Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

 I was thinking about Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) while watching a podcast about the upcoming "Halloween Kills". Curtis deciding to give Laurie a "more fitting" story to close out her character's story arc than "H20". I still think "H20", despite its many flaws and "errors in judgment" by those who made it, feels as right as any close to the Laurie / Michael story. The head comes off, those eyes open, Laurie with the heavy breathing once heard by Michael twenty years earlier in Haddonfield. That this film never has a single scene in Haddonfield seems odd and perhaps a bone of contention with Halloween fans. I can see why "H20" is often rejected by fans of the franchise. Its glaring flaws, "mask issues", "Scream music", "Williamson 90s flavor", "Hartnett hair", how Michael doesn't look burnt up at all (it would seem to follow "Halloween II" but I'm not so su...

 Yeah, some comedies of this type are better in memory than once you see them after considerable time. This is a silly exercise in exaggerated parody, using Universal horror films and Transylvania village life within what was depicted by Universal horror in the 30s and 40s, except modern mid-80s sensibilities and snark are applied. There is a spirit about the film often seen in comedies desperately wanting laughs as the cast works extra hard for every snicker and snort available. Goldblum tries to work his special brand of magic, while Begley, Jr., is tasked with squeezing out every ounce of slapstick and physical expression / performance he can with what material he has. I appreciated their efforts while wondering what might have been had they had better material and director. Yet, they give it their all. Richards as the stumbling, bumbling butler trying to impress Begley with his comic gimmicks stops the film in it's tracks each time he pops up. Carol Kane, who I have a peculiar ...

  Baby talk in Freddy film...I am always on record in loving Lisa Wilcox as Alice, but, as her two films suggest, she seems to be an acquired taste. I think I wish Wilcox's second of two films in the Nightmare franchise was better. I think Wilcox does what she can -- and did it well, to me -- with a film that has a final nightmare sequence that reminds me of how far any franchise can fall when the studio puts release date before making a fleshed-out, well-thought-out quality horror film. Jacob vomits souls into Fred and those very souls pull his baby self towards his discovered mother, Amanda...that alone tells you that somewhere along the way the convoluted means behind Fred's returns and "deaths" further sent the franchise on a downward spiral.

  The Nightmare Cathedral is what I call it I totally get it. I went through a few pages of Letterboxd reviews and it did amuse me how all over the place the feelings towards A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) turns out. This is very polarizing, considering the sequel it followed. To reiterate, I did feel "Dream Warriors" felt right as a closing chapter to the Nightmare series, but Robert Shaye -- in this fourth film as a very boring teacher who looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else but in the classroom -- saw potential millions. And the mile around the block waiting to get in to see "The Dream Master" proved Shaye was right. He capitalized on the buzz off "Dream Warriors"...for better or worse.

  What a mess Dexter lands himself in. Those "cocaine tapes" with his biological mother (a drug informant) and Harry (the cop using her to score the coke, eventually leading her to her death) seeming to discuss "meeting up and hooking up" has Dexter all bent out of shape. Then there is this love triangle Dexter buries himself in after sleeping with Lila after a fight with Rita over a voice message on the phone about that trip to meet up with the one responsible for his mother's death...this after a really awkward and uncomfortable dinner, instigated by Gail all too giddy to further drive a wedge between her daughter and Dexter, inviting "sponsor", Lila. Lila clearly loves to stir the pot as much as Gail does. Lila wants Dexter. Gail wants Dexter gone and Rita all to herself. There are two "breakups" in the episode after Rita learns Dexter was away with Lila (no fucking), and the second when Dexter admits to sleeping with Lila after the first ...

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors ( 1987) wasn't part of the SYFY Freddy franchise package last October so my daughter missed out on that, but since I have the '99 franchise box set (still treasured in my physical media library), she really wanted to finally watch it. This is also that rare time where my wife decided to watch it with us, since this sequel is her favorite of the franchise. Despite the success of the second film, the "broken rules" (perhaps not broken, since I noticed yesterday at the end Freddy wasn't "over" as Lisa had told Jesse, emerging from Lisa's friend's stomach the iconic blade glove and Robert Englund laugh, so it wouldn't seem Jesse ever had awaken from his nightmare) seemed to irritate Craven, so a fresh treatment laying out the third film was written. Granted, Nightmare fans know that what ultimately got made didn't adhere to Craven's script, but I appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in wh...

I will start by saying that I really liked Chloë Levine as Chelsea. Well, I thought her performance was not bad at all. Levine is one of those actresses who can say so much through a look, her eyes, her mouth. My interest in her wasn't just because she's very pretty, but I liked how you can see so much going behind her eyes. That moment where she realizes The Ranger (Jeremy Holm) is out and inside the store, trying to pass him by before he could notice her is such an example. That whole scene after leaving the store where Chelsea tries to avoid eye-to-eye contact with The Ranger, hoping he doesn't realize she's "little wolf" while her posse of anarchist coke-snorting, cop-hating punks (with their jacket name as "Scumbags") bring up her cabin (shared with her deceased uncle, played by Indie Multi-tasker, Larry Fessenden), is one of my favorite pieces of acting with Levine of the film. I dug her. Holm's Ranger is a silly psycho right out of the 80s...

  My daughter was begging me to have ourselves a "Freddy week". Now, initially she wanted a Freddy weekend Saturday the 24th, but I just didn't want to try and squeeze five or six films in a day or so. Gotta let the films "breathe" , I guess is how I felt.

 In the early period of the Nightmare on Elm Street series the boiler room seemed just so much more distinctively eerie, so much more sinister. It was as if you could get lost within that place, such a significant place for the menace living within its nightmare walls, a location where he felt right at home. Not just there but anywhere, the menace could use it as just a starting place for his playground, living free within that realm, gleefully delighting in the pleasures allowed him.

 A serial killer profiler, Will Graham(William Petersen), has "retired" after nearly dying at the hands of Hannibal Lektor (Brian Cox). He had a breakdown and needed to break from that profiler job, retreating to Someplace, Florida, with his wife (Kim Greist) and son (David Seaman), taking up a home on the beach. Mann's 80s colors are rich in texture, the aesthetics of the night are incomparably his own. Even when the film takes us into Missouri to the killer of the film (Tom Noonan), there seems to be that distinctive Miami Vice flavor that bleeds from the Tooth Fairy's home (Noonan uses fake teeth to bite victims left at his bloody crime scenes, committed by following a lunar cycle) with the green windows. He even works at a lab, with blind Joan Allen meeting him, agreeing to take a ride home at his request, eventually going on a date or two with Noonan's Dollarhyde, even sleeping with him. Dollarhyde has moon posters on his walls. Dollarhyde watches video recor...

"BAAAAASTAAAAARDDDD!"  Okay, so I revisited this after quite an absence. I was   reading my review from 2008 (listed below), realizing I didn't seem to like it much. I could really feel this negative reaction to the content. Maybe I took it just a wee bit too seriously. Not Friday night, however. I had mentioned the subgenre idea of Surrealist. I think you could almost (if not outright) include Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces (1982) in the Surrealist. I mean, for fucksake, the pieced-together "perfect woman" designed from the body parts of different female victims by Purdom's demented dean grabs the crotch of Ian Sera, seemingly a feminist revenge on man's mistreatment of women. It's too bad it wasn't Purdom's crotch that isn't ripped into and squeezed into mush! George could never get a light for his smoke It doesn't stop there. A chainsaw taking a head off in broad daylight certainly gets brought up by all of us slasher fans, as wel...

 I was watching a YouTuber's podcast and he posited the idea of a subgenre called Surrealist. Yes, I guess it could be a catch-all for all those Fulci bizarro flicks, scifi horror oddities, outre, off-kilter, not quite real, dream-and-nightmare logic, occult, otherworldly, supernatural, and uncompromisingly hard-to-pin-down films so unwilling to cooperate in terms of following the more rational, clear path of storytelling. I think The Dead Pit (1989) certainly does that. All the way to the end, this film simply won't agree to follow any sort of proper logic. There's no interest in cow-towing to us if we want the story to make sense. If that were so, Jane Doe would wake up from her nightmare in a comfortable bed, with her father rushing into her room to make sure she's okay. That would be a compromise. Instead Jane Doe puts on her father's ring and her eyes glow red as his did when he "reawakened" from his "dead pit", sealed behind a door that is ...

Peculiar "vampire" film with a quirky personality -- Ben Hall's Wesley loves to go on poetic monologues at the supper table, the kind of cat who loves the sound of his own voice, finding colorful descriptive ways to provide conversation about the stars in the sky and a man in San Paolo with an  "apocalyptic fart" -- set in some point and time that can't quite be pinpointed. This is directed by a guy named Mickey Reece, more recognized in his native Oklahoma, with a ton of films under his belt, and yet so many of us have just recently discovered him thanks to Shudder. I can tell you that if it wasn't for Shudder I wouldn't have even be wise to Climate of the Hunter (2019). I don't get to enjoy the "festival circuit", so the film still went unnoticed unless you had kept up with him or perhaps seen a film at some "fantastic fest". That said, I'm aware of him now, and perhaps if he ever directs another offbeat horror film, Shu...

 Another Shudder premiere I gave a viewing to Wednesday night, late, and to say I'm taken aback by Rot (2019) would be an understatement. There is a giant monster phallus with tendrils reaching out from the hole towards Madison (Kris Alexandrea) who has a hammer and uses it to make sure she remains safe from any harm. This after Madison pummels just-turned-30 Aaron (Johnny Uhorchuk) with hammer, took off her dress with only panties left on, and chopped off Jesse's (Johnny Kostrey) creature penis. Seeing a creature penis (very, very veiny penis) crawl away, then return much, much bigger...no words. The film starts with a ton of realism. Madison is barely holding it together because she is multi-tasking something fierce. She is eyeing a grant interview with money potentially funding a thesis while assisting a demanding professor in class. She is constantly studying, and this thesis takes so much of her time. Jesse is her boyfriend, working a rather frustrating nursing home job. J...

 On Halloween evening in Salem, Mass, Paige (Geena Santiago) prepares for her final theater show as a witch being burned at the stake before heading off to New York City, not anticipating the poisoning of tourists visiting the town through a hand print to sit in the audience. When one of the tourists vomits up bile and drops dead after Paige recites a monologue about cursing the village for her character's wrongful murder, the other out-of-towners want revenge -- especially when more of them have diseased hands and puke up bile, further adding to the body count -- pursuing her and her stage cast / friends. Paige couldn't envision what Turner (Jeff Ryan) has to admit, though. The 66 minute low budget horror comedy plays completely as a light-hearted (if ultra-violent and very exaggerated) romp. Salem itself gets plenty of "star treatment" as a backdrop for the zany happenings which include Paige and company trying to hole up in a hotel by kidnapping, rope-tying, and wa...

Savalas Cossack Captain Kazan "investigates"  Shudder just recently dropped this on the streaming site and I was all there for it. Admittedly, I do wish Telly Savalas and Helga Liné had more time available in the film than given, but it was fun to see such a snooty, rather icy snob archeologist/scientist Lee realize his found prehistoric fossilized ape (potentially the missing link) is but a shell for an alien being accidentally left behind by his crew, now moving from human host to human host in order to stay alive. Cushing, in Lee's field, was also in the general area doing research (his assistant is unfortunately alone with the alien being, inhabiting the inspector (Julio Peña), while investigating the baggage car), hitching a ride out of Shanghai. Julio Peña's inspector is "occupied" Lee isn't aware that the creature in his crate has such a presence seemingly hostile to anyone on board a train driving through Siberia. Those eyes and the blood that dr...