★★★★-Imagine The Island of Dr. Moreau except with zombies. That's this movie (released as Zombi 2), which served as a loose sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead in Italy (released under the title Zombi). Interestingly, there Dawn of the Dead was Dario Argento with a new score by Goblin, who did the truly awesome music for other Argento movies like Deep Red.
Watched this as part of the Lucio Fulci Night on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. They had composer Fabio Frizzi to play with the house band and tell Fulci stories and give insights to his work on this and the second film in the double feature, The Beyond. They also had the male lead of the film, Ian McCulloch, on to talk about working with Fulci, the director. McCulloch was sort of an embarrassment, not knowing what kind of program he was on and taking himself too seriously. Fulci, from the stories they tell, seemed like a real piece of work. Semi-abusive to the actors and crew, he didn't think you were earning your money unless you getting beat up physically as an actor. But Frizzi had nothing but kind things to say, so there is that.
The gist of it is that the boat of a scientist thought to be working on a Caribbean island shows up in New York Harbor empty save for a giant, bloated flesh eating zombie. A reporter and the scientist's daughter head down to figure out what is going on. Once there, they find the island plagued by a voodoo curse, which causes the deceased inhabitants to rise as zombies and prey upon the living. You know the drill.
The movie stars Tisa Farrow (sister of Mia Farrow) plays the daughter, McCulloch the reporter, and Richard Johnson is the Moreau type figure. Didn't know any of them before watching this flick.
Remembered for a couple of things, the film was notorious put on the “video nasty” list in the United Kingdom for one scene in particular involving an actress getting her eye slowly forced into a wood shard. It's pretty brutal. There are several deaths by zombie that are pretty hard to watch, actually. Also a zombie wrestles a real, very large shark, which is just nuts. You can read more about that here.
While low budget with not the best acting, there is a lot of shock that kept me and my female companion on our toes. We squealed with schlocky delight on multiple occasions while watching this flick. Makes it pretty good in my book.
The Love Witch. "Men are like children. They're very easy to please as long as we give them what they want..." "I'm the love witch! I'm your ultimate fantasy!" I loved this movie. Like Season of the Witch except good. Solid movie with a lot of layers to unpack. Plus it is extremely visually appealing. Would be a hell of a movie to trip to.
Gist is a a modern-day witch uses her magic to get men to fall in love with her before killing them for failing to live up to expectations. She drugs them with love potions made out of hallucinogenics before giving men "what they want." She is totally deadpan, which allows the guys to project whatever they desire onto her, which drives them crazy. It's a playful tribute to 1960s horror and Technicolor films, combined with its serious inquiry into contemporary gender roles. It's a super interesting take.
Came out in 2016. Was written, edited, directed, produced, and scored by Anna Biller. Stars Samantha Robinson (a very pretty lady) as Elaine Parks, the modern-day witch who uses spells to get men to fall in love with her. She played the role of Abigail Folger in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. Didn't really recognize anyone else from the movie, but all the acting was serviceable. One of thems, one Laura Waddell, looks just like Chassie Tucker from At Home with Amy Sedaris, which is like my favorite show. Others include Gian Keys, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, and Jennifer Ingrum, if you've heard of any of them.
Watched this on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. It was his Valentine's Day special. He has a great interview with Biller. His drive-in totals highlight the six "wang doodles" in the film. Also talks a lot about how the movie is super colorful and looks so good because it was shot on 35mm film, instead digital. The last bit focuses on this crazy sequence near the end that involves a random renaissance fair and includes a mock wedding. It's out there... Again, love.
Really hard to pick an MVP in this since Robinson is so great in this role and Biller's vision is so well executed. Ultimately giving it to Biller for putting together such a fine and visually appealing film. Good shit.
This was legitimately one of the worst movies I've ever seen. 1988 straight to video, if that tells you anything. Wouldnt have finished it if it weren't on Joe Bob Briggs Last Drive-In. Even then it was something of a chore. Diana Prince, aka Darcy the Mail Girl, was really unimpressed. "You should have shown another movie." It's MST3K bad without the riffing to get you through it. Had to supply a lot of our own to not go mad.
Gist of the movie is that this maniac of a grandfather/pumpkin patch proprietor is secretly this satanic cult leader whose group sacrifices folks on Halloween night. He also practices incest and fathers a child with his daughter. That child, this little blonde kid, is being groomed to take over the cult and grows up to be Mac's dad from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Some shit to watch out for... Lots of nudity. All gratuitous. Some of the ladies are pretty attractive, too, surprisingly. Odd number of breasts, which is always fun. The blonde child from early in the movie looks exactly like the brother of Mac's dad and nothing like Mac's dad. It could be that guy's son.
Gramps kills his granddaughter's BF after getting trapped in a recently dug grave. Instead of burying him in, you know, the deep ass grave, we later see that dude was buried next to the hole in a dirt mound, which was an interesting choice. Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Hack-O-Lantern features a cop having sex with a girl right on top of a freshly dug grave. Later, a girl bones a guy on the mound and mistakes a corpse's exposed hand for her lover's. Insanely, the girl then shows her friend exactly where she had sex at where they find the corpse, who is the other chick's BF.
Some other dumb shit includes the four times I thought the movie was over but then it just kept going on. Lots of pump fakes. Hate a pump fake. Also, Gramps thinks he is making the sign of the devil and making the pentagram in the air like a Catholic would cross himself, but he is really making the sign for "I love you." WTF.
Worst offender of all, maybe, is the name Hack-O-Lantern. Like, why? Has nothing to do with anything that happens in the movie. Waste of a perfectly good title.
Only real positive I have is that the band is pretty solid. The director, one Jag Mundhra, came out of Bollywood which seems to pretty much always have more or less music videos in the movie (at least the few movies I've seen playing at Indian restaurants). I guess this came out of that style. Band was D.C. La Croix, metal but not metal AF. Total MVP of the movie.
Maniac. "You wanna meet me someplace?" "Where?" "The back seat," Disco Boy, played by Tom Savini, says from the front seat of the car. My grandpa told my dad to never let me watch two movies, knowing the type of kid I was, The Fly and Maniac. I was five and all. But my grandpa worked nights, and the next time I spent the night with my grandparents immediately told my grandma I wanted to see The Fly. She encouraged my watching crazy shit at a very young age. But I never got around to Maniac. I think I'm pretty glad I indeed waited 33 years to watch this. I fucking hated it and found it extremely disturbing. But I recognize it was quality. Greatest movie of all time.
Gist of the movie is a very sad, completely antisocial psychopath, one Frank Zito, played by Joe Spinell, murders a shitton of women in New York City, stealing their scalps as his trophy. Only reason I watched it was because it was Joe Bob Brigg's Last Drive-In with Tom Savini as a special guest. Otherwise, probably would have turned it off after the first 10 minutes. There is a fucking brutal garrotting with piano wire in the opening scene that doesn't bode well. Then we hear the killer drone on in his antisocial way, frequently brutally killing women and gruesomely slicing off their scalps. And I'm checking out. Tom Savini's head exploding scene is fucking incredible, though. Like Scanners except better. Warning, this shit ain't fucking around.
Directed by one William Lustig, the film was released in 1980. Got remade in 2012 with Elijah Wood as the killer, which is weird and something I'll never watch. Most the women in the 1980 version of the movie were porn actresses, including one Sharon Mitchell who seems to be have done some good since leaving porn, check out this NSFW link, or maybe not. Only person I recognized besides Savini was actress Caroline Munro. She plays this fashion photographer that killer dude is obsessed with but doesn't try to kill until late and she fucks him up. She was in the infamous Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter and The Spy Who Loved Me. She's a pretty lady. I think she can do better. Also, I'm gonna need to go through the Bond flicks at some point here.
Hard to say who won this among Lustig, Spinell who stared in and co-writer of the film with one C. A. Rosenberg, or Savini for doing what he does. Lustig puts it all together, and Savini made his own head realistically explode. But I've got to give it to Spinell for writing it and his acting. I mean, this is Last Podcast on the Left shit. I was really disturbed through the whole movie. This was legit what I'd imagine a real psycho's day-to-day to be like. It really ain't pleasant.
Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is total trash but a great late-night flick perfect for The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs and USA Up All Night. They don't make them like this anymore. Cheaply made dumb horror comedies done by directors with enough know how to crank it out and keep it fun with crazy kills and lots of nudity. This was director David DeCoteau's specialty as he did it close to 150 times with his most recent flick coming in 2016. This is his first of several featuring scream queens Michelle Bauer, Linnea Quigley, and Brinke Stevens. One such flick, Nightmare Sisters, was filmed in the four days following this one, another testament to DeCoteau's. Have two and a half weeks to film a B-movie. Do it in 12 days under budget with a some extra film in the can. Might as well crank another out. Two movies in 16 days. Crazy. Fuck it, right? DeCoteau was one of many proteges of the great Roger Corman who perfected the art of cranking out serviceable low budget flicks. Maybe not as successful as others to come out of the Corman school, directors like James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, or Martin Scorsese, but hey, DeCoteau has more film credits than all of them combined, which is insane.
This dipshit
Anywho, This also marks the third Linnea Quigley movie I've written about. The first two being classics in Night of the Demons and Return of the Living Dead. I, personally, don't see the big deal. She does seem pretty cool and all but not what I'd call attractive in any way. I guess that must be it, being a bad, cool chick. Regardless, this movie. Fun AF. Greatest film of all time.
Pros: Well made for what it is. Lots of nudity (though it's probably not nudity you'll really want to see). While not the greatest looking kills, they are pretty amusing. Super fun though not what I would call funny.
Cons: Sexual misconduct is treated pretty lightly (the dudes break into the sorority, do an insane amount of peeping, and sort of joke about maybe committing rape). The monster looks like trash and is a totally racist stereotype for no reason. Decent amount of stuff that happens goes nowhere and happens for no reason (specifically thinking of a scene where a chick that has been turned into a demon with all this shit coming off her face tries to put on makeup but there are plenty more). Acting isn't great but what do you expect.
Here's the gist... Three bored frat bros peep on a sorority ritual that involves 20 minutes of paddling, spraying their two pledges down with whipped cream, and then sexy showering. Once they are inevitably caught by the head mistress or whatever the the president of a sorority is called, this sorority has three members and two pledges by the way, they make the pledges and the frat bros, who just committed a sex crime, go out to the local bowling ally and steal a bowling trophy. With the fat one, who is extremely aggressive and disgusting, this is more or less like telling these chicks to go and get sexually assaulted. Once they have broken in and got what they came for, they drop the trophy when smoke and a demon comes out. The demon ends up being this ridiculous looking jive talking imp named Uncle Impy. Impy has the ability to grant wishes but these end up coming at the price of their lives and end up being bullshit anyway.
In addition to Bauer as Lisa, Quigley as Spider whom we meet when she is trying to rob the bowling ally which is both trashy and stupid considering there are cameras everywhere and probably no money in the register, and Stevens (the one with the eyebrows) as Taffy who gets pulled apart like her namesake, the movie stars Carla Baron as Frankie (whom I think is the one that turns into the Bride of Frankenstein and looks like Alison Brie in Glow) and Kathi O'Brecht as Rhonda who are pretty much interchangeable, Hal Havins whose the fat, disgusting one that was also the fat, disgusting prick in Night of the Demons as Jimmie, Andras Jones as survivor dude Calvin, the late Robin Rochelle as head of the sorority Babs, and John Stuart Wildman who gets it on with Bauer who reminds me of Brett Kavanaugh since they both have the same shitty hair and also like to commit sexual assault plays Keith. The guy who plays Uncle Impy, a guy named Michael Sonye, goes by the stage name of Dukey Flyswatter. Dude is indeed Caucasian and was in several cult classics including Surf Nazis Must Die. The demon, which is pretty unnecessarily racist, talks hella shit and sounds like the Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas or the flytrap in Little Shot of Horrors the musical.
Best line of the movie comes from the janitor, played by George "Buck" Flower. You might recognize him from the role of drunk homeless man in every John Carpenter film from the 1980s or from Back to the Future from the role of drunk homeless man where he says the memorable line "crazy drunk driver" or from Wishmaster where he plays a homeless man. He was basically always a homeless man. In this flick though he at least has a job and ends up being an Imp expert as he was the one that trapped in the bowling trophy and such. Anyway, his line is "Demons munching your friends? I gotta tell you both, kids, drugs are not the answer."
None of the kills are all that great but the one where the chick with the welty demon gets bowled to death, basically they roll the ball down the lane into her face, is alright though you know it's coming. The one chick named Taffy is pulled apart like the candy but you don't see anything. I do like the idea of ironic punishment though. Sort of thought the one dude who wishes for Bauer to do him would get liked boned to death or whatever but that doesn't happen. He eventually realizes what a fucked up situation this is, like slipping a chick a ruffie or something, and tries to shut it down but the chick is super persistent... Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did it, unfortunately. Maybe an appropriate outcome would have been him going to jail and justice getting served and what not, but instead a chick come and fries his face.
Best scene is the one where the demon chicks kill the fat frat guy, Jimmie, by decapitating him somehow with an ice machine. The demon chick then takes his head and obligatorily rolls it down the bowling lane. We get some pretty sweet commentary from Uncle Impy here. When the chicks goes to roll his head, he says "she steps up, she wriggles her fanny," and then when bowls is all, "it could be a strike," and I feel that most directors or whatever would have her roll a strike. But DeCoteau ain't got the time or film for that and we get the head bouncing and rolling halfway down the lane before getting caught in the gutter.
MVP of the movie is Linnea Quigley. I mean she is way over-the-top like you'd expect but she manages to go a whole movie without getting neked and is sort of bad ass. She kills the demons, traps Uncle Impy, and has a couple three solid one-liners. Stuff like "It's too bad we had to kill her. I really liked the outfit she had on." That when kills the one that looks like the Bride of Frankenstein. Then there is this touching little exchange: Spider: "What is this, Midnight Wimp Bowling League?" Taffy: "Who are you? The Bride of Dracula?" Spider: "Oooo. Jump back. Prom queen on the loose. Or is it high school hookers?" Overall it was a pretty serviceable performance by Quigley. And she takes the nerd she saves home with her to go to the bone zone and what not.
Watched this as part of Joe Bob Briggs's new show The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs where he introduces said movies, gives the infamous "Drive-In Totals" where in he gives a ridiculous rundown of the movie, and pops in in the middle to talk some shit. This was his shtick on MonsterVision which I was completely obsessed with as a kid and am thrilled is back. This was the perfect film to start with and is definitely right up his alley. Greatest film of all time.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch. No Michael Myers. No Dr. Loomis. No witches. Confused? You're not alone. No one understood it when it came out. The franchise was supposed to be anthology at this point since Myers is dead and all. Always heard it was a box office bomb but it made five times its budget. Critically it mostly bombed. It is out there, for sure, and doesn't make complete sense but it's super interesting and more fun than most of the movies in the Halloween franchise. If I were to rank the three films in the series up to this point, I'd actually put this above Halloween II. Below Halloween, of course, which is weird since Halloween III is the greatest movie of all time.
Pros: Holds up great on its own. Way the fuck out there (in a good way). Tom Atkins is great. His cute little female companion is pretty solid as well. The villain(s) do a good job of going from over-the-top and humorous to creep city. Sick poster... Just look at that shit... Incredibly solid John Carpenter score.
Cons: Not a Halloween sequel should be stressed but isn't (though I think everyone knows this at this point, 36 years later). Sort of hard to follow. Not everything plot wise makes all that much sense. Ending is dark AF. That Silver Shamrock song set to the tune of "London Bridge" they play 15-20 times in the movie will fucking stick with you.
Gist of the thing... We get one Dr. Dan Challis (played by Tom Atkins whom you'll recognize from such classics as The Fog [1980], Escape from New York, Creepshow, Night of the Creeps [a personal fave], and Lethal Weapon [he was Michael Hunsaker]) who decides to play detective after a costume shop owner comes into the hospital and prattles on about how "they" are going to kill everybody. Once that man's skull is ripped apart by an automaton who self-immolates in the parking lot, his daughter, Ellie Grimbridge (played by Stacey Nelkin), joins him for some mystery solving and coitus in the nearby town of Santa Mira, California, a town famous for Silver Shamrock Novelties which completely runs the town. The company/town is run by this evil Irish warlock (maybe???) dude named Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy whom I know as Andrew Packard in Twin Peaks). At one point we get a tour of the company's hall of fame and hear about their greatest hits which include sticky toilet paper (hilarious), the soft chainsaw, and the "dead dwarf gag" which sounds disturbing. They also make three sweet-ass masks that have little magic chunks of Stonehenge (which they have stolen and is approximately three times larger than it is IRL) that kill people when they watch a certain Silver Shamrock commercial or fuck with the chip in the logo as part of a culling ritual for the Celtic festival, Samhain. The mask kills are crazy. They basically turn people's head into pumpkin goo and bugs and snake come out and kill anyone else that is nearby. They really go out of this horribly.
Sick masks. Also, chick is out of Atkins's league
Written and directed by one Tommy Lee Wallace who worked with Carpenter a bunch previously and was married to childhood crush Nancy Kyes/Loomis who plays Atkins's wife who is fed up with his shit. Wallace would go on to do Fright Night Part 2 and It (the 1990 miniseries version) which are both "great" flicks I remember super fondly from childhood that I should probably revisit at some point. Other notable actor appearances besides Atkins, Nelkin, and O'Herlihy include Jamie Lee Curtis in voice only as the Curfew Announcer/Telephone Operator, Joshua John Miller (he plays one of Atkins's kids) who wrote an insanely dope movie called The Final Girls with Malin Akerman (me-ow), Thomas Middleditch, and Alia Shawkat (among others) which is a meta horror flick with a lot of dark humor that I fucking loved, and stuntman/Michael Myers in Halloween II Dick Warlock who is one of the Ken doll assassins.
Favorite line of the movie is "It's getting late. I could use a drink." Never has a phrase so perfectly summed up a character than those eight little words. Dude is a drunk, you see. Which brings me to...
She'll probably be alright
There are a bunch of gnarly kills in this one. Homeless guy gets his head ripped off. Always solid. Dude gets skull ripped apart like "The Mountain" did that other dude in Game of Thrones. Kids head turns to mush, bugs, snakes, so forth, which then come out and kill his parents. A guy lights himself on fire. All that shit is great. But the best one comes to good old Marge Guttman who introduces herself, first and last name, to Grimbridge, where she is from, what line of work she is in, and that Grimbridge should "look her up" sometime. This all with an economy of language, in less than six seconds of screen time. "What the hell is that about," I ask myself. She is so going to die, that's what. Her deal is she has a kid back home in San Francisco, another detail we get from that information packed introduction, who she picked up a new mask for even though she had them at the store and what not. Anyway, the little Silver Shamrock logo pops off. So what she does is takes it apart and finds a little circuit board underneath it and starts fucking with it. As she pokes at it with a hair pin, this whilst Atkins and Grimbridge enter the bone zone, a laser shoots out and hits her in the mouth. When they cut back to her shit is all fucked up. Her face is completely jacked and all the bugs and snakes and shit come out and finish the job. It is gross and disturbing and excellent.
Some shit with this movie... Atkins is so over-the-top. Love that shit. First off, horrible doctor, father, husband. Major drunk. Brings a sixer or a 40 oz with him wherever he goes. Even drinks whilst on call. Chicks still love him though as he has banged at least four chicks in this movie and it would seem possibly every female that works at this hospital. The four chicks are the black nurse who he tells he should have married, the coroner whose ass he grabs, Kyes who is his wife or exwife or whatever, and the daughter of the crazy guy who is like 30ish years his junior. After he has boned her a couple of times he finally asks her how old she is. "Old enough," apparently.
The ending of this movie, spoiler, is also insane and has a lot going on and is also my favorite bit of the movie. It goes thus: Grimbridge was captured by the Silver Shamrock people and dude obviously goes to save her, escaping from his own captivity by die harding his way out of his one-room prison through the air vents. They sneak around the building by pushing a rack of masks so no one can see them which totally wouldn't work. That is when Atkins gets how to defeat the bad guys. The big plan, we see, is to randomly hit buttons on the big computer in the warehouse where Cochran and all his minions have gathered which brings up the commercial. Atkins then takes a box of the circuit logo things and dumps them on the guys, which leads to chaos and kills them all. Atkins and Grimbridge then take off to warn everyone but it turns out that she is a robet and attacks him causing them to crash the car and her to lose an arm. He beats her with a tire iron until her head pops off. He gets back in the car and is attacked by the severed arm. He pries it off eventually and then is immediately attacked by the headless body. Ridiculous. Finally he runs to a gas station and makes a call to god only knows who, whoever plays all the commercials on all the channels or something which obviously isn't a thing, telling whoever is one the other end to pull the Silver Shamrock ad as it is going to kill everyone. They get it done on two of the three networks but it starts to air on the third with Atkins screaming for them to "turn it off for god's sake, turn it off!!!" while children sit there and watch it right in front of him. Yeah, it's dark and bleak as hell.
MVP is... Drum roll... Michael Myers. Huh? Yep, that is right. No more of this bait and switch bull shit. This cemented that Michael Myers was the franchise and would be in every damn one of these flicks from here on out. They'll retcon him, kill him off, resurrect him, reboot him, and retcon him again if they have to but he will be in the movie. So no franchise as an anthology. Too soon. Too out there for 1982. Franchise financier Moustapha Akkad who had the rights to the character would make sure Myers was the killer in all the movies from then on out, even bringing him back, awkwardly, after he got his head chopped off in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. The rest is history and now we have all the sequels where Myers becomes more Jason like with each passing installment. So looking forward to that shit. Also, my dude Joe Bob Briggs did a sweet Monstervision for this installment of the franchise. Love the shit out of Joe Bob. Enjoy.
Halloween II. Got myself my first pumpkin beer of the season so it's that time. Gonna start with these and hopefully gonna make my way through them all in time for the new one that comes out in October. The new one, by the way, ignores all the sequels including this one. Loved all these as a kid, we'll see if it holds up. Sooo, this one. The one that made Michael Myers and Laurie Strode brother and sister. The one that started the franchise down the path that would eventually take us to the Mark of Thorn that completely derailed the series. But we are a ways away from that. Last one with Jamie Lee Curtis until Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. John Carpenter/Debra Hill wrote it. Guy named Rick Rosenthal directed. Carpenter hates it. Critics hated it, too and it got horrible reviews when it came out. A lot of those focused on this being a continuation of the first one that doesn't stand up on it's own (which is somewhat valid). But this is overall a pretty solid movie. In fact, greatest film of all time.
Pros: This is where we get The Shape's movements down (assuming you like him not looking down when climbing stairs and stuff). JLC and Donald Pleasence are both great though not in the movie as much as you'd remember. Pretty tense but less so than the original Halloween movie. Genuinely pretty scary.
Cons: Starting to feel more like Jason Voorhees than Mike Myers at this point. Also get the sister stuff which is what it is. There is also a fair amount of bullshit in this movie with the razor blade kid, Ben Tramer getting hit by a car and exploding, and Sheriff Brackett blaming Loomis for letting Michael out, which totally didn't happen.
Picking up directly where the 1978 Halloween film left off, slasher Michael Myers goes back after survivor Laurie Strode--killing many nurses and doctors and such, maybe two EMTs, and one random girl along the way--who was taken to the hospital following the traumatic events of the first flick. Dr. Sam Loomis, meanwhile, searches desperately for his former patient whom he sees as pure evil. This was supposed to be the last of the films featuring The Shape, and the first time I saw it as a child it was, but as we know that changed 1988 with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.Halloween III: Season of the Witch, you will see, followed an unrelated story as the franchise was supposed to be more of an anthology type. Apart from JLC and Pleasence you'll probably really only recognize the two EMTs from the movie. They are Lance Guest from The Last Starfighter and Leo Rossi who was the serial killer from Maniac Cop 2 and a million other things.
Lots of pretty ladies in this one. Have JLC who is universally considered a hotty. Then there are the nurses. There is Ana Alicia who is the dark-haired nurse who doesn't know how to use a walkie talkie, she did warn the security guard in her defense, and could have prevented the whole thing. Super cute but dumb. Tawny Moyer who is the short-haired blonde and my fave. Pamela Susan Shoop who is the one that goes to the bone zone with Budd (played by Leo Rossi) who got her face melted off in the hot tub. Pretty sure that can't happen.
Favorite line is "His wife’s always picking on him. He probably got angry and decided to start beating her…Big deal!" Oh casual domestic violence. Always hilarious. Big deal indeed. No. This is in reference to Alice who hears a scream coming from next door at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Elrod.
Some pretty alright kills but my favorite is the one with the nurse played by Moyer. In that, Laurie is out of bed running around and this clueless nurse--everyone in the hospital is dead by that point--is like "What is going on? Where is everyone? Get back in bed." That is when Myers pops out and scalpels her in the back, lifting her high in the air. It isn't so much the kill as what happens afterwards that made this my favorite as her little white nurse's shoes pop off and clang against the floor.
Best scene of the movie is when Michael Myers has chased Laurie into the basement of the hospital and they get to the elevator. This whole bit is easily the most intense point in the film and arguably the scariest. Finally gotten ahead of Myers a bit, Laurie is backed into the end of a hall with an elevator. She sees Myers coming and smashes at the button. It finally gets there and Myers is closing in. That is when she smashes the close door button repeatedly which works just as he gets to the door, sticking his hand in. You think that the door is going to pop back open as it would with a new elevator, and likely one then as well, but it doesn't and she gets away safe.
There is some shit in this movie... At the beginning of the movie we see this kid going into the hospital with a razor blade in sticking out of his lip. This is based on that urban legend of people putting razors in apples and poison in candy on Halloween. There has never been a documented case of the first and while the second did happen, it was a piece of shit dad that poisoned his kid, not a person that randomly poisoned trick or treaters. We later see them leaving with the mom saying they will go home and play board games and stuff. No going to the police and none show up, I mean, they are busy and all but still. So not only do they have to deal with Michael Myers, now they also have this psycho out there trying to kill kids by putting razors in candy. But that is of little concern in this universe.
The real Myers, up in flames... Totes survivable
We also have Ben Tramer, Laurie's crush from the first one, get hit by a car and explode before the car even completely crashes. The whole scene is fucking insane. First Loomis spots him wearing The Shape mask. He runs at him, waving his gun around like a wild man, stops and points it, about to shoot. Tramer starts looking back at him like WTF when a police car comes out of nowhere and pins him to a van with crash and burn. The cop gets out of the car and protests that the guy came out of nowhere. After more explosions and such, the deputy comes and whisks off Loomis and Brackett, tell Brackett that his daughter is dead. They get in the car and go but the guy involved in the crash is just standing there like an idiot. No big, just an officer caused fatality.
Which brings us to the whole bit where Brackett blames Loomis for Myers is insane and has always sort of irritated me. When Brackett is told that there are three dead kids and "one of them is Annie," he turns his anger toward Loomis. The conversation is basically "you son of a bitch. What have you done?" Loomis is like, "uh, I'm sorry. I haven't done anything." Brackett, losing his shit, "You let him out!" Which totally doesn't happen since Loomis always believed him to be evil incarnate and all and responds "I didn't let him out. I gave orders for him to be restrained." So you know. The opposite of that.
And lastly, the ending of the movie is pretty definitive with Loomis sacrificing himself by turning on all this flammable gas and shit and blowing himself and Myers up by flicking his lighter which he got from Marian Chambers, the nurse that he was rolling with in the first one and who picks him up to take him out of Haddonfield on orders of the governor (uh, what?) in this one. Michael is definitely some sort of supernatural being to survive this shit as he gets shot point blank in both eyes and then completely torched... But as we see in the later installments, he and Loomis both survive. It was a miracle, apparently, but obviously this was, according to Carpenter's script, supposed to be the end of The Shape.
Found a Monstervision segment for the movie which is dope. Love me some Joe Bob Briggs. Linking that shit below. Learned some crazy shit from it as well. Basic gist is that a year after the movie came out, this guy in California named Richard Delmer Boyer stabbed this elderly couple to death whilst high on PCP whereupon he hallucinated he was in this movie and killed this couple. What the fuck, bro? The jury was then subjected to this film which seems pretty unnecessary. No idea. But the defense didn't work and the dude got sentenced to death.
MVP of this movie is a tough one. Doesn't seem that JLC was in the movie enough to get MVP status but I think you have to go with her. Pleasence is pretty close but going to JLC because of that elevator scene and the one where she goes outside and hides in the car. When Pleasence and company show up to find her and she tries to scream but can't, that shit is gold. Also, how exhausted and traumatized she seems. Very much how I think a real human would be at this point. MVP performance right there.
But yeah. Movie was pretty solid. No John Carpenter's Halloween or anything but it is probably the third or fourth best movie in the franchise. Still have a little ways to go before the wheels totally come off.
Though Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is one of the tamest of the franchise with kills that are just okay with gore that mostly happens off screen and basically no nudity, I still enjoyed the film and give it ye olde greatest film of all time tag. Out of the six I've watched thus far, I'd put this at a solid second or third. I'll get to the rankings later on.
This installment sees the return of Tommy Jarvis with actor Thom Matthews (whom you may remember from Return of the Living Dead)
taking over the role as the third actor to take on character in three
films as Jason is back as supernatural killing machine with more or less
complete invincibility. This is who Jason is for the rest of the
franchise, it is important to note. An unkillable zombie that just loves
murder. You also get a little bit more comedy in this flick than in the
previous ones with Jason occasionally breaking the fourth wall like
when he kills a paintballer by ripping off his arm and smashing his face
into a tree which produces the "Have a Nice Day" smiley face. Here
Jason looks at the camera like, "eh."
Pros: The real Jason is back and this time with a sense of humor. Cast is again pretty decent if not way over the top. Campiest of the series thus far. Pretty good pacing except for a couple of scenes where Tommy is driving around and escaping from the police (which happens multiple times).
Cons: Tamest of the series to this point. Sex and violence is mostly off screen which no one asked for. Could have probably shaved a few minutes off a couple of scenes and made it a little tighter.
What happened to the bald, tennage Corey Feldman?
Notes: Get the third Tommy who is going to kill Jason once and for all. He has a sidekick that is fucking jazzed about this when they are rolling up. This fucking guy is embarrassing. We are also supposed to ignore the fact that Jason was said to have been cremated several movies ago. They dig up Jason and he looks like shit. No surprise there. Then we see Tommy's poorly thought out plan not work. He is going to burn him but it starts raining. Get some blue lightning bringing Jason back to life. Jason walks over to the other dude and calmly punches his heart out. Tommy ghosts. Jason puts on the mask and is ready to fucking rock. Get the 007 intro thing but with Jason stabbing instead of Bond shooting. And here we fucking go.
Ballsy move. Lucky she's above the law.
Naturally, Tommy goes to the cops. Starts in with the talk. The cops are like, "uh, we don't need this shit. Also, what the fuck are you talking about?" Provoked, Tommy grabs a shotgun and waves it around. Good way to spend the night in jail or die if you are a minority. The sheriff's daughter shows up there at the jail then and wants to
bone dude, which is a weird vibe to throw out there to a potentially
crazy man while your dad the sheriff is standing there. Just saying. The sheriff is an aggressive asshole but come on.
Then, when Tommy escapes the first time, she tells him her dad is
looking for him in connection with some deaths. Dude is like, "Jason"
and she is like "I will pick you up and help you evade my dad." If this
were real she would be like, "uh, you are the murderer."Her abetting escalates to the point where she breaks him out of jail the second time, holding a deputy at gunpoint. That's a felony, sister.
Get a bunch of kills in this one but none were super great. The president from Scandal, one Tony Goldwyn, shows up with a lady. They make some bad decisions while driving around in a bug and get murdered. A group five or so paintballers in the woods get theirs. One is the "Have a Nice Day" kill. Jason then kills three with one machete blow. The nerd of group then pops up and shoots Jason with a paintball. Other than momentarily confuse Jason, this does nothing. See him mangled later when Jason stumbles upon a couple camping out in a graveyard. The guy is supposed to be gay or something as he is weird stereotype that 80s movies always play up. The dude is a dandy, basically, wearing a suit while camping and being uninterested in sex. They die.
From there Jason finds another couple camping out. These two are "glamping" in an RV. The dude counselor is such an idiot. He's fucking aggressively stupid. Uses the word "squaw" to refer to the chick that rides him. What a guy. They leave, thinking someone is watching them. Driving away, girl is like, "pull over, you can't drive this thing." dude is like, "no way babe, I've always wanted to drive a house, and I want to rock." It's the dumbest shit. Then he cranks the tunes and says a bunch of dumb shit. While this is happening the girl gets pulled into the bathroom by Jason. Dude is like, "what are you taking a dump?" Charming. She gets the face-plant into the side of the RV. Dude gets a knife in the ear whilst driving. Killed, thank fuck. RV loses control and flips several times. Jason is unphased by the crash. Interesting tidbit about the girl from that scene: she was fired from Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning and replaced by the lovely Deborah Voorhees under dubious circumstances. The way she tells it, during her audition she was asked to take off her top by director Danny Stienmann, she refused, she got the part, Stienmann then made a pass at her, she rebuffed him, then she was fired. She didn't sue for sexual harassment and to make it up to her the casting director ended up offering her a non-nude role in this flick... But then asked her to get nude anyway. Again, she refused, but this time they figured it would be way too fucked up to fire her a second time. Good call. She is a fucking human being and all.
A triumphant Jason surfs a flaming Winnebago
Around here Jason makes it to the camp, finally, and kills a couple of counselors. In the first one, Jason twists a girl's head off. The second one is done off screen but we see the gruesome aftermath. When the police show up there is blood everywhere in that room. Speaking of the counselors, they are actually responsible for youths
as this is the only one in the series with real campers. Get some humor
out of them here as one of the young girls is doing some light Sarte
reading, No Exit. Existentialism, totally accessible for the kiddos. Jason doesn't kill kids though. Several police officers are killed though, making up for the lack of child death. One, the sheriff if I remember correctly, gets folded in half. This movie actually has a pretty impressive kill count. The final tally was 18.
Some spoilers below, if you give a shit about such things. So here we are at the end. Tommy has managed to dispel Jason by drowning him, tying him to a boulder with chains and throwing it in the lake, which sets up Part VII nicely, just before everyone's favorite supernatural zombie kills the sheriff's daughter, Megan. But wouldn't you know it, Jason manages to pull Tommy down with him to a watery death. Megan, however, is a camp counselor and didn't fuck around with her lifeguard training and pulls Tommy out of the water and even manages to necessitate using a little of the old CPR. I like to think the happy couple go on to live out their days together far from Crystal Lake, reminiscing about how they met while hunting a hellish killing machine that folded her dad in half as this is the last of the series in which Tommy appears. Good times. Good movie.
MonsterVision
Let's check in with good old Joe Bob Briggs one last time and see how the Friday the 13th marathon ended on Halloween back in 1998.
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning--the second in the Tommy Jarvis trilogy--makes more or less no sense, doesn't feature the "real" Jason, and came out just a year after the one that was supposed to end the franchise, but is nonetheless a totally awesome movie. Definitely of the kitsch persuasion, the film isn't good but is highly enjoyable/memorable.
Part of my effinity for this movie comes with it being the first one in the series that I saw when I was six or sevenish. Spoiler: This is the Scooby Doo one. where Jason isn't the killer. It's some guy dressed up as Jason. I thought they were all like this with some guy trying to make everyone think he was this dead psycho killer, like keeping the memory of that alive or something. Needless to say, this is indeed the only one like this.
Pros: Lots of over-the-top killing, some spectacular nudity, and kung fu. The first movie in the franchise with a little diversity (there are four black people in the film, one of which even lives). Best kill is the greaser with a road flare.
Cons: The hillbillies are incredibly irritating. The movie in no way varies from the formula and then throws out a twist. Most of the active is SO bad.
The pretty, blonde waitress lady
Notes: Character list includes
an older Tommy, an attractive blonde psychologist lady, the middle
aged dude running the camp, a fat, low self-esteem idiot, a variety
of troubled youths that constantly sneak off to do it, a mother/son
duo of hill-jack bikers, a couple greasers, a black kid named Reggie and most of the rest of his family including his brother who lives in a van, some hot chick that works at a diner that shows up for no reason other than to show off her breasts and die, and some skeezy dude who is into her.
Fuck, man
The movie opens with little Tommy, Corey Feldman, dreaming about Jason coming back from the grave. When he wakes up he is a 30-yeard old man who is playing a high school kid. To torture him, I guess, the cops are taking him to Camp Crystal Lake which is now a group home situation for wayward teens. Right after the cops
leave we get to meet this chunky idiot with chocolate on his face and hands. He walks over and starts talking to these attractive 80s girls doing laundry who want nothing to
do with him. They treat him like shit and send him off. He then goes over to this guy Vick who is chopping wood like a
maniac. The fat idiot offers him a candy bar. He chops it. The idiot
tells him he is "out of line" and Vick fucking kills him with the ax.
Talk about overreacting, man. This comes out of fucking nowhere. It stands out as the second most brutal in a movie full of brutal fucking kills. Kill that isn't even done by Jason. Fuck, that was
dark and sad. So cops come back and we also get these ambulance drivers. One is a raging asshole, calls everyone a “bunch of pussies” because they are crying about having just witnessed a brutal murder, while the other one is sort of walking around, looking weird. They keep focusing on the weird one inexplicably. SPOILER: Remembering that the killer was some dude dressed as Jason, when they kept zooming in on this
medic, I knew he must be the killer. That night Jason kills a couple of greasers. It's whatever. We are 15 minutes in and we
already have five deaths. None are impressive.
Don't fuck with Tommy
Some stuff about this incarnation of Tommy. Dude is unexpectedly jacked and totally unhinged. So we keep seeing him slowly losing it. The way they illustrate this is the best. Some raging asshole
comes down in Tommy's wolfman mask, yeah, he is still making those masks, and just acts like a huge asshole.
He jumps around like, "booga booga" and makes Tommy jump in front of the group. They are laughing and he starts sort of halfway punching Tommy repeatedly in the chest in
an extremely irritating way until Tommy like slips him around his
shoulders and slams into this table. It is fucking insane.
Here's a pretty lady
Now on to the most memorable kills. We get this mustachioed guy who works at the hospital as an orderly
who picks up a chick way out of his league at a diner. She goes and
gets naked in the bathroom just because. Pops her tits out saying “it's
showtime” for no reason other than to insert some nudity into the
film. While this is going on, Stache gets axed in the head. The girl gets it in her chest. More fantastic, gratuitous nudity. This couple smokes weed
while doing. It's some random dumb girl with great tits and the idiot that got slammed by Tommy. The girl gets garden sheers to the eyes while the dude gets a belt tightened around his
face and a tree. It's sort of a weird one but is cool.
Here's some more deaths. The kid Reggie, his brother shows up and is the black dude from Return of
the Living Dead. He is homeless and living with his girl in a van near the camp. He meets up with Reggie and the doctor lady before elegantly mentioning to his girl that he has to take a shit because of the enchiladas her ate earlier. His girl dies off screen while he gets it on the can because of said enchiladas. Jason stabs wildly through the outhouse walls with some pointy, spear thing. Dude does
what you shouldn't do when someone is stabbing wildly through the wall and plants
himself against that wall. He gets the pipe thing right square in the chest and dies. Now it's on to the Geek and his mom, which thank fuck, these two, yeesh. It starts when the Geek
comes at Tommy like an aggressive asshole. He basically picks a fight with Tommy who Chuck Norris's his ass. After taking that L, the Geek is freaking out, riding his motorcycle around screaming like a lunatic about getting
his ass kicked. Finally, after this goes on for way too long, Jason lops off his head with a machete before he meatclevers the mom's face. From there it is the kids who get it. A dude that looks like Jon Cryer gets a clever to the face, this redhead who just turned down Cryer gets naked, sees Cryer dead in her bed, and then gets the standard under the bed stab. And finally we get some chick combining “the
robot” with miming, which is an embarrassing way to go for sure, who dies somehow but you don't really notice because you just want the dancing to stop.
Tommy Chuck Norrising a hillock
Still not as bad as Crispin Glover in The Final Chapter
Eh? See it? No? Ok then.
It's here that we get the usual discovery of all the bodies scene. It's the black kid who finds them
all dead. Doctor lady shows up and like berates him. “What is it? What's wrong?
What's the matter? What's wrong? What is it? What is it?” This
while shaking him. That is not an exaggeration. They take off. Kid's grandpa gets hurled through the window. His eyes are cut out too. This Jason likes stealing
people's eye holes, I guess. I've been thinking that this kid looks familiar.
Realize he is Carl Lewis as he is sprinting away, possibly genuinely terrified. They go outside. It's raining. The doctor is wearing a white
shirt bra-less. She also falls a lot. Tries to crawl away for 20 seconds.
Jason is like 80 yards away. Just stand up and walk briskly away. She is determined to make crawling work. Jason eventually walks up on her. About to bring the machete the fuck down when the kid shows back up flying around in a bulldozer which he hits Jason with. Takes a lot of damage but bounces back. The doctor now fights Jason with a chainsaw. Machete vs.
chainsaw, chainsaw always wins. Obviously. Cuts his arm with it. But it runs out of gas. Bummer.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Just before the doctor lady gets kilt, Tommy shows back up
after being missing for half the movie. Him and Jason stare each other down for a long time while
everyone yells at Tommy to do something. What he does is stab Jason in the femoral. Should bleed out. But doesn't. Sort of falls and is hanging on to the side of the barn where there are spikes underneath him for no reason. He is still coming at them so Tommy chops off his hand and he lands in bunch of spikes.
The old Scooby Doo ending. It's not the mythic Jason but just some enthusiast with some ability to make
masks. He's another mask savant, basically. His son was the kid that
got axed at the beginning. Doesn't kill the guy who killed his kid
though. This ending is stupid and doesn't make sense. But wait, there's more. Cut to the hospital, Tommy has
all Jason's shit. He dreams he puts all that shit on and kills the doc. Wakes up. It was a dream, to his relief. Then he maybe does it for real. Roll credits. Glad that was cleared up. Yeah, it's whatever but I would still watch this movie over almost every Nightmare on Elm Street.
MonsterVision
Let's check back in with good old Joe Bob Briggs. See what he has to say about this Part 5 of the franchise.
