Michael and Leatherface came back, Jason’s just passed through the re-birthing canal, and Freddy, Chucky, and Pinhead are clawing their way up the fallopian tubes. So…
In Defense of the Crimson Cheese
There is a sect of 80’s horror fans that do not adhere to the common adage of “once a franchise delves into self-parody it dies.” The absolute beauty of horror that originated in the decade of decadence is how they all started out as maniacal ideas, executed with a serious tone and passion. Freddy, Chucky, Jason, Michael Myers, and Pinhead all started out this way. Then, after success, there was an attempt to copy that tone and passion a few times, which for the most part resulted in a “meh” type of feeling. There are exceptions like Dream Warriors, but for the most part the median of these franchises are forgettable. This is of course when the self parody begins. Flicks such as Freddy’s Dead, Jason X, Bride of Chucky, and ultimately Freddy vs. Jason all delved back into the serious nature of their beginnings and made a joke out of it (some would argue it started even earlier then these movies.) Please, don’t get me wrong, straight horror can be amazing, but that is not the focal point here… it’s about this specific generation of mainstream horror franchises.
Of course, this caused a lot of horror fans disappointment with their cries of how it isn’t scary anymore and how they are more comedic then horrific. So? What’s the problem? Are you seriously telling me that you were actually scared of the original movies? Are you seriously saying that the reason you enjoyed them so much was because they incited fear in you? If your answer is yes, then I need to ask if you have ever watched any of them more then once and more recently then 20 years ago? Are you really a fan, or do you just remember them being more brutal and horrific then they were? If you have such an austere lust for the most demented, gore spewing, psycho characters… what is more “psycho” then killing someone with a healthy sense of humor? Perhaps those of us who were never legitimately scared by slasher flicks are prone to enjoy the comedic, hedonistic side of things more; hence that is what gobbled up the straight terror end of the spectrum.
Look, the first Nightmare, the first Child’s Play, the first Halloween, the first Friday are all beautifully made horror classics, but all these 80’s franchises were unique unto themselves and their time period in one way that really has never been replicated… we started to root for the villains. As for the sick, cold, beautiful bastards that always root for the villain no matter what… we love you, but this isn’t directed at you, now go masturbate to Cannibal Holocaust. The 80’s horror icons, our generation’s Universal Monsters, somehow became the heroic protagonists of the story. The first films in the franchises were created to scare and viewed to be scared, but time and sequels changed the social response to creating these flicks to “WOW” the audience with funny kills and viewing it to laugh at how many one dimensional nymphomaniac 20-somethings they will carve up next. Freddy Krueger was a child molesting murderer and yet it got to the point where we cheered as he slaughtered innocents. THAT WAS THE FUN OF ALL THIS!
This all lead to the characters being caricatures of themselves… which was never detrimental, if anything they stayed more honest to their origins this way, but were free to do anything under the sun. Look at Freddy vs. Jason, director Ronny Yu understood what made these guys great, the look, the back-story, the lore, the comedy, the kills. Sure the humans in that movie were garbage, who cares? This is not about “quality” or writing or any standardized pretentious film arguments. This is about understanding what made these characters stick around for so long and become so beloved. It wasn’t even specifically the flicks, it was the characters! Sure they all had their earnest moment at the beginning when it was supposed to be scary and we were supposed to be rooting for the good guys, and for most of them it was done right the first go around. Why do we always have to go back and try to make everything serious again? Re-release movies if you have to, some things should stay as artifacts and beacons of their time. If the franchises never embraced the villain’s status as a champion of hilarious murder they would NEVER have obtained the iconic heights they have now. Ok, how about we settle it with this… as long as the killer’s nature and persona are kept in tact, all is well. Period.
(Also, none of the above pertains to any horror character, or franchise created in the 90s… that was a whole different animal of parody that was lame beyond belief.)
With that said…
Friday The 13th : A Review of the last 10 minutes that would make Larry David Proud.
******SPOILERS******SPOILERS********SPOILERS************
There is really no need to review the whole movie; it was half travesty and half brutal fun. Jason looked physically bad ass (still not as iconically perfect as Ken Kirzinger or Kane Hodder); Derek Mears gave a good performance with his physical presence. Very akin to Rob Zombie’s Halloween the stuff that was added to the persona of the character destroyed it. Mr. Vorhees doesn’t set traps, he doesn’t keep hostages, he doesn’t practice archery and he most certainly doesn’t have an elaborate headquarters of death. Honestly, I think the best thing to come out of this film is the completely definitive image on the gorgeous theatrical release poster.
It seemed at times that Marcus Nispel was trying to remake his other remake, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with this remake. Add a slight dollop of Leatherface from the 1986 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, with the whole sympathetic pseudo sexual victim relationship and a sprinkle of that awful too-close-shaky cam crud and you got the new Friday. The acting was good, the comic-relief surprisingly funny, the plot simple as it should be, and the intelligence/booby level was equalized appropriately. All I want to discuss, in brief, is the ending. If you want a well written full-review just head on over to the talented Christopher Stipp’s much more thorough and different assessment:
http://asitecalledfred.com/2009/02/13/trailer-park-friday-the-13th-and-shopaholic-reviewed/
**********EVEN BIGGER SPOILERS*********
There are two groups of teenagers in the movie. The first, on a mission to find Crystal Lake’s best weed, get destroyed by Jason in the very beginning. The exception being the girl who supposedly looks like Jason’s mother, he takes her hostage, locks her up in his basement lair while he is out… um… bringing home the bacon. The second group is simply a bunch of wealthy kids going up to stay in daddy’s lake-side cabin for a weekend of boners, beer, and republican conversation.
Supernatural‘s Jared Padalecki plays Clay Miller, the brother of Whitney, the chick locked in Jason’s love nest. Cut to after Jason is supposedly dead. It’s night time. Mr. Voorhees has a chain wrapped around his neck, the other end of said chain is tangled up inside a wood-chipper which is located in a barn. I will give the benefit of the doubt and say the barn is roughly a mile away from the lake. Also note that Clay has no knowledge of Jason’s story, legend, or origin. Cut to the scene of both Millers standing on the Camp Crystal Lake dock, it’s now day time, Clay kicks Jason’s dead body into the water… and then Jason pops back up through the dock to grab him. Cut to credits.
Ok… I laughed out loud in the theater. Not because it was awful, not because it was badly shot, not because it was meant to be humorous, but because of the plethora of questions!!! Not questions about Jason returning to life… questions about WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY DRAG 300 POUNDS OF DEAD WEIGHT ALL THE WAY TO THE LAKE AND DUMP HIM IN? WHY!
Think about it… There are somewhere around 12 freshly murdered corpses in the area, probably hundreds more in Jason’s home. You and your sister/brother have gone through the most traumatic and exhausting experience of your entire life, yet you manage to take down a lumbering psychotic professional killing machine whom you know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT. Would your first instinct be to spend the next 3 hours, cutting him down from the wood chipper, and doing your best to move a humongous, foul-smelling, corpse all the way to the lake and dump out the only evidence to prove to the cops, the world, and everyone that you yourself did not go on a brother/sister killing spree? They effectively spent all night moving this body… with no motive, they didn’t even consider going to get help? None of this occurred to them in the LONG arduous trek these two tired, broken victims spent transporting the corpse? Clay is shown to be a pretty smart guy throughout the whole movie too. I mean I can deal with stupid characters in horror films… but this is just beyond absurd, they are going WAY out of their way to do this meaningless act, which is actually a detriment to their future well being (a.k.a. Not going to jail.) Let’s not forget that a cop was brutally murdered here… No one is going to take this lightly.
I realize I am over analyzing an extremely lazy storytelling device, one that only served to give Jason a chance to pop out of the water, but it’s absolutely hilarious. I also realize that Whitney heard her friend at the beginning of the film say something about Jason’s origin… but come on… she has been a hostage for 6 weeks! A month an a half in a constant state of fear and god only knows what Jason was giving her to eat, the last thing this chick would want to do is spend a few hours dragging a corpse through the woods in order to be symbolic! What truly made me laugh is the thought of the movie cutting away right after Clay kicks Jason into the lake, and then we go straight to a conversation with Clay Miller and the police:
Cop: You kids ok?
Clay Miller: Well I’m a little banged up, and she’s been held hostage for 6 weeks but yeah, we’ll live.
Cop: so you say Jason Voorhees did this?
Clay Miller: yes, he’s a psychopath… he brutally murdered everyone…
Cop: WELL… where’s the body, got to call in forensics and such. You said you killed him in the barn right?
Clay Miller: he died in the barn, yes sir, but we dumped his corpse in the lake… so…
Cop: The lake? What the hell for? Because of the legends?
Clay Miller: Legends? No… we just… we just figured the lake would be fitting, you know?
Cop: Fitting? Your tellin’ me you disposed of the body of the prime suspect in well over hundreds of missing person cases including last nights murders?
Clay Miller: hmm… should we not have done that? Was that a bad idea? “˜cause I gotta be honest, we started to question it ourselves as we were both crying and dragging his body through the woods.
Cop: God damn…
Clay Miller: So next time… no lake… check. Got it. Man… he was HEVVVVV-EEEE too… Haha.
Cop: get in the car.
You know what, it’s so absurd it actually makes the movie better. Thanks for reading!
Yes, it feels more like a series of sketches than the more unified narratives of Holy Grail and Life Of Brian, but I still enjoy Monty Python’s swan song, The Meaning Of Life (Universal, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$19.98 SRP), if only for the massive production number for “Every Sperm Is Sacred”. So, yes, it’s great that the film has finally made its way to high definition, porting over all of the previous DVD’s bonus material plus an absolutely delightful and brand new one-hour reunion of the 5 remaining Pythons.
It wasn’t until I popped in the first disc of the Carol Burnett Show spin-off Mama’s Family: The Complete Collection (Time Life, Not Rated, DVD-$199.95 SRP) that I remembered why I always used to watch it whenever I caught it during its original syndicated run – It’s just a solid character comedy that’s eminently relateable. And even better, because of its strong characters, it all holds up as a timeless sitcom that never tried to preach. The box set sports a pair of exclusive bonus discs loaded with featurettes, bonus cast interviews, and bloopers. All in all, a very nice trip down memory lane.
The title doesn’t lie – Slimed!: An Oral History Of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age (Plume, $20.00 SRP) really does give the full, unabashed, ridiculously candid history of the only channel where kids win from it’s early days on the cable dial to the mid-90’s (pre-Spongebob). Within its pages, you get to learn about the unique executives and corporate culture that allowed bonzo programming like You Can’t Do That On Television, Double Dare, and Ren & Stimpy to flourish. Kudos to author Mathew Klickstein for getting so many of the suits and creatives on the record about a unique era we probably will never see again.
And speaking of true tales of creative people told with remarkable candor, Very Naughty Boys: The Amazing True Story Of Handmade Films (Titan Books, $14.95 SRP) is the tale of the scrappy little independent film company founded by George Harrison and Denis O’Brien to fund Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, which then produced the likes of Time Bandits, Withnail & I, and The Long Good Friday over the course of a tumultuous history and rather sad flameout. Featuring interviews with the likes of the Pythons, Robbie Coltrane, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths, and more, it’s a tale worth diving into.
While not as impressive as seeing it in its IMAX presentation, the 3D remastering and its accompanying restoration for the 75th anniversary edition of The Wizard Of Oz (Warner Bros., Rated G, 3D Blu-Ray-$35.99 SRP) is pretty darn spectacular even in a home theater, bringing to vivid life details and vibrancy you wouldn’t expect in a film 3/4 of a century old. Bonus materials include everything from the previous Blu-Ray release, plus an all-new feature-length documentary.
Perhaps the best praise I can give World War Z (Paramount, Rated R, 3D Blu-Ray-$54.99 SRP) in this zombie-cluttered age is that it’s an enjoyable popcorn flick that realizes it’s essentially the undead equivalent of a Roland Emmerich “The World Is Going To Hell” pic, only with Brad Pitt as a combination of Jeff Goldblum/Will Smith/John Cusack. Its effects work is serviceable and uses its 3D to reasonably good effect. Bonus materials include a clutch of featurettes.
If there’s anything that The Hangover III (Warner Bros., Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$35.99 SRP) proves it’s that it’s probably a good time for the Wolf Pack to end their increasingly surreal misadventures, as there’s really no place else for the comedy to go before it simply becomes in exercise in desperate absurdity. For this final outing, though, we at least get an Alan (Zach Galifiankis) centric trip. Bonus materials include featurettes, extended scenes, and outtakes.
Packed with 20 episodes, audio commentaries, featurettes, deleted sequences, and more, the 6th season of Robot Chicken (Warner Bros., Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$39.99 SRP) arrives packing plenty of ha-ha and ho-ho, even if it all seems to fly right by in bite-sized snatches.
The new deluxe edition of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Warner Bros., Rated PG-13, Blu-Ray-$29.98 SRP) brings together the formerly 2-part adaptation of Frank Miller’s landmark tale into a unified presentation, porting over the bonus features from the previous releases while adding in a brand-new feature length documentary on Miller and the story’s legacy.
This year’s classic Who-palooza continues with another pair of releases, including the DVD debut of the 4th Doctor Tom Baker story Doctor Who: Terror Of The Zygons (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$34.98 SRP) – featuring the shape-changing villains who will be playing a role in the upcoming 50th anniversary special. Also available is the next volume of Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP), which focuses on Doctors 5-8, presenting one complete story from the tenures of Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann.
Eight seasons on, Bones (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$69.99 SRP) is still a charming little procedural that plays like CSI meets The Thin Man, but I was most excited to see the great Dave Thomas pop up on the show, and to learn it was a prelude to his joining the writing staff for the upcoming ninth season. How can you not watch this show? Bonus materials include audio commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, and a gag reel.
As bonkers as the first season was, American Horror Story: Asylum (Fox, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$59.99 SRP) manages to trump it with an even more disturbing tale, bringing the chills to the Briarcliff Home for the Criminally Insane with a cast that includes Jessica Lange, Zachary Quinto, and James Cromwell. Bonus materials include deleted scenes and featurettes.
A tale of adventure and revenge set in German East Africa pre-WWI and starring Lee Marvin, Roger Moore, and Ian Holm? Yes, I do believe I will give Shout At The Devil (Shout Factory, Rated PG, Blu-Ray-$19.97 SRP) a watch, just for those elements alone. Who cares if it’s good or bad? It’s an adventure!
Kudos to In The Flesh (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98 SRP) for finding a new spin on the zombie trope, as it brings us a world wherein zombies have been treated and are being reintroduced to society after a devastating war. So what happens when a troubled teen who had committed suicide only to rise from the dead is rehabilitated and sent back to family and friends who never thought they’d see him again? There’s the crux of this series, and a fascinating one at that.
It’s certainly nor Pixar or even Dreamworks quality, but there’s enough charm to Alpha And Omega 2: A Howl-iday Adventure (Lionsgate, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$24.98 SRP) to keep the kids occupied over the holiday season with its wintry adventure featuring the wolf cubs from the first Alpha And Omega. Bonus materials include featurettes and games.
If you’ve ever wanted to binge view Hollywood’s “classic” horror series about a children’s doll inhabited by the spirit of a killer, look no further than Chucky: The Complete Collection (Universal, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$84.98 SRP), which collects all 6 films starting with the original Child’s Play right up to the brand new Curse Of Chucky. Bonus materials include audio commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and more.
Con man Neal Caffrey’s alliance with FBI Agent Peter Burke is already on shaky ground when he ditches his tracking anklet and disappears as we delve into the fourth season of White Collar (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP), featuring an audio commentary, a featurette, deleted scenes, and a gag reel.
Keen on a proper British ghost story? Give a spin to The Secret Of Crickley Hall (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98 SRP), the adaptation of James Herbert’s tale of a couple who move to the titular countryside house after the death of their son, only to have the seemingly idyllic manor turn sinister when various disturbing phenomena begins occurring, including the cries of their son.
