4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Many great horror films have taken place in a college setting. Then again, so have many, many bad ones. In honor of all of those films, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Collegiate Slasher Films
Final Exam (1981, dir by Jimmy Huston)
The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982, dir by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow)
Pieces (1983, dir by J. Piquer Simon)
The House on Sorority Row (1983, dir by Mark Rosman)
Creeped Out is a Netflix release that really isn’t. I have noticed that Netflix will call something an original series even though they just bought the rights. This show was originally produced by CBBC, explaining why the second episode has very hard to understand British accents. I checked Bruce McDonald’s IMDB and yes…he’s english and wrote for the Eastenders. Eastenders or EastEnders (sp?) is show that I believe is about poor people in London or something…I’m not investigating anymore than that.
I watched the first episode Marti with my girls (7,9). They were quite scared by the opening and one other scene that I will get to later. The show is a lot like the 90s show The Outer Limits. It has a lot of spooky and technology themes that teach a morality or cautionary tale. I was primed to like this show because I loved the Outer Limits and one of the writers is really nice: Melinda Snodgrass (follow her on twitter).
The story opens with Kim. Kim is a pretty girl in high school who none of the boys pay attention to because that actually happens in real life. She has nerdy friend that also is a pariah for no particular reason. Kim is forced to hang out with her loser friend and pine for a boy who looks like Justin Bieber. She gets a new phone and pays for it somehow. This phone is indestructible and self-aware.
The phone’s AI calls himself Marti. Marti is really really creepy. He works autonomously to make Kim popular and succeeds. Kim gets the attention of the cool kids, including Bieber. Just when Bieber is about to go out with her, in true Lifetime MOW fashion, Marti reveals himself to be a jealous psycho boyfriend. He threatens to destroy Kim’s new found popularity unless she agrees to be only his. YIKES. When Kim gets fed up, she tries to destroy the phone, it doesn’t work. Kim tries to call customer service and a woman answer who slowly takes Marti’s side. Then, the voice switched to Marti’s voice and my daughters both screamed. They didn’t understand why fully it was so scary, but I finished the show alone.
Marti blackmails Kim to take him to the prom and she agrees. It’s really creepy. She eventually defeats Marti, but he destroys her popularity. She entombs Marti in cement, but then considers releasing him six months later because she really liked being popular.
The show had a real Outer Limits vibe and played upon human weakness and need to be loved. There’s always been the morality tale of giving up your soul for fame, but this is more basic. Kim wants to be loved and our technology has never made us more isolated from real love. Marti’s popularity is twitter popularity: fake. Marti gave her multiple friendships that were ended as quickly as they began like muting or blocking someone. On the other hand, Kim’s nerdy friend took the good with the bad and continued to love Kim. It spoke to dependence and isolation because of technology and our total dependence upon instant love.
You’re a college student. You’re a member of a sorority. You start your day by waking up in a stranger’s bed, with a hangover. When you walk across campus, you blow off the girl trying to get you to sign her anti-climate change petition. When you get back to your sorority house, you’re rude to her roommate and refuse to eat the birthday cupcake that she made for you. You body shame a girl at lunch. You’re sleeping with one of your professors. You’re rude to your father. You’re going to a party.
Oh! And did I mention that you’re in a slasher film and that there’s a really creepy figure wearing a baby mask who is following you around?
Seriously, you are so dead.
That’s the situation that Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) finds herself in 2017’s Happy Death Day. It’s her birthday and, unfortunately, she’s murdered at the end of it. Of course, if you’ve ever seen in a slasher film, it’s not a shock when Tree dies. She’s the quintessential self-centered girl who always gets killed in these type of movies.
(For the record, I would probably die within the first ten minutes of any slasher film.)
However, in Tree’s case, she gets another chance. And then another one after that. And then, another one after that… every night, Tree dies. Every morning, Tree wakes up in the dorm room of Carter Davis (Israel Broussard) and she has to relive the last day of her life all over again.
To the film’s credit, it doesn’t take long for Tree to realize that she’s in a time loop. (Also, to the film’s credit, Carter specifically points out that Tree’s story sounds exactly like the plot of Groundhog Day. “What’s that?” Tree asks. Carter explains that it’s a film with Bill Murray. “Who’s Bill Murray?” Tree replies.) Once Tree figures out that she’s going to have to keep living the same day over and over again, she sets out trying not to die. She doesn’t go to the party but that just means that the killer comes to her. She tries to spend a day barricaded in her dorm room, just to find that the killer is hiding in a corner. She follows the various suspects around as they go about their day. It seems like no matter what she does, she can’t keep the killer from catching her.
On the plus side, as a result of having to deal with the same crap over and over again, she does become a better person. She’s less rude and condescending. She grows more confident in herself and stops worrying so much about what everyone else is going to think about her. Of course, becoming a better person isn’t going to do her much good if she keeps dying every night….
Happy Death Day is a clever combination of horror and comedy. It’s a movie that’s smart enough not take itself too seriously. Even when Tree becomes a nicer person, both the character and the film retain their sarcastic edge. Even when she learns to face the world with positivity and happiness, the film seems to be gently mocking the ease by which film characters can go from being self-centered to thoroughly altruistic. Meanwhile, the killer may be frightening but again, the film mines plenty of dark humor from the character’s pure determination. No matter Tree does, that killer eventually shows up.
It’s a precarious balancing act, trying to be scary and funny at the same time. Fortunately, Happy Death Day benefits from a clever script and a good lead performance from Jessica Rothe. Rothe gives an intelligent and empathetic performance as Tree. It’s impossible not to sympathize with her frustration as she wakes up to discover that she has to go through the exact same day yet again. It’s a sign of the strength of Rothe’s performance that you sympathize with Tree even before she becomes a nicer person.
Happy Death Day is a clever film and one that I’m surprised to say I missed when it was originally released. If you also missed it, now’s a great time to catch it!
Today’s horror on the lens in 1959’s The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. It’s a film about a family, a zombie, decapitation, and a family curse. Someone is murdering all of the descendants of the legendary Captain Drake. Can Jonathan Drake be saved or is he destined to become just another skull?
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is an atmospheric little movie, one that treats its potentially campy plot with the utmost seriousness.
Both on his own and as a member of Goblin. Claudio Simonetti has been responsible for some of the most iconic scores in the history of Italian horror cinema. He is probably best known for Goblin’s score for Dario Argento’s Suspiria. The minute you hear the opening of that score, you are immediately transported into Argento’s nightmarish world of witches, death, and ballet.
In 1999, Simonetti formed Daemonia, a heavy mental band that played updated version of his classic horror scores, along with new material. In this video, they perform Suspiria and the end result is a perfect video for October!
On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, a couple moves into a house on the coast. Everyone tells them that the house is haunted but the couple refuses to believe them. After all, everyone knows how superstitious people are in New England. I mean, Stephen King had to pick it up from somewhere, right?
However, after moving into the house, the couple starts to realize that they are not alone….
According to the show’s host, John Newland, this is based on a true story (maybe)!
This episode originally aired on May 26th, 1959. The husband is played by Robert Webber, who also played Juror #12 in Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men.
The old textile mill has a problem. The people who work there keep dying, especially the ones who work the night shift. The mill has another problem. It’s become infested with rats. Just stepping into the mill means you’re running the risk of having a rat fall through the ceiling and land on your head. The evil mill foreman, Warwick (Stephen Macht), puts together a cleanup crew to work overnight and take care of the infestation. Idealistic drifter John Hall (David Andrews) is hired to help and soon discovers that there’s something even bigger than a rat living underneath the mill. Unfortunately, by the time that John makes his discovery, almost everyone else is dead and Warwick, having had an Apocalypse Now-style breakdown, is painting his face with muck and trying to kill whoever’s left.
This is a weak film adaptation of a throw-away Stephen King short story. That the film itself is clearly not meant to taken seriously doesn’t make it any better. The only thing that this film has to recommend it is Brad Dourif, who has an extended cameo as a crazy exterminator named Tucker Cleveland. Cleveland knows everything about how rats have been weaponized over the years and he will be more than happy to explain every detail. It’s too bad that Dourif does not have a bigger role because the movie is lot less entertaining when he’s not around. If you do watch Graveyard Shift, stick around for the end credits so you can hear the theme song that is made up of samples of dialogue from the movie.
Since it’s Thanksgiving in Canada, it seems appropriate that today’s horror scene that I love should come from one of the best Canadian horror films of all time and….
No, this scene is from the 1980 film, The Changeling. Directed by Peter Medak, the film is about a house that’s haunted by the spirit of a boy who was murdered there decades ago. When George C. Scott moves into the house, he discovers the truth about not just the murder but the political conspiracy that led to it. It’s a really good movie. You should watch it.
Anyway, in this atmospheric scene, Trish Van Devere explores the house. It’s always a bit strange to watch a horror scene devoid of context but let me just say that The Changeling is such an atmopsheric and intense ghost film that you’ll never want to wander around a potentially haunted house again once you’ve seen it!
After the success of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN , Universal decided it was time for a sequel to everybody’s favorite vampire, Dracula , with James Whale scheduled to direct. Whale opted out, putting DRACULA’S DAUGHTER in the hands of Lambert Hillyer , an old pro who dated back to silent William S. Hart Westerns, and was more comfortable with sagebrush sagas than Gothic horror. The result was an uneven film saved by Gloria Holden’s performance as the title character, Countess Marya Zaleska.
I’ll give Hillyer credit for some atmospheric scenes scattered throughout the movie. The opening scene at Carfax Abbey, cobwebbed as ever, picks up where DRACULA left off, with Edward Van Sloan’s Van Helsing (inexplicably renamed Von Helsing here) caught by constables shortly after staking the undead Count. The Countess burning the body of her vampiric father, hoping to free herself of her curse, is spooky, as is the return…
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! Today’s edition for 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicate to you!
Through the Shattered Lens 