STRANGER THINGS
(July 2016)

"And you know it, and he knows it, but no one ever says anything until you both start punching and yelling at each other like goblins with Intelligence scores of zero.
"Now everything’s weird.”

For anyone who knows me, it should come as absolutely no surprise that Netflix’s Stranger Things had me by the second scene of its first episode/Chapter.

The scene in question: a D&D session that’s been 10 hours running, threatened by the intrusion of… dun-dun-dun-duuuun… parental concern that tomorrow is a school day.

Set in 1983, Stranger Things is the kind of show that resonates on a very specific frequency, and should appeal greatly to Geeks of a Certain Age, those who know exactly what that scene feels like, those who’ve lived that scene, in one variation or another.

“The bad men are comiiing!”

“Mad hen. Does that mean anything to you? Like a code name or something.”

Stranger Things’ 8-Chapter narrative kicks off with the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), last seen headed home after that marathon gaming session. The search for Will draws in not just his gaming buddies, but also a bunch of adults, a bunch of teenagers, and a few other characters besides.

With Stranger Things, the show’s creators--the Duffer brothers, twins Matt and Ross--have given us a love letter to that very specific ‘80’s Amblin strain of entertainment that Steven Spielberg spearheaded. Taking that as their template, they’ve infused it heavily with dollops of Stephen King, some smidgens of John Carpenter, and then sprinkled on many of the pop culture markers of that era, from the music (Joy Division! Echo and the Bunnymen! The Clash!) to the films (The Evil Dead! The Thing! The Empire Strikes Back!).

It’s a heady (and sometimes, emotionally-wrenching) rush of geek nostalgia, Stranger Things is. (And, speaking of geek nostalgia, look! Winona Ryder!!)

Of course, the thing about nostalgia is, it works on our emotional attachments to the familiar, to the things we grew up with. As such, there are a whole slew of visuals and story beats in Stranger Things that will recall, to varying degrees, those benchmarks of our past.*

But, given the way the show takes those elements and weaves them into the narrative whole, we still end up with something new. Reminiscent of something(s) old, oh yeah, definitely. But still, in the end, something new. (Or, new-ish, at the very least.)

To a certain extent, Stranger Things does the same thing The Force Awakens does, work from the template of something old and established, and dress it up with some new elements.

In point of fact, there’s something more pure and honest about the way Stranger Things uses that particular approach.

Let’s be honest: no matter how good it is, The Force Awakens, is after all, still constructed to be a franchise re-starter, while Stranger Things appears to be simply, a new story that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. (Of course, should Stranger Things suddenly explode into a multimedia juggernaut, then we can reexamine that assessment.)**

“You always say we should never stop being curious, to always open any curiosity door we find.”

“Dustin…”

“Why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?”

Now, while the contingent of young actors on the show are across the board excellent, Millie Bobby Brown (who was also one of the noteworthy elements of BBC’s Intruders) and Broadway vet Gaten Matarazzo (Gavroche on Les Misérables) must be commended for their performances; Matarazzo’s Dustin Henderson is officially the latest entry on my personal Awesomest TV Characters Ever! list.

Oh, and Amy Seimetz’s got a single ep guest spot here, too! (Just thought I’d throw that out there.)

So, if you happen to be a Geek of a Certain Age, you’d be doing yourself a mighty disservice if you didn’t check out Stranger Things.

And you know what? Even if you aren’t, check the show out anyway.

Look! Even Stephen King likes it!

My only question about the Netflix series STRANGER THINGS is whether or not it will be popular enough to crash their servers. It might be.

--Tweet from Stephen King

* For the record, there are also some visuals that recall more recent titles, like Silent Hill and Under the Skin. (You’ll know them when you see them.)

** Having said that, I will still freely go on the record to say, given the way they opted to close the 8^th Chapter, please please please let there be a second season…

(Stranger Things OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

IN MEMORIAM

Stan Winston
April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008

(Image courtesy of Stan Winston Studio and latimes.com.)

IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL THINGS RECYCLABLE (2)
HALLOWEEN

The end of August brings us the Rob Zombie redux of John Carpenter’s classic Halloween. As the last time I’d seen it was some two decades ago, I thought it was high time I took a return trip to the streets of Haddonfield and see how old Mikey was doing…

“I met him 15 years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, not even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong.
“I met this six-year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and… the blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes.
“I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.”
-- Dr. Sam Loomis

From the opening Touch of Evil-inspired shot, to its killer climax and that final shot of the Myers house, Halloween is still one of the best films John Carpenter has ever brought to the screen.
Shot in three weeks in 1978 for a miniscule budget of $300,000, the film would go on to become the most successful independent production of its time. It would cement Carpenter as one of the premiere horror directors of modern times, and become the foundation upon which Jamie Lee Curtis would build her career.
And, for better or worse, it would be the match that would light the proverbial powder keg that the slasher genre would turn out to be, one of the prime forces behind the grand 80’s horror boom. It would also be the inspiration for countless low-budget cheapies as well as many of today’s horror directors.

Unlike the subsequent Friday the 13th franchise, and the rest of its slasher offspring, from The Prowler to The Burning to Happy Birthday To Me, which were far more interested in fake blood and kill shots, Halloween was instead, a solid exercise in suspense.
In the film, Carpenter expertly captures the spirit of Halloween, with fake dead leaves and deserted streets, giving the audience the sense of furtive movement and noise, just around the next corner and beyond the next bush. And into this apparently idyllic suburban scenario, where bookish Laurie Strode (Curtis) spends her nights babysitting, he introduces the Shape, Michael Myers, freshly escaped from the loonybin, come home to Haddonfield to give Laurie the most unforgettable night of her young life.

What also sets Halloween apart from many of its ilk is that its brand of suspense is not of the taut constant-hide-and-stalk variety (as, say, in Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension), but rather a pervading sense of dread and anticipation. Once Carpenter establishes that tone, it remains, a constant spectre shadowing the proceedings, giving even the chatty scenes between Laurie and her friends an unsettling undercurrent, a feat also achieved by Steven Spielberg in Jaws. Even in seemingly innocuous scenes of dialogue between characters, you never once forget that you’re in a suspense movie. Carpenter is able to replicate that previously mentioned feeling of things happening at the edges of our senses in the film’s very pacing, where we are given the impression of things just biding their time till they can pounce on us when our back is turned.

With his own brand of minimalist scoring, Carpenter orchestrates the on-screen action perfectly, ratcheting up the tension, and eliciting fine performances from Curtis (who would follow in her mother’s footsteps, Janet Leigh, and become one of horror’s immortal Scream Queens) and Donald Pleasence, who plays Dr. Loomis, the Ahab to Michael Myers’ Moby Dick.
And in Michael Myers, Carpenter created the first in a grand tradition of lumbering, seemingly unstoppable killers.

Even with its imperfections (the POV cheat in the opening sequence, so as to milk the sequence’s reveal for all its worth; the downright terrible performance by Nancy Loomis as Annie—even this woman’s death is ridiculous) Halloween still stands tall in the annals of horror cinema as a brilliant example of good storytelling on a severely limited budget.

“I watched him for 15 years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall. Not seeing the wall. Looking past the wall. Looking at this night. Inhumanly patient. Waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off.
“Death has come to your little town, sheriff.”
-- Dr. Sam Loomis

Since then
Following Halloween, Carpenter would enter the 80’s, where the director did most of his best work (The Thing, Starman, Prince of Darkness). Sadly though, after the excellent They Live, his film work began to deteriorate, beginning with the terribly flawed postmodern horror of In The Mouth of Madness.* His other 90’s work (Vampires, and the Village of the Damned remake) felt uninspired and seemed blatantly derivative of his better, past films. 2001’s Ghosts of Mars was no better.
His most recent work has been on TV’s Masters of Horror, where he directed Season 1’s “Cigarette Burns,” which seemed to be a return to the classic Carpenter this particular horror geek fell in love with. But he broke my heart all over again with Season 2’s awful “Pro-Life” (see review in Archive: April 2007).

Curtis meanwhile, entered the 80’s as the premiere Scream Queen of horror, appearing in Carpenter’s The Fog, and slasher entries Prom Night and Terror Train**, as well as Halloween II. She would then segue to Hollywood legitimacy through films like John Landis’ Trading Places. (Perfect may have been a miscalculation.) She would also prove she could make people laugh just as well as she could scream as part of the ensemble of the hilarious A Fish Called Wanda.
In the midst of all her other film work, Curtis would reprise the role of Laurie Strode two more times after Halloween II, in Halloween H20 and Halloween: Resurrection. (Incidentally, Curtis would appear on-screen with her mother—Janet’s Leigh’s last film role before her death in 2004—in Halloween H20.)
Keeping busy with her children’s books, Curtis is perhaps best known to today’s generation for her roles in Christmas with the Kranks and the Freaky Friday remake.

Looking forward
Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot clearly enters the game with a lot of weight on its shoulders. And considering that nearly all of the recent remakes of 70’s horror have left me unsatisfied, I’m not really certain how to approach this one. (And although I thought Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses wasn’t exactly terrible, it didn’t really grab me as the work of a director I needed to keep my eyes on; thus, I’ve yet to see The Devil’s Rejects, which has its own share of fans.)
The thing is, no matter how skeptical I am of any given film, there’s always a part of me that’s open to being surprised, that part of my film geek DNA that strives to accept a film on its own terms, without the baggage it may have accumulated on its journey to the big screen. So in that respect, I’m giving Zombie some leeway, as is only fair.
I’d also like to be excited, actually, at the possibilities of what Zombie could bring to his remake, but I’m striving to temper that.
Zombie’s got a big enough mountain to climb as it is without me hyping myself up into a Halloween frenzy.

* I never got to see 1992’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man, so that may have been Carpenter’s last good film before the decline…

** In the current mad rush to remake everything from the 70’s horror catalogue, both Prom Night and Terror Train are getting the redux treatment.
Prom Night has Brittany Snow (the loony racist Ariel from Nip/Tuck), The Doom Generation’s Johnathon Schaech, and Jessalyn Gilsig (another Nip/Tuck alumna) in its cast, while the re-titled Train has American Beauty’s Thora Birch in the Jamie Lee Curtis role.

(Halloween OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

Thanx to J&R Travel Agency, for arranging my return trip to Haddonfield.