We are family

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midnight1981-2MIDNIGHT

2 Stars  1980/88m

“…When the clock strikes death.”

A.k.a. Backwoods Massacre

Director/Writer: John Russo / Cast: Melanie Verlin, Lawrence Tierney, John Hall, Charles Jackson, Greg Besnak, John Amplas, Robin Walsh, David Marchick, Doris Hackney, Bob Johnson, LaChele Carl, Ellie Wyler, Maura Minteer.

Body Count: 14

Direlogue: “I hope you listen to what you told them and don’t go camping around here.”

Night of the Living Dead co-author Russo directs from his own novel of the same name this trite, misogynistic Texas Chain Saw photocopy in which a backwoods mama teaches her four children (three boys, one girl) that people are demons and must be sacrificed to Satan.

Into this redneck nightmare runs Nancy, a God-fearing Jamie Lee wannabe on the run from her abusive stepdad (Tierney). She hitches a ride with a couple of frat boys on their way to Fort Lauderdale. After giving a lift to a jive talking Reverend and his daughter – who prattle on about unsolved murders in the locale before they both meet nasty ends – the three teens make the mistake of camping out.

Both boys are shot dead by two of the psycho siblings, disguised as cops, and Nancy is taken prisoner to put on the conveyor belt to sacrifice at midnight along with two other young girls.

Russo makes the most of the bleak settings and the redneck style works well, but the narrative is driven by overlong, hammy expositions rather than action. There’s also little insight into the psychosis of the killer family other than the corpse of the mother held at blame, sis taking control, and why their sacrifices are exclusively teenage girls.

Add to this a horrible Euro-country theme song that crops up at every available opportunity and one might understand why the family were driven mad after all.

Blurbs-of-interest: John Russo co-produced The Majorettes and directed a seldom-seen sequel to Midnight in 1993.

Yule be sorry

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THE TOYBOX

2 Stars  2006/15/81m

“It all began so innocently.”

Director / Writer: Paolo Sedazzari / Cast: Claudine Spiteri, Elliott Jordan, Craig Henderson, Suzanne Bertish, Christopher Terry, Heather Chasen, Peter Ellis.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “I want someone to notice my breasts.”

Disclaimer: This is the best I can do for for a festive-themed slasher film this year. And there’s no way I’m sitting through Christmas Evil again.

Ignore the DVD cover, nothing that awesome happens in this regional British trip into the surreal.

As children, siblings Berenice and Brian Usher shared a wild imagination and cherished their alone time in their country cottage so they could act out their adventures and, when things went awry, she would lock him in their toybox (that’s it for title relevance).

Several years later, Berenice brings her boyfriend Conrad home with her from university for an Usher Family Christmas. After meeting her Russ Abbott-fan father, her sex-starved mother and dotty dead-husband-obsessed grandmother, Conrad wishes he had never agreed to come with her. Then there’s Brian, grown up but just as odd as he always was.

What ensues is, for the most part, nonsensical garbage concerning stories of a mythical killer who prowled the Norfolk and Suffolk border, sacred amulets, ghosts, witchcraft and a zombie master disguised as the local vicar. In short, it’s crap.

Again: don’t be fooled, it merely looks good in still form

After nearly an hour of this tedium, in which the family constantly bicker and we take detours into flashbacks of the kids’ childhood imaginary eccentricities, Brian, feeling rejected by Berenice, eventually goes apeshit and starts killing everybody, although it must be stated that nearly all the murders occur off-screen, making it a rather dry kill spree.

Energetic direction and photography attempts to paper over the evident crevices in the plotting and the initially dreadful acting, which somehow becomes less noticeable as the weirdness of the Usher clan unfolds to stunned bystander Conrad, the only likeable character. Suzanne Bertish is, however, fun as the graceless mother, Madeline.

There’s one semi-creepy bit that’ll be lost on anybody not British or under 30, which is Brian’s singy-songy answerphone message, the theme to Russ Abbott’s old clipshow (“Songs of joy and tears of laughter…” etc), sung VERY slowly.

There are so many unanswered questions by the time the credits mercifully roll: Who was the man with the dog? Why was there a clown sat on the toilet? Why did they think the Vicar was a zombie?

Rubbish, but interestingly made rubbish and certainly like no other slasher film you’ll have seen, or indeed will ever see.

Stock Background Characters 101: The Bitchy Girl

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In this feature, we examine the lesser beings of the slasher movie realm, which, if you’re making your own slasher film, could provide a good cast roster for you.

No killer or final girl profiles here, this is a celebration of those underlings who made the most of their fleeting flirtation with stardom. And usually died.

Get your claws out, it’s THE BITCHY GIRL

bitchygirls2Overview: Every gaggle of teens on vacation has to suffer the endless put-downs and scheming of The Bitch. She’s varies from simply being the nasty – but usually hot – chick who attempts to destroy the Final Girl’s romantic chances with her desired beau, to being the self-centered leader of the pack who gets everyone in trouble in the first place and will do whatever it takes to cover her own ass!

Linguistic Snapshot: “Daddy will get me out of this – I don’t care what happens to the rest of you, you can go to hell for all I care!”

Styling: The Bitchy Girl dresses better than you. Her clothes and her hair cost more than yours. She’s pretty much immaculate in every way and you’re plain or ugly to her. If it’s a high school slasher film, she’ll be stylish where the rest of her class are in jeans n’ t-shirts. If it’s a collegiate slasher film, she’ll be the sorority president in pearls and pastels. She’s always skinny and oft can be found with complacent grin painted on her face.

“I look like Posh Spice and I’m just as evil.”

Hallmarks: Bitchy Girls are always white, almost exclusively from rich families; she’s the Daddy’s girl, the Princess and getting her own way has led her down the path of unrighteousness, though she’s often able to pull the wool over authoritarian eyes or by virtue of her family’s connections. Daddy can buy anyone.

However, behind the snarky comments, the pearls and the immovable hair, Bitchy Girls’ are sometimes products of bad home environments where Mommy is constantly tapping the bottle and Daddy works away so much, screwing his harem of nubile assistants and nobody gives Melissa/Vickie/Kimberly the attention she needs.

Downfall: Almost without exception, The Bitch will die a horrible, fitting death. In fact the only time I can recall a Bitch surviving is the Cheerleader who badmouths Sidney in Scream. Otherwise it’s decapitation for sneering superbitch Tasha in Tormented, sandblaster to the face for light-fingered Tammy in Venom, and it was powerdrill attrition for mean new girl-excluder Diane in The Slumber Party Massacre.

The Bitchy Girl sometimes belittles the situation as she does everything else; Melissa in Friday the 13th Part VII ignores the pleas of Tina and Nick and gets an axe in the head for her troubles; Elsa Shivers in I Know What You Did Last Summer practically laughs off her sisters near-death experience and winds up feeling the business end of the killer’s hook.

Whichever way you cut ’em – arrow in the torso, cellphone rammed down the throat or a good old fashioned throat slashing – The Bitch outlives most of her doomed friends but only so we can ‘enjoy’ her getting her comeuppance.

Genesis: Without doubt the reigning queen bee of slasher movie bitchness is Wendy from Prom Night. Wendy tries to win her ex-boyfriend back from the arms and bad perm of Jamie Lee Curtis and attempts to rig the prom so that SHE will receive the crown – and this is after killing Jamie Lee’s little sister in the prologue! Thankfully, the ski-masked loon gets there first and axes Wendy out of the picture before she can go through with her plan.

Sneering side-ponytailed Judy from Sleepaway Camp tormented poor Angela with the help of equally unpleasant counsellor Meg – they threw her in the lake and Meg even backhanded her. As a result both suffered: Meg was knifed in the shower and Judy was curling-tonged to death.

“She’s a carpenter’s dream: Flat as a board and needs a good screw!”

Then there’s sorority power queen Vickie in The House on Sorority Row, whose revenge prank against stern housemother Mrs Slater goes so badly wrong that it costs quite the number of her college friends their lives as she ropes them into covering up her crime…

The Bitchy Girl is never the killer with possible exception of undead prom queen Mary Lou Maloney from Prom Night‘s II and III and possibly Kristen in Final Stab.

Legacy: Bizarrely, in the Friday the 13th-verse, there were no bitches introduced until the late 80s when Melissa turned up. In the next movie, Tamara – a virtual clone – snorted coke and pushed the non-swimmer final girl off a cruise ship.

Nasty girls began to become more prevalent as the genre slowly evolved towards casting more unlikeable characters than pleasant ones. Macho Assholes and Bitches prevailed, providing adequate fodder for all manner of demises:

  • The sheriff’s slutty daughter, Kelly, in Halloween 4 was impaled with a rifle.
  • Ultra-mean camper Ally was drowned in the world’s grossest outhouse toilet in Sleepaway Camp II.
  • The quasi-remake Sorority Row made über-bitch self-serving Jessica quite humorous with a never-ending list of witty put-downs and carefree reactions to her friends’ deaths. Upon finding a dead guy stuffed upside down in a vent she identifies him by stating “I’d know those ugly ass shoes anywhere.”

Conclusions: And so on and so on… Mean people serve to highlight how nice the nice people are and, hopefully, tempt the killer’s blade away from those of us who try to do the right thing and put others first.

So what I’m saying is that we NEED to take The Bitchy Girl on holiday with us. Yeah, she might make a few people cry and split up some couples but when it comes to stompin’ time, you know she’s got zero chance of getting away. Thank you, Bitch, your acidic commentary and toxic personality makes the world that little bit safer for the rest of us.

Life’s a bitch – and if you are too, then you’ll certainly die a lot quicker. But you could still give those Mean Girls a good going over.

The House on Forgettable Row

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THE HOUSE WHERE DEATH LIVES

2.5 Stars  1980/15/80m

A.k.a. Delusion

“More people died there than lived there.”

Director: Alan Beattie / Writers: Beattie & Jack Viertel / Cast: Patricia Pearcy, Louis Basill, Joseph Cotton, John Dukakis, Leon Charles, Patrick Pankhurst, Alice Nunn, Abraham Alvarez, David Hayward.

Body Count: 8

Better-than-usual actors elevate this low budget slasher that tries to pass itself off as a classy psycho thriller.

Young nurse Meredith (Pearcy, heroine of nasty killer worm flick Squirm) is hired by disabled millionaire Cotten to help around his large mansion house as he copes with the death of one of his sons and awaits the arrival of his estranged grandson.

There, she is acquainted with the bolshy cook, the mysterious gardener and the alcoholic butler. She also discovers Cotten’s retarded second son is permanently locked in the room next to hers. When he dies after ‘falling’ out his window, it’s not long before suspicion is cast upon the strange grandson Gabriel (who has lived on a remote farm since birth) whom Meredith finds herself attracted to.

The strange accidents continue until a rushed ending that sports an original – though to the experienced viewer, predictable – twist. Although there’s no explicit violence, a couple of disorientating murder scenes spice things up and feminists can rest easy as not ONE of the victims is female.

Director Beattie sensibly avoids the usual slasher clichés in favor of his characterisations but doesn’t go far enough for the film to escape its roots and so it becomes just another hardly-known killer-in-a-big-house opus.

Blurb-of-interest: John Dukakis (nephew of Olympia) was one of the sailboat kids in Jaws 2.

Thou shalt repent thy clichés!

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prom4aPROM NIGHT IV: DELIVER US FROM EVIL

3 Stars  1991/18/93m

“They skipped the prom for a private party. Now it’s the last dance.”

Director/Writer: Clay Borris / Cast: Nikki de Boer, Alden Kane, Joy Tanner, Alle Ghadban, Ken McGregor, James Carver, Brock Simpson.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “Here’s to Jamie Lee Curtis!”

If you’re alright with the entirely predictable then you could do worse than Prom Night IV, the slasher film equivalent of an episode of Murder, She Wrote.

The production team have ditched Mary Lou Maloney and gone back to basics with the only connection to the other films being Hamilton High where, in 1957 – arguably one of the more sucky years for the faculty – two rubbernecking prom attendees are slashed and immolated by psychotic priest Father Jonas, who wants to ‘deliver the souls of sluts and whores’ to God.

After 33 years hidden away by priests in a medically induced coma state, a do-gooder young priest charged with guarding him (Brock Simpson, who played a different role in all four movies) makes the bad decision of not dosing him and is murdered in payment when Jonas awakes, seemingly not to have aged a day in 33 years!

Meanwhile, a couple of Catholic school girls and their HH-alumnus boyfriends take a limo out to the country house of one of them where they plan to have their own little prom. But of course Jonas has found his way to the same locus and, feeling they’ve transgressed various Biblical blurb, proceeds to kill them one by one by one…

There are elements of Hell Night at play, little in the way of claret and the characters aren’t especially interesting. It’s plainly obvious that goody-two-shoes Meagan (de Boer) will be the last one standing but there are some decent riffs thrown into the mix; the police actually call back but Jonas picks up another extension and tells them it’s “in God’s hands.”

There’s also an amusing scene early on where template bad girl Laura is hauled into the Mother Superior’s office after being caught having it away with her boyfriend in his car. While the nun struggles to articulate a summary of the charges, Laura just looks up with a grin and says: “We were FUCKING.” Funniest moment in a po-faced film.

prom-4-2

Prom Night IV is decent, forgettable fare – but still better than the 2008 remake of the original.

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