October 26th

The Walking Dead 5.13: "Forget" directed by David Boyd
Sasha's reaction to the party is exactly the same as what I would have had. When the world is still in such disarray, it's maddening to see people worrying about the same pointless garbage they used worry about before the apocalypse (e.g., pasta makers). In fact, I'd say that if there is one advantage to the end of the world, it's the chance to ditch all of society's idiotic bullshit.


Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) directed by Wes Craven
Freddy vs. Jason XVI: A Parent's Nightmare 

Robert Englund as Freddy
14 Oct 1994

Wes Craven's best film. Yes, Part 1 is iconic. It was powerful enough to change our culture. It's the reason New Nightmare even exists. But, it's rough around the edges; the ending -- being the result of a fight between Craven and Shaye -- is not satisfying. New Nightmare feels like it is exactly the movie Craven wanted to make, and he has much worthwhile to say in it.

This is a horror movie for parents. All of Heather's nightmares involve Dylan either disappearing or in immediate danger from Freddy. All of my worst nightmares since becoming a parent are similar. But it's not just the supernatural that scares Heather (or me). What if there were something wrong with your child and you hadn't a clue on how to fix it? Worse, what if it's your fault? What if the stress in your life is affecting him? Or, what if you passed on a mental illness to your child? The little one is depending on you to fix things, but what if that can't be done or you don't have it in you?

Your child is the most important thing in the entire universe in a way that I don't believe the childless can comprehend. For this reason alone, I'm not surprised New Nightmare was the lowest-grossing Elm Street movie and that it is now only spoken of dismissively as merely a warm-up to Scream. The teenage audience that makes up the bulk of ticket sales for slasher movies cannot identify with this movie in the slightest. Myself, I caught this on opening day at the theater when I was 17. While I enjoyed the movie back then, my admiration of it has consistently grown every time I've watched it. This time, I'm the parent of a child who is the same age that Miko Hughes was during filming. Shortly after I started the film -- luckily right before Freddy's hand attacks the SFX crew, so when I paused it was on Heather's face on not a claw stabbing a chest -- my daughter wandered downstairs and told me she was too scared to sleep. Life and art, forever intertwined. Needless to say, the film affected me quite a bit this time out.

Nosferatu (1922)

This is a horror movie about the importance of horror stories. I greatly enjoy the premise of this movie: there's an ancient evil that thrives on the killing of innocents. The only way to stop this entity -- temporarily -- is to capture it in a story that it finds appealing. Once that story dies -- by becoming "too familiar, or too watered down by people trying to make it easier to sell, or it's labeled a threat to society and just plain banned" -- the entity escapes. This is an incredible perspective. What societies enjoy horror stories? Peaceful societies. If your country is involved in a civil war, you tend not to be going to the cinema to watch people get slashed to ribbons. Once you've gotten things under control -- you've captured the evil and contained it temporarily -- you're able to relax and enjoy darker stories.

New Nightmare (1994)

Why enjoy those darker stories in times of peace? Dylan gives us the answer in the movie. When Heather stops reading "Hansel and Gretel," telling him "this is too violent.  I don't know why you like these stupid old tales," Dylan insists she finishes. When she does not, he tells her the end of the story from memory. At the end of the movie, Dylan uses this story as a way to defeat Freddy. Dark stories, as Dylan says, are important. They get us thinking about what we might do should the same thing happen to us. They keep us strong and aware and prepared for the less-than-pleasant situations life puts us into. Horror is important and perhaps even vital to our ability to deal with our own existence.

It's been five years since the remake that didn't impress anyone and 12 years since Freddy vs. Jason. Freddy's mostly assuredly dead again. Has some other story captured his evil? I can't think of any monster from the past decade that could qualify on anywhere near the same level as Freddy. Perhaps The Walking Dead? Though not about a single character, the show has immense cross-cultural appeal (it's not something only horror nerds watch or read). The more I think about it, the more I think this is correct: fear of the zombie horde has captured this entity at the moment. Though, I'm fairly sure we're nearing the end of that cycle as well. What will be next? Or will he be free?

Favorite Character
Heather Langenkamp: the character of Wes Craven tells her in the film, "it was you who gave Nancy her strength." I think the real Craven believed this, too (take a listen to the commentary track for Part 1 sometime). I believe it as well.

Favorite Sin
Taking your child somewhere and forgetting their favorite stuffed toy. I can't count how many times I've done this. Dylan's reaction is calmer than my own daughter's when this has happened.

Favorite Kill
Rex (the stuffed dinosaur), who sacrifices himself to Freddy's claw to protect Dylan. Stuffed animals -- we call them "buddies" in our house -- have a near-magical power to children that they take very seriously. I'm confident my daughter's Ele would do the same for her.

Freddy's Mood
Darker, more evil.

October 4th

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) directed by Joseph Zito

Ted White as Jason
13 Apr 1984

Freddy vs. Jason, Part IV: Jason's Dead
Jason feels quite a bit different in this movie compared to the prior two. He's far, far stronger than he's ever been before. Previously, he was clearly just a big human in a mask who could be fought with and sometimes knocked out. In this one, he is supernaturally unstoppable. He's able to -- with just one hand -- crush a guy's skull. He bursts through wooden doors like they were made of wet paper. He picks up and throws a man, who must weigh around 200 pounds, a dozen feet through a window. He throws an ax through a wooden door to kill a girl. Frankly, I'm starting to think he really did die at the end of 3 and this is the first zombie Jason movie.

Not that I mind. This is an excellent Jason movie... maybe even my favorite (I need to watch 6 and 7 again). It boils everything down to pure audience titillation, which, you have to admit, is why we're watching these things in the first place. There's more nudity than ever before. Fully half of the plot is simply teenagers trying to get laid. There's skinny-dipping, and shower sex, and pot-smoking, and beer bongs, and goofy dancing. Hell, they even show an old stag film at one point.

The violence is brutal. Jason isn't merely walking around dispatching people like in 3; he's angry as hell and wants to make sure the kids know this. One of the kids gets crucified (!) in a doorway. Later, when Jason needs to use that door, he rips the kid off the nails (as Zito gives us a close-up of the hand tearing away). When Jason kills the hiker Rob, he does not merely slit the guy's throat. Nope, he repeatedly gouges him with a random tool as Rob screams and screams. Like I said: brutal. Plus, the gore still holds up today: Jason's split hand, the machete through his head, and the head-crushing in the shower all work as well now as they did then. You can certainly tell Tom Savini came back to the series.

If this was going to really be the final Jason movie, it was a helluva way to go.

Favorite Character
Axel (Bruce Mahler): the impossibly horny, jerk of a hospital morgue attendant who gets cock-blocked by Jason's dead arm.

Favorite Sin
Watching an aerobics show in a morgue next to Jason's body without any intention of actually doing aerobics.

Favorite Kill
Rob (Erich Anderson), whose half-disturbing, half-hilarious screams of "You're killing me! You're killing me!" when Jason begins tearing him up with a random tool from a toolbox makes for a uniquely memorable kill.

Jason's Mood
Pissed off.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) directed by Wes Craven

Robert Englund as Freddy
9 Nov 1984

Freddy vs. Jason, Part V: Revenge of the Dream Demon
Horror movie gold. A Nightmare on Elm Street sits up there with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, and The Thing as examples of horror at its very best. As a character, Freddy, I suspect, will last the ages, standing aside Dracula and Frankenstein. He is certainly my favorite monster by a long shot. Some thoughts on this first film during this latest re-watch:

Freddy's characterization in this one is far, far scarier than in any of the other films. He is completely batshit insane here. A horribly disfigured guy cutting off his own fingers ("watch this!") and then cackling about it is absolutely terrifying. That this same guy is in control of your dreams... good God. I wish this Freddy had stuck around or returned at some point (though New Nightmare Freddy is fairly close).

I think the dreams in this film are the most dreamlike of the series. It's the little things. I like the lamb in Tina's first dream ("like lambs to the slaughter"). I like how Freddy is not bound by physics or rationality: he'll pop up where ever is scary, stretch his arms out to encompass a whole street, and sometimes appear in two places at once. I like that after seeing news footage of Tina in a bodybag, that image invades Nancy's dreams repeatedly (a very normal thing to happen after a tragedy). I like how the kid in English class switches from Julius Caesar to an utterly appropriate Hamlet quote ("O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams.") when Nancy nods off. The imagery of the bathtub scene is incredibly nightmareish to me (the worst dream I ever had was losing hold of my daughter in the middle of lake and watching her fall down, down, down into the darkness below). All credit goes to Wes Craven for his understanding of the human mind, I would say.

Conspiracy theory: is the entire movie Nancy's dream? She seems to think so. Towards the end, when Freddy emerges from her mother's bed, she says to him:

It's too late, Krueger. I know the secret now. This is just a dream. You're not alive. This whole thing is just a dream. I want my mother and friends again.

You could write this off as wishful thinking; a response to the trauma of four people dying that she cares about. But, there seems to be little hints here and there that she's actually correct. The biggest hint, obviously, is that she walks directly from this nighttime scene into a daytime scene in another location where her mother and friends really are still alive. That kind of random scene changing is very dreamlike. In fact, the editing of the movie is similarly dreamlike. Craven often uses soft fade-to-blacks to quickly transition to new scenes. I'm guessing this was intentionally mimicking the feeling of nodding off; of our eyes slowly closing, then snapping open again.

Earlier in the movie, though, we see a few other things. When Rod and Tina settle into bed shortly before Tina's murder, they pull up a inner blanket that is red- and green-striped. That same night, supposedly in the real world, we see Freddy stretch out the wall above Nancy's bed. When Nancy almost drowns in the bathtub, we never see her wake up. She simply swims back to the surface and hangs onto the edge. Shortly before Freddy gets him, Glen naps in a red- and green-striped chair in Nancy's room. Freddy seems to easily influence the "real" world. I suspect that the entire film is the slow mental torture of the daughter of the woman who kept Freddy's glove after burning him alive. Naturally, the sequels ignore all of this and take the film too literally, but, it's interesting to think about if this were a stand-alone movie.

Favorite Character
Nancy (Heather Langenkamp): the person we would all hope to be in a similar situation. Nancy quickly figures out the bizarre fact that a man is killing her friends in their dreams, devises several experiments to test the limits of this man's power, and then uses that info to execute a plan of attack. There's a reason why Nancy is one of the all-time great final girls in horror.

Favorite Sin
Using sex as a way to forget your nightmares.

Favorite Kill
Tina (Amanda Wyss), who is first tormented by Freddy in a nightmare, and then so viciously attacked that she's dragged up onto the ceiling. Still one of the most intense kills in all of slasher history.

Freddy's Mood
Maliciously insane.

6WH: September 25th

Today was the big movie night for Week 1 of Halloween. In addition to C, who's been coming to these weekend moviethons for years, we've now got J taking part in the celebration. J's a real horror nut, so he fits right in. He even brought movies and shorts to throw into my mix. Armed with plenty of beer, a pair of large bowls filled with candy and some delivery pizza, we set out into horrorville:

Trick 'r Treat (2008) trailer
Dagon (2001) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Terror III: Dial 'Z' for Zombies" (1992)


Fear Itself: "Eater" (2008) directed by Stuart Gordon
Essentially Masters of Horror season 3, Fear Itself aired briefly on NBC before being canceled. Even on semi-uncensored Showtime, Masters of Horror could barely keep up a decent output of horror. I have no idea what Mick Garris was thinking by taking this idea to a freakin' network. As you'd expect, the show is pretty tame. What I did not expect was how ridiculous the commercial breaks make the show feel. They always cut to black with a musical beat, reminding me of crappy cop show.

The episode itself is unremarkable. A local police department has to hold a cannibal overnight before the FBI picks him up. He uses some Cajun voodoo magic to escape and begins killing police officers. It all comes down to the lone surviving female officer to stop him, making the show the typical woman versus monster horror story. Stephen Lee (kindly Ralph from Dolls) was a treat to watch in this as the overweight asshole, and the eater himself is kind of creepy-looking. Other than that, I actually prefer Gordon's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids episode to this as far as TV horror goes. (6/10)


The Funhouse (1981) trailer
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006) trailer
Merrie Melodies: "Transylvania 6-5000" (1963)


The People Under the Stairs (1991) directed by Wes Craven
C was strangely obsessed with watching this one and J had never seen it, so we popped it in. It's kind of a nostalgic film for me. It came out right when I started watching horror movies. Plus, I'll always like any movie that has a house filled with secret passages in it. This and Nothing but Trouble have the coolest houses in cinema for that. And, as a Twin Peaks nut, it's amusing to see Big Ed and Nadine playing another kooky married couple. Other than that, the film is essentially 90 minutes of a kid playing hide and seek in the house while trying to avoid the murderous owners. "A nice, family comedy," is how I think J described it afterward. (6/10)




Alien (1979) trailer
Werewolves on Wheels (1971) trailer
Ray Parker Jr.: "Ghostbusters" (1984)
Dawn of the Night of the Dead... The Musical (1980)
Loaf (1991)


Slime City (1988) directed by Greg Lamberson
This is one of the films J brought over. Based solely on the title, we popped in as the final film of the night. What a rip! There isn't anything approaching a city of slime in this film. At best, it could be called Slime Apartment, but Slime Dude would be closer. The premise is kind of amusing. After being seduced by his skanky neighbor, Alex catches the strangest VD ever from her. Anytime he gets upset, he starts to turn into slime. The only way to go back to his normal self is the kill! There's some other stuff in there about black magic, possession and green yogurt (?), but it ain't real important. Anyone watching the movie is in it for the slime. Unfortunately, things don't get really slimy until Alex begins to go to pieces during the climax. We get some Troma-style gooeyness right at the end with some fun special F/X. It's not enough to make up for the prior hour of bad acting, editing and directing, though. (6/10)

That was it for Week 1's big weekend. All had a good time gorging on horror, beer candy and pizza. Five weekends left!


Pumpkins Help Us See the Candy Bowls