Evil Dead 2

EVIL DEAD 2

Released in 1987, Evil Dead 2 opens with a recap of part of the first film and then picks up where the original left off (with Ash emerging from the cabin only to be hit by something nasty speeding through the forest).  Ash, trapped at the cabin due to the destruction of the bridge in part one, holes up and copes with a few horrors (including his right hand becoming possessed and attacking him until he’s forced to cut it off) before three others arrive at the cabin via a hiking trail.  The newcomers include Annie (the daughter of the cabin owners who comes bearing previously missing pages from The Book of the Dead), her boyfriend, a workman who set up a blockade at the damaged bridge, and the workman’s girlfriend (Bobby Joe).  Ash and his three new allies endure a hellish night as the demons unleashed in part one continue to torment and assault their human prey.  Annie ultimately reads a couple of passages from The Book of the Dead in order to render the primary evil spirit as flesh and to open a rift in space & time through which the manifestation of the spirit can be dispelled.  The plan works, but unfortunately Ash gets pulled into the vortex too and ends up in 1300 A.D. with his chainsaw and shotgun.

Like the first film, this sequel boasts innovative low-budget special effects and a clever script.  Evil Dead 2 features more humor than part one but is still saturated with disturbing images (I’ll likely have nightmares about the possessed individual who erupts from a grave in the cellar).  Bruce Campbell gives a jaw-dropping performance as Ash.  The sequence in which he battles his possessed right hand (before he severs it) demands repeat viewings.  While Evil Dead 2 has an army of rabid fans who swear it’s superior to the original, I actually prefer part one’s darker tone.  Still, this sequel is absolutely worth checking out on a chilly October night to get you in a Halloween kind of mood.  I look forward to finishing the trilogy by enjoying Army of Darkness soon.

The Evil Dead (1981 version)

THE EVIL DEAD (1981 version)

A brutal, intense, and gripping horror film that takes place primarily in and around an isolated cabin in the mountains over the course of one harrowing night, The Evil Dead follows five young adults (Ash, Scotty, Linda, Cheryl, and Shelly) as they unwittingly unleash dark and murderous forces.  The characters arrive at the cabin and discover a cellar full of assorted detritus including a book bound in human flesh that contains disturbing illustrations inked in blood along with text in an ancient language.  They also find an old tape recorder and listen to the reel thereon, which reveals the origin of the book and its intended purpose.  The recording also includes spoken translations of some of the text, and once these are played all hell breaks loose.  Cheryl becomes possessed (her eyes become ghastly, and her flesh tone changes as she screeches in an awful voice).  She attacks the others and gets knocked down into the cellar.  Scotty chains its door in the floor so she can’t escape.  Linda then inexplicably takes a nap (as if anyone could sleep after watching a friend transform into a monster) while the others stand guard.  Shelly heads into another room and screams.  She too becomes possessed, and a wild brawl with Ash and Scotty ends with the demonic Shelly being dismembered by an axe.  The guys bury her outside.  Scotty vows to get the hell out of there by any means necessary and takes off.  Ash goes back inside, where Linda becomes possessed and giggles incessantly.  Scotty reappears and reports that the foliage and trees prevented his escape (earlier, the viewer sees vines and branches attack one of the ladies).  To discuss the plot from this point on would be to rob you of the joy of discovering the film’s third act surprises on your own, but I will reveal that Ash survives until morning and heads out of the cabin seemingly victorious, at least until the final few seconds.

The Evil Dead is not a flawless film (Scotty moves with little urgency when Shelly screams in another room, and Linda somehow sleeps through the loud noises when Ash and Scotty fight the possessed Shelly), but it is close.  Perfectly-paced and full of practical special effects that look better than modern computer-generated imagery, this film is essential viewing for fans of the horror genre.  I last watched this gem on VHS in 1998, and I’m delighted to have now revisited it on Blu-ray.  I’m curious to see the remake (slated for release in 2013), which hopefully will serve as a gateway to allow a new generation of fans to discover this 1981 version too.  Chilling and dark, The Evil Dead remains breathtaking over three decades after its initial release. 

Seed of Chucky

SEED OF CHUCKY

Though its tone is even more comedic than the previous couple of entries in the franchise, Seed of Chucky (released in 2004) is a step up in quality from Bride of Chucky.  This fifth film in the series finds the offspring of Chucky and Tiffany imprisoned in the United Kingdom by an abusive ventriloquist.  After seeing a televised report about a Chucky & Tiffany film in production in Hollywood, the kid escapes to track down his or her parents (the gender of this doll is a matter of some debate throughout the tale).  He/she arrives in a storage facility at the studio where the Chucky & Tiffany dolls created for the film lay.  He/she manages to summon the souls of his/her parents into these dolls, and they waste no time in killing a fellow who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Later named Glen/Glenda, the kid is horrified to learn that his/her folks are killers.  Chucky and Tiffany set out to find suitable human bodies to transfer their souls into.  To discuss the plot in any greater detail would mean spoiling a lot of the fun best enjoyed by actually watching the film.

Seed of Chucky, despite being overtly comedic, boasts some memorable death scenes.  When Glen/Glenda finally embraces his/her heritage, he/she uses a lighter and a can of hairspray to create an improvised flamethrower and torch a poor victim to death.  Earlier, he/she accidentally causes a photographer to topple back into a shelf filled with jars of acid, and the result is gruesome.  There’s also a disemboweling and a graphic decapitation.  Fans of horror/comedy hybrids should find this movie wildly entertaining, as the gore and laugh quotients are both high.  Though I miss the serious and scary tone of the original Child’s Play film, I thoroughly enjoyed Seed of Chucky and recommend it.  

Bride of Chucky

BRIDE OF CHUCKY

The fourth film in the Child’s Play series, Bride of Chucky (released in 1998) finds a woman named Tiffany (the girlfriend of serial killer Charles Lee Ray) using black magic to resurrect her lover in the body of the doll his soul inhabited in the previous installment.  She has stitched Chucky back together, and her old flame wastes no time in dispatching her new boyfriend once he’s back in action.  After a spat, Chucky kills Tiffany and transfers her soul into the body of a female doll.  He informs her that to transfer their souls into human bodies, they’ll have to acquire a special amulet that’s buried with his corporeal remains in New Jersey.  Tiffany phones her neighbor (Jesse) and hires him to transport a pair of dolls to a cemetery, and soon Chucky & Tiffany are on the road with Jesse and his girlfriend/fiancée Jade (who are fleeing from Jade’s controlling uncle).  Chucky and Tiffany rack up a few kills when Jesse and Jade aren’t looking, and then the dolls reveal that they are alive and take their human drivers hostage at the start of act three.  Will Chucky and Tiffany transfer their souls into the bodies of Jesse and Jade?  Check out the finale of this film to find out.

Saturated with even more humor than Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky isn’t nearly as engaging as the first films in the series despite the shot in the arm that is the addition of a female doll accomplice for Chucky to work with.  This project does feature innovative death scenes (in one memorable moment, Tiffany shatters the mirror on the ceiling above a pair of honeymooners, thereby causing shards of glass to rain down and kill the unlucky couple).  The serious and scary tone of the first Child’s Play film has been replaced with a more comedic feel, and I perceive this change in direction as a mistake.  The concept of a doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer is inherently disturbing and doesn’t mesh well with jokes.  Also, why was this magic amulet never mentioned in any of the previous films?  The series mythology gets shaken up fundamentally by the existence of this trinket, and not in a good way.  Bride of Chucky will be of interest to fans who have followed the series thus far, but it’s not a film I’d recommend just checking out as a stand-alone story.  If you must watch just one Child’s Play film, go for the first and still best one.  

Child's Play 3

CHILD’S PLAY 3

With a plot that takes place eight years after the events of the previous installment, Child’s Play 3 finds Andy Barclay (now a teenager) attending military school.  In a prologue, Chucky comes back to life when the company that produces the Good Guys dolls fires up its old cobwebbed factory and some of Chucky’s blood gets into a vat of plastic being used for the first batch.  The soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray ends up in the first new doll off the assembly line, which winds up in the hands of the company’s CEO.  Chucky kills the corporate president and then somehow mails himself to Andy’s military school (presumably he coerced someone into wrapping him up and addressing the parcel).  A kid named Tyler intercepts the package and steals the doll.  Chucky realizes that he’s now in a new body and is free to try to transfer his soul into a fresh victim, and he sets his sights on young Tyler as a potential host.  He also wants to kill Andy as revenge for the events depicted in the first two films.  Mayhem ensues as Andy comes face-to-face with his old nemesis. 

Child’s Play 3 is a watchable sequel that boasts some memorable death scenes.  The school’s barber meets a particularly brutal end at the hands of Chucky.  The finale takes place in a carnival spook house, and the interior sets thereof feature some visually arresting designs and props.  This entry in the franchise features more humor than the previous two installments and ends up being the weakest link in the series thus far.  Perhaps the laws of diminishing returns have set in as this third film about a killer doll gets underway.  It’s an entertaining yarn, but it’s not as engaging as parts one and two.   

Child's Play 2

CHILD’S PLAY 2

A fun sequel that opens with the charred remains of the Chucky doll being cleaned up and rebuilt by the company that makes the Good Guys line of toys, Child’s Play 2 finds Andy Barclay placed with foster parents (Phil and Joanne Simpson) while his biological mother undergoes psychological evaluation.  Another foster kid (a teen girl named Kyle) also lives with the Simpsons.  A toy company executive makes the mistake of placing Chucky in his car, and Chucky forces the fellow to drive him to Andy’s new neighborhood.  Chucky infiltrates the foster home and poses as Tommy (an identical doll that was already in the house).  Mayhem ensues when Andy realizes that Chucky’s back, still trying to transfer his soul into Andy’s body.  Chucky murders the Simpsons and attacks Kyle.  The third act takes place in the toy factory that makes the dolls, where Andy and Kyle have a series of climactic battles against the antagonist.

Child’s Play 2 includes some creative death scenes (a particularly gruesome one involves a factory worker on a conveyer belt where the doll eyes get installed) and explains the loose ends from the first film (the two cops who witnessed Chucky’s rampage deny the story told by Andy and his mother, probably so they can keep their jobs).  I’m quite curious to watch the third film in the series to see how Chucky returns yet again given his fairly definitive destruction at the end of this installment.  While not high art, Child’s Play 2 is an entertaining eighty-minute popcorn horror film that delivers some dark humor along with plenty of scares.  I look forward to the further adventures of Chucky, the doll with the soul of a serial killer. 

Child's Play

CHILD’S PLAY

A 1988 film that has aged well and remains entertaining and scary, Child’s Play opens with a cop (Mike) pursuing a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray down a city street.  Ray shoots the lock on the door of a closed toy store and heads inside.  Mike follows him and mortally wounds him with a bullet.  Ray touches a friendly-looking red-haired doll and utters a mystical incantation with his dying breaths.  Lightning crashes down into the store, and (as the viewer learns later in the tale) Ray’s soul passes into the doll.  A single mother named Karen Barclay later buys the doll from a street vendor for her six-year-old son (Andy).  While Karen works late that night, her friend Maggie babysits Andy.  Soon the doll (known as Chucky) ambles around the apartment on his own after Andy goes to bed.  Chucky strikes Maggie in the forehead with a hammer and sends her plummeting out a kitchen window.  By coincidence, the lead police officer on the case is Mike from the prologue.  Maggie’s death, chalked up as an accident, is only the beginning of Chucky’s rampage.  He seeks revenge on Eddie (the partner in crime he had during his life in a human body) for abandoning him the night Mike shot him in the toy store.  Chucky talks Andy (who insists to others that Chucky is alive and not just a doll) into taking him to Eddie’s crash pad, where Chucky uses the oven to fill the place with gas.  When Eddie fires his gun, the hideout explodes.  Authorities take Andy away for psychiatric evaluation when he continues to insist that Chucky speaks to him.  Karen takes the doll home and realizes with horror that she never put the batteries in, yet Chucky has been saying things such as “I like to be hugged” in her presence (the mechanized toy is supposed to utter a few stock phrases).  Karen threatens to throw Chucky into the fireplace unless he speaks, and (at the midpoint of the story) the doll reveals his true nature to her as it spews nasty language and bites her arm.  Chucky flees the apartment, and Karen attempts to tell Mike what happened.  Mike assumes she is lying but later comes around to her point-of-view when Chucky attacks him in his car in a particularly harrowing sequence.  Karen and Mike set out to locate the killer doll.  Chucky, meanwhile, has his own agenda and visits the man who taught him the secret of soul transference to learn how to get back into a human body.  The fellow tells Chucky that he must utter the incantation and take over the body of the first person he revealed his true nature to after becoming a doll, thereby sending Chucky on a mission to take over the flesh of young Andy.  Eventually all the main characters end up back in Karen’s apartment for a climactic showdown in which Chucky nearly succeeds in transferring his soul into Andy’s body.  Despite being burned in the fireplace and shot repeatedly, the doll just keeps on attacking.  The good guys ultimately triumph, at least until the first sequel.

Directed and co-written by Tom Holland (the auteur behind the original Fright Night), Child’s Play takes a premise that could easily seem silly and milks it for maximum suspense and frights.  There’s ample humor to balance out the chills (in Andy’s introductory scene, he prepares breakfast for his mom by burning toast, dumping a huge clump of butter on it, and adding sugar to an overflowing bowl of brightly-colored cereal).  Chucky is a memorable and singular antagonist who grows increasingly horrific as the story progresses and his features become more pliable and human-looking.  I didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, but I’m now eager to plow through the other entries in the franchise.  I’ll never look at a doll in quite the same way again.   

Solstice

SOLSTICE

Co-written and directed by Dan Myrick of Blair Witch Project fame, Solstice (released in 2008) follows a young woman named Megan whose twin sister Sophie died of apparent suicide at a Christmas party.  The June after Sophie’s death, Megan heads with some friends (Christian, Zoe, Alicia, and Mark) to an isolated house owned by her parents for a week of rest and relaxation.  En route, the group stops at a general store, and there Megan meets Nick (a clerk who gives her a free copy of Fortean Times, a magazine devoted to news about flying saucers, spontaneous human combustion, and the like).  Megan studies an article about communicating with the dead, which is allegedly easier to do on and around the summer solstice (which conveniently is just a couple of days away).  Megan later returns to the store and invites Nick over for dinner, thereby creating a love triangle with Christian as the third party.  Nick facilitates an impromptu séance prompted by Megan’s insistence that she’s been sensing Sophie’s presence since arriving at the house.   During and after the séance, Megan has quick flashes of visions that make no sense to her.  She ultimately sees a particular location in the woods that she passed through while jogging, and she insists that the group head out there and dig (she’s convinced that it’s where Malin, a little girl who went missing in the area in the past, is buried).  Turns out Megan’s exactly correct, and the discovery of the corpse prompts a confession from one of Megan’s friends (I won’t spoil which one) about a dark secret involving the confessor, Sophie, and Malin.  The confession neatly ties up all the loose story ends just in time to prevent the plot from seeming disjointed. 

Solstice features some shocking and chilling images (a couple of times a spirit manifests as a black silhouette with red eyes) and is relatively entertaining for yet another entry in the ghost(s)-want-to-communicate-clues-to-the-protagonist-and-reveal-the-truth sub-genre (Stir of Echoes is a superior variation on this type of tale).  At times Megan is a passive protagonist while elsewhere in the plot her actions drive the story (like when she trespasses in and explores the house of Leonard, a seemingly creepy recluse who lives across the lake).  Solstice seems for a long while like an uneven project that has switched MacGuffins mid-stream (Megan starts off wanting to communicate with her dead sister and ends up more interested in the missing local girl), but the final few minutes wrap up all the narrative threads neatly.  Solstice kept me hooked not through clever dialogue or memorable characters (the film unfortunately lacks those elements) but through the need to know what would happen next and how the various mysteries would pay off.  A plot-driven (rather than character-driven) movie that gradually parcels out the backstory about Sophie’s death through a series of flashbacks, Solstice will keep you guessing about what twists and turns the story’s spine will take from scene to scene.  I enjoyed this project more than I expected to and recommend it.

Red Victoria

RED VICTORIA

A low-budget indie film that features innovative and realistic special effects, Red Victoria follows a somewhat snooty intellectual screenwriter named Jim as his agent railroads him into penning a horror script.  Jim, who has utter disdain for the genre, finds himself mentally blocked every time he sits down to work on the project.  He finds unwelcome inspiration when a woman named Victoria magically appears in his bed one night.  Victoria is an articulate but undead individual who sometimes looks like a zombie but can alter her appearance at will to appear normal.  She informs Jim that she’s there to serve as an editor on his horror screenplay.  Soon she tries to act as a muse by murdering people in Jim’s presence beginning with a psychotherapist and then moving on to the pool maintenance man, Jim’s agent, and others.  Jim develops a love-hate relationship with Victoria and recruits a friend to research ways to vanquish this particular type of spectral entity.  The friend procures a special dagger that, if used on Halloween, will reportedly do the trick and get Victoria out of Jim’s existence for good.  Will Jim succeed in ridding himself of Victoria, or will he remain haunted forever?  Watch this fun comedy/horror hybrid to find out.

Red Victoria looks and feels low-budget except for some astonishing special effects.  At one point a severed arm on a coffee table that looks at first like a cheap plastic prop springs to life, flips over, and points at something.  Victoria’s entrance scene, when she manifests as a badly-decayed corpse with empty eye sockets, is jaw-dropping.  Such moments of visual ingenuity are peppered throughout the plot, which is rather clever if one suspends one’s disbelief enough to overlook certain details and questions (I’m not sure how Jim disposed of the various bodies that piled up on his property).  Available on DVD through Amazon, Red Victoria is a singular movie that’s worth checking out this Halloween season for some laughs and chills.  The tone of the project begins weighted more toward comedy than horror but grows more serious as the story progresses.  An entertaining look at a writer who meets and becomes largely controlled by a murderous personification of his inner muse, Red Victoria runs just under ninety minutes and may well entertain genre fans in search of a unique horror/comedy tale.  I heartily recommend this memorable look at one man’s rocky journey to crank out a horror script.