SERIOUS HORROR & SCI FI CRITIQUES

THE STRANGENESS

2009-04-12T23:47:00.002-07:00

THE STRANGENESS: A Review For A Movie That Tries To Sell You A Book.
By Hubbs Kowalski

Petey Waco was a little jacked that I used our conversation in my review for HATCHET.

“Dude, you totally ragged on me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You said I say goofy things.”

“Well, you do.”

“And you don’t?”

“Whose column is it, Waco? Maybe you should start writing your own columns.”

“Don’t use my name in your stupid fucking reviews again.”

“What the hell is your problem?”

“Nobody calls me goofy.”

“I didn’t call you goofy.”

“MOTHERFUCKER, DON’T FUCKING EVER USE MY FUCKING NAME IN ONE OF YOUR STUPID FUCKING MOVIE REVIEWS EVER AGAIN!”

“Fine.” That Petey Waco is crazy. And cruel. A real cruel dude.

So from here on out, I will never mention Petey Waco again. I may say Petey this or Waco that, but never will Petey and Waco be side by side in my reviews again. All I have to say to him is freedom of speech, Petey. Freedom of fuckin’ speech.

Fascist.

Anyway, I took some time out and got around to watching the old Trans World Entertainment VHS release THE STRANGENESS, a film I’ve had in my collection for years but never have gotten around to watching. My interest was piqued by the generous chapter afforded it in Stephen Thrower’s mammoth and utterly indispensable book NIGHTMARE USA. If you don’t own NIGHTMARE USA yet, you’re a fuckin’ fascist.

Just like Waco.

Anyway, there’s a closed mine that is waiting to be re-opened that has a history of miners dying in it. An incredibly motley crew consisting of two hard partying mine specialists, a geologist (I think she’s a lesbo, which is always a good thing), a company foreman-type who is a total ass and a writer and his hot blonde wife are going into the abandoned mine to see if its suitable to resume work. Inside they meet a monster and bam, there’s THE STRANGENESS.

Suffice to say, this low-budget monster movie is kind of a good time. Sure, the acting blows and its never very gory, but it’s quite a fun trip, although without having read the interviews and making of in NIGHTMARE USA, I wonder if I would have liked it less. Thrower’s book is one of the most informative books ever written, if not the most informative, on American exploitation films and their creators. The amazing thing about THE STRANGENESS is that all the inside the mine shots were sets and they are quite incredible. The monster is glorious stop motion by Mark Sawicki and Craig Huntley (both who are in featured roles). A labor of love, made for commercial purposes that really shows off the technical genius of this skeleton crew.

Bad part besides the acting is the horrible writing. Come to think of it, the movie does kind of suck but would probably scare the shit out of a 10 year old at two in the morning. So yeah, Thrower’s enthusiasm and journalistic digging into the making of the film is what made it for me, because without that general knowledge of the talent behind it and his pointing out interesting aspects of the production which you can look for throughout, it’s pretty much slow-moving and uneventful until the final act.

Sometimes you need that prodding and different outlook when approaching an incredibly obscure 27-year-old horror film.

I guess in the end, I’m suggesting you go out and get Thrower’s NIGHTMARE USA, because then, you’ll be tracking down the films he mentions in it. I’ve seen a lot of the films in the book, and a lot of them suck, but I’ll be damned if Thrower doesn’t make me want to take a second look at them.

Get it today before he unleashes Volume 2 of NIGHTMARE USA. Thrower is a godsend for exploitation lovers and seems all around like a pretty cool dude.

Unlike Petey. Who’s a goofy thing saying, threatening fascist who’ll probably sue me after this one.

LEGEND OF BIGFOOT

2009-04-12T23:47:00.001-07:00

Your Drive-In Report by Hubbs Kowalski

(Editor’s Note: The following was sent in an email by Kowalski, somewhere in Georgia)

Poobah,

I found this drive-in in Clarkston, GA called the Rita. Shows triple features every night! It’s like heaven…but with BBQ! And PBR! Anyway, my laptop is acting the fool but I’m going to try to hammer this out. If the keyboard fucks up again, I’ll have to wait till I get to a library or some shit.

The tour is going good. We had four people show up last night. If you or Harvey could Western Union some dough to get us to Kentucky, that’d be pretty fuckin’ rockin’.

Hubbs.

LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1976)

Directed by Harry Winer

Written by Harry Winer and Paula Labrot

Rated G

Sometimes catching the first flick of the night at the drive-in is a bummer. Tonight was a triple feature at the Rita, a drive-in I found in Clarkston, GA, that started with THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, which I was pretty excited about. I love that Bigfoot. The way he just walks around, leaving footprints, taking a shitty picture and stinking up the place. It turns out though that THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, while having a bit of Bigfoot in it, was really just one of those nature films from the 1970’s padded with stock footage.

You know the kind I’m talking about. The ones that put animals together that would normally not ever interact. Like cats and coyote puppies. Coyote puppies and skunks. Coyote puppies and chickens. Cougars playing with rabbits. There’s a lot of that here in BIGFOOT. It’s pretty cool, but you either need to be shit-faced drunk or terribly hung-over to appreciate it. Why? I don’t know why. It’s just one of those strange genres that can’t be enjoyed unless your inebriated or suffering.

The pic focuses on Ivan Marx, a tracker who hunts renegade animals for various people when the animals come around and start fucking up the natural order of things. Then somehow he gets hooked on Bigfoot to the point that his “head is reeling with Bigfoot”. That’s a pretty fair description of my mindset going in. Except I got no Bigfoot. I got coyote puppies and skunks, but no Sasquatch.

Marx is a pretty dramatic motherfucker, too. Throughout the narration, he’s “mystified”, “uncomfortable” and “prejudiced”. For a backwoods tracker, he’s a complex man.

Once he gets the Bigfoot bug, he gets all self-righteous in his demand for people to believe in Bigfoot and the use of Bigfoot’s name to sell things, like Bigfoot was God or something. All I know is that this shit is boring. This ain’t no NIGHT OF THE DEMON, I’ll tell you that. Ain’t nobody getting their junk ripped off by an evil Bigfoot.

So around the time of the eviscerated dead bear frozen in death with a seig heil pose, I wandered over to the other lot to see if Freddy was in row 8 to get some weed. Freddy, I was told by the management of the Rita, always has the best weed if not the best taste in movies. I scored a dime bag, smoked that shit and LEGEND OF BIGFOOT didn’t get any better. It was too late.

I expected better from director Harry Winer, the gaffer on Ken Osborne’s WOMEN UNCHAINED. Lately he’s been doing a lot of TV, directing VERONICA MARS and stuff.

Well, at least I was ready for Treat Williams in NIGHT OF THE SHARKS. NiGGhht……fuuuuckkkk KKkeboOArDDDDD

CLOVERFIELD

2009-04-12T23:46:00.001-07:00

CLOVERFIELD:

Stomp them yuppies while I puke!

By Hubbs Kowalski

My cousin calls me and says, “Hey cousin, let’s go see that CLOVERFIELD movie.”

I was half-drunk so I said, sure, why not? Plus it’s only $4 bucks at the drive-in. However bad it is won’t matter, because I’ve got enough beer to get full on drunk. And I’m a positive guy. I look at things as at least half-full whilst full on drunk.

CLOVERFIELD starts out with a bumper saying that the following footage is government property or some shit. I only kind of remember that part because now, I was about ¾ drunk. Anyway, there’s these yuppies in New York and they’re all rich and white and are filming the going away party of one of their rich yuppie friends whose job is sending them to Japan.

So basically, in no way, can I relate with any of these people. Something needs to stomp these people now.

About 15 minutes in, the shaky cam is getting to me. And I’m waiting on some stomping. I ask my cousin if its me or is the movie really that shaky. He tells me the whole movie is going to be that shaky.

It’s about now that I realize being full on drunk at CLOVERFIELD is not a good thing.

So this BLAIR WITCH/CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST with a Harryhausen tinge sci-fi’er takes a bit of time to get going. I guess to set up the characters enough that you want them to get stomped by something. Although that Malena or Marena girl is hot. I don’t know her name in the movie; it was something to that effect…Marena, Malena. I don’t know.

Look, I was drunk…

Anyway, then the thing shows up. It’s some kind of monster. Matter of fact, my cousin says it looks like that thing from THE MIST. And what little you see of it is kind of cool because the movie really is about the rich white yuppies’ trying to find this girl the Japan-bound guy loves and kind of fucked up his chance at smoochies with. Actually he did more than smoochies. Then he didn’t call her. Then she shows up at his going to Japan party with another dude. I also think one of the rich white yuppies was actually black or not all white. But she acted pretty white. I don’t know.

Look, I was drunk…

What’s most important to know is that CLOVERFIELD isn’t a monster movie as much as it’s a road-trip love story, kind of like Charlie Sheen’s immortal THREE FOR THE ROAD from 1987 with Kerri Green from THE GOONIES but filmed by an epileptic who obviously has no respect for Charlie Sheen movies from the 80’s. Because if he did, he would put the fucking camera on a tripod.

Look, I may be a tad drunk right now…

Towards the end of CLOVERFIELD, the camera finally comes to a stop. No shaky. By about halfway in, the thought of puking my guts out occurred to me about 300 times. This shit is really, really shaky and made me physically ill. But when that camera stopped, and my eyes tried to focus after 70 + minutes of Chinese-Olympic-caliber eyeball ping-pong, I puked.

All over the side of my cousin’s car. All the way to the shit-stank restroom. Right onto a piss-splattered toilet with a roll of toilet paper shoved in it for good measure. After puking, I looked over to the right of the stall to see these words etched into a 50th coat of red paint: WILL WORK FOR HOME DEPOT.

Jesus, I wish I was going to Japan. Chicks apparently like the vomit over there anyways.

I’ve seen the videos. I know these things. And in no way are they shaky like CLOVERFIELD. But the funny thing is, those videos didn’t make me puke.

Moral of the story: Don’t go see CLOVERFIELD drunk. Maybe don’t go see it all at the theater. For you general well being, it may be safer to watch it at home.

And stay away from those Japanese shit-puke videos.

They’ll scar you for life.

For more information on Charlie Sheen’s immortal THREE FOR THE ROAD, please go to its IMDB entry at THREE FOR THE ROAD

JOHN CARPENTER'S PRO-LIFE

2009-04-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

MASTERS OF HORROR, MY ASS
by Hubbs Kowalski

MASTERS OF HORROR, MY ASS is a new attempt by Hubbs Kowalski to do some kind of “recurring shit” . When asked what that meant, Kowalski replied, “The fuck do you think that means? I’ll write about one every week.”

The releases are kind of old news, most of them have been reviewed, we explained.

“How about being a little more supportive? Fuck, we‘re gonna be flying high when that goddamn third season revs up!”

We have yet to inform Mr. Kowalski that there will not be a third season of MASTERS OF HORROR.

When pressed about the Jamaa Fanaka Summer “recurring shit”, Kowalski replied, “First, don’t be an asshole. Second, it’s coming. And third, you let that Diana Thoren chick just waltz up onto your site whenever she feels like it. I’m giving you quality stuff on a semi-regular basis. The fuck you bustin’ my sack for? I’m sure those homos at Huffington Post would love to have me. And those eggheads at Slate, too. Consider yourself lucky.”

Without further ado, the first installment of MASTERS OF HORROR, MY ASS

JOHN CARPENTER’S PRO-LIFE

Some of these MASTERS OF HORROR shows ain’t bad, as a matter of fact, CIGARETTE BURNS, the John Carpenter entry from the first season was pretty good. Carpenter’s second season entry , PRO-LIFE, is even better, give or take some lousy writing.

Anqelique runs through the woods and out into the road where she’s almost hit by doctor Alex (Mark Feuerstein, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT) and nurse Kim (Emmanuelle Vaugier, SAW II). They work in a abortion clinic somewhere in the middle of the Oregon woods and take Angelique there to make sure she’s alright. At the abortion clinic, they find out she’s pregnant and wants an abortion. Turns out, her father is Dwayne Burcell (Ron Perlman, CITY OF LOST CHILDREN), an abortion protester with a restraining order. Dwayne tracks down his daughter there and all hell breaks loose, literally, as we find out that the abortion foe’s daughter was impregnated by something evil from the bowels of inner earth.

The bad part about MASTERS OF HORROR are that the shows are cheap, which is fine, but some of these directors, like Carpenter, have a style that doesn’t seem to transcend to this under-funded television format. The two I’ve seen so far that break this mold are Joe Dante’s HOMECOMING and John Landis’s DEER WOMAN. However, that doesn’t make things all bad, as Carpenter ups the ante on implied torture and gushing gore, which oddly enough, has never been part of how he did business before.

The writing here is sloppy at points, especially when the story slows down to extend its running time. For example, Dwayne and his sons unload their weapons on a closed gate trying to get into the abortion clinic, but when faced with the wooden doors at the entrance, he sends the sons to try and find another way in, allowing to cut to more drama inside. A few more pads like this happen, which means you could probably do this tale in about 30 minutes and some change.

The monster is pretty impressive given the low budget, but the gore is a bit too digital for my taste. Acting is sub-par all around except for Perlman, who does a great job as the God-fearing father who learns too late the error of his ways.

While modestly entertaining if you catch it on TV, I can’t see anyone paying money to own this, especially when the true Carpenter feel is completely absent.

Ol’ John needs to quit cashing his remake checks and turn out a new feature worthy of his talents.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HELLRAISER! (2007)

2009-04-12T23:22:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday Hellraiser!
by Eric M. Harvey

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the original HELLRAISER. I remember that fall of 1987 very well, having just started the ninth grade. I remember also catching the bus with my best friend, MC Randelhi Fresh, and being dropped off at 6th Avenue and 167th Street, then making the 3 or 4 block trek down to the 167th St. Twin on an overcast Saturday afternoon. HELLRAISER had opened the day before and we’d been waiting for it, especially after the spreads in Fangoria.

Here in 2007, I stumbled across a used copy of HELLRAISER (the collector’s tin Anchor Bay put out with HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II-$5.99!) and figured why not? It had been a long time and it wasn’t in my collection. I spent the next two nights watching both movies and have to ask this question about the original HELLRAISER: How in the hell did this talky gore fest that reeks of a foreign film become such a watershed moment in the horror genre, and most importantly, with mainstream American audiences?

One of its strangest (and endearing) qualities is its look. Anyone familiar with British cinema of the 80’s knows that most of the films of that time have a look that’s very similar, nowhere even remotely what an mainstream American audience would be used to. I’m sure there are some film scholars who could define this look and the reason, but to me, HELLRAISER comes off almost as a TV movie. The American equivalent would be the Universal product of the 70’s such as TWO MINUTE WARNING and THE CAR. I’m very proud that I grew up in a generation that could sit through HELLRAISER and appreciate for what it was, rather than dismissing it due to its lack of flash.

Its lack of flash is also noticeable in its story structure. There’s a lot going on and much of it has nothing to do with Cenobites. In fact, it’s almost a whole hour into the movie before all the Cenobites show up. It takes its time setting up the characters and plot, although there’s many a moment where the damn thing just doesn’t make sense. I still can’t figure out if it’s supposed to be set in England or America (although it goes to great pains to fool you into thinking it’s America, it can’t lose the overly British look and vibe).

What I think sold HELLRAISER was its originality. Clive Barker obviously wasn’t going to settle for the same old horror clichÈs, and created an S&M netherworld that resonated with many a viewer. Most of the film’s sexual overtones (and dysfunction) were way over my head at 13 years of age, but the gore definitely delivered, which is what I was going for at that time anyway.

And in that department, HELLRAISER shows it’s age. Some of the effects (mostly the hooks in skin) are quite crappy, but some are still incredible works of art and quite sickening. The rebirth of Frank Cotton and his sinewy regeneration cycle provide proof of the superiority of prosthetic effects to CGI. Most important, many of these scenes elicit disgust and not for the sake of it alone like some lesser horror films of today (see Eli Roth). Every repulsive scene is integral to moving the story along and conveying the horror experienced by the characters.

After HELLRAISER ended, I had some minor quibbles. Ashley Laurence as Kirsty is quite the terrible actress. There are a lot of moments where it doesn’t make sense, especially in a film that explains a lot at the beginning, then kind of sidesteps other possible questions the audience might have for certain character motivations. And it is quite forgettable. It’s been two days since I’ve watched HELLRAISER and while I remember a lot of it, all of what I remember is rather hazy. Upon thinking about it, I had the same reaction when I was a kid. It was a weird film for me at the time, not similar to the horror films I was used to and while enjoyable, made no real mark on me as it has for others.

What is it now? Seven or eight HELLRAISER sequels, each one getting progressively worse, and ending up a straight to video franchise? They’re quite shit, but very much in demand due to their dumbing down to the lowest common denominator of horror fans. This unfortunate change seemed to happen with the Wilmington, NC lensed HELLRAISER III, which was an American scrubbing away of the foreign-feel associated with the first one and it’s sequel (which is quite good, if not better than the original).

It’s hard to envision the original HELLRAISER being released today theatrically, much less a modest hit that begs for an immediate sequel. What’s even funnier is reading Roger Ebert’s original review, calling it “… a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.”

There’s so much imagination going on here that, obviously, Ebert couldn’t process it. Maybe Clive Barker should’ve ripped off some Bergman and tickled Ebert’s snobby bone, guaranteeing a three and a half star review.

PRIMEVAL (2007)

2009-04-12T23:21:00.000-07:00

PRIMEVAL: AFRICA ADDIO meets ANACONDA by Eric M. Harvey

PRIMEVAL opened in theaters earlier this year. January, to be exact. For those not in the know, that’s when studios dump their shit product into moviehouses.

I couldn’t figure what the hell PRIMEVAL was about. They advertised it as a supernatural serial killer movie set in Africa.

Then I found out, right at the end of it’s two week theatrical run, it’s about a giant killer crocodile.

Note to PRIMEVAL’s marketing geniuses: I would have gone and seen it if I knew it was about a giant killer crocodile, you fucking idiots.

The studio seemed to realize that the “mysterious” marketing campaign was a failure (one of the worst I’ve ever seen) because now the DVD packaging is all about the crocodile.

There’s even a “Croc-umentary”.

A hunky cable news reporter without any personality (Dominic Purcell, PRISON BREAK) fucks up a story and is sent to Africa with his Rochester-esque cameraman (Orlando Jones) and a hot bimbo cat magazine reporter (Brooke Langton) who likes to save dogs.

The reason they go? To catch a giant crocodile named Gustave and inadvertently, fight the local African warlords.

Seriously, that’s the plot. But guess what?

This film is a fine example of cut-to-the-chase genre writing.

We got a disgraced reporter. We got a cameraman who lets you know he's a cameraman because he complains about an out of focus shot of a news anchor when we first meet him. We got a cat magazine reporter who wants to make the big jump to cable news reporting. We got a reason to go to Africa. We got a Steve Irwin clone that doesn’t even get a proper introduction to the rest of the cast; he’s introduced to the audience by a clip of his TV show, and then 5 minutes later he’s just tooling around Africa with the rest of them. This is screenwriting.

That’s a lot of ground to cover. So what do you do? You get a TV director (Michael Katelman, GILMORE GIRLS, NORTHEREN EXPOSURE) to craft this sucker into a streamlined, no bullshit action/horror pic.

Within the first 19 minutes, we get a mass grave with maggots, the crocodile has killed a stuffy British professor of some kind, we’re properly introduced to the main cast (see above), we go to Africa, we get ambushed by warlords in a pretty well-shot action scene (it’s not major in anyway, but old school in it’s execution, i.e. you can see everything).

We're not done though: a little girl gets eaten and Jurgen Prochnow (DAS BOOT, BEERFEST, BEVERLY HILLS COP II) as Quint from JAWS shows up and embarrasses the rest of the cast because he can actually act. All this in 19 minutes.

Most directors with lofty intentions would have dragged this son-of-a-bitch to the 40-minute mark by now. Not Katelman. He was the first unit director on Van Damme’s CYBORG (directed by Albert Pyun) and second unit assistant director on PREDATOR.

Hell, he was first assistant director on Pyun’s CAPTAIN AMERICA fiasco. He’s Cannon Pictures approved and Pyun-tastic!

You know, I really can’t believe how much I liked PRIMEVAL.

Maybe it's because you get to watch people say lines like:

STEVE IRWIN CLONE: Did you know Crocodiles haven’t changed much since the Triassic? Why should they? They’re the most efficient killing machines on the planet.

ORLANDO JONES: This crocodile’s like OJ Simpson. He messed up when he killed that white woman.

JURGEN PROCHNOW (a long way from DAS BOOT): You don’t seem stupid so you must be insane.

ORLANDO JONES: I would never say this in front of a bunch of white people, but slavery was a good thing. Anything to get the fuck out of Africa sounds good to me.

Maybe I liked when Jones says he’s going out to film establishing shots for the report they’re doing, doesn’t walk that far away from the camp, and encounters a rhino, zebras and a giraffe, which seem to be all hanging out together, as if he’s at Lion Country Safari.

All they needed was a bear and a cougar fighting and it would've been the best movie since WONDER OF IT ALL.

Maybe I liked it for the scene where Jones calls the crocodile a punk bitch, because his character’s from Brooklyn.

I really liked Prochnow’s Quint turn. We need more Quints in movies. A Quint would’ve made KNOCKED UP better; Quint could have been a Planned Parenthood doctor, “I’ll catch it…and kill it…for 10!”

The weird thing about the movie is the abundance of political commentary on the anarchic state of certain parts of Africa right now. It takes up a lot of time in this movie. Some good action scenes come out of it, but it veers the movie off course, especially in a giant killer crocodile flick.

Roger Corman always liked to have a little social commentary in his movies, but I’m sure he would have pulled Katelman aside and said, “Look, Mike, enough with the Africans. And where's the boobage?”

Now, I tell you, they don’t make this kind of movie anymore. So much so I kept thinking that it was made in 1993 and someone at Disney finally got around to releasing it.

Especially so since it went out under the Hollywood Pictures arm of the aforementioned conglomerate (“If it’s the Sphinx, it stinks!”).

But there’s some good gore, the croc isn’t bad for CGI and the supporting cast is up for the task. Langton as the cat reporter, I don’t mind so much; she’s hot and acts enough to look like she might’ve done some summer stock, but casting Purcell and Jones as your leads is about the stupidest thing one could do.

This is the second film this year I’ve seen Purcell in (the other was THE GRAVEDANCERS) and he just cannot act. There’s not one shred of personality in him. It’s incredible to me that he’s an actor. Apparently, his next starring role is in a supernatural Nazi film. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Which I guess is fitting.

Orlando Jones…well, he’s the most unfunny motherfucker ever to walk the planet. The best thing he did was play a retarded magazine seller in OFFICE SPACE and became immediately unfunny in the movie when he quit affecting retardation.

You get past these two shmoes, PRIMEVAL is good Saturday night, drive-in fun, provided you drink a six-pack. Or two.

And by the way, am I supposed to believe that since this was inspired by true events, two white reporters and their jovial Negro sidekick went over to Africa to catch a giant crocodile and fight warlords for CNN? For what? Sweeps week?

HALLOWEEN (2007)

2009-04-12T23:20:00.001-07:00

HALLOWEEN: It ain’t as bad as it could’ve been
By Eric Matthew Harvey

I grew up on HALLOWEEN (1978). That film and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) were two of the films that made me into a horror fan. I was never a monster kind of horror fan, although I liked those movies. No, I grew up on slashers and Italian zombie pictures, as well as the Romero kind. The funny thing is, those movies are technically adept and scary. Well, maybe not the Italian zombie ones.

When the HALLOWEEN “re-imagining” by Rob Zombie was announced, I, like many others, cringed and hemmed and hawed about what a disaster it was going to be. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not a disaster, but it’s pretty fucking pointless and put together terribly.

In Zombie’s version, it’s all about Michael Myers and how he became Michael Myers. Yet you really don’t understand why he became Michael Myers because it’s never properly addressed. Other than some exterior influences, nothing much is revealed, kind of like the first one. But the first one understood that you didn’t need to know this back-story, so why take up the first half of a movie focusing on something you can’t (or won’t) explain?

Oddly enough, the first half is the best part of the movie. Here is where Zombie isn’t remaking HALLOWEEN, but adding to it. All of this begs the question; why not just create something new instead of attaching the stigma associated with HALLOWEEN to it? Zombie, while no means a seasoned filmmaker, does have an eye; it just gets lost somewhere amongst his horrid scriptwriting and wink-wink cameos and the use of white-trash stereotypes he’s so fond of (not to mention his annoying use of earthquake-cam and sloppy close-ups throughout this film).

The opportunity was there to create a new boogeyman for a new generation, but once he begins to really remake HALLOWEEN, with the same characters and dialogue and running through it like a Reader’s Digest abridged version, everything he somewhat accomplished in the beginning becomes null and void.

Zombie’s HALLOWEEN is not scary or suspenseful. It’s garden-variety slice and dice and brings nothing new to the table. I guess I didn’t expect it to, but after the leaps and bounds in direction he made with THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, I expected something a lot more.

But the end result isn’t abysmal. Compared to the last four true sequels, Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN ranks under HALLOWEEN 4 in quality within the Michael Myers saga. I expected to destroy it, but I can’t. It’s just not that bad.

It’s just there, unfocused and non-threatening, which may be worse than the all out hate I have for parts 5,6,7, and 8.

At least I remember those turds in some capacity, even if negative. Zombie’s film has created complete and total apathy within me and in a couple of weeks, I’ll probably not think about it all.

CONFESSIONS OF A HORROR WRITER by Victor Miller

2009-02-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

Nice pic of Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller pilfered from Harry Manfredini at http://www.harrymanfredini.com/.

Confessions Of a Horror Writer

Washington Post, The (DC) - June 22, 1980

Author: Victor Miller; Victor Miller, a novelist and screenwriter who lives in Connecticut, is presently at work on his next film.

I WROTE "Friday the 13th."

I also went to a prestigious New England prep school and majored in English at Yale University. I have a lovely wife and two more or less well-adjusted children.

But I still wrote one of the most frightening and gory movies ever made. Now I have to deal with the consequences.

My children are proud, my neighbors are aghast, my parents are shocked, my friends are mystified and my agent is euphoric.

My kids are impressed. (They are 11 and 7, and I wouldn't let them see "Friday the 13th.") In fact, everybody under the age of 24 seems to be impressed. This low-budget ($500,000) thriller has reportedly grossed well over $25 million for Paramount and the producers. Most of that money has come from the deep designer-jean pockets of the 17-to-24-year old crowd.

My mother, a grande dame from the French Quarter in New Orleans, was no similarly impressed. After she and my dad spent their working lives putting me through all this high-class education, they are somewhat puzzled by the fact that, instead of imitating Keats, Shelley or T. S. Eliot, I am slogging in the sodden footsteps of George Romero ("Night of the Living Dead") and heading for twin-bills with "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

My mother, in her late 60s, and my father, in his 70s, went to see my efforts at a theater on Canal street the week that "Friday" opened. Fearing cardiac arrest for one or both, I had told them they didn't need to see this film. I imagine it took some time and effort on their part to assimilate what they had seen and integrate it into their image of me. My parents had spent my entire youth turning on my night light and checking my closets for the monsters I was sure were there. They may even remember the number of times I called them home from dinner parties because I was afraid the baby sitter couldn't adequately protect me.

Yet they sat through, by actual count, one knife in the gut, two slit throats, one hunting arrow in the neck, one hatchet in the face, one body through a window, one arrow in the eyes, and one decapitation. I imagine that they must have been somewhat agrrieved to see the cinema of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard transformed into Grand Guignol. But when they called me the follwing day, my mother said, "It is a marvelous parody of horror movies."

I was not always a writer of gore and mayhem. I began as a playwright, attempting to delineate the depth of my artistic consciousness. The first play I produced went into rehearsal at 125 pages and came out at 70. The actors had trouble with the depth of my artistic consciousness.

Once burned, I turned to a less communal form of expression -- the novel. I also decided to deep-six my neuroses in favor of story-telling. For years, I wrote detective books, the Novelizations for the "Kojak" TV series, thrillers and sagas for six different publishers.

Perhaps I should have had a premonition that I was doomed to a grisly fate. In 1977, I wrote a novel called "Hide the Children" for Ballantine. It was about a busload of schoolkids being kidnapped -- written six months before those nuts did the same thing out in California.

But it wasn't until my friend Sean Cunningham -- a local producer responsible for the cult terror favorite, "Last House on the Left" -- asked me that I had ever attempted horror for the silver screen. He said, "I have $500,000 to make a very scary film that should grab as large an audience as possible."

Never having seen many horror films (I get scared when someone goes "boo"), I went out and saw everything I could. Then Sean and I sat in his kitchen drinking coffee for hours before I came up with the location -- a summer camp -- and the villain.

The modes of destruction took more coffee and a careful recollection of every physical fear I've ever had. I put the killer under the bed because any 9-year-old can tell you that's where killers hide. I put the ax in the face because I'm terrified of having my face messed up, and there's nothing quite as messy as a scout ax. Sean would edit each draft with phrases like, "Keep it relentless."

When the final draft was accepted, I cheered and took my wife out to several long dinners, but I did not go to the set where they were filming my movie. For one thing, the making of a horror film is about as fascinating as watching somebody spray for aphids. Worse yet, the actors look at the author as weird for having invented all the terrible stuff they have to do.

Suprisingly, after "Friday the 13th" was in the can, Paramount Pictures bought it and raised the ante. The put millions into promotion, and released it in 1,160 theaters across the country. A low-budget film which I had written for a low five-figure Writer's Guild scale was suddenly of the verge of becoming a monstrous flop or a hideous success.

Variety's critic hated the film, but couldn't change the fact that it was the top-grossing box-office hit in the country for three solid weeks -- and after five weeks. Variety still lists it as the third highest-grossing film in the national, behind "The Empire Strkes Back" and "Up the Academy."

My neighbors and friends are variously impressed or aghast.

To impressed all seems to ask me two questions:

1) Do you have a percentage?

2) Are you going to move to Hollywood?

I continue to be stunned by the first question. It seems to me a little like asking somebody if he's rich or how much she makes a week "take-home." The question is answered in behavior, so it doesn't even have to be asked. If I trade in my Ford Fiesta for a Mercedes 300SD, you know I got a percentage. If we move from Stratford to Westport, you know I'm raking it in.

Whether or not I move to the West Coast will depend on many many factors, not the least of which is the fact that I have spent a lifetime on the East Coast. The question is moot.

The aghast folks are legion. For the past five or six years. I have been active in my children's schools, their cub scouting, baseball, soccer and all the activities than an aging father is heir to. For one year I had my very own Cub Scout den and every Wednesday we played games, did "artsncrafts" and helped each other grow up. Little did these boys' parents know that every morning I was writing sado-masochistic terror (as well as a terrifically funny and altogether dirty book called "Toga Party" for Fawcett.)

Now my cover is blown. I am the man who thought up the hand that comes out from under the bed and sticks the hunting arrow through the throat -- a clear impossibility, but who cares in horror movies? I am no longer the pleasant-faced man with the children and the pretty wife. Mothers now have to think a few times before letting their children come and play ball in our yard. (They can never quite be sure I won't spring from the cellar looking like Tony Perkins on a bad trip.)

I spoke at two local high schools, brought in by popular demand because, though the teachers had not seen "Friday the 13th," every single one of their students had -- except maybe the Seventh Day Adventists and Quakers. In each instance, the kids all sat back against the wall. Now, as a former backwall sitter myself, I thought it was their reluctance to be called upon. But the teacher informed me that the kids were afraid of me!

Who could blame them? Hadn't I written a movie in which over seven (I lose count) beautiful young teen-agers are brutally snuffed out? Moreover, I had written a movie in the classical horror Puritan mode in which the kids' only sin was playful lust.

Thus it was that I had to spend the first 10 minutes of my talk assuring them that I carried no weapons in my briefcase. I informed that that I never spanked my kids, and didn't yell at them very much either. Gradually they moved their chairs a little closer and began to ask me how we put the hatchet in the actress' face without ruining her career.

I have a number of friends who are truly distressed with me, though they cannot figure exactly wherein my culpability ties. I would characterize these nice people as "old-time Humanists" with deeply ingrained Liberal frames of reference. Out of affection for me, they saw the movie. They understood on the way in that this was a horror movie and that actors would be cruel to one another in bizarre ways. But they were shocked and surprised in a way they had not counted on -- and neither had I!

Without spoiling the ending for you -- as New York Times critic Janet Maslin did -- I'll say that our heroine becomes locked in a terminal struggle with the villain. Time and again the heroine cannot bring herself to kill the villain. The audience, whether middle class or not, ends up screeming "Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!" (WE have a female villain, another victory for ERA and another defeat for Phyllis Schafly.) The effect on the liberal-human-type person is incredible. Surrounded by heretofore friendly theatergoers, you are now in the midst of a real true Roman mob scene and the Christians are tearing the lions apart! At the very least "Friday the 13th" lifts the veil of civilization and says, "There but for the grace of a modicum of conscience is as blood-thirsty rabble."

And so I am now a nice, occasionally liberal-type person whose friends are upset because I have reputedly undone the veneer that took years to apply.

Yet another result was the avalanche of hideous reviews. Our movie is what the industry calls "review proof" -- meaning that our audience either doesn't read, or doesn't read the critics.

But I myself am not review-proof. Notwithstanding the fact that I have written a blockbuster and all my dreams have come true, it really does hurt to have to deal with the incredible virtriol that has come my way since we opened on May 9. Hundreds of reviews of "Friday the 13th" have appeared in print, and I have seen only one which was positive. It appeared in the The Fairfield (Conn.) Advocate, and was written by a guy I know.

I really mentioned the Times critic's rage. She gave away the ending in the hopes that then nobody would come see our piece de drek. Worse yet: A nationally known critic printed our star's home address in his column and encouraged his readers to write and tell her what a louse she was for appearing in this film. (With all the loonies loose in our society, can anyone condone that little trick?) In short, "Friday the 13th" seems to have pushed a button in the critical solar plexus producing not just negative reviews, but rage.

I asked a knowledgable friend why we should be singled out so terribly and he said that our fault lies in the fact that our film attempts to do nothing more than appeal to the emotions. Our country, being still caught in the web of Puritanity, finds it necessary to punish anyone who has no higher goal than to entertain or to zap the nerve endings. That sounds just complicated enough to be correct, but it doesn't help me thassimilate e feelings. It's very much like being back in grade school when me and the guys were caught doing something offensive to decorum and the teacher made us feel like bad guys.

As far as the critics are concerned, "Friday the 13th" is the cinematic equivalent to belching in art class. What makes them angry, I suppose, is that this is a $25-million belch.

Okay. So how do I feel about what I've done?

In the main, pretty damn good. I am a storyteller and, judging by the box-office figures, I've told a story that a lot people are enjoying. My audiences have elected me to a very exclusive club whose members have written movies that reached the top and stayed there just long enough to keep from being anomalies. It is a strange feeling, one that makes me wonder where I'll be in a year, and what I'll be doing and so forth.

But, thanks to that hit, I can now command six times the amount I got for it on the next script. I have gained what people in the business call "credibility" and I am told that I can bank on that. (My creditors thought it was credible all along.)

And finally, I am happy to be a working writer. There are quite a few of us whose names are hugely unknown. We feed families by our efforts, we preserve shelf space for publishers, we work for a great deal less than the media superstars, we constantly disappoint the critics, we can't get a good table at Elaine's, we love our families, and we pray for a hit.

To do anything else would seem like work.

FANTASY AND THE MACABRE - Glut of Brainless Horrors Geared for the Teen Set by John Stanley

2008-09-07T22:26:00.001-07:00

FANTASY AND THE MACABRE - Glut of Brainless Horrors Geared for the Teen Set

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - December 29, 1985

Author: JOHN STANLEY

It was a year typically dominated by science-fiction movies angled toward the youth market, and the summer saw a glut of brainless plots about teen-age inventors that left one wondering if some producers had compromised their art to attain a new level of ineptitude.

Especially awful within this short-lived subgenre were "Weird Science," an incomprehensible misfire from John Hughes in which a pair of nerds creates a sexy woman from the bowels of their computer, and "My Science Project," in which some wimpy teenagers misuse a force-field weapon from a flying saucer to enter other times and dimensions.

Of a slightly better quality, with director Joe Dante at the helm, was "Explorers," in which yet more teenagers invent a device that speeds them into space, where they meet some cutesy aliens who speak our language, all too well.

Evidence that a science-fiction or fantasy movie didn't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and didn't have to depict teenagers in any way, was Ron Howard's unusually mature and sensitive "Cocoon," which dealt with a group of senior citizens and their personal joys and dilemmas when they undergo a youth rejuvenation brought about by alien visitors. Its popularity indicated it was time for a re-evaluation of some of the cliches producers enjoy spouting about what makes a movie successful.

Steven Spielberg kept his crown as the leading producer of glossy, high-tech fantasy movies, hitting his popular stride in 1985 with a witty time-travel comedy, "Back to the Future," which was still one of the top grossers into December, and which is continuing to pull in audiences at the Regency III Theater.

SPIELBERG fared less well with "Goonies," a horribly bloated fairy tale-style search for a pirate's treasure that was such a slight, silly idea it couldn't possibly sustain its enormous, over-rich production. Spielberg ended 1985 on a happier note with "Young Sherlock Holmes," one of the best-crafted films of the year, a stylish tribute to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective for the first half, a rousing Indiana Jones-style adventure for the second.

The sequel to "Alien" won't be here until next year, but for 1985 we were subjected to an Alien-look-alike in "Creature," a well-done low-budget space-horror adventure. Its craftsmanship would have warranted greater respect had the story been more original; instead, it was almost totally derivative of "Alien." "Life Force" was a Tobe Hooper fiasco about vampires from outer space that turned into a special effects sideshow with no other substance to support it; and "C.H.U.D.S." was an offbeat creatures-in- the -sewer tale photographed in slimy New York locations with a serious attempt to inject a socio-relevant plot into the mayhem; its cheapness ultimately pulled it down a manhole.

"Godzilla 1985" was the hardly awaited revival of the Japanese hulker, who had been off the screen for 10 years. Most critics, after seeing a man in a dinosaur suit crash through cardboard sets with the sleaziest special effects bursting around it, hoped the fire-breathing behemoth would stay away another 10.

Another dinosaur, Baby, in "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend," rampaged through this Disney film that came and went so fast, even it is considered a lost legend. In fact, Disney had a terrible year: "Return to Oz" was a monumental $27 million disaster, depicting the dark side of Dorothy and her friends on the Yellow Brick Road - a misguided concept the public instantly ignored, and " The Black Cauldron," a long-awaited animated feature, emerged a routine sword-and-sorcery tale with the fire under the kettle fizzling out about halfway along.

Capturing a greater sense of excitement through animation was "Starmaster: The Legend of Orin," touted as the first 3-D cartoon feature. While it had its thrill-packed moments, and featured some imaginative secondary characters, it ultimately became a clone of "Star Wars" - George Lucas would surely have grounds for a lawsuit if he felt like pressing it.

Those who had hoped that Australian director George Miller would top his "Road Warrior" with "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" were mildly disappointed. While the new sequel to "Mad Max" was wall-to-wall action, enhanced by the presence of Mel Gibson, its sense of breathlessness was gone.

Political science-fiction remained a lukewarm box-office draw for "1984," a British version of George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future ruled over by Big Brother. While it was distinguished as the last feature of Richard Burton, it was less distinguished as entertainment, being a bleak depiction of a society without love or hope. It was very very depressing.

A political flight-of-fancy of the worst kind, following on the heels of John Milius' "Red Dawn," was "Invasion U.S.A.," a farfetched proposal that the Russians would land a commando force on a Florida shore and then go around killing innocent Americans as a way of showing our government that we are a stupid lot of cattle being led to the slaughter. It was really just an excuse for Chuck Norris to blast several hundred invaders away, and, coming on the heels of "Code of Silence," it w as a terrible comedown for the box-office star.

In the vein of fantasy adventure there was "King Solomon's Mines," with Richard Chamberlain as H.R. Haggard's great white hunter, Quartermain, but this Golan and Globus movie had nothing to do with Haggard and everything to do with cloning Indiana Jones. While it was a breathless assault of nonstop action, and featured half the tribes of Africa as extras, one couldn't help but be offended by the direct swipes from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" right down to the line "Trust me."

In the mold of James Bond was "Remos Williams: The Adventure Begins," the farfetched premise about a New York cop who is turned into a super spy by a clandestine government agency and trained how to dodge bullets by an Oriental guru (Joel Grey in the oddest casting of the year). The action scenes were good, including a Statue of Liberty acrobatic act. The Golden Gate Bridge, on the other hand, was where Agent 007 found himself dangling from in "A View for a Kill," the weakest Bond film i n a long while, with Roger Moore looking too old for the role and delivering his lines in a bored, tired fashion as he pursued a madman bent on destroying the Bay Area with a devastating earthquake device.

The best horror movie of the year from a standpoint of blood and gore, and downright nightmarish visuals, was "Re-Animator," an independent production that claimed to be based on H. P. Lovecraft short stories. The only similarity was the use of the name Herbert West for the science student who resurrects the dead with a green serum. What was remarkable about "Re-Animator" was its creation of a macabre night land of the starkest horrors - from its walking dead, its talking severed head (with an undying yen to kiss the heroine) and its final surrealistic moments that are right out of a mortician's worst nightmare.

If any one horror film disappointed it was George Romero's third and final part of his "walking dead" trilogy. "Day of the Dead" was nothing compared to "Night of the Living Dead," no matter how much better its scenes of ghouls munching on human flesh or tearing apart a human body piece by piece. It had none of the suspense or punch or restraint that made the 1968 film a cult favorite.

To everyone's surprise, the 1985 release that overtook "Day of the Dead" was "Return of the Living Dead," a delightful (but still occasionally scary) pastiche of the George Romero genre spoofing punk rock, teenage vapidity and Romero himself. Dan O'Bannon, author of "Alien," wrote and directed this unusually bright effort.

Another surprise delight of the year was "Fright Night," with Roddy MacDowall as an ex-"Creature Features" host who gets involved with a young couple stalking a vampire in modern suburbia. The wild and woolly climax was a visual delight of horrors but without being sickening or repulsive in the vein of "Re-Animator."

There were two Stephen King movies in 1985. First came "Cat's Eye," three original tales written by King that were quite literate and exciting, especially the tale of a demonic troll trying to kill a little girl in her bedroom, and scampering through the toys and litter on her floor.

The second King script was "Silver Bullet," based on his famous novella, which was basically a remake of " The Wolf Man" with the hairy beast closing in on Gary Busey and a crippled nephew. The film was handsomely produced, but ultimately, when the smoke from the silver bullet had cleared, the whole thing seemed too slight to be a Stephen King movie.

Werewolves were also busy in "Teen Wolf," an unusual teenage comedy that didn't have one murder - it was all about how Michael Fox adjusts to finding out he's a werewolf halfway through high school. And lycanthropy was the theme of a beautifully photographed English film, "Company of Wolves," an allegory enwrapped in a fairy tale that ultimately became the stomping grounds for Little Red Riding Hood. It was autumnal and lovely, but too esoteric for American horror audiences.

The slasher genre gave out its last gasps. "Final Terror," in which some park rangers and their girlfriends are terrorized by a crazy old lady during an outing, finally came to San Francisco after a couple of years on the shelf, but even exploiting Rachel Ward and Daryl Hannah in the cast couldn't help.

Paramount milked many millions more out of the masked killer named Jason in "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning," the fifth and worst in the series - but surely not the last. There's too many more millions waiting to be picked up.

Sword-and-sorcery waned in '85 without a new Conan movie, but Arnold Schwarzenegger was nevertheless on hand in "Red Sonja," playing swordsey with beautiful Brigitte Nielsen (Sylvester Stallone's new wife) and stopping a green talisman from blowing up the world. Far superior was "Ladyhawke," a medieval myth about two lovers who are cursed, she becoming a hawk by day, he becoming a wolf by night.

Charles Band cranked out a couple of cheapies this year: "Ghoulies," an unmitigated rip off of "Gremlins" but without the style and the sense of humor, and "Dungeonmaster," a spinoff on role-playing games that jumped around from incident to incident as a wicked wizard tried to put the whammy on a heroic guy and vulnerable, tied-to- the -stake gal.

Harry Ho, manager of the St. Francis, was still booking lesser known exploitation movies - grind-house fodder that would warm the heart of Joe Bob Briggs - in exclusive runs. The best exploitationer of the year was "Hellhole," a women-behind-bars genre flick with a twist: A Frankenstein subplot with mad doctor Marjoe Gortner and lustful lesbian Mary Woronov injecting beautiful women with a serum to achieve "liquid lobotomies." Woronov's intense performance was the strangest of a ny movie lesbian yet.

Ho also brought in " The Mutilator ," a Friday- the -13th clone that featured several chopped-up bodies and one cut exactly in half. He double-billed "Superstition" ( The Exorcist Meets the Shining) and "Seven Doors to Death" (haunted house thriller).

Across the street at the Electric Theater, owner George Lung and projectionist Pat Marsh were still priding themselves on finding obscure, little-known horrors that even Ho would probably turn his nose up at. The best for 1985 was " The Stuff," a brand new Larry Cohen science-fiction horror thriller that New World Pictures had refused to give a general release. The white substance of the title turned out to be a natural packaged dessert (resembling yogurt in texture) that took over the eater and turned him into a zombie if it wasn't crawling up the wall like The Blob.

There were two Italian terrors double-billed ("Autopsy" and "Eyeball" ) that were simply awful, and there was the biggest ripoff of the year, "Zombie Island Massacre," which didn't have a single real zombie in it, and which wasn't even a horror film. Italian gangsters and stuff like that.

There was "Sacrifice," a sequel to "Make Them Die Slowly," a sickening cannibal film that featured the on-camera deaths of several animals that were really sacrificed by the filmmakers, and a revival of two gore classics: "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs."

The Electric's final special of the year was " The Deadly Spawn," a science-fiction horror exploitationer in which a toothsome alien monster comes to Earth aboard a meteor and terrorizes some boring teenagers in their home, with scads of little tadpolelike E.T.'s with big teeth swarming into the woodwork and the food. Watching it, as with so many of the year's gross-outs, was an ugly experience.

GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON by Lou Lumenick

2008-09-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

GORE AND VIOLENCE IN THE OFF-SEASON

The Record (New Jersey) - January 28, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record

April may be the cruellest month, but January is when exploitation pictures fill the nation's theaters. Low-budget independent quickies have long filled the vacuum between quick-expiring Christmas flops and the next wave of major studio offerings in February.

So many 1984 holiday movies have folded so rapidly ("Dune," "Protocol," etc.) that this month has brought a bumper crop of B movies. These films invariably combine a maximum of nudity, violence, and gore with a minimum of writing, directing, and acting talent. If they're rated at all, they get an R, and their running times are usually under 90 minutes. Most are not even reviewed by critics.

" The Mutilator ," "Emmanuelle 4," and "Surf II: The Nerds Strike Back" (there was no "Surf I," in case you were wondering) already have come and gone in North Jersey theaters during the last three weeks. "Avenging Angel" and "Walking the Edge" are still playing (but probably not for long). This last weekend they were joined by " The Perils of Gwendoline" and "Superstition."

" The Perils of Gwendoline" is unusually ambitious for its ilk, an English-language French production with a reported budget of $4.5 million. (Most exploitationers cost less than $1 million). It's based on a comic strip by John Willie, helpfully identified in the film's press notes as "one of the most recognized, durable, and unique practitioners of the art of bondage illustration. "

Sounds pretty racy, and the TV commercials for "Gwendoline" promise some fairly kinky adventures along the lines of ( the preliberation Jane Fonda's) "Barbarella. " So you can imagine the disappointment at the Hyway Theater in Fair Lawn Friday night when an audience of 32 souls ranging in age from about 10 to 60 discovered a tame, slow-moving knockoff of "Raiders of the Lost Ark. "

Disappointed crowd

Gwendoline (played by Tawny Kitane, the improbably-named heroine of "Bachelor Party") is a wide-eyed American novitiate manquee who's searching for her missing father, a butterfly collector, in 1930's Macao. Accompanied by her friend Beth (Zabou, who speaks dubbed English) and a reluctant mercenary named Willard (Brent Huff, "raised in a backwoods community in the Ozarks," say the press notes), Gwendoline sets out for the land of the Yik Yak (don't ask), where her father was last seen. They meet up with alligators, cannibals in blackface, pirates, and a campy mad queen (Bernadette Lafont) attended by 60 scantily clad gladiator girls.

Although writer-director Just Jaeckin ("Emmanuelle," " The Story of O") contrives to present Gwendoline, Willard, and Beth in various stages of dishabille ("Take your clothes off quick! " is a typical line of dialogue) and some nifty leather gear, there really isn't anything going on to qualify "Gwendoline" as even a soft-core romp. Only the scene where some gladiator girls pulled a chariot got much of a rise out of the Fair Lawn crowd.

Not so "Superstition," a schlocky slasher film that inspired a great deal of audience participation during its near-sellout showing at the Route 17 Triplex a bit later Friday evening. Mostly high-schoolers on a date, they cheered when one guy's head exploded in a microwave oven; applauded when an elderly minister (Stacy Keach Sr.) bought it at the business end of a runaway electric saw; and roared at the awful dialogue ("I thought you loved me," says a libidinous young man when his date balks at some back seat action).

Not that the audience was unaware of James Roberson's absent-minded direction or the film's less-than-taut editing. When, at the end of an endless series of suspenseless tracking shots down the corridors of a deserted house, a character says, "let's get out of here," the audience shouted its agreement.

Hilariously awful

"Superstition" is essentially a slasher film incorporating elements of "Poltergeist," represented by an orgy of modestly spooky special effects in the final reel. There is also a hilariously awful flashback sequence of a witch being executed in 1692. The witch apparently is played by Lynn Carlin ("Taking Off"), who also turns up as a madwoman who advises a detective (Albert Salmi) and a young minister (James Houghton) investigating the bizarre murders that their problem is "you have 20th-Century minds. "

They were lining up, too, for a Saturday matinee of "Superstition" in the downstairs auditorium of the National Twin in Times Square. Upstairs, only half a dozen brave souls (in a 1,000-seat theater) turned up to catch "Walking the Edge," a woozy revenge melodrama featuring Nancy Kwan, who was a big star in in " The World of Suzy Wong" and "Flower Drum Song" a quarter of a century ago.

Kwan still looks smashing at 46, but she and Robert Forster ("Stunts," "Alligator"), a B-movie veteran of above-average talent, fight a losing battle against Norbert Meisel's lame direction and Curt Allen's inane script. The latter concerns a cabdriver (Forster), a former Triple A baseball pitcher ("a right-handed Sandy Koufax") who's now a runner for a bookie. He inadvertently becomes involved with Kwan, whose husband a drug dealer and young son have been brutally executed by mobsters in the film's opening scene.

She wants to get even, of course, and in the course of 93 minutes Kwan and Forster brutally eliminate half a dozen villains of various ethnic persuasions without so much as a visit from the Los Angeles Police Department. Between killings, they fall in love.

"What do we do now? " Kwan asks as they literally ride off into the sunset in Forster's cab.

"Got me," he replies as the movie ends.

Revenge is obviously the theme of "Avenging Angel," which managed

to fill only about a dozen of the 1,127 seats at the RKO Warner later Saturday afternoon. It's a sequel to "An 772077gel," last January's biggest exploitation hit.

The earlier movie concerned a Los Angeles high school honors student by day who was a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard by night. "Avenging Angel" takes place four years later, and our heroine (now played by Betsy Russell, star of "Private School" and the well-stacked granddaughter of political columnist Max Lerner) is studying law. When the police officer who got her off the streets is murdered, she returns to her old precincts to settle the score.

While there are a couple of rousing shoot-outs, the new "Angel" (Robert Vincent O'Neil returns as director) suffers from an overabundance of comic relief. Returning from the first film are Rory Calhoun as a demented drugstore cowboy, and Susan Tyrell as Angel's old cigar-smoking lesbian landlady. Joining them are a gaggle of eccentric street performers, a pair of transvestites, and a baby whose kidnapping becomes a key point of the plot.

"Avenging Angel" did garoer a few laughs from the sparse audience, although it was sad to see poor Ossie Davis as a police captain who gets a lecture on criminal rights from law-student Angel.

Such is justice on the exploitation movie circuit.

THE MUTILATOR aka FALL BREAK (1985)

2008-09-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

APPALLING GORE FAILS TO DAUNT FILM AUDIENCES

Miami Herald, The (FL) - October 16, 1985

Author: CARL HIAASEN Herald Columnist

Imagine this: It's a sunny holiday afternoon in autumn. Birds sing. Teen-agers lounge on Haulover beach. Joggers trot through the Grove.

Yet in a dark downtown theater, redolent of foul hot dogs, more than 40 people are watching one of the most abominable movies of all time.

The film is called The Mutilator . Its profoundly repugnant newspaper advertisement features a gleaming marlin gaff and promises: "By sword. By ax. By pick. Bye bye."

I have not come to review this motion picture, but rather the audience. I anticipate a cavalcade of geeks, troglodytes and sociopaths -- who else would pay $2.50 to watch a bunch of dumb white college kids get hacked into corned beef?

But a quick survey before the action starts offers these demographics: A well-dressed young couple, sharing Polaroid snapshots; a moody guy in a dingy tank top, girlfriend on his lap; several teen-agers, slightly rowdy but too muscular to rebuke; up front, an entire family, including a 6-year-old, a toddler and a nursing infant.

And, of course, sitting by himself: the obligatory strange pale man with the baggy pants and bucket of popcorn. You know the one.

The film begins, and even before the opening credits there is a gruesome killing that would send most normal folks scurrying for the door or the restrooms. Not this bunch -- a true gore corps.

The titles flash: The Mutilator . "Written and directed by Buddy Cooper." Enough said.

Then the actors, none of whose names are remotely familiar (aliases, no doubt).

Then: "Special appearance by Ben Moore."

Who the heck is Ben Moore? No one seems to know, but instinct suggests that he plays the title role.

The plot unfolds:

A group of boisterous, beer-guzzling college kids talks a pal into crashing Dad's beachfront townhouse for the weekend. The father happens to be a demented lunatic who sleeps under some gardening tools in the garage and has a respiratory disorder so severe that his breathing can be heard all the way to Seattle.

Beyond this, The Mutilator follows the identical script of Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween and all other teen slasher movies:

1. The Trampy Co-Ed is the first to die, but only after the mandatory semi-nude swimming scene.

2. The Dumb Blond Jock is the next to be mangled.

3. The Goofy Comic-Relief Guy is third on the menu (and the only character whose mutilation seems to sadden the audience).

4. Next is the Concerned Cop, who gets beheaded.

5. Then there's quite a tedious Stalking Sequence, with lots of bad camera work and bass violas.

6. The climax is the tired old Car-Won't-Start-Scene, with Mr. Mutilator clumsily hacking his way through the convertible top.

7. Finally the killer is gored, stabbed, burned and run over by the young collegiate heroine, who is (I swear) a self- proclaimed virgin and proud of it. She also is a master of Kung- Fu, as any Southern California virgin must be.

During all this carnage I expect raucous outbursts from the crowd, but the theater is reverently quiet, as if we are watching Olivier do Hamlet.

According to my notes, the only audible exclamation comes during the decapitation scene when a man in the back row cries, "Oh s---!" Which pretty much sums up my sentiments, too.

Sitting one row ahead of me is a handsome gray-haired woman with an embroidered shopping bag. She watches the entire film silently, without a murmur or a flinch. In fact, she is sitting so still that I begin to worry that she might have passed away during the marlin-gaff scene.

But, moments after the final mutilation, the old woman bolts for the exit, understandably eager to escape before the house lights come on. I catch up with her and ask what she thought of The Mutilator .

She smiles and says, "It's incredible, yes?"

Oh yes.
---------------------------------------------------------

GORY ' MUTILATOR ' JUST ANOTHER CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK

Boston Globe - March 9, 1985

Author: Michael Blowen, Globe Staff

The modus operandi for this gory story is the same as countless other slaughterhouse pictures.

The weapons include a battle ax, a fishing gaff, a machete, a cigarette lighter, a knife, a pitchfork and a chainsaw. The motive is money for writer- producer-director Buddy Cooper. The victim is the audience.

As one of the faceless murderees says, early in this putrid excuse for a motion picture, "I've got a bad feeling about this." Me too.

The film is unrated because the producer is not a member of the Motion Picture Association of America and was not obligated to submit it. It would most likely have been given an R.

THE MUTILATOR - Written, produced and directed by Buddy

Cooper, starring Matt Mitler, Ruth Martinez, Bill

Hitchcock and a cast of other unknowns, at the Beacon Hill

and suburbs, no rating.

GREAT WHITE aka THE LAST SHARK (1982)

2008-09-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

REVIEW MOVIE\ A GREAT WHITE ' PUSSYCAT\ GREAT WHITE - DIRECTED BY ENZO G. CASTELLARI, WRITTEN BY MARK PRINCI,\ STARRING JAMES FRANCISCUS, VIC MORROW AND MICKY PIGNATELLI, AT THE\ PI ALLEY AND SUBURBS, RATED PG.

Boston Globe - April 20, 1982

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff

Because of its "substantial similarity" to Universal Pictures' "Jaws," a federal court in Hollywood ruled April 6 that " Great White " should be barred

from release. Last Wednesday, the distributor, Film Ventures International, and Universal reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount of cash that allowed " Great White " to open. Unfortunately.

On one level, Judge David V. Kenyon, in his initial decision, was right. There are similarities between the two films - a shark, an ocean, a selfish politician, a veteran fisherman with an Irish accent and a massive marketing campaign.

However, that's where the resemblance ends. "Jaws" succeeded through Steven Spielberg's gripping direction, fine performances by Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider, punchy editing, excellent special effects and a riveting music score.

" Great White " is a shoddily constructed, poorly acted, ridiculous ripoff.

From the out-of-synch dialogue to the phony accents, director Enzo G. Castellari's fishy movie is a completely unconvincing sharksploitation film that deserves to be blown out of the water.

In one sequence, when Vic Morrow is explaining the vicious habits of the shark, Castellari cuts to a grainy shot of a great white that's obviously in an aquarium tank. In fact, the scenes between the actors and the "shark" are so horribly matched that I would be surprised if the actors even saw one shark during the filming.

The plot is the same as its predecessor. Marine author Peter Benton (James Franciscus) and fisherman Ron Hammer ( Morrow ) team up to capture a giant white shark that has killed a surfer, disrupted a windsurfing championship, lunched on a teenager's leg and yanked a helicopter into the sea. Naturally, these two intrepid sailors eventually win out. But it's hard to understand what they are afraid of.

"Bruce," the mechanical shark from "Jaws," has been replaced by a beast that looks like a balloon left over from Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Consequently, when Franciscus and Morrow set sail to kill the fish there is no fear or tension. They look like what they are - two guys trying to kill a balloon.

The only real sharks in " Great White " are the people who made it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Laughable ' Great White '

Washington Post, The (DC) - April 23, 1982

Author: FRANK SANELLO

Universal failed to stop the U.S. release of a small-budget Italian movie called " Great White " because of the film's similarity to "Jaws," its mighty moneymaker, but the studio shouldn't worry: " Great White " probably will be laughed out of the U.S.

Starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow , it compulsively yet superficially imitates the original, whose scariest elements don't bear repeating on the cheap.

The phoniest thing about the production is its "star," a bargain-basement version of Bruce the Shark. Whenever the creature appears you can almost see the taxidermist inside, still trying to make it look fierce.

The underwater stock footage has a shark that doesn't even appear to belong to the same species as a big white , and doesn't match the lighting or graininess of the rest of the film.

See if the story sounds familiar: The mayor of a coastal resort in Georgia (much of the film was actually shot in Malta) is running for governor and refuses to cancel the city's annual windsurfing regatta even though a shark has already noshed on one contestant. The shark enters the regatta and makes mincemeat of many, rather than taking his victims serially a la "Jaws."

Chastened, the mayor calls in an experienced shark-hunter, Vic Morrow , who has a Scottish accent (Robert Shaw's was Irish in "Jaws." James Franciscus has Roy Scheider's role, but instead of a logical occupation like Scheider's chief of police he is cast as a shark-hunting novelist.

The remainder, interspersed with leaden, irrelevant exposition, consists of the shark taking on various challenges and winning handily, including chomping a helicopter, which is the only original and riveting moment of the 90 minutes.

Your neighborhood seafood restaurant has more drama and marine realism.

GREAT WHITE -- At 17 area theaters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Great White ' Rip-Off

Washington Post, The (DC) - April 24, 1982

Author: Richard Harrington

"I've never seen anything like it in my life!" says Vic Morrow halfway through " Great White ." Of course, after 45 minutes of de'ja viewed shark mayhem, he must be kidding.

And the filmmakers must feel it's been long enough since the visceral shock of "Jaws," because " Great White " is now on 17 area screens . . . and just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theaters.

(Actually, it may not be on those screens for long. Universal Pictures, distributors of "Jaws," succeeded Thursday in getting a preliminary injunction against Film Ventures International, requiring withdrawal of " Great White " from exhibiting theaters, cancellation of all advertising and a recall of all prints. Universal has sued Film Ventures over the new film and a trial is pending.)

Most of the elements are familiar: the Centennial Windsurfing Regatta that's vital to a coastal resort's business; an ambitious mayor (Joshua Sinclair) who's manipulating the local media in a bid for the governorship and refuses to close the beach down; a taciturn shark hunter ( Morrow ) and a likable shark-author (James Franciscus) who've settled in a town where a shark hasn't been seen in 30 years; juicy young kids (mostly with Italian names) who don't seem to grasp the fact that they're being eaten up.

Then there's a 30-foot shark who seems to enjoy playing with his food and who likes to knock all the windsurfers off their boards in a game of underwater pinball; he doesn't even eat them! This is a smart shark who traps a couple of guys in an underwater cave by piling up rocks at the entrance. This is a bold shark who seems unafraid to bite off more than he can chew, whether it be a boat, helicopter or a pier with half a dozen people on it. This is an agile shark with a bit of dolphin blood in him; like an Ivory bar in the bathtub, he spends a lot of time popping up halfway out of the water, begging for food. This is a nasty shark who, just before he sinks his teeth into someone, actually seems to gloat.

Add the obligatory underwater footage as Great White heads for his meals; every time someone steps into the water, there's little guessing about who's coming to dinner. Throw in a quick slide show about Great Whites . Mix up stock footage of a real Great White with a mighty mediocre mechanical Great White (trying unsucessfully to make them look alike). Enhance the muddy picture with a sound track that sounds like it was recorded underwater and, voila , you have, not a shark, but a turkey.

Selected dialogue: "She's gone surfing with the boys . . . must be a hell of a specimen . . . they found something . . . there's something funny here, I don't like it . . . there was nobody in the boat . . . Couldn't it have been something else . . . Good God . . . No explosion did this . . . there's too much at stake . . . No damn shark's going to ruin a whole year's work . . . I'm going for a swim. Who's coming? . . . nothing's going to happen . . . there's nothing to worry about . . . that's a mighty big fish down there . . . what if we don't find him . . . did we get him . . . it's my fault, I should have known . . . he's down there, I can feel it . . . Do you think this thing's going to work? . . . It's my shark! . . . Don't worry,it's just a fish . . . Damn you! . . . BOOOOOM!"

Admitedly, we've come a long way from "The Old Man and the Sea," but it seems a shorter distance between "Jaws" and " Great White ." Unfortunately, it's all underwater.

REVENGE OF THE DEAD aka ZEDER (1983)

2008-09-07T15:56:00.001-07:00

REVIEW MOVIE\ DEADLY REVENGE'\ REVENGE OF THE DEAD - DIRECTED BY PUPI AVATI. AT THE PI ALLEY AND SUBURBS,\ UNRATED. MENACING ATMOSPHERE AND OCCASIONAL GORE .

Boston Globe - June 16, 1984

Author: MARK MURO

Heard of any bartending jobs?

Know anyone looking for a gardener?

How about a garage that needs a mechanic?

If so, please call.

"Revenge of the Dead," dubbed with semi-hilarious consequences into English from the Italian, is a prohibitively dull zombie flick and, friends, we must - repeat must - find a new line of work for Pupi Avati, its director. We better hurry, too.

This movie, you see, is deadly. Involving a mysterious typewriter, a lot of mumbo-jumbo about undead personages and a murderous priest named Don Luigi Costa, the plot follows a mousy-looking novelist's attempts to figure out why everything is so weird in Bologna, Italy, in Chartres, France, and everywhere else he goes. Clues accumulate, strange old ladies administer the evil eye, but very little happens. Though our hero - a cut-rate ringer for the young Humphrey Bogart - wanders around constantly in dark crypts and houses full of inexplicable heavy breathing, what we wind up with is a thriller totally devoid of thrills. Six rather routine maimings are not nearly enough to sustain so witless and incomprehensible a little movie.

There is, however, one fun snort of idiocy. This occurs late, with the score standing Undeads 4, Good Guys 0. "I have to understand what it's all about," snivels our hero to his cheap cutie of a girlfriend. "Too many things don't make sense." That said, he almost cries. You know how he feels.

MARTIN (1977)

2008-09-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Four Excuses in Search of Some Gore

Washington Post, The (DC) - May 12, 1978

Author: Judith Martin

Blood may be replacing sex at the movies. The number of films that are excuses to watch people copulate seems to have leveled off, so to speak, but there's a boom on movies that are excuses to watch people bleed to death.

The newest, and one of the most pretentious, is "Martin," a film by George Romero, whose "Night of the Living Dead" in 1970 attained the high distinction, in the genre, of being called "a cult movie."

"Martin" is pretentious in a way that pornography is when it is dressed up for people who don't want to admit to their taste. We're not really coming for that , it seems to say; that is just there because it is an integral part of the story.

Sure it is.

"Martin" is a film about a punk who goes around killing people in the messiest possible way. Blood in all over the screen most of the time. But no fewer than four different excuses have been supplied, to disguise the fact that it's designed for people who like bleeding.

Excuse 1: This is really a literary movie, the concept of the Vampire being a mythology that explains allegorically the human predicament. The film is full of references of Vampire lore, with the repeated assertion that this is adding to a long literary tradition with new information.

Excuse 2: This is really a historical film , showing us our roots. Each scene in the present reminds Martin of something that happened to him in the previous century. However, this is kept to a minimum because of course the past took place in black-and-white, and blood doesn't show up as well as in our colorful present.

Excuse 3: This is really a psychological film , expressing the alienation of modern youth. The Vampire looks like the other rotten kids on the block, and is constantly throwing out clues for the analyst: "It's just that I'm shy . . . "In real life, you can't get people to do what you want them to do."

Excuse 4: This is really a satirical movie, making fun of all those other movies that cater to people who really like horror movies. There are several references to how "It's not really like the way they did it int 'The Exorcist,'" and the Vampire's confidant is the host on a call-in radio show.

Of all the excuses offered No. 4 is probably the lowest. If people want to enjoy pornography, or blood, they shouldn't claim to be doing it out of superior feelings based on putting down people who admit enjoying it.

But then, nobody really enjoys watching others bleed to death - and the people who buy pornographic magazines do it only because they enjoy the articles about the economy that separate in pictures.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)

2008-07-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

REVIEW / MOVIE\ FROM CANADA COMES A VALENTINE WE CAN ALL DO WITHOUT\ "MY BLOODY VALENTINE" - A FILM DIRECTED BY GEORGE MIHALKA. WRITTEN\ BY JOHN BEAIRD. STARRING PAUL KELMAN, LORI HALLIER AND NEIL AFFLECK.\ A PARAMOUNT PICTURES RELEASE. AT THE CINEMA\ 57 AND SUBURBS. RATED R.

Boston Globe - February 17, 1981

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff

"My Bloody Valentine," a Canadian import, should be wrapped in red crepe paper, tied with a big red bow and marked return to sender. It's a gruesome greeting card for which the sentiment might read:

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

In movies like this

there's nothing new.

The story takes place in Valentine Bluffs, the little town with a big heart. It's a pleasant mining village on the Atlantic seacoast. The residents are conventional citizens who drink beer on Friday night and go to church on Sunday. They live a simple life. But Valentine Bluff, like every other hamlet in these slice and dice movies, is steeped in gore lore.

It seems that 20 years earlier, two mine superintendents decided to head off to the St. Valentine's Day Dance without checking the gas level in the shafts. Five men were asphyxiated and the survivor, Harry Warden, subsisted on their remains. Poor Harry. After a year in the state mental hospital, this reluctant cannibal returns to Valentine Bluff and, with the skill of a veteran miner, hacks out the hearts of the two superintendents with a pick axe. He places the hearts in a frilly, heart-shaped box and delivers them to the townspeople with a warning to stop the St. Valentine's Day Dance.

After 19 years, the townspeople decide to bury the past and hold the dance again. Shame, shame. Obviously, these country folk haven't seen "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "Friday, the 13th," "Silent Scream" or " Halloween ." They don't realize that slice-and-dice vengeance has a longer half-life than nuclear fallout.

They begin to get the message when the mayor receives a box of candy with a real heart inside and the owner of the town's laundromat is found spun dry in one of her own machines.

Film fans who relish the sight of blood dripping from the sides of a candy box; who delight in being "grossed out" by rib cages pried open with an axe or, for some unimaginable reason, rejoice in seeing a human heart boiling in water with a dozen hot dogs, might like receiving "My Bloody Valentine."

However, the direction, acting and production values are so inept that you begin rooting for the killer. Valentine Bluffs would be a much nicer town without the vile little teenagers that the killer bludgeons to death.

This Valentine's Day massacre is one that we could do without.

BLOOD BEACH (1981)

2008-07-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

REVIEW / MOVIE\ THE BEACH PARTY FILM, 1981\ BLOOD BEACH - WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEFFREY BLOOM, STARRING DAVID\ HUFFMAN, MARIANA HILL, JOHN SAXON AND BURT YOUNG. AT THE SAXON AND\ SUBURBS. RATED R.

Boston Globe - January 24, 1981

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Staff

During the late '50s and early '60s, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon played Beach Blanket Bingo and Jan & Dean sang "Surfin' Safari" beneath the Santa Monica Pier. They drank Coke instead of sniffing cocaine. But things have changed. The golden sands that beckoned the California girls have turned into "Blood Beach," a few acres of prime real estate with one major drawback - a tenant who lives under the sand and devours the sun worshippers. Is it a mysterious force? A sea monster? The bag lady? While the answer to this question will not keep you riveted to your seat, it does provide enough of a central theme to keep you from making trips to the concession stand.

The film opens, a la "Jaws," with Harry (David Huffman) taking a swim while his neighbor strolls along the beach with her dog, Feiffer. The closeups of Harry's strokes with the boom-boom, boom-boom of the soundtrack resurrect images from Steven Spielberg's thriller. But, instead of Harry being yanked into the briny deep, his neighbor is sucked under the sand.

This flip-flop idea is hardly original, but it's effective. The film is pure exploitation and any fan of "Friday the 13th" and " Halloween " will probably delight in the camp humor and occassional thrills of "Blood Beach."

In one scene, the surviving wife of a victim is asked to describe her husband to the investigating officer. "He was wearing blue and red bleeding madras Bermuda shorts," she says. "I didn't like them very much, but he was attached to them." There is very little sympathy for the victims. In fact, the police department can't get any extra men assigned to the case until Feiffer, the mangy mutt, bites the dust and the city council is flooded with complaints

from animal lovers.

The performances by David Huffman, Burt Young and John Saxon are appropriately one-dimensional. Saxon looks as if he had a furrowed brow implantation; Young chews cigars and eats hamburgers better than any of his contemporaries and David Huffman, if he plays his cards right, could become the Tab Hunter of the '80s.

It would be unfair to reveal the ending, but writer-director Jeffrey Bloom left plenty of room for a sequel. Bloom may not have a focused directorial eye but he certainly has a sharp eye for the box office.

THE BOOGEY MAN (1980)

2008-06-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

REVIEW / MOVIE\ BOOGEY MAN' DEEP IN GRATUITOUS GORE\ THE BOOGEY MAN - WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY ULLI LOMMEL. STARRING\ SUZANNA LOVE, RON JAMES, AND JOHN CARRADINE. AT THE SACK CINEMA 57\ AND SUBURBS. RATED R.
Boston Globe - November 27, 1980

Author: MICHAEL BLOWEN

People are easily frightened. A flight of dark stairs leading to a musty basement or the creak of a door will send our hearts fluttering and perk up our ears. It's an automatic, primal response.

Filmmakers, more than any other show businessmen, realize that we're cowards and that fear is an emotion that can be easily manipulated. All they need is a dark house, a psychopathic killer and a young woman. It's a formula with inexpensive ingredients that can yield big profits.

"The Boogey Man" is merely the latest entry in the slash and bash sweepstakes. A young woman, obsessed with the murder of her mother's boyfriend by her younger brother, is beset by nightmares. Her husband, the stiff rationalist, insists that it's all in her imagination. But that's not the case.

It seems the maniacal ghost of the victim is trapped in a mirror and attacks anyone whose image catches its reflective gaze.

By the time the mirror is put to rest, it has drawn more blood than the local chapter of the Red Cross. A boy has his neck broken by a slamming

window; a girl has her chest punctured by a pair of scissors; an old man is pinned against the wall of a barn by a pitchfork through his neck; an old woman is strangled by a garden hose; the blade of a knife enters the back of a teenager's neck and comes out his mouth just before his girlfriend is compelled, by forces beyond her control, to give him a final kiss. She dies in his skinny arms.

This is not frightening, it's repulsive. Your eyes reel back from the screen in disgust, rather than horror. It's the oozing blood that repels you, not the well-crafted tension of a genuinely frightening movie such as "Don't Look Now" or "Dressed to Kill."

The economics of horror films featuring no-name actresses, such as Suzanna Love, and bulging advertising budgets are a good investment. The overhead is low (usually under $1 million) and the profit potential is high (" Halloween " returned 18 times its capital investment). Unfortunately, no matter how many times moviegoers have been disappointed by a horror movie that promises more in its commercials than it delivers on the screen, crowds continue to buy tickets.

If you're one of those people, you better watch out. "The Boogey Man" is going to get you. Don't say you weren't warned.

SILENT SCREAM (1980)

2008-06-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

Image from CULT RARE VIDEOS

REVIEW / MOVIE\ A MILDLY SCARY SCREAM'\ SILENT SCREAM - DIRECTED BY DENNY HARRIS. WRITTEN BY KEN WHEAT, JIM\ WHEAT AND WALLACE C. BENNETT. STARRING REBECCA BALDING, BARBARA STEELE,\ YVONNE DE CARLO, CAMERON MITCHELL AND\ AVERY SCHREIBER. AT THE SACK SAXON AND SUBURBS. RATED R.

Boston Globe - November 19, 1980

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Correspondent

A strange Victorian house overlooks the Pacific. The lace curtains flutter. The stairs leading to the attic are covered with cobwebs. The doors creak and Yvonne De Carlo is hidden away in an upstairs room.

A conventional setting for an exploitation horror film. In fact, everything about "Silent Scream" is conventional. But, given the avalanche of recent slice-and-dice films, it's not bad. After "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "Fade To Black," and "Motel Hell," "Silent Scream" is a welcome relief.

It's not a masterpiece. The acting is mediocre, the script pedestrian and the direction inconsistent. But it has enough cheap thrills to keep you riveted to your seat for its inconsequential 90 minutes.

Cameron Mitchell of television's "The High Chaparral" and Avery Schreiber, the Frito bandido, are a pair of police detectives trying to solve the bizarre murder of a wealthy, snobbish college student who lived in the house by the sea. The grisly manner of the death (the young man was knifed to death and buried in the sand) leads Mitchell and Schreiber back to the house. By the time these two lame-brained investigators discover the truth, several more gruesome murders occur.

The character actors, dredged up from the past, are fascinating. Yvonne De Carlo plays a puffy matron who spends the entire film in a frumpy housedress. Barbara Steele, once crowned Queen of the Bs for her many roles in serials and Republic features, doesn't have a line, but her performance is invested with chilling terror. Mitchell and Shreiber merely get in and out of a few cars.

Director Denny Harris, like most every other horror exploiter, steals most of his bits from Hitchcock. The sequence of killings looks as if he studied "Psycho" and made carbon copies. But he does show the ability to maintain suspense. In one frightening scene, while a young woman climbs up the attic stairs, Harris maintains tension by altering camera angles and quick cuts. It's frightening.

In spite of its obvious flaws, "Silent Scream" is the best low-budget horror film since " Halloween ." If that sounds like damning with faint praise, so be it.

PROM NIGHT (1980)

2008-06-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

Image from www.movieposter.com

REVIEW / MOVIE\ SENIOR PROM, SOPHOMORIC PLOT'

Boston Globe - August 18, 1980

Author: Michael Blowen Globe Correspondent

A film directed by Paul Lynch. Screenplay by William Gray. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielson, Antoinette Bower and a host of unknowns. At the Sack Saxon and suburbs. Rated R.

My senior prom was a horror show. Everyone dressed in rented formal wear and danced to the music of the Eddie Corcoran Trio. We were kids dressed up like mini-adults indulging in a fantasy conceived and executed by our parents and the school administrators. It wasn't much fun.

Neither is "Prom Night," a low-budget exploitation film, imported from Canada, to fill this summer's quota of quickie horror movies.

The plot is predictably sophomoric. A killer, who six years earlier observed four children forcing a little girl out of the window of a deserted schoolhouse to her death, is stalking the hallways of Alexander Hamilton High School. He seeks revenge.

The concept of a maniac returning to avenge injustice is certainly not new to the genre. " Halloween ," John Carpenter's bargain basement horror film, is only the most recent example. But "Prom Night" isn't half as frightening as Carpenter's movie.

Except for the pre-credit sequence, when the four children tease the little girl by chanting, "The Killer's Coming, The Killer's Coming," as the camera darts around the dark, deserted hallways, there is little else that's terrifying. And when people aren't frightened at horror movies, when the situations are as ridiculous as those presented in this slice and dice exploiter, people begin to laugh. And "Prom Night" is laughable.

The entire cast must have flunked algebra at least 10 times. They all look old enough to be dancing the bop and, when Jamie Lee Curtis and Casey Stevens, the King and Queen of the prom, start to disco, it's uproarious. Their awkwardness is symptomatic of the film's misdirected style.

Director Paul Lynch could have made a witty satire on the nature of proms or a frightening excursion into the terror of locker-lined hallways after dark. But, with the exception of one obvious cut from a bloody victim to the Hawaiian punch bowl, he's humorless and inadequate.

"Prom Night" certainly doesn't give you any moments to remember.

HALLOWEEN (1978)

2008-06-26T04:09:00.001-07:00

Two Movie 'Sleepers' That Woke Up Fast

Washington Post, The (DC) - March 18, 1979

Author: Sam Allis

" HALLOWEEN " IS suffering from schizophrenia; it can't decide if it's a cult movie or simply a pedestrain box-office smash.

"It's probably a cult movie in reverse," concluded David Levy, owner of the Key Theater in Georgetown. "Cult movies are supposed to take time to build and this is simply too big to be a cult movie now. But it has a hardcore following of horror-film aficionados, who will still be there long after everyone else has died away."

" Halloween 's" problem is this: Although endowed with some unmistakable ingredients of a midnight classic, it has already grossed over $12 million since it was released last Halloween -- an obscene amount of lucre for any sefl respecting cult film to make in six months.

Made on less than $1 million, without one bankable star, " Halloween " has been on Variety's list of the 50 top grossing films in the country for the past 18 weeks.

To put this in perspective, the legendary "Night of the Living Dead," George Romero's schlock horror classic, grossed under $5 million during its two years on Variety's charts before its copyright problems became so byzantine that it fell into the public domain and beyond financial scrutiny. Anyone with a copy can now distribute it.

"Night of the Living Dead" has grossed millions since it opened in 1968, to be sure; it has been translated into 17 languages. But it has taken years and countless midnight shows to become a big moneymaker.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacres," another gory film with a hardcore following, has grossed somewhere over $10 million in the five years since it was released and continues to make modest amounts at drive-ins and on late night television.

Enter John Carpenter and his no-name sleeper, " Halloween ." Watch him walk off with $123,000 during the first three days that it opened in the Boston area and $2 million in the Chicago-Milwaukee area alone in half a year.

Critics add to the conclusion by being hopelessly divided over the value of the film. But that in itself is good for sales. Pauline Kael of the New Yorker savaged " Halloween " in one of her reviews last month. But she directed her barbs at those nameless people who think that it has a cult potential. In effect, she acknowledged that it has something going for it, albeit repugnant to her.

"A lot of people seem to be convinced that ' Halloween ' is something special -- a classic" she wrote. "Maybe when a horror film is stripped of everything but dumb scariness -- when it isn't ashamed to revie the stalest device of the genre (the escaped lunatic) -- it satisfies part of the audience in a more basic, childish way than sophisticated horror pictures do."

A prime target of Kael's wrath is Tom Allen of the Village Voice, who first discovered " Halloween " and wrote that "it stands alone in the past decade with George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' and, before that, with 'Psycho.'"

David Ansen of Newsweek, another " Halloween " fan, called it "one of the scariest flicks in years." "It's a classic grade-B movie with absolutely no pretensions," he concluded.

"You've got reviewers reacting to other reviewers, which is always a good sign," said Peter Kastoff, the man who orchestrates the distribution of " Halloween " for Compass International in Los Angeles.

It would appear that the American public likes the "dumb scariness" of " Halloween "; low-brow brutality has always fared well with audiences in this country. But combine a virtually no-name cast (Donald Pleasance does appear in it), timeless and simplistic terror with underwhelming acting and you're inviting the unswerving loyalty of horror devotees as well. " Halloween " appears to have captured both audiences.

Meanwhile Kastoff is running a piece that would make Anne Corio jealous. He eschews the saturation-distribution technique of "Jaws" that would splash " Halloween " all over billboards and theater marquees. While that route would be lucrative in the short run, he feels that it would lead " Halloween " to the pastures of late-night television long before its time. Instead, he is running the film sparingly and hopes to milk a little less for a lot longer. He assures us that we won't be seeing it one television for years to come.

After a brief, unspectacular opening last Halloween at a Broadway theater, Kastoff pulled the movie out of New York completely until late in the fall, when it reappeared at the Arty Eighth Street Playhouse along with that redoubtable cult film, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." After a two month run there, it was pulled again and will not be seen in New York at all until next Halloween , when it will reappear as part of a nationwide promotion.

"It could almost be a seasonal thing," Kastoff said. "We could run it every Halloween for a while and then pull it."

Kastoff operates on the less is more principle, which in this case, appears to be as good as gold. A little "dumb scariness" goes a long way. (ITEM 130) Picture, " Halloween ": $12 million in six months.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983)

2008-06-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

FILM: MORE TEENAGE MAYHEM IN ' SLEEPAWAY CAMP '
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - January 23, 1984
Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic

Dear Mom,

How are you? I am fine. I went to Sleepaway Camp this morning. My editor made me go. She's mean. I had to sit through the whole thing.

There were other people in the audience. I guess their editors made them go, too. Some of them yelled at the screen.

"Hey, man, this is traaaaaash," one shouted. "This is like some weird home movie," another screamed. "When we gonna get some action?" another pleaded.

Here is what happened to the people in Sleepaway Camp : One was stung to death by bees, one was drowned, one was boiled alive, three were hacked to death with a hatchet, one was shot in the throat with an arrow, one was beheaded and one was abused with a hot curling iron. In a flash of originality, one of them was stabbed to death in the shower.

Here is what happened to the people in the audience: nothing. I've had more thrills untangling paper clips. You want excitement, try to walk across Vine Street before the light changes.

I am told that the average cost of making a movie these days is $12 million. Sleepaway Camp looks as if it cost about, oh, 59 cents.

You've heard of the Actors' Studio? The people in this movie appear to have graduated from the Actors' Toolshed.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about the three people who get run over by a motorboat. Eeeeeek. . . . WHAM! That's how the movie starts.

We flash ahead eight years. The lone survivor of that horrible boating accident is Angela, a shy and troubled teenager who goes off to Camp Arawak with her protective cousin, Ricky.

Everybody makes fun of Angela. Nyah, nyah! Why are you so shy, Angela? You sure act weird, Angela.

Pretty soon all the people who've been making fun of Angela turn up burned, bloated or hacked into julienne slices. Mel, who runs the place, keeps everything quiet because he's afraid that bad publicity will ruin the camp's reputation.

This makes about as much sense as anything else.

You'd think that the big question would be: Who's reponsible for these icky murders? There are plenty of suspects. It could be Ricky, protecting his shy cousin. Or it could be Angela, who's a little too quiet. Or it could be Mel, who looks a little too much like Milton Berle for his own good. Or the big- chested sexpot who torments Angela. Or the smart-aleck older boys who push Ricky around. Or Angela's sweet boyfriend, Paul.

But the even bigger question is: When will we get a daylight scene so I can look at my watch and see how much longer this thing is going to last?

I should warn you - in case your editor makes you go see it - that the people behind Sleepaway Camp seem to think that the climax is a real shocker. A big surprise. If you've been living in Sri Lanka for the last 20 years without television or newspapers, the ending might cause your right eyebrow to lift about one-tenth of an inch. No more.

The only good news is that there seem to be fewer and fewer of these teen- splatter movies, and they seem to make less and less money. That's good news because one more and I'm gonna be going away to summer camp. Either that or the funny farm.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP

Produced by Michele Tatosian and Jerry Silva, written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, music by Edward Bilous, and distributed by United Film Distribution Co.; running time, 1 hour, 19 mins.*

Mel - Mike Kellin

Ricky - Jonathan Tiersten

Angela - Felissa Rose

Ronny - Paul De Angelo

Paul - Christopher Collet

Judy - Karen Fields

Parents' guide: R (violence, obscenity, nudity)
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'SLEEPAWAY CAMP,' 'WAVELENGTH' - SKIP 'EM

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - January 24, 1984

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Sleepaway Camp." A thriller starring Mike Kellin, Jonathan Tiersten and Felissa Rose. Written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. Photographed by Benjamin Davis. Edited by Ron Kalish and Sharyn L. Ross. Music by Edward Bilous. Running Time: 84 minutes. A United Film Distribution release. In area theaters.

* "Wavelength." A SciFi drama starring Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie and Keenan Wynn. Written and directed by Mike Gray. Photographed by Paul Goldsmith. Edited by Mark Goldblatt and Robert Leighton. Running Time: 87 minutes. A New World release. In area theaters.

Ring out the old year, ring in the new. Ring-a-ding-ding.

Well, folks, the annual glut of holiday movies finally has started to subside and we're back to grind, grind, grind.

Last week, we welcomed "Angel" and "Hot Dog - The Movie," not a very auspicious or promising start for the new film year. And this week, well, we have "Sleepaway Camp" and "Wavelength," examples of the poverty and pure gall of "contemporary moviemaking," or whatever.

A bloodied knife penetrating a child's sneaker figures prominently in the ads for "Sleepaway Camp." The ad reads: "You will go there in a bus . . . and come home in a box!"

Give me a break.

That's about as original as "Sleepaway Camp" ever gets. The plot is a replay of gory heebie-jeebies stirred in the "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" trilogies: White middle-class kids, all sexually promiscuous, get hacked to death by an unseen killer in sunny, meadowy settings.

And as is true with most movies of this ilk, "Sleepaway Camp" prompted the urban audience surrounding me to cheer on the killer and ridicule and scorn the ill-fated white kids.

The film's cast includes a lot of New York stage performers, apparently hard-up for movie work, and features one of the last screen performances of the late Mike Kellin, the gravel-voiced character actor who made a career largely playing ex-cons and sociopaths. His best film roles: the psycho convict in "The Great Imposter" and the sentimental tour guide (who remembers the food and service of every hospital he's ever been in) in ''Paternity."

Mike Kellin deserved a better send-off. We deserve better movies.

Another case in point is "Wavelength," a bit of misguided camp that marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Mike Gray ("The China Syndrome"). This el cheapo flick is the flipside to Steven Spielberg's "Close Entounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T.": Three alien creatures come to earth, hole up in the Hollywood Hills and prove to be not so very cute or benevolent. Neither is this movie.

The creatures are being held there against their will by a short-sighted U.S. Air Force that fails to see that the bald outer-space critters resemble some of Hollywood's lesser denizens. (If you doubt me, check out the aforementioned "Angel.")

It's feared that the aliens will do something awful to humans, like boggle them into a dazed state, but judging from the people on hand here (played by Robert Carradine and Cherie Currie, among others), it wouldn't make much difference. It might even be an improvement.

**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: "Sleepaway Camp" is rated R for its violence, and ''Wavelength" carries a PG for its language.

MORTUARY (1983)

2008-06-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

Poster Image from Bosnuk's Public Gallery

Scene from Mortuary (1983)
Uploaded by grf450

LYNDA DAY GEORGE IN 2 MINDLESS FILMS

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 1, 1984

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Young Warriors." A drama starring James Van Patten, Anne Lockhart, Ernest
Borgnine, Richard Roundtree and Lynda Day George. Directed by Lawrence D. Foldes from an original script by Foldes and Russell W. Colgin. Photographed by Mac Ahlberg. Edited by Ted Nicolaou. Music by Rob Walsh. Running Time: 103 minutes. A Cannon Films release. In area theaters.

"Mortuary." A thriller starring Mary McDonough, Christopher George and Lynda Day George. Directed by Howard Avedis from an original screenplay by Avedis and Marlene Schmidt. Photographed by Gary Graver. Edited by Stanford C. Allen. Music by John Cavacas. Running Time: 91 minutes. An Artists Releasing Corp. release. In area theaters.

This week's bottom-of-the-barrel movie entries - sleazoid flicks guaranteed to revolt any civilized moviegoer - cannibalize everything from "Death Wish" to "Pyscho." And for better or worse, they also provide us with a sort of mini Lynda Day George Film Festival.

In "Young Warriors," a young woman is gang-raped and murdered by a bunch of roughnecks. Her brother (James Van Patten) enlists the help of his fraternity buddies to hunt down the street scum.

While they're at it, they decide to root out other killers and, if possible, interrupt other street crimes in progress. Kevin - that's the boy's name - does all of this without the permission of his police-officer father (Ernest Borgnine) or his mother (Lynda Day George) who insists that skull- crashing is the job of the police.

Before long, Kevin and his chums are dressed in military camouflage uniforms and carrying weapons of all sorts as they stumble onto crimes and whip the daylights out of the subhumans committing them.

"Young Warriors" is a half-hearted, simple-minded tribute to vigilantism, telling us that violent sex and brutality are not nice, while wallowing in both. You'll need to empty out your brain cells to make any sense out of this kind of misguided logic.

In "Mortuary," a clone of Norman Bates - named Paul Andrews (and played by Bill Paxton) - is terrorizing Small Town, U.S.A. with the embalming fluid
from his mortician-father's lab (workshop?). This unbalanced kid gets a kick out of extracting life juices from people while they're still warm.

Naturally, he comes from a bad home. His daddy (the late Christopher George in one of his last film roles) is heavily into black midnight chants, satanism and things that go bump in the night.

Like other films of this ilk ("Halloween," etc.), "Mortuary" finds true weirdness at the heart of Midwest normalcy. Its "suspense" revolves around Paxton's sick obsession with a sweet girl-next-door type (Mary McDonough of ''The Waltons") and around her deadly involvement with the father-son mortician team. Lynda Day plays the girl's mother, who may or may not be in on the weirdness.

**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: Both are rated R for language and violence.

POSSESSION (1981) U.S. Release (1983)

2008-06-26T02:58:00.001-07:00

'POSSESSION' AN EXORCISE IN FUTILITY

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - November 14, 1983

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Possession." A thriller starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill and Heinz Bennent. Directed and co-authored by Andrzej Zulawski from an original script by Frederic Tuten. Photographed by Bruno Nuytten. Music by Andrzej Korzynski. Special effects by Carlo Rambaldi. Running Time: 78 minutes (cut from original 128 minutes). A Limelight International release. In area theaters.

Any movie that has the gall to reach back to 1973 and attempt to redo "The Exorcist," whose own imperfections can be re-examined on TV these days, deserves every odious comparison it gets.

"Possession" is a boringly camp-elegante attempt by a group of reputable French, German and Polish filmmakers (most notably director Andrzej Zulawski) to find Art in the ooze and bile that monopolize most demonic-possession flicks. All we end up with is a movie that's even more fatuous than most exploitation thrillers of this ilk.

There's nothing on screen here that we haven't seen before. This is not to imply that "Possession" is without its interests or curiositites. Not so. The film's history alone should command our attention: "Possession" is - now get this - 50 minutes shorter than the version that played the Cannes Film Festival two years ago and won star Isabelle Adjani her Best Actress award there.

In the seriously truncated version being distributed in America, nothing makes sense, least of all Adjani's babbling, incoherent and yet arresting portrayal of a woman who has given birth to some slimy, other-worldly monster (which could be a demon or even a god).

Adjani's character, Anna, is a little unstable and more than a little bonkers. When she isn't abusing her little ballet students, she's carving up herself with an electric knife or terrorizing her wild-eyed husband (Sam Neill), who also seems possessed.

Anna keeps her repulsive monster-child stashed in a suite of rooms in a decaying hotel in Berlin. Amidst a flurry of flashbacks, flashforwards and scenes involving Anna's demure alter-ego (named Helen), our madwoman and her evil ward spend their days killing off nosy intruders (and sutffing their entrails in a refigerator) and their nights making . . . love. The lovemaking scenes in "Possession" are fairly gross.

I think it is safe to assume that the film's American distributor edited out everything except the excess and and frenzy. The missing 50 minutes most certainly contains exposition, common sense and an explanation or two, quiet, introspective scenes that might have brought rationale to the excess and frenzy (and perhaps even made them more vivid).

Adjani works herself up in a succession of self-abandoning scenes that seem to be a takeoff on her role in "The Story of Adele H," and Neill, always fascinating, remains the screen's most civilized psycho.

Complementing the stars - and also suffering from the indiscreet editing (garroting?) - are the contributions of cinematographer Bruno Nuytten and effects wizard Carol Rambaldi ("E.T." and "Alien").

Rarely has so much been so senselessly wasted.

**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: Rated R for its violence and gory effects.
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FILM: 'POSSESSION' IS A THRILLER ABOUT A LADY AND A CREATURE

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - November 15, 1983

Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic

I sat through Possession because it's my job. Why anybody else would want to do it, I can't imagine. Take my word for it: If today's Inquirer does nothing more than steer you away from this movie, you will have gotten your quarter's worth.

Possession, in its present form, is one of those movies that's so awful, so unclean, that it clarifies for you exactly what it takes to make a movie bad. It's as if someone had taken every wrong technique and simmered them down into a thick, unpleasant broth.

Isabelle Adjani, the beautiful French actress who came to stardom with Francois Truffaut's Story of Adele H and has never, for my money, lived up to her hype, is humiliated in the lead role.

It's kind of hard to figure out what's happening most of the time, but she plays a crazed young woman with a thing for Jesus and another thing that she
keeps in a run-down apartment house. This other thing, a gruesome sort of creature that she loves dearly and often, helps her knock off the curious souls who venture into their decaying refuge.

Ostensibly a thriller about demons, Possession is really an attempt to raise the gore movie to a level of pseudo art. There's plenty of spitting-up and contortions and people getting sliced and impaled, but there's also this moronic attempt to invest the images with an artsy weirdness. There are so many fisheye-lens shots that I thought I was at the aquarium.

But nothing is worse than Adjani's performance. She gurgles. She rants. Icky fluids comes out of her mouth. She screams her inane lines directly into the camera like a preschooler's idea of the way crazy people act.

And she won best actress honors at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. For this movie. It's unbelievable.

The original version of Possession, shown in Europe, was much longer. Perhaps her better scenes were left in the trash bin. Maybe they cut the movie in half and released the wrong part.

Suffice it to say that I don't think we're dealing with a lost masterpiece here. True, the movie is halfway hacked to shreds, but if they're looking for volunteers to finish the job they can add my name to the list.

There were a few unfortunates who went the distance the afternoon I saw the movie. It's a prodigious achievement and I salute them. But I'm not sure whether to give them a medal or a saliva test.

Maybe both. Just to be safe.

POSSESSION

Produced by Marie-Laure Reyre, written and directed by Andrzej Zulawski, photography by Bruno Nuytten, music by Andrzej Korzynski, and distributed by Limelight International Film Releases; running time, 1 hour, 18 mins. *

Anna - Isabelle Adjani

Mark - Sam Neill

Heinrich - Heinz Bennent

Parents' guide: R (violence, nudity)

ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)

2008-06-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

A HAVEN FOR DARK DREAMS

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 30, 1983

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Alone in the Dark." A thriller starring Dwight Schultz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence and Martin Landau. Written and directed by Jack Sholder. Photographed by Joseph Mangine. Edited by Arline Garson. Music by Rentao Serio. Running Time: 92 minutes. In area theaters.

Jack Sholder's "Alone in the Dark," I am happy to report, is a tidy little thriller that deserves to surmount the overall disagreeable reputation that the splatter genre has earned.

It is more than a little competent, often brutal and surprisingly witty as it kicks off a series of trauma dramas, each set in either a very clinical asylum or an attractively creaky country home where everything is dark, dark, dark, thanks to a convenient electrical blackout.

The horrorfest kicks off with a nightmare. Martin Landau - playing a character called The Preacher, a chap with pyromaniacal tendencies - wakes up screaming from a recurring dream that has him being castrated by a cleaver- toting butcher, Donald Pleasence. Landau sweats a lot during his bloody
dream work.

Cut to: a shrink's office, where a most serene Pleasence is greeting his new assistant, Dan Potter (the stage actor Dwight Schultz).

As it turns out, he's the director - or mad doctor - of a New Jersey mental asylum called The Haven. Here, the patients are called "voyagers" and their stay is described as a "vacation." There's no violence at The Haven, despite the free-flowing blood, just a lot of "cries of pain."

Pleasence, as Dr. Leo Bain, turns out to be the screwiest outpatient at The Haven, and he has a lot of competition: Besides The Preacher, there's Fatty (Erland Van Lidth), a child molester; The Bleeder (Phillip Clark), a chap who gets a nosebleed whenever he kills someone, and Hawkes (Jack Palance), a gung-ho warmonger. All are incurable.

Cut to: The Potter homestead, where we meet Dr. Dan's sexy, liberated wife (Deborah Hedwall), his sexy, punky sister (Lee Taylor-Allan) and his daughter (Elizabeth Ward), just the kind of child that Fatty likes to molest. Anyway, the aforementioned blackout loosens The Haven's security system, and the psychos bust loose.

"Alone in the Dark" then swings to and fro between the asylum and Dan's house. The men have an uncontrollable urge to dismember and/

or kill Dan because they believe he killed his predecessor, the beloved Dr. Harry Murton, who actually is alive and well and working in a hospital in Wynnefield, Pa.

Sholder neatly contrasts the certifiable behavior of the patients with the panicky behavior of the usually laidback Potter clan, and he has come up with one particularly clever twist (involving The Bleeder).

"Alone in the Dark" also is more eloquent than other films of its ilk and has the kind of humor that perfectly balances the gore. "All right!" Pleasence finally (and calmly) admits. "All right, they're crazy." A pause. ''Isn't everyone?"

One of the most engaging aspects of "Alone in the Dark" (running a close second to Schultz's very appealing performance) is that Potter's home is
somehow much creepier than the asylum.
Parental Guide: Rated R for its intense violence and adult language

MANIAC (1980)

2008-06-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

HORRORS! 'MANIAC' ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM STOP

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 27, 1981

Author: DESMOND RYAN

By Desmond Ryan

Inquirer Movie Critic

There are a fair number of films that make you want to throw up your hands in despair. Maniac simply makes one want to throw up.

To call this horror film the work of sick and irresponsible perverts is to demean the honor of perverts. In seven years of watching films for a living, I have walked out before the often-bitter end on only two occasions. This review is based on the first 40 blood-drenched minutes, which was as much of this unspeakable and genuinely depraved film as I could stomach.

Anyone ill-advised enough to venture into the presence of this disgusting venture should adopt the tactic favored by the fans of the woeful New Orleans Saints last season. This involved sitting in the stands with the head covered by a large, brown-paper bag, which afforded the double benefit of disguising one's attendance and obscuring the countless errors of the team on the field. For Maniac , it should also help with the nausea to which anyone with a claim to humanity will undoubtedly succumb.

For some time, it has been clear that, having exhausted themselves of original ideas, horror-film directors are now engaged in a blood-slinging contest. The situation in these movies is always the same - a woman alone and in peril is murdered in gruesome circumstances. Sometimes her companion - usually her lover - is done in for good measure.

In the normal run, I would ignore Maniac in the same way that one might cross the street to avoid a dead cat. However, there are aspects of this film that demand denunciation. And because the City Council and the Human Relations Commission are too busy condemning Fort Apache , to worry about what a film like Maniac does to the mental health of the citizenry, the matter has to be raised here.

I call this movie irresponsible for two reasons. First, it caters to instincts and feelings of a baseness that I don't even want to think about. This is not entertainment or the mild titillation of being scared. This is gross pandering. Secondly, the people who made Maniac - its director is a man of 26 named William Lustig - don't seem to know or care about what effect it might have on a sick or deranged mind. I have no way of proving such a connection, but the thought of certain men seeing it and then creeping off to a subway does not sit well with me.

The maniac in this instance is played by Joe Spinell. He has a penchant for selecting victims at random, scalping them and using the hair to adorn mannequins. The credits are preceded by one throat-cutting (woman) and one garroting (man). They are followed by one strangulation and scalping and one shotgun blast at a head. At this point Ileft the screening room and an ashen- faced veteran projectionist.

Beyond the specifics and a ghastly love of detail with which these killings are depicted is a more urgent issue. Maniac is the epitome of the new pornography, propaganda for an attitude about women that is obscene in a manner not found in sex films. Hard-core pornography tends to dominate women, but at least it does not exude the festering hatred of them to be found in Maniac . There is some incredibly twisted Calvinism at work in these films that says that women whose conduct is "loose" should be punished in ever more dreadful ways.

The film is doing well at the box office in New York, which means there are a lot of people who think of this as entertainment. That should terrify and appall anyone who cares about the state of our country. Mr. Lustig obviously does not. His film belongs in an abbatoir, not a theater. Space and the restraints of language imposed by a newspaper prevent me from discussing where he belongs.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 (1985)

2008-06-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

THOSE 'HILLS' STILL HAVE EYES

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - January 2, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"The Hills Have Eyes II." A thriller starring Michael Berryman and John Laughlin. Written and directed by Wes Craven. Running time: 100 minutes. A Castle Hill release. At the Duke and Duchess exclusively.

The local showing of Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes II" must be some sort of marketing experiment.

The movie is being screened exclusively in only one theater (the Duke or Duchess - I've never been able to figure out which is which) and, to the best of my knowledge, it is playing nowhere else in the country. So, I suppose that the eventual national release of "The Hills Have Eyes II" depends on how well it does here.

Judging from the local reaction at the performance I attended, Craven's film won't be released.

This movie is so shallow and pointless that it goes beyond the usual horror idiocy and enters the realm of anti-humanity. Its plot is so simple I couldn't even follow it.

It goes something like this: A bunch of kids jump on a bus and, with the money made from the stud fees of their communal pet dog, Beast, they head for the desert. Why? Who knows? (Anyone who figures this much out must have serious emotional problems.)

Anyway, one of the kids, the overaged Ruby, has reservations about the desert trek because she was involved in the murder and mayhem there that laced the first film. The original "Hills Have Eyes" was a fairly disgusting to- do about the systematic extermination of a family of vacationers by a family of hermits. Ruby was one of the hermits, see; now she's a good guy.

Much of the film recaps the previous movie via flashbacks. Ruby has flashbacks. Even Beast, the dog, has a flashback or two. Honest. Meanwhile, the fresh-faced kids - Jane and Harry, Foster and Susan, Cass and Sonny and something called The Hulk (John Laughlin of "Crimes of Passion") - start dropping like flies.

The bald Michael Berryman encores from the first film, once again exploiting his birth defects as the movie's most horrific villain.

He keeps telling the rest of the cast - the victims - to "choke on your puke."

I almost did.

Parental guide: Rated R for its senseless violence.

TROLL (1986)

2008-06-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

TROLL' MAKES A NOBLE TRY FOR A NEW TONE IN HORROR -BUT MISSES

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - January 23, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Film Critic

After a decade-long cycle, movie audiences seem to have lost interest in traditional horror films. Except for ''A Nightmare on Elm Street,'' it's been ages since one has had any impact at all at the box office.

In reaction to this, horror filmmakers have been trying some variations on the standard form lately, and whatever else you may say about ''Troll,'' a new horror programmer that has been playing several local movie houses this week, it is at least a stab at something different.

The film is about a family that moves into a San Francisco apartment house that is being terrorized by a troll - a gruesome creature who is moving from apartment to apartment killing off the inhabitants and using their bodies as energy to create more troll creatures.

A kindly witch who lives upstairs makes friends with the son of the family and soon explains to him that the troll is using the apartment house as a base to take over the world - unless the boy can somehow kill him first and save his family.

The movie follows this familiar horror formula closely, while at the same time it tries for a strange new tone - a combination of terror, whimsical cuteness and out-and-out comedy the like of which I have never seen in a horror film before.

Unfortunately, it never quite finds the unique tone it is searching for - the experiment is, I think, a kind of noble failure - and the film is ultimately more disorienting than charming. It also fails pretty miserably in the big test of any horror movie: It's not scary.

The special effects, on the other hand, are quite good. Director and special-effects designer John Buechler has created an impressive menagerie of trolls, and in its more frantic moments his film looks for all the world like a Scandinavian gift shop come to life.

Less impressive are the humans in the cast, which includes June Lockhart, her daughter Anne Lockhart, Gary Sandy, Shelley Hack, Sonny Bono, and the wreck of Michael Moriarty, who, not that long ago, was considered to one of the two or three most promising young actors in America.
Memo: MOVIE REVIEW * * Troll, directed by John Buechler. Produced by Albert Band. Cast: Noah Hathaway, Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack, Sonny Bono, Gary Sandy, June Lockhart, Anne Lockhart. Empire Pictures. Several theaters. Rated PG-13.
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TENANTS HAVE CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 'TROLL' KIND

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - January 20, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

THANKS to Steven Spielberg and "Gremlins," there's a whole new movie genre with which to contend. It's called family horror -- funny, cuddly, gruesome spook shows that delight and amaze Mom and Dad, as well as Sis and Little Timmy.

The latest in this line of wholesome shockers is "Troll," an ingenious U.S.-Italian fantasy that combines Brothers Grimm lore, morbid Spielbergian yocks and a magical kingdom of naughty but basically benign puppet-trolls obviously inspired by Jim Henson's Muppets.

``Troll" opens with the impossibly wholesome Potter family moving into a San Francisco apartment. Little Wendy (Jenny Beck) chases her rubber ball into the basement laundry room and is there captured by Torok, a drooling, pointy-eared troll. The ring on Torok's finger allows him to take on Wendy's likeness whenever he chooses to infiltrate the building and raise general havoc.

What follows is a cross between "Poltergeist" and "The Bad Seed," with the suddenly willful -- and abnormally strong -- Wendy turning the tenants, one by one, into frolicking elves and wood sprites.

The forces of good reside upstairs in the person of that feisty eccentric Mrs. Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart). St. Clair is a good witch with a talking mushroom sidekick right out of "Fantasia." She counsels Wendy's brother, Harry (Noah Hathaway of "Neverending Story"), and sends him off to save the world from a troll takeover.

Though "Troll" is only adequately directed by John Buechler, the film comes with wondrous stop-action effects, another winning performance by Michael Moriarty as the boogaloo-ing Daddy Potter and all those chattering, snaggletoothed beasties from a parallel fairy kingdom.

Also, we get Sonny Bono as the gauche swinger upstairs, and two generations of Lockharts as the scrappy June turns before our eyes into radiant daughter Anne for the climactic face-off with Torok's giant, horned demon.

Often as enchanting as it is scary, "Troll" comes highly recommended to those families who do everything together, including raising goose flesh.

TROLL. Directed by John Buechler; scripted by Ed Naha. PG-13 (profanity). (star)(star) 1/2
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'TROLL' MIXES FRIGHT WITH FUN

Boston Globe - January 17, 1986

Author: Michael Blowen, Globe Staff

The Potters are a relatively normal American family who move into an old apartment in

San Francisco. Harry (Michael Moriarty) and Anne (Shelly Hack) have two cute children, Harry Jr. (Noah Hathaway) and Wendy (Jenny Beck). Everything seems serene until little Wendy follows her bouncing ball down the stairs into the laundry room, where a slobbering troll transforms her into a little monster. (Judging from her rude behavior, he didn't have much to alter.) That is the beginning of "Troll," a movie that's surprisingly wry for an independent, apparently low-budget horror film.

The story revolves around a troll who, centuries ago, was banished into the netherworld after losing a battle with the humans. This particularly nasty little creature, complete with a runny nose and the power to turn upstairs neighbor Sonny Bono into a pod, eventually assumes control over most of the building.

Aside from a few shoddy special effects, including a background matte painting of the Golden Gate Bridge that looks as if it was painted by Bonzo, "Troll" is an imaginative, passably frightening monster movie that never takes itself too seriously.

Screenwriter Ed Naha, author of " Horrors - From Scream to Screen," borrows from sources as divergent as "Invaders From Mars" (1953) and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978), but it's all in good fun. In fact, "Troll" has 10 times more laughs than "Spies Like Us.

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW TROLL - A film directed by John Buechler. Written by Ed

Naha. Starring Jenny Beck, Noah Hathaway, Michael

Moriarty, Shelly Hack and June Lockhart. Produced by

Albert Band, executive produced by Charles Band. Music by

Richard Band. At the Pi Alley and suburbs. Rated PG.
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Horrors ! `Troll' nothing more than flight of fancy - MOVIE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - January 17, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

Movie review on "Troll," a horror /fantasy movie starring Michael Moriarityand directed by John Buechler.

More and more Michael Moriarity is becoming a name to look for when deciding whether to take a chance on an otherwise unheralded low-budget horror movie. He has

steered us right with "Q" and "The Stuff" and now there's "Troll," a droll little tale of the misuses of enchantment.

Moriarity is less the star here than a stalwart supporting player to a gallery of sprites, elves and gnomes up to no good, all designed with fiendish glee by John Buechler who apparently had a few creatures left over from "Ghoulies." (Remember the infamous ad with the whatz-it in the toilet?)

Harry Potter (Moriarity), his wife (Shelley Hack), and their two kids, Harry Jr. (Noah Hathaway) and Wendy (Jenny Beck), have just moved into a new apartment. Along with the usual problems of getting settled (including Harry's 3,000-record collection), there's the small matter of the troll in the basement laundry room.

Little Wendy goes on an ill-advised trip downstairs by herself and is zapped by the creature. Meaning, the real Wendy is spirited away to some fourth-dimensional fairy land and the troll assumes her human form. Her parents notice there's something wrong with their fair-haired baby when she starts behaving like a cross between the bad seed and little Linda Blair pre-exorcism. But they figure she's just a bit upset by the new surroundings.

However, Harry Jr., who exists on a steady diet of horror movies and monster magazines, knows something is up. At the very least, Sis is a pod person from Mars. At the very worst, well. . . .

Meanwhile Wendy/Troll is busy trollifying the neighborhood, transforming all the neighbor's apartments into one-bedrooms in the fairy kingdom. If Harry Jr. and the wisecracking witch upstairs (June Lockhart) don't do something, the entire building - perhaps, the entire world -will become one big slice of non-real estate.

"Troll" is less a fright film than a flight of fantasy put together by people who actually appreciate Spenser's "The Faerie Queene." It may be a major disappointment to the teen audience at which its ad campaign is so wrongly aimed. There's not much in the way of blood 'n' guts, but there are some very unsettling scenes - such as the transformation of Sonny Bono (the ex-Mr. Cher) into a lit eral forest primeval. However, on the whole, the movie has a relatively gentle, once-upon-a-time tone . It's more like a Muppet's nightmare than anything else.

Moriarity and Miss Hack (former Charlie Girl turned failed Charlie's Angel) are amusing as the parents blissfully oblivious to the changeling in their home. Noah Hathaway is a believably reluctant hero, and Miss Beck is fine as the possessed little girl hiding a demonic imp under her angelic features. June Lockhart, making up for years of milk-and-cookiedom on "Lassie" and "Lost in Space," has a ball as the capable conjurer who firmly believes trolls should stay where they belong: under Bill y Goat Gruff's bridge.

"Troll" has a fractured fairy-tale appeal that's scary and knowing, all at the same time. In one scene, the Potters open their door to discover a lobby filled with otherworldly flora and fauna, some of it not very friendly. A sympathetic talking tree stump tells them to get back inside immediately; even magic has its rules, and the fairy world can't intrude unless it's been invited. A properly upset Moriarity slams the door shut and says, "I don't know what's going on out there, but I'm listening to that tree."

Proving, I guess, that he has the same good taste in talking trees that he has in horror scripts.

"Troll." A horror /fantasy movie starring Michael Moriarity. Directed by John Buechler. Rated PG-13 for some graphic special effects and occasional profanity.

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT (1984)

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All definitely not calm, quiet in `Silent Night' - Movie review

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - April 1, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

When it was originally released in 1984, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was just another so-so splatter film. Then certain parents in the Midwest decided there was nothing so-so about a film whose killer went ho-ho-ho. Their protests - led by a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness - gave the movie an unintentional publicity boost and probably brought it a few extra dollars at the box office.

The picture is both too little and too late. Don't be fooled by the ads or by its so-called lurid past; "Silent Night" is nothing more than yet another ho-ho-hum "Halloween" rip-off that happened to pick the wrong holiday (or the right one, depending on your point of view).

When it was originally released in 1984, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was just another so-so splatter film. Then certain parents in the Midwest decided there was nothing so-so about a film whose killer went ho-ho-ho. Their protests - led by a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness - gave the movie an unintentional publicity boost and probably brought it a few extra dollars at the box office.

The distributor, Tri-Star Pictures, rode the crest as long as it was profitable but, in the face of mounting unfavorable P.R. and dwindling grosses, pulled the picture instead of opening it nationwide. "Silent Night" was then dumped on the cable and videocassette circuit, where it has slumbered peacefully until some greedy bookers figured there were still a few bucks to be made from a two-year-old non-scandal. To that end, the film has been re-released with a "Caligula"-ish ad campaign -i. e., "The movie that went too far . . . they tried to ban it . . . Now you can see it . . . uncut." - and Atlantans are "enjoying" Christmas in April as "Silent Night, Deadly Night" finally limps into town.

A kid named Billy is badly traumatized when a killer dressed in a Santa suit kills his parents one Christmas Eve. This happens just after the family has visited Grampa in the mental hospital and the loony old man has hissed in Billy's face, "Christmas is the scariest damn night of the year. You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run away."

Billy's next stop is an orphanage run by a Nazi nun (Lilyan Chauvin) who ties naughty little boys to their bedposts and says things like, "You will learn what it means to be sorry." By the time he's grown up, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) is nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake - though it takes being forced to dress as a toy-store Santa on Christmas Eve to get his psychoses flowing.

The last 45 minutes of the film is an On Dasher-On Slasher rampage as Billy, still dressed as Santa, folds, spindles and mutilates the rest of the cast. To help get those psycho-juices flowing in the audience, the film intercuts the carnage with flashbacks to various naked breasts Billy saw while he was growing up (including those of his mother, who was almost raped by the original killer Claus).

Frankly, if you want to see a really scary movie about a psycho-Santa, let me suggest 1972's horror anthology "Tales From the Crypt," in which Joan Collins (!) tries frantically to keep an escaped lunatic in Santa-drag from getting inside her house, only to have her efforts thwarted by her own little girl who welcomes "Santa" with open arms. That film's final shot - of a slavering madman, d ressed in a red-and-white suit, with mayhem in his eyes - is more frightening than all of "Silent Night's" imbecilic impalings put together.

The director of "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is Charles Sellier Jr., whose previous credits include "Grizzly Adams." That ought to tell horror connoisseurs something. But I don't know what you tell people like the guy who sat across the aisle from me in an almost-deserted theater and explained that he was there because he was bored. His boredom means more bucks for more movies like this and more of my time wasted. I'd personally appreciate it if the other bored young men and women out there would try a movie they think they might like instead of supporting one they expect to be awful. It would make my job a lot easier - and a lot less insulting.

"Silent Night, Deadly Night." Horror film about a psycho Santa starring Robert Brian Wilson. Rated R for sex, female nudity and excessive violence.

TERRORVISION (1986)

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'Terrorvision' will never be a legend in its own slime

San Diego Union, The (CA) - April 17, 1986

Author: David Elliott, Movie Critic

"Terrorvision" 1/2 * An Empire release. Directed, written by Ted Nicolaou. Produced by Albert Band. Photography by Romano Albani. Music by Richard Band. Rated PG. In local theaters. The Cast Gerrit Graham-Stanley Mary Woronov-Raquel Bert Remsen-Grampa Alejandro Rey-Spiro Diane Franklin-Suzy Chad Allen-Sherman

"Terrorvision" will be gone from local theaters by Friday. There's no review as damning as a one-week run. But I'll try.

Is it a comedy? Is it a horror film? Is it a space fantasy? No, it's just dung. Not that I expected much -- you don't go to see a movie called "Terrorvision," doubled at the Casino Theater with "Zone Troopers," expecting the movie experience of a lifetime.

Seems the planet Pluton is using monsters to scavenge its garbage. One of the mutant uglies, called Hungrybeasts, beams across the cosmos thanks to some technical foul-up and enters Earth through the TV satellite dish of the Putterman family, headed by swinger Stan (Gerrit Graham) and his slut wife Raquel (Mary Woronov). Their cute kid Sherman (Chad Allen) plays with handguns, and the cute Grampa (Bert Remsen) is a full-time paranoic, beaming into his own crackpot channel.

Right away the Hungrybeast smells out the best garbage -- bad acting -- and munches Grampa into a mess of goo. If there's art here, it all belongs to special-effects creator John Buechler, who makes the monster into a fairly lovable grotesque. The thing has enough slime to lube a dozen Godzilla pictures, and indeed we see a dozen cheapo monster movies flash by on the Putterman's TV screen.

The writer and director, Ted Nicolaou, seems to be making a satirical swing at bad television. He sinks below it, and pea-shoots upward. This is the sort of intentional spoof so bad that it doesn't give us unintentional laughs, which are the main reward of lousy movies. Though made in Italy, it won't be matched on double bills with Federico Fellini's new satire on TV culture, "Ginger and Fred."

This beauty is shot in some sort of psychedelic '60s BlazoVision, or LuridScope. The colors are so raw that after 20 minutes I put on dark glasses, and found some relief. (Better to lose some nuances than get a migraine.) To go with the retro-visuals, there are dated jokes about heavy-metal music and Sammy Davis love chains, and lines that get the big-belch treatment, such as, "Hey, he's a gross-lookin' booger, ain't he? I'd nuke that sucker!"

That whiff of Noel Coward comes from Bert Remsen, whom devotees of '70s films will recall as one of the funniest actors in Robert Altman movies like "California Split" and "Brewster McCloud." Gerrit Graham, blithely retching his way through the part of Stan, was long ago hilarious in Brian DePalma's "Phantom of the Paradise." Big, cartoon-faced Mary Woronov was once funny in "Eating Raoul," and Alejandro Rey, badly playing a Hefner-lizard called Spiro, was the amusing Cuban lawyer in "Moscow on the Hudson."

So here they all are together, making a living that looks like dying. Seeing the film is on a par with acting in it. That's like a draw in a duel where both sides get killed.

Trying to limit the damage, I caught only a section of the companion feature, "Zone Troopers." In this treat, another Italian effort with international zilch appeal, some rather pleasant space aliens beam into World War II, and give our boys a hand against the Nazis. It's "E.T. Meets Klunks vs. Krauts."

Starring such ticks on the underbelly of cinema as Art LaFleur and Biff Manard, the film gives the GI Joes lines like this (to an alien): "You have any women with ya, like blondes from Venus?" Connoisseurs will chalk that up as a nod to the 1966 cheapo classic, "Mars Needs Women."
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'TERRORVISION': FULL OF GORE AND SEXUALITY

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 18, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"TerrorVision." A horror comedy starring Gerrit Graham, Mary Woronov and
Bert Remsen. Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou. Photographed by Romano
Albani. Music by Richard Band. Special gore effects by John Buechler. Running time: 83 minutes. An Empire release. In area theaters.

The new pornography of movies - namely, aggressive violence, laced with overall inhumanity - comes to a head with something called "TerrorVision."

If you're an aficionado of junk, this one has everything - a plot about a TV set that houses a monster, ripping off "Poltergeist;" a cast of perfectly awful characters, representing an assortment of perversions; a monster made of slime and, seemingly, snot; lots of dirty jokes and bad dialogue, and a sprawling set that's supposed to be a suburban home but that looks like a studio soundstage.

Heads roll. Limbs fly. Bodies are sucked into televison sets and hot tubs. Bad taste abounds and, if you're into such things, let me assure you that there's more blood and bile here than there was in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

If you're not into such things, but just have to see "TerrorVision"
because it stars B-movie greats Mary Woronov ("Eating Raoul") and Gerrit Graham ("Phantom of the Paradise"), then by all means, go - but take a No- Pest strip along with you.

Parental guide: Rated R for its gore and leering sexuality.
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FILM: A MONSTER OF A GARBAGE PROBLEM IN 'TERRORVISION'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 17, 1986

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

Near the beginning of Terrorvision, an undertaking that lives up to the terrible promise of its title, a boy looks at a horror film on cable TV and opines, "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen."

That might well be true, with the exception of the movie he's in. Terrorvision is the third Charles Band production to be foisted on America in a still-young year - the others being the unforgettable Troll and Eliminators. Low in budget and lower in mind, Band's projects ally transcendent dumbness with dime-store effects. Indeed, he seems to have been listening to his accountants because the monster in Terrorvision sounds exactly like its counterparts in Troll, which is to say like a stopped drain.

Terrorvision tries to have fun with the sleazier aspects of popular culture, but only proves that it is impossible to satirize trash when you have only garbage at your disposal.

Joe Dante combined humor and horror in this vein, most notably in The Howling, which was both a homage to and a loving spoof of the genre and its conventions. But the chemistry eludes Ted Nicalou, who wrote and directed Terrorvision. His one honest idea is to suggest that his monster from outer space is the result of an interplanetary sanitation problem and that the wonders of satellite dish reception can put the creature on the screen and then in the family room.

Moving with the storied alacrity of the Philadelphia Streets Department, the sanitation people on the monster's home planet of Pluton occasionally interrupt terrestial television broadcasts to warn of the dangers. But Nicalou doesn't have the slightest notion of what to do with this premise beyond making the family in question more repellent than the creature from the landfill on Pluton.

The Putterman family boasts parents who are swingers, a pastiche punk daughter and a nutty survivalist grandfather. Their antics are the subject of some awful jokes before they provide various repasts for the monster. Nicalou has contrived to make these meals as revolting as possible.

In each case, the creature leaves only the head and sucks out the brains. This leaves a terrible mess on the carpet, but at least serves as fair warning that Terrorvision is strictly for the empty-headed.

TERRORVISION *

Produced by Charles Band, directed and written by Ted Nicalou, photography by Romano Albani, music by Richard Band, distributed by Empire Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour and 23 minutes

Stanley Putterman - Gerrit Graham

Raquel Putterman - Mary Woronov

Grandpa - Bert Remsen

Suzy Putterman - Diane Franklin

Parent's guide: R (violence)
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`Terrorvision' misses mark

Houston Chronicle - February 15, 1986

Author: JEFF MILLAR, Staff

Nothing would please me more to say that "Terrorvision" (rated R) is a little jewel of a comedy that I have discovered, just for you. I can't. The movie's made by B-teamers and has all the characteristics of same. If a laugh is located at 34 degrees north, 27 degrees south, they spud in at 38 degrees north, 22 degrees south. They try, but they just can't produce. That's why they're B-teamers. Like the basketball coaches say, you can't teach height.

To characterize the film: It's a facetious gross-out horror film. By error, an extraterrestrial is teleported into an American living room via a backyard satellite dish. The ET squishes people with pincers, injecting a solvent which turns flesh into multicolored gelatin, which the ET then slurps up. He's actually rather cute. Introduced to Earthling television, the ET becomes quickly becomes addicted, sitting in a Jacuzzi and gurgling, "Tee-vee, tee-vee."

But the film was made so much on the cheap that the ET is virtually all the filmmakers have to offer in exchange for a ticket. After 20 minutes, you've seen all the cleverness the filmmakers have on their shelves. The dialogue and direction, both by Ted Ninicolaou, are just close enough to funny to make you wish this premise had been taken up by the A-teamers who could have made it actually funny.

It would do none of these actors - one is genuinely talented and may have done this because of financial distress - any good to list their names, so I won't.

KILLER PARTY (1986)

2008-06-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

From Bosnuk's Public Gallery

Horrors mix with humor in MGM's `Killer Party'

Houston Chronicle - May 14, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

"Poltergeist II" may be looming enticingly on the horizon, but for now the horror genre is getting no respect.

In Austin, independent producer Cannon Films is making a cut-rate sequel to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with almost none of its original stars, a fact that has set fans howling.

And in Houston, MGM has just released a miserable indie production it picked up for distribution called "Killer Party," a horror potboiler that rarely rises above a simmer. The movie was made in Toronto with a cast of unknowns, save for nominal stars Paul Bartel and Martin Hewitt. Bartel has earned some respect for the black comedy "Eating Raoul," but Hewitt starred with Brooke Shields in the classically bad "Endless Love," and if that film didn't finish his career, this one will.

Metro is touting "Killer Party" as a horror movie with humor, though the film is really more of a feeble campus comedy with horror trappings. The filmmakers seem to change their minds about tone and thrust with every reel, starting with the opening scenes, which turn out to be a horror movie within a heavy-metal music video within the movie proper, which is then scored with hopelessly dated and prissy pop. The "raison de scare" is an April Fool's party in a decrepit old frat house where, as any viewer of the "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" films can guess, a pledge died from a hazing incident 20 years before. Old ghosts die hard and, naturally, someone is stalking the stupid students.

After much scene-setting with hysterically overwrought high jinks and hormonally imbalanced kissy-face, the corny conventions reign, with an inevitable array of heavy-breathing point-of-view shots, followed by the usual decapitations, impalings, disembowelings, electrocutions and bathtub drownings. For the most part, these slayings are all good, clean fun, in the sense that they're almost bloodless - an oddly innocent incongruity for an R rating.

But the film turns seriously sinister toward the conclusion, with some respectably good "Exorcist-"style possession scenes, followed by more prissy pop ("These are the best days of our li-i-i-ives") over the end titles. Say what? The acting is monumentally bad - grossly overplayed and obnoxious enough to merit a new chapter in "The Golden Turkey Awards" book.

As for the production staff, they tout such credits as "Funeral Home "and "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter," which tells you where they're coming from. They may mix the brew a bit differently here, but if they think they are giving the teen slash-'em-up genre a new dimension with this mindless melange, they are sadly mistaken. "Killer Party" isn't worth crashing - just trashing.

THE CRAVING aka NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (EL RETORNO DEL HOMBRE LOBO) (1981) U.S. Release (1986)

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Poster Art from The Mark Of Naschy @ www.naschy.com

`The Craving' leaves you hungry for ticket refund - Movie Review

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - May 28, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

Eleanor Ringel reviews "The Craving."

The scariest thing I saw during the couple of hours I wasted at a supposed horror movie called "The Craving" was a young mother brow-beating an elderly ticket-taker into disobeying the law and letting her underage children into this R-rated movie while she wandered the mall. The sheer ferocity with which she insisted that the gentleman allow her kids' psyches be exposed to this picture's sub-level blood-letting was a chilling reminder that all moms are not created equal.

"The Craving" itself is actually not all that terrifying. Rather it's an exceedingly cheap (the first movie I can remember without any credits), poorly-dubbed monster mash about three women who go vampire hunting and end up creatures of the night themselves. The object of their quest is an 18th-century vampiress who can be brought back to life by having the blood of a maiden dripped on her ashes. The least scrupulous of our heroines, having already strangled a wheelchair-bound professor, cheerfully sacrifices one of her roomies.

Meanwhile, the most virtuous of the three has fallen for a werewolf (also 18th-century vintage) who tries to be good between full moons and does his best to help destroy the vampiress.

Since all three leading ladies are long-limbed, well-built brunettes, it's often difficult to tell who's doing what to whom. What you can see is more women nibbling women than on an average night at a gay bar and more false blood than in an archival tape of an Alice Copper concert.

The tradition of the vampire-lesbian film is a long and semi-honorable one (a recent addition was "The Hunger," with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), but this poor excuse for a picture doesn't even count as a fatuous footnote. The only thing right about "The Craving" is its title; you leave the theater hungry to see a real movie.

"The Craving." Rated R for sex, nudity and violence.

CRAWLSPACE (1986)

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'CRAWLSPACE': A CHIP OFF THE CRUEL BLOCK

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 9, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"Crawlspace." A thriller starring Klaus Kinski. Written and directed by David Schmoeller. Photographed by Sergio Salvato. Edited by Bert Glastein. Music by Pino Donaggio. Running time: 77 minutes. An Empire release. In area theaters.

'You have to learn how to laugh, Martha," mad Dr. Karl Gunther tells his cowering caged prisoner, whose tongue he has extracted. "It makes getting through life a lot easier."

If only Dr. Gunther's methods of treatment were as comforting as his
bedside manner. Once attracted to pain and the cure of it, Gunther now delights in creating it. "I am addicted to killing," he writes in his daily journal. These words are spoken in voiceover in English but are actually written - in German!

The son of a Nazi, Gunther studied and practiced medicine in Argentina, where his parents took refuge and where Gunther obviously picked up his father's penchant for inflicting pain and suffering on others.

Now, he spends most of his time, alone, thinking up assorted tortures - er, treatments - for the nymphomaniacs who live in the apartment building that he owns. For diversion - and perhaps incentive - he regularly slithers through the building's crawlspace, spying on his tenants and their various sexmates.

I don't know about you, but there's something about a horror -comedy about the activities of a Neo-Nazi that makes me quite ill. Enough already.

Poor Klaus Kinski. As the mad doctor, he's perfect, afflicted with the kind of face that makes him suitable only for horror comedies or Werner Herzog movies - which, more often than not, are one and the same.

Parental guide: Rated R for gore.

IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO (1986)

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'SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO': A SCARY KIND OF HOKUM

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 30, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro." A thriller starring John Rhys-Davies and Timothy Bottoms. Directed by Raju Patel from a screenplay by Jeffrey M. Sneller and T. Michael Harry. Photographed by Jesus Elizondo. Edited by Paul Rubell. Running time: 97 minutes. A Scotti brothers release.

Who says they don't make movies like they used to?

More than 30 years ago, "The Naked Jungle" had Charlton Heston as a South American plantation owner fighting off an army of man-eating red ants. That was in 1954. And in 1963, Alfred Hitchcock trained a flock of crows to feast on Rod Taylor and Tippi Hendren in "The Birds."

Now, here we are in 1986, watching Timothy Bottoms as an African game warden contending with a band of bloodthirsty, marauding baboons.

In "In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro," an exotic new horror film, a recurring real-life situation is exploited with lip-smacking enthusiasm. It's a problem that has starving wild animals periodically attacking Kenya's national parks and eating people.

The site of the attacks in this movie is the Amboselli National Park and the culprits are primates that are not only three times stronger than man, but also as intelligent. That makes for a nasty combination - and a lot of bloodletting.

Bottoms is the senstive voice of reason, a ranger who wants to protect man and beast alike, and John Rhys-Davies is the trigger-happy macho miner who is beefy enough to keep a family of baboons fed for a full year. (I don't know. There's something about a big, burly man with a gun that makes one want to urge on the beasts.)

The movie surrounding them, about something we all fear, is old-fashioned hokum, predictable, funny, more than a little frightening.

Parental guide: Rated R for violence.
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`KILIMANJARO` FILM APES REAL THRILLERS

Sun-Sentinel - June 11, 1986

Author: Roger Hurlburt, Entertainment Writer

Move over Stallone, Bronson and Eastwood -- when it comes to revenge in the movies, nobody does it better than Mother Nature.

In the past, moviegoers have braved the effects of killer bees, chomping sharks, voracious grasshoppers, spiteful killer whales, angry birds, ravenous frogs, squadrons of bats and even hordes of killer tomatoes. All have had a bone to pick with mankind at one time or another.

But compared to the hirsute horrors prowling about In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, any other marauding managerie becomes child`s play.

How about an army of 90,000 man-eating baboons?

It seems that a severe drought on the African plain has made food scarce. So armies of baboons come out of the foothills to turn the natives and a group of mine developers into the breakfast of chimps.

Supposedly based on a true story, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro is a film that makes a monkey out of the viewer.

Disjointed and contrived, the film is nothing more than an overblown, fictionalized account of what actually happened in Kenya a few years ago when starving baboons attacked and killed a few people. The events were indeed tragic, but not the fodder films are made of.

"Anything can happen when an animal is starving," comments game warden Timothy Bottoms. And sure enough -- just about everything does in this shoddy film.

Bottoms wants to evacuate the area. He knows the dangers of dealing with a "thinking, intelligent primate." Baboons, we learn, like to hunt in packs and are three times stronger than a human.

Unfortunately, we also learn that humans like to walk around in the bush at night alone -- proving they are three times dumber than an ape.

John Rhys-Davies, who gives a fine performance despite the story, isn`t scared. He has a mining operation to run. So what if bands of hungry baboons are looking for dinner? Time is money and he`s in a hurry.

As if there aren`t enough problems, enter Bottoms` nagging Beverly Hills girlfriend Michele Carey. Garbed in designer fashions, she arrives at the game preserve to get him to stop all the conservation nonsense and come back to California. Bottoms has too much at stake to leave -- namely, a sick cheetah and a neurotic water buffalo.

Though filmed on location in Africa, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro rapidly reveals its threadbare story about a bizarre, singular incident. The screenplay barely supports the drama, so director Raju Patel goes out of his way to spice up the sequence of events.

Top honors must go to the bit where a crazed baboon, unknowingly placed in a crate inside a plane, climbs out at 20,000 feet and decides to have the pilot and passenger for lunch. Come on.

While one or two shots of the throng of baboons racing across the plain are visually disarming, the characters are not. Bottoms sleepwalks through his role and at one point is upstaged by a rhinoceros. Rhys-Davies bellows and stomps around in enjoyable fashion, but even he labors to keep a straight face.

Mostly, it`s the choppy editing, myriad of distracting subplots and a wealth of dialogue padding that makes time spent In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro a decidedly dark and dank experience.

FRIDAY THE 13th PART VI: JASON LIVES (1986)

2008-06-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY 13TH CHANGES FOR 'BETTER'

Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - August 8, 1986

Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer

Appropriately enough, it is a gravedigger who provides the mot juste for "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives."

Drunk and clearly not a part of what's happening now, the old man looks straight into the camera and says "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment!"

Then - sploosh! - the undead machete-wielding maniac Jason Voorhees strikes again, adding the gravedigger to the pile of corpses for the entertainment of gore fans.

Violent horror movies have pretty much lost their popularity, except for the deadening butchery of the hugely lucrative "Friday the 13th" series. But the gravedigger's dying words do mark something of a change in the series. Actually, it's a change for the better, although it doesn't take much to be better than the morbid movies that presented strings of graphic killings and little else.

The gravedigger represents all those - including critics, parents and most adults in general - who have decried the movies in the past. Bumping him off is one of several inside jokes aimed at the fans, jokes that occasionally work.

Credit must go to director-screenwriter Tom McLoughlin, directing his first feature and showing some real promise. Suspense and humor were almost absent from these geek show movies, but McLoughlin manages to squeeze in some of both. He has characters who are more than cardboard targets, moves the series in the direction of gothic horror movies and de-emphasizes grisly killings somewhat, alhtough there are buckets of blood. At the end, however, it collapses back into form.

But it's all relative. McLoughlin's work is derivative, but at least it's not entirely derived from "Friday the 13th" Parts I through V.

Still, the formula absolutely requires an opening in which it is learned that - gasp - Jason isn't dead. He's the worse for wear, though, dripping maggots when Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews) pries open his coffin. Tommy, the character who as a boy "killed" Jason in an earlier episode intends to completely destroy the corpse to end his nightmares. Instead, Jason springs back to life, dons his hockey mask and sets out to kill a new generation of young campers.

The local Chamber of Commerce, tired of being associated with endless slaughter and sequels, has changed the name of the town from Crystal Lake to Forest Green, but Jason finds it anyway.

Tommy runs afoul of the local sheriff, who can't believe the killer is back. Tommy has more luck convincing his beautiful daughter (Jennifer Cooke) who - as coincidence would have it - is also a counselor at the fatal camp. The movie has moments as a middling horror thriller before it changes into mostly the same old chop.

"Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" is rated R for violence and vulgar language. * 1/2
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JASON UP TO OLD TRICKS IN LATEST "FRIDAY 13TH'BY CARYN JAMES
NEW YORK TIMES

Fresno Bee, The (CA) - August 5, 1986

It is a dark and stormy night. Tommy Jarvis escapes from the mental institution where he has been since he killed Jason, the town terror who hacked his way through dozens of bodies in five previous "Friday the 13th" movies. Tommy is a driven man, compelled by a logic known only to scriptwriters of sequels. He is determined to dig up and destroy Jason's corpse, just to make sure he's dead, like going back to make sure you've turned off the stove after you've left the house. Tommy digs up the decomposing body, the music swells, lightning strikes Jason through the heart and . . . well, you know the rest. This movie, after all, is called "Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives." Why Tommy couldn't let dead enough alone is just one of the trifling questions you can amuse yourself with while watching the film. You might also wonder why Tommy was thoughtful enough to bring along Jason's hockey mask, so the reborn monstrosity can pick up right where he left off, without even a change of apparel.

And why do the sheriff's daughter and her friends become counselors at the camp that was the site of most of Jason's murders? How did their parents convince them Jason was not real, when the series has only been around for six years and these kids are old enough to drive?

Teen-agers with no sense of history, they seem doomed to repeat the victims' roles in Jason's cut-'em-up rampage, because repeating history is what the "Friday the 13th" series is all about. It has fans who admit it's trash but watch just because it's there and don't expect any surprises.

Jason's new director and screenwriter, Tom McLoughlin, tries to liven up the formula with traces of humor and acknowledges the film's cult status with some self-directed irony. "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly," says one of Jason's first victims, when she and her husband encounter the killer on a lonely road.

But despite a few lighter touches, the film is still a gory waste of time that plays its murders for all the blood and guts they're worth.

There are plenty of cliched reaction shots of faces in terror, more than enough frames filled with bloody knives and severed heads. There is not, however, any suspense about Jason or his victims. He stalks, they scream, he kills. None of it is enough to make you jump out of your seat, though it may be enough to make your stomach churn.
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Bolt brings Jason back in `VI'

Houston Chronicle - August 5, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

"Nothing this evil ever dies," the ads proclaim.

And nothing this profitable.

After five box-office hits, the R-rated "Friday the 13th" films have reached a half-dozen Roman numerals - the first series since James Bond to last that long. The latest incarnation has the unwieldy title of "Friday the 13th", Part VI: Jason Lives (try remembering that at the box office).

Like the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween" series, the "Friday the 13th" films have a conveniently indestructible bogyman - in this case, Jason Voorhees, the mute, crazed survivor of a legendary summer camp tragedy who wears a hockey goalie's mask as he runs murderously amok amid nubile camp counselors and terrified kiddies.

The new film opens with Jason in his grave, buried by "Part V." But a tormented survivor of Jason's crimes is compelled by his worst nightmares to unearth the fiend, thus assuring himself that Jason is nothing more than a moldering, maggot-ridden and far from ambulatory corpse.

He needn't have worried. The only activity in Jason's casket is that which inspires the ditty "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. . ." But our anguished hero isn't satisfied, and he thrusts a spearlike pole from the cemetery fence into Jason's gooshy gut. Naturally, all this occurs in an ominous thunderstorm. And, naturally, lightning strikes the pole and brings Jason to Frankensteinian life.

From then on, the film could be called a remake as much as a sequel. Jason returns to his old stalking grounds, and the body count mounts (it's 17 at the end, plus one squashed bug) until a final confrontation "seems" to put Jason down at last.

Ah, but we know better, don't we?

Fortunately, director-writer Tom McLoughlin spikes the punch this time. His basic plot may be slavishly imitative of his predecessors, but he paces the film well and adds some stylish visual flourishes and wry humor, including the obligatory in-jokes ("Cunningham Road" is clearly named after the first "Friday the 13th" film's director).

The acting isn't much, but that can be part of a low-budget horror film's charm. David Kagen, in particular, chews the scenery with relish as the skeptical, tough-talking sheriff whose daughter is a typical "Friday the 13th" heroine - a camp counselor who looks like a fashion model for Seventeen.

The film was shot almost entirely at night on locations just outside Atlanta, where the scenery is handsomely verdant but oddly autumnal for summer camp, with lots of fall leaves blowing across Jason's path of carnage.

McLoughlin, who has written two episodes for Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories", shows a fine hand with the young kids who populate the luckless camp. The sweet little girls are properly terrified and disarming; the slightly older little boys - one of whom is reading Sartre's "No Exit" - ruefully speculate that they're all "dead meat." Not to worry - none of the children are victims. Bloody this series may be, but it's not "perverse."

Some would argue that any violent film is perverse. Fine. Don't go. There probably are three minutes of violence in this entire 90-minute production. The violence is swift, it's sudden and it isn't always bloody. No one agonizes slowly.

Jason may be insane, but as a murderer he is cooly efficient, quickly dispatching victims with a wrench of their necks or a thrust of his machete.

That's entertainment? No, that's horror fantasy, a genre that makes no more pretense of echoing reality than a thrill ride at the amusement park. Neither should be taken seriously, and you're a lot more likely to grow queasy from the latter.
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'JASON': YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MADMAN DOWN

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - August 4, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives." A thriller starring Thom Mathews and Jennifer Cooke. Written and directed by Tom McLaughlin. Photographed by Jon R. Kranhouse. Music by Harry Manfredini. Running time: 85 minutes. A Paramount release. In area theaters.

As I approached the box office of the Eric Route 38 Twin (in South Jersey), it seemed to pull away from me, just like one of those elongated corridors in horror movies.

What I was experiencing was the feeling of dread - and more than a little embarrassment.

"I-I-I'm ashamed to say this," I stuttered, "but I want to see 'Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives."'

"What?" the cashier asked.

"'Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives,"' I repeated.

Her piercing eyes seemed to look right through me. "That'll be $2.50," she snapped, without any humor in her voice. My blood ran cold.

I stood there in a catatonic state for a few seconds, prompting her to point me towards the entrance. Inside the theater, I bought a small popcorn and a small coke.

"What movie are you seeing?," the salesperson inquired.

"' Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives,"' I repeated.

She smiled. It gave me the creeps.

As I walked into the auditorium, all eyes seemed to be on me - deadly, lifeless eyes. Who are these people? - I thought - what do they want?

The answer was fairly obvious: blood. They were there to see some bloodletting. But would the film be enough? Would they want mine?

The theater darkened and the movie was preceded by a trailer for ''Extremities," with scenes of Farrah Fawcett slicing and dicing some guy who apparently had broken into her home. It was the nastiest preview that I think I've ever sene, but the audience seemed to enjoy it - and wanted more. Their appetites were successfully whetted. Mine was ruined: My popcorn container seemed to stumble off my lap.

The movie opened with the usual Paramount logo, followed by a maggoty grave-digging sequence during which the infamous Jason Vorhees is resurrected for the fifth straight time. Then the title comes on the screen, not "Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives," but "Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI."

I missed the next five mintues or so of the movie because I was trying to figure out why the film has an on-screen title that differs from the one in its print ads.

I tuned back in to catch the moment when the now completely revived Jason stops a VW bug and kills the two kids inside. As the woman fearfully squirms away from our killer's bloody blade, she offers him money to spare her. She even takes out her credit cards. As she dies clutching her American Express card, the camera lingers on her as if to remind us that, well, at least she didn't leave home without it.

Farther down the road, Jason bumps into a trio of people indulging in war games and makes meat out of all three. In the meantime, the kid (Thom Mathews) who dug up Jason is trying to explain what happened, but the local sherriff (David Kagen) thinks Tommy - that's the kid's name - is a psychopath and is responsible for all the murders. The sheriff's daughter (Jennifer Cooke), who has developed the hots for Tommy, thinks otherwise.

By this time, Jason, wearing his usual goalie's mask, has made his way to Crystal Lake, the camping site where he originally made his name. Only now, it's called Forrest Green.

At the camp, Jason kills an assortment of young camp counselors in the throes of sex. There's something about sex that bothers him, particularly if the young woman of the duo is especially hot for it.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that this is serious stuff. Not only have the makers of this series made the same exact film six times (and that ain't easy) but they've conveyed the same point six times - namely, that sexually free young women have robbed insecure men of their sexual identity. Hence, Jason's mask.

The people around me had no idea that these movies appeal to their most puritanical attitudes toward sex. They seemed to enjoy Jason's purgative violence as he hacked away at couples enjoying sex.

Now, that's really scary.

Parental Guide: Rated R for the usual (i.e., violence and sexuality).
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FILM: THE SIXTH 'FRIDAY THE 13TH'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 2, 1986

Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

Calling all counselors, calling all counselors. Friday the 13th, the slice- and-dice series about Jason, the vengeful camper who put the splat in splatter movies, has added yet another chapter to its bloody saga.

How can this be? When last we saw the remains of the lumbering zombie in the hockey mask, Jason Voorhees was dead and buried, right?

Well, let me tell you, Jason's alive. Which means everyone in the vicinity of Forest Green (also known as Crystal Lake) is dead meat. And that includes this movie.

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, like the previous five installments, is a real crowd-sleazer. You've got your cemetery on a thunderstormy night. You've got your bodysnatchers trying to make sure Jason's really dead. (To the honchos at Paramount Pictures, Jason is unkillable. This series is such a cash cow that they'll raise the dead just to make more bucks.) You've got the maggoty corpse of Jason reanimated by a lightning bolt.

At one point during this picture - after Jason kills a survivalist by pulling his arm out of its socket, but before he decapitates a pretty counselor by twisting her head off - I was reminded of kindergarten sadism.

I went to a pretty tough grade school in East Los Angeles where Dion, a male classmate, liked plucking out strands of my hair. He tied one end of a follicle to a scrap of construction paper. With the other end, he made a slipknot and tied it around the body of a fly he had trapped. The fly would struggle with this excess weight, trailing its confetti-sized sign, then collapse. I felt like an unwitting accomplice in Dion's sadism. Jason Lives provokes the same sensation.

As one of Jason's soon-to-be victims says when she sees the indelible hulk in the middle of the road on a rainy night: "I've seen enough horror movies to know well enough that any weirdo wearing a hockey mask isn't friendly."

Neither is Jason Lives. Oh, Jason, go take a spike.

JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI *

Produced by Don Behrns, written and directed by Tom McLoughlin, photography by Jon R. Kranhouse, music by Harry Manfredini, distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 25 mins.

Tommy - Thom Mathews

Megan - Jennifer Cooke

Sheriff - David Kagen

Sissy - Renee Jones

Paula - Kerry Noonan

Parent's guide: R (extreme violence, language).

Showing: At area theaters.

BLOODY BIRTHDAY (1981) U.S. Release (1986)

2008-06-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Movie Review- Vile `Bloody Birthday' celebrates evil doings

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - August 13, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

There's a good reason why "Bloody Birthday" has been sitting on shelves for six years: This is a vile picture. Would you believe that the killers are 10 years old? Isn't this going entirely too far? Do we need movies like this?

A prologue explains, as if this bit of information answered every question, that three babies were born during a solar eclipse in Meadowvale, Calif., in 1970. The story then picks up during the week of their collective 10th birthdays. Debbie, Steven and Curtis are angelic-looking classmates and accomplished murderers.

For exercise, they polish off horny teenagers. Their first chosen victim is Debbie's father, the sheriff. The Gang of Three wants him out of the way to gain possession of his pistol. Their teacher is eliminated because she insists that they do homework. How about that for motive?

A spunky classmate named Timmy becomes suspicious and, during an outing in a junkyard, Curtis attempts to lock Timmy inside a refrigerator. This incident is not sufficient to alarm Timmy's older sister, Joyce, the film's theoretical heroine. In the unlikeliest occurrence, Joyce accepts Debbie's request to baby-sit for her, and Joyce obligingly brings Timmy, conveniently setting up an ambush of the only two people who pose a threat.

Of many alarming events, one of the most repellent involves the suggestion that Curtis is putting ant poison in three huge birthday cakes. (Defenders might say that "Bloody Birthday" anticipated the poisoning of headache powders and other consumer goods, but the glee with which the idea is presented is reprehensible.)

The best-known actors in the cast are Jose Ferrer and Susan Strasberg, who pr obably completed their scenes in a single day. Ferrer plays the town doctor, and Miss Strasberg is the ill-fated teacher. You have to wonder what persuaded them to take these roles. Ferrer and Miss Strasberg can't have made much money, and "Bloody Birthday" is not a film they will want to list on a resume. They only cheapen themselves by participating. Doesn't professional dignity count for anything?

"Bloody Birthday." Horror . Rated R for violence and nudity
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FILM: A TERROR TALE LOOKS AT KIDS GONE VERY BAD
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - July 1, 1986
Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic
Splatter-movie directors are either graduates of Animal Guts Tech or of Creepy Music/Razor Sharp Academy. Rest assured that Ed Hunt, writer and director of Bloody Birthday, went to the latter. And he wasn't an honors student.

Its title notwithstanding, Bloody Birthday (1980) is a relatively bloodless experiment in terror, recalling The Bad Seed with a trio of blithely homicidal 10-year-olds who stalk adults to the accompaniment of shrieky, high-pitched violins.

This is California terror, you can tell, because the explanation for their juvenile delinquency is astrological. The kids were born during a lunar eclipse on June 1, 1970. An amateur astrologer they terrorize suggests that ''the eclipse caused something to be missing from their personalities." Something like conscience.

These squeaky-clean brown noses do well in school, ingratiating themselves with teachers and parents. When no one's looking, however, they garotte teenagers with jump-ropes, bludgeon adults with shovels and kill police officers with baseball bats. Who would suspect?

One line for the horror hit parade: The astrologer confides to her beau, ''I'm not going to college. I want to be a reporter."

BLOODY BIRTHDAY *

Produced by Gerald Tolson, directed by Ed Hunt, written by Ed Hunt and Barry Pearson, photography by Stephen Posey, music by Arlon Ober, distributed by Judica Productions.

Running time: 1 hour, 25 mins.

Susan Strasberg - Miss Davis

Jose Ferrer - The Doctor

Parent's guide: MPAA Rating: R (nudity, sex, violence)

DEMONS (1986)

2008-06-18T06:40:00.001-07:00

ITALIAN GORE-FEST WITH GRISLY VIOLENCE THAT`S NEVER SUBTLE

Sun-Sentinel - September 23, 1986

Author: BILL KELLEY, Entertainment Writer

Pity the poor fool who attends a showing of Demons thinking it will be a routine, supernatural horror thriller. The only routine ingredient in this stomach-churning Italian gore-fest -- unrated to avoid an "X" for its explicit mayhem -- is that B-movie staple, the sub-par dubbing of its European cast`s dialogue.

Demons is the latest low-budget extravaganza from director Lamberto Bava, son of the late Mario Bava (Black Sabbath). Bava Sr. single-handedly launched the giallo cycle of vividly brutal -- if elegantly photographed and staged -- Italian horror movies of the `60s.

Lamberto has inherited his father`s flair for the audacious, but, alas, not much of his talent. He has lately collaborated with Dario Argento (Suspiria), the poor man`s Mario Bava of the `70s.

Bava Jr. and Argento are the principal writers of Demons, and their screenplay`s springboard is the most original thing about it: Patrons in a cavernous urban movie theater the Metropol, (exteriors filmed in West Berlin), which is operated by demonic cultists, are turned into monsters on a night that fulfills a prophecy of Nostradamus.

In the ways the victims are infected (initially by images from the screen itself), transformed into demons and then made indestructible, the movie owes much to Night of the Living Dead (`68) and its grisly descendants. Buffs will trace the twist ending to several earlier Italian horror movies, including Michael Reeves` The She-Beast (`67).

Bava and Argento have no use for the more subtle, refined styles of suggestive horror . They believe less is too little and more is never enough.

Demons is unabashedly, clinically brutal -- within an hour, the screen is awash in glistening blood, putrescence and viscera.

Not only does Bava`s camera not flinch; it savors each opportunity for excess. The bloodletting is accompanied by a noisy sound track of songs by Motley Crue and other heavy metal rock bands.

Since Demons intermittently exhibits a darkly humorous streak -- for example, the hero of its first hour is a pimp who slipped into the theater with two hookers -- the film has a certain antic charm. That eccentric quality is enhanced by the movie`s freewheeling grotesqueness.

Be sure you know what you`re getting into, however -- Demons is anything but a conventional (or even coherent) foray into contemporary horror . It`s strictly a feast for eyes that aren`t easily scorched by outrageous violence.

MOVIE REVIEW

1/2 star Demons

Italian horror film about patrons in a movie theater who are attacked by monsters as a centuries-old prophecy is fulfilled.

Credits: With Natasha Hovey. Directed by Lamberto Bava. Written by Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava.

Unrated. Graphic violence including disemberment, drug abuse, profanity
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Movie Review- `Demon's is hard-core gore in Berlin

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - September 23, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Scott Cain reviews the film "Demons."

"Demons," a monster movie set in Berlin, is suitable only for the most insatiable gore freaks.

Both director Lamberto Bava and producer Dario Argento dote on festering flesh and hideous bodily fluids. There are no maggots in "Demons," but otherwise the two moviemakers trot out their full bag of unsightly tricks.

It's useless to complain about characterization in a movie like this, but "Demons" is particularly aggravating. As the film opens, Cheryl, the heroine, is riding the subway and seems frightened of every shadow. A fellow who looks only slightly more wholesome than "The Phantom of the Opera" offers Cheryl a ticket to a movie at the Metropol theater and she takes it. In fact, she chases him down the street to ask for a ticket for a girlfriend.

That night, Cheryl and Kathy join perhaps 50 other people, including one blind man, at a showing of a slasher movie. In the slasher movie, a fellow nicks his face with a mask found inside Nostradamus' tomb and turns into a zombie. Watching in dismay in the auditorium is a young woman who nicked her face on an identical mask in the Metropol's lobby. Panicky, she retires to the restroom and begins foaming at the mouth.

Soon, the Metropol audience realizes that something is amiss, but all the exits are locked. (The front of the building has perhaps 50 windows and it's not clear why the windows are unavailable to the trapped moviegoers).

No explanation, either, why the survivors - who barricade themselves in the balcony - are unable to hear what's taking place on the main floor just a few feet below them.

When, at long last, some moviegoers escape from the theater, they find that Berlin is in flames. This smashes the previous impression that the event at the Metropol was unique.

You wonder why Italians went to Berlin to make "Demons." Is this revenge for Hitler's treatment of Mussolini? Old wounds heal slowly in Europe. The slime, ooze and gook in "Demons" make you long for the "divine decadence" that Fraulein Sally Bowles found in the Berlin of "Cabaret."

"Demons." A horror movie. Not rated, but probably would qualify for an X because of violence
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DEMONS' GOES FOR THE GROSS - BOTH AT BOX OFFICE AND ON SCREEN

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - September 12, 1986

One evening, a group of diverse people walking in a lonely Berlin subway are handed invitations to a free screening of a new horror movie in a rather spooky downtown theater.

In the lobby before the show, one of these people, a black hooker, picks up a movie prop on display (a silver mask, just like the one worn by the villain in the movie-within-the-movie), tries it on and cuts her cheek on it.

Moments later, she feels ill, goes to the restroom and promptly transforms into ''a demon - an instrument of evil,'' with red eyes, long fangs and a propensity for slobbering green slime.

When her friend comes to check on her, she gets bitten for her trouble, and she too is transformed into a demon. The two of them are soon crawling around the dark auditorium biting movie patrons and turning them into monsters.

Before long, the theater audience seems to be evenly divided between normal movie fans and monsters, the normals barricading themselves in the balcony (the doors having been inexplicably cemented shut) and the demons attacking them, ripping open their necks, gouging out their eyes, scalping them, chewing off their body parts and generally vomiting gore, exploding with pus and popping ''Alien''- like out of bodies.

This is pretty much how it goes in ''Demons,'' a new English-language, made-in-Germany, Italian horror movie that, according to its press notes, was one of the top-grossing films in Italy last year and has been called ''one of the 10 best horror films of the last decade'' by Fangora magazine (well, not exactly Time or Newsweek, but they don't review this kind of movie).

Directed by someone named Lamberto Bava, the movie tries hard to break the threshold in cinema special-effects gore, since almost every second of screen time is devoted to something totally repulsive. And ''Demons'' more or less outgrosses (and is even more boring and repetitious than) its obvious model, the George Romero zombie movie.

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW * Demons, directed by Lamberto Bava, produced by Dario Argento. Cast: Urbano Barberini, Natasha Bava, Paola Cozza, Karl Zinny. Ascot Entertainment. Several theaters. Unrated. By William Arnold P-I Film Critic
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FILM: GIVING CUTTING UP A NEW MEANING

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - June 25, 1986

Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

Demons is a Purple Rose of Cairo for the dimwitted and bloodthirsty.

Considering that Demons chronicles the literally stomach-churning metamorphosis of moviehouse patrons who turn zombie while watching a horror picture, I made a mistake buying a frankfurter on the way in. Both the movie and its movie-within-the-movie are slice-and-dicers that marinate their characters in blood before pureeing and liquefying.

Shot on location in Berlin, this movie might better be dubbed Night of the Dying Dread. A group of Berliners, mostly teenaged and pert, are given complimentary tickets to a chic new moviehouse, the Metropol, where it's hard to tell the difference between punk-rocker patrons and zombie predators. Something in the movie they're seeing reduces many in the audience into drooling, frothing, fanged and taloned vampires requiring buckets of blood for sustenance. And guess where they get it? Not the ideal place for a first date.

Directed by Lamberto Bava, son of Mario, the schlockmeister who made the not uninteresting Hatchet for a Honeymoon (1970), Demons is the movie equivalent of a fingernail on a blackboard.

Demons is effective in two ways. It makes even the hard-core gore fan too timid to put her feet on the floor (for fear a moviehouse vampire will gnaw at them). And it makes the loathsome Toxic Avenger look comparatively innocent.

Armpit-deep in blood and entrails, escaping zombies by the skin of his teeth, one patron announces to no one in particular, "This is the last complimentary ticket I'll ever accept." Wish I could say that. This piece of movie sadism cost me $4.50.

Parents take note: Though it carries a disclaimer about its graphic scenes, Demons is unrated. If I were in charge of the MPAA, I'd give it something beyond X.

Like Y.

For "Yucko."

DEMONS *

Produced by Dario Argento, directed by Lamberto Bava, written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti, photography by GianLorenzo Battaglia, music by Claudio Simonetti, distributed by Ascot Entertainment Group.

Running time: 1 hour, 26 mins.

Urbano Barberini - Moviehouse patron

Natasha Hovey - Moviehouse patron

Karl Zinny - Moviehouse patron

Fiore Argento - Moviehouse patron

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (violence, drugs, sexual abuse, gore)
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'DEMONS': AN ITALIAN HORROR

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 23, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"Demons" ("Demoni"). A thriller starring Natasha Hovey and Urbano Barberini. Directed by Lamberto Bava from a screenplay by Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti, Franco Ferrini and Bava. Photographed by Gianlorenzo Battalia. Edited by Pietro Bozza. Music by Claudio Simonetti. Running time: 85 minutes. An Ascot release. In area theaters.

It was inevitable, I suppose.

"Demons" ("Demoni"), the Italian horror movie directed by Lamberto Bava, the protege of Dario Argento ("The Bird with the Crystal Plummage"), is the ultimate sick joke on its audience. This is a movie where horror -film fans deserve much worse than they get.

This anti-movie is about a theater that entraps its patrons, turning them into ranting, panting zombie-like beasts. Everything that happens in the movie-within-the-movie happens off-screen as well. Moviegoers turn crazy - and turn on each other.

With plenty of creepy music and variations of murder, no cheap shot is overlooked. Our main concern is supposed to be with young couple Cheryl and George (Natasha Hovey and Urbano Barberini) and their increasingly inane attempts to exit.

Parental guide: Not rated. Gory.
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`Demons' has lots of gore in store

Houston Chronicle - June 18, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

The credits tell you where "Demons" is coming from, at least geographically.

Lamberto Bava is the director. Dario Argento is the producer. You guessed it - it's an Italian movie, shot in Rome as it turns out.

As for where the film is coming from stylistically, its newspaper ads tell a lot.

"It may be one of the best horror films of the last decade!" proclaims a critic's printed quote. But the source of the rave is even more revealing: Fangoria Magazine.

Fangoria is the bible of fright fans who thrive on gore. Lots of gore. Gore and more gore. Ridiculously ostentatious gore. Mind-boggling, stomachwrenching, gut-churning gore. Special-effects gross-outs as art.

And that is what you'll find in "Demons" - so much so that Signore Argento didn't even bother to submit his film to the Motion Picture Association of America for its ratings review.

Why bother? What he has here is a clear-cut case of X-styled excesses. Getting the MPAA to confirm that fact would only force the film out of theaters that refuse to book any X-rated material.

Instead, Argento has placed a disclaimer on his film, warning that it contains scenes "which are considered shocking!" No one under 17 is admitted, the same policy as for X-rated product.

So you've been warned. Those not greedy for gore should steer clear. This film about an audience trapped in a theater where demons on the screen become marauding demons in the flesh is not one for sensitive tastes.

But what about the fans - the horror -film aesthetes - the faithful Fangoria readers? Will they delight in this fright?

Some will, others won't. I'm not accusing the horror audience of homogeneity. But those who do like it are more likely to embrace the film for familiarity than originality.

"Demons" is formularized to death. It rips off so many movies that it's hard to know where to start. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

The film's " horror movie within a horror movie" motif has been used countless times. Its heavies are nightmarishly transformed humans with bright contact lenses, hideous claws and green bile oozing from their mouths "(The Exorcist, Abby, The Evil Dead)." These demons devour humans and contaminate their victims, who in turn become demons "(Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead)." And there's a post-apocalyptic thrust by the survivors at the end that's straight out of MadMax and the like.

Need I go on?

Even its makers may admit that the plot is predictable and the acting stinks. But so what? "Demons" doesn't try to achieve horror via mood or suggestion, but with a simpler, more direct approach - shock. And "Demons" has shocks, lots and lots of them. It's as subtle as an earthquake.

Yes, but what about those marvelous special effects? Did you see the bloody transformation scenes? And the way the nail pierced the guy's skull? "Bellissimo!"

DEADLY FRIEND (1986)

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Movie Review- `Deadly Friend' milder than most horror flicks

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - October 15, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

Movie review on "Deadly Friend," a horror spoof starring Matthew Laborteaux and Kristy Swanson, and directed by Wes Craven.

When a horror specialist like Wes ("Nightmare on Elm Street") Craven decides to bury the hatchet and go for cheap laughs, one doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

In the case of "Deadly Friend," a sort of "I Was a Teenage Dr. Frankenstein," disappointment wins out.

In a sense, "Deadly Friend" is a droll inversion of the typical teen slice-and-dice formula. This time, the busty blond cheerleader-type is not the shrieking victim-to-be but the killer. Her name is Samantha (Kristy Swanson) and she could almost be the typical girl-next-door. Only, most girls-next-door aren't quite so pretty and most don't have a drunkenly abusive daddy who, the script hints, isn't blind to his little girl's grown-up charms.

Her charms certainly aren't lost on her new neighbor, Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), who isn't exactly your typical-boy-next-door, either. He's a teenaged scientific genius whose best friend is a robot named BeeBee that he built himself. BeeBee may look like something the Jetsons would own and he may talk in guttural semi-coherent "Gremlins" babble, but he's as super-intelligent as his inventor and a good deal more physical (as in super-strong).

"I developed the basic program and he makes up his mind after that," Paul tells his refreshingly average pal, Tom (Michael Sharrett). "No telling what he's going to do next."

Unfortunately, BeeBee doesn't get the chance to do much of anything next. He's blown to smithereens by the neighborhood crackpot - a cranky old lady with a creaky but effective shotgun. Shortly thereafter, Sam is pushed down the stairs by her dad and ends up on a life-support system, with Daddy ready to pull the plug.

However, Paul has a plan - he'll steal Sam and put BeeBee's brain or microchip or whatever in her skull. The only hitch is, Dad pulls the plug a few minutes early, so there's an eight or nine hour stretch when Sam is flat-out dead. Those few hours beyond the pale wreak havoc on her complexion and her personality. When she comes to, her skin has a greenish glow and she's developed a fetish for purple eye-shadow. More crucially, she's developed a fetish for settling old scores, which isn't goo d news for drunken dads or daffy old ladies.

A few years back, Craven made a really good horror spoof called "Swamp Thing," based on the comic book. "Deadly Friend" is cast in somewhat the same mold, but while "Swamp Thing" was affectionate and unassuming, this film is slickly manipulative and a bit condescending.

It's almost as if Craven were out to prove he can do more with teens than mop up the screen with them. But his good intentions - if that is, indeed, the case - aren't backed by a good script. "Deadly Friend" simply isn't very clever.

Worse, it's backed by a misleading ad campaign that wrongly emphasizes its few scary moments. "Deadly Friend" isn't deadly viewing, but it's nothing that'll give anyone nightmares, on Elm Street or anywhere else. Nor does it intend to. But pulling an audience in with a "Carrie"-ish come-on and handing them some weak jokes about killer-blondes isn't my idea of a good way to build a word-of-mouth audience. It makes about as much sense as trying to pass "Blue Velvet" off as "Still the Beaver."
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WES CRAVEN'S 'DEADLY FRIEND' A CRUSHING BORE IN HORROR GENRE

Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - October 15, 1986

Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer

After making the clever horror - movie hit "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and some good television thrillers, director Wes Craven has returned to his roots.

His new movie "Deadly Friend" has some interesting pretensions, but basically it relies on whatever shock value it can find in crushing heads, necks and other human body parts. Not much.

Doing the crushing is a teenage girl named Samantha (Kristy Swnason). She has blonde hair, a nice figure, a pleasant demeanor and a menacing father, but the outstanding thing about her is that she's dead.

The Dr. Frankenstein of this tale is a familiar figure, the teenage scientific genius named Paul (Matthew Laborteaux). Midway through the film, the girl is pronounced brain-dead from a fall down a stairway. Her friend Paul takes an "artificial intelligence" microchip from his broken robot, performs some quick brain surgery on the girl and brings her back to life - sort of.

For a short time, Paul finds himself with a girl he can turn on and off with a remote-control switch. Some science project. You can imagine what this guy scored on his SATs.

But to show he's just a normal teenage kid, Paul spends the rest of the movie in a panic as Samantha starts killing people in the neighborhood who have been unkind to her or Paul. For better or worse, this is the first horror film on record in which a victim is decapitated by a thrown basketball.

One of the ironies is that while Samantha's advanced artificial intelligence keeps getting "smarter," the movie keeps getting dumber. The last shock sequence makes no sense at all, and Craven goes twice to that very shallow well of showing something grotesque, only to reveal that it was "only a dream."

"Deadly Friend" has a far-fetched but workable premise (although, does the genius have to be a teenager?), which director Craven fails to bring to life.

"Deadly Friend" is rated R for extreme violence and vulgar language. * 1/2
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TAKE ONE DEADLY HORROR FILM AND TWO JIGGLE MOVIES AND STAY HOME

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 14, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Film Critic

It used to be that movie distributors saved their lowest exploitation films for the summer audience. But with the vast number of hungry multiplex screens and an overall glut in exploitation production, the dogs of August now pop up all year long.

This week, for instance, a vacuum in the release schedule has invited a trio of summer-style exploitation pictures to hit town - a horror film, the long-delayed ''Deadly Friend''; and two beach pictures, ''Malibu Bikini Shop'' and ''Hardbodies 2.''

The first of these, Wes Craven's ''Deadly Friend,'' is a fairly routine ''teen-age Frankenstein'' movie reportedly bumped from the summer's schedule because of last-minute exhibitor anxiety over the failure of the previous summer's cycle of teen-age Frankenstein movies.

Based on a book by Diana Henstell, the film is about a teen-age genius (Matthew Laborteaux, of TV's ''Little House on the Prairie'') who implants an artificial-intelligence chip into the cortex of his brain-dead girlfriend.

In true Frankenstein tradition, the girl-monster soon runs amok and, faster than you can say Boris Karloff, is twisting off the head of her abusive, sicko father and doing in the grouchy neighbor who had earlier stolen her basketball.

Under the direction of horror veteran Wes Craven, this film treads the narrow line between satire and playing it straight rather well, and is always technically a cut or two above the level of the average exploitation horror vehicle.

But the film is so predictable and so unremarkable in every way that anyone who thought Craven's ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' heralded the advent of a daring new horror -movie talent will find ''Deadly Friend'' a considerable disappointment.

Over in the next auditorium we have something called ''Malibu Bikini Shop,'' which was filmed in Santa Monica and Venice, and has nothing at all to do with Malibu (the title on the print I saw did not even mention Malibu - it was called ''The Bikini Shop'').

In any case, the film is a jiggle comedy about two odd-couple brothers who inherit a bikini specialty shop that is in rather (you should pardon the word) shaky financial condition, and have to mount a massive bikini promotion to save the place from extinction.

In its heart of hearts, this movie is an old-fashioned late '50s ''nudie'' and exists as an excuse to show topless and scantily clad women in a variety of peekaboo, teasing poses and situations.

But the young cast is surprisingly appealing; the script is never really vulgar. Director David Wechter has worked in a couple of very stylish video- style fantasy sequences. And a good supporting cast of Hollywood veterans (among them Frank Nelson, Kathleen Freeman and Jay Robinson) all help make this innocuous little movie a lot more tolerable than its title and premise might imply.

There are, however, no such redeeming features to ''Hardbodies 2,'' a sequel to last year's ''Hardbodies'' and the second summer T&A movie of the week.

Loosely a comedy about an American movie company filming on location in the Mediterranean, this one is straight, soft-core pornography that goes out of its way to be crude and vulgar every chance it gets.

Like ''Malibu,'' the dominant visual motif is the bare breast, but instead of teasing his audience, director Mark Griffiths absolutely overwhelms it with breast montages.

Indeed, his movie is virtually a documentary on the mammary organ - and one that is so overdone and thoroughly unimaginative that even the most dedicated connoisseurs of skin will probably be bored by it.
Memo: MOVIE REVIEW (1) ** Deadly Friend, directed by Wes Craven. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin. Cast: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett. Warner Bros. Several theaters. Rated R. (2) ** Malibu Bikini Beach, directed and written by David Wechter. Cast: Michael David Wright, Bruce Greenwood, Barbra Horan, Jay Robinson, Frank Nelson. International Cinema. Several theaters. Rated R. (3) * Hardbodies 2, directed by Mark Griffiths. Written by Mark Griffiths and Curtis Scott Wilmot. Cast: Brad Zutaut, James Karen, Alba Francesca, Roberta Collins. Cinetel Films. Several theaters. Rated R.
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Disneyesque `Deadly Friend' Craven's latest effort in horror

Houston Chronicle - October 13, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

Let's see. Director Wes Craven's "Deadly Friend" is "his most terrifying creation" - even counting "A Nightmare on Elm Street." It says so right here in the newspaper ads.

And that is a lot like saying "The Color Purple" is "Steven Spielberg's most spectacular film since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." It's called misrepresentation based on reputation.

Don't be fooled. Granted, "Deadly Friend" hovers in the horror genre for which Craven is best known (and for which "The Hills Have Eyes" should be his standard, not "Elm Street)." But for "Deadly Friend's" first hour, it isn't a horror film at all.

Instead of shocks and jolts, or even the development of a foreboding mood, Craven tells a low-key, Disneyesque story about clean-cut Paul - an impossibly brainy type played by Matthew Laborteaux - who moves with his single mom into a quaint, handsome neighborhood of two-story houses and white picket fences.

He quickly makes friends with the paper-route boy and with Samantha, the girl next door. She's a sweet but scared blonde (played by Kristy Swanson) who is violently victimized by her crazily possessive father.

Sam sneaks out enough to pal around with Paul and his pet robot, BB, a corny rip-off of the humanized machines in "Short Circuit" and "Star Wars." BB's mechanical mutterings sound like a cross between the latter film's Jawas and R2-D2, and its appearance has the uncomfortably cartoonish anthropomorphism of Disney's dopey droids in "The Black Hole."

Starting with the film's first scene, BB steals the show and actually becomes the focus, even though the robot has no role to play in the story's latter half. By then, the only thing haunting this picture is the promise with which its ads primed the audience. Like the ghost of box-office past, it moans in our minds: "His most ter-ri-fy-ing creation."

Wooooooooo.

Say what?

Except for one sudden, nightmarish nightmare sequence (which has become Craven's forte), there isn't a scare until the latter half. Then, the catalyst is Samantha's brain-dead beating by her dad and a Frankensteinian revival by boy-genius Paul and his magic microchips.

Yes, Sam is alive again - but hardly well. She's also superstrong and remembers enough about her tormentors to wreak gory retribution.

That's a lot of plot to be giving, but the film's selling and buildup demanded some kind of clarification.

So, there you have it: "Deadly Friend" does, in fact, finally turn horrific. And when it does, it delivers a fair dose of the title's deadliness. But the real shock is reconciling that change in tone and style with all that came before.

Craven certainly shows an affinity for Disney - note that he directed the TV film "Crimebusters" for Disney's Sunday series. Perhaps with "Deadly Friend" he simply craved some rare softness and sweetness and wanted to tell a tale with more to it than a body count.

If so, that is a commendable enough ambition, but it's a goal he hasn't achieved yet in a workable whole.
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FILM: SCI-FI, HORROR IN 'DEADLY FRIEND'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - October 13, 1986

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

Among the many pleasures afforded by Francis Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married is the way in which a master director takes battered old cliches and time-travel formulas and turns them into something refreshingly original and surprisingly deep.

Wes Craven's muddled Deadly Friend reminds us that such feats of filmmaking are rare indeed. Craven has amassed a considerable following among horror fans, beginning with the repulsive cult favorite The Hills Have Eyes and culminating with the hit A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven, a veteran of the gore wars that have seen the genre degenerate into a competition to create ever more gruesome death scenes, clearly did some thinking before he chose to make Deadly Friend. That, in itself, is a highly unusual departure for a director in the field.

In the event, he chose to graft a variation on the Frankenstein theme and some standard horror ingredients onto a tried formula from another field - bright kids versus the scientists and authority and an experiment gone wrong. The idea has yielded movies as entertaining and provocative as WarGames and The Manhattan Project - pictures that worked because they were about some pressing technological issue.

The first part of Deadly Friend plays like a halfhearted reprise of Short Circuit with Matthew Laborteaux as a super-bright 15-year-old who is fascinated with artificial intelligence. He has developed his own robot, and his precocity has won him a place beyond his years in a graduate school. Craven's film is a modest pleasantry until he remembers who he is.

His movie promptly turns into I Was a Teenage Brain Surgeon with a clinically specific operation that brought a nauseated groan from many in the audience. Restoring a dead girl to life in this league merely entails shoving what looks like a cheap digital watch into her cranium and sewing up the scalp. Beneath all this is a rather shrewd fantasy for teenage boys about taking absolute control of a girl's body.

Developments thereafter are predictable and of the sort the customers expect from a director who clearly doesn't wish to depart too drastically from his Craven image.

DEADLY FRIEND *

Produced by Robert M. Sherman, directed by Wes Craven, written by Bruce Joel Rubin, photography by Philip Lathrop, music by Charles Bernstein, distributed by Warner Brothers.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 mins.

Paul Conway - Matthew Laborteaux

Samantha - Kristy Swanson

Jeanne Conway - Anne Twomey

Tom - Michael Sharrett

Parent's guide: R (violence)

Showing: At area theaters
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HORROR AND HILARITY

The Record (New Jersey) - October 13, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @@ DEADLY FRIEND: Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Bruce Rubin. Photography, Philip Lathrop. With Matthew Laborteaux (Paul Conway), Kristy Swanson (Samantha), Michael Sharrett (Tom), Anne Twomey (Jeanne Conway), and others. Produced by Robert M. Sherman. Released by Warner Bros. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R: explicit violence, gore.

"Deadly Friend" is a horror movie all right, but the scary stuff's so entwined with nasty, nostalgic humor that even the skittish can have fun watching it.

Director Wes Craven, who made the gore classic "A Nightmare on Elm Street," has eased up a bit to poke fun at the old-time Hardy Boys brand of small-town hijinks and at two contemporary genres computer-whiz adventure and social-issue docudrama.

When 15-year-old Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux of "Little House on the Prairie") and his mom (Anne Twomey) move into town, they at first find a Norman Rockwell tableau: leafy streets, quaint houses, a spunky paperboy named Tom (Michael Sharrett).

But Samantha (Kristy Swanson), the girl next door, has bruises all over her body. It doesn't take long to learn that her bug-eyed, beer-besotted father (Richard Marcus) beats her, and that she refuses to squeal. ("Sometimes I want to roll a truck over his face, but he's still my father," she explains.)

The real weirdo in "Deadly Friend," though, turns out to be Paul himself, a genius doing artificial-intelligence research at the local university. When, in quick succession, his pet robot Bee Bee gets blown away by an eccentric old lady (Anne Ramsey) and Samantha is killed by her dad, the geek goes haywire.

With the incredulous (and hilarious) help of Tom, he steals Samantha's body and brings her back to life by implanting Bee Bee's old circuitry in her brain. Needless to say, she has revenge on her modified mind, and Paul can't keep her in the attic.

There's a tawdry, TV-land feel to "Deadly Friend," but it works to the movie's advantage. Paul's mother is a latter-day Donna Reed, the houses are straight out of "Ozzie and Harriet," and there are intentional references to "Bewitched" (like Elizabeth Montgomery, this Samantha is called "Sam"). We're suckered into thinking that we're watching one of those comfortable old sitcoms and then arrrgghh!! see this cheerleader of a Frankenstein do her ghastly routine.

The ghastly part does draw too much blood, but Craven almost always cleans up his act with a humorous touch including death by basketball. The straight scenes are poorly edited, but it's all patched together by the fact that the entire cast strikes the right note of innocence gone awry.

For all its exploitative trappings, "Deadly Friend" somehow turns so many tables so quickly the most appealing characters take turns being plenty unappealing that you're left feeling sympathy for just about everybody. These days, that's not such a horrible thing to say about a horror movie.

TRICK OR TREAT (1986)

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DEAD HEAVY-METAL ROCK STAR HAUNTS 'TRICK OR TREAT' IN ALMOST GENIAL - WAY

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 28, 1986

Author: Janet Maslin The New York Times

Haunted houses, demonic pumpkins, spirits from the great beyond - so what else is new this Halloween?

Haunted rock stars, that's what. ''Trick or Treat,'' which opened in Seattle last weekend, is about a deceased heavy-metal star who returns to wreak havoc at a small-town high school. The rock star is played most energetically by Tony Fields, who stomps through the film in studs and low-cut black leather, scaring everyone he sees. Ozzy Osbourne, who does this kind of thing in real life, appears in the film briefly (and none too convincingly) as a minister.

''Trick or Treat'' was directed by Charles Martin Smith, who played the likable nerd in ''American Graffiti'' and has given his own film something of a likable nerd quality. It's genial, not too frightening and even rather sweet.

Its main character is a teen-age heavy-metal fan named Eddie (Mark Price) who's so ardent a follower of the dead rock star that he discovers a hidden message by playing the star's last record backward.

This becomes the latter-day equivalent of rubbing a magic lantern. Soon the star is appearing to anyone who makes the mistake of playing his tapes or records - even to Eddie's mother, who is one day tidying up the metal-studded dog collars in his room when she accidentally turns the stereo on. One teen- age girl, who is inadvertently exposed to the music, actually melts.

''Trick or Treat,'' which also has a cameo by Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, is knowing and sometimes even funny about heavy-metal music, its attendant paraphernalia and its adolescent mystique.

As a horror film, though, it's very tame, with slow pacing and a dark look interrupted by frequent bursts of lightning. The mildest thing in the film, paradoxically, is its music, which is mostly by a group called Fastway. The terrible rock star is at his least imposing when he starts to sing.
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MOVIE REVIEW- `Trick or Treat' is a feeble attempt at horror

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - October 28, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

"Trick or Treat," a feeble imitation of "Carrie," will play into the hands of fundamentalists who believe that rock 'n' roll music is satanic. Record burners will love this movie for its propaganda value.

The notion that vile messages are dubbed onto recordings in reverse so that they can be understood by playing the record backwards - a process called back-masking - is accepted at face value. This is an allegation that the music industry has been trying to refute for years.

The story takes place at a high school which has even more cliques, more meanness and more nasty pranks than the school in "Pretty in Pink." Eddie, the nerdiest and loneliest student (played by Marc Price), is tormented by gangs of muscle-bound preppies. (In the real world, don't snobs ignore "creeps?" Far from spending their days thinking of ways to humiliate Eddie, real preppies would studiously avoid taking notice of him.)

Eddie is deep into heavy-metal music and is distraught when his hero, Sammi Curr, is killed in a fire. From a sympathetic disc jockey, Eddie acquires the master copy of Sammi's final album. He takes this home and, by back-masking, summons forth the spirit of his idol, who exacts a terrible revenge against Eddie's enemies. Eddie attempts to stop Sammi's maraudings, but Sammi's power steadily increases. In a scene stolen straight from "Carrie," Sammi causes mayhem at a dance held in the sch ool gym.

"Trick or Treat" marks the directorial debut of Charles Martin Smith, an actor who usually plays homely and wimpish supporting characters, notably "Terry the Toad" in "American Graffiti." Smith is a nice guy, but movies, especially horror movies, require a director with bite. Smith doesn't have any. He is no more suited to being a director than he is to being a leading man, as the expensive failure of "Never Cry Wolf" demonstrated.

Smith can't be accused of going for glamour casting. Marc Price, who plays Ed die, is best known as Skippy on "Family Ties." Price looks like a boy who can't get a date for Saturday night. He is colorless beyond the requirements of the role. When the prettiest girl in school takes an interest in him, you can't believe it.

Tony Fields, who was in the movie of "A Chorus Line," plays Sammi Curr with enough makeup and leather paraphernalia to make Ozzy Osbourne seem tidy. The real Osbourne, who is unrecognizable with his hair slicked back and wearing business clothes, makes a cameo appearance as a right-wing preacher denouncing rock 'n' roll on television. Hundreds of professional actors could have played this role with more zip - remember what Paul Sorvino did as the windy evangelist in "Oh, God!".

"Trick or Treat." A horror movie. Directed by Charles Martin Smith. Rated R for profanity, violence and nudity
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Teen's fiendish idol lends a hand in `Trick or Treat'

Houston Chronicle - October 27, 1986

Author: JEFF MILLAR, Staff

From the newspaper ad, you have every reason to believe - geeze, I did - that "Trick or Treat" (rated R) wouldn't be worth paying Federal Express to send it to the Crab Nebula. And, son of a gun, if that hummer wasn't pretty good.

"Trick or Treat" is a teen-market horror film, but it's got intelligence and a lot of malicious humor.

Eddie is a head-banger, which is argot for an admirer of heavy-metal rock. You see them in malls: Sallow adolescent males who wear black T-shirts with death's heads or "AC/DC World Tour" logos, chrome-studded leather wristlets and hair that's been six days since washing.

No matter where you encounter them, they walk as though they expect to be told to leave. So, they try to claim their space with a dip in their shoulders as they stride a little longer than seems natural.

It's paltry and unconvincing arrogance, but it's all they can come up with. You seldom see them with anybody else, and you almost never see them with girls.

At his high school, Eddie is regularly hazed by a cadre of blond jock types and is available on an as-needed basis to most anybody else who needs someone to torment. One of Eddie's female torturers - in what, to her, is mercy - tells Eddie that he might have more friends if he weren't so creepy. She's right.

He wants friends, but he "is" creepy. And he's so committed to the lifestyle codified by his choice of music (among adolescents, you ar e what you listen to) and has retreated so far into it for nurture and remedy of his loneliness, that he doesn't know any way out.

The narrative and most of "Trick or Treat's" set pieces are basted together from bits of other movies, hijacking Stephen King most blatantly. The film makers have pulled off a very neat trick. They make the galaxy of rip-offs appear as though we aren't supposed to notice they're rip-offs and then acknowledge, as subtext, that they "are" rip-offs.

Eddie's idol is Sammi Curr, a cutting-edge head-banger of the demonic school who kills and eats snakes onstage. Sammi is supposed to play a concert at Eddie's high school, which is also Sammi's alma mater, but that's nixed by Moral Majority types. Then Sammi dies in a hotel fire.

Eddie is devastated by Sammi's death; then he's put through a period of especially cruel hazing by the blond jock types. And a quasi-sympatico girl to whom he's attracted appears to have set him up for a hazing session.

Then Eddie comes into possession of a

unique studio acetate copy of an unreleased Sammi album. Eddie discovers that by playing certain cuts of the record backward, Sammi talks directly to him.

Soon, Eddie has tapped into enough of Sammi's demonic power to have gained satisfactory revenge against the blond jocks. But he can't cut Sammi off. Sammi soon materializes and bursts out of Eddie's stereo speakers.

Sammi can travel anywhere he wishes via electric wires or radio signals and, like Janis Joplin felt about her high school, he's got grudges.

It is not a good idea to hack off a dead, demonic, heavy-metal singer who can reach into TV screens and yank the images out of them, which is dreadfully upsetting to talk-show guests back in the studio.

One of the better in-jokes: The Moral Majority preacher in a talk-show scene is played by rocker Ozzy Osbourne, stuffed into double-knits and complaining about Ozzy Osbourne. Sammi reaches into the screen and rips the preacher's head off.

The finale to "Carrie" isn't the finale of this film, but it's in there.

"Trick or Treat" was written by Michael F. Murphy, Joel Soisson and Rhet Topham, from Topham's story, and directed by Charles Martin Smith. It's the first time out as a director for Smith, the actor who played the nerd in "American Graffiti" and the naturalist in "Never Cry Wolf." He's got tools. There's wit in the screenplay, but it's Smith's sense of pitch that maximizes the cleverness. Smith is past the beginner stage; it takes a veteran's panache to know when to go deadpan.

"Trick or Treat" is very well-acted by Marc Price as Eddie and Tony Fields as Sammi.

Again, again, the old caveat. People who have to go to the movies fall like a parched Arab upon a oasis when given the gift of movies that aren't - thank you, lord - as bad as they could be.

Note the subject matter of the film. It ain't Lubitsch
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`TRICK OR TREAT` HAS STYLE, WIT WITH HORROR

Sun-Sentinel - October 30, 1986

Author: BILL KELLEY, Staff Writer

Here`s something we haven`t seen in a while -- a horror film that isn`t loaded with blood and gore. What`s more, it`s even a pretty good movie.

Trick or Treat ponders, with wit and a fair amount of style, what would happen if one of those heavy-metal rock stars who are supposedly corrupting our youth really did have links to Satan, somehow perished in a fire, and was brought back to life by a teen-age fan whose loyalty knows no bounds. The rock star is one Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), whose Halloween appearance at his own high school alma mater has been banned by the town fathers; the fire is caused by a black ritual performed in Sammi `s hotel room; and the fan is Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price), a withdrawn teen-ager who constantly is terrorized by a popular gang of yuppie roughnecks.

Out of this not-so-original premise, actor Charles Martin Smith (seen in Never Cry Wolf and as the nerdy Terry the Toad in American Graffiti), making his debut as a director, has fashioned a lively, intermittently suspenseful horror thriller. Smith is no James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein) or even Terence Fisher (the Hammer horror series), but he shares their knack for having fun with the genre without thumbing his nose at it.

Smith also manages to get some effective, credible performances from his cast, all of whom look at home in their roles -- particularly Price and Fields, who demolishes everything in sight as the satanic rock star. Smith even makes us accept the device by which Sammi is revived -- playing a demo copy of his latest record backwards. And he has cast two rock musicians in appropriate cameos -- Gene Simmons as a disc jockey and Ozzy Osbourne, in a suit and with hair slicked back, as a right-wing anti-rock crusader.

But the most refreshing quality of Trick or Treat is that, notwithstanding a substantial body count, Sammi`s victims are dispensed with a minimum of bloodletting. You`ll remember that distinction long after the movie, which fizzles after about an hour, is over.

MOVIE REVIEW

2 stars 1/2 Trick or Treat

A withdrawn teen-age boy brings the dead leader of a satanic rock music band to life.

Credits: With Marc Price, Tony Fields, Lisa Orgolini, Doug Savant. Directed by Charles Martin Smith. Written by Michael S. Murphey, Joel Soisson, Rhet Topham. rated r Nudity, violence, profanity.

1 star Poor, 2 stars Fair, 3 stars Good,4 Excellent
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`TRICK OR TREAT SHORT ON APPEAL

The Record (New Jersey) - October 27, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @ 1/2 TRICK OR TREAT: Directed by Charles Martin Smith. Written by Michael Murphey, Joel Soisson, and Rhet Topham. Musical score, Christopher Young; performed by Fastway. With Marc Price (Eddie Weinbauer), Tony Fields (Sammi Curr), Lisa Orgolini (Leslie), Glen Morgan (Roger), and others. Produced by Michael Murphey and Joel Soisson. Released by De Laurentiis. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R: nudity, profanity.

"Trick or Treat" is like a large bag of candy collected on Halloween. It's plenty tantalizing at first, but loses most of its appeal long before you've finished with it.

Charles Martin Smith, who in "American Graffiti" played a classic teen-age geek of the Sixties, here debuts as a director with a promising story that features a teen geek of the Eighties. Despite a lot of supernatural shenanigans, though, the inspired spirit of Terry "the Toad" Fields never enters the body of one Eddie "Ragman" Weinbauer, a nerd looking for revenge on Lakeridge (read "Anywhere"), U.S.A.

Eddie played with misplaced seriousness by Marc Price, best known as Skippy, the butt of Michael J. Fox's barbs on TV's "Family Ties" is a pasty-faced guy who shuffles through school with hair down in his eyes, a skull on his T-shirt, and heavy-metal sounds pulsing into his head. The popular types call him "creepy. "

At home he inhabits a dark lair complete with pet rodent, fine stereo equipment, and posters of rocksters who sing about death and the Devil. His top hero is the scandalous Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), who also endured a tortured adolescence in Lakeridge.

When adultdom bars Sammi from returning to his alma mater to play for the Halloween dance, Eddie gets angry. When Sammi then dies in a fire, Eddie gets angrier. When a local deejay gives him the sole copy of an unreleased Sammi Curr record, Eddie gets truly twisted. As his shockingly normal friend Roger (Glen Morgan) says, the kid is "one quart low. "

"Trick or Treat" becomes a low-budget marriage of "Faust" and "Frankenstein" when Eddie makes and breaks a pact with Sammi Curr's ghost, which inhabits the rare recording and occasionally emerges to murder in an electronic fury.

The movie is initially interesting because Price carefully proves Eddie to be a sweet fellow whose heavy-metal habit has more to do with insecurity than psychosis. But the make-believe horror element, when it finally comes, runs counter to this characterization, turning the teen-ager into a manic goof. The pacing is uneven, and the content is an unsettling mixture of laughs, pale special effects, bad rock and roll, and stagy deaths.

One on level "Trick or Treat" is intended as a statement about the effect of questionable rock lyrics on young people, and about freedom of speech. (Heavy-metal superstar Ozzy Osbourne makes an ironic, if odd, appearance as a fundamentalist calling for censorship.) The screenplay, though, makes this statement almost as incomprehensible as many of the lyrics themselves
ROCKERS' 'TRICK OR TREAT' BLAND HALLOWEEN FARE
Boston Globe - October 25, 1986
Author: Tom Long, Globe Staff
"Trick or Treat" is a remarkably bloodless horror flick with a heavy- metal soundtrack and a plot as predictable as the seasonal appearance of low-budget "shockers."

First we meet rock star Sammi Curr, a fundamentalists' nightmare in heavy mascara, leather and chains. His gig at Pender High is canceled because of his predilection for biting the heads off snakes during his show. Curr is not without his fans. When he isn't being humiliated, sworn at or stomped on, high-schooler Eddie Milbauer, a real nerd, turns the stereo up loud and worships the ground Curr walks on.

Curr meets his earthly reward in a hotel fire. Eddie is beside himself with grief -- until he starts playing Curr's record backward and receives a message from beyond. The message is spelled r-e-v-e-n-g-e.

The resulting mayhem is more boring than frightening. Action sequences are telegraphed, and victims are bloodlessly dispatched in a puff of electrical smoke. The film is devoid of both suspense and horror , and unremarkable except for a brief cameo appearance by shock rocker Ozzy Osbourne, a performer purported to be no stranger to biting the heads off animals as part of his act. Osbourne plays Rev. Aaron Gilstom, a fundamentalist preacher who rails against pornographic rock.

Predictably, Eddie the nerd and Curr the zombie converge on Pender High just in time for a Halloween costume party and a rock concert that really knocks 'em dead but wouldn't scare a fly.

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'TRICK OR TREAT' ROCKS WHEN IT SHOULD SHOCK

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - October 25, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

AS every satirist from Swift to Garry Trudeau has demonstrated, the best way to defuse the ranting moralists in our midst is to take their finger-waving to an absurd extreme.

The new horror entry, "Trick or Treat" (now playing), does just this by showing rock music as not only an unhealthy influence on the young, but, as long suspected by the Jerry Falwell flock, a devious tool of the devil as well.

That's right, Mom and Pop's worst fears of coded satanic messages and sadomasochistic dust covers come true here. The hero, an anti-social weirdo named Eddie (Marc Price), takes sweet revenge on school bullies by following the orders of the late great Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), a rabid rocker in the Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper mold who perished in a fire but has been reincarnated on an acetate demo left with the town deejay (KISS' Gene Simmons in a change-of-pace nice-guy role).

By playing said record in reverse, Eddie is able to communicate with Curr, who, like his young fan, was treated shabbily by classmates at Lakeridge High. The more Eddie spins the magic record, the stronger Curr gets -- until he's reborn in a shower of sparks from the kid's stereo speakers.

Mom, meanwhile, shakes her head in disapproval. Eddie, now the last word in leather and spikes, should have been weaned from AC/DC and Black Sabbath long ago, she frets.

A perfect gimmick idea with more than a passing salute to the possessed youngsters of Stephen King, "Trick or Treat" should have been one of the funniest scares of the year. Unfortunately, it isn't. Actor-turned-director Charles Martin Smith (the nerds of "American Graffiti" and "Never Cry Wolf") has turned this timely play on adult paranoia into a run-of-the-mill shocker with subpar demons and lame special effects.

This film needed someone as crafty and demonic as the music itself. Smith, who obviously doesn't have his heart in exploitation horror , plays down the fright elements and (thankfully) the gore, and delivers a plodding variation on some of the teen comedies by John ("Breakfast Club") Hughes.

Still, there are some fun in-jokes. Like the casting of rock's premier bad boy Osbourne as a TV evangelist railing against the suggestive lyrics of "pornographic music." Striking his most uptight, judgmental pose, he whines, "Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned love song?"

TRICK OR TREAT. STARRING GENE SIMMONS AND OZZY OSBOURNE. DIRECTED BY CHARLES MARTIN SMITH; SCRIPTED BY MICHAEL S. MURPHEY, JOEL SOISSON, RHET TOPHAM. R (PROFANITY, NUDITY). (star) 1/2

FROM BEYOND (1986)

2008-06-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

A horrid film 'From Beyond'

San Diego Union, The (CA) - October 29, 1986

Author: David Elliot, Movie Critic
"One day I'd like to make a movie that my kids can see," said director Stuart Gordon. His tongue must be firmly in cheek, assuming he hasn't ripped it out as a prop for one of his films.

Gordon, a leading stage director in Chicago who moved to Los Angeles in 1984, became something of an instant cult figure to horror film addicts with "Re-Animator," which provided such jollies as a man being wrapped and crushed, python-like, in his own squirming entrails. Now Gordon is back on screen with another adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story, "From Beyond."

Camp is the spirit on tap here. A character named Dr. Pretorius -- the name famously used by Ernest Thesiger in "The Bride of Frankenstein" -- gazes upon his wonderful new toy, The Resonator, and pronounces fervently, "I want to see more -- more than any man has ever seen!"

Well, a movie that suggests such superlatives is hard put to deliver, in 1986. Years ago you could hang bones in cobwebs, move Halloween lights through the sockets of skulls, and give people the shivers. Now they "want to see more," which really loads the pressure on Gordon and other wizards of ooze.

Right away, we feel Gordon trying to top his first film and satisfy the in-group ghouls. He has Dr. Pretorius (Ted Sorel) turn into a slab of slime as his Resonator sets up vibes that bring forth the monsters from his pineal gland -- the little neighbor of the brain that became briefly famous when Descartes called it the likely seat of the soul. Before long the gland, looking distinctly phallic, is popping out of foreheads.

Jeffrey Combs, boyish hero of "Re-Animator," returns here as a scientist who goes round the bend when Pretorius beckons from the Pineal Beyond. That interests a psychiatrist (Barbara Crampton), who is sexually haunted by the astoundingly gross Pretorius, and before long she is showing a novel interest in leather bondage gear. Inhibitions fall, and guts pile up.

Gordon has masterful makeup specialists to filigree the ick, but as a director he's barely a starter. Long shots look like crudely lighted theater sets, and close-ups like bulging photo booth specials. Some of the shock touches are amazingly sophomoric, such as a cut from a man vomiting to an egg being cracked over a frying pan.

And the tone is cold, compulsive, remotely aloof from story values or characterization. Cheap-shot horror with no intent except comical nausea was pioneered years ago by another Chicagoan, Herschell Gordon Lewis, whose work had titles like "Two Thousand Maniacs!" Stuart Gordon is Lewis' inheritor, slicked up for the '80s and offering the same kind of visceral pornography, but with a new in-on-the-party cachet that comes from 20 years of grinding exploitation. Geekery has graduated to this.

The horror movie, driven to the ghoulie pits by so many obvious effects (including mainstream films such as "The Fly" and "Aliens"), could be going the way of the western. This is how genres die. And nothing in "From Beyond" is as funny as the effect a local theater is causing by preceding the film at intermission with -- just imagine -- Strauss waltzes.

"From Beyond" (Zero stars) An Empire release. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Dennis Paoli, from the novel by H.P. Lovecraft. Produced by Brian Yuzna. Photography by Mac Ahlberg. Music by Richard Band. Rated R. In local theaters. The Cast Jeffrey Combs..........Crawford Tillinghast Barbara Crampton.............Dr. McMichaels Ken Foree.............................Bubba Ted Sorel.....................Dr. Pretorius Carolyn Purdy-Gordon...............Dr. Bloch

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 (1986)

2008-06-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

CHAINSAW PART 2' DESERVES AN XXX RATING

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 30, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Movie Critic

Tobe Hooper's sequel to his 1974 splatter- horror movie, ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre,'' was supposed to be the summer's big horror movie, and its distributor, Cannon Films, reportedly spent a small fortune on pre-publicity.

But after a brief, spectacularly unsuccessful opening in Los Angeles and New York, the film was suddenly and unceremoniously jerked from the August release schedule, with, Cannon said at the time, ''very little possibility of a future release.''

There are several theories as to exactly what happened (Cannon itself is not talking), but the most likely is that the film was too gross even for the drive-in crowd, and certainly too gross for the motion picture rating board. Had the film been submitted, the board would probably have given it an X rating, meaning that most newspapers would refuse to accept advertising for it. Now that the film has finally made it to town for a three-day curiosity run at the Neptune Theater, this explanation seems even more credible. The film is so stomach-turningly gruesome that it's impossible to imagine what kind of subcretin would sit through it, and an X rating seems positively kind.

Hooper's story line this time out has a demented ex-Texas Ranger (the ubiquitous Dennis Hopper) and a rock 'n' roll disc jockey (Caroline Williams) joining forces to capture a family of serial killers who have been wiping out half of North Texas with chain saws for the past 14 years.

The expositional violence gets out of the way very quickly, and the movie soon settles down to an hour-long climax sequence in an abandoned amusement park that the killers have turned into a death camp so horrific it makes Auschwitz look like Disneyland.

From the very beginning, it is obvious that Hooper and his scriptwriter, L.M. Kit Carson, are trying for a tone somewhere between horror and farce. The film gets more slapstick as it gets more ugly, until it ends with a chain-saw sword fight between hero and villain that burlesques Errol Flynn.

The problem is that the movie is so brutal and realistic that it never plays as farce. It's very hard to laugh at the sight of a man being skinned alive or beaten to death with a hammer. And when the movie shows almost 40 continuous minutes of the heroine being brutalized and tortured, sliced with a straight razor, raped with a chain saw and beaten in the head with a hammer while being held in a kneeling position, it's hard not to feel outraged by the idea that you're supposed to be laughing.

All told, this movie is so irresponsible and morally corrupt that it may be the single best argument for censorship I've seen in years. And the fact that the horror audience rejected it so strongly on their own gives me some slim hope that the end of the world may not be completely upon us.

Cannon Films Dennis Hopper, as one of the good guys, hefts a saw in ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.''
Memo: Review (No stars) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, directed by Tobe Hooper, written by L.M. Kit Carson. Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Johnson, Bill Mosley. Cannon Films. Neptune. Unrated.
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'CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2' SHOULD DIE ITS OWN DEATH

Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - August 31, 1986

Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer

No, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is not the worst movie ever made, but it certainly does have some of the worst scenes.

They would include:

*Actor Dennis Hopper calling down Biblical wrath ("I am the lord of the harvest!") as he chainsaws through the wooden supports of a human abattoir.

*The ugly "Leatherface" on the verge of indulging his sexual chainsaw fetishes, and a woman cooing encouragement in an effort to escape.

*A character called "Cook" Sawyer lamenting the plight of the small businessman as he supervises cutting up of corpses for meat to sell in his prize-winning Texas chili, along with "eyeball pate" and other menu items.

Yes, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is meant as a comedy. If you squint, you can see it as a corpse- strewn satire of some grotesque kind of Americana.

It is unusually bloody and gory, and has not been rated to head off a dreaded X. But what's really disturbing about this movie is that its makers expect an audience of real people to see this as humor or entertainment.

History: Back in 1974 the title "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" probably scared and revolted many more people than ever saw the movie. Such is the power of the imagination. The movie itself also played on that power to frighten through suggestion by presenting a taut horror film, with much shrieking and running but only a relatively small amount of violence. The original "Chainsaw" helped launch a huge collection of movies that generally became gorier and more stupid.

The present: The wave of "slasher" movies has long passed, lapsed in popularity, and has been superceded by a few wretchedly shopworn movies for a specialized audience. As bizarre as it may seem, "slasher" movies have turned into baroque bloodbaths done as comedy, exploiting the bizarre fame of crazed movie killers to squeeze out a few more bucks. Anthony Perkins (this time the romantic lead) in "Psycho III," masked Jason Voorhees in "Friday the 13th - Part VI" were the stars not the villains.

That continues with this woebegotten movie, directed by Tobe Hooper, who did the original, but seems to have lost all sense of perspective. A hero/ victim of sorts this time is poor, frustrated cannibal-butcher Leatherface, who is told by Sawyer "You got to choose, boy! Sex, or the saw."

The ridiculous premise is that chainsaw murders have continued over the past dozen years, but have been covered up by authoritiies as accidents. In the story, an attractive rock 'n' roll disc jockey (Caroline Williams) becomes involved with the killers through Hopper, who is looking to avenge the death of his family.

She follows the suspects to a a strange underground lair where Sawyer cuts up bodies for his chili stand. In fairness, theaters should offer blindfolds to patrons.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is not rated. It goes beyond R- rated movies in violence. It also contains much vulgar language and scenes of sexual fetishism. (0 stars.)
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"CHAINSAW' IS TEXAS-SIZED STUPIDITY

Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA) - August 29, 1986

Author: SHARON JOHNSON

Good news, fans of gore galore. Those good ol' boys are back.

Yes, the merry crew that captured America's heart and disturbed America's collective digestive system in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has returned in a new dramatic triumph, cleverly titled "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II."

And what jolly family entertainment it is.

Young people can satisfy their natural scientific curiosity to know what happens when the head is sliced apart with a chainsaw. [Hint: It's not a pretty sight.]

Viewers can be edified by the sight of one of the resident cretins crushing a man's skull with repeated blows from a hammer.

While he's pursuing his hobby, his brother is in a nearby room caressing a woman's crotch with his chainsaw.

In fact the movie offered such a wealth of cultural enrichment that, sated, I departed after 47 minutes and several gallons of prop blood.

Not because the movie was grotesquely gross. It was, of course, but what would you expect from a movie called "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II"? Obviously it's not going to be an adaptation of a Tolstoy short story.

What makes this movie so unbearable is that it's so derivative and so DUMB! It borrows less from its predecessor than from the old English horror tale "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." [Todd gave the finishing touch to his customers, who then furnished the meat for his partner's famous meat pies. The chainsaw crew is in search of the secret ingredient for their family's prize-winning chili.]

As for the stupidity factor, consider this basic premise: Dennis Hopper stars as a former Texas Ranger who lost his family to the chainsaw gang 14 years ago. He's been on the killers' trail for all that time. He's become an expert on their brutal crimes, knows every move they've made.

A disc jockey [Caroline Williams] with a call-in show just happened to be talking to the latest victims at the time of their demise. She has the tape, complete with screams, moans and chainsaw buzzing.

Hopper urges her to play the tape on the air. At night. When she's alone and unprotected in her remote studio. Guess who comes to visit? Guess what expert on their crimes never expected they might? Guess what disgusted reviewer couldn't take any more?

Tobe Hooper directed with his usual lack of finesse. L.M. Kit Carson's screenplay is one that even cultists are unlikely to regard as a classic. Most of the performers are heavily disguised. A smart career move. [Hopper tries to hide under a 10-gallon hat but eagle-eyed viewers will spot him easily.]

With their usual sensitivity to cinematic art, movie bookers have scheduled this for indoor theaters. Not a smart move.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" is a drive-in movie if ever there was one. Other considerations aside, while being exposed to this garbage, you'll need all the fresh air you can get.
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'TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE' BARELY CUTS IT SECOND GO ROUND

THE ORLANDO SENTINEL - August 28, 1986

Author: By Jay Boyar, Sentinel Movie Critic

On rare occasions a bad movie comes along that's intriguing in ways much better movies are not. This happened in 1974 with a now-legendary horror film called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And, to a lesser extent, it has happened again with the sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.

Ugly, gross, exploitative: All the adjectives used to dismiss the 1974 film also apply to its successor. In fact, so revolting is Chainsaw 2 on a ''gut'' level that to delve into the stupidities and banalities of its narrative almost seems beside the point. But what makes this mostly unwatchable picture worth considering is that it intermittently unearths a vein of madness that good movies generally don't dare to approach.

In Chainsaw 2 we meet Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper), a retired Texas Ranger in a ten-gallon hat, and Stretch Brock (Caroline Williams), a young, female disc jockey in (you should excuse the expression) cutoffs. After some initial friction, they join forces to track down the gang of psychopaths that was featured in the original Chainsaw movie.

What the psychopaths are up to this time is killing innocent people, slicing them up with a chainsaw and using their flesh and blood as ingredients in chili. Horror -movie buffs won't need to be reminded that the gang includes the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Bill Johnson), the plate-headed Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) and the leader of the group, Drayton ''Cook'' Sawyer (Jim Siedow). These creepy characters are brothers who defer in some matters to the withered lunatic they call Grandpa (Ken Evert).

Tobe Hooper, who directed the first Chainsaw picture, is director once again. As his lackluster work in such recent movies as Invaders From Mars and Lifeforce goes to show, Hooper doesn't have a great deal of what is ordinarily thought of as moviemaking talent. Mainly, he places static characters in static situations.

But in the Chainsaw pictures, bad though they are, Hooper finds that psychic location where insanity, playfulness and familial idiosyncrasy meet. The result is enough to send enormous shivers up your spine.

In Chainsaw 2, his bizarre inspiration is most clearly on display during a scene in which the ghoul brothers and Grandpa terrorize the disc jockey. The games they play with her -- and with each other -- get to you largely because they are nightmare versions of the hideous emotional games in which more normal people engage. But the biggest problem with the film is that, having tapped into the viewer's secret fears, it proceeds to abuse its audience.

This is a movie that deserves to be dismissed, but it's not a movie to dismiss casually. Like the stench of death, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 has a tendency to stay with you.

Memo: Movie review 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2' Cast: Caroline Williams, Dennis Hopper, Bill Johnson, Bill Moseley, Jim Siedow, Ken Evert Director: Tobe Hooper Screenwriter: L.M. Kit Carson Cinematographer: Richard Kooris Music: Tobe Hooper, Jerry Lambert Theaters: Northgate 4, Orange Blossom 2, Fashion Village 8, University 8 Cinema, Prairie Lake Drive-In Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Industry rating: Unrated Reviewer's evaluation: * Reviewing key ***** excellent, **** good, *** average, ** poor, * awful
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Movie Review- `Chainsaw II' doesn't cut the mustard

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - August 26, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR: STAFF

Eleanor Ringel Film Editor

Before Jason was a gleam in the eye of greedy "Friday the 13th" filmmakers, there was Leatherface, the star of Tobe Hooper's 1974 legendary low-budget chiller "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." And Leatherface didn't waste his time on hokey hockey masks; his face-covering was made from human skin.

Fans of the original - a film whose crude sensibilities and slice-and-dice tactics prefigured the entire slasher-movie syndrome - have waited 12 years for a worthy sequel. What they've gotten instead is "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" - the Howard the Duck of horror flicks.

"Chainsaw II" is the product of the the unholy alliance of Hooper and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, whose previous credits include the useless remake of "Breathless" and half (the unwatchable half) of "Paris, Texas." Together they've created a sequel that's part pointless gross-out, part clumsy spoof.

As the movie opens, the cannibalistically inclined Sawyer family -Leatherface (Bill Johnson), Chop-Top (Bill Mosley) and Cook (Jim Siedow) - have gone the Sweeney Todd route. Their special chili-con-carnage barbecue, with its - ho-ho - secret ingredient - is prize-winning stuff, and the Sawyers are preparing for a big weekend of feeding Dallas football fans.

That's why two obnoxious yuppies who've chosen the wrong pick-up to pick on are soon minced meat. However, the yups' last yelps - along with an ominous buzzing sound - happened to have been recorded by Stretch (Caroline Williams), a local DJ whose request line they were prankishly tying up.

Enter Dennis Hopper in a 10-gallon hat (arguably the most frightening sight in the movie). He's retired Texas Ranger Lefty Enright, the uncle of some of the kids the Sawyers buzz-sawed back in '74.

Lefty's been riding the vengeance trail ever since, and now he and Stretch join forces to track the Sawyers down, even if it means entering their charnel-house chamber of horrors where sides of human beef hang from the rafters and skel etons lounge in chairs.

Hooper's original film was a primitive artifact a la "Night of the Living Dead." The shoestring budget only added to its shock-appeal. The sequel is in color and has all the entrails that money can buy. But it has absolutely none of its predecessor's nightmarish residue. Poor Tobe Hooper has literally fouled his own nest, making a mockery of the one movie for which he may be remembered, while Carson seems to have envisioned the film as a dumping ground for the Texas jokes he couldn't cr am into "Paris, Texas."

Granted, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is hardly an inviolate classic. But turning the soul-less Sawyers into fun-loving cutups is the sort of thing one expects from a college comedy troupe, not from the man who first made these monsters come alive.

On its own unpolished terms, the original made an impact - even on those who knew it only by reputation. The sequel is a smirking travesty whose heroine delivers the movie's own best one-line review. Confronted with a slavering Leatherface, whose phallic connection to his chainsaw is made clunkily obvious (more Carson "humor"), Stretch screams over and over, "No good! No good!"
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TOO BAD IT'S NOT THE SAME OLD GRIND

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - August 25, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

HAIL, hail, the gang's all here.

It's just like homecoming week down at the local grind house. There, big as you please -- in murky, underlit color -- is Holly-weird's most infamous family, the Sawyers of just outside of Austin, Texas.

We met the Sawyers in Tobe Hooper's 1974 fright classic, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." That's the one about five dumb hippie types being terrorized by Pa Sawyer and his hard- workin' boys.

You remember the boys. One was crazy as a coot. Jabbered a lot about slaughterhouses and head cheese. The other, Leatherface, wore a mask of human flesh and liked to chase pretty young things with a humongous chain saw.

Well, not much has changed since the Sawyers first consented to a group portrait. They're still sawin' up unlucky wayfarers in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" and turning the cured parts into the best gol'darn barbecue west of the Pecos.

Actually, a few things have changed: The Sawyers now run the Last Roundup Rolling Grill, known for its award-winning chili (The secret? "It's the meat -- don't skimp on the meat," grins Daddy Sawyer). And Hooper has risen to superstar status with the let-'er-rip drive-in crowd. His post-" Chainsaw" attractions have included "Poltergeist," the unwatchable "Lifeforce," and this year's good-natured "Invaders from Mars" remake.

Though none of these films has come close to the grisly genius of "Saw 1," Hooper is something of a folk hero on the horror circuit. Which is why it's not enough for him to just make scary, entertaining movies anymore. He now has to make horror satires, just to prove he's a whole lot smarter than the run-of-the-mill slasher director.

Bring on the footnotes

''Saw 2," scripted by L.M. Kit Carson ("Paris, Texas"), is so self-analytical it ought to come with footnotes, or at least a special glossary to explain the political allusions and references to "Saw 1." It's a cold-blooded, pretentious, uninspired exercise -- inspired more by Beckett, Stanley Kubrick and "Sweeney Todd" than the genuinely horrific first installment.

The press kit thoughtfully labels it "Grand Guignol with a social conscience . . . the first Chainsaw comedy . . . the 'Duck Soup' of slasher films." (Hey, the press kit could stand some footnotes.)

Veteran nut case Dennis Hopper rambles on as a chainsaw- packin,' Scripture-quoting ex-Texas Ranger obsessed with meting out poetic justice to the "blood crazy" family that messed with his niece and nephew 12 years back. Caroline Williams plays a foxy deejay who throws in with Hopper, and soon finds herself being wooed, Black & Decker style, by the love-smitten Leatherface.

Rubbery-faced Jim Siedow is back as the eternally fretting Daddy Sawyer, and Bill Mosely plays the Vietnam-vet son with Creature Feature makeup and a Sonny Bono wig (to hide the metal plate in his head). Both are hilariously demented, and then some.

For those who like to intellectualize about this kind of thing, Hooper has designed "Saw 2" as a pitch-black commentary on the pitfalls of private enterprise in corporate America. Cornered in his subterranean charnel house, Daddy Sawyer sees the writing on the wall. "The small businessman always gets it in the a--," he laments as Hopper closes in.

Hooper and script writer Carson are themselves off-the-wall mavericks who have had similar bad luck with the big boys. Is "Saw 2" their elaborate way of getting even? If so, they've failed. Few horror fans will want to waste money on a scare show this convoluted and confused.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. Unrated (many graphic disembowelings). (star) 1/2
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A FILM FIT FOR THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

The Record (New Jersey) - August 25, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @ TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2: Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by L. M. Kit Carson. Music, Tobe Hooper and Jerry Lambert. With Dennis Hopper (Lt. Lefty Enright), Caroline Williams (Stretch Brock), Bill Johnson (Leatherface), Jim Siedow (Drayton "Cook" Sawyer), Bill Moseley (Chop-Top), and others. Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Released by Cannon. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 95 minutes. Unrated: crude language, excessive violence, and gore.

Let's face it, slasher-flick aficionados aren't going to tune in here for the word on "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2." So this one's going out to other poor souls who believe they've reason to subject themselves to the blood and body-parting.

To all you art-film fans who thought "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was a camp classic that transcended its genre into the sphere of worthwhile culture:

True, Tobe Hooper's 1974 movie about the slaughter of a group of Texas hippies was inventive. Its low-budget, documentarylike trappings gave the horror a disconcerting immediacy, an extra dimension that could easily be labeled ironic. It poked shrewd, if deranged, fun at the Age of Aquarius.

Hooper who went on to direct big-money successes such as "Poltergeist" (under the supervision of Steven Spielberg) has tried to give the sequel the same more-than-it-seems aura.

The script, written by the talented L. M. Kit Carson ("Paris, Texas"), brings back the saw-wielding psychopath Leatherface (Bill Johnson), his brother, the demented Vietnam veteran Chop-Top (Bill Moseley), and their elder relative Drayton "Cook" Sawyer (Jim Siedow). But it also pretends to have a 1980's social conscience.

These days, the odd family's victims aren't hippies, but rich yuppies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The human flesh is used in an award-winning chili that's peddled from the Last Roundup Rolling Grill. The peddler, Cook, regularly rants about the near-extinction of the small businessman in the shadow of Sun Belt corporatism.

(Hooper and Carson are native Texans, and there's also some authentic Lone Star State self-mockery. The story, for instance, takes place on the weekend of the Texas-Oklahoma football game and chili cook-off.)

Most important, the legendary Dennis Hopper was cast as Lt. Lefty Enright, a retired Texas Ranger who has been tracking the murderers for 12 years. (One of the original victims was his nephew.)

Hopper, who has been in several great films ("Easy Rider," "Apocalypse Now," "The American Friend"), is always mesmerizing, no matter what else is happening on the screen. Here he's not only a lawman with a long-overdue score to settle, but a religious fanatic to boot. He has some good surrealistic moments, babbling about Hell, fear, and the Devil, and singing the hymn "Bringing in the Sheaves. "

Enright and his accomplice, a pretty rock-and-roll deejay named Stretch (played in a bright, high-pitched, B-movie way by Caroline Williams), discover the ghoulish trio's kitchen in the bowels of an abandoned amusement park. The set for this final buzz-down is an operatic and macabre complex of tunnels, filled with skeletons and cobwebs and a wide selection of lamps.

But none of this is enough to make up for the gratuitous, truly gruesome head-hammering, skin-slicing, and entrail-spilling. The social satire isn't pointed enough. The humor isn't funny enough. The staging isn't imaginative enough.

For all its hip subtext, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2" is no more responsibly made than the worst slice-and-dice drive-in shocker. The pretense to a larger meaning is just a cynical rationalization.
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FILM: GRAPHIC GORE SPLATTERS 'CHAINSAW'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 23, 1986

Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

I'm not averse to splatter movies. This is a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre talking. But the sequel to the 1974 classic is as unoriginal as sin and as unappetizing as chili con carnage. I say this realizing that to slam The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is as pointless as debating just how many devils can dance on the blade of a buzzsaw.

Tobe Hooper's original (and influentially amoral) Chainsaw Massacre was a compelling, if primitive, artifact. This movie about a crazed South Texas cannibal family of butchers had a crude documentary style and cruder humor. For all its gory reputation, it relied mostly on the sound of a chainsaw and the images of cobwebbed skeletons to induce its horror , which was as economical as its budget. Wryly, it warned pleasure-loving hippies that work- ethic wahoos were out to punish them.

In the unredeemably disgusting sequel, nothing is left to the imagination. A deranged Dennis Hopper stars as Lefty, a vigilante sheriff out to destroy the bloodthirsty Sawyer family because they drove his niece mad and killed his wheelchair-bound nephew. Giving aid and comfort to the sheriff is Stretch (Caroline Williams), a pretty DJ terrorized by call-ins from the Sawyers.

For most of the movie, Lefty and Stretch are hostages in the Sawyer butcher caverns - a cluttered inferno of entrails located somewhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The Sawyers' idea of a good time is to skin humans alive and to sharpen their chainsaws on trembling female flesh. Their specialty is eyeball pate. You don't want the recipe.

If this cluttered, ugly movie is good for anything, it must be for making omnivores into strict vegetarians. But the ugliest feature of Part 2 is not its explicitness, but its moral: that you have to become a bloodthirsty psychopath to kill a bloodthirsty psychopath. Part 2 is the Rambo of splatter.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was not submitted to the MPAA for a rating. But if this rotten carcass of a movie were submitted to the FDA, it would be rated unfit for human consumption.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 *

Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, directed by Tobe Hooper, written by L.M. Kit Carson, distributed by Cannon Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 mins.

Stretch - Caroline Williams

Lefty - Dennis Hopper

Leatherface - Bill Johnson

Choptop - Bill Moseley

Cook - Jim Siedow

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (extreme violence, sexual violence, blood, obscenity).

Showing: At area theaters.
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LEATHERFACE RETURNS WITH HIS CHAIN SAW

Richmond Times-Dispatch - August 23, 1986

Author: Carole Kass ; Times-Dispatch staff writer

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is a sick joke. A very sick joke. A terminally ill movie. Though it won't kill you with its frequent bloodletting (right after the opening the top of someone's head is sliced off and the blood drips out of the remaining "bowl") or drop you with laughter for its juvenile dialogue, it could easily make your last meal insecure.

Somehow its tawdry, schlocky predecessor became a cult film: It was the first slice-and-dice slasher movie. As such, it was considered a comic horror film. Indeed, a copy resides in the archives of the Modern Museum of Art in New York. That one was so horrible, you laughed in self-defense.

Tobe Hooper, who made his name and found fame with that original, has made the not-so-eagerly-awaited sequel. Macerated Leatherface is back, waving his chain saw, using it as a sexual extension as well as a deadly weapon slicing through groins and gizzards. And so is Chop-Top, his brother with the rotting teeth and the itchy metal plate in his head. He uses a sharpened coat hanger to scratch his head and dig out dead eyes. He is handy with the dipper when it looks like some blood might spill.

The bossy chief cook of the Last Roundup Rolling Grill is back too. Barbecue has been replaced by chili. It looks like bloody entrails anyway, and this chili wins contests because of the prime meat it contains.

The story has something to do with Dennis Hopper -- who started the new wave of films in the 1960s -- sinking to this appearance as a Texas Ranger obsessed to the point of possession with finding the chain-saw gang. Then there is Stretch (Caroline Williams) who starts out as a fearless disc jockey. But when she finds herself straddling an ice cooler with Leatherface pointing the chain saw at her shorts, she starts to scream and she never stops. She becomes a blithering scream machine.

She is led to the underground slaughterhouse-kitchen decorated with skeletons, Christmas lights, human haunches hanging on hooks and such. She makes her exit climbing a ladder with the knife-wielding Chop-Top slicing at her calves with a deer knife. What a bloody mess.

Unrated, it is playing at the West Tower and Chesterfield theaters

CHOPPING MALL (1986)

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GETTING MAULED AT THE MALL NOT A PRETTY SIGHT

Sun-Sentinel - November 3, 1986

Author: CANDICE RUSSELL, Film Writer

Just short of total worthlessness, Chopping Mall is a mean-spirited, savage horror film about robots run amok. A San Fernando Valley shopping mall is the setting for 78 minutes of unrestrained mayhem late one night. Crazed rats in a maze are more interesting to watch than a few couples in a technological nightmare.

Contrary to the print advertisements for the film, Chopping Mall has nothing to do with credit card fanatics getting their comeuppance for rampant consumerism. The victims are kids having a sex party in a furniture store long after the last shopper has gone home. The perpetrators are 2-foot-tall robots programmed as mall security guards, only their circuitry goes whooey in an electrical storm. All they do is zap their human prey and say, "Thank you, have a nice day."

Elevators, stairs, mannequins, air-conditioning ducts, steel doors and other things found in the mall are used by the terrified teens to evade the ravaging robots. Death for humans and machines occurs by means of electrocution, laser beam, fire, bullets, arrows, choking and crushing -- hardly pretty sights. The teens` characters, an ever-dwindling number, might call this violence "gross."

Director Jim Wynorski, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Steve Mitchell, can be credited with a modicum of suspense as the robots speed up to the next victim for instant annihilation. But Chopping Mall is a one-note samba, devoted to chasing, hiding, screaming and murder. Even teensy cameos by actors Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov, that diabolical pair from the camp comedy Eating Raoul, can`t blunt the impression of an unrelenting sadism at work.

MOVIE REVIEW

1/2 STAR) CHOPPING MALL

Teen-age revelers are pursued and destroyed by robots in a shopping mall.

Credits: With Kelli Maroney, Tony O`Dell. Directed by Jim Wynorski. Written by Jim Wynorski and Steve Mitchell.

Rated R Violence, coarse language, sex, nudity.

1 star Poor, 2 stars Fair, 3 stars Good, 4 stars Excellent
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MOVIE REVIEW- Let the (ticket) buyer beware: This `Mall's' a killer

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - September 23, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Scott Cain reviews the film "Chopping Mall."

"I guess I'm just not used to being chased around the mall in the middle of the night by killer robots." So says one out-of-breath character to another in "Chopping Mall," a horror yarn with a better-developed sense of humor than most.

In fact, there's nothing wrong with "Chopping Mall" that being toned down and shortened and put on "The Twilight Zone" wouldn't cure. At heart, this is a TV program. The film is only an hour and 15 minutes long - but that's too long. There are too many characters and they take too much time to be introduced, only to be bumped off.

"Chopping Mall" was filmed partially at Sherman Oaks Galleria in the Los Angeles area. This is the same mall that Arnold Schwarzenegger tore up in "Commando" and you can't help wondering whether Sherman Oaks makes more money being shattered by movie companies than from retail trade.

In this story, the mall is called Park Plaza 2000 and is newly-equipped with Protector 101 security robots, which look like miniature tanks and have more deadly gadgets than James Bond's company car. During a thunderstorm, the robots malfunction and murder their computer operator and a janitor (played by Dick Miller, a veteran of horror wars). The robots then become aware that teenagers are having an illicit party inside a furniture store.

A crucial difference between "Chopping Mall" and horror movies like "Friday the 13th" is that two of the teenagers are nice. Miracle of miracles! Allison (Kelli Maroney) and Ferdy (Tony O'Dell) exchange sweet flirtations and watch monster movies on TV while their friends are making whoopee on furniture-store beds.

Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov of "Eating Raoul" make an all-too-brief appearance as Mr. and Mrs. Bland, sarcastic merchants. Bartel and Woronov probably filmed their lines in a single day.

The robots, created by Robert Short and dozens of assistants, are credible villains. Only occasionally do you think that an adversary ought to be able to sneak up behind one of them and, if nothing else, topple it on its side.

Among the human actors, the only offensive performance is given by John Terlesky, as Mike, a smug preppie. Terlesky has discovered the scene-stealing potential of chewing gum and, being shameless, works his jaw overtime. Even as he collapses to the floor from wounds inflicted by a robot, his jaw continues to flap.

"Chopping Mall." A science-fiction thriller. Directed and co-written by Jim Wynorski. Rated R for violence, profanity and sexual situations.

SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE (1986)

2008-06-18T05:38:00.000-07:00

MOVIE REVIEW- `Massacre' is an unrealistic thriller

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - November 11, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT: STAFF

Movie Review : "Sorority House Massacre."

"Sorority House Massacre." A thriller. Rated R for plentiful violence, profanity and nudity.

By Scott Cain Staff Writer

"Sorority House Massacre" is even more humdrum than the shamelessly exploitative title suggests.

Four coeds who are the only weekend occupants of a Los Angeles sorority house are stalked by a psychopath. The girls have ample opportunity to escape, but they usually find that they have locked themselves inside the house and have misplaced the key. The two-story building has at least a dozen windows on the ground floor, but they never think to get out that way.

At one point, two of the intended victims actually make their way outside the house but can't think of a way to get out of the yard. We must hope that these are not the brightest students on campus.

As ever in stories of this type, the electricity goes off. This inconvenience does not prevent the girls from watching a horror movie on television. This is shortly before Bobby escapes from an asylum, having divined from brain waves that sister Beth, the only member of his family he did not kill a dozen years earlier, has moved back into the old homestead, which is now a sorority house. Beth realizes from brain waves that Bobby is on the way for a showdown but waits until he is outside t he door to inform her friends. She will not win the prize for Miss Considerate.

GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS (1986)

2008-06-18T05:35:00.000-07:00

'GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS,' SHOT IN VILLANOVA

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - November 14, 1986

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

Girls School Screamers began life under the more unassuming title of The Portrait. By any measure, it's not a pretty picture.

This low-budget and lower-minded splatter-fest is, to my knowledge, the first horror film shot in Villanova. And its director, John Finegan, may well be shot by irate Main Liners if he ever shows his face again in Villanova. After all, the Main Line is still a place where slice and dice is what the servants do to make tea sandwiches.

But the truth is you don't have to be a patron of the Devon Horse Show to say a loud nay to what Finegan has wrought in Girls School Screamers. Finegan is a Philadelphia filmmaker who reasoned that the best way to establish himself as a director would be to catch Hollywood's attention with a horror film. The depressing thing is that he's probably right. Going back to Roger Corman cheapies in the '60s, more than a few now-respected moviemakers got their start in what is literally hack work.

These days, however, a newcomer feels compelled to go a cut below the competition. And so, although the splatter movie seems to have run its course, the ones that do show up make sure that everything but the ox is gored in style. Finegan tries to inject some humor into his stream of blood, but nothing here emerges as more than strictly and remorselessly routine.

The title change is the result of his film being picked up by Troma Inc., the exploitation specialists who were recently represented by The Toxic Avenger. Finegan made Girls School Screamers for an amazing $87,000, but his lack of resources shows, and the acting is dismal. In this kind of movie that doesn't really matter, because the audience for it is simply waiting around for the killing to start.

Every excuse for putting good-looking women in the path of an inventive murderer has been used up by now. Finegan tries the one about the girls being required to stay for the weekend at an ominous mansion and to respond to
manifest danger with consistent stupidity. I suppose a man has to start somewhere. He has nowhere to go but up after Girls School Screamers.

GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS *

Produced by John Finegan, James Finegan and Pierce J. Keating, directed and written by John Finegan, photography by Albert R. Jordan, distributed by Troma.

Running time: 1 hour, 22 mins.

Jackie/Jennifer - Mollie O'Mara

Elizabeth - Sharon Christopher

Kate - Mari Butler

Parent's guide: R (violence)

Showing: At GCC Northeast 4 (midnight shows only)

THE HOWLING II : YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1986)

2008-06-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

BARGAIN BASEMENT SEQUEL A WASTE OF CAST AND FILM

Sun-Sentinel - November 15, 1986

Author: BILL KELLEY, Television Writer

The Howling II has been creeping into and out of South Florida off and on for weeks now, usually hitting the midnight circuits and never staying long enough for anyone to track it down and burn all the prints. But we can at least do the next best thing: warn you not to see it.

This follow-up to Joe Dante`s 1981 werewolf thriller is a sequel in name only. It begins at the funeral of the Dee Wallace character from that film -- a TV anchorwoman turned into a werewolf -- then jumps to modern Transylvania, where three intrepid werewolf hunters stalk the leader of a cult that has infested Los Angeles.

Want to know how bad this movie is? Christopher Lee is in it, as the hero, and he doesn`t give a good performance. Now, here`s a guy who has been in more than his share of movies that are beneath him, always playing them as if they were Shakespeare, but Howling II is so bad even he couldn`t rise above it. It`s like Laurence Olivier staggering through The Boys From Brazil.

Clairvoyance does not accompany acting skill, or probably no one -- not even Z-movie queen Sybil Danning, awful as ever as the lead werewolf -- would have appeared in this film. Everything is inept. You`ve never seen a movie with such a hurried, slapdash look.

Although shot in Czechoslovakia (doubling for Transylvania), the film fails to take advantage of the colorful location. The photography is worse than you`d see in a home movie, filled with jump cuts and unmotivated zooms (and the color is washed out and grainy due to cheap lab work). Phillippe Mora`s direction is thuddingly unimaginative. The zero budget allows no special effects. The makeups, what little we can see of them, looks like dime-store Halloween costumes. Forget the state-of-the-art makeups of the first Howling -- the filmmakers went to the bargain basement this time.

But the worst thing -- even worse than turning it into a sex- horror film with orgies (and you haven`t cringed until you`ve seen those) -- is the waste of its cast. Reb Brown, the male second banana, isn`t Spencer Tracy, but he was adequate in Uncommon Valor; he`s given nothing to do here. One of Lee`s talented British contemporaries, Ferdy Mayne (seen on U.S. television as a jewel thief on two Cagney & Lacey episodes), is killed off so quickly that his part could have been played by the drive r of the studio`s catering truck.

Horror fans waiting for Lee to do his first werewolf movie, and as the hero no less, were in for the rudest shock. Try as he does, not even he emerges with dignity. Howling II manages to make both him and the eastern European landscape seem dull -- which is no mean feat.

MOVIE REVIEW

(No stars) The Howling II

Three werewolf hunters journey from modern Los Angeles to Transylvania to destroy the leader of a cult of werewolves.

Credits: With Christopher Lee, Reb Brown, Sybil Danning, Annie McEnroe. Directed by Phillippe Mora.

Nudity, violence, gore, coarse language.
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`Howling II' nothing like facetious original

Houston Chronicle - March 18, 1986

Author: JEFF MILLAR, Staff

By calling the film "Howling II" (rated R), its makers commit a deception that in any other industry would make ambitious young lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice drool.

None of the principals involved in "The Howling," the cleverly facetious gross-out movie of a few years ago, had anything to do with this. No screenplay by John Sayles. No direction by Joe Dante. No Slim Pickens turning into a werewolf.

The filmmakers, unless my old eyes deceive me, evoke the progenitor film only by splicing into their film some of the turns-into-a-werewolf special effects used in "The Howling.

" This has to do with the surviving brother of the Dee Wallace character hitching up with a TV reporter and going along with Christopher Lee, as an "occult investigator," to Transylvania, motherland of werewolves, to put a stake through the heart of a witch.

It was written by Robert Sarno and Gary Brandon and directed by Philippe Mora. One senses that these filmmakers hoped for Sayles' and Dante's wryness. But they're a light year away from having enough talent to achieve their objectives. The movie is junk.

I extracted some cruel pleasure in watching Reb Brown and Annie McEnroe, as the brother and the TV reporter, struggling to find a way to deliver the nitwit dialogue. Lee, who's been delivering nitwit horror -movie dialogue since the Truman administration, knows how to protect himself. One imagines Brown and McEnroe after shots, shielding their eyes from the lights and looking out into the darkness that conceals the camera and saying, "Look, can someone give us a break?"

DEADTIME STORIES (1986)

2008-06-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

`Deadtime Stories' digs for horror in fairy tales

Houston Chronicle - December 2, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

"Deadtime Stories" lurks in a curious subgenre of the horror film: the anthology movie.

Such efforts rarely succeed. Two hours of unrelated vignettes is a difficult format to pull off, and even when it works - as with George Romero's "Creepshow" - box-office success is not assured.

That's because moviegoers are such a highly conditioned lot - perhaps more so than the audiences for any of the other popular arts. Movie audiences are so accustomed to a single plot with a beginning, a middle and an end that several short stories stitched together, to many people, may seem like a cheat.

Early television was more open to the format - anthology series were common in the '50s and early '60s. But they almost disappeared until 1984, when "Amazing Stories" and the revamped "Twilight Zone "and "Alfred Hitchcock" brought the short-story form back to television.

Those series have all drawn from the fantasy realm, which, in turn, is closely related to horror . And horror has been the focus of the few anthology films of any kind in recent years: "Tales From the Crypt" and "The Vault of Horror " in the early '70s, the made-for-TV "Trilogy of Terror" in 1975 and "Creepshow" in 1982.

Except for "Trilogy of Terror" - with its infamous voodoo-doll segment starring Karen Black - each of those films was patterned after the notorious E.C. comic books of the early 1950s. The producers must have figured horror is a lurid genre, so why not go for the gusto and adapt the grisly stories and vivid styles that prompted congressional hearings and almost destroyed the comics industry in an overprotective backlash?

"Deadtime Stories" ignores such notoriety. It goes elsewhere -

and earlier - for its material. It turns to fairy tales.

Not a bad idea, on the surface. There'senough violence and horror in fairy tales to satisfy the blood lust of many hard-core gore fans. A huntsman is ordered to carve out the heart of Snow White; an evil witch transforms herself into a flame-spewing dragon. Disney Productions, for all its respectability, has been offering these traumas for years in its animated fairy-tale adaptations.

But Disney has always played it straight. "Deadtime Stories "strives for horror with humor, and it doesn't work - at least, two-thirds of it doesn't.

This is the kind of film that plays best in theaters with torn screens and decades of snack-bar goo on the floors. It looks sleazy, with all the ambiance of a porno movie between the sex scenes. A few special effects are worthwhile, but the no-name cast can't act, and the production values are largely el cheapo. And unlike an old Roger Corman flick, it's not even cheap charm - it's dismal and dreary.

The obligatory framing device involves an impatient uncle telling warped versions of fairy tales to his insomniac nephew. He spins three yarns, and the first and last are losers: a plodding medieval plot about two bickering witches, and a camped-up "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (Goldie is a telekinetic Carrie type) that's gleefully vulgar without a touch of the wit it gropes for so desperately.

That leaves the middle segment, a modern-day retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood."

In this case, Red is Rachel, a teen-ager who gets her grandma's prescription mixed up with that of a junkie. He turns into a werewolf when he doesn't get his fix by nightfall - you take it from there. It's a wickedly ironic sendup of the familiar story, with a welcome twist at the end.

But if anthology films need one thing, it's consistency, and "Deadtime Stories" doesn't deliver.

Director and co-screenwriter Jeffrey Delman makes a game effort in his first outing. For all the film's R-rated excesses, there's a certain innocence about it, and you can sense he was aiming for more than the standard shock schlock.

Storytelling was more on his mind - but he doesn't pull it off. And when you don't tell a good tale in two tries out of three, that qualifies an anthology film as a failure.

Certainly, one successful half-hour is worth something, but when you have to sit through the bad to get to the good, you're better off staying at home.

There's always that old copy of "Grimm's Fairy Tales" to curl up with - and the originals were probably scarier than the retreads, anyway.
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MOVIE REVIEW- `Deadtime Stories' tells grim fairy tales

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - November 28, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Movie Review : "Deadtime Stories."

Papa Baer, Mama Baer and Baby Baer, three escaped mental patients, discover that there is an intruder inside their house in Amityville. In fact, the trespasser is in the shower. Papa Baer rips back the curtain and discovers a dizzy blonde. She is Goldi Lox, a murderess of tiptoe-through-the-tulips insouciance, and she is not a bit flustered at being discovered. "You were expecting perhaps Janet Leigh?" she asks perkily.

If this incident - a blunt vulgarization of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" - strikes you as funny, then "Deadtime Stories" will be your cup of tea. People who like horror in straighter form should hold out for "A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 3."

The connecting thread of "Deadtime Stories" is that Little Brian can't sleep and begs Uncle Mike, who is babysitting, to tell him just one more fairy tale. As bachelor uncles are prone to do, Mike tells stories that practically guarantee Brian will not go to sleep anytime soon.

The humor is ample but none too subtle. In the "Goldi Lox'' episode, the Baer family is being tracked by Officers Jack B. Nimble and Jack B. Quick. The Baers seem incapable of committing a crime on purpose, but Baby Baer is serving a sentence of 4,726 years.

In an episode based on "Little Red Riding Hood," Rachel is a shapely young woman who jogs through suburbs in a spiffy red outfit. She stops at a drugstore to pick up medicine for Granny, and the smitten pharmacist accidentally gives her the prescription for Willy, who needs sleeping pills to get him through nights with full moons.

When Willy discovers the error, he sets out for Granny's house to exchange packages. Unfortunately, Rachel hasn't arrived. She has stopped for a rendezvous with her boyfriend in a secluded area of a state park. By the time she arrives at Granny's, the moon is out and Willy has turned into a werewolf.

"Deadtime Stories" opens with a medieval tale in which Peter (played by "Family Ties" heartthrob Scott Valentine) is the slave of two witches. The hags want to revive their sister, who has been dead for 37 years. To complete the potion, they need a virgin and Peter is ordered to bring one to their cave. When a curvaceous blonde is laid out on a table in front of them, each of the bloodthirsty witches is anxious to perform the dirty deed, but Florinda takes precedence. "You can kill the next sacrifice," she says consolingly to Hanagohl, who sulks but is clearly putting the promise into a mental ledger.

Campy horror movies are few and far between. Writer-director Jeffrey Delman and producer Bill Paul worked on "Deadtime Stories" for four years, making another episode whenever they could raise more money. More power to them. Let's hope they don't have as much trouble next time.

"Deadtime Stories." A comic- horror trilogy, directed by Jeffrey S. Delman, who wrote the story and is a co-author of the screenplay. Rated R for abundant violence, nudity and profanity.

THE WRAITH (1986)

2008-06-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

'WRAITH': A HORROR , FOR SURE

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - November 24, 1986

Author: BEN YAGODA, Daily News Movie Critic

"The Wraith," a drama starring Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn and Randy Quaid. Written and directed by Mike Marvin. Running time: 89 minutes. A New Century Productions release. At area theaters.

The chief contribution of "The Wraith" to the teen/revenge genre is a significant shortening of what could be called the comeuppance quotient - the amount of time that elapses before the sadistically-warped villain starts getting the extremely painful punishment that is his due.

By my unofficial count, it took only 21 minutes before Packard Walsh, this film's sniveling sociopath, began getting zapped by the black Turbo Interceptor that is "The Wraith's" instrument of good. This not only shatters the previous record but suggests whole new horizons for teen/revenge.

Otherwise, the only remotely interesting thing about this mindless exercise is its casting, which displays a fetish about celebrity sons and siblings.

Charlie (son of Martin) Sheen brings new meaning to the word wooden as the automotically avenging wraith (Webster's: "apparition; also: ghost, specter") of a teen murdered by Packard (Nick Cassavetes, son of John C. and Gena Rowlands).

Packard is constantly accompanied by a veritable geek chorus of subhuman sidekicks, among whom number Griffin (son of Ryan) O'Neal and Clint (brother of Ron) Howard. And Randy (brother of Dennis) Quaid is the well-intention ed sheriff who vainly tries to make sense of it all.

Quaid is probably the only member of the entire cast who acquits himself with anything close to honor, but I was most saddened to see what had become of Howard.

Two decades ago, appearing with his brother on "The Andy Griffith Show" and with a bear on "Gentle Ben," he was quite possibly the cutest single person on television. The years have not been kind. In "The Wraith," playing a character named Rughead (and looking the part) he sports a grotesque pompadour and is forced to utter lines like "They were adiosed by the kid in the Turbo" and "Whoever he is, he's weird and p---ed off."

Parental guide: Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, idiocy

CREATURE (1985)

2008-06-16T19:52:00.001-07:00

KINSKI, EXPLODING HEADS SAVE THIS 'CREATURE' FEATURE

Miami Herald, The (FL) - May 28, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Creature is a clone of Alien (1979), even down to the advertising art work, which shows the creature bearing a marked resemblance to the alien -- something of a cross between an alligator and an anteater with an overdose of implacable evil thrown in. This makes Creature something of a genre straggler, the market for horror -in-space having peaked a couple years ago, and the film would be unremarkable except for the presence among the cast of Klaus Kinski, who is undeniably the weirdest star in contemporary motion pictures.

Kinski could probably name his project, but with very few exceptions -- Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo the most recent and notable -- he seems to prefer potboilers; as he said several years ago, "I like bad cinema."

Creature is indeed pretty bad, though it does have some competent effects work, including one of the better exploding- head sequences since Brian De Palma perfected the art in The Fury.

As it happens, however, Kinski's screen time is not large. He plays the lone survivor of a German deep-space research mission menaced by the creature, and as is so often the case in his "special-guest" appearances, his character acts according to motives that are at best obscure. His first move upon making contact with a rival American research team is the attempted rape of their security chief, a towering dominatrix named Bryce. Only after she whaps him around her neon-and-chrome boudoir does Klaus settle down and warn the rest of the folks what they're up against: a 200,000-year-old carnivore that controls its victims by putting little brain-eating crabs on their heads and letting them burrow for the cerebrum.

The only time Creature is at all fun is when the Kinski character reverts to form, lunging at Bryce while they're on patrol, cackling happily when she cuffs him across his life- support system. It's a shame when the braineater finally gets to him, and his head swells up.

By that time the movie is irredeemably formulaic, departing
from the plot of the far superior Alien only in minor detail. As usual, Kinski is ill-used by his pot-boiling bosses, who always miss the point: He makes a far better villain than the most fearsome of anteaters; he's even implacable.

Creature (R) **

CAST

Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Marie Laupin, Lyman Ward, Robert Jaffe, Annette McCarthy, Diane Salinger, Klaus Kinski.

CREDITS

Director: William Malone. Producers: William Dunn, William Malone. Screenwriters: William Malone, Alan Reed. Cinematographer: Harry Mathias. Music: Thomas Chase, Steve Rucker.

A CFR Corporation release. Running time: 92 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore.

Herald movie critics rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good ** 1/2 Worth Seeing ** Fair

* Poor Zero: Worthless
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'CREATURE' REVEALS ITSELF AS ANOTHER SCI-FI RIPOFF

SACRAMENTO BEE - April 29, 1985

Author: George Williams Bee Reviewer

YOU HAVE TO to admire the audacity of Creature with its bargain-basement sets, soap-opera acting - and its grand larceny of plot lines from about a dozen other sci-fi horror flicks. The backdrops and the actors are neatly woven into this claustrophobic adventure, and the stolen scenes were lifted from some very good movies.

When an American space vehicle lands on a moon of Saturn, it finds a German mission got there first, but there is no sign of life from the still-steaming craft. The American crew, half men, half women, is low on oxygen and attempts to borrow some from their European colleagues, only to find the Germans have been vulturized by an outer-space monster who is still hungry and still around.

The monster was aboard an ancient spaceship that crashed on the moon 200 centuries earlier. It was part of an insect collection gathered from throughout the universe. It was resting harmlessly in a cocoon until the earth visitors blundered onto it and cracked the cocoon's shell. As one of the earthlings says, It does not become a butterfly in the summer.

Among the actors, Klaus Kinski is particularly hammy as a German astronaut who turns up as the only survivor of his mission - or is he? Stan Ivar as the American commander, Wendy Schaal as his chief electronics officer, Lyman Ward representing the corporation that built the American craft and Diane Salinger as the security officer all seem to have learned their lines well and almost make it through the movie without tripping over the scenery.

The lighting is restrained, and most of the low-budget sets are hidden in shadows. This helps to heighten the realistic feeling of Creature, which is ably directed by William Malone, who also helped to write the derivative script. Malone keeps his cameras focused on tight little corners to create a closed-in kind of atmosphere that makes for some edge-of-the-seat moments when you forget you've seen this same story in a movie at least a dozen times before.

CREATURE

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Lyman Ward, Diane Salinger. Director: William Malone. Screenplay: Malone and Alan Reed. Photography: Harry Mathias. Distributor: Cardinal Entertainment Corp. and Trans Word Entertainment Inc. Running time: 91 minutes.

Arden, State, Birdcage, and Forty Niner and Sacramento drive-ins.

Rating: R, for violence, some nudity.

GHOULIES (1985)

2008-06-16T19:49:00.001-07:00

MOVIE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - May 31, 1985

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR: STAFF

GHOULIES: A "Gremlins" rip-off starring Peter Liapis and Lisa Pelikan. Movie Guide: code rating, PG-13; sex, one scene; violence, fairly graphic; nudity, none; language, perhaps an occasional profanity. Playing at selected theaters around town. `Ghoulies' not likely to frighten true horror -movie aficionados By Eleanor Ringel Film Editor

"Ghoulies" is a harmless "Gremlins" rip-off whose main attraction is a number of cleverly designed puppets that look like Muppets that have been through a Cuisinart.

The plot concerns a nice-enough college student named Jonathan (Peter Liapis) who inherits a not-very-nice mansion that was once home to a cabal of devil worshippers led by Jonathan's dad, Malcolm (Michael Des Barres).

Jonathan and his cute girlfriend, Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan), move in, but before you can say "hellzapoppin'," he's spending all his time reading Daddy's old books on dat ol' black magic. Guess what gets whom in its spell?

It takes Rebecca a little while to figure out what's going on until the day she comes home and finds her lover in the basement, dressed in Dad's conjuring clothes and summoning up an indoor thunderstorm. "Becky, you're home early," gulps our hero, sounding as if he's been caught with another woman instead of another dimension.

Rebecca packs her bags, but Jonathan, using his magic powers, gets her to come back and start dressing like a Charles Addams character. He also invites his buddies over for a heck of a dinner party in which, given the ghoulies' perverse appetites, the guests end up as the main course. Meanwhile, out back, Daddy has risen from the grave and is ready to show Sonny-boy that there's no ghoul li ke an old ghoul.

In its relatively restrained bloodletting and sporadic attempts at character development, "Ghoulies" is mercifully old-fashioned (i.e., early '60s). Compared to a ghastly thing such as "Superstition," it almost seems good-natured and well-written. Actually, it's neither, but the actors do try to keep straight faces - even during a party scene in which Trivial Pursuit and Charades are rejected in favor of A Ritual -and the director, Luca Bercovici, doesn't seem all that obsessed with staging a gory floor show.

The tongue-in-cheek ad - a ghoulie popping out of a toilet - is misleading, though possibly useful to more disenchanted movie critics. The film flirts with campiness, but is essentially straightforward about its ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties.

However, these things that go bump in the night aren't likely to turn up bumping around in your nightmares, either. As scary movies go, this one's only a little more frightening than Disney World's Haunted House.

A film-lore footnote: Jonathan conjures up a pair of non-puppet dwarfs dressed like extras from a midget's version of "The Ring of Nibelung." One of them, Tamara de Treaux, once spent a few months as E.T.'s innards.
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'GHOULIES' TAKES THE LOW ROAD

Boston Globe - April 27, 1985

Author: Michael Blowen, Globe Staff

High Concept.

This Hollywood phrase perfectly describes "Ghoulies" - a genetic misfit that wants us to believe it's a cross between two Steven Spielberg productions - "Gremlins" and the soon-to-be-released "Goonies."

Under the High Concept concept, the filmmakers needn't worry about quality direction, convincing performances and professional production design because the whole reason behind the movie is a title and advertising campaign.

The story is stupid. A couple moves into a house. The man conjures up spirits. The spirits harass her. She screams. He becomes a sorcerer. His father returns from the dead. They fight. Sonny wins. The couple drives away.

The production uses the old house as a single set, thereby cutting costs to a minimum. They save on actors by hiring a bunch of stiffs who'll seemingly do anytyhing to be in the movie business.

The producers may be jaded and sleazy with this sort of exploitation but they realize a fundamental law of the movie business - once the theater has your money, it's tough to get it back.

The advertisement will attract certain people to the theater under the false notion that it's a frightening monster picture. The ad features a Gremlin-like creature emerging from a toilet bowl. The patrons of horror films might be attracted by that. But, instead of capturing the audience, the producers have created a marvelous metaphor for their own behavior. May they reap what they have sown.

MOVIE REVIEW GHOULIES - Directed by Luca Bercovici, written by

Bercovici and Jefery Levy, starring Peter Liapis, Lisa

Pelikan, Michael Des Barres and Jack Nance as Wolfgang, at

the Cinema 57 and suburbs, rated PG-13 (violence).
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Ad for 'Ghoulies' really says it all

San Diego Union, The (CA) - January 22, 1985

Author: David Elliott, Movie Critic

For the Glasshouse Theater's first showing of "Ghoulies," 22 customers, including me, showed up. I was there to review. What's their excuse?

Maybe we were all siren-charmed by the ad. The one of a ghoulie, a little geek of gunk with snappy suspenders and sawmill teeth, rising up out of a toilet. Perhaps all of us hoped he'd be popping up in the movie with the Tidy Bowl man in his mouth. But in the film, Ghoulie comes out of the toilet once, for two seconds -- he's only there to justify the ad.

"Ghoulies" is a Dumb Teens in Creepy Old House movie. The leading character, Jonathan, comes from an old line of devil worshipers who did well in Los Angeles real estate. (Don't they all?) He has inherited the mansion, including the bulging, black magic library of his late father. After learning to babble in a kind of Spanish Latin with Transylvanian overtones, his eyes glow lime-green while frisky creepies, or "ghoulies," come out of the woodwork to do his bidding.

In my favorite scene, Jonathan has his satanic robes on and is starting to light up with infernal power down in the basement. His young wife, Rebecca, still in the dark about The Dark One, opens the door. They converse:

"Jonathan, what's going on here?"

"Rebecca, you're home early!"

Rebecca looks perplexed, but goes up to fix dinner. She must have read in Modern Bride that every husband needs a hobby. Later, of course, when she is in a zombie state and the dinner guests have been minced into leftovers by the ghoulies, she must realize (dimly, in her case) that Jonathan wasn't down there rehearsing for the office Halloween party. For horror flick teeny-heads like Rebecca, revelation is always a little too late.

Nothing in "Ghoulies" matches for impact the alluring ad, a pitch that's barely true to the movie but does, in essence, define the "genre." Director Luca Bercovici concedes creative control to special effects contriver John Buechler, who gets on a roll with his ghoulies. These snarling, skittering dermatological disasters drip pus and slime, but are sort of lovably revolting. They seem to know they're marketable, like the critters in "Gremlins."

The sagging truth is that most of the newer shock movies are so sullied by satirical irony that they're not scary. They're so busy "just kidding" that they barely go "boo." They seem to be made for teenagers who are nostalgic for the safe TV spooks of their childhood. For those of us with richer childhoods, the cry rises: "O Vincent Price, where art thou now?"

Here's another angle on the importance of "Ghoulies." Assuming that we 22 morbid suckers each paid $3 at the door, and didn't slip in through the theater plumbing, ghoulie-style, that means on a lovely afternoon in San Diego at least $66 went into the coffers of this, uh, film. But, hey man, why beef? Tell it to the kids in Ethiopia.

"Ghoulies" * An Empire Pictures release. Directed by Luca Bercovici. Produced by Jefery Levy. Photogaphy by Mac Halberg. Written by Luca Bercovici, Jefery Levy. Music by Richard Band, Shirley Walker. Rated PG-13. At local theaters. The Cast- Peter Liapis-Jonathan, Lisa Pelikan-Rebecca, Michael Des Barres-Malcolm, Jack Nance-Wolfgang.

FRIGHT NIGHT (1985)

2008-06-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

"FRIGHT NIGHT": A HORROR FLICK WITH LITTLE BITE - Special effects can't overcome the thin plot of this minor piece of the macabre

The Dallas Morning News - August 12, 1985

Author: Robert Denerstein, Scripps Howard News Service

Sprinkle them with holy water and they blister. Shove a crucifix in their faces and they cringe. Lure them onto the sunny side of the street and they're history.

We're talking vampires. We're also talking Fright Night, a wild fun house of a movie that contains one of the more menacing members of the breed and some ghoulishly rewarding special effects.

The vampire in Fright Night is played by Chris Sarandon, who gives a finely exaggerated performance, something on the order of Chris Sarandon doing Joan Crawford.

Sarandon's Jerry Dandridge is a vampire who's as at home in a disco as he is in his coffin. He's not afraid to flash his beautiful teeth; to quote Billy Crystal, he looks "mahvelous.'

But unlike George (Love At First Bite) Hamilton, Sarandon isn't lovable. Anger him and he goes for the jugular.

The story begins when Jerry moves next door to Charley (Wil-

liam Ragsdale), a teen-ager who lives with his mom. Jerry, not exactly the ideal neighbor, lives in a rickety house that has so much eerie, horror -movie smoke seeping out of it, it seems an apt target for an environmental impact statement. There's more. Every morning, a body (remains from the previous night's fun) is carted out of the house in a garbage bag.

One night, Charley looks out of his window and sees Jerry take a bite from his date's neck. This raises a big question: If you're the average teen-ager, just how do you persuade others that you're telling the truth about the vampire next door? Even your girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) won't believe you. Neither will Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), the weirdest kid in town, the one with the Jack Nicholson smile and the porcupine haircut.

In desperation, you consult a TV personality, a washed up actor (Roddy McDowall), who's doing an Elvira-like turn on a local TV station. He's Peter Vincent, vampire killer. Not surprisingly, he's a fraud.

All of this is efficiently handled by first-time director Tom Holland, who builds toward an effective special-effects finale.

Consider the wolf, the one that creeps toward its doom with a stake in its heart. Or how about Sarandon's transformations, like the one from vampire to sharp-toothed bat.

Holland, who also wrote the script, pokes fun at recent slasher films in which young virgins are hacked apart by maniacs in ski masks.

This time the young virgin is seduced by a vampire in a couple of erotic scenes. Ms. Bearse makes a convincing transformation from teen-ager to woman to, well, go see for yourself.

Don't expect a masterpiece of the macabre. The plot is thin, the movie isn't as funny as it thinks it is and there's sloppiness in the script, the unexplained disappearance of Charley's mother from the story, for example.

Fright Night, R-rated with profanity, nudity and violence, is strictly a jolt-and-bolt affair that stays close to the surface. Although it never gives you much to sink your teeth into, it does deliver the nerve-wracking goods.
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"FRIGHT NIGHT' SCARES UP LAUGHTER

Akron Beacon Journal (OH) - August 6, 1985

Author: Bill O'Connor, Beacon Journal movie critic

Suppose you went to see a stage show and the entertainer came out and
told sly little jokes, made wry comments on familiar aspects of life.

Then, suddenly, the guy sat down on a chair and told you a serious story
about an ax murderer.

Not the best combination for an entertainment. Well, much the same problem
afflicts Fright Night, the latest vampire movie. It's not that Fright Night is a bad retelling of the vampire story. In fact, the plot is interesting. Chris Sarandon is an hypnotic vampire, and the idea of Roddy McDowall playing a
fading horror -movie star has possibilities.

But Fright Night gets stuck in the goo of its own muddy conception of
itself. Writer and director Tom Holland just can't make up his mind. Much of
Fright Night is in the general tone of Love At First Bite, where we laughed at the whole vampire idea.

Yet, other parts of Fright Night, especially the last 20 minutes or so when the special effects are trotted out, are serious attempts at making a vampire/ horror movie.

The story is that high schooler Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), while
smooching with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse), glances out the window and notices some strange activity. Charley notices two men carrying a coffin into the house next door. The men, the suave Jerry Dandridge (Sarandon), and his
cold-eyed sidekick, Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), are new neighbors.

There are several murders in the city, and Charley begins to notice more
strange activities next door. Finally, he realizes that Jerry is a vampire.

The cops won't believe him, so Charley seeks help from Peter Vincent
(McDowall), the ex-movie star who now hosts a TV show, Fright Night.
Charley reasons that Vincent would be able to prove that Jerry is more than
your average guy with big teeth.

As Charley is drawn more deeply into the activities next door, so is his
girlfriend. In all vampire movies, there is a strong sexual undercurrent.
That, in fact, is the main appeal of these movies, an appeal that Love At
First Bite exploited so well. That sexual undertone is the only memorable
thing about Fright Night, and that is only because of one scene in which Jerry dances an erotic, seductive dance with Amy as she is drawn hypnotically to
him.

The change in tone, the shifting of gears, though, grinds the movie's good
points into dust. For most of the movie, Vincent is played as a fool, a
pompous minor leaguer. Stephen Geoffreys is just awful as Evil Ed, Charley's
buddy. Geoffreys plays him in such a manic way that we can get no handle on
who Ed is. The romance of Charley and Amy is played strictly for laughs, a
will- she-or-won't-she farce.

All this is changed abruptly at the end when we're supposed to get involved in a serious vampire hunt, one that is filled with danger.

In these climatic scenes, there are a lot of special effects -- melting bad guys, fangs, horrible faces -- but they fail to involve us. They fail because the story and characters, at this point, exist to serve the special effects,
and it should be the opposite.

The overall problem is that we don't fear what we laugh at.

Movie review : Fright Night Stars: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale Director: Tom Holland Studio: Columbia Pictures Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes Theaters: Akron Square, Chapel Hill, Kent Plaza, Belden Village and Gala and Magic City drive-ins Rating: R for language and violence * *
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MOVIE REVIEW- `Fright Night' puts bite on audiences with ghoulish fun

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - August 5, 1985

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Fright Night: Written and directed by Tom Holland. Movie Guide: code rating, R; sex, mildly implied; violence, considerable; nudity, some female; language, a few bursts of profanity. Opens today at metro-area theaters.

"Fright Night" is hardly a classic horror flick, but it has several stunning moments and is infinitely more subtle and witty than "Friday the 13th."

Tom Holland, the writer and novice director, was previously known as the author of scripts for "Cloak & Dagger," "Psycho II" and other thrillers. "Fright Night" is his pet project, a long-awaited opportunity to tell a version of "the boy who cried wolf."

His teenage hero, Charley, correctly deduces that the new neighbor is a vampire, but he can't convince anyone about the supernatural menace even after grisly murders take place in the community.

When friends and police turn a deaf ear to Charley's warnings, he seeks the aid of Peter Vincent, a ham actor who hosts a TV monster-movie show. By accident, Peter becomes convinced of the vampire threat, but he is a coward and retreats to his shabby apartment. Charley is left alone to battle the powerful enemy.

Chris Sarandon plays the vampire in the glamorous-romantic-smart style of Frank Langella. This is unquestionably Sarandon's most entertaining film performance. You believe that he could bamboozle the police, charm gullible middle-aged ladies and debauch innocent teenagers all in the same evening.

In an intriguing variation on routine, the vampire's assistant is played as a pink-cheeked jock by Jonathan Stark. Endless speculation could center around this master/

slave relationship.

William Ragsdale is alert and frisky as Charley, the hero. His nerdish friend is played by Stephen Geoffreys, a resourceful actor who brings more emotion to the part than it deserves. After a chase down the longest and most deserted alley in modern America, he becomes one of the vampire's first victims. Later, when he is one of the "undead," Geoffreys has a powerful scene, but it is ruined by the comically massive fangs with which his mouth is outfitted.

Peter Vincent, the TV host, is not a consistently written character. He alter nates abruptly between quivering cowardice and stalwart heroism. Roddy McDowall, never an actor to worry about such trifles, milks the role for all it's worth. He is clearly having a great time and is a major contributor to the movie's sense of fun.

It's too bad that Charley's mother (played by Dorothy Fielding) is the most cartoonish sort of movie parent. She is distracted to the point of imbecility. This really wasn't necessary.

Another irritation is that Charley is strangely ignorant of vampire lore. This is an unconvincing lapse since he stays up late every night to watch horror movies on television.

Finally, there is not much consistency in the use of remedies. At one point, Peter Vincent has already successfully used a cross to foil a vampire. When he tries the method again, he has no luck and is informed that it's because he doesn't have faith. If so, why did the trick work the first time?

Caption: The last two paragraphs did not appear in the final edition.
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A MOVIE CAPTURES THE TEENAGE GORY DAYS

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 3, 1985

Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic

Hollywood figured it out about 30 years ago: Teenagers make up the biggest chunk of the horror -movie audience.

In the '50s, we got high-schooler Steve McQueen battling The Blob and Michael Landon sprouting werewolf hair. In the '60s, Count Yorga stalked the Southern California beach-party set.

In the '70s, the monster angle was dropped completely. Who needs vampires or giant spiders? Splatter flicks offered enthusiasts exactly what they were seeking in its most gory, undiluted form: promiscuous teens stalked and butchered by a huge, masked maniac wielding a phallic knife.

Now, in a blatant attempt to tap the same exploitation audience, we are given Fright Night, a special-effects bloodfest combining Risky Business-style teen antics with the staples of vintage vampire flicks. Written and directed by Tom Holland, whose witty script was the best part of 1983's Psycho II, it will be of interest only to devotees of state-of-the-art gore.

Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is your basic small-town teen. He goes to school. He hangs out at the fast-food joints. On TV he watches junky monster movies introduced by a faded horror -movie actor named Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall).

And he's got sex problems. He and his cute-as-a-button girlfriend don't seem to connect. When they get intimate, they get awkward - they're hopelessly stalled in the transition to post-virginhood.

All of a sudden, a suave gent moves in next door. Jerry Dandrige, played with smooth aplomb by Chris Sarandon, oozes sex appeal. Every night it seems some beautiful woman is going into his house. Only problem is, they never come out.

Charley begins to suspect that Mr. Dandrige is not your ordinary neighbor - that, perhaps, he sucks blood for a living. Naturally, nobody believes him. Not even pathetic Vincent, who has been fired by the local TV station and wants nothing to do with this wild-eyed teen.

What's Charley to do but sharpen a few stakes, surround himself with crucifixes and prepare to do battle with the neighborhood creature of the night?

On paper, it's a wonderful idea - Spielberg-style teens stalking a vampire. But Holland undercuts the material by making just about every wrong move possible.

Fright Night's tone is inconsistent. Instead of giving the story a sense of the fantastic, Holland keeps matters morbid, even threatening. Elements of camp are tossed around casually, but the humor is flat. Holland never uses them in the classic fashion - to deflate tension.

Nor does Holland show any dexterity with his actors. They either are poorly cast or they emote shamelessly. Only Sarandon has the poise to overcome this lack of creative direction.

Fright Night's violent effects are frequent and intense. It's not so much splatter-movie gore, where heads are lopped off by giant axes swung from the darkness. It's people turning into animals with plenty of makeup, oozing slime and tiny, mechanical creatures.

But the biggest problem is that Holland doesn't understand that this type of fright fantasy only works when the director places his characters in a realistic setting. You have to believe the characters could actually exist or there's no sense of exhilaration when the plot takes a turn for the bizarre.

The truth is, Holland's not really interested in his characters. He doesn't care enough to breathe life into them. They're just imitations of teens we've seen a thousand times before.

Holland wants to get to the gore as fast as he can and then keep it splashing. Which is what Fright Night is all about.

FRIGHT NIGHT * *

Produced by Herb Jaffe, written and directed by Tom Holland, photography by Jan Kiesser, music by Brad Fiedel, distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 32 mins.

Jerry Dandrige - Chris Sarandon

Charley Brewster - William Ragsdale

Amy Peterson - Amanda Bearse

Peter Vincent - Roddy McDowall

Evil Ed - Stephen Geoffreys

Billy Cole - Jonathan Stark

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult situations)
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MAKEUP MAKES SCARY FILM

SACRAMENTO BEE - August 3, 1985

Author: George Williams Bee Reviewer

IT'S BEEN A lot of years since we've had a real, visually scary vampire movie. To match the kind of stunning impact provided in the new 'Fright Night,' you'd have to go way back to Lon Chaney - The Man of a Thousand Faces

in the silent era.

The star of 'Fright Night' is the makeup man, Richard Edlund, the Oscar-winner who created the special makeup effects for movies like 'Ghostbusters' and 'Poltergeist,' not to mention the 'Star Wars' trilogy. His vampire effects are superb.

This is not to take away from Roddy McDowall and Chris Sarandon, whose* acting lifts 'Fright Night' immeasurably. Sarandon, a respected Broadway performer, displays the right combination of sexuality and danger to make the vampire a credible creature. And McDowall, the former MGM child star, seems to get better with age. He has the especially difficult challenge of playing a bad actor, a former horror movie star like Vincent Price. He's funny and wonderfully convincing.

The story is about a teenager, Charley Brewster, who discovers a vampire has moved in next door. No one believes him, of course, when he tries to get help. Neither his mother nor his lover, Amy. Not the police. Not even his best friend, Evil Ed Thompson.

But the former horror film star, Peter Vincent, takes an interest. Probably because Vincent's creature-features television show has been canceled and the ham actor sees Charley's problem as a way to make some easy money.

But Jerry Dandridge, the vampire, is more than a mere problem. When you can come out of your grave at night and present yourself as a handsome and mesmerizing playboy with superhuman strength, well, not even your own mother is safe from his lust to suck the blood out of people while they sleep. It's going to take more than crucifixes and garlic to bring this vampire down to size.

Edlund may have created the ultimate in vampire makeup and optical effects to make the Jerry Dandridge monster believable. So believable, in fact, that you feel a seam. The first half of the movie is funny horror . The second half, the Edlund half, well, there's nothing funny about it. It's just plain horror .

Director Tom Holland is a former actor who knows how to give actors room to do their thing. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA and a California attorney, he has written a number of heralded screenplays, including the script for 'Psycho II.' He's an Alfred Hitchcock fan, which shows clearly in the inventiveness and black humor of 'Fright Night,' his directing debut. FRIGHT NIGHT Cast: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall, William Ragsdale, Amanda Pearse, Stephen Geoffreys. Writer-director: Tom Holland. Producer: Herb Jaffe. Photography: Jan Kiesser. Production design: John De Cuir Jr. Editor: Kent Beyda. Music: Brad Fiedel. Distributor: Columbia.

Sacramento Inn, State, Birdcage, and Sacramento and Forty Niner drive-ins.

Rating: R, for scaring the daylights out of you.
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'FRIGHT NIGHT' IS TERRIFIC

Boston Globe - August 2, 1985

Author: Jay Carr, Globe Staff

Could Tom Holland be the next Ron Howard? Like Howard, Holland is a TV actor turned film director, and I'd say he has a future. His first feature, "Fright Night," is a clever comedy of horrors -

a slick reworking of the Dracula legend into contemporary terms for the teen market. It begins by using the same kind of

lurid lettering emblazoned across cheap late-night horror movies. But Holland has more on his mind than campy parody. He doesn't just use the Dracula iconography. He clearly understands the subtexts in that most Victorian of novels, and parades them across the screen in elegantly creepy ways, putting a real charge on his material.

His starting point is the fact that in this supposedly rational age, nobody believes in vampires. When one moves next door to teenager William Ragsdale, and Ragsdale tells his mother and the cops, his mother's reaction is predictable: "Want a Valium?" He bombs when he goes to the cops, even though he saw the vampire's buddy carry out a body. Ironically, the vampire is the only one who believes him. The catch is that the vampire intends to kill him that night, and almost does, as the world, starting with his lonely, divorced mother, turns a deaf ear. To them, he's just the boy who cried bat.

Rightly, the film is built around Chris Sarandon's seductive powers as the vampire. He gains access to the boy's house by seducing the boy's mother. Like Frank Langella in the recent stage version of "Dracula," Sarandon is sexy. As Bram Stoker's original did, he zeroes in on his adversary's woman. The kid's girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) is afraid of sex, but clearly fascinated by it. In short, she's ripe for a Dracula - a projection of her fears and desires - and fangs of her own. Even the kid's be st friend, played by that disheveled leprechaun, Stephen Geoffreys, is skeptical, and it costs him. He's turned into the contemporary version of Dracula's disciple, the fly-eating Renfield.

Ragsdale's only ally for the late-night showdown in the vampire's chic, restored Victorian gothic digs is Roddy McDowall, the local late-night TV horror movie host, who once hunted vampires on screen himself, but whose crucifix has been gathering dust, and who isn't inclined to believe Ragsdale. Still, he and "Fright Night" know their way around crucifixes and garlic. The duel is a good one. The often gushing special effects really seem special. Sarandon is a vampire in whose evil powers we can believe, even during the film's light moments, when it barely skirts self-parody. There's a lot of deft work on view here, including Ragsdale's frightened young hero, which means the director must have done something right in back of the camera as well a s in front of the word processor. "Fright Night" is a clammy winner.
Caption: PHOTO

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW FRIGHT NIGHT - Directed and written by Tom Holland.

Starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse,

Stephen Geoffreys, Roddy McDowall. At the Cinema 57 and

suburbs, rated R (impalings, dismemberments, simulated sex).
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'FRIGHT' RECALLS HORROR OF THE GOOD OLD NIGHTS
Miami Herald, The (FL) - August 2, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Fright Night is not what you think. It is not just another wheeze from the slasher cartel, nor does it star Linda Blair. It's not Citizen Kane, either, but what the heck: This is summer.

Fright Night is about the vampire who moves in next door, and according to director Tom Holland, it's an attempt to "update" the whole idea of Dracula. But what it does best is quite the opposite: Fright Night resurrects the blissful naivete and dizzy plot implausibilities of the great wave of horror films of the 1950s and '60s, the Bronze Age of cinema.

It's daffy and sweet and sometimes unintentionally funny. It's even scary in its closing moments, when the genre- sanctified confrontation -- a boy with a wooden stake against the suave undead -- is re-enacted wholly without irony, as if Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Hammer Films, not to mention Bela Lugosi and Abbott and Costello, had never drawn blood.

Holland is a screenwriter (Class of 1984, Psycho II, Cloak and Dagger) making his directing debut, and his idea of something new is to have teen-agers discover odd doings next door, and turn to a washed-up horror -film star (played by Roddy McDowall with epochal fidgetiness) for help. The teens are
sexually repressed, but this is not really new; the vampire legends ooze Freud.

Holland was smart enough to keep the good old stuff in, too, from shape shifting to tricks of the undead trade (a vampire may not enter your house to bite you unless he has been invited in by the "rightful owner"). The cast plays them out with all the corn and plot holes (where is everyone else in the neighborhood, much less the cops, when the screams start in the old manse?) of the vintage Dracula spin-offs.

What's fun about Fright Night is that comforting sense of deja vu, by which one feels oneself stepping back, back, back in time, to an era when horror films were unabashedly dumb.

Fright Night is as silly as a film about hungry ghouls can be, and with the exception of an eccentric-teen turn by Stephen Geoffreys, a spiky-haired supporting player who looks as if he just wandered in from The Breakfast Club, there isn't really a "modern" moment in it. The movie is bloody and gruesome and quite harmless, just the way they made them "in the good old days."

Fright Night (R) ** 1/2

CAST: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amada Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark.

CREDITS: Director: Tom Holland. Producer: Herb Jaffe. Screenwriter: Tom Holland. Cinematographer: Jan Kiesser. Music: Brad Fiedel. A Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 104 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore.

Herald movie reviewers rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent; *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good; ** 1/2 Worth Seeing; ** Fair

* Poor; 0 Worthless
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'FRIGHT NIGHT'

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - August 2, 1985

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Fright Night." A thriller starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys, Amanda Bearse and Roddy McDowall. Written and directed by Tom Holland. Photographed by Jan Kiesser. Edited by Kent Beyda. Music by Brad Fiedel. Running time: 100 minutes. A Columbia release. In area theaters.

Well, now, it's been a long time between fright flicks.

Time was, many of us were members of the Horror -of-the-Week Club, what with the assorted "Omen," "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" installments released on cue and ready to sow seductive seeds of corruption in our sleep. Every week, they invaded our mass consciousness, and then, poof! All of a sudden, they were gone.

Fear not, the genre is not dead and certainly not buried; it's back - and it's as vicious and mechanical as ever.

First, we had George Romero's "Day of the Dead," an unsettling tale of flesh-eating zombies, a mad doctor and medical zealotry. And now we have Tom Holland's "Fright Night," which is no less than a youth version of that old horror chestnut, the blood-sucking vampire movie.

This is a first, says Holland, who refuses to acknowledge "Love at First Bite" and "The Hunger," two vampire fables that respectively featured such creaky actors as George Hamilton, Susan Saint James and Richard Benjamin, and David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Holland means to pump new blood into the genre. (The pun is very much intended.)

The difference between "Fright Night" and other fright flicks is that Holland's film generally is dominated by an innocence. In fact, it is very much an innocent version of "Day of the Dead." Both films feature supernaturals - either vampires or the undead - who feed on the living in order to survive.

"Fright Night" is amiably gross and not one whit sexually retro. What I mean is that, unlike "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th," this film does not resort to using horror as a punishment for sexual curiosity. Random screwing or petting is not followed by a blood ritual here. There is no random screwing or petting here. Sex, in fact, has almost nothing to do with it and, blessedly, "Fright Night" also is free of the usual direct scatological references.

Of course, these omissions do not necessarily make "Fright Night" a good movie. For one thing, it is a structural mess, alternating a campy tone with a tragic one and leaving the viewer (at least, this viewer) feeling discombobulated, instead of with a feeling of dread. The film also has one too many ugly little creatures, covered with saliva, snot and fecal-looking matter. Its scatological references are indirect. As I said earlier, this movie is gross.

Holland's plot is about a nitwit named Charley Brewster (newcomer William Ragsdale), who spends far too much time alone in his room watching old horror movies on creepy Peter Vincent's TV show. Vincent (played by Roddy McDowall) claims to be a real-life vampire killer (actually, he's a ham actor) and specializes in showing vampire movies.

Well, to make a long story short, Charley becomes convinced that the two single gentlemen who have moved in next door are vampires. Nobody believes him, of course, and to add injury to insult, the head vampire (Chris Sarandon) elects to recruit Charley's sexually frightened girlfriend, Amy (Amanda Bearse). Amy is no fool; she knows what happens to girls who sleep with their boyfriends: In horror films, they usually end up hacked up.

Holland, who makes his directorial debut here (he previously scripted ''Psycho II" and "Cloak and Dagger") has consummately crafted his movie and has filled it with more ideas than most big movies you can name. He could be the man to bring the horror movie out of the dark ages. He knows how to create a catharsis.

What he hasn't learned is how to integrate these ideas, which accounts for ''Fright Night's" structural mess.

Parental guide: Rated R for its gory effects.
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STRA-A-ANGE A PAIR OF NEW MOVIES DEMONSTRATES HOW FUNNY THE NIGHTMARISH CAN BE

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - August 2, 1985

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

THERE'S some seriously weird stuff going on at the movies these days. We're talking cuckoo-crazy, as in stra-a-ange. But don't be alarmed. The odd goings-on in "Fright Night" and "Weird Science" (both opening today) will have you laughing so hard you'll almost forget your fears.

Almost -- but not quite.

As every spooky spoof from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" to "Ghostbusters" reminds us, the horror genre with its creaky cliches and moldy monsters is perfect for teasing.

And that's exactly what the two young filmmakers behind today's new arrivals have done, in films that flit easily from the stylish to the silly, from the erotic to the eerie.

And with this range working for them, it's a safe bet that both will become required summertime viewing for the out-of- school-and-ready-to- howl set.

The more conventional "Fright Night" is an ingenious reworking of the Dracula legend. Only here the hero is a small-town kid with a vivid imagination, the vampire is a Valentino-suave neighbor played by Chris Sarandon, and the fearless vampire killer is a cowardly horror -movie star who's now hosting a "Creature Feature"-type TV program.

But don't go expecting another zany "Love at First Bite" lark. Though there are laughs aplenty in "Fright Night," written and directed by Tom Holland, there are also wonderfully nauseating makeup and bat effects that will have you hiding under your seat.

Indeed, Holland, who wrote "Psycho II" and last summer's overlooked "Cloak & Dagger," has whipped up the best tongue- in-cheek chiller since Joe Dante's "The Howling." And just as the Dante film revitalized the werewolf yarn, "Fright Night" gives the vampire melodrama a much-needed transfusion of humor and suspense.

And just as you think Holland has played his last devilish prank, he one-ups himself with more gruesome surprises and throwaway comedy touches (like the vampire throwing sparks by dragging his long fingernails along a banister).

Newcomer William Ragsdale plays Charley Brewster, a horror - movie buff who spies new neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Sarandon) with his next luscious victim. Charley spends the rest of the movie trying to convince his mom and friends that the mutilation murders being reported nightly are the work of an honest-to-gosh vampire.

Making matters even more frustrating is the fact that Dandrige is a smug charmer who mocks Charley's every feeble attempt to expose him. Like all the best fiends, Dandrige delights in taunting his adversary.

And when he really gets mad, Dandrige puts the bite on Charley's girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and his already wacked-out buddy (Stephen Geoffreys of "Fraternity Vacation").

Holland, who doesn't always play fair with vampire lore and logic, has great fun making his hero squirm. At every turn Dandrige outsmarts his young crucifix-wielding opponent (Roddy McDowall as the TV show host). Worse, that blankety-blank bloodsucker mesmerizes Amy at the local disco in what has to be one of the hottest, funniest seduction scenes in recent years.

Sarandon really comes into his own as the supercilious vampire who becomes a howling, red-eyed banshee from hell when miffed. Geoffreys is also a scream as the freaky friend who's basically an insecure loser. This is really the old Renfield/ Igor role given a New Wave slant.

Credit Richard Edlund of "Ghostbusters" fame with the amazing visual effects, which include an appallingly graphic reverse transformation from wolf to boy and a dive-bombing vampire bat that's about the size of B-52 bomber.

What Edlund's makeup people do to Bearse's lovely smile in the final basement crypt scenes will have you tossing in your sleep for weeks to come.

'Weird Science" is something else again -- a deliriously funny mix of "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Risky Business," "The Road Warrior" and such vintage Disney hoots as "The Shaggy Dog" and "The Absent-Minded Professor."

Since we're title-dropping, we should add that it's a color-tinted print of that 1935 classic, "The Bride of Frankenstein," that inspires our two young nerd heroes to show up the preppy bullies at school by creating their very own dream girl.

''Just like Frankenstein -- 'cept cuter," drools Gary (Anthony Michael Hall of "Sixteen Candles" and "Breakfast Club").

''I'm not digging up any dead girls," whines the shyer Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), who lives in mortal terror of his older brother, the snarling CroMagnum (sic) with the boot-camp crewcut.

Of course things have been refined a bit since Dr. Frankenstein's days on the moor. Now our heroes blend computer science with voodoo and a bit of old-fashioned studio fog to create a living doll named Lisa (Kelly LeBrock of "The Woman in Red").

Their toughest decision: Whether to favor boobs over brains.

''I want her to live. I want her to breathe. I want her to aerobicize," Gary rants in a hilarious variation on the original Frankenstein's exultant "It lives!"

As it turns out, Lisa is as bright and brassy as she is beautiful. And this works out just fine, because she can protect her horny creators from threatening elders, as well as lecture them on the importance of friends who "like you for what you are, not what you pretend to be."

In other words, the boys have hit the jackpot -- a centerfold nanny who shelters them at night and showers with them in the morning.

''Weird Science" runs out of things to say and do, so eventually it resorts to repetitious sight gags and effects as well as the obligatory car chase. But there's still more to howl over here than in any five other teen comedies.

Once again John Hughes ("Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club"), who also wrote the script, proves himself a master at capturing high-school angst. His young Frankensteins possess all the intensity and nervousness of real misfits, not the cartoonish "Goonies" variety.

And Mitchell-Smith and Hall complement each other beautifully. The former is charming and painfully shy; the latter mouthy and naughty. The mix results in some of the year's funniest moments -- first at a blues bar (where Hall becomes a rappin' "Saaay whaaat?" soul brother), then at a wild and crazy party that's crashed by a Pershing missile and a gang of motorcycle mutants straight out of "Mad Max."

''Weird Science" is a weird concoction all right -- weird, wonderful and unexpected.

Fright Night

(star)(star)(star) 1/2

R (fleeting nudity, nauseating makeup effects)

Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall Director-screenwriter: Tom Holland

Studio: Released by Columbia Pictures

Weird Science

(star)(star)(star)

PG-13 (profanity, nudity,

emphasis on sex)

Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock, Ilan Mitchell-Smith

Director-screenwriter: John Hughes

Studio: Released by Universal Pictures
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`FRIGHT TAKES DRACULA'S LEGACY IN VEIN

The Record (New Jersey) - August 2, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record
MOVIE REVIEWS

FRIGHT NIGHT: Written and directed by Tom Holland. Director of photography, Jan Kiesser. Music by Brad Fiedel. Editor, Kent Beyda. Special effects coordinator, Richard Edlund. With Chris Sarandon (Jerry), William Ragsdale (Charley), Amanda Bearse (Amy), Roddy McDowall (Peter), Stephen Geoffreys (Evil Ed), and others. Produced by Herb Jaffe. A Vistar Films Production released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 106 minutes. Opens locally today. Rated R: gore, violence, strong language.

57th St. Playhouse, Manhattan. Rated G.

Let's face it. Vampire movies have become a pretty toothless genre.

Sure, we all have fond memories of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. But "Psycho" (1960) marked a turning point in the American horror film. And the real-life horrors (assassinations, the Vietnam war) of the 1960's made the notion of stylish, undead villains lusting after the blood of virgins seem fairly ludicrous. The dull-witted, decidedly unromantic zombies of "The Night of the Living Dead" were a more apt Zeitgeist. They were succeeded by a series of ax-wielding maniacs ("Halloween," "Friday the 13th") determined to mete out punishment to heroines foolish enough to indulge in the new sexual permissiveness.

With the exception of Herzog's "Nosferatu, the Vampyre" and the Frank Langella "Dracula," more recent attempts to return to the classical genre have been unsuccessful. Perhaps screen audiences have become so sophisticated that vampire movies are almost automatically greeted with titters. Who could forget the spectacle of Catherine Deneuve hunkering down into Susan Sarandon's jugular in "The Hunger"? It's no accident that "Lifeforce" wherein vampire aliens from Halley's comet turn London's population into zombies inadvertently turned into one of this summer's funniest movies.

State-of-the-art effects

During the last decade, most of the few vampire movies played it for laughs: George Romero's "Martin," "Court Yorga Vampire," and the best of the genre, "Love at First Bite," with George Hamilton. Now we have "Fright Night," which tries to combine spoofery with gory, state-of-the-art special effects by Richard Edlund ("Ghostbusters," "Lifeforce"). It's like mixing oil and water.

Not that debuting director Tom Holland (he wrote "Psycho II" and "Cloak and Dagger") has anything more than mild chuckles up his sleeve. It's a basic variation on the boy-who-cried-wolf story, about a suburban teen-ager (William Ragsdale) who catches a glimpse of his new next-door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) carrying on the rites of the undead. Unable to persuade his mother or the police that property values are in danger, Ragsdale tries to enlist the aid of Roddy McDowall, a broken-down vampi re movie star who's just been sacked from a job hosting his old flicks on television. ("All they want is demented young men in ski masks hacking up young virgins! ")

McDowall understandably takes Ragsdale as a loony, but is enlisted through the efforts of the kid's girlfriend (Amanda Bearse). She doesn't believe him, either, but pays McDowall to reassure Ragsdale that Sarandon really isn't a vampire. Only it turns out Sarandon doesn't cast a shadow, and McDowall winds up fighting a real, as opposed to reel, vampire. You get the general idea. . . .

Playing a part more suited for Vincent Price or Christopher Lee, McDowall is mildly amusing as the cowardly horror -film star, though his characterization lacks bite. Sarandon looks merely embarrassed as the bogeyman, and there's an uncomfortable suggestion of a sexual relationship between his character and the young man who tends to his coffin. The young leads are merely bland.

Holland throws in more plot twists than you can shake a crucifix at, but his chase scenes are so tiring that all that's left to marvel at are Edlund's special effects. Absolutely nobody is better at depicting disintegrating heads, but it's no laughing matter.

IN BRIEF: Made 10 years ago, Jamie Uys's "Animals are Beautiful People" is having a belated New York debut on the heels of his incredibly successful "The Gods Must Be Crazy. " The South African film maker's nascent style is discernible in this earlier work, an almost-documentary about wildlife in the Dark Continent.

I say almost-documentary because of the tongue-in-cheek narration, which stresses anthromorphic humor. (Animals, fish, flowers, and even clouds are compared to human beings at various points.) Several sequences seem to be clearly staged (including, appallingly, a fire in a nesting place) for dramatic effect, and animation is used in several places.

Uys reportedly shot 500,000 feet of film over four years, and he's captured some remarkable sights. Among them are a snake capable of swallowing whole an egg 10 times as big as its head, and a colony of animals becoming intoxicated from fermented fruits. There are no human beings in the film, aside from a brief appearance by several bushmen.

"Animals are Beautiful People" is a good place to take the kids. Adults won't be bored, either. -

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

2008-06-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

A ZOMBIE MOVIE THAT PLAYS GORE FOR LAUGHS

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - August 19, 1985

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"The Return of the Living Dead." A comedy-thriller starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Mathews and Don Calfa. Written and directed by Dan O'Bannon. Based on a story by Rudy Ricci, John Russo and Russell Streiner. Photographed by Jules Brenner. Edited by Robert Gordes. Music by Matt Clifford. Running time: 90 minutes. An Orion release. In area theaters.

Unlike the George A. Romero movies that its spoofing, Dan O'Bannon's "The Return of the Living Dead" is not a horror film that becomes an endurance ordeal.

On the contrary, "The Return of the Living Dead" is malicious fun, using Romero's flesh-eating zombies as far-out symbols of modern man's insatiable appetite for control. What Romero has forgotten, O'Bannon (one of the authors of the movie "Alien") remembers: Anything eerie has to be contrasted against humor for maximum effect.

Whereas Romeo's last zombie movie, the recent "Day of the Dead," suffered
from being too unendurably gory and somber, "The Return of the Living Dead" is uncommonly witty. It is hardly a parasite living off George Romero's undead menaces; it comes with its own brand of unwholesomeness and nastiness.

O'Bannon's best contribution to the material, the one element that gives his movie its neat twist, is his pitting the walking dead against what he views as their live counterparts - punks. With dark circles painted under their eyes, their green lips, and hair that looks like coagulated blood, these modern rebels-without-a-cause should identify, if anything, with O'Bannon's oozing zombies. There should be a meeting of the minds, but there isn't. They should be ready to party with their blood brothers. Instead, they panic.

The dirctor has set his movie in a macabre cul-de-sac consisting of a medical-supply warehouse (which houses preserved corpses for experimentation), a funeral parlor and a cemetery. The first half-hour or so is a jokey explanation of what's to follow: One of the pickled corpses is nuked by some military-invented "animating" dust and, after it comes to life, it is cremated at the neighboring mortuary.

Just as smoke begins to fill the air, it starts to rain, and the nearby graves are doused with the revitalizing, but lethal, particles. All hell breaks loose. Cops and medics arrive, only to be eaten alive; the zombies take control of the fog-covered patrol cars and ambulances, using their radios to order more cops and medics.

Meanwhile, the warehouse lunks (Clu Gulager, James Karen and Thom Mathews), the mortician (Don Calfa) and the traumatized punks race back and forth among the three locations, creating a murkbath effect. Somehow, there's a certain insidious charm to all of this.

Horrormongers should have a ball at "The Return of the Living Dead." The rest of us should find some humor in the assorted half-life running amok on screen.

I know I did.

Parental Guide: Rated R for its sick humor and gore.
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FILM: HORROR IN 'THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 19, 1985

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

In The Return of the Living Dead, the zombies subsist on the brains of live humans. They won't find anything to eat in theaters showing Dan O'Bannon's dreadful movie.

The acting is so bad that it's hard in most scenes to tell the walking dead
from the supposedly living, and as an attempt to mingle horror with humor, O'Bannon's film is as hilarious as an autopsy.

As the title indicates, The Return of the Living Dead is a salute to George Romero's 1968 cult horror movie, Night of the Living Dead - a film that contains its own streak of black humor. Romero recently released Day of the Dead - the third film in the zombie series - and it was hard to imagine anyone coming up with a worse film this year.

O'Bannon, a scriptwriter making his directing bow, picks up Romero's shovel, walks into the cemetery and obliges. A glance at his writing credits - which include the visceral, terrifying Alien - is enough to show that O'Bannon knows the dynamics of horror films. Alien was a very slick exercise in tension that moved at a clip that allowed one to forget that the characters often chose the dumbest course of action.

I can't think of anything dumber than what O'Bannon seems to have tried in The Return of the Living Dead. I say seems because his intentions are not easily divined in this slapdash mess that hinges on the idea of Romero's zombies getting a new lease on life through the accidental release of a chemical at a medical-supply warehouse run by Clu Gulager.

O'Bannon's apparent purpose is to provoke laughter and nausea. The latter comes easily enough because The Return of the Living Dead indulges in tasteful scenes of beheading, blood-slinging and zombies biting chunks out of people's skulls. O'Bannon stops just short of Romero, who is the screen's leading gorenographer.

Anyone who has been in an airplane in bad weather knows that nervous laughter is a common response to fear. Eliciting that response in a horror context is extremely difficult and certainly beyond the grasp of O'Bannon. Arguably, it hasn't been brought off successfully since Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein 10 years ago.

Brooks had something to parody: the most popular myth in all of horror film and literature. O'Bannon has Romero, and it's no contest.

The Return of the Living Dead has a hopelessly crude plot that essentially repeats the typical Romero premise. The dead come scrambling out of their graves and surround the living in an enclosed space. In this case, it's a crematorium, which is where O'Bannon's defiantly witless script belongs.

There are, for reasons that are presumably clear to O'Bannon if no one else, scenes of a punk party in a cemetery complete with a striptease. While the kids are dancing on the graves, the dead rise up to protest the loud music by dining on the partygoers.

By the time this aimless digression arrives, the film has done enough to render the average moviegoer brain-dead. That surely was the condition of the studio executives who gave O'Bannon the money for this appalling and stupid exercise.

THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD *

Produced by Tom Fox, directed and written by Dan O'Bannon, photography by Jules Brenner, music by Matt Clifford, distributed by Orion Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

Burt - Clu Gulager

Frank - James Karen

Ernie - Don Calfa

Freddy - Thom Mathews

Parent's guide: R (extremely violent)
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BRAIN-EATING ZOMBIES: IT'S GREAT STUFF, BUT WHY?

SACRAMENTO BEE - August 16, 1985

Author: George Williams Bee Reviewer

WHAT MAKES a good horror movie? Obviously, the Frankenstein and King Kong stories are established classics. Most of the rest produced by Hollywood have been mediocre, but 'The Night of the Living Dead' and its sequels are exceptions.

These are stories about zombies created through screwball experiments by the U.S. Army. The army develops a gas that transforms corpses into living creatures who are forced to relieve the pain of being dead by eating the brains of normal humans.

Apart from being monumentally gruesome, the movies have built a growing fandom creating crowds whenever 'Living Dead' films are scheduled at midnight cult screenings from coast to coast and overseas.

The series was originated by George Romero, an inventive director and writer from Pittsburgh. He wrote the first of the series with Jack Russo. Russo, following the success of the first film, rewrote the story in the form of a novel with the same title. The rights to the title were purchased by Hollywood screenwriter Dan O'Bannon ('Alien,' 'Blue Thunder').

So now 'The Return of the Living Dead,' written and directed by O'Bannon, is being released in competition with Romero's second sequel, 'Day of the Dead,' soon to be released.

O'Bannon's film is a slickly made thriller, a first-rate example of the horror genre.

Clu Gulager stars as the proprietor of a medical-supply business in Louisville who discovers a number of the zombies, encased in airtight drums, have been shipped to him by mistake and are stored in his basement. A couple of his night workers open a drum by mistake, allowing the gas to escape. And there is a cemetery across the street.

Along comes a band of punkers who decide to use the cemetery as a meeting place just as all those graves start producing signs of life, or, I should state, living dead. And then there's a mortuary nearby that becomes the main target of the zombies because there are a bunch of humans inside.

It'll probably be a fast-food stop for the zombies. I mean, if you've got brains, what are you doing hanging around a mortuary next to a graveyard where the corpses are emerging from their graves?

Gulager waits until his two employees start changing into zombies before he figures out it might be a good idea to call the 800 number printed on the sides of those drums. As he'll find out, the army has a contingency plan for such emergencies, a plan just as imaginative as the one responsible for those zombies in the first place.

The movie is filled with shocks and thrills - a good entertainment. I don't know why. Who can explain why a movie about living corpses who eat human brains as a form of aspirin can draw a crowd? Especially one in which the zombies are made to look so real (by specialist Bill Munns, who studied the mummies of Guanjuanato, a small Mexican village where the bodies of local people have been kept in various stages of deterioration ranging from two to 100 years).

I sure can't. I only know it's made well by a group of filmmakers out to show you a good time at the movies.

THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD Cast: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Jewel Shepard. Writer-director: Dan O'Bannon. Producer: Tom Fox. Photography: Jules Brenner. Special makeup effects: Bill Munns. Production design: William Stout. Music: Matt Clifford. Distributor: Orion.

Arden, Sunrise.

Rating: R, for violence, nudity
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A ROMP WITH ROMERO'S ZOMBIES

The Record (New Jersey) - August 16, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: Directed and written by Dan O'Bannon. Story by Rudy Ricci, John Russo, and Russell Streiner. Music, Matt Clifford. Photography, Jules Brenner. Editor, Robert Gordon. With Clu Gulager (Burt), James Karen (Frank), Don Calfa (Ernie), Thom Mathews (Freddy), Beverly Randolph (Tina), and others. Produced by Tom Fox. A Hemdale presentation released by Orion Pictures. Opens locally today. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R: nudity, violence, strong lang uage, gore.

To say that "Return of the Living Dead" is more entertaining than "Day of the Dead" is like stating you'd prefer death by firing squad to death by hanging. Either way, it's a pretty nasty experience.

"Day of the Dead," George Romero's recent, second sequel to his 1968 cult classic, "Night of the Living Dead," was mostly an excuse to demonstrate some state of the art, stomach-churning special effects. "Return of the Living Dead," a sort of pseudo- sequel, is more playful and a bit easier to sit through.

The premise of "Return" is that Romero's original film was inspired by a real-life incident at a veterans hospital in Pittsburgh. Fourteen years later, the chemicals that turned corpses into walking, flesh-eating zombies are sitting in the basement of a medical supply house in Louisville. It's all because of an army paperwork error.

Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon ("Alien," "Lifeforce"), who is also making his directorial debut, contrives for the chemicals to reanimate the population of a nearby cemetery. The ghouls mix it up with a band of punk rockers, a pair of medical-supply employees (Clu Gulager, James Karen), and a nervous mortician (Don Calfa).

Though he strives to parody Romero's brand of claustrophobic horror , O'Bannon ends up with the kind of cheerful cheapie that Roger Corman used to slap together in a couple of days. The acting is deliberately broad, the special effects are cheesy, and the humor runs to jokes about rigor mortis. The effect is deadening.