Welcome to the (approximate) halfway point in 31 Days of Halloween! We're at the spooktacular point of no return and it's been a hell of a week, which has awarded us the opportunity to ruminate on and study horror and the meaning of Halloween. I've got a couple tricks up my sleeve to announce today just after our daily rundown of movies, so let's get right to it.
Day 8: Silent Hill: Revelation
Video-game-to-movie adaptations usually flop, or are at least abysmal efforts at transposition. While Revelation certainly had a couple more problems than its predecessor, Silent Hill, it definitely works as (if nothing else) entertaining fan service for games like Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill: Origins. I also wanted to watch it as an example of continuing a successful horror franchise, which can sometimes manifest as beating a dead horse or milking a cow for all it's worth.
Day 9: Last House on the Left (1972).
Last House on the Left is an early effort from both Wes Craven (of the Nightmare on Elm St. series) and Sean S. Cunningham (producer of Friday the 13th). It's also one of the most disturbing and uncomfortable films I've ever seen. It truly excels at delivering prolonged, unsettling torture visited upon the innocent at the hands of inhumanly cruel killers. Craven's genius moves us to a place where we want the victims' horrific ordeals to be over with so badly, we actually pray for their deaths to come sooner. It takes serious bravery to commit to the type of darkness that Craven has the killers show throughout the film, to the point that the victims pass the point of no return and all we can hope for for them isn't a miraculous escape, but a quick and merciful end.
The other grisly element of the psyche these killers exhibit is how their mood changes once they're done committing their vile deeds. In the moment, they laugh, tease and cajole, happy to victimize innocents and see them reduced to nothing. Immediately afterwards, however, they find themselves depressed, silent, and eager to forget. Their game is over, they come down from their "high" and for just a moment, see the world through crystal clear lenses. It's difficult to stomach, but an effective and brilliant portrayal of human evil.
Day 10: Puppet Master.
File this under "confronting childhood fears," which will also be the case when I watch Ghoulies later this month. Puppet Master is a great off-the-wall movie about puppets coming to life and murdering humans - and, contrary to Child's Play, none of them are children's toys or puppets that resemble dolls or Cabbage Patch Kids. The puppets in Puppet Master have no aesthetic purpose besides killing humans and scaring audiences. One wears a black trenchcoat and fedora, with a hook for a hand a knife held in the other. Another has a working drill replacing the top half of its head.
Day 11: Battle Royale
In Battle Royale, the government has passed a law to control a working-class rebellion by holding an annual contained bloodsport fought by randomly selected children. The children fight to the death in an arena and the final combatant is the winner, allowed to go home and be a hero to the nation. If one clear winner isn't determined after three days - if, for example, all the kids refuse to fight - all the children will be killed by those who run the program. Elected officials and the super-rich place bets on the winner of the game, as all children receive backpacks with different weapons at the onset. If this sounds familiar, feel free to join the years-long discussion debating whether or not The Hunger Games plagiarized Battle Royale. At any rate, this terrifying film is a daring and horrific look at the worst that people are capable of - even people as young as children. 42 students participate in the Battle Royale program in the film. Only two are actively interested in killing their classmates, while many others attack others out of sheer panic and pre-emptive self-defense. Some kill themselves, believing their victories to be impossible; others are determined to hide and wait it out, believing an alternate answer will come. Similar to Lord of the Flies or The Mist (see below), Battle Royale is an experiment in the tolls that lawless panic take on seemingly normal people. Brilliant film, based on an equally brilliant book.
Day 12: Silent House
I make it a point every year to roll the dice on a few new titles I've never seen, and on the 12th day of 31 Days of Halloween, I did so with the Elizabeth Olsen home invasion piece Silent House. Elizabeth Olsen is the younger sister of the infamous Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, but it seems that their last name is where the similarities end. She competently pulls off this 80-minute piece about a young woman flipping a house with her father and uncle. She finds herself alone and scared quickly enough, as someone breaks into the house and knocks her father unconscious before dragging him off to an unknown part of the house. The filmmakers chose to present the film as one flowing 80-minute take to better emphasize the tension and flow of time. This also means the film proceeds in real time, taking place over an 80-minute period of one evening. Some sources claim the film was shot in 10-minute segments and edited to appear as one take, though in my viewing I didn't notice a possible break in shooting for the first 45 minutes of the movie. I was, I admit, more impressed by the presentation of the film and its execution than I was by its screenplay's third act, which fell flat on a horror cliche of which I've never been a fan. Even still, the long takes, clever scares and amazing use of the setting - 99% of the movie takes place in the house without ever feeling boring - are very much to be commended.
Day 12 Bonus Round: Busch Gardens (Williamsburg, VA) Howl-O-Scream
For a company outing, we toured Busch Gardens' haunted theme park Howl-o-Scream, which boasts six haunted houses and several frightening paths to walk through in the park. Park employees dress as horror creatures (vampires, mutants, zombies, etc) and stalk park attendees throughout the grounds or jump out at them from well-hidden spots in the haunted houses. The haunted houses included Dead Line, an Italian metro zombie motif; The Haunted Cove, a spooky pirate area; Bitten, a vampire haunted house; Root of All Evil, a mutant greenhouse; 13: Your Number's Up, a haunted house exploring 13 phobias from enclosed spaces to clowns; and Catacombs, a classic underground/skeleton haunted house. All six had dark designs and great scares, never once delving into the cheesy or unimpressive.
Day 13: From Dusk Till Dawn
This horror-comedy from screenwriter Quentin Tarantino and director Robert Rodriguez is a great predecessor to their 2007 double feature Grindhouse. There's nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said earlier, better and by smarter people, so I'll leave it alone and only mention that it's one of the funniest and most quotable movies of its time. It's a prime example of the '90s indie film scene. And hey, Tom Savini is in it!
Side note for Day 13: On October 13, the new season of AMC's The Walking Dead premiered, which was released the following day on iTunes. While it may focus more on drama, I firmly believe it works great as a horror show as well. If you're enjoying horror with us this month - especially if your collection is running on fumes before Halloween - feel free to incorporate some Walking Dead for your count! It's a great show, and even if it were 45 minutes of sipping tea and discussing Eastern philosophy, it would still be doing so amid the zombie apocalypse, so knock it out! We're watching too!
Day 14: The Mist
As we traverse 31 days of celebrating horror, I become more and more inclined to write open love letters to some of my favorite selections, and The Mist is at the top of the pile for a multitude of reasons.
First and foremost, it reminds me of my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone - "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." In "Monsters," a regular American cul-de-sac descends into mass hysteria and murder after their power and phones are cut. Why? Because as they grow ever more fearful about their lack of contact with the outside world, they give over to panic, witch-hunting and violence. The episode ends with the neighborhood in utter chaos, which pans all the way out to a flying saucer on a hill. Two aliens watch the mayhem and one turns to the other and says (and I'm paraphrasing here), "See? When we invade, we don't have to lift a finger. If you simply remove one or two basic elements of their civilization, the humans will do the work for us of tearing one another to bits." Like the aforementioned Battle Royale and Lord of the Flies, Stephen King's The Mist celebrates that idea by enclosing a group of 30 or so Maine residents in a grocery store with some thick alien fog outside. They become aware of strange creatures roaming the mist and within 48 hours, their pragmatic tribe descends into religious zealotry, human sacrifice. Some characters even discuss this process in dialogue - humans are basically good, but that may be contingent on communications working and our ability to dial 9-1-1 in case of emergency. On the other hand, if you lock people in a small area with no lights, no rules, no contact with the outside world and so on, they'll rip each other to shreds. One character says "As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room and we'll start dreaming up reasons to take sides and kill each other. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?"
Second, the creature design throughout the film is simply perfect. From the implied-but-not-seen tentacle monster in the beginning of the film to the crab/mantis in the strip mall parking lot, these are truly frightening beasts. A series of football-sized fly-like bugs with skulls for heads make an appearance, as does a four-winged pterodactyl look-alike, but it isn't until the very end of the movie that my favorite creature shows. Remaining as spoiler-free as I can, I'll only say that the sense of scope in the film is laid out as more of the outside world (beyond the grocery store) is shown, and amid the widespread mist calamity is a 100-foot tall behemoth that walks on four legs. It has a back like a turtle's shell and fleshy hooks dangle from its abdomen. It resembles an imperial walker from the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, and it's all the more frightening that it's alive and also roaming free along a New England freeway. If, at any point while watching the movie, you ask yourself "Well how bad could things really be out there?" this last big creature provides the answer. Its freedom, slow movement and unimaginable genetic history speak volumes about the nature of the event.
Third, there is the inclusion of Melissa McBride as a mother of two. McBride, best known for playing Carol in AMC's The Walking Dead, is in the supermarket in the beginning when the mist befalls the town. She explains with utter determination that she must leave and get home to her kids, who shouldn't be alone for more than a few minutes. Some citizens beg her to stay indoors and not risk her life, and she asserts through tears that she simply can't leave her children. Her role in the film is only three minutes, and she owns the film for the entirety of her time on-screen. She quietly walks out of the supermarket and her fate is unknown. It's a masterful performance in the smallest of roles, and it's easy to see why she was brought by The Mist's director and first boss of The Walking Dead, Frank Darabont, from one project to the other.
Finally, we used to marathon certain types of movies on Halloween night in college with the familiar suffix "-palooza." Zombiepalooza, UFOpalooza, B-moviepalooza etc. This year we're commemorating Stephen King from October 14th to about the 18th with "Kingapalooza," by watching movies in our blu-ray collections and on Netflix Instant that are based on works by the oft-known "King of Horror," culminating with the remake of Carrie starring the amazing actresses Chloe Grace-Moretz and Julianne Moore. We officially started with The Mist (even though we watched Children of the Corn last week) and we've got Pet Sematary, Misery and The Shining in line before Carrie. We don't have time to run through the entire TV series of Dead Zone, and we watched The Langoliers this spring. We may or may not watch Bag of Bones and The Golden Years, too. If you've got any good horror marathons to watch (see also our "Surprises" below), mention them in a comment or on our Facebook event!
Surprises: Friday the 13th and Hellraiser
As a special bonus run for 31 Days of Halloween, I spent September 30 to October 12 watching one film a day each in the Hellraiser and Friday the 13th franchises. Hellraiser was the first film I watched for this year's film celebration, and Friday the 13th was next. Starting October 2, I watched one film from each franchise per day until they ran out. Nine Hellraiser movies and 12 Friday the 13th's mean I finished catching up on the 9th and 12th of October, respectively. How do classic horror franchises age over 30 years? The results were compelling tales of Hollywood and immortal slasher villains. Let's take a look.
Paramount released nine Friday the 13th movies over the course of 13 years, with the 9th likely intended to be the last in a canonical series (it is, after all, called Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday). Minor chronological mulligans aside (no fewer than 15 years pass between 1980 and 1987), Paramount offers a steady stream of reliable slasher films - Jason Voorhees kills a bunch of marijuana- and sex-obsessed teens in a feat of stealth and systematic cruelty before anyone catches on and kills him again. In fact, I'm working on a separate blog post about Jason's many returns to life that will be uploaded soon. There's brief nudity, quick violence and frequent impalement. Lather, rinse, repeat. They're a series of fun and consistent horror movies, if not a bit monotone. Some say they jumped the shark when it came to 2001's Jason X, which saw Voorhees board a spaceship in the year 2455 and slaughter young people there, but after watching the entire series in less than two weeks, it seemed more to me like a franchise that allowed itself to let its hair down and have more silly fun with itself. Even the following film, Freddy Vs. Jason, was like a pro wrestling match between two of 1980s horror's favorite slashers: Freddy Krueger and Jason. In the booklet "Crystal Lake Memories," which accompanies the complete Friday the 13th collection on blu-ray, there's a quote from Robert Englund (long-time actor portraying Freddy) who says that as far back as the mid-'80s, fans would ask him who could take who in a fight: Freddy or Jason, so for him it was a fun opportunity to put the rumors to rest. After 1993's Jason Goes to Hell, the subsequent sequels (and the 2009 reboot of the franchise) comes across more as a self-aware celebration of jump scares and "immoral" teens than a campy joke.
Hellraiser and its first two sequels relied largely on the uncomfortable juxtaposition of Judeo-Christian theology and BDSM sex. While the villains and demons explore the Biblical Hell and punishment for sin, they also wax on about incorporating pain into sexual pleasures and wearing slick black leather outfits. The Cenobites, or demons, only appear when someone solves a mystical puzzle box. This puzzle box is usually sought after as a mystical means to merge pleasure and pain, sex and violence, life and death. Often, people looking for "the extremes of experience" find the box and solve it as part of their carnal desires and are punished, in a Faust-meets-goth fashion, with chains and hooks and blood-addled 1980s nightclub depravity. The only real problem with the series arose when it moved from theatrical releases to straight-to-video. Beginning with its fifth film, Hellraiser: Inferno, the series saw a noticeable dip in production quality, which wouldn't be a problem - Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi was filmed for $7,000 - except that the fifth through eighth films in the franchise weren't written as Hellraiser films. Apparently, Miramax - who owned the rights to the Hellraiser universe - picked up other, unrelated horror scripts and had screenwriters make hasty rewrites to incorporate franchise favorites like the puzzle box and the series' lead Cenobite, Pinhead, into the films. The end result on Inferno and the subsequent Hellseeker, Deader and Hellworld are movies with only tenuous relations to the franchise. Only the most recent sequel, 2011's Hellraiser: Revelations, is based on a script intended from its genesis to be a Hellraiser movie.
Jason's and Pinhead's franchises are two lifetime case studies of keeping and discarding various elements of groundbreaking horror films. While some of their entries are, at best, forgettable, I find it endlessly fascinating to see the transformations that culture, money and history influence.
It's been quite a bloody week, and I thank you for enjoying some of these silly ruminations on horror films with me. We're just about, essentially, more or less, kinda, pretty much halfway through our celebration of terror and it's going swimmingly. Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming tongue-in-cheek look at Things that Will Not Kill Jason Voorhees, and next Tuesday for our week three roundup! Until then, stay spooked and watch some horror movies!
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