Hello Mary Lou! It's...Urban Legends 3

As we begin the welcome process of closing down 2020, it's nice to think back to the handful of good things this year of horrors has brought us. Among them...um...my antibodies? 

Oh, and on a personal note, my rediscovery of Urban Legend and first time enjoyment of its sequels.

Quick Plot: It's prom night, 1969, and shy Mary has snagged herself a popular jock as her date. Strings are attached, as it turns out said gentleman caller and his pals are really just out to roofie a few unsuspecting seniors via some laced punch. Mary ends up dead, though if you say her name three times, you just might flash forward to 2005's Sam (a young Kate Mara), regaling her slumber party pals with some urban legend tales involving poor Bloody Mary, trapped forever in a locked treasure chest.

Turns out, Mary has been waiting 35 years to come back for her revenge, doling it out creatively on the teenage offspring of all her former classmates responsible for her fate. We've got a Final Destination 3-esque tanning bed demise, CGI spider eggs disguised as a pimple, death-by-peeing-on-an-electrical fence, and more. 

The Final Destination 3 similarities don't end there: any specific connection to the first two Urban Legend films is essentially brushed away by a "hey! I found this article on the internet about other urban legend-inspired killings." I suppose you could count the more uncomfortable ties as well: as in the first Urban Legend, a dog is killed (part 2 was kind enough to only do so in its movie within the movie) and as with Loretta Divine's Reese, the film's only black character can easily be charmed by complimenting her on her resemblance to Foxy Brown.

Directed by Pet Sematary (and Pet Sematary 2)'s Mary Lambert, Bloody Mary is clearly itself a fan of the horror genre. That's not surprising when you see that the script was cowritten by Krampus/Trick 'r Treat's Michael Dougherty. It shares some DNA of the post-Scream self-aware dead teenager flick, but also has some deep affection for older films, particularly the glorious Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. 

The early aughts were a weird time for pop horror. Scream-infused slashers were slowly dying away, while The Ring's success made J-Horror the hot new style. Saw would burst onto the scene in 2004, bringing with it a whole new movement in nihilism and gore. Landing on DVD in 2005, Blood Mary feels in some ways like a carefully blended combination of these styles. There's dated CGI attempting bordering on silly, a ghostly dark-haired girl showing up to make faces, and a batch of beautiful young white people awaiting a truly horrid fate. 

That sounds kind of terrible, but when put together with just the right touch, it's a weirdly dumb good time.

High Points

While it's a little inconsistent, the overall tone of Bloody Mary feels just right. Teenagers are dying in bizarre and brutal ways, but, well, most of them are kind of awful to begin with, and Lambert's touch feels like it carries just the right weight to make the deaths land in decent taste (yes, I realize I'm saying high school students being burned to death in tanning beds or castrated by electric fences is tasteful, but some of you know what I mean)

Low Points

There's really only one relationship with any real heart, and that's Sam and her brother David. While it's refreshing to have a genuinely loving sibling bond, it also makes the ending and lack of, well, dealing with a key aspect of the ending rather unsatisfying

Lessons Learned

The most effective morning beauty routine involves wearing a perfectly matched Victoria's Secret bra and panties set and slipping into high heels before putting on your makeup

Complete confidence means nothing if your mom's a dirty alcoholic

Being isolated from your pals after watching your frenemies murdered will do wonders for the health of your hair

Look! It's- 

Pre-"I didn't even want to be in the Nightmare On Elm Street remake" Rooney Mara, Kate's little, now more famous sister as "Classroom Girl #1." Naturally, I got very distracted from the plot of Bloody Mary with my much more interesting new fantasy version of Whatever Happened to Baby Mara?

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bloody Mary is a fun time capsule of early 21st century teen horror, one that feels charmingly less hip than some of its more CW network-cast quickies. I watched it via Netflix disc (yes, I'm that old) and there's a cute making-of featurette that certainly took me back to a simpler time. It doesn't quite pack the same satisfying winks as the first Urban Legend, but it's a worthy entry into what turned out to be a surprisingly fun-filled series. 

Supersize That Food of the Gods

Synchronized swimming

‘80s stylin'

Cute rats

Cute giant rats

Giant kids that curse

A character named Carlos singing La Cucaracha while peeing in bushes

My question is obvious: in all the list of great sequels, why oh why oh why has nobody ever mentioned Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2?

Quick Plot: Set in a university, Gnaw begins with a bunch of flaky animal rights activists protesting the medical experimentation going on inside. I say ‘flaky’ not because it’s silly to protest this kind of thing, but more because these particular people are idiots who make the monkey releasers of 28 Days Later look like Stephen Hawking. The kind who break into a laboratory after hours to expose its cruelty and embark upon a 'trash the room!' montage (that truthfully, I long to participate in) without actually helping any of the creatures. Best of all, after making the papers and pissing off the administration, the trespassers return...THE VERY NEXT NIGHT.

Although I can't really blame these ill-advised coeds. They only have their education to blame, and considering a university that had been BROKEN INTO the very NIGHT BEFORE has done nothing to beef up its security measures, why would they possibly think repeating their crime would have consequences?

Thankfully for us, these do gooder dumdums are about to kickstart one of the best plot standbys in the history of film: giganticism. See, unbeknownst to the critter crusaders, Dr. Neil Hamilton was experimenting with a growth hormone. Why would a scientist experiment with a growth hormone you ask?

Well, that.

See, Neil’s doctor friend a few towns away was doing some of her own work with hormones and...oops, made little Bobby a hilariously gigantic (and even more hilariously foul-mouthed) monster. Although Neil generally restricts his research to plants in order to still be able to sleep with his horribly not smart animal rights activist galpal Alex (played by Prom Night 2’s Mary Lou herself, Lisa Schrage), he takes the risk and feeds a rat some untested drugs as a few others nibble on supersized tomatoes that would put Lisa Simpson's lost science fair project to shame. In the words of his assistant, Neil has created “an accidental hormone concoction, like trying to make a martini and ending up with LSD.” Shockingly, in the 1980s, this was considered a bad thing.

Naturally, once the lab gets broken into (for a second time in a row, did I mention that?), a few hulk-in-the-making rats get loose and begin a reign of terror on the small college town. Even more naturally for a genre film, there’s a single-minded bureaucrat (in this case, the college president) who refuses to close the campus despite, you know, the threat of Rodents of Unusual Size chomping through the student body. 

But how could one POSSIBLY be expected to cancel class when there’s a synchronized swimming competition on the horizon?

Yes dear readers, Gnaw: The Kind of Not Really Sequel to Food of the Gods features a synchronized swimming massacre. See, such a sport was apparently a HUGE spectator coup back in the day and therefore equals a battleground akin to Gettysburg when the rats decide to crash. What follows is a glorious scene of carnage that cares so much about its audience that it even includes a randomly crazed mob member picking up a policeman’s freed handgun and firing madly at the innocent crowd.

I pretty much adored Gnaw from start to finish. The effects of the rats--what I imagine is a combination of puppetry and forced perspective, much like Bert I. Gordon's original--are colorful enough to not worry you with whether they look believable in any way, and the kills, plentiful enough to keep you watching. It falters a tad in the dullness of its leads, but hey: any film that gives us the transformation of a greedy scientist into a low rent Toxic Avenger can't escape being awesome.

High Points

There are a lot of small touches in the supporting cast that makes Gnaw something clever, including an overly enthusiastic hunter with a flamethrower and minor character with a receding hairline and a subtle but quite funny obsession with scientifically curing baldness

Low Points

Though I loved her bitchy prom queen attitude as Mary Lou, Schrage’s good girl Alex is painfully unlikable here. Paul Coufos fares a tad better, but both roles are just not nearly as much fun as the movie they're in

Lessons Learned

To do experiments you need a lab...and research data

Don’t forget to take the lenscap off the camera

You would think diehard animal activists wouldn’t be afraid the thing they’re trying so hard to protect (i.e., rats). You would think but be very, very wrong

What’s wrong with this country: people not taking pride in their work

HILARIOUS DREAM SEQUENCE ALERT!

I was initially confused as to why the white toast Neil would allow himself to be so easily seduced by the school slut, but then something wonderful happened: Neil tasted some of his hormone juice and the effects were felt by his first confused, then grateful, then understandably horrified new squeeze. Then he woke up.

Crazy Cat Lady Alert

I tell it straight here: Neil’s habit of letting his favorite pet rat drape herself over his shoulder as he goes about his day is pretty much how Joplin and I spend evenings here at the Doll’s House

Montage Mania

Ingredients: 

Computer

Rock music

Bunson burners

Petri dishes

A rainbow of food coloring in glass vials

Fist pumps

That my friends, is science at work

Goof Squad

I am, quite possibly, the absolute worst judge of continuity (somehow I missed the infamous Leif Garrett wig/no wig switcheroo in Devil Times Five), making my catch of the lead protester's hair going from near House Party style to crew cut back to House Party over the course of two days either impressive on my end or really sad for the film. And yes, I rewound to see if I was missing a hairnet and no, I found none.

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is a fun film. Not scary or thrilling or, you know, actually good, but an enthusiastic animals attack popcorn flick made with fresh enthusiasm. Considering most of its competition in 1989 featured silent slashers, Gnaw is ridiculously refreshing for its throwback style. The DVD is sadly sans special features, but nature strikes back fans owe it to themselves to seek out this subgenre with an ‘80s sheen. 

Prom Night, Prom Night, First Crown I Smash Tonight

Prom Night, for all its Leslie Nielsenness and Jamie Lee Curtis disco, is not a very good film. Its 1986 followup, however, has achieved a farily positive reputation, at least based on the cool cats in my movie nerd circle (most of whom, I assume, spent their senior prom home watching parts 3 & 4 while I spilled chicken all over my puffy sun orange gown while closing the night out with ‘N Sync’s Bye Bye Bye).

Time to put those nerds to the test. Otherwise, there will be wedgies.

Quick Plot: In 1957, slutty prom queen Mary Lou dies just before being crowned in front of her gawking classmates, among them her piece-on-the-side badboy lover (turned priest as an adult) and cuckolded rich boyfriend who unleashes a deadly stinkbomb and later, grows into a sexy bespectacled Michael Ironside.

Flashing forward thirty years, the Ironside is now the high school principal whose son is dating good girl Vicki, a big-haired, doe-eyed blond who for whatever reason (that somehow involves the desecration of a prom crown), ends up occasionally possessed by the flaky ghost of Mary Lou. Along the way, artistic puffy pants wearing students get strangled by prom capes, dopy fathers get kissed by their teenaged daughters, and hairspray is wildly abused by men and women with equal opportunity. The ‘80s were indeed a time for pioneers.

I thought I’d have more to say about Prom Night II, but really, it’s the kind of slightly self-aware ‘80s slasher that speaks for itself. High school students are stereotyped and killed in adorably silly styles. A good girl plays dirty in ways that would make Hannah Montana raise her eyebrows (and then take notes). The effects are gooey and gorgeous and at the end of the day, the nerds prevail.

High Points

Any film that culminates in an epic prom scene featuring crushed blue velvet AND lasers is automatically going to get at least four stars from my galaxy

Low Points

Honestly, there’s not much to NOT *like* about the movie, but I suppose one could just want the whole story to take a few steps further towards trashiness

Lessons Learned

Tutti Fruiti is a REALLY long song

Stink bombs + satin = bad times

The potato is rich in AM, FM, and carbohydrates

In order to avoid overloading your bedroom with its equestrian theme, balance those posters of stallions and carousel horses with classier fare, like Picasso’s Guernica

Rent/Bury/Buy

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is a darn good party film, one busting with ridiculous ‘80s style--and I’m not just talking about crimped hair and mismatched earrings. It’s a goofy bowl of punch that won’t come near scaring you, but it probably beats any high school dance you ever attended.