Friday the 13th – Page 5

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“If I can’t be a cheerleader… no one can be a cheerleader.”

May 14, 2019 Hud Leave a comment

PANDEMONIUM

1982/PG/78m

“Finally, a movie that is totally taste-free.”

A.k.a. Thursday the 12th (working title)

Director: Alfred Sole / Writers: Richard Whitley & Jaime Klein / Cast: Tom Smothers, Carol Kane, Candy Azzara, Judge Reinhold, Debralee Scott, Marc McClure, Teri Landrum, Miles Chapin, Tab Hunter, Paul Reubens, David L. Lander.

Body Count: 12

Laughter Lines: “I know every cheerleading camp here has ended in death, but I put all my lifesavings into this camp!”

Sense of humour reflects our taste in horror to some degree: What makes me roll on the floor howling with laughter might make you pull a face like someone just farted in the elevator. Thus, reviewing these parody films is always a bit pointless, as they were – and still are – nothing but a collection of cheap gags with a contemporaneous quality that are dated the second the shoot wraps.

Arriving eight months after Student Bodies, there’s no apparent box office information for Pandemonium, which was forced to change its name after Saturday the 14th came out the previous October, possibly scuppering its chances to make a splash, as it plays closer to the Friday the 13th-inspired shenanigans than Wacko or Class Reunion. Pandemonium is, for one, a hard word for me to type, and just ‘meh’ as a title.

A spate of cheerleader slayings closes down a cheerleading camp (the javelin shish-ke-bob kill is actually hilarious), which is later reopened by longtime wannabe pom-pom waver Bambi (Azzara), who attracts six ‘teens’ to enrol and try to buck the trend of murders that plague all previous attempts to reopen the camp. We have Mandy, Sandy, Randy, Andy, Candy, and Glenn – Glenn Dandy – fresh faced and ready to bounce on mini-trampettes and into bed with one another. Unlike her peers, Candy possesses telekinetic abilities, which will come in handy later, methinks.

While carts of Japanese tourists interrupt practice, and the local Canadian mountie searches for two escaped killers (“Is Jarett the man who murdered his entire family with a hand drill?” / “That’s right. Then varnished them and made a lovely set of bookshelves.”) a black-gloved fiend tries to trim the camper roster, eventually succeeding with the help of rigged-trampolines, the electric toothbrush from hell, pom-poms, and megaphones.

As with the other parodies of the time, and even Scary Movie, a good chunk of the jokes don’t really relate to the conventions of the slasher plot at all, and just exist to prop up the chuckles, and some would doubtlessly not fly post-millennium. There’s enough silliness to keep the motor running though, and it just has a colorfulness lacking in the other parodies, and just absorb some of the names in that cast!

The film kind of peters out towards the end, but at least features a not-obvious killer with motive and not some dream-within-a-dream bollocks, or no killer at all, and the body count actually goes somewhere north of four. Stupid, but let’s not pretend it was ever intended to be anything else.

Blurbs-of-interest: Alfred Sole previously directed Alice Sweet Alice; Carol Kane was in When a Stranger Calls and later Office Killer; Miles Chapin was in The Funhouse; Tab Hunter was later in Grotesque; Marc McClure – the first Jimmy Olsen – was in Dead Kids; Judge Reinhold was later in The Hollow, with Eileen Brennan, who appears with the delicious Piper Laurie send-up; Paul Reubens, pre-Pee Wee years here, was in The Tripper after his porn theater shame extravaganza. Look out for Sydney Lassick, Eve Arden, and late Simpsons voice actor Phil Hartman in cameos.

Reviews

The Final Girls Behind the Mask of the Cabin in the Woods… Part II

April 4, 2019 Hud One comment

YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER

2018/88m

“It’s summer camp, what did you expect?”

Director/Writer: Brett Simmons / Writers: Thomas B. Vitale, Covis Berzoyne / Cast: Fran Kranz, Alyson Hannigan, Brittany S. Hall, Jenna Harvey, Bryan Price, Patrick Reginald Walker, Isaiah LaBorde.

Body Count: 11

Laughter Lines: “Do you party? Drugs? Alcohol?? Caffeine??”

For those who thought Behind the Mask was good, but not sticky enough when it came to the stab-n-drip act, here’s a companion piece that’d make a good viewing buddy along with The Cabin in the Woods for a great night’s horror, featuring Fran Kranz, who played stoner Marty in the latter. A touch of Tucker and Dale and a dollop of The Final Girls is sprinkled in and voila! Minor spoilers ensue.

Kranz is Sam, enthusiastic head counsellor at Camp Clear Vista, who runs bloodied through the woods and barricades himself in a cabin and calls… Alyson Hannigan. No Willow super powers available, as she is Chuck, comic book store employee and walking horror culture almanac who would likely give Randy Meeks a run for his money and a raging hard-on for her.

Chuck (“exposition is my middle name!”) is well-versed in how ‘these situations’ play out so asks Sam to describe the killer: “Ugly, ugly dude,” “Freddy ugly, or Matt Cordell ugly?” See? Flashing back to a couple of days earlier and greeting the new counsellors, then on to the grue, Chuck is quick to deduce a few things and put it to Sam: “Are you sure you’re not the killer?”

YMBTK unfolds in an interesting non-linear way, two-thirds of the way through the wooden-masked loon’s murder spree, and Sam stays on the line with Chuck to try and remember what happened earlier in the night that led to this point and if he is, in fact, the maniac. (He is).

Well… sort of. Further down the road in the backlog of reveals, Sam tells a story to the new counsellors about a cursed woodman who went mad and killed some folks and is buried somewhere nearby. One of the group unearths the wooden mask and puts it on Sam’s face as a joke, which bonds to him and transplants its evil, complete with whispering ‘ki-ki-ki’ sounds that’d make Jason’s ears prick up. It’s the mask that’s evil, not Sam, who protests his innocence as best he can, especially as it seems the last few teens standing are coming to make a pre-emptive strike.

Chuck sums it up best when she says: “Woah, wait a minute, so you’re saying you knew all along that your family’s campground had this creepy history with the evil mask? Not to sound like a broken record, but why the hell did you put that mask on!?”

The murder scene flashbacks get shit done. Seriously, those of us climbing the walls waiting for another Friday the 13th to go back to camp can exhale in afterglow as, not only does the killer resemble early Jason, but the setting ticks all the boxes. These aren’t crappy shacks or tents from fourth-tier Camp Blood-a-likes, Clear Vista is a summer camp, complete with kitchens, a pool, toolshed – everywhere you’d expect someone fleeing Jason to go is found here. Sam hacks, chops, beheads, behands, and drowns the counsellors using a gnarly blade with ‘gator jaws affixed to it.

Despite his resistance to allow the mask to control him, Chuck lamentably advises that he’s gradually painting himself into a corner in terms of his survival: “I think it’s only gonna get worse. I think you’re probably gonna die. I’m sorry, Sam, it’s just… that’s how these things seem to go. On a bright side though, in a lot of these cases the killer comes back in a couple of years, you know, lightning strikes their grave and they’re back from the dead!” Come the end, it’s Sam versus good girl, Jamie, and a couple of not entirely shocking twists, but as Chuck points out, the opus can only end one way.

Genial observations from Hannigan’s character – who never actually shares a scene with Kranz – and all manner of winks and nods to other films (you can’t miss the Mask Maker poster!) make this a delicious dessert for hardcore slasher fans and probably entertaining enough for casual horror bods. Flaws are few, though the counsellor roster are largely undeveloped beyond the point of names for the majority, but this goes beyond the missive to some degree. And I can’t say I love the title, but what else would you call it?

Are they any other ways to skewer the conventions? Probably one or two (I skimmed over a contender but the production values were so dire I couldn’t embrace the masochism), but few will shine as brightly and merrily as this.

Reviews

Hell Hath No Fury: The 13 Best Female Killers

November 30, 2018 Hud One comment

Traditionally, society leads us to believe that killers are men, victims women – even more so when people address slasher films without having seen one. But wait up, a certain movie way back when totally changed it up when it led the audience into thinking they were watching a guy kill that string of sexy teens, but then BAM! it turned out to be a middle-aged woman with a grudge.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, the adage goes, and boy – or girl – can they bring the hellfire when they want to.

Here are my 13 favourite lady killers – spoilers, obvs.

Mandy Lane (Amber Heard)
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

Victims: 2

As the title suggests, aaaall the guys at school long to get in the pants of Mandy Lane – future Mrs Johnny Depp, and then ex-Mrs Johnny Depp, Heard (wasn’t she a lesbian at some point as well?)

Anyway, ATBLML has us believe that her friend-zoned pal Emmett is the killer, only to reveal that he is but her puppet, having manipulated him into offing her clique of high school friends, then betray him and crown herself final girl at the end to win the affections of the hunky ranch hand.

Diane Payne (Sally Kirkland)
Fatal Games (1984)

Victims: 5

In an academy for aspiring young Olympians, a javelin-toting maniac is getting rid of the members of the so-called Magnificent Seven, who potentially may eclipse their own past successes.

Turns out it’s the level-headed nurse Diane, who had a sex change after a scandal to try and compete as a woman, but was disqualified over this too! Suckfest. Watch as she pitches her weapon of choice down difficult corridors in an effort to silence the teen who discovers her secret. Kirkland played again the killer in 2006’s Fingerprints.

Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts)
Scream 4 (2011)

Victims: 5+

Sidney Prescott’s 17-year-old cousin is the criminal mastermind behind the new Woodsboro Murders. Sick of hearing aaaaall about her cousin, Jill intends to take the shortcut to fame and fortune, by setting herself up as the new Sidney and reap the rewards of professional victimhood. Emma Roberts does the nasty bitch schtick well, with a IDGAF attitude to go with her handy knife and, like Mandy Lane, ability to manipulate a boy into doing much of the leg work then take the fall for her.

Mrs Tredoni (Mildred Clinton)
Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

Victims: 4

Devout Catholic Mrs T. can’t stand the bratty daughter of single mom Catherine Spages, and when she kills the wrong sister, goes about setting up Alice as the one responsible, digging herself a hole that a million Hail Mary’s won’t get her out of. A real sting in the tail of this viciously anti-religious pre-Halloween flick.

Victoria Engels (Barbara Steele)
Silent Scream (1980)

Victims: 2

One time prom queen Victoria sits in her secret attic room staring into a mirror covered by a photograph of her younger self, listening to old 50s records and pretending it’s all good – until students move into the rooming house her mother and brother run, and they serve only to remind her of her youth to the point she goes even more cuckoo. Horror Queen Steele is as awesome in the role as you think she’s going to be.

Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage/Courtney Taylor)
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II / Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1987/89)

Victims: 14

Promiscuous prom queen Mary Lou is burned to death by one of her many ex-boyfriends on the night she’s crowned queen at Hamilton High, 1957.

Thirty years later, her spirit is unleashed and she embarks on a supernaturally assisted killing spree, returning again in the third movie as a female counterpart to Freddy Krueger, serving up all manner of inventive demises for teachers and students, including making lockers squish a girl, death by ice cream, battery acid, and super-charged football.

Terry Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga)
The Initiation (1983)

Victims: 9

Ye olde evil twin cliché is realised excellently in this late-to-the-party slasher, which sees college kids undertaking their sorority hazing menaced by a shadowy killer after hours in a huge department store.

Turns out the weird dreams heroine Kelly has about broken dolls, a fire, and many reflections, are actually memories of her until-recently institutionalized crazy twin, who intends to kill and replace Kelly with herself. The revelation scene is camper than a row of pink tents.

Ann Thomason (Tracy Bregman)
Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Victims: 7

Wah wah wah, nobody came to my birthday, bellows weepy heroine Virginia to her best friend Ann, hostess of the party they all went to instead. Years later, when both girls are members of the Crawford Top Ten – popular clique at a prep school – it turns out to be Ann who is offing the grown-up teens who dissed Virginia’s party years earlier, because they’re half-sisters blah blah blah. The camp-tastic Scooby Doo ending salvages the movie from being a write-off.

Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly)
Bride of Chucky (1998)

Victims: 5+

In life, Charles Lee Ray’s girlfriend Tiffany Valentine might have killed a few schmucks here and there, but in death and resurrected as a doll companion to Chucky, she goes into homicidal overdrive, infamously shattering a glass ceiling over a canoodling couple on a waterbed below, doing it with an evil grin throughout. Check out the scene in Seed of Chucky where she attempts to apologise to family members of her victims.

Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart)
Urban Legend (1998)

Victims: 9

“You used an urban legend to kill my boyfriend, and noooow…” Although the physical requirements of the killer in Urban Legend look to be way more than model-esque Brenda could hope to live up to, unless she’s packing major muscle out of sight, the revelation that she’s offed nine students and staff of Pendleton University and based each murder on an old sleepover tale is nothing short of amazing. If you thought the bitchy exposition at the end of Happy Birthday to Me was sending the needle over the end of the camp-o-meter, this practically breaks the fucking thing.

Mrs Loomis/Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf)
Scream 2 (1997)

Victims: 2+

Kevin Williamson wickedly paid homage to Friday the 13th when unveiling the second killer at the end of Scream 2. In contrast to everyone else I know, I guessed the other killer but not Mrs L., so it was a juicy surprise when it turned out she was the brains of the project, designed to reap revenge of Sidney Prescott for killing her dear Billy.

Nobody does deranged quite as theatrically as Metcalf (see also the episode of Desperate Housewives where she held a supermarket full of shoppers hostage) and her furious rantings during the final act haven’t been equalled by any of the late-90s slasher crop.

Angela Baker (Felissa Rose)
Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Victims: 11

Who would suspect the shy girl at Camp Arawak could be behind the bizarre series of deaths that plagues the joint? From wasps nests thrown into bathroom stalls to death by curling iron, Angela is a particularly inventive psycho, and even if it turns out that she is in fact he, for all intents and purposes the film has a female killer.

Mrs Voorhees (Betsy Palmer)
Friday the 13th (1980)

Victims: 9

Could there be any other victor? I do wonder if without the final reveal in Friday the 13th the film would have been viewed even less favourably by critics at the time? Who knows, but however you cut it, it was a smart move on behalf of Cunningham and Miller to toy with the audience’s expectations in this way, only to have your average mom turn out not to be all open arms and sympathy, instead coming at you with a knife and the most insane grin to grace the silver screen.

Lists

“His name was Johann…”

November 10, 2018 Hud 2 comments

CAMP DEATH III IN 2D

2018/85m

“The most horrible good movie ever!”

Director/Writer: Matt Frame / Cast: Dave Peniuk, Angela Galanopoulos, Darren Andrichuk, Emma Docker, Chris Allen, Starslie Waschuk, Terry Mullett, Cynthia Chalmers, Gerald Varga, Hans Potter, Katherine Alpen, Andrea Bang, Niall King, Jason Asuncion.

Body Count: 18

Laughter Lines: “First the murders, then that whole Jewish angle that didn’t work!”

80s homages are everywhere right now, from Stranger Things to Summer of 84, and the slasher movie has been no exception. This parody recalls the likes of Student Bodies, Pandemonium, and National Lampoon’s Class Reunion. And like those movies, it’s catered to a particular taste.

For a lot of its 85-minute runtime, Camp Death III in 2D plays out like a Benny Hill skit, with characters zipping all over the place at increased walking pace. Though I grew tired of this long before the end, fortunately the production qualities of this $35,000 CAD movie are comparably high and there are just about enough decent gags for a once over, but, as with any parody, an equal distribution of terrible ones as well.

Camp Crystal Meph is being reopened three years after the last in a never ending series of murders courtesy of Johann Van Damme, the off-the-shelf masked loon with Mommy issues. Hopeless optimist Todd Boogjumper has opted to open it to a group of outcasts and misfits, much to the chagrin of his ever-furious profanity-spouting uncle Melvin.

Naturally, Johann rocks up and begins eliminating the campers stabbing them, burning them, or, in one pretty funny scene, using a toaster to bombard them with slices of cooked bread. Some campers are dumb enough to accidentally off themselves or each other as well.

Most of the cast members are listed as coming up with ‘story ideas’, which lends to the uneven comedy throughout – it’s more like a series of skits by a comedy troupe loosely strung together by occurring at the same location, and not all jokes relate to Friday the 13th lore or basic slasher movies clichés. By the end things have gotten really wacky, with a Santa costume, a talking head on a drone, and the most annoying thing ever – a microphone too close to an amplifier.

Entirely down to any individual sense of humour but worth a once over.

Reviews

Hellraiser Fundraiser

August 17, 2018 Hud Leave a comment

SCREAM PARK

2012/18/81m

“Death is the new attraction.”

Director/Writer: Cary Hill / Cast: Wendy Wygant, Steve Rudzinski, Alicia Marie Marcucci, Kyle Riordan, Tyler Kale, Kailey Marie Harris, Dean Jacobs, Doug Bradley, Nicole Beattie, Brian McDaniel, Ian Lemmon.

Body Count: 10

Laughter Lines: “Sometimes, when I’m here at work, I just fantasize about being crushed in the gears of a ride.”

Be not fooled by that artwork, this cheapo production is littered with issues that plague low-budget filmmaking, but is at least worth a look at for fans of the early, grainy Friday the 13th instalments, which appear to have influenced a fair whack of its aesthetic. Spoilers ensue.

The youthful employees at Fright Land work their final shift before the closure of the park for good, due to low ticket sales. They decide to stick around and have a party, which is soon crashed by a pair of masked lunatics who waste no time in hanging, slashing, and deep-frying them one by one. This is one of the few films where the black guy literally does die first.

Obvious final girl Jennifer is concerned about where her missing boyfriend might be, while dragging the dead weight of the wimpy park manager around everywhere she goes, eventually finding out that the park owner (Hellraiser‘s Doug Bradley) has decided to try and turn around their bad fortunes by staging ‘an incident’ that will drag in the crowds.

Mucho dialogue of the “quit screwing around” variety ensues, and the rather dilapidated look of the park pleasantly echoes Camp Crystal Lake’s grubby, rundown cabins. However, there are sound and visual problems throughout, debuting with the frankly bizarre pagination-from-hell title card:

I mean… why???

Scream Park isn’t a good film, but beyond the low-end presentation and amateur-night performances (the survivor is interviewed by a cop, who finishes talking with her by saying “Thanks – take it easy.” Dude, she just saw eight people die!) there’s some fun to be had – and it’s great to finally see someone go for the eyes after years of shouting at the screen for them to do it!

Blurb-of-interest: Doug Bradley was in Wrong Turn 5.

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