Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

  I think in November of 2019 ( A Christmas Horror Story ) I covered A Christmas Horror Story (2015) rather in depth enough where I don't have to elaborate with any more specifics and can now shoot more loosely. I still think William Shatner, despite his limited appearances in the film, is such a fun presence, that the anthology horror film ("Trick 'r Treat" (2008) clearly an inspiration for its framing of the stories, not told in traditional format of the tales separated) benefits so much from him being in "A Christmas Horror Story". He really received a cushy role in the film located comfortably in a radio station, sort of the DJ not only in job but for the stories (and characters in them). I think it was important to keep that Christmas aesthetic (something you will read a lot any time I write during this part of the year) really ever present, and Shatner's studio is very much treated as such. I mean, with Shatner's storied career, a film he made...

 While I always watch the film on the DVD my wife bought me for Christmas years ago, Scrooged (1988) was on AMC this afternoon while I was doing cardio. I noticed a serious cut in the film that really bothered me. It concerned Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen)  carrying Murray's Frank Cross in a visitation to his parental home as a child. After Frank's reminded of his unpleasant meat market butcher father's disregard on Christmas Eve, bringing a cut of veal home for a "present", and his pregnant mom's departure includes a goodbye to her little boy, adult Frank starts to well up and cry while Christmas Past seems assured of "Niagara Falls" due to this memory. In the AMC cut, once Frank cries, the "time counter" in Christmas Past's taxi clocks them forward to a Christmas Party held by television CEO, Lew Hayward (John Forsythe). There is an entire moment cut right after Murray's tears as Frank and Christmas Past leave the hous...

  A French killer Santa film with Home Alone vibes a year before "Home Alone" (1990) was even released to major box office? Count me in! Dial Code Santa Claus (1989) is a film I had never heard of until I read a review from a good blogger friend of mine at  The Bloody Pit of Horror   and watched a YouTube video from a favorite Horror YouTuber,  Piz - Deadly Games  . This is about a little boy genius whose computer game is on point. His mother is a big CEO of malls, seemingly involved with a co-worker in secret because she doesn't want her son to realize she is moving on with her romantic life. His grandfather is a sickly diabetic, and he has created a special computer with a message board that reaches a warped psychopath who pretends to be Santa Claus, gains access to the boy's address, and plans to drop in with bad intentions. I'm all about finding Christmas Horror from the 80s, most definitely, so this was on my radar for 2020. I have been wanting to add some ...

 This German slasher,  Die letzte Party deines Lebens ,  from 2018 features an attractive cast portraying a graduating student class on vacay to a resort isle with plenty of neon-lit clubs and tourist bars. This is the kind of locale perfect for a traveling group to capture randy teens nearly adults drunk, high, and ready for sex. As a slasher, I think many fans of the genre might be disappointed. While there is a bit of gore (slit throat from broken glass, a liquor bottle forced down a mouth, a screwdriver stabbed into the back, a victim left to bleed in the middle of a club full of grooving youth), the violence quotient isn't particularly high and the camera cutaways reveal the lack-of-budget evidence. The mask is an alteration on a smiley face from a covering on the head of a teenage girl who is raped by two of the dicks among the student class on the isle trip...this obviously contributes a great deal to why the killer has chosen the specific class.  I think beca...

  Closing the night with the third film which was way down my ranking list back in the 90s. I was curious as to whether or not IFC would be different than AMC or SYFY or even Sundance or BBC. It was rated TV-MA, so that is refreshing. I have to say that I am legit surprised--really stunned--just how much has been left in this cut of the film. Debbie (Tracie Savage) getting the machete from underneath, and it protruding all the way through her chest, the harpoon into Vera's eye, Shelley's slit throat, Andy's severed body in two parts, the pitchfork usage in the barn, with Rick's eyeball popping out even shown. Savage is mentioned in name because her entire shower, with shots of her breasts, are shown. That really struck me. When you see a lot of the AMC and SYFY (Paramount Network, too) cuts of the Friday films, the gore is almost completely excised. I watched "Friday the 13th" (1980) on Paramount Network not too long ago, and that cut was totally PG. But props...

 So it was interesting when I was putting together my franchise ranking on my Letterboxd account for the Friday the 13th franchise just how my ratings for basically its entirety as a whole is 2.5/5. So despite how many times I've watched these films, how much fun they can be, I still can't bring myself to rank many of them that high besides Parts 1, 2, 4, and 6. It's an acknowledgment that despite how entertaining they can be to me, I also have to realistically recognize they aren't the gold standard in plotting, continuity, or logic. Even Part 2, which I do really like, sitting at #2 on my Letterboxd list, has so many logic issues that come to knock you upside the head just based on the opening sequence alone. I'm the first to admit that some of the below titles are even a stretch at 2.5/5, but I do find them entertaining. Their value, admittedly, when scrutinized, can certainly be disputed. And I couldn't really debate the many, many flaws. But if I'm hone...

 I have been busy today wrangling birthday items, cake, homemade ice cream, gifts, etc. for my daughter's 17th, and I'm just now getting to Friday the 13th (1980). I have read and seen on many of the YouTube vids on the SE that Part 2 (1981) is perhaps the best quality of the first four, which all got 4K transfers. I guess I'll see. I have actually noticed many say Part 5 and 6 actually have excellent quality transfers. So I don't know. This is the very first time I own any of the Friday the 13th films on Blu Ray. I have to say what really stands out to me while watching "Friday the 13th" this evening is the lush green of the New Jersey rural location shooting. Again, to me, this was always a major reason I think as highly of the film as I do. When I went to a cabin early October (and plan to return again next year), besides "The Evil Dead" (1981), "Friday the 13th" is always the first film I think about. As much grief as Cunningham receive...

 I will preface this by saying, I realize Friday the 13th fans have been really interested in Steve Miner's thoughts on his two films in the franchise for quite a long time. I have been as well. But if you were hoping for in depth details about what happened on the set of the second and third Friday the 13th films, this interview on the Scream Factory bonus disc for the Box Set will be an extreme disappointment. Now, Miner has a lot of personality and is forthcoming about many of the films in his career and mentioned how being the director of the second and third film handcuffed him. Perhaps that is why Miner never talked about Friday the 13th 2 & 3. While he is a key fixture in the early films of the franchise and their popularity (he mentions Wes a lot more than he even does Sean, which I thought was fascinating), they did sidetrack him. I thought his mentioning trying to make a Godzilla film was cool...I wish he had gotten that off the ground, considering he even contacted T...

 Okay, so I'm finally digging into the Blu Ray special set Scream Factory put out for Friday the 13th fans to really enjoy. There is just so much to canvas, to explore, to really venture into. It will be so exciting. So on YouTube (which is currently exploring some global site outage), everyone and their mother decided to do Unboxings and Deep Dives into the Friday the 13th set. I received so many notifications and recommendations by YouTube's algorithm on videos about this set, I was starting to get a bit irritated. A few YouTubers I obviously follow, but when you get so many of these Unboxings and reviews, it can be a bit overwhelming. Because this was right in the middle of October, the Friday the 13th franchise suffers from the month's Halloween fever. I have always thought of Friday the 13th as my spring and summer franchise, anyway, to be honest.  I sort of decided I would pick and choose, without any linear direction. Because of the ongoing Friday the 13th dispute, I...

I realized I watched this not too long ago. For some reason--perhaps the rather racist remarks often doled at Murphy that I failed to remember from earlier viewings--I wasn't so fond of Walter Hill's 1982 "cop/convict joining forces to catch cop killers and secure hidden drug money" San Francisco action thriller, 48 Hours.  Murphy is so damned good as the quipping, charismatic, jive-talking thief taken out of the slammer for 48 hours by rugged, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, reckless-driving, irritable cop, Nolte. Nolte does later apologize for throwing that n-word around as well as "watermelon"--I think at one point he even calls him "charcoal-colored skin"!--to get a rise out of Murphy, but it is really fucking jarring in 2020 watching "48 Hours" all things considering. I never try to bring politics into a review, I don't because we get enough of that shit in the news and such, but it can be quite abrasive, the way Nolte throttles Dav...

 Too often I bypass Dr. No (1962) right to "Goldfinger" unfairly. Even "From Russia With Love" has seemed to surpass "Dr. No", but there had to be a starting place for the James Bond franchise. I revisit "Dr. No" and often recognize that I take it for granted. Perhaps I don't appreciate the film enough for setting the template for how exciting, creative, and clever the franchise would be. Joseph Wiseman was the very first Bond villain. No one could ever take that from him. He's very assured of himself. He carries himself as if he'll be unstoppable. The mechanical hand (lost his human hand to radioactivity) that can crush. Dr. No brings up SPECTRE, and 007 refers to him as any madman in asylums considering themselves as Napoleon or God. When Dr. No talks about how invincible he is, failing to kill Bond (only "softening him up"), the template sets up how Bond villains often make that major critical mistake not to be finished w...

  So I wanted to watch something Christmas related in the horror genre. I get that there isn't a cache of recognized horror films set around the Christmas season besides that short list that pops up in the early 80s. But I have noticed a lot of independent horror films, anthologies specifically, starting to emerge which I think is a good thing. So I was on Shudder, sort of perusing the catalogue and All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018) was available. I read the description and it was an anthology from a female director, with a framework set on Christmas Eve, featuring a couple Jenna and Max (including pretty red-head, Ashley Clements, and awkward but friendly Graham Skipper) attending a theater stage play as a minuscule troupe pantomime with few items the tales that eventually are presented to us.  Look, you can scan the reviews and user comments on IMDb and Letterboxd and see how folks felt about the anthology, often siting how they wish it were better but not shying away f...

  I am sort of trending towards other genres the last few days. I will obviously be starting up my Holiday Season viewing schedule soon. I'm thinking about writing some smaller, more compact shit on my Letterboxd account because, ad nauseum, I've more than blathered on about this and that for years on the blog now. I have the urge to watch "Black Christmas" (1974) again already after revisiting it just a few months ago in celebration of the great John Saxon's memory. But my interests aren't solely in horror--its umbrella over so many subgenres is most definitely appreciated and gives us fans plenty to watch and write about--and I feel sometimes that needs to be addressed. I love the action genre for all its many logical inconsistencies, nonsense plot developments, excuses for violent outbursts and mass beatdowns where a one man machine can rampage mow through a lot of thugs and brutes, and smarmy, cold-blooded, meathead, vile, and any other assortments of colo...

Downey's convertible can't start up  Molly Ringwald just wanted to be an adult in an adult film. I realize folks loved her in "Sixteen Candles", "The Breakfast Club", and "Pretty in Pink", but Molly, bless her heart, was past 20 and just wanted a role outside of high school. Could you blame her? I still think, though, that there was a hangover...audiences still thought of her as a high schooler. I don't blame her for wanting to just break that cycle. Downey, Jr. was up next in "Less Than Zero", so addiction followed his life for far too long. Despite that, he's incredibly talented. He's quite a ball of energy in The Pick-up Artist (1987). At least his character, despite being a "pursuer of women", seems like an okay guy if that wasn't such a dedicated extra-curricular activity. One scene has Downey picking up one woman, using his persuasive manipulative skills to get a smile, attention, and number, and, not long...

  Yikes, jury duty plots can be hit and miss. I remember seeing "Runaway Jury" (2003), though, in the theater because of the Grisham connection, really digging it. Now, as far as Illegally Yours (1988) goes, I was interested in it because it was Rob Lowe working through his young career during his wild Brat Pack days, and the film was directed by Peter Bogdanovich. I have never read about it or delved into its history, so this was a fresh viewing. I hate to say it because I like Peter's work overall prior to "Illegally Yours", but this film is just a chaotic, fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants mess desperately wanting to be loved even as it is just so busy it can't just stop a fucking minute to breathe at all. I get that Peter wanted the film to be something along the lines of Hawks' screwball comedy era, but despite Lowe's energetic, active performance--I don't think he's to blame for why the film isn't good--and Colleen Camp's quick-witte...

  Hubie Halloween (2020) was a film that popped up early in October on Netflix, and I asked my kids if they were interested. They initially seemed to be, but anytime I asked them if they wanted to watch the Adam Sandler Happy Madison Production set during Halloween season, the interest just didn't seem to materialize. So I went ahead and decided to pick a random November day in the first of the week, considering the buzz for the film wasn't exactly celebrated. I think because Sandler came off such a high for "Uncut Gems" the year before for A24, the thought was he had turned a corner in his career, deciding to focus his energies towards a better class of film. And "Hubie Halloween", made as part of the lucrative Netflix deal he penned for quite a considerable sum, didn't necessarily follow through with such lofty assessment from critics the year before. But the film does garner bonus points with me for its depiction of the Halloween season...the aesthe...