Behind the Haunt

Occasionally, I remember to make the most of October by actually watching seasonal movies. 

Quick Plot: With four weeks til Halloween, private school senior Zack is thrilled to work at his cousin Mark's haunt. Everything is all pumpkins and satisfying jump scares until Mark's top employee Jacko turns up hanging from the zipline.

Naturally, things get worse from there. One employee accidentally injures a patron with a real chainsaw, but these are the kinds of local news stories that seem to draw even bigger crowds. When Halloween night finally hits, the mayhem matches with its seasonal peak.

The Haunted Forest is clearly not a high budget production. Writer/director/editor/co-star/probably lots of other roles Keith Boynton makes the most out of what he has, which mostly adds up to two keys: enough acres to build a haunt, and young lead Grayson Gwaze.

Playing a high school senior, Gwaze has an easy charm onscreen and makes his Zack an earnest, likable kid. It goes a very long way in keeping The Haunted Forest engaging. There's nothing particularly, how do I say it, interesting about the story. Bodies start piling up right as the season hits its stride. Every speaking character is a suspect. The reveal occurs on Halloween night.

That's about it. For a movie filmed on the grounds of a real Halloween haunt, it's pretty disappointing to find no actual scares. There's some decent black humor in the film's last act, as a batch of ill-fated influencers (including the cast of a fake reality Real Housewives-type show that's cleverly sprinkled in throughout the film) get the VIP treatment that goes predicatably wrong. But 

This is an odd film to discuss because I can't necessarily say it's good, but watching it, I could tell that the creatives behind it actively did their best. The setting looks great. The acting is generally good enough. And probably most notably, it feels made by someone who loves Halloween. Which actually makes the final coda feel quite strange. Is this ultimately a morality lesson in NOT celebrating the darker parts of the holiday?

High Points

I really do think a huge part of my softness for this movie comes from Gwaze's charm

Low Points

...Which also makes it even odder that his character is so vaguely written. A single throwaway line about his mother being ill (physically? mentally?) opens up questions that the film seems to simply forget about in the end

Lessons Learned

Being smart is the next best thing to being rich

Chanting doesn't wash away your people's sins

Scare acting is best done with a clear mind

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Haunted Forest isn't a particularly good horror film, and its final message may be to NOT revel in, you know, the fun of a good horror film. That being said, it's loaded with Halloween vibes and like many a Tubi exclusive, feels better than you'd expect for a free network. 

Come Right In!

Folks, do you realize just how many horror movies there are in the world? I know, I know. You're probably thinking, "I've been a genre fan my whole life, of course I know and of course I've seen them all."

Trust me: you haven't. 

Take today's feature, Deadly Manor. It's a supernatural slasher from 1990, filmed in New York with a Spanish crew. Never in my 44 years have I heard of this movie.

Quick Plot: Six young people are road tripping to a lake when they realize they have no idea where it actually is. Thankfully, a mysterious hitchhiker named Jack shows up to help direct them. 

Well, they're still hours away due to some very bad navigation, but at least they find an abandoned house that should due for a restful night. Helen feels a sense of dread and promptly storms off, leaving her boyfriend Tony and the rest of the gang to explore their strange new digs. 

There's a smashed car staged like a shrine on the lawn, a batch of caskets in the basement, dozens of photographs of a naked woman on the walls, and most troubling, a collection of human scalps on a shelf. In other words, slightly better than your last stay at a Knights Inn.

For reasons only '80s slasher screenplays can fathom, the kids still decide to stay the night. Tony even helps himself to some house wine, despite just skimming through a photo album of murdered young people a minute before. 

There are dumb teenagers, and there are Deadly Manor's dumb teenagers. 

As you might guess, they're not lasting long enough to reproduce. As the night slowly finds reasons for the kids to split up, the house gets a whole lot bloodier.

Directed by José Ramón Larraz (whose Edge of the Axe was also a, "hey, I never saw this VHS cover" discovery for me), Deadly Manor delivers on its promises. Horny young people are hunted by some kind of entity, and the reveal is both fitting for the genre and slightly new. It doesn't quite go as bonkers as Edge of the Axe, but any horror fan with a soft spot for this era should walk away satisfied.

Low Points

It's an odd choice to give us virtually no context or insight into the actual characters. Yes, they're designed to be disposable hot teenagers by the rules of the genre, but there's absolutely nothing on the page to define them. We can't even identify the lead until we happen to have one person left. The actors are perfectly appealing and deserved a little better

Lessons Learned

Everything collapses sooner or later

All a young couple needed in the '90s was wood and condoms

Don't count on the police to arrive to an emergency quickly, but do appreciate it when they're really sorry for being late

Rent/Bury/Buy

Deadly Manor didn't rock my world, but it was perfectly entertaining in a, "hey, there's a '90s slasher I haven't seen!" way. You can find it, you guessed it! on Tubi. 

Needs More Topless Forster

 

It took me quite a long time to see the mild cult classic Alligator, but that also meant it hit me at exactly the right time. I went in with low expectations and was charmed by how it navigated its Jaws references while working in some sly humor. It was the smartest dumb movie I'd seen in quite some time, so why not set my DVR to record TCM's late night showing of its lesser loved sequel?

Quick Plot: Through land developments and the usual corporate greed, some very toxic substances are flowing through the lake of Regent Park. Only Detective David Hodges seems to be concerned about the growing number of missing persons, perhaps because most of them are either unhoused or part of the Latino community.

The mayor is naturally under the thumb of wealthy real estate developer Vincent Brown. Wealthy real estate developer Vincent Brown is naturally responsible for polluting the waters which leads, of course, to THE MUTATION.

I'm trying to drum up some enthusiasm for the story because my gosh: Alligator II: The Mutation is one big slog.

The opening credits raised my hopes. Richard Lynch in the first film's Henry Silva role? Dee Wallace Stone as an adorable biologist? Clowns on stilts who will likely topple into the mouth of a mutated alligator? Surely we've got a good thing here!

Whew boy. We don't.

There was an 11 year gap between Alligator and Alligator II: The Mutation. That seems like quite a bit of time to develop a decent or at least creative sequel. The world at large wasn't clamoring for an Alligator followup, so making one had to come from a place of passion, right?

Not right. There's no passion in Alligator II: The Mutation. The film is a near complete retread of the first but without any of its weird little spark (sorry ladies, but Bologna keeps his shirt on). What should be the climax, where the alligator tears through a carnival, is about five minutes of some of the laziest mayhem I've ever seen. The alligator doesn't even eat things! He just whacks them with his tail!

I'M ANGRY!

It's Alligator II, for goodness sake. Where's your sense of joy? 

High Points

He's no Robert Forster, but Bologna tries, and has a certain charm that at least kept my interest

Low Points

Why is this lethargic, charmless Alligator sequel nearly two hours? Why does it even exist? Now I'm grumpy, so let's cheer up with a reminder of what made the first film so memorable:

This is the 17th time he takes his shirt off

Lessons Learned

When you get paid, you do your job

Alligators can't be professionals

Rookies never listen (which is why they often end up handcuffed in the bathroom)

Look! It's - 

Kane Hodder menacingly standing behind Richard Lynch!

and

Professor Toru Tanaka popping up briefly to throw another wrestler onto a table. In this (deadly doll's) house, anyone on the receiving end of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Running Man puns is celebrated

Rent/Bury/Buy

Ugh. I found very little joy in this movie. I can't imagine anyone else finding much more. 

Married...With Tubi

Ever wake up on a Thursday and find yourself saying, "Life would be okay if I could just have a smoothie and watch an early '90s made-for-TV crime saga?"

Really? Just me?

Sometimes I think of Tubi as my own personal Needful Things. It just knows exactly what I desire and delivers it. The cost is a few ads, which is only slightly worse than my soul. 

What a fine time to be alive. 

Quick Plot: Librarian Susan is four months pregnant but separated from her cheating husband. Teenage daughter Justine is bitter about the demise of her parents' marriage and rebels by making out with her boyfriend Ryan, turning mean girl to former best friend Ashley, and being snotty to her mother. 

While Susan is out enjoying a sweet date with her old high school flame Eric, Justine is having a complicated girls night. Ashley has told her that Ryan has been cheating with fellow cheerleader Vicki (such a cheating cheerleader name), and Justine has both gals over to chat. 

Things don't go well.

Vicki storms out with Ashley and Justine fast behind. There's hair pulling and screeching, and before you know it, Vicki is reported missing. The cops, including detective Eric, trace her last steps back to a lying Justine right as a jogger stumbles on her dead body in the woods. 

Clovis is a small town. Justine and Ashley are the prime suspects, with both girls tangling themselves in their knotty lies. Susan quickly becomes an outcast, and her burgeoning relationship with the case's head investigator doesn't look good for anyone. 

Violation of Trust, also listed as She Says She's Innocent, is a perfectly fine little TV movie. The story seems annoyingly straightforward until a third act twist, at which point you as the viewer will kick yourself for not spotting the obvious casting choice that tells you what you need to know about the film's real villain.

High Points

Director Charles Correll lucks out with a decent cast. Katey Sagal was a few years into her epic Married...With Children run and clearly wanted to show a different side of herself as a much more sympathetic (but still quite daft) mother. Charlotte Ross had just left Eve Donovan behind on Days of Our Lives and easily transitions as a slightly realer, still spoiled teen. These are very watchable women.

Low Points

Maybe it's just a very 2020s read, but I wanted so much more from what seemed like an incredibly toxic relationship between Justine and Ashley. Was Ashley in love with her too-cool best friend? 

Lessons Learned

Never ask a pregnant woman how she feels at 5AM

Homicide doesn't wet the appetite on a first date

Teenage couples don't share keys

Rent/Bury/Buy

There's nothing revolutionary about Violation of Trust. It's an early '90s TV movie with familiar faces and a melodramatic murder mystery. It scratched my itch exactly as I'd hoped. Bless you, Tubi.  

Regrets Only

A movie you've never heard of starring Lance Henriksen doesn't come with high expectations. Especially when it's streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Quick Plot: Roland Levy, a successful novelist, invites a batch of his close but incredibly flawed pals to his island for a dinner party. After sharing some very J. Peterman-esque anecdotes about his recent adventures recovering from poison in Africa, Roland reveals his real party favor.

It's poison, obviously.

Roland is convinced that the only way forward is to die, especially when you have skeletons in your closet that need to be cleaned out for good. 

What follows is a rather drab 90 minutes about unlikable people suffering from out of focus hallucinations. For the women, most involve sexual assault. For the men, lots of daddy issues. 

Throughout it all, Lance Henriksen owns the screen with an air of relaxed charisma. He's the only reason to watch this otherwise slog. Maybe it's not The Invitation's fault that it was, 20+ years after its release, marketed as a thriller. If you approached this film expecting a middling drama, it...well, it still wouldn't be good, but at least it wouldn't necessarily feel anticlimactic. 

Filmmaker Pat Bermel has a long history in the film business, though this stands as his only directorial credit. Outside of Henriksen, the cast is vaguely recognizable (hey! it's a lady from Decoys, says one of the few people who remembers the Canadian movies Decoys). No one is terrible, no one is great. The fact that their characters are all wealthy jerks certainly doesn't help.

The Invitation does ultimately go somewhere. It's just not an entertaining destination. 

High Points

Gotta love that dog's recovery wardrobe!

Low Points

I'll be nice and blame a good deal of The Invitation's ugliness on the print. There's a very specific visual graininess endemic to these kinds of low budget movies of the early aughts era, and it makes a blah movie even less pleasing to watch

Lessons Learned

The side effects of elephant birth control is that female elephants become really aroused 

All the money in the world apparently does not buy you likable friends

Sellers aren't writers

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can't imagine where the audience is for The Invitation. It's unpleasant for most of its runtime before ending on a note of pure syrup. Lance Henriksen completists can find it on Prime. 

On Pointe

 

I love ballet. Not, like DOING ballet, but much like figure skating, dance is a fascinating discipline that combines athleticism and artistry to tell soap opera level stories with such furious passion that has no true equal. Dancers devote their lives to a challenging, high art form bound to break their hearts (and bodies). It's tragic and beautiful.

Hence, anytime a genre (or in this case, adjacent) film crosses my eyes with a pirouette, I'm in. 

Quick Plot: Miss Thorna's small ballet troupe is heading to Budapest for an important gala performance, but their bus isn't quite up for the trip. It breaks down somewhere in the Hungarian woods, leaving the girls to hike their way to the nearest glimpse of civilization: a rundown hotel stacked with eastern European gangsters under the watch of former prima donna Devora.

Enough small bad decisions are made that things go very wrong very quickly. Miss Thorna witnesses something she shouldn't and pays for it with an immediate bullet to the head. With no phone service or record of their tracks, her dancers are seemingly lambs to the slaughter. 

Never discount someone who can do fouettés on the very tips of her toes.

As defacto leader Bones points out, these girls may be outmanned and on strange turf, but their enemies are drunk and out of shape. The dancers, on the other hand, are prima FUCKING ballerinas. No, they're not trained to disarm gangsters or even fire guns (well, never discount a country club girl), but they ARE physical Amazons with skills John Wick could only dream about.

Directed by Vicky Jewson from a sharp script by Kate Freund, Pretty Lethal is pretty damn fun. Maddie Ziegler confidently leads the action and bounces especially well off rich girl Princess (Lana Condor). The film seamlessly includes a deaf character (A Quiet Place's Millicent Simmonds) without ever feeling like a forced decision. At under 90 minutes, there's little time for backstories but honestly? It doesn't matter. The actresses all put enough into their characters and Freund's script gives us all we need in their interactions to know who they are. 

Best of all, there's nothing cruel about Pretty Lethal. Another filmmaker could easily have taken the material and made it leering or unpleasant. Beautiful young women battling for their lives against male gangsters can go very, very wrong. In Jewson's hands, we have full confidence that these women will be able to take care of themselves.

High Points

Yes, we get fight choreography that combines ballet and basic bar brawls, and yes, it's fabulous. 

Low Points

I know that Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite is a) the most recognizable ballet for Americans and b) public domain and therefore convenient to drop into your soundtrack, but the actual ballet-ness of Pretty Lethal feels a bit stifled by being restricted to this as its only real source of music

Lessons Learned

You can tell a well-traveled ballerina by whether she knows the difference between ebola and e-coli

Toenail torture does not work on ballerinas

Hungarian gangsters shoot as well as Empire stormtroopers

Nobody commits to an accent quite like Uma Thurman

Rent/Bury/Buy

Pretty Lethal was kind of made for me, so it's hard to know if its appeal is quite as universal. But hey, if you like ballet mixed with hand to hand combat and sprinkled on top with Uma Thurman in full camp, you can't really go wrong. Find if on Amazon. 

Pretty Little Mallrats

Is there a better place to set a horror movie than a shopping mall?

I thought not. 

Quick Plot: Apple, Cherry, and Fig are the mean girls of the mall. They have perfect hair and unreasonable shoes, exactly what's needed to front the boutique Free Eden. Down one employee, Fig sees potential in an Auntie Anne's knockoff sample girl and not just because she's named Pumpkin.

The hiring process isn't quite traditional. Having never worked retail, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think most apparel saleswomen are required to drink a blend of fruit and panty juice served in a boot before being locked overnight in a mall. 

It seems to work. Pumpkin joins the staff and quickly infiltrates what is, most definitely, a coven of witches (even if the dim Cherry isn't actually aware of that). Apple runs a tight ship: no boyfriends, strict schedules, and the occasional ritual. Basically, trust exercises for Mean Girls. 

Sadly, as most coven-based movies have taught us, these kinds of tight female cliques are never unsinkable. Pumpkin has her own motives in dismantling their power dynamic, which proves all too easy when Fig has found love and Cherry has, well, a lot of extracurricular needs that don't line up with Apple's ideals. Meanwhile, Apple seems haunted by her own mysterious past. Free Eden doesn't seem to have many retail seasons left.

Based on screenwriter Lily Houghton's play and co-written and directed by Meredith Alloway, Forbidden Fruits is the kind of stylized Starburst pack of movie that will likely be insufferable for a certain contingent of moviegoer. It's not a surprise when Diablo Cody's name shows up as a producer. If overly accessorized young women speaking in their own pop-heavy vernacular hurts your ears, then give this movie a pass.

For the rest of us who see Cher Horowitz and Jennifer Check as icons, Forbidden Fruits is equally fun and frustrating. The core cast is pitch perfect, with all four of the leads understanding the balance between human being and caricature. They go a long way towards making this something special, which might be why I found myself a little more disappointed than lesser films.

See, Forbidden Fruits reminds me quite a bit of Mona Awad's hit novel Bunny. Both present similar female friend groups -- early 20s, incredibly beautiful, incredibly toxic -- in a darkly comic vein of witchy misanthropy. What stinks is that in both cases, there's such a deep, ugly cynicism about the actual possibility of female friendship amongst this kind of woman. For as deep as these friendships seem to be at first glance, it takes just one interloper to tear them apart from within. 

It's just a bit of a bummer.

Forbidden Fruits has enough of a third act plot twist that it can somewhat justify the need to have these women (literally) at each other's throats, but it does still feel like a miss in that regard. There's a sense that each of the female characters have full agency underneath those false eyelashes, but the idea that they can ever share it with one another seems to not even be on the table. 

Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy Forbidden Fruits. Alloway finds the perfect aesthetic and makes great use of her mall setting, particularly in the film's final act. I laughed a LOT, and not just because of -- 

High Points

What do we have to do to make Victoria Pedretti a star? She makes such fascinating, off the wall choices in every role she plays. Her voice as Cherry is so different from what we've heard in You or The Haunting of Hill House, tight and mannered yet somehow also spacey. Everything that comes out of her mouth is hilarious but also shockingly earnest. How does this woman do it and why don't we celebrate it more?

Low Points

Some of the gore at the end is, you know, a tad silly

Lessons Learned

No fate is worse than having to name your son Bob

When you don't fit in in high school, you learn a lot about state birds

There's an art to folding chino pants

Chekhov's Law of Escalators, the Stiletto Addendum

Obviously, one does not flirt with the dangers of wearing sharp heels on a moving stairway in Act I if one will not pay off such a move in Act V. This was based on a play, after all

Rent/Bury/Buy

If it sounds like I'm hard on Forbidden Fruits, it's probably because this is the kind of movie I want to unabashedly love. It doesn't quite get there for me, but I still had a fantastic time. Find it on Shudder when you're in the right mood.