reVIEW (51) SCREAM 2

reVIEW (51)

SCREAM 2

... and with a brand new Scream just around the corner, here’s the other zombie I wanted to resurrect…

Go, zombie, go!

Shamble across the Interwebz!

“Let’s face it, Sidney. These days, you gotta have a sequel!”

-- Stu (from Scream)

The menacing drone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” plays over the opening credits of a film called Stab.

Yes, Stab--the film based on the novel The Hillsboro Murders, written by the Antichrist of tabloid TV, Gale Weathers.

With an audience of howling gorehounds in white masks and black cloaks, the sneak preview of Stab (presented in “Stab-O-Vision,” naturally) serves as the opening sequence of Scream 2, an opening that is both a sobering indictment of how fanatical some gorehounds can get about their horror movies, and a brilliant follow-up to Scream’s taut opening; we even get to see Heather Graham (a long way from Twin Peaks, she is) do Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker, in a great Psycho homage.

Slamming us with a coda that is a chilling example of what Scream 2’s “freaky Tarantino film student,” Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), terms “life imitating art imitating life,” the sequence drags us bodily into the second chapter in Kevin Williamson’s envisioned trilogy, a stunning continuation of the first film, many of its plot elements and surprises logical ramifications of events that occurred in the original.

“It’s starting again, Randy.”

-- Sidney

Two years after the bloodbath at Stu’s house in Scream’s climax, Sidney (Neve Campbell, back for a second round) and fellow Woodsboro massacre survivor Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have gone on to university, where they are pursuing a “pseudo-quasi-happy existence,” trying to put the past behind them. A past that refuses to go away, as not only has Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) written a book about Woodsboro, but a film has been made from that novel.

Then there’s Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), falsely accused by Sidney for the murder of her mother (as seen in Scream), still trying to clear his reputation by getting on the tube to tell his story.

With Stab’s opening just around the corner, all these media prods set the stage for the renewed mayhem; as an Omega Beta Zeta sister puts it so succinctly, “It’s that movie, Stab. It’s bringing out the crazies.”

“If there is some freaked-out psycho trying to follow in Billy Loomis’ footsteps, you probably already know him. Or her. Or them. They’re probably already in your life. They get off on that.”

-- Dewey

The sly intelligence and self-referential wit evidenced in Scream is still here in the sequel, proving that Williamson’s skill at writing a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat horror film that is also a statement on the genre and the medium, was not a one-off fluke.

From the broad thematic (and cinematographic) nods to Psycho (and, to a certain extent, Psycho II) to the particular--and peculiar--workings of the Scream universe (what could just have very well been a throw-away line from the first film crystallizes into “reality” as we see Tori Spelling essay Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in Stab; it’s just too bad we don’t get to see David Schwimmer’s Dewey), Williamson displays firm control of plot and character, taking the survivors from the original and bringing them two years forward, each of them displaying scars--both physical and psychological--from the events in Woodsboro.

And given the strong sense of continuity between the first two chapters of the Scream trilogy, my mentioning Psycho may be very appropriate, since, the way I see it, after all the trauma the survivors of Scream 2 go through, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Scream 3 opens with said survivors running a motel just off the highway, dressing up in masks and cloaks and murdering unsuspecting secretaries on the lam.

“So it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood. More gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it.”

-- Randy

Though the death scenes here are not necessarily any gorier than those in the original, what are certainly more elaborate this time around are the set pieces leading up to those deaths; the chases, the thrills, the suspense. In an astoundingly nerve-wracking sequence, Williamson actually outdoes the “potential slasher victim trapped in the back of a cop car” scenario in I Know What You Did Last Summer with the one in Scream 2.

Williamson and director Wes Craven also utilize the Windsor College setting to its utmost, wringing all they can out of the “college campus as stalking ground” milieu.

Just as Scream played with the slasher setting archetype of the small town terrorized by the mad killer (as established in Halloween and done to death in many a subsequent film, such as The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine), Scream 2 trods the well-worn footpaths of such slasher fare as Graduation Day and Final Exam.

True to form though, Williamson takes it that one, smart step further. The script is so cognizant of its setting that the environment is exploited for all its thrill-worthy potential.

At one point, Kennedy, David Arquette, and Cox share a particularly intense scene set on the sprawling campus lawn in broad daylight, and in another (in what I like to think of as the film’s T.S. Eliot “Who is the third” moment), Campbell does a great turn in a slightly surreal dress rehearsal where Sidney plays the doomed prophetess Cassandra amidst a masked Greek chorus.

Even Sidney’s identification with Cassandra--who is doomed to live out a future she is intimately familiar with, because she can convince no one of its impending reality--is a stroke of genius on Williamson’s part. At one point in the film, Sidney laments, “I knew this was going to happen”; the police stations and reporters are now a painfully familiar sight for poor Ms. Prescott.

“Wow. That was intense.”

-- Cotton

Crackling with an air of tense expectancy and boasting a climax that has some last-minute mind screws and plot curveballs, Scream 2 is an expertly executed film that highlights not only the fascination of the movie-going masses with violence, but also the omnipresence of the media in our lives.

It is a film that once again proves that, 1) Wes Craven is alive and well and still quite capable of eliciting the scares, 2) it doesn’t hurt for horror to have a brain, and 3) Kevin Williamson is a brilliant writer with a deep respect for the genre and a great sense of humour.

Described by one critic as “a fascinating piece of work for a post-media society,” Scream 2 is a film that holds a mirror up to itself, the horror genre, and the audience, all in one graceful, knowing gesture (the audience being a microcosm of society at large); a film that gives you pause for reflection, as you’re running scared silly for your life.

“You do realize that if we were in a Scream movie, you'd be the prime suspect...”

-- Mark Gatela to me

[The above review existed in a former published life, and in slightly altered form, in the year 1997, under the identity of “Scream and Scream Again.”]

(Scream 2 OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (50) SCREAM

 

reVIEW (50)

SCREAM

With the impending release of Scream (the fifth installment and the first without the late, great Wes Craven at the helm), I figured I should resurrect a couple of corpses and let them do the zombie shuffle across the Interwebz, so… here’s one…
 
[The review below existed in a former published life--and in an altered form--in the year 1997, under the identity of “Hitting the Right Pitch.”]
 
“What’s the point [of watching scary movies]? They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act, who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door. It’s insulting.”
-- Sidney
 
In 1977, former literature professor Wes Craven--who had already helmed 1972’s lurid Last House on the Left--directed the aridly vicious The Hills Have Eyes, cementing his reputation as a creator of gritty and uncompromising horror films.
A year later, on the last night of October, Michael Myers haunted the streets of Haddonfield in a blood-drenched homecoming that would spawn a whole sub-genre within the horror field, and would make the careers of director John Carpenter and actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
It would be six years later, in 1984, that Craven’s path would intersect with the trajectory of the slasher film genre, when he ended up creating a horror icon: A Nightmare on Elm Street’s “bastard son of a hundred maniacs,” Freddy Krueger--an icon that would later lose all of its potency to the insidious disease, sequelitis.
Flash forward a dozen years, and Craven once again plunges into the slasher genre with a little scary movie called Scream.
 
“See, the police are always off-track with this sh!t. If they watch Prom Night, they’d save time. There’s a formula to it! A very simple formula! Everybody’s a suspect!”
-- Randy
 
From its intense opening sequence which features a wicked ‘90’s take on When A Stranger Calls, coupled with a game all horror hounds would both love and dread to play (watch out for the trick question), Craven makes it clear he’s out for blood.
The 13-minute sequence is so taut and solidly crafted, it makes far better viewing than any number of random full-length slasher entries you might name.
It also utilizes a device hardly seen in the 36 years since 1960’s Psycho (though Chuck Russell’s remake of The Blob, and Craven’s own original Nightmare actually, also used it to good effect).
With that brilliant sequence, we are rushed headlong into what can perhaps be best described as a postmodern slasher film that could very well have been the final word on the genre.
 
“You should never say ‘Who’s there?’ Don’t you watch scary movies?! It’s a death wish. You might as well just come out here to investigate the strange noise or something.”
-- Ghostface
 
It will be remembered that Craven first attempted to do the postmodern meta thing with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, where Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, and Craven himself, all appeared in a tale that presented them struggling against the evil they had created on the screen, now bursting through into the “real world.”
John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness would also explore similar terrain.
However you may feel about either title though, I think it’s fair to say that Scream hits just the right (meta) pitch.
 
It’s a wickedly self-referential film that speaks the language of the movie buff: from the general (rated relationships and the “life is a movie but you can’t choose the genre” analogy) to the specific (the exposure of a slasher film’s conservative, puritanical heart in one of the cardinal rules of the genre: sex equals death, the virgin gets out alive--oft-discussed by the more critically-minded of us gorehounds in the nearly 20 years between Carpenter’s Halloween and Craven’s second slasher triumph).
 
In loving tribute to the very audience who had, by that point, held him in awe for decades, Craven’s Scream is a genuine joy for horror film fans, making reference to a whole slew of movies, from Terror Train to The Silence of the Lambs.
It even turns the entire “Do horror films create violent psychos?” debate on its head in one swift, clean stroke.
With the skill of a surgeon (or an anal-retentive serial killer), Craven and scriptwriter Kevin Williamson play with audience expectations, utilizing every trick they can get their hands on, including time-honoured horror movie clichés and the genre formulas we all know and love, to give us a solid slasher flick that cuts right to the bone.
 
“What movie is this from? I Spit On Your Garage?”
-- Tatum
 
Scream is a horror movie that manages to entertain, set you on edge, and study the genre it belongs to, all in one fell swoop. In doing so, it places the entire slasher genre on the hot spot.
Even Craven is not safe from himself. From the conspicuous-looking janitor to the throw-away line, “You’re starting to sound like some Wes Carpenter flick or something,” it’s clear this film also has a sense of humour.
But like all great horror movies, it’s also relentless and persistent--the Energizer bunny wearing a hockey mask, coming at us again, and again, till the bloody end; an end orchestrated to perfection with a videotape of Halloween playing as counterpoint.
 
“Only virgins can outsmart the killer in the big chase scene in the end. Don’t you know the rules?”
-- Randy

As I mentioned earlier, Scream could very well have been the final word on the slasher genre.
But its box office success would prove to be a siren song Hollywood was loathe to resist.
Which, in the final analysis, was still a very good thing, as Scream 2 (reView post to follow soon) proved to be a crackerjack sequel.
And while I was ultimately disappointed by Scream 3 (Williamson did not write the screenplay), the 11-years-after Scream 4 (with Williamson back on scripting duties) turned out to be a curious title for me.
I didn’t much care for it back in 2011 when it was released. But I went back to it just last year as a refresher and was pleasantly surprised to discover a newfound appreciation for it.
Whereas my initial reaction was that it was an ultimately pointless retread, it turns out my reconsidered opinion is now that 4 is a slyly wicked subversion of the “Let’s introduce the new generation to replace the OG characters” type of reboot, where
 
[SPOILER!!!]
 
some of the very characters you fully expect to have the torch handed over to reveal themselves to be the ones under the Ghostface mask.
Bravo, Craven and crew.
 
And now, we have the 11-more-years-after Scream to look forward to…
Hopefully, it does Mr. Craven proud.
 
(Scream OS & UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[6 of 13]
The Osgood Perkins Slot

Tie number 2...

THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER

(September 2015)

Osgood Perkins (son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) gets a slot all to himself this year, and we kick off with his feature debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter.

Originally titled February, the film follows Kat, Rose and Joan, the former two left largely alone and unattended at their virtually empty boarding school. Both are in a delicate condition (one, emotional, the other, physical), and soon, the quiet in the halls and rooms is shattered by the undeniable fact that this is, after all, a horror movie.

Under Perkins’ assured directorial hand, the off-kilter air that is in evidence very early on quickly settles into an unease that pervades the rest of the film’s running time, helped in no small part by Perkins’ younger brother, Elvis (himself a musician with 3 albums under his belt), who scores the proceedings with a jangly, atonal touch.

With Bryan Bertino (whose The Strangers nabbed itself a ¡Qué horror! 2008 slot) as one of its producers, and genre faces James Remar, Emma Roberts, and a nearly unrecognizable Lauren Holly along for the darkly disquieting ride, The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a must-see for anyone who treasures horror that doesn’t feel the need to over-explain itself.

THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS

(September 2015)

"I'll tell you what it is, kids.
"It’s that every f*cker in the country thinks they’re a photographer now, okay? And everyone can share an image, and it’s awful. It’s awful because it makes everything just like watery piss.

“Then you have this guy who creates an image that you actually can’t f*ck with, that you actually can’t ignore…”

Serial killers are like zombies and vampires; you need to look really long and really hard to find films about them that are actually worth your time and your attention.

Nick Simon’s The Girl in the Photographs is definitely worth your time, not just because it’s an excellent (and at times, frankly brutal) serial killer thriller, but it’s also one of the last things the late, great, and sorely missed Wes Craven worked on. (At the very top of the end credits roll, the dedication, “For Wes.”)

So if you feel any allegiance at all to the late Mr. Craven, then the least you can do is check out the film that he believed in enough to Executive Produce, before he had to so abruptly leave us…

And while that should be enough reason, if you find that you still need some more motivation, then Kal Penn’s total douchebag fashion photog Peter Hemmings is one of the definite draws of the film.

There’s also Mitch Pileggi, effectively de-Skinner-izing himself as the ineffectual Sheriff Porter, and Katharine Isabelle--late of the equally sorely missed Hannibal--in a brief role.

Plus, the D.P is Dean Cundey! Halloween! The Thing! And if your cinematic tastes lean more towards big-a$$ Hollywood productions, Jurassic Park! The Back to the Future trilogy! Cundey also shot the brilliant Psycho II, which leads us to one other notable…

The film’s screenplay is credited to Osgood Perkins, Rob Morast, and Simon.

So, yeah. Psycho. Perkins. (Osgood also actually played “Young Norman” in Psycho II.)
This double whammy is a promising sign for Perkins’ sophomore directorial effort, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, which already garnered some good notices from its TIFF premiere last month. (Incidentally, the double whammy we're looking at right now also premiered at TIFF, last year, just 2 days apart.)

So, yes, The Girl in the Photographs.

If you want a bit of brutality in your ¡Qué horror! viewing…

“This guy knows I’m from Spearfish. He’s doing this… this photography thing with his victims as… as… as an homage, as a… as a nod, a nod to me, Spearfish’s most famous citizen and only known living artist.

“Frankly, I’m flattered.”

(The Blackcoat’s Daughter, February, and The Girl in the Photographs OS' courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016

Candidate #7

THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS

(September 2015)

"I'll tell you what it is, kids.

“It’s that every f*cker in the country thinks they’re a photographer now, okay? And everyone can share an image, and it’s awful. It’s awful because it makes everything just like watery piss.

“Then you have this guy who creates an image that you actually can’t f*ck with, that you actually can’t ignore…”

Serial killers are like zombies and vampires; you need to look really long and really hard to find films about them that are actually worth your time and your attention.

Nick Simon’s The Girl in the Photographs is definitely worth your time, not just because it’s an excellent (and at times, frankly brutal) serial killer thriller, but it’s also one of the last things the late, great, and sorely missed Wes Craven worked on. (At the very top of the end credits roll, the dedication, “For Wes.”)

So if you feel any allegiance at all to the late Mr. Craven, then the least you can do is check out the film that he believed in enough to Executive Produce, before he had to so abruptly leave us…

And while that should be enough reason, if you find that you still need some more motivation, then Kal Penn’s total douchebag fashion photog Peter Hemmings is one of the definite draws of the film.

There’s also Mitch Pileggi, effectively de-Skinner-izing himself as the ineffectual Sheriff Porter, and Katharine Isabelle--late of the equally sorely missed Hannibal--in a brief role.

Plus, the D.P is Dean Cundey! Halloween! The Thing! And if your cinematic tastes lean more towards big-a$$ Hollywood productions, Jurassic Park! The Back to the Future trilogy! Cundey also shot the brilliant Psycho II, which leads us to one other notable…

The film’s screenplay is credited to Osgood Perkins, Rob Morast, and Simon.

So, yeah. Psycho. Perkins.

Osgood happens to be the son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins. (And he actually played “Young Norman” in Psycho II.) Osgood also happens to be making a name for himself as a director as well, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to see his directorial debut, February (reportedly retitled The Blackcoat’s Daughter).

If this film’s screenplay is anything to go by, then I’m even more pumped to see February-or-whatever-it’s-being-called-now.

So, yes, The Girl in the Photographs.

If you want a bit of brutality in your ¡Qué horror! viewing…

“This guy knows I’m from Spearfish. He’s doing this… this photography thing with his victims as… as… as an homage, as a… as a nod, a nod to me, Spearfish’s most famous citizen and only known living artist.

“Frankly, I’m flattered.”

(The Girl in the Photographs OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE LAST HOUSE
ON THE LEFT
(Review)


Ever since Michael Bay’s brazen culpability in the decision to redo Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—officially kicking off the 70’s/80’s horror remake wave we’re still in the clammy grip of—I’ve been waiting for that particular remake that would actually stand on its own as a valid piece of modern horror cinema.
I look at Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, or Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux; we didn’t particularly need them, but they were excellent updates of their originals nonetheless.
I’ve also yet to see this generation’s The Thing or The Fly, remakes that actually transcend not just the original source material, but also the boundaries of genre cinema as well.
And while Dennis Iliadis’ grimly violent The Last House on the Left—a reworking of Wes Craven’s infamous debut feature—may or may not be in that esteemed league,* it’s certainly a very adult and ballsy piece that effortlessly leapfrogs over its recent remade ilk and is officially the first 70’s/80’s horror remake that I’m actually satisfied with.


As with the original, Iliadis’ Last House follows the ordeal of a family who gets the chance to turn the tables on a bunch of criminals who have just perpetrated a heinous act on one of its own.
Iliadis takes a script by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth (who wrote Disturbia, and previously worked with Craven on the script for Red Eye), and with a pretty solid cast, crafts a tense and disturbing portrait of the strength of filial bonds and the universality of violence.
It’s brutal, this, and Iliadis gets some excellent performances from the likes of young actors Spencer Treat Clark (Bruce Willis’ son in Unbreakable, all lookee-he’s-growed-up-now!) and Sara Paxton (Aquamarine’s mermaid, and soon to be seen on TV’s The Beautiful Life), and more seasoned thespians like Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn (who I still think of as either Tarzan, or the bad dude in Ghost), and Garret Dillahunt, who stole most of the best bits in the second and final season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, playing the ultimate role-playing geek living in his mother’s basement, the awesome John Henry.
With Dillahunt and Goldwyn as the heads of their respective families, Last House presents an unflinching depiction of how far ordinary people are willing to go to avenge a loved one.


This one’s intense, and yes, I’ll say it again—brutal, with some great work by KNB EFX, including a gloriously gory kitchen appliance-assisted Grand Guignol bit. (True, it’s a scene that, arguably, may have been unnecessary, but it’s still a shocking bit of grue!)
Hands down, this wipes the floor with the collective a$$es of all those other recent horror remakes, including those of Craven’s Hills Have Eyes films.
By pairing the onscreen violence with performances that manage to delineate personalities that elicit our sympathies (or our antagonism), Last House quickly proves to be much more than a misguided exercise in reheating cinematic leftovers in the hopes of cashing in on a recognizable brand name.
No, this is a grand, catered affair, whose dishes rework the classic recipe into something very contemporary, and yet, ultimately timeless.
So come on in, if you’ve the stomach for it. Just bring lots of napkins to sop up the mess.
Lots and lots of napkins…


* It would be difficult for me to judge whether Iliadis’ take transcends Craven’s version, as I’ve yet to have the opportunity to see the original…

Parting shot: Aside from Iliadis’ Last House, the only other recent ‘70’s horror remake I actually like is John Moore’s The Omen.
I do still have a bunch of issues with it (and yeah, that was another remake we really didn’t need to begin with), but it does have some great cinematography, courtesy of Jonathan Sela.


(The Last House on the Left OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

THE DEVIL’S CHAIR
(Review)

“I guess you’ve seen Hellraiser. I’m guessing you’ve seen all those kind of films. Pumpkinhead or whatever. That’s probably why you’re watching this now.”


Well, this one was interesting. I can’t say I completely love it, but it’s an intriguing piece of horror cinema nonetheless.
We open with the scathingly knowing narration of Nick West (Andrew Howard), as we’re treated to fragmentary glimpses of how this tale will end, before we’re quickly shown the foundation of Adam Mason’s The Devil’s Chair: Nick and his bird Sammy (StarStreet’s Polly Brown) are larking about the abandoned Blackwater Asylum, when they discover the eponymous chair, which becomes instrumental in Sammy’s apparent demise.


We’re never really certain what exactly happened—not yet, at any rate—but Sammy’s body is never found, and Nick’s crazed rantings about the chair land him in a functioning loonybin for four years, before he’s prematurely sprung by Psychology professor, Dr. Willard (David Gant, possibly familiar to some of you from Paco Plaza’s Romasanta, François Girard’s Le violon rouge, or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil).
Willard intends to write a book about Nick, about the incident and his delusions. Central to that book is Nick’s reactions to his return to Blackwater, in the company of Willard and a few handpicked students.


Right off the bat, we can plainly see the terrible Catch-22 here: if Nick is indeed a nutter, then the good doctor is returning to the scene of the crime with the lunatic murderer (something which is actually brought up by one of the characters early on in the film); if Nick is telling the truth, then there’s some weird supernatural shenanigans going on in Blackwater.
Either way, an abandoned asylum is the last place any sane individual would want to be in.
But Willard and academic company take the plunge, with Nick in tow, and The Devil’s Chair chronicles the results of that boneheaded decision.

“Look at this poorly written, badly acted bullsh!t! Is there any truth in this B-movie banality? No! No!
“There is no truth, my friends. Believe no one. Believe nothing.”


At its core, The Devil’s Chair is a fascinating look at the dichotomy of the traditional supernatural-tinged horror film and the more modern, grounded brand of endurance horror which finds its roots in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes.
Nick’s voice-over, which runs the entire length of the film, serves as a sort of postmodern commentary on the on-screen action, adding another layer to the whole. Initially, this may at first seem to be a way to inject a Guy Ritchie-esque air about the proceedings (complete with freeze-framing the action so as to better punctuate Nick’s observations and opinions), but ultimately the narrative technique bolsters the climactic reveal.
It’s the non-linear narrative though, which could make or break it for an audience.

As it is, that opening montage pretty much telegraphs the film’s outcome; it’s all right there.
Given though that the third act eventuality was always in my mind, when Mason and co-writer Simon Boyes choose to let that particular shoe drop, it’s still a horrible, pivotal moment that subsequently drags the audience through the grueling, bloody climax.
And, potential deal-breaker though it is, the reveal is certainly more intrinsic to the material than, say, a plot flip like Haute Tension has.
Love or hate that curve which The Devil’s Chair takes, it’s undeniably part of the whole.


For my part, I’ll say this: You know those moments in a movie where you see another film that might have been, had the filmmakers chosen to go down a particular path?
Those instances when you exit the theatre and go, Why didn’t I see that movie, instead of what I was actually shown?
Well, in the case of The Devil’s Chair, I can safely say, I’m glad I didn’t see that movie, the one that was actually going on… What we do see of it is enough to drive the point home.
After all, in this day and age of extreme cinematic horror, there’s something to be said for the adage “A little goes a long way.”

“I tell you what, party people, you geeks and freaks, you bloodthirsty morons... F*ck you. Bring on the red parade.”


As potent a brew as The Devil’s Chair is though (with enough bravado to sneak a David Lynch moment in before the end credits), it’s not without its warts.
There may have been a tad too many of those aforementioned Guy Ritchie moments, and the voice-over did get contrived in some bits, and in one stretch, strangely derisive of the film’s intended audience.
I was also none too thrilled with the CGI bits.
And even though the borderline hammishness of Gant’s portrayal of Willard makes a little more sense by the time the film wraps up, it’s still a borderline hammy piece of acting that we need to endure for the length of the feature.


Still and all, it’s an effective piece that marks Mason as a name to watch in the future. (I’ve yet to see his previous film, Broken, though in the wake of The Devil’s Chair, I’m certainly looking forward to his next feature, Blood River, which reunites him with Howard.)
If you, like me, revel in the broad and dark spectrum that horror resides in, then The Devil’s Chair is a title that needs to go on your viewing list.
At the very least, it could open up some involved discussions of the different kinds of horror, and the particular personal preferences of any given horrorhound.

“Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Parting shot: Incidentally enough, having mentioned Ritchie, Howard had a role in his underappreciated Revolver.

(The Devil’s Chair OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & shocktillyoudrop.com.)

reVIEW (29)
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

It’s been a while since I was last on Elm Street, so when the chance came for a return visit, I took it without hesitation.
I first walked down it in 1984, via the magic of Betamax, knowing this was something new from the man who’d given me The Hills Have Eyes and Deadly Blessing, so I was stoked.
Wes Craven did not disappoint then, and here, now, 23 years later, A Nightmare On Elm Street to a large extent, still holds up as an exercise in scares and chills.

With this film, Craven introduced all of horror geekdom to Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), child murderer come back from the dead, to haunt the dreams of the children of Elm Street. Freddy, of course, would go on to join Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees to form the Slasher Trinity, all three graduating to Horror Icon status over the course of money-making sequel after money-making sequel.
In Craven’s original Nightmare, Freddy is a darker, more sinister bogeyman, and would gradually transform over the franchise’s length, into the wisecracking death-dealing jokester most know him as, whose puns and one-liners were probably more dangerous than his razor-blade fingers.
Here though, at the very beginning—and in keeping in tone with the film—Freddy isn’t very big on laughs, and this first Nightmare is all the better for it.

From the opening sequence of Freddy assembling his killer glove, through the Last Girl fake, all the way up to that final shot of poor, boozy Marge (Ronee Blakley) going—ha ha—through the front door, A Nightmare On Elm Street is an effectively creepy little number, with a number of scenes and images that permanently seared themselves into my fevered and impressionable horror geek brain. (That singular image of Amanda Wyss’ Tina standing in her bloodied body bag in the school hall still pops to mind whenever I encounter certain lines of Hamlet.)
And of course, given the subsequent career trajectory of one of the film’s young stars, A Nightmare On Elm Street is notable (particularly to the mainstream movie-going audience) as having these three words in its opening credits sequence: “Introducing Johnny Depp.”

As much as I love Craven’s first Nightmare though, I cannot deny it does have a number of warts, among them, some bad performances. Mr. “Introducing Johnny Depp,” in fact, as young Glen Lantz, is one of the few actors that manage to rise above bad in Nightmare. The rest of his young co-stars display questionable acting prowess.
And perhaps most alarmingly, the bad acting isn’t just confined to the youngsters, as even the aforementioned Blakley (who plays alky mother to Nightmare lead Heather Langenkamp) is a train wreck.
This might not have been so great a sin, except for the fact that the pivotal revelation of who Freddy Krueger really is and what the parents of Elm Street did to him so long ago, comes to us (and daughter Nancy) through the bleary “acting” of Blakley. This could have—and should have—been a great scene. Instead, it feels obligatory, more a plot necessity than the gut-wrenching moment of epiphany it must have been on paper.
There’s also the synth score which gets vaguely ridiculous in certain patches, and “Nightmare” by 213, which plays over the end titles is so bad, I’d managed to wipe it entirely from memory till just a few moments ago, when hearing it once more filled me with an entirely different kind of horror.

Still, in the final analysis, A Nightmare On Elm Street is a horror movie that works, that gets the job done, and leaves the audience with a lingering aftertaste of anxiety, which is so much more than can be said of many a horror film today.

Parting shot: The companion piece to this review—The Director’s Chair (3)—can be found in the Archive.

(A Nightmare On Elm Street DVD cover art courtesy of cduniverse.com.)

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR (3)
WES CRAVEN in
“MY CRAVEN 3 (SEVERAL HUNDRED MORE WORDS ABOUT WES CRAVEN)”

“Fortunately, somebody always comes along when it’s least expected and reinvents the (horror) genre. And that’s exciting to watch.”
-- Wes Craven (1990)

And that’s kind of what Craven did with Scream, which turned Hollywood back onto horror in a big way. (Even horror icons like George Romero credited Scream for making Hollywood execs start calling him again to see if he was up to anything new.)
Yes, there was some backlash from Scream (including the resurrection of the deservedly dead slasher flick, as well as the ungodly births of TV’s Dawson’s Creek, Wasteland, and the abominable Teaching Mrs. Tingle, whose only saving graces were Helen Mirren, and the Exorcist bit), but it otherwise put horror back on the bankable map, and made Craven a force to be reckoned with once again, over two decades after his unsettling and infamous debut, Last House on the Left (which has the distinction of being on Stanley Wiater’s Disturbo 13, a list of the most “balls-to-the-wall disturbing” horror films ever made).
Anyway, for what it’s worth (and this is, after all, what we’ve come here for), my Craven 3 (in no particular order)…

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): welcome the razor-fingered Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs, as Freddy Krueger gives us our first walking (or should that be, running?) tour of Elm Street (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare—the 7th in the Elm Street franchise—was Craven’s first, badly botched attempt at postmodern horror, which Kevin Williamson showed him how to do correctly in the Scream films)

Deadly Blessing (1981): though Craven isn’t particularly fond of this one, I still think it’s a nice little horror tale that straddles the line, making the viewer wonder whether there’s a natural explanation for all the sh!t going down, or if it really is an incubus haunting the scenic Pennsylvania Dutch countryside (it’s also got Sharon Stone in it, long before she was “Sharon Stone”)

And, two for the price of one! Scream (1996) and Scream 2 (1997): postmodern horror cinema’s finest hour(s), these are horror films for horror film fans, and display Craven’s suspense at its tautest (please disregard Scream 3, with its limp screenplay by Ehren Krueger—who likewise degraded Ringu into its slick Hollywood doppelganger; the only memorable things in Scream 3 are the cameos, and indie queen Parker Posey)

Yeah, The Hills Have Eyes is a classic, but it’s also (like Last House) pretty bleak and hard to sit through. (It’s also pretty much Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with a social commentary. And this is, after all, the Craven 3. Or 4, if you want to be picky, so I had to make some tough choices.)

And, just to take a peek at the cruddy end of the spectrum, Craven’s also had a bunch of clunkers, the worst quite possibly being Deadly Friend (which was such a crapfest because of studio interference). Sad, since the script was adapted from a novel by Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the screenplay for the brilliant Jacob’s Ladder. (Though he also wrote… ulp… Ghost.)
Cursed is also a stinker, but you can read about that in the Archive.

“[Wes Craven] may need a good screenwriting collaborator, the way Billy Wilder needed collaborators I.A.L. Diamond and Charles Brackett to produce his best films.
“Craven’s masterpiece awaits; and I for one am eager to see it.”
-- Ed Gorman
“Several Hundred Words About Wes Craven” (1992)

(I think that masterpiece was Scream/Scream 2, that “good screenwriting collaborator,” Kevin Williamson, but then again, that’s just me.)

Parting shot: In recent years, Craven has been involved with The Hills Have Eyes remake and its sequel, as well as acting as one of the producers of Feast. He also co-wrote the script for the English-language remake of Pulse and contributed a great short to Paris Je T’aime.
He’s now reportedly at work on a sequel to The People Under The Stairs (as producer) and a remake of his own Shocker, which he is slated to direct.
(Reviews of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Cursed, The Hills Have Eyes II, Feast, and Paris Je T’aime can be found in the Archive.)

(Wes Craven image courtesy of webwombat.com.au; A Nightmare On Elm Street, Deadly Blessing, Scream, Scream 2 OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is an altered version of an identically-titled article.)