Author Archives: Hud

More almost but not-quite slasher flicks

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Another handful of horrors that hang out by the dance floor where all the slasher flicks are partying and flirt with them, trying to blend even though they don’t really fit in… See the last lot here.

DEAD SILENCE 2007

“From the makers of Saw” came this seriously underrated and unsuccessful scare flick, in which young couple Ryan Kwanten (later in True Blood) and Laura Regan (from My Little Eye) receive a creepy ventriloquist’s doll in the mail that somehow kills her, sending him back to their hometown of Raven’s Faire, a town apparently cursed by the ghost of Mary Shaw, subject of an Elm Street-like nursery rhyme that states if you encounter her in your dreams, don’t scream or you’ll lose your tongue, just as Regan did.

Kwanten’s investigations, hampered by greasy detective – and ex-New Kid on the Block – Donnie Wahlberg, seem to generate a fresh wave of creepy deaths and there’s one helluva twist at the end that I was totally blind to!

Why it’s not a slasher flick really: it’s a ghost story with a body count really, shades of Darkness Falls as well as Krueger-town (there was an additional murder in the deleted scenes) creep in, but not enough to swap sub-genres and they’re not likely to make a sequel…

DONKEY PUNCH 2008

Three northern gals holidaying in Mallorca hook up with a quartet of private school guys crewing on a luxury yacht and decide to party on the boat. Sex and drugs dominate and one of the guys decides to test a sexual urban legend – the Donkey Punch – which backfires, killing one of the girls. The boys vote to throw her overboard and say she fell and when the girls refuse to go along with it, a series of intensified confronations and misunderstandings lead to a second accidental death, then escalate to murder…

Why it’s not a slasher flick really: most of the deaths are accidents (including a neat outboard demise) and one person commits suicide. There’s a final girl of sorts but this is totally a Brit-grit situation flick.

HOUSE OF 9 2005

Another UK export; in this cut-price Battle Royale, nine strangers are abducted and wake up in a locked down house and informed that when only one remains alive, they will exit with £5million. Dennis Hopper is an Irish priest with a dodgy accent, Kelly Brook a shy dancer, Chardonnay from Footballer’s Wives a socialite, a rapper, an American detective, married couple and so on…

They argue about the situation until it leads to accidental death and murder, whittling down numbers until only one remains and exits. Cue semi-clever twist.

Why it’s not a slasher flick really: as with Donkey Punch, it’s all situational, there’s no one killer offing everybody one by one.

THE LAMP 1987

I love this cheesecake 80s horror film about a killer genie – or Djinn – which inhabits ye olde lamp that dim-witted, dungaree-wearing heroine Alex rubs when it arrives at her father’s museum. A field trip, a dumb teen idea to spend the night there (in a fucking museum…), Djinn-possession and the teens, some staff members and a couple of meathead racists find themselves done in in a variety of proto-Final Destination ways, some of which are suitably gruesome and clever, let down only by bargain basement effects work and a Djinn that looks like a Kinder Egg toy.

Why it’s not a slasher flick really: it’s a close one: there’s a lot in common with the likes of The Initiation and any number of collegiate prank slasher flicks but in the end it varies itself out of the equation.

THE UGLY 1997

A defence psychologist appointed to reassess a murderer, who proceeds to fill her in on his traumatic childhood and the slayings that followed. Despite warnings from the creepy institution doctor the shrink is soon sucked into his tragic tale of a nasty mother, school bullies and his one friend. All the blood on show is like black motor oil from a bunch of extras who are slashed up with a straight razor. Things go all Se7en with a downbeat twist ending, but it’s typically arty in the Australasian way.

Why it’s not a slasher flick really: a serial killer flick with grisly murders peppered throughout; no busloads of dense teenangers here.

Thrash n’ Slash

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SLASH

2.5 Stars  2002/15/90m

“All this farm needs is a little blood…”

Director: Neal Sundstrom / Writers: Stephen Ronald Francis & Gus Silber / Cast: Steve Railsback, James O’Shea, Zuleikha Robinson, Nick Boraine, Craig Kirkwood, David Dukas, Nina Wassung, Neels Claser, Brett Goldin, Danny Keogh.

Body Count: 12

Dire-logue: “You should’ve asked the wizard for some brains, asshole!”

I’m being made to watch a Twilight film. Approximately 10 minutes  in and the sonically boring essence of it all is making me want to throw myself into a woodchipper, so here’s a rundown of sub-par (but still about 227% better than Twilight) South African American-pretender Slash.

A rock band, who conveniently share their name with the film, are looking for a break. When the lead singer’s aunt dies, he is invited back to the farm he grew up on for her funeral. So happens that his grandpa, Jethro, was a notorious serial killer who scythed dozens of locals and donated their blood to the harvest in the belief it would improve their farming luck.

So it comes as little surprise that the band become stranded at the darm when their bus ‘breaks down’ and a scarecrow-costumed psycho starts picking off the group with a large sickle.

The identity of the killer is revealed, although in fairness there are only three suspects, and opens itself to much scrutiny concerning to obtuse plotting. Not that Slash is a bad film, it’s just flawed enough that is blocks any chance of becoming a better film.

Some witty one-liners and a strangely upbeat climax, which sees too many of the band members survive, push the standard expectations aside, which make it seems as though the ending might’ve been re-shot a couple of times to the audience’s preference. Twilight is still on… Someone mail me a woodchipper.

Blurbs-of-interest: Railsback was in Deadly Games. The IMDb lists Slash as a spin-off of Children of the Corn. Farm and sickles aside, I don’t know why…

Don’t go in the house. Or the basement. Or the cemetery. Just leave.

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THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY

2 Stars  1981/18/82m

Director: Lucio Fulci / Writers: Fulci, Elisa Livia Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti & Giorgio Mariuzzo / Cast: Katherine MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina, Dagmar Lassander.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “Ann, mommy says you’re not dead… Is that true?”

Cooool title and cooool poster. For me though, that’s where the coooolness ends.

It’s Italian, it’s dubbed badly, it’s Fulci, it wants to be The Shining, it makes next to no sense. As far as I could tell, the Boyle family – professor dad, squealy jittery mom, and blond moppet Bob – are moved into the old Freudstein house. By a cemetery. Two teens were killed there in the prologue so we know more than the Boyle clan already.

Little Bob is friends with a girl, Mae, who it seems nobody else can see. She says cryptic things and tells him not to go in the house etc… Meanwhile, Realtors and babysitters drop by and whomever is loitering in the seemingly unlockable basement totters in and kills them horribly. There’s some weird shit going on with the childminder, who resembles a mannequin we see randomly decapitated earlier on, stares a lot, and cleans up massive pools of blood that nobody questions.

Much ado is made about the experiments of Dr Freudstein but it was both boring and incoherent, made worse by the absolutely atrocious dubbing, for which it seems that Bob was voiced by a thirtysomething woman whose scream could shatter all the glass in a church.

Being an Italian horror flick, the gory violence is almost exclusively angled at women and the end comes shackled to a twist that isn’t at all comprehensible. According to Fulci, it’s something to do with the relationship between the children, but I read theories on time travel, limbo n’ all sortsa crap. And the zombie-monster-killer thing regenerates his cells by killing folks. Or something. There was a vile poo-like substance dripping from him when he was stabbed.

There are comparisons with Amityville and The Shining (which Fulci thinks is crap) but it’s more of a crumbling slasher flick with supernatural factors. The fact that they go unexplained lends to the creepiness of the film, as it did in the likes of Ghosthouse and I’m probably the only viewer who didn’t hate the kid with a fiery passion from hell. I actually thought he was quite sweet – nothing like the obnoxious back-talking brats they’d put in the role these days.

Is it a classic? Shrug. I laughed at it a bit. A couple of sequences were well done – Bob trying to escape from the basement. But I’m not a fan of crazy, haphazard all-over-the-place horror (wait ’til we get around to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) so I won’t lose any sleep if I never see it again.

Blurb-of-interest: Frezza (the kid) had a bit part in A Blade in the Dark.

5 things I wish they’d stop doing in horror films

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Let’s enjoy a good old moan, shall we?

Asshole Characters

The most crucial problem in low-end horror films (and indeed some high-end ones) is the total inability of scribes to write people we actually give a damn about, save for maybe the ones who’re going to survive (but not always – read on).

Thinking back to the happy-go-lucky teens of the 80s set, there was usually a bitchy girl and a macho dickhead but, for the most part, they were fairly innocent, likeable kids who we feared for and were sometimes even sad when they were slashed to ribbons.

But now? Oh God, it’s just a parade of obnoxious, self-absorbed, hateful characters and the audience virtually cheers on the killer when they die. Is this how people are now? Surely, I can’t be the only one who sees the problem in that?

No Survivors

Sometimes it’s necessary to off everyone in a film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning for example, but more frequently, and the Final Destination franchise is to blame, as if Asshole Characters aren’t enough, even the survivors aren’t valuable enough to save.

What initially appealed to me about slasher films was the notion of one person escaping to tell the tale. Every now and then there was a last second twist where the killer would leap out from somewhere and grab the final girl and it’d be left to the audience to decide whether or not she got away but seeing the last survivor brutally offed is an overstep into cruelty, i.e. the plain mean end of the super-shitty Splatter University.

Token Lesbianism

It’d be progressive if gay characters were ushered into the genre every now and then but what’s happened instead is that ‘gay characters’ has been translated exclusively to “hot girls making out”, as homosexuality can seemingly only be represented in a way that titillates the presumed low-IQ straight male demographic and any gay male characters are camp, weak and unquestionably doomed and would never be allowed to kiss a guy on camera.

In the last few years, there’s been girl-on-girl action in ever increasing numbers. With the exception of French flick Deep in the Woods, gay girls are always killed off, as if it’s the only logical alternative to them being ‘cured’ with a good hard shag.

No Opening Credits

This is more of a complaint about film in general: Why do 50% of new films completely bypass the opening credits? I like to see who’s gonna be in it ‘cos sometimes there’ll be a recognisable face you weren’t aware was going to be there or a cool cameo. But now…well you’re lucky if you even get the title! Wes Craven’s New Nightmare I’m looking at you.

Torture Porn-Lite

Hostel was a good film; great idea for a horrible tale of grue and in spite of what it proposes is going to happen or has happened, it’s not that gross. The downside of Hostel (besides the fact it had Eli Roth attached to it) is that it caused all manner of slasher films to ramp up the grue.

Gone were the thrifty throat-slashings and quick, sharp skewerings, enter long drawn out sequences of people suffering for extensive periods of time. The ambiguous enjoyment of the kills in a slasher flick moves the audience into questioning if they want to continue watching as the likes of Seed, Carver and Turistas delight in dragging out the demises of (usually female) victims.

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OK, so I’ve seen too many, I’m getting old and cranky, but for fucks sake will the people who write and produce these films at least try to avoid the pitfalls of their predecessors? Who am I kidding, genre comes from generic. May as well just shut up and learn to live with it.

Backtrack Baby

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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD

2.5 Stars  1989/18/86m

“Freddy delivers.”

Director: Stephen Hopkins / Writers: Leslie Boehm, John Skipp, Craig Spector & David Spector / Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Danny Hassel, Erika Anderson, Joe Seely, Nick Mele, Valorie Armstrong, Burr DeBenning, Clarence Felder, Beatrice Boepple, Whitby Hertford.

Body Count: 3

So I had this dream about A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 t’other day; I can’t remember much of it now apart from ‘being at’ the graduation scene. As it probably stands as my least favourite Freddy flick (including the remake), this subconscious soiree was enough to at least make me go back for a reappraisal…

While it’s still the most disappointing Elm Street (though I love the artwork), The Dream Child still houses just about enough charm to slink by, thanks mainly to that nostalgic drag the late 80s has as all three major slasher franchises began to wane. Seriously.

Halloween 5 was a subplot-scuppered mess, Jason Takes Manhattan tried to light a spark that fizzled out seconds later and as for Freddy, well Freddy’s problem was that he’d become way too big, way too recently…

If you’ve watched the excellent 4-hour documentary Never Sleep Again (and if not, what the actual fuck?) you’ll know that the fifth trip down Elm Street was rushed out in no time at all, with an unheard of four week pre-production schedule and the same time again to edit the film, it was done and dusted less than a year after The Dream Master, which probably highlights New Line’s then-greed with the franchise as the fourth film raked in an unprecedented $50million and favourable reviews.

Freddy’s worldwide fame notwithstanding (the TV series had begun, he was being namechecked by Ronald Reagan, he released a rap LP…), the producers made the error of attempting to back-pedal to the gritty, gothic feel of the first film, keeping Mr K pretty much out of sight for most of the film as he returns to torment Springwood teens through the dreams of an unborn baby. Desperate? Yes. Clever? Kinda.

The foetus in question belongs to Alice, who returns from surviving the last film along with boyfriend Dan and also her recovering alci dad. Now, I never really liked Alice in The Dream Master, she was all willowy and enfeebled, like some simpering Jane Austen chick who then went kick-ass. It was a by-the-book heroine that grated me. Thankfully, she’s a lot more resolute and likeable in The Dream Child.

No sooner than do she and Dan conceive, Freddy is able to enter the bub’s dreams and using Alice’s ability to suck other people into hers, eliminate her new circle of friends one by one. Or rather one, then two, then another one and no more.

A measly three victims are served up this time around, giving FK little to do and Alice and dwindling pals too much to do. Inexplicably, nobody seems to remember nor mentions the spate of deaths at Springwood High what, a year earlier? When Alice tries to convince her buddies of Freddy’s existence, they shut her down. Hello? Dead brother Rick? Kristen. Sheila. Debbie. Have they all developed amnesia?

A recycled subplot concerning Amanda Krueger and her lost remains is tossed in rather haphazardly (the producers admitted the end was not even written until the shoot was half over) and all manner of visual effects are wheeled in to try and divert the attention: Freddy as a chef who feeds one victim to death; cartoon super-Freddy; loads of gothic shit.

To be fair, the effects work – for its day – is excellent. One of the last films to make extensive use of claymation before the CGI dawn, The Dream Child at least puts effort into killing what few doomed teens there are. The MPAA, however, was not impressed and subsequently all grue scenes were cut back, rendering the film rather impotent on the gore stakes. Thus, it also became the lowest grossing entry, turning a decent profit but falling far short of the dizzy heights of the two former entries, which are arguably the best sequels.

Fortunately, they cut back on the comic one-liners as well – eventually going into overdrive in Freddy’s Dead two years later – to aid the reversion to Scary Fred Krueger. But it doesn’t work. By ’89 the brand was too ingrained in pop culture and no matter how off-screen you keep Englund, no matter if you bring back the finger-blades screeching along steel surfaces, he’s still the guy every other kid dresses up as at Halloween. Freddy fail.

Essentially, the rush-job that was the movie hurts it. Director Stephen Hopkins produced a good looking flick with no real surface issues but the drained ideas tank shows and is almost bone dry come the third act, which makes almost no sense at all. A couple more victims, more made out of the don’t fall asleep keystone that the whole series should pivot on might’ve drastically improved things but who can say?

But the black girl didn’t die – hurrah! Progress.

Blurbs-of-interest: Kelly Jo Minter later starred in Popcorn; Stephen Hopkins also directed Dangerous Game; Robert Englund can also be seen in Behind the Mask, Hatchet, Heartstopper, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) and Urban Legend; Whitby Herford was in Mikey.

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