Film Review: Friday the 13th Part 2 (dir. by Steve Miner)

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Spoilers Below)

This the one where the nice guy in the wheelchair gets a machete to the face.

There’s a lot of different ways that you can describe Friday the 13th Part 2. It’s a horror movie, a slasher flick, and a sequel. It’s the first Friday the 13th movie to feature Jason Voorhees as the killer. It’s also one the best installments in the franchise. However, to me, this will always be the movie where the nice guy in the wheelchair gets a machete to the face.

Originally released in 1981, Friday the 13th Part 2 is, of course, about more than just the nice guy in the wheel chair getting a machete to the face. The film opens with Alice (Adrienne King), the sole survivor from the first film, struggling to get on with her life a year after the massacre. She has a small apartment that, in a nice touch, is full of drawings of the disfigured boy who attacked her at the end of the previous film. One night, Alice’s cat startles her by jumping out of a closet and shouting, “Watch out, there’s a mysterious killer in here.” Foolishly, Alice ignores her cat and ends up getting an ice pick rammed into her head.

(If only people listened to their cats…)

Five years later, Camp Crystal Lake is once again reopening, this time under the direction of alpha male Paul Holt (John Furey). Paul and his annoying sidekick Ted (Stu Charro) tell everyone not to worry about any old rumors about some mysterious murderer killing anyone who goes to Crystal Lake. Meanwhile, Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) is wandering around, going all “You’re all doomed!” and then watching as Paul’s girlfriend Ginny (Amy Steel) undresses in her cabin. Bad Crazy Ralph! Luckily, Crazy Ralph then gets strangled with barbed wire. (Ouch! I guess he was the one who was doomed, huh? Get it? Anyway…)

Paul, Ginny, annoying Ted, and the rest of the counselors decide to head into town so they can spend the night getting drunk. However, a few counselors decide to remain at the camp. (Again, this just goes to prove that slasher films are not only about punishing people for having sex and doing drugs. If the majority of this installment’s victims had simply been willing to go get drunk, they would have survived.) Remaining at the camp: horny couple Jeff and Sandra (Bill Randolph and Marta Kober), Terry (Kirsten Baker), who for some reason refuses to wear underwear, Scott (Russell Todd), who is obsessed with Terry but could do so much better, sweet-natured Vicki (Lauren-Marie Taylor), and finally Mark (Tom McBride), the nice guy in the wheelchair.

Anyway, if you’ve ever seen a slasher film than you can guess what pretty much happens. Jason (played here by Steve Daskawisz) shows up and kills everyone until eventually Ginny and Paul return to the camp. (Annoying Ted stays behind to keep drinking and somehow manages to survive the film. It’s an odd slasher film where the nice guy in the wheelchair gets killed but the obnoxious, dorky guy somehow makes it through.) There’s a big, genuinely exciting final battle with Ginny and Paul on one side and Jason on the other. Ginny survives, Jason escapes, and Paul … well, who knows? One moment, Paul’s there and the next he’s gone. I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Friday the 13th Part 2 is controversial among many horror fans because so many of the killings are identical to the killings from an earlier slasher film, Mario Bava’s brilliant Bay of Blood (a.k.a. Twitch of the Death Nerve). One especially obvious example is the double impalement of Jeff and Sandra and when I say obvious, I mean that the exact same scene can be found in Bay of Blood. In Peter M. Bracke’s history of the franchise, Crystal Lake Memories, Part 2’s self-important screenwriter, Ron Kurz, claims to have never heard of Bay of Blood. And to that, I say, “Whatever, Ron Kurz. You’re either a liar or you actually don’t know who Mario Bava is. Either way, you suck.”

Though Friday the 13th Part 2 is obviously a rather derivative film and frequently doesn’t make much sense, it’s also a personal favorite of mine as far as 80s slasher films are concerned. The cast is likable and attractive (especially Russell Todd, who gets killed way too early as far as I’m concerned) and some of the kill scenes are genuinely well done. Amy Steel, much like Adrienne King before her, make for a strong heroine and her final battle with Jason is actually pretty exciting. The true star of the film, however, is director Steve Miner who fills each scene with a sense of genuine menace that goes a long way to making up for Ron Kurz’s sloppy script. As opposed to Sean Cunningham (who directed the first film), Miner shows a genuinely inventive visual sense. My favorite shot in the film is a rather minor one of a bunch of cars driving down a shadowy road. The scene doesn’t really add anything to the story and it almost feels like filler but it’s still effectively eerie.

It could be argued that Friday the 13th Part 2 is the first true Friday the 13th because it’s the first film to actually feature Jason Voorhees killing camp counselors. The character of Jason makes even less sense in this film than he did when he was just some kid living underwater in the first film. It’s impossible to watch the film and not wonder how 1) Jason suddenly went from being a 13 year-old living in a lake to a 40 year-old living in a shack in the woods, 2) how Jason managed to track down Alice, 3) how Jason managed to then walk all the way to Alice’s new home and then all the way back to Crystal Lake without anyone noticing him, and 4) why exactly has Jason been hiding in the woods all this time and apparently allowing his mother to believe that he was dead. That said, I actually think that Jason is probably at his scariest in Friday the 13th Part 2. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, instead of wearing that famous hockey mask, Jason spends most of the movie with a burlap sack over his head. As opposed to the hockey mask (which makes Jason look rather Canadian), both the sack and Jason’s odd overalls make him look like a faceless demon that’s sprung, full of fury, out of rural folklore.

Though it made less than the first film, Friday the 13th Part 2 was a financial success. Audiences ignored the film’s many critics and they flocked to see it. Not surprisingly, Paramount Pictures immediately called for a sequel.

The end result — Friday the 13th Part 3 — would be one of the worst horror films ever made.

We’ll deal with that tomorrow.

Trailer: The House At The End of the Street

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I saw this trailer two weeks ago when I went to see Hunger Games. I like the title (which is an obvious homage to the classic House On The Edge of the Park) and Jennifer Lawrence is like the best but I’d feel better about this film if it wasn’t rated PG-13. Seriously, that PG-13 rating is quickly becoming the kiss of death as far as horror is concerned.

Film Review: Friday the 13th (dir. by Sean S. Cunningham)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Warning: Spoilers Below)

This month, the 13th is going to fall on a Friday so I figured what better time would there be to watch and review the Friday the 13th franchise? Through April 13th, I’ll be reviewing each film in the franchise. Some of these reviews will be positive and quite a few of them will not. Let’s get things started with the one that started it all, the original 1980 Friday the 13th.

Is there anyone out there who does not know the plot of Friday the 13th? For those who don’t, here’s a spoiler-filled refresher. In the late 50s, at the rather crummy looking Camp Crystal Lake in New Jersey, two counselors sneak off from a sing-along so that they can do whatever it was that young people used to do in the 50s. Suddenly, someone else walks into the room. “Uhmm, we weren’t doing anything,” one of the counselor says right before a machete is plunged into his stomach.

Jump forward 25 years. Annie (Robbi Morgan), a bubbly young woman who won’t stop talking about how much she loves children, hitchhikes into Crystal Lake. She tells the townspeople that she’s looking for a ride to Camp Crystal Lake and everyone give her that “Oh no you didn’t” look. Crazy old Ralph (played by Walt Gorney) tells her, “You’re doomed.” Since this is a slasher film, Annie ignores him and ends up getting her throat slashed in the woods by an unseen assailant wearing black gloves.

Meanwhile, at Camp Crystal Lake, the somewhat jerky Steve Christy (played by an actor named Peter Brouwer who never gets enough credit for giving a good performance here) is working hard to get the long-since deserted camp up and ready for its grand reopening. Helping him out are his fellow camp counselors — lovers of life and fun Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) and Jack (The Kevin Bacon, who is like such a total hottie in this film I don’t even know where to start), boring Bill (Harry Crosby), bossy meanie Brenda (Laurie Bartram), obnoxious practical joker Ned (Mark Nelson), and finally Steve’s girlfriend, Alice (Adrienne King). Steve tells his counselors to get the camp ready and then heads off to pick up supplies in town. (Or at least, that’s what Steve says he’s doing. As far as I can tell, the only thing he does when he gets to town is head over to the local diner and start flirting with the 90 year-old waitress…)

With jerky old Steve gone for the day, the counselors decide to spend their time swimming (and, in Ned’s case, pretending to drown), having sex, smoking pot, and eventually getting killed one-by-one by an unseen murderer. Eventually, once Alice is the only counselor left alive, she runs into a nice, older woman named Pamela Voorhees (played, with a lot of genuine menace, by Betsy Palmer). When Alice explains that everyone’s dead, Pamela responds by mentioning that her own son — Jason — drowned at the camp 25 years ago because the counselors were too busy “making love.” Pamela then tries to kill Alice and Alice ends up chopping Pamela’s head off and then floating out onto the lake in a canoe. (Meanwhile, the camp is nowhere close to being ready for opening day.)

The next morning, Alice wakes up in the canoe and spots a bunch of police officers on the shore. As she starts to call out to them, a deformed boy suddenly jumps out of the water and grabs her. This, of course, is one of the most famous scenes in the history of horror and one that has been parodied and ripped off numerous times. However, when I first saw Friday the 13th, that scene made me scream and, even today, I still find my heart racing just a little bit faster whenever I know that it’s coming up.

The first time I ever saw the original Friday the 13th, I was either 8 or 9 and it was all incredibly daring because I was staying up way too late with my older sisters and watching a cable station for grownups that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be watching. We didn’t want to wake up mom or dad so we had the volume turned down as low as it would go and we whispered our comments of “Ewwww!” and “Agck!” (Yes, even at the age of 8, I was already saying “agck.”) Even though I couldn’t hear the film, I could see it and the end result was thatm when I did eventually go to sleep, I was awake after about an hour, screaming because I had a Friday-inspired nightmare. I doubt that the movie would scare me as much today because today,I know who Tom Savini is and, if I need proof that Kevin Bacon was actually not killed by Mrs. Voorhees hiding underneath the bed, I can watch my DVD of Crazy,Stupid Love. But when I was younger, Friday the 13th was the fuel of nightmares and, seeing as I’ve always had my little morbid streak, I think that’s why the franchise continues to interest me.

If there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree about when it comes to Friday the 13th, it’s that the true stars of the film were the disturbingly plausible gore effects designed Tom Savini. Even when I rewatched the film before writing this review, I was surprised by not only just how bloody a movie Friday the 13th was but also at how realistic it all looked (especially when compared to the intentionally over-the-top gore effects that Savini provided for Dawn of the Dead). There’s a surprising brutality to the film that reminds us that — unlike future installments in the franchise — the original Friday the 13th was not made for mainstream audiences but instead for the audiences who populated New York grindhouses and dark Southern drive-ins. The special effect that every other reviewer always seems to point out is the scene where the arrow bursts through Kevin Bacon’s neck. While that scene is indeed shocking (and sad too, because it’s Kevin Bacon dying), I’m always more disturbed by the scene that immediately follows, where Marcie gets hit in the face with the axe. That’s the scene that showed up in my nightmare after I watched the film for the first time.

Director Sean Cunningham has said, in numerous interviews, that he was inspired to make Friday the 13th largely because of the box office success of Halloween and there are some pretty obvious similarities between the two films. What is less often commented upon is just how much of the original Friday the 13th was inspired by the Italian giallo films of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Whether it’s the focus on the killer’s black gloves or the use of Harry Manfredini’s iconic theme to signal when something bad is about to happen, the giallo influence is pretty obvious. Sean Cunningham was hardly an innovative director but when he stole, he stole from the best and the end result, crude as it may have sometimes been, was undeniably effective.

In Peter Bracke’s fascinating history of the franchise, Crystal Lake Memories, there’s an interesting quote from Jeannine Taylor, the actress who played Marcie. When discussing her reaction after first reading the script, Taylor says, “To me, this was a small independent film about some very carefree teenagers who are having a great time at summer camp where they happen to be working as counselors. Then they just happen to get killed.” Taylor’s comment gets at one reason why Friday the 13th — out of all the slasher films to come out after Halloween — continues to be watched by even people like me who weren’t even alive when it was first released. Uniquely among the films in the franchise, Friday the 13th is a true ensemble film and, though the performances are somewhat uneven and the characters are pretty one-dimensional, the cast has an easy and likable chemistry. Watching the film today, it’s a bit hard not to concentrate on the fact that you’re seeing Kevin Bacon in a low-budget slasher film but once you get over that, you realize that Bacon and the entire cast are totally believable as bunch of likable, carefree kids who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of critics have complained that the first half of the film drags as we just watch everyone goofing off around camp. To me, those early scenes make the film because they get us to care about the characters just enough so that we don’t necessarily want to see them killed.

Another frequent critical complaint is that it’s difficult to have much sympathy for characters who consistently do stupid things that ultimately lead to them getting killed. Viewers tend to shake their heads as they watch Ned go wandering into a deserted cabin or when Brenda just happens to wander out on the archery range. Myself, I always tend to roll my eyes whenever the film reaches the point that Marcie decides to run out into the rainy night in just her panties and a shirt. I always find myself going, “Yeah, like anyone’s really that stupid…”

Of course, even as I type this review, I’m thinking about how, a few nights ago, I thought I heard a catfight at 3 in the morning and my immediate response was to run outside and walk up and down in the alley, wearing only a t-shirt and a thong, calling my cat’s name.* Even as I searched for our cat, I found myself muttering, “This is like a slasher movie waiting to happen.” However, I still kept wandering around that alley in my half-naked state because, at the time, I was pretty confident that there weren’t any masked maniacs around.

That’s what people who criticize films like Friday the 13th for featuring stupid characters refuse to admit. We all do more stupid things than we care to admit because we’re usually pretty confident that there won’t be any negative consequences to our stupidity. We all know that there are evil psychopaths out there but we’re also confident that we won’t run into them. The reason why the slasher genre has remained popular is because it forces us to confront our deepest fear, which is that we might not be as safe or have as much control over our fate as we tell ourselves.

Not surprisingly, Friday the 13th and its subsequent sequels has never been as popular with critics as they have with audiences. In fact, critical reaction upon the initial release of Friday the 13th was so hostile that one critic even printed Betsy Palmer’s address and invited outraged filmgoers to write her letters of protest. The standard critical complaint about Friday the 13th was that it presented death as a punishment for having sex and smoking weed and here I would say that the critics were mistaken. While it is true that Jack and Marcie die after doing both of these things, I think there’s actually a far more relevent message to be found within the film. Consider this: Ned dies after he spots someone in a deserted cabin and says, “Can I help you?” Steve Christy is killed because he spots someone out in the rain and approaches them, saying, “What are you doing out in this mess?” Brenda thinks that she hears a child crying for help outside of her cabin and foolishly goes walking around in the middle of hurricane in her nightgown, calling out, “Hello!?” until she’s killed off-screen. What the critics, so caught up in their moral panic, failed to understand was that the message of Friday the 13th is not that people shouldn’t have sex. The message is that people shouldn’t offer to help random strangers.

Despite the amount of critical scorn heaped upon it, Friday the 13th was a box-office success and the 18th highest grossing film of 1980. At the time, for a low-budget, independent film, this was highly unusual. Despite the fact that Friday the 13th ended with Mrs. Voorhees losing her head and Jason still in that lake, there would be a Friday the 13th Part 2.

We’ll deal with that tomorrow. Until then, don’t help any random strangers…

——

*Doc, our cat, was fine, by the way. It turned out, he was sitting in the kitchen the whole time I was outside desperately searching for him.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer (dir. by Lela Swift)

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched an obscure science fiction film, 1974’s The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer.

Why Was I Watching It?

It was nearly four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. So, I turned on the TV, checked the guide, and I saw that something called The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer was about to start on the Fox Movie Channel. Pushing the info button on my remote control, revealed only that the film was made in 1974 and that “No cast information is available.” Well, after seeing that, how couldn’t I have curled up on the couch and watched?

What Was It About?

Clifford Swimmer (Peter Haskell) is perhaps the least likable human being ever. He’s an angry alcoholic who abuses his wife (Sheree North) and son (Lance Kerwin) and who has somehow managed to get into debt to the local loan shark (played by William Bassett, who is better known for playing the Sheriff in House of a 1,000 Corpses and doing the voice overs for those annoying Whataburger commercials). Clifford hates his life and dreams of running off with his mistress and living on a boat. If only he were free of his “responsibilities…”

Fortunately, he just happens to know the local mad scientist (Keene Curtis) who clones Clifford, using cells taken from Clifford’s tongue. Once the clone takes his place at home and word, Clifford runs off with his mistress. Fortunately, the Clone turns out to be the nicest, most gentle guy in the world and both his wife and son are overjoyed at the sudden change in personality that appear to have occurred within “Clifford.” The real Clifford Swimmer, however, soon becomes disillusioned with life on a boat and decides to return to his old life. Unfortunately, his old life doesn’t really want him back. It all leads to violence, several murders, and a surprise twist at the end.

What Worked?

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer. Smartly written (and as melodramatic as any film called The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer should have been), this was a surprisingly thought-provoking little film and the “surprise” ending was executed very well and even came close to bringing tears to my sleep-deprived eyes.

Considering the film’s origins (which are discussed down below), this was a surprisingly well-acted film that is dominated by an excellent performance from Peter Haskell as Clifford Swimmer and this clone. After I watched the film, I checked with imdb and I discovered that Peter Haskell (who passed away in 2010) was apparently a pretty busy television actor and he definitely had the looks of someone you would expect to find playing a doctor in a soap opera. On the basis of his performance here, he was also apparently a pretty versatile actor.

What Did Not Work?

According to imdb, The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer was originally an episode of something called The Wide World Of Mystery which used to air on ABC back in the 70s. However, even if I hadn’t done that bit of research, the film was obviously made for television. By that, I mean that it has the flat, stagey look of a three camera sitcom. As well, the fact that every climatic scene fades to black (for a commercial break) definitely disrupts the rhythm of the show.

That said, I have to also say that — last night at least — these “flaws” actually added to the film’s charm.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

If I were ever the type to be a home wrecker, I hope I’d be as stylish a one as Clifford’s mistress, Madeline Rivera (played by Sharon Farrell, who is also in one of my favorite movies of all time, Out of the Blue). Seriously, her clothes were to die for. That said, I would also hope that I would have better taste in men.

Lessons Learned

Sometimes, it’s not a bad idea to just stay up late and just watch whatever happens to come on.

Grindhouse Classics : “Blood Feast”

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Tell me, friends, have you ever had — AN EGYPTIAN FEAST?

It doesn’t matter how you answer that question, the important thing is in how you ask it. You’ve gotta get all bug-eyed, swerve your neck outwards like a crane, and pause dramatically between “hand” and “an” before raising your voice for the final three words. Then you, too, can look and sound just like Mal Arnold, the decidedly non-Egyptian “actor” (and I use that term loosely) who plays Egyptian serial-killer/caterer in director Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1963 classic Blood Feast, and know that you’ll be faithfully imitating a slice of movie history.

And no, I don’t take the phrase “movie history” lightly — but in this case it most certainly applies. Which is not to say that Blood Feast is in any way a good film — heck, in many respects it isn’t even really a competent one (wait, didn’t I just refer to it as a “classic?” — bear with me, all will be explained), but for what it did, and when it did it, well — like it or not, it really does represent a couple of important firsts.

And speaking of firsts — first, a bit of a plot rundown, not that such a thing is really all that necessary. A nubile young female strips down to take a bath while listening to a radio report about a series of brutal, unsolved killings in her area. She gets naked, opens up a book called “Weird Ancient Religious Rituals,” lays back in the tub —and is hacked to pieces by a freaky-looking intruder of vaguely foreign appearance, who leaves what’s left of her to slowly bleed to death while he makes of with her amputated leg.

Cut to the catering shop of one Fuad Ramses, the killer from the previous scene (no mystery here folks, sorry!), who is conversing with a customer, one Mrs. Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton), who is planning a birthday dinner for her daughter, Suzette (eventual 1963 Playboy Playmate of the Year Connie Mason). Ramses suggests an Egyptian feast (hence our opening quote), and Mrs. Fremont agrees that would be a lovely idea given that her daughter is taking a night class on Egyptian history and culture.

The cops, led by one Detective Pete Thornton ( Lewis regular William Kerwin, operating here under the pseudonym of “Thomas Wood”) are hot on the trail of the killer, of course. We’re informed that the “entire force” is working around the clock on tracking the psychopath down, and even though said “entire force” apparently consists of only two guys, they follow the leads they’ve got pretty well, and those leads —- uhhmmmm — lead them to the aforementioned Egyptian studies night class, where our good detective takes an instant liking to our Ms. Fremont The Younger. Of course, in between trying to make time with the wealthy young socialite, he’s still got a case to work, and a couple more bodies (of the female variety, naturally) pile up, one with its tongue removed, the other sans its brain (both shown in lovingly agonizing detail by Lewis, with the tongue scene especially being a standout for hardened gore-hounds to this day — and yes, the rumors are true, they used a sheep tongue procured from a local butcher shop), and of course both unfortunate ladies are connected with that apparently-cursed night-school class (which makes you wonder why everybody doesn’t just drop the course, but I digress).

Anyway, as events play out, clues finally lead the cops right to Ramses’ doorstep — or, more specifically, to the back room of his shop, where he’s got an impromptu shrine set up to the supposedly Egyptian goddess of death, Ishtar. The ever-enterprising Fuad is apparently attempting to serve up a bunch of body parts from different victims to people at the Fremont party as a cannibalistic sacrifice to his savage goddess in order to facilitate her reincarnation upon the Earth into human form. Or something. And he’s got Suzette in mind as his final victim. Or to be Ishtar’s new human hostess. Or something.

I suppose none of it really matters because Fuad walks with a comically over-pronounced limp and isn’t gonna get too far once the cops show up (he makes it into the back of a garbage truck in his feeble escape attempt and is compacted therein, with Thornton intoning that he ended up exactly where he belonged because he’s nothing but human garbage anyway — whoops, sorry to give away the ending), and it’s not for its gripping and dramatic story that anyone cared — or, for that matter, still cares — about this movie anyway.

Nor, frankly, is it due its performances, most of which fall below even community theater standards, that Blood Feast is still talked about to this day . Oh, sure, Arnold’s all kinds of fun if you can get past the blatant offensiveness inherent in the idea of a guy of course being a bloodthirsty maniac because he’s disabled, vaguely effeminate, and even — gasp! shudder! — an immigrant. He’s clearly playing the whole things for laughs (as is Lewis himself, for that matter), but the same charitable view really can’t be extended to the truly awful non-acting of Connie Mason, whose “talents” were best summarized by HGL when he famously said “I’ve often thought that if one took the key out of Connie’s back, that she’d simply stand still” — nor to Bolton, who, if anything, is even worse in her turns as Mason’s cinematic mother. Neither actress emotes in the slightest, nor are they aware enough of their own shortcomings to intentionally over-do things — they’re just basically reciting dialogue, and not even doing that very well.

So what does at leave us with? Why, surely the answer’s right in the title — blood, and lots of it (and specially-concocted blood at that — Lewis didn’t care for how any of the standard-at-the-time stage blood looked on camera, so he had a local Miami (like most of HGL’s flicks, this was lensed in the South Florida area) cosmetic company come up with a new blend just for this film that he would end up using on all his subsequent efforts — on the plus side it was entirely edible, on the minus side the base ingredient was Kaopectate) . And brains. And tongues. And entrails. And limbs. But mostly, just lots and lots — and lots! — of blood.

All of which is pretty much standard stuff these days, of course, but it certainly wasn’t back in 1963. This is well and truly the first “gore film,” and while that fact has been justly acknowledged by the horror community at large, what’s less talked about, but no less true, is the fact that Blood Feast is also the first modern slasher film. Oh, sure, Lewis and producer David F. Friedman make a big deal of pointing this out on numerous occasions on the occasionally-self-congratulatory-but-on-the-whole-pretty-lively-and-enthralling commentary track that accompanies this film’s DVD and Blu-Ray releases from Something Weird Video (it’s presented full frame with mono sound and also includes the standard “Gallery Of Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation artwork” that all these come with), but for some reason the largely-self-appointed gatekeepers of horror-dom don’t seem to want to go there. It’s almost as if they’re willing to give Blood Feast some “props,” but not too many. You want us to admit you were the first gore flick? Fine. We can do that. But the first slasher? No way. We’ve gotta save that for a more “respectable” picture, thank you very much. It’s gotta be Halloween. Or Black Christmas. Or —

Well, folks, I’m here to call bullshit on that. Horror on the whole is already marginalized and ghetto-ized by the (again, largely self-appointed) arbiters of all that is right and good in “mainstream” cinema — to see the same thing done on a “micro” level within horror fandom itself as is done to the genre on a more “macro” level reeks of hypocrisy of the highest order. Let’s give Blood Feast its due. I’m not here to tell you it’s a great example of the slasher subgenre, or frankly even of the gore subgenre, but it did ’em both first, and everyone who came along later owes a debt of gratitude to what Lewis and Friedman did here, even if they didn’t necessarily do it all particularly well. Besides, numerous and readily-apparent flaws aside, this is good, solid, brainless fun. If more horror flicks were to put their various pretenses aside and just embrace the sense of good-time movie-making that Blood Feast positively revels in, maybe — just maybe — the genre as a whole wouldn’t find itself in the mess it’s in today. Just a thought.

6 Trailers To End March With

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi! It’s Saturday and that means that it’s time for yet another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation trailers. Enjoy!

1) The Omega Man (1970)

“Charlton Heston IS the Omega Man!” This movie is the second of three film adaptations of Richard Matheson’s classic novel I am Legend.

2) Last House On Dead End Street (1977)

This film is reportedly one of the most purely grindhouse films ever made. It’s also next to impossible to see. The Trash Film Guru has seen it and I’m insanely jealous. As for this trailer, it’s short but rather effective. It’s also perhaps the hundredth trailer to feature the “It’s only a movie” tagline.

3) Deranged (1974)

“A man so obsessed with death that he became…DERANGED!”

4) Equinox (1970)

I own the Criterion edition of this film. It’s actually kind of fun in its own silly way.

5) Vengeance of She (1971)

This is a Hammer film. I love how increasingly excited the narrator gets as he talks about vengeance.

6) Endgame (1983)

Finally, let’s end this entry with yet another look at a post-apocalypse future. From the iconic Italian director Joe D’Amato, it’s Endgame.

Film Review: Grey (dir. by Darshan Patel)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I want to take a few paragraphs to recommend a 20-minute film that I recently saw. The name of the film is Grey and it can be viewed here.

Grey is a harrowingly honest but ultimately hopeful film about depression. Opening with Raphael sleeping on his couch while his wife Lea lies alone in their bed, Grey is a near-documentary look at a couple whose lives are currently ruled by depression. While Lea spends her days in bed (getting up only to close the curtains), Raphael struggles to carry on with his life. He goes to work, he exercises in the park, and every day he comes home and tries (unsuccessfully) to get his wife to eat. Though Raphael obviously loves his wife, it’s obvious that he’s nearly at the end of his rope.

Speaking as someone who has to deal with depression her entire life, I can say that Grey gets it right and for that, I’m thankful. Far too often, cinematic depression is just portrayed as just a plot device, a condition that has a very specific cause and, therefore, a very specific solution. Though Grey gives us some hints as to what exactly has triggered Lea’s depression, it very wisely leaves the reason for her condition ambiguous and instead, it focuses on the day-to-day experience of both Lea and Raphael. It acknowledges and illustrates the fact that depression affects more than just the person who is depressed while never playing down just how difficult it is to find oneself trapped in that condition. Grey perfectly captures the strange stillness that comes with depression and the numbness that results from it.

In the pivotal roles of Raphael and Lea, both James Parsons and Chiara Grioni give strong and sympathetic performances but the real star of the film is director Darshan Patel. It’s a difficult thing, making a film about depression that is both honest and watchable but Patel has managed to largely succeed. Wisely, he takes a hand-held, almost documentary-like approach here that allows us the viewer to make up our own minds regarding what we’re watching. Instead of manipulating us to make us feel sorry for Raphael and/or Lea, he instead casts us in the role of detached observers who can do little more than simply watch life unfold. As a director, Patel captures the feeling of isolation that comes with being depressed and, even in the scenes where Raphael interacts with others, you’re left with no doubt that he’s a man who feels that, without Lea, he is totally alone in the world. I think the scene that most vindicates Patel’s technique is in the disturbing scene where Lea matter-of-factly considers slitting her wrists. A lesser director would have played the scene with a lot of ominous music and flashy editing and the end result would have been a lot less effective than Patel’s straight forward approach.

In the end, Grey is the perfect title for this film. Too often, films about depression either give into melodrama or they provide a bunch of easy answers. Anyone who has ever had to deal with depression knows that the truth is never quite as simple. Depression truly is a state of being grey, a state of being where the only feelings are ones of numbness, apathy, and hopelessness. With an unflinching eye, Patel captures that feeling in this film and, it is to his credit, that Grey ends on a note of hope that feels totally earned.

If you’ve ever suffered from depression or if you’ve had to deal with and/or take care of someone who suffers from depression, you’ll find Grey to be a powerful film and one that deserves to be seen. You can watch the film for yourself here.

A Roughie With Lisa Marie: Scum of the Earth (dir. by Herschell Gordon Lewis)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If there’s any exploitation director that deserves a critical re-evaluation, it’s Herschell Gordon Lewis. Over the course of two decades, Lewis dabbled in every genre of low-budget filmmaking and even invented one with his 1963 “gore” film Blood Feast. Many film critics tends to dismiss Lewis as being one of the worst directors of all time. I would argue that, far from being the worst, Lewis was a unique filmmaker who, working with low budgets and mainstream support, always managed to create movies that had their own unique cinematic aesthetic. Much like the great French director Jean Rollin, Lewis made dream-like films that — though initially dismissed for their lack of slick production values — have managed to survive the test of time and remain as interesting and oddly watchable now as the day they were first released. That certainly not the accomplishment of “the worst director of all time.”

(Add to that, the worst director of all time is Garry Marshall. Seriously, New Year’s Eve will be forever tainted, thanks to Mr. Marshall.)

Though Lewis is best known for his “gore” films like Blood Feast and the Gruesome Twosome, he dabbled in just about every genre of film. Last night, I watched one of his non-gore films, Scum of the Earth. Filmed in 6 days in 1963, Scum of the Earth was released at the same time as Lewis’s better-known Blood Feast.

“Only an alert society can protect itself from those who prey on the weak — the scum of the earth.” — Closing Narration of Scum of the Earth.

Like many of the classic grindhouse film, Scum of the Earth presents itself as a warning to mainstream society about the evil lurking just underneath the facade of normalcy. In this case, that evil is the “dirty picture” underground and the film starts with a montage of various “teenagers” selling pictures of a topless woman. I like to think that, with this little pre-credits sequence, Herschell Gordon Lewis establishes that Scum of the Earth is nothing less than a black-and-white, low-budget version of The Wire.

Much like The Wire and Traffic, Scum of the Earth goes from showing us how the product is distributed to showing us how and why the product comes into being in the first place. Mr. Lang (Lawrence Wood) is a cheerful man who spends his time sitting in a small office and sending out his henchmen, evil Larry (Mal Arnold) and the moronic Ajax (Craig Maudsplay), to distribute explicit photos of the innocent victims that he lures into his sordid web. (Indeed, they are truly the scum of the earth…) The pictures are taken by disillusioned artist Harmon (Thomas Kerwin) and most of them feature Sandy (played by Sandy Sinclair). It’s quickly revealed that both Sandy and Harmon hate what they’ve become but they’re both being blackmailed by the jovial Mr. Lang.

However, Sandy’s pictures are no longer selling as well so Lang offers her a proposition. Sandy can retire from the business if she recruits a replacement. For the rest of the 72-minute film, we watch as Sandy and Harmon recruit innocent Kim (played all wide-eyed and breathless by Vicki Miles) who desperately needs 500 dollars to be able to pay her college tuition. Oddly enough, that’s the same way I paid my college tuition which, incidentally, was a lot more than 500 dollars.

Anyway, Kim soon finds herself in over head because 1) she’s incredibly stupid and 2) she’s dealing with the scum of the earth. If Kim stop posing for topless pictures, she knows that copies will be sent to her kindly but slow-witted father. (“You’re the best father I ever had!” Kim tells her dad at one point.) Even worse, Ajax and Larry want to take some pictures of their own with her. Whatever is a girl to do!?

As a director Herschell Gordon Lewis has always struck me as being a bit of American Jess Franco. Much like Franco, he made film that can charitably be called terrible. Between performances that ranged from histrionic to living dead and a filming technique that seemed to mostly consist of little more than turning on the camera, it’s easy to dismiss Lewis and his films. It’s only on repeat viewings — after you’ve gotten a previous taste of the Lewis aesthetic — that you start to notice that quirky details and the occasionally inspired visuals that give evidence to the fact that Lewis does not deserve his reputation for being one of the worst directors of all time. Even in an admittedly lesser work like Scum of the Earth, there’s enough intentional strangeness to hold your interest. To cite one example, the villainous Mr. Lang appears to love toys and he gives quite a few of his evil speeches while looking down at two nodding bobble heads. As static as the majority of the film is, the final chase (in which two police officers pursue the portly Mr. Lang through a rather slummy strip mall) is a lot of fun to watch. The best visual in the film comes when Kim is posing topless for the first time and Lewis gives us a shot, from her point of view, of the oppressively bright lamps shining down on her and casting the rest of the studio into total darkness. It’s a scene that is full of genuine menace.

The cast is full of actors who will be recognizable to anyone who has seen any of Lewis’s other films. Out of the cast, William Kerwin comes the closest to giving an actual performance, bringing a real sense of sadness and regret to the role of Harmon the Photographer. Kerwin also appeared in Blood Feast, playing the dedicated cop who pursues the evil Faud Ramses who was played by yet another Scum of the Earth alum, Mal Arnold.

In Scum, Arnold plays Lang’s henchman, Larry. In 1963, Arnold was 30 years old and he looked like he was 40. However, he was cast here as a character who tells everyone that he meets that he’s under 17 and therefore, he doesn’t have to worry about going to prison for distributing dirty pictures. Or, as Arnold puts it, “Not me, Daddy-O! I’m a minor!” What makes this especially amusing is that in Blood Feast (which was, again, released that same year), Arnold is playing a character who is 5,000 years old. What also makes Arnold’s performance as Larry enjoyable to those of us who are familiar with Lewis’s cinematic career is that Arnold essentially gives the same over-the-top performance here that he would later give in Blood Feast. I kept expecting him to ask Kim if she wanted an Egyptian feast.

However, the film truly belongs to Lawrence Wood, who plays Mr. Lang with such an insane joy that it’s impossible not to root for the sleazy old pornographer. Whether he’s giggling as a toy monkey somersaults across his desk or he’s politely explaining why nothing is actually his fault, Wood appears to be having such a good time that it’s just infectious. Wood’s best moment comes when Kim expresses some reluctance about modeling for more pictures and suddenly, Mr. Lang starts to shout at her about how she (and all the other kids) are hypocrites. “You’re damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale!” he shouts as sweat streams down his face and Lewis zooms in for a close up of his mouth, “You’ll do what I tell ya!” Wood screams, “Do you hear!?” It’s a scene of lunatic genius that, in the best tradition of both Herschell Gordon Lewis and the grindhouse in general, comes out of nowhere and is all the more effective because of it.

For this scene alone, Scum of the Earth deserves to be seen.

Teaser Trailer: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I went to The Hunger Games on Friday, the last trailer shown before the film started was a 50-second teaser for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, which, by the way, is like one of the most awkward-sounded movie titles ever. Not that it matters since everyone’s just going to call it Twilight anyway…

Anyway, with this trailer, the Twilight series continues to equate losing one’s virginity to being turned into a supernatural creature. Despite the fact that the Hunger Games and Twilight are petty much designed to appeal to the same audiences, this trailer actually inspired some pretty derisive laughter from my audience. Most of that laughter was directed at poor Kristen Stewart hunting that deer but Edward’s comment regarding both he and Bella being the same temperature also got a reaction.

But you know what? Everyone laughs at Twilight and then they sneak off and wait in line for 24 hours to see the next movie*. As for me, I love my freaky, mismatched eyes but I still think it would be fun to have at least one red vampire eye…

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* That’s right. I said “wait in line…to see the next movie.” Deal with it, yankee.

Teaser Trailer: The Host

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With The Hunger Games currently dominating the box office and the Twilight saga coming to an end later this year, The Host (scheduled to be released in 2013) appears to be Hollywood’s next great attempt to capture the money of tweens and people who wish they were tweens. Much like Twilight, The Host is based on a book written by Stephanie Meyer and it’ll probably make a lot of money while getting slammed by critics. One positive note is that the film stars Saoirse Ronan, who deserved an Oscar nomination for Hanna. On the negative side, The Host is directed by Andrew Niccol, who is just a bad enough director to have a whole lot of rabid fans online.