Scary Movie Month 2016: Misery (But For Real)

So I had a plan this month to write as much as I can about Stephen King adaptations. It appears, however, that I'm going to have to cancel that plan. You see, the Annie Wilkes-ian specter of real life has got its sledgehammer (or ax, if you're a Constant Reader) in its hand and it's swinging like hell for my already feeble ankles.

This is the first Scary Movie Month in 3 years I've had to tap out due to unforeseen circumstances, and to the small handful of people who read these (hi mom), I appreciate your support and I thank you for reading my ramblings. Hopefully things will become more manageable soon but in the meantime: enjoy your Scary Movie Month, and I hope to be on here rambling away again soon. 

Scary Movie Month 2016: Battleground

Battleground 

I wanted to start with a lesser-known and under-appreciated King adaptation, and while this is an episode of television rather than an actual movie I feel it fits the bill nicely. Adapted for basic cable as part of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes anthology series (even though the story is from the Night Shift collection), this tribute to Richard Matheson's Amelia (itself memorably adapted as the final story in Trilogy of Terror, the one with Karen Black menaced by a Zuni fetish doll, the doll even makes a brief cameo here) is a fun, briskly paced tale of suspense.

William Hurt (always awesome) plays a hitman who, in the opening sequence, takes out the CEO of a toy company. When he returns home he finds that he has been delivered a suspicious package that turns out to be a small foot locker filled with army toys. Being a Stephen King story, the toys come to life (l'chaim!) and set out on a mission of vengeance against Hurt.

The silly, pulpy material is played completely straight, which goes a long way toward making it effective. Matheson's son, Richard Christian Matheson, wrote the adaptation and it's directed by someone who knows a thing or two about bringing life to inanimate objects, Brian Henson, son of Muppet mastermind Jim Henson. The special effects are for the most part terrific (some are a little wonky, but what do you want from a decade-old television production?) and they keep the threat escalating in new and interesting ways.

What really makes this stand out is that the story is told without a single word of spoken dialogue, and that choice is quite effective. Lots of filmmakers (particularly modern filmmakers) wouldn't trust their audience enough to tell a story without spoken exposition, and it's a great choice that serves the story well. Hurt is excellent in the lead, and there's never a moment where he refuses to believe what's happening which is a refreshing take on this sort of thing. Having him accept his situation at face value and try to work his way out of it helps the threat feel legitimately threatening and amps up the tension nicely. The pace is terrific, too, this thing really moves.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes as a whole is a well made, satisfying anthology series and absolutely worth seeking out (it's available on DVD for around $10 on Amazon). I may talk about other episodes later on (can you tell I don't have these things mapped out in the slightest?) or I may not, but either way I strongly recommend tracking it down.

I'll be offline for the next couple of days (happy new year to my fellow Hebrews and Shebrews) but I'll be back Wednesday to see what else the King has in store for us. In the meantime, make sure all your toys are put away. Maybe count them to make sure they're all there. Some of them could be missing.

They could be hiding.

Waiting.

Scary Movie Month 2016: Hail to the King, Baby

Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.

Those are the first words I ever read that were written by Stephen King (they began the introduction to Night Shift, his first collection of short stories), and they changed my life. They were intimate yet forbidding, and they made me feel both intrigued and very, very nervous. I was much too young to be reading some of the stories in that book, and I was a kid who was very easily scared by movies and such. That being said...Uncle Stevie wanted to talk to me, and who was I to refuse?

As I dug into that book and learned about the dangers of possessed motor vehicles, demonic laundry presses, vengeful army toys, the parentless children of Gatlin, Nebraska, spoiled beer, and all the rest, I was certainly scared but I was also feeling something that the horror movies I had seen up to that point hadn't made me feel: joy. Exhilaration. I was having fun. As scary as the stories were (and to my 10-or-so-year-old brain they were fucking terrifying), as each one came to an end I couldn't wait to see what the next one had in store, to see where Uncle Stevie would take me next. I trusted him, even though I was afraid of him. 

The next book of his I attempted to read was the brand new (at the time) It. I say attempted because I got only a few pages in before poor little Georgie Denbrough went chasing after his paper-and-paraffin boat and accepted his final balloon from Pennywise the Dancing Clown. That opening shook me to the core and scared me so much that I didn't build up the courage to go back to the book for over a year to read the next thousand pages, many of which contained nightmares that have never been and will never be matched. Finishing It (again, much too young) was running a gauntlet, and after I finished, my first order of business was to grab whatever I could get my hands on that had the name Stephen King on the cover (next up for me was Thinner, and that's a deliciously poisonous slice of Gypsy pie).

Every fan of King that I know refers to themselves the same way King himself refers to us: we are Constant Readers. He speaks to us, to our family of Constant Readers, in his introductions and annotations, and he always does so in such a personable manner that it feels like a conversation. Let's talk, you and I. Even if you're not addressed by name, you are a Constant Reader, and that's enough to let you know he's having this conversation with you, he can hear your voice just as clearly as you can hear his. That avuncular tone inviting us into the darkness, making us feel safe and scared for our very lives all at once, that's magic. There's nothing else like it, and imitators be damned there's no one else like Stephen King.

As much as I love and will always love King's writing, there's another thing that I love and always look forward to despite the fact that it can often be a crushing disappointment: movie (and television) adaptations of King's work. They are legion, and they range from excellent (The Shining, The Dead Zone, Misery) to execrable (The Mangler, Pet Sematary Two, most of the Children of the Corn franchise). These are what I've chosen to write about this year, and yes I'm including sequels and such that aren't directly based on his books or stories but still wouldn't exist without him (so something like Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War counts, while something that's only inspired by King like Stranger Things doesn't count. Make sense?). The order in which I write about them will be random, because I have a feeling that going chronologically would be a bit depressing, quality-wise. I won't cover every single adaptation out there, but just whatever strikes my fancy on the day that I'm writing each post.

The other thing I'm doing a little differently this year is that my posts won't be daily. I'm going to write as much as I can, but unfortunately I won't have the time to post every day and to be perfectly honest I want to enjoy this time bathing myself in the works of my favorite writer, I don't want it to start to feel like homework, so I'm going to pace myself a bit. Thank you to those of you who read these, and who encourage me to keep writing them. I will be back tomorrow with more.

Now let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.

Happy Scary Movie Month!

Top 10 of 2015 and Shadowboxing With My Father

Top 10 2015

Worst:

Vacation

Honorable Mentions in no particular order: 

The Gift

Krampus

Spring

Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation 

Straight Out of Compton

Turbo Kid

What We Do In the Shadows

Magic Mike XXL

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

We Are Still Here 

Top 10:

10. Bone Tomahawk 

9. Sicario

8. Chi-Raq

7. Ex Machina 

6. Mad Max: Fury Road 

5. Spotlight 

4. It Follows

3. Love & Mercy

2. The Hateful Eight

1. Creed

Let's talk a little about my number one pick. I generally try not to get too personal online, but I gotta do so a bit here, so expect a fair level of incoming schmaltziness. 

From the day I saw it until the day after Thanksgiving, I thought Love & Mercy was a lock for my top spot. While I love a lot of Beach Boys music, I was mostly unfamiliar with Brian Wilson's story (I basically knew just enough to get the references in the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson") and I only went to see the movie because I knew my dad wanted to, if he hadn't I probably would have skipped it until it hit home video. We went together, and to my surprise I was completely swept up in it from the very opening frames. Two hours flew by in what felt like the length of a single Beach Boys song, and by the time the end credits rolled (over footage of the man himself singing the title song) I had tears of pure joy running down my cheeks (warning: this may become a theme here). It touched me in a way that's rare, and I've since become a tremendous fan of Wilson and gained a new appreciation for his genius on a level that I had never been able to comprehend before. Over the span of two hours, I fell in love with Brian Wilson.

My dad, on the other hand, didn't think much of the movie. He wanted less time spent on all the Dr. Landy stuff and more time spent in the studio in the Pet Sounds era. I was a little bummed that the movie didn't connect with him the way it did with me, but I was still happy that we had the opportunity to see it together.

Cut to the day after Thanksgiving. I had the day off from work and I'm not the Black Friday shopper type, so I decided to go see Creed. It was my dad who introduced me to the Rocky series so many years ago (around the release of Rocky III, circa 1982), and while I knew he'd want to see it, he was out of the country so I went on my own figuring that if it was any good I'd go see it again with him when he got back. I certainly wasn't expecting much from it. I love the Rocky movies, but the thought of a spin-off centered around a character who never existed before seemed like it was destined to be a forgettable, cynical cash-in at best. 

Sometimes movies can surprise you.

A funny thing happened during that first screening of Creed. Those Love & Mercy tears? They ain't got nothin' on what Creed did to me (told you it would be a running theme). I had tears streaming down my face for a solid half of the movie, completely caught up in the passion co-writer/director Ryan Coogler poured into every frame. At first I didn't understand why it was so emotionally overwhelming, but then I realized what it had to be. I needed my dad to see this movie. I needed to share it with him. 

My father is a good man, and I love him, but we didn't always get along. When I was a kid, I was often afraid of him (not physically, he wasn't abusive or anything like that, just very intimidating) and as I got older, there were times I resented being compared to him. Times when I felt there was no real me, that in most people's eyes I wasn't Josh, I was just Bob's son. 

There's a scene in Creed, a very small moment but also my favorite single moment in any movie this year, in which Adonis Creed is watching a YouTube clip of his father, Apollo Creed, in a title fight with Rocky Balboa. The clip is being projected onto a wall so that it's practically life-size, and Adonis stands up and begins to shadowbox. What struck me about the moment isn't the imagery of this conflicted man fighting alongside the father he never knew, it's the fact that he's not fighting alongside Apollo, the moves he's matching are Rocky's. He's fighting against his father, against his legacy, against his very name. 

Shortly afterward, when he meets Rocky and they begin to slowly form their own familial bond, I couldn't get the image of him fighting against his father out of my head. The whole movie revolves around Adonis deciding how to make his own way without either embracing or besmirching his father's legacy. To suggest this might have hit a nerve with me is to suggest the sky might, at times, be blue. 

A short while after my dad got back from his trip we went to see Creed together, and I've never been more grateful for the darkness of a movie theater, because it meant he couldn't see that I cried through the entire movie that time. I didn't even know I had that many tears in me. I don't think he knows why the movie resonated so deeply with me (at least not until now, because he's one of the three people who will read this) but there are tears welling in my eyes as I write this. 

Adonis Creed learns to take pride in his father's legacy rather than shun it. It took me a long time to learn the same thing, but over time I did learn it. Sitting there with my father, watching this tale of fathers and sons, watching a man struggle with the intimidation of living up to his revered father, was the best two-plus hours I spent in a theater all year. 

I love Rocky Balboa, and I have ever since my dad introduced me to him when I was seven years old. I could never have imagined back then that someday I'd be 40 and I'd still have a new Rocky movie to share with my dad, much less one that helped me appreciate him and his love and support that much more. As proud as Adonis becomes of his father's legacy, it can't even touch how proud I am of mine.

And I don't even have to wear star-spangled shorts and punch other people in the face repeatedly to show it.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 31: Happy Halloween!

In Memoriam: Scary Movie Month 2015 

I've got no movie today. Technically we did make it halfway through a midnight screening/shadowcast performance of Repo! The Genetic Opera here at the Spooky Empire horror convention but the performance was lame and also that movie is terrible. Anthony Stewart Head has got some strong pipes, though. 

Not a lot of time to write today thanks to Spooky, but I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting here and on the Twitter machine. This is my favorite time of year, and talking horror and hearing about what everyone is watching, from old favorites to new discoveries, is always fantastic. I have a tremendous list of movies to catch up on thanks to everyone championing what they're digging, and there are few things on this planet that make me happier than the anticipation of new horror.

That's all I've really got today, I've gotta get rambling if I'm gonna catch the Fright Night panel (William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse and Stephen Fucking Geoffreys are here). Thank you all, stay safe and have a happy Halloween!

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 30: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Normally I save this one for Halloween itself, but I'll be at Spooky Empire horror con tomorrow, so I won't have time for a Scary Movie Month movie (however I will still post something here for the three of you reading this). I wrote about this one last year as well, but it's a Halloween tradition for me so I had to write about it again. Deal with it, jerks.

I adore this movie, because it's not only an entertaining riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it's also wall-to-wall batshit insane. Angel-who-walks-among-us-as-man Tom Atkins stars as Dan Challis, a doctor-slash-estranged-father-slash-lothario-slash-drunk. He stumbles across a plot masterminded by Conal Cochran, CEO of Silver Shamrock Novelties (Dan O'Herlihy, gloriously unhinged), to kill a whole bunch of children on Halloween night by using a television signal to trigger pieces of Stonehenge that are also insect-and-snake-producing lasers  sewn into the popular masks he manufactures to melt the heads of the kids wearing the masks. Feel free to read that (admittedly run-on) sentence again and let it sink in. Oh, and also there are people who are actually robots, one of whom kills a guy by breaking his nose FROM INSIDE HIS HEAD. Have I mentioned that this is a certifiably batshit movie?

This year it was even more fun than usual because I watched it with a commentary track recorded by (some of) the F This Movie! crew which is (as always) both hilarious and informative. From discussing the genesis of the movie and its place in the Halloween franchise to pointing out goofy details like Challis' handkerchief (or "dickcloth") I enjoyed every moment of the track, it really helped to make the movie feel fresh. Also, it was a kick to hear JB's assertion that it's not a good movie completely deflate as he kept pointing out more and more things he liked. For a movie about a crazed Irish mask-maker and his robot minions attempting to murder as many children as possible with Stonehenge-lasers it's strangely likable. From the painfully early-80's computerized opening credits to the legitimately great (and frighteningly bleak) final shot it's a tremendously fun watch. Plus you'll never get the Silver Shamrock jingle out of your head, ever, not even if you're the victim of a laser-equipped Halloween mask. Hap-py hap-py Halloween, Silver Shamrock!

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 29: WNUF Halloween Special

WNUF Halloween Special

I'm kind of torn about this one. Stylistically I greatly appreciate what they're doing, but narratively it's significantly less satisfying. The concept is great: what we're seeing is a VHS recording of a Halloween special aired on local TV on Halloween night 1987 in which a reporter takes a group of people into a supposedly haunted house. As would befit a VHS recording of that time, all of the commercials are in place and I could legitimately imagine someone who doesn't know this was actually shot in 2013 thinking that it was authentic. They really have the details down of that era of television, and it's as convincing a recreation as you're ever going to see.

As convincing as the production is, the novelty wears a bit thin by the halfway point. Yes, including the commercials is a very clever conceit, but the "station breaks" come so often that it begins to feel like so much padding. Also, while the commercials feel very authentic, it tends to pull the audience out of the movie when the sixth commercial for a show that never existed comes up. There was never a moment where I stopped thinking "this sure does look like the real thing" which only served to remind me that of course it wasn't the real thing. The whole special is just over 80 minutes as it is, but it might have benefited from removing three or four of those breaks and clocking in at around an hour. 

Once the proverbial excrement hits the cooling device and the allegedly haunted house turns out to be exactly that, things escalate so quickly that there's no real time for tension to build. It's a very impressive production that leaves itself almost no room to tell a story, which is disappointing. I appreciate the novelty of it and the artistry involved in recreating the look of a 1987 television broadcast so exactly, but when all is said and done it feels like no more than that: a novelty. That novelty is certainly worth a look, and the intention is worth applauding, but I wish it was a strong enough movie to be recommended as more than a curiosity. 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 28: Transylvania 6-5000

Transylvania 6-5000

I blame Mel Brooks. I grew up watching his movies and listening to his & Carl Reiner's 2000 Year Old Man records over and over and over (and over), so I have a tremendous soft spot for his borscht belt style of comedy. It's silly, it's often infantile, and more often than not it makes me laugh. That combined with a love of monster movies makes me a pretty big fan of this goofball lark written and directed by Rudy De Luca, cowriter of a whole bunch of Brooks' movies (but typically not the good ones). 

Jeff Goldblum (dreamy as always) and Ed Begley, Jr. are tabloid reporters sent to Transylvania by their editor (Norman Fell!) to chase down a Frankenstein story. This leads to all sorts of monstery chicanery as they cross paths with a mad scientist (Joseph Bologna, playing to the cheap seats), a scheming hunchback (John Byner), a sexy vampire (Geena Davis, hooooooooly shit, worth seeing the movie just for her costume) and assorted wacky townsfolk. 

The interplay between Goldblum and Begley is legitimately pretty great, and they manage to wring laughs out of material that really doesn't earn it. Whenever they're offscreen the movie suffers, though Bologna appears to be having fun going so broad and there's charm in that.

Overall it's a tame, harmless, silly little comedy that for some reason (read: Goldblum) has remained on my radar for thirty years. I was in first or second grade when it hit cable, and it was one of those movies that seemed to play almost daily on HBO at that time, but I'm still surprised how fondly I remember it and how well it still works for me. Comedy is just as subjective as horror, and this certainly won't play as well for everyone, but I had a pretty big smile on my face the whole way through. I'd love to have seen what someone with a deft comic touch and genuine affection for horror movies like Brooks could have done with the same material (as a director, De Luca is a pretty decent screenwriter) but at least Goldblum & Begley's chemistry manages to keep it afloat. Also, did I mention Davis' outfit? Because that has also remained a very fond memory for thirty years. Ahem.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 27: The House That Dripped Blood

The House That Dripped Blood 

Another reader request, this one from my friend Nicky who is a straight-up horror authority and often knows my tastes better than I do. She knows I love anthologies so she recommended this one from Amicus, the studio behind my favorite anthologies Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). This is a bit different from those in structure in that all four of the stories here (plus the framing story) take place in the same location, a house that has seen its share of horror over the years. Also, while Crypt and Vault were both based on EC Comics stories, these tales are all based on Robert Bloch stories, with the man himself adapting them for the screen.

It's not quite as consistent as the EC movies, and the twists are a bit more predictable, but the stories are entertaining and feature a few standout performances by the likes of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Denholm Elliott, Jon Pertwee, and Joss "Diplomatic Immunity" Ackland. It starts off strong with probably the best story in the bunch, featuring Elliott as a writer who is haunted by his own murderous creation (shades of I, Madman and Martin Scorsese's episode of Amazing Stories, "Mirror, Mirror," both of which are things I love). It's a scary concept effectively executed.

The next two stories are a bit weaker, but there aren't any in the movie I'd call bad. One concerns Cushing and Ackland as friends who become obsessed with a waxwork that resembles a woman from their past, and the next features Lee as an abusive father whose young daughter turns to the supernatural for revenge. Both follow somewhat predictable beats but they also both have moments that work. 

Things pick up again in the final story, with Pertwee (who was playing Doctor Who at the time as well) starring as a horror film star whose costume cape turns its wearer into an actual vampire. It helps that this segment also features the luminous Ingrid Pitt, who is welcome to bite my neck any time she wishes. 

While none of the stories are quite as effective or memorable (or scary) as those in Crypt and Vault, this is still a better-than-average anthology and worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing. What it's really missing is the wicked streak of dark humor that permeates the EC movies, it takes itself just a tad too seriously, but that's not enough to sink it completely. Amicus produced such high quality movies that even their weaker efforts tended to be worth seeing, and this is no exception. If it sounds like I'm being hard on it, it's only because some of their other work is so strong that it makes for a pretty high bar to clear.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 26: Ravenous

Ravenous 

Hey, it's a reader request! My friend Fabian asked me to do this one at some point this month and since I loved Bone Tomahawk yesterday it seemed like the right time to revisit another Civil War-era cannibal movie featuring David Arquette in a small role (which is turning out to be a surprisingly robust subgenre). This one is a lot goofier, but it's also buckets of fun.

Guy Pearce, who should be in everything, stars as a US soldier during the Mexican-American War who is stationed in a remote California outpost when a disheveled man (Robert Carlyle) appears at the base with wild tales of cannibalistic survival. Turns out that there's more to his tale than Pearce and the other members of his regiment (including Jeffrey Jones, Neal McDonough, and Jeremy Davies) realize, and things go next-level bonkers (™ Jason Mantzoukas) from there.

Where the cannibal threat in Bone Tomahawk was deadly serious, here it's a lot sillier. It's stated at one point that to consume the flesh of another gives you that person's life energy, which basically turns this into Highlander with moderately less goofy accents as people are absorbing each other's energies all willy-nilly. It's a lot of silly fun, with Antonia Bird's energetic direction and Damon Albarn & Michael Nyman's quirky score helping it stand out from the crowd. The tone is kept light despite the subject matter and setting, and that comic tone (along with a bunch of fun performances, Carlyle in particular has maybe never been better) keeps the material from ever getting downbeat. This is one of the best comic horror movies of the 90s, and while it tanked in theaters it's easy to see why its cult has grown on home video and it has such a strong reputation in the horror community. It's on a special-feature-packed blu-ray from Scream Factory (doing the Lord's work, as usual) and absolutely worth tracking down. Just don't watch it when you're hungry.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 25: Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk 

It feels like it's practically a spoiler just to list this western as a Scary Movie Month entry, but I'm running with it because when it gets horrific it does not pull any punches. Come to think of it, it opens pretty horrifically too, with David Arquette and Sid Haig robbing the bodies of a group of people they just murdered. As they do so they encounter a tribe of monstrous savages (to use the parlance of the movie) which starts a chain of events that leads sheriff Kurt Russell to hunt down the mysterious, possibly supernatural tribe. 

The majority of the movie is a straightforward western with Russell, deputy Richard Jenkins, cowboy Patrick Wilson, and dangerous dandy Matthew Fox tracking down the savages in order to save Wilson's wife and Russell's other deputy, kidnapped by the tribe. The dialogue during this section of the movie is pretty great, with the ragtag group of trackers building a rapport as they get deeper and deeper into unknown territory. Jenkins in particular gets to be funny without ever being the butt of the joke, which would have been an easy trap for a lesser movie to fall into. 

Russell is excellent (as if that's any sort of surprise) and centers the movie with charm and a clear sense of righteousness. He knows the danger he's heading into, but he doesn't shirk his duties for a second. When things take a turn for the horrific (and boy do they), character still comes first and every member of the hunting party acts according to their character, making them feel like fleshed-out people, not like constructs acting out the whims of a screenwriter. 

Not content with being just a damn solid, satisfying horror movie, this is also one of the best westerns to come along in some time, completely deserving of the talent and mustache Russell brings to it. Alternately funny, suspenseful, and haunting, it's kind of a shame this is playing limited/VOD because it would have played wonderfully in a theater. Even at home it's completely absorbing, but it would have been nice to have the chance to see it on the big screen. Get it together, audiences. This is exactly the kind of original movie we complain about not getting anymore as we file into the latest Transformers-branded noise factory. 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 24: Beware! The Blob

Beware! The Blob

This was an attempt to get back to writing about movies I like that have poor reputations, but I ran into a little snag: this movie is fucking terrible. I had fond memories of it, so either my memory is faulty or it just plain hates me.

Larry Hagman directs this dopey, amateurish, aimless, mean-spirited garbage fire of a "sequel" to the 1958 monster classic. There's no need to see the original to follow what's going on here (there is nothing going on here) and I imagine to watch them back-to-back would be akin to chasing a fine single-malt scotch with a warm, expired Yoo-Hoo. 

A bit of the frozen Blob is accidentally thawed and goes on to devour everyone and everything in its path, starting with a little kitten because fuck this movie. It goes blobbing around town engulfing bored character actors and assorted bit-players who all have exactly as much personality as the Blob itself. In an attempt to create a setpiece along the lines of the famous movie theater scene from the original, the Blob attacks a bowling alley, which makes for a sequence exactly as low-rent as it sounds. 

The movie plays as if it thinks it's a comedy, despite the fact that not a single funny thing happens. You would think an unstoppable mass of murdergoo from outer space would at least provide a couple of decent scares, but the scares are just as effective as the "jokes" (only they're probably more likely to cause laughter). The only thing this movie succeeds at is making the original look even better than it already is. Beware the Blob, indeed.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 23: Misery

Misery

I know I said this week I'd stick to movies I like that don't get much love, but The Dark Half put me in a Stephen King mood and this was the one that was on my mind so I'm running with it even though it gets PLENTY of love. Refunds are available at the exit.

James Caan is Paul Sheldon, a novelist (the protagonist of a King story is a writer? The devil you say!) who has spent his career writing trashy romance novels. Tired of wasting his talents, he kills off Misery Chastain, the heroine of his series, to focus on writing more serious fare. On a long, snowy drive after finishing his new, serious novel he loses control of his car and gets into a nasty accident. He's rescued by Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), his self-proclaimed number one fan. Turns out Annie is a nurse as luck would have it, and she takes him to her isolated home to care for him. Annie doesn't take kindly to the news that Misery is no more, however, and she's determined to get Paul to bring her back.

Widely considered one of the best adaptations of King's work, Misery truly is something special. Kathy Bates won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance and she's really great, alternately amiable and terrifying. Hers is a true rarity: a character that works even better on the screen than on the page. When we meet Annie in the novel, there's clearly something wrong about her. In the movie, she just seems like a harmless eccentric until she slowly lets that veneer drop. It's sort of the opposite of King's problem with the film version of The Shining, where his major complaint was that Nicholson is full-on bonkers from the very beginning. 

While Bates has the showier part, Caan deserves some love too. It can't be easy for such a physical actor to spend almost an entire movie bed-ridden and still sell an audience on both his pain and his progress, but Caan makes it look effortless. The two of them have a fascinating chemistry, as he grows to hate her we can always see it in his eyes but we can also believe that Annie doesn't see it, their reactions to each other never ring false. While it's mostly a two-person show, there are also a few colorful supporting characters, particularly the late great Richard Farnsworth as a small-town sheriff investigating Paul's disappearance.

King has since spoken about the genesis of the story, inspired not only by his sometimes horrifying fan-base but also by his struggles with sobriety, he's referred to Annie as the personification of the drugs and alcohol that were keeping him separated from the rest of the world. The movie is already scary when taken at face value, but viewing it through that particular lens gives it an extra dimension, reminding us how difficult it can be to get out of the grip of substance abuse. 

Also, despite taking place almost entirely in a single location it never feels constrained or stagy (even though it's now being literally staged, an adaptation is running on Broadway this year featuring Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis). It's an intelligent, frightening movie (if you can get through the infamous sledgehammer scene without wincing or looking away, you're a stronger person than me) highlighted by two stellar performances. There's not much more to be asked from your Scary Movie Month entertainment than that. 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 22: The Dark Half

The Dark Half

A few years after he found success as a writer, Stephen King tried an experiment. Whether to see if he could duplicate his success or just to see if he could publish a few books without the weight of expectation that comes with being a household name, he published a handful of novels under a pseudonym. Once it was discovered that Richard Bachman was really Stephen King, King stopped writing books under that name...but what if Bachman wasn't ready to retire?

That's the basic premise of The Dark Half, as scholarly writer Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) decides to retire George Stark, the pseudonym under which he writes pulpy thrillers (clearly inspired by Donald Westlake writing the Parker novels under the name Richard Stark). The problem is that "high toned son of a bitch" Stark isn't ready to be killed off, and he becomes a separate entity from Beaumont, intent on terrorizing him into changing his mind and murdering anyone who gets in the way of his rebirth. Hutton is terrific in the dual role, giving Stark an aura of oily menace and imbuing Beaumont with a combination of intelligence, fear, and resignation.

Adapted from King's novel by the great George A. Romero, there are a few moments that work better on the page (particularly in the climax involving a swarm of sparrows) but those issues are minor. For the most part it's a strong, well-paced, tense adaptation that belongs in the conversation when talking about good movies adapted from King novels. Unfortunately it often seems to get dismissed when discussing either King or Romero's filmography and that's a shame. Thankfully Scream Factory released it on blu-ray earlier this year, I hope that helps to put it on more people's radar, it definitely deserves to be seen. Just be careful...the sparrows are flying again.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 21: Freddy vs Jason

Freddy vs Jason

Here's the thing: the people who hate this movie have very valid reasons for that. The characters are paper-thin, the story is contrived and often nonsensical (since when is Jason afraid of water? And why is "bitch" seemingly the only word in Freddy's vocabulary?), and much of the first hour or so is downright laughable. I can't argue that any of that isn't true. That being said, the actual showdown between the two titans of terror that takes up the last half hour or so is so great that it's totally worth wading through the fairly terrible buildup.

I'm a longtime fan of both series, but even still I'm pretty solidly on Team Freddy so I appreciate that in structure this is much more a Nightmare movie than a Friday movie. It's a fitting swan song for Robert Englund in his eighth and final time behind the makeup, and he seems to be having fun going even broader than usual (which is saying something). The "heroes" (led by blank slates Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, and Kelly Rowland) are much less likable and certainly less memorable than the usual Elm Street leads, and much too much time is spent on them rather than the main attractions, but when it gets to the point where Freddy & Jason go toe-to-toe all is forgiven. 

Director Ronny Yu (who previously revitalized the Child's Play franchise with the terrific Bride of Chucky) brings some style to the proceedings and even manages to squeeze out a few fleeting moments of legitimately nightmarish imagery. While the script could have used another pass (or twelve) there's still some real fun to be had, particularly in that spectacular final act. Honestly, the whole movie could have been the showdown and I doubt any fans of either franchise would have complained. As it stands it's a bit of an odd duck, it's half a satisfyingly brutal battle royale, and half a thoroughly missed opportunity. The stuff that works, though...DAMN that stuff works. Plenty of fans complain about the ending by calling it a cop-out but I thoroughly disagree with that take. It gave us a definitive "winner" while still managing to serve fans of both characters with a (quite literal) wink to the audience. Glad I didn't place any bets on the outcome, though, I'd have lost my (red-and-green-striped) shirt. 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 20: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus 

This is an odd case in that I'm not entirely sure how much I even like this movie, but I still feel compelled to support it. Part of that is that I'm a lifelong fan of Spike Lee and find that even his failures are almost always worth watching (ok, maybe not Oldboy, but I doubt even Spike would begrudge you for skipping that one). Another part is tremendous affection for the source material, Bill Gunn's 1973 sorta-vampire opus Ganja & Hess, a pretty great unsung little horror movie about a doctor who develops a thirst for blood after being stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger. At the very least, this is something unlike anything else Spike has ever done, for better and for worse.

Spike's remake doesn't stray far from the source (to the point where Gunn is credited as a writer), both to its credit and to its detriment. There's some very powerful imagery in this version (and especially for a movie that was shot in only 16 days the visuals are quite striking), but a lot of it is so slavish to the original that it feels a bit too familiar. Also, it doesn't help matters much that Stephen Tyrone Williams is no Duane Jones and his performance as Dr. Hess Greene is nowhere near as nuanced and electric as Jones' was. I've only ever seen Jones in Ganja & Hess, Night of the Living Dead, and Beat Street (almost half his filmography, he made very few movies) but he had a presence that demanded your attention, whereas Williams has a presence that demands you ingest caffeine. 

Performance issues aside (and to be fair it's not just Williams, there are a few weak performances on display) the movie does manage to cast a spell over its two-hours-plus running time. It's very stylish and the soundtrack is terrific (again often the case with Spike) and while it feels like the messages about race and class often get lost in the style, it's still striking enough visually to warrant a recommendation. It'll never overshadow the original for me, but it's a worthy retelling that will hopefully lead a new generation to rediscover Gunn's film (wishful thinking, that, considering I believe I'm one of maybe six people who have ever seen this version, seeing as it was unceremoniously dumped onto VOD & home video with no fanfare. A shame, because it deserves an audience).

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 19: Saw VI

Saw VI

I've been thinking about movies I like that have less-than-stellar reputations, and I think I'm gonna make those my focus this week. Normally I don't have any overarching themes, but I feel like trying something a little different and I've got a long, difficult week ahead of me work-wise so it seemed like a good idea to stick to movies I already know I like. So with that in mind, let's check in on a late chapter in a series that often gets dismissed as "torture porn," a meaningless pejorative invented by people who usually can't be bothered to actually watch the movies they bash.

The first time I watched Saw I didn't much care for it. I thought it was a silly, oppressively bleak movie that hinged on too-flashy camera work (there are still a few shots I really can't stand), a somewhat nonsensical twist and a pretty terrible Cary Elwes performance. A month or so before Saw IV came out my friend Fabian convinced me to give the first movie another shot and try out the sequels. I did, and I'm glad he pushed me to try again because a funny thing happened with the sequels: I became totally hooked on the ever-twisting soap opera that is the Saw series. This series has a commitment to continuity that is completely unlike any other series I've seen in any genre. That constant re-framing of what's come before fascinates me, and I love that it's not a series that you can jump into at any point. You could watch any Elm Street or Friday the 13th movie and have a pretty decent idea of what's going on, but there's no way you could jump into any given Saw movie (even with a generous "previously on Saw..."-style recap) and have the first clue what the hell is going on. I love that, I love that the series rewards you for paying attention. I also love that my very favorite entry came so late in the series.

Saw VI should not have worked. Jigsaw, the villain of the series played by the great Tobin Bell, has been dead since the climax of Saw III (brief side note: another thing I love about the series is that they don't pull any dopey "he didn't really die" tricks to keep Bell on screen, Saw IV opens with his autopsy in vivid detail...that dude is stone cold dead) but thanks to the fluidity of the timeline in these movies he still gets to participate in the proceedings through flashbacks. The "hero" of the movie (Peter Outerbridge) isn't a hero at all, he's a scumbag insurance company flack who spends his career figuring out new ways to not pay for medical procedures. He's forced to decide who to save and who to allow to die in a series of deadly traps, and there's real tension in the setpieces that place life-or-death scenarios directly in his hands. As all this is going on, we're also still following Jigsaw's protégé Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), having escaped almost-certain death at the end of Saw V (in an ending seemingly cribbed from Superman II, of all places) and working to carry on Jigsaw's legacy for himself. 

So yeah, there's a ton of stuff going on in this movie, but surprisingly it never gets overwhelmed by trying to service all the different threads. The Saw movies are notorious for their use of flashbacks, and I'm a big fan of how they truly make you rethink what's come before (plus, whatever it takes to give Tobin Bell more screen time is fine by me). The narrative is constantly zigging and zagging in unexpected directions, and this chapter even has something to say about the current state of American health care. That's a pretty lofty ambition for the fifth sequel to what is essentially a grimy midnight movie, but here we are. No movie with a "VI" after the title should be as good as this one is. Unfortunately the follow-up, Saw 3D, took that sentiment to heart and ended the series on a very lackluster note. At least we'll always have Saw VI (and Tobin Bell's awesome pronunciation of the word "piranha." Seriously, listen for it, it's great). 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 18: Tales of Halloween

Tales of Halloween 

VOD is a goddamn miracle. First it gave us DEATHGASM, which until today was my favorite Scary Movie Month discovery this year. Now, it has given us Tales of Halloween, which is not only a great Scary Movie Month discovery, it's also one of the best movies I've seen this year full stop. A murderer's row of modern horror filmmakers get together (both in front of and behind the camera) to offer an anthology of 10 Halloween stories. I'm a huge fan of anthologies to begin with, and adding Halloween into the mix is like topping your pizza with another pizza...it's all so good. Add onto that Adrienne Barbeau as your narrator and I'm gonna need to have a defibrillator handy. 

Very often in anthology movies there are three or four stories, and usually at least one of those is lousy. Surprisingly, all 10 of these stories are entertaining, there wasn't a single one that I'd call bad. There were a couple of standouts (I particularly liked Darren Lynn Bousman's "The Night Billy Raised Hell," Dave Parker's "Sweet Tooth," and Andrew Kasch & John Skipp's "This Means War") but all 10 were fun and not a single story overstayed its welcome. My only nitpick (and it truly is a nitpick) is that it didn't capture the atmosphere of October quite as well as some other movies (Trick 'R Treat for example is one where you can practically feel an October chill through the screen) but it's so full of love for the holiday and the season that that's a minor complaint at best. 

Barbeau is just the first of countless familiar faces (hers is glimpsed briefly during a fantastic opening credits sequence scored by the legendary Lalo Schifrin) that populate every nook and cranny of the world in which this movie takes place. The stories are unconnected, but they all take place in the same general area on the same Halloween night, so characters will bleed into multiple stories (for example you'll see a major player in one story trick-or-treating in the background of another, that sort of thing). I just finished it and I already want to watch it again both to spot connections I missed and to scan the crowd scenes for even more familiar faces I'm certain I overlooked the first time. I'll also be watching it again just to enjoy the gleefully gory celebration of my favorite time of year that it is. Tremendous fun, with a love of horror and Halloween that flows just as freely as the blood does.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 17: A Handful of Tales From the Crypt

Tales From the Crypt: The Man Who Was Death/And All Through the House/Dig That Cat...He's Real Gone

Listening to Patrick Bromley and Adam Riske talk about Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood on this week's F This Movie! made me want to revisit the show from which those movies sprang. Sure, it's not technically a movie, but these first three episodes of Tales From the Crypt aired in a 90-minute block on HBO so it totally counts as far as I'm concerned. These three episodes are all examples of Crypt at its best, and it was really fun to revisit them. A series rewatch may be in order soon. 

The first episode, The Man Who Was Death, is my favorite of the three and it introduced me to the greatness of Bill Sadler. Here he's Niles Talbot, a state executioner who's so dedicated to his job that he keeps on doing it after the death penalty is repealed in his state. Sadler is the whole show, talking to the camera and narrating his own story as we see it unfold. It was a great choice to air first because not only is Sadler so charming and inviting that we can't help but like him, but it's also structured in a way that lets the audience know what to expect from these Tales. Virtually every episode hinges on an ironic twist, and this is no exception to that, making it an ideal example of the show's mission statement.

The second (and arguably most famous) episode is And All Through the House, featuring Mary Ellen Trainor (RIP) as a woman who just killed her husband and finds herself being menaced by a murderous Santa (Larry Drake) on Christmas Eve. It's reasonably tense, funny, a little gory, and very well put together. The story was filmed once before in 1972 with Joan Collins in the lead, but this is a very entertaining update that stands nicely on its own.

The final episode, Dig That Cat...He's Real Gone (I love that they didn't change the title of any of the episodes from their 50's comic book source material) concerns a sideshow attraction who dies on stage and is resurrected every time due to having the gland of a cat implanted in his brain, giving him the cat's nine lives. Joe Pantoliano is great in the lead, equal parts sleazy and fun, and bonus points to Robert Wuhl as the carnival barker, only because I've always liked that guy and he never gets enough love. The story has easily my favorite twist of the three, culminating with a strangely logical bit of insanity that I can't help but love. 

The show ended up running for seven seasons of varying quality and it's one I always enjoy. Even the bad episodes (and there are certainly a few clunkers) typically offer something worth watching, and that's more than can be said for most of what's on TV. The combination of often over-the-top gore and a warped sense of humor (and morality) really helps it stand out from the other horror anthology series out there, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a kick out of the Crypt Keeper, the skeletal host voiced by comedian John Kassir. Good stuff, full of fun Scary Movie Month spirit.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 16: Friday the 13th Parts VII & VIII

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan 

Ok, I wasn't gonna do another Friday movie so close to the last one, but I'm gonna be on a boat with all my coworkers for a large chunk of today so part VIII seemed like the right choice since so many people accuse it (erroneously) of almost entirely taking place on a boat. Yes, a decent amount of time is devoted to the trip to Manhattan, but it spends more time in the Big Bloody Apple than it gets credit for. Also, the time on the boat is pretty fun, so I'm glad I chose it to prepare for my trip.

I had a little more time than usual today, so as one of only two fans of part VII worldwide (hi Mike!) I decided to make it a double-feature. Yes, I recognize these are both demonstrably terrible movies that even fans of the series dismiss. Let every word Jason says throughout the series represent the number of fucks I give about the terrible reputation these have, I love 'em. Let's start with part VII, which is actually my favorite in the series (yeah, I said it).

Jason faces off with Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), a telekinetic teen who recently arrived at Crystal Lake. It's basically Jason vs Carrie, with lots of the bloodshed left on the cutting room floor as the MPAA was cracking down on violence at the time. So why do I dig it so much? Part of it is John Carl Buechler's Jason design, which is easily my favorite look for ol' swampypants. He's a legitimately terrifying hulk here, and the way Kane Hodder plays him in his first time behind the mask makes him seem like a completely  unstoppable maniac who enjoys what he's doing. It's the closest Jason has ever come to having a personality and I dig that. The producers of the franchise must have dug it too, as Hodder is the only person in history to play Jason more than once (he hangs on through four movies, finishing his run with the criminally underrated Jason X). He made the part his own so thoroughly that there was even fan outrage when he was replaced by Ken Kirzinger (who incidentally is murdered by Jason in part VIII) for Freddy vs Jason. I really like the telekinesis angle too, because at least they were trying to make it stand out and give Jason someone worth facing off against. Also, Terry Kiser (Bernie!) appears as an unscrupulous psychiatrist out to exploit Tina and he makes everything better.

There are lots of little touches I enjoy, from the infamous whacking-the-sleeping-bag-against-the-tree kill (Hodder's oft-cited favorite moment from all four of his movies) to the little *honk* when he shoves a party horn into a character's eye. There's enough quirkiness on display to keep it fun, though it's not as overtly comedic as part VI (which is lots of fun in its own right). 

Part VIII stays silly as a group of mostly doomed kids set sail for Manhattan without realizing everyone's favorite hockey-masked murder enthusiast is stowing away on their ship. The promise of Jason in Manhattan isn't realized until later in the movie than the filmmakers intended due to the budget being slashed like a promiscuous camper, but they make the most of his travel itinerary. It was less expensive to film outside of Manhattan so the section on the boat was expanded in order to allow costlier NY setpieces to be dropped. Still, once they get to Manhattan there's some terrific footage of Jason in Times Square and director Rob Hedden really makes pre-Giuliani New York seem like a place so horrific it would have given Golan & Globus night sweats. Those midnight toxic waste dumps in the sewer must really raise hell with the property value around there. 

The pace is a little slow and the cast is weaker than usual (which where these movies are concerned is reeeeeeeeally saying something) but I still can't help but enjoy it. Hodder still gives Jason more personality than we're used to, and he gets to punch a dude's head clean off his body so it can't be all bad. There are a few fun kills, with electric guitars and hot sauna rocks being my favorite of Jason's newly-discovered murder weapons. Also, it's a kick to see Kelly Hu (X-Men 2's Lady Deathstrike) and her giant 80's hair get chased around the ship. All things considered, there's fun to be had with both of these and if you're inclined to enjoy goofy slashers you could certainly do a lot worse.