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Fresh (2022)
Fresh Indeed
After a string of lousy dates, Noa meets Steve at a local grocery store and they hit it off. Soon, they're meeting up a lot and, when Steve suggests they go away for the weekend, Noa jumps at the chance.
What Noa doesn't know is that Steve has his own plans in mind and this relationship isn't going to be what she thinks it is.
It's nice to see Sebastian Stan sinking his teeth into a role this bizarre and twisted and having a great time. Fresh balances horror and humor very well, giving the audience just enough of both without making things too funny or too dour and it all leads to a very satisfying conclusion.
The Screaming Woman (1972)
TV Movie Full of Surprises
Wealthy Laura Wynant hasn't made a good name for herself among her local neighbors. Everyone thinks she's a bit off the deep end, especially after a stay at a mental facility. Her son and his wife are all too eager to have her declared mentally incompetent so they can put her away and inherit her fortune.
This all comes to a head one day when Laura, out for a stroll in the woods surrounding her estate, hears a woman crying out for help from underneath the ground. When she tries to tell everyone around her, they all attribute it to her overactive imagination or even proof of her insanity.
As the woman underneath the ground runs of air, Laura starts a race against time to try and save her before it's too late.
The Screaming Woman is a solid, well paced TV chiller with an excellent central performance by screen queen Olivia de Havilland. It's twists and turns are interesting and its story is an unusual twist on the Rear Window tale.
Pet Sematary (1989)
Still Scary In Spite of Flaws
When Louis Creed and his family move into a farmhouse in front of a busy Maine road, he's quick to befriend next door neighbor, Judd. When Louis' daughter's beloved cat dies, Judd tells Louis about the spooky titular cemetery where, if you bury something, it comes back to life. The only catch is that it's not quite the same as it was when it was alive.
Tragedy continues to strike the Creed family and Louis thinks that, if it brought back an animal, it can bring back humans and this will be a mistake that will change Louis' life forever.
It's a strong concept by Stephen King and he and director Mary Lambert work extra hard to tell it in the scariest way possible. Some sequences in this film still hold an eerie and disturbing power to this day, but it's bogged down by two flat lead performances that either go too broad or blend into the wallpaper.
A Day of Judgment (1981)
A Day of Boredom
Billed as a horror film in the midst of the slasher cycle, A Day of Judgement can't help but disappoint anyone expecting a straightforward horror flick and it's easy to understand why it's still struggling to find an audience all these years later.
It's like a silly Christian scare film crossed with A Christmas Carol about a bunch of small town sinners in the 1920's being given karmic justice in the form of a grim reaper-esque black cloaked figure who gets them pulled into hell by zombie-like hands or decapitates them.
Performances are spirited and it's not a badly made film in the technical sense, but not much is really going on and the most interesting subplot (there are many!) involves the younger wife of a town businessman carrying on an affair with one of her husband's employees.
House of Wax (2005)
Starts Slow, but Builds To Pure Intensity
Maybe the House of Wax remake didn't catch on because of it's slow first act. You can't exactly say it starts with a bang. Unlike most slashers and certainly most horror films of that period, House of Wax takes its sweet time in getting to introduce us to its characters. Unfortunately, these characters are mostly nothing more than your average teen/college archetypes, so it's not like the film spends much time developing their characters since there's not much there to begin with.
What does build during this section of the film is a decent sense of atmosphere and dread. While these people aren't the best developed, they do at least seem like real people, so we do start to feel for them when they're put in harm's way. By the time House of Wax gets to "the good stuff", it's off and running and it doesn't stop to give us a breather for the rest of the film.
All the death scenes are inventive and pretty grisly. These aren't just a quick stab here and there - these filmmakers want us to feel their pain. There's even a good chase scene or two. Also, Paris Hilton, as limited an actress as she is, doesn't embarrass herself at all. All these things add up to make House of Wax an attraction that's well worth your time.
The Corpse Grinders (1971)
For Completists Only
The Corpse Grinders is about as cheap and gritty as you'd expect, which is actually the best thing I can say about it. Even the worst low budget films of this era have that cheesy charm built into the celluloid itself.
As best I can figure out, The Corpse Grinders is about people who use human bodies to make cat food and then the cats that eat it turn into bloodthirsty monsters, attacking people at random as two boring scientist-type people try to figure it out.
The acting is as awful as you'd imagine, there's no pace to speak of, and at less than 75 minutes, it feels like it's at least an hour too long. Most of the film isn't even enjoyable on a "so bad, it's good" level. Don't waste your time.
Trauma (1993)
Argento's Greatest Hits
By this point in Dario Argento's career, it seemed like he was desperate to break out into the American market as many of his previous films were too strange or arty to be big hits anywhere besides Europe. Trauma feels like his most mainstream film by a wide shot. Released at a time when upmarket thrillers were all the rage in the US, Trauma was dumped onto video where it didn't really make much of an impact. But is that what it deserved?
Trauma isn't a brilliant or exceptional film, but despite the American locations and actors, there's still a trace of that European horror aesthetic that Argento was so well known for. There are the rainstorms of Suspiria and Tenebrae, the "main clue was in front of my face the entire time" trick and the brutal decapitation from the finale of Deep Red is recreated a few times, and there's a tinge of the occult from Suspiria and Inferno.
Story-wise, Trauma is pretty typical giallo/thriller stuff, but it does have two interesting characters at the forefront - a young anorexic girl and a former drug addict. They're not the usual people one finds placed in a story like this, which is refreshing. Where it gets icky is when they try to make this underage girl and former drug addict into potential lovers. It's just a bit too gross even for a movie where a killer bashes people with hammers and decapitates them with a portable guillotine.
The Child (1977)
Beware of Rosalie's Friends
Young Rosalie has a few friends she likes to visit at night in the graveyard. Apparently, this doesn't bother her family, but it does bother her new babysitter, Alicianne and her nosy neighbor. Who could Rosalie possibly be hanging out with at night in a cemetery? Why, zombies of course.
The Child is a hard film to pin down. Is it a typical "Bad Seed" movie? A zombie movie? A telekenesis movie? Who knows, but it sure is fun to try and figure out just what was going through the filmmakers' minds while coming up with it. It seems like they just threw everything at the screen, hoping that something would stick.
The zombie makeup is effective, the music score is bizarre, all the performers are dubbed which gives the film that dreamy Euro horror movie feel, and there are a few flashy bits of red paint gore involving eye trauma.
Screams of a Winter Night (1979)
Things That Go Bump in the Night
I love anthologies! If you don't like the first story, there's always hope for the next one or the next one. Rarely do you find an anthology without at least one memorable story and Screams of A Winter Night is no exception.
In the film, a group of friends venture into the woods to hang out at a cabin and tell spooky stories. These stories include a story about a couple being harassed in their parked car at night, a mysterious room in an abandoned building, and a psychotic coed who loses her grip on sanity. Each stories has the same actors in the wraparound story playing characters in the story being told which is a nice touch (and probably a great way for the producers to save money).
Each story brings something special to the plate even if they are a mostly predictable lot. The most memorable is probably the story about the creepy room in the abandoned building. It explains nothing and leaves everything up to the viewer's imagination. It shouldn't be anywhere near as creepy as it actually is.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Why Won't He Die?
For a 5th entry in a slasher series, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is about as braindead and uneventful as one would think. It picks up a year after little Jamie (a terrific Danielle Harris in an almost totally silent performance for a majority of the film) stabbed her stepmother with a pair of scissors after, seemingly, inheriting Michael Myers' evil after touching his hand. Meanwhile, Michael survived the explosion by leaping into a stream and carrying himself off to the cabin of a hermit who's been nursing him back to health. October rolls around and he comes out of his coma and resumes his quest for teenage blood, but this time, Jamie has a psychic link with her uncle.
There's also a strange man in black who keeps showing up for no reason in between teenage slaughter scenes.
Halloween 5 doesn't start off that bad. It still keeps Jamie as a potential inheritor of Michael's evil, but as the film progresses, she goes back to being the normal little girl who's just trying to outrun her evil uncle that she was in the previous film. This entire storyline is discarded, but we do keep two bumbling cops who the film has decided to give a goofy theme song to. It's pretty jarring and takes one out of the film every time.
There's at least a bit of suspense and tension generated at the climactic Tower Barn party where Michael carves up a few horny teenagers.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
Predictable Prequel
Prequels are tough, because you already know how things will turn out for the most part and it robs the audience of a lot of excitement. This sense of inevitability lingers over The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning throughout and casts a cloud of tedium over everything. It doesn't help that the story is almost beat for beat the same as the remake from 3 years prior.
This prequel tells the exact same tale as before, but this time a different group of young people who venture out into the back roads of Texas and find themselves preyed upon by the murderous clan of cannibals.
If possible, it's even more depressing than the previous remake with a lot more gore and torture scenes. It's an admirable attempt and the actors aren't bad, but it's hard to get too invested when you know good and well that no one's going to make it out alive by the end.
Happy Death Day 2 U (2019)
Where Does This Film Get Off Being So Moving?
I enjoyed the original Happy Death Day and felt a sequel probably wouldn't be the best idea since it seemed like the only way it would make any sense is if they repeated themselves. Thankfully, Happy Death Day 2U doesn't repeat itself and, instead, seems to switch genres entirely.
While the original film was a darkly comic slasher spoof, this film is much more of a sci-fi/action/horror/comedy/drama hybrid. It shouldn't work (and for people expecting more of the same, it won't), but the actors are game and the tone shifts are handled well.
There are moments in the film that I didn't expect to be so moving and they called to mind The Final Girls. Any film that can make me tear up automatically deserves high praise.
Horror fans will have to go into this one with an open mind if they're going to enjoy it, but if they do, I can't see why they wouldn't.
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)
A Perfect Slasher
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is pretty much the textbook definition of "fun 80's slasher cheese." It's so eager to entertain that even the biggest doubters will probably end up having a good time with it. There's something so joyful about it.
Unhappy Campers is, of course, a sequel to the much more serious Sleepaway Camp from '83. In that film, Angela went on a killing spree at a summer camp, killing anyone who threatened or made fun of her. According to this film, she spent some time in a mental institution, but now she's back and still not too thrilled by people with bad manners and sketchy morals. In some ways, she's a precursor to Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom - she's typically just killing rather awful people...or people she thinks are awful.
Pamela Springsteen takes over the role from Felissa Rose and she's a campy delight. In many ways, she IS the film. Had they miscast this role, the film probably wouldn't work at all. There's a demented, righteous glee that she brings to the role that makes the entire thing quite amusing to watch.
There's some boobs and blood for those of us who are interested in that sort of thing (and I'd assume most slasher fans are) and the pacing is tight as a whip, not even clocking in at 80 minutes. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers is lean, mean, and ready to entertain.
Don't Go in the Woods (1981)
Bad Movie Heaven
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat - Don't Go in the Woods is AWFUL. Truly awful. Easily one of the worst films ever made. Every performance, piece of dialogue, plot point, shot, sound cue, etc. is executed in the exact opposite way it should be. Some will say this was planned by the filmmakers, but I have my doubts. Either way, if you're in the right frame of mind and with the right people, Don't Go in the Woods can be a super fun time.
There's no point in going into the plot, because this movie hops around like a bunny on crack, going off onto strange tangeants and side plots. I'm not even sure if any of the characters had names. What makes this movie so much fun is just accepting that this movie is awful and rolling along with it.
Yes, there's most definitely a lot of blood, but it's usually just some crew guy throwing it onto one of the actors.
This is a hard film to recommend, because most people will just be appalled by how terrible everything is and not find the humor in it, but have a few drinks, call a couple of friends over, and you have a great film for bad movie night.