horror comedy

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

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three star

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Many black & white alien invasion movies from the 1950s have found a second life in the last few decades as targets for sarcastic derision at the hands of MST3k & similarly-minded snark peddlers. I think the reason Invasion of the Saucer Men largely escaped this treatment was that it was more than willing to make fun of itself in a way that sucked the joy out of any potential bullying. An irreverent horror comedy of sorts, Invasion of the Saucer Men treats its teenage-marketed 50s sci-fi horror genre tropes with such a continuous wink & shrug attitude that making fun of the film in any way feels redundant at best. Filmed almost entirely on a sound studio lot with no budget to speak of, the movie originally was pitched as a drama & developed into a comedy sometime during production. In that decision the film avoided slipping into a mockably goofy triviality & instead became an intentionally goofy triviality. It’s a minor distinction, but an important one.

A “true story of a flying saucer” told over the course of a single night, Invasion of the Saucer Men is just one gentle push away from becoming a full-blown genre spoof. Its small town setting of Hicksville & population of drunk drifters, dimwitted farmers, and eternally horny teens all feel like a direct mockery of the many by-the-numbers sci-fi horror flicks that proceeded it. And that’s not even to mention the film’s standard issue alien invaders, which look like prototypes for Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. The plot doesn’t truly kick off until a hot & heavy teen couple accidentally strike & kill one of said evil invaders with their car on the way home from canoodling. Because of the “little green men’s” stature they at first assume that they killed a small child, but when that “child’s” hand detaches from its lifeless body, grows an eyeball, and crawls away, they quickly realize what they’re dealing with is not of this planet. The question is if they can convince their fellow citizens of Earth they’re under attack from extraterrestrial forces before it’s too late.

It’s funny to think that Invasion of the Saucer Men was released on a double bill with I Was a Teenage Werewolf under the tagline “We DARE you to see the most amazing pictures of our time!”, since that’s the exact kind of old school, teen-oriented sci-fi horror the film mildly lampoons. Invasion of the Saucer Men is far from a full-blown spoof, but it does directly reference the violence & fantasy in other teen films, so its tongue-in-cheek genre mockery plays as entirely intentional. My very favorite moment in the film is when our eternally horny teen heroes trek out to Make Out Point to recruit their fellow oversexed peers to help save the day because the adults of Hicksville won’t believe them. It’s a gag I’ve seen repeated with the moviegoers of America in Night of the Lepus & the Greatest Generation of navy men in Battleship and it’s one that never fails to amuse me.  Invasion of the Saucer Men could’ve been (a goofy) one for the ages with a few more gags that inspired, but as is it’s an enjoyable, self-deprecating genre spoof that proves remarkably difficult to mock.

-Brandon Ledet

Roger Ebert Film School, Lesson 8: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

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Roger Ebert Film School is a recurring feature in which Brandon attempts to watch & review all 200+ movies referenced in the print & film versions of Roger Ebert’s (auto)biography Life Itself.

Where Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is referenced in Life Itself: On page 51 of the first edition hardback, Ebert reminisces about a theater called The Princess where he used to watch movies as a child. He describes tickets as costing 9¢, popcorn 5¢. Shows started at noon & lasted hours as newsreels, serials, and double features (often a pairing of a Western and a comedy) lit up the screen. One of the comedies mentioned in this anecdote is Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 

What Ebert had to say in his review: Ebert never reviewed the film, but he did expand on his memories of The Princess, including the memory of watching this feature, in his essay “Hooray! Hooray! The First of May!“.  Roger writes, “When Bud & Lou met Frankenstein, it scared the shit out of us.”

By the time Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein reached cinemas, Universal Studios had more or less discontinued their “Famous Monsters” brand & decided to retire the loose franchise on a remarkably silly note. Bela Lugosi returned to his role as Dracula for the second & final time in the film (though he would continuously play various other vampires throughout his career). Lon Chaney Jr. returned as the Wolf Man (despite being cured of his lycanthropy in The House of Dracula three years earlier). Sadly, Boris Karloff didn’t return as the Frankenstein monster (possibly due to his longtime rivalry with Lugosi), but Glenn Strange serves as a suitable replacement. All three actors had been sufficiently terrifying before in previous horror pictures, but that’s not their exact purpose here. Instead of scaring the audience, they’re meant to scare skittish funnyman Lou Costello, who delivers the film’s true bread & butter: broad, child-friendly yuck-em-ups. The film’s horror context is merely a backdrop, a stage for Costello to play on. Horror comedy is one of my all-time favorite movie genres, but I don’t think it’s a format that really came into its own until the 1980s. Old Hollywood horror comedies struggled to homogenize both of their respective formulas & the results often feel like a standard vaudeville routine that happens to feature scary monsters. Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein offers no exception.

In light of recently watching the Marx Brothers’ comedy A Day at the Races for this project, it’s difficult not to compare Abbott & Costello’s vaudevillian humor to that of the Marxs’. The comparison is not flattering. Bud Abbott is an uninteresting straight man archetype, which leaves Lou Costello to carry all of the film’s humor on his own two shoulders. His banter is never quite as impressively complex as Groucho’s. His physical humor never even approaches the high standard of Harpo’s. Lou Costello is, in essence, adequate as a comedic force in this picture. I can pick out a couple moments here or there when he got a really good laugh out of me: I particularly enjoyed the gag where he attempts to match the Wolf Man’s beastly howling over the telephone & the self-deprecating humor of him answering the suggestion “Go look at yourself in the mirror sometime” with the response “Why should I hurt my own feelings?”. For the most part, though, he’s entertaining, but far from the height of hilarity. It might be an issue of Costello himself not being especially into the production. Before filming, he was quoted as saying “No way I’ll do that crap. My little girl could write something better than this.” He eventually warmed up to the film & had fun during filming, but it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that his heart wasn’t fully into it.

The plot of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is fairly bare bones. The titular comedic duo are a pair of dock workers charged with delivering crates that contain the corpses of none other than Dracula & the Frankenstein monster (despite what the title implies, Dr. Frankenstein is not involved) to a sort of House of Horrors wax museum/cabinet of curiosities. The monsters come to life & scare Costello stupid. Laughs ensue. You get the picture. What really surprised me about this story line, though, was how familiar it felt. About halfway into Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I had to ask myself whether or not my childhood favorites, The Monster Squad, was in fact a remake of the comedy classic, at least in terms of their shared central conflict. In both films Dracula serves as a criminal mastermind hell-bent on taking over the world by controlling the Frankenstein monster through a magical talisman. The only real difference is that in the Abbott & Costello version the Wolf Man is determined to stop the dastardly Dracula instead of blindly joining his ranks (and getting punched in “the nards” by young children). If you have any personal affection for The Monster Squad, I think Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is worth a look as a possible starting point for its source material.

I’m slightly diminishing the significance of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein here. The film is effortlessly charming as an old school horror comedy & has been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” enough to be selected for preservation by the US Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. I think the picture had a lot of significance among younger viewers who grew up to hold it in high regard. Just like my generation latched onto the similarly-minded The Monster Squad, Ebert’s generation connected with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein on a personal level. Not only was the humor of both films skewered towards younger crowds, both Ebert & I most remember being scared by the relatively tame horror end of our respective childhood favorites. If nothing else, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein captured the terrified imaginations of its pint-sized audiences during its theatrical release & also served as the final major studio production for future legend Bela Lugosi, who desperately needed the money. That’s all the significance a broad comedy really needs to justify its place in the world.

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Roger’s Rating: N/A

Brandon’s Rating: (3/5, 60%)

three star

Next lesson: My Dog Skip (2000)

-Brandon Ledet

Rubber (2011)

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threehalfstar

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“This is the first time in my life I’ve identified with a tire.”

In the late 90s & early 00s Quentin Dupieux was making electronica records & puppet-starring music videos under the moniker Mr. Oizo. He’s since developed the visual end (the much more interesting dynamic to me) of that project into a career as a full-blown filmmaker. I’ve yet to see any of Dupieux’s other works, but it’s very easy to see Mr Oizo’s (and his puppet surrogate Flat Eric’s felt-covered) fingerprints all over his most widely known film to date, Rubber. Rubber is, in essence, a work of puppetry. A horror comedy about a sentient, killer car tire with psychokinetic abilities, Rubber is puppetry in its most basic sense: it brings an inanimate object to life & supplies it with a personality. Rubber‘s car tire protagonist/antagonist might not be easily recognizable as a traditional puppet, but it’s easy to see an A-B connection between the irreverent puppetry of the film & Dupieux’s past work as Mr. Oizo/Flat Eric. Local mainstay Miss Pussycat might be a more logical path of lineage for Mr. Oizo, but Dupieux has certainly not left those puppet-centric music video roots in his past.

A full-length feature film about a killer car tire might sound a little narratively thin to wholly succeed, but Rubber sidesteps that concern by adding a second plot line concerning meta audience participation to its formula. Rubber is not only an unnecessarily gritty/gory version of the classic short film The Red Balloon; its also a tongue-in-cheek indictment of the audience who would want to see such a gratuitous triviality in the first place. A car tire comes to life & immediately learns to kill after it figures out how to roll on its own treads. After crushing bugs & trash under its light weight, the tire moves onto telekinetically exploding human heads like that one .gif from Cronenberg’s Scanners continuously playing on loop. The only thing that could stop this depraved nonsense is if the meta audience surrogate, a mysterious group of binoculars-equipped onlookers, would just simply stop paying attention. Rubber’s central message seems to be very much in line with that of the Treehouse of Horror segment “Attack of the Fifty Foot Eyesores“. If we don’t want to see any more films this inane, cruel, and unnecessary, we need to stop paying them attention.

Of course, I do enjoy watching things this inane & gratuitous, which is largely what Dupieux is depending on. My favorite parts of the film are the moments when the tire is doing things even more unnecessary than rolling on its own volition or exploding heads with its “mind”: it sleeps, it drinks, it watches television, it peeps in on girls in the shower, it stares in abject horror at a mass grave/tire fire, etc. It takes a certain appreciation of for-its-own-sake-absurdity and/or impossibly dumb horror schlock to enjoy the film for what it is, but Rubber does come off as eager to amuse once you get on its wavelength. The smartest thing Dupieux does with Rubber is to open the film with a fourth wall-breaking mission statement that ponders “In Steven Spielberg’s E.T. why is the alien brown? No reason […] In Oliver Stone’s JFK, why is the president suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason,” and goes on to declare “All great films, without exception, contain an important element of ‘no reason’. And you know what? It’s because life is filled with ‘no reason’. The film you are about to see today is an homage to ‘no reason’, the most powerful element of style.” If you’re amused & not violently rolling your eyes at the sentiment of that quote, chances are you’ll have a similar to reaction to Rubber as a whole. All else abandon ship.

Even with all of Rubber‘s stray meta-philosophical tendencies (which are never taken too seriously), Dupieux sticks to a strict doctrine of ‘no reason’. There’s no entertainment value or general purpose to this film about a killer car tire other than the perverse pleasure of watching a film about a killer car tire. It’s the kind of the same joy you could pull from watching a yellow felt puppet file paper work, drive a car, or shill for Levi’s jeans to a groovy beat. It doesn’t need a reason beyond its own very existence.

-Brandon Ledet

Stung (2015)

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three star

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A lot of people were harsh on last year’s winking-at-the-camera B-picture Zombeavers for being a little too try-hard & calculated. Personally, I’m a little more forgiving on silly, made-for-cult-audiences trifles than most, so I enjoyed its SyFy Channel-type camp well enough. What saved the picture for me more than anything was the handmade beaver puppets. The film’s dialogue was never quite as amusing as it wanted to be, but the slightest appearance of a zombie beaver puppet could have me howling.

Toeing the exact same line between terrible dialogue/acting & delightful special effects is the recent horror comedy Stung. The directorial debut of German special effects artist Benni Diez, Stung is a fairly basic creature feature about mutant wasps that brutally disrupt a stuffy garden party. Much of the film is bland & sloppily slapped together, but a few bonkers plot twists in the third act & a refreshing focus on handmade practical effects save it from feeling like another hopeless CGI-heavy cheapie like a Lavalantula! or a Sharknado 3. If you have little to no interest in monster movie creature effects, you’re likely to spend most of the film bored & frustrated in the wait for bodies to drop & the credits to roll. The only attraction featured here is the giant mutant wasps themselves.

Remove the mutant wasps from Stung & you basically have the world’s worst episode of Party Down. A small catering company handles a quirkily pathetic garden party while experimenting with a will-they-won’t-they romance that no one could possibly care about. The lead is a painfully unfunny physical comedian with a whiny “But I’m a Nice Guy”/friendzoned approach to romance. His love interest is a Type A Bitch™ we’re supposed to deride for caring more about her flailing small business & personal survival than getting laid by a bartender/clown/employee. The best bet for finding a worthwhile character is among the party guests, since the leads are such dull wastes of time. My vote for MVP (or maybe Only Valuable Player in this case) goes to genre film veteran Lance Henriksen as a drunken small town mayor.At the very least he gets a couple decent one-liners out, like when he quips “This party needs an autopsy” (before the killings start) and when he responds to the correction, “Those are not bees, those are wasps” with “Who gives a shit?” Even Henriksen’s world-weary irreverence does little to liven up the proceedings, though, and most of the film’s time that’s not filled by killer wasp mayhem feels like a huge waste of effort.

It’s a good thing, then, that there’s so much killer wasp gore to (excuse the expression) chew on here. Stung‘s gigantic mutant wasps click & screech like insectoid pterodactyls. When they sting their prey they use the victim as a flesh vessel to incubate even larger wasps. These transformations are massive, wet, disgusting, and above all else entertaining. The mayhem gets even more gnarly from there, especially in the film’s go-for-broke third act stupidity. Gigantic nests, wasp-controlled human drones, wriggling larvae, and flaming monsters all make for a wickedly amusing good time as long as you pay more attention to what the creatures are up to than anything said or done by their entirely-forgettable victims. Stung is to be enjoyed for its Them!-style monster puppets & 80’s Peter Jackson gore, not for its sense of narrative or tonal nuance. About the only thing that qualifies as a successful joke in the film is when one character carries around a can of bug spray as an in-vain mode of protection, but even that gag qualifies as a triumph of the costume department. Stung is all about its puppets & gore and nothing else. That just happened to be enough to make it worthwhile for me.

-Brandon Ledet

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

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three star

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The convenience of films with titles like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that you pretty much know ahead of time whether or not you’ll be on board with what they’re selling. Do you enjoy costume dramas? Are you not yet completely exhausted by the staggering amount of zombie media out there? Surely there are enough people who sit comfortably in both categories. Just take a random polling of attendees and any Tori Amos or Rasputina concert & you’re bound to find a few.  And you can count me among them. I can enjoy a good, middling costume drama any day of the week & I’m more or less in the same camp when it comes to mediocre zombie mayhem (although that genre tests my patience more every coming year). I never bothered reading the print version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which the film’s opening credits claims is a “Quirk Book series classic”) because it seemed kind of mindless & arbitrary, but luckily mindless & arbitrary are two attributes of genre cinema I can usually get behind. Basically what I’m saying is I knew approximately how I was going to feel about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies before I even got to the theater and I suspect most people are in the same boat. The film itself did little to exceed or subvert expectation, but honestly I was fine with that.

As you might expect with a literary adaptation where zombies are air-dropped into a classical work, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies somehow keeps its Jane Austen plot & its zombie mayhem somewhat separate. Early scenes show young maidens cleaning guns instead of sewing (or something similarly ladylike) & including knives in their garters & corsets dress-up montages, but for the most part its polite society parlor drama & the zombie killing rampages mix about as well as oil & water. The film has fun with genre-bending lines like “Zombies or no zombies, all women must think of marriage, Lizzie” & “I don’t know which I admire more: your strength as a warrior or your resolve as a woman,” but its two plot lines rarely bleed together in a satisfying way. On one hand you have a small gang of unmarried sisters trying to land wealthy beaus while staying true to themselves. Happening almost entirely somewhere else: the zombie apocalypse & an alternate history of England as a country. The film’s line of horror comedy is mostly an occasional interjection that disrupts these dueling plot lines. For a film with such a winking joke of a premise Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes both ends of its titular mashup surprisingly seriously.

There is exactly one thing that stuck surprisingly  astute with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a Jane Austen adaptation. One thing the film does very well is to bring attention to the way Austen’s characters are viciously combative in their hushed, “polite” conversation. During scenes that might’ve played as subtle verbal sparring on the page are accompanied here by not-subtle-at-all literal sparring. For each verbal jab someone throws at their societal opponent a corresponding jab is thrown with a fist. A perpetually slumming-it Charles Dance (who now has a history of working in this realm thanks to Victor Frankenstein & Dracula Untold) plays the girls’ paterfamilias & describes his progeny as “our warrior daughters”. It’s true that the girls were already warriors in the zombieless Jane Austen source material, but their modes of violence & agency were a little less easily detectable. God help any desperate high school student who tries to pass an exam on Pride and Prejudice by watching this film, but the thematically obtuse might get a better understanding of the novel’s modes of societal combat by watching it play out visually on the screen.

That small insight aside, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is mostly a silly endeavor, never entirely serious about engaging with its source material in any sincere way. It’s also not all that committed to the zombie end of its premise. The monster make-up is solidly on point, but the film shies away from the gore end of the genre that made folks like George Romero & Peter Jackson masters of the form. Hardcore Pride and Prejudice fans and hardcore zombie movie fans are both likely to find plenty to gripe about here, since the film splits its time between both halves without  ever fully committing to either. The ideal audience, then? I’d say folks easily impressed by costume dramas who wouldn’t mind a little zombie mayhem peppering the genre for superfluous flavor are most likely to enjoy themselves. Pride and Prejudice fans are likely to be annoyed by how the novel’s feminist themes are cheapened by being boiled down to sexy women playing with weapons in complicated underwear. Zombie creature feature nerds are likely to be bummed by how the genre’s go-for-broke gore has been mostly supplanted by bodice-heaving romance. Personally, I took perverse pleasure in both of those aspects (especially the part about the complicated underwear; can’t help myself). For me, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ worst crimes are being a little overlong & having the gall to flash back to earlier scenes from within its own film in an especially-lazy letter-reading scene. For a film that sets the bar so low & expectations so specific in its very title & premise, those are two faults I’m more than willing to forgive.

Side note: I love how insular casting in the costume drama/fantasy cinema world can be. Besides Game of Thrones‘ Charles Dance & Lena Headey, there’s Lily James of Downton Abbey & Cinderella, Maleficent‘s Sam Riley, Noah‘s Douglas Booth, and (my personal favorite) Boardwalk Empire‘s Jack Huston. I guess you could include Doctor Who‘s Matt Smith in there as well, given that series’ time-jumping aspects. I’m sure for the actors this kind of typecasting can be an annoyance, but as an audience I find it oddly fascinating.

-Brandon Ledet

Cursed (2005)

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fourstar

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Full disclosure: I had pretty much completely given up on being open-minded about anything Wes Craven had directed post-Scream. Despite a deep love & appreciation for the meta horror of both Scream & New Nightmare and the childlike loopiness of The People Under the Stairs, I just never bothered to venture into Craven’s career post-1996. I think this may have been a combined problem of not wanting to risk ruining the good vibes I got from Scream with what could be diminished returns (and nu metal vibes) in its three sequels & associating his name too closely with dire production credits like Wes Craven Presents Wishmaster & Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000. Despite hearing good things about the in-flight thriller Red Eye, my entry point for post-Scream Craven wound up being the 2005 werewolf horror comedy Cursed. It turns out my concerns were mostly unfounded. Craven had certainly veered to a much lighter tone in this outing than the hard-to-stomach horror of early films like Last House on the Left & The Hills Have Eyes (thank God) & some of the film’s early 2000s CGI has aged a tad poorly, but for the most part Cursed is a genuinely entertaining creature feature with a pleasant tonal balance between humor & violence. Cursed is, in a simple phrase, good, dumb fun. That’s all I can ask for from any director, honestly, so now I’m deeply curious about what other late-career Craven gems I may have overlooked.

Part of what frees Cursed from feeling like a run-of-the-mill werewolf picture is that it spreads its story so thin across so many different creatures that it feels more like a pastiche than a direct genre film. A typical werewolf movie will follow the gradual transformation of one painfully conflicted protagonist/antagonist as they discover the world of werewolfdom. Cursed, on the other hand, gets greedy and follows the monster movie mayhem of at least four different wolves. It at first teases itself to be a classic predatory-wolf-terrorizes-a-local-population (Los Angeles, in this case) story, but then that wolf ends up infecting several other innocents. These leaves room for a proto-Twilight supernatural romance, a beastly catfight centered on petty jealousies, and (most amusingly of all) an unofficial Teen Wolf III situation where an unpopular student uses his werewolf abilities to excel at high school wrestling (as opposed to the basketball & boxing victories of the first two Teen Wolves). Just in case you might mistakenly assume that this all-inclusive tour of werewolves past were at all accidental, the film makes room for a wax museum version of Lon Cheney’s Wolf Man character to make a posthumous cameo. Cursed is well versed in its lycanthropic history & it wants you to know it.

At first it’s difficult to tell for sure if Cursed is asking to be taken seriously or if it wants to play as a horror comedy. Its monster movie mayhem is never gore-obsessed, but it can be gruesome at times, especially in an early scene involving victims trapped in an overturned car. When about a third of the way into the picture the aforementioned teen wolf is testing out his newfound abilities by howling at the moon with a pack of stray dogs, however, it’s pretty clear the film is supposed to operating within a certain sense of morbid humor. Much like its sleek-goth look, the film’s comedic/horrific tone calls back to late 90s titles like The Faculty, Idle Hands, and (duh) Ginger Snaps in a way that manages to feel way more charming than outdated. When our howling teen wolf is caught googling lycanthropes, his sister jokes, “Why can’t you just download porn like other teenage boys?” Later, another woman muses “There’s no such thing as safe sex with a werewolf.” By the time the film stages its climax at a strange nightclub/event hall hybrid that doubles as a haunted house with funhouse mirrors and a wax figurine “Diva Room” for statues of folks like Madonna, Cher, and Xena: Warrior Princess, the film proves itself to be an enjoyably silly, bloodsoaked work of deadpan horror comedy.

What personally struck me most while watching Cursed was its ludicrously stacked cast of welcome faces. Joining the always-delightful Christina Ricci were forgotten early 00s personalities like Dawson Creek‘s Joshua Jackson, Gilmore Girls‘ Milo Ventimiglia, Mya, Craig Kilborn, and (briefly) Lance Bass. Before-his-time Jesse Eisenberg has a lot of fun with the howlin’/wrasslin’/werewolf-Googlin’ teen protagonist (although his straightened hair in the film was a huge stylistic mistake) and there are similar early glimpses of Nick Offerman in a bit role as well as three actors from Arrested Development: Scott Baoi (as himself), Portia de Rossi, and Judy Greer. If I had to single out a most valuable player here (besides maybe the down-for-whatever Eisenberg) it’d have to be Judy Greer. She rarely gets much of a chance to shine (see, for instance, her diminished role in Jurrassic World) and Cursed really allows her to run wild with an Ice Bitch role you can tell she had a lot of fun sinking her teeth into. I mean, she really chewed the scenery. Seriously, she ate up the compe . . . you get the picture.

I wouldn’t rank Cursed up there with Wes Craven’s best or anything like that, but I don’t think the director was aiming for that kind of accolade with this film anyway. Cursed finds Craven relaxed, having fun, and paying tribute to the monster movies he grew up loving. Throw in a time capsule cast & some classic werewolf puppetry/costuming from special effects master & John Landis collaborator Rick Baker (when the film isn’t indulging in ill-advised CGI) and you have a perfectly enjoyable midnight monster movie pastiche. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed a straight-forward Teen Wolf III high school wrestling picture in its place.

-Brandon Ledet

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

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fourhalfstar

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Four films into the Roger Corman-produced “Massacre” collection & I feel like my efforts have finally payed off in a significant way. Sorority House Massacre was a delightfully dreamlike slasher, but it was cheap & derivative in a way that kept it from achieving anything too special. The Slumber Party Massacre was a by-the-numbers genre exercise with brief flashes of feminist-bent satire that were exciting, but mostly lost somewhere in their translation from script to screen. Sorority House Massacre II bridged the two properties, mixing & confusing the plots of the two original features to the point where no sense could be made of their central mythology (which, I assure you, was never intended to be shared). Slumber Party Massacre II, thankfully, brings a sense of purpose & unique charm to the (very loosely connected, if connected at all) Massacre franchise. It’s the first film of the series I’ve seen that felt like something truly special, the exact kind of bonkers midnight monster schlock that’s so mindlessly trashy & gratuitous that it approaches high art.

Courtney, the younger sister of one of the few nubile survivors of the original Slumber Party Massacre, ditches visiting her traumatized sibling in the hospital (“But Mom! It’s my birthday! I don’t wanna go to a mental hospital!”) in order to practice for The Big Dance with her all-girl New Wave garage band an at unsupervised (and unfurnished) condo. Of course, a group of goofball boys crash the party in order to make out & cause mischief. Despite warnings from her sister (who speaks to her through nightmares) to not “go all the way”, Courtney does the deed with the hunkiest of the bonehead beaus anyway, an act that releases a killer sex demon bent on killing everyone in the condo (seriously). Before having sex, Courtney falls into a routine of seeing nightmare images that recall the loopy flashbacks I enjoyed so much in Sorority House Massacre, but pushed to a much goofier extreme (severed hand sandwiches, killer raw chicken, a mutant zit spewing a river of puss, etc.) only to have everything snap back to normal when she calls for help. Her buddy/drummer asks, “Are you on drugs or something?” and Courtney responds with a perfect, gravely serious deadpan, “I wish I was, Sally.” It isn’t until after she has sex that these horrors become “real” & Slumber Party Massacre II devolves into supernatural horror/screwball comedy antics.

Slumber Party Massacre II gets everything right on its approach to slasher-driven mayhem. The origins & specifics of its killer rock n’ roll sex demon are just flat out ignored. All you know, really, is that he kinda looks like Andrew Dice Clay (although I’m sure they were aiming for Elvis) with a Dracula collar on his leather jacket & a gigantic power drill extending from the neck of his electric guitar (or “axe” in 80s speak). He mercilessly disembowels & impales teen victims on his monstrously phallic weapon/musical instrument all while shredding hot licks & doling out generic rock ‘n roll phrases like “This is dedicated to the one I love” & “C’mon baby, light my fire” before each kill. The best part is that this irreverent killer antagonist, although supernatural & unexplained, feels clearly purposeful. He not only plays directly into the slasher genres teen sex = instant death trope in a hilariously exaggerated way, he also stands as a perfect fit for the film’s overall aesthetic of a dirt cheap MTV relic. The film’s nightmare sequences & playful girlishness intentionally mimic/mock cheap music videos (right down to the smoke machine & bare bones sets) so it makes perfect sense that the killer would be a rock video knockoff with a phallic guitar murder weapon. Early in the film the girl band dreams of big success in ambitious statements like “Some day we’re going to be in movies & rock videos & everything,” and “MTV here we come!” What they didn’t expect is that MTV would come to them, wielding a gigantic power drill & an endless abundance of cheesy rock ‘n roll one-liners. All this & the camera taking the POV of a television while the girls watch the sister-Corman production (and flawless masterpiece) Rock ‘N Roll High School & dance around the living room in their undies (or less).

There are isolated moments that made the three Massacre films I had watched prior feel occasionally worthwhile, but Slumber Party Massacre II puts them all to shame. Written & directed by Deborah Brock, Slumber Party Massacre II includes everything recommendable in the earlier films, only pushed to their most exaggerated extremes. Its kills are bloodier. Its self-parody is funnier. Its nudity is more enticing. Its characters & dialogue, although awful, are far from memorable. I even have favorite characters in this film (a power couple of the impossibly attractive/horny Sheila & the perfect cad/Adam DeVine prototype T.J.) when I couldn’t name you a single character in any of the Massacre films I had watched before. So far in this franchise I’ve been championing Sorority House Massacre as a favorite due to its surprisingly strong femininity (for a slasher, anyway) & loopy dream/deja vu imagery. Slumber Party Massacre II outdoes it on both counts. The music video nightmare imagery is far more plentiful/bizarre than anything to be found in Sorority House Massacre & its mock sexiness (although it mimics male masturbation fantasies like pillow fights & car washes for a comical effect; at one point some male lookers-on exclaim “I didn’t know girls really did this stuff!”) is far more playfully feminine in an authentically girly way. It even achieves all this without airlifting its killer from John Carpenter’s Halloween with little to no changes in his backstory the way Sorority House Massacre does, opting instead to bother creating its own monster to terrorize its buxom, half-dressed teens (R.I.P. Sheila). Barring the highly unlikely event that Slumber Party Massacre 3 is an even better turn for the franchise it feels safe to say that this film is the most worth tracking down under the “Massacre” imprint. More importantly, it’s one of the most deliriously fun VHS era slashers I’ve ever seen, within or without the franchise. I highly recommend checking it out no matter how much you care about the “Massacre” films as an enterprise.

– Brandon Ledet

Attack the Block (2011)

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fourhalfstar

Are we all pretty much done talking about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens at this point? If so, please forgive me for the following preamble. One of the most exciting aspects of the film for me was the introduction of relative newcomers Daisy Ridley as the oddly-controversial Rey & John Boyega as the absurdly affable Finn. They both do an excellent job of holding down the protagonist end of the film in a remarkably deft tag team effort for two actors who aren’t too used to headlining multi-million dollar tentpole epics. More astute sci-fi fans might not have been as surprised as myself by Boyega’s part in that effort, though, given that he already had put in a rewarding lead performance in a deliriously fun action film a few years prior to The Force Awakens. Attack the Block finds John Boyega in a much quieter, more stoic leading role than he’s asked to play with Finn (who is often employed as comic relief), but even as a babyfaced teenager he was prepared to prove himself to be leading man material.

As stoic & as straight-faced as Boyega plays its protagonist, Moses, Attack the Block is anything but a grim horror picture. An urban sci-fi horror comedy about an alien invasion that targets the unlikely ground zero of a housing project in London, Attack the Block is a wildly fun creature feature with an exceptional knack for practical effects monster design & sleek music video aesthetic. Its ragtag group of barely-out-of-diapers youngsters that fend off the otherworldly invaders are an amusing gang of pothead ruffians (the kind that would inspire Liz Lemon to involuntarily shout “youths!”), mostly harmless in their overly-macho, self-aggrandizing indulgence in vulgarity & hip-hop swagger. Their accents border on being incomprehensible for an American outsider such as myself, but that foreign aspect can also be insanely charming, recalling the early 2000s raps of Dizzee Rascal & The Streets. Even more incomprehensible are the alien beasts that attack these kids. Kinda bearish, kinda canine in nature, these creatures are too dark to get a good look at, unless they’re baring their glow-in-the-dark fangs. The audience isn’t alone in not knowing what to make of the aliens. They’re described most accurately described in the film as “big alien gorilla wolf motherfuckers” & “Maybe there was a party at the zoo and a monkey fucked a fish?”. The difficult-to-pin-down creature design of the aliens pairs nicely with the highly specific cultural context of their victims & the film’s overall silly horror comedy tone to make for a remarkably memorable & unique picture.

Attack the Block turns a small cast & a limited budget into something truly special, a trick that can only be pulled off by fans of the genre it works in. Indeed, the film even goes as far as to shout out properties like Gremlins, Ghostbusters, and Pokemon by name, not to mention the close involvement of Nick Frost & the producers of the cult favorite Shaun of the Dead. The budget might be somewhat limited, but the film pulls a remarkably unique visual language from such simple visual sources as fireworks, smoke, swords, and motor scooters. What’s more important, though, is that it nails the monster attacks aspect of its appeal, which are plentiful  without being overly gore-heavy (despite a stray decapitation or throat-tearing here or there). And the film gets major bonus points for achieving most of this mayhem with practical effects, a minimal amount of CGI seamlessly mixed in for bare bones support.

There are plenty of reasons for sci-fi & horror fans to give Attack the Block a solid chance. It’s a perfectly crafted little midnight monster movie, one with a charming cast of young’ns, a wicked sense of humor, and some top shelf creature feature mayhem. The film doesn’t need John Boyega’s teenage presence to be worthy of a retroactive recommendation & reappraisal, but that doesn’t hurt either. In just two films, Boyega has carved out a nice little name for himself in genre-cinema. If you enjoyed his turn as Finn in The Force Awakens, you should definitely check out his earlier work in Attack the Block. The truth is, though, that you should check out Attack the Block even if you hated The Force Awakens. It’s an undeniable crowdpleaser, a commendable entry in the horror comedy genre that will endure long after the novelty of seeing a babyfaced Boyega in action wears off.

-Brandon Ledet

Krampus (2015)

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fourhalfstar

When I first became aware of Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, I was ecstatic because I absolutely love Christmas horror films (Silent Night, Deadly Night, Gremlins, Santa’s Slay, etc.). What’s not to love about a film based on what is essentially the opposite of Santa? A demon that goes around punishing little brats that misbehave sounds like a good time to me. I got even more excited when I found out that Toni Collette, my all-time favorite actress, was playing a lead role in the film. This was a movie made for me, so needless to say, I had pretty high expectations. Thankfully, Krampus did not disappoint.

Other than it being a horror film about a murderous Christmas beast, one of the weirdest things about Krampus is that it made it to the big screen. Most Christmas horror movies go straight to DVD. I can’t even remember the last time a Christmas horror film was in theaters. It may have been the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, but I’m not quite sure. Anyway, it’s always a good sign when a campy movie makes it to theaters. Krampus brought in over $16,000,000 on its opening weekend, which is pretty impressive considering its campy reputation. Bad taste is alive and well!

The film begins with a hilarious but disturbingly truthful Black Friday scene that will give you all the feels. Bing Crosby’s “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas” plays as a mob of greedy customers wreak havoc on a retail store. The audience in the movie theater gave out a few good laughs for this part, but a good bit of the crowd had on their “ain’t it the truth” face. Among the people in the retail store are the film’s main characters: husband/wife duo Tom (Adam Scott) and Sara (Toni Collette) and their 10-year-old son, Max (Emjay Anthony).

Max is old enough to know that Santa is not real, but there’s a part of him that just can’t give up on believing in Santa. It’s as though his belief in Santa represents his want to have a normal, enjoyable holiday with his family. Max’s German grandmother (Krista Stadler) is very supportive of his belief, and she encourages him to write a letter to Santa. He eventually becomes upset and rips up his Santa letter, throwing the pieces out of his bedroom window. By doing this, he unintentionally summons Krampus, but Krampus does not arrive to Max’s home alone. He brings a couple of demonic toys, gingerbread men, and elves with him, and they do most of the dirty work. And by “dirty work,” I mean that they execute most of the murders. The evil elves and possessed toys were actually pretty frightening, but the demonic gingerbread men were totally unnecessary. Actually, I can honestly say that they were the only reason I didn’t give this movie five stars. They were terrible! And not even in the good way.

Something that I noticed in Krampus was the abundance of tongue action. One of the demonic toys, which is an angel doll, uses its tongue while it attacks Sarah. This really gross, super thin tongue comes out of this creepy toy’s mouth, and it’s absolutely terrifying. Also, Krampus has a weird tongue thing going on as well. When he comes face to face with Max, he has a tongue very similar to the angel doll, and he licks the poor kid’s face. While all this was going on, I couldn’t help but think of Beth Grant tonguing that mannequin in September’s Movie of the Month, The Boyfriend School.

Krampus is definitely going into my traditional Christmas watchlist, along with Home Alone, A Christmas Story, and Miracle on 34th Street. It’s got the perfect balance of comedy and horror. There are times where you’ll be crying from laughter, but there will be times that you’ll come close to peeing your pants from fear.

-Britnee Lombas

Victor Frankenstein (2015)

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fourstar

“You know their story . . .”

In the press/apology tour for Victor Frankenstein (critics have not been kind), director Paul McGuigan has been quoted as saying that Mary Shelly’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is “dull as dishwater“, not a surprising sentiment in light of how his film approaches its source material. Victor Frankenstein has the same reverence for Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has for its Brothers Grimm origins. It’s so distanced from the novel, in fact, that I didn’t spot a single mention given to Mary Shelly in the final credits. Not even a “characters by” shout-out. Oddly enough, I think it’s that exact flippant approach to the now classic horror tale that makes the film an enjoyable (and mostly intentional) camp fest. Well, that & over-the-top performances from James McAvoy as the mad scientist Frankenstein, Daniel Radcliffe as the groveling Igor, and Andrew Scott as a soft spoken police inspector on a mission from God.

At first, it seems as though Victor Frankenstein doesn’t bring any new ideas to the table for a property that’s been already adapted for the screen roughly 50,000 times (including last year’s dismal I, Frankenstein). McAvoy’s feverish, spit-flinging performance is inspired in terms of camp value, but the movie’s early declarations like, “Life is temporary, so why should death be any different?” and “The world remembers the monster, but not the man . . , But sometimes the monster is the man,” aren’t particularly fresh, but rather a stitched-together homunculus made of old leftover movie parts. Eventually, however, a clear narrative appears. As the God-fearing police investigator starts butting heads with Frankenstein, it becomes clear that the film is a campy battle between Atheism vs. Christianity, Science vs. Faith. The policeman is incensed that the mad scientist is on a mission “to create life in direct, violent action against God,” claiming that he’s “in allegiance with Satan.” Frankenstein snaps back, “There is no Satan, no God, no me.” This aspect of the film is obsessively explored to the point that is plays as 100% sincere, but ultimately feels just as ridiculous as any of its outright horror comedy gags.

Half-cooked philosophy aside, there’s plenty of goofy charms that make the film surprisingly enjoyable as a camp fest. An early origin story for Igor that features Harry Potter crouched over in heavy clown make-up works as literal bread & circuses. Moving the narrative from a remote castle to the inner city gives it a distinct Tim Burton tone, particularly the movie Sweeney Todd. The film’s costume design is gorgeous (especially in the love interest & Downton Abbey vet Jessica Brown Findlay’s dresses & McAvoy’s vests), but the rest of the imagery is absurdly nasty. Grotesque practical effects surrounding bodily horror like eyes & other organs suspended in jars, steam punk medical tools, abscess fluid, and an early Frankenstein monster prototype (a chimp-esque “meat sculpture” homunculus made of dead animal parts) are all pitch perfect in their absurdity. The actual Frankenstein monster almost feels like a last-minute afterthought, but is ultimately satisfying in its design, looking like a mutant pro wrestler or Goro, the big boss character from Mortal Kombat, except with extra internal organs instead of extra limbs. Ultimately, though, it’s the over-the-top acting of its three heads that sell the movie as an absurdist slice of mindless entertainment.

It’s difficult to say if this was an intentional element to the movie’s  Max Landis screenplay, but the film also has an interesting level of homosexual subtext in the relationship between Igor & his master, which manifests both in subtle moments of body language & romantic jealousy as well as more obvious moments like when Frankenstein shouts about sperm in the only scene where he’s shown conversing with women. Again, it’s difficult to tell if this was Landis’ screenplay or McAvoy & Radcliffe’s performances in action, but it’s just another element in play to a surprisingly enjoyable film with an already-negative reputation due to its indifference for its source material & flights of ugly frivolity. Victor Frankenstein‘s latent homosexuality (which really does stretch just beyond the bounds of bromance), laughable atheism, and grotesque body humor all play like they were written in a late-night, whiskey-fuelled stupor, the same way the film’s monster was constructed by the titular mad scientist drunk & his perpetually terrified consort.  I know I’m alone here, but my only complaint about this film is that it could’ve pushed its more  ridiculous territory even further from Mary Shelly’s original vision, with Victor planting wet kisses on Igor’s cheeks & Rocky Horror‘s “In just seven days, I can make you a man . . .” blaring on the soundtrack.

-Brandon Ledet