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“A boy’s best friend is his mother”

September 13, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

mother's day 1980

MOTHER’S DAY

1980/91m

“I’m so proud of my boys – they never forget their mama.”

Director/Writer: Charles Kaufman / Writer: Warren Leight / Cast: Nancy Hendrickson, Deborah Luce, Tiana Pierce, Frederick Coffin [as Holden McGuire], Billy Ray McQuade, Rose Ross.

Body Count: 6

A few crossover elements with stock slasher elements see this eyebrow-cocking rape revenge comedy included here.

A trio of college friends, now in their thirties, gather for their annual trip and, this year, venture into the woods stalked by a couple of hicks, who abduct them for sex slaves at the backwoods cabin they share with their domineering mother.

When one of the women dies after escaping, the remaining pair decide to return to the shack to unleash vengeance on the family, which includes TV-on-the-head, Draino down the throat, and suffocation by inflatable chair!

Little slashing occurs, exhibited only in the opening scene, where a couple of hippies are ambushed – look for the blood splatter that occurs before the weapon has even been swung.

Some amusing moments and the women’s revenge is great, it’s also unexpectedly well made, but nothing more than a passing curiosity. Curiously, several of the cast members go by different names outside of this production.

Reviews

In the shadow of the rainbow

July 27, 2023 Hud Leave a comment

CRUISING

1980/18/102m

“Al Pacino is cruising for a killer.”

Director/Writer: William Friedkin / Writer: Gerald Walker / Cast: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Richard Cox, Karen Allen, Don Scardino, Joe Spinell, Jay Acovone, Randy Jurgensen, James Remar, Ed O’Neill, William Russ, Powers Boothe, Gene Davis.

Body Count: 5

Laughter Lines: “C’mere. I wanna show you my night stick.”

How many 80s/90s films dealt with ye olde sexy police woman going undercover as a stripper/hooker/exotic dancer to weed out a serial killer? Tons. Literally, this was the plot to every third steamy late night cable thriller back in the day.

So it says quite a bit about social attitudes that inverting the template, inserting a male cop into a gay environment where he has to blend in – really blend in – resulted in critics mauling the film, protesting from gay rights groups concerned about the depictions in the film, and, to this day, fierce online debates about it all.

Friedkin’s bleak, grimy film takes place in ’79-’80 New York City, where the discovery of dismembered body parts in the Hudson River leads investigating detectives to trace victims to the seedy underground leather scene. Enter Pacino’s Steve Burns, selected by his superior given his physical similarity to several of the victims. Burns agrees (somewhat eagerly) to go undercover and infiltrate the community to try and lure the killer.

His girlfriend (Allen) is kept in the dark and, as Burns goes deeper into the clubs, bars, and general life, he finds himself torn in two directions. The leather-clad, silky voiced killer, meanwhile, continues slaying men in public park cruising grounds and a porno theater, often heard singing a little rhyme in a creepy tone. The cops begin focusing on a suspect who works in a steakhouse that has many of the same type of knife being used, and Burns hangs out with his sweet natured playwright neighbour, Ted.

Friedkin deliberately fucks with us throughout, changing which actor plays the killer more than once in difference scenes to disorientate and confuse – at one point, an actor who played the killer then switches to be the next victim (although all are overdubbed by James Sutorius). Such is the interchangeability of the larger situation, the homogenic aesthetics of the scene, and the ambiguity around the film’s coda.

Cruising is a confronting vehicle, likely especially for heterosexual audiences in 1980, with the added discomfort of watching men casually and intimately touch the ‘straight’ lead. Gay men remain divided on it; at a time then gay rights were gaining a little bit of traction (just prior to the AIDS crisis), protestors saw the film (based on a novel and a series of genuine, unsolved murders) as a step back towards optics they were trying to distance themselves from: Predatory, sex-fuelled, vampire-esque lifestyles of hedonism that, by day, could be the guy at the store, at the gas station, waiting your table…

Around 40 minutes of footage was excised over around fifty submissions to the MPAA which, according to Friedkin, mostly consisted of X-rated antics captured at the clubs. It does feel like something is missing as we speed towards the end, but the is-it-or-isn’t-it note things end on is, it seems, likely intentional and plays into the is-he-or-isn’t-he nature of existing as a gay person in society, especially at that point.

But it is a slasher film? Hmm… like a leather daddy straddles his sub, Cruising can play around with versatility. More than enough is borrowed from stalk n’ slash antics for it to be of interest (oddly, the film it reminded me of most was Maniac, from which Joe Spinell plays a skeezy beat cop here). It’s probably too high-end, too polished, despite the filthy gutter it plays in, to qualify, but …why the hell not? Taste the rainbow.

Decidedly not for all audiences – gay or straight – relievingly non-judgmental about the counter culture it explores, and exquisitely shot. Have fun spotting all the before-they-were-famous faces: Ed O’Neill, Powers Boothe, James Remar, Burr DeBenning.

Blurbs-of-interest: Don Scardino was the lead in He Knows You’re Alone; Joe Spinell was also in The Last Horror Movie; James Remar was in The Surgeon; Gene Davis (the crossdressing informant, DaVinci) played the nudie killer in 10 to Midnight; Burr DeBenning was in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.

Reviews

Recurring Nightmare

April 13, 2021 Hud Leave a comment

BAD DREAMS

1988/18/84m

“When Cynthia wakes up, she’ll wish she were dead.”

Director/Writer: Andrew Fleming / Writers: Michael Dick, P.J. Pettiette, Yuri Zeltser, Steven E. de Souza / Cast: Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, Harris Yulin, Richard Lynch, Dean Cameron, Susan Ruttan, Damita Jo Freeman, E.G. Daily, Susan Barnes, Louis Giambalvo, Sheila Scott Wilkinson, Sy Richardson.

Body Count: 9 (+24)

Laughter Lines: “If you wanna fit in with the 80s, you’re at least two divorces, a condo, and a yeast infection behind the times.”

Of all the Elm Street rip-offs, just a glance a the name and details of this should tell you it’s one of the most overt. Although, being pedantic about it, Bad Dreams targets Elm Street 3 for much of its pilfer source, not least by casting from that movie Jennifer Rubin (who played ex-junkie Taryn) as the lead.

Rubin is Cynthia, the sole survivor of a mass-suicide at the Unity Fields cult in 1975, where self-styled prophet Harris (Lynch) poured ladles of gasoline over his flock before burning them and himself to death. Thirteen years later (finally not five, ten, or twenty!) Cynthia wakes from a coma and is placed into the mental care of Dr Alex Carmen and joins his therapy group of oddballs to assist her integration into the 80s (see Laughter Lines).

Among the other group members are anger-prone Ralph, sex obsessed couple Ed and Connie, seldom spoken Lana, jittery journalist Miriam, and Gilda, who just mutters stuff about destiny. Their issues aren’t particularly clear or realised well, unlike the Dream Warriors kids, where individual personalities were nailed down with ease by Craven’s script.

Cynthia neither fits in, nor wants to be there, but when she starts to see her dead cult leader in elevator or walking down the corridors, she thinks he’s come back for her to complete the transition to the next plane of existence blah blah blah. These visions coincide with the apparent suicides of the other group members, who drown, fall out of high-storey windows, and in one icky case throw themselves into a giant ventilation fan, causing blood rain throughout the clinic.

The cops who have been waiting thirteen years for answers around the cult’s demise see Cynthia as the common link between the deaths, despite the fact she has alibis for each, Dr Carmen is fired, and Cynthia put into isolation where ~~Freddy~~ Harris can get to her more easily.

At this point, Bad Dreams releases its twist, revealing circumstances to be much more earthbound than we’ve been led to believe. It’s unexpected and a decent deception, but it renders a majority of the film redundant and leads to a soggy climax that feels half-baked before the credits just start rolling and Sweet Child O’ Mine kicks in.

It’s a bit of an ‘Oh… okay’ moment, but the film is at least well made, boasts some interesting supporting characters and witty dialogue here and there. The flashback scene to the cult wilfully burning their own faces is intensely and unsettling. More time with the therapy group characters would’ve added some sorely missing depth to proceedings and meat for the actors to get their teeth into.

So how much does it borrow from Kruegertown?

Set on a psychiatric care ward a la Dream Warriors
Heroine repeatedly taken back to a creepy old house in her dreams/flashbacks
Death by fire
Ghoulish otherworldly stalker who the ‘adults’ can’t see (sometimes) appears all burnt up
Cynthia put into isolation ‘for her own good’
Doctor dismissed by hospital for getting too involved
Two cast members from Elm Street movies appear

Blurbs-of-interest: Harris Yulin was later in Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take; Richard Lynch was in Laid to Rest, Curse of the Forty-Niner, and Rob Zombie’s Halloween re-do; Charles Fleischer, the doctor from Elm Street 1, appears here briefly as the pharmacist.

Reviews

Lights on, nobody home

March 22, 2021 Hud 3 comments

DARKROOM

1989/15/86m

“Where old passions develop.”

Director: Terrence O’Hara / Writers: Rick Pamplin, Robert W. Fisher, Brian Herskowitz / Cast: Jill Pierce, Jeffrey Alan Arbaugh, Aarin Teich, Sara Lee Wade, Allan Liberman, Stella Kastner, John O’Connor.

Body Count: 9

College girl Janet returns home to her rural family home for a break – joining mom, grandpa, her sister and her cousins, who live with the family after a suspicious fire killed their parents along with Janet’s photographer father some years back. His darkroom still exists in the basement of their remote house. Someone in the cast is sneakily taking photos of people before killing them, occasionally wearing a creepy worn yellow rainmack while doing so.

When Janet’s boyfriend Steve turns up, mom asks them to go look for AWOL sister Paula, who has shacked up in a trailer with a temperamental local who, it seems, has killed her, and attacks anybody else who crosses his path. Lots of running back and forth ensues, with all vehicles unavailable or immobilised, the phone out, and the nearest neighbours ten miles away… Ideal working conditions for your common or garden slasher killer.

A nice credits sequence and some good photography make Darkroom look better than expected, though for a Nico Mastorakis production, most of the kills are tame or occur off camera entirely; the killer’s motive is hazy and seems almost shoehorned in in place of something that would really wrap things up satisfactorily.

An okay 86 minutes but you might get more out of developing some old photographs.

Blurb-of-interest: Aarin Teich was in Bloodspell.

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Time to sit down and give a darn about this yarn about a barn

March 8, 2021 Hud Leave a comment

THE BARN

2016/88m

“On Halloween night the legend of The Barn awakens.”

Director/Writer: Justin M. Seaman / Cast: Mitchell Musolino, Will Stout, Lexi Dripps, Cortland Woodard, Nikki Darling, Nickolaus Joshua, David Hampton, Linnea Quigley, Ari Lehman.

Body Count: 26+

Laughter Lines: “I watched them eat a fucking face-burger made out of Russ’s head!”

A labor of love by creator Justin Seaman, whose vision was so strong that even when the film ran out of cash, most of the cast and crew stayed on to see it to completion.

The ‘lost 80s’ subset has given us the likes of The Sleeper, Lost After Dark, Lake Nowhere, and of course The House of the Devil in the last few years as well as probably a barrel load more of films I’ve just not seen. Some of the capture the era perfectly, some pile on the Rubik’s Cubes, day-glo, slang, and Cyndi Lauper hits to eyebrow-raising proportions. Eyebrows being apt, they always give it away. Nobody was that preened in ’81.

The Barn is (wisely?) set in 1989, allowing for hairstyles and technology to look a little bit more likely than some of the other examples. For Halloween-obsessed nerd Sam, following the traditional rules of Trick or Treating is a vital life skill, even if it means he’s mocked for being too old to care by his dad and others when the season rolls around.

For pranking uptight local Ms Barnhart (Linnea in cameo), Sam is tasked with gathering candy for the church. Or something. I wasn’t clear on the nature of this punishment, but he and his friends decide to attend a concert by Demonic Inferno and pick up candy in a town along the way. They end up in Wheary Falls, where, in the 1959-set prologue, a pre-teen copped a pick-axe in her head after knocking on the door of an old barn. Sam knows the legend, which shapes his trad. views on the subject, but when the six teens pound on the door of the same barn, they awaken a trio of Halloweenie demons who soon canter into town to gather ‘treats’ for their master.

After wasting a couple of Sam’s friends, the trio – pumpkin-headed Hallowed Jack, the Candy Corn Scarecrow, and The Boogeyman, who is a Satanic miner – off a few townsfolk before crashing a party and slash their way through everyone. Everyone.

Sam and his pal Josh learn from a ’59 witness what they have to do and by when, and head back to the barn to destroy the three demons and prevent the devil from ascending for his All Hallow’s Eve feast.

The Barn isn’t strictly a slasher film, despite cruising close to those waters, its ’89 setting ties it in with the cross-genre films that came along at the end of the decade, tossing in ideas and motifs from various other horror sub-genres for a melting pot effect. The grainy picture and cigarette burns don’t necessarily convince me that films from [the real] 1989 were presented this way, harking back to the two films it brought to mind most clearly: HauntedWeen and Jack-O (the latter filmed in ’93 but aesthetically similar and with Linnea).

The colorful playfulness and attention to detail is the main selling point here, buoying out some flat characterisations and a crucial lack of final girl-dom come the end, which flirts with a Bill & Ted-ish bro scenario. This is the kind of film you have vague memories of seeing at your friend’s house as a kid and want to randomly find on a cable channel around Halloween years later, crack a few beers and smile ear to ear for 90 minutes.

Blurbs-of-interest: Ari Lehman played Young Jason in Friday the 13th; Linnea Quigley can be seen in roles of various sizes in Fatal Games, Graduation Day, Jack-O, Kolobos, Murder Weapon, Silent Night Deadly Night and Spring Break Massacre.

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