Oct
31
You know what I’m tired of hearing? I’m tired of hearing that “The Exorcist” is the scariest movie in whole wide world. It’s not, especially not if you’re an atheist or even one of those fence-sitting wussy agnostics. Then the movie is just a crashing bore. And let’s be honest. “The Exorcist” is a phenomenally boring movie. I finally sat through the entire leviathan earlier this year after having seen only bits and pieces of it years ago with my jittery college roommate, a Mormon who was absolutely terrified by the notion of demonic possession. He had little to fear if you ask me. I hated sharing a room with that buttwipe. I couldn’t imagine Satan wanting to share a body with him.
Anyway, I’m getting off track. What I’d actually like to discuss, apart from my dislike of “The Exorcist” and its overwhelming popularity, are the lists that pop up on the Internet around this time of year, lists of the “best” horror movies. They’re all so samey and dull. Most of the flicks on them are older than I am. That doesn’t necessarily discount their quality. Make no mistake, I don’t think pop culture only became valid on August 12th, 1979, and any movie made before my date of birth is irrelevant. I am, however, sick of seeing a 35-year-old movie like “The Exorcist” as a chart-topper on all these lists when there have been plenty of scary movies made rather recently. What’s more, some of are actually watchable.
So if you’re thinking about throwing a Halloween party and want to screen some genuine fright flicks, ones that won’t have you reaching for the remote so you can fast-forward to the “good parts,” here are some modern horror classics, listed in no particular order:
The Mist: Writer-director Frank Darabont, the guy Mick Garris secretly wishes he could be, adapts another Stephen King story for the screen. Unlike his previous efforts (”The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”), this one’s a horror flick about a group of people trapped in a grocery store by a strange mist that rolls into town and is seemingly loaded with Lovecraftian beasties. The film was released theatrically in color, but one of the DVD special features is the option to watch it in black-and-white, the version that I prefer. “The Mist” is a great film that I hope is finding an audience on video; it sank like a stone at the box office because the Weinstein Company stupidly released it the day before Thanksgiving. And it has one of the best “Oh, s***!” endings I’ve ever seen.
The Descent: Neil Marshall’s follow-up to “Dog Soldiers” is about an all-female group of spelunkers who find themselves trapped in a cave with a bunch of blind, albino freakshows — each with a taste for human flesh. The claustrophic arena is scary in and of itself: the Survivor Girl becomes stuck in a tunnel my cat would have a hard time squeezing through; another girl’s hands are shredded by a rope; and yet another girl suffers a gruesome compound fracture. This is all before the monsters even show up. Then all hell really breaks loose. I actually prefer the American version to the one released in the UK. Of course, the UK release was redubbed the “unrated” version when the movie landed on DVD and simply has an additional scene after the final scare, one that’s a little esoteric and sort of unnecessary. I’d suggest just stopping the movie after the final scare; you’ll know it when you see it.
Planet Terror: The first half of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” isn’t all that scary really, but “Planet Terror” is a great splatter film. Rodriguez’s films have an energy and a sly sense of humor that’s almost always appealed to me. Here, he’s clearly having a ball, putting his own spin on the exhausted zombie/viral outbreak sub-genre. This being a “Grindhouse” movie, the story doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense (a military platoon unleashes a zombie virus in a small Texas town for some reason or another), but that’s sort of beside the point. What’s important to Rodriguez is recreating the experience of seeing an exploitation movie — one that’s thoroughly scratched, missing a reel and swimming in blood and gore. And he does. Rodriguez brings some of today’s technology to a film that’s supposed to be a throwback to obscure B-pictures of the ’70s. Rose McGowan’s assault rifle for a leg is clearly achieved with CGI. But griping about the use of sophisticated special effects and not the ultra-low-budget approach taken by the exploitation wunderkinds of yesteryear would be like lamenting ILM’s work on the “Indiana Jones” movies, which were inspired by the Republic serials from the ’30s.
28 Days Later: Speaking of zombie/viral outbreak movies, Danny Boyle breathed new life into the rotting corpse of the sub-genre with this film. Some folks think that Zack Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” is a worthy successor to George A. Romero’s classic; they’re dead wrong. “28 Days Later” reinvents the zombie film for the 21st century. Shot almost entirely with digital cameras, save for the final scene, the movie is set a month after the outbreak of “Rage” virus in England. Bike messenger Jim wakes up in the hospital from a coma, not knowing what’s happened outside the hospital doors. Confused and alone, he wanders through the empty streets of London until a horde of fast-moving “infected” find him. The way Boyle portrays the infected as snarling, red-eyed vessels of intense hatred is utterly terrifying. Traditional shambling zombies that groan and bite you if you get to close aren’t anywhere near as scary as these sonsabitches. I’ve read a lot of blather about how the film falls apart in its third act, once Jim and his two fellow survivors encounter a platoon of British soldiers with dubious intentions. But I think Boyle is saying something about the breakdown of our civilization, how it’s not necessarily going to be caused by some external “other,” rather by our own bastard selves.
Shaun of the Dead: Zombie movies have been all the rage for the past 5 years or so. What can I say? This one’s at least a comedy, an approach not often taken. Comedy and horror are a difficult mash-up. Sam Raimi can do it in his sleep, evidenced by “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn” and its sequel, “Army of Darkness.” Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” is a worthy successor to Raimi’s spook-a-blasts. The script for the film, co-written by star Simon Pegg, is as sharp a piece of writing as I’ve seen in any genre recently. Wright brings a certain flair to his direction that emphasizes the humor over the scares; it’s why the film is grouped with my other comedies and not my horror flicks on my DVD shelf. But it’s still a better zombie movie than George A. Romero’s last two clunkers. It has a respect and appreciation for the genre that movies like the stunningly overrated “Dawn of the Dead” remake lack. It also has character. Pegg’s Shaun is a recently dumped electronics store assistant manager, one with little to no ambition beyond spending his evenings at the local watering hole, throwing back a pint or two with his friend, Ed (Nick Frost). That it takes a zombie outbreak to get him to accept a little responsibility and try to win back his ex-girlfriend. The setup provides for plenty of laughs and considerable gore. Still, this is definitely a movie you can sneak past that one person in your life who doesn’t typically like zombie movies.
Since I’m moving tomorrow, all my DVDs are boxed up. I haven’t watched even half of the movies I’d planned on seeing in the days leading up to October 31st. It’s been a busy month. But you could do a lot worse than what I’ve listed above. Have a Happy Halloween…even if you decide I’m full of bunk and rent “The Exorcist” anyway.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
30
“Spawn” #185
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I’m not ashamed to admit that I like Spawn. I probably should be, but I’m not. I’ve noticed that Spawnie’s gotten a bit of a bad rap on the geek sites. But of all the Image titles that launched shortly after the heavy-hitters departed from Marvel Comics to form their own creator-owned publishing house, “Spawn” is one of the two (the other is Erik Larsen’s “Savage Dragon”) books that still hits shelves monthly. For better or worse, the character has endured. Creator Todd McFarlane had breathed new artistic life into Spider-Man before his game-changing “Spawn” #1 sold almost 2 million copies, a record for an indepedent book. He since revolutionized action figures for the “mature collector” (i.e. perpetual adolescents like me) and produced a middling “Spawn” film and animated series in the late-’90s.
To his credit, he helped revitalize a flagging medium. Or did he? I started collecting comics in 1991 during the speculator boom, which also creatively bankrupted the industry. Before the housing bubble, before the Internet bubble, there was something that could be called the “comics bubble,” a period when speculators bought up piles of comic books, thinking that one day they’d be as valuable as “Action Comics” #1 (the first appearance of Superman) or “Detective Comics” #27 (the first appearance of Batman). And publishers acquiesced. Tons of #1 issues were put out. They had special gimmick covers. There were crossovers out the yin-yang. It was all sizzle and no steak. By the mid-’90s, Marvel Comics had filed for Chapter 11. DC had run out of A-list characters to kill or cripple. Meanwhile, Image couldn’t ship a book on time to save its life. The bubble burst. Comic books ultimately became so much paper gathering dust in some speculator’s basement.
Having weathered this perfect storm of greed and mediocrity, McFarlane’s become something of a controversial figure. He’s not much of a writer, he’s a bit of a credit hog, and he’s been in and out of court with Neil Gaiman over the rights to certain characters. Yet “Spawn” is still published every month. I think I have every issue of the core title. If I’m missing a few, it’s not intentional. I’ve fallen behind on my reading. It’s also not the easiest book in the world to follow. That brings us to the new storyarc, “Spawn: Endgame,” which kicked off yesterday with issue #185, and is supposed to change everything as we know it!
Um, I’m still lost. For the unintiated, Spawn was once a man named Lt. Col. Al Simmons, a government assassin who was betrayed and murdered by his superior. He went to hell and made a deal with the demon Malebolgia. Simmons returned from the grave, desperate to see his wife again. Unfortunately, he returned some 5 years after his death as Spawn, maggoty corpse that bleeds green “necroplasm,” and slums around with the dregs of society in the back alleys of New York. His wife has since remarried. Life — or “afterlife” — sucks for Spawn. To make matters worse, Spawn’s deal with Malebolgia guarantees his services as a general of Hell’s armies when they attempt an overthrow of Heaven.
That’s how I understand Spawn’s origins, having read the first 100+ issues. From what I saw in the issue recap at the beginning of #185, the world was recently destroyed, Spawn remade it and now God and the Devil are fighting their endless battle in a parallel universe…or something. But #185 begins with Spawn blowing his own head off, someone waking up in the hospital from a coma, and the demonic Clown stumbling upon Spawn’s decapitated corpse. Whilce Portacio — one of the Image’s lesser talented founders — has taken over the pencilling duties for this run. I’m not thrilled with his art. It’s not nearly as incomprehensible as Angel Medina’s work, but McFarlane really should take on the artistic chores again. This is one of the few books I’ve stuck with because, at the very least, it has pretty pictures.
I was hoping that “Spawn: Endgame” would wipe the slate clean and start the series afresh. Issue #185 seems to just complicate things further. McFarlane’s not interested in telling a straighforward superhero story, and that’s fine. But the book’s never been a great read. It gets mired in overly complicated tangents or becomes endlessly redundant. Then every couple of years, McFarlane shifts gears with a storyline like “Endgame” and adds another layer of confusion to the proceedings. Conceptually, I like Spawn — an agent of hell gone rogue. The storytelling unfortunately never quite lives up to the character’s potential. I think I’ll stick with “Endgame” for another couple of issues and see what happens. Like I said, I’m not ashamed to read the book, but if “Spawn” doesn’t improve, I won’t be ashamed to drop it, either.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
29
Slow News Week, I Guess
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I’ve fallen a little behind on my blog this week. I’m moving to the Westside, and studying for the GRE, and not finding a whole hell of a lot in the entertainment world to ramble on about. You may have seen my non-story about Chris Nolan wanting to make sure that “Batman III” has a good story before he signs on to direct. Yeah, it’s just one of those weeks.
Which brings me to a Reuters article I read about Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr’s involvement with the upcoming “Avengers” movie. I thought this was already a done deal. The post-credits scene in “Iron Man” kind of implied that the titular hero would have a slot on the team. What’s more, I would be astonished if the studio hadn’t taken out a three-picture option on Downey. That’s pretty much SOP when signing an actor to a franchise-starter. Michael Keaton got quite a bump in pay when Warner Bros. had to renegotiate his contract for “Batman Returns.” The studio had unwisely signed him for only the first film. Since then, studios know better or so I thought.
The real news, something I still regret not blogging about a week or two ago because I had an awesome pun for a title (”War Macheadle”), is that Terrence Howard is walking away from future “Iron Man” installments and being replaced with Don Cheadle, a stronger actor in my opinion; he also comes equipped with a grown-up voice.
On a side note, it should be pointed out that Jim Rhodes, the character Cheadle will play, didn’t become War Machine until the ’90s; every article I read about Rhodes reports that he’s destined to become War Machine in the film series, but that is sloppy reporting. In the comics, when Tony Stark was too stinking drunk to suit up as ol’ Shellhead, Rhodes would wear the armor and for all intents and purposes be Iron Man. Stark even sat out “Secret Wars,” the quintessential game-changing Marvel Comics crossover event of the ’80s. The Iron Man in that storyarc was none other than Rhodey himself. The War Machine armor came way later in the “Iron Man” mythology. I imagine this will be compressed in the film series, but I would expect Rhodes to wear the Iron Man armor at one point or another in movie two and not become War Machine until the third entry.
Anyway, once I’ve finished moving into my new apartment, I should be able to start blogging every day again. I’d meant to post reviews of “Saw V” and “Let the Right One In” last weekend, but couldn’t find the time. Hang in there, readership! I’ll be back in full effect soon enough. I only hope that I have some news to report that’s actually — I dunno — newsworthy.
-Iron Brad
Oct
27
So There Might Be Another Batman Movie
Filed Under Blockbusters, Comics, Movies | 1 Comment
I always find it amazing when filmmakers are totally oblivious to the concept of the film franchise. See, Hollywood doesn’t like to make one-offs. They want something that’ll spawn sequels, trilogies and a fourth installment that’ll come over a decade after everyone’s given up on there ever being another one. Somehow, filmmakers don’t quite get this. A director makes a movie, it performs well, the studio wants another one, the director’s hung up on doing something “small” for his next project, and so it goes. This happens every time. Even George Lucas does it, and he’s got his own studio.
Chris Nolan’s the director du jour to be hemming and hawing about what’s next for him. You may have heard about his latest directorial effort, “The Dark Knight,” and its overwhelming success at the box office. Well, surprise, surprise, Warner Bros. wants to make another one. And according to CHUD.com, Nolan’s noncommittal about whether or not he’s on board for a third Bat-flick. For him, storytelling comes first. If he’s going to make a new Batman movie, it’s got to have a good story. When a filmmaker starts sounding like screenwriting guru Robert McKee and going on and on about story, it’s clear that he is either suffering from writer’s block or hasn’t finished renegotiating his back-end deal.
I know Nolan’s a strong writer. “Memento” is one of my favorite films. There isn’t a Chris Nolan movie I’ve seen that’s disappointed me. He’s one of the better storytellers putting out movies today. He can’t shoot action, but he can tell a good story. I just find all this business about storytelling to be one of those overused directorial talking points that’s essentially meaningless. It’s like a director saying, “If I’m going to direct another movie, it’s got to be in focus.”
In film school, my professors would constantly suggest, “No one ever set out to make a bad movie.” This was before Uwe Boll ever got behind a camera. But still, saying that you only want to make a movie because it has a good story is just goofy. Do you also want to work with good actors? How about craft services? Would you like for the Red Vines to be of the highest quality?
I appreciate that filmmakers want to tell good stories, but shouldn’t that be a given? As impossible as it’s been for me to break into the entertainment industry, I’d like to think that the people who actually do make movies for a living are trying to make the best possible film and not simply collecting a paycheck. Now if they could just figure out how franchises work and not use up all their good ideas in movie two…
-Brad Lohan
Oct
25
It should be noted that this film is not about a Supreme Court case, so Sarah Palin might actually be familiar with it. No, this “Freddy vs. Jason” is a long-in-the-works monster mash between two icons of ’80s horror. Released in 2003, the movie was something I’d been looked forward to for the better part of a decade. And it was through those rose-colored glasses that I first watched the film. I think I remember proclaiming it as one of the best movies of the year, which either speaks to the general lack of quality films at the multiplex in ‘03 and/or my psychosis. At any rate, watching it again recently led me to believe that it’s not really as great as I’d originally thought.
The film tries to smoosh together the mythologies of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th” and it works well enough, I suppose. It’s impossible to tell when the hell the movie takes place, given the spotty continuity of both series. But as it opens, Jason is resting in peace, buried in a shallow grave on Crystal Lake. Freddy’s floating around in limbo, frustrated that the children of Elm Street have seemingly forgotten about him and itching to make a comeback. For whatever reason, Freddy’s powers are fueled by fear — something I was not aware of — but he’s somehow able to revive Jason and point him in the direction of Elm Street to do a little killing and make people afraid again; Freddy is clearly a neo-conservative.
Somehow able to maneuver undetected in suburbia, Jason — a seven-foot-tall man-beast in a hockey mask — starts stacking up bodies and Freddy quickly regains his strength. But Jason’s not about to take his machete and go home just because Freddy’s back to form. Since neither one is willing to share, they ultimately have a go at each other in an epic throwdown that begins in the dream world and ends at Camp Crystal Lake. The final battle is definitely worth the ticket price even though it goofily posits that Freddy’s weakness is fire and Jason’s is water. That’s simply an invention of the script and completely inconsistent with both franchises’ fairly flexible “rules.”
So who else is in the movie apart from the Big Two? Well, Monica Keena plays Lori, the Survivor Girl. Keena’s way too attractive for the role. It’s frankly impossible to believe that someone with hips and a bust like hers is 18 has hasn’t gone on a date in 4 years, not since her ex-boyfriend Will (Jason Ritter, essaying a hysterically awful performance even for this genre) seemingly fell off the face of the earth. And herein lies a MAJOR plot hole. Will has been institutionalized for the past 4 years because he thought he saw Lori’s father kill her mother. It’s unclear as to why exactly that’s grounds for being sent to the laughing factory, but whatever. Anyway, at another point in the film, Lori says her mother’s been dead for a year. Read that again; I’ll wait. See. It makes no damn sense, unless her mother died twice. As it turns out, chronology notwithstanding, Freddy killed Lori’s mom, Will saw it, and her father had him sent to Westin Hills to dope him up with Hypnocil, a drug that keeps kids from dreaming. Boy, that makes an ass-load of sense.
The humans in these movies are always generally disinteresting. They’re really just “types” who are cut down in no particular order. The whole whodunit subplot regarding Lori’s mother is overly complicated and not really resolved in a satisfying way. We’re here to see two titans of the slasher genre take each other apart.
So what else don’t I like about the movie? Well, I think director Ronny Yu went way, way overboard with color filters in post-production, trying to create a “comic book” look that’s only achieved by hacks who obviously don’t read comic books. Some scenes are purple, or green, or another color that overwhelms the senses and draws you out of the movie. Yu’s also madly in love with bird’s eye shots that look straight down at the action, shots that establish nothing but a dissonance between the audience and what’s happening on screen. How often to casual observers look straight down at people having a conversation? The answer is never. Oh, well. Yu has a DGA card. I don’t. I guess I can go eff myself.
All that being said, the movie isn’t a total wash. There are some good kills, the best being Jason repeatedly stabbing this guy as he’s lying prone in bed. Then Jason picks up both ends of the bed and sandwiches them together.
This is not a movie that holds up on repeat viewings, but I am genuninely disappointed New Line never got their act together and put out a sequel. The movie literally ends with a wink at the audience that would suggest another film is already in development. It just never happened. The studio got too caught up in trying to make the next one a three-way fight by adding in Ash from the “Evil Dead” series, like an aging and slightly overweight Bruce Campbell needed to add more confusion to the proceedings. When that never panned out, New Line killed the project, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Well, that about wraps up my “Night-Marathon.” It’s been educational for me, watching these movies back-to-back, sometimes two a night. Seeing the franchise evolve, or devolve, is a fascinating glance into the horror zeitgeist of the mid- to late-1980s. Freddy Krueger is an instantly recognizable character, his M.O. known to fans and non-fans alike. Deconstructing the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series is something I’d been hoping to accomplish in some small way in these blogs, though you could doubtless write a book and get much more in depth; the thought had occurred to me. Until then, pleasant dreams.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
24
This was the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie I saw in the theater. The series had been dormant for about 3 years before “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” — the penultimate chapter in the franchise — was released. In that time, I’d finally gotten into horror movies and caught up on all the previous films in the series. I vaguely remember liking “New Nightmare” when I saw it in high school. But, having seen it again, I don’t think it really holds up all that well.
Where Wes Craven had taken a step back from almost all the “Nightmare on Elm Street” sequels — the one exception being movie three, in which he’s credited as a co-writer and exec producer — he wrote and directed “New Nightmare.” What’s interesting, conceptually anyway, about Craven’s approach is that it’s not a back-to-basics reboot. One would think that the filmmaker would return the series to its roots, not take somewhere it’s never been before. Yet this movie tries something different. This movie brings Freddy into the real world.
Released two years before “Scream,” “New Nightmare” is Wes Craven’s first attempt at deconstructing the slasher film genre, grounding the film in a “reality” that’s more like our own, one where Fred Krueger is a fictional character in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies. Heather Langenkamp plays herself, the actress who starred as Nancy in the first and third films. Robert Englund, John Saxon and Wes Craven also play themselves in the film.
Movies that get this meta are too impressed with themselves to make you suspend your disbelief. “Last Action Hero” tried something similiar a year before this film dropped, and it doesn’t work all that well, either. The concept of Freddy crossing over into our world is a tough sell. Freddy’s too fantastical a character. The movie is fundamentally flawed for that reason alone. Freddy can’t exist in “reality,” so what’s Craven trying to pull here?
In “New Nightmare,” we learn that the Freddy series had managed to contain the character’s unique brand of evil. But since New Line killed him off, the franchise can no longer serve as a stopgap, something to beat the evil back. Now Freddy’s somehow spilling over into the real world and killing people! And this Freddy — the Freddy in our world — is much more sinister, trenchcoat-clad and no longer wearing a glove with razors attached to the fingertips; the blades now jut from each of his mangled digits.
The film might have worked if it had been a straight slasher movie with Heather Langenkamp being stalked by some lunatic dressed as Freddy. But Craven wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Some of the “Nightmare” films toyed with the idea of people having horrific nightmares about Freddy then dying of seemingly accidental deaths. There’s a little of that early on in the film. Yet in this movie, Freddy can also cause earthquakes. He even revisits one of his more famous kills, dragging a girl up the wall and across the ceiling. In trying to strike a balance between fantasy and reality, Craven comes up short on both fronts. The film doesn’t quite feel like a “Nightmare” movie, nor does it achieve that post-modern and slightly more realistic quality the “Scream” trilogy has. Splitting the difference just doesn’t work, not when balancing two mutually exclusive tones.
Well, I’m entering the last leg of my “Night-Marathon.” There’s one more film to go — a bit of a mixed bag, but not the worst way to cap off the series.
Tomorrow: “Freddy Vs Jason.”
-Brad Lohan
Oct
23
The word “final” is somewhat meaningless in regards to horror pictures. “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” and “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday” are two examples of films — in the same franchise! — that floated the word in their titles. From a marketing standpoint, I guess suggesting that the latest franchise installment is the series’ last gasp might generate interest outside of the core fanbase. Or, another thing you can do is make it in 3-D. And if you combine those two gimmicks, you’ll have a synergistic love-explosion. Enter “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.”
Released in 1991, shortly after I started junior high, “Freddy’s Dead” was the first installment that jettisoned “A Nightmare on Elm Street” from its title. This is also the first non-numbered sequel, a trend that’s become more commonplace in recent years, since kids these days can’t count anyway. With this film, you really get a sense that New Line’s more than a little embarrassed by the franchise — their friggin’ bread and butter — and genuinely interested in putting the final nail in Fred Krueger’s coffin.
But first…let’s learn more backstory about Freddy!
I think I know Freddy Krueger better than I know myself at this point. As I mentioned in my review of movie five, “Freddy’s Dead” reveals that Krueger was once married and had a daughter. His wife’s since passed on, believe it or not, but his little girl grew up to become the film’s heroine, Maggie (Lisa Zane).
At any rate, Freddy’s killed all but one of the kids on Elm Street, so he dispatches the lone survivor — who’s suffering from amnesia — to a neighboring town in hopes that the kid will return with some new victims. The police scoop up Survivor Boy and, thinking he’s a junkie, deliver him to the youth center where Maggie works. Soon, Maggie and a small batch of troubled teens bring Suvivor Boy back to 1428 Elm Street, a house that should’ve been bulldozed years ago. Bodies hit the floor in imaginative ways, my favorite being Freddy killing a kid in a video game. Ultimately, Maggie has it out with her old man in a 3-D battle royale.
The movie’s simply not all that good, but it has its moments. Roseanne and Tom Arnold, back when they were an item, show up as creepy bereaved parents. Johnny Depp also returns to the series in an anti-drug commercial parody. But when the cameos are more fun than the actual film, there’s something really wrong here.
Director Rachel Talalay certainly has a deep understanding of the series, having worked in various and sundry producer roles on most of the previous films. I just think that they were out of ideas by this point. Freddy’s almost entirely played for laughs. The opening sequence has him dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz.”
At the end of the day, nothing is all that “final” about this entry. There are still two to go: “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” (my absolute least favorite) and “Freddy vs. Jason.” Those films, to their credit, try different things with the character, but as I near the end of my “Night-Marathon,” I think the best thing that can be done with Fred Krueger is to lay the bastich to rest for good.
Tomorrow: “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.”
-Brad Lohan
Oct
22
I think this installment was the first “Nightmare” movie I saw when I was a teenager. I remember it being truly, well, nightmarish. It’s probably the darkest entry in the series and the last one you’ll see a mixed review of. It’s all downhill from here, kids.
After the success of “The Dream Master,” “The Dream Child” represents the beginning of the end of the Freddy series. The ’80s were coming to a close. Paramount had finally quit cranking out “Friday the 13th” entries after the fourth “Nightmare on Elm Street” totally schooled “Jason Takes Manhattan” at the box office when the two films were released weeks apart the previous year. Fans had had just about enough of slasher movies. They were over Jason, and with the tepid response to “The Dream Child,” it was becoming pretty clear that they were about done with Freddy, too.
This installment picks up a year or so after the events of “The Dream Master.” Freddy’s dead — at least temporarily — and Alice is getting pretty hot and heavy with her new boyfriend, Dan, another veteran of movie four and your stereotypical toolbox. Alice has acquired a new batch of disposable friends with requisite quirks (one has an eating disorder, one’s into comic books, etc.), and they’re all graduating from high school. It’s a time for new beginnings, particularly for Alice, who discovers that she’s now pregnant after making sexytime with Dan during the opening credits.
Where “Friday the 13th, Part VII: A New Blood” aped “Carrie,” “The Dream Child” apes “Rosemary’s Baby” to a degree. Freddy’s somehow able to use Alice’s unborn baby as a conduit for him to return from wherever he goes when he’s not killed at the end of the each movie. Apparently, babies in utero dream 70% of the time. What the hell exactly do babies dream about, you ask? In the case of Alice’s fetus — or “foetus,” if you prefer that spelling, like I do — it’s of her pals getting massacred.
Unfortunately, this film has the smallest cast of expendable teens. I guess it’s tough making new friends when all of your old ones were slaughtered by some dream demon. But having only three kills in the movie makes for a bit of a sluggish pace. I think too much time is devoted to scenes with Alice talking to this grubby, creepy kid named Jacob, who’s supposed to be a 10-year-old version of the baby she’s carrying. The battle over her baby’s soul is interesting. But pre-adolescents who manifest themselves out of nowhere to provide exposition are just an unnecessary distraction that raise too many questions in a series that makes you already work overtime to suspend your disbelief.
There’s more backstory about Freddy’s mother, Amanda Krueger, a nun who was accidentally locked inside a mental instution with 100 or so crazies, a bit of information that was touched upon in movie three. Again, we continue to learn more and more about Freddy — in the sixth film, it’s revealed that he was also a husband and a father! — and care less and less about the protags. At this point, one wonders why the series doesn’t just turn Freddy into an anti-hero and make him the main character. Robert Englund could definitely carry a film much better than the lightweights who’ve been anchoring the each installment thus far.
“The Dream Child” feels smaller than “The Dream Master.” It’s gloomy and claustrophobic, revisiting the atmosphere of the earlier films. But I think it needs more carnage to really live up to genre expectations; “Halloween” has a higher body count, and that movie came out more than a decade earlier. Still, it’s better than the two crap movies that follow.
Tomorrow: “Freddy’s Dead.”
-Brad Lohan
Oct
21
The highest-grossing “Nightmare on Elm Street” flick, “The Dream Master,” was directed by none other than Renny Harlin, the Finnish wunderkind who went on to helm “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” and “Cliffhanger,” not to mention “Cutthroat Island,” a movie that bombed so badly, it sank an entire studio. At any rate, Harlin’s second American film, coming on the heels of “Prison” (starring Viggo Mortensen), was movie four in the Freddy series. And after this installment, the series really started to lose its steam.
“The Dream Master” is a direct sequel to “Dream Warriors.” Patricia Arquette chose not to return to the role of Kristen, so the producers pulled a Maggie Gyllenhaal and recast the role with Tuesday Knight. Kristen and her two friends from the Westin Hills lunatic asylum — Kincaid and Joey — have since been released and are adjusting to their lives without Fred Krueger.
In a bit of weirdness that trumps anything in the previous three films, Kincaid’s dog manages to resurrect Freddy by peeing fire onto his unmarked grave. Krueger quickly makes short work of the kids who escaped from him in “Dream Warriors,” but not before Kristen passes her special gift onto another girl, Alice (Lisa Wilcox). As I mentioned in my review of the third film, Kristen has the power to pull other people into her dreams. For whatever reason, she gives this ability to Alice before Freddy finishes her off. It was kind of dumb move because Kristen, Kincaid and Joey were the last of the “Elm Street Children,” the offspring of the parents who torched Fred Krueger before the start of the first film. In giving Alice her power, Kristen has now enabled Freddy to reach more kids because there would be no movie otherwise.
Keeping with the high-concept approach to the dream sequences in move three, “The Dream Master” trots out another batch of quirky kids with phobias, illnesses and/or hobbies that’ll play a significant role in their destruction. My favorite would have to be the tough girl who, while lifting weights, begins shedding her skin and turning into a cockroach. People actually sat around and thought of things like this. Bully for them.
Alice discovers that each time one of her friends gets bumped off, she absorbs that person’s gimmick. It didn’t work that way when Kristen had the power to drag people into her dreams, but whatever. By the end of the film, Alice is able to use all of these unique abilities — like the karate skills she got from her recently departed brother — against Freddy.
If I have one complaint about movie four, it’s got to be that the film isn’t particularly scary. A couple of the dream sequences even take place in broad daylight. By this point in the series, Freddy’s now trotting out the bad puns and one-liners. Englund’s still able to bring plenty of menace to the role, but the character’s — dare I say it? — almost becoming likeable. One of the odd complexities of slasher films is that the audience begins to identify with the stalker over the course of a given franchise because he’s the character you get to know the best. That Freddy now brings some humor to the table only makes him more of an enjoyable a presence and diminishes the acts of horrific violence.
Tomorrow: “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.”
-Brad Lohan
Oct
20
Probably the best sequel — if not the best film altogether — in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series is the third installment, “Dream Warriors.” Fun fact: Frank Darabont, writer-director of “Shawshank Redemption,” is one of the co-writers. Unlike movie two, this film expands upon the mythology without undermining it. More is revealed about Freddy’s origins (”The bastard son of a hundred maniacs!”), and the dream sequences are extremely ambitious, really raising the bar for subsequent films. We also get to see a very young Patricia Arquette and Lawrence Fishburne early in their careers.
Heather Langenkamp returns as Nancy, now a graduate student specializing in dreams. She still has a gray shock of hair from the first film but has since become incredibly hot; she’s rather plain-looking in movie one. Her mother, last seen being pulled through a window by Freddy at the end of the first movie, is dead. It’s not explained how Nancy ultimately escaped from Freddy’s taloned clutches, but I guess it’s not important. What is important is that she’s now hot.
This film is about a group of kids who’ve been locked up in the booby hatch for having various sleeping disorders. They each have some character trait that Freddy exploits in the dream world. One kid is into making puppets, so of course when he falls asleep, Freddy turns the kid into a marionette, using the ligaments in the kid’s arms and legs as his strings. It’s gruesome, but inspired.
When the kids start turning up dead, Nancy suggests to Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson, looking remarkably like Bill Maher) that he give the kids Hynocil, an experimental drug that prevents dreams. The kids don’t take it long enough for it to start working, and one of them winds up — let’s see if I can explain this — in the dream world, suspended over a flaming pit with his arms and legs tied to stakes with disembodied tongues instead of rope.
On a side note, I’ve noticed that tongues are a motif in these films. Freddy’s tongue pops out of the mouthpiece of Nancy’s phone in the first film; while making out with a girl in movie two, Jesse opens his mouth and unfurls an elongated purple tongue; and in part 3, a kid is literally tongue-tied, a fitting predicament, given that he’s a mute.
Back to the movie, Patricia Arquette’s character Kristen, whose name is pronounced differently by literally every character in the film, has the power to draw other people into her dreams. Nancy decides to mount a rescue mission, using Kristen as a way to unite everyone in dream world, so they can take on Freddy all at once with their respective gimmicks and save the mute kid. That they bring along the Dungeons and Dragons kid — the self-anointed Wizard Master — only speaks to their hopeless desperation.
Meanwhile, Neil and Sheriff Thompson (Nancy’s estranged father, played by John Saxon) try to find Freddy’s remains in a scrap yard. Neil’s been fed a bunch of exposition by a nun, and he now knows the only way to do away with Krueger for good is to bury him in consecrated ground. There’s a great little Harryhausen-inspired fight between the two men and Freddy’s skeleton. Even if it does look prehistoric by today’s FX standards, I think it’s still pretty impressive given the truncated shooting schedule (New Line cranked out a Freddy movie a year during the franchise’s heyday) and limited budget.
Usually, the third movie in a series is where it becomes obvious that the filmmakers are out of ideas. But the opposite is true with “Dream Warriors.” It seems like the filmmakers finally figured out what to do with the series. This film also equips Freddy with a sense of humor, an addition I’m fine with. Most slashers wordlessly tear people asunder. One who provides some witty repartee is refreshing.
My one complaint about this film is that there are too many survivors. I prefer there to be one or none in horror movies. But movie four more than makes up for that, wiping out these geeks in the first reel. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Tomorrow: “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4.”
-Brad Lohan