You Will Believe

I saw Urban Legend in the theater as a 16-year-old horror fan who was witnessing the rebirth of slashers aimed squarely at my generation. Having been that awkward kid with full video store access, it was a strange place to be. Suddenly, the type of movies I'd beg to watch at slumber parties were actually cool. The only problem: the actual movies were not.

I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween H20, Disturbing Behavior...the list of movies with good talent and promise that don't actually work that well as horror is pretty long. My memory of Urban Legend was that it was more fun than most of its peers, but, well, it's been 22 years. Let's see how it's aged.

Quick Plot: Pendleton University student Michelle Mancini (yes, the name should remind you of a certain hero of mine) stops for gas on a dark, rainy evening, immediately becoming suspicious of the twitchy gas station attendant beckoning her to get out of her car. Considering he's played by Brad Dourf with Charles Lee Ray eyes and Billy Bibbit's speech impediment, you can understand her edginess. 

Enter the first urban legend of Urban Legend: there's someone in the backseat, and Michelle learns too late that some legends can be true...particularly in slashers all about turning urban legends into elaborate murder set pieces.

The Pendleton student body seems fairly ambivalent about one of their own being brutally murdered. Only Paul (Jordan Catalano era Jared Leto), an ambitious school newspaper reporter, and Natalie (Alicia Witt at her most radiant red-headedness), who knows a thing or two about the deadly possibilities of modern folktales and Michelle Mancini, suspect there's a bigger story at play.

Like any Canadian-posing-as-New-England university, Pendleton has its share of haunted, shrouded history. 1998 marks the 25th anniversary of a fabled massacre, and mysterious professor William Wexler (Robert Enguland!) seems to have a bit much invested in covering it up while also convincing his students that urban legends are pure myth.

Cut to 16-year-old me, who had just begun receiving colorful college brochures with autumnal imagery, becoming even more excited to get out of high school and sit in lecture halls where Freddy Krueger showed slides straight out of Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark.

Anyway, future dreams aside, Urban Legend is indeed the perfect late '90s slasher. Sure, the brown lipstick fashion trends and resigned sighs of seeing your roommate on dial-up and getting a busy signal on your landline give you a knowing wink 22 years later, but here's the thing: Urban Legend is actually kinda good.

Yes, we wouldn't have had Urban Legend in theaters had it not been for the success of Scream one year earlier, and yes, it follows many of the same beats BUT, guess what: the same can be said for Friday the 13th to Halloween, or The Intruder to Friday the 13th, and so on and so on. 

Urban Legend knows its slasher playbook: pal after pal of our final girl dies in a high concept way by a dark figure whose face is obscured (in this case, with a winter coat that apparently everyone in town owns). Each murder is inspired by a popular urban legend, sometimes with an added twist. It's a perfect horror movie setup from first-time screenwriter Silvio Horta, and first-time director Jamie Blanks manages a surprisingly sharp balance between treating the horror seriously while clearly holding in a giant wink.

There are plenty of small touches throughout Urban Legend that demonstrate a clear affection for the genre, from using Chucky creator Don Mancini's name to casting Halloween 4/5's Danielle Harris as Natalie's ill-fated goth roommate. The reveal of the killer is big and stupid in the best of ways, while the coda lets you reframe the entire movie in whatever guise you choose. 

We're at a very specific moment in time when we can look at the '90s with rose-colored glasses. Horror cinema at this time was defined by the self-aware slasher, and while Urban Legend may have felt trite in 1998, it has aged remarkably well two decades after its debut.

High Points

Most of the actual violence is so over-the-top that it's more silly than scary, but the opening scene is genuinely thrilling, with the reveal played to perfect effect amid a rain-soaked dark highway

Low Points

There are two genuinely unpleasant things in Urban Legend, and I'm not talking about the many dead young people or Joshua Jackson's hair color: yes, a dozen innocent students are brutally murdered, but the force-alcohol-fed dog-in-the-microwave moment feels line crossing. The other is one of those uncomfortable real-life mirrors that's hard to put out of your mind: in 2001, Rebecca Gayheart was convicted of vehicular manslaughter that caused the death of a child. Much like Natalie and Michelle, this wealthy white woman received a small fine and probation. There's a lot to process there and it doesn't necessarily need to be done to enjoy a sharp '90s horror flick, but it feels wrong not to acknowledge it when discussing the movie

Lessons Learned, Late '90s Edition

As witnessed here and in Se7en, there was a high correlation between serial killing and excessive rain

A bad bleach job was all you needed to pass yourself off as a Hanson brother

You'd never get a job in the newspaper industry without a hefty batch of school paper writing samples

Rent/Bury/Buy

Urban Legend is currently streaming on Hulu, and I found it surprisingly enjoyable to revisit. It won't change your life, but it just might make you look fondly back at a period of genre cinema we'd all once written off.

Bonus Content!

Hungry for more discussion on '90s theatrical horror? Allow me to point you back to Canada for Alexandra West's fantastic essay book on the subject, The 1990s Teen Horror Cycle. It's a smart, scholarly, and fun look at a decade that we long took for granted. 

Road Trip, Rogue Vampire Hunter Style

Going into Stake Land, there was a pile of reasons why my expectations were higher than Miley Cyrus at a backyard barbeque held at Cheech Marin’s casa. Amongst them:

-Director Jim Mickle and actor/cowriter Nick Damici’s previous outing, Mulberry Street, was an impressively refreshing low budget horror that used a standard premise--vampirish zombies chewing through New York City--and made it into something truly new, with a multi-aged cast and hauntingly effective portrait of post-9/11 Manhattan.

-The fact that it’s a post-apocalyptic survival tale, something that never fails to rock my world (even when directed by the humorless Michael Haneke)

-Proven history: The last time I watched a movie starring a Gossip Girl star for this site, the result was the beyond magnificent Drive-Thru

Quick Plot: As a plague of vampirism spreads through the world, human survivors get by with whatever tools they choose to trade, be it guns, shantytown politics, or crazy religious cult gang membership pent on worshipping monsters and raping nuns. Eking out existence in the south is Martin (Connor Paolo), an orphaned teenager who watched his parents and baby sibling get eaten and has since been learning under the tutelage of Mister (Damici), a badass vampire hunter who smokes and sleeps his way through the makeshift communities. Eventually, they collect a few more traveling teammates, including the aforementioned nun Sister (Kelly McGillis), the ex-soldier Willie (Sean Nelson) and the sunnily pregnant Belle (genre queen Danielle Harris).

So yes, this is a film that opens with a savage vampire zombie chewing on an infant. It’s actually a strong way to begin, since Stake Land is indeed a brutal and dark ride that digs into the worst of both monsters and mankind. Besides baby-eating (sorry; I know it’s not funny, but it also kind of is) there are not-so-subtle hints towards sexual slavery, domestic terrorism, and slain children, all of which is handled with the kind of weight they need.

Stake Land is essentially a road movie set after the apocalypse, a sort of genre take on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with more, well, vampires. As is common for many a serious-minded horror film, it quickly reveals that it’s man rather than monster that plays the real villain in life. Like Mulberry Street, there’s some not-so-deeply buried social commentary that never overtakes the action. The government has given up, leaving some citizens to sympathetically form communities and others to turn world-wide disaster into their own hedonistic utopia. 

Most notable is Stake Land’s portrayal of religion, something that’s done with far more evenhandedness than you might expect. Yes, the major bad guys are racist and misogynist zealots (led by Broadway powerhouse Michael Cerveris) who force their hateful beliefs on the country through violence, but the film seems to strive for a balance with other nods that point to faith as a comfort. McGillis' Sister is a solid force, a woman who offers the flip side of faith as something that breeds kindness and sympathy. Too often films like these end up painting religion as the true evil of the world through broad and stereotypical strokes or on the flip side, end up as weird exercises in Christian entrapment (see I Am Legend). Stake Land wisely avoids either fatal misstep.

And really that's just one of many things I absolutely loved about this film. The performances are all quite good, with each actor lending the right balance of battle-torn weariness with a subtle ray of hope. Harris brightens up every scene she's in, while Damici offers outstanding presence with very little dialogue. As the everyman lead, Connor Paolo is surprisingly effective, never overplaying the role but maintaining the center as a boy coming of age with the right balance of innocence and maturity. While I would normally see character narration as unnecessary and distracting, it works well in Stake Land, never overstepping the action or telling us anything we already know. Would the film work without it? Most likely, but the lines lend a certain gravity that always reminds us what world we're now living (and dying) in. 

High Points

It’s a testament to Stake Land that the actual vampires are far less important than the rest of the narrative, but they’re still something to be acknowledged. Considering Mulberry Street’s main weakness was its iffy execution of its rat-like zombies, allow me to give a nod to the vampiric creations here, especially with their different styles based on time of infection

Low Points

While I didn’t need any backstory regarding what began the plague, it was a tad frustrating to realize that I had no idea how the virus even worked in terms of contagion

Lessons Learned

No man should begin his vampire hunting career without proper armor and headgear

When choosing one's vehicle for vampire hunting in the post-apocalypse, always consider the mechanics of the trunk

In the post-apocalypse, a round of square dancing is considered more appealing than a vanilla ice cream cone

Soap Box Special

You may, as I did, experience a mild shock when you realize that the 50something nun is played by Witness and Top Gun hottie Kelly McGillis. Yes, seeing an actress primarily known for her work three decades ago now looking all of her 54 years is initially surprising, but I've been even more astounded by how many Interwebbers are citing her look in this film as 'old and ugly.' First of all, she's playing a nun barely surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, meaning her Botox sessions and salon appointments have probably been canceled indefinitely. Secondly, her face is still quite stunning, offering plenty of warmth and depth considering she most often has to act without words. Most importantly, she looks absolutely fine for a woman in her 50s, though by 'fine' I mean 'what an actual woman in her 50s should look like.' And people wonder why actresses keep drinking virgins' blood at plastic surgeons' offices.

Unlike some people...

Rent/Buy/Buy

I’d been hearing about Stake Land for the past year or so, as it’s made quite a dent in the horror community. To me, the film most certainly deserves its indie gem reputation. It works as a monster movie, with plenty of effective action-heavy vampire attacks, and it absolutely soars as an apocalyptic road trip hybrid. The DVD includes two commentaries, while the Blu Ray and 2-disc Special Edition are loaded with a making-of, Q&A, and seven character prequels (also viewable on youtube). Though some of my fellow bloggers have been unimpressed, I found Stake Land to be well worth a viewing and even, if you’re feeling financially frisky or just plain wild, a blind buy. 

Settle down now.

And This Is How You Make a Mess

Like a good chunk of current horror fans, I rank The Devil’s Rejects as one of the best-made genre films of the last ten years, consider House of 1000 Corpses to be an obnoxious but not irredeemable scrimmage in filmmaking, and find the opening half of the Halloween remake to hold a pumpkin full of potential that gets squandered in the rushed second half. The news that Rob Zombie would be following up his 2007 film with a sequel that he once vowed to never touch was odd, but not unwelcome. Maybe, I thought, he needed to get the reboot homage out of the way to find his own vision for Michael Meyers.


Well. Perhaps he did, but that doesn’t mean it works. Halloween 2 (thankfully NOT called H2 in the actual credits) is, like its predecessor, an ugly, occasionally jarring, often annoying, and ultimately chaotic exercise in grisliness. It’s far more interesting than lackluster fare like the latest Friday the 13th or The Hitcher remakes, but ultimately, even the 2 hour running time--filled not in small part by quick shots of fake breasts, blasting music cues, and somewhere around 1872 uses of the word ‘fuck’--leaves us with a rough and confusing film without much to like.


Quick Plot: One year after surviving the return of Michael, Laurie Strode (the now more tolerable, if not quite sympathetic Scout Taylor-Compton) continues to be haunted by nightmares and bad fashion sense. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis (the always reliable genre stalwart Malcolm McDowell), is thriving as a minor celebrity about to release his second book detailing the Haddonfield attack. And Michael? Well, he apparently woke up somewhere that contains Rob Zombie style hillbillies and has been trekking across the country/state/town/universe (it’s never clear) slaying anybody that gets in his way of reuniting with lil sis. For company, he is occasionally visited by mom Sheri Moon-Zombie dressed up for Halloween in a dime store ghost costume and leading a white horse through snow. (For the record, Zombie has adamantly stated there will be no Part 3--which he also did regarding Part 2--but if there is, I’m dying for it to feature a showdown between Moon’s Pegasus and Brad Dourif on a black stallion).

Also returning is Danielle Harris as the healthy-minded Annie, a far more enjoyable presence compared to Laurie’s new slutty goth friends. In typical Zombie style, other veterans pop up for random cameos with mixed results. Eventually, Michael comes home, Laurie learns some secrets, and we try to figure out what the hell is going on.*

One of the reasons I’ve always preferred Ebert to Siskel is that Ebert reviewed a film for its intended audience, while Siskel would criticize its plot for not being the direction he would have chose. At this point, I’m starting to think my issue with Rob Zombie’s Halloween series is not necessarily his filmmaking, but the tease of character development he’s now given us twice. I was intrigued by the young Michael Meyers as a natural born psychopath with a soft spot for his mother and baby sister, and therefore, I’ve been nothing but disappointed with Zombie’s decision to fast-forward through adolescence and jump into Meyers, now a 7 foot tall indestructible killing machine. As a fan of Chucky, I’ve never had issues with the abuse of realism of horror, but I don’t understand how or why someone with as much talent as Rob Zombie would start Michael out as a person and suddenly transform him into a demon. I don’t want a Part 6 style supernatural explanation, but it feels, once again, like Halloween 2 wants to explore Michael’s psychology but can’t quite shake the limitations of making a simple and grisly gorefest.

High Points
Brad Dourif clearly holds a special place in my heart, and here, he dutifully carries out the role of a guilt-ridden sheriff and ends up being the most sympathetic character in the bunch

Casting Margot Kidder as a psychologist is all sorts of ironically fun


No spoilers here, but one of my favorite performers--goodness no, it’s not Chris Hardwicke--makes a stellar cameo beside McDowell


The final shot is quite haunting, but see my spoiler rant below for more explanation*


Low Points
One of the most effective aspects of The Devil’s Rejects is how truly terrifying scenes take place under the hot sun, so it’s quite disappointing to see the majority of Halloween 2 occur in the poorly lit nighttime

While I enjoyed McDowell’s performance, his entire storyline felt like plot filler--especially considering its thin resolution


Zombie has proven before that he can compose a great shot, but here, he randomly chooses scenes to make artistic. As a result, these slow-motioned moments feel pretentious and out of place, while the rest of the filming just looks ugly


Lessons Learned
Post traumatic effects of surviving a nightmarish chase with a giant killer may include developing a goth persona, not wanting to clean your bathroom, and building an impressive tolerance to hard liquor

Illinois is home to the new Chris Hardwicke talk show, conveniently located ten minutes from Haddonfield


If you want to survive a Rob Zombie film, never work in the sex or stripping industry


Black-and-white cartoons are known to inspire vivid nightmares


Another word for a Dr. Frank-N-Furter Halloween costume would be “chick dressing up like a dude who wants to be a chick.” I guess someone did not obtain the rights to the Rocky Horror Picture Show


Jewish people use the phrase ‘kosher’

D-E-A-D spells not dead


See/Skip/Sneak In
Sigh. Fans of Zombie’s first Halloween will certainly want to check out this installment, and some may even enjoy it more. The Saturday night audience I had the displeasure of sitting with hardly seemed impressed at the conclusion, although they certainly seemed jumpy throughout. Despite my fairly negative review, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from giving Halloween 2 a chance if he or she appreciates this kind of roughness onscreen. Just remember to stop by with some comments on your own take. I'm incredibly curious to hear other thoughts on this installment, especially as word of mouth contains more expletives than the film itself.


**SPOILERS**
**SPOILERS**
**SPOILERS**


My understanding is that Laurie has simply snapped by the end, but my friend and I were both considering the fact that maybe she was the killer all along. The last few kills are committed with no witnesses. The cops can’t get a shot of Michael. The early murders have nothing to do with anything else happening onscreen and therefore could have simply been fantasies of a pre-aware Angel Meyers. If our theory was right, I’d have more respect for the film; at the same time, I’d also be annoyed that Zombie couldn’t commit to that idea. Either way, the ambiguity--and there’s a good chance dear Erica and I are the only ones that felt that--just seems, like the rest of the film, a big old mess.


**END OF SPOILERS***
**END OF SPOILERS***
**END OF SPOILERS***