After seeing THE SUBSTITUTE and PORKY’S 2: PORKY IS NOT IN THIS ONE THOUGH I wanted to catch up with all the other movies Alan Ormsby had anything to do with, and POPCORN seemed like a good choice for Halloween. It’s about some film students who put on a big vintage horror marathon complete with William Castle style gimmicks. It happens at a big old style movie house and the patrons come in costume and ready to be obnoxious.

But the most obnoxious is a mystery maniac who’s terrorizing the place, possibly for reasons related to a “film cult” whose unfinished last film POSSESSOR these students happened to find a print of. Apparently this cult leader/auteur named Gates showed the movie before burning down a theater… and they never found the body. Not sure if that is relevant but thought I’d mention it just in case, I don’t know. Might be an unnecessary detail.

It’s a cool idea I think, but honestly most of the fun comes from the festival itself, the movies-within-the-movie, which I think I heard Ormsby directed, but if so he’s not credited for it. There’s MOSQUITO, THE AMAZING ELECTRIFIED MAN and a dubbed Japanese one called THE STENCH. I was really impressed by that last one because Godzilla movies always get parodied (and martial arts movies if you want to lump in other Asian cultures) but I don’t think most filmatists know about (or expect us to know about) the non giant monster Japanese horror of that era like GREEN SLIME, MATANGO and all that stuff. So it gives it some movie nerd cred and authenticity. I also thought alot of (but not all of) it felt fairly accurate to the feel of a real good festival of this type. Actually this would’ve been a pretty spectacular event to attend for the most part – a relatively small number of people get killed. So 99% of the moviegoers I think had a good time and probly didn’t regret going, unless they can’t appreciate old campy movies, in which case fuck ‘em.

Bob Clark somehow consulted the makeup department, and there are in fact some pretty cool illusions of a burnt up monster putting on masks of the other characters.

The movies aren’t really funny exactly, they’re just cool “what if” alternate cinematic history and if they really existed you can see how fun it would be to watch them late at night with that huge crowd and electrified seats and all that. So that makes it enjoyable. The movie itself is watchable, but not great.

Ormsby is credited for writing the screenplay, and it’s directed by Mark Herrier, the guy who played Billy in the PORKY’S saga.

After POPCORN I watched this Australian SCREAM-era (2000) meta-slasher called CUT. You get it, because a director yells “cut” and a maniac cuts you. Double meaning. Just like POPCORN and that newer one THE HILLS RUN RED this involves a cursed horror film. It’s an ’80s slasher abandoned two different times when real murders took place on set. Now a hot-prospect film student (”she’s supposed to be the next Jane Campion”) convinces the star (Molly Ringwald) to return to Australia to give it another go, and of course the murders start happening again.

The film references aren’t too obnoxious, and it’s kind of cute to see it from an Australian perspective. They even mention MAD MAX 4 being about to happen. They don’t hide from SCREAM either, mentioning both it and Wes Craven in the dialogue. The heroine looks a little like Neve Campbell too, and has a secret connection to the murders through her mother. And it uses similar pop music on the soundtrack.

I thought it was kind of cool that it was a woman director in the movie. Genre tradition takes precedence over the reality of the industry power structure. The actual director of CUT is a man though, Kimble Rendall. He hasn’t done much else as a director but seems to have made a good career as second unit director on big Hollywood productions that film in Australia. He did the MATRIX sequels, I, ROBOT and KNOWING. And, uh, GHOST RIDER. But, you know. Food and electricity cost money.

In CUT (and the movie within-the-movie) the killer wears an adequately creepy full head and neck mask. The “kills” are okay. I like the part where he kills the guy playing the killer in the movie – it’s not every day you see a masked slasher get his rubber throat slit.

It seems to be solidly in that whodunit slasher mold revived by SCREAM, with all the red herrings and possible motives and what not. At one point it looks like it’s heading for a SCOOBY-DOO type ending. But (SPOILER) in the end it turns out to be supernatural. I didn’t see that coming. So he’s silent stalker and burnt up supernatural being, like if you took off Jason’s mask and he was Freddy underneath. And this guy’s death is great, involving some fantastic latex effects and crying so horribly I almost felt sorry for him.

I didn’t feel sorry for Ringwald though. It’s cool to see her again, but her role is kind of lame. She just plays the cliche of the bitchy primadona star, and not even well written enough to get many laughs out of it. There are a few moments when she’s portrayed as a human being, but there oughta be more. Maybe they were waiting for part 2.

I guess Kylie Minogue is in there too, but I didn’t know which one she was. I’ve heard the name but don’t really know who she is.

Darth Irritable suggested this in the “homework assignment” thread, and I think maybe someone else had been trying to push it on me too. It lived up to the recommendation: nothing special but fairly enjoyable.

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It’s the sequel curse, really. People will be mad if you don’t reference stuff from the first one, but if you do they’ve already seen it so it’s not gonna be as great as they thought it would be. It’s like Pop Tarts – they’re fine and everything but every time I eat one I think “that’s right, I forgot, they’re kind of dry and flavorless.” That’s how it is in this sometimes. When it opens with Pee Wee waking up with a boner that’s a cute “we have to do this again” moment instead of an outrageous way to start out a movie. The sequel is Pop Tarts, the original is Toaster Strudel.

The plot of this time is a little more far-fetched, and that leads to both the movie’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. It’s not as real as part 1 because it’s more of a movie conflict: they end up taking on the school board, the religious right and even the Ku Klux Klan. But those storylines also make it kind of interesting because instead of just more horniness and giggling it deals with self righteous censors, corrupt politicians and prejudice against Seminoles. Plus horniness and giggling.

I think it also makes a point of making Wendy a much stronger character with pranking powers equal to a boy’s. She plans and executes the dismantling of a political career through the medium of classy-French-restaurant-slapstick (fake puke, garcons falling in fountains, etc.). That part’s too broad for me, with some laughs here and there. But I like the part where she reveals to Pee Wee, in a genuinely kind of sweet scene, that she’s not really the ho people say she is and that she had sex with him in the bus at the end of part 1 because she actually liked him.

The title implies a HALLOWEEN II (original version) approach, but after initially dealing with Pee Wee’s feelings it doesn’t really matter that it’s the next day, and continues into other days. Also, the establishment known as Porky’s is still demolished, and Porky himself is never seen. From what I’ve read it sounds like they wanted him to be one of the Klansmen, but he wouldn’t do nudity. Porky has standards.

Even after losing his virginity Pee Wee is still insecure, and keeps pretending he has a stable of women to hook the other guys up with. They know he’s full of shit but play along to embarrass him, then he tries to prank them and they try to prank him back. I like how in the scenes where they’re fucking with him they don’t pull it off perfectly. They keep almost cracking up, or you can see their faces smiling but turning away so he doesn’t see them. Still, they’re starting to be like the Impossible Mission Force of pranking, they get pretty elaborate. Alot of cloak and dagger shit goin on here.

My favorite part of the movie is the reaction the cops have to the guy in the excellent zombie makeup who’s supposed to scare people in the cemetery. Usually in a broad comedy like this everybody would be superstitious and think it was a real zombie, or they’d see the zombie and decide to stop drinking. In this one nobody who sees the zombie really reacts much, they just kind of stare at him wondering what his deal is.

Our pal Alan Ormsby (DERANGED, DEATHDREAM, THE SUBSTITUTE) is credited as co-writer along with Roger Swaybill and Bob Clark.

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THE SUBSTITUTE is not necessarily a great action movie. It doesn’t have any particularly memorable action scenes or anything. But I really like this movie for the simple fact that the idea behind it – combining a mercenaries/drug gangs action movie with a DANGEROUS MINDS style white-teacher-makes-a-difference-in-the-big-city movie – is flat out brilliant, a once-in-a-cinematic-history opportunity. Seriously, I sit around trying to think of genre combinations this absurd and yet this natural. There aren’t many left.

Tom Berenger plays Shale, a just-disavowed covert ops badass looking for work when his old girlfriend (Diane Venora), a teacher of the toughest class at a gang-infested Miami high school, gets knee-capped. He figures her students are responsible so he has his computer expert friends whip him up various fake degrees and a background in education, then he becomes the substitute teacher for her class, undercover.

Some filmatists might’ve made this movie but pussied out and not gone all the way with the concept. Not these filmatists. They stay true. It turns out the biggest troublemaker in the class (Mark Anthony – the guy that’s married to Jennifer Lopez!) is also the #1 lieutenant in a drug gang. And the big boss man is the school’s principal (Ernie Hudson), which explains why he was timid about kicking guys like that out of school. They store coke by the kilo in the floor of the school’s boiler room. And there’s a big transaction going down after the parent-teacher conferences.

As a side note, my spell check apparently doesn’t know there’s a past tense of the word “pussy.”

From there the movie could move to some exotic locale, like Miami Beach, or some swamp or something. But still it stays loyal to being a school-based action movie. Shale and his merc buddies (Luis Guzman, William Forsythe, Raymond Cruz, Richard Brooks) take on the gangs and a team of rival mercenaries inside the school at night. In fact, Shale has his showdown with the lead merc inside his own class room, which we know by the 100 misspelled punishment sentences on the chalkboard. Shale explains that it’s a remedial class before he shoots the guy – my one regret is that he doesn’t tell him he failed.

During the climax I was thinking it was funny that nobody heard gunshots and called the cops, but then our heroes actually address that as they walk off into the sunset. They also feel bad that they had to blow up parts of the school. But since earlier they stole drug money and used it to buy sports equipment and school supplies I figure it sort of evens out.

This would’ve made a funny Seagal movie (it’s got the black ops background, the old computer expert friend, the learning, and I’m sure he would’ve thrown in some Spanish or ebonics) but it’s perfect for Tom Berenger. He has just the right cold stare and unemotional responses. I believe he would be the thing that finally scares some of these gangster kids. When he’s writing on the chalkboard and somebody throws a can at the back of his head his reflexes are so fast he catchs it and throws it back in the kid’s face. Ninja shit. In fact, later on he stocks up on ninja stars. So don’t go saying the American education system isn’t up to snuff. We got ninjas. And they bond with students by comparing ‘Nam scars to gang scars.

It’s just enjoyable to watch him dominate these people, like when a bunch of guys ambush him in the library but he is prepared and makes them put their guns in a library cart and rolls them away. And tells them not to talk in the library. I like Tom Berenger.

I like that all those guys are on his team too, even if they don’t get to do a huge amount. Forsythe does get to be the psycho on the team, the guy who enjoys it too much, who goes overboard and shoots people unnecessarily. At one point he has a guy tied up and kicks cocaine in his face like that cartoon bully kicking sand in the wimp’s face on the beach.

Raymond Cruz might not be a name that means anything to you, but if you watch alot of ’90s action movies you’ll recognize him and he’ll make you feel at home. He was in OUT FOR JUSTICE, UNDER SIEGE, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, BROKEN ARROW, THE ROCK, ALIEN RESURRECTION and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2, plus others. In this one he looks like kind of an idiot because he’s got a ponytail on the top of his head, like a topknot. But that’s just what mercenaries do I guess.

They use a couple of the well-traveled but lesser known action tropes that I enjoy:

* the American flag gets shot down in one of the classrooms. In Seagal movies you often see symbols of knowledge or spirituality (books, statues) get accidentally hit in a shootout. A flag getting shot is a similar idea.

* class tensions – Shale goes after a rich asshole on a jai alai court. He chases him into the locker room and keeps beating on him. The two guys whose job it is to weave the xistera (jai alai scoop thingy – special thanks to Wikipedia) watch but don’t give a shit and just sit there weaving.

The director is Robert Mandel, who did F/X and SCHOOL TIES. But I was surprised to learn that the writers are names I know from being a horror fan. The credits list the team of Roy Frumkes & Rocco Simonelli, plus Alan Ormsby. (Not sure which ones wrote the first draft and which ones rewrote it.) Frumkes is the guy who wrote STREET TRASH, but I recognized him as director of DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD, that awesome documentary where they followed the making of DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD. Ormsby was a regular collaborator with the late Bob Clark. He wrote and starred in the cult favorite CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. To be honest I am not a member of the cult that it is a favorite of, I couldn’t get through it, partly because of Ormsby playing this obnoxious fucker:

But I forgive him because he wrote the uncomfortably funny Ed Gein movie DERANGED and the war-themed zombie movie DEATHDREAM. Also I just learned that he invented a creepy doll:

From the creator of Hugo comes THE SUBSTITUTE. That’s two good ways to get into Heaven.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a serial killer out of Wisconsin called Ed Gein. He is the most fucked up motherfucker that ever was fucked up. He is the original American Psycho as they would say on Entertainment Tonight. When they caught him he had a dead lady hanging in his shed cleaned out like a deer. He had a heart on his stove and all kinds of heads and skulls and chairs and clothes made out of human skin. He started out digging up graves and then started killing people, collecting their body parts, wearing them and possibly eating them. I mean jesus, I’m not making this up, but don’t read it if you’re eating – the dude had a box full of vaginas and he liked to dance around in the moonlight wearing a belt he made out of nipples. In my opinion, he had a problem with women.

Anway this fucker inspired alot of the most famous horror pictures, from Psycho to Texas Chainsaw to Hannibal Lecter and, I forget which other ones, possibly The Fly or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or one of those. But this picture Deranged is a more obscure one from 1978 which is based much more closely on the actual case.

For the movie they changed his name to Ez instead of Ed, because he is still alive and living in some minimum security place somewhere and I mean, you never know. But personally I think he would be able to figure out that it was him if he saw the movie. Anyway the story begins with Ez’s mom dying, and shows how lonely he is, and next thing you know he digs her up and starts taking care of her. Then it’s more graverobbing. I don’t mean to preach or anything but the guy is a sicko in my opinion. Anyway there are subplots about Ez having dinner with his childhood buddy, who he calls sir. His buddy’s wife (”ma’am”) convinces him to start going on dates, and this leads to him start killing.

Now this whole graverobbing cannibal business is a really crazy story and that’s obviously the main appeal of this picture. But the only reason I enjoyed it is because, well, it’s funny as hell. I mean yes, there might be some people who would argue that it is tasteless to take some of the most shocking atrocities ever committed, put them on screen thirty years later and play it for laughs. But, in my opinion, there is, I mean, as far as I’m concerned, with the uh… well, they’re right. It’s tasteless. but still.

Ez is played completely convincingly by Roberts Blossoms as this dim old farm boy who is over polite and with no social skills. Which fits the character pretty good if you think about it. When a gal is trying to come on to him, he seems confused and says, “ma’am?” Later he tells his mummified dead mama that he thinks the gal has a screw or two loose.

There is another funny scene where Ez is driving home from having first dug up his mom’s corpse. He gets pulled over and he tells the cop that the bad smell in his truck is from a dead pig. As he drives away he says, “I apologize for calling you a pig, mama.”

And then when local gals are missing, Ez starts telling everybody that they’re not missing, he has them at his house. People just laugh and say that he has a twisted sense of humor. I thought this was pretty funny, then I read that it really happened with Ed Gein. So maybe it’s not funny, even though I laughed. I guess it depends on your tastes in real life serial killer comedy. I mean if you like them then, this must be one of the better ones.

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Even though he’s a zombie, he’s also a metaphor for people who survive war. They come back changed and nobody knows what to do to help them. Andy doesn’t get his hand in a garbage disposal like in ROLLING THUNDER, he doesn’t get bullied by the sherriff for being a longhair like in FIRST BLOOD, he doesn’t get spit on by protesters like in the urban legends. On the surface people treat him real good, like a great hero, but they just don’t understand him. They don’t even try.

At first the family thinks it’s a miracle, the state department made a mistake. But it’s immediately clear that their son has come back different. He barely talks, he stares off into nothingness, he smiles worse than Dick Cheney, he strangles a dog in front of a bunch of little kids. Also he’s been going around killing people, draining their blood and shooting it up (a little vietnam drug reference for you there). And then he starts to rot. Andy never had maggots crawling out of him before Vietnam.

But nobody seems to notice that Andy is different, or at least they don’t want to admit it. They welcome him home and ask him questions and then answer them for themselves and don’t notice that he’s not talking to them and maybe not listening. They tell him anecdotes about world war 2 and act like they’re his buddy and don’t notice that they aren’t connecting with him on any level, or that he literally doesn’t have a soul. Or a pulse either.

The feel is alot like a play or a movie from an earlier era, with some very dialogue heavy scenes and a little too much jokey dialogue from the various characters in the neighborhood (like the wacky mailman who talks to their dog).

The cast is good: the mother in denial, the pretty, scared sister and the dad who looks exactly like Magneto reborn as a small town american dad. And especially the guy who plays Andy. He kind of reminds me of the kid who stars in MARTIN, but his character is much more distant and emotionless.

It’s not incredibly gorey, but it’s Tom Savini’s first movie. He gets the credit for the makeup anyway, but according to the extras on the DVD he was pretty much an assistant for Alan Ormsby (who also wrote the movie). Savini was a combat photographer in Vietnam, so I wonder what he thought about doing this movie?

The movie has a bunch of different titles, like DEAD OF NIGHT and THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME and I guess it was written as THE VETERAN. None of these titles are any good, including DEATHDREAM, and I bet that’s why it’s not a very well known movie. I mean come on dude, DEATHDREAM? Let’s get real here boys.

The director is Bob Clark, who also did the fucked up but very funny Ed Gein movie DERANGED (also with Ormsby and Savini). This guy made some good (if ugly) movies for a while, then he got famous for PORKY’S and CHRISTMAS STORY and then, I don’t know, details are sketchy but I’m figuring at some point he must’ve gone off to a war and came back traumatized. Because he does BABY GENIUSES movies now. Also something called THE KARATE DOG. But still, DEATHDREAM’s worth seeing. Give the guy a break. Maybe he’s doing garbage now but he’s got his bases covered because he made this movie back in 1974 that’s very relevant today. And who knows, maybe 30 years from now we’ll be saying the same thing about BABY GENIUSES 2: SUPERBABIES.

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