Class Struggles: Part Two

I suppose that I should be thankful for my film classes, because they expose me to cleaverless films that I might otherwise have never seen. Come with me on a journey back to my Russian cinema class, as I explore what might prove to be two of my favorite Russian films ever, though there's honestly not much competition in that regard so far.

Ballad of a Soldier (Баллада о солдате / Ballada o soldate)

Year: 1959

Director: Grigoriy Chukhray

Cast: Vladimir Ivashov, Zhanna Prokhorenko, Antonina Maksimova

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

A young war hero is given a brief vacation, and he touches hearts on the road back to his mother's house.

The Russians love to make films about war. Whether it was the pro-Bolshevik Revolution propaganda films of the Stalinist period, the "up and at 'em" World War II pictures, or the more somber, naturalistic period pieces that followed the post-Stalin Thaw, no topic has been more thoroughly explored by the cinema of a nation. Unless you count France's love affair with black and white cigarette smoke.

1959's Ballad of a Soldier is one of those Thaw period films, created during the time in which the Russian people were given a chance to reflect honestly and earnestly on the impact the war had on their nation. The paranoid iron thumb of Mssr. Stalin was gone, and filmmakers tentatively poked their heads out of the sand to explore that persnickety value known as Truth.

Through the escapades of one lucky enlistee on his brief journey home, Ballad of a Soldier tells the story of an ailing nation. Pvt. Alyosha, played by the adorable Vladimir Ivashov, spends his entire trip back helping others, to the point where he sacrifices all but one minute of time with his mother in service of his fellow countrymen. On his travels he meets an injured veteran who's afraid his wife will leave him, a woman who has shacked up with another man while her fiancé is on the front, a Ukrainian family put in harm's way thanks to Stalin's relocation programs, and a young girl with whom he falls in love, all over the course of three days.

He lives a life over that long weekend, exploring the consequences of the war in every nook and cranny of the country, touching hearts and changing lives, kissing his mother on the cheek, and returning to the front, never to be heard from again. This film is all about the future potential that was wrested from the young men who were sent into the fray, and it is profoundly affecting. While Alyosha's mother pines for her lost child and her unfixed roof (standing in for the broader sense of Mother Russia, left in disarray), so do we, acknowledging the loss of a life meant to be lived, converted into just another fallen soldier.

Nobody ever said Russian cinema was cheerful.

Rating: 8/10

The Steamroller and the Violin (Каток и скрипка / Katok i skripka)

Year: 1961

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Igor Fomchenko, Vladimir Zamanskiy, Marina Adzhubei

Run Time: 46 minutes

A young violin player and a construction worker strike up an unlikely friendship.

Andrei Tarkovsky is a filmmaker best known for his habit of hiding encoded messages in his films which the audience must then analyze and decode. The Steamroller and the Violin is his very first film (in fact, it's his film school thesis), so it's not quite so complex as all that, but it's still a tremendously valuable watch for anybody even remotely interested in the history of Russian cinema.

Exposing the hidden class system that fueled Soviet Russia, the film details a privileged and bullied boy's attempts to make a friend, which are squashed by his mother who doesn't want him consorting with Those people. At a brisk 46 minutes, it can't really be about much more than it, can it? But it uses its time wisely, painting an image of two people's lives with elegance and grace, without pushing them to adhere to any sort of rigid plot. It's like a more focused form of Italian Neorealism.

As the boy and the construction worker make their way around town, their interactions are filtered through reflections, reflections, everywhere. Whether it's in a puddle of water or the dozens of inexplicable mirrors that pepper the production design, the film constantly reflects on itself and its own meaning in a manner that's simultaneously student film heavy-handed and professionally precise.

The most unforgettable element of The Steamroller and the Violin is its inimitable style. It's earthy and worn, but packed with sophisticated double meaning, especially in its most playful moment - when the boy and the man become separated with a building between them in the process of being demolished. It's meaningful, skilled, and charming despite its relatively clumsy subtext, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is a filmmaker to watch out for. Well, to have watched out for.

The only question that remains is... If Tarkovsky can do it the first time out of the gate, why are all American student films so damn bad?

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 849
Reviews In This Series
Class Struggles: Part One (March 29, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Two (April 9, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Three (April 22, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Four (April 24, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Five (May 6, 2015)
Class Struggles: Bonus Round (May 11, 2015)

Census Bloodbath: Stranger Danger

Year: 1981

Director: Ken Wiederhorn

Cast: Lauren Tewes, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John DiSanti

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Eyes of a Stranger is a slasher film displaced in time. A sleazy rape-murder thriller in the vein of the late-70's grindhouse era, the film came late to the party in March 1981, by which time the despotic teen splatter film had risen to its rightful throne. It's a lonely straggler, left out in the cold by the genre's abrupt transition following the release of Friday the 13th.

The true misfortune of this is that Eyes of a Stranger is possibly the best of its skeevy brethren, certainly far more than its lackluster counterpart from 1980, the utterly reprehensible Don't Answer the Phone. Taking cues from the vibrantly grimy Maniac, the film rises above its lowly stature to actually bestow a modicum of artistic merit upon itself.

Not that I'm asking for high art from my meat cleaver movies.

The film tells the story of Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes), an empathetic Miami reporter who is profoundly personally affected by a recent rash of rape-murder crimes that has been striking the city. These crimes trigger her feelings of guilt about the molestation of her sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first feature film role), which left her deaf and blind. When she begins to suspect that her neighbor Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti) is the culprit, she takes it upon herself to investigate, despite the protestations of her lawyer boyfriend David (Peter DuPre).

While it could have just been yet another throwaway trifle of misogyny, Eyes of a Stranger has much more to it than that. On top of two strong female protagonists, the film has a focused sense of style and an exquisite amount of tension during many sequences. It's almost like it's actually a movie instead of a string of nasty kill scenes. What an idea!

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty to dislike about Eyes of a Stranger. Its focus on rape as a key element of the murder sequences prevents them from being any fun, though the bulk of the sex crimes are thankfully relegated to the offscreen void. That keeps the kills from becoming too nasty, but it also keeps them from becoming much of anything. In a film with a flimsier plot, this would have sunk the entire affair like a lead iceberg.

But lo and behold, we have a surprisingly solid thriller narrative anchored by characters with actual dynamics. The victims are still generally one-dimensional and introduced only to die five minutes later, but the main storyline is nothing to shake a stick at. As the body count begins to pile up, Jane's foolhardiness puts a strain on her relationship with David, with whom she has been using Tracy as an excuse to avoid shacking up.

Despite the fact that she can handily do laundry, make toast, go swimming, and all sorts of totally normal teen things all by herself. As a matter of fact, I think the laundry thing puts her ahead of the average teen.

So, in Eyes of a Stranger we have realistic characters interacting in a world with consequences, many of whom are performed with surprising skill. Tewes is absolutely stunning, creating a nuanced backstory told completely by her face, and Jason Leigh milks tension out of every moment she's in, no matter how brightly lit or visually unimpressive they may otherwise be. Only DiSanti is a weak link, providing an utterly banal villain performance in which he is out-acted by his car, which has a swooping Night Rider design and sinister eye-like headlamps. Honestly, if there's ever a sequel in the works, any smart producer would tap that car first thing.

Earlier I mentioned the film's sense of style and I'm going to expand upon that now, because segues are the worst. Especially in the first act, the world of Eyes of a Stranger is populated with rich, vivid colors that, much like its spiritual forebear Maniac, invoke the atmosphere of the classic Italian gialli.  The swooping camera slowly carves its path through highly saturated greens and reds, lending the film an air of class and panache before it brutalizes the audience.

I've already spoken out about the imbalance in the kill sequences, which struggle to avoid the nastier side of exploitation, in which violent rape is merely an excuse to see boobs, but many other moments before and after the questionable acts are fraught with genuine tension. I shudder to spoil too many of these, because they're really quite alarming, but Eyes of a Stranger puts in a bid at actually achieving scares, something many an anemic slasher has utterly failed to do.

On top of all this, the film has an intimate, detailed sense of its own geography, it paws at thematic potential with a half-cocked subtextual discussion on sight and the male gaze, a unique exploration of the life of a girl cut off from her senses, and it's possibly one of the most female-empowering films of its ilk. Even in the finale, which sets up a "the hero races to the scene" subplot, the women prevail over all and the bonds of sisterhood prove to be the most effective defense. It's like Frozen but with more belt stranglings!

Although to be honest, I'm a little sad nobody even attempted to whack Olaf the snowman.

Tom Savini doesn't get a lot to do, but his effects perk up the film where it counts, and creates an ultimately very enjoyable experience. I'm extremely hesitant to throw my support behind Eyes of a Stranger because despite its charms, it's still beholden to its pedigree of sleaze, but all in all it's a worthwhile watch.

Killer: Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti)

Final Girl: Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) and Tracy Harris (Jennifer Jason Leigh)

Best Kill: Jeff is decapitated and his head is placed in a fish tank, much like the awesome He Knows You're Alone from the year before.

Sign of the Times: I'd be screaming too if I was asked to put on that forest green tracksuit.

Scariest Moment: Tracy goes about her business in the kitchen, but when she claps her dog doesn't come. We see that it's dead on the floor and realize that the killer is in the house.
Weirdest Moment: Debbie watches Shock Waves on TV. This is weird because nobody has ever willingly watched Shock Waves.
Champion Dialogue: "Why don't you go stick it in your ear and then go jump in the bay?"
Body Count: 7; not including a corpse found in the beginning of the film, or Tracy's seeing-eye dog.

1. Jeff is decapitated.
2. Debbie is strangled with a belt offscreen.
3. Annette is killed offscreen.
4. Smoocher is stabbed in the neck with a switchblade.
5. Smoochette has her throat slit.
6. Stripper is killed offscreen.
7. Stanley Herbert is shot in the head. 

TL;DR: Eyes of a Stranger is weighed down by a sleazy atmosphere, but features some terrific performances and a great deal of legitimate tension.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1178

Bore Of The Worlds

Year: 2015

Director: Tim Johnson

Cast: Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I am neither a child nor a drunk frat guy. As such, farts utterly fail to amuse me. If you disagree with this sentiment, please feel free to skip the rest of this review and go play Call of Duty. If you are a child, feel free to win. Knock those frat guys down a peg, why don't you?

Home, according to people who are far more educated on the topic than me, found DreamWorks Animation on a precipice. The studio that brought us Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon has fallen upon hard times and the success of the company hinged upon the box office take of a little film starring a pop star and that annoying nerd from Big Bang Theory. 2015 isn't exactly the Golden Age of animation.

Luckily for the studio and B-level animation fans everywhere, Home pulled its weight in the theatrical market. Unluckily for just about everyone, it's probably the most listlessly generic family comedy in a generation. In the wake of genuinely intelligent and entertaining kiddie fare like The Lego Movie and Big Hero 6, perhaps it just seems more egregiously wan that it truly is. But the case remains that the film is nothing but a prattling, pop music-shilling wisp, providing naught but the most base level quality at every turn.

"Kids love adorable sidekicks, right? Why not give the little bastards two? That'll really get them buying plushies. Hey Dave, quit hogging the Spray Cheez." - Some DreamWorks Executive, probably

Home tells the story of Oh (Jim Parsons), a small purple Boov. The Boov are an alien race that excel at one thing: running away. After their cowardly Captain Smeck (Steve Martin on Dramamine) panics at a treaty meeting and accidentally steals a valuable stone from their enemy the Gorg, they must find a new place for their race to hide. The solution? A little blue marble known as Earth covered in a self-destructive, hairy scourge known as the human race.

The Boov rampage the planet with their superior technology, relocating humanity to a planned living community in Australia. Honestly, it sounds kind of nice. There's no work to be done, and an amusement park made of ice cream dominates the landscape. But Home was made in America, so this socialist utopia is obviously unspeakably evil. Thanks, Obama.

When Oh accidentally sends a housewarming e-vite to the Gorg (a note to developers: maybe rethink that function in the next focus meeting), the Boov scramble to prevent their nemesis from finding their new hiding place. Oh becomes a fugitive and forms an unlikely team with the renegade human child Gratuity "Tip" Tucci (Rihanna), who just wants to find her mother (Jennifer Lopez), who was stolen from her during the Boov invasion.

On their journey together, Oh discovers that uniformity and cowardice shouldn't be his only tenets in life, and Tip discovers that they're both outcasts, learning that she is too keen on pushing people away. "The power of friendship" and "beauty isn't skin deep" and all that great stuff. Hooray!

"Never trust a guy with a mustache."

There are numerous film-breaking problems with Home, not the least of which is its devastatingly ugly animation style. The humans are nothing more than glassy-eyed Pop! Vinyl figurines, and the Boov are just unrendered Play-Doh excretions. Its dully functional narrative harbors exactly zero surprises, and the apocalyptic profusion of Rihanna singles that peppers the film renders it nothing more than a schizophrenic concept album. 

Especially in the first half, the muslin thin plot is torn to bits by odious slapstick, an alarming wealth of low rent scatological humor, and the utterly mystifying grammatical construction of the Boov dialect, which is something like a dyslexic Yoda being smothered with a thesaurus. It is perfunctory, feeble, and distractingly inconsistent. You're telling me that the Boov have such a mastery of human culture that they regularly fall to pieces at a terrible "Busta Rhymes" pun, but are unable to comprehend what a high five is? 

OK, that one is nitpicky, but give me a break. Maybe don't have a character wear a tire as a hat, then make a pun revealing that he knows exactly what function the object affixed to his cranium truly serves. It's damn sloppy is what it is, and I won't stand for it.

Though maybe the film in which a car runs on a Slurpee machine shouldn't be analyzed with a fine-toothed comb.

OK, despite my unbridled anger at that tire thing, Home isn't exactly the Marquis du Sade of children's movies. There's enough in there to be at least remotely entertaining, and the comedy does pick up once the endless setup flatulates its way offscreen. It's still generally broad and unenthusiastic, but several lines are gutbusters with a remarkably mature outlook on the world.

There's also some genuinely decent world building, especially regarding the clever design of Boov technology, which is generally soft and round with an efficient and engaging functionality, using a consistent and aesthetically pleasing bubble motif. And the "camera" engages with the material, creating motion more often than not, indicating that at least somebody cared about the film (for the record, it's not me).

And the voice cast is decent: Parsons and Martin milk their personas for exactly as much as they're worth nowadays, and Rihanna gives a performance that isn't exactly memorable, but is certainly more than anybody could have thought her capable of. Likewise, the film's commitment to diversity and racial representation is impossible to overlook.

The cherry on top? There's exactly one memorable image in the film. That's not necessarily a plus, but it's a doozy, and it's one I'll be thinking about for a long time to come. So there's that.

All in all, the film as a whole is pleasant enough, but it's nothing to write home about. And that pun is better than about 75 percent of the movie, so you're welcome.

Peace.

TL;DR: Home is a tragically generic, relentlessly mercenary kiddie picture, but it has at least a couple moments of real entertainment.

Rating: 5/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I'd say no. It's already earned enough to save DreamWorks and prove that minority protagonists are viable in the market, so save your hard-earned cash. And also I'm sorry for the delay in getting this review out. I'm a busy boy.

Word Count: 1083

Battle Of The Sexes

Year: 2015

Director: David Robert Mitchell

Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Sex is never a good idea if you're in a horror film. Whether it's the puritanical slashers revenging themselves upon the youthful and libidinous, the Satanic cults that want to infest your womb, or the various horrible diseases, infections, and possessions it opens you up to, just avoid doing the do at all costs. Listen closely. Can you hear faint music that sounds like this? Do yourself a favor and join a convent or something.

Sex has been a part of horror for as long as the genre's been around, dating back to classic literature and even folklore. There's a million reasons to be afraid of the illicit pleasure that has the power to wither, corrupt, cure, infect, and create with wanton arbitrariness, but It Follows has almost miraculously found a new one. 

I mean besides the fact that doing it in the backseat of a car is a cramped, sticky nightmare.

It Follows follows the story of the following: Jay Height (Maika Monroe of The Guest) is a young college student in Detroit. Her ancient rabbit ears television set would seem to indicate that she's in the 80's, but her friend is reading an eBook on some ridiculous Star Trek clamshell compact nonsense that I'm not sure has even been invented yet. So I came to the conclusion that maybe the TV is supposed to indicate that she's poor. But her bedroom is bigger than mine. So... science fiction, it is.

Anyway, Jay goes on a date with the hunkish Hugh (Jake Weary, who somehow survived the terror of being in all 3 Fred movies). All night he acts very strangely, looking over his shoulder and being profoundly distracted. Nevertheless, she finds him likable enough for a quick shag in the backseat of his car, after which he reveals that he is being followed by a relentless shape-shifting creature. It takes the form of whatever person will most help it blend in with your environment, ceaselessly walking toward you until it can reach you and perform a murder most foul. You can outrun it for a stretch, but it will always come trudging, ever trudging for your soul.

The only way to temporarily abate the following is to have sex with another person, at which point the It moves onto them. Once it murders them, it comes back to you. It's like a homicidal game of hot potato. Jay takes to the road with her useless friends: her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), their bookish friend Yara (Olivia Luccardi), their horny hanger-on Paul (Keir Gilchrist of the tremendously underrated United States of Tara), and their half-stud, half-hippy garbage neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) to avoid the It while trying to discover a way to defeat it.

And being very symmetrical in the process.

It Follows can be described the same way that Hugh describes the monster: "It's very slow, but it's not dumb." The film's pacing, much like its intermittently interesting electro-score by Disasterpeace, has that very same deliberate, interminable pounding. In the beginning, this is a mortifyingly dull weakness, but as the steam builds in the film's pressure cooker, it becomes an unstoppable oppressive force.

The film isn't quite scary enough to give nightmares to more than the most impressionable of teenyboppers, but the tension it creates in its later sequences is still insidiously effective, even for hardened horror viewers. 

The various forms of the It twist the mundane world into a deranged nightmare, and the unflagging determination of the slow but steady menace creates an overwhelming pressure in the background of every scene. On top of that, due to the disguised nature of the beast, victims are required to flee to less-populated areas (which are usually a death sentence in these kinds of films), creating an unsettling cognitive dissonance in the minds of the viewers.

Of course, there's also a smattering of the usual suspect jump scares that feel particularly cheap among the riches to be found here. It's like eating a bowl of juicy raspberries and finding a Cap'n Crunch crunchberry hiding in your spoon. It's startling, yes, but it doesn't make you appreciate the experience any more.

Not when I could spend my time being followed around by a raspberry instead. (I think I've lost control of this metaphor.)

That's the real problem with It Follows. For everything it does spectacularly, terrifically well, there's one small rankling element that knocks it down a peg. Much like Paula Abdul's relationship with the cartoon cat, it's two steps forward, two steps back. And yes, I just referenced "Opposites Attract" on a blog in 2015. I deserve a Pulitzer.

Seriously though, every great element of the film has a small negative one latched onto it like a remora on the belly of a shark. 

Example #1: The film is utterly gorgeous. David Robert Mitchell provides It Follows with a slick, well-polished look that balances colors and symmetry in a unique and arresting way. BUT the machinations of the monster lack internal logic, sometimes choosing the exact form that would cause it to stand out rather than blend in with the masses. The forms it picks are scary, yes, so I'm only nitpicking here, but they don't quite gel with Its motivations as we understand them.

Example #2: The monster is one of the absolute best low budget exercises in terror ever conceived. It's astoundingly cheap, but still feels effectively chilling and supernatural without requiring any extensive special effects. BUT other elements of the production value belie its low budget a little too much for a wide release. The audio can be a little muddy at times, the film's predilection for 360 degree shots is not entirely supported by the resolution of the camera, and the shakiness of the cinematography (especially in an early sequence with a wheelchair) is a constant reminder of the camera's presence, breaking the film's reality a little too often.

Example #3: It Follows is super smart. There are loads of valid ways to interpret the film, because the film is cleverly layered in a way that promotes conversation and active viewership. With today's anemic slate of original horror, this is a tremendous boon. [Highlight for my personal interpretation: Although there's a lot to talk about with the sexual angle, like the STD from Hell that prevents future loving relationships from flourishing, or the idea that sex and intimacy are dangerous and terrifying. My personal feeling is that the It represents the ever-present truth of your mortality, which you can push from your mind by seeking pleasure and feigning ignorance, but inevitably comes to retrieve you. At any rate, It Follows is emphatically NOT a date movie.] BUT there's a dismaying amount of heavy-handed symbolism, mainly in the form of Yara reading literary passages from her damn ass seashell e-reader thing that have a direct link with the events onscreen. Wow, what a coincidence. Such merit, so art.

At least the cinematography is still gorgeous no matter what.

So, for these reasons, despite desperately wanting to give It Follows an 8/10 rating, I really can't find it within myself to do so. But I still highly recommend the film. It's clever, intelligent, original horror starring one of the genre's quickly rising stars in her second role of the past year that really should put her on the map. There's a subtle sense of humor, a modern treatise on sex and dating, and a refreshingly non-exploitative use of nudity. All in all, it's a win-win-win even if it ain't perfect.

Brennan says check it out!

TL;DR: It Follows is a terrific original horror film with a clever low budget concept, but it's a little too ponderous to be truly unforgettable.

Rating: 7/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Yes! Support original horror!
Word Count: 1319

Census Bloodbath: Pranks For The Memories

Year: 1986

Director: Fred Walton

Cast: Deborah Foreman, Amy Steel, Clayton Rohner

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Sad April Fool's Day! 

Just kidding! Happy April Fool's Day!

That's about all the pranking energy I have in me at this point, I'm afraid. As a kid, I was the best in the business, but I'm retired now. Luckily for us, today's slasher feature has us covered for all of our practical joking needs. April Fool's Day, released by Paramount in 1986, is a film birthed from a congregation of slasher royalty.

Friday the 13th producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. pulled together some of the biggest names in the business for April Fool's Day, including Nightmare on Elm Street composer Charles Bernstein, Fade to Black/The Funhouse/Friday the 13th 4, 5, & 6/Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo/Everything You've Ever Loved casting director Fern Champion, When A Stranger Calls director Fred Walton, and Friday the 13th Part 2 Final Girl Amy Steel. It's kind of like the Avengers for the slasher set, if you will.

Only they do battle with terrible 80's hairstyles instead of world-eating aliens.

April Fool's Day tells the story of one Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman of 1988's Destroyer), a tragically rich young woman who hosts an April Fool's/birthday/spring break getaway weekend for her college friends at her secluded island mansion. After a prank unintentionally leads to a gory ferry accident, the constable and the ferry captain head to the mainland, leaving the unfortunate kids all alone for the weekend. Of course a mysterious someone begins picking them all off, but let's Meet the Meat before they're seasoned and sliced, shall we?

The group in April Fool's Day is considerably large, but each of the kiddos has a distinct, multi-faceted personality that renders them unique and compelling. The one thing this diverse group has in common is that none of them seem to like Muffy all that much. 

There's Nikki (Deborah Goodrich), the clever, promiscuous sexpot with a Mad Magazine sense of humor; Chaz (Clayton Rohner of I, Madman), Nikki's boyfriend, the kinda cute, really horny film major who doesn't take anything seriously; Arch (Thomas F. Wilson aka freaking Biff Tannen from Back to the Future), Chaz's bestest buddy, and one of those straight dudes who spends an improbable amount of time pretending he wants to bang his friend; Hal (Jay Baker), a kinda dorky Southern gold digger who fears for his own inheritance; Skip (Griffin O'Neal), Muffy's jovial stoner cousin; Nan (Leah Pinsent), a bookish, prudish, bubbly girl who packs a separate suitcase for her homework; Kit (Amy Steel), who, thanks to her androgynous name and veteran performer is without a doubt our Final Girl despite her only character trait being that she's a tad irritable; and Rob (Ken Olandt), Kit's boyfriend who feels like he isn't worthy because he goes to a state school. 

He's wrong. He's not worthy because of his terrible mullet.

Their interactions are underscored with a truly intriguing element of class anxiety. Most of the guests are sheltered and privileged in their own right, but many are envious of Muffy "On a Clear Day You Can See the Kennedys" St. John's considerable means, and Rob feels inadequate because of his lower socioeconomic status. It is perhaps too much to ask for a late-period slasher to explore this topic in a full, satisfying manner, let alone worm its way into a decent thesis, but April Fool's Day uses this unconsummated motif as a bedrock for incredibly solid characterizations.

The yuppie movement having come into full swing by the mid-80's, these obnoxious but lovable characters plant the film firmly in a historical context, far more than the typical slasher ephemera of feathered hair and neon legwarmers. Compounded with one character's expression of nuclear fears, and another's shamefully hidden abortion, April Fool's Day becomes a half-decent social piece on the futility and anxiety of the upper and middle class in the materialistic 1980's.

It's a good thing, too, because as an out-and-out slasher film, April Fool's Day isn't exactly a peach. The dialogue and filmmaking are solid, and there's some decent atmosphere, but the Thought Police MPAA crackdown on slashers in the latter half of the decade stunts the film considerably. The one sex scene is about as un-exploitative as Nancy Drew's dream journal, and the gore is light, to say the least.

When your climactic gore reveal could be fixed up with some Tampax and a teaspoon of Alka-Seltzer, it might not be ready for prime time.

BUT! The tone is jovial and the atmosphere is decently spooky, in the best evocation of the spirit of April Fool's. While the kiddos have fun with dribble glasses and gimp masks, Bernstein's remarkably held-back synth music keeps the creep factor up for scenes that have actual, genuine tension from time to time. Though the kills may be muffled, the preceding moments can be deliciously tense and one sequence in a well actually manages to dredge up a goosebump or two.

And wait! There's more! The cast is packed with actors who had more than just a simulacrum of a career, so the performances are across the board pretty decent. The only weak links are the flaky Deborah Foreman as Muffy "It's OK, It's Perrier" St. John, who for the life of her can't figure out just what to do with her damn hands, flapping them wildly around her face like rabid bats, and (unfortunately) Amy Steel, who is brought down by a dull character and reduced to a kind of drowsy irritation for too many of her line readings. 

Kit only becomes interesting in a historical context when she comes on to Rob, providing the actress her second consecutive non-virginal Final Girl character. I don't know what it is about Ms. Steel, but directors love to film her jumping dudes' bones, and this scene is certainly more sultry than her chaste pre-coital scene with Paul in Friday the 13th. Despite her lackluster performance, this scene is more than enough to launch her into the Final Girl pantheon for defying stereotypes. Go Kit! Feminism!

On another note, the film is also quite well-shot, with picturesque scenery and nighttime lighting that manages to avoid drowning the frame in darkness. You'd think that slasher filmmakers would pick up a book or two on night cinematography when they prepare to shoot a film almost entirely after sunset. But you would be severely overestimating how much the people behind the camera cared about these things. Most of the time, I count myself lucky if I don't see a boom mike in frame, but here the cinematography is skilled and professional and I can't respect that enough.

Also whoever picked out that outfit deserves an Oscar.

Alright, here's where things get SPOILERific. If you care about the ending to a 30-year-old B-slasher, skip ahead to the image of the homoerotic frat bros.

As you might have been able to guess, the ending of April Fool's Day reveals that the Agatha Christie-esque body count antics are all one big prank. Muffy is performing a dry run for a murder mystery getaway weekend she plans to sell to the public, in which her evil twin Buffy escapes from an asylum and mows down the guests. Her friends are her unfortunate first victims. 

This ending is a sprightly reversal on slasher expectations from a team intimately familiar with the formula, but it also prevents the film from being a classic example of the form. For obvious reasons, all the deaths are kept offscreen, reducing the impact of the kills and irritating the horehounds in the audience. The film is clever enough to spring back from this deficiency, but it causes the third act to drag something fierce before the Final Girl sequence kicks in.

Speaking of the finale, the film's premise also prevents the Final Girl from fighting back against the killer. It wouldn't exactly be a classic prank if Kit stabbed Muffy in her smug face, so she is reduced to panicked running that is rendered interesting by some inspired set design, but doesn't have the dynamism of her chainsaw tussle with the truly dangerous Jason Voorhees. The final reveal is chilling thanks to some subtle, jarring sound design, but in the end its clever reversal is not quite worth the losses it inflicts on the film as a whole.

Welcome back, my love.

All in all, April Fool's Day isn't a film that I would recommend to a casual horror fan, but for those willing to explore its coy depths, it's a rewarding character slasher with a well-honed sense of fun. It won't change your perspective on the genre or anything, but it's a more than acceptable romp through the social climate of 1986 with some puckish mayhem thrown in for good measure.

Killer: [Buffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) but actually nobody]

Final Girl: Kit (Amy Steel)

Best Kill: Chaz is castrated while wearing a gimp mask, so that's fun.

Sign of the Times: As much as I love Chaz's baggy jacket/V-neck/patterned pajama pants combo, I'm pretty sure it's a capitol offense to wear it in today's fashion climate.

Scariest Moment: Arch is hung from a tree above a lunging snake.

Weirdest Moment: In an attempt to nail the classic Spring-Loaded Cat scare, April Fools Day launches a forlorn feline directly down onto poor Skip from the stratosphere.

Champion Dialogue: "Your fly's open and your Hostess Twinkie is hangin' out."

Body Count: 8 [But actually 0]

1. Skip is killed offscreen.
2. Arch is decapitated. 
3. Nan has her throat slit.
4. Chaz is castrated.
5. Nikki is stabbed to death.
6. Hal is hung.
7. Muffy is decapitated.
8. [Muffy has her throat slit.] 

TL;DR: April Fool's Day is a demure slasher, but makes up for it with great characters and a fairly suspenseful twist on the genre.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1650

Class Struggles: Part One

I'm graduating this semester, so that means I'm stuck with all the classes I put off in earlier years in order to take cool horror classes that let me watch From Beyond and get academic drool all over Wes Craven. The one class I was looking forward to was French cinema, but lo and behold the Fates would not allow it, and the only foreign film class I could get in my schedule was Russian.

As it turns out, this was a happy accident because hardly any country with a relatively thriving cinematic output has had a more tumultuous and fascinating history than the Soviet Union U.S.S.R. Russian Federation. As a result, their cinema is twisted, strange, and uniquely compelling for any aspiring film historian. Here's some mini reviews of the first two films I've had the deranged pleasure of watching.

Battleship Potemkin (Броненосец Потемкин / Bronenosets Po'tyomkin)

Year: 1925

Director: Sergei Eisenstein

Cast: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigori Aleksandrov

Run Time: 1 hour 6 minutes

The crew of a battleship mutinies, leading to a rebellion against tsarist forces in the nearby town of Odessa.

To start off the class with a rip-roarin' good time, the first thing we screened was Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent film depicting an early Bolshevik rebellion in 1905, twenty years earlier.

You don't often see me reviewing silent films on here, largely because the style of the medium is almost completely divorced from modern cinema and the evolution of film criticism that I represent. But Potemkin has been named one of the three most influential films in world cinema for a reason. It is my hope that I can balance an explanation of how it functions as a classical masterpiece of the form and why it's OK if you don't like it all that much.

I hope you'll all bear with me if I toss some film theory at ya right quick. Eisenstein was an early pioneer of the montage theory of cinema. Montage (no, not the Rocky training sequence kind) was an approach to understanding cinema through the power of editing. An early notable experiment juxtaposed a neutral-faced man with different images, like a bowl of soup, or a young child. Reportedly, the audience commended the man's acting, applauding the hungry look he gave at the soup and the caring look with which he gazed at the child. In reality, this effect was created through the context of the images, for the man's face didn't actually change a lick.

Now you can believe in this theory or not. I personally have some doubts about that particular experiment, but nonetheless Battleship Potemkin was used as a testing ground for some high level early theories about the dialogue of cinema and how the juxtaposition of images functioned to create an emotional response.

On that level, it is a damn masterpiece, a perfect textbook example of all the best ways to use the system. Intellectual metaphors abound, whether it be the relatively simple boiling soup that represents the bubbling rage of the working class or the maggot-infested meat that stands more obliquely for the rotten state of tsarism. And entire books could be written about the famous Odessa steps sequence, and I'm sure several have.

But the fact remains that the silent film era is often too distant from our own to be truly recognizable as entertainment. On top of this, Battleship Potemkin's heavy propaganda elements render it a bit too po-faced and serious to be worth a visit if you're looking from any other perspective than film analyst or historian.

The communistic focus on a collective body of working class people rather than a set of protagonists is likewise alienating for a modern audience. So, while the film is structurally and cinematically possibly the best single silent film of the 1920's, its density overpowers its magnetism. If you're in an academic mood, I recommend Battleship Potemkin above all else, but it is not a film to sit through for pleasure.

Rating: 6/10

Circus (Цирк / Tsirk)

Year: 1936

Director: Grigori Aleksandrov & Isidor Simkov

Cast: Lyubov Orlova, Evgeniya Melnikova, Vladimir Volodin

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

A down-on-her luck American circus performer in Moscow wants to keep her illegitimate black child a secret so she isn't deported.

Circus is a curious beast. A staunchly Stalinist propaganda film disguised as a wacky slapstick comedy about the circus, it's one of the most interesting pieces of film ephemera loosed from the back gums of the 1930's.

Comedy is another of those things that sometimes doesn't carry over quite as well from the black-and-white era. And when you consider that this film exemplifies what people in the Soviet Union found funny, it carries over even less. They weren't, shall we say, the most mirthful of people. 

Yet Circus is another interesting curio. It displays a gaudy fantasy world, but any active audience member  can reverse engineer the illusion to reveal some twisted truths about the time it was created.

Between the wacky misunderstandings, the Charlie Chaplin impersonator, and the warbly Betty Boop musical performances (can you tell that the American films had snuck their way over the border?) lies a story about Russia as a post-racial nirvana where people from all over the world could live in harmony. However, the "all around the world" song that closes the film avoids letting the Jewish man sing, and the demure sidestepping of those pesky Purges piques historical interest.

Propaganda is some of the most excitingly factual cinema out there, if you know where to look. If you take a peek in the corners and behind the curtains, there's a world of secrets waiting to be uncovered. 

Also, the strained excesses of the film's desperate bid for veracity provide some excellent camp value, especially in the closing number "Song of the Motherland." The overall comedy might be a stale imitation of the American greats, but nothing beats the smarmy villain who wants to drag our heroine back to Evil Capitalist America - a man who looks like a cross between Adolf Hitler and Dracula, who has the ability to disappear in a puff of smoke.

You can't make this stuff up.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1033

Reviews In This Series

Class Struggles: Part One (March 29, 2015)

Class Struggles: Part Two (April 9, 2015)

Class Struggles: Part Three (April 22, 2015)

Class Struggles: Part Four (April 24, 2015)

Class Struggles: Part Five (May 6, 2015)

Class Struggles: Bonus Round (May 11, 2015)

Una Poca De Gracia

Year: 1987

Director: Luis Valdez

Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I don't really like biopics. Human lives are messy. Good things happen, bad things happen, and then you die. There's no narrative there. It's not particularly interesting, no matter how monolithic a public figure you happen to be.

Of course, Hollywood is keenly aware of this. That's why they love to punch these things up with long lost loves, criminal subterfuge, and various nefarious, melodramatic doings. Is your Zayn Malik biopic not turning out the way you want it to? Toss in a cancer-riddled BFF. Maybe a hot air balloon chase. And boom. Box office gold.

1987's La Bamba is perhaps the only biopic in the world that refrains from indulging in these excesses. The story of Ritchie Valens, tragically concise as it is, turns out to be near-perfect fodder for the sickly format. It's short, sweet, simple, and sincere. While it's still beholden to the meandering weaknesses of the genre, the source material is uniquely tailored to the world of cinema.

This is gonna be one of those sad reviews, isn't it?

La Bamba covers a very short period of the life of Richard Valenzuela (Lou Diamond Phillips), beginning with his move to the San Fernando Valley in 1957 and concluding with his devastatingly early death in a plane crash two years later. As he rockets to superstardom at 16 years old, he struggles to balance his Mexican heritage and his American identity, bouncing between his jealous alcoholic half-brother Bob Morales (Esai Morales), his privileged white girlfriend Donna (Danielle von Zerneck), and his loving mother Connie (Rosanna DeSoto).

After he joins a garage band called The Silhouettes, his talents are discovered by Bob Keane (Joe Pantoliano) of Del-Fi Records, who signs him more or less immediately as a solo act. After a series of singles make it big, he sock hops all the way to the bank, providing a good home for his beloved mom and just generally being a saintly, angelic person. It's very Pollyanna, but if there's ever someone worth airbrushing and idealizing, it's a dead minor, I suppose.

Donna's not worth the trouble, though. She's kind of a dick.

The story of La Bamba is more myth than biography, reducing the Valens story into broad brush strokes to create a fablistic tale about passion, family, love, loss, and culture. In doing so, the film necessarily becomes a little bit shallow, but the surface-level plot and themes are functional and slick. 

It's a shame that some key moments (Ritchie agreeing to change his name, or making the fateful decision to incorporate the Mexican folk song La Bamba into his discography) are left by the wayside in a plot that assumes you already know these stories and don't care to hear them again, but for the most part La Bamba is a rollicking soap bubble about a young boy's triumph and his legacy: the tentative prods at acceptance between the Caucasian and Chicano communities of Southern California.

The film is most important as a piece following the lives and losses of the minority community in the Valley. Directed and written by Luis Valdez, a prominent figure in the Chicano theater movement, La Bamba thrums with energy during the scenes that more explicitly explore racial interactions. As Ritchie (a fully American teen who doesn't speak a word of Spanish) learns that he will never be perceived that way because of the color of his skin and begins to embrace his ancestral culture, the screen comes alive with passion and color.

In fact, the parts of the film that depict his meteoric rise to fame could hardly be more perfunctory. Only one moment - Ritchie's first recording session - truly captures the same effervescence and humor that is brought to the scenes of Ritchie's everyday life and internal struggle. By removing nearly all of the iconography from such an iconic figure, Valdez finds the human truth beneath the gloss.

The human brain beneath the perfect hair, so to speak.

Listening to film students talk all day really changes your perspective on what makes a good metaphor.

So La Bamba has heart, a talented and committed cast (especially DeSoto and the newbie Phillips in his first feature role), and a director who knows what to do with the material to make it unique. It's an essential watch in the history of Chicano cinema, and it's an enjoyable rock 'n roll fairy tale to boot. I can't really complain about that. 

This was made in the late 80's, after all, so there are some patently cheesy moments (the final shot, for one thing, and the alarming percentage of The Big Bopper's dialogue that's just "Helloooooo, baybay!") as well as an unnerving fixation on foreshadowing the inevitable plane crash, but all in all La Bamba is a treat. 

It's a biopic that ignores the superficial traditions of the genre, and it's a humanistic fable about finding oneself in the midst of success. It's not complex, but it doesn't need to be. And it's a nostalgic, glowing assessment of one of rock 'n roll's most tragic figures that focuses on his joys and successes rather than the melodrama. I can't think of any way to make the film more rewarding than that.

TL;DR: La Bamba is probably the best of a bad genre, and an excellent account of Mexican-American life in the 1950's.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 913

Census Bloodbath: Camp Blood

For the crossover review of The Burning over at Kinemalogue, click here.

Year: 1981

Director: Tony Maylan

Cast: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1981 was the year of the slasher film. 

No, it didn't have the most slashers released. 1982 beats it out with 43 of the godforsaken things, and the post-video boom years of '87 and '88 also clock in above the legal limit. 

Nor did it have the most franchise involvement. That would be 1989, the grisly offerings of which included Friday the 13th VIII, Halloween 5, Silent Night, Deadly Night III, Sleepaway Camp III, and Nightmare 5. 

But what it did have was a generous slate of what are pretty widely considered to be the absolute pinnacle films of the genre, including Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, Just Before Dawn, Hell Night, Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, and The Prowler, and that's not even including the ones that I like that stray from the general consensus.

Our subject today is one of these films: The Burning, which is subject to wide-eyed adulation by many a Johnny Slasherfan. It's got it all. Summer camp shenanigans? Check. Cameos from a pre-fame Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter? Check. Gruesome gore effects provided by Tom Savini, the patron saint of bloody murder? Effects so nasty that Britain successfully persecuted and banned the film as a "video nasty"? Check and check.

So why don't I like it quite as much as all the hype has led me to suspect?

Well, I guess I'll have to tell you now that I've painted myself into this rhetorical corner. 

Also, try not to be depressed that Jason Alexander starred on Seinfeld as the miserably bald George Costanza a mere nine years after this film was shot.

I'll explain my lukewarm affair with The Burning in due time, but let's take a whack at the plot first, shall we? The film opens in the mid-70's in Camp Blackfoot, where young Todd (Keith Mandell) and his friends are planning the prank of a lifetime. They sneak into the bunk of the evil groundskeeper Cropsy (Lou David) and place a worm-riddled skull candle next to his cot. Their innocent jest turns disastrous when Cropsy knocks the candle off the nightstand in fear, igniting a blaze that could toast an admirable number of marshmallows, but toasts the poor groundskeeper instead.

Five years later, a murderous Cropsy has been released upon the world, skin covered in third-degree burns. He hightails it to Camp Stonewater, which is located just down the lake from the now defunct Blackfoot site, which presumably burned down in the blaze that stole his face. The blaze also stole the plot of Friday the 13th Part 2, but that is neither here nor there. Regardless, producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein (I know, right?) claim that their script was written in 1979, before any of this Voorhees nonsense.

Insipid controversy aside (All slasher films are rip-offs of Halloween, which was itself a rip-off of the rip-offs of Psycho. It's a very incestuous gene pool, and it's not worth getting our knickers in a bunch), The Burning has a classic slasher set-up with a new twist. In addition to the nubile counselors and older campers, there's also a heapload of children on hand, making a mess of the mess hall and inciting the ire of the dangerous lurker in the woods.

When a group of campers goes on a weekend canoeing trip, their canoes drift away in the night, trapping them on a wooded island where Cropsy is waiting with his wickedly sharp garden shears. The campers are overwhelmingly numerous, but the ones we really need to keep track of are Todd (played as a teenager by Brian Matthews), the handsome and easygoing head counselor; Michelle (Leah Ayres), his counselor girlfriend who wishes he would be more stern with the camp troublemakers; Glazer (Larry Joshua), one of the aforementioned troublemakers, and a supposed hunk with an alarmingly lumpy musculature; Sally (Carrick Glenn of Girls Nite Out), Glazer's coy girlfriend; Karen (the excitingly-named Carolyn Houlihan), Sally's BFF who is such a virgin that it's hard to walk because her legs don't open all the way; Eddy (Ned Eisenberg), a horndog supernova whose latest target is Karen; and Alfred (Brian Backer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High), a weird loner who expects our sympathy because he's picked on, but is hard to love because he's a voyeuristic creep who watches girls in the shower and stalks couples who trundle off to bang in the woods. If he were that age today, he'd probably be writing My Little Pony fanfiction on his dad's computer while he's at work.

Now don't get any ideas, ya little creep.

So, why am I not as huge a fan of The Burning as I probably should be? Well, for one, the sheer mass of characters in the quivering blob of the film's cast is pretty overwhelming. Because the genre was still new and not completely, soul-witheringly desperate in 1981, the slashers didn't have the Weimar-esque hyperinflated body counts that would come into play later in the decade. Thus, The Burning couldn't compensate for the terrifying size of its ensemble, and far too many of the campers survive without being put into any sort of danger at all.

It's a little hard to be terrified for poor trembling Katie CounselBoob when you know that about 200 other kids are happily splashing in the water just down the riverbank without a care in the world. And, just like in every Ryan Murphy show, there's far too many cast members jostling for attention to really nail down the characterization of any of them.

And don't even get me started on the pacing of the film, which lurches to a halt after an arbitrary opening kill, contenting itself with Parent Trap-esque camp escapades for a good 40 bloodless minutes. The music is stomach-turningly bland, like eating a gallon of oatmeal, and the acting is needlessly showy. When the kills finally arrive, they do offer a shot in the arm of the film, but some of it comes too little too late, and it doesn't help that the effects haven't aged particularly well. It's still Tom Savini, so there's no doubt that it's a master class of latex and Karo syrup, but his work here is the least convincing that I've ever seen from him. 

He's allowed a minor reprieve, though, considering that his work in the same year's The Prowler is far and away the most gruesome, effective kill work he's ever contributed to splatter cinema.

And Cropsy's weapon is too awe-strikingly rad to even quibble about some minor elasticity problems.

One more major complaint: When the ending finally comes around, instead of lining Michelle up as the obvious Final Girl, The Burning tosses her aside and shoves Todd and Alfred into the fray to split duties in a perfunctory sequence that has some decent effects work, but falls flat with a big pffffbt. By its closing moments, the movie has sputtered and spilled out over the sides like an overheated soufflé.

Now keep in mind that while these unfavorable moments are foregrounded, they still exist in a well-shot, well-edited (by Nightmare on Elm Street 2 director Jack Sholder, of all people), high-energy camp slasher that is still one of the best in the business. These issues drag it down somewhat in my esteem, but The Burning is still worth anybody's time as a camp slasher curio of the highest order.

There's sex, pot, hijinks, wacky dialogue about sex, pot, and hijinks, a blissfully generous helping of female and male nudity, and a cool weapon/killer. Cropsy being based on a real urban legend of the New England camping community, his presence adds an extra dimension of cyclical urban legend terror to the film, which is already pretty decently successful in its scare sequences, including [SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT] the film's notorious raft massacre.

In a flurry of choppily-edited action that is reminiscent of the post-Hitchcock era of classic horror, Cropsy raises the average kill count of the movie tenfold, bursting out of a drifting canoe and mowing down a pack of campers right after the film's longest stretch of goreless paradise. It's shocking and visceral, liberal with its grue, and downright nasty in its brevity. It would be the best part of any slasher film it was placed in, but here it's the cherry on top of a pretty, well-made, if insubstantial classic work of slashcraft.

The shots AND the men are pretty, so there's really no losing here.

So, heed my warnings if you want to dive into The Burning anytime soon: Don't expect unparalleled greatness. But rest assured that you'll have a terrific summer at Camp Stonewater, whatever the downsides are.

Killer: Cropsy (Lou David)

Final Girl: Todd (Brian Matthews) and Alfred (Brian Backer) and very slightly Michelle (Leah Ayres)

Best Kill: THE RAFT SCENE (Skip to 2:30 - gore warning)

Sign of the Times: This is perhaps the only decade of film history where the men's swimsuits were at least three times as revealing as the ladies'.

Scariest Moment: THE DAMN RAFT SCENE

Weirdest Moment: A hospital orderly attempts to scare a new intern (who is middle aged and balding) by showing him Cropsy's burns, openly comparing him to a monster and an overcooked Big Mac while in the room with the notorious psycho.

Champion Dialogue: "Maybe it's because she likes you, you dumb bastard."

Body Count: 10

1. Prostitute is stabbed in the gut with scissors.
2. Karen has her throat slit with shears.
3. Fish is sliced in the chest with shears.
4. Barbara is stabbed in the stomach with shears.
5. Woodstock has his fingers cut off and throat slit with shears.
6. Eddy is stabbed in the throat with shears.
7. Diane is sliced in the forehead with shears.
8. Sally is killed offscreen.
9. Glazer is impaled in the throat with shears.
10. Cropsy is stabbed in the back, axed in the face, and burnt to death. 

TL;DR: The Burning is probably the least exciting of the A-list slashers, but you can never go too wrong when Tom Savini is in the fray.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1713