Body Bags was the okayest movie of all time

Ah, body bags. You see, if it's murder, suicide or a nasty accident, they put them in here. Checked off a lot of boxes for me. Anthology comedy horror with two "masters" of horror directing. A rip off of Tales from the Crypt with lots of fun cameos. Stacey Keach, Debbie Harry, and Sam Raimi. I figured this would be dope. But in the end, not really my cup of tea. 

Three segments. John Carpenter hosts and introduces each story. He is this morgue employee, it seems, who is into some weird shit. Sort of tells us about how some of the people there die and are brought in in body bags. These are their stories. 

The first segment was the slowest and most traditional/run of the mill of the three. Slasher stalks a gas station attendant. Cool setting and lots of great bit parts, but it doesn't hold up at all when it comes to logic. The plot holes in this one are too distracting, and I'm not one to care about that generally. But you ask yourself a couple of questions and it comes undone as shit. Robert Carradine, bro of David, plays the killer. Get cameos from David Naughton from American Werewolf in London, and directors Wes Craven and Sam Raimi.

Second segment is easily my favorite. Stars Stacey Keach, the obvious MVP of the movie, as a dude going bald who is fucking obsessed. He has a pretty girlfriend who is supportive, but dude just won't let it go. Fucking paints his head and shit like that. It's fucking gross. But everywhere he looks he sees dudes with like 80s rockstar hair, or some dog with a golden mane, and dude loses his shit. So he goes to this Hair Club for Men type place and gets some hair treatment whilst nurse Deddie Harry is all over him, telling him how sexy he'll look with long flowing locks. He's fucking stoked when he pulls off the bandages and has hair down to his ass. It's crazy ridiculous and obviously looks like shit. But he gets what he wanted, but, you know, this is a horror anthology, so that shit comes at a price. 

Third segment is sort of the same as the second. Dude loses a part of himself, his eye, is obsessed with getting it back. Does an experimental surgery. Gets what he lost back. Is ironically tortured by the eye. It's the old, got an eye from a dude that got executed, now I see his crimes and will start killing myself bit. If you're a Simpsons fan, it's the same plot as "Hell Toupée" from "Treehouse of Horror IX" where Homer gets Spike's hair after he got the chair and then Homer starts having urges to kill and what not. The guy that gets the eye, by the by, is Mark Hamill. He is basically out there playing hero ball during his whole segment. 

Directors are listed as Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. Carpenter did "The Gas Station" and "Hair" while Hooper did "Eye". Not what either are going to be remembered for, for sure. But definitely not either of their worsts. Plus, I think Carpenter is a genius and generally love his work. That said...

There were moments that I had fun, and the casting was amazing. But overall I thought it was sort of meh. I thought the bookend segments with John Carpenter as a morgue attendee ghoul were especially disappointing. Too much a really bad rip off of Tales from the Crypt without the humor. I mean, they tried, but the jokes were shitty and sad. 

Scream 4 is the greatest movie of all time

Scream 4. Probably the last one in the franchise. Scream popularized the whole "meta, self-aware, postmodern" horror genre. Basically every horror movie that came out there for a while was a total Scream clone. Basically came out and defined the genre. Literally did this in the flick even. Scream 2 came alone and did the same thing for sequels. Then with Scream 3 we sort of get that with trilogies but maybe not so convincingly. Now we get this one that attempts to do the same thing with reboots. And though it generally didn't get the best reviews, it totally works. All that negative ink is a bunch of bullshit because Scream 4 is the great movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: The franchise is showing its age, but Scream 4 is undeniably an improvement over its predecessor, with just enough meta humor and clever kills.

Pros: Wes Craven directed. His last picture. Great cast. Maybe the best of the franchise (though the first one had a pretty great one as well). Also some pretty ladies. Do a really good job of world building/character development. Though we've seen this same setup in this same time, it totally throws you for a loop with it's originality.

Cons: More brutal than the previous movies, which is quite the dubious achievement. The killers' motivations/whole murder plan is pretty bonkers.

Bad enchiladas 

You likely know the drill by this point. The gist is Sidney Prescott shows up somewhere, in this one her home town, Woodsboro, where the first movie took place, and the Ghostface killer(s) soon follow. This time it is 10 years later and the murders seem to revolve around Sid's cousin, Jill (played by it girl Emma Roberts from Scream Queens, among other things), much like they did with her back in the day. David Arquette, Neve Campbell, and Courteney Cox return as Dewey, Sid, and Gale Weathers, respectively. Gale and Dewey are married now. Women fawn over Dewey who is the sheriff now, god help us, who no longer has a limp or quite as much brain damage. Newcomers to the series include Roberts, Anthony Anderson, the lovely Alison Brie who will always be Annie from Community to me, Adam Brody, Rory Culkin, Marielle Jaffe, Erik Knudsen, Mary McDonnell, the also lovely Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Nico Tortorella, Aimee Teegarden and Britt Robertson. We also get cameos from Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin, a former Academy Award winner, as characters within the Stab universe. Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two, returns as the writer and knocks it out of the park. I would argue that this is why 1, 2, and 4 are considered solid to classic and 3 is generally considered shit. It is also the final film from horror master Wes Craven who died in 2015.

Remember that chick?

Like all the other Scream movies, the opening is significant and does most of the world building. The opening of the actual movie are the openings for Stab 6 and Stab 7 which we sort of got in Scream 2 but in this one you think this is actually the opening of the movie we, the audience, is watching. But twice we are tricked with the movie within the movie withing the movie. It is a bit confusing when you try to explain it, I realize. Basically, here the Stab flicks like Scream are also in need of a soft reboot and sort of go off the deep end. We see the Stab movies have gotten stale and turn toward the uncertain. There we get just a bunch of nobodies in 6 doing the same old shit. Then big name actresses in 7 just phoning it in in an unpredictable movie that is unpredictable because it has sort of gone stale. Hey, that is just what Scream 4 is! This explanation is all over the fucking place. You'll just have to watch it for this to make sense, I think. Anyway, we eventually get the real intro. It's Coach Taylor's daughter, Julie, from Friday Night Lights (the series) played by the actress Aimee Teegarden, and some other chick. Since this is a Scream movie, we know the semi-famous person at the beginning is going to die, horribly. And... she does (and so does the friend). First, the friend is stabbed in the stomach and arms half a dozen times before being thrown through a window and then finally hanged from a ceiling fan while Teegarden gets stabbed a shitload of times before being crushed by garage door like whatsherface in Scream and then is stabbed some more.

Alison Brie. Me-yow

Speaking of brutal deaths, this flick is full of them. Every single death is more gruesome than the most severe in the first three--probably the Drew Barrymore death. And they look fucking real, too. Some of the notables include Sid's assistant or whatever played by the lovely Alison Brie who is toyed with like the old cat and mouse thing before she is stabbed and thrown off a parking garage onto a van, the boyfriend, red herring guy who gets shot in the dick and head, and Emma Roberts's next door neighbor sort of friend, one Olivia Morris, who gets the shit stabbed out of her including a bunch of defensive wounds which they show Psycho style before she gets gutted. And a note on Psycho, that movie gets another nod with  Anthony Anderson's (from Blackish) character who is named Anthony Perkins after the actor who played Norman Bates. His death is also notable for being hilarious. For his demise, Ghostface runs up on him and stabs him in the forehead. He gets out of the car and takes some wild swings at GF that is nowhere near landing, falls to his knees and says "fuck Bruce Willis."

Dewey. Dumbfuck

The body count is a little higher in this one than the previous films. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Dewey is now the sheriff. So everyone is fucked, obviously. Some issues arise here with his incompetence, which is expected. First off, he is back with Gale/Courntey Cox who is back to looking fantastic. They are married and she has writer's block (she is the Stab author in this universe). But once the murders start back up, she is fucking in it, trying to get in as much of the action as possible. But Dewey fucking denies her, saying she isn't a cop and can't be on the scene or whatever. She says shit like "I wrote the book on this," which is a killer line, but she still gets denied. Part of this I'm sure has to do with Dewey's deputy who is a cute chick that wants to fuck that fucking hates Gale. But, you know, she legit isn't a cop and shit. That shit though doesn't fucking matter, apparently, since Dewey lets Sid lead the fucking investigation for some insane reason. It is fucking nuts. This guy is an elected official. Let that shit sink in.

A few scenes that stuck out... One, the whole Stabathon that the high school AV club hosts where Gale puts these hidden cameras all over the place. Before they have it, Gale and Sid are visiting these HS kids and they float the idea of the two of them showing up to the film fest. The two of them are like, "this is in extremely poor taste, so how about no and you not do this." The kids respond with, "lame, we doing it" and then Gale ends up coming incognito anyway. She is wearing a mask so it isn't a "hello, fellow students situation," but it is pretty close. It is like the first movie where they have the hidden cameras all over the place and they can see the killer coming after one of the main characters. In this one, they damn near get Gale (and Sid later in the movie) but of course they live on in the Screamverse. But the scene is memorably tense and drawn out with a bunch of that the-killer-is-behind-you goodness.

Ger

That shit leads to another scene that really stuck out as the main kids that are still alive, around six of them, go to the cheerleader one's house to finish the horrorfest. There, a Culkin boy, Rory, nearly makes nerd history, they say, when Hayden Panettiere, a pretty lady, comes onto him and encourages him to make a move. She is indeed a very attractive lady, and even though he is the killer, spoiler, or one of them at least, and is boning the other, spoiler (it's Emma Roberts), he still nearly does it. But he's cock blocked by the red herring, Roberts's ex Trevor, who is just sort of a dick. Plus, he's gone too far by this point. That whole shit also hearkens back to the first one as well but with some major twists that are bananas and are easily some of the best moments in the series. Their motivation, by the way, are fame and lulz, basically.

The MVP of the flick has to be Emma Roberts. This flick elevated her to scream queen status and even got her a staring role in the television series Scream Queens which I found to be pretty solid as well American Horror Story. Her final girl status in the film is pretty mind bending. A unique take that turns what the expected upside-down. The shocking reveal at the end illustrates how far people will go to become reality stars, a pretty solid social critique of the Kim Kardashian/Paris Hilton model for fame as well as our collective obsession with serial killers and mass murderers. The performance is super solid and the character totally believable.

And that was the franchise. With that I guess I should rank them... IMO it goes Scream, Scream 4, Scream 2, and Scream 3. Can't beat an instant classic in the original which completely changed horror for the next decade and saved the dying genre. Though it doesn't get the credit, Scream 4 popularized the soft reboot in ways that went beyond horror, much like the first one did with teen movies and meta, self-awareness in film. If you are going to do a soft reboot, don't just tell the same story and don't completely reimagine it either. Give the people the movie they liked but take it in unexpected places--with a mind blowing twist, basically. See Star Wars: Episode VII, Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World, and Terminator Genisys. All follow this model. Before that, it was all hard reboots like Halloween, Spiderman, and Star Trek which just shit on everything that came before and retold the same story. Next we've got Scream 2 which sort of defined the rules for sequels. A lot like the first one, it laid out the tropes and knocked them down to make for a super solid followup. Scream 3 tries to do that same shit with trilogies but is sort of all over the place and somewhat fails as the plot makes a little less sense and the shtick gets a little old. So yeah, 1, 4, 2, 3. In that order. Guess I should go back and do Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th as well, so look forward to that.

Scream 3 is the greatest movie of all time

Scream 3. End of a trilogy. The quote unquote shitty one. The one where Sid is off the grid. The one where they broke from screenwriter Kevin Williamson's (who wrote the first one and outlined the second) vision. The Hollywood one where they film the third Stab movie within the third Scream movie. The one in the Jay and Silent Bob universe (the duo sees Gale Weathers on the backlot and yell, "hey, it's Connie fucking Chung!"). Lots of in jokes like that here. This is an industry movie like Body Double or Theater of Blood or Sunset Boulevard.

Personally, it was the first movie in the franchise I wasn't stoked about. It was only a couple years since the previous one came out but it both felt like it had been too long and that we had just had a bunch of these come out. Probably the reviews didn't help. It's pretty cheesy and way out of left field. Plus the new big thing in horror in 2000, when this movie came out, were found footage films like The Blair Witch. The self-aware stuff had sort of lost its charm. But it is fun in the end. I really didn't hate it the first time I saw it, it was on network TV by that point, and it definitely aged better than I thought. It was more over-the-top than the other two and got pretty close to being hysterical at times (mostly with Parker Posey the actress playing an actress playing Gale and following her around and what not). But yeah, it's not terrible. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: According to critics, Scream 3 has become what it originally spoofed. Despite some surprising twists, the movie seems to have lost its freshness and originality by falling back on the old horror formulas and cliches.

Pros: Decent humor. This is so over-the-top that you don't really need spoofs like Scary Movie. The story, while ludicrous, is still pretty interesting.  Pretty ladies. Always with the pretty ladies and these movies. OK way to wrap-up the series, though it was a little anticlimactic and not the real of it.

Cons: Some of the acting is pretty phoned in which I'm not going to dwell on too much. The shtick gets a little old the third time around. Gale's (Courtney Cox) haircut is atrocious. The plot hinges on some pretty confusing bullshit.

Gist of the movie is that three years after the college one, a killer dressed as Ghostface makes the rounds again, this time in Hollywood on a movie backlot, picking off actors from the third Stab movie in the order they die on film in an attempt to get Sidney to come out of hiding. With this being the "final" installment of a trilogy, "the rules" change yet again, brought to you via video by a dead Jamie Kennedy in one of the more bizarre moments of the franchise. Like the previous and preceding films, the installment was directed by horror maestro Wes Craven. David Arquette, Neve Campbell,  Courteney Cox, and Liev Schreiber reprise their roles as Dewey, Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers, and Cotton Weary respectively. Newcomers include Patrick Dempsey (McDreamy from that one doctor show), Scott Foley whom you might remember as Jake Ballard in Scandal or from whoever he played in Felicity, Lance Henriksen from Aliens, Matt Keeslar (no idea), Jenny McCarthy (who popularized anti-vaccing), Emily Mortimer from Lars and the Real Girl, Parker Posey from the Christopher Guest movies, Deon Richmond (no idea), and Patrick Warburton who will always be Putty from Seinfeld. Legendary producer Roger Corman also has a cameo. As does Carrie Fisher. She plays a chick who looks exactly like Carrie Fisher. This was supposed to be the last of the franchise but then it was revived with Scream 4 in 2011, which is solid, and the show which debuted in 2015 and currently is in post-production on season three.

Anti-vaccer, dude

Some shit that stuck out includes Cotton Weary being this major late night talk show host with a car phone. No one gave a shit about him in Scream 2 and wouldn't give him the time of day unless Sid came along with him. Then he sort of gets some credit for saving the day and now he is like a regular old Howard Hughes/Jay Leno. He ends up the opening scene death, which keep getting weaker. It is sort of funny though since the killer has a fancy new voice changer that can make him sound like anyone. So when Ghostface attacks Cotton's old lady, played by Kelly Rutherford who was Dixie Cousins in The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. which is like my favorite show of all time, he talks shit in Cotton's voice. They also talk about having Stab roleplay sex which is insane. She ends up attacking the real Cotton which opens up the killer for a pair of easy deaths.

Oh, that chick

There is a surprise Randy explaining "the rules" scene which is strange considering he died in Scream 2. They needed someone to deliver it, I guess, and since it isn't all that serious of a movie, why not find a way to bring Jamie Kennedy back. The way this is so delicately done is they bring in Randy's never before mentioned sister--played by Heather Matarazzo who is this girl I've always mistaken for Thora Birch who played the girl that gets grilled on the stand by Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advocate and had a bunch of other pretty dope little roles over the years (like DJ Tanner's girlfriend in Roseanne)--who has a video that her brother recorded just before he died in case the murders start up again after the events of the movie where he dies. Just roll with it. Even though it's dumb, I still love that rules shit. In this one, the end of a trilogy, we learn that: 1.) the killer will be superhuman so stabbing or shooting him won’t work and he must basically be cryogenically frozen, decapitated, or blown up; 2.) anyone, including the main character, can die;  and 3.) whatever you think you know about the past will come back and destroy you. Thems the rules for some of that sweet survivin'.

The killer ends up being this guy Rowan, spoiler, who is directing Stab 3 and turns out to be Sid's long lost brother that was born out of wedlock when Sid's murdered mother was an aspiring actress. Yeah, it's fucking weird and doesn't make a lot of sense and requires some serious dedication for a goof. It is fucking insane. So get this. He tracks down his biological mother (Sid's mom who died before the first one) who gave him up for adoption. She doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He stalks her. Finds out she is having an affair. Recruits people to kill her and toy with and then kill the rest of her family as well as a bunch of other kids. Hope that this becomes a book that is then turned into a movie franchise. Go to film school. Become a big shot director. Get old Hollywood stupid money. Agree to direct the third installment of that franchise. Kill everyone. That's it. What? I mean... What? But that is how it goes down. But he fails because he is an idiot. And then they shoot him, repeatedly, so as not to come back. Funny as fuck but not the most grounded in reality installment of the series.

Again, like Scream 2, not the easiest movie to pick a winner for. In the end I'm going with Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie as fake Gale Weathers. She hangs out with the real Gale and constantly talks shit about how her Gale is better and what her Gale would do in such and such situation. She does die in the end but not before bumbling around and being crazy for all but the last 10 minutes of the film. She was also apparently banging Brad Pitt which is some sort of mind fuck since this would have been in the Jenifer Aniston years and Courtney Cox was on Friends with her at that time and so forth. But yeah, her over-the-top performance stands out as the most absurdly ridiculous in film that is full of them.

Sweet Gale on Gale action

Another little detail that made this for me comes in the scene where the killer corners Sid on the set of Stab at the location of her fake house. Here, again, she has the opportunity to run out of the fake front door of her house but instead runs up the stairs just like she did in the first and just like she railed on would be survivor girls for doing in these types of flicks. Nice little attention to detail there on this deep cut.

Anyway, three of these films down with Scream 4 on deck. That one was genuinely really solid and I'm looking forward to writing about it. So look for that shit in the next few. Going to watch and write about something Independence Day related today though. Still deciding on what but I've ruled out Uncle Sam because it looks too shitty even for my tastes.

Scream 2 is the greatest movie of all time

Scream 2. The crazy-things-are-happening-to-Sid-at-college movie. This was the first movie I can remember where I was gleaning leaked info from the internet. A movie within the movie that was based on the events from the first movie. Hearing about this, though nothing new, really, did blow my little freshman mind with anticipation. Was incredibly stoked when it finally came out and I thought was a worthy followup to the most groundbreaking horror movie released in my lifetime (though Get Out might have surpassed the original Scream on that front). In some ways I liked it better than the first film, although it is really tough to beat. Like the way Sid is a damaged character, the way Randy explains the rules for sequels, the way it is established that "brothers don't last long" in horror movies, and so forth. For these reasons I'm gonna call it... Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: As with the first film, Scream 2 is a gleeful takedown of scary movie conventions that manages to poke fun at terrible horror sequels without falling victim to the same fate.

Pros: Seems cliche now but it did for horror sequels what the original did for horror flicks. Mixes humor and murder pretty deftly. Decent amount of wit. The movie within the movie is great shit. Pretty ladies. Cox never looks better than she does in this movie. Just about as rewatchable as the first one. Great couple of kills (especially the cops).

Cons: More or less just more of the same (not that I consider this a bad thing). A little too cheesy, maybe.

Gist is a couple years following Sid getting attacked by her boyfriend and his partner-in-crime after they killed a half dozen or so people at her high school while dressed in the now famous Ghostface mask, a copycat killer now takes up murdering people at her college. Like the original, we get all the meta genre stuff, wit, and satire as we see how the whodunit unfolds. Also directed by Wes Craven, the movie stars all the survivors Scream in David Arquette as Dewey who is just as brain damaged in this one (see the scene when he almost gets killed at the end [his downfall is stepping in pizza that is on the floor, which is just completely insane]), Neve Campbell as Sidney, Courteney Cox (who looks great in this one) as Gale Weathers, Jamie Kennedy as movie geek Randy, and Liev Schreiber as wrongly accused Cotton Weary. Short-lived newcomers to the franchise include a murderers row of '90s college aged talent in Omar Epps, Rebecca Gayheart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant,  Portia de Rossi (Lindsey from Arrested Development) who shows up out of nowhere to show us what a Blueth was like in college, and Jada Pinkett Smith. We also get some Laurie Metcalf (who plays Jackie in Roseanne) action as, spoiler, a news report who ends up being the mother of Billy Loomis, the murderer from the first one, who teams up with Olyphant for some sweet revenge.

The mean girls all stars 

First people of color in the franchise. Last less than a scene

Most memorable scenes from the flick include the opening, the Randy talking about movie scenes, and the dress rehearsal of the Greek tragedy "Agamemnon". The first is sort of the amuse bouche for the flick. After having no diversity in the original, here we get Epps and Jada at the "Stab" premiere which is the movie within the movie that details the events from the first flick. So right away we know that that is a thing and that people are into the story in that universe like audiences were into Scream at that same time. Which is all a little confusing. Plays within plays or movies or whatever have been around since the Renaissance dating back to before Shakespeare (although he more or less popularized it) and weren't even new to TV and movies like with "Itchy and Scratchy" in The Simpson, of course, but this movie within the movie about the first movie was pretty fucking nuts. Here we get Epps sticking his head up to a bathroom stall at the premier of "Stab" to listen to two people have sex when the killer sticks a knife through the stall door and into his head. Scary Movie sort of ruins this when they completely copy this scene with one of the Wayons bros getting a dildo to the brain instead of a knife. Jada, for her part, gets murdered in the theater with people cheering, thinking it was a part of the show or something. It is brutal. Being surrounded by all those people and no one taking your screams seriously.

As for the scene where Randy talks shit about them living in a sequel or whatever, keep in mind that while the thing that Scream does where everyone in every horror movie knows they are in a horror movie has been played to death, back in 1998 it was still new and hadn't really been done before the one came out in 1996. So, yeah, this was still defining the tropes and telling us what was to be expected in the age of self aware horror in regard to sequels. Like we saw in the previous film, Randy does this pretty much directly in two scenes. The first one he is in film theory class or something and him and Olyphant and Joshua Jackson are discussing the apparent lameness of most sequels. Randy holds the position that no sequel has ever outdone the original. People name various examples, none of which I give a shit about, where this was not the case. This is an ingenious little scene here and forces audience participation. Every time I see this movie, probably around four times at this point, I think of new examples that have popped up since my last viewing (this time Thor: Ragnarok came to mind, another previous one I thought of in the horror genre is Evil Dead II which I have to get around to soon). And we also get one of the killers talking movies, showing his hand a little bit. The second Randy-talks-movies scene is when him and Dewey are at a diner after the killings start up again. Here we get "the rules" which basically come down to more people will die in more gruesome ways. They all can't be winners, I guess. An honorable mention sort of related to horror movie rules would be when Gale's black camera man states that brothers don't live very long in horror flicks. A bit of situational irony there as he is saying this whilst bouncing out of town and thus ensuring his survival.

The last really memorable, and probably best, scene in the movie is the one where Sid is playing the role of Cassandra in the Aeschylus tragedy "Agamemnon" which is part of The Oresteia which is a trio of plays based around the Cassandra character at dress rehearsals. Early, Sid talks about how she wants to go on with the show despite all these murders. During the rehearsal, the chorus chases her about with fake daggers wearing cloaks and masks. Here we see Ghostface among the chorus, which may or may not have been real, slashing at her and weaving in and out with the other actors. It is all chaos and Sid freaks out. I like to think this wasn't Mickey, who was nearby and is later revealed as one of the killers, the experience is just too much.

But none of those were the truly best scene in the movie. That is hands down when Jerry O'Connel's character sings "I Think I Love You" by The Partridge Family at the top of his lungs to Sid in the school cafeteria. It was super sweet and totally impressive. Apparently the role was between O'Connell and some other guy and O'Connell nailing this scene is what got him the part. If he would have survived, he almost certainly would have won the movie. Check it out...

Best kill of the movie was the cop on the hood of the car. Here, Sid and her soon to be dead friend Hallie get picked up by the cops on Sid's protection detail. While they are stopped at a light, Hallie, who is pretty terrible, is like "uh, where we going?" The cops just say a bunch of stupid shit like "if we tell ya, we'd have to kill ya," and "don't ask; don't tell" which, you know, maybe pay attention instead of making the worst dad jokes of all time and shit. Of course Ghostface pops up here and stabs the driver in the throat. The other gets out, gets kicked in the face, and ends up on the hood with Ghostface driving like a wild man. He eventually rams it into a construction zone, plowing into a dumpster full of metal pipes. One of these ends up through the guys head in super gnarly death. The girls then have to climb over Ghostface, who is passed out from the wreck, to get out of the car. It's a pretty shit situation to be in.

It is tough to say who won this one but in the end I'm going with Gale. No longer hated, her and Sid end as sort of friends. She gets the scoop, kind of falls in love (again), survives getting shot, and kills a rival that isn't even on her level. Plus she is looking fierce in this installment. In 3 she has this weird bang thing going on that I'm not crazy about but here she is perfect looking. And is just totally a badass. Winner. This chick.

So that was Scream 2. I sort of like this watching and writing about an entire franchise and am probably going to do that with all the big ones. So, yeah, look forward to seeing some shit on 3 and 4 here before too long. Also some shit on Sleepaway Camp and Texas Chainsaw as well, assuming I get them done before the fall. Then I'll be doing the rest of the Halloween franchise.

Scream is the greatest movie of all time

Scream. Total game changing horror movie. When this came out I lost my mind. I was in eighth grade and I remember everyone sort of placing themselves in the various roles and where they fit in and stuff. I was an obvious Matthew Lillard although I have probably grown into more of a Randy. So yeah, not only did it start a horror renaissance but every high school movie ever rode it's coattails and was made from 1996-2001. Catapulted Courtney Cox into super stardom for a little bit. Established Wes Craven as a genius and gave us two of my favorite scenes of all time. Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Horror icon Wes Craven's subversive deconstruction of the genre is sly, witty, and surprisingly effective as a slasher film itself, even if it's a little too cheeky for some.

One of the great THO scenes of all time

Pros: The opening is one of the greats of all time. Ditto on the rules scene. One of the greatest meta films ever which really popularized the literary device in cinema (especially with horror). Matthew Lillard (Stuart) really goes for it. Most of the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the film awesome instead of annoying. Lots of pretty ladies. Rose McGowan has never been cuter, a very cute girl, than at that moment.

Cons: Some of the plot is a little ludicrous. Like, I don't think the whole Billy Loomis/Stuart game plan at the end to get away with murder, spoiler, is going to hold up once the crime lab shows up and sees they are covered in corn syrup. I'm pretty sure Dewey is making fun of people with brain damage.

Gist of the movie: A masked killer, Ghostface, terrorizes the town of Woodsboro, California, with a serious of pretty fucking heinous murders that reference horror films. High school senior Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, and her friends become the focus of the killer(s)'s "game". Directed by Wes Craven, the film stars David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, Cox, McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich who was briefly the next Johnny Depp. Linda Blair (from The Exorcist), Liev Schreiber, and Henry Winkler are also sort of in the movie in mostly cameos. Can't stress how groundbreaking this felt at the time. A darkly comedic satire of shitty horror tropes that had dominated the genre for half a dozen years prior. It was the only horror film that was aware of other horror films. It was fresh AF and I fucking lost my shit over it.

Shit that sticks out... Gotta start with that opening scene. So much to love here. First, Drew Barrymore, probably the biggest star in the movie at the time, gets offed in a super violent and grotesque way. Psycho did this before when they killed off Janet Leigh but there weren't a lot of other people in that film. When you buy your ticket for this, you know you have this ensemble cast so the message is that anyone can die in this flick. And it's a super long and brutal scene. The killer toys with her and the audience, calling and asking her questions about horror films that her life depends on. Like the whole who was the killer in Friday the 13th question. Barrymore screams "Jason" which is incorrect. It was his mother that did the killing in the first one. I feel that most people, unless they were obsessives like Randy, Stuart (Lillard), or Billy, would probably get that wrong. Then, once she is finally done for and her parents get home, her mom picks up the phone to call the police and they can hear their daughter's gurgling sounds and kindly says something like "sweetie, baby?" The way I interpret this is that she knows her daughter is not long for the world and she just wanted to provide her with some kindness in her last moments. Fucked. But then the husband sends the wife off to the neighbors to call the police and there is their girl, hanging from a tree. This was thankfully not as brutal as it was supposed to be. Barrymore originally was gutted and her entrails were all spilling out and stuff but it earned the movie an NC-17 from the ratings board and they took it out.

Brutal

One nitpicky thing, the computer/technology stuff does not hold up so well. Computers, according to movies in 1996, were magic. Like how Sid calls 9-1-1 via text (this after she rips dumb horror chicks for running up the stairs instead of out the front door and then does just that) which maybe you could do but who would. Also when Dewey, the least likely person ever in the history of film to be remotely computer literate, sees that Sid's dad never registered at the hotel he was supposed to stay at with a quick Google search.

Another nitpick, no way in hell Billy/Stuart could have possibly thought they were getting away with this. They are blaming Sid's dad--why the hell is he doing this?--who they have bound in Stuart's basement for multiple days. Ligature marks, anyone? Plus they are covered in physical evidence and one of them has fake blood all over himself. But sure, you'll get away with it. Not like you weren't already shady as shit and on the cops' radar since the first murder.

"It was du-umb"

Something of note is what a surprisingly sensitive lover Skeet is despite his hatred of Sid because of her mother cheating with his dad (talk about misplaced anger) and being a vicious murderer and all. This is quite the long con. Also, their motives are suspect as hell. Just throwing that out there. Anyway, this, I feel, is why Sid didn't really ask too many questions the Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy run up on her saying that the other one is the killer. She locks them out, must have been a pretty awkward conversation for those two, and Billy shows up after seemingly just being killed. Covered in corn syrup, Sid gives him the gun even though he was obviously the killer. Well, they had just gone to bone town and Billy was like shockingly sweet. He would try to kill her in like less than an hour but not before sharing an extremely tender moment.

The breakout star of this film, the guy who won the movie basically, something I'm awarding to movies from here on out, was Randy. Three of the best scenes in the movie were the result of this dude. The one that is most amaze balls is the one where Jamie Kennedy goes over the rules for surviving a horror. Namely don't drink or do drugs, don't have sex, and don't say you'll "be right back. Just another great meta moment which popularized horror movies being aware of other horror movies (though Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Waxworks, and several other movies did it before). The scene in the video store where Randy screams "everyone is a suspect!" is up there as well for all of the same reasons. It is basically the same scene in a different location. One of my favorite scenes this time around featuring this dude that I never really gave much time before was when Courtney Cox attacks him with her giant 1980s cell phone. This is just after she finds blood everywhere in her van and is super on edge when Randy just wanders up and is like, "hey, Gale, where is" and smack. She then takes off in the van when her dead camera guy falls off the top. Sid tries to stop her and it just freaks her out more and she veers off the road and crashes into a tree. Meanwhile Randy, who doesn't know anything is going on still, has just been attacked by a news celebrity for what seems like no reason. This would be like Nancy Grace beating with a Blackberry or something.

Randy's wet dream

So, yeah, greatest movie of all time. Having finally worked my way through all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies (though I'm still working on my piece for Freddy vs. Jason) I am probably going to revisit all the Scream flicks which I was obsessed with as an early internet user. I remember getting online via dialup and reading about leaked info for the sequel which is basically wacky stuff happening Sid at the sorority movie. So look forward to that.

Dr. Carver of Auteur Autopsy presents one of the greatest, Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs

Dr. Carver of Auteur Autopsy presents one of the greatest, Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs. 

This is my new thing with the movie stuff. Video! I'm on the YouTube as Dr. Carver. Learned some lessons on this one. Sound quality is horrible (getting a mic) and it's all a bit rough. But it's a first. Check it out.

This is the first video for the site. The audio isn't very good but now I know that I need an external mic. 

Also, forgot to credit the music in the intro. It's Feast Of The Zombie by Behold the Living Corpse.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is the greatest film of all time

Finishing up the Nightmare movies with Wes Craven's New Nightmare on Robert Englund's 70th birthday. Just one more Freddy movie to go. Now I'm going to watch all the Friday the 13th movies until I get to Freddy vs. Jason. God help me with that endeavor.

New Nightmare was mostly decent except for the end. This was my first viewing since sixth grade. God tier then. Definitely a step below now. Wes Craven is still solid(ish) and the film holds up alright. You can see the wheels turning here for the meta epic that he comes out with a few years later in Scream. This is sort of a prototype for what becomes postmodern horror. On it's own I would say this is one of the better Nightmare movies. I shall rank those here pretty soon.

Pros: Solidly postmodern. Felt totally revolutionary when it came out. Really fucking slick. Return to scary Freddy.

Yes, this shit again

Cons: Bob Shaye, again, is unfortunately all over this one too. Notably the redo of Freddy's disgusting tongue coming out of the phone receiver and licking at Langenkamp's face. Really drags in the middle and the ending isn't the best.

Notes: Opening scene is fucking brutal. It consists of a Langenkamp, Nancy from the first one, on a Nightmare set with her family, acting and what not, when the robot Freddy hand comes to life and starts slaughtering people. Husband is a FX guy. Son is the “boys have penises and girls have Kindergarten Cop. Wes Craven is there, too. IRL it was all a dream. Had an earthquake. Kid is watching NOES and freaks out. She gets a “One, two, Freddy's coming for you,” prank call. Goes on a show. Getting pub for the 10^th anniversary of 1. Uncle Freddy comes out. Hams it up. She goes and sees Bob Shaye. He's proposing a definitive Nightmare movie. Says that him and Wes haven't talked for 10 years because Wes hasn't had any “really scary nightmares.” Pretty sure that wasn't why. Also says that while they were going to leave Freddy dead, “the fans” won't let them. Pretty sure that wasn't true either at that point.

The adored child murderer, hamming it up

We start learning stuff about Langenkamp's son who is losing it. He has this stuffed T-rex he names “Rex.” Rex is the kid's protector. Pretty cool idea and keeps showing up with Freddy wounds. They stitch him up and he is ready to go again. Rex is constantly waking the kid up fighting Freddy, he tells his moms. He has another freakout while the dad is away working on a movie. Langenkamp calls him up on his ginormous cellular telephone and he decides to drive four hours to get back home. Langenkamp dreams his death. It goes thus: he is all over the road dozing off. Falls asleep driving. He tries to call home on his massive, barely functional cellular phone. Nothing. Dozing again. We see the knives from the glove come out of the seat and sort of flick his crotch. He is totally out. The glove comes out and slashes his chest and wrecks his car. Wakes from her dream. Police show up to tell her he's dead. She demands to see the body. At the coroner's she sees the Freddy slashes and pukes.

At the funeral the wind blows like crazy, earthquake. She falls and hits her head on the coffin. It's crazy. The kid disappears. Is getting pulled into the coffin by Freddy. She saves him. Her husband reanimates and attacks him. She wakes. John Saxon saves her. He is the best. In the background in the crowd we see Wes shaking hands with Shaye. Robert Englund is awkward. Seeing the swarthy dude from the original NOES in the background as well.

The infamous painting

Kid keeps watching the original NOES, a glutton for punishment, which is apparently always on cable. He is singing the Freddy song. Heard it from under the bed, he says. He tells her Freddy is trying to get into their world, well no shit. He has a nose bleed and she takes him away to clean it. We see the TV is unplugged. She takes him to the playground the next morning and meets Saxon. While they talk the boy climbs on top of this death trap of a spaceship jungle gym. That you can climb out of the top of this is crazy. She goes home. Is getting mail from a “stalker” which includes one letter of the alphabet on a single Bible page. Calls Robert. See Robert's shitty paintings. He is working on a Freddy one. He is having dreams, too. It's such a shit painting.

A candid of Langenkamp with her favorite prop

All the dreams and stuff keep escalating. The kid gets more and more Freddy obsessed. Comes at his momma in her dream with little steak knives attached to his fingers. She wakes and comes down stairs. The kid has arranged the pages to spell “answer the phone.” I start wondering here if this movie is actually bad and I just have nostalgia for it. Anyway, the phone, it rings. She does indeed answer it. It's Freddy. His tongue comes through the phone and licks her face, again. God damn it. What the fuck. Bob Shaye loves that shit, obviously. It's still fucking gross and not scary. It makes the kid puke, which yeah. He fucking loses it. Kid goes to the hospital. Nurse is Bob Shaye's sister, Lin Shaye. You might remember her as the gross landlord from Kingpin.

Such an elegant gesture

Langenkamp goes to see Craven. Tells her about the script. Gist is “when the story dies, the evil is set free,” he says. Explains the mythology of it. Basically has to go through someone real, her, to become real. She is like, “what the hell, man, that is all really happening to me.” He's basically a tulpa. If you watch Supernatural, then you know about this. A tulpa is a pretty cool concept that comes from Tibetan Buddhism. The word means “emanation” or “manifestation.” What it basically is is a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers. Something that comes into being because you believe it.

When he does come into being, Freddy shows up wearing leather pants. He needs better friends. Someone to tell him he looks ridiculous. Chuck Klosterman once wrote something along the lines of if the world was ending in 10 minutes and a friend were to show up wearing leather pants, he would spend all of his remaining time roasting friend in said leather pants.

Fucking brutal

There are two really good scenes near the end. The first is when the kid's babysitter gets killed. It is like the one in the original where Freddy drags the girl around on the ceiling except more brutal. It's sort of a long time coming and also out of nowhere. It's solid. The other is when the actors start losing touch with reality. Saxon is there helping Langenkamp when suddenly he starts calling her Nancy and saying that she is his daughter and he is a cop. At first she resists it and then that becomes reality. It's so dreamlike and cool. That shit is fucking great.

There are also some not so great scenes near the end. One is the highway scene. The kid and the mom are running across the highway while a giant Freddy fucks with them from above, picking them up with his knife finger and shit. It looks like such shit. Like incredibly fucking bad. The green screen looks absurd and she has the worst stunt double ever. It is someone with a completely different body type and a very shitty wig. It's not good.

Gross

The final scene doesn't age well either. After Freddie beats on Langenkamp, he gets to where he is like going to eat the kid like a snake but Langenkamp saves him. Again, looks like shit. Then the stupid stairs scene from 1 comes back. Another scene no one asked for. Basically the end is a bunch of the worst Freddy scenes from the previous movies montaged together into a bullshit fight scene. It ends when Freddys uses his long snake tongue to try to choke Langenkamp out which we have seen before. But the kid stabs it and Freddy ends up in a furnace and gets cremated. Anticlimax. Then once they leave the dream, Langenkamp finds Wes's script. It was all in there. Not the greatest ending but it sure as shit was a lot better that Freddy's Dead: The FinalNightmare. I probably won't ever watch it again but it was pretty good. Would have ended the series nicely. But then they had to do Freddy vs. Jason. I'll get to my outrage on that one eventually. 

Pretty much says it all

The People Under the Stairs is greatest worst movie of all time

Combine Home Alone and Don't Breathe and you get The People Under the Stairs. The film follows a young black kid named Fool who is a bad fucking way. His mother is dying of a totally treatable form of cancer—get used to this playing out again after Obamacare gets republicanized—and they are about to get evicted by the slumlords that own their building (keep in mind, slumlords were getting a lot press at the time). Fool ends up joining Ving Rhames and a white dude on an attempted burglary at the landlords' home. Turns out the property owners are an incestuous brother/sister pair that have some weird shit going on as they've been abducting children to raise as their own, only to mutilate them and throw them in the basement when they fail to live up to their unrealistic expectations (which I assume is the normal Christian way of raising a child). The burglars die almost immediately, living Fool to fend for himself in the walls of the mansion with the help of the couple's “daughter” who so far hasn't disappointed them enough to cut out her tongue or anything.

There is some nostalgia for this movie on my end. It came out when I was 9 and was the first R-rated movie I saw in the theaters. There were like 30 of us that went as a part of some kid's birthday celebration. The kid's negligent parent took us in a bus from the community center to the theater. The manager, I recall, was not very keen on letting a shitload of wild ass 6-10 year olds watch a Wes Craven movie with minimal parental supervision but trying to force us into Beauty and the Beast wasn't going to happen. At the time, I fucking loved it. Hadn't seen it since. Time for a rewatch... Now it wasn't great, but was still solid enough to recommend it as an absurd cinematic experience.

Fool and Ving in happier times

Pros: Wes Craven is so good. Way over the top to the point of hilarity. Borders on slapstick comedy. I'd almost swear it was a Raimi movie if I didn't know better. Great pacing. Kid actor is pretty good for a child.

Cons: This movie doesn't know what it wants to be: social commentary, creepy horror, or zany comedy. Acting isn't the best. Parts of the movie weren't great. Sort drags on near the end... It's also extremely racist. I give this movie a lot of passes for nostalgic purposes.

Meet the protagonist. Fool is his name. He's 13 years old. His sister is the ethnic chick in the fifth Nightmare on Elm Street movie, The DreamChild. They are in a shit situation. Mom is sick and dying of a curable disease and they are getting evicted. Ving Rhames is maybe the sister's boyfriend or something. It isn't super clear. He is a raging asshole. Well, he has found out where their landlords live. Wes Craven is so good. Just gets right to it and have natural dialogue.

Once we get our first glimpses of the slumlords we see it is Big Ed and Nadine from TwinPeaks. She is crazier in this movie, slightly, but Big Ed is way more insane. This movie is basically what would've happened if the two had procreated in Twin Peaks. See something's going on with the daughter. Totally abuse her and all that.

Ving, Fool, and this white guy, Spencer, go to the house to steal the money the landlords are rumored to have. Fool tries to get in dressed as a boy scout, selling boy scout cookies which isn't a think, but is rebuffed. Now Spencer goes up to it and weasels his way in the house but doesn't come out. Really funny line here. Fool keeps on floating hypotheticals. Maybe this. Maybe that. And Ving says "maybe the president's gonna make me the secretary of Pussy,” which was golden. Keeps it coming with his zany antics. Another zinger at Fool, “You're too old to get to tit and too young to get ass.” “He's fucked either way,” he says. Classic.

The couple leaves. Fool and Ving break in. They are immediately attacked by a Rottweiler. They subdue the dog and separate. Fool goes to the basement. He finds Spencer. His hair has gone white. People under the stairs sort of come at Fool. Roach jumped on his back scares the shit out of him. He takes off. The folks come back. Ving eventually gets killed and they realize, at some point, that they have another person in the house. They know right away it was the boy scout.

Foo!

This is where the movie really starts toeing the line between straight up comedy and over the top horror. Some examples, when Fool is getting attacked by the people under the stairs, basically a 90s grunge band, Roach scares them off by like playing with Ving's corpse and making him look like a zombie. That is like Fool's father figure but he rolls with it. At another point the dog is barking, obviously because of Fool's antics, and Big Ed comes out and yells, “shut the fuck up!” in the most hilarious way possible. When I saw this in the theater it was the funniest thing anyone had ever seen.

Fool escapes once but comes back for the daughter. He calls the cops who are naturally easily distracted and think all is cool. Fool gets in during this shit show. He then hears the parents talking about a bunch of bull shit in their room. Think the coast is clear, he prances about the house. But surprise. The parents recorded that conversation during the day or something and played it on a tape player to fool him. Wha? This is insane and makes no fucking sense. What is awesome though is now Big Ed is wearing a gimp suit because it's hilarious.

Of course Fool keeps breaking away and crawling around through the walls for another 30 minutes. At one point they lift a scene straight out of Home Alone when Fool makes a bunch of noise in the chimney so that Gimp Daddy climbs in and looks up. Gimp gets hit in the face with a brick. Totally Home Aloned you, bra.

Lotta this action

Parents eventually get theirs. The mom, who runs through most of her last 10 minutes screaming and running around with a butcher knife like a lunatic, takes her first blow when the daughter busts out the ceiling out of nowhere like a maniac and smashes her face into the floor. She doesn't finish the job though. Mom is looking rough AF now. Fool, who talked the people under the stairs into helping him by basically promising them that he will help them score with chicks when they get out, are now all about helping Fool and the daughter girl. So yeah, the gets eaten by the people under the stairs but not before she again runs around screaming with the knife like a wild person. This movie was made by insane people.

The end involves this slick, sort of unnecessary, and totally unrealistic trick with the coins that is yet another Home Alone esque gag. Takes place in this storage room filmed with gold coins and bills. Money is fucking everywhere. It's enough to swim in Scrooge McDuck style. What Fool does is he puts the coins in these candles and lights them so that the coins fall as the candles melt so that Big Ed thinks he is like fingering the coins or something. The coins fall out at a rate of one every three seconds instead of the more realistic 45 minutes. This leads to Fool blowing up the storage room with Big Ed, the money, TNT, and all. This kills Big Ed, finally. Money starts raining down from the sky. They practically call it a ghetto miracle. All the money is completely in tact. We also see the people under the stairs are loose and on a mission to score. Roll credits. I'm sure things end up going well for them. All in all, pretty funny for a movie about mutilating and confining a bunch of kids in a basement. 

They are out there, ladies

UPDATE: Forgot to check on those "Drive-In Totals" as Monstervision totally did this flick. Whenever the godly Joe Bob Briggs and I agree on shit I feel somewhat validated with this bullshit bloggy blog. Enjoy!