Muir Book Wednesday: Horror Films of the 1990s

Very shortly now (in just days, I hope...), my book Horror Films of the 1990s will be published. If you've followed my work in print, you will realize that it is the long-awaited follow-up to my earlier texts, the award-winning Horror Films of the 1970s (2002) and Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

Like its two predecessors, Horror Films of the 1990s is a seven-hundred-or-so page survey of a wide swath of scary (and not-so-scary) films. Over three-hundred films are reviewed in detail in the book, and I also contribute a lengthy history about the decade and the particular events that shaped the genre cinema from the years 1990 - 1999.

Basically, the thesis of all my "Horror Films of..." books is that art universally mirrors life, and that you can better understand the horror films of any particular epoch by learning more about what was occurring in the culture at the time. In other words, I write a great deal about context. Therefore, Horror Films of the 1990s gazes at quite a few historical trends, and how those trends found voice, sometimes surprisingly, in the horror films of the day.

Two important nineties "Zeitgeist" touchstones involved the Human Genome Project and the Internet, for instance. Many films in the decade looked at this scintillating notion of a new Pandora's Box being opened, either in terms of genetic science or computers. Films such as Jurassic Park, Mimic, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Deep Blue Sea focused on Frankenstein-like genetic horror, while films such as The Lawnmower Man, Brainscan, and Ghost in the Machine reflected fears involving new technology. Both trends were really expressions of our culture's long-standing fear about "science run amok."

Horror Films of the 1990s remembers other trends in 1990s horror films too. Another notable shift from the 1980s involved the "morphing" of the famous faceless slashers (like Jason) into "Interlopers," murderous and dynamic individuals who insinuated themselves into the lives of average Americans and American families. Films such as The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, The Guardian, The Temp, Single White Female and Cape Fear are notable examples of this particular trend.

This same decade was also very much about the "homogenization" of horror, as studios made genre films their A-products: beneficiaries of big budgets and more well-known casts. But with greater costs involved in production, horror films also had far less room to transgress, and that proved a problem for a genre based on the foundation of shattering moral decorum and tradition.

Another notable difference: In the 1970s, we saw films with titles such as I Spit on Your Grave and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the 1990s, we got films with generic-sounding titles such as Scream, Mimic or The Temp. So-called "brand name terrors were also produced with easy identification in mind, and for quick sale on the home video market.  The "Grim Fairy Tale" trend was one example of using famous historical myths or cultural icons (Leprechaun, Rumpelstiltskin, Uncle Sam, Jack Frost, etc...) to quickly and effectively capture audience attention.

In general, the 1990s aren't considered a particularly good time in horror film history. Many of the films produced in this era don't stand up well next to the films of the 1970s or 1980s, for instance.

And yet I came away from my experience writing the book appreciating the good horror films of the Clinton Era all the more, perhaps, since they were fewer and farther between than in the previous decades I'd investigated.

So if you're a fan or follower of this blog and my books, I hope you'll seek out Horror Films of the 1990s, and let me know what you think of the book.

You can order Horror Films of the 1990s at Amazon, or through the publisher, McFarland.  Also, if you get the chance, you can see me discussing Horror Films of the 1990s at my author's page on Mahalo, here.  

I appreciate all your support!

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Home Sweet Home (1980)

"A little craziness never hurt anyone..."

- Dialogue from Home Sweet Home (1980)

In honor of the approaching holiday, today I'm looking back at a really terrible horror film that I first encountered while writing Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

Conveniently, it's both Thanksgiving-themed and a turkey.

Advertised with the ad-line "The Bradleys won't be leaving home. Ever," Home Sweet Home (1981) is the not-so-riveting story of a deranged serial killer and his holiday rampage.

Said serial killer is portrayed by Body by Jake's (1988) gleeful Jake Steinfeld. The enthusiastic exercise guru -- also known for his music label, "Don't Quit Music" -- plays this muscular madman as a cackling, bulging-eyed freak. This looney killer has the tattoo "home sweet home" emblazoned on his fist, and was incarcerated for eight years over the bludgeoning death of his parents.

In one of the film's first scenes, this hyperactive, super-fit killer takes PCP by injecting it into his tongue, guns his car engine rowdily, and then runs over a little old lady crossing the street.

Lots of maniacal, silent-movie-style, villlainous cackling over that. Unfortunately, Jake has no moustache to twirl.

Meanwhile, at a Southern California ranch, the unconventional Bradley family is preparing for a holiday that may or may not be Thanksgiving. Let's see: there's a turkey. There's a celebratory meal. There's a family gathering. And there are guests. But no one mentions Turkey Day by name. The VHS box does it for us.

Anyway -- for some reason -- the obnoxious Bradley son, charmingly named "Mistake," is dressed as a mime for the occasion. He's a practical joke-playing mime, no less. And did I mention, Mistake also dabbles in the electric guitar?

Unfortunately, the mime is one of the last characters to die in Home Sweet Home, meaning the audience must endure Mistake's lame antics for a very long time before the movie arrives at his fateful, and wholly-deserved electrocution.

The holiday meal with the Bradley family promises to be an unusual one too, not just because Mistake is a mime and because an uninvited serial killer is on his way, but because one of the invitees "won't drink anything," since "she hates to go to the bathroom." WTF? You know, I don't particularly like going to the bathroom either. I think I'll stop drinking too. I didn't realize it was that simple...

And did I mention that some crack cops are on the case, investigating the murders and pursuing the body-builder killer? The classy cops gawk at one character's overripe breasts after stopping her for speeding, and share this colloquy:

"Did you see that chick with the big bazooms?"

Since Home Sweet Home is incompetently shot, written and acted, one might hope that the violence Jake ultimately inflicts on the Bradley family would at least prove entertaining. But it isn't (well, except for the death of the mime, to be fair...). One character dies when she falls over and cracks her head against a rock. Can you really blame Ole Jack for that? Another character gets his head crushed under the hood of a car.

Home Sweet Home exhibits the familiar flaw of the worst slasher films, meaning that the killer is always positioned right where he should be in order to kill the one character who happens to be left alone at any given moment. You might accept that level of expertise from a Michael Myers or a Jason...but by Jake Steinfeld? I just can't ascribe supernatural abilities to this guy. Enthusiasm, gung-ho inspiration, yes. Boogeyman capabilities...no.

Mere words can't truly convey how irrevocably horrible this movie is. So Happy Thanksgiving, caveat emptor, and...gobble, gobble.

And The Worst Horror Film Remake So Far Is...?

...Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls.

The original Carnival of Souls (1962) was a one-of-a-kind experience. Forged on a tiny budget in the middle of nowhere Kansas, it was undeniably crude. Yet the film by Herk Harvey was surreal and creepy too; a mesmerizing, unsettling journey into a disturbing, black-and-white netherworld.

In my review of the film, I wrote:

"Performances in Carnival of Souls are truly variable, from the exquisite and sublime (the entrancing Hilligoss) to the terrible (there's a moment when a stranger by a water fountain addresses the camera directly), but there's an alchemy at work in Carnival of Souls, one impossible to dismiss.

The film's production deficits somehow manage to play into the overriding sense of the unreal and dream-like. There are no zombie attacks, no fierce action sequences, no bouts of blood-letting here. Instead, the venture methodically and memorably (and with unforgettable imagery) charts one woman's tragic plight as she slips slowly - piece by piece - from the world of the living to the world of the dead. In that half-detected twilight between life and death, she begins to regret that she never embraced life as meaningfully as she should have. Because now, death's cold embrace - a dance partner in the carnival of souls - is all she can look forward to.

The 1960s Carnival of Souls had budgetary drawbacks but viewers could easily overlook them because the film nonetheless expressed something powerful and resonant about mortality. That abandoned Saltair Carnival was a realm of terror, and our heroine was never going to escape it; no matter how hard she tried. Ultimately, we're all going to have our dance card punched by Death too; and thus something rings true about the stark, mysterious film and the hopeless, inevitable air that dominates it.

The same could not be said for the dreadful 1998 remake. It stars Bobbie Phillips as Alex Grant, a young woman who witnessed the murder of her mother twenty years ago by an abusive clown, Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). On the anniversary of her Mom's murder, Alex is accosted by Louis once more, and she drives her car into the waters of a California harbor rather than let the sadist endanger her younger sister, Sandra (Shawnee Smith). Following the accident in the harbor, Alex begins to move throughout different stages of her life, is terrorized by Louis repeatedly, and even sees gesticulating, spasming demons straight out of Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Technically-speaking, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a much less-accomplished effort than the original film, an odd fact given that the remake undoubtedly cost far more than Herk Harvey's groundbreaking original. In fact, this 1998 film is staged so ineptly that sometimes reverse angles don't even match. And the characters are so often shot in in close-up and medium-shot that you can't tell where characters are positioned in relationship to each other. One scene that features Louis popping up in the back-seat of Alex's car is so badly composed and edited that you aren't even sure that Miller and Phillips were in the same car at the same time to shoot the scene. Additionally, the movie is over-lit and blandly shot in a style that makes your average Sci-Fi Original Movies look like Fellini.

The newer Carnival of Souls also boasts all the tell-tale marks of bad 1990s screen-writing. In the original film, we met a character who happened to be in a car wreck, but the audience knew little about her background. As the movie went on, we learned she was a bit of a cold fish, and that she had held a job as a church organist. But we came to sympathize with her through her experiences; through the strange events occurring all around her. We identified with her because something strange and terrible was happening to her; and because, we felt, it could happen to us too.

By contrast, the 1998 film layers on facile psychology and off-the-shelf characters (in much the style as Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, actually...). Alex is a "psychologically damaged" character with "a tragic past" she must overcome. The events of the film take place on the anniversary of her Mother's murder...the event she could never get past. How many times have we seen that kind of predictable set-up before?

The Boogeyman of Carnival of Souls this time around has changed too. He is not some wide-eyed, pale-faced personification of Death, but rather Alex's "personal" demon: the groping, gruesome and utterly obvious Louis. The focus on the inner life -- on mortality itself -- has been turned outward to the simple defeat of a two-dimensional "bad guy" the audience can hiss at. Certainly, a good film could be made from these concepts, but this isn't it. These changes only make Carnival of Souls much more two-dimensional, much more run-of-the-mill than the original film.

The 1998 film is also slathered with dopey New Age, touchy-feely dialogue about death. Alex shares a discussion with a man who might be an angel. He tells her, "It's time to let go." She replies "I can't. I haven't lived yet." At another point, during a discussion of closing down her bar (The Mermaid Bar), Alex tells her sister "I'm not ready to go." Sandra replies "I know, but you're closer than you think." Welcome to Foreshadowing 101. But once more, the whole concept of the original film is undercut because death is now a safe harbor, a peaceful zone...not a realm of the unknown and the terrifying. I suppose this change has occurred so that the film can end with a kind of happy ending: our heroine has beaten the bad guy, "achieved" the rescue of her sister, and moved on to a "good place."

This movie should have been titled Horrorway to Heaven.

Really, I could go on and on about what a lousy film this is. There's a gratuitous sex scene on a boat that pops up out of nowhere with bizarre urgency but then leads nowhere. And the movie constantly skips time frames -- back and forth between scenes -- thus negating even the most rudimentary sense of narrative momentum (and precluding the need for that pesky thing called "continuity.")

And rather ungraciously, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls even fails to credit the original 1962 film as a source of inspiration. There's no "based on" opening credit here, despite the fact that the overall outline of the film is the same as the original (a woman dies and doesn't know it...) and despite the fact that certain shots are explicitly re-staged (the car pulled from the water...). The IMDB lists John Clifford, the writer of the original Carnival of Souls in the credits for this film, but I watched this film yesterday and his name is nowhere on the front of the film. The opening credit reads: written for the screen and directed by Adam Grossman.

Bottom line: Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a bad remake, and an arrogant one too. It has the audacity to adopt the title of a beloved older film but then substitutes weak ideas for the powerful ones of the original. A remake of Carnival of Souls need not have been slavishly imitative of the original, but it could have captured at least some of the ambiguity, some of the terror, some of the spikiness of the 1962 effort. This remake fails on all fronts.

I'm a big admirer of Wes Craven, but I sure as hell wish his name didn't appear before the title of this travesty, the lousiest of horror remakes.

What were my other contenders for that title? Next in line: the remake of The Hitcher (2007), and Jan De Bont's The Haunting (1999).

Of Men, Morality and Microwaves: A Trip Back to The Last House on the Left

Writer/director Wes Craven created The Last House on The Left (1972) as a "Generation Gap" Era re-interpretation of the 1960 Ingmar Bergman film, Jungfrukallan (or The Virgin Spring), an Academy Award winner for best foreign film. Going back further, you can trace the film’s violent tale to a twelfth-century Swedish ballad sometimes known as “Töre's daughter in Vänge."

There are some two-dozen variations of this particular ballad, but all versions are built upon the bloody pillars of rape and revenge. The story also involves the destruction of innocence or purity, and the moral price of vengeance.

The filmed versions of "Töre's daughter in Vänge" all feature a relatively affluent doctor, his innocent young daughter, and the violent, unwashed “herdsmen” who -- after raping and murdering the girl -- arrive at the doctor’s home to stay the night. In the end, after learning of his daughter’s death or suffering, the doctor exacts bloody and righteous vengeance against the murderers.

The three celluloid versions of this long-lived story offer starkly different interpretations of the ballad. Bergman's take is overtly religious and redemptive. Craven's "God is Dead," Manson-era take seeks morality in a universe totally absent the Divine. And the post-Bush/Obama era version of Last House on the Left offers a sort of "let's turn the page" approach to morality; leaving us to draw conclusions for ourselves after we have witnessed horrific, cruel, pre-meditated violence.

"You See It and You Allow It:" Violence and Faith in The Virgin Spring
Bergman’s The Virgin Spring explicitly concerns faith. Indeed, the tragic incident from start to finish may even be interpreted as a "test of faith" for Dr. Tore, played by Max Von Sydow.

He wonders why God permits such atrocities in the world of man. “You see it and you allow it! The innocent child’s death and my revenge…you allowed it! I don’t understand you!” he laments near the film’s conclusion.

Tore searches for meaning in the death of his beloved child, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson); but also in his own blood-thirsty, violent actions. He is a faithful servant…so why was he punished in this cruel fashion? Why was his dignity -- his sense of civilization -- stripped from him? Was he right to act so barbarously?

Mareta (Birgitta Valberg), Tore’s wife, believes that the innocent child was taken from the family because the parents loved and adored the beautiful Karin more than they worshipped and honored Christ. In other words, the parents were punished for not putting their love of God first. A shaken Dr. Tore swears to erect a church in the very spot in the forest that his daughter died; a kind of testament to the Mystery of Faith.

God rewards the tortured, doubting Tore. The Supreme Being miraculously creates a bubbling spring at the very idyllic location where Karin died; a sign that Tore’s continued faith is justified; and that his violent actions were justified too. Tore sees his faith restored by this miracle. A rapturous, high-angle shot reveals the creation of the virgin spring, and Tore’s awe at God’s wisdom and power.

An affirmation of religion (specifically Christianity), The Virgin Spring suggests that God forgives even the most atrocious acts of violence…if only the perpetrator is faithful. Tore may never have all his answers (God moves in mysterious ways), but the doctor can satisfy himself that God exists...and that God has heard him; and that he remains the Lord's servant.

Brilliantly and artfully crafted, Bergman’s version of "Tore’s Daughter" may boast a darker, more sinister interpretation too, especially given our times. The film seems to suggest that after committing heinous violence, the self-righteous will be rewarded with a miracle, and more than that, even be granted certainty of the existence of the Divine...something most human beings are denied on this mortal coil.

Today, we see doctors murdered for performing legal operations, terrorists bombing innocent civilians, and nations launching into bloody war...all over personally-held beliefs or delusions that “God is on their side.” Religion thus becomes the excuse for ideological and literal warfare. Here we see the same thing on a smaller, more intimate scale: bloody vengeance is deemed okay, and forgiven...if one is devout.

The Road Leads To Nowhere And the Castle Stays the Same: The Last House on The Left (1972)

Wes Craven re-interpreted The Virgin Spring and "Tore’s Daughter in Vange" for The Last House on The Left, his widely-despised debut film.

The New York Times

reviewer walked out of the film (with an hour still to go) and called it “sickening tripe,” (December 22, 1972). Even Danny Peary, author of Cult Movies decried the film as a “sick sexual fantasy” and “an incitement to violence.” (Delacorte Press, 1981, page 348).

In The Last House on The Left, young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) -- the equivalent of the Karin character -- is raped and killed by the sociopath Krug (David Hess). Her path intersected with Krug's while she was trying to score some weed on the way to a rock concert performance (by a popular group called "Bloodlust.") In The Virgin Spring, Karin had been on her way to "lighting candles" for Christ, to honor his suffering, when attacked. The distinction, of course, is critical. Mari is a self-involved modern teen of the Peace Generation; not a devout supplicant like Karin. Craven has thus stripped the religious veneer from the tale. But importantly, he has not stripped the moral underpinnings of the ballad. On the contrary, he has actually augmented them.

Although Mari prays to (an absent) God before she is murdered -- in a harrowing scene staged in almost identical fashion to Karin’s rape and murder in The Virgin Spring -- there is no salvation for her or redemption for her fallen parents here. Unlike the Tores in The Virgin Spring, Dr. Collingwood (Gaylord St James) and his wife in the 1972 Last House on the Left are not enlightened in the finale by the existence of God, or by a comforting awareness of Divine Method. Rather, they are left totally isolated in their shattered, middle-class living room, surrounded by the blood of villains. The camera does not majestically swoop heavenward to give the impression of God’s support; or even presence.

Instead, by freeze-framing on the shattered Collingwoods in the final (close-up) shot of The Last House on the Left, Craven reveals the futility of bloodshed and retribution in a way that the spiritually uplifting finale of The Virgin Spring does not. Very simply, the film ends on the face of two shattered people. They have been as violent and brutal as Krug and his fellow attackers (Sadie and Weasel)...and their daughter is still dead. They have achieved nothing...except the lowering of themselves to barbarism; to the level of the criminals who were so monstrous. They have survived; they have prevailed...but now they don't even know who -- or what -- they are.

On the soundtrack, a song entitled "The Road Leads to Nowhere" (composed and performed by David Hess) plays, and the title itself (also a lyric featured in the body of the pieces) expresses the futility of all the violence portrayed in the film. Despite the brutality, despite the revenge completed, "the castle stays the same," meaning that nothing changes. Mari remains dead and God does not right that wrong because the Collingwoods have "won." The subtext of the film is simple: as bad as the low class Krug and his compatriots are...the affluent, middle-class Collingwoods are really no better.

There's a fascinating moment in Last House on The Left, when Krug, Sadie and Weasel all pause by the lake, following the rape and murder of Mari (and her friend, here named Phyllis). For a brief instant, the criminals are silent. And they actually appear chastened. As if, for one fleeting instant...they have awareness of what they are; what they have done. At the end of the film, the Collingwoods kill with comparative abandon and glee. Mrs. Collingwood even bites off Weasel's penis while giving him head (a macabre touch not retained in the remake). The "respectable" Collingwoods seem to have no recognition of what they've done...not until that "freeze frame" captures them in the hell of their own making; in the aftermath of a bloodbath. In both these moments, violence is not championed, not even in the name of retribution. The opposite is true.

Why is The Last House on the Left so reviled by so many, so despised? In part because it accomplishes the unthinkable and the totally unsavory: it treats violence as real...and horrible. Most films, even great horror films, treat violence in a "tolerable" way, meaning that we may be frightened by the scary images...but we're not, ultimately, undone or debauched by them. Movie decorum keeps "the horror of violence" at an acceptable distance from our psyches..

Not so Last House on the Left.

After titillating the audience with early glimpses of the comely Mari in the shower, arousing lascivious interest, Craven turns the table on his audience and stages a brutal, affecting, prolonged, utterly monstrous rape. He lingers there. The scene goes on and on until you feel sick to your stomach watching. Again, this is Craven's desired manipulation: he makes you thirst for the blood of Krug, Sadie and Weasel right along with Mari's parents. Your anger is justified and righteous. We identify with the Collingwoods. With their loss, with their pain. We want the bad guys to suffer too.

But then, there you are, at the end of the film -- having wallowed in the violence with the Collingwoods. And you don't feel good about it. You feel - like the Collingwood's in that traumatized, valedictory freeze frame -- ashamed . The Collingwoods have stooped to Krug's level and gotten their revenge...but what's left? The road leads to nowhere. Violence, while perhaps satisfying on first impulse, ultimately solves nothing. Forged during the time of the Vietnam War, Craven's Last House on the Left is perhaps the ultimate anti-violence, anti-war film. It doesn't romanticize violence, and furthermore, decries violence even when the situation is an archetypal Biblical "Eye-for-an-Eye" setting. It's ironic that Last House on the Left is constantly attacked as being an incitement to violence, when nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that -- as movie goers and perhaps even as critics -- we prefer our violence palatable...not authentically disturbing.
"Are You Ready to Be A Man?" The Last House on the Left (2009)
The remake of Last House on the Left (2009) makes a number of interesting and telling modifications to the Swedish ballad and original story of "Tore's Daughter."

In this cinematic version alone, for instance, the doctor's daughter -- again named Mari (Sara Paxton) -- survives the attack. Her survival removes some of "anger" that, theoretically, Dr. Collingwood should feel. His victimization, in other words, is not as severe.

Also, the leader of the "herdsmen" or thugs, Krug (Garret Dillahunt) is defined more in the terms of being one of Craven's "Bad Fathers," than in the original film. This Krug is almost constantly seen goading his son into violent action; telling him to cowboy up and be a man. Even the rape of Mari here seems to stem more from Krug's cruelty to his son than his own feelings of sexual desire. The point, I believe, is the cycle of violence: the passing of "abuse" from one generation to another.

Also, alone among the filmed versions of the tale, Dr. Collingwood in this film (Tony Goldwyn) gets to utilize his skills as a physician.

Some of these changes in the "Tore's Daughter" template are just superficial; and some run far, far deeper. For instance, in the last act of the remake, Dr. Collingwood stabilizes his badly-wounded daughter and plans to escape in a boat (and get her to a hospital alongside his wife). With the aid of Mrs. Collingwood (Monica Potter) and Krug's son, Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), Dr. Collingwood also incapacitates Krug, eliminating any and all immediate danger..

But instead of simply escaping -- or killing Krug in the heat of a kill-or-be-killed moment (as was the case in the Craven version) -- this Dr. Collingwood takes his time and, with extensive pre-meditation, plans for the torture and death of Krug utilizing a malfunctioning microwave oven. In other words, this is no longer a case of flight or fight. Mari is safe. Krug is down for the count. But Collingwood -- a man sworn to protect life -- nonetheless breaks his oath and engineers a complex plan (involving a delicate surgery...) to kill Krug. Here's how I see this: Were my loved ones attacked and in jeopardy, I would certainly respond violently in the moment...perhaps even murderously...to protect them. But, were my wife and daughter attacked, and the situation safely ameliorated, I can't imagine I would respond by engineering -- over a sustained period of time -- a brutal surgery and torture scheme. That goes beyond preservation of self and family. That's...extreme sadism.

There are two ways to read this alteration in the tale. Either this is a pander-fest to the modern audience, ostensibly a bread-and-circuses demographic, who demand Krug's blood and want him to suffer in a horrifying way. Or, as I believe, this is a comment on our post-9/11 age, just as Craven's version commented on the 1970s. Yes, we were brutally attacked in September 2001 and three thousand Americans died horrible deaths and the terrorists were EVIL. But The Iraq War occurred in 2003, the torture at Abu Ghraib happened in 2004, and over 101,000 Iraqis are now dead in the year 2009. Exactly when, you might rightly ask, do we get to stop avenging 9/11 with a free conscience? Exactly when does the "heat of the moment" of 9/11 fade away, and reason...and restraint...and LAW set in? We were right to strike back against those who hurt us and killed our loved ones...but how long do we continue striking back against enemies with moral impunity before we are the ones provoking a new cycle of violence?

In the 2009 version of The Last House on the Left, Dr. Collingwood expresses not one recrimination about his actions; and that's also the official take of our government, even today. President Obama wants to "turn the page" on American moral abuses of the Bush Years...thus leaving them unaddressed and unpunished. That's also the state in which we leave Dr. Collingwood. Mari (like America) is safe and sound, but he (like our nation) hasn't yet looked in the mirror and faced the consequences of his bloody actions. That needs to happen. For him and for us.

This is a fascinating change in the enduring Swedish original. In the past, Dr. Tore and Dr. Collingwood responded to violence with savagery, but it was always in the passion of the moment. And they had motives we sympathized with: the death of the daughter. Here, this Dr. Collingwood has time for reflection, time for pause, and his daughter yet lives. And despite time, despite the survival of his daughter, Collingwood still knowingly and mercilessly fries Krug's brain in a microwave.

He doesn't feel bad about it...and in this case -- I hate to say it -- that makes the Tore character worse than the despicable Krug. Because this Krug, like his previous incarnation, at least experiences that moment of humanity by the lake in which he realizes that he's a monster. This Dr. Collingwood still thinks he's a doctor and an upright citizen. He marches on...but his violence is left unaddressed. And Krug, for all his brutal crimes, clearly didn't set out one morning to hurt Mari or Page...he happened upon them...and his brutal nature asserted itself. That assertion doesn't take him off the hook for his crimes in any way, but they were crimes of opportunity. By contrast, Collingwood is the only character in the movie who plots out and executes -- in detail -- a torturous death for another human being.

In some ways, this newest Last House on the Left is the most disturbing version of the tale yet produced. It doesn't find answers in God, like Bergman's version. Nor does it find answers in man's nature, like Craven's tale. Instead, it just punts moral judgment down the line. The 2009 Dr. Collingwood feels he was justified in the pre-meditated torture and murder of another human being because he was attacked first....and I suspect many modern viewers feel the same way.

"Bloodlust" isn't just the name of a rock group. And it's not a feeling limited merely to black hat bad guys, either. We can find it right here, dwelling in our very own neighborhoods. Just turn by the lake, and stop at the last house on the left...

The Vault of Horror Presents: The Horror Canon

The amazing B-Sol at The Vault of Horror recently tasked the Horror Cyber-Elite -- a veritable "Justice League" of horror bloggers -- to assemble selections for a Horror Canon.

As B-Sol describes the mission:

"My plan was to create a list of absolutely indispensable horror films that every fan needs to have seen in order to consider themselves a proper horror geek. This is not to be confused with "The Greatest of All Time." For example, Plan 9 from Outer Space would not be on my list of the greatest of all time, but I might very well consider it "must-see" viewing for any wannabe horror fanatic!"

"Think of it this way: If someone came to you and said, "I want to get into this whole horror thing, what movies do I need to see?" Which movies would you give them to watch?"

Check out the post in its entirety to see the Cyber-Horror Elite's tally of 35 films for inclusion in the Horror Canon!

To my delight, eight of my ten recommendations/suggestions made the final catalogue. As always, you may quibble with a specific title, or wonder about a particular omission, but I love these lists because they get the debate started, evoke passion, and foster further blogging. For instance, given the success of recent first-person/P.O.V. horrors like REC (2007) and Cloverfield (2008), I would have liked to see The Blair Witch Project (1999) make the Horror Canon, perhaps in lieu of some 2008 - 2009 films that may -- or may not -- stand the test of time.

Regardless of the titles ultimately chosen, it was an honor to be included in the selection process for The Horror Canon, and one of these days, I plan to post in detail about the films in the canon and why, indeed, they remain so important to a deeper understanding of the genre...

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987)

More than the work of any major director since Howard Hawks, John Carpenter’s films have undergone a unique "second life" -- a period of intense re-evaluation…and new found appreciation.

Even the classic Halloween (1978) originally drew bad reviews and nearly faded into obscurity until a laudatory Village Voice review by Tom Allen, and a well-timed holiday release rescued the film's reputation. Today, Halloween is a fixed star in the horror firmament; even a companion piece for Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).

Likewise, Carpenter’s The Thing (1981) was ignored by audiences and vilified by critics in the summer of E.T. (1982). Carpenter was even termed a “pornographer of violence” by some short-sighted critics because of the film’s intensity and pioneering (though admittedly gruesome...) special effects.

Yet by the 1990s, The Thing was exerting enormous influence on the genre in Hollywood productions almost too numerous to list. From The X-Files (“Ice”) and the main adversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- the shape-shifting “Dominion” (detectable only by blood test…) -- to the T-1000 in Terminator 2 (1991), Thing imitations were practically ubiquitous.

In recent years, critical estimations of In the Mouth of Madness (1994), They Live (1988), The Fog (1980), Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001) have also trended positive. But it is the director’s 1987 Nigel Kneale homage, Prince of Darkness that has witnessed the most meteoric rise in appreciation. Once derided as "second rate" and "klutzy," the film is now beloved for its brawny narrative twists, not to mention Carpenter's crisp direction.

The second movement of Carpenter’s so-called “Apocalypse Trilogy” (a cycle including The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness…), Prince of Darkness is elegantly lensed, suffused with a gloomy, unsettling vibe of cerebral terror (the more you understand, the more afraid you feel…) and punctuated with periodic jolts or "stingers" of extreme intensity. It is, as L.A. Times critic Michael Wilmington opined, a film "filled with graceful, gliding tracking shots, and icily precise Hitchcockian setups of the bleak decor and scary effects." (October 23, 1987).

Prince of Darkness also features one of Carpenter’s most memorable, arresting and pulse-pounding soundtracks. The score’s “ominous intonations…grab you and take command of your heartbeat.” (Allen Malmquist, Cinefantastique Volume 13, # 2, March 1988, page 117).

In all, this Carpenter film fires on all cylinders, and holds up exceedingly well on repeated viewing. At the film's heart is a discussion of science as the new "faith;" and an examination of a population -- another alienated population -- searching for spiritual and emotional meaning in a world apparently devoid of it.

He Lives in the Smallest Part of It

Prince of Darkness features a number of John Carpenter touchstones, both visual and thematic. First and foremost, this is a siege picture (like Assault on Precinct 13 or Ghosts of Mars), meaning that the action focuses on a small group of protagonists inside fighting off superior forces outside.

The abandoned police precinct of Assault has become the abandoned Church -- Saint Godard's -- of Prince of Darkness. In both scenarios, the location of the battle is important. The buildings are relics; ones without contemporary meaning or importance. Society has passed them by in both cases; they are symbols, essentially, of impotent infrastructure or bureaucracy.

Writing for Monthly Film Bulletin in May of 1985, Philip Strick compared the two Carpenter films in a way that is illuminating for our discussion: "With Prince of Darkness, the siege of Assault on Precinct 13 is vividly reconstructed: the derelict fortress, the comfortless corridors, the silent army in the night outside, the collapse of logic and security."

You may recall that the oft-repeated "siege" element in Carpenter's films is an homage to the cinema of Howard Hawks, notably Rio Bravo (1959). But Prince of Darkness is also an homage to one of Carpenter's favorite writers : Nigel Kneale. Kneale was the prime talent behind the British Quatermass films of the 1950s and 1960s (The Creeping Unknown, Enemy from Space and Five Million Years to Earth). His films (as well as TV serials) popularized the notion that threats mistaken as being of supernatural origin are actually...extra-terrestrial. In Five Million Years to Earth (1968) it was a Martian psychic force, not the Devil, sweeping through London, and so on. Carpenter resurrected this concept for Ghosts of Mars in 2001, but first he employed it in Prince of Darkness.

In Prince of Darkness, Jesus is an ancient astronaut, and Satan and his Father (the Anti-God) are also extra-terrestrials. In a tip of his hat to Howard Hawks, Carpenter edited the film Rio Bravo under the name "John T. Chance," the name of John Wayne's character in that movie. Likewise, Carpenter penned Prince of Darkness under the name "Martin Quatermass." Quatermass, of course, is the protagonist of Kneale's most famous works.

Prince of Darkness also evidences Carpenter's distinctive anti-authoritarian voice. Here, the Catholic Church has hidden the truth about the nature of Evil for 2000 years. "We were salesmen," says Pleasence's priest with disgust. "We were selling our product." In various films -- as we've seen -- Carpenter also went after movie critics (They Live), religious fundamentalists (Escape from L.A.), and even used the Catholic Church as a target again in Vampires. There, another Catholic sect was hiding a different Devilish secret: a black crucifix that created the world's first vampires.

Where Prince of Darkness pinpoints so much new energy, however, is not in these commonly-found Carpenter homages or themes, but rather in the endless possibilities of Quantum Physics. It's a whole new playground for the director, and he makes the most of the territory. The film discusses every important concept from Schrodinger's Cat to "causality violation" (time travel), and it does so with a sort of breathless, fast-paced intelligence that challenges the audience to keep up.

Let’s Talk About Our Beliefs, and What We Can Learn From Them…

Prince of Darkness begins with the discovery of an ancient and secret Catholic sect known as "The Brotherhood of Sleep." The guardian priest of this mysterious sect dies while clutching a miniature box containing a key; a key to the basement of a rundown Church in poverty-stricken L.A. called Saint Godard's.

There, upon an altar in the basement...is a seven million year old canister of volatile, swirling fluid. The liquid is, in fact, Pure Evil: Satan himself.

In hopes of comprehending and defeating this unusual threat, a Catholic priest (Donald Pleasence) teams up with Professor Birack (Victor Wong), a teacher of quantum physics at the Doppler Institute of Physics. Along with a group of dedicated graduate students -- including lonely Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount) and Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) -- the man of science and the man of faith spend the weekend at the old church and undertake a study of the canister and the liquid, as well as the corrupted Latin palimpsest that details its history and secrets.

Over a long, horrifying night, as revelation follows revelation, the forces of darkness invade the Church. As the devilish, pre-biotic liquid "self-organizes," it assumes psychokinetic control over small organisms (such as insects) first, then L.A.'s wrteched homeless, and finally it makes zombie minions of many of the graduate students themselves. The evil liquid also selects a human host, Kelly (Susan Blanchard), and plots to bring its demonic father -- the Anti-God -- into our dimension. At the same time, all the graduate students experience a recurring nightmare: a tachyon S.O.S. warning from the year 1999...

Very much like 1982's The Thing, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness concerns flawed, lonely, awkward human beings living in a world in which there is no real faith or human inter-connection. In fact, Prince of Darkness repeats verbatim a line uttered by R.J. McReady (Kurt Russell) in The Thing: "Faith is a hard thing to come by these days." As in that earlier film the line is spoken by Carpenter's unconventional protagonist and voice for the audience, here a graduate student in quantum physics named Brian Marsh.

The problem is that in a world of advancing science and human knowledge, the old platitudes of religious faith and belief seem antiquated and stale. At least until dressed up with such scientific candy-coating as "differential equations," "tachyons," "indeterminancy," and the like. Yet importantly, those "new" scientific concepts don't tell us who we are (or who we should be...) in the same authoritative sense that old-fashioned belief systems did.

Thus...a void.

Carpenter -- ever the visual artist -- finds an imaginative way of expressing this crisis in spirituality. As Pleasence's priest views St. Godard for the first time, the camera presents an establishing view of the church from behind an old iron gate, and a holy cross -- a Catholic Crucifix -- can be seen jutting heavenward from the church's roof. Yet above the church is another gate slat, this one horizontal in direction. In other words, the cross (representing religion or faith) is boxed in on all sides, from above and from left and right. Visually, it is trapped, confined and caged by its inability to answer the questions that so many people seek in today's world.

Professor Birack -- a wise elder and interpreter of the quantum runes -- seems aware of these problems in human connection, and he seeks amongst his studentsw -- again according to the dialogue, -- "philosophers" rather than "scientists." Philosophers, he understands, will understand how to place scientific knowledge within the context of man's spiritual or emotional world; whereas scientists, by implication, may not.

In Birack's students, we see disciples in waiting: lost souls who, for the most part, have forgotten the art of being human. Instead, they have come as boxed-in as the crucifix over the church. They have labeled themselves using the prevailing and simple lingo of their culture. "I'm a confirmed sexist," Brian tells Catherine proudly while trying to court her, unaware of how silly and bigoted he sounds. Later, Walter (Dennis Dun) tells a racist Jewish Mother joke ("I said rich doctor, not witch doctor!"), and also comments, condescendingly that Lisa, the team translater, could "pass for Asian."

This is a world in which it doesn't matter so much that a woman like Susan (the radiologist) is married, but rather the degree of her marriage ("how married?" a potential suitor asks). Thus communication between people, especially between people of opposite sexes is dominated in Prince of Darkness by what Catherine terms "miscues." These are wrong, defensive interpretations based on pre-conceived notions of others and even a pervasive non-understanding of self. In his essay, "John Carpenter: Cinema of Isolation" scholar John Thonen saw these graduate students as "selfish," and "lifeless" (Cinefantastique, Volume 30, Number 7/8, October 1998, page 71).

What these lost souls seem to lack is the very thing religion once provided for many: a sense of belonging, a sense of man's innate goodness. These young scientists, as the film notes, get romantic when discussing The New Faith (Quantum Physics) but "clam-up" when it comes to talking about emotions, feelings and humanity. Perhaps that's because science provides no guide-lines, no rules, no equations in such matters.

Catherine and Brian are seekers of truth and more than that, they are seekers of love...which is something more meaningful than just good sex (which ironically, is their first connection). Catherine desires to know "what the numbers mean," a search beyond scientific jargon, and Brian's obsession with card tricks represents a need for an understanding of life beyond mere probability tests; in something like...luck.

Each character has an idea of what specific path will lead them to personal enlightenment, but what they wish to make room for is the person -- the other -- who may bring them, by philosophies unknown and unexpected, to the missing piece of life's puzzle. To love. To real intimacy.

The tragic love story in Prince of Darkness plays out, interestingly enough, as a modern Christ analogy. Because of her burgeoning relationship with Brian, Catherine is finally open to love, to giving. Ultimately, she sacrifices herself to save mankind. She vanquishes the evil, but at the cost of her own life and future. "She died for us," Birack states succinctly, putting Catherine's sacrifice in decidely religious, Christian terms. Catherine knew what was at stake and made a conscious decision to consider others above her own well-being and survival. She saved, literally, a wicked world (one controlled by the Anti-God). She thus changed everything, preserving our future. Her Gospel, perhaps, is the mesage heretofore incomplete, the one beamed back through time (a causality violation) as an unconscious message. Will that message be different after her choice to save our world, or will it simply cease to exist all together?

No Prison Will Hold Him Now

Prince of Darkness debuted in the Age of AIDS, in 1987. This was the very year, in fact, that President Reagan made his first public statement on the epidemic. It was also the year that the formerly promiscuous James Bond 007 (Timothy Dalton) became a one-woman kind of guy in The Living Daylights.

The AIDS epidemic (as it was understood at the time) serves as an important backdrop to Carpenter’s film, since the “Evil” force depicted here is a fluid passed from person-to-person (usually mouth-to-mouth). Susan infects Calder by kissing him and forcing the evil fluid down his throat. Likewise, she contaminates Lisa in a sexually-charged sequence. As Lisa reclines on her bed, supine, Susan mounts her -- ascending into a dominant position -- straddling her. She then ejaculates the fluid into Lisa's protesting, open mouth. In the case of both AIDS and the Devil Liquid, transmission occurs through what appears to be sexual behavior; and the danger is carried in the equivalent of bodily fluids.

AIDS was largely seen originally (in the 1980s) as a "gay" disease, because it decimated that population first. If you look at the pattern of transmission in Prince of Darkness, you may note that same-sex transmission is highlighted. Susan infects Lisa. Susan and Lisa infect Kelly (all women). Professor Leahy (Peter Jason) and Calder (both men...) go after Brian. The one instance in which a woman does infect a man (Susan to Calder) could be read as representing another sexual taboo: interracial coupling. And come to think of it, Susan -- the first to be infected and spread the disease -- is married; thus acting out, essentially, an infidelity. What we're talking about here isn't just sexual behavior then but perhaps sexual misbehavior. Remember, The Thing too featured a single sex population in peril and posited Evil as an easily-transmitted disease; one "hidden" in the blood. In that film as well as in Prince of Darkness, Carpenter reflects American society's rampant fear of and paranoia about AIDs, about disease transmitted from person-to-person during promiscuous, impulsive acts.

Another important context underlining Prince of Darkness involves the 1980s epidemic of homelessness. By 1983, there were 35 million Americans living in poverty, some five million more than when Reagan had been inaugurated in January 1981. Reagan's economic policies involved what The Christian Science Monitor termed "deep budget cuts in the social service area" in order to lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans. The result was that more and more people lost their homes. Reagan once even audaciously stated that many of these unfortunates were “homeless by choice.”

In Prince of Darkness, it is the homeless who first become human minions to the Devil...an army of streetwalkers and hobos who -- ostensibly aimless -- have found malevolent purpose. Idle hands and all. Carpenter returned to the the theme of poverty and the homeless in his next film, They Live (1988), setting much of the action in a Shantytown called "Justiceville."

Say Goodbye to Classical Reality

Carpenter's Prince of Darkness screenplay asserts a "universal mind" or God if you will. However, because this is a Kneale-ean homage anchored in science, it also asserts the Laws of Physics. In particular, the film reminds us that every particle has an opposite or anti-particle. Therefore, if there is a universal mind or God, by inference there is also an anti-God.

In the film, a shorthand for this duality is quickly established via mirrors, via reflections. Accordingly, much of Prince of Darkness visually and contextually deals with doubling, opposites and mirror images. The mirror becomes the portal to the other world; where our "opposites" exist.

Birack and Pleasence's Priest are mirror images of sorts, possessing contrasting world views (science vs. religion) and Carpenter even uses mirror image compositions and mise-en-scene throughout the film, most notably during Brian's "test" leap into the alley beyond the church, and the subsequent attack of the homeless "antibodies." The film cuts to opposing reverse angles moving in on Brian from both sides. It's a visual mirror, with Brian as our point of reference in both shots, from both angles. Brian's prominent placement in the frame even presages Prince of Darkness's electric, portentous climax: a further "test" by Brian...this one staged as he reaches out for his own, possibly malicious anti-self in a mirror.

These final images resonate. They get under the skin. They promise so much yet explain so little. As Brian reaches for the mirror, gazing into his own reflection, the film's many themes converge. He is not only wondering if Catherine is watching him from the other side -- from the anti-verse -- but he is looking into his own face -- sweaty and pale -- and seeking answers. Brian is wondering, perhaps, if, the evil, the contamination could pass to him next. Only a moment earlier, he imagined himself in bed beside a rotting corpse...(the ultimate fear of the AIDS era...) and the uncertainty, the fear of infection, is palpable. It is this moment that Carpenter leaves us to ponder as the film concludes: a close shot of a groping hand reaching for (but not actually touching...) a mirror; the portal to darkness.

Prince of Darkness remains one of John Carpenter's most frightening films, not merely because of the superb soundtrack, the AIDS-subtext, or the clever use of Quantum Physics, but because the screenplay spotlights how much we take for granted in our daily lives. In Prince of Darkness we witness a world where logic is of no use (it collapses on the subatomic level...) and in which Evil is Real. There is indeed an order to the universe, John Carpenter reminds us...but it's not at all what we had in mind...

Ode to a Delta 88: The Classic Returns!

"He absolutely loved it (the Delta 88), and it kept on getting destroyed, and he would rebuild it. He had a very sentimental attachment to that car..."

-Robert Primes (director of photography, Crimewave).

Once upon a time, director Alfred Hitchcock was famous for making cameo appearances in his films. Today, Sam Raimi is almost as well-known for featuring his beloved car -- "The Classic" (a yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88 from 1973...) -- in his various Hollywood productions.

Ash (Bruce Campbell) piloted Raimi's treasured Delta in Evil Dead (1983), Evil Dead 2 (1987) and even time-tripped with it in Army of Darkness (1993). The director's car was also featured (and virtually destroyed...) in a nighttime car chase in the cult film, Crimewave (1985). More recently, it served as Cate Blanchett's clunker in The Gift (2000),and Uncle Ben's (Cliff Robertson's) car in Spider-man (2002). You can also see it in Spider-Man 3 (2007).

The cinematic love affair between Sam Raimi and his car continues to this very day, with this week's Drag Me to Hell (2009). The 36-year old Oldsmobile returns as the conveyance of diabolical old gypsy, Sylvia Ganush. The Classic even has a good supporting role this time around too: showing up (malevolently) in a darkened parking deck, and later seen quiescently parked in the gypsy's driveway.

When I wrote The Unseen Force : The Films of Sam Raimi in 2004 for Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (now available on Amazon's Kindle...) I had the honor of interviewing several cast and crew members from Raimi's productions, and we inevitably got around to the subject of The Classic. Sheree Wilson, star of Crimewave told me that the car was indeed Sam's "baby" and that she got a lot of special privileges with it, "hanging off...dangling off... "(page 83) of it.

After working on Spider-Man, the great Cliff Robertson told me that Raimi's Classic serves as the director's "signature." Roberson noted he was unaware of the car's deep significance until the "yellow Oldsmobile appeared on the scene" and his character died "in front of it at the Public Library."

Robertson added that it would be "interesting to see" how Raimi is going "to put it in a futuristic movie..." (page 304), but that he was sure that Raimi would "find a way, being the inventive, creative man that he is..."

Let's hope we next see The Classic battling Deadites again in Evil Dead IV...

13 Reasons I Love the Friday the 13th Films

Happy Friday the 13th!

Today sees the release of a re-imagined Friday the 13th movie franchise in cinemas across America. Given this milestone, II figured it was a good time to pay my respects to the original films; the ones I grew up with as a teenager in the 1980s.

So, without further introduction, here are 13 reasons I will always love the Friday the 13th movies:

1.) There's a consistent, Old Testament-style, conservative argument to be made in the interpretation of the old school Friday the 13th films (1980 - 1991). I describe this thesis a bit in my book, Horror Films of the 1980s, referring to it as "vice precedes slice and dice." That means, simply, that misbehaving teenagers (screwing, drinking, snorting coke and getting high...) are punished (violently...) for their moral transgressions. Jason, whose trusty machete might as well be the punishing Hand of God Himself, is the punisher. With this motif in place, I never understood the Moral Majority's dedicated opposition to the Friday the 13th films. The not-so-subtle subtext of these Reagan Age horrors is that if you play...you pay. But then, would-be censors aren't know for their penetrating film analysis, I suppose.

2.) There is an alternative interpretation of the Friday the 13th films too. Stated bluntly, it is implicit in the original films that Jason Voorhees - hockey mask, machete and all -- is the natural (or supernatural...) result of a modern world in which there are no more predators for man. Jason is therefore but a mechanism, a response from nature, to man's invasion of a natural terrain (in this case, Camp Crystal Lake). Screening the Friday the 13th film together, it's clear that the one factor in common is not Jason himself (who, technically, doesn't appear in Part V: A New Beginning), but rather...a storm. Yep, bad weather inevitably brings thunder, lightning...and evil, serial-killer predators (whether Mrs. Voorhees, Jason, or the Jason Impostor). The arrival of bad weather is important in the various Friday the 13th narratives for practical reasons, of course. Storms knock out power (and particularly lights...) plunging frightened teens into darkness, preventing telephone calls for aid, and making the youngsters ripe for the picking off. But it's more than that. It's as if nature is rising up and rebelling against these aimless, decadent humans and Jason is the mechanism to destroy them. If Jason didn't exist, Mother Nature would have to invent him. Consider also that Jason is tied to nature in an interesting fashion: he is believed dead for years when in fact he is alive and "incubating" at the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake.

3.) The Survivors. They were no longer little women...they were final girls. Horror-hating moralists and not a few feminists perpetually and blindly misinterpret the Friday the 13th films as misogynistic when nothing could be further from the truth. Virtually every Friday the 13th film provides the audience a laudable and heroic "final girl" who outsmarts, out-thinks and out-fights the powerful (and male) Jason Voorhees. While her friends are fucking, getting high, or getting drunk, the final girl alone is actually paying attention to what's happening, and able to sense -- and ultimately combat -- looming danger. Tell me that's not a positive message to send to teenage girls. Keep your wits about you, don't submit to peer pressure, and remember where you left the chainsaw...

4.) The sleeping bag kill. This is a murder featured in Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), and it's my all-time favorite sequence in the franchise. As you may recall, Jason zips up an unlucky camper in a sleeping bag and then -- like she's a sack of potatoes -- repeatedly slams the bag and camper into a tree trunk It's not the goriest kill; it's not the silliest kill; but in some ways this basic bludgeoning is the most brutal and -- oddly -- the funniest kill in the series. I get a kick out of it every time I see it.

5.) The Cassandra Complex. This character archetype appears in several Friday the 13th films (particularly the first, Part 2, Jason Lives and Jason Takes Manhattan). There's always a drunk stumbling around the perimeter of Crystal Lake warning oblivious teens that they're all "going to die." This Cassandra figure goes right back to Greek myth -- the tragic seer who is never believed by those in danger. Critics and moralists can accuse the Friday the 13th films of being pandering, stupid horror movies as much as they want...but many of the entries are actually constructed with an eye towards some classic literature. Both in Mother Love (the relationship between Jason and Mrs. Voorhees) and in the inclusion of the discredited seer.

6.) Tom McLoughlin's sense of humor. McLoughlin directed Part VI, Jason Lives! and once more found the fun in the aging Friday the 13th saga, injecting the series with fresh blood in a number of clever sequences. The film opens, for instance, with a nod to the James Bond gun barrel sequence, except this time Jason is on-screen armed with a machete. The humor permeates in the film in little ways too. A child camper at Crystal Lake is seen, briefly, reading No Exit. Again, the meme that these are just "stupid" horror movies is proven wrong.

7.) The Stars in Waiting. Kevin Bacon, Crispin Glover, Corey Feldman, and Martin Cummins are just a few of the young actors who showed up at Camp Crystal Lake, got horribly murdered by a Voorhees, and moved on to bigger things. Everybody's got to start somewhere...

8.) Harry Manfredini's trademark "chi-chi-ha-ha" riff. Okay, so it's not the Halloween theme by John Carpenter. But this creepy, classic composition defined the Friday the 13th sound for a generation of teenagers, entered the pop culture lexicon, and was widely imitated and mocked. And, if I'm not mistaken, the cue is resurrected for the remake.

9.) The trailer for Jason Takes Manhattan. I'm not certain how many of you are old enough to recall this TV advertisement...but it was bloody genius. To the chipper tune of "New York, New York," a camera crept up on a figure gazing at the iconic New York City skyline. As we moved in on the figure -- his back to us -- he whirled around and it was...Jason! This trailer was actually more inventive than the farmed out-to-Canada movie it was created for. I appreciated the tag-line too: "Now New York has a new problem." I also can't help but think of The Muppets Take Manhattan...

10.) High Concepts Gone Horribly Wrong. The makers of the Friday the 13th films attempted desperately to keep the long-in-the-tooth series going, infusing new and crazy ideas into the later sequels. For instance, A New Blood was sort of Carrie Versus Jason, an idea that sounds great on paper but doesn't play so well, especially when "Carrie's" psychic powers miss their target and wake up Jason Voorhees from his deathly slumber at the bottom of Crystal Lake. And who can forget Jason X -- which sent Jason into deep space and brought in Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck technology? And in the underwhelming Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason is overcome by toxic waste in Manhattan's sewers...because you know, in New York, toxic waste gets flushed through the sewers every night! The toxic sludge doesn't kill Jason though...it just transforms, him into a pre-pubescent kid wearing his bathing suit. Whatever...

11.) Amy Steel. Ginny from Friday the 13th Part II is my personal favorite "final girl" in the series. It's a personal thing, all right? Not every Final girl can adorn a bloody wool sweater, talk sternly to Jason, and get the killer to back down. If I can't have Jamie Lee Curtis...give me Amy Steel any day.

12.) The Motive That Makes No Sense. So let me get this straight. Mrs. Voorhees went on a killing spree in 1980 (in the first film) because her little boy, Jason, drowned at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958 thanks to neglectful counselors. But...as the end of Friday the 13th proves...Jason didn't drown. He's still alive. So if Jason isn't really dead, why is Mrs. Voorhees after Alice (Adrienne King) and her friends? It makes no sense at all. Then, Jason kills new teenagers because Alice killed his mother. But his Mother shows up alive in the lake at the end of Part III. What the hell? It kind of reminds me -- in a really bad way -- of Jaws IV: The Revenge (1987). There, the great white shark wants revenge against all Brodys because Chief Brody...killed it.

13.) The sting-in-the-tail/tale from Friday the 13th. Director Sean Cunningham crafts a perfect, mind-shattering coda for Friday the 13th, even if it makes no sense in terms of the specifics of the narrative. A spent Alice is alone in a row boat, in the middle of Camp Crystal Lake when a deformed Jason Boy leaps out of the water to attack her. This sting-in-the-tale/tail is second only to Brian De Palm's Carrie (1976) in terms of terrifying impact. Everything about this finale is pitch-perfect, from the placid, idyllic look of the lake, to the tranquil, misleading music, to the sudden attack itself. Indeed, the longevity of the Friday series may originate from this unforgettable denouement (which passed the serial killer torch from Mother to Son).

There you have it. Happy Friday the 13th. Here's to you, Jason...with an arrow in the eye!

Vault of Horror's Cyber-Elite Returns With the Top 20 Foreign Horror Movies of All-Time!

B-Sol at the great genre blog Vault of Horror has just gone live with another "Cyber-Elite" post.

This time, the dedicated cabal of horror film lovers has selected the top twenty foreign horror movies of all time.

And yes, It's another tally certain to spur controversy and debate (good things, in my book...). Especially because Italy's output is so lightly represented overall.

And, well, if I've learned anything in the last few years...don't mess with Italian horror movie fans. They'll never forgive you. Hell hath no fury like an Italian horror movie fan scorned.

A quick scan of the Cyber-Elite list reveals that six of my personal top ten foreign horrors made the group list, which is a pretty good number, I reckon.

Alas, two of my high-ranking choices, Don't Look Now (1973) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) didn't make the final cut. D'oh!

You can check out the entire list here. Below I include a snippet of the top five. I had three of these on my top ten (but I'll leave you to guess which ones. But yes, one of my top two choices was indeed Italian...):


1. Let the Right One In (2003) – Sweden
2. Suspiria (1977) – Italy
3. Cemetery Man (1994) – Italy
4. Nosferatu (1922) – Germany
5. Diaboliques (1955) – France

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Mirrors (2008)

SYNOPSIS: Ben Carson (Sutherland) is a suspended NYPD detective suffering from post-traumatic stress after killing a man on the job.  Carson is estranged from his wife, Amy (Patton) and their  children, and attempting to beat his alcoholism. While living with his sister, Angie (Smart), Carson takes a job at a burned-down old department store in Manhattan, The Mayflower, and patrols the premises as the new nightwatchman. The last nightwatchman, Gary Lewis, was murdered in a subway. Very quickly, Carson begins to see horrible, traumatic visions reflected in the Mayflowers' over sized and ubiquitous mirrors. These reflections are not simply horrifying, they are actually murderous, and come to haunt Carson over a period of nights. Of course, his disbelieving friends and family think he's officially a nutcase. When the demonic mirrors threaten Carson's family, he sets off on an investigative quest to locate a mysterious woman named "Anna Esseker," believing that she may hold the key to resolving the crisis.

COMMENTARY: Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the most disappointing Asian horror remake of all? It's Alexandre Aja's Mirrors, a lugubrious and turgid re-crafting of the 2003 Korean genre effort, Into The Mirror.  Basically, if you've seen The Ring (2002), you've seen Mirrors. In both cases, an imperiled protagonist faces a supernatural threat that endangers children. In both cases, the evil originates with an apparently-evil little girl in a mental hospital (Samara in The Ring; Anna Esseker here); and in both cases, the evil spreads like a contagion, either via videotape or, as here, in the looking glass. Both films involve an investigation into a dark and troubled personal history, one that leads to revelations from the Evil One's family members and old, forgotten medical records.

But the derivative and wholly-predictable narrative represents the least of Mirrors' problems. As is the case in such inferior films as The Eye, the real deal-breaker is a total lack of internal consistency. In horror films of the rubber reality venue,  in which consensus reality is shaken and stretched, internal consistency is absolutely vital. To provide two brief examples: Freddy Krueger must obey the laws of the "dream world" in A Nightmare on Elm Street. The dream world is key to his power and his defeat. And Pinhead in Hellraiser is tied to the Lament Configuration puzzle box. He doesn't just show up when he wants to. Hands don't call him; desire does. In these and other rubber reality films, the filmmaker establishes the overarching rules of the battlefield, and sticks to them (with surprises included), so that audiences can understand the threat, and more importantly, accept the resolution. Create instead a rubber reality world with no rules, with no internal consistency, and it's all just phantasmagoria. There can be no adequate resolution because the parameters of Evil's power have not been established, let alone sufficiently explained.

Take for instance, the monster in Mirrors. It adopts the form of reflections as people wander by the reflecting skin of the mirror. Once it captures your "image," it can kill you, by killing your image, your reflection. This dynamic is played out in the gory prologue. Gary Lewis spies his reflection in a mirror. Then, the reflection version of himself slits his throat. But the wounds show up on Gary, as well as on the reflection, and the real man bleeds to death.  So that's the rule: you see your image die; you die. But then, Mirrors changes its mind. In one scene, Ben sees his reflection in a mirror as it draws a gun and shoots him at point blank range! But it's just an illusion. Ben doesn't get shot. So a mirror glass shard the thing that killed Gary is real, but the mirror bullet fired by the mirror Kiefer is not? This kind of thing happens again and again in the film. Early on, Sutherland relives a horrible conflagration and sees his reflection catch fire. But he's actually fine. Just his reflection burned up. Again, different rules at different times.

Another example is the utterly ridiculous scene involving Angela's murder. The camera depicts actress Amy Smart standing in front of her bathroom mirror. She leaves the sink, but her diabolical reflection creepily remains in the mirror, watching her take a bath. Then, the mirror version of Angela rips off her own jaw, and so the real Angela's jaw falls off too!  In this example, Angela wasn't even looking in the mirror when this horror happened! So, you look in the mirror just once and it gets you? You don't need to be in the proximity, or watching? Or even have your eyes open? If that's the case, then why do Kiefer and his family spend so much time in the film painting over all the mirror surfaces in Amy's house? I mean, the mirrors have already seen Amy and the kids by this time, right? What's the point?

This discussion leads, alas, to a fairly significant instance of the movie's general incoherence.  Consider: a long time ago, little Anna Esseker was possessed by a flesh-and-blood demon. The monster was finally "exorcised" into mirrors. Now, over fifty years later, the demon in the mirror is haunting men like Ben Carson and Gary Lewis because it wants them to locate Anna Esseker and, for lack of a better word, re-possess her. So, the film introduces s a demon who is virtually invincible. He lives not merely ensconced in the mirrors of a department store, but can travel to any mirror, anywhere in the world, apparently, including those in subways and family homes. In these mirrors, the demon can make people kill themselves even if he catches sight of them just once (like Angela), and his victims don't even have to be looking at a mirror to be under the demon's evil sway (again Angela). Furthermore, the demon can't be destroyed, because the mirrors all magically heal after being shot at, cracked, or thumped with furniture. And heck, it isn't just mirrors where the demon can live. It also thrives in pools of water, which also reflect images. But this all-powerful demon desires to trade this existence -- this invincibility -- for the frail physical, flesh-and-blood body of an elderly nun (Anna Esseker), so that Kiefer Sutherland can beat that body, burn that body, shoot that body, and perforate it with a boiler room pipe?

The movie bears out this complaint in believability. The demon finally gets back into Anna's body and about two minutes later gets killed. Be careful what you wish for, demons! See how the movie's logic does not survive even the slightest bit of scrutiny?

Even the small details seem off. For instance, how does the dead night watchmen, Gary Lewis, send Ben Carson a package, via UPS half-way through the movie? No only has Gary Lewis never met Ben (and even if he knew his name, how would Gary know Ben's address?) But again, Gary died in the movie's first scene, before Ben took the night watchman job! I didn't know UPS was now making deliveries straight from Hell.

Character motivation is way, way off in Mirrors too. The nun, Esseker, is totally resistant to helping Ben resolve the crisis. Not once but twice she refuses to help him. even after looking at a photo of Carson's cute kids. The only way she'll go back to the Mayflower (or Matthews Hospital...) is at gunpoint, actually. Then, just one scene later, she's miraculously leading the charge. She gets to the Mayflower and is totally on-board, ready to sacrifice her life, barking orders at Ben about what, precisely, to do to summon the demon. There's a scene missing here: the one in which Esseker "embraces" the mission and isn't just Ben's hostage. Without that scene, her sudden and inexplicable change of heart is just another WTF moment in a film full of them. Why not offer the audience the bread crumb of one token scene in which Esseker ponders her vows, their meaning, and then has a change of heart?

Also, ask yourself this question: why doesn't Ben ever lead any of the doubting thomases in his life (friends and family) to the Mayflower and simply shoot the mirrors there in front of witnesses? Nobody believes him that the mirrors self-repair, and so he attempts to prove it by shooting another mirror at Amy's house. Which, of course, doesn't self-repair and therefore makes him look more like a raving lunatic. Well, why not call the demon's bluff, and go back to the Mayflower with an entourage of witnesses and shoot those mirrors? Either result in that case would have been a positive one for Ben. Think about this logically for a second. Either: a.) the demonic mirror wouldn't have called his bluff, and would have therefore been destroyed by the gunshots, or b.) the mirror would have indeed self-repaired, and Ben would have had the hard evidence of his story in the form of eyewitness accounts.

Mirrors is doubly disappointing, I suppose, given the level of talent involved. Kiefer Sutherland boasts a long, distinguished connection with the genre. From The Lost Boys (1987) to Flatliners (1990) to Dark City (1998), the actor has done particularly well with horror and dark imaginings. But seven years of 24 has apparently rubbed off on him. In his first post-Jack Bauer horror film Sutherland plays Jack Bauer. There's a really off-moment here in which Ben threatens the nun at gunpoint, and, well, all you see is Jack on his latest mission. All that's missing here is Chloe.

And Aja? This is his most undistinguished and disappointing work. There is nothing to mark this film belonging to Aja. Nothing to delineate it as special, different, inventive, original or even particularly frightening. Mirrors is pretty much on a par with low-rent material such as One Missed Call or The Eye. It's  especially saddening that a premise so rife with potential is rendered so mind-numbingly stupid by a filmmaker as clearly talented as Aja remains. The idea of reflections, of "doubles," and of opposites, is one that could be quite powerful. Not to mention quite revealing in terms of human psychology. Lip service is paid to the concept here, but that's it. Offhand, this author can think of two films that do much better with the concept of mirrors as "portals of evil." The first is John Carpenter's underrated but utterly brilliant Prince of Darkness (1987). It gets the concepts right, using the mirror as the universe of the Anti-God. And the other film is a terrible movie, Poltergeist III (1988). But here's the thing: as bad and as stupid as Poltergeist III surely is, the director there meticulously crafted all of his mirror scenes with doubles, with two-sided sets (the "mirror" in the middle bisecting it), and so there was a physicality and reality to the threat. Actors playing horrific reflections had to carefully mimic performances. In Mirrors, Aja takes the easy route and relies almost entirely on CGI. Bad CGI is everywhere. An early shot of the gothic Mayflower department store digitally inserted into modern Manhattan is unbelievably fake. Look, if you can't even manage a believable establishing shot of your primary location, how are you going to suspend disbelief for almost two hours? Short answer...Aja doesn't.  I hope the director didn't end up with seven years of bad luck after making this movie.