Rock That Shock

Ahhhhh, conventions. If ever there was a playground for the kids that usually hid under bleachers during recess to play in, these would be it. This past Sunday, my dear friend Erica and I crashed Massachusetts’ Rock & Shock for some celebrity spotting, obscure DVD shopping, and confidence boosting due to the generous population of people less attractive and socially skilled than myself. Highlights included:

-Sharing NY bagels with Bill, Chris, and Mel of Outside the Cinema 


-Coming off like a giddy fangirl, then reining it in to have a genuine conversation with Jack Ketchum. The man who, in the past year, has pretty much become my favorite author was quite gracious and amiable about discussing his work and I’m supremely excited to read his latest collection of short stories, Closing Time. This anthology contains a few stories that appeared in a book I often rave about, Peaceable Kingdom, which is currently out of print. I'm thrilled to have these stories back and even more excited to read some new ones.

-Pitching new film projects for the awesomely good-humored Corbin Bernsen to tackle. Since The Dentist sequels are tied up in rights issues, Erica and I suggested the former Roger Dorn take on other professions in the medical field, such as The Orthodontist, The Chiropractor, The Podiatrist and The Proctologist

-Discovering that Malcolm McDowell sports a mean ascot

-Picking up a trio of DVDs: one I truly love (Tourist Trap), one I’ve been waiting for with great expectations (UK’s Dead Set) and one that will probably be awful, but having read the short story, could not be resisted by me (Rawhead Rex)

-Observing the fact that Tom Savini’s son is quite possibly the antichrist. This may be a cruel statement to make about a 6 year old, but the boy was literally sitting inside a garbage can and pointing to another which read “Photos: $3.” This was apparently following the sugar rush the day before, wherein I’ve been told the kid spent most of the afternoon stealing candy from the OTC table

-Chatting with the Crypt Keeper himself, Mr. John Kassir, who seemed genuinely (and deservedly) proud of his work on one of my favorite television shows of all time and shared some interesting tidbits about how the writers adjusted the character over time to suit his clever interpretation

-Being told that Jesus loved me by Jason Mewes, who was very sweet when he had to leave the show a tad early to smoke a cigarette

-”Interviewing” the one and only Kane Hodder for OTC, a 5 minute or so clip wherein I asked Jason VI-X what he learned from taking Manhattan and if he’d ever lost a fight to a short man. The recording should be available through OTC’s feed soon, so Terry Gross has a little time to up her game before I zoom in to seize her headphones. Note this will be done by brute physical force and not interviewing skills because on that front, I’m about as talented as Arsenio Hall. Still, enjoy the sound bites and the sound of me trying to figure out how to hold a microphone.

Overall, we had a blast and I send a giant round of thanks to Erica for driving and being such a hot date, Bill, Chris, and Mel for being such awesome company, and the Rock and Shock show for doing it right. Also, I’ll thank the tanks of tarantulas ($20 each, if you’re interested) simply to not make them angry at me should they ever escape. We’ll be hitting Jersey’s Chiller Theater up for Halloween weekend (in between a costume themed wedding and profuse candy corn consumption) so hopefully there’ll be another round of random conventionness in another two weeks. 

The world is truly a beautiful place.

Back To School, Slasher Style

Amid the glut of slick remakes and grisly torture porn that has thus far defined 21st century horror films, many fans like to harp back to the good old days of Reagan politics and drive-in cinema, sometimes falsely remembering every midnight screening as the second coming of Citizen Kane. It’s easy to forget that for all its giddy spirit and musical montage-fueled plot development, the 1980s contained a fair heap of cinematic slush, quite often slasher fueled.

And so we come to Slaughter High, Final Girl Stacie Ponder’s Film Club pick for the month of Shocktober. Directed by the possibly drunken trifecta of George Dugdale, Mark Ezra (both of Living Doll), and Peter Litten (director of To Die For, not, thanks to the helpful DVD extras, to be confused with the Nicole Kidman “starrer”) this is to the 80s what something like 2008’s The Hitcher remake is to our current time. Not good. Not needed. Almost bad enough for a good time with alcohol but a tad too awful to deserve your time.

Quick Plot: The world's oldest high schoolers since Grease decide to play a nasty prank on Marty, the bespectacled science nerd with an April Fool’s birthday. Campus hot girl Carol (genre babe Caroline Munro) pretends to seduce him in the locker room shower, only to abandon the birthday boy in his birthday suit while her obnoxious friends dip him a toilet and hurt Wendy’s commercial slogans his way. The totally ungnarly gym teacher issues athletic detention, inspiring one good humored bully to play yet another prank on the unpunished Marty by spiking a joint with poison and rigging a chemistry experiment so it explodes on the science whiz (because innocent whoopee cushions were soooo 1985). Add a jar of precariously placed nitric acid and it’s safe to say young Marty is having the worst birthday since Samantha Baker turned 16.

Ten years later (we assume), our gang of no goodniks return to their alma mater for a private high school reunion, this time as the world’s oldest looking twentysomethings. First, we get a far too long and incredibly dull scene establishing Carol as an up-and-coming actress unwilling to show her goods in a crappy little horror film (for those interested, Ms. Munro does not show her goods in this crappy little horror film either, although several others do so unimpressively). Other characters in this too-large group include a poor man’s Michael Imperioli complete with Joisey voice who seems to be something of a lead, a brassy blond with a randomly South Carolinean accent, and a few more soon-to-be victims who have just about nothing to offer the audience aside from their deaths.

Nobody seems to think it odd that only the cool kids have been invited to this reunion, nor does it raise an eyebrow that it’s being held in the rat-infested high school now abandoned (yet oddly enough, equipped with a working bathtub and fresh body wash). The school caretaker--why he still has to take care of a closed public school is unclear--pops by for a jump scare before being crucified on a graffitied locker as the old friends catch up the best way they know how: soulful bonding over recreational drugs. One of the more annoying male members gulps down a beer and quickly experiences an Alien-ish stomach eruption, minus the charismatic little creature (a shame, since it would have been more interesting than anyone else in this film). Cue frantic running around the dark empty hallways, splitting up for no apparent reason, random boob shots of women who may, if lucky, receive ribbons for participation in wet t-shirt contests, and poorly timed revelations about unseen children’s paternity. 

Yup, Marty’s back and he’s mildly pissed because, you know, these former big kids on campus ruined his social cred and mangled his face. The 99 pound weakling apparently spent the last ten years mastering the art of playing dead, then getting up really quickly and quietly so that several characters can glance at where his body should’ve been and gasp. Ugh.

Slaughter High is not a good movie, nor is it lovably bad like The Pit or slightly innovative and goofy around the likes of Hellgate. With three men credited for directing, it’s easy to see the many places the film went wrong. It’s never clear if we’re supposed to be screaming or laughing at some of the kills, most of which are gory but not particularly well executed. A bombastic score does nothing to heighten drama and the lighting and staging choices are so fuzzily dark that it’s often hard to understand what actually is going on. All this is bad enough, but what ultimately slaughters Slaughter High is its student population.

Normally, character isn’t something we expect to be focused on in a cheap slasher. Aside from the awesomeness of being able to say Kevin Bacon and neck spear in the same sentence, it’s a challenge to name any actor who met his fate at Camp Crystal Lake. The problem with Slaughter High, much like the recent F13 “reboot,” is that it overloads itself with an unruly number of characters while making us care about absolutely none of them. Munro’s Carol has no redeeming factor to make a final girl worth rooting for, while her posse of friends range from white bread bland to ungodly off-putting. Worst of all, Marty himself offers us nothing as either a victim or killer. Sure, I pity any picked-on geek on instinct, but give me one more reason to actually like him. In his one scene of dialogue, Marty comes across as whiny and dumb. My sympathies lied with no one.

At a certain point, however, Slaughter High dragged me into it enough that I was able to keep two eyes onscreen for the last twenty minutes. By then, it seems to be noon the next day (what the last couple of victims were doing for 6 hours is unexplained), which is apparently just enough time to resurrect a few corpses for a fantasy zombie sequence and toss in an unexplained twist rife with sequel and Halloween costume potential. If only anyone could care enough about this movie to get the naughty nurse in drag look.

High Points

I can’t complain about the look of the killer. The jester hat with a wrinkled old man rubber mask had a spark of creepiness about it

You have to love the totally 80s cheesiness of the poster art, even if it does bear a slight resemblance to what I imagine the Killer Condom looked like in his graduation photo

Low Points

You’d think that by featuring older actors with new life problems and what-if wonderings about their high school years, the cast could conjure up some interesting interpersonal relationships. You’d be wrong

Lessons Learned

A caretaker takes care of places

Avoid wearing jingly bell accessories if your main activity of the evening is scheduled to be stalking

When in the 80s, do coke

Gym sneakers retain their exact scent for ten years

If you have the chance to beat a psychotic murderer to near death with a baseball bat, it’s best to not drop the weapon at the mildly bruised killer’s feet and slowly run away

Trust me: the prom queen does not want to have sex with you in the girl’s locker room

Rent/Bury/Buy

Hardcore 80s slasher fans may get a kick out of this little remnant of a time passed, but most others should avoid the temptation of the somewhat kickass poster art. The sole DVD extra is a Pop-Up Video-ish trivia track that occasionally plays under the action to provide viewers with such life changing knowledge as “the hockey mask is a reference to the 1980 slasher film, Friday the 13th.” Random fun facts do offer something new; I only learned here that Nebraska was the last state to ban the electric chair, although what that has to do with Slaughter High isn’t spelled out for us in multiple choice quiz question. Perhaps the best tidbit comes in a True/False question: Actor Simon Scuddamore, who played Marty, died from an intentional overdose shortly after this film’s shooting. When that’s the most interesting thing about your movie, you have a problem.

Don’t forget to head over to Final Girl’s site for a roundup of other bloggers bravely travailing the muck that is Slaughter High. You never know: someone might have given it a passing grade. That someone would have bad taste.

Says the person about to fall asleep with a Sunday night showing of Showgirls.

Sequelize Me

Last week, I looked at a few sequels that do the right thing and deliver some sort of quality the second (or fourth) time around. Feeling confident in the possibility of franchises, I figured I’d throw my support to a few stand-alone films that could possibly benefit from a solid followup. I had planned an extensive list rounded up to a flashy number like “13” or the ever popular “50,” but the more I thought about it, the harder it was to come up with movies I think warrant more installments. I love my random little oddities like The Stuff or Identity, but having seen one too many Hitcher retread or Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Graves, I figured I’d slow down and think not only about what to follow up, but how to bring on another round while serving it cinematic justice

1. Scarecrows

This little seen 1988 film utilizes one of rural America’s most fearsome creations, adding a touch of zombiism to very tall burlap sackheads hunting a band of plane hijacking bank robbers. It’s short, cheap, and incredibly creepy, plus worthy of plenty of bonus points for featuring the scariest cornfield since Malachi and Isaac played hide-and-seek behind the rows. Its long-awaited (by me) DVD release came just two years ago with nary a special feature, leaving the possibility of a sequel looking slimmer than the stick these monsters are mounted on. Still, scarecrows are freaky, abandoned farms look great on camera, and the world can always use more reminders of how tasty homegrown corn really is.

Title: Scariercrows

Plot Proposal:Keep it simple. What works so well in the original is the film’s isolated setting and crustily ragged villains. While I loved the fact that the titular scarecrows’ victims were a little older than your typical horror bait, a sequel could cast just about anyone as straw meat. Horny teens would be a tad too trite, so let’s keep the shifty hero angle and crash a prisoners’ transport bus en route a corrections facility. Give us a big bloody car accident to kick things off, followed by physically and morally intimidating characters trying to survive the night. We’d even get an excuse for why nobody would call the authorities, since escape would be the second goal on everybody’s mind. Toss in some internal gang friction to compete with the brain chompers and you’ve got plenty of material to stuff into 90 minutes or more.

Tagline: If they only didn't eat brains...

2. Kingdom of the Spiders

It’s unlikely that William Shatner will ever fit back into those Levi jeans, but few creature features could dare to end on such an oddly eerie note as this 1977 arachnid holocaust. From goofy CGI jumpers to Middle Earthian monsters, we’ve seen our share of spiders in cinema over the last thirty years, but none have really come close to capturing the total icky fear factor of fuzzy tarantulas bent on world domination. Until now.

Title: Kingdom of the Spiders II: The World Wide Web

Possible Plot: It’s been 30 years since the carnivorous arachnids coated the earth in their silk. Since then, mankind has been driven underground, occasionally venturing above to  scavenge for food while trying to avoid being scavenged themselves. It’s a brutal world but one plucky survivor vows to take down the the eight-legged apocalypse causing freaks by creating a juice that will melt those Kevlar strength webs and poison their spinners. The secret ingredient: Aquanet, discovered in prime condition in an abandoned Kmart (commercial sponsor alert). An all-out toxic battle ensues as Charlotte, our heroine, leads the ragtag army in pumping the remnants of the sewer system with a powerful mix of hairspray and carbonation, melting the prickly hairs right off those bulbous bodies and culminating in an explosion Michael Bay could only dream of. Naturally, there are casualties on the human side (both insect and aerosol related) to give us a rowdy last 30 minutes, but our homo sapien cousins ultimately emerge victorious...until the final shot reveals one lone egg-dragging arachnid sprouting a ninth leg and some very, very puffy hair. Could Part 3 be just around the corner?

Tagline: Along came some spiders 

To sit down beside us

And suck out our guts till the end of days

3. Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Perhaps the very definition of a cult (or more appropriately, kult) movie, this 1988 film truly is like no other. Yes, its pure uniqueness can probably never ever in a hundred strobe light years be matched but you know what? I want more. You want more. We all. Want more.

Title: Massacre In the Milky Way: Komeback of the Klowns

Possible Plot: When we last spotted the balloon-dog walking extraterrestials, things didn’t look so funny. Their circus spaceship had seemingly been blown to bits, leaving nothing behind but the crumbs of acidic cream pies...or so we thought!

We open with an overhead shot of the colorful explosion, slowly--then manically--panning out, up, down, in, swirl, and loop-di-loop as the camera travels through what’s revealed to be a bendy telescope watched by the weeping amber eye of a newly crowned war widow klowness. Primal screams and bicycle horn honks rock what we now see to be the mother ship. That’s right: that yellow-and-red striped tent was just one vessel of the nomadic tribe. There were two vehicles sent down that fateful day in California. 

One made it home.

So many directions a sequel to the greatest film of all time could go, it’s near impossible to find a starting point. Another earth invasion would be dandy, but klowns deserve more innovation than that. Remember how certain ladies were, instead of being wrapped in flesh-eating cotton candy, enclosed in giant bouncy balls and kept alive? Obviously, there was an ulterior motive but get your dirty minds out of Pennywise’s gutter. There will be no God Told Me To-like yellow auras or Cronenbergian births. Turns out, for all their pie-throwing, shadow puppeteering, car racing skills, our anitheroic race has one circus niche that remains unfilled amongst their kind: trapeze artists. Hence, light young women are being collected to complete the Klown show. What follows is an orgy of genres and film tropes never before united in such light-hearted PG-13 rated bliss: women in prison plotting + martial arts training montages x ginormous Caligulaesque scenery - phallic imagery x space travel sci-fi + Italian cannibal cinema / Space Jam - bicycles + unicycles. Oh, and that’s just before the opening credits.

By the end of the film, we’ll get a hotheaded crimson plastic haired mother seeking vengeance, acrobatic acts to rival Cirque de Soleil, a balloon dog attack, and a Romeo & Julietish love story that kicks the slimy green butt out of V’s tepid lizard-meets-dumb-teen drama. I smell an Oscar. It has the faint odor of stale popcorn and burnt corndogs.

Tagline: Fear Has a New Facepaint 

A tad too fan fictiony for your tastes? How would you follow up the Brothers Chiodo masterpiece, Shatner’s brave spider stomping, and Scarecrows’s creepy night hunts? Also, what are some of the single entry genre films you think deserve a second go ‘round? I'll give a hardy vote to The Wicker Man--a Robin Hardy vote that is, as he's currently working on a follow up to his classic pagan musical. Unbreakable is essentially a two hour prologue to a movie yet to be made, and I always wondered what happened to the newest member of Tod Browning's Freaks. Share your votes below. Bonus points for plot synopsis!

Killing 9 To 5

It’s been seven months since I last watched Severance and nearly one year since I began my first actual office job. Having now suffered through dry meetings scored to the buzz of overhead lighting and office scandals regarding lunch orders, I’m truly shocked by the lack of horror films that utilize a corporate setting. Where’s the weapon arsenal sponsored by Staples and uncomfortably ill-defined relationship barriers riddled with career-climbing ulterior motives? 

Hence, when the 1997 issue of Fangoria I recently bought at a yard sale featured an article about Office Killer, I rearranged my Netflix queue faster than you can say coffee break. Directed by famed photographer Cindy Sherman and starring an impressivey miscellaneous cast, Netflix defined it as “a thriller with surprising hilarity,” which should have quickly warned me that a genre film I had never heard of was buried in time for a reason.

Quick Plot: The always intriguing Carol Kane plays Dorine, an efficient copy editor (and if my boss is reading, allow me to assure the world that ALL copy editors are efficient) who lives a lonely existence with her invalid mother and chubby cat. At work, supervisor Jeanne Tripplehorn (who may have been in 65% of films released in the mid-late 90s) hands out downsizing slips instructing employees that they’ll now have to work part-time from home, much to the horror of the workaholic Dori. Meanwhile, surprisingly non Jersey accented Michael Imperioli (yes, Christophuh himself) puts in some IT hours installing this revolutionary new office tool called "email" on the employees' home computers. The world is a changing place.  

While working late to meet a deadline, Dori’s verbally abusive and hair abusing boss electrocutes himself while trying to fix an internet connection. Instead of calling 911, Dori decides to break the all sorts of rules by stealing the ultimate office supply--the corpse of her supervisor.  


A few days later, Dori once again finds herself alone with a rude and authority drunk superior, this one an asthmatic chain smoker with a dangerous comfort level in pleather evening wear. Spike an inhaler with a little butane and Dori is on a killing roll, always in less than expected manner and with a slight comic edge. Corpses pile up in her basement to be posed, dismembered, and Febrezed. Only Molly Ringwald as a cynical secretary with poor fashion sense suspects the suddenly confident grammar expert of being less than a model employee.  

Everything I’d read about Office Killer made it seem like a film I would love. Unfortunately, nearly everything about it just doesn’t work. Sherman has a definitive visual stle, casting the entire film in a sad and stale orangey brown that makes everything inside look rusted. By today’s standards, such a choice feels stuffily uncomfortable but also, oddly outdated a mere 12 years later. Instead of the icy uniformity done so well in films like Office Space, Office Killer’s title setting just feels messy. Even a low level publisher heading into the red wouldn't feel as if a retirement home was converted into magazine headquarters.  


More troubling is the tone, or lack thereof. Most of the characters are flat stereotypes which could certainly have worked had the film known what to do with them. Instead of forging ahead into campy wickedness, Office Killer sits on its unpleasant cast without any intrigue. Sometimes it seems as though Tripplehorn is our heroine, while Kane’s manic Dori bounces back and forth between sympathetic shut-in and psychopathic murderess. It’s fun to watch her chide the corpses of Girl Scouts, but when we have no idea why she killed these little girls in the first place, why should we care? Fuzzy narration and a few flashbacks hint at sexual abuse (and hey, if said sexual abuser was Eric Bogosian, I too would probably grow up with more than a few issues) but nothing’s really done with that thread. Ultimately, it feels as though the script presented a premise that called for sharp black comedy, while the director treated it straightforwardly with a static eye. It’s hard to laugh at jokes that feel flatter than the page they were typed on and even harder to fear for characters that lack the slightest hint of depth.  


High Points 
While she seems to have no idea what to do with her poorly drawn character, Kane is still an intriguing presence in just about any film she's in

Following her divaliscious turn in the Aussie slasher Cut , Ringwald has convinced me that she should henceforth only accept roles that call for serious bitchery 


Low Points 
What’s the point of featuring a motorized Gremlins stair chair if you’re not going to use it?

Um, the rest of the movie?  

Lessons Learned 
The Internet might occasionally kill you, but it’s pretty easy to hack


Masking tape is great in a pinch, especially if said pinch involved holding in a corpse's intestines

Never feel up your daughter while driving

Like mace, a silk headscarf with an elaborate and too colorful print can indeed be used against you


When in doubt, always say no to pleather


Rent/Bury/Buy 
The female factor of Office Killer makes it interesting in concept, but this is sadly one of duller 90+ minutes I’ve recently endured. I have the slight feeling that it may, like many dark comedies, improve a bit on repeat viewings but I have absolutely no desire to revisit this film and unless you’re nursing a Carol Kane crush, I’d skip it. The DVD contains no special features, so despite the fact that this film feels deliberately cultish, it seems nobody involved in its production cared enough to come back.  

I know how they feel.

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Eat Me

Having gorged on my share of highly fattening Italian zombie cinema (I'm still picking the cheese and intestines out of my teeth), I didn't expect much from Spanish filmmaker's Amando de Ossorio's Knights of Templar series. Yes, I'm clearly an ignorant American who can't tell the difference between Europeans. Thankfully, 1971's Tombs of the Blind Dead, the first entry in this four-film set, has its own refreshing take on the undead mythos complete with a slow and spooky tone that actually left me unsettled. Yay.

Quick Plot: While on vacation in Lisbon with her swinger-ready boyfriend Roger, thirtysomething Virginia bumps into her former college roommate/tepid ex-lover Betty (you know, 'cause all female coeds "experiment"). They quickly catch up and Roger, clad in the world's most pimpin' bathrobe, invites the attractive mannequin factory owner to a couples' camping trip and train ride. Annoyed at Roger's shameless flirtation, Virginia leaps off board and decides to spend the night in an abandoned medieval town which unfortunately enough, happens to be occupied by a band of crusty, Ghost of Christmas Past-ish monsters. Our bland brunette makes a valiant effort to escape, but once the shamblers hitch up on horseback, the poor lass doesn't stand a chance.

Back in the civilized world of Portuguese society, Betty and Roger visit the world's laxest morgue to identify the body of their friend/lost third in the threesome that wasn't. Later that evening, Virginia's corpse awakens to take a bite out of the slightly sadistic coroner's assitant. Betty and Roger visit the town historian (about as quaint a film profession as a candlestick maker or milkman, but anyway) and learn that the village is haunted by the the Knights of Templar, a power-abusing group of noblemen who sacrificed virgins (well, whipped them to near death then sucked blood out of their nude bodies) to Satan in return for eternal life. Legend has it that the townspeople strung up the naughty knights and left their deaths at the hands--or beaks--of eye-pecking crows.

It's a great setup for a different breed of monster, but the real beauty of Tombs of the Blind Dead is how sparingly Ossorio uses his shuffling man-eaters. There is no real mass feasting we've become used to seeing in similarly styled films of the time, but the attacks are incredibly effective due to the careful choices made to build each scene. A creepy soundtrack cues up medieval monk chanting as these giant grim reapers gallop atop white stallions. Since the knights are blind and hunt by sound, our characters are forced to play Marco Polo rounds of life or death. The score sometimes kicks in at the wrong times, but it's refreshing to watch a film that doesn't rely on gigantically overblown sound cues to tell us danger is a'comin.


I didn't notice just how invested I was in this film until one of the final scenes. I won't spoil a film that I recommend you seek out, but let's just say that I caught myself holding my breath as our heroine attempts to crawl to safety with a horde of horse-riding dead soldiers silently in pursuit. Even though that's the kind of emotion horror films are, by definition, supposed to be riling up, it's hard to remember the last time I felt so on edge in an actual moment of action.


High Points
An early attack in a freaky mannequin workshop (no, there is no other type) is sufficiently suspenseful in an almost Hammer Horror style

The sole special feature is pretty damn amazing: an alternate prologue that explains how man once rose up against his simian oppressors by poking out their eyes and seizing control of planet earth. That's right: in order to cash in on a big little 1968 adventure, an alternate title for Tombs of the Blind Dead was Revenge From Planet Ape. The absurdity is a beautiful thing


Low Points
It's a horror cliche that I'll never accept: so you work alone late at night in a mortuary. No stereo, no traffic, or any other ambient noise of any type. How do you not hear the sound of a body dismounting from its gurney as it approaches the back of your neck for a midnight snack?



Character was clearly an afterthought to the script. While Lone Fleming gets to dig a little deep with Betty's confused sexuality, some of the plot choices by other actors feel a little too silly to believe

Lessons Learned
When the world gets as quiet as it can possibly be, you will hear the obnoxiously deafening sound of your own heart beat. So will the zombies.


Decorators are harmless


In order to sway a criminal smuggler to accompany you on a dangerous mission into a haunted town, simply bait him with subtle hints that he may be slightly nervous. Sample approach:
Badass Criminal: I won't go.
Metrosexual: I understand. Are you afraid?
Badass Criminal: I'm coming!


Contrary to popular belief, not all women enjoy a smoke after being raped


Rent/Bury/Buy 
With its carefully drawn atmosphere and unique spin on an easy genre, Tombs of the Blind Dead was an exciting surprise for me. If the entire series maintained this level of quality, I'd suggest a buy; however, most reports I've heard seem to single out this film as head and shoulders above the other three. Having not yet seen these movies, I personally can't speak to that but I would plan a Netflix sampler before putting heavy money into this set.

Important Note: The Blue Underground DVD offers you two cuts of the film: Tombs of the Blind Dead, in dubbed English, and La Noche del Terror Ciego, in Spanish with subtitles. Being lazy and of worsening eyesight, I started with Tombs but quickly realized that something was off. If a young virgin is being stripped and torn apart in an exploitation flick, would the filmmakers really be so restrained as to not show her bosoms? Sure enough, the Spanish version is a gorily nude 14 minutes longer and apparently much more fluid than the chopped up American cut. Without question, put on your reading glasses and watch this one (even if, like me, you have your own boobs and don't necessarily require a few shots of prosthetically chewed up ones). Just don't forget to switch back to Tombs to check out the insanely wonderful attempt to ride the ape train. 

How to Succeed In Sequels

More than any other film genre, horror has thrived--and sometimes shriveled--with the onslaught of sequels. From forced character crossovers to flashback riddled running times (is there even ten minutes of original content between the first round of followups to The Hills Have Eyes and Silent Night, Deadly Night?), it’s easy to mess up a sequel. But you know what? Pumpkins are in season, I'm high on candy corn, and the positivity is pumping, so let’s instead take a moment to consider some of the smart choices sequels have made in continuing a good story: 

Expanded Mythology

The true beauty of a sequel is that it can take a premise people found interesting the first go ‘round and attack it from a new angle, such as the Cenobite-heavy chambers of Hellraiser II. While it's true that many a sequel runs the risk of revealing too much (thereby negating some of the mystery that occasionally defines a first film) others seize upon the potential. Eli Roth's Hostel, for example, was a better idea than film, but his followup used the now established setup of a capitalist torture show to fully explore what audiences were drawn to in the first place. Instead of wasting time with standard protagonists, Roth gave us a briefer intro to much more likable women, then promptly delved into Elite Hunting and its own financiers. The result was a quick moving and smartly done film that found just the right note to revisit Slovakia.

Other films are less successful, but not always in a sacrilegious way. The philosophically horrific Cube series debuted as one of the most surprisingly intriguing films of the ‘90s, while a few straight-to-cable/dvd sequels attempted to take an incredible concept and try it with a different recipe. Cube 2 :Hypercube plays with the math, hints at its origin, and shoots itself with a horrid title worth of an Atari game while Cube Zero (arguably a prequel) goes behind the scenes to pose new questions. Neither is anywhere near as satisfying as Vincenzo Natali's original, which works precisely because we ultimately know nothing but what our own fears project. Still, if you watch Parts 2 & 3 as if they’re pieces of fan fiction blown up to feature length, both work on their own terms, sort of ‘what-ifs’ to a question that should never actually be answered.

Remakes In Sequels’ Designer Clothing

The world would be a far less groovy place had Sam Raimi ended the adventures of Ash in 1981. Yes, The Evil Dead is a great gooey film, but it's his first sequel that cements Bruce Campbell's status as an icon among the undead. Only quibble? It's not really a sequel if the first half hour retells the original story.

Sometimes, a filmmaker decides that directing a second film is code for second chance. In the case of The Evil Dead, this minor lapse of originality works because Raimi takes the good and makes it better with more money. We forgive the fact that Ash and Linda had already made a fateful trip to that cabin in the woods because even within the constraints of the same story, Raimi uses such a different energy that we end up with a completely different film not only from its original, but from just about every other film that had come before it.

Keep the Story Consistent

Say what you want about the juggernaut success of the Saw series, but has there ever been a 6 film franchise with such an excessively complicated spiderweb of a plot? Haters like to attack Lions Gate’s posterchild for its grisly suspenseless violence and contrived characters, but I continue to argue that this is, in many ways, one of the tightest (at least by script) franchises in the horror genre. With occasional flashbacks (and inventive ways to utilize the now deceased Jigsaw himself), each film has continued the story with something of a six degrees of separation mentality. A minor character from Part 2 returns to head Part 4, while missing characters reappear with believable, if somewhat logistically stretched explanations as to their whereabouts. I imagine the upcoming installment will have two audiences: those that have followed the five previous films and are still waiting for answers about Jigsaw's wife, the contents of a mysterious box, and the protagonists of Part III’s daughter (who’s been missing, but acknowledged in the last two films) while the other half will simply slurp their sodas through exposition and cheer at the latest rusted torture contraption. In a way, everybody wins. Except for oddly vast majority of horror fans who like to brand Saw the antichrist of filmdom. 

...or Dare To Be Different

Franchises are generally defined by their formula, whether it be pretty teenagers + machetes or redheaded dolls + profanity. Every so often, however, some series take a chance by breaking from the fold (even Chucky changed his act with married life). Though initially panned by critics and ignored by audiences, Halloween III: Season of the Witch has slowly aged to prove itself the most memorable of all those October 31st celebrating films. Admittedly, that’s not much of a feat when its competition included Michael Meyers’ worshipping cults and Tyra Banks, but still: abandoning Meyers for an evil corporation wielding head-melting dime store masks was a daring move well before its time. Likewise, the majority of Elm Street fans tend to use Part 2 as a coaster for their Hypnocil spiked Red Bull, but the sheer fact that such a random entry exists in an otherwise formulaic series is in itself somewhat notable. (Also, it’s one of the most fascinatingly homoerotic/homophobic films of all time, but that’s a discussion save for another day).

Jump Right In

Look, if we’re watching a film with 2, II, or the words “The Return” in the title, you can probably trust that we’ve been here before. Thankfully, the better sequels understand that audiences don’t need heavy exposition to get the kills rolling. Note how starting from Dawn to Land,George Romero’s Dead films never wasted time explaining the oncoming zompocalypse. Similarly, 28 Weeks Later boasts one of the most terrifyingly exciting openings in recent years by immediately thrusting us back into a nightmarish world we know all too well. 

There are plenty more notable sequel rules for continuing a franchise, so add some of your own and let the Freddy Vs. Jason style fights begin!