In It For The Kills: Horror Perspectives

Finally! I got to see Paranormal Activity

Keep in mind I live in a town with one movie theater and about 10 stoplights, and most of the time I'm lucky when movies I actually want to see come to the minor city 45 minutes away. Meaning, in the end, that although we actually by some miracle got this movie right here at our own little theater, nobody is going there to see it so it will be the first and last time we get something that doesn't star Owen Wilson. Even the ghetto fab girl behind me wasn't screaming or even talking to the characters as if they could hear her, because this is the kind of film that is succeeding on the midnight movie audience camaraderie experience. And that experience was missing. Don't believe me? Think about how many times you have actually watched Rocky Horror at home alone. (Not you, sir. Only the sexy people.) See? So if you want to enjoy Paranormal Activity, see it on the big screen, preferably in a crowded theater.

Now I'm not gonna sit here and say the film sucked, or that it wasn't scary. And I applaud the William Castle marketing techniques as well as the return of the midnight movie. Its just that the movie tried to break from the mold but only halfway. To go along with the mockumentary feel, the two stars seemed like average (i.e. annoying and self absorbed) people you might know. Katie was so crushingly average she seemed like one of those awful women who love to hang out in front of the school waaaaay before my son's elementary school lets out in the afternoon just so they can talk about scrapbooking and pregnancy and how hard life is when you don't have to do anything but take care of your litter of kids and collect your husband's check. (I am a stay at home mom. Its the easiest job ever, and my kid is special needs, bitches.) Katie likes making jewelry, knitting and having her ugly friend come over so they both can be cunty to Katie's boyfriend. She is a prude who is always snappish and would never, ever ever let herself be photographed having sex or even do a little striptease down to bra and panties. And although I couldn't wait to see the demon get ahold of her yuppie ass whose shit don't stink, it was surprisingly refreshing to see such an average person on film. It was not in keeping with Hollywood conventions. So why was the rest of the story horror-by-the-numbers?

If you're gonna make me suffer through two hours with an unlikeable, boring, the-best-part-of-her-is-in-her-bra-and-wont-come-out-and-say-hi lead actress, why not make the extraordinary experiences she is having give you the license to write a screenplay in which the characters have SOME sense? If the demonologist is out of town, go sleep in a church. Call another demonologist; hell, every demonologist in the country. Try praying or reading your bible. Have your family come over and camp out. Cut your wrist and take a vacation to the mental hospital. Katie was more concerned with pussy whipping Micah than she was for her own life and Micah did everything he could think of to worsen the situation with the demon. I mean, for God's sake, when Micah finds Katie holding a cross he actually burns it. Way to go. I'd like to see more horror movies populated by characters who have seen a horror movie before in their lives. The best movies are the ones where they decapitate the masked killer, slay those zombies or find out what that ghost wants, and then even if they die those fuckers go out fighting.

So go and see the movie in a charged up emotional group setting if you want to see it. Encourage Hollywood to embrace budget films and give them major releases in podunk towns. If you want a big boobied unsmiling girlfriend to degrade you so you can build your ego in the neverending pursuit of being her tampon, ask her if any demons are chasing her before you move in together. If you come down with demons, don't bring home a Ouija board. And for those of you who say it wouldn't be a movie if the characters' actions had been logical, please consider whether watching movies with really stupid people in them is making you feel better about yourself, and then go take some continuing ed classes.

Oh, and check out the original ending of the film on YouTube after you see the movie. If it had not been changed the movie would have been much better.

Strait-Jacket (1964)

Its a fact of life that you either prefer Coke or Pepsi, and Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. Strait-Jacket puts another vote for Ms Crawford on my scorecard. I have not seen a lot of movies made before 1968 or so and had no interest in doing so until I saw The Innocents this summer. Of course the only thing these two movies have in common is that they both surprised me by being so much better than I thought they would be because they have no boobs, blood or cursing. Sorry, but I'm a child of the 80s and was raised on gratuitousness. But since the songs of my teenage years began appearing on the classic stations, maybe coincidentally I've come to appreciate acting without special effects and the subtlety afforded thereof. Maybe its because I'm getting progressively slower and I can wait for the plot to fan out. Besides, the decap scene in this flick is awesome even without the gore.

Anyway, I do know enough about old movies to know that at the beginning of Joanie Dearest's career the lines were delivered in a more projected fashion because a lot of people had come from the stage and also because you had to project the lines for the mikes of the time. And I've seen enough 60s-80's horror starring actors from the studio golden age to know some people were still hamming it the hell up. But Crawford changed her acting style with the time and here, even though she spends a lot of time shredding up the screen, her emotion is believable and not melodramatic. This is especially notable because Strait-Jacket is a neat little schlock sandwich. But I love it because it's the classic slasher melted together with "someone is trying to make someone else think they're insane," only the boogeymen are women.

The Imdb says this movie distills to "after a 20 year stay at an asylum for a double murder, a mother returns to her estranged daughter where suspicions arise about her behavior." The dude who talks a lot at the beginning of movies on TCM said it was an example of a woman over a certain age not being allowed to play a romantic role. I think Crawford's character turns on her sexuality/passion. She grabs an axe and cuts off her husband's head because he is quite literally sleeping in her bed (post coitus, its is implied) with an old girlfriend. Joan's character had an old man husband first to get his money and then got herself a handsome younger cowboy who ends up a headless horseman. But she turns out to be sane in the end because her crime was only a crime of passion. Personally, when I found my recent ex fooling around with someone else I fixed myself another drink and went back to the party. But some people get stabby about cheating. In this case the straitjacket fits someone quite different who murders out of true long simmering insanity rather than temporary. It is the notion of Crawford as a romantic heroine, however tragic, that makes this movie a little better than the usual William Castle flick. The only gimmick here is the star.

Oh and PS, Joan requested Diane Baker to play her daughter having worked with her before. So there's evidence the famously bitchy star got along with at least one fellow actress!

Raw Nerve (1991)

 
 
Your neighbor who sells bootleg shrimp and rides a bike because he cant afford a shrimp boat and a car has a story idea. What the hell, he has to daydream to stay awake while he's going out to work in the morning before dawn. You're a screenwriter, ya know? He comes up with ideas, snap snap snap but he's just the idea man. That's the hard part. You might as well do the easy part, writing the script, since you don't have a job.

So here it is. Some asshole is going around shooting big haired pretty girls in the faces with a sawed-off shotgun. How can you finish the script with maximum exposure of Jan-Michael Vincent with a southern accent and a butt cut? Once you've cast a 1991 Traci Lords as a naive high school age orphan, you've entered a cinematic world of pure absurdity. Then add a male romantic and dramatic lead who drives racecars for a living in Mobile Alabama. Have him hanging out with the guy who played the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse in Raising Arizona. Then to add class, bring in Glenn Fucking Ford as the Angry Police Chief. Congratulations. You have a vintage straight to video chicks in peril movie with no boobs and no blood. Now with more incest.

But you do have a pickup truck driving off of a parking deck and breaking in half. You also have the two dumbest people on earth falling in love after one night of sex during which one of them is trying to exploit the other for a newspaper story. Because your neighbor with the boat still lives in that universe where people get all shouty about the local paper.

Encounter of the Spooky Kind (1980)

 
In only three movies I completed my lazy person's thesis on 80s Hong Kong horror: the movies are all absolutely ridiculous. But movies in general were a bit more WTF to me in the 80s. Sammo Hung plays a guy who, literally in the first scene of the movie, barely escapes two ghosts looking for a body as he walks home from work. We find out that his wife is a bitch, he drives a horse drawn cab (year is 18something) and helps his client cheat on his wife...with Sammo's wife!

Sammo sees someone running away when he sneaks off to check on his wife. Then the plot, and be patient because there isn't much left, leaps to...the client has to kill Sammo, who doesn't even know who was at his house while he was at work. And they don't just wanna kill him, they wanna convince him to go to an abandoned house at night so a magician can telepathically animate a corpse to do what I'm not sure to him. Sammo's kung fu is too strong for the dead guy and we never get to see how the dead guy would have taken out his victim. And by the way Sammo's character, we find out 30 mins into the movie, is locally famous for being afraid of nothing.

The rest of the movie is absurd humor and some of the best kung fu scenes this side of Drunken Master and its ilk. From what I read it was the first movie besides Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires to have the hopping corpses who can't find you if you hold your breath. I think this is probably the kind of movie you could watch several times and still notice new things going on in the fight choreography. There is not a lot of killing, blood or nudity (in fact we get mooned by a male actor and that's it) but I didn't miss them. An excellent intro to the sub genre and owed a debt by Mr. Vampire.

The Mythology of the Universe as seen in The Haunted Cop Shop (1987)

 
1. If your police station used to be a night club for suicidal Japanese men, don't be surprised if you break out in vampires.

2. Acting like a headless ghost will scare a confession out of a crook.

3.If you're in jail, and you wander out of your spontaneously opened cell into a game of mah-jong, don't bet your life on the game just because you have no money.

4. If you meet three guys who ask you to play mah-jong while you're wandering around jail, they might be ghosts.

5. When internal affairs sends a skeptic to investigate your claims of goblins in the workplace, you can make a believer out of her by tricking her into eating dog meat. This will make her unlucky which will in turn make her see ghosts too.

6. Don't leave your keys lying on the gurney next to the vampire you have strapped down.

7. Why use a wooden stake through the vampire's heart when a chopstick will work just as well?

8. If you light enough candles you can fight lesser vampires using kung fu. If their leader shows up though, he will rip off your arm.

9. Mixing comedy and jump scares randomly will make the jump scares more effective.

10. If you speak Mandarin to your partner he will kick your ass.

11. Folks who were fans of HK horror in the 80s are very nostalgic when it come to this movie.

12. Ricky Lau managed to have a great career in films despite being very funny looking.

He Lives By Night aka Ye jing hun (1982)

Although I began my serious horror junkie ways recently in 2007, my love affair with the Hong Kong horror flick began when a large group of friends and I got blindsided by the piss-your-pants-funny Mr Vampire on a baked potatoes movie night in 1996. As I was pretty much solely into kung fu movies at the time (OCD, anyone?), I didn't begin to explore the world of Hong Kong horror until I started this blog. I needed to know: are all Hong Kong horror films padded with slapstick?

After watching the goofy ass yet still creepy Bless This House, which is considered to be one of the first serious HK horror flicks, I did a little research and found out that yes, at least in the 80s, most HK audiences preferred comedy. Now while I hate horror spoofs (Student Bodies, Return to Horror High) I do love a lot of comedy mixed with truly terrifying stalk and kill scenes. Simply put, In my journey through the world of horror as documented in this blog, I've found that I don't like to get to the end of the movie and feel bad. Sue me, Eli Roth fans.

He Lives By Night is notable in the HK slasher genre because it borrows heavily from the giallo. However, where the giallo fills the running time with gratuitous sex or weird hallucinations a la Autopsy, He Lives By Night breaks up the scares with fat guys in glam makeup for no reason, three people eating $200 worth of tripe, chicken feet and dumplings for breakfast or a radio station security guard who keeps a box of weapons like spiky maces and brass knuckles behind the desk for employees to borrow. The film also does more than a little winking at Mr Hitchcock; when we first see the fat, pipe smoking police chief (Kent Cheng) we see a large silhouette of him alone in profile with his pipe.

Someone is murdering women by stabbing them and then strangling them with a white fishnet stocking, which is the killer's fetish of choice. Now, I lived through the 80s as a young pop culture junkie, and the only pair of white fishnets I ever saw was in the ZZ Top video for "Legs," but maybe they were a fashion staple in HK. Anyway, the film gives us a too-obvious choice of suspect in the obsessed fan of Sissy (Sylvia Chang) the late night radio host with the sexy voice and the face for radio. Because the fat police chief has the hots for Sissy, and his partner (Simon Yam) is an old classmate of hers, she helps the police with the investigation until of course the real killer is stalking her. It doesn't help that she taunts him over the radio and figures out uncannily why he is killing. Just like in the giallo or the Hitchcock thriller, there is a damn good reason the killer went nuts.

The movie does have its disturbing parts, chiefly the scene in which a  young woman is brutally murdered in her own home while her friend hides from the killer and watches. Whether by reason of good old misogyny or morality, most of the victims are not very nice people (the Carrie syndrome). I actually rooted for the killer after he murders the shoplifters who carjacked him.

I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it, but I wish if the writer wanted to go Western he had kept the Italian/British convention of hiding the killer's identity til the end. It's just not as much fun to watch the cops try to catch the killer when we the viewer already know who dun it.

Want more? These movies are sometimes hard to find, so I'm not only taking viewing suggestions but also guest reviews. Lets spend the weekend looking at HK horror to try to get a handle on it and put it in context. And yes, since I went to a public state college, the weekend starts at midnight tonight. So get out your glitter makeup and join me for a mini HK film fest, this weekend on In It ForThe Kills.

Why I am not reviewing cheestastic 80s movie Fear No Evil

Ahh, the flea market. The dirt mall, as some call it. Although these internets allow us the privilege of buying or downloading almost any movie (even Song of the South! I downloaded it just to see if it could be done, then quickly erased it in case I ever want to run for the school board!), there is something about going on a dust-caked Easter egg hunt for old VHS tapes in the original issue boxes. Only sometimes, you are duped by a lazy-eyed pork roast named Bub.

It's getting harder and harder to find old horror tapes. Some people (ahem) will purchase anything that even hints at slaughter and naked breasts, while in the same bin you found bereft of horror there are 35 copies of Crimes and Misdemeanors. I love Woody Allen movies, and I snottily hypothesize that some of these horror bandits would be better off watching at least The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (middlebrow for The Allen) than sitting down with Uncle Dad and the family to watch Mother's Day. But alas, as they say in the movie biz, horror movies always make their money back. And back again. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to fight the dirt mall crowd.

So after sweating my way around the entire market on Saturday with only Odds and Evens (I have a bit of a Terence Hill fixation), The Mad Bomber and Sonatine to show for my efforts, I allowed Bub the Pork Roast to talk me into taking a second look at his grimy VHS wares. "What'r yew lookin for?" he asked.

"Oh, just 70s and 80s horror," I said. He proceeded to tell me that the only movies worth seeing from that era were Halloween and Friday the 13th. I smiled and nodded. Then my husband, knowing how disappointed I was at not finding anything new to write about, looked at the selection for about five seconds and found...

An Embassy release of Fear No Evil! (For those of you who share my obsession with 80s box art click here for a kickass collection of Embassy covers.) I've been looking all over for this flick! He was my champion and I was his princess. I've been practicing delayed gratification since Saturday waiting for the right moment to pop that sucker in the VCR and tonight seemed like the right time. I read the back of the box again with glee, then slipped the treasure out of its cover to find...

The tape inside is Night Breed. Bub was smarter than me after all, and may in fact be ready to graduate from Curse of the Jade Scorpion to Annie Hall. Because he knew something I forgot, or which honestly has never occurred to me, SINCE I WOULDN'T TRY TO SELL SOMEBODY A COPY OF NIGHT BREED IN THE FEAR NO EVIL BOX. Always look in the box. In fact, go ahead and push that tiny button on the tape so you can see what condition the tape is in. Maybe even put it in the VCR there at the shop, er, stall, because even I know the trick of unscrewing the plastic case and replacing the tape of Bugsy Malone starring a tiny Scott Baio with Jerry Springer Too Hot For TV or some shit, and I'm naive in the ways of crime.

So, if anyone knows where I can get my hands on Fear No Evil, I will pimp your blog endlessly. Until that blessed day, let's watch the Fear No Evil trailer. Again.

Friday the 13th: The Remake

Today we have a guest blogger, my dear friend and sometime accomplice Jeff. Here's what he, a discerning horror viewer, had to say about the Friday the 13th reboot.

Ok, kids, here's another remake of one of our cherished classics, Friday The 13th.....
It opens up with a bang; Its 1980 and Mrs. Voorhees is chopping up camp counselors for letting her beloved son drown. Of course, her subsequent beheading came as no real surprise. Nice intro to the legend, although a bit short.
After that it becomes your typical Jason slashfest on horny, drunk, and stoned college kids. The kills are good(keep an eye out for the kill on the boat, a personal favorite), but predictable. The nudity and sex are ample, after that, I found it a little stale.
Nothing about this made me jump, cringe, or say,"Oh shit!' Jason just jumped from one kill to the next with none of the stalking around or any,"Ch,ch,ch...ha,ha,ha." that he became famous for. On top of that, it's revealed that he has a secret network of tunnels and tripwire alarms all over the place, so he can appear anywhere, at any time. It kinda takes away from the spook factor and the,"Where the hell did he come from?" feeling you get from the classics.
Also, I had some questions of logic. Where does he get electricity to run those big ass flood lights at the camp? Maybe it's from selling that stinky, dank herb he's growing out back. Jason growing the ganja? Really? I guess growing some weed makes Jason's job of luring in coeds to slaughter that much easier.....I guess.
All in all, I'd say it's worth the watch, but don't expect to be thrilled with anything that would add light to the series.

Paranormal Activity (2009) and the Found Footage Genre

Paranormal Activity buzzed through the horror blog community this weekend as everyone got ready for it coming soon to a theater nowhere near them unless they live in Austin (Alamo Draft House); Seattle (Neptune); Ann Arbor, Michigan (State); Durham, North Carolina (Southpoint 16); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (RAVE Mall of Louisiana 15);Boulder, Colorado (Cinemark 16); Columbus, Ohio (Studio 35);  Orlando, Florida (AMC Universal Cineplex); Madison, Wisconsin (Marcus Eastgate 16); Santa Cruz, California (Del Mar 3); State College, Pennsylvania (Premiere College 9); Tucson, Arizona (El Con); and Lincoln, Nebraska (Ross Media Center).  The trailer showed folks jumping around in their seats there in Hollywood on Sept 15th 09 though. Whoo doggie!

I don't even really know what the movie is about besides that it is a mockumentary of sorts purporting to be footage of a couple taping phenomena in their home which gets scarier and scarier and is eventually found and shown to the public by someone uninvolved. The best parts of the preview, night shots of the malevolent activity, promise us a buildup of terror because we know that one night these people are going to die at the "hands" of this ghost. There's no other way for their ghost hunting tapes to leap into the found category, the strange sub category of films that pique my interest because I know that something very bad happens at the end and that I will likely never know just what.

While nobody ( I hope) will believe that Paranormal Activity is a true story, when thinking back on the found footage films that worked such as Cannibal Holocaust, the British TV special Ghostwatch and Blair Witch it begs the question: why did anyone ever believe these films were documentaries?

I found the answer waaay back in the back of my mind as I realized I did actually learn something in college. American Lit is dominated until the 19th century by non fiction in the form of letters. Being a harsh and wild land, America was filled with the descendants of Puritans who had to struggle just to survive. It was considered frivolous to spend time writing fiction because, frankly, there was too much work to be done. So early fiction writers (such as Nathanial Hawthorne in his mystery/horror short story "Rappaccini's Daughter") often framed their fiction as a story they were merely recounting by another author. This got the writer off the hook for being a lazy dreamer type and simultaneously gave the story a bit of credibility: it may have been written by this other rapscallion but it is being retold to you by your trusted and sober author's voice. This could also be the origin of the urban legend; people always claim that it was "a friend of a friend" in the story because they think it sounds more realistic.

So go to http://www.paranormalmovie.com and demand that this movie be brought to more screens, and wait and see if anyone in your burg thinks this story really happened to that one guy who knew your cousin's beautician's mechanic.

Scream (1996)

I remember seeing this on opening night and they scared the crap out of me by killing off the mega famous star Drew Barrymore in the first five minutes. Then the sequels got dumb and dumber and then the Scary Date Epic Teen Movies came along and I'd all but forgotten about this movie. We didn't have a lot of good horror in the 90s and this one was a bright spot, but was it just because we were so hungry for horror? After all the movie singlehandedly brought back the dead teen movie while parodizing 80s dead teen movies has now been parodized to the point of its insides being on the outside.

Does it hold up for me? Yes and no. It doesn't pack the same punch, as it seemed scary to me back then, but it definitely holds up as a dark comedy. So in the spirit of the horror comedy, I'm gonna let the IMDb boards tell you what we've learned from this movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My personal favorite point was either "Dewey was 20 for a whole other year" or Mr Prescott's lodging choice above but I actually laughed at many of the comments. And by the way, this list really was clipped from a collaborative effort by anonymous movie lovers and nobody got called a moron in the entire thread. That proves Scream is one of those rare movies most genre fans can all agree on as a quality film, and also an anomaly of our pop culture in that we are nostalgic for this old film about older films. Even if the slasher is really going to lie down and stay dead except for the times when its ghost is resurrected for a remake, maybe the horror comedy has a future.