Posts Tagged ‘slashers’

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Well, Michael Bay is going down the list of everything he can do to ruin the quality of my life. Destroy the language of action cinema – check. Produce a horrible remake of one of my all time favorite movies – check. Make one of the most moronic event movies ever imagined and convince most of America that’s the best you can expect from a “summer popcorn movie” – check. He also personally re-elected Bush, in my opinion, and invited all the yelling party kids to hang out outside my apartment every night after the bars close. So he’s pretty much set everything on fire already but just to add insult to injury he’s circling back to pee on my rose garden by having his rat fucking, no-account production company Platinum Dunes “relaunch” both Jason AND Freddy. And maybe I’m in a small faction here but I was patiently awaiting the JASON VS. FREDDY 2 they’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while and was not aware that those two troublemakers had been sent back to the docks yet.

So as much as I believe in forgiveness and second chances, I’m pretty sure I will hate this soul-less cokehead asswipe for all his days, even if he prevents world war 3 (unlikely) or gives all his Lamborghinis to charity (way more unlikely). But on the positive side he has so far failed to erase the existence of the movies he is working hard to destroy the legacy of. So to celebrate the silver lining on this toxic cloud I think I’m gonna go back and watch and review all the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies. Take that, Michael Bay. Game, set and match, motherfucker.

When people think of ELM STREET they usually think of wisecracking Freddy, making puns and calling women bitches. (Not only is he a child killer, he’s disrespectful to women.) You think of all those teens who have one hobby or fear and then they fall asleep and have an elaborate dream where that hobby or fear turns into their ironic death. So if they’re into comic books they will be killed by Super Freddy, if they’re afraid of bugs they’ll be turned into a roach and stuck in a roach motel. If Freddy haunted Michael Bay I guess he’d dream about driving around in his Lamborghini getting a blowjob but all the sudden the hooker turns into Freddy. Freddy sucks Michael Bay (played by Peter Horton) in through his mouth and shits out an animated film loop with Michael Bay’s head on it. The film screams “Noooo!” in a high–pitched voice as Freddy puts it into an old fashioned movieola with red and green stripes painted on it. Then he starts chopping the shit out of the film with his finger-knives and makes some quip about quick cuts making a scene more exciting. (more…)

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Hatchet

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Well, I guess now it’s officially a pattern. The pattern goes like this:

  1. small independent horror movie plays a few small film festivals.
  2. People on the internet go ape shit because they got to see it first.
  3. Buzz spreads for a year or so.
  4. Anchor Bay (#1 releaser of horror movies in the VHS days) buys rights, gives tiny theatrical release.
  5. I see it on DVD.
  6. god damn it, why don’t they make good ones anymore

This pattern started with BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON and fortunately this one is not as asinine as that one. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t cut the mustard. Believe me, I wish it did. I see mustard everywhere and I want nothing more than for that mustard to be cut by a movie like this. But just being above the standards of the DTV giant snake movies is not a horror resurgence.

I had hopes for HATCHET because unlike BEHIND THE MASK there’s nothing postmodern or meta about it. It’s just a straightup slasher movie about a big, unkillable freak chopping people up in the Louisiana swamp. His name is Victor Crowley and he’s played by Kane Hodder, who played Jason in some of the later FRIDAY THE 13ths. Victor has a backstory kind of like Jason meets the guy in THE BURNING: he was a deformed freak who kids treated bad, then his dad (also Kane Hodder) hit him in the face with a hatchet and also I think he was set on fire or something, I forget. (more…)

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Book Review: Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

Monday morning I heard a phrase on the radio that surprised me: “men, women and chain saws,” said in a somewhat dismissive voice.

What the hell? This was a weird coincidence. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Berkeley professor Carol J. Clover is a very academic book exploring gender issues in slasher, possession and rape-revenge films, mostly from the ’70s. I read the book years ago and it really affected my view of slasher movies. I paraphrase it alot when defending these kinds of movies (a pretty regular past time these days).

I think it’s been an influential book, but I don’t know anybody else who’s read it, so it was a surprise to hear it on the morning news. I had read it mentioned recently in the Fangoria horror magazine, when Quentin Tarantino mentioned it in an interview about Death Proof. It’s not surprising he read it. In the first half of Death Proof he uses alot of the slasher movie conventions discussed in the book, setting up Butterfly as what Clover calls “the Final Girl.” The biggest clue is that she has “the investigative gaze,” she’s the one who notices Stuntman Mike’s car and keeps eyeing him, and is scared of him. No one else realizes anything is wrong. Ordinarily this would mean that she would go on to survive and defeat, escape from, maybe even kill Stuntman Mike. But, well, maybe some other time. (Of course, he ends up making what is more obviously a feminist movie, not having to even have the women tormented too much before they want to spit on somebody’s grave.)

After Tarantino’s interview reminded me I thought I should read the book again, so I ordered a used one online. There’s alot more Freudian shit in there than I remembered, but it holds up. Clover’s main argument is that the slasher genre in general is not as misogynistic as its critics would have you believe. The book seems to be a response to critics like Siskel and Ebert who had crusaded against slasher movies in the wake of the Friday the 13th movies. She argues — and I think she’s completely right — that when an audience watches a movie like Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Halloween, or their lesser cousins and nephews, their sympathies lie with the victims. Although they may cheer when Jason squeezes a skull just right so that an eyeball pops out in 3-D, they will cheer louder when the Final Girl gives him what’s what. Many critics condescendingly assume that horror fans are crazed sadists popping boners from the torment of women. But Clover shows example after example after example of how the movies are specifically designed for the viewers, despite being mostly males, to put themselves in the woman’s shoes. (more…)

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The Slumber Party Massacre

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

This is a slasher movie about girls at a slumber party, and a dude with a portable drill. There is no pillow fights or nothing but otherwise it pretty much plays out how you would imagine.

Almost anywhere you read about this movie they say it’s a feminist slasher movie. I can see a touch here or there that supports that theory, but I am positive that pretty much every one of these people would be saying it was misogynistic if it was directed by a man. In most respects it’s exactly like every other slasher movie of the time, including showing lots of gratuitous female (and not male) nudity. When the girl gets up in the morning you see her take her shirt off to change into a dress. When she goes to school you see lots of nudity in the locker room, including a really funny shot (I’m not sure if it’s intentionally funny or not) that pans down and just focuses on a girl’s ass for a while before panning back up to where it started. Then during the slumber party they all take their clothes off to change into their night clothes and for the most part don’t wear pants for the rest of the movie. The other characters, who don’t get naked, wear those tight running shorts that were popular at the time.

Plus, there’s a scene where the girls are in the school gym playing basketball, and they’re fucking terrible. They can barely dribble, let alone shoot. I thought it was okay, they’re just high school kids in gym class. But then they mention that it’s not gym class, it’s the actual varsity team. You call that feminism? I’ve seen the Seattle Storm before, I know girls can play basketball.

The alleged feminism in the movie is pretty minor. There is a shot (also used for the movie poster) that goes from between the killer’s legs with the drill pointing down to look like a dick, but that’s not all that different from Jason’s machete or Leatherface’s chainsaw (especially in part 2 where in one scene it’s almost more of a prosthetic penis than a phallic symbol). At the end one of the girls hacks the drill bit off with a machete and this makes the killer helpless, so the phallic thing is obviously not a coincidence. (more…)

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Boys, boys, boys–

These last couple weeks have been tough on my mental facilities. I reviewed that great new “ULTIMATE” edition of the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, I also revisited parts 3 and 4 in that original series, then on Thursday I reviewed the new prequel to the remake. So by that point I’d studied and written about pretty much every angle to the whole Texas Chainsaw deal. You’d think I’d be done with it by now, but there is one final chapter: the one spinoff of the original movie that achieves its own level of True Greatness. I am talking about Tobe Hooper’s 1986 sequel, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. It’s been available on DVD for a couple years in a bare bones edition (get it, that is a pun because of all the skeletons they have) but Tuesday it comes out in a much deserved special edition with new commentaries, featurettes and deleted scenes.

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is my all time best buds forever horror movie, so it’s lucky for me that part 2 happens to be one of my all time favorite sequels. Mostly hated in its time, it has developed a little bit better of a reputation over the years and if it’s not at bona fide classic status by now I think it will be after this DVD gets around and more people give it serious consideration. Like Mr. Romero’s DEAD pictures Mr. Hooper here made a chainsaw movie to represent the time it was made, an excessive, over-the-top ’80s take on TCSM. While it’s about as unrelenting and in-your-face-crazy as slasher movies come, it’s also way more of a comedy than the original, so I can understand why some people didn’t cotton to it right away. But I think most horror fans who gave it half a chance would fall in love with its deranged brilliance.

A warning: it starts out iffy. The first thing you hear after the credits is the dated 1980s drum machine of a Timbuk3 song. And the first scene is about some obnoxious high school yuppie football fans driving down a Texas highway firing guns and calling the K-OKLA request line, announcing themselves as “Buzz” and “Rick the Prick.” Like in many bad horror movies (especially of that era) these are characters that you will probaly want to see get killed. If so you will get your wish when the two assholes get stalked by an American flag-decked pickup truck that they played chicken with earlier. Leatherface makes his entrance hidden behind “Nubbins,” the new name for the hitchhiker’s rotted corpse, which he uses as a puppet while sawing their Mercedes. (more…)

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The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION

Well in a serious bid to not hate the upcoming TEXAS CHAIN SAW remake prequel, I decided to mentally condition myself by rewatching the two bad sequels, parts 3-4. But I don’t know, maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, maybe the remake lowered the bar, maybe it’s some kind of Stockholm Syndrome deal, but this week I found out I really don’t hate these two movies like I used to. They’re not good sequels, no, but I was able to appreciate them a little more after all these years. The little fuckers are starting to grow on me.

I also realized the secret behind the failure of the sequels. Every one of them is basically a loose remake, but without all the elements that were in place to make the first one work. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle 4 times unless you’re really good with a bottle, and not even Tobe Hooper is that good with a bottle anymore. The sequels are all closer to the original than the actual remake is. They change the reason why the victims are in town, they have a different lineup for the family (and a different person playing Leatherface), and they add some new twists here and there. But they’re all basically some people come to town, get stuck at the house, they’re tormented in crazy ways, there’s the dinner scene, they escape, they battle, they get away. I think the reason part 2 is the only one that works is because it has more of the pieces in place: Tobe Hooper is still there so it has a more artistic execution than the others. Jim Siedow is still there as the cook and he’s better than all the other characters. Bill Moseley as Chop Top is new, but he’s a way better Hitchhiker substitue than all the characters in the other sequels. Leatherface doesn’t look as good as in the first one, but he looks much better than the other two (three including the remake). At the same time, part 2 has more drastic new twists than the other two: an underground amusement park instead of a house, Dennis Hopper as a protagonist as psychotic as the Sawyer family, a social satire/black comedy tone with ridiculously over-the-top gore that gives it its own feel entirely different from the original. The others don’t go as far to stand out. (more…)

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Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

As you’ve probaly figured out by now, I love THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Hell, I’d go so far as to call it the DIE HARD of horror. The Mohammed Ali of horror. The Bruce Lee of horror. I also love part 2, not as fond of part three, hated part 4, fucking DESPISED the remake.

This week they got the prequel to the remake coming out. I’m sure I’ll probaly hate it, but who knows. In some ways it doesn’t sound as bad as the remake, and since it’s not a remake you can hold it to the lower standards of a sequel. And lucky for it, there have been two not so hot sequels already to lower the bar. So I came up with a plan. First, I devised a method by which I will see the prequel without Michael Bay getting any of my money. Then I rented parts 3 and 4 so I can have them fresh on my mind while watching the prequel. That way I will have the maximum possible open-mindedness when I see the new one and might be able to appreciate it. The only problem is I watched Part 3 here and it’s not as bad as I remembered.

LEATHERFACE (which is a dumb fucking title) is not really a disaster. More like a small accident, a minor fenderbender. Nothing to be proud of, but we’ll get it fixed. The beginning of the movie has Leatherface creating his mask, shot exactly like the opening of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET where Freddy constructs his glove. This is important because that’s the context this movie was made in. New Line Cinema had the rights to make a Texas Chainsaw sequel. They had just released A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD and it had done only okay. And they probaly knew that NINJA TURTLES shit couldn’t float forever, so they had to come up with a new Freddy. That’s why the title puts the emphasis on Leatherface. Leatherface is Freddy, the mask is his hat I guess, the saw is his glove. Give us money. (more…)

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Black Christmas

Monday, September 25th, 2006

You probaly know director Bob Clark as the guy who did PORKY’S and A CHRISTMAS STORY. More recently he did the two BABY GENIUSES movies and something called KARATE DOG which, judging by the cover, is not a metaphorical title. But back in the day he was a pretty good director of horror movies. One of the ones he did was DEATHDREAM, a really eerie movie about a guy coming back undead from Vietnam and everybody is sort of in denial that he’s different. I liked that one a hell of alot better than HOMECOMING, Joe Dante’s sort of similar anti-war zombie thing from the Masters of Horror show.

But right after DEATHDREAM Clark did his most famous horror movie, BLACK CHRISTMAS, and it’s a pretty good one.

There are no killer Santas, not even maniac elves or savage, carnivorous reindeer. In fact there’s not too much of a Christmas ambience in the thing. But it does take place over Christmas break. This sorority house has been getting weird phone calls from some anonymous pervert. In the opening, one of the girls is attacked and suffocated in her room and taken up to the attic. The rest of the characters spend the whole movie trying to find her.

The next day, the girl’s dad shows up on campus to pick her up. After waiting forever he starts asking around for help and ends up meeting people who know his daughter, and together they look for her. Luckily her boyfriend has an in with the John Saxon at the police department so they are miraculously able to put together a search party when she hasn’t even been gone a day. (It’s refreshing to see a movie with a missing person where they don’t mention that “she has to be gone for 24 hours before she can be considered missing” thing.) (more…)

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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Well friends, we all agree that THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is one of the greatest films in the history of American independent cinema, etc. etc.

[imagine 30,000 words here about why I love this movie. And believe me, I could do it.]

[Okay, maybe I'd have to pad it out by going off on a tangent about how underrated part 2 is, and why I hate the remake, and I'd have to spell "alot" as two words, but I could still make it to 30,000.]

[Seriously, you piss me off and I WILL do it. I'm ITCHING to do it. Don't test me.]

But why in God’s name do we need another DVD release of it is the question. Anchor Bay hasn’t got their paws on it so it’s not to an ARMY OF DARKNESS crisis level yet, but I would’ve figured you couldn’t have a more definitive, a more special, or a more ULTIMATE edition than my treasured ‘Pioneer Special Edition’. I never did pick up the penultimate ‘If We Change The Cover It Counts As A New Edition Edition’ from 2003 (the one with the picture of meat on the back). So I’m not always a mark for these sloppy seconds or whatever you call it. But for this one I bit.

So what, you’re asking, is supposed to be so god damn ULTIMATE about this edition? First of all, they spelled the name right. CHAIN SAW, two words, not one. You gotta get it right because there’s another movie out there with a similar title http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=16307 that you might get it confused with. CHAINSAW is some shitty movie from 2003 about an evil musclehead who chases glisteningly spray-on sweaty attractive people through spooky, foggy slaugherhouse sets because the other kids picked on him when he was little. Also he cut off Harry’s head I believe. That one’s CHAINSAW one word. CHAIN SAW two words is the raw, authentically sweaty American classic, so I’m glad they got that right finally. (more…)

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I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

Howdy fellas -

I’ll always know what you did last summer. You wore short sleeves and complained about Star Wars 3 alot. Also, that’s the name of the new DTV sequel to I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It’s from the director of TROIS 3: THE ESCORT and the writer of OCTOPUS 1&2 and stars a bunch of young TV actors I never heard of.

When last we left our heroes (you know, the kids who ran over a guy and then lied about it), they were in the Bahamas fighting against a vengeful fisherman with a hook. There was no need for a surprise twist of who the killer was, it was still the guy with a hook. I believe Jeffrey Combs was involved, the R&B singer Brandy (who your parents used to listen to) survived due to contract negotiations, and an uncredited Jack Black grunted “it’s all good” as he was gored to death. I’m sure other things happened but that’s what I remember. Then Jennifer Love Hewitt had to leave to prepare for the GARFIELD movies.

That was 8 years ago, so the teens who were mildly entertained by the sequel at that time have blossomed into adulthood. To celebrate this new stage in their lives, Hollywood is giving this audience what they give every generation as it reaches maturity: a replacement group of teenage protagonists. Enjoy.

Obviously, since we’re dealing with an entirely new set of characters, the thing that the person knows about what they did 9 or 10 summers ago is not the same thing. At this point even the fisherman is probaly thinking ah fuck it, it’s time to move on. So we gotta start out with a new dark secret for some kids to bury.

They figured out a way to tie it in to the old series though. The movie opens at a carnival on the 4th of July, where the new group of teens discuss the legend of the fisherman with the hook who kills people on the 4th of July. Then without warning the fisherman appears and runs through the carnival, scaring the shit out of everyone. (more…)

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