Movie 161: Slaughter High (1986)

 Starring: Caroline Munro, Simon Scuddamore, Carmine Iannaccone, Donna Yeager, Gary Martin.
Director: George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, Peter Litten.

Well, it's April Fools Day, technically, and Slaughter High was originally titled "April Fool's Day" and takes place on the titular day as well, so it seems like a fitting beginning.  We'll follow up with other April Fool's films tomorrow, but for tonight(well, this morning) we'll focus on this little gem from the mid-eighties slasher craze.  If memory serves, it's actually a rather fun little film with a lot of charm, but it's been a long time since I've checked it out.

Hey, we have a score from Harry Manfredini...and, wait, three directors?  I seriously had no idea about that, and I usually know that kind of thing.  Caroline Munro, I know, though...a scream queen in her own right with huge...tracts of land.  Anyway, we have a pretty simple set up here: nerdy Marty is lured into a prank by Munro under false promises of locker room sex, and hilarity ensues.  Marty, of course, is really exceptionally lame: I wonder if the prank would have been satisfying to this group of "cool" kids if Marty acted like a human being instead of a cast-off from Revenge of the Nerds.  Anyway, Caroline convinces Marty to get into the shower, turns it on...gets him naked and the group of punks throw open the shower and take a picture of him naked, spray him with soap, rub him down with a sponge, and give a swirley...all on the guys birthday.  Only Caroline shows even the slightest amount of remorse...the coach comes in and finds this all occurring and forces all the punks to go the gym and run laps...and, of course, our bullies blame Marty for this punishment.  I was bullied in High School but never to this level of cruelty.  The Coach gives it to 'em pretty good, though...except two of the punks have skipped the punishment to further torment Marty...and Marty hasn't figured out that Caroline led him into a trap.  So he accepts a joint from his tormentors that makes him sick, and while he's throwing up, the ringleader screws with Marty's chemistry experiment that then blows up and hideously scars his face.  Ha ha.  April Fools.

I mean, I think even I would have picked on Marty.  I'm not proud of that, but anyone THIS ridiculous would be way too easy of a target.  Not that I would have ever gone as far as these assholes did...but, yeah.  To be fair to the jerks, they clearly didn't really mean to create a situation that would hideously scar the guy...but, three pranks in a row is still pretty excessive any way to slice it...also, screenwriting wise, it's really a long way around.  It's taken an absurdly long time to get to this accident that assuredly creates a super villain.  Anyway, the jerks witness Marty's start of darkness and are understandably feeling kind of bad about it...at least to the point that Caroline Munro wakes up from a nightmare about it years later.  Not sure if waking up is an improvement, though: she lives in one of the ugliest apartments I've ever seen, and apparently she's an actress.  So, living nightmare.

Also, in a pretty clumsy transition: Caroline is going to her High School Reunion.  Off she drives in her Voltswagon Beetle to her surprisingly secluded, countryside high school.  Oh, no, wait, sorry: the beetle belongs to Skip or whatever...the ringleader captain of the team/class clown(somehow that combination occurred)...anyway.  Seriously, this is one secluded high school...and apparently it's abandoned?  How does a high school get abandoned?  And did these characters not keep in touch with anyone outside their immediate group of friends?  No one else?  It gets dark and they don't go back to town, instead deciding to break into the dark, clearly abandoned high school.

At least with Harry Manfredini doing the score we get a Friday the 13th music sting when one of the dolts jumps out with a Jason mask on.  He even makes a direct reference to the film...which makes it even odder that these guys are wandering into a horror film scenario.  They find a room with decorations and Marty's old yearbook, and there's some exposition and the janitor shows up...and then he gets killed.  The characters play some jokes on each other that are...well, a little funny, anyway.  The bit where they bet Skip that he couldn't drop a quarter into a funnel stuck into his pants and then dumped water down it is pretty good.

The first of the characters that isn't a lowly janitor is killed during the party scene when one of the randos drinks an acid beer...and his stomach inflates and explodes in a big gooey mess.  The rest of the party bolts for it, only to find they're locked in and can't escape.  The stomach burst effect was actually pretty solid...looked good.

Know what's never a good idea?  Full black on screen.  Eventually the guy manages to show up under some lighting, but it takes a minute or so to get there.  I never really bought the "killer in the car" gag under these circumstances: the guy runs out with the keys to Carol's car, and Marty is inside.  How did Marty know which car the guy would go for?  Or, did he see him and instead jumped into it while nobody could see him?  I guess that's possible.

One of the dingbats decides to take a bath, which I'm not even sure where she'd find a bathtub in a high school, but somehow Marty rigged the plumbing to dump acid into the bath, and she melts.  Actually, right up until the last moment where her face dissolves in a time lapsed claymation effect, the death looks pretty good again: her body is covered by burns and stuff, and the girl has quite the pair of lungs on her.  Her scream is among the best.

Marty must have been worth a fortune...in order to fully rig this old abandoned school with death traps, electrified windows and such...I can't imagine how much that would cost.  Apparently being a hideously scarred psychopath pays really well.

One of the girls is married to one of the dolts...and was sleeping with one of the other guys, and apparently she and the other guy have a child that the husband-dolt thinks the kid is his.  Classy folks.  And then an impotence joke.  Hilarity.  I can't think of anything more inappropriate than having sex after two or three of your friends had died horribly...in typical horror film fashion, they're murdered in the middle of the act by an electrified bed.  Again, Marty really has his shit together.

Seems like we're already down to three: Skip, Caroline and the hippy girl whose name I didn't catch. Skip starts demanding that Marty show himself, yelling threats and the like...maybe not the best way to approach the situation.  But, considering that Skip asks "what do you want from us" and doesn't seem to understand that all Marty wants is their untimely deaths...I dunno, maybe try saying sorry?  Do they make a "sorry we inadvertently scarred you horribly" hallmark card?

Oh, Nancy is the hippy girls name...Nancy blames Caroline and Skip for all the carnage(which isn't entirely inaccurate, since they were the primary offenders) but quickly backs down.  Skip is convinced that Marty will leave them along after mid-day, which makes absolutely no sense.  I don't think time factors all that much in Marty's psychotic plan to exact murderous revenge.  Wait, April Fools ends at noon?  Where did that come from?  Hmm, research says it ends at Noon...in the UK.  I don't think this movie is supposed to be taking place there, though...Nancy is clearly cracking, Skip appears to have been hung.  Caroline is the only one keeping things together.

Marty furthers the mind games by playing the video of him being pranked, and Nancy runs for it.  Apparently Nancy succeeds where everyone else has failed and manages to get outside in no time...only to be herded into a pit full of hot mud or something.  Nancy almost makes it out, but Marty shoves her back in...which is apparently fatal.  Now Caroline gets to do the final girl panic and run around finding corpses, which is always fun, especially with the Manfredini music.  He really is one of my favorite composers.  Caroline wacks Marty with a bat, but then she, uh, drops it...and all the light bulbs burst(really, where did he get funding?!)...y'know, the photography isn't bad, either.  The simplistic, maze-like set design actually creates a sense of disorientation when combined with the narrow focus camera shots and steady-cam moves.

Adding to my "Caroline's life is actually a waking nightmare" thesis is her outfit. It looks like she made her own outfit out of bedsheets...parachute pants, big cumbersome belt over her stomach.  It's kind of awful.  So I'm not sure being attacked by Marty is even the worst thing to happen to her.  Did I mention that Marty has a jester mask, and that it's actually kind of cool?  I probably should have.  Oh, it turns out Skip wasn't dead...well, until he staggered in front of Caroline and she embedded a hatchet in his head. Oops.  April Fools, dude.

Despite having a run in with a strange death trap in the locker room the first time she was in there, Caroline runs back into it a second time anyway, hiding in the shower where she pranked Marty the first time.  Marty follows her in...takes off his mask, and plunges a spear right into her chest.  Marty then celebrates in crazy person fashion...until he hears the voices of his victims taunting him.  Actually, according to my research, the April Fools tradition they were citing earlier actually suggests that anyone who performs a prank after mid-day is the actual April Fool, so considering that he killed Caroline after noon might be why the ghosts of his victims are harassing him.

Except they aren't, because in another variation on the April Fools theme, this movie is an April Fools on the audience themselves:  the whole movie has actually been the fever dream psychotic fantasy of Marty in the hospital, apparently shortly after his accident.  For whatever reason, even though the alarm is going off, the Doctor takes his time responding, opting instead to finish his paperwork.  Marty kills the nurse, throws on her outfit, kills the Doc and starts ripping his own skin off as the movie draws to a close.

Final Thoughts: There's a clever element to the "all a dream" thing, considering that the movie was originally supposed to be called "April Fools Day" and playing with that concept.  It's not necessarily a great idea-and was done considerably better by April Fools Day-but there is an intelligence to it that is admirable.  For what is ostensibly a pretty straight-forward 1980's slasher flick, this works pretty well.  Some of the deaths are admittedly inventive(well, somewhat, anyway) and the effects are mostly well done, and the killer has a pretty striking look that even plays off of the absurdity of the entire scenario and the personalities of his victims.  It's pretty standard stuff, but there's a sense of charm here.

Final Rating: Two and a Half stars.

Movie 160: Leprechaun 3 (1995)

Starring: Warwick Davis, John Gatins, Lee Armstrong, John DeMita, Caroline Williams, Michael Callan.

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith.

I have no idea how Leprechaun became an actual franchise that sustained as many films as it did (I'm stopping before I get to anything involving him hanging out with rappers, because even I have my limits), but somehow it became an actual thing that spanned six films and a (loose) remake.  I kind of get having a part two but...six movies?  Anyway, let's just keep going.  Think this one takes place in Las Vegas which...well, okay, that makes sense.

The fact that I'm sitting here watching Leprechaun 3 just fully settled on me and for one terrifying moment I questioned my entire worth as a human being.  I broke into a cold sweat, staring around the room, wondering if my entire life has been a waste, whether or not THIS was IT.  What if I die tonight, and the last thing I did was watch this series?  Have I accomplished anything of note in my 34 years of life?!

Then I realized that I've probably seen a lot worse.  I have sat through Demonic Toys 2 and Ten after all.

The movie opens with some derelict guy dragging a statue of the Leprechaun with a medallion over its neck to a pawn shop.  The guy gives him twenty bucks, complains about the medallion being fake(as he puts it on?) and the statue comes alive and attacks the pawn shop guy.  No pogo stick, though...instead he bites the guys toe off...

Oh, young lady, you don't want to be hitchhiking in Las Vegas.  You might end up attracting our creepy nerd of a lead character.  Anyway, he offers to explain to her what's wrong with her car: she breezes out and he says "You don't want to know this, do you?"  She says no.  I riff: "Learning how to help myself is dumb."  He agrees to give her a ride...the Leprechaun realizes he dropped a coin in the pawn shop.  Why does he keep carrying his gold around anyway?

Our blonde female star is apparently a magician...well, she's an assistant but wants to have her own act.Then we keep cutting back to our "foreign" stereotype pawn shop who looks at a cheap internet site to learn about Leprechauns, finds the coin and grabs a gun planning to kill the little bastard.  But, um, dude: the Leprechaun literally ate your toe.  Why would even assume a gun would work?  It's a magical creature.  I'm not sure why the pacing is so weird: it seems like the pawn shop story should have been your opener(and several minutes shorter) and then have the two leads do their little "meet-cute" nonsense, then tie the two together.  Instead we bounce back and forth.  It's irritating, but not as irritating as Scott, our lead: this nerd is supposed to be small town naive but, seriously: how can someone be so completely blown away by seeing gambling?  It's a casino, not the grand canyon.

Unsurprisingly, the magician Tammy works for is a total tool, and the...Jesus Christ Scott's parents gave him a check for $23,000?  That's bonkers.  Anyway, what I was I going to say?  Oh, right, something about insulting gender roles and a lot of obvious "wishes" our cast of characters are going to make...and Scott has just thrown down all that cash on a single game of roulette?  That's so painful I almost want to shut the movie off.  But, we're back to the Leprechaun/Pawn shop owner story for some reason.  Why hasn't this ended?  We're back to the kid losing all twenty-three grand which is utterly terrifying and almost entirely impossible.  Nobody is actually that dumb.

For the love of all that is holy why is this pawn shop story STILL HAPPENING?!  Scott should have ended up with that gold coin like twenty minutes ago.  Can we get on with this?  Okay, finally, Scott has entered the pawn shop to sell his watch so he can STILL GAMBLE, and then he uses the gold coin to make a wish to be back at the casino on a winning streak...apparently the coin grants the wishes without the actual power of the Leprechaun?  The video did suggest that, in this film, the Leprechaun's power comes from the gold and without it he's useless...oh, well.  Doesn't really matter, since we just have the Leprechaun making puns about the names of casinos, which just kind of irritates me.

Scott might be among the most irritatingly stupid characters I've seen in a film.  This movie is making me really, really mad.  The Leprechaun having a sight gag with an Elvis impersonator did not improve my mood.  At all.

This is supposed to be funny but it's just putting me on edge.  Everyone is trying to steal Scotts money and it's a farcical attempt to riff on "Midsummer Nights Dream" or whatever, with everyone looking for the coin and getting wishes and sexist and stupid stuff.  And now Scott is going to become a Leprechaun and...oh, why am I bothering?

A man was just electrocuted to death by a boob robot, and the Leprechaun beat up two loan sharks with a shaleleigh. Then he causes a Woman's butt, boobs and lips  expand to horrific sizes and...she explodes.  It wasn't really horrfying in the horror movie sense, but in the "geez, that's ugly and sexist and insulting."  

Final Thoughts: I had designs on doing the fourth film in the series but I just don't think I can bring myself to go ahead with it.  This third film was so awful that I think it actually threw my back out somehow.

Final Rating: One Star.

Movie 159: Leprechaun 2 (1994)

Starring: Warwick Davis, Charlie Heath, Shevonne Durkin, Sandy Baron, Adam Biesk, James Lancaster.

Director: Rodman Flender.

I don't remember the last time I watched Leprechaun 2.  I probably saw it once...pretty sure this is the one with the girl who would become the titular monsters bride if she sneezed three times or something?  Probably the only really interesting thing about any of these films is the general assumption that every single Leprechaun is basically identical.  There's no continuity to speak of so there isn't really a reason to believe that he's the same exact dude.  But, anyway, there's a movie happening.

A thousand years ago the Leprechaun had a slave and the Leprechaun says that it's Saint Patrick's Day and, as such, he is going to chose a bride.  If a young woman sneezes three times and nobody says "Bless you" than she is forced to marry the little shit and the slave goes free.  The slave is all on board until he finds out the girl in question is his Daughter.  So he says "bless you" and the Leprechaun places a curse on the family line: in a thousand years the Leprechaun will marry his descendant, which really probably shouldn't concern the slave too much since he'll likely be dead by then.

A title card reading "ONE THOUSAND YEARS LATER" made me laugh, I have to admit.  Then there is Clint Howard and Kimmy Robertson being suckered by a guy who does a haunted hollywood tour...apparently he's the boyfriend of our pretty blonde lead...whose accent is kind of odd...?  Anyway, the tourists apparently are totally willing to wait around for an hour while the kid goes and gets his boss who is enjoying all-day happy hour and is not particularly appealing.  

I'm glad they're showing me this kid taking a group of tourists on a crappy haunted hollywood tour.  I really feel like that was a good use of screen time, especially when that transitions into a drunken bum sleeping next to a tree on Harry Houdini's property that happens to be the home of the Leprechaun.  Because the tree has a sign on it that says "a gift from your friend in Ireland" which...uh...what?  

The Leprechaun comes out of the tree with the bums bottle of whiskey and takes a swig.  He then spits it out, complaining that it's a bottle of Canadian Whiskey.  "The only whiskey is Irish whiskey" The Leprechaun exclaims.  No argument here, Leprechaun.  Kind of wish I had some of that.  

Anyway, our two leads go to the go-kart track (because that's what adults do on dates...but they may not be adults?  Later the kid is only able to be released by the police to his legal guardian?) and the girl is delighted when her friend at the track notices that she changed her hair and finds someone to cover his shift so they could hang out...I think we're supposed to be on the side of the boyfriend(which, I mean, a guy has to make a buck so I wouldn't necessarily blame him for still making sure the tour goes on), but the other guy does seem nicer...well, okay, guess not.  Ian is being an asshole.  Calls her a tease and a stuck up bitch because she won't put out after he took the night off and bought her chili dogs.  Classy guy.  Glad the Leprechaun is about to kill him.  Wait, why did that scene need nudity and porn music?  I mean, she has nice breasts I suppose, but...anyway, it's weird. 

Warwick Davis being genuinely amused by his own antics tends to help: when he rips off a business man's finger and licks it, shouting "finger licking good" and basically convulsing with his own laughter...it's actually kinda funny.  He does it again when our lead opens the door and sees a man hanging there: the Leprechaun thinks this is unbelievably funny, like he literally forgot he put the corpse there.  

There's some creepy sexist things happening here: the Leprechaun places a collar on the girl, and immediately seeks out sex and talking about changing her body and face to carry his litter...I mean, he IS the villain so I guess that makes sense but it still is creeping me out in a not-so-fun way. I'm really uncomfortable now.

Apparently the Police (who spontaneously appeared for no reason) think our lead male, Cody, is responsible for killing the douche from earlier and possibly for kidnapping Bridget because they found flowers from him?  Not super bright cops.  Then Cody reads a bunch of stuff about the Leprechaun's powers and weaknesses (he can be hurt by rot iron)...and he has a gold coin so the Leprechaun is hunting him.  There's some mildly amusing dialogue from Morty, Cody's friend.

Oh, movie: now a black man dressed as a leprechaun hanging out chocolate gold coins?  At least it's brief.  I actually do kind of like the drinking contest scene, though: they had established that the bartender had a "red special rye" bottle (which was soda and seltzer), and so Morty uses it as a decoy, goading the Leprechaun into drinking actual whiskey while he drinks the fake booze.  I could have done without all the dwarf actors chanting "one of us" the whole time...but Davis has fun with it.  Even the music starts being off kilter as the Leprechaun is drunk.  It's actually a pretty good scene.

Morty fell for the oldest trick in the book: had the Leprechaun dead to rights and wishes for the pot of gold without thinking about adding conditions.  So the gold gets teleported into Morty's stomach.  Then Morty uses his other wishes to basically release the Leprechaun and die.  But that's irony for you.  Why the Leprechaun didn't just do that forty minutes ago (pretty sure Cody would have given up the gold if he was rotting from the inside out) is beyond me....

"Have you had your iron today?"  Ouch, that line was really bad.

I think we're coming up on the climax: Cody has entered the Leprechaun's lair, Bridget is trying to escape, etc.  Bridget looks pretty good in her red dress and slippers...even if it's all kind of demeaning.  Again, he's the villain so that's a thing but it's still creepy.  This finale really is taking it's sweet time, though: fighting skeletons and getting wrapped in brambles which just go away...and Bridget could just pick the lock to remove her magic collar thingy?  Seems like that could have happened awhile ago, too.

Cody outsmarts the Leprechaun and the Leprechaun explodes after being stabbed with rot iron which, again, probably could have happened twenty minutes ago, really.  

Final Thoughts:  Davis has a bunch of energy that is somewhat appealing, and there's one or two good scenes in there.  But mostly it's...well, it's not good.  Still, you could make an argument that it's a better movie than, say, Boondock Saints.

Final Rating: Two Stars.

Movie 158: Leprechaun (1991)

Starring: Warwick Davis, Jennifer Aniston, Ken Olandt, Mark Holton, Robert Gorman.

Director: Mark Jones.

It's St.Patrick's Day, so...well, this should be a no-brainer, right?  I'm old enough to remember thinking "the girl from Leprechaun is super gorgeous" before knowing who Jennifer Aniston was, so there's that.  Before her famous hair and massively successful television show, she was the star of a crappy horror flick about a hammy Warwick Davis...which goes to show you that anyone can blow up under the right circumstances.  These days Aniston is so big she wouldn't even notice stepping on everyone involved in this film long enough to scrape them off her shoe.  But everyone starts somewhere.

We open with an aging Irishman fulfilling various stereotypes as a half drunk man who apparently stole the pot of gold from a Leprechaun, and his Wife mocks his story.  She then falls down the stairs fleeing from Warwick Davis, which seems even more unbelievable than the actual existence of Leprechauns.  The Leprechaun fears four leaf clovers and...well, bullets make him sleepy or something?  The old Irishman shoots him a couple of times and apparently incapacitates him and tosses him into a crate, but as soon as he's in the crate he wakes up and mocks the guy for a bit...then the guy has a stroke and dies before he can set the crate on fire.  The Leprechaun finds this amusing, even though he's stuck in a crate for basically forever.

Ten years later and here comes Jennifer Aniston with her Father...apparently this is North Dakota.  Aniston is a high society girl who wishes she was in L.A.  She's super likable, obviously...well, no, she isn't.  Sarcasm doesn't translate to the written word well.  She runs into hunky Nathan(I fully approve of the name), who basically tricks her into agreeing to stick around by challenging her sense of female equality...it'd be a weird scene if it weren't deliberately meant the way it is.  Nathan obviously ISN'T sexist, and she sticks up for her gender pretty quickly.  

Nineties fashion was pretty fantastic: Aniston rocks jean shorts with floral patches and L.A. Looks Sneakers.  It's really great.  She warms up pretty quickly once she starts hanging with Nathan, and her natural charisma starts to shine through.  Meanwhile, mentally disabled Ozzy ends up running into the Leprechaun and, because mentally disabled, nobody believes him.  Despite the Leprechaun really wanting his stuff back, he decides to be subtle for awhile...makes a lot of sense.  Ozzy sees a rainbow and runs off to look for the end and annoying little brat Alex follows after him.  Ozzy swallows a gold coin and Alex is hoping to hide the gold to pay for an operation to make Ozzy smarter.  Meanwhile the Leprechaun grabs Jennifer's leg.  She thinks it's Nathan and kind of likes it, then the Leprechaun scratches her.  The only thing good to come of it is this exchange:

"Something was touching me.  I thought it was Nathan feeling my leg."

Nathan, with a grin: "You'd let me?"  

Anyway, Leprechaun injures Aniston's Dad, so they go into town to take him to a hospital.  Alex leaves a coin with a pawn broker.  The Leprechaun shows up after Alex and Ozzy have left, popping out of a safe.  The Pawn Broker gives the coin back, and then something truly magical happens.  The Leprechaun shows up with a pogo stick.  The Broker screams "NOOOOO!  NOOO!" and then the Leprechaun jumps up and down saying "This old man, he played one, he played pogo on his lung" until the guy is dead.  I think Mark Jones should have been involved in the space program or some sort of humanitarian effort because any man who could write a scene about a dwarf killing a man with a pogo stick could probably solve all the worlds problems.

I don't know if it's me or the movie, but I don't seem to be making any momentum with this post.  It's probably both the movie AND me but...well, it's not like there's a lot to analyze or discuss with this film.  I mean, what is there to really say about it?  Warwick Davis has a lot of energy and borders on entertaining?  Jennifer Aniston is really lovely and has a lot of charisma(which is obvious because it's why she became a mega star)?  I mean, both of those things are true but are also self evident.  Actually, I might add that Ken Olandt as Nathan isn't so bad, either...there's occasionally some interesting uses of handheld camera work.  The trouble is that the film isn't really scary or funny, and it desperately wants to be both of those things.  Not sure the addition of an annoying would-be Feldman and/or a mentally disabled guy as central cast members was a particularly wise choice, either.  

On the plus side, though: The Leprechaun just made a weaponized vehicle out of a lawnmower and a pitchfork.  And then used it to knock over a pickup truck.  So, well, there IS that.

Y'know, it's interesting that the Leprechaun basically has seemingly unlimited power but still spends time to chase people down and bite them.  He literally has shown the ability to teleport and use telekinesis at least, it seems like physical encounters would be entirely unnecessary.  I mean, there's the throw away lines of his powers not being at their peak without his actual gold, but that doesn't seem to be holding him back much.  It's like if Freddy decided to instead kick people in the balls while they were awake, or Pinhead getting into boxing matches.

Okay, so old man O'grady from the beginning is still alive.  I think he miraculously recovered when the screenwriter realized the film needed some stretching...well, okay, also O'Grady knows how to kill a Leprechaun.  Ozzy probably could have just as easily related that information, though.

Unlimited power but the Leprechaun can't seem to handle wearing roller skates, or prevent himself from crashing into a fence.  Then Aniston enters the old folks home or whatever and sneaks past the sleeping guard(who has a badge?) instead of say getting his help like she was trying to do ten minutes ago.  She...oh, boy, this all just came together and it's so badly written it makes me want to punch myself.  Tori drove her jeep to town to get info on how to kill a Leprechaun but didn't, say, go to the police and send an ambulance for Nathan and the others?  Why didn't she use that jeep forty minutes ago?  

Hey, one genuine laugh!  Ozzy makes the heroic gesture to save Alex (and gets cut the fuck up as a result: seriously, respect), and the Leprechaun chases after him.  As he runs past Nathan, he utters "How's your leg?" and smacks the guys knee.  It's actually kind of funny.  Also funny: The Leprechaun crawls out of the well half melted and reiterates that he wants his gold: so Nathan runs over and hits the shell of a Leprechaun in the face with the butt of the rifle and then blows the well up with gasoline.  

Final Thoughts:  I don't think there's much else to add.  It's pretty terrible, other than some of the nicer things I said throughout this blog.  

Final Rating: Two Stars.

Movie 157: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton.

Director: Samuel Bayer.

I didn't really mind the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street the way many people did.  I've discussed my general mindset on reboots and the like before on this blog, and nothing has changed:  I see them as no different than making another adaptation of Shakespeare.  It's a piece of fiction being redone in a new fashion for a new audience.  It's fine.  But, even for remakes, I found this one to largely be mostly watchable.  It certainly is better than Freddy's Dead at any rate.

I made a few allusions to a greater mindset on the remake and fan response to the sequels and how it all tied together.  My general thesis statement on that score is this: the remake is basically the movie the fans said they wanted, and they rejected it.  Over the years people complained about the franchise softening up on Freddy: he wasn't as "dark" as he used to be, and they needed another movie where he became scary again.  The trouble with this is that, even back in Craven's original film, the character was hardly dark.  The concept was a dark, but the character's most frightening and resonant trait was how amused he was by everything.  It was never about "dark", really, it was about gallows humor.  In addition to that, Craven was smart and educated enough to realize he was making direct allusions to trickster Gods from ancient myth, but that's for a much larger piece on the series.  

My point is that the fan base was seeing something that wasn't there.  But they said they wanted dark.  So, the remake comes along and this thing is dark as fuck.  The fan base claimed they wanted the molestation angle brought up again, and the remake did it.  Jackie Earle Haley plays the character as a molester, a rapist, a monster...his makeup is horrific, his stance is highly aggressive.  In short, he drops Englund's hammy performance.  He and the movie are "dark."  And yet, everyone hates it.  Be careful what you wish for.

Anyway, we get a quick introduction to the concept and characters: Katie Cassidy is our decoy protagonist (taking the Amanda Wyss role of Tina from the original, though she's called Chris here), witnessing the death of her friend at a diner.  Working at the diner is Nancy, our actual star, played by Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara (shortly before her star making turn in the remake of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Quentin has a crush on her.  Then TV star Thomas Dekker plays Jesse, Chris's ex boyfriend.  Her friend dies at the diner, and Chris attempts to confide in Jesse that she thinks something horrible is going on.  Nancy agrees with her.  Nancy's Mom is played by Connie Britton, who is also now famous after turns on American Horror Story and Nashville.  Clancy Brown shows up, too.  It's a good cast.  I love Katie Cassidy (but I'll try not to retread that subject, I did it enough when I did Black X-mas), and I'm psyched that she's out decoy protagonist at the start.  Even though she wears Uggs. 

There are things I could do without in this film, though: my earlier statements about the miscommunication between fans and the creators should not be misconstrued as a total endorsement of the film.  I certainly don't think it's a great flick by any means.  I think it's mostly merely okay.  The first real scare of the film goes to Freddy being surprisingly quick and violence, pinning Chris to the ground and growling "Remember me?"  It actually isn't bad.

I really do think Jackie Earle Haley did a strong job as the character, and the makeup effects on him are very decent.  He may not be Englund, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  As I said earlier, Englund had a very specific vision for the character: it was pretty hammy and humorous.  That was fun, and he was great, but it isn't necessarily the ONLY read for the character.  Haley brings some of that humor to the role, but mostly seems pre-occupied with being evil and aggressive, and I think it actually works really well.  Different doesn't mean wrong, and hell: there are eight movies with Englund performances in them, and they'll always be there.

Thomas Dekker does okay with his role, even if he does seem a little young to be dating Katie Cassidy.  Honestly, really, expecting me to believe that Katie Cassidy is a high schooler is a bit odd.  She gives a good performance, but it really is kind of absurd to tell me she's a teenager.  His character is a little uneven, too: we don't know much about him besides being Chris' ex, and he's kind of a jerk.  

I think the main issue with this film is that it's a little by-the-numbers.  Chris' nightmare goes in some okay places, but the whole blue filter look mostly feels a little cliched at this point.  Haley gives some good creeps as Freddy throughout the dream, especially when Chris wanders around an abandoned elementary school as she hears him count down for hide and seek.  Then they do a halfway decent catapult nightmare misdirect, which I enjoy.  However, this film falls prey to problems that a lot of remakes do: the line between strong referencing and adaptation and direct lifting for the source material is a very fine one, and I'm not sure this film walks it properly.  I feel like it's either the Shakespeare thing(basically always the same with a few tweaks) or complete reinvention.  When you try to have both, things tend to get messy, and this film lands there more often than not.

Jesse, locked up for murdering Chris, suffers from a dream while inside that ultimately gets him killed.  I read somewhere that actor Dekker purposefully wanted to "scream like a girl" to buck traditional gender roles in horror, which is pretty cool of him.  The sequence itself is appropriately dingy and colored with reds, yellows and oranges, making it look hot and sweaty and hellish.  The CGI blood effects don't do it any favors...and Haley once again gives some strong moments.  Haley plays the character with a lot of anger, too...he's a ball of rage.  It's an interesting take.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Quentin continue to have virtually no chemistry...I'm not sure whose fault it is, either.  Don't get me wrong, I actually think Rooney Mara is incredibly talented.  This movie, though...well, she seems to be playing aloof or detached a little too much, to the point where she isn't making enough of a presence of herself.  Kyle Gallner more or less falls under the same category.  Though it isn't really fair of me to assign "fault" and I apologize for that.  Chemistry is it's own strange alchemy and some actors just don't have it together.  Mara and Gallner don't have any together.

The revisiting of the bathtub scene really wasn't super necessary, but that isn't really the movies fault.  I was making an argument just the other day about this film in a discussion over the inherent self-referential nature of remakes, and on "fan service."  The argument I made was that fans have made fan service an unfortunate given: people complain when remakes aren't "true to the original" and, as such, filmmakers feel compelled to throw in scenes that are directly lifted from the source material.  Unfortunately, film makers are generally too afraid to let remakes be themselves.

There are some very lovely dream images in this film when allowed to do it's own thing, though; when Nancy returns from her bath and finds it snowing in her room, it's some strong set dressing and effects work, especially as she moves through the room to the elementary school from Chris' dream earlier...actually, that whole sequence was really well done, right down to her encounter with Freddy.  Interestingly enough, Mara and Haley DO work well together.  And, again, Haley brings that creepy, dark, sexual predator energy to the party.  It's creepy stuff.

The flashback is, again, suitably upsetting: the "Freddy is molester" element that was simply hinted at in the original roars its way to the foreground here, to the point that I feel like this movie is allowed to get TOO "dark."  Like, the fantastic elements of the series which ultimately make it moderately harmless and fun are superseded by a really unpleasant element that is, again, what a lot of fans said they wanted.  I think it works better as an insinuation than it does as a full fledged plot element, even if it does offer a fairly interesting misdirect: that Freddy may have been innocent of his crimes which, while interesting, definitely had me worried for awhile.  Had they really played that card, I would have been quite irritated.  The directness of the molestation element does provide suitable motivation for the parents to lynch the guy, it's just...unpleasant.  

I always found it a little odd how readily they wrote themselves into a corner in regards to sequels.  Nancy's research finds that she and Quentin are literally the only ones left, which means that sequels would have basically been impossible.  

Not sure how I feel about the "Nancy and Quentin look like junkies" thing.  It makes enough sense, it's just not super effective.  I DO like the Pharmacy scene with Nancy drifting in and out of the market and the dream world.  It's a pretty impressive scene production wise.  Again, when this movie does its own thing with the dream stuff, it's capable of going to some decent places creatively and visually. Rooney is doing some better work, too, as time goes on.  The script doesn't always give her the best dialogue to work with, and she still has very awkward chemistry with her co-star, but she's cutting a more final girl figure as things move along.  I am a fan of Rooney Mara.

Once again, the climax keeps proving a lot of my point:  there's a lot of good stuff going on throughout this sequence except when it feels the need to directly point out that it's a remake.  Nancy confronts him, hides in the closet...and then she sinks into ground and Freddy makes his own real one-liner, and it's ripped off from Part 4.  Then things go back to being unpleasant again as Freddy basically dresses Nancy up in little girl clothes and makes some pretty upsetting statements on what he wants from her...like I said, TOO dark.  Haley is playing the role very well, and Mara is giving as good as she gets, but the content just gets a little too intense to be much fun.

CGI blood effects are the worst.  So is the "You're in my world now, bitch" line.  Mara doesn't even seen comfortable saying it.  The last scare looks terrible.  Meh.

Final Thoughts:  It's not a great film, but for what it is...well, this isn't so bad a film.  I'd argue that it's actually quite good when it's being allowed to do what it wants to, which is be it's own film.  The Nightmare sequences, performance ques and dialogue that isn't ripped from the original series mostly are pretty well done.  The film does get too "dark" for it's own good, though: too often does it get carried away in trying to be edgy to the point of no longer being any fun whatsoever.  Seeing a young woman weep over finding nude photos of her five year old self really isn't the kind of thing a film about a dream monster with knife fingers should probably be about.  Between that and awkward fan service moments, things never quite reach the heights they probably should.  Still, enough of it is decent enough that it's not a total loss.

Final Rating: Two and a Half stars.

Movie 156: Freddy's Dead:The Final Nightmare (1991)

Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Zane, Yaphet Kotto, Shon Greenblatt, Lezlie Deane, Breckin Meyer, Ricky Dean Logan.

Director: Rachel Talalay.

I have the option of watching this in 3D(and I have 3D glasses because of my copy of the remake of My Bloody Valentine) but it really just isn't worth it.  I mean, it's just Freddy's Dead.  The worst of them all.  THIS movie is the one where I'm with the general fan base: Freddy is literally a walking cartoon character her, and it's infuriating and insulting.  But, whatever: there's a cool Goo Goo Dolls soundtrack?  Breckin Meyer is in a pre-fame role?  Yaphet Kotto kind of rules?  I'm trying to find a bright side.

Rachel Talalay made the move from Production Manager for previous sequels to finally being allowed to direct one, and to her credit it's more or less well directed even if the whole movie has a serious case of Twin Peaks envy and is nowhere near as cute as it thinks it is...but good for Talalay.  Moving on up.  It's a well deserved spot, even if the movie isn't great.  She worked really hard for this series.  She earned it.

We open on an extended nightmare sequence-probably the only good instinct the film has-playing on a fear of heights and a common nightmare concept of falling.  Actor Shon Greenblatt does a pretty good job of reacting to everything,  The sequence is more expansive than a lot of the series: lots of ground is covered(I mean in the geographic sense: we move from an airplane, to a falling house, to the town of springhood, down a hill, to a bus stop...it's a pretty long sequence), and there's a cameo from New Line Cinema's founder Robert Shaye, which is cool.  The images of Freddy as The Wicked Witch of the West and Commercial Bus Driver is just jarring and silly...basically, Freddy has become Bugs Bunny in his old age.  To his credit, though, Englund is as good as ever with his hammy performance.  He's certainly one hundred and ten percent committed, and it does take a little bit of the sting out of the whole thing.

How is this movie written by the same guy who wrote the excellent In The Mouth Of Madness?  I'm glad Mike Deluca doesn't work at New Line anymore.  I don't mean that, really, I was just frustrated.  I really hope Mr.Deluca is doing well.  Not TOO well, though: this movie really does suck.

Young, ponytail clad Breckin Meyer is playing a little handheld "Ninja Gaiden" video game...I remember those...I can't remember what they were called, or even how to describe them.  It's like a game boy but it was one plastic thingy with a couple buttons and basically stick figure characters.  They really sucked.  One of the greatest disappointments of being a child of late eighties, early nineties.  Breckin looks totally absurd and VERY 1991.

We're introduced to Lisa Zane, a therapist named Maggie.  She works at a teen shelter...Breckin plays Spencer, the troubled rich kid(whose Dad apparently tried to set him up with the older sister of his Girlfriend which is...wow).  Lezlie Deane plays the imbalanced martial arts girl Tracy, and rounding the group out is Carlos, who is deaf...and Jon Doe, our kid from the credits sequence, who is now amnesiac and is fairly certain wherever he's from is a bad place.  Maggie also works with Doc, played by Yaphet Kotto, who knows a lot about dreams.  That more or less covers the whose who and expositional stuff...oh, wait, Maggie has re-occurring dreams about a water tower or whatever.

Lisa Zane is really attractive here.  She has great hair, and...ooh, business suits.  Also, I legit like the Goo Goo Dolls(well, circa early nineties) and really wish I could find this soundtrack someplace. It really is one of the better things about the film.  But, anyway, plot stuff: Maggie realizes there's a connection between Jon's dreams and her own, so she takes him back to Springwood.  Somehow nobody did any research about the town before they left, where they would discover that it somehow continues to function despite every single member being shellshocked and insane, every child being dead(how is this not national news?  EVERY kid is dead?  Wouldn't the entire world be examining this bizarre rash of deaths?) and...well, okay, that's it but still.  Every kid is dead, all adults have gone mad, and somehow nobody thought to do the research or have heard of it.  But, okay, fine.  Stowing away in the back of the van is the other characters, who attempt to drive off after a colorful interaction with Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold and an obligatory reference to Twin Peaks and another cool Goo Goo Dolls song. 

Two random thoughts coming from the school house scene: 1) Considering the state of the town and everyone's insanity, is it possible that Jon Doe would actually be a gibbering psychotic like everyone else if he HADN'T hit his head? and 2)If Freddy "erases" his victims as the movie later suggests, why are there newspaper clippings about all the murders and disappearances?  Come to think of it, why is everyone so insane?  Wouldn't they just not remember their dead children?  I mean, I guess you could argue geographic proximity or that the amnesiac effect is caused voluntarily by Freddy and the people of Springwood remember because Freddy wants them to...only skilled dreamers like Doc can maintain full power?  Y'know, sometime I'm going to just write down a full list of Freddy's powers...he's basically a Ravenloft darklord.  If you know what I'm talking about.  If not, google it.  But, seriously, the general suite of powers Freddy possesses is huge, even outside the dream.  

Carlos gets the dubious distinction of being the first to die.  His hearing aid is removed by Freddy, who uses the kids deafness for obnoxious, fourth-wall breaking sight gags.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE sight gags, I just don't want them from Freddy.  Anyway, Freddy gives the hearing aid back, it turns into a little creature that gives Carlos super hearing and Freddy screws with him before scraping a chalkboard until the kids' head explodes, which is one of the stupidest sentences I've ever typed.

Spencer gets high and sees a Johnny Depp "brain on drugs" ad
(For the much younger among you...here's what the ad looked like)

It has a kinda funny alteration of Freddy smacking Depp with the frying pan (must have seen Sweeney Todd), and asks "Yeah, what are you on?  Looks like a frying pan and some eggs to me."  Then In a gadda da vida starts playing and Spencer ends up in a video game reality where his Father snaps him with a towel and Freddy beats him up, while in the real world Spencer cartoonishly bounces around like a pinball.  Jon and Tracy go into the dream to try and save him...but Tracy knocks him out to get there so, even after the fail to save Spencer, he's stuck inside.  

Tracy tries to save Spencer by kicking the video game controller out of Freddy's hand but he has the Power Glove and...god, this movie is so horribly written.  The sequence does look pretty good, though: the animation and all is pretty impressive looking.  It's not even a bad idea, really: video games kind of makes sense, they just could have been a little less silly with it.

Anyway, Tracy and Maggie run off with Jon Doe's unconscious lump of a body until he pulls a rip chord in his dream and flies out of the van...and Freddy reveals he isn't Jon's Dad(Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you: Jon and Maggie became convinced that Freddy had a kid, who he reveals is a Daughter).  Freddy's evil plan was to get inside Maggie's head so he could leave Springwood, which he couldn't do for some reason unless pulled over the threshold by a blood relative which...I mean, what?.  Freddy cuts Jon's parachute and...sigh...pushes a bed of spikes underneath him.  And does a fourth-wall breaking bit where he's out of breath and wipes sweat off his forehead.  Insert Three Stooges noises here.  Woooooo-wooo-wooo, knuck knuck.

Maggie figures out she's Freddy daughter, Tracy gets attacked in the dream...actually, Tracy's nightmare is actually pretty creepy, but mostly because it's about molestation and rape.  Honestly, it seems a little out of place in this film, and it is quickly undermined by the cartoonish Freddy stuff.  Nice of Freddy to let his prey escape so readily.  Y'know, in the documentary, superfan and New Line guy Jeff Katz remarks: "Why does Lezlie Dean survive in that movie?  She has no business surviving that movie."  I couldn't agree more.

Freddy also decides to give Doc a bunch of exposition for some reason.  Over five movies and he never told anybody about "the dream people who gave me this job" but decides to let that slip now?  Oh, and 3D glasses because this movie is about irritating and confusing audiences.  Not that I mind the Freddy flashback stuff-I really don't-it's just...why is this movie so ridiculous?  It's the worst possible send off for this franchise.  I feel like I should have done the 3D version, just to get the full effect of the irritation.

I feel like someday in one of my college classes I should just start chanting "Son of a hundred maniacs" at someone just for shits and giggles.

Fun little cameo by Alice Cooper.  Another quote I should throw out at people is "Wanna know the secret of pain?  If you just stop feeling it, you can start using it."  It doesn't quite have the ring to it that the chant does but...yeah, I don't have a way to finish that sentence.  I don't even know why I brought it up.  Guess I just needed something to say because, well, y'know...this movie isn't giving me much to work with.

Pretty lousy last act to this thing.  The over-the-top combat sequence between an apparently still superhuman Freddy and Maggie mostly just stumbles along.  It seems to want to be something of an intimate battle, both physically and emotionally, but then descends into the two writhing around on the ground like children and resorting to name calling and biting.  Would could have been a really emotional and intense fight to the finish...instead it's throwing stars and pipe bombs.  

Final Thoughts: Way too silly to be scary, too stupid to be funny...other than the cast seeming pretty damned committed, this movie seems to fail on every conceivable level.  There's some good effects work, too, I suppose, though it's undermined by the cartoonish violence and incessant mugging for the camera.  And Dream Demons.  Fucking dream demons.

Final Rating: Two Stars.

Movie 155: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Joe Seely, Erika Anderson, Danny Hassel, Nicholas Mele.
Director: Stephen Hopkins.

Often remembered as the "second worst" of the Nightmare franchise, Part 5 actually remains one of the more visually memorable installments in the franchise.  At least, that's how I see it, anyway.  I remember first seeing it on USA's "Up All Night" when I was in middle school (when I started my habit of being a night owl when I should have been sleeping for school in the morning) and generally finding it to be pretty freaky.  There was something about the color scheme and lighting that made me feel like I was breaking some sort of rule seeing it, like there was something sinister about it.  Of course, I was Twelve or whatever...but that late night edited-for-tv screening in the dark living room of my Mothers house really stuck with me.  Along with my early viewings of 3 and 4, it probably stands as a big part of why this series has always been my favorite.

I think more of the Nightmare films should have had cameos of Englund sans-makeup.  It's an effective little bit at the beginning when, as we move hurriedly through the gaggle of inmates in the asylum(all doing their craziest performance actor stuff), we see him smirk at the camera.  The only time I remember them doing it was in part 2 when he was a bus driver.  It's a pretty good nightmare sequence, though: Alice experiencing the horror that Nun Amanda Krueger suffered at West'n Hills.

Lisa Wilcox and Danny Hassel return to reprise their roles from part four, probably a year or so later?  Maybe two?  Anyway, Alice and Dan are still together and sexually active, and have somehow found an entirely new group of friends: the sassy Yvonne, nerdy artist Mark and model Greta.  They're a fairly weird combination: two people whose lives have been mired by tragedy(like, all their friends died.  Six of them.), a nerd, an athlete and a model...not sure how those kids get so close outside of fiction.  Also, Dan is apparently valedictorian and his Parents don't particularly approve of Alice(possibly because she's a magnet for tragedy and, y'know, the daughter of the town drunk)...especially when he seems more interested in her than his future, which seems like an odd conversation for graduation day anyway.  I guess in a town with the kind of death rate Springwood has it'd make sense to push your kid as quickly as possible, though I kind of thought Dan would be approached by football recruiters before graduation day.

Nicholas Mele also returns as Alice's Dad.  He's cleaned up his act and gotten sober.  Something about that revelation-and his character in general throughout this film-always kind of warmed my heart.  It's rare that a Parent has any real source of growth or emotional nuance, and I think it speaks to Leslie Bohem's finished script (with respect to original writers John Skipp and Craig Spector, who are apparently fairly bitter about this whole thing) that it would include that kind of addition.

For some reason, Alice is working at her diner job on graduation day.  It makes for a good enough reason for her to wander across the park and get sucked into the nightmare, but...really.  Working on graduation day?  You must have a pretty lousy employer, Alice.  Anyway, wearing her most innocent looking outfit, Alice follows a Nun into a gigantic castle-like convent or whatever...Springwood's geography is pretty odd.  She then witnesses Amanda give birth to a horrible freak-baby which, in turn, becomes Freddy.  There's a grimy quality to the color and lighting(like I said earlier) that really makes things seem...I dunno, just very tangible.  Freddy's return is pretty well done: Alice catches on pretty quick and attempts to stop it, but the church set goes all weird(lots of sideways shots and weird geometry...kind of wild) and boom. IT'S A BOY!!!

Dan once again proves why I dig him: Alice tells him Freddy's back and there is no hesitation.  Off he goes.  It's a quiet little moment, but when Yvonne asks him if someone died, he gives a nice little head hang.  Then he gets killed off in one of the more memorable death sequences.  I know a lot of people complain about the increase in Freddy's witty commentary, but (as I said in my write up of the original and will likely go back to when I do the remake) I always felt it suited him.  The character was never as "dark" as the fans like to think he was.  But, anyway, I enjoy him spitting out the champagne and bellowing"bad year!"

The motorcycle death is really one of the best sequences in the series.  It's just so painful looking.  It's a little similar to the cockroach death (which I said was a little too much, and I stand by that) but somehow keeps from being too aggressive.  It certainly is intense, though, I'll give it that.  Dan goes through a pretty terrible ordeal before dying.  It's a good death, though, Dan.

I'm not sure why the news of Alice's boyfriend's death OR her pregnancy would be left to the candy striper(even if it IS her best friend), nor on why her sudden shouting about Krueger would be summarily dismissed as crazy talk...didn't six people die a year or two ago, with people shouting about a dream killer?  Wasn't Alice directly involved?  How do her friends not know the story of how all of Alice and Dan's friends died?  I know the history is primarily only important to Alice and the audience, but...I dunno, you'd think other people would have some sort of information.  You would also think that the Doctor would be in charge of delivering news.

Alice getting out of the hospital and going directly to her friends to tell the whole story is a nice touch.  No bullshit, just alert the whole gang automatically.  They're not receptive at first, and seem to be dealing very well with the death of their friend (he died the night before!  Like, less than twenty four hours!)...it's followed by a nice scene between Alice and her Dad.  He comes home with healthier groceries, and she asks if he's disappointed in her.  Mele gives a great line read of "No.  No I'm not." and even references hoping for a boy because he would like to hear the sounds of a little boy again.  Never forget Rick.  Never.

Greta goes next...as good as the scenes more or less are, they sure are thrown together pretty quickly with little to no cohesion.  Again, the death scene is well handled: good effects, and interesting enough dynamics(there's a visual metaphor of being infantalized, and about eating disorders).  Greta doesn't have an awful lot of characterization, though, so it's hard to invest much besides visually.

I think this movie could have used more Mark.  He's probably my favorite Nightmare character after Rick, really, but that could be because he's a nerd who loves comics like me.  I also think The Phantom Prowler is actually a pretty cool character design.  But, he's probably the only victim in this film to get real personality.  He was totally in love with Greta, who was way out of his league(again, I can totally relate.  I, too, spent my high school years in love with a statuesque young woman who was out of my league), he's not handling her death well and he totally changes his tune and decides he believes in Freddy.  He has a nice decoy death scene, even if it's designed to bring plot elements in: Jacob, the creepy little boy, is Alice's unborn baby and his dreams are what allowed Freddy to return and, basically, Freddy wants to collect the souls of Alice's friends and use them to possess the baby.

The Doctor really does suck at his job.  His bedside manner is terrible, he violates Doctor/Patient laws to tell Dan's parents about Alice having anxiety attacks (which actually isn't super uncommon in young pregnant women...and also there are, y'know, shrinks and medicine and all sorts of things to deal with that stuff but nope calling her dead boyfriends parents.  Not HER Father, her dead boyfriends parents)...I think you should get a new doctor, Alice.

Mark suggests abortion, which is pretty huge for a late eighties horror flick.  He also does a great job in the background of the scene between Alice and Dan's Parents...it's cool he's left in the shot at all.  It would have been easier to just have him go outside, but instead he offers some excellent support in the shot...until the discussion gets to a certain point, and then he underscores its importance by slowly excusing himself.  It's some nice screen business. Then her Dad sticks up for her, too, which is excellent.  Joe Seely really does some nice work...it's too bad he didn't do an awful lot else.  Mark is way too rough on his comics, though...bad fanboy.

Nice little moment of strength for Yvonne, though: as she's falling through the air off of the compromised diving board, she manages to utilize her training into an organized dive...and when Freddy picks her up to show her to Alice, she's throwing punches.  I like the (admittedly few) interactions between Freddy and Alice: it plays like comic book nemesis encountering each other.

If there is one thing I'd change from Mark's death scene, it would be the skateboard.  I don't object to the rest of it so much: I like the black and white imagery, the weird doll stuff and The Phantom Prowler...I mean, as far as the latter, they opened that door with part three and dream powers, so it works for me.  Super Freddy is a little goofy, I'll admit...but there's something really jarring and creepy about him being turned into paper and shredded.  I put it up there with the cockroach and motorcycle deaths, really: that sense of immobilization and helplessness...I find it pretty unsettling myself.

The climax looks fantastic.  Great M.C. Escher designs, stained glass windows, weird geometric shapes...and then some pretty cool latex effects of Freddy bursting out of Alice and the souls just bursting out of Freddy with faces indicative of their deaths...it all looks really great, and organic and slimy.  Good stuff.  It's a bit of a hurried conclusion story wise, which...well, the whole thing is hurried story wise.  It really is an awkward film in a lot of ways, with some solid ideas kind of keeping things afloat.  I feel like the story wanted to be deeper but just didn't have the time to breathe.  It's like a cake that you take out of the oven too soon.

Final Thoughts: It's a really rushed film on the page and in the sense of direction: Hopkins handles the effects stuff well, though, and most of the film has some astonishingly excellent visuals.  I don't think we needed the late nineties rap song over the credits...really doesn't fit.  But overall...well, it's a pretty okay film for a quick sequel.  Looks great, less filling.

Final Rating: Two and a half stars.

Movie 154: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Danny Hassell, Andras Jones, Brooke Theiss, Toy Newkirk, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman.

Director: Renny Harlin.

As star Tuesday Knight's song "Nightmare" begins to play over the opening credits of A Nightmare on Elm Street:The Dream Master, I'm taken back to when I was twelve and saw my first horror films: this film and the previous film, part 3.  You would think that part 3 would have resonated with a twelve year old a little better, considering the themes of empowerment, innocence and togetherness.  But, somehow, part 4 worked better for me and it was one of the first horror films I would go on to buy with my own money.  It's one of the films in my collection I will never part with.  It's one of my favorite horror films, if not my favorite.  Obviously, the film would be a sentimental favorite since, objectively, it's not exactly a work of cinematic brilliance.  It's fun and colorful and strange, though, and it captured the imagination of twelve year old Nathaniel quite easily.

I think, in the end, the reason it resonated with me so much was the characters.  There was this dramatic weight to them, even as high schoolers, that made them relatable and interesting.  I became obsessed with Andras Jones doing bad karate in his garage, rocking out to Dramarama's insanely catchy "Anything,Anything" and his unbelievably amazing hair.  I wanted to have that hair when I grew up.  I STILL want that hair.  Unfortunately for my twelve year old self, my hair would basically only last another few years before it started falling out.  For a long time I would tout Andras as my hero ironically.  Now I actually respect him, because he's kind of rad in real life.  But Rick is a great character and he gives a good performance.  

Also, I crushed hard on Lisa Wilcox.  I still crush hard on Lisa Wilcox.  One of my very first crushes.

So, that's some idea of why this film means so much to me.  It isn't a whole explanation, and I have to actually talk about the movie itself at some point, so it will have to remain an eternal mystery.

Kristen-now played by Tuesday Knight-reunites with her old friends Kincaid and Joey, who remind her that, despite her terror, Freddy is totally dead.  However, Kincaid's dog bites her and the wound arrives in reality: a bad omen.  She then meets new friends Alice(Wilcox) and her brother Rock(Jones), who happens to be dating Kristen.  Alice and Rick's Dad is an alcoholic, first seen mixing himself up a bloody mary.  Then we're off to school to meet the rest of the cast.  In no time we're introduced to the whole gang and get their basic personality types: Dan is an all-american jock, Rick is a carefree jokester, Debbie is a tough gal(but fears bugs), Alice is a daydreamer, and Sheila is super smart.  That's all we need to know, and yet somehow they actually make an impression.  

We establish that and we're off to bad karate.  It really is super cool somehow.  Think it's the hair.  That and the Dramarama.  Anyway, the real basis for the scene is to show that A)Rick knows karate and B)this is how he handles the stress of a drunken dick of a  Father, a girlfriend with emotional problems, and a sweet but weak-willed sister.  Alice then has a day dream where she tells off her Dad (and looks more grown up and vibrant, most importantly: an ideal self exists within her dreams).

Then, because this movie just says "screw elaborate pacing, let's just get on with it," we're off to the first death of the movie.  Kincaid falls asleep and wakes up in the junk yard from the previous film and witnesses the random rebirth of Freddy...who comes back when a Dog pees fire on his grave.  The best explanation for Freddy's return would have to be that, as Joey had suggested, constantly dreaming about Freddy would inevitably "stir him up again."  The movie doesn't really care, though, which is part of it's power.  The movie works similarly to Hellraiser III: it wants to revel in it's own strange premise, and take joy in the fantastic world it dwells in.  Excess (without going overboard) is the name of the game, and director Renny Harlin is fully committed to that task.  Kincaid doesn't last long under this new gameplan, though, and he's out as quickly as he's in.  Good death, though: the movie at least allows him to get a decent shot in before his dispatching.

Joey is next, being taken out in an imaginative waterbed sequence.  The sequence is only the second moment of full nudity in the series...it's weird how prudish the Nightmare films really kind of are.  There isn't a LOT of real violence or blood, really: the imagination goes more into weird and fantastic visual terror.  There's virtually no nudity.  Even the profanity is mostly kept into inappropriate one-liners.  Sure, there's the occasional cursing but not all that much, at least not to what it could be.  Freddy could (and probably should, given the nature of his character) be saying a lot more racist and sexist things, but he doesn't.  Sure, there's some but not a great deal.  It's just interesting at all, considering how parallel it often runs with Friday The 13th, which is the opposite.

There's a subtle division towards the end of the first act beginning to set up the change over between protagonists (though I do wonder how Alice got through a whole day at school without somehow hearing that two of her classmates had died the night before...no matter how big the school is).  They give us a scene of Alice hanging with her friends at the diner, remind us of her crush on Dan (who is one of my favorite horror movie love interests ever, but we'll get to that), and then she tags along for Kristen to give some exposition...well, okay, Rick transfers it to Dan for the sake of the audience.  But it sets up the "Alice as understudy" element that drives most of the narrative moving forward.

No matter how many times I see it, it still amuses me greatly that Kristen outright cites the sudden death of her friends as the reason she's not eating, and her Mother dismisses it as fatigue.  It's amazing.  

Much like its direct predecessor, Dream Master doesn't screw around.  It gives us enough exposition to be coherent, but it realizes that the money is Freddy.  Freddy is who the audience came to see, so it jumps right into the nightmare sequences and death scenes at a rapid pace.  Any scene around them is basically to give them weight, explanation or just developing characters in some small way.  It really is something of a miracle of pacing.  

Anyway, Alice witnesses Kristen's death and takes over as the heroine, immediately showing more adulthood(and better hair and skin) upon waking.  There's actually a really well acted and developed scene between Alice and Rick: Rick, unlike most other horror movie boyfriend characters, blames himself for not being there enough for Kristen, showing genuine signs of grief.  I mean, you don't see a lot of genuine grief in horror films anyway, but this one really shows two characters who have a close relationship mourning the death of someone they were both close to.

The quiet does not last long, though: Sheila is next.  Sheila is smart and has Asthma, so of course she dies of asphyxiation during a physics test.  As simple a line as that is, though, it's actually a pretty effective scene.  The set design makes the floor of the classroom look like a pit using a pretty basic optical effect, and a tight frame gives it a claustrophobic effect: very few nightmare sequences in the series take that kind of time to create that sort of visual effect for the viewer.  Then, Sheila is deflated in another simple but arresting effect.  

In Never Sleep Again:The Elm Street Legacy they make the connection that Rick's look in the post-Sheila death scene inspired the look of Buffy character Angel.  I totally buy it.  His hair and long black trench coat...they do look an awful lot alike.

I guess this as good a time as any to discuss how much I like the character of Dan.  He's played by  the handsome and earnest seeming Danny Hassel, but that isn't all of it.  Dan, confronted with all the weirdness, actually just kind of shrugs and says "Yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense,"  He also sticks up for his friend Rick, which is always something I like in a character.  Everything about Hassel's performance suggests that Dan is a stand up guy and, in a simple but not stupid trait, is willing to accept a bizarre explanation if it best explains unusual events.  It doesn't hurt that Rick says "If I'm next, watch your back" five minutes before he actually dies (on the toilet, no less).  I figure that kind of accuracy, I'd believe in "Dream Monster," too.

Rick's death scene always seemed kind of extraneous.  I was never convinced he even needed to die at all, except to give Alice more motivation, I suppose.  I think the movie may have been weirder with him in it for the rest, but...I mean, they could have pulled a Joey and had him in a coma or something.  Instead we get a really awkward shadowboxing scene that Freddy doesn't even really show up in...and Freddy kinda just wins without any real typical Freddy bluster.  It's mostly a disappointing scene, especially considering he was one of the most well-rounded and interesting characters in the series run.  But I suppose that's why he had to die: gives the movie more of an emotional hook.

To drive home the "Alice gains special abilities of her dead friends"(which is a cool superpower to have if you don't particularly like your friends that much) we have her rocking out to Dramarama and swinging a pair of nunchucks.  She wants to get together with Dan and Debbie, her last two remaining allies, but Drunk Dad doesn't want her to.  Despite knowing that Freddy will inevitably strike at them if she sleeps, she goes upstairs and takes a nap.  Nice going, Alice.

I really do think Alice, and obviously Lisa Wilcox by extension, is one of the most beautiful women ever to walk the planet earth.  The character was a big part of my crush (it's more than physical, you guys) in general: something about Alice in particular really captured my young heart.  I think it's the combination of strength and shyness, the niceness coupled with being capable.  Plus gorgeous.

Great gags with the movie theater and the soul pizza.  Both of those images are so very captivating.  The pizza scene has more importance than that, though: it's also the first time that Alice and Freddy actually have something akin to a conversation.  The villain makes sure the hero knows what's at stake now, which acknowledges her as his new adversary in the eyes of the viewer.  Plus he needs to terrify her into summoning other friends...and Debbie gets the short straw. It's probably for the best that Debbie dies here, though: I think she's probably be pretty pissed if she knew Alice chose the guy she had a thing for over her...or that Alice didn't summon, like, some guy at school she barely knew.  Nope, Alice summoned her only remaining best friend to die a horrible, painful, humiliating and demoralizing death.  Poor Debbie.

Really, from the perspective of the victim, Debbie's death probably is the most traumatic of the series.  Not only is there her fear of bugs, but the horror of transformation in general...being confronted with these things would have to be beyond any sort of...I mean, seriously.  What a terrifying, cruel and unusual death.  It's almost too much for the series...but it's so fantastic visually that it's pretty much forgivable.  I had a hard time watching it when I was a kid, though.

After a car accident puts Dan in surgery and, as such, into Freddy's crosshairs, Alice goes home and has a "getting badass" montage, taking accessories and mementos of her dead friends and making them into weapons and armor to face Freddy once and for all.  It's a pretty cool little moment.

Dan doesn't end up being much help.  No sooner are he and Alice together, Dan is forced out of the fight, leaving Alice and Freddy one on one.  It had to be like that, though: what was Dan really going to do here anyway?  Not that that point really matters, considering the point would have to be Freddy up against The Dream Master, who has similar powers to himself.  As I said earlier, it would have been weird if Rick had somehow survived as well...there really wouldn't be a decent place to fit him into the narrative.  The fight itself is appropriately epic in its scope: Alice uses all the powers of her friends and her own inherent goodness to do battle but slowly exhausts them all and finds that Freddy is, as one would expect, ostensibly omnipotent within his own environment.  However, Alice ultimately channels a greater power through herself, dismantling his very makeup and causing his emprisoned souls to tear their way out in yet another excellent (and a little gross) effect.  Alice believes Freddy to be defeated, and gets together with the dreamy, major league hunk Dan.

But what was that reflection in the water....?!

Final Thoughts:  It's far from the greatest horror movie ever made.  It's simple, it's a little silly, but it's imaginative, visually arresting, and filled with interesting and engaging characters (even if they exist for an absurdly short amount of time), and excellent performances.  Plus, it never ceases to make me happy on a personal note.  I love this film.

Final Rating:  (Critically) Three Stars.  (Personally) A Billion Stars.

Movie 153: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Starring: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Craig Wasson, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Jennifer Rubin, Laurence Fishburne, John Saxon.

Director: Chuck Russell.

On average, the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels are actually pretty good.  Part three is probably one of the best horror sequels in the genre's history: strong effects, energetic direction and a fun cast of characters.  The late Eighties had a lot of really fun horror flicks, really, and Dream Warriors really goes all out with that sense of energy and camp.  Plus, great score by Angelo Badalamenti, who did great work with David Lynch.

Y'know, this might be the first time I've ever watched this on DVD and I'm fairly certain that the song Kristin plays while making her little arts and crafts house is different than the VHS version.  In fact, I know it is. I've seen the VHS so many times that I know every inch of this film and they are definitely not the same song.  It's interesting.  I wonder if they use this "Into the fire" song when they call things back later, too...

There's very little bullshit in Dream Warriors: Kristin(a pre-fame Patricia Arquette) is having bad dreams.  Has bad dream.  Freddy shows up and chases Kristin around the house.  No exposition, no "previously on" or whatever...we just jump right into "Freddy wants to kill people" territory.  It's a smart strategy for a horror sequel to have: exposition can come later.

Laurence Fishburne!  Thinner and far, well, rad.  Doctor Gordon tells Laurence(playing Max The Intern here)says that Doctor Simms believes that the kids hanging out at West'n Hills Hospital are there because of sex, drugs and rock n' roll.  Max weighs in: "Shit, that's what keeps people alive!"  Then he goes into action mode while trying to subdue a whacked out Kristin.  Character introductions are handled very well in this film really: almost a precursor to the "walk and talk" method that Aaron Sorkin uses.  We meet Max(admittedly a minor character), then Gordon, who brings us to Dr.Simms and some of the kids, then we get Kristin freaking out and re-introduce Nancy.  Nancy then goes back to Max, who introduces the rest of the characters.  

"Ain't that right, cool breeze?" I need to call more people "Cool Breeze."

It's really such a simple film.  Kristin is haunted by Freddy.  Kristin ends up in hospital with other kids haunted by Freddy.  Nancy has experience dealing with Freddy.  Nancy comes to hospital, teaches kids how to fight Freddy.  They fight Freddy.  The End.  It's kind of marvelous.  But first, we need to get on with all the murdering.

After a little bit of exposition on some of the kids, Kristin reveals the big turning point of the series: she can pull other people into her dreams.  Of course, she does this while being eaten by a Freddy worm that is really kind of phallic and looks amazing.  It's such a fantastic image and a great effect.

"Straight Talk only in this room."  Another motto I need to quote more frequently.  Also I need to start saying "In the name of Lorac, Prince Of Elves, Demon be gone" during Dungeons and Dragons games.

Phillip was always my favorite of the kids (other than Kincaid, who is super rad) when I was growing up.  Considering that the character is barely present whatsoever in the film, that's kind of surprising really. I think it was Phillip speaking up in the first meeting, pointing out the biggest logical fallacy(in fact, THE logical fallacy) of the series that made me like him the most.  He's literally killed off two scenes later, but it is one of the coolest death scenes in the series.  It's a genuinely creepy one: Phillip makes puppets, so Freddy turns him into a blood puppet and leads him to his death.  Luckily for Freddy, the night nurse kind of sucks at her job.

Craig Wasson gives a pretty good performance as Dr.Gordon: he's a man of science who is faced with some unusual stuff and, unlike his counterpart Dr.Simms, actually adapts.  Along the way, though, he is a rather conflicted and frustrated individual.  Despite his rational mindset, he's a compassionate man...it's rare to see a scientist who is also an everyman in horror films without them being a hippy or seemingly negligent or what have you.

One flaw in this film: random scene with sleazy orderly trying to get Taryn to do drugs with him.  The scene doesn't even have a payoff, and Taryn's history of drug abuse was already established in one of the earlier group scenes.  

However, Dick Cavett turning into Freddy and attacking Zsa Zsa Gabor is a great bit, followed by Jennifer's excellent death and one of Freddy's best one-liners: "Welcome to prime time, bitch."  I never understood how any rational human beings could label Jennifer's death a suicide, though: how did she get up there to smash her head into a TV?  I mean, really.  At least Gordon acknowledges that it makes no sense.

The kids go all "Inception" and reveal their own remarkably limited dream powers: instead of being able to, say, do whatever they want because it's a dream, they can do magic tricks and have mohawks.  But, hey, I guess that works, too.  Joey, the mute, uses his dream powers of getting chicks and witnesses one of the series' very rare uses of nudity.  It turns on him, though, since the naked chick turns out to be Freddy.  Should have picked a better dream power, Joey.  

Ghost Nun tells Gordon the backstory of Freddy and suggests burial and consecration will defeat him for good.  It's a good enough justification for everything.  Like I said earlier, it's a very simple film.  The ending shouldn't be needlessly complicated under those circumstances and, hey, it fits the general feel of the series (even though the previous two films have avoided any sort of religious elements...but I guess if you're talking a ghost that kills people in dreams...well, might as well bring god into things).  It also brings John Saxon back into things, which is always awesome.  Gordon and drunken ex-cop Saxon go into an auto salvage yard to find Freddy's bones while Nancy leads the remaining kids into the dream to do battle with Freddy...which leads everyone into their separate climaxes.

Yep, they use the "into the fire" song for the call back, too...how weird is it that the one song is different between the DVD and VHS versions when absolutely everything else is identical.  While the plan of gathering together to present a united front is a good one in theory, it didn't work that well for them last time, did it?  I mean, it basically had the same effect: he used the room itself against them and divided them.

I know I often tear off my dates head yelling "Where's the fucking bourbon?!"  Freddy and I have something in common.  I like the Taryn and Freddy combat, too...in general, Dream Warriors works by going where the original film only barely considered going: instead of bringing Freddy to real world terms to be defeated, the characters take dream world terms to him instead.  It expands the franchise mythology in a stronger way than Part 2 did, at any rate.  Taryn doesn't fare well, and Freddy uses another favorite one liner: "What a rush."  

The Wizard Master is that cool kind of lame...or lame kind of cool...whatever you wanna call it.  It's cool in that way old silly infomercials or Ed Wood movies are.  It's utterly ridiculous(probably the most ridiculous thing in the whole franchise outside of Freddy's Dead), but that makes it sort of rad.  Coupled with Kincaid's dream outfit(complete with matching neon red tank-top and high-tops), it's the perfect storm of late eighties nonsense.  For whatever reason, Nancy, Kristin and Kincaid just assume Taryn and Will didn't get anywhere.  They're right but, it's kind of dickish to make that assumption.  There's no mention of "hey, maybe we should locate our other team mates" or anything, just "Welp, we three are together.  Guess it's time for the final battle."  No love for Taryn and Will, I guess.

The group battle with Freddy is also pretty well done: Nancy catches Joey, Kristen runs interference with a drop kick, Kincaid backs up both both ladies...some good physical combat by Freddy, and the very cool visual effect of the souls in Freddy's chest (another nice addition to the mythology: Part Three does a pretty good job of expanding the rules)...other than being a strong reference to the old Harryhausen days, I'm not sure Freddy needed to be able to control his own bones.  If he could do that, why the dreams at all?  Why not run around using skeleton power to kill everyone?  It's fairly successful against Saxon, which also makes me wonder why he didn't take skeletal form to kill the actual parents who set him on fire.  If he can do both, why stick to one?  But, whatever, it's a good scene.  So is the mirror one, too.  Nancy is kind of gullible to assume a sonic scream would defeat Freddy and the sudden appearance of her Father in the dream is NOT a trap...but, again, it works.

I don't think the movie or the greater canon would have worked without the death of Nancy.  It seems so necessary and gives it all more weight.  Not enough martyrs in the neverending battle against Freddy.  

Oh, and Dokken.  Greatest horror movie theme song ever.  In the music video, even Freddy is no match for Metal.

Final Thoughts:  As I rock out to Dokken's "Dream Warriors" I'll see what I can to sum up.  This film walks a really great line between outright silly and actually having a sense of weight.  Most of the elements work really well: it's a good script built around a simple and straightforward story, characters who can be archetypes without being caricatures and a cast capable of bringing them to life.  If you watch them in order, you can see Englund developing the character more and more throughout the series(no matter what your take on that development is, you can't deny that such a development exists).  Aside from all that, though, is the thing that Dream Warriors does best: it ups the ante in the realm of the fantastic and imaginative.  The effects work and creative death scenes really bring the story into a far more visual and direct place, which definitely keeps the series moving in a positive direction.  If nothing else, each sequel of Nightmare really does remain its own animal, and that is probably why it's so special to so many people.

Final Rating: Three Stars.