Silver Bullet

SILVER BULLET

A wildly entertaining film that Stephen King scripted (based on his novella Cycle of the Werewolf), Silver Bullet follows a brother and sister (young Marty and teenager Jane) who live in a small town where someone authorities describe as “a maniac” has been picking off residents during full moons. Dense with lycanthropy action (the antagonist kills four people within the movie's first thirty minutes, though one death occurs off-screen), the story features some emotionally gut-wrenching beats (like when the father of a murdered child confronts the sheriff in a bar). 

 

The tale's midpoint consists of a way cool dream sequence set in the community's church.

One night Marty is out shooting off fireworks when the werewolf attacks him. Marty hits the beast in one eye with a rocket and gets away. He tells Jane what happened, and the next day she canvases the town looking for someone with only one eye. Soon enough Marty and Jane know the identity of the werewolf, and they set out (with the help of their uncle) to kill the beast before it gets them. I won't spoil the plot beyond this point.

 

In the foreword to a book that includes the screenplay and the novella on which it is based, Stephen King writes, “Is the picture any good? Man, I just can't tell. I'm writing without benefit of hindsight and from a deeply subjective point of view. You want that point of view? Okay. I think it's either very good indeed or a complete bust... After you've been through four drafts plus spot rewrites, the film itself seems like a hallucination when you first see it.”

Silver Bullet is a fantastic movie with richly-drawn characters, witty and realistic dialogue, and a plot that spins along at just the right pace with plenty of tense and horrifying scenes in which the werewolf strikes. It ranks alongside Ginger Snaps as one of my favorite werewolf films. 

 

Not all critics agree with me. A review in The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror states that the project “is half-hearted horror” and says, “Set in a rural community populated by hysterical, intolerant, booze-befuddled, trigger-happy rednecks, this displays King's cynicism about the common people.” Roger Ebert wrote, “I know that a case can be made for how bad Silver Bullet is. I agree. It's bad. But it's not routinely bad. It is bad in its own awesomely tasteless and bubble-brained way...”

 

I urge you to check out Silver Bullet, for I perceive it as a superior horror movie. It's an anomaly: an R-rated project with kids as the central characters. That alone sets it apart from the pack.

It Follows

IT FOLLOWS

With a musical score and visual style that evoke the vibe of the best aspects of John Carpenter's early films, the 2015 project It Follows (written and directed by David Robert Mitchell) tells the tale of Jay, a young woman who lives with her mom and sister in a suburb. Jay sleeps with a guy who claims his name is Hugh. The dude then presses a chloroform rag to Jay's face and knocks her out. When Jay awakens, she's tied to a wheelchair in a crumbling abandoned parking garage, and Hugh explains that he has to show her something. He says that he's passed something on to her, and soon a “thing” (that can look like anyone) will be following her with the intent of killing her. He encourages Jay to sleep with someone else to pass “it” to that person, and he notes that whenever it kills someone it then goes after the previous person in line; no one who has ever encountered it is ever safe. The thing shows up in the form of a nude woman, and Hugh wheels Jay to his car and speeds away. Hugh advises Jay that the thing is “slow but not stupid.” Hugh dumps Jay in the street outside her abode, where her allies (sister Kelly and friends Paul and Yara) rush to help her. Thus begins Jay's ongoing waking nightmare.

At first skeptical of Hugh's story, Jay goes about her normal life until she spots an eerie old woman relentlessly walking toward her. Jay flees and next encounters the thing at her house, at which point she's utterly convinced of its reality (though her friends and sister don't believe her). Neighbor Greg drives the group to the abandoned house that Hugh had been renting, and there (within the pages of a pornographic magazine) they discover a photo print of “Hugh” with a classmate who sports a letterman jacket. Jay recognizes the school and in a yearbook finds her assailant, whose real name is Jeff. Jay and her posse go to his house, where (out in the yard) Jeff spouts more exposition and advises Jay to buy some time by driving somewhere. Greg takes the group to an isolated beachfront property where his dad used to take him hunting. There Kelly, Paul, and Yara become convinced of the thing's reality when it (invisible to all but the afflicted) attacks Jay from behind; Paul breaks a chair over the entity, which shoves him back with preternatural force. Greg (who had been off peeing and missed the assault) remains the only skeptic after the group escapes. Jay takes off in Greg's car, crashes, and winds up in the hospital where she sleeps with Greg to pass along the curse. To describe the plot from this point on would be to deprive a first-time viewer of some of the story's best frightening moments.

With an oddly-paced third act that's laced with a large degree of ambiguity, It Follows is not a perfect film, but it's an enthralling ride that pulls you through a tension-filled journey that largely takes place in an environment generally associated with safety and the American dream (the suburbs). Jay and her friends are pleasant characters to spend time with; there's a bit of business involving a fart early in the narrative that reveals how comfortable these kids are around each other, and it's a fine moment of levity to balance out the grim tone of the prologue (which reveals what can happen when the thing catches up to a victim). The soundtrack features synthesized rhythms that are as driving and unrelenting as the antagonist. It Follows is a singular project that filled me with dread the first time I watched it (at the movie theater in the spring) as I rooted for Jay to find some way, any way, to escape the seemingly unstoppable entity. Having just revisited the story on Blu-ray, I can testify that It Follows is even better the second time around, and I imagine it'll hold up to repeat viewings over the years ahead. The “monster” of It Follows is wholly unique and thought-provoking. I look forward to whatever cinematic yarn David Robert Mitchell spins next, and I hope he remains in the horror genre (his debut film, The Myth of the American Sleepover, is a straight-up ensemble drama). It Follows: utterly marvelous.

Invitation to Hell

INVITATION TO HELL

A charming but unintentionally silly made-for-television movie that aired on ABC in May of 1984, Invitation to Hell (directed by Wes Craven from a script by Richard Rothstein) follows suburbanite Matthew Winslow's efforts to resist constant pressure to become a member at Steaming Springs Country Club in the community he's just moved to with his wife Pat and two young children (Chrissy and Robbie). Quoted in Brian J. Robb's book Screams & Nightmares, Craven described the project: “The premise was that Susan Lucci was a woman who ran a country club that was attracting all the executives from these high-tech agencies, but she was really the Devil and the steam room was the entrance to hell, if you can believe that.”

As the tale begins, everything's looking up for the Winslows. In the first thirteen minutes, the family moves into a pleasant new abode and enjoys a visit from Matt's old fraternity buddy Tom Peterson, who works at Micro-Digitech (the company where Matt's just been hired). Via a scene at Matt's laboratory the next day, the viewer learns that Matt's working on fine-tuning a spacesuit intended to be used for a mission to Venus (the suit can withstand extreme temperatures, features built-in weapons, and scans the surrounding environment for threats). Six minutes later, Matt crosses paths with Jessica Jones (director of the Steaming Springs Country Club) for the first time when their cars nearly collide. A couple of minutes later, Jessica initiates Tom Peterson and his family into the club by ushering them through a doorway into a dense cloud of steam while saying, “Enter the spring and taste its power.” Twenty-six minutes in, Matt finds himself pressured by his boss (Harry) to join the club, and two minutes later Jessica (who has inexplicably stopped by Matt's workplace) also encourages Matt to join. The pressure to conform continues as newly-initiated Tom (who has been promoted) invites Matt to explore all the club has to offer. Four minutes later, Matt's wife Pat (envious of the new car that Tom's wife drives) asks Matt to join the club. Apparently sick of all the pressure, five minutes later Matt takes Pat to the club, where Tom and Jessica take them around to see the sights. Matt strays away and ventures into the foyer of the steam room, but Jessica interrupts him before he discovers that Hell lays beyond a locked door. Around the story's midpoint, Pat and her kids join the club without Matt and (after agreeing that they “forsake all for the club”) go through that door. The next day, the Winslow's dog (Albert) growls at Pat and the kids. Matt notices marked personality changes in his family, and near the one hour mark Pat asks her husband to “just give us a little bit more of yourself.” Seventy minutes in, Matt (now certain that there's a connection between the club and his family's turn to the dark side) returns to the steam room and measures the temperature beyond the forbidden door: it's eight-hundred degrees fahrenheit. Matt returns home (after apparently murdering a security guard who caught him at the steam room) and finds Chrissy beating her plush toy bunny with a crowbar. “You're not my daughter,” Matt realizes, and he locks his kids in a closet and incapacitates his wife. Matt goes to his lab, steals the experimental spacesuit, and heads to the club (where conveniently there's a Halloween costume party in full swing). At the eighty-one minute mark, Matt ventures into Hell. A ten-minute sequence in the underworld sports some truly trippy imagery, and Matt ultimately rescues his real family. Back home, Matt ventures outside where neighbors chatter about a massive fire that has burned the club down. The project runs just over ninety-three minutes before the end credits.

“I made TV movies to pay the bills and keep the lights on in my office – they don't represent my body of work,” Wes Craven once said (as quoted in the book Screams & Nightmares).

Invitation to Hell may have been intended as a satire about materialism and conformity. Patricia Winslow (who pines for new furniture, a piano, and a better car) literally loses her soul until her husband brings her back from Hell. Whatever the ambitions of the project's writer (Richard Rothstein), the final product is worth a look if only to marvel at the hairstyles and primitive computers of the eighties (and of course to enjoy the ten-minute sequence set in Hell). The project has solid production values largely courtesy of the director of photography (Dean Cundey, most famous for his work on John Carpenter projects including Halloween and The Fog).

Invitation to Hell is neither terrifying nor thought-provoking, but it is fun and entertaining.

Shocker

SHOCKER

Even if you overlook its myriad shoddy special effects, the 1989 film Shocker (written and directed by Wes Craven) falls apart the further along the plot goes, which is a shame as the first act is rather gripping. The story follows a college football player named Jonathan Parker who awakens from a dream in which his foster mother and step-siblings are murdered by a television repairman named Horace Pinker. Jonathan then receives a phone call informing him that his family really is dead. He tells his cop father about the dream, and eventually Pinker's captured (but not before he brutally slaughters the protagonist's girlfriend Alison). The movie's most gut-wrenching image appears nearly twenty-seven minutes into the tale when Jonathan sees Alison's corpse in a tub full of bloody water. At the forty-two minute mark, Pinker's execution goes all wrong. Turns out that Pinker (a practitioner of black magic) has found a way to transfer his spirit from body to body, and he's hell-bent on taking revenge against Jonathan (his biological son) for giving his identity away to the police. Pinker leapfrogs from a doctor to a cop to a jogger to a young child, and in the film's wittiest moment (about an hour in) Pinker (in the kid's body) drops an F-bomb. Pinker keeps on hopping bodies until he somehow develops the ability to travel through pure electricity. The story spirals into abject silliness ninety-nine minutes in when Jonathan and Pinker magically hop into a television and travel from program to program (momentarily appearing in an episode of Leave it to Beaver). My willing suspension of disbelief totally snapped when the hero and the antagonist jump out of a television into a random family's home, and the mother (instead of being terrified and awestruck) comments, “I've heard of audience participation shows, but this is ridiculous.” Jonathan somehow vanquishes Pinker by having his friends sabotage the local power plant. If you can sort out the logic of this film's third act, send me an e-mail and let me know how all the pieces fit together.

A review in Variety aptly summarized Shocker's flaws: “At first glance (or at least for the first forty minutes) Shocker seems a potential winner, an almost unbearably suspenseful, stylish and blood-drenched ride courtesy of writer-director Wes Craven’s flair for action and sick humor. As it continues, however, the camp aspects simply give way to the ridiculous while failing to establish any rules to govern the mayhem.” 

On one of the Blu-ray's audio commentary tracks, Craven acknowledges that the special effects are rough around the edges but never addresses the story's problems. In the book Shock Masters of the Cinema, interviewer Loris Curci quotes Craven as saying “I like Shocker.”

Upon further reflection, my biggest problem with the story is that Pinker somehow eluded capture for quite a long time even though he apparently openly parked his business van (with “Pinker's Television Repair” plastered on the side) outside the homes of his victims before he killed them. Surely an eyewitness would've noticed this vehicle and remembered seeing it near the crime scene at least once.

Casual horror fans should steer clear of Shocker, while Craven completists will be delighted with the quality of the new Blu-ray (dense with special features and sporting a fabulous transfer). I wanted to like Shocker given its intriguing core concept, but its flaws are too numerous to overlook.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (1985 version)

THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 (1985 version)

“The boogeyman's dead,” a psychiatrist assures Bobby Carter (one of the survivors from the first Hills Have Eyes) seven minutes into the sequel. Bobby, still traumatized from the ordeal he endured eight years earlier, has an intense fear of the desert and opts to not accompany a team of motorbike racers there even though they'll be testing out a new form of fuel that he formulated. As the film opens on a closeup of Bobby, I assumed that he would be the protagonist this time around, but his role turns out to be little more than a cameo. Indeed, there is no clear lead character in The Hills Have Eyes 2, and that's one of the project's many flaws.

Whereas the first film was steeped in realism, Hills 2 (written and directed by Wes Craven) requires serious suspension of disbelief almost from the get-go. Early on, the viewer learns that Bobby's wife is Ruby (from the first film's family of savages), only now she calls herself Rachel and masquerades as a civilized woman. By a massive coincidence, the racing team that's going to test Bobby's fuel must attend an event in the desert not far from where the original film took place. Ruby accompanies the team on a bus and (twenty-one minutes into the story) agrees without much protest when the group opts to veer off the paved road on a shortcut that will lead right to her old stomping grounds. Beast (one of the dogs from part one) goes on this trip too. The bus traverses rough terrain, and jagged rocks puncture its fuel tank, thereby stranding the group (conveniently close to a seemingly abandoned property that Ruby and the bikers explore in search of gasoline). Naturally, Pluto (Ruby's brother from part one) appears and attacks his sister, then scampers off into the desert. At the thirty-five minute mark, “Rachel” confesses to the others that she is in fact Ruby from the legendary family of desert cannibals. Nobody freaks out. Pluto steals one of the motorbikes, and two of the guys (Harry and Roy) pursue him. The first death occurs fully forty-two minutes in (nearly at the midpoint) when a large rock falls and crushes Harry. Four minutes later, Roy (on his bike) ends up ensnared in a net (Pluto and his ally this time around, a gigantic fellow known as The Reaper, have developed a knack for constructing elaborate traps). Cut to nightfall. In the second half of the film, the deaths occur one after another swiftly. One fellow takes a massive spear to the chest, and seven minutes later a dude named Foster gets pulled under the bus and axed in the head. Four minutes later, The Reaper crushes a girl named Jane in his arms. Within a minute, he slits the throat of another gal (Sue). Four minutes later, Pluto plummets to his death. Ruby's fate is unclear, for around this time she hits her head on a rock and is never seen again. The only memorable and singular character (a young blind woman named Cass) fills the “final girl” role and (with the help of another survivor) outwits The Reaper in a harrowing (if unbelievable) denouement.

In a 1985 interview with Kim Newman, Wes Craven explained that the film that reached audiences did not reflect his artistic vision: “It was not intended to be released as it was. It was not completed, and I had an agreement that when we'd finished the initial shoot the producers would cut it together and we'd see what we needed. Then we'd go shoot for another five or six days. That was agreed upon but... suddenly they were acting as if that was the finished film... The whole thing is unfinished. I wasn't satisfied with the whole ending. There were a couple of main sequences in the center of the film that didn't quite work. And the whole opening needed to be shortened drastically.”

Craven articulates additional reasons for the project's flaws in this quotation from Brian J. Robb's book Screams & Nightmares: “It was a much better script, I think, than the movie turned out to be... It was very underfunded. The movie was originally budgeted on the first draft of the script, and the producers said they thought it should be expanded, so I wrote a much better and bigger script, but the budget stayed the same.”

Critics have savaged the film. A review in Variety states that Hills 2 is filled with “dull, formula terror pic cliches, with one attractive teenager after another picked off...” In his book about Craven, John Wooley opines that “the biggest disappointment about Hills 2 is the sense of detachment from what's happening on the screen, an air of unreality and not the good kind of unreality.” The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror concludes, “This perfunctory sequel drops the thematic drive of pitting two mirror-image families against each other and rehashes the uninteresting Friday the 13^th strategy of isolating a group of teenagers in a rural locale and killing them one by one.” The comparison to Friday the 13^th is particularly apt given that Harry Manfredini composed the scores for many of the films in that franchise in addition to scoring Hills 2. Also, Kane Hodder (who would go on to play Jason Voorhees in 1988's Friday the 13^th part 7) performed stunts in Hills 2.

A serious missed opportunity to tell another gripping tale of primal survival, The Hills Have Eyes 2 is a curious footnote in Wes Craven's oeuvre – a critically-reviled movie peppered with bits of clever dialogue (“It ain't natural to be in a place without a disco,” says Foster when talking about being in the desert). The only film in history in which a dog's memory appears as a flashback scene (Beast recalls the time in part one when he nearly killed Pluto by tearing the savage's throat out), Hills 2 is as derivative as part one was innovative. This project really does feel like a sub-par eighties slasher film, whereas part one pushed the envelope and enthralled audiences upon its release in 1977. Unless you're a Craven completist, avoid The Hills Have Eyes 2.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977 version)

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977 version)

[A shorter version of this review originally appeared here in September of 2011.]

An auteur film (written and directed by Wes Craven) about the Carters (a family from Cleveland) whose car (pulling a camping trailer) crashes in the middle of nowhere en route to Los Angeles, the 1977 version of The Hills Have Eyes has a slow first half balanced by a flurry of violent action in the final forty-five minutes. The Carters find themselves under attack by a savage family that dwells in the hills near the crash site. There are bloody casualties on both sides before the ordeal ends. To go into much more detail would be to spoil some of the movie’s finer surprises.

“I set out to have the two families in The Hills Have Eyes be mirror images of each other so I could explore the different sides of the human personality – the two brothers being the [antithesis] of each other within the bounds of popular entertainment,” Craven once said (as quoted by Brian J. Robb in the book Screams & Nightmares). The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror suggests that Craven failed in this goal: “The film is hobbled by its inability to confront the inference that the depraved 'family' of marauders are a dark mirror image of the 'typical' middle-American family they attack. As it is, the attackers are just garishly repulsive, while their victims are neither likable enough to serve as identification figures nor placed in any critical perspective.” 

For extended discourse about the families in this movie, see D.N. Rodowick's essay The Enemy Within: The Economy of Violence in The Hills Have Eyes. You can find it in a book titled Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film (edited by Barry Keith Grant).

My main complaint about this project is the abrupt ending that leaves the viewer in the dark about how the survivors ultimately return to civilization (or if they do so at all). The first half borders on being boring, but the pace really picks up after the midpoint. Gritty and realistic, the original version of The Hills Have Eyes may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed the journey to the finale even though the members of the Carter family are somewhat bland and unmemorable. The antagonists, on the other hand, are fascinating and terrifying (at one point, they plan to devour a baby they’ve kidnapped from the Carters). One review suggests that I may be wrong in dismissing the Carters as bland: a piece in Variety asserts that the screenplay “takes more trouble over the stock characters than it needs.” 

In a featurette titled 'Looking Back at The Hills Have Eyes' on the Blu-ray, Wes Craven says, “As bizarre as the premise of the film is, I've always struggled to make the people in it seem real... that white-bread family from Cleveland... those were people that I grew up with. That mother was like my mother.” 

The original premise differs from the final film. On the Blu-ray's audio commentary track, Craven reveals that “the first version of this script... was written [in the] early seventies, obviously, and was set in 1984 during the presidential primaries, and people needed a passport to go from state to state because it was kind of like [an Orwellian] 1984 type of society. [Producer Peter Locke] said, 'We don't need all this. Let's get to the desert.' So this very elaborate script got pared down.”

If you’re looking for a decent chilling tale about primal survival against difficult odds, spend ninety minutes with The Hills Have Eyes.

Deadly Friend

DEADLY FRIEND

[A shorter draft of this review appeared here in August of 2010.]

A dark and subversive take on the “people with their own sentient robots” type of film (like Short Circuit), 1986’s Deadly Friend (directed by Wes Craven) includes some wildly entertaining moments. You just have to exert tremendous effort to suspend your disbelief.

The story follows Paul Conway, a young whiz kid who studies the human brain and has built an intelligent robot named BB. Paul and his mom (with BB) move to a new neighborhood, where Paul swiftly befriends the local paper boy (a high school sophomore named Tom) and the cute girl next door (Sam, who has an abusive and controlling father). One night Sam’s father knocks Sam down a flight of stairs. She hits her head at the bottom and goes brain-dead. Doctors intend to remove her from life support after twenty-four hours pass. Paul goes all Frankenstein and concocts a plan to insert a small computer (which he calls a pacemaker for the head) that he salvaged from BB (who earlier took three shotgun blasts from a paranoid neighbor) into her brain. With the help of Tom, he actually executes this scheme – with dire consequences. Cyborg Sam sets out to exact revenge on all those in the neighborhood who have wronged her, including her father and the mean old lady across the street (whose death scene, which involves a basketball, is one of the greatest ever filmed). Paul’s efforts to control Sam mostly involve locking her in different places (like her old bedroom and the attic). Ultimately Paul’s mom and later the police come face-to-face with the new Sam, and a cop’s bullet ends the cyborg’s deadly rampage. A brief epilogue (added at the insistence of Mark Tapin, who at the time was the Warner Bros. alpha male) makes no sense unless interpreted as a nightmare.

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Jacob’s Ladder) penned the screenplay for this project (based on a Diana Henstell novel that I've never read). Rubin originally set out to write “a deep and heartfelt movie” but explains that the studio demanded additional violence after an early cut of the film didn't go over well. “We showed the picture to a bunch of Wes's fans, who hated it. All they wanted was guts, so the studio told me to give them six more scenes, each bloodier than the last,” said Rubin (as quoted by John Wooley in his book Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares).

According to Brian J. Robb's book Screams & Nightmares, Craven had the following to say about Deadly Friend: “There were seven or eight producers, and they all had their idea of what the film should be... the film became a hodge-podge, then it was censored by the MPAA. They made us submit the film thirteen times.”

Though the material in the finished film sometimes veers into silly territory, Craven successfully constructed an engaging tale that evokes both chills and laughter despite the studio's meddling. You know you’re watching a unique story when at one point you realize that the protagonist has slipped his mother a mickey so that he can sneak out of the house to perform unauthorized experimental brain surgery on the gal from next door. The tale is only ninety minutes long and absolutely worth sitting through to get to that death-by-basketball scene. Deadly Friend isn’t a realistic yarn, but it’s damn entertaining.

Some critics enjoyed the film at the time of its release. In The New York Times, Caryn James described the movie as “a witty ghoul story” and said, “Mr. Craven deftly balances suspense and spoof.” Variety noted that Deadly Friend has “the requisite number of shocks to keep most hearts pounding through to the closing credits.” Other critics were less impressed. Paul Attanasio wrote in The Washington Post that the film “is a routine horror movie, poorly photographed (by old-time cinematographer Philip Lathrop) and poorly performed...” Time Out published this summary: “This may be Craven at his crummiest...”

If you don't expect high art or a yarn steeped in realism, check out Deadly Friend for a fabulous ninety-minute dose of raw entertainment. I rather enjoy this unusual over-the-top story.

Chiller

CHILLER

A made-for-television movie that was broadcast in May of 1985, Chiller (directed by Wes Craven from a script by J.D. Feigelson) has an intriguing core concept but isn't a terribly well-made project. If you seek it out, be aware that all extant home video versions at the time of this writing have extremely poor picture quality and seem to have been sourced from fourth or fifth generation tapes.

“Chiller was about a man frozen cryogenically ten years ago,” Wes Craven once said (as quoted by Brian J. Robb in the book Screams & Nightmares). “He's now brought back to life entirely restored, except he has no soul. It's not horror in the sense of a maniac stalking people. Chiller was a kind of interesting thing.”

Chiller (which runs eighty-eight minutes including the end credits) suffers from a poor structure and the presence of a protagonist who is largely passive until her final confrontation with the antagonist. The tale opens with an apparent malfunction at a cryogenic storage facility that results in one frozen human subject (Miles Creighton) being rushed to a hospital. The protagonist (Marion Creighton, mother of Miles) waits around until twenty minutes into the story when a doctor proclaims, “He's alive.” Cut to six weeks later: Miles remains unresponsive on life support. Marion refuses to allow the medical professionals to pull the plug. At the twenty-seven minute mark, Miles finally opens his eyes. Three minutes later, Miles (in a wheelchair) arrives at his wealthy family's home (a sprawling estate) where his step-sister's beloved dog seems afraid of him. Six minutes later, unobserved, Miles snuffs out the pet's life – the first sign that Miles has not returned quite right. Miles goes back to work as an alpha male at his late father's corporation, where he berates the board of directors for giving money away: “Charity does not increase sales. It's non-profit.” Miles promptly fires his father's best friend Clarence (who ran the company while Miles was frozen) and then, emotionless, walks away from Clarence's corpse after the older man drops dead in a stairwell. Miles meets a female employee for drinks and engages in overt sexual harassment fifty-three minutes into the tale when he implies that he'll promote her if she sleeps with him. She inexplicably goes to his hotel room (later, we learn that he blackened her eye there). At the one hour mark, Marion's trusted ally (a Reverend named Felix) ponders, “When a man dies, what happens to his soul?” Six minutes later, Felix and Miles have a confrontation (in which Miles calls Felix a “meddling preacher”) that ends with the implication that the antagonist runs over Felix with his car. Felix survives and (in his hospital room) tells Marion, “The body you revived is empty. He has no soul.” The protagonist finally becomes active seventy-five minutes into the story when she interrupts Miles as he attempts to rape his step-sister. Four minutes later, Miles (with a gaffing hook in hand) stalks his mother through the house, and she locks him in a walk-in freezer. Police arrive and find Miles seemingly frozen to death, but he revives and attacks a cop. Marion shoots and kills Miles. An epilogue depicts a massive malfunction at the cryogenic facility, implying that the area will soon crawl with soulless citizens.

Walter Goodman accurately reviewed Chiller in The New York Times: “The show, written and produced by J. D. Feigelson and directed by Wes Craven as though they were following the commands of a computer, is a collection of scare tactics that ought to be frozen, wrapped in aluminum foil and placed in cryogenic chambers for at least a couple of generations. There are the rustlings and shufflings in the shadows, the creepy music, the free-floating mist, the camera moving ominously toward a victim, the sudden close-up appearances of the bad guy. With all of this, there's scarcely a chill in Chiller.”

One of the lesser projects in Craven's oeuvre, Chiller (with its protracted boring scenes and lack of an active hero) left me cold. Skip this one.

Deadly Blessing

DEADLY BLESSING

Directed by Wes Craven and released theatrically in the summer of 1981, Deadly Blessing follows a young woman named Martha who lives on a farm next to land owned by “the Hittites” (an Amish-like religious sect). Martha's husband Jim had been a Hittite but opted to disobey his father and leave the flock, thereby becoming shunned by his kin. Someone murders Jim fourteen minutes into the tale. Two of Martha's old friends (Vicky and Lana) arrive and stay with the widow to help her through her time of grief. Other nefarious events occur (a Hittite gets killed, someone unleashes a snake in Martha's bath, and Vicky's forbidden romance with another Hittite ends with her burned to death in her car), leaving the viewer to wonder who is behind this crime spree. “It's almost a traditional whodunit,” says Wes Craven (quoted by Brian J. Robb in the book Screams & Nightmares).

“What we tried to do with Deadly Blessing was to kind of do something a little bit different... in that we were gonna combine a murder mystery with a horror film,” says co-writer Matthew Barr in a featurette titled 'So It Was Written' on the Blu-ray. Barr continues, “Deadly Blessing takes basically a group we modeled on the Amish, but we made them of course more extreme, and we called them the Hittites... and the idea was to kind of set up a story with a repressive religious cult.” Barr explains that the plot involves “a young man who had left the fold, married an outsider, wanted to farm and live the modern way... he gets killed... that's where the murder mystery came in.”

On the home video commentary track, Wes Craven describes his input into the screenplay: “I did a pretty thorough rewrite. The script was in need of a lot of work.” Later, he adds, “It was an early script for the guys [Glenn M. Benest & Matthew Barr], and it had a lot of problems, so there was a lot of just making things more believable and trying to figure out the logic of it. That went on throughout shooting, I think; there was always constant rewrites and trying to make it make a little bit more sense... Structurally, it had a lot of problems, so I was just trying to straighten out motivations...”

Co-writer Matthew Barr (on a Blu-ray featurette) notes that even before Craven became attached to the project, he and Glenn M. Benest “had written the script about six or seven times already. We made some versions that were more violent, less violent, as we tried to kind of refine the story. And ultimately Wes Craven was brought in, and then he wrote and rewrote the script himself a couple of times...”

Glenn M. Benest recalls that Craven “came up with one of the scariest moments in the whole film where there's a snake in the bathtub. That is a frightening scene, and he came up with that whole thing.”

In the book Screams & Nightmares, Craven describes the origin of the snake scene: “I dreamed the entire scene as it appears in the movie complete with fades, colors, everything. I woke up and wrote it all down, and we shot that version. It worked beautifully.”

The screenplay originally ended with protagonist Martha saying farewell to her friend Lana after the two survive a harrowing night. Producers tacked on an epilogue in which a demonic creature erupts out of the floor in Martha's home and pulls the protagonist down (perhaps to hell). “The end was added on... it was forced by the studio. That was shot back in Hollywood after the film was all cut together. The producers, Jon Peters and Peter Guber, decided it needed a big spectacular ending, and they had this thing written,” says Wes Craven (as quoted by Brian J. Robb in the book Screams & Nightmares).

Co-writer Glenn M. Benest (in a video interview within the So It Was Written featurette on the Blu-ray) discusses the epilogue: “I'm pretty ambivalent about it because in a way it goes against what the film is about because to me the film is about that there isn't a devil or supernatural evil, that evil is in people. It's not out of some supernatural force... evil is what people do...”

Craven (on the home video's audio commentary track) recalls that the film wasn't well-received upon its release, but it did garner some praise. Carrie Rickey in The Village Voice called Deadly Blessing “a minor miracle: a consummately-crafted small genre movie with more ideas than most big movies...” Janet Maslin (in The New York Times) wrote that the project “is a better-than-average horror film, in large part because it isn't about terrified coeds being stalked by an ax-wielding loon. Its story is more original than that...”

More than three decades after its release, Deadly Blessing has become a cult classic. An odd film with a denouement (pre-epilogue) that only partially makes sense after repeat viewings, the project documents some beautiful landscapes and features a couple of particularly chilling set pieces (the notorious snake-in-the-bathtub bit and Lana's adventure while trapped in Martha's barn). “It's a flawed film in many ways,” Wes Craven laments toward the end of the Blu-ray's commentary track. I agree, but I also assert that the story is wholly unlike any other horror tale before or since, and for that alone Deadly Blessing is worthy of appraisal by genre fans.

Red Eye

RED EYE

“The interesting thing about Red Eye is it's not just a thriller. It is almost like a little art film,” opines director Wes Craven in a featurette titled A New Kind of Thriller that's available as a DVD bonus feature. “The entire second act is... basically two people on an airplane just talking... [screenwriter] Carl [Ellsworth] made it work with the dialogue.”

Indeed, this motion picture from 2005 (which was the first feature film credit for Ellsworth, who had previously written for television shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer) demonstrates that tension and clever banter can elevate a low-budget film to a quality worthy of acclaim. Critics sang the praises of the project during its theatrical run. In The New Yorker, David Denby called Red Eye “a dandy little thriller” that is “made with classical technique and bravura skill.” Ethan Alter (in Film Journal International) wrote that the movie “has a playful wit and enough genuine tension to make it worth your time and money.” Empire Magazine concludes that the film is “slick fun deftly handled by Craven.”

The director (in a video interview on the DVD's bonus features) describes how he became attached to the project. “Somebody called up and said, 'We have this script – first-time writer, but it's really good. Check it out,' and I was actually at the end of working a very long time on Cursed, the movie I did before Red Eye, and I was pretty much exhausted and burnt out, so, you know, 'I want to go to an island someplace and disappear for a year, but okay, I'll read it.' And it was just like, 'Oh, oh, oh, oh, juicy stuff.' And then it was like, 'Well, God I have to do this. I'd be a fool not to.'”

The bare-bones plot follows a hotel manager named Lisa who has booked a flight from Texas (where she attended her grandmother's funeral) back to Florida. At the airport, she meets a charming fellow who buys her a drink and chats her up. On the plane, Lisa finds herself sitting next to him and learns that his name is Jackson Rippner. Twenty minutes into the film (which runs a mere seventy-six minutes total before the end credits roll), the plane takes off. Just a few minutes into the second act, Rippner reveals his sinister side as his dialogue with Lisa skews darker and darker. Turns out he's part of a team hell-bent on assassinating a Homeland Security bigwig who is hours away from checking in at the hotel Lisa runs, and Rippner needs Lisa to phone her staff and move the target to a particular room so that Rippner's allies will have a clear shot at the suite with a surface-to-air missile. If Lisa does not cooperate, another one of Rippner's pals will murder Lisa's father.

I won't spoil much of the story except to say that in the third act, Rippner shows up at the home of Lisa's father, and a taut cat-and-mouse chase ensues. On the home video commentary track, Craven observes that in this sequence Rippner “was fighting her on her home territory for the first time. Suddenly he's on the other person's turf. Originally it was written for the father's house that he had moved into after a divorce that she had not grown up in, and we made it the house where she had grown up as a child, and so she knew every inch of it.”

My only complaint about Red Eye is that Lisa's dad ultimately shoots and kills Rippner about three minutes before the credits roll. I'd rather see the protagonist save herself at the climactic moment. This is a minor quibble, though, and Red Eye is otherwise an expertly-crafted yarn. Seek it out.

Summer of Fear (originally titled Stranger in Our House)

SUMMER OF FEAR (also known as STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE)

Based on a Lois Duncan novel that I've never read, the 1978 project Summer of Fear (directed by Wes Craven and originally broadcast by NBC under the title Stranger in our House) is a drama with supernatural elements rather than a horror film in the traditional sense, though the plot touches on assorted horrific notions: the death of loved ones via a car accident, the loss of a beloved family pet, and the effects of a stroke on one's ability to function.

In his book Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares, John Wooley quotes the director as saying that Summer of Fear was “where I first shot in thirty-five millimeter. It was the first time I ever used a dolly. I was working with things I never realized even existed.”

With its decent production values, the film showcases a teenaged Linda Blair as a young adult named Rachel who grows to suspect that her cousin Julia is a witch. Julia moves in with Rachel and her family after Julia's parents and housekeeper die in a car crash. Turns out that “Julia” is an imposter named Sarah who practices black magic and was the real housekeeper for Rachel's late aunt and uncle; the actual Julia also perished in the car wreck. For some reason, Sarah is hell-bent on making life uncomfortable for Rachel and her family. After Sarah declares her intent to kill Rachel and her mother, Sarah pursues Rachel and her ex-boyfriend in a car chase that ends in the witch's apparent death (an epilogue reveals that she survived).

I first watched Summer of Fear on DVD in 2009 and at the time was not impressed: I wrote, “This film is flat-out boring and riddled with flaws. Sarah's motive is unclear, the characters are dull, and the plot plods along with periodic incidents (Rachel gets a bad case of hives, for one) that the protagonist attributes to her alleged cousin's use of witchcraft. Don't waste your time.” Having just sat through the project two more times (once while listening to the DVD's commentary track), I now see the appeal of this tension-filled thriller. In addition to being a time capsule that documents the hairstyles, wardrobes, bulky telephones, and gas-guzzling automobiles of the late 1970s, the movie plays to the universal fear of one's family life unraveling. On the audio commentary, Wes Craven notes that “this is every teenager's nightmare situation: you have everything worked out in your family and with your boyfriend and everything else, and then somebody comes in and starts gaining all the power away from you.”

One of the film's more unsettling aspects is its overtones of incestuous relationships. Rachel's older brother seems attracted to his cousin. “Julia” gives her alleged uncle a neck massage and later (eighty-five minutes into the tale) invites him to “unzip me” as she changes clothes. Julia/Sarah claims that Rachel's ex-boyfriend always saw Rachel as more of a “sister” even when they were dating. These moments make me squirm in the present day and must have been exponentially more controversial back in 1978.

Though hardcore horror fans may not enjoy this entry in Craven's oeuvre, Summer of Fear has its share of entertaining moments and is worth at least one viewing for Wes Craven completists. If you go in expecting straight horror action, you'll be disappointed. The script (adapted from the Duncan novel by Max A. Keller and Glenn M. Benest) is relatively tame given that it was developed for network television, but it pushes the envelope in places and sports one particularly gut-wrenching scene (in which Rachel's beloved horse dies just before the midpoint). Summer of Fear is an atypical Wes Craven project. If you have one hundred minutes to spare and want a glimpse of a nuclear family's trials and tribulations in late-seventies California, check it out. It's a surprise-filled ride.

Night Visions

NIGHT VISIONS

A 1990 made-for-TV movie that Wes Craven directed and co-wrote, Night Visions follows a singular and memorable protagonist (a young woman named Sally Powers who has a history of mental illness, low-grade telepathy, and a fresh doctorate in psychology). In Los Angeles, Powers partners with a hot-tempered alcoholic cop (Tom Mackey) in an effort to solve a string of murders attributed to a serial killer nicknamed The Eagle due to his signature of leaving attractive female victims posed in spread-eagle positions. Peppered with periodic provocative and sometimes horrific imagery and sporting a well-staged tension-filled final ten minutes (and featuring a trippy dream sequence twenty-seven minutes into the story), Night Visions isn't nearly as unwatchable as most of the scant online reviews of this obscure project suggest. It was never destined to win any awards, but it's a perfectly serviceable thriller marred only by the unbelievable sub-plot of Powers developing a romantic relationship with a photographer named Martin (if Powers was truly obsessed with solving the case, she would not take time away from sifting evidence to go on leisurely dates) and by Mackey's habit of contaminating crime scenes.

Night Visions becomes increasingly interesting when a stressed Powers manifests symptoms of multiple personality disorder. Actress Loryn Locklin delivers nuanced performances in scenes that depict Powers slipping in and out of alternate personas. Other stars of note in this project include James Remar as Mackey and Mitch Pileggi as a police captain.

Seventy-one minutes into the tale, Powers articulates a thought-provoking profile of the killer that (along with a bone-headed move by the bad guy) ultimately leads to the discovery of his identity. I won't spoil the mystery. The Eagle is a unique antagonist with a penchant for snuffing out lives at carefully-selected geographic locations that form the points of a star when mapped out.

Night Visions at the time of this writing has not officially been issued on home video except long ago on VHS in some non-USA countries (PAL format rather than NTSC). Here's hoping the powers-that-be will sate Wes Craven's legion of fans by giving this decent little film a proper modern-day commercial release. I'd snap up a copy right away given the chance.

Night Visions doesn't rise to the quality of Craven's best work (it will never capture the popular imagination the way A Nightmare on Elm Street did), but it's above average for made-for-TV fare. Seek it out and let me know how you perceive it in the comments here on the blog.

My Soul to Take

MY SOUL TO TAKE

Written and directed by Wes Craven, My Soul to Take met with harsh reviews upon its theatrical release in October of 2010. In Variety, Dennis Harvey called the film a “dumb, derivative teen slasher movie” and “a pretty soporific affair bogged down by awkward expository dialogue, one-dimensional characters (or ones whose suggested hidden sides turn out to be mere tease), bland atmospherics and unmemorable action.” Gary Goldstein (in the L.A. Times) opined that the project is “a thrill-free snooze” with an “overly complex story.” Marc Savlov wrote in The Austin Chronicle that “this utterly mediocre forget-me-now could've been crafted by any faceless serial director.” I beg to differ with these three critics and all the others who dismissed My Soul to Take, which I perceive as a flawed but thought-provoking singular horror tale with ample scares and a core concept that demands repeat viewings to fully appreciate.

The movie opens with a gripping nine-minute prologue set sixteen years before the main story. In the opening sequence, a family man named Abel (who suffers from multiple personality disorder) finds a distinctive knife in his workshop and recognizes the weapon from TV news reports as the blade of choice used by a local serial killer (the Riverton Ripper). Fearing that one of his heretofore unknown personalities might be responsible for a string of murders, Abel phones his psychiatrist but then notices that his pregnant wife has already been knifed. Authorities arrive and shoot Abel as he's about to kill Leah (his three-year-old daughter). Abel snatches a gun from one officer, shoots him, and then offs his doctor before another cop takes him down. Wounded but alive, Abel revives in an ambulance en route to the hospital (where mysteriously seven premature births are happening) and causes a nasty crash (the vehicle flips, rolls, and ultimately explodes alongside a river). When help arrives, Abel's body is nowhere to be found.

Sixteen years later, the seven kids born the night of the prologue ring in their sixteenth birthday with a tradition known as “Ripper Night” alongside the river (by the remains of the ambulance, now rusted out and covered in candle stubs) during which one of the “Riverton Seven” must fend off a massive puppet designed to look as Abel might appear had he survived and lived in the wilderness all this time (ragged clothing, long hair, and a scraggly beard). Protagonist Adam “Bug” Hellerman (a sensitive fellow prone to migraines) is this year's “volunteer,” and he's spooked by the sight of the puppet. Before the ritual goes far, police arrive and order the teens to disperse. On his way home, Jay (one of the Riverton Seven) notices someone following him as he crosses an isolated bridge. Chased down by a long-haired bearded fellow in ragged clothes, Jay dies around seventeen minutes into the tale when his assailant slams his head against a metal post, knifes him, and tosses him into the river.

The next forty minutes of the film happen during daylight as the teens (unaware that one of their peers has been murdered) go about a typical day before, during, and after school. A female student nicknamed Fang holds sway over many friends and followers; she makes life hell for Bug and his best friend Alex, ordering a bully (Brandon) to rough them up. Thirty-three minutes into the film, Bug has a vision and sees (in a restroom mirror) Jay, bloody, swimming underwater. Six minutes later, Craven begs the viewer to wonder just what the hell is going on when Bug and Alex (alone in a corridor) begin speaking in unison and moving as if they are mirror images of one another for a minute or so. Just under ten minutes later, the present-day Ripper claims another victim and slits the throat of Penelope (a religious gal and one of the Riverton Seven) alongside the school's pool. Within eleven minutes, two more victims fall to the mysterious killer (who may or may not be Abel): Brandon and the young woman he lusted after (Brittany).

Night falls again one hour into the film, and the rest of the action plays out in and around Bug's home that evening. Craven reveals that “Fang” is Bug's sister and is in fact Leah (Abel's daughter), and the woman Bug thought was his mother turns out to be his aunt (paramedics cut Bug out of his dead mom's womb the night of the prologue). Eighty-one minutes into the story, the protagonist finds himself confronted by a cop who thinks that Bug's responsible for the four teens killed that day, and Bug finds that his aunt has also been killed. The Ripper shows up, kills the officer, and attacks Bug. I won't spoil the beat-by-beat moments of the denouement, but I will reveal the twist that confused many critics and may not be apparent until a second viewing: the night Abel died in the prologue, his seven personalities (each a unique soul) dispersed and reincarnated as the Riverton Seven, and one of them is the present-day killer. I won't tell you which one, though there are only three suspects left as the finale gets well and truly underway.

My only quibble with this film is that Alex (ninety-one minutes into the story) tells Bug that Abel developed “schizophrenia” at the age of sixteen. Schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities (contrary to popular opinion) and is a wholly different sort of mental illness.

“This was a script that got rewritten while we were shooting,” Wes Craven notes on the Blu-ray's audio commentary track. “It's a very complex story, and we kept figuring out how to make it better.” While some critics see the plot's complexity as a negative, I enjoyed watching a horror yarn in which not everything's spelled out even by the time one reaches the very end. My Soul to Take is a wrongly-maligned entry in Wes Craven's oeuvre, and I predict that it shall be rediscovered and reevaluated in due time. Thought-provoking, sometimes puzzling, but always entertaining, My Soul to Take is a unique spin on the “teens in jeopardy as a knife-wielding killer stalks them” sub-genre. Disagree? Leave some comments here on the blog.

Frankenstein (2004 made-for-TV miniseries)

FRANKENSTEIN (2004 made-for-TV miniseries)

I haven't read Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein in over two decades, so I cannot discuss how Hallmark's miniseries (which runs two hours and fifty-minutes without commercials) fares in terms of being a faithful adaptation of the book (though many reviews on IMDB praise this version's faithfulness to the source material). The tale opens with the crew of the Prometheus (a ship caught in ice) rescuing Viktor Frankenstein (who had been pursuing his bipedal creation on a dog sled) from freezing to death. Viktor tells his life story to the ship's captain, so the bulk of the story is a flashback to the events described by Frankenstein (the narrative returns to the captain and Viktor on the ship several times). The plot moves from Viktor's childhood (when his parents adopted an orphan named Elizabeth) to his time at a university where he immerses himself in absorbing all he can learn about chemistry, physics, and science in general. Viktor develops a hypothesis about how to bring the dead back to life, and he tests his ideas on a dead dog that he manages to momentarily resurrect. Not content to experiment on animals, Viktor assembles a human out of various corpse parts scavenged from the local graveyard. One stormy night, Viktor brings his creature to life. It escapes into the community and takes a coat with Viktor's journal in one pocket. The monster (which is more articulate and intelligent than in most filmed versions of this story) reads the journal and realizes that it is the creation of Viktor Frankenstein. It somehow finds its way to the Frankenstein estate in search of its creator, accidentally kills Viktor's young brother, and frames a servant girl named Justine for the killing. Viktor manages to locate and confront the creature, and it demands that Viktor create a female mate with the promise that the two monsters will exist peacefully outside of civilization if Frankenstein complies. Viktor agrees, but his friend Henry (upon learning of the dreadful experiments) convinces him not to proceed. In the presence of the monster, Viktor burns the not-yet-reanimated body of the mate. The creature vows that it will find Viktor on his wedding night. Viktor inexplicably does not tell his bride-to-be (creepily enough, his stepsister Elizabeth) about the danger they're in. The creature kills Henry, and a grief-stricken Viktor gets on with his life and marries Elizabeth. Viktor's creation does indeed track down the happy couple in their honeymoon suite and kills Elizabeth. Viktor pursues the monster (it leaves a series of cryptic notes for Viktor to find) and ends up on the dog sled from the prologue chasing the creature across an icy landscape. Viktor dies aboard the Prometheus after finishing his tale, and the ship's captain watches as the creature carries its dead maker off into the blizzard.

My main problem with this version of Frankenstein is that the story is supposed to be the events Viktor describes to the captain of the Prometheus, yet there are numerous scenes in which Viktor is not present. How did he know what the monster was up to when it was off on its own? This quibble aside, the Hallmark version of Frankenstein is quite watchable and boasts marvelous production values for a made-for-TV endeavor. Nothing jolted me out of the “reality” of the tale – I noticed no anachronisms in terms of the environments or dialogue, but then I've never been to modern day Europe and certainly have no idea what it was like during the time period in which this yarn takes place, so how would I know if something was dreadfully off-key? With a cast that includes Donald Sutherland (as the Prometheus captain), William Hurt (as Viktor's college mentor), Julie Delpy (Viktor's mother), and Luke Goss (the creature), the 2004 made-for-TV miniseries version of Frankenstein is not wanting for talent. It's not a project that warrants or demands repeat viewings, but it's worthy of a look (especially for fans of the Shelley novel).

The Curse of Frankenstein

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN

A 1957 project that launched the Hammer Film series of Frankenstein movies, The Curse of Frankenstein opens and closes with scenes of a disheveled Baron Victor Frankenstein imprisoned in a cell where he implores a priest to believe his tale of bringing to life a humanoid creature cobbled together from various corpses. After the prologue, the main plot picks up with Victor as a wealthy child (he's just inherited his family's fortune) hiring a tutor (Paul) to educate him. When Victor has grown into a man, he and Paul remain friends and test their unorthodox scientific theories by bringing a dog back to life. Victor proposes that they next create and reanimate an ideal human specimen, but Paul balks. Victor pushes forward alone and assembles a creature from the parts of assorted dead bodies. Obsessed by his research, Victor spends little time with his fiance (his cousin Elizabeth) or his mistress (a servant woman who works for him). Nearly fifty minutes into the film (which runs eighty-three minutes total), Victor brings his creation to life as lightning flashes through the windows of his laboratory. The monster promptly attempts to strangle its maker to death, but Paul intervenes and saves Victor's life. The men strap the creature down, but it escapes the next day. Out in the countryside, Paul and Victor hunt the abomination with rifles. Paul shoots and kills it, but not before the creature encounters a blind man and a small child (both presumably meet horrible fates, though whatever occurs to them happens off camera). Victor and Paul bury the monster, but Victor secretly reanimates it. The mistress, meanwhile, threatens to expose Victor's secrets and research if he does not marry her. Victor traps her in the lab with the creature, thereby solving that problem. The night before Victor is to marry Elizabeth, the monster gets loose again and ventures up to the roof. Elizabeth (who has been pressing Victor for details about the nature of his research throughout the tale) explores the laboratory and deduces that someone is up on the roof. She heads up there. Paul and Victor, outside, spot the creature atop the abode. Victor races to the roof just as his creation approaches Elizabeth. Victor fires a couple of shots from a pistol and accidentally hits Elizabeth in the shoulder. Victor throws an oil lantern at the monster, which burns and falls through an angled rooftop window into the lab below, where it lands in a vat of acid. An epilogue back in Victor's cell implies that nobody believes Victor's tale (Paul and Elizabeth refuse to corroborate his story). Guards lead Victor out of his cell, and the viewer spots a guillotine through a window.

For its first fifty minutes, The Curse of Frankenstein is slow-paced by modern standards with lots of lengthy shots of characters gushing exposition through dialogue on lavish sets. Once the creature rips the bandages off its face and reveals its gruesome visage, the tale gains momentum and remains engrossing right up to the end when guards escort Victor (presumably to his execution) from his cell. Peter Cushing vanishes into the role of Baron Victor Frankenstein and gives a fine nuanced performance as the obsessed mad scientist. He chews up the scenery, particularly on the set of the way cool laboratory in which chemicals bubble in beakers and strange equipment glows and hums.

The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Films notes that The Curse of Frankenstein “devotes considerable screen time to the actual construction of the monster (an event that [Mary] Shelley's novel glosses over).” This observation keys into my main complaint about this film – the creature only shows up for the last half hour and even then has little screen time. The filmmakers (director Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster) made a bold choice in crafting a project that focuses more on Victor than his creation. If you're willing to sit through a slow first fifty minutes, you'll enjoy an enthralling denouement with a horrific animated corpse lurching around.

Friday the 13th Parts 3 & 4

^{FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3}

Much more flawed than the first two films in the series but featuring a chilling second half, Friday the 13^th Part 3 opens with a five-minute prologue that recaps the end of Part 2 and then sows further confusion about just how the previous film ended by depicting Jason on the floor of his shack with the machete no longer embedded in his body. Was the “Jason jumps through the window” moment just a nightmare? Apparently, which leaves the question of what happened to Paul at the end of Part 2 (unless the bit where Ginny's loaded into an ambulance is also part of a dream).

Friday the 13^th Part 2 paints Jason as a territorial recluse who only goes after people who enter his turf. Here in Part 3, he's more proactive in terms of seeking out victims. He first goes after a general store owner named Harold and his wife, apparently drawn to their laundry that hangs outside so he can get a change of clothes. Harold's wife watches a newscast that establishes “Crystal Lake” as the name of a community, not just a camp and a lake. Harold snacks on the food in his shop and swills Jack Daniels as he sits on a toilet, continuing the Friday the 13^th tradition of painting many of the locals (like Crazy Ralph) as colorful eccentrics. Jason dispatches Harold by lodging a cleaver in his chest, then kills the missus by jabbing a knitting needle through the back of her neck. The sequence in and around Harold's store runs about eleven minutes, so once again the viewer must wait an inordinate amount of time before meeting the protagonist.

Chris Higgins (a young woman) and a small group of her friends (inexplicably including a marijuana-loving couple who look about ten years older than the others) travel via van to a place called Higgins Haven (a bit of land on which a barn and a two-story house sit near the lake). En route, they encounter a strange older fellow sleeping in the middle of the road. The young adults get out of the van and listen to the man ramble on in a manner that makes it clear he's meant to be the equivalent of “Crazy Ralph” for this film. He shows them a human eyeball, which sends them fleeing back to the van. As they drive away, the eye-toting fellow bellows “I've warned thee!”

Upon arrival at Higgins Haven, Chris goes into the house where her love interest (a guy named Rick) practically assaults her on sight, lunging forward and surprising her with a hug and a kiss. She rightly rebuffs him. Chris looks out a window and notices the barn door moving. She and Rick head outside and shortly thereafter hear a scream from the house. They rush in and find a fellow named Shelly with a small axe apparently embedded in his head, but it's not real; Shelly is the prankster of the group, and he pulls such stunts for attention. He sits up and laughs at his own cleverness, oblivious to how much the others dislike his brand of humor.

Shelly and another one of Chris's friends (Vera) go on a supply run in town, where they get on the wrong side of three bikers (two guys and a woman). The gang shows up at Higgins Haven looking for revenge (Shelly ran over their motorcycles with a car). They siphon gasoline from the van with the intent of using it to burn down the barn. Unfortunately for them, Jason lurks in the barn and picks them all off in quick succession.

Chris and Rick have a heart-to-heart discussion in which Chris reveals her backstory of having been attacked in the nearby woods by a hideous man a couple of years earlier. She's returned to Higgins Haven to conquer her fears. The Jason of Part 2 would never have left her alive, so once again the narrative of Part 3 alters the nature of the antagonist.

The male stoner goes to an outhouse at night, hears something outside, and finds his girlfriend lurking out there.

Vera sits at the end of a dock at the lake, and Shelly (clad in a wetsuit and wearing a hockey mask) grabs her leg and leaps out of the water to scare her. He holds a spear gun. Shelly heads for the barn, and shortly thereafter Jason emerges with the hockey mask hiding his face: the first time the killer sports his iconic look. Jason uses the spear gun to shoot Vera in the eye, killing her.

Two other members of the group (Andy and Debbie) have sex. Debbie then goes to take a shower. Andy walks down the hall on his hands, and Jason (apparently tired of hanging out in and around the barn) appears and slices him in half. Debbie returns to her hammock following her shower, and Jason (hiding below) thrusts a blade up through her back and out the front of her chest.

The male stoner goes to check the fuse box. Meanwhile, Shelly (with his throat slit) stumbles into the kitchen and startles the female stoner, who thinks that he's pulling another prank.

Jason throws the male stoner into the fuse box, electrocuting him.

The female stoner realizes that Shelly's throat actually has been slit, and she panics and races through the house until Jason stabs her in the belly with a hot fireplace poker.

Rick and Chris (who had been out hiking) return to the property and find popcorn burning in the kitchen. They split up and explore in search of the others. After a bit, Chris goes outside and calls for Rick, unable to see that Jason's right around the corner of the house with a hand clamped over Rick's mouth. Jason crushes Rick's head.

Chris finds blood and clothing in the bathtub and realizes something's seriously amiss. She runs outside and approaches the barn and finds a biker's corpse. Chris retreats to the house and locks the doors, but Jason hurtles Rick's corpse through a window to create his own entrance. Chris runs upstairs, hides in a closet, finds Debbie's body, and gives away her location by screaming. Chris pulls the knife out of Debbie and goes on the offensive as Jason chops down the door with an axe. Debbie stabs Jason's hand and leg, and thus the third act begins seventy-seven minutes into the film.

The remaining fifteen minutes of the story are best experienced firsthand, so track down the Blu-ray (which unfortunately does not include the commentary track one can find in the “From Crystal Lake to Manhattan” DVD box set) and enjoy Jason versus Chris in high definition. I won't spoil the final twists and turns of the plot, but I will say that it's a harrowing ride that ends with Jason seemingly dead with an axe stuck in his head on the floor of the barn.

Friday the 13^th Part 3 expands the Crystal Lake mythos but creates some paradoxes and questions. If Chris and her family have inhabited Higgins Haven for some time, why did Jason never slaughter them given that the property seems to be in his territory? Why did Jason leave Chris alive when he attacked her in the woods a couple of years earlier?

Not as focused or as chilling as the first two films in the series, Part 3 nonetheless delivers an entertaining and tense second half saturated with innovative kill scenes. It's the weakest of the first four tales in this franchise, but it's nowhere near as vile and unwatchable as, say, Part 5. A new spin on the Jason Voorhees legend, Friday the 13^th Part 3 delivers the goods that fans of quality slasher films expect. It could've been better, but it ain't bad.

FRIDAY THE 13^th: THE FINAL CHAPTER

The fourth film in the series picks up the night after the end of Part 3 as law enforcement officials and ambulances swarm Higgins Haven and cart away the deceased. Jason (still seemingly dead) heads to a morgue, where fourteen minutes into the tale he stops playing possum and kills a morgue attendant and a nurse.

The next day, a woman known as Mrs. Jarvis jogs through the woods with her daughter Trish. They return home (a house near Crystal Lake) and find Trish's younger brother Tommy playing a video game as he wears a monster mask. The Jarvis family discusses the fact that six young adults have rented the property next door.

The six renters (four guys and two girls) drive toward the property and pass a cemetery in which a prominent headstone marks the resting place of Pamela Voorhees. This is the first time fans of the series learn the first name of Jason's mother. This gravestone is also the source of some controversy among fans, for it lists Pamela's year of death as 1979. Until the release of The Final Chapter, everyone assumed that Part 1 took place in 1980 (its year of release). I stand by the 1980 continuity, for June 13 in 1979 was not a Friday. Perhaps the tombstone engraver made a mistake.

That night, Tommy and Trish greet the six renters as they arrive next door to the Jarvis place. The new neighbors include two single fellows (Jimmy and Ted) and two couples: Sara & Doug and Samantha & Paul.

The next day, the renters go on a hike and cross paths with twins (Terri and Tina). The twins go skinny-dipping with the group (aside from Sara, who heads back to the house).

Tommy and Trish have car trouble on their way home. As Tommy attempts to fix the engine, a fellow named Rob shows up and offers to help. He gets the car running, and Trish offers a ride to Rob (who claims he is hunting bear).

That night, Trish advises Rob to stick to the trails that wend all around the lake.

Next door, the renters party with the twins.

Near the midpoint, Samantha goes for a nude swim alone and climbs into a rubber raft. Jason (who can apparently hold his breath a really long time) leaps out of the water and stabs her from below.

Back at the rented house, Ted smokes a joint while Jimmy goes upstairs with one of the twins.

Paul looks for Samantha and swims out to the rubber raft, where he finds her corpse. Panicked, he heads back to the dock where Jason stabs him in the crotch.

Rob (at his campsite) hears Paul's screams and heads into the woods with a machete.

Back at the party house, Jimmy and Tina get intimate. Their bed breaks.

Ted finds and watches some old nudie films as he smokes dope.

Fifty-one minutes into the plot, a thunderstorm commences. Terri goes to leave without her sister but bumps into Jason outside. She's killed.

Mrs. Jarvis returns to her home to find that the power is out and her kids are not home. She goes outside and is presumably killed (an off-camera death).

Trish and Tommy return home and cannot locate their mother. Trish goes to search the trails outside only to locate Rob.

Jimmy goes downstairs for some post-coital wine. Jason drives the corkscrew through his hand and embeds a cleaver in his face. Jason next appears outside a second-floor window, where he pulls Tina through the glass and sends her toppling to her death.

Out in the woods, Rob explains to Trish that he's actually hunting Jason, not bear, because Jason killed his sister Sandra (see Part 2).

Sara and Doug enjoy each other in the shower while downstairs Jason kills Ted by shoving a knife through the back of his head.

Sara heads back to the bedroom while Doug remains in the shower. Jason kills Doug.

Sara returns to the bathroom, finds Doug's corpse, and runs downstairs. An axe comes through the front door and kills her.

At the Jarvis house, Tommy heads downstairs as Rob and Trish arrive. Jason disables the phone line. Rob and Trish go next door and realize Jason has been there.

The final eighteen minutes of the tale depict the efforts of Rob, Trish, and Tommy to survive as Jason stalks them. This film boasts one hell of a denouement, and I won't spoil the ending here: watch it yourself (ideally on Blu-ray) and enjoy the jolts and scares that lead up to Jason's final moments as a living breathing human being.

Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter (like Part 3 before it) begs certain questions: how has the Jarvis family existed in Jason's territory for so long without having been stalked and killed before? Why would the Jarvis family stick around after hearing news about the slaughter at Higgins Haven (presumably elsewhere on Crystal Lake) when they're aware (via a newspaper that Mrs. Jarvis has) that the killer's “body” is missing?

These flaws aside, The Final Chapter remains one of the strongest entries in the franchise and is on par with the first two films in terms of sheer entertainment value. A major step up in quality from the third film, Part 4 boasts stunning practical special effects and some truly chilling imagery. I recommend the first four Friday the 13^th tales if you're in the mood for a bloody good time this October.

Friday the 13th Part 2

FRIDAY THE 13^th PART 2

Released in 1981 (but set five years after the events of the first movie aside from a twelve-minute prologue that occurs two months after Alice Hardy decapitated Mrs. Voorhees), Friday the 13^th Part 2 does not (as a review in Variety claimed) “employ too many of the same twists and turns used in the original.” The sequel is a unique tale with a new killer and a distinct set of victims. While the setting is similar (the bulk of the movie occurs at a training facility for camp counselors along Crystal Lake near the camp from the first film), the plot unfolds in a wholly different way from the yarn told in part 1. In the lengthy prologue this time around, Alice (the survivor from the original film) has a nightmare about her encounter with Mrs. Voorhees. She awakens, takes a phone call from her mom, and showers. As Alice heats water in a tea pot, a cat startles her by jumping through the window. Alice goes to her fridge to fetch some food for the kitty and therein discovers the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees moments before an unseen assailant drives an ice pick through her temple.

In the twenty minutes that pass before the next kill scene, the audience eventually meets the protagonist (a graduate student named Ginny who studies child psychology). First, the narrative introduces an array of young adults: Sandra and Jeff (a couple) who encounter Crazy Ralph in the town near Crystal Lake, their old friend Ted, a wheelchair-bound counselor-in-training named Mark, and two ladies (Terry and Vickie). All of these doomed individuals gather outside Packanack Lodge to hear an orientation speech from a dude named Paul (the protagonist's love interest) as they gear up for counselor training. Our heroine (Ginny) arrives late in a sputtering unreliable car twenty-one minutes into the story (an awfully late introduction for a main character). That night, the group sits around a campfire as Paul recounts the legend of Jason Voorhees, who allegedly drowned in Crystal Lake back in 1958 but whose body was never recovered. Paul says that certain old-timers in town claim to have seen Jason, who some believe survived and grew up living off the land in the dense local woods. Paul speculates that Jason may have seen his mother decapitated that fateful night in June of 1980 and that he might even now lurk in the forest waiting to exact revenge on any who dare enter his territory. Because there would be no movie otherwise, this legend is totally true (though Paul doesn't believe it).

Later that night, Ginny and Paul kiss in Ginny's cabin while Crazy Ralph lurks outside and spies on them. Jason (still mostly unseen) shows up and quietly murders Ralph. The next day, Jeff and Sandra set off to visit the off-limits grounds of neighboring Camp Crystal Lake. They stumble upon the mangled corpse of a dog moments before a cop busts them for trespassing. After the cop takes the curious couple back to Packanack Lodge, he glimpses Jason vanishing into the woods and sets off in pursuit. The policeman stumbles upon a weathered shack of sorts deep in the forest and explores its interior until Jason sneaks up behind him and embeds the claw of a hammer in the back of his head.

That night, Ginny, Paul, Ted, and many of the background extras (additional trainees who are not named or given much to do in the story) head to a bar in town, thereby leaving a small group of young adults to be picked off at the training facility. A guy named Scott steps into a rope trap that hauls him up by his feet so that he dangles upside down, and Jason shows up to slit his throat with a machete. Terry arrives to cut down Scott, sees that he's dead, and whirls to (presumably) face Jason (her death occurs off-camera). Mark and Vickie flirt in a couple of scenes dense with clever subtext, and Vickie heads off to her cabin to freshen up. In her absence, Jason embeds a machete in Mark's face. Less than two minutes later, Jason drives a spear through the back of Jeff as he sleeps with Sandra, and the spear goes through her as well. Three minutes later, Jason knifes Vickie. Ginny and Paul then arrive back at camp so that the third act can commence.

As Ginny and Paul explore the lodge in search of the people they expect to find there, Ginny senses something amiss and bellows, “Paul, there's someone in this fucking room!” Jason leaps out of the shadows and attacks Paul. Ginny wisely arms herself with a knife. Jason chases her outside, and she kicks him in the crotch. Three minutes later, Ginny goes on the offensive again and attacks Jason with a chainsaw (wounding him but inexplicably opting to not finish him off). Ginny races into the woods and stumbles upon Jason's shack. Therein, she finds a shrine of candles surrounding the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees (whose gray sweater also sits nearby). As Jason pounds on the door, Ginny puts her child psychology skills to good use and dons the sweater. When Jason bursts through the door, Ginny addresses him by name and identifies herself as “mommy.” She talks a confused Jason into kneeling before her and is about to decapitate him with a machete when he spots the head of his real mother behind Ginny and raises a pickaxe to ward off the death blow. Paul shows up (in a deux ex machina moment) and grabs Jason from behind, enabling Ginny to slice the machete deep into Jason's shoulder and neck area. Jason drops, and Paul carries Ginny back to Packanack Lodge.

After a false scare in which Terry's missing dog appears at the door, Jason leaps through a window and grabs Ginny from behind. This is an infamous “money shot” moment in which the viewer gets a good long look at the deformed face of Jason, who had worn a sack over his head throughout the rest of the film. (The iconic hockey mask does not appear until the third film in the series.)

In a brief epilogue, paramedics load Ginny into an ambulance as she calls out for Paul – a slightly confusing ending.

An entertaining and frightening tale from a bygone age (before the existence of cell phones and rectangular television sets), Friday the 13^th Part 2 contains ample spooky imagery (one can never un-see the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees surrounded by candles in Jason's shack after one gazes upon it) to sate hardcore slasher film fans and is laced with humor to balance out the jolts and gore. There's a fair amount of gratuitous nudity and women-in-panties moments also. Ginny is a more dimensional protagonist than most heroines of this horror sub-genre, and (before she actually encounters the killer and realizes that he's more than just a legend) she cooks up a fine psychological profile of what Jason would be like if he existed: “a child trapped in a man's body.”

The first four films in the Friday the 13^th series are wildly entertaining. Check back before October for reviews of parts 3 and 4.

Friday the 13th (1980 version) [unrated edition]

FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980 version) [unrated edition]

I'll be taking a look at the first four films in the Friday the 13^th franchise this autumn. Spoilers abound, so don't read on if you've never seen these slasher gems and want to discover them for yourself.

The original Friday the 13^th follows a young woman named Alice Hardy who is part of a small crew fixing up an isolated summer camp along idyllic Crystal Lake in June of 1980. Alice (an artist who “draw[s] very well” according to her employer) toils alongside other young adults: a vegetarian named Brenda, a prankster known as Ned, another dude called Bill, and a couple (Jack and Marcie). The members of this group paint docks by the lake, nail up sagging rain gutters, and fix up an archery range, all totally unaware that the town's self-proclaimed “messenger of God” (Crazy Ralph) is utterly correct when he intones “You're all doomed.”

In the fifth season of the sitcom Seinfeld, the protagonist's neighbor (an eccentric fellow named Kramer) writes and sells a coffee table book about coffee tables. Some fifteen years earlier, film producer Sean S. Cunningham and screenwriter Victor Miller hatched the brilliant idea of creating a movie set at a summer camp with a plot worthy of being told around campfires. Indeed, the film's first sequel includes a literal campfire scene.

In his book Making Friday the 13^th: The Legend of Camp Blood, David Grove quotes Victor Miller as saying, “I came up with the summer camp idea and it seemed perfect except for the fact that there were lots of kids at summer camp. Where's the terror in that? That's when I thought that it was a summer camp that was just about to open... we had to have these kids who are totally on their own with no one to help them. Total isolation.”

Sean S. Cunningham directed the film from a Victor Miller script that included substantial uncredited rewrites by Ron Kurz (who went on to have sole credit as writer of the film's first sequel). The plot that unfolds in the final product opens with a five-minute prologue set at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958 (a place that a sign indicates was founded in 1935). Two counselors sneak off to an isolated room to sate their carnal needs, but before their romp progresses beyond making out, they're interrupted by an off-camera assailant who kills them both. The narrative then moves to June 13^th in 1980. Nine minutes pass before the protagonist (Alice Hardy) makes her first appearance. Alice's boss (Steve Christy) vanishes from the proceedings for half an hour; he heads into town eighteen minutes into the film and doesn't reappear until the forty-eight minute mark. Thus, Alice and her co-workers have ample time to get into unsupervised trouble.

Jack and Marcie wander around the camp and are outdoors when a thunderstorm commences thirty-six minutes into the tale. Just before the rain falls, Marcie tells Jack about a recurring dream she's had in which “rain turns to blood.” It's a quietly chilling moment and one that has stuck in my craw. Some critics assert that the Friday the 13^th films are nothing more than one gory scene after another, but subtle chills like this one permeate the first movie.

Jack and Marcie sneak into a cabin to have sex during the storm, unaware that the corpse of Ned (whose death scene is not depicted) lays in the upper bunk above them. Meanwhile, Alice plays “strip Monopoly” with Brenda and Bill. Alice smokes a joint and nearly removes her shirt (the game's interrupted before she unbuttons too far), which contradicts the viewpoint voiced by some critics that only goody-goody virginal girls survive slasher films. Marcie leaves Jack alone in the cabin and heads out for some post-coital use of the self-contained washroom building, and in her absence someone hiding beneath Jack's bed shoves an arrow up through the mattress and right on through Jack's throat. Approximately four minutes later, the killer embeds an axe in Marcie's face. Ten minutes later, Brenda dies off-camera at the archery range. Seven minutes after that, boss Steve makes it back to camp only to be knifed in the stomach. Bill is the next to perish, albeit off-camera. Alice (who inexplicably takes a nap shortly after she finds a bloody axe in Brenda's bed) awakens and sets out to locate Bill. When she stumbles upon his corpse, she realizes that she's in mortal peril and barricades herself in the counselors' main headquarters. Headlights appear outside, and Alice (who thinks that Steve has returned) runs outside to be greeted by a woman who identifies herself as “Mrs. Voorhees... an old friend” of the family that owns that camp. Alice attempts to explain that her peers are all dead, but Mrs. Voorhees seems unfazed and heads into the cabin where Alice had been barricaded. In there, she gushes some exposition about how her son Jason drowned at the camp in 1957 while the counselors who were supposed to supervise him were off “making love.” Mrs. Voorhees reveals herself to be the killer when she explains that she could not let Camp Crystal Lake reopen again. She pulls out a hunting knife and lunges at Alice, who fights for her life. Eventually the two women end up on the shore of Crystal Lake, where Alice decapitates Mrs. Voorhees with a machete.

In her book Games of Terror, Vera Dika describes Friday the 13^th as “a film where elaborate characterization and motivation would only get in the way of the rhythmic progression of shocks.” Indeed, most of the characters are thinly-drawn; Brenda has a couple of lines that reveal she is a vegetarian, and Ned goofs around more than Bill and Jack, but the project will never be remembered as a character-centric piece.

Atmospheric and unsettling, Friday the 13^th remains a seminal and prototypical slasher film nearly thirty-five years after its theatrical release. I hadn't looked at any movies from this franchise for over a decade (I used to see the first four films in heavy rotation on cable TV during the mid-to-late 1980s) before I began revisiting them on Blu-ray as part of my annual horror movie festival, and I'm pleasantly surprised to report that the film that spawned the series still retains its crude charm despite a rather slow first act (after the prologue, the viewer spends a long set of scenes following Annie, a young woman who has been hired to be the camp's cook, as she makes her way toward Crystal Lake by hitchhiking). For first-time viewers, there are ample red herrings in terms of suspects who could be the killer (certainly Crazy Ralph and Steve Christy seem creepy and possibly dangerous). For those who have seen the film numerous times before, there are always new details to discover (I noticed a sign that indicates there's a “Lake Tomahawk” thirteen miles beyond Crystal Lake). Often dismissed as a silly gore-filled simple slasher movie, Friday the 13^th is a work of art worthy of serious examination in the eyes of this reviewer. There's a reason the mythos of Camp Crystal Lake resonated with viewers strongly enough to launch a lucrative multi-film franchise. The third act in particular is dense with a sense of dread and suspense. I'm glad I opted to re-examine these stories in the autumn of 2014.