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Greaserial Mom

January 7, 2020 Hud Leave a comment

PSYCHO BEACH PARTY

2000/15/89m

“Party till you drop. Dead.”

Director: Robert Lee King / Writer: Charles Busch / Cast: Lauren Ambrose, Thomas Gibson, Nicholas Brendon, Kimberley Davies, Charles Busch, Danni Wheeler, Beth Broderick, Matt Keeslar, Amy Adams, Jenica Bergere, Nick Cornish, Andrew Levitas, Buddy Quaid, Kathleen Robertson, Nathan Bexton.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “In the past I’ve had little use for you head shrinks: Ink-blot tests, ‘I hate my mother’ and all that crap.”

Possibly the only slasher film based on an off-Broadway stage show, enter this one at your own risk, for you’ll either love it or proclaim it’s the worst thing y’ever did see.

Lauren Ambrose, who would shortly after land the role of Claire in Six Feet Under, plays Florence, a plucky smalltown girl who, in the summer of 1962, just wants to learn to surf and hang out with the boys, rather than do boring girly things, like her love-rival Marvel Ann (a pre-stardom Amy Adams). She falls in with a crowd of cool kids in Malibu, led by legendary surfer Kanaka, his protege Starcat (Nick Brendon from Buffy), and their pals, who have names like Yo-Yo and Provoloney and exhibit barely repressed homosexual urges. They reluctantly allow Florence to learn with them, and dub her Chicklet.

Chicklet, however, has multiple personalities, the most powerful of which goes by the name of Ann Bowman, a fearless dominatrix, who may or may not be the mystery fiend who’s been murdering kids with physical imperfections around the area lately: A girl with a cleft lip is killed at the drive-in, one of the surf gang with a skin condition is hacked to pieces, the toxic chick in the wheelchair is beheaded…

Investigating is Captain Monica Stark (played by show’s writer Charles Busch), who notices the action is centered around the surf crowd, and B-movie actress Bettina Barnes, who is hiding out from Hollywood in a beach house, where ‘something bad’ happened, until she is awarded better film roles.

As kids turn up dead, the surf gang throw themselves a Luau, which includes a great dance-off between groups over a Los Straitjackets jam. Chicklet confides in her dorky friend Berdine that she’s concerned she has schizophrenia, which means she’s either capable of being the Butcher of Malibu Beach, or a target for them. The killer is quite obvious in retrospect, though I was having such a ball with the entire affair it caught me out.

That this was issued on an LGBT film label is relevant; it’s only a slasher flick further down the ladder of homages, waaaay below the campy love letter to goofy 60s surf movies, dripping in their homoeroticism, marrying that with B&W movie schtick, and then finally the slasher trimmings. Think Grease meets Serial Mom, which reminds me I’d love to see a 50s/60s set slasher film one day – Bobby Sox, Hotrods, and a psycho killer.

The cast look like they’re all having a whale of a time, with Ambrose’s comic timing the icing on the cake. Fabaroonie.

“Don’t bet on it, darlings!”

Blurbs-of-interest: Matt Keeslar was in Scream 3; Andrew Levitas was in Hellbent; Nathan Bexton was in Basement Jack.

Reviews

Just leave the asbestos there…

December 18, 2019 Hud One comment

SESSION 9

2001/15/96m

“Fear is a place.”

Director/Writer: Brad Anderson / Writer: Stephen Gevedon / Cast: Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas, Brendan Sexton III.

Body Count: 5

An asbestos removal crew takes a job at the abandoned Danver Memorial Hospital, hoping to clear the place in a week, prior to his renovation, in the hope of obtaining a generous bonus.

Spending a lot of time alone in the oppressive atmosphere of the former mental institution begins taking its toll on the men: Company owner Gordon is having difficulty adjusting to life as a new father; while Hank and Phil are still at loggerheads over the woman they both left; academic Mike is reconsidering law exams; and Gordon’s be-mulleted nephew provides the team with their inexperienced scapegoat. As work continues for long hours and tension mounts, one of them becomes obsessed with the archived interviews of a schizophrenic former patient and eventually cracks himself.

Session 9 isn’t your average stalk n’ slasher flick by any metric, and it’s only the tail end of things that it shows its hand as influenced the sub-genre. Director Anderson firmly places the accent of terror on the environment itself, rather than ejector-seat scares – some images really send a shudder up the spine in a not-dissimilar way to the more effective found footage horrors. Long, torch-lit corridors and flickering overhead lamps, creaks in the dark, and the dirty walls of the asylum’s interior all contribute to a feeling of desolation that would turn anyone insane.

It’s one of those watch-it-back-for-the-hints films, with subtle drops as to whom the killer is left all over. The material on the archived tapes is also positively compelling on its own. Even as the end credits begin, there’s certainly no clarification of the previous events, a strategy repeated later in the similarly-constructed but inferior Identity.

Not for all tastes, but fans of slow-burn horror should take a walk down these creepy hallways.

Reviews

Slashdance

October 8, 2019 Hud 3 comments

MANIAC

1980/X/85m

“I warned you not to go out tonight.”

Director: William Lustig / Writers: C.A. Rosenberg, Joe Spinell / Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Gail Lawrence, Kelly Piper, Rita Mantone, Tom Savini, Hyla Marrow.

Body Count: 7

“She’s a maniac, maaaaniac on the floor, and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before…” go the lyrics to Michael Sembello’s 1983 #1 hit from Flashdance, but it was originally penned for this grimy little flick, with the lyrics understandably altered from “He’s a maniac, maaaaniac that’s for sure, he’ll kill your cat and nail it to the door.”

Despite an impressive 6.5 on IMDb and some inventively gruesome FX work from Tom Savini (who later suggested be might’ve gone ‘too far’ with some of it), I’ve never really liked much about this depressing release, which would pair well with Don’t Go in the House. Less a straight-up slasher flick, more of a serial killer pic, in which Spinnell (who co-wrote and financed with his earnings from Cruising) is a schizophrenic madman who slashes, garrottes, and skewers his mostly young female victims, and keeps mannequins around his apartment that wear the dead girls’ scalps as wigs.

Between some extremely drawn out sequences of stalking and slashing, Spinell is nothing short of excellent as the perverse, slobbering killer terrorising New York City, in much the same way as Lustig’s later creation Matt Cordell would in Maniac Cop. The always lovely Munro – then wife of large financier Judd Hamilton – is a fashion photographer who dates him a couple times (if you believe that!) before he turns on her, but her role is minimal and she’s not really the heroine she would normally be set up as.

The film has something to say about the people we fear without being too patronising, instead substituting much if the usually dull psychobabble with the grotesque slaughters of five women and two men, with the infamous shotgun/exploding head gag that caused Gene Siskel to walk out of the screening. The film was cut to shreds in various regional releases and refused a rating in the UK, eventually seeping through with about a minute of cuts in the early 2000s.

A strange picture to be sure, but an interesting one if you can look past some of the repulsions that plague the otherwise incisive script. Spinell started work on a sequel, which would never be finished due to his death at 52 in 1989.

Blurbs-of-interest: Munro and Spinell worked together again in 1983’s The Last Horror Film; she was also in Slaughter High and Don’t Open Till Christmas; Lustig later directed the Maniac Cop trilogy and Uncle Sam; the film was remade/re-imagined in 2012 with Elijah Wood.

Reviews

The Dolls of Death

August 27, 2019 Hud 2 comments

TOURIST TRAP

1979/15/90m

“Every year young people disappear…”

Director/Writer: David Schmoeller / Writer: J. Larry Carroll / Cast: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness, Tanya Roberts, Robin Sherwood, Keith McDermott, Dawn Jeffory.

Body Count: 6

Technically one of the very first post-Halloween teen horror pics to emerge, Tourist Trap was actually shot shortly before John Carpenter started rolling on his genre-confirming film, but was released in March of 1979, by which point Halloween had happened.

Co-produced by Irwin Yablans, TT draws a significant amount of inspiration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre instead, with five youngsters (including a future Charlie’s Angel) diverted from a backroad to Slausen’s Lost Oasis due to car trouble. They’re welcomed by the happy-go-lucky owner, who shows them his brother’s mechanical mannequins and allows them to hang around while one of their number drives off to town in a borrowed truck to find assistance.

The three girls let curiosity get the better of them and individually wander off to explore the big house out back. They soon discover that it’s inhabited by a masked loon who also has psychic powers, which he uses to kill them, until nice-girl Molly is left to save the day.

The absence of Friday the 13th-styled influences is interesting in Tourist Trap, especially as certain sequences would feel right at home on the shores of Camp Crystal Lake, with characters rambling around in the dark telling their friends to quit trying to scare them. An obvious lack of significant budget sometimes gets in the way and the film has a fair whack of padding to reach the 90-minute finish line, but ultimately its surreal embellishments outweigh the negatives, utilising the creepiness of the dummies in the shadows to the maximum effect.

Given the cult-like status of this, I’m surprised it wasn’t immediately snatched up during the remake craze of the 2000s (possible because House of Wax got there first) but never say never!

Blurb-of-interest: Jon Van Ness was later in X-Ray.

Reviews

Valley of the Cheapjack Franchises: JACK FROST

August 12, 2019 Hud Leave a comment

JACK FROST

1997/18/86m

“He’s chillin’ …and killin’!”

Director/Writer: Michael Cooney / Writer: Jeremy Paige / Cast: Chris Allport, Scott MacDonald, Stephen Mendel, F. William Parker, Eileen Seeley, Rob LaBelle, Zack Eginton, Jack Lindine, Chip Heller, Brian Leckner, Marsha Clark, Darren Campbell, Shannon Elizabeth Fabal, Kelly Jean Peters, Todd Conner.

Body Count: 12

Laughter Lines: “Do something!” / “Like what – teach him how to shoot better!?”

Yes, it’s a killer snowman. It’s two films about a killer snowman. Shot in 1993-94 but not completed until 96 and then released in 97, Jack Frost was intended to have a $30m budget and Renny Harlin in the director’s chair.

Whatever stopped that happening is a mystery, but the final product is a trite but sometimes fairly amusing horror comedy slasher, one of the last before Scream came and changed everything.

Mad serial killer Jack Frost (MacDonald) is being driven across Colorado on route to his execution when the prison transport collides with a truck carrying some weird acid, during a snowstorm. Poor Jack is melted by the chemical, which stores his DNA in the snow, turning him into an abominable snowman who feels fit to take revenge on the smalltown sheriff who caught him. Oh look, said town is located right where the accident happened!

Jack can turn to water and morph under doors n’ stuff, and uses a variety of comical methods to off the locals, including decapitation-by-sled, axe handle down the throat, and an icicle in the head. The Sheriff (Allport) and pals take on Frost with an army of hairdryers in an effort to melt him.

Fun once, but prep your eyes to roll at the relentless assault of lame one-liners. And still better than the Michael Keaton film of the same name that came out in 1998.

JACK FROST 2: REVENGE OF THE MUTANT KILLER SNOWMAN

2000/15/93m

“He’s icin’ …and slicin’!”

Director/Writer: Michael Cooney / Cast: Chris Allport, Eileen Seeley, Chip Heller, Marsha Clark, Scott MacDonald, David Allen Brooks, Ray Cooney, Tai Bennett, Sean Patrick Murphy.

Body Count: 12

Laughter Lines:”I now pronounce you… totally fucking dead.”

Looking as if it was made on a tenth of the budget of the first, Jack is resurrected as the snowman when scientists spill coffee on his corpse!? He tracks arch nemesis Sam Tiler and wife to a Bahamian island, where it all goes a bit I Still Know What You Did Last Summer with Gremlins-style offspring snowballs thrown in.

Barely a drop of blood and the removal of the brief nudity could probably see the rating dropped to a PG with ease; the gags don’t even hit that so-bad-they’re-good low hanging branch; and the sub-one-dimensional characters are just annoying.

This is one franchise that needed to be microwaved.

Blurbs-of-interest: Chris Allport was in Savage Weekend; Eileen Seeley was in The Baby Doll Murders; Shannon Elizabeth was in Scary Movie; Rob LaBelle was in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare; Stephen Mendel was in Stepfather III.

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