2023 - October

03-10-2023

No horror director makes movies as deliriously beautiful as Mario Bava. A former director of photography, Bava crafted cinematic gourmet dinners served in carefully designed courses made up of stylized violence only tangentially connected by a thin and frequently disregarded plot.

"Blood and Black Lace", one of the earliest if not the earliest examples of proper, pure Giallo, is one of Bava's most beautiful films which is saying a lot. Imitating the world of Haute Couture in which it is set, the film is stylized to the point of self-parody and vacuus to a fault so much so that it pays to stop listening whenever any of the characters attempt to explain the plot.

But what images Bava conjures up! Just consider the film's striking opening - without a doubt my favourite credits sequence of all time - in which the camera creeps around an attelier finding the cast hidden behind mannequins and clothes hangers posing like models and beautifully lit with bold, painterly coloured lights. I've never seen Cameron Mitchell look better than when he's lit up in red and shot from a low angle by Mario Bava as Carlo Rustichelli's cool, jazzy saxophone theme blares underneath.

This sequence is followed by a quick succession of murders the most famous of which sees a woman's face crushed by an iron glove. The scene is brutal for sure but Bava coats it in such beautiful imagery, striking lighting, and inventive staging that you can't help but look on with admiration and awe.

Everything except the visuals in "Blood and Black Lace" is utilitarian at best including Marcello Fondato's thin screenplay. This is a film anchored by its memorable murder scenes so Fondato only puts in as much effort as is needed to connect them into a relatively coherent plot. What is the film about? Well, a killer looking for the diary of his first victim who was a model. The killer suspects one of her colleagues found it and stole it. But which one? We, the audience, know but the killer doesn't, so he goes from one model to the next, looking for the incriminating diary and killing them along the way.

Similarly utilitarian are the performances though considering how underwritten their parts are it is hard to blame the actors. The characters' functions are clear and one-dimensional. The women are here to look beautiful and be victims. The men are here to look shifty and be suspects. Everyone in the cast does as much as is asked of them but not much more which considering the amount of suspects Bava and Fondato throw our way is something of a problem. I had a tough time keeping track of all the creepy men lurking around the fashion house but it ultimately doesn't really matter since the mystery at the heart of "Blood and Black Lace" is no mystery at all. Fondato's script is not a puzzle in the style of Agatha Christie. There are no real clues as to the killer's identity and ultimately anyone could be the bad guy.

"Blood and Black Lace" is one of the most threadbare Gialli I've ever seen. It knows exactly what it wants to do and doesn't even consider trying anything else. I admire its confidence even though I wish it had a bit more substance to keep me engaged when the killer isn't on screen. Mario Bava's treatment of the material is characteristically self-assured and stylish. He may not be my favourite Giallo director but he is without a doubt the most artistic one. His visuals are second to none and there are shots in "Blood and Black Lace" which transcend not only the Giallo genre but cinema itself - they're gorgeous even outside of the film's context and if you were to remove them from the movie they could be regarded as masterpieces of photography.

But cinema is a complex art form requiring a delicate balance between its many elements. This is where "Blood and Black Lace" stumbles somewhat because besides the beautiful photography and Carlo Rustichelli's terrific score, it doesn't offer much more to a discerning viewer. The story is simplistic, the characters one-dimensional, and the performances flat so that whenever the characters stop to actually speak to each other the film seems to fall into a lull.

Bava's heavily stylized visuals also somewhat undercut the horror of the murder scenes. They are so painterly and deliberately staged that they have an otherworldly atmosphere which robs them of any visceral brutality or a genuine sense of terror. "Blood and Black Lace" has some of the most inventive kills of the Giallo genre but they don't quite have the impact they should because they never feel real.

For those reasons, "Blood and Black Lace" is a film I admire more than I love. Whenever I watch it, I am in awe of Bava's artistry and the visual magic he is capable of but as a thriller "Blood and Black Lace" leaves me cold. It is never scary or particularly engaging or for that matter thrilling. It feels more like a fashion show, instead, with beautiful models parading on stage before an audience held at a distance, allowed to look but not to touch the clothes they'll never get to wear.

3/4

03-10-2023

"Slaughter High" is a paint-by-numbers 80s slasher which is almost saved by its brazen bizarrity. It revolves around a group of teenagers who look like adults and who grow up into adults who behave like teenagers. They are stalked and brutally murdered one by one at a high school reunion being held in the middle of the night inside the now-closed school building which resembles a dilapidated Gothic asylum. The killer, they presume, is Marty (Simon Scuddamore), a movie nerd wearing a huge pair of glasses and a sweater whom they subjected to a particularly vicious prank. The prank, in truth, is more evil than anything the killer does to the bullies making the first act of "Slaughter High" also its highpoint of horror.

The kills, however, are ludicrous and inventive and range from axes to the head to exploding guts and acid baths. This sort of willful cartoonishness is what makes "Slaughter High" stand out in a sea of derivative slashers. Its triumvirate of directors, George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, and Peter Litten, ramp up the goofiness and turn the predictable material into a delightful cornucopia of self-parody until "Slaughter High" begins resembling a Zucker Brothers movie.

Take, for instance, its cast which plays the adult versions of their characters with the exact same gleeful idiocy that the teenage version had. The intervening years have not changed them or the dynamic of their group one iota. The dumb jock is still as meatheaded as ever with his muscles threatening to burst out of his shirt. The class joker is as shrill and annoying as before, never missing a chance for a prank or a callous remark. The "one girl who goes all the way" is as slutty and blonde as she was at school, jumping on the jock with her boobs hanging out even after at least three of her friends were brutally murdered. There is no room for subtlety in "Slaughter High" and the actors have a lot of fun playing these stereotypes with joyful abandon.

Cartoonish is indeed the best word to describe "Slaughter High" which is probably as close as we'll ever get to a Saturday Morning Cartoon version of "Prom Night". Everything about this film from the characters to the plot, the performances and especially the kills is pitched at that level, somewhere between parody and melodrama, hitting the sweet spot for audiences who wished Scooby-Doo was just a little bit edgier.

Despite its American setting, "Slaughter High" was actually made in England which goes some way in explaining its bizarrity. The high school really doesn't look like any building you'd ever seen in the USA with its heavy stonework, countryside setting, and Gothic exterior. The wildly over-the-top characters make sense if you imagine them as American stereotypes seen through foreign eyes.

Like most slasher films, "Slaughter High" does eventually run out of steam. After about 50 minutes of good fun, the directors run out of ideas and the rest of the film consists of fairly dull wandering around the building, jump scares, and gratuitous nudity. The ending is a particular disappointment from the laughably long "chase scene" to the anticlimactic twist.

The quirky atmosphere ultimately cannot carry alone a woefully underwritten screenplay which features no real mystery or surprises. A film which began as a promisingly goofy slasher eventually gets bogged down by severe pacing issues and a lack of audience engagement.

"Slaughter High" is one of the more enjoyable 80s slasher flicks but that is damning it with faint praise. In a subgenre rife with unambitious, predictable bores, here is a film which is at least memorable for its over-the-top cartoonishness even though it seems none of its three directors had the chops to actually do something interesting with the film's unusual style.

1.5/4

05-10-2023

Bigfoot movies are a major hole in my horror knowledge. I've never seen "The Legend of Boggy Creek" or even "The Abominable Snowman" but if Ryan Schifrin's "Abominable" is anything to go on maybe it's time I rectify that. If it had come out in the 1980s, "Abominable" would by now certainly be regarded as a cult classic with its campy tone, fun scares, and bucketloads of gore. Unfortunately, it was made in 2006 and dropped between the cracks, getting lost among the tons of cheaper, less ambitious, and far less entertaining straight-to-DVD fare.

Unlike those films, "Abominable" features some genuinely good work, especially from director/writer Ryan Schifrin who realizes just what kind of a movie he is making and brings a good sense of humour and a campy yet unassuming aesthetic to the proceedings.

The film begins with Preston Rogers (Matt McCoy) returning to his cabin in the woods where a climbing accident left him in a wheelchair and his wife dead at the bottom of a mountain some months back. Unfortunately, the visit won't be the weekend of quiet self-reflection and exposure therapy Preston was hoping for. His peace is first disturbed by a gaggle of hot girls who've rented the cabin opposite his. Unbeknownst to either of them, however, there's a monster stalking these woods killing livestock and terrifying the locals who form a hunting party to kill it.

From here "Abominable" doesn't quite develop the way you might expect it to. For one, the hunting party gets wiped out pretty much immediately in a scene which as hilariously silly as it is gruesome. This leaves the wheelchair-bound Preston as the only person aware of the monster's existence after he spots it stalking the girls in the other cabin.

Yes, this is "Rear Window" with a Bigfoot and it's as much fun as it sounds. Sure, by the nature of its concept, the second act of the film does get bogged down with a lot of scenes of Preston trying to convince people that there's "a monster in them there hills". There's also a fair bit of scenes in which Preston does little more than spy on the women partying, arguing, and (yes, of course!) showering. But once the killing starts, "Abominable" delivers on the gory fun its premise promises with a decent-looking monster and some inventive kills which are only somewhat marred by shoddy CGI.

There is also, as I mentioned before, a lot of humour in "Abominable" which Schifrin deftly balances with the scenes of outright horror. The film is certainly not above goofy gags and cinematic in-jokes (the Wilhelm Scream does indeed appear) but it takes its premise seriously enough for there to be some genuine tension in the attack scenes. Schifrin does a great job of building up the threat of the Bigfoot without actually showing it too much. Indeed, the best scenes in the film are the ones right before the attacks in which the tension slowly grows.

The performances are nothing more than adequate but a film like "Abominable" hinges more on its effects and direction than character development which is downright inexistant anyway. Far more important are Neal Fredericks' moody, stylish photography, head and shoulders above any other straight-to-DVD horror flick of 2006 and a classy, intense score by Lalo Schifrin.

"Abominable" is a delightfully old-fashioned Bigfoot romp which does a great job of emulating the charm of B-movie creature features while simultaneously updating the formula with some good humour and self-effacing in-jokes. It's a neat if undemanding horror debut for a director whose second feature is long, long overdue.

3/4

07-10-2023

The slasher genre has many progenitors from Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" but none of them is as convincing and as fully formed as Mario Bava's "A Bay of Blood". Especially fascinating is the extended sequence in which a group of carefree, horny teenagers stumble upon the titular bay where they are stalked and brutally murdered by a mysterious masked killer. Not only is the plot structure virtually identical to most 80s slasher flicks but some of the kills have also been studiously copied in many of them including "Friday the 13th" itself.

But, since this is a Mario Bava film, that sequence is only one of the many twists that form "A Bay of Blood's" Byzantine plot which meanders wildly between a whodunnit thriller, a proto-slasher, and a spooky ecological horror film. As with most of Bava's oeuvre, the screenplay for "A Bay of Blood" seems to be nothing more but a series of excuses for the master to showcase his flashy visuals and visceral gore effects. Considering how convoluted and frankly bizarre the plot becomes, I was not surprised to see that the script is credited to five different writers. Surprisingly, Bava manages to tie all the film's erratic twists and tonal shifts into a (mostly) coherent film by giving it a mean, edgy sense of humour which is so pitch black and cynical that at times it makes the movie feel like an elaborate prank on the viewer.

It begins with one of the finest opening scenes in all of Giallo in which we see the brutal murder of the grumpy old Contessa Donati (Isa Miranda). This is the first of many, many kills in "A Bay of Blood" which uncharacteristically make me physically wince. Not only is the manner of the Contessa's death horrific but so is the way Bava shoots it. The sound effects also contribute to the death having a real thump and weight which makes it all the more impactful.

After the Contessa buys it, the camera slowly pans up the killer's body to his stereotypical black gloves. But the camera keeps going! In the film's first major subversion to the formula, the killer is immediately revealed as Contessa's crusty husband Filippo (Giovanni Nuvoletti). So much for the mystery? Not quite, as Filippo himself is almost immediately murdered by an unseen assailant.

The unhinged massacre continues as the possible inheritors to the Contessa's fortune and anyone who might know the killer's identity start dropping dead. "A Bay of Blood" ends up with a higher body count than most of the slasher flicks it ended up inspiring. And boy what kills they are! We get some real stomach-churners here as special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi gives Tom Savini a run for his money. Bodies get pierced by African spears, throats are cut by curved sabres, heads are cut off and geysers of blood shoot out of their stumps right at the lens.

This is Bava at his grungiest (though not quite at his grittiest - see "Rabid Dogs" for that "pleasure"). Gone is the colourful stylization of "Blood and Black Lace" or the gothic trappings of "Black Sunday". "A Bay of Blood" even feels like an 80s slasher film with its starkly realistic photography and visceral gore. In that sense, this film is the opposite of "Blood and Black Lace", made for the people who found that film too sanitized and dreamlike. In contrast, "A Bay of Blood" feels like a nightmare.

The pitch-black sense of humour, however, helps the film rise above exploitation. The whole thing feels like a soapbox opportunity for Bava to air out his innate cynicism. There are no good people in "A Bay of Blood", no innocents, only those who did and didn't commit these particular murders. The film's brazen rug-pull finale is as memorable as it is infuriating. I personally love how hilariously anticlimactic and ironic it is but any viewer seeking traditional narrative closure is sure to be frustrated beyond belief.

For anyone coming off Bava's stylish and beautiful "Blood and Black Lace", "A Bay of Blood" is bound to be a rude awakening. It's a diabolically witty, brutally visceral Giallo which is so rough around the edges you're bound to scratch your retina watching it. Of course, this being an Italian film, the screenplay is its weakest element. The film makes no particular attempt to flesh out any of its characters and the plot makes not a lick of sense but Bava's sense of humour and Carlo Rimbaldi's gore effects more than make up for these issues. Also superb is Stelvio Cipriani's smooth jazz soundtrack which provides a whole other level of self-parody by providing a sharp contrast to the horrific, bloody, intense images it underscores.

"A Bay of Blood" went on to be imitated by many slasher films but very few come even close to bettering it.

3/4

07-10-2023

John Cassavetes was a brilliant director (my favourite director, in fact) and a fine actor as well. He had a compelling, shifty screen presence which was put to great use by Roman Polanski in "Rosemary's Baby", Don Siegel in "The Killers", and Elaine May in "Mikey and Nicky" where he was asked to play characters of uncertain morality and shifting loyalties. Unfortunately, as time went on, he began to value his acting career less and less, using his screen presence and relative fame to fund his exceptional directorial efforts. This means that Cassavetes' later career is full of questionable, low-rent movies he starred in only because they paid the most and required the least amount of effort. Some are fun schlocky fare ("Brass Target") but most are forgettable and indeed forgotten.

"Incubus", a rather strange and old-fashioned horror movie released in 1981, at the start of the slasher craze, falls on the forgettable side even though frustratingly there's a lot of good work and imagination on display in it.

The story feels like a 1950s B-movie creature feature in which some kind of a monster terrorizes a small American town, raping and murdering women every night. The addition of rape to the formula which traditionally eschewed such gruesomeness makes for a series of uncomfortable moments and far too many scenes in which serious-minded town officials go on and on about the perpetrator's weird sperm. (I doubt I've ever heard anyone say the word in my life as many times as John Cassavetes does here in the span of 90 minutes.)

The town's dumb sheriff (John Ireland) is certain there's a dangerous gang at work on his turf but Dr Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes) is not so sure. He is stumped by the perpetrator's aforementioned weird sperm and the egregious amount of... um, intestinal damage caused by the attacks (I told you this film gets uncomfortable).

Now, the film's big twist is spoiled both by its title and the very nature of the story. Of course, we all realize that the killer is some kind of a demon especially when we see the actual attack scenes in which the titular Incubus throws people, furniture, and bookshelves with supernatural ease. In order to counteract the predictability of the story, the filmmakers have Sam jump to the conclusion about the attacker being supernatural almost immediately which makes him sound like a crackpot even to the audience. Not that "Incubus" is all that concerned with being believable seeing how Sam is not only the town's coroner but he's also the local GP, surgeon, detective, and chief of police. The film loses all semblance of reality when the sheriff himself comes to Sam for advice in how to lead his investigation.

It is commendable that director John Hough actually tries to build up a sense of atmosphere and mystery in the film's first half instead of going for cheap, visceral scares. He smartly keeps the Incubus off-screen for most of the film, suggesting his presence with handheld camera movements and Stanley Myers' derivative but effective score.

Albert J. Dunk's cinematography is the champion of the film as he creates a genuinely unsettling visual style. There are some marvellously inventive shots in "Incubus", especially in the wonderfully crafted and seriously upsetting attack scenes. My favourite is the one in which the camera is mounted on the underside of a wheelchair as it rolls towards a bathroom door. When it stops at the foot of the door, we see through the crack beneath it what the person can't - a dead body lying sprawled on the floor of the bathroom.

What ultimately sinks the movie, however, is George Franklin's confused, meandering screenplay based on a novel by Ray Russell. What sounds like a fairly straightforward B-movie plot branches off into some absolutely confounding directions. Besides the main plotline following Sam's investigation, we also follow a local teenager named Tim (Duncan McIntosh) who is plagued by nightmares. Also in the film is a local journalist Laura (Kerrie Keane) who has beef with the sheriff, Tim's creepy grandmother Agatha (Helen Hughes) who may know more than she's telling, and Sam's teenage daughter Jenny (Erin Noble) who has no discernable reason to even be in the film.

Tonally, the film is all over the place. The story would suggest a 1950s B-movie-style creature feature about scientists trying to catch a monster loose in a small town. However, Franklin's screenplay veers off in all kinds of directions eventually and quite unexpectedly turning into a Hammer Horror-style Gothic melodrama about witches, demons, and old family secrets. Furthermore, director John Hough tries to modernize the proceedings by adding slasher movie touches which tips the film rather unfortunately into exploitation territory. Besides some out-of-left-field gore not even caused by the Incubus himself, there's also the obligatory shower scene in which a woman about to be raped is ogled by the camera as she takes a shower.

Ultimately, Hough is just not a confident or good enough director to pull all of these disparate plot strands and tones into a coherent, well-paced movie. "Incubus" has a great, almost documentarian visual style occasionally interrupted by some seriously trippy imagery but its tone is all over the place. Pacing-wise, the film moves at a decent clip until the third act which devolves into a leaden sequence of exposition monologues leading towards a disappointing climax which resolves the film's already weak mystery in a way which feels more like a cheat than a surprise.

The only reason I even watched "Incubus" (twice, I might add) is John Cassavetes who seems utterly checked out and uninterested in the goings on around him. Sam is supposed to be the film's hero but Cassavetes cuts a sinister, sleazy figure as he caresses his rape victim patient and secretly watches his teenage daughter undress. This is a distinctly low-effort performance in a part in which he is miscast anyway.

He's not helped by the film's supporting cast who range from forgettable to awful. John Ireland, another somewhat famous thespian slumming it in B-grade horror fare, looks sleepier than Cassavetes. Kerrie Keane is utterly charmless as the love interest. Helen Hughes delivers a performance so over-the-top it would make Maria Ouspenskaya blush. Meanwhile, Duncan McIntosh rants and thrashes about as the troubled Tim in a performance which leaves little doubt as to why his career went nowhere quickly.

"Incubus" is a frustrating film because a lot of it is actually surprisingly good. The murder scenes are visceral and disturbing, the atmosphere is creepy and mysterious, and the visuals far outclass any other low-rent 80s horror film I've ever seen. But the film is terminally confused. It doesn't know if it wants to be a B-movie, a gothic horror film, or a slasher. Its plot is a constant barrage of new characters and confounding plot develops none of which are properly introduced or fleshed out. Ultimately, "Incubus" gets bogged down in a mess of its creation becoming rather boring and anticlimactic in its garrulous third act.

2/4

08-10-2023

"Mortal Thoughts", Alan Rudolph's neo-noir about Cynthia (Demi Moore) and Joyce (Glenne Headly), a pair of New Jersey women trying to cover up the murder of Joyce's abusive husband James (Bruce Willis) had the bad luck of coming out a mere month before "Thelma and Louise", the definitive movie on the subject. As such it has perhaps understandably been neglected even though it offers some interesting variations on the killer women subgenre.

If I had to guess, the deciding factor in why "Thelma and Louise" prevailed was the fact that it's very hard to misinterpret "Mortal Thoughts" as a feel-good female empowerment fantasy. It's also a far less ambitious picture which is content to remain strictly within the framework of a thriller, twisting and turning its revenge plotline in favour of thrills and shocks rather than genuine introspection.

This is evident almost immediately with the way screenwriters William Reilly and Claude Kerven choose to present this story. The plot is told through flashbacks as Cynthia is interviewed by Detective John Woods (Harvey Keitel). The only reason "Mortal Thoughts" has this distracting framework is so that it can deliver a cheap twist which, frankly, would have made the movie much more interesting had it been presented to us right off the bat.

Now, I'd be the last person on Earth to criticise what is meant to be straightforward entertainment for not striving to be "important" and "meaningful" like a Lifetime TV movie but as long as we're comparing it to "Thelma & Louise" it's hard not to note just how slight "Mortal Thoughts" seems. Despite presenting us with a morally complex situation - we certainly side with Cynthia and Joyce even though we cannot quite condone their vigilante actions - the film never bothers to truly grapple with the issues it raises.

Commendably, it never tries to underplay the domestic violence at the centre of its plot. James is undeniably, unquestionably abusive towards Joyce and the film never attempts to justify his behaviour or offer some cockamamie popular psychology which would explain it. Rudolph also never uses abuse to generate cheap suspense or tension in the plot.

The character of James, however, is not nearly as menacing or impactful as he should be. This is not, I think, strictly the fault of Bruce Willis' performance but rather the entire concept of the character is flawed. He is too cartoonish, too laughably evil to be truly believable. In fact, Cynthia's husband Arthur (John Pankow) is a far more sinister, sleazy character whom I found more reprehensible with his gaslighting and controlling behaviour.

The cast is generally quite good especially the criminally underrated Glenne Headly whose Joyce is a more layered and intriguing character than I think Alan Rudolph realized. The film has a tendency to forget about her for long stretches of time as we focus on Cynthia which is a shame since Headly's performance is so wonderfully slippery. You're never quite sure what Joyce is thinking, whose well-being she's looking out for, and what her relationship with Cynthia is actually like. There's a lot of mystery surrounding Joyce's character which makes her much more interesting than Demi Moore's charismatic but one-note turn.

Despite the good cast and an interesting premise, "Mortal Thoughts" is in the end rather underwhelming. It's never as suspenseful, as clever, or as witty as it should be. Case in point - there's a scene after James is murdered in which Cynthia and Joyce have to pretend to be grieving while trying to conceal evidence under the watchful eye of James' feuding family. The scene which offers endless opportunities for both farcical mayhem and Hitchcockian suspense ends up falling flat and underdeveloped. The film certainly has its fair share of twists and turns but it seems like neither Rudolph nor the writers bothered to flesh out the actual scenes and wring out the potential from them.

Alan Rudolph's direction is visually sumptuous and occasionally borderline experimental but his treatment of the material is awfully workaday. He never ratchets up enough suspense or tension for us to get truly invested in these women's actions.

Framing the film with a police interview robs "Mortal Thoughts" of a lot of tension since we know from the get-go that the women will get caught. Why then should we care about whether they manage to clean the blood at the crime scene or conceal clues since we can see Cynthia telling them all about it anyway?

What I did find fascinating about the story is that it presents a more complex dynamic between the protagonists than we usually see in these killer women pictures. Cynthia and Joyce are not exactly into the idea of sisterhood especially once Cynthia decides she doesn't want anymore to do with Joyce's marital problems and the resulting fallout. She has her own gaggle of kids and jerk of a husband to deal with. I found the tension between Joyce and Cynthia far more compelling than the love between Thelma and Louise. It's such a shame that the filmmakers never make anything nearly as memorable out of it.

"Mortal Thoughts" has all the elements for a decent neo-noir thriller but they never seem to come together. The performances are excellent but the characters are underwritten. The premise is intriguing but the way the story is framed kills its momentum and robs it of suspense. I wish I could recommend this film solely on the strength of Glenne Headly's wonderful performance but "Mortal Thoughts" is more frustrating than truly enjoyable or memorable.

2.5/4

09-10-2023

Do you remember those heady days of yore when movies had to explain the concept of the internet? I do and they sure weren't in 2007! And yet "Perfect Stranger", James Foley's supposed techno twist on the whodunnit genre still treats the internet as a brand new, unknown, and mysterious force to be treated with care and awe like alien technology in an episode of "Star Trek".

Miles (Giovanni Ribisi), the film's resident nerd, explains in hushed and reverential tones how this internet thingy allows you to communicate remotely with people from all over the world. You can even visit buildings online by clicking through a gallery of photos in staggeringly poor resolution on a website which looks like it was thrown together in Photoshop during a boozy afternoon. And, dear viewer, you won't believe this, but a computer can also talk! It can translate text to speech so that when the lead character receives text messages, a computer voice can read them out for us. Phew and I thought I'd have to do some reading!

But then "Perfect Stranger" is set in a bizarro timeline anyway. This is some kind of an alternate dimension in which our lead, investigative journalist Rowena Price (Halle Berry) has to write under a male name to be taken seriously as if she were a 2007 reincarnation of George Elliot. It's set in a world in which our antagonist ad man Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis) is lauded as a genius for marketing campaigns which are nothing more than corny slogans awkwardly photoshopped over neutral backgrounds. This is a world in which a marketing executive's sex life is front-page news and adultery is treated like some kind of a capital offense.

"Perfect Stranger" is trash, for sure, but, for at least some of its runtime, it's fun, pulpy trash. It's the kind of movie which you watch and grin as you list all of its improbabilities. If you, like me, enjoy a dumb, glossy thriller which thinks it's Agatha Christie when it's actually closer to Ed Wood, this will keep you entertained on a rainy afternoon.

The plot follows Rowena as she investigates the murder of her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox). She suspects the killer is Harrison Hill, a powerful playboy who was having an affair with Grace - an affair which, if it got out, could destroy his marriage to an uber-rich heiress and wreck his Hugh Hefner lifestyle.

For all its lurid plotting and absurd twists, "Perfect Stranger" is curiously lacking in tension or suspense. Director James Foley's treatment of this material is sedate at best making a movie which should have been edge-of-your-seat stuff feel like comfortable Sunday viewing. There's no sense of threat or menace here at all. Rowena goes undercover in Harrison's agency but Foley never generates an ounce of suspense over whether she'll be found out.

Bruce Willis is terrific in roles which require him to be charming, charismatic, and slightly sleazy so Harrison Hill is no great stretch for him. The problem is that he's so likeable on screen that we never buy him as a villain for a second. In fact, I was much more creeped out by Rowena's geek buddy Miles who just oozes sleaze and stalker vibes. Halle Berry is the best thing about this film, however. She makes for a very engaging detective and her performance made me stay with the movie even as the plot veered off into increasingly crazier directions.

The main criticism people have with "Perfect Stranger" is its big twist ending which I won't spoil except to say that I think it's the most interesting aspect of the film. I just wish writers Todd Komarnicki and Jon Bokenkamp made it a more logical conclusion. I just don't buy the killer's motivation in the least and the offhanded way the film reveals it is sloppy direction at best.

"Perfect Stranger" is perfectly serviceable trashy entertainment from a time when Hallmark Mysteries scripts could still be turned into major motion pictures. Except for Halle Berry's performance, nothing about it is particularly good or notable but it churns along at an agreeable pace and keeps those silly twists coming. It kept me just entertained enough that I don't regret spending 100 minutes in its goofy company.

2/4

09-10-2023

The making of a feature film spin-off of a popular TV series is always a tricky balancing act between pleasing the pre-existent fan base's wish to see their favourite characters and story arcs and attracting new viewers for whom the film has to be accessible and appealing enough so that they may consider dipping into the show. When that show is "The X Files", however, all bets are off. With a story arc as convoluted as that, you'd be forgiven for assuming that anything except the pilot episode would be impregnable for an uninitiated viewer.

But the movie version of "The X Files" is a pleasant surprise. Here is a slick, intelligent feature film spin-off which nails the balancing act with precision and elegance. It gently guides the newbie viewer through its complex, twisty plotline while giving the dedicated fan exactly what they've come to expect from the show along the way.

What immediately struck me as I watched "The X Files" is the self-assuredness of tone and style and the laidback, natural chemistry between its stars. With the show's successful five-season run as preparation, the film confidently ploughs ahead into its labyrinthine tale of alien invasions and government conspiracies unencumbered with the need to prove its concept or establish its characters.

OK, admittedly, I have seen the show before. Who hasn't? I should also add that I did quite enjoy the few episodes I have seen. However, I would not call myself a dedicated fan or someone who possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the show's history. But this film does not require that. It sweeps you along from the very first scene with its well-established atmosphere of mystery and menace.

It also does a great job of introducing us to FBI agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson), the dynamic duo who comprise the titular X Files, a fringe team of agents who investigate the paranormal. Their wisecracking dynamic and unusual way of working is introduced as they tackle a far more Earthly threat - a bomb planted in a federal building in Dallas.

From there, the film only gets more complicated. As it's soon revealed, the bomb was planted there not by terrorists but by a secret society embedded deep in the leading world governments. Their mission: to cover up the emergence of an alien virus which turns those it infects into hosts for hideous, violent alien creatures.

The film does a great job of emulating all the elements which made the show such a resounding success. There are ancient conspiracies, political intrigues, medical mysteries, body horror, and lots of shadowy dealings. At the heart of it all, however, is a pair of likeable, fleshed-out characters with a more complex dynamic than we usually see in blockbuster films. I am glad to say that the famous Mulder and Scully relationship has not been watered down for the film. There is a terrific sense of history between them and a palpable sexual tension which makes all of the scenes they have together sizzle with excitement.

The world they exist in is similarly fleshed out and rich. The film does a good job of suggesting a great deal of history between the characters and a great deal of complexity behind the scenes which we never get to see. It turns the show's convoluted story arc into a real strength using it to create a lived-in atmosphere. Characters show up for brief cameos but we can sense that they have a great importance in the overall scheme of things. There is a lot of tension between them, an unspoken history which adds to the mystery.

It helps, I suppose, that the film was written by the show's creator and showrunner Chris Carter. He knows these characters, this world, and the conspiracies inside and out and I appreciate his reticence in overexplaining any of them. It is far more rewarding to merely get hints and suggestions about the various motivations at play and I like that he trusts us to be smart enough to piece it all together.

But I must also add that the screenplay of "The X Files" is maybe the film's weakest element. The plot is, in the show's inimitable style, awfully convoluted. There is a great deal of characters, situations, and locations at play here and as our leads flew from Texas to Washington to England to Africa and Antarctica, I must confess that my head began to spin. Carter's dialogue leaves a lot to be desired as well. There is a scene in this film that no amount of fan sites or guidebooks could begin to explain. It is a meeting between the mysterious leader of the secret society named Strughold (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a person I assume is his second in command (John Neville). They throw around such words as "colonization" and "spontaneous repopulation", and at one point Strughold complains that "the geometry of mass infection presents certain conceptual reevaluations for us about our place in the Colonization". If that is not confusing enough, later on in the scene he is informed that Mulder has been causing trouble and he issues the order that they should take away what he holds most valuable. "That with which he cannot live without." Try figuring that one out!

But "The X Files" movie is so entertaining and so engaging with its mysterious atmosphere and appealing mixture of political intrigue and sci-fi shenanigans that I was willing to just go along with Carter's script. What he does manage to do is pace the film in such a way that we're never bored. The plot bounces from one situation to the next with the speed of light throwing Mulder and Scully from one tight corner to the next. We get lots of alien action, gruesome body horror, action scenes, and quiet character drama to satisfy every audience member.

Kudos also to director Rob Bowman who does an exceptional job at giving a sleek, cinematic feel to a movie which could easily have ended up looking like a glorified TV episode. His treatment of this material is wonderfully dynamic and visually exciting due in no small part, I'm sure, to Ward Russell's moody cinematography.

The top-notch cast includes such acting luminaries as John Neville, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Blythe Danner and Martin Landau as well as such wonderful character actors as William B. Davis, Mitch Pileggi, Terry O'Quinn, and Jeffrey DeMunn and let me tell you, no one looks more harried than DeMunn in shirt-sleeves and a ruffled tie.

The heart of the movie, however, comes from the show and most of it rests squarely on the shoulders of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny whose charismatic performances kept audiences returning in droves for nearly a decade.

"The X Files" is a rare example of a completely successful movie spin-off. It slots neatly into the show's convoluted history but in such a way that even complete newbies will get a kick out of its twisty plot and gruesome set-pieces. Most of all, however, "The X Files" is great sci-fi fun which isn't afraid of occasionally stepping straight into B-movie schlock territory.

3/4

09-10-2023

Christine (Nicole Kidman) wakes up every morning in a strange room next to a man she does not recognise. The man then explains that his name is Ben (Colin Firth) and that he is her husband. You see, Christine was in a car crash 10 years before as a result of which she developed amnesia meaning that every night after she falls asleep her memories of that day are wiped.

After Ben leaves for work, however, another mystery man calls. He claims to be Dr Nasch (Mark Strong), a neuropsychologist who has been working with Christine for the past few weeks. He tells her that Ben is lying. She wasn't in a car crash. She was the victim of a vicious assault by an unknown person who left her for dead in a hotel car park.

Quite a predicament!

"Before I Go to Sleep", based on a novel by S.J. Watson is indeed a mix between "Memento" and Dana Carvey's "Clean Slate". It is actually three mysteries wrapped up in one. The first is, of course, the question of what truly happened to Christine ten years ago.

I have not read Watson's novel but this film gives me the impression that it is one of those books you pick up before an aeroplane trip. The undemanding kind, full of twists and turns which will keep you entertained during the monotony of flying. The novel was adapted for the screen by Rowan Joffe and his script is utterly preposterous. Not only are the twists increasingly far-fetched but the film does not even stick within the confines of its own internal logic. It never seems to be able to make up its mind on the question of how much can Christine truly remember and how her amnesia works. Each twist also introduces a number of plot holes and a fair few questions which are never answered - merely dropped.

The second mystery in the film is who are Ben and Nasch. Here, the film does offer a few interesting conundrums and for its first half, this question did keep me guessing. It helps that the two men are played by Colin Firth and Mark Strong both of whom give good, mysterious performances. Colin Firth is especially good at portraying the fatigue of living with an amnesia patient. His voice is tired and raspy as he explains for the umpteenth time who Christine is. His eyes are all cried out as he looks at his wife who regards him as a stranger. There's a particularly good scene that I won't spoil in which Firth perfectly projects the emotional pain of having to relive his traumas again and again as he has to recount them to his wife who lives in blissful ignorance.

The third and most interesting mystery, however, is who even is Christine. This is, I believe, the real meat of the film which Watson gleefully ignores in favour of lurid twists and cheap suspense. Instead of focusing on his protagonist's unusual and painful condition, her torrid emotions, and the intriguing position of not knowing who you are in the most literal sense of the phrase he focuses the film solely on its stupid, cliched plot. Thriller trappings are never nearly as interesting as a fully fleshed-out character especially when that character is played by an actor as good as Nicole Kidman. But this film shamefully wastes her talent requiring her only to play a withering damsel in distress at the mercy of two mysterious men. Yawn!

There are a lot of promising elements at play in "Before I Go to Sleep" but the movie is ultimately disjointed right down to its choppy, confusing editing style. As directed by Rowan Joffe, it doesn't ever develop a natural, even pace. Instead it sort of lurches from one situation to the next without bothering to resolve any of them. The resulting film is narratively inert, uneven, and more frustrating than enjoyable.

In its third act, "Before I Go to Sleep" utterly devolves until it becomes yet another thriller with a slasher ending. It seems that whenever writers don't know how to end a movie or can't be bothered to come up with anything original, they slap on a fight scene at the end. Why should I as a viewer want to see a fight scene at the end of a psychological thriller? What makes these filmmakers think that an action finale is the way to end a movie which has so far been a puzzle-box mystery? Shouldn't a film which revolves around a protagonist with a troubled mind and has psychology at its centre have a smarter, more carefully considered ending?

But then "Before I Go to Sleep" is not a smart or carefully considered thriller. It's a sloppily put-together potboiler with a cliched plot full of holes and a deeply unsatisfying ending. In the end, it has neither the intelligence of "Memento" nor the sense of humour of "Clean Slate". If you ever wanted to see a movie that would make you miss Dana Carvey, this is the film for you.

1.5/4

11-10-2023

Six years after the end of the show and a full decade after the first movie, Chris Carter directed and wrote "The X Files: I Want to Believe" which was his second unsuccessful attempt to launch a film franchise based on his TV smash hit. In a bid to attract new viewers, he smartly chose to make "I Want to Believe" a standalone story, almost completely detached from the show's complicated and often impregnable story arc. And yet, somehow, "I Want to Believe" feels less accessible to new viewers than the first film which leaned into the show's wild conspiracies and alien invasion plots. Why? Well, let's look at the film's most basic plot first.

Taking a cue from some of the show's darker instalments like "Home" and "Beyond the Sea", "The X Files: I Want to Believe" is a sinister serial killer thriller which kicks off when a female FBI agent is kidnapped from her own home by two feral-seeming men. Another kidnapping soon follows and the only person who seems to have a clue what is going on is a disgraced former priest Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly). Father Joe, who claims to be a psychic, leads the FBI to a severed arm which turns out to belong to one of the kidnappers.

Who better to tackle a mysterious serial killer-detecting psychic than Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson), the FBI's own paranormal investigating dynamic duo? But following the events of the show unknown to me, neither of them is working for the FBI anymore. Scully has mysteriously become a neurosurgeon while Mulder has retreated into the woods and grown one of those fake-looking beards characters in movies grow when they retreat back into the woods.

But this case is too juicy to pass up and when FBI Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) who is in charge of the case comes calling Mulder simply cannot resist the call of the paranormal.

"I Want to Believe" was meant to be the triumphant return of "The X Files" to the big screen but to me, it just doesn't feel very "X Files-y". Whereas the excellent first movie was full of shadowy conspiracies, black goo from outer space, and ravenous aliens, "I Want to Believe" plays out like any other of the dozens of serial killer thrillers made in the wake of "Silence of the Lambs".

Chris Carter's screenplay is rife with cliches taken wholesale from the books of James Paterson or one of his imitators. In good old-fashioned Carter style, his writing is also often unbearably portentous and bends over backwards to be meaningful and clever when it is actually heavy-handed and obvious. There are salves of scenes in which Mulder and Scully debate the meaning of faith ad nauseam like first-year philosophy students. Their dialogue is stiff and full of hokum like "you cannot escape the darkness - I think it finds you and me". In one scene, a character quotes Proverbs 25:2 and later on it turns out the bad guys live at number 252. Cue meaningful looks and "The X Files" theme.

So if "I Want to Believe's" plot is so removed from "The X Files" mythology why did I say it is less accessible to new viewers? Well, since the story is so familiar and frankly boring, the only point of interest in the film is the relationship between Mulder and Scully, a relationship which rests on nine seasons of backstory and development which is continually referred to by the characters in dialogue which I found often baffling. They speak of their son, for instance. Something seems to have happened to him but I don't know what. It seems important but Carter never bothers to explain. They discuss what the FBI did to them all those years ago but never bother to tell the audience. The performances from David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are heartfelt and sharp but the characters they are playing are ciphers if you are unfamiliar with the series.

It is a huge mistake then for Carter to separate Mulder and Scully which Carter does for almost the entire runtime of the film. While Mulder is away trawling through serial killer cliches to uncover the truth behind Father Joe's visions, Scully is in an entirely different state dealing with a soppy, melodramatic subplot involving a dying child she desperately wants to save. And whenever Carter does bring the two of them together all they do is debate philosophy and argue. I wanted to see them in action, solving mysteries, confronting the unknown. I don't care about their religious beliefs or Scully's dying patient. That's not what I'm here for!

Instead of crafting a compelling mystery or a fun sci-fi flick (which the previous film was), Carter seems to be trying to make a more serious, inquisitive film about the nature of belief. The subtitle is, after all, "I Want to Believe". But all he has made is a dull, ponderous film. The plot is awfully familiar, the pacing leaden and dull, and not one aspect of this film is in the least engaging or interesting.

OK, credit where credit is due, the photography by Bill Roe is phenomenal and the whole film has a great snowy atmosphere perfect for chilly thrills. But it never delivers! Despite terrific performances from Duchovny, Anderson, and especially Billy Connolly who creates a layered, complex character out of a cliched script, the film is fatally lacking in excitement or tension or (most devastatingly) mystery.

"The X Files: I Want to Believe" failed to launch the movie franchise Chris Carter was hoping for and it would be another decade before "The X Files" came back - this time on TV. I'm not surprised. At its best, "I Want to Believe" feels like a middling episode of one of the show's later, lesser seasons. At its worst, it feels like a low-rent serial killer thriller. As a fan of the first film and a casual but appreciative viewer of the show, I wanted to like this movie but my belief dwindled as the film droned on like snow on a hot day.

2/4

12-10-2023

When there's an alien on the loose, Which must be caught, Who ya gonna call?

"Alien Hunter" is a schlocky sci-fi thriller from the heady days when you could put out any kind of old garbage on video and still make your money back. It begins with stock footage from "The Thing from Another World" showing a group of scientists excavating a mysterious object from the ice of Antarctica. The object which resembles a meteorite trapped in ice begins emitting a signal. Believing they have found an alien spacecraft, the scientists fly in cryptologist Julian Rome (James Spader) to interpret the signal.

In one of the film's best scenes, just as the object is about to be opened, Julian interprets the message which reads simply "DO NOT OPEN". He tries to stop his colleagues but is too late. An alien creature is unleashed to roam the halls of the Antarctic research station.

An "Alien" rip-off on ice by way of "The X Files" sounds like it should be a hoot but "Alien Hunter" gets too bogged down in meaningless technobabble and political intrigue. It turns out that the UN is fully aware of the alien presence in Antarctica and in a bid to cover it up, they decide to blow up the research station.

In a misguided attempt to lend the film some credence, the entire first half is comprised of incomprehensible science talk and characters wandering around the spacecraft in awe. All of this Nigel Kneale-lite hokum, however, is severely undermined by the filmmakers who have the male scientist walk around in heavy winter coats and the female scientist walk around in skimpy, revealing leotards. After 45 minutes of scientific measurements and philosophical debates, they finally decide to open the spacecraft by cutting it open with a buzzsaw. What an innovative scientific approach!

The film almost wakes up from its slumber when the alien is finally unleashed and half the cast is killed off in a single scene but it quickly devolves into a series of scenes in which our characters wander down empty hallways with flashlights jumping at their own shadows. Director Ron Krauss tries to emulate some of that claustrophobia that made "Alien" and "The Thing" so effective but constantly undermines his own efforts by cutting back and forth between Antarctica, Washington, and a Russian submarine. It's hard to build up tension and suspense when every five minutes we cut away from the alien creature to some stuffy meeting in a cabinet room. Who thought interrupting "Alien" with "All the President's Men" was a good idea?

Eventually, "Alien Hunter" does find its groove in a third act which is interesting though underdeveloped. As the surviving scientists turn on each other, the tension does rise but it's too little too late. By that point, I had already checked out.

"Alien Hunter" has ambitions to be a serious-minded, character-driven sci-fi thriller but it's failed by schlocky execution and a thin, cliched screenplay. Writer J.S. Cardone barely bothers to develop any of the characters. They are so interchangeable that I had a devil of a time keeping track of who's alive and who's dead.

Our protagonist, meanwhile, Professor Julian Rome, is a creep who ogles his female students and doesn't stop making lewd jokes even after half his colleagues are brutally murdered. Even the charismatic and energetic James Spader can't make him likeable.

I respect the attempt by the filmmakers to make "Alien Hunter" slightly more intelligent and complex than your run-of-the-mill "Alien" rip-off but the result is a talky, shallow film which is never entertaining nor suspenseful enough to overcome its derivative nature. As the paper-thin characters droned on about cryptology, mathematics, and SETI, I yearned for the cheap thrills of Roger Corman's "Forbidden World" or Sean S. Cunningham's "Deep Star Six". Those films were goofy and exploitative for sure but at least they were fun. "Alien Hunter" is just tedious.

1.5/4

13-10-2023

Even though John Carpenter's "Halloween" is certainly the first modern slasher film, it was "Friday the 13th" which kickstarted the 80s slasher craze and codified the tropes the subgenre is now best known for. Even though it was clearly made to cash in on the popularity of "Halloween", "Friday the 13th" has more in common with more brutal, grittier films like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", "Savage Weekend", or most obviously Mario Bava's "A Bay of Blood". In fact, it was exactly this grindhouse aesthetic which made the film as popular as it was. In 1980, it was still a shocking novelty to see a film as violent and grungy as this being distributed by a major studio like Paramount Pictures.

43 years later, however, after we've become inundated with derivative slasher films, torture porn, and gore galore, is the original "Friday the 13th" even worth seeing for anyone other than those interested in the history of the slasher film? Surprisingly the answer is yes. Even though it has not aged nearly as well as the films which inspired it (probably because it wasn't nearly as good to begin with), "Friday the 13th" is still a surprisingly effective and enjoyable 80s slasher flick.

It's one of those lightning-in-a-bottle kind movies which are bolstered not by the material but by the fact that material was turned into a movie by the right people at the right time. It had the good luck to be the first of its kind, the good luck of having Tom Savini, one of the best make-up artists ever to create its gory effects (the kills in "Friday the 13th" are exceptional), and Harry Manfredini's "Psycho"-inspired score which remains, for my money, the best 80s slasher soundtrack.

These are the elements which make "Friday the 13th" stand out in the sea of its lesser imitators. Otherwise, this is a pretty straightforward 80s slasher flick, sticking slavishly to the formula it helped invent. It begins with a group of teenagers arriving at a remote location - the infamous Crystal Lake Summer Camp - where they are picked off one by one by a mysterious killer.

I like the cast of "Friday the 13th". They're a mostly likeable, unassuming bunch and while they are loosely delineated according to the common cliches - the jock, the nerd, the sexy girl etc. - none of them are obnoxious or cartoonish. They're a nice bunch of kids really, decently played by a young, inexperienced cast, and you don't want anything bad to happen to them. The sole exception to this is Mark Nelson's Ned, the joker of the group, who grows very annoying very quickly. Thankfully, he gets killed off pretty early on.

I also love the film's setting. A summer camp had been used before in horror films but never this well. Whereas most other horror films set in nature ("Deliverance", "The Ritual", "Long Weekend") tried to make their settings appear threatening and sinister, "Friday the 13th" pulls out all the stops to make Crystal Lake appear beautiful and picturesque. Director of Photography Barry Abrams uses the location to great effect creating a fascinating counterpoint between the gorgeous setting and the nasty things which happen there.

Now, "Friday the 13th" is by no means a great film. Hell, I wouldn't exactly call it a good one either. At times it's awfully clunky, slow-going, and obviously assembled in haste. Director Sean S. Cunningham wrings out a lot of atmosphere from the rainstorm which traps the teenagers at the camp but suspense eludes him. Instead of crafting clever, imaginative set-pieces around Tom Savini's shocking kills, he just has his cast wander around the camp seemingly aimlessly until they get unceremoniously killed off.

Indeed, as written by Victor Miller, the film lacks any kind of narrative progression. Setting it all over the course of a single night and having all the characters split up as early as they do robs it of any possibility for meaningful character development. Furthermore, the characters don't even become aware they're being stalked until 71 minutes into this 90-minute film. This means that they're not even able to try and do anything to fight the killer. They're just cannon fodder.

The film also has no mystery. Sure, we don't know who the killer is but we also have no viable suspects. Besides the main cast, the only other characters are the kooky locals none of whom could even possibly be the killer. Cunningham never even tries to create a sense of mystery. "Friday the 13th" then is nothing more than a series of shocking kills loosely tied together with characters wandering around the camp. In other words, not only does it lack mystery it also lacks a plot.

Consequently, there's a lot of dead air. Roughly half the picture is brainless padding as we watch characters walk around, get ready for bed, brush their teeth, fix a sink, play Monopoly... If we're lucky, we get a throwaway dialogue scene such as the one in which a crazy local shows up to warn them of impending danger or the one in which a motorcycle cop shows up and then leaves for no apparent reason. A pretty egregious example is a scene in which a snake is killed on-screen for the sake of wasting three minutes of the audience's time.

Even the climactic third act is hopelessly padded with the seemingly indestructible killer attacking the final girl again and again and again.

OK then, "Friday the 13th" is not a terribly good film but it is still one of the better examples of 80s slasher movies most of which are boring, repetitive, and full of crass characters. "Friday the 13th" does admittedly become repetitive in its second half but it is buoyed by a good, likeable cast, an exciting score by Harry Manfredini, and some truly shocking kills courtesy of the great Tom Savini. Even though I find some of its sequels more roundly entertaining, the original "Friday the 13th" is still a decent example of the ubiquitous slasher subgenre.

2.5/4

13-10-2023

It's fascinating to watch how slowly the cliche elements of the "Friday the 13th" franchise developed compared to other 80s slasher franchises. Unlike Michael Myers who arrived fully formed in "Halloween", Jason Voorhees' on-screen persona took at least four films to grow into the iconic horror villain we all know. As is common knowledge by now, Jason wasn't even the killer in the first "Friday the 13th" film. That honour belonged to his mom Pamela (Betsy Palmer) who went insane after her son drowned while at Camp Crystal Lake. Jason's first proper appearance as the franchise's main villain came in "Friday the 13th Part 2" where he is revealed to be alive in a rickety old shack in the woods. Don't think about it too hard - it only makes sense in slasher movie logic. The hockey mask didn't show up until the third film and it wasn't until the sixth film that Jason finally became an indestructible zombie killing machine.

The tone and style of the franchise slowly developed as well but "Friday the 13th Part 2" is really just a confident retread of the original. It's certainly a slicker film, better-made, and less grindehousey but it repeats many of the same mistakes of the original just with a higher budget.

This time the film takes place at Packanack Lodge, a picturesque campsite on the same shore as the now closed Camp Crystal Lake. It's been five years since the first film and the police still patrol the area refusing access to gawkers and hikers. But not even the stern Deputy Winslow (Jack Marks) can do anything to stop a group of teenagers from attending camp counsellor training at Packanack Lodge.

The movie introduces a large number of counsellors right off the bat but then doesn't kill a single one of them until 50 minutes in. Instead, it dedicates vast amounts of its runtime to shenanigans and fake scares. While this kind of padding is preferable to the coffee-making scenes from the first film, it still feels like a waste of time.

Meanwhile, this sequel tries to tie up some loose ends from the original by having Jason take care of that film's survivors. The opening scene in which Alice (Adrienne King) is unceremoniously killed off is a terrific horror prologue but I could have done without the return of Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) who is about as useless here as he was in the first film.

When the massacre finally starts, "Friday the 13th Part 2" does spring to life. The kills were designed by Oscar-nominated make-up artist Carl Fullerton who does an imaginative and striking job. Sadly, two of his best kills were butchered by the MPAA and only survive in VHS quality on the BluRay bonus features.

This sequel is directed by Steve Miner who does a much better job at creating suspense than Sean S. Cunningham. The best example of Miner's superior direction is the film's wonderfully tense climax, a 15-minute chase scene which never feels repetitive and packs more suspense than "Friday the 13th" had in its entire 90-minute runtime.

Miner's blocking, however, doesn't always make sense. There are a lot of fake scares in this film where characters are startled by things just off-camera which they should easily see. This is one of those movies where things are only visible to the characters when the camera can see them. Take for example a kill scene in which a victim is clearly shown sitting on an empty porch. Miner cuts to a close-up of the back of their head and a knife slams into their face from the left side of the screen. Now, the only way Jason could have killed this person is if he were right next to them which he clearly wasn't. Maybe Jason can teleport?

Miner is also better at using handheld cameras than Cunningham was. He even goes so far as to give the camera a real presence, making it feel like a voyeur, a prowler, a predator all on its own. In the film's terrific opening scene, the camera slowly approaches Alice as she showers. She senses its presence and moves aside the shower curtain. She stares right into the lens as if she's just caught the camera peeping. The shot ends.

Where the film stumbles is Ron Kurz's derivative screenplay which does nothing to improve on the original, it merely imitates it. There is still no narrative progression or much of a plot. Counsellors get killed off one by one and remain unaware so that they can't even fight back. There is again no mystery, nothing for the characters to figure out, and nothing for them to do. They're just cannon fodder.

The cast is reasonably likeable and never annoying but they're also not particularly memorable or relatable. Having just finished watching the movie, I can't really recall a single character except for Vickie whose likeability is more down to actress Lauren-Marie Taylor's natural sweetness and charisma than anything Kurz has written for her. Unlike in the original, I never felt bad for these characters when they got killed. Hell, I could barely remember them. I think Kurz himself had trouble keeping track of all the characters since a few of them just vanish from the film.

The film is also slicker and more expensive. Peter Stein's photography makes the film look glossier and more respectable but it also loses the grungy, nasty aesthetic which made "Friday the 13th" so effective. This film feels more antiseptic, less authentic, and less real.

Overall, "Friday the 13th Part 2" is better made than the original but not nearly as memorable or effective. Miner also makes the mistake of showing Jason too often, making him look less like a prowling threat and more like some yoho with a burlap sack on his head. I think even I could beat up this incarnation of Jason.

2.5/4

13-10-2023

3D is the last refuge of a franchise in trouble. Indeed, "Friday the 13th Part III in 3D" is the franchise's most derivative entry and the only one which brings absolutely nothing new to the formula. It is a mechanical retread of the previous two films which places its cannon fodder characters on an assembly line so that Jason can hack and slash them at regular intervals. OK, at its best "Friday the 13th" is not the world's most imaginative series of films but none of the sequels are as lacking in originality or as deprived of imagination as this one.

The 3D gimmick, the sole selling point of this film, is of the cheapest, worst variety. Random objects keep flying at the audience's eyes like mayflies at an actual lakeside. Director Steve Miner doesn't use the 3D for any particular purpose nor does it enhance the atmosphere or the effectiveness of the film. It is nothing but a poor man's gimmick, a desperate clutch at something to distinguish this film from the rest.

The screenplay by Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson is a cut-and-paste job recycling plot points, kills, and scenes wholesale from the previous films. The final two minutes, for example, are an almost shot-for-shot remake of the iconic final two minutes of the first film. Similarly, this film copies the legendary stab to the throat kill which got Kevin Bacon in the same movie. The sole difference is that here it's done less convincingly.

The plot is basically a retread of "Friday the 13th Part 2" with a group of teenagers arriving at a lodge near Camp Crystal Lake. Despite warnings from a crazed bum, they decide to spend a night there and are stalked and killed by Jason.

The characters are absolute stock slasher flick cannon fodder - obnoxious and unlikeable in the way that the first two movies smartly avoided. The teenagers include an atrociously annoying joker badly played by Larry Zerner, the most forgettable hot chick from the entire series played by Tracie Savage, and the blandest hunk you've ever seen played by Paul Kratka. Also in the film are some kooky locals and a motorcycle gang all of whom are cartoonish stereotypes. The performances are almost uniformly awful except for maybe a fine turn from Catherine Parks who does all she can with a horridly underwritten part.

Kitrosser and Watson's screenplay quickly settles into a rhythm which it follows slavishly. The film feels like it was put together with the help of a metronome as it goes back and forth between teenage shenanigans and gory kills at regular intervals. It becomes tedious very quickly and boring around the midway point.

In an effort to jazz up the proceedings, the duo added some gags which feel like they've been recycled from cheapo 1960s sex comedies. There's a groovy stoner couple who walk around barefoot and are constantly high out of their mind. The film opens with a sequence which I assume is meant to be funny but is actually painfully grating in which another bickering couple are randomly killed by Jason. The humour in this film is on the level of a high-school improv group.

Steve Miner's direction is shoddy and flat in sharp contrast to his excellent work on part two. I guess he was too busy making the 3D effects work to worry about actually making a good movie. There are far too many fake-out jump scares in the first third of the film so that by the time Jason actually does show up there's no actual suspense or tension. The film's pace is flabby and uneven and the stalking scenes are unimaginative and blunt. The actual kills are occasionally clever (I like the scene of Jason squeezing a man's head to death) but they lack the visceral gore of the first two films. There's noticeably less blood in this film and the kills feel more artificial than before robbing the film of its edge.

The one improvement is Jason himself. He's a more muscular, menacing presence in this film and Richard Brooker does a great job of portraying him as a creature of pure anger. His physicality makes a huge difference over the Jason from the second film who in comparison seems like a wimp. Brooker's Jason is a genuinely scary, imposing figure even though Miner doesn't use him nearly as well as he should. It should be noted that this is the film in which he finally acquires his famous hockey mask which is the sole meaningful addition part three makes to the franchise lore.

"Friday the 13th Part III" offers some amusement though not quite in the way that the filmmakers intended. The 3D effects are a good laugh as are the awful acting and the wooden lines. There's a flashback scene in this film which would make Neil Breen blush.

This film is pure schlock and it's probably great fun at a midnight screening but as a serious slasher film "Friday the 13th Part III" is a real dud. It's machine-like pacing, shoddy direction, awful acting, and cut-and-paste screenplay make it tedious viewing especially when watched back-to-back with its much superior predecessors.

1.5/4

14-10-2023

Even though "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter" was by no means the last Friday the 13th film (in fact, more of them were made after it than before it), the title is not a complete lie. This Joseph Zito-directed fourth instalment in the long-running franchise really is the finale of what could be called the original quadrilogy. It is the last film in which Jason is a destructible, human killer. It is the last film which directly follows the events of the previous two. It is also the last film before the franchise started branching off into increasingly weird and sometimes experimental ways, changing tones, styles, and even villains the way some people change their socks.

Unlike the wholly derivative part three, "The Final Chapter" does try to innovate on the old slasher formula while still recognisably sticking to its broad strokes. For one, it is the first "Friday the 13th" film to try and diversify its cast. Instead of having it consist entirely of teenage cannon fodder, writer Barney Cohen introduces all kinds of characters with different backstories and motivations for Jason to unceremoniously kill.

The most interesting and likeable of the cast are the Jarvis family consisting of a single mother (Joan Freman), her teenage daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck), and her young son, the soon-to-be legendary franchise recurring character Tommy (Corey Feldman). They live near in a secluded cabin near Crystal Lake. The best scenes in the film are without a doubt the ones which focus on the Jarvises because we genuinely grow to care for this small, loving family. Their interactions are warm and believable, their characters are likeable, and the performances are uncharacteristically believable. I like the tinge of sadness and loneliness that Joan Freeman brings to the part. I also like how Trish is a loving, dutiful daughter but also bored stiff of living in the woods with no one her age for company.

One day while out and about with her brother, she meets a mysterious hiker named Rob (E. Erich Anderson). As it turns out, Rob is the brother of Sandra, one of the teenagers from part two best remembered for getting impaled with a spear while having sex. Rob is an interesting character, well played by Anderson but the film dedicates far too little screentime to him.

Instead, the film also introduces a whole gaggle of teenagers because, apparently, by law, you can't have a slasher film without dead horny teenagers. Without a doubt, the worst scenes of the film focus on these annoying, cartoonish, brash characters whose sole preoccupation in life is getting drunk and getting laid. Besides Crispin Glover whose performance is so balmy you can't help but be fascinated by him, all of these characters are instantly forgettable and massively unlikeable.

There's no reason to have these despicable teenagers in the film. Had "The Final Chapter" focused solely on the Jarvises, Rob's desire to hunt down and kill Jason, and Trish's budding relationship with Rob, it could have been a first-rate horror film. Instead, far, far, far too much screentime is devoted to the drunken shenanigans of the teenage bozos who've rented the cabin next to the Jarvises for no apparent reason.

After a neat, though goofy prologue set in a hospital morgue and a pleasant first act spent with the Jarvises, the second act of "The Final Chapter" is a real slog to sit through. It consists almost entirely of inane, juvenile dialogue and unfunny, grating gags without any hint of horror or suspense.

It takes an ungodly amount of runtime for Jason to finally begin killing off those ghastly teenagers. This is where the film finally comes alive again and the final 30 minutes are fun in that campy slasher way. Tom Savini is back and the kills in "The Final Chapter" are without a doubt the best in the franchise. There are some superb gore effects which are as gruesome as they are witty and clever. Even though the kill scenes were horribly butchered by the MPAA, Savini's wonderful practical effects shine through.

Where the film falters somewhat is that director Joseph Zito doesn't bother to create much suspense before the kills happen. Most of them consist of characters walking outside and then suddenly being smashed in the head by a machete or something. Instead of creating elaborate suspense sequences around Savini's kills, Zito goes for blunt, uninspired aggression. This is doubly disappointing because Zito certainly knows how to craft a suspenseful sequence. The final 15 minutes or so consist of a terrific chase scene full of tension and clever twists. Why then are the preceding 75 minutes so lacking in stalking? Take, for example, an early scene in which a hitchhiker (Bonnie Hellman) encounters Jason on an empty stretch of road. Instead of having a sinister sequence in which Jason slowly stalks his prey, followed by a chase down the road, Zito merely has Jason grab her by her hair and stab her in the throat before she even realizes he's there.

"The Final Chapter" then is a real mixed bag for me. The Jarvises are definitely the most likeable and well-rounded characters the franchise ever had. It also has some of the franchise's best kills, beautifully designed by the master Tom Savini himself. However, the shoehorned teenage characters are despicable and insufferable and the film's pacing suffers greatly from focusing on them. The middle third of the film is downright unwatchable as the film degenerates into a "Porky's" sequel before suddenly remembering it's meant to be a slasher flick. There's lots of good work in "The Final Chapter" and it's definitely better than that 3D garbage but it doesn't come close to replicating the grungy unease of the original or the slick, efficient thrills of part two.

2/4

14-10-2023

Everyone rags on "The Final Chapter" for not living up to the promise in its title but nobody points out that "A New Beginning" is even more misleading. The title was supposed to allude, I assume, to a bold new direction the franchise was going to take after it killed off Jason in the previous movie. Unfortunately, the fans hated it and the next film, "Jason Lives", undid pretty much every interesting thing this film tried. That's why part five should more accurately be titled "Friday the 13th: The Dead End".

I personally love this movie. It's unironically one of my absolute favourite films not only from the Friday the 13th franchise but from the 80s slasher subgenre in general. What writer/director Danny Steinmann has created here is absolute, unabashed schlock. "A New Beginning" is brazenly, proudly bizarre - a film that is equal parts baffling, sleazy, and self-aware. It completely subverts the formulaic nature and the straightfaced, visceral tone of the first four films by diving head first into grotesque comedy. In parts, "A New Beginning" reminded me of "Delicatessen" so much so that this is probably as close as we'll ever come to seeing what a "Friday the 13th" movie directed by Jean-Michel Jeunet would look like.

This is the film in which a girl serenades her man as he's having explosive diarrhoea in the dingiest public toilet you've ever seen. This is the movie which takes place in the 1980s even though Tommy Jarvis whom we last saw in 1984 has grown at least 10 years and everyone dresses and speaks like it's the 1950s. Where else can you see a goth girl dance the robot alone in her room? Which other film has a man lovingly smooth talk cocaine by saying the immortal lines "The forecast is: cloudy in the mountains, sunny in the valleys, and snow flurries - up your nose."

And if you think "A New Beginning" is unintentionally hilarious just look at the scene in which a horrifically annoying class clown-type character is introduced. Now, such a character has blackened every "Friday the 13th" movie with his presence. Just when you think "A New Beginning" is going to have the worst of them all, he is immediately killed off and not even by Jason. He is axed in the back by one of his supposed friends for being an annoying douchebag! No, "A New Beginning" knows exactly what it's doing.

This is the franchise's first foray into straight-up comedy and if you enjoy surreal sub-Lynchian insanity done with a sleazy 1980s sensibility, it'll also be your favourite. The characters I love the most are the bizarre redneck Ethel (Carol Locatell) and her son Junior (Ron Sloan) who is at least as old or older than she is. Every line they deliver is absolute vulgar gold. I love how they walk around like medieval peasants complete with soot on their faces. They would fit right into a Monty Python movie.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for an effective slasher film - I'd say look elsewhere. "A New Beginning" has a few decent fight scenes and some inventive if not terribly visceral kills but for the most part, it doesn't really work as a horror film. It should be said that it has some of the least annoying teenage characters of the franchise which is ironic considering it is set at a summer camp for "troubled teens". The film also has a very likeable child actor in the form of Shaver Ross who brings attitude and humour to his part as Reggie.

The plot begins when Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) is released from a mental institution where he's been held since the events of the previous film into the aforementioned camp which functions as a sort of a halfway house. Jason is dead and buried but as soon as Tommy shows up, someone starts killing off the teenagers. Is Jason back from the dead or is there a copycat? Frankly, who cares? With how little character Jason has in these movies, it could be anyone under that mask.

Tommy Jarvis is introduced as our protagonist but the film very quickly forgets he even exists. Instead, "A New Beginning" is an entirely episodic romp which moves from situation to situation - from kill to kill - with little regard for narrative or pacing. There's a kill every 10 minutes or so with such regularity that even that becomes a kind of a running joke. Like a timer, every 10 minutes the killer shows up and stabs someone even if that person is standing in a clearing in broad daylight. The killer just teleports next to them because the movie's format demands a kill!

"A New Beginning" is probably a terrible "Friday the 13th" film but it's a first-rate parody. It really is a complete joke, a self-parodic grotesque comedy with humour so broad that it often borders on tasteless. But I personally find Danny Steinmann's take on the slasher subgenre terribly refreshing. He clearly has little time for its tropes and traditions. Instead, he infuses the film with his own style and tastes creating something so unusual and unique in the franchise that it's worth seeing for that reason alone.

3/4

14-10-2023

After a bizarre detour into the grotesque, the sixth "Friday the 13th" film is an electric return to form though with a noticeably lighter tone and higher production values. To mark the franchise's new groove, director/writer Tom McLoughlin opens his film with what is probably one of the very best prologues in any slasher movie.

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews) and his friend from "the institution" (Ron Palillo) arrive at a gothic graveyard with the intention of burning the body of Jason Voorhees. They dig his coffin up, open it, and find inside a worm-infested abomination which has long since lost any human form. Tommy stabs it through the heart with an iron rod but as he goes to get the gasoline a lightning bolt strikes the rod and the abomination's eyes open. He's alive! The camera dollies into Jason's eye where we see him doing a little James Bond spoof. The title explodes on screen: "Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI".

Right off the bat, it's obvious that this film is a pretty different beast. It continues the tongue-in-cheek approach of "A New Beginning" but its sense of humour is less grotesque and more self-affecting and self-aware. Kevin Williamson cited "Jason Lives" as one of the biggest influences on "Scream" and it is not hard to see why. The film has a cine-literate, sarcastic streak running through it. In one scene, a pair of camp counsellors run into Jason in the woods. "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly," quips one of them.

"Jason Lives" is also the most well-put-together of all the "Friday the 13th" films. It replaces the grungy, rough aesthetic of the previous five films with a glossy look more in line with higher-budgeted Hollywood fare than grindhouse schlock. Tom McLoughlin's direction is not just skilled but also stylish and Jon Kranhouse's photography lends a cool new Gothic atmosphere to old Crystal Lake. Unlike the previous films which often looked like something you'd find on a beat-up old VHS tape, "Jason Lives" looks like a pretty polished film.

Even composer Harry Manfredini has upped his game delivering his best and classiest score since the first film. Not only does he avoid the intrusive synths or derivative scare chords which plague some of his lesser scores but he goes as far as to include little quotes into his cues including a variation on the famous opening eight notes of Dies Irae.

McLoughlin's screenplay has a loose, episodic structure which cuts back and forth between its two leads - Tommy Jarvis and Jason Voorhees. While Tommy is trying to convince the local sheriff (David Kagen) that Jason is alive, the hockey mask-wearing killer is indiscriminately massacring anyone who comes between him and his Crystal Lake home. On the way from the graveyard to the camp, Jason encounters a variety of victims including a pair of bickering counsellors, a couple having sex in an RV, and a hilarious group of executives playing war games in the woods. Each of these vignettes is a nicely rounded, well-executed short full of suspense and quirky humour.

Meanwhile, Camp Crystal Lake has been reopened under a new name and new management. This is the only "Friday the 13th" film which has actual kids at the camp but smartly McLoughlin never uses them for cheap child-in-danger-type thrills. The kids are very funny characters on their own terms, however, and the script gives them some very funny lines to say. As Jason is wreaking havoc in the camp, the kids hide under their beds. One kid turns to another and asks him: "So, what were you gonna be when you grew up"?

Unlike "A New Beginning", "Jason Lives" also works as a pretty good slasher film. There are some imaginative if surprisingly tame kills throughout and the climactic mano-a-mano fight between Jason and Tommy is a corker! Kudos to director Tom McLoughlin for being able to weave together the film's disparate tones with such self-assuredness. He juggles high camp, farce, parody, and genuine thrills and suspense with the ease of a circus performer.

It helps to have a pretty darn good cast - probably the best "Friday the 13th" ever had. Thom Matthews cuts a likeable, heroic figure as Tommy Jarvis, Jennifer Cooke is adorable and charismatic as his love interest, and there are some terrific comedic turns from actors such as Nancy McLoughlin, Ann Ryerson, Whitney Rydbeck, Wallace Merck, and Bob Larkin. Also great is C.J. Graham in the most important role of all - Jason himself.

This is the first appearance of the Zombie Jason - arguably his most famous incarnation. In this film, Jason is like a Terminator, moving determinedly towards his target and crushing anything and anyone that stands in his way. Graham makes him seem almost robotic or like he's being hypnotically called towards the lake by some higher power. This Jason is much scarier than any which came before.

"Jason Lives" is the most polished and technically sound of all the "Friday the 13th" movies. It's also the funniest, cleverest, and best-paced. This film moves with the same determination and speed as Jason does, wasting no time in getting to its exciting climax. Here we have the first "Friday the 13th" film which is absolutely never boring, which has absolutely no unlikeable characters, and which is an all-round entertaining, satisfying experience. If only McLoughlin had stayed on, we wouldn't have had to suffer the abominations that followed.

3/4

15-10-2023

If Tom McLoughlin's "Jason Lives" gave the "Friday the 13th" franchise a new refreshing lick of paint and a bold tonal direction to follow, John Carl Buechler's "The New Blood" dragged it back into the pits of schlock. (Un)affectionatly nicknamed "Jason vs. Carrie", this seventh instalment in the long-running film series pits our favourite indestructible killer against Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln), a teenager with telekinetic abilities. Tina is under the care of the slimy Dr Crews (Terry Kiser), a manipulative psychiatrist who has whisked her away to a secluded cabin in Crystal Lake with the hopes of exploiting her powers (somehow... for some reason...).

You see, some years before, when she was still unable to control her powers, Tina caused the death of her father at Crystal Lake. Returning to the scene of his death causes all kinds of powerful emotions to surface and as anyone who's seen "Carrie" knows that spells trouble. One night, while staring intently into the lake her father drowned in, Tina inadvertently raises Jason from the dead (because they had to revive him somehow I guess). Let the mayhem begin!

"The New Blood" banked on the telekinetic angle big time hoping that Tina would replace Tommy Jarvis as the new protagonist of the franchise. Unfortunately, this potentially interesting and fun idea is vastly underused in this rather underwhelming sequel. Far too much of Tina's storyline revolves around her having visions of future murders. Of course, Dr Crews and her mother (Susan Blu) who don't blink an eye at Tina's telekinetic powers refuse to believe that she can foretell the future.

Frankly, Tina is not a particularly good protagonist. She's a mopey, wet character who spends most of the runtime in hysterics. Lar Park Lincoln does the best with the material she was given but she just doesn't bring much charisma or likeability to the part.

Like in "The Final Chapter", the body count is provided by a gaggle of teenagers staying in a cabin next to Tina's. This lot of horny youths is not nearly as annoying or obnoxious as the ones in "The Final Chapter" but they're not particularly memorable either. The film barely bothers to even delineate them and by the time the massacre begins, I could hardly remember which teenager was which.

The first half of "The New Blood" is at least engaging but once Jason rises from the dead, the film becomes horribly repetitive and unimaginative. The teenagers split up to have sex all around the house and the woods and the film falls into a pattern of teenagers having sex, Jason stumbling upon them, and then killing them brutally. Since we don't get to know any of these characters we don't really feel anything when they are killed and "The New Blood" ends up feeling like a make-up artist's highlight reel.

There are some decent kills in "The New Blood" but they've been butchered by the MPAA to the point that some of the murder scenes don't even make sense. This is a shame since the deleted scenes are without a doubt the best thing about the film. The cuts are also unfortunate because this film introduces Kane Hodder as the franchise's most terrifying, brutal Jason. Very much following the Terminator-like characterisation of Jason from "Jason Lives", Hodder infuses the part with more aggression, rage, and pure physicality than we've ever seen before.

Once all the teenagers are dead, the third act of "The New Blood" devolves into a leaden montage of characters wandering through the woods looking for each other. I will now give you a transcript of the final 25 minutes of "The New Blood": "Tina! Tina! Mom! Mom! Mom! David! David! Tina! David! Mom! Mom! Tina! Tina! Tina! Dr Crews! Dr Crews! David! Mom! Mom! David! Tina! Tina! Tina! JASON!!!!"

The final showdown between Jason and Tina features some nice practical effects but is in essence no different and no more exciting than any of the previous final fights between Jason and the final girl. Most of it consists of Tina staring at things intently which then makes those things fall on Jason.

I'll give props to writers Daryl Haney and Manuel Fidello for trying to make "The New Blood" something truly new but their script is devoid of intrigue or mystery while John Carl Buechler's direction is suspenseless and dull. The storyline about the crooked Dr Crews, for example, could have been interesting if only we and Tina didn't know from the very beginning that he was a scumbag. The film doesn't even bother to create any tension around Dr Crews and instead of being a compelling secondary villain, he becomes merely a minor annoyance.

Cinematographer Paul Elliott makes "The New Blood" look atmospheric and eery and Fred Mollin's score is more energetic than the film itself but ultimately this is a rote, fairly dull, and disappointing entry of the series.

1.5/4

15-10-2023

There seems to be some kind of a curse on the titles of "Friday the 13th" films. "The Final Chapter" got 8 sequels, "A New Beginning" got retconned, we never saw "The New Blood" again, and now there's "Jason Takes Manhattan" a film which promised 100 minutes of Jason getting up to all kinds of bloody shenanigans in New York City but ended up delivering 60 minutes of Jason stalking teenagers on board a ship.

The preposterous plot sees a group of teenagers travelling from Camp Crystal Lake to New York City on a rusty old ship. Now, the first question is clearly how the hell do you get from a lake to an ocean, but I'd also like to add a few more. For one, why are these teenagers travelling to New York City on a ship? Especially considering the fact that Camp Crystal Lake is in New Jersey! Secondly, what are they even doing in Crystal Lake which is in the middle of nowhere near a podunk town which doesn't even have a high school?

OK, "Friday the 13th" movies have never been all that strong on logic but "Jason Takes Manhattan" is taking the piss. One certainly gets the impression that writer/director Rob Hedden knocked this one out over a boozy weekend.

None of the characters act like human beings. The high schoolers behave like horny ten-year-olds engaging in mindless pranks and pointless arguments. At one point, a pair of cartoon bullies push a girl off the ship into the ocean in full view of their teacher! When Jason does the same thing to another teenager later on in the film it's a fatality but this time the victim of the prank just climbs back on.

The adults are no better. The kids' teacher Colleen (Barbara Bingham) seems to be having an inappropriately close relationship with one of her students, the nervy young Rennie (Jensen Daggett) and brings her along for the trip despite the protestations of her haughty uncle Charles (Peter Mark Richman) who also happens to be the high school principal. In one scene, Charles is the victim of a honeytrap set up by one of the teenagers. She seduces him by writing some kinds of weird squiggles on her body, videotapes him groping her, and then blackmails him for better grades.

The writing is absolutely atrocious. I've already mentioned the insane premise, the dialogue is wooden and unnatural, and the characters are solely defined by their "quirks".

The first 60 minutes of "Jason Takes Manhattan" do indeed take place on board the creaky ship. Now, I must confess that I do like the claustrophobic setting. Cinematographer Bryan England does a tremendous job of making this film look stylish and atmospheric. This might just be the best-looking "Friday the 13th" film. However, Hedden doesn't really use the location to its fullest advantage. Most of the film consists of characters running down hallways getting picked off by Jason who in this film waits behind corners and pops out of air ducts like Alien. Despite its rickety appearance, the ship is, for some reason, decked out with a discotheque and each teenager gets their own first-class suite!

When the film eventually makes its way to Manhattan, it exhibits a refreshingly goofy sense of humour. I love the scene in which Jason boxes a teenager on a rooftop as well as the little sight gag in which Jason is taken aback by a hockey ad. However, once again Hedden fails to utilize the location's full potential. Except for a disappointingly short scene set in Times Square, most of the 30-minute finale is set in alleyways and interiors which could be located anywhere in the world. I also found that the running gag of New Yorkers not really reacting to Jason at all gets old pretty quickly and robs the indestructible killer of much of his menace.

The biggest disappointment in "Jason Takes Manhattan" is the kills which have been sanitized to the point where the film could pass for PG-13. Except for the aforementioned rooftop punchup which ends in a gloriously over-the-top death, most of the film's kills either take place off-screen or are committed by such boring methods as drowning. Jason throwing people off the side of a ship is hardly a horrifying image. By 1989, the MPAA guidelines ruined much of the blood-and-guts appeal of these films.

As I mentioned previously, "Jason Takes Manhattan" is a gorgeous-looking movie and it has atmosphere to spare but the awful, clunky writing and a series of disappointing horror scenes make it something of a wasted effort. The film certainly has its moments and a certain kind of best-of-the-worst charm but, for the most part, this is a lesser entry in the "Friday the 13th" franchise.

1.5/4

15-10-2023

Following the poor receptions of "The New Blood" and especially "Jason Takes Manhattan", Paramount sold the rights to the "Friday the 13th" franchise to New Line Cinema who, in their eternal wisdom, decided to produce a sequel which would get rid of all the elements that made the "Friday the 13th" franchise iconic. The clunkily titled "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" is a muddled, confused mess of a movie which cannot decide if it wants to be a slasher film, a supernatural thriller, or a siege movie. One thing's for sure, however, it definitely doesn't want to be a "Friday the 13th" movie.

The film begins with Jason falling into an FBI trap. While trying to kill off a hot naked teenager, he is jumped by a few dozen agents who blow his body up to smithereens. After 8 movies, Jason is finally dead but his evil spirit lives on possessing the inhabitants of a small town and turning them into bloodthirsty murderers.

To my everlasting shock, Jason is barely in this movie. After the brief prologue, he only shows up for a few minutes in the film's nonsensical climactic fight. Instead, he possesses random people who then inexplicably become as indestructible and powerful as he was.

Now let me ask you this? Do you want to watch a "Friday the 13th" sequel in which the killer is not Jason but some pudgy small-town sheriff? Of course not! Who the hell would? Since "Friday the 13th Part 2", Jason has become the only element tying this franchise together and he has been the closest thing this series has to a protagonist since "Jason Lives". He is the reason why people even watch these movies. They certainly don't flock to the cinemas to watch the boring teenagers he kills.

Also utterly confusing is the film's inability to pick a protagonist. The first third of the film seems to be building up Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) as the film's hero. Duke is a bounty hunter who claims to know how to send Jason to hell. Even though the film bends over backwards to make Duke look like a badass, he is a dreadfully unlikeable character. Brash, unpleasant, and disgustingly sleazy, Duke is more reminiscent of the franchise's secondary villains such as Dr Crews from "The New Blood" than a potential hero.

None of this really matters anyway since Duke disappears after getting arrested about 30 minutes into the film and our new protagonist is suddenly a random local named Robert (Steven Culp). The bespectacled Robert would be forgettable cannon fodder in any other "Friday the 13th" film but here he is thrust into the lead role. Steven Culp, however, is not a terribly good actor and the wimpy, whiny Robert is just as sleazy and unlikeable as Duke.

The third act once again shifts gears and the protagonist becomes the fetching Jessica (Kari Keegan), a local waitress who, for reasons I won't spoil here because I don't understand them, is the only person who can kill Jason. Of this film's three leads, Jessica is the most likeable but we barely get a chance to meet her before complete mayhem breaks out and the whole town becomes a shooting range.

The film's plot makes absolutely no sense. Writer/director Adam Marcus has no understanding of what makes a "Friday the 13th" movie tick. Instead, he fills "Jason Goes to Hell" with all kinds of retcons and mythology turning Jason into a demon. The finale involves a magical glowing dagger, a disgusting worm creature, and the "old Voorhees house" which has never been mentioned in the franchise before. I guess Marcus confused "Friday the 13th" with "Halloween" where the old Myers house played a big role.

The film is also full of bizarre side characters who seem to be meant as comic relief but the film is never really funny. Instead, they come across as grating intrusions in an already overly complicated and baffling plot.

I think it's always commendable when a late franchise entry tries to subvert the established formula but "Jason Goes to Hell" is absolutely, inexcusibly terrible. Not only is it an awful "Friday the 13th" sequel, but it's also just an awful movie - tonally confused, bafflingly plotted, full of unlikeable characters, and stilted performances. There are no redeeming features in this disaster - this movie can go to hell.

0.5/4

16-10-2023

Most ghost stories are stories about grief. Maybe that's why so many of them begin with a death of a child. "Don't Look Now", maybe the best ghost film ever made, is the first to come to mind but also films like "The Haunting of Julia" and "Pet Semetery". The scariest aspect of a good ghost story is not the jump scares or the creaking floorboards or the ghostly apparitions but the creeping atmosphere of sadness beneath the surface.

Much like "Don't Look Now", Peter Medak's "The Changeling" keys in on this overwhelming emotion. It begins with a truly shocking prologue in which a mother and her child are suddenly mowed down by a truck as the father, composer John Russell (George C. Scott), watches on helplessly. The camera lingers on his face, numb with shock, his fists raised in futile protest. George C. Scott has the ideal face for this kind of role, by the way. Lined, worn, bitterly sardonic. He always looks like he desperately needs a cup of coffee to replace that good night's sleep he'll never get.

Sometime after the accident, John packs up the remains of his life in brown cardboard boxes and moves to Seattle where he hopes to finish his latest composition in peace. He gets in touch with an agent of the local historical society, the charming Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) who rents him out a gorgeous Gothic mansion. Touring the enormous, cobwebbed house, John wonders why it hasn't already been snatched up and how come the rent is so cheap. The best answer comes from Claire's crusty old secretary (Ruth Springford) who warns John that "That house is not fit to live in. No one's been able to live in it. It doesn't want people."

John Russell must not be a horror fan because anyone who's ever seen a ghost movie would know that that house is trouble with its grand staircase, carved balustrades, boarded-up rooms, and a huge chandelier just itching to fall. Before long, however, John begins listening to the things that go bump in the night and he hears a whispering voice repeating the name Joseph.

How does a respectable, sensible man like John Russell end up getting involved with ghosts, organising a seance, and solving a 70-year-old murder? Well, like I said this is a story about grief and the ghost offers John the ultimate cure for that malady. He is, after all, a father who desperately needs to believe that his daughter and his wife are alright, somewhere up there, and still with him.

Yes, "The Changeling" is indeed a familiar, by-the-numbers ghost story. In fact, it is very much like the house it takes place in - old-fashioned and creaky but undeniably beautiful, atmospheric, and superbly made. The screenplay by Russell Hunter, William Gray, and Diana Maddox will offer no surprises to even a novice horror fan. It hits every beat and every scare the formula requires of it but director Peter Medak, his crew, and especially his cast have turned it into the finest ghost story since "Don't Look Now".

I am astounded by this film's ability to creep under the viewer's skin. Even as I sat there, in my comfortable chair, predicting where it was going, I was genuinely spooked. Medak takes a slow, methodical approach to building the film's atmosphere. Don't expect any scares in the first 40 minutes or so as he slowly settles us into the story, the setting, and the characters. He then carefully introduces the ghostly elements in such a realistic, matter-of-fact fashion that the very fact the film's not trying to scare you becomes scary. Look, for instance, at the superb seance scene. Listen to the well-trained, droning voice of the medium. Look how Medak frames her with a bulky tape recorder in the shot. There are no grand gestures here, no spinning chairs, no flying objects, no speaking in tongues. It's so low-key it could very well be real. And that's where he gets you.

The film is beautifully shot by John Coquillon who gives it the grainy, hazy look of an old stained photograph. Trevor Williams' production design follows suit and the whole film takes place in wood-panelled rooms where dust and cobwebs have become part of the decor, a kind of priceless wall art. I love the design of the mansion as well. Like the rest of the film, it finds the right measure between realism and genre convention. It is just grand and gothic enough to be creepy but not impractically so like the house in the awful remake of "The Haunting". This house could very well be real. And that's where it gets you.

What makes "The Changeling" for me, however, are the performances. George C. Scott, an actor who's never given a bad performance, absolutely anchors this film. He makes John Russell wonderfully self-possessed, rational, and proactive. This is not some hysterical fantasist. If he can believe this story, so can we. Also wonderful is Trish Van Devere, a charming, charismatic presence who brings a lot of energy to the film. It is, however, Melvyn Douglas who really impressed me in the small but vital part of the influential Senator Joseph Carmichael who is somehow connected to the ghost. Douglas' few scenes are the real highlights of the film. This is a part Douglas could have easily sleepwalked through but he gives it his all. He is tremendously convincing as a man who has been powerful for such a long time that he exudes power the way other people sweat. He doesn't bother to stop before a door because he knows it will be opened for him. There is a scene late in the film between Douglas and Scott which is absolutely electric and worth the price of admission alone.

"The Changeling" is predictable and it occasionally succumbs to schlock such as in the scene in which a haunted wheelchair chases Trish Van Devere around the house. But Medak's grip on the atmosphere is so strong and the performances are so real and convincing that the film is unquestionably effective. It has that hypnotic, quiet, sad quality that all great ghost stories have. It is like a good yarn told on a rainy night by a warm fireplace in a quiet voice. You lean in to hear better... and that's when it gets you!

3.5/4

17-10-2023

How hard must it be to come up with the tenth installment in a series of films with such a restrictive format as the "Friday the 13th" films have? OK, the title is easy - it has to be something X, that is the law, just as every part three has to be in 3D. But the plot! What to do with the plot! Should it be the same thing? Another band of teenagers getting indiscriminately hacked up at Crystal Lake? But that's so boring! We've seen it done every which way to Sunday. Should it be something radically new? Well, "Jason Goes to Hell" didn't work, that's for sure. So what then?

Well, for a start, let's set it in the future. The tenth "Friday the 13th" movie came out in 2001 which means that the 80s aesthetic is out and millennium tweens are in. The film begins in the far-off future of 2010 where we find that Crystal Lake has become a high-tech research facility dedicated to the study of Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder). As David Cronenberg explains in a very witty cameo, his ability to regenerate is unprecedented and needs to be harvested. But Jason cannot be contained by such puny things as chains and locks and before the first five minutes of the movie are out he's broken free and is wreaking havoc in the facility. That is until project leader Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) doesn't stop him by cryogenically freezing them both in a heroic act of self-sacrifice.

And there they remain. Frozen solid at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. Side by side for 450 years until they are discovered by a motley crew of space astronauts who take them up into their spaceship The Grendel. Through futuristic nanotechnology (what else!) they revive Jason and Rowan and the mayhem continues... IN SPACE!

Well, if that's not an answer to the question of how you make the tenth instalment in a franchise feel fresh I don't know what is. Much like Warwick Davis' Leprechaun, Kane Hodder's Jason has made his way into outer space and just like "Leprechaun 4", "Jason X" is total, willing, self-effacing schlock. It's relentlessly stupid, hilariously cheap, and the most entertaining "Friday the 13th" movie since the similarly comedic "Jason Lives".

Director James Isaac asks the question of what "Friday the 13th" would look like if it had been made as an episode of the third season of "Star Trek: The Original Series". The Grendel is colourful and held by shoestring and prayer. Through the windows, we can see a plain matte of a starry sky. The super high-tech instruments are plastic props and recycled computer screens.

Much like in "Star Trek" or, more accurately, Roger Corman's "Alien" rip-offs, the future in "Jason X" is hilariously contemporary. The costumes look like they were taken off the discount racks at Walmart. Just look at those low-cut sweaters and tacky necklaces! These space archaeologists must be huge fans of "Dawson's Creek".

But Isaac and writer Todd Farmer know exactly what they're doing. The goofiness in "Jason X" is no accident. Much like "Jason Lives" and "A New Beginning", this is a deliberately comedic, goofy, over-the-top take on the "Friday the 13th" franchise which I think is the best way to approach it. The premise by itself is already so silly that you can either make fun of it or have the audience make fun of your movie. Isaac and Farmer have wisely chosen the former.

I love how all the characters in "Jason X" act exactly like camp counsellors at Crystal Lake. They're meant to be intelligent, trained scientists and yet they behave like horny teenagers sneaking off to have sex and pouting when they're caught by their teachers.

The characters in "Jason X" are likeable but mostly forgettable. This is a shame since I think Isaac and Farmer could have done something more interesting with a cast of scientists. The best characters are tech-nerd Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell) and his android girlfriend Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder). They're a surprisingly heartwarming and cute couple. Surprisingly good is spaceship sex fiend Janessa (Melyssa Ade). She's certainly a stock character but the witty writing and Melyssa Ade's intensely charismatic performance make her stand out.

What is very smart about this film is that the characters become immediately aware of Jason's presence. Whereas most of the "Friday the 13th" movies revolve around teenagers who are entirely clueless that they're in danger, here we have a group of characters who are prepared to fight back. This leads to a far more dynamic and exciting movie than we're used to from this franchise. In that regard, "Jason X" certainly owes a debt of gratitude to "Aliens" especially in the sequences involving the space marines.

Kane Hodder is back as Jason and this is probably his best performance to date. This iteration of the character is genuinely scary whenever he shows up on screen with his red glowing eyes and huge, intimidating physique. Contrary to the usually solid rule of not showing your monster too often, I find that the "Friday the 13th" films work best when you see Jason as often as possible. Especially when he's played by the truly menacing Kane Hodder.

"Jason X" then is a very entertaining and occasionally clever schlockfest which leans fully into the goofiness of the series. It also has some of the best kills in the franchise and a few characters you grow to care for. It absolutely could have been sharper and more satirical but I don't think that's what Isaac and Farmer were going for. This film is intentionally dumb and very good at it. It's not as bizarrely funny as "A New Beginning" nor as competent as "Jason Lives", but "Jason X" more then delivers on schlocky fun and bloody thrills.

2.5/4

17-10-2023

The film's title is displayed over a beautiful wide shot of the desert which makes the opening credits sequence look like something out of a Sergio Leone picture. Then two stagehands come into shot and wheel out the desert revealing it to be nothing more than a matte painting. This is the first of many moments in "Body Double" in which Brian De Palma presents us with a beautiful image only to then reveal the banal and workmanlike nature behind it.

In another scene, our hero the nebbish out-of-work actor Jake (Craig Wasson) finds himself walking through a nightclub while an orgy is in full swing. He stops in front of an open door. He peeps inside and sees pornstar Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) changing. "I like to watch," he tells her. "Makes me hot too," she replies, "Why don't you come over here and I'll show you how hot?" He walks into the room and closes the door behind him. As the door closes, we see the entire camera crew reflected in the mirror hanging on it. It's only then that we realize that what we are seeing is indeed the making of a porn film.

"Body Double" is full of such examples including a brilliant double twist at the very end which I think may just be the finest example of its kind. But what is it all for? I suppose that if we regard "Body Double" as just a Hitchcockian thriller one could argue that De Palma is using this technique to put us on edge. To tell us that we can't trust anything we're seeing. To doubt even our own eyes. Maybe that's true but I think there's a deeper purpose at play here.

While "Body Double" is definitely an effective and fun thriller, it is also one of the cleverest movies about movies I've ever seen. This is De Palma's tribute to all things cinematic - the matte paintings, the camera crews, the ADs, the DPs, the actors, the producers, and the body doubles. De Palma has often been accused of copying other directors (most often Hitchcock). Here he brazenly copies every genre, style, and filmmaker he can think of. The film begins with a parody of a vampire B-movie which cuts to the aforementioned western vista. It then moves into the realm of a domestic drama, followed by a film noir, a "Rear Window" homage, a "Vertigo" homage, a Giallo film, a horror film and eventually, yes, a porno film.

It switches gears so often and so many times that it'll give you whiplash. Several times throughout the film I loudly asked the screen "What is going on"? And yet, this is not a frustrating picture at all. It's totally engrossing, consistently entertaining, and extraordinarily witty especially if you know movies. That wily sense of humour is what ties the film together and what kept me invested even though I could see where the plot was going a mile away.

Our hero is the out-of-work actor Jake who one day finds himself out of a job and out of a wife after walking in on her having sex with another man. "Her face was glowing," he complains to an actor friend named Sam (Gregg Henry) who offers him a place to stay. The house turns out to be LA's famous Chemosphere, a futuristic round building perched on top of a hill - ideal for voyeurism. Sam says he's looking after it for a friend and that Jake can stay there while Sam's out of town.

The house comes with a special perk which Sam shows Jake with a childlike glee. Every midnight, a hot neighbour does a naked dance in front of her window - a window, by the way, which can be seen from the Chemosphere with the help of a telescope.

Anyone who's seen "Rear Window" knows where this is going and indeed one night Jake witnesses the neighbour's murder at the hands of a monstrously deformed killer wielding a hilariously phallic drill.

The identity of the killer shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's ever seen a thriller. After that, the story is easy enough to piece together. But, still, I won't reveal anything further except to say that it involves the aforementioned porn star, a high-pitch voiced kook in the tradition of Nancy Allen from "Blow Out".

In good old-fashioned De Palma tradition, however, the plot hardly matters here. It's the style that counts. "Body Double" is not as outwardly stylish as some of De Palma's other thrillers. In fact, the whole thing has a sleazy, grainy look of a cheap Cannon thriller. It's meant to. The style of "Body Double" is in its metatextual touches, cinematic in-jokes, and pure excess. In that sense, it reminds me of De Palma's much underrated "Snake Eyes" in which the director similarly threw caution to the wind and just had fun.

"Body Double" indeed is great fun. It's engaging as a noir pastiche, very funny at times, and even quite disturbing in its scenes of graphic violence.

Craig Wasson is simply terrific as the wimpy Jake who is definitely not your cookie-cutter thriller protagonist. In fact, he's not a terribly likeable guy. He's hard done by, ineffective, and, honestly, a little creepy. He clearly gets more than a kick out of voyeurism and in one extended scene follows his neighbour all around town like a stalker. When he fished out her used panties out of a garbage bin, I knew I was in for something quite unusual. The appeal of the character is precisely in his flawed nature.

Also wonderful is Melanie Griffith who makes a huge impression with not much screen time. There are also first-rate supporting performances from Dennis Franz as an irritable director and Gregg Henry as a lounge lizard type with his silk scarves and devil-may-care attitude.

De Palma nails exactly the qualities that made "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" so compelling - the helplessness, the obsession, the lead sinking deeper and deeper into a plot he can't quite understand. But it's the cineliterate layer of humour which makes me love "Body Double" as much as I do. I don't know if a casual film viewer would get all that much out of "Body Double", but anyone who loves cinema (especially exploitation cinema) is bound to have a ball. It's a lurid, self-parodic, self-indulgent celebration of exploitation genres - thrillers, horror films, porno films... you name it and there's no one who could do it better than De Palma.

4/4

18-10-2023

I don't think there's a horror franchise with a more rudimentary and simplistic formula than "Friday the 13th". There's very little lore or backstory, no returning protagonist, and barely any room for inovation. By the nature of the beast, it needs to take place in or around Crystal Lake and it must have a rampaging Jason killing unaware horny teenagers. Because the premise is so threadbare, there's no way to really differentiate a sequel from a remake or a reboot.

Marcus Nispel's 2009 "Friday the 13th" film bills itself as a remake but there's no reason why it couldn't just be the twelfth instalment in this ludicrously long-running franchise. I've also heard it described as a reimagining but there's really nothing to reimagine. The charm, if you can call it that, of the franchise is in its blunt simplicity, in the fact that its leading man is Jason Voorhees, the killer with no personality or motivation and that his victims are bland, stereotypical cannon fodder.

Oh, sure, Nispel coats the film in a distinctly 2009 aesthetic giving it that grim, dour look associated with Platinum Dunes remakes and an obnoxious, clangy, loud sound design. But the screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is distinctly 1980s. Its teenagers are the same teenagers as before, making the same dumb jokes and the same mistakes as ever, and having raunchy sex and getting drunk in the woods as they're being stalked by a masked killer. The only difference? They call each other dude and bro now.

The killer also is the same old Jason. A hockey-masked, machete-wielding killing machine. Oblivious to reason, impervious to injury, he keeps relentlessly coming back desperate for that teenage blood. As played by Derek Mears, he has even less personality than before. I didn't find this Jason particularly scary because he's so bland. He's basically the stereotypical version of himself without the distinctive physicality of Kane Hodder's Jason or even the janky humanity of Steve Dash's version.

This "remake" is certainly more competently made than the original and it boasts a glossy, clean look but it has neither the humour of the later sequels nor the grimy sleaziness of the original four. This makes it one of the most squarely boring films in the series, a lumbering retread of slasher cliches which takes itself far too seriously. Nispel constantly seems to be reaching for pathos here with long stretches of the film devoted to supposed character development, lots of crying over dead friends, and a much darker tone than usual but the characters are still as thinly written, obnoxious, and stereotypical as ever and the premise remains silly.

As the characters kept bickering with each other even in the face of murder and as Jason continued rampaging unchallenged, I found myself getting more and more bored. What is the point of having an indestructible villain? Surely, it destroys any sense of suspense or tension. What is the point of having such unlikeable characters? Are we meant to be rooting for Jason to kill them? If so then why do we spend so much time with them? All the fighting, the wooden dialogue, the goofy sex scenes become interminable long before the killing begins.

About halfway into "Friday the 13th", I began wondering why I was even watching this film. It repurposes scenes from the sequels which I've already seen, it repeats all their same mistakes, but it does so gloomily and with leaden pacing. Nispel has blatantly failed to reimagine the franchise because this film is exactly the same as all the ones that came before it but worse. As a "Friday the 13th" sequel, however, this film is a glum bore.

By the time the climax rolled around, I was thoroughly checked out. I began looking at Daniel Pearl's cinematography and Jeremy Conway's production design. This film is so dark and murky that I could barely make out the characters as they trampled their way through the woods. The interiors, meanwhile, are utterly unimaginative. We get cobwebbed rooms, dilapidated cabins, underground tunnels... you half expect Bela Lugosi to show up with a lantern. Either way, there's none of that wonderful atmosphere of nature, summer, and beauty which was so well contrasted with the brutality of the originals. Here, everything is nasty.

Even if I wanted to, I can't spoil "Friday the 13th". First, because you already know what happens but more importantly because I didn't care. I think I spent the final 25 minutes thinking about what I was gonna watch next. One thing's for sure, however - whatever it is, it can't be as boring as "Friday the 13th".

1/4

18-10-2023

Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale" begins with a close-up of a TV playing the climactic scene of "Double Indemnity". Reflected on the screen is Rebecca Romijn who is then revealed in one of those slow De Palma dolly shots watching the film while lying stark naked on a hotel room bed. She plays Laure Ash, a professional thief as badass as her name implies, and we meet her just moments before she leaves to execute her most daring heist yet - a diamond theft at the Cannes Film Festival.

De Palma has a lot of fun staging and shooting the heist as Laure and a pair of French gangsters conspire to steal the diamonds right off the body of a model wearing them at the premiere of Regis Wargnier's "East-West". Scored to a Bolero-like piece composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, the sequence looks like something out of "Mission: Impossible" with its high-tech gadgetry and preposterous series of double-crosses.

The plan, however, doesn't go according to plan especially after Laure makes off with the diamonds leaving her two comrades to face the music alone. On the run without a passport, she literally falls into luck after she is mistaken for a grieving widow who could be her identical twin. The widow's parents take her to their home where she just happens to find a passport and a ticket to America. De Palma ex machina strikes again!

Seven years later Laure is still living under an assumed name, now as the wife of Bruce Watts (Peter Coyote), the richest man in America. However, trouble starts brewing when Watts becomes the American ambassador in Paris and Laure has to return to the country where she is the unfinished business to be taken care of. In another stroke of luck (this time bad), her comrades are being released from prison on the same day as Bruce and she arrive. What can she do?

This is the closest to a synopsis I could muster for "Femme Fatale" a movie so (intentionally) disjointed, so shifty, so elusive that it is impossible to predict what's going to happen next mainly because most of the time you don't have a clue what's happening right now. De Palma takes 40 minutes to set up the premise I outlined above only to then completely abandon it as soon as nosey paparazzo Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) enters the picture. To reveal anything of his involvement in the plot would be to spoil many, many surprises but suffice it to say that the missing diamonds soon fall by the wayside.

The experience of watching "Femme Fatale" is only comparable to the experience of watching De Palma's own "Body Double". Both films meander gleefully through genres, styles, and storylines with a clear disregard for classical movie structure. But whereas "Body Double" had a clear, engaging throughline involving a murder mystery, "Femme Fatale" offers no such helping hand to the audience. I found myself actually talking to the screen, asking "What the hell is going on" every fifteen minutes or so. The film moves from a heist thriller to a chase picture to a fantasy to a kidnapping neo-noir and so on and so on. As it turns out, there are many cons being pulled in "Femme Fatale" but none of them are so devious as the one De Palma is pulling on the audience.

Consequently, the film is fascinating and certainly never boring but at times extremely frustrating. I found myself getting angry at the movie because I had nothing to grasp on to. I desperately wanted a clear storyline, a plot element, just a single character whom I could rely on to be truthful and actually stay in the picture. Just as the diamonds plot keeps appearing and disappearing so do many of the characters. Banderas' Bardo, for example, is advertised as the film's male lead but he's barely in the film until more than 45 minutes have gone by.

As written by Brian De Palma himself, the film is both undercooked and overwrought. The plot is downright nonsensical and feels like a series of sequences De Palma wanted to shoot but never managed to pull together into a coherent story. There is very little thought put into the mechanics of the narrative here. For instance, the opening heist scene is absolutely ludicrous. The big plan clings entirely on Laure seducing the model, the model agreeing to have sex with her in a public bathroom, and then not noticing Laure switching the diamonds under her very nose.

What makes the film work, at least most of the time, is De Palma's overwrought direction. The film is overflowing with split screens, slow-motion, and split diopter shots. It often plays out like a De Palma sizzle reel, a collection of his greatest hits played out across two hours. It's all familiar stuff but the film is certainly stylish and dazzling to look at.

There's a BIG twist at the end of "Femme Fatale" but it hardly matters in the least. By that point, we've been jerked around and had the rug pulled under our feet so many times that I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the whole film played out in a child's snow globe. Watching "Femme Fatale" for the plot is an excruciating experience. The film is goofy, poorly structured, and at times incomprehensible. Every character is a paper-thin mannequin created solely so it can be manipulated by De Palma into all kinds of twists and shocking revelations.

But if you watch "Femme Fatale" as a stylistic exercise, a devil-may-care romp through cinematic excess, it can be a lot of fun. Rebecca Romijn is terrific at emulating the great femme fatales of the screen and Antonio Banderas is the perfect, charming, yet convincingly naive patsy. Most importantly, you can sense throughout the picture that Brian De Palma is having a blast. You can almost hear him rubbing his hands together and sniggering like a naughty child watching his prank unfold. I'm not sure I had as much fun as De Palma did, the victim of the prank never does, but when all is said and done, "Femme Fatale" is a fun and stylish bit of De Palma hokum.

3/4

19-10-2023

Frederick Knott's "Wait Until Dark" is one of those thriller plays which seem like they were perfectly engineered rather than written. It has a dozen or so moving parts, all cut into attractive and unusual shapes, which when moved at the right time and in the right way eventually fit togther to form a clockwork mechanism for producing suspense.

The plot centers around an awfully elaborate con perpetrated by a trio of villains with the goal of obtaining an immensly valuable shipment of heroin hidden inside a doll. Through a convoluted chain of events, the doll has fallen into the hands of Susy Hendrix, a blind woman quite oblivious to the doll's worth and the trio's intentions.

The whole thing plays out in Ms Hendrix's living room - a claustrophic, cramed space which acts like a stage for the trio of conmen who come on and off it playing a variety of roles. The handsome Mike assumes the role of an old family friend, the portly Carlino plays an irritable policeman, and the dastardly Mr Roat plays the double role of a young husband who suspects his wife is cheating on him and the son's vicious old father.

But Ms Hendrix is no fool. She is, as she herself puts it, a champion blind lady and she soon catches on that the trio are not what they claim to be. She notices that they keep wiping off every surface they touch. She hears them playing with her blinds. But what can she do? The answer is in the title.

Following in the footsteps of Knot's other theatrical thrill machine "Dial M for Murder", "Wait Until Dark" was turned into a film in 1967. The casting was ideal. Audrey Hepburn, one of the most loveable and sweet stars of all time played the blind Susy Hendrix. Richard Crenna brought a kind of oily charm to the role of Mike Talman. The underrated Jack Weston was both surprisingly funny and surprisingly menacing as the wily Carlino. It is, nevertheless, Alan Arkin who truly impresses as the vile Mr Roat. When asked if he felt he was overlooked by the Academy for his role he quipped that you don't win Oscars for being mean to Audrey Hepburn. Well, I think he at least deserved a nomination. Arkin's Roat is a horrid creation - a truly despicable villain who oozes terror.

"Wait Until Dark", however, was not directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It had the bad luck to fall into the hands of Terence Young, a stylish but clunky filmmaker responsible for such cinematic disasters as "Bloodline", "Inchon", and "The Jigsaw Man". Whereas Hitch managed to visually jazz up what is essentially a chamber piece, Young's direction of "Wait Until Dark" feels like a TV movie. His camera mills about imperceptibly around the set which looks like it was imported directly from the theater. He shoots the whole thing in bland masters and close-ups with little imagination or visual dynamics.

Young's televisual direction is a problem in the play's talky first half which goes on for a little too long. There's a lot of needless set-up here as the characters explain the plot to each other in dry, theatrical exchanges. The play was adapted for the screen by Robert Carrington and Jane-Howard Hammerstein but they can't have made too many alterations. In fact, the whole first half feels like one of those dry recordings of stage plays you used to see on TV.

It is only when the night falls and the play's thrilling third act begins that the film comes to life almost in spite of Young's direction. Charles Lang's photography is superb here as the familiar set becomes enveloped in a menacing darkness and the trio of bad guys have to feel their way around it with only matches to light their way.

Henry Mancini's music does a hell of a lot of heavy lifting as well. This is one of his very best scores filled with terrifying dissonant chords and screeching orchestral sounds.

By the time the film's most famous scene comes around (you'll know it when you see it), the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife and there's not a dry pair of pants in the audience.

The final 40 or so minutes of "Wait Until Dark" are absolutely superb and well worth seeing. The performances are engaging, the twists come in thick and heavy, and the music reaches a fever pitch. However, the first hour is a bit of a chore to sit through especially if you're familiar with Knott's play.

As I sat there waiting for the second half to begin, I wiled away the time thinking logically about the plot - something you should never do while watching one of these kinds of thrillers. Why doesn't she just call the police? Why don't they just ask her for the doll? Does anyone else live in this apartment building? You don't think about these things during "Dial M for Murder" because Hitchcock's direction is so fluid and sharp that it just sweeps you right along. Terence Young's languid direction, on the other hand, gives you plenty of time to pick apart the holes in the plot.

3/4

19-10-2023

It's a tad disquieting to realize that the problems of the modern working man in the city are exactly the same as the problems of the 1948 working man in the city. The opening act of "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" could be remade for today's audience word for word, shot for shot and it would still resonate as strongly as it did more than 70 years ago. You'd just have to account for inflation.

The story begins with a very funny sequence in which Mr Blandings (Cary Grant) is rudely awakened from peaceful slumber by the whine of an alarm clock. He then has to navigate his tiny New York City apartment which he shares with his wife (Myrna Loy) and two daughters. There's almost a choreography to their morning routine. Look, for example, at the graceful pirouette Mr Blandings has to make - coffee in hand - to avoid his running daughter. Behold the minuet he and his wife perform in their cramped bathroom as they get ready at the same time. Marvel at the way the entire family and their maid huddle together in a single corner to have their breakfast which Mr Blandings notes is always the same.

To hell with the rat race! - decides Mr Blandings one morning. He's going to buy a house in the country. In spite of the protestations of his best friend and lawyer (Melvyn Douglas), Blandings spends a fortune buying a dilapidated house which, according to local legend, was visited by General Gates' horses. "Civil War," exclaims Blandings. "Revolutionary War," he is corrected by a local.

In proper comedic tradition, everything goes downhill from there and fast. The house is crooked and rotting, so Blandings decides to tear it down and build a new one. He walks into this endeavour with blind faith and enthusiasm and comes out the other end a changed man. He is suddenly beset with bills, troubled by workmen, perplexed by the lintels between the lally columns, and driven to distraction by the delivery of the wrong windows. His basement is flooded by a newly discovered bubbling spring. His ideal tool shed has a dodgy lock. And why is his wife making eyes at Bill?

Despite all of these comical complications, however, I was surprised to find that "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" largely eschews farce and screwball laughs in favour of a gentler brand of domestic comedy. Instead of wringing out gags from falling roofs and holes in the floor, it focuses on Mr Blandings' growing disenchantment with the city life, his desperate and ill-advised attempt to reinvent himself as the lord of the manor, and his relationship with Mrs Blandings whom he assumes must be as unhappy as he is.

Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are definitely a tad too old to play this naive couple looking for their place under the sun but they do it so well and so charmingly that it's easy to overlook their age. Cary Grant is absolutely winning as the strung-out ad executive who jumps in headfirst into a foolhardy venture simply to avoid being stuck in his office all day. Meanwhile, Myrna Loy delivers a beautifully tuned performance which is more low-key than her usual sparkling work but which still simmers with her own brand of wisecracking wit.

The supporting cast is equally as good, especially Melvyn Douglas who is the perfect straight man with his laidback attitude and cynical disposition. His subplot with Myrna Loy may lead nowhere in narrative terms but it does offer more than a few laughs. The gaggle of workmen who exploit, irritate, and generally drive Mr Blandings crazy is played by Jason Robards Sr., Harry Shannon, Tito Vuolo, and Nestor Paiva among others. Each of them is given a funny little vignette to play which they do with relish. Every character whom Mr Blandings encounters on his way to his dream home is deliciously distinctive and comical.

Director H.C. Potter gives the film a slower pace than I expected. On the whole, in fact, "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" is a gentler, more subdued comedy than the premise may lead us to assume. Don't go into this film expecting the ratatat delivery of Loy & Powell or the sharp comedic tension of Hepburn & Tracy. This film aims to be sweet rather than cutting and winning rather than relentless. Potter's laidback attitude, however, fits right in with the film's countryside setting and allows for Grant and Loy's terrific performances to breathe and take on a more human character than is usual in screwball comedies.

Based on an autobiographical novel by Eric Hodgins which has since been filmed several more times, "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" is a pleasant and thoroughly winning comedy. It's not a classic on the level of Grant or Loy's best work nor is it continuously hilarious but it feels as comfortable as a pair of slippers on a rainy evening. As the credits rolled I had a smile on my face and a spring in my step and sometimes that's more than enough.

3/4

19-10-2023

If the history of cinema is indeed boys photographing girls, then the history of the thriller genre is boys photographing girls being menaced by boys. The more helpless the damsel in distress, the more heroic the boy who saves her looks and who is more helpless than a blind lady? That's why there's almost a subgenre of thrillers about beautiful blind ladies being menaced by dastardly killers. What I liked about Michael Apted's take on the genre, a serial killer thriller named "Blink", is that the damsel in distress is actually not all that helpless. She's actually smarter, sharper, and tougher than any of the cops trying to protect her.

OK, Emma Brody (Madeleine Stowe) is not technically blind. She is recovering from a cornea transplant which has restored her vision after 20+ years of blindness. As she regains her sight and gets used to the sensory overload, she begins experiencing a phenomenon her doctor calls "a perceptual delay". What this means is that her eyes register what they see but don't transmit it to the brain until a day later. In other words, she begins experiencing visions or hallucinations of things she actually saw the day before.

I have no idea if this is a real condition or not. Some cursory Googling suggests not but the doctor in the film assures us that there is "some research" about it. It reminds me of the kind of pseudoscience that Giallo thrillers used to be based around. Sort of like Dario Argento's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" which revolved around the idea that a dead person's eye imprints the last thing it saw on its cornea.

Anyway, as she rests after the surgery at home she hears a strange noise outside of her door. She goes out to investigate but sees nothing. Or so she thinks. The next day she has one of her visions - the image of a man hiding in the shadows. Predictably, the man she saw is a vicious serial killer who rapes and murders women but not necessarily in that order. He has killed his latest victim in Emma's building and she is the sole eyewitness.

As I said before, Emma is a tough, smart character wonderfully played by Madeleine Stowe. She's a ballbuster, as she is repeatedly described by the various characters she runs into and takes no nonsense from anyone. There's a great moment when she walks into the police station and asks "Are there any cops around here who work or do you all just sit around and drink coffee". After the cops try to make fun of her condition she tells them to f-off and storms out. She's definitely a lady who can take care of herself.

But "Blink's" first mistake is that it surrounds her with characters who aren't half as competent or sharp as she is. The film's male protagonist, Detective John Hallstrom (Aidan Quinn) is, in fact, a complete wimp. On top of that, he and all of his colleagues are depicted as unbearable jerks who treat Emma as if she's a crank even after she basically solves the case for them. They continually make tasteless, obnoxious jokes and seem unable to talk about anything other than sex. The very first scene of the film, in fact, introduces them drunk in a bar making unwanted passes at a woman just trying to do her job.

All of this wouldn't be a problem if the film didn't seem to think we should like Hallstrom and his motley crew of sexists. In fact, Emma herself falls in love with John which was more stupefying and mysterious to me than anything involving the film's serial killer. Why does she like this jerk? This guy constantly belittles her, yells at her, makes her think he loves her and then rudely dismisses her when his lieutenant rightfully admonishes him for not doing his job. He's also a terrible detective. He's meant to be leading the investigation into a serial killer but instead, he spends all of his time having steamy sex with Emma and avoiding phone calls from his colleagues.

Dana Stevens' screenplay gives us a strong, capable, intelligent female character and then makes her fall in love with the lousiest, nastiest, stupidest cop this side of "The Naked Gun". Why? In fact, why did there even need to be a love story in this film? Well, probably because there's not much else to fill out the film's runtime. The serial killer storyline is decently put together but never particularly engaging. There are no suspects, no clues, and very little narrative progression. The killer helpfully seems to wait for Emma and John to fall in love before he kills again. Ultimately, Stevens commits the worst sin of all when it comes to writing thrillers - she breaks the first commandment of Father Knox which states that the killer must be someone who's actually appeared in the story before the third act.

Michael Apted, certainly a capable director of thrillers, himself doesn't seem awfully interested in this story. He gives the thriller scenes a rather off-handed treatment shooting them in the blandest way possible and getting them out of the way quickly. The film has a disappointing lack of style, despite being photographed by the great Dante Spinotti it has a ploddingly realistic look like an indie drama or a TV movie. It lacks atmosphere, scares or thrills.

What "Blink" seems more interested in are its characters and their relationships which is admirable if not entirely successful. There are some wonderful character beats in this film such as Emma realizing that she has no idea what beauty is after decades of blindness. She bluntly asks a woman "Are you beautiful" and then proceeds to stare at herself in the mirror. "I look like my mother," she concludes.

Another great scene has Hallstrom coming face to face with the husband of the serial killer's third victim. The husband takes Hallstrom to task. "What have you been doing? Why didn't you catch him?" Hallstrom can only look embarrassed because he doesn't have a good enough answer.

But despite all of these good scenes, a fascinating premise, and a first-rate performance from Madeleine Stowe, "Blink" does not amount to much. As a thriller, it's awfully simplistic, engaging, and lacking in style and atmosphere. As a love story, it lacks a strong and likeable male character since John Hallstrom is a stupid chauvinist pig. As a serious drama, it is weighed down by its preposterous serial killer plot.

Had "Blink" been a character study of Emma Brody, a woman who had spent her entire life blind regaining sight and having to learn how to navigate the world around her, it would have been a far more fascinating movie. Sadly, writer Dana Stevens and director Michael Apted made a muddled film, uncertain of its tone, lacking thrills, and saddled with a despicable male lead.

2/4

20-10-2023

David Grann's non-fiction book, "Killers of the Flower Moon", is easily one of the most harrowing and disquieting reads of my life. It tells the story of a series of murders of Native Americans in the first half of the 20th century which the Osage refer to as the Reign of Terror. I am not an easy crier but Grann's minute depiction of the racism, segregation, and infantilisation that the Osage endured under the thumb of white Americans made me tear up more than once.

Now, the book has been turned into a major motion picture, the latest epic directed by Martin Scorsese who now seems to specialize exclusively in three-hour, multi-generational, historical dramas. It features a cast to die for, Scorsese's usual first-rate crew including cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and the late composer Robbie Robertson, and the budget and the ambition to grasp the full scope of the Reign of Terror.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" is predictably an exceptional picture expertly made by a master filmmaker and featuring bravura performances. Not a second of its 206-minute runtime feels slow, boring, or excessive. It is consistently entertaining, engrossing, and horrifying. And yet, I do have to say that it is never as striking, enraging, or harrowing as Grann's book and I left the theatre rather confused wondering why I wasn't feeling as impacted and moved as I did when I finished the book.

I believe the answer lies in the fact that Scorsese and writer Eric Roth chose to tell the story from the perspective of the killers - the white Americans who marry and then kill their Osage wives in order to inherit their considerable wealth - rather than the Osage themselves. The film does, I must say, show a great deal of respect for the Osage tribe and vast amounts of historical and cultural research are evident but there is no doubt that the lead characters are the villainous millionaire William Hale and his nephew Ernest Burkhart.

The film also chooses to end on a rather more positive and upbeat note than Grann's book. Scorsese never spares his white antagonists their rightful scorn but he also depicts the FBI agents who eventually cracked the case as rather stereotypical white saviours. If you were just to watch the film, you'd conclude that the entire Reign of Terror was orchestrated by Hale and his cronies and that the FBI successfully dealt with them at the end of their painstaking investigation.

The true story, as outlined in detail in Grann's book, is rather more horrifying. The systemic abuse and exploitation of the Osage were perpetrated by pretty much every white American who stepped foot on their land even if they acted independently from Hale. It was a cultural matter, something which was considered normal for white folk to do, and which was quietly approved by the government. The conclusion of the investigation was also not nearly as neat as Scorsese depicts. In truth, most of Hale's co-conspirators got away scot-free, most of their victims got no justice at all, and the murders continued well into the 1930s many years after the FBI closed the case and considered the matter dealt with.

Nevertheless, this is a strong movie and a picturesque evocation of the historical period. With his three-and-a-half-hour runtime, Scorsese unfolds the story at an unhurried pace leaving plenty of room for some wonderful little details and scenes such as the opening newsreel or one of the most beautiful death scenes ever committed to film in which an old woman is literally visited by her ancestors.

Leonardo DiCaprio delivers the finest performance of his career, minutely detailed and superbly controlled, playing the put-upon Ernest Burkhart whose life has left him with a permanent sour expression. DiCaprio seems to have altered the very physiognomy of his face for the role making Ernest appear aged by the hardships of his life. For the first time ever, I became fully invested in the character DiCaprio is playing and I completely forgot I was watching a movie star on screen.

Burkhart's domineering uncle William Hale is played by Robert De Niro in his best performance since "Meet the Parents". He is utterly creepy as the manipulative Hale, a man who tells his nephew that he doesn't have to call him sir - "call me King". He walks through Osage territory as if he owned it. He behaves towards them like a benevolent ruler or a kindly grandfather patronizing them. There is an absolutely chilling moment in which Hale says an Osage prayer in memory of a person he just had murdered. But then De Niro has always been brilliant at playing wolves in sheep's clothing.

The heart of the film and the absolute standout performance, however, comes from Lily Gladstone as Mollie, an Osage who falls in love with Ernest and who offers us the Native American perspective on the events. Gladstone is simply mesmerizing. She has a real, rare screen presence which reminded me of the great actresses of the 1930 and 1940s. Most of all, she has a fantastic stillness, conveying almost the entirety of her performance through her huge, hypnotizing eyes and an occasional warm smile. She makes Molly a tough lady indeed, someone who is not easily manipulated or swindled, and someone who is determined not to let the terror continue. Oh, how I wish the film was all about her!

This trio of leads is offered terrific support from actors like Jesse Plemons as a Columbo-like FBI agent, John Lithgow as an ageing prosecutor, Cara Jade Myers as Mollie's wild sister, and William Belleau who turns in a heartfelt performance of a man overcome with "melancholia". The titular killers are superbly well cast with memorable character actors such as Louis Cancelmi, Sturgill Simpson, and Ty Mitchell. I also have to mention an absolute scene-stealing bit part played by Brendan Fraser as Hale's wily Southern lawyer who proves just as menacing as his client.

The film is beautifully photographed by Rodrigo Prieto, especially in its more lyrical passages such as the Osage's discovery of oil or a haunting sequence in which Hale's co-conspirators burn the very land they worked so hard to snatch from the Osage. Underscoring these wonderful sequences is Robbie Robertson's final and best film score consisting of an energizing bassline which reminded me of the heartbeat at the center of Ennio Morricone's music for "The Thing" and a droning electric guitar wail which sounds like a coyote's howl.

All of this combined makes "Killers of the Flower Moon" a film not to be missed even though it just falls short of brilliance. In the end, it only portrays a small chunk of the Reign of Terror and a story only of a few people rather than the entire Osage Nation.

3.5/4