This review was written as part of the Final Girl Film Club.

[WARNING: I can't be troubled with trying to withhold spoilers. We've got bigger fish to fry.]

“Lifeforce” doesn’t aspire to be anything surreal, but it is one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. Not so much because of what’s in the movie, but because of what was left out.

Director Tobe Hooper, who’d blown people’s minds a decade before with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, had just come off “Poltergeist” in 1982. Rumors that producer Spielberg had guided Hooper’s hand were refuted, but also made a lot of sense. Really – You watch “TCM”, “The Funhouse”, and “Poltergeist” back to back to back and then tell me which one doesn’t belong. My guess is you’ll choose that one that is “E.T”, but with ghosts. read more »

This review was written as a part of the Final Girl Film Club

[WARNING: I would say this review contains SPOILERS - I pretty much take you through the whole thing - but if you've already read the title of the movie, than there's nothing much to spoil, so...]

This week, Final Girl picked ‘The Devil’s Daughter’, a made-for-TV movie from 1973. Now I don’t remember watching made-for-TV movies in 1973, but then I wasn’t alive, which places me just outside the desired demographic. So I read up on ‘em.

In the early 60s, made-for-TV movies were introduced to television audiences. There had been movies on TV before, of course – even made especially for it. But it was these made-for-TV movies that were specifically sold as being just like the movies you’d see in the theater, except that you could watch them in the comfort of your own home. At one time, these were prestige pieces. And to make the made-for-TV movies as much like Hollywood movies as possible, they were modeled on other, successful movies and ripped off for all they were worth. read more »

This review was written as part of the Final Girl Film Club

[WARNING: Welcome to spoiler city.]

Some movies make it all look easy. They were born into rich families, maybe. Or they were born with good looks. Brains. Natural athletic ability. Normal movies have to work and work just to be adequate. But there is a race of super movies that achieve greatness with ease.

I believe that “Near Dark” is one of those movies. read more »

This review was written as part of the Final Girl Film Club.

WARNING: Here there be spoilers, ya’ll.

In the opening minutes of ‘Scarecrows’, the character of Bert is running for his life from a team of heavily armed bank robbers when the truck he is driving stalls. He gets out to check the engine and finds that there is, in fact, no engine to check. He is understandably befuddled by this turn of events and asks himself “What is this? Some kind of a fucking joke?”

Oh, but if only it was a joke, Bert, it would have been an amazing joke – because who, exactly, could set up an engine-less jalopy in the middle of nowhere just so they could pull a zinger – and succeed? read more »

The following review is written as part of the Final Girl Film Club.

Zombie knows that we know that he knows that we know everything about ‘Halloween’. And as much as Zombie has made ‘Halloween’ his own, he can’t escape the fact that every frame is a reference to the original. So he takes the same story and opens a different window on it, sets up his camera in some different places (most of the time) and expands the universe of Michael Myers… somewhat. See, for all the universe expanding, there is an equal measure of direct lifts from the original ‘Halloween’ that serve to be-suck what good stuff he’s pulled together.

And I’ll probably go all SPOILERS on you, so stop reading if you care.

The whole she-bang starts off with a REALLY shrill, cliché white trash family dynamic that’s about as off-putting as Michael’s first major action of the movie, which happens at about the same time. So you’ve got this terribly written scene in the kitchen with a lot of bad swears and screaming vs. a great sequence which is handled with taste and restraint. It’s suggested, very short, very economical. It just plays out and it stays with you.

This is where most of the universe expansion comes into play, watching the young Michael grow up, filling in the blanks created by Loomis’ lines in the original:

LOOMIS
…I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left, no conscience, no reason, no understanding, in even the most rudimentary sense, of life or death or right or wrong. I met this six-year-old boy with a blank, cold emotionless face and the blackest of eyes, the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and another seven trying to keep him locked away when I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely, simply evil.

Reading over this now, I realize Zombie didn’t follow this to the letter and thank God he didn’t. It would’ve been painfully boring. It’s a great line for the original, because the original treated Michael like death itself, like a plague, like the boogie man. He had no reason or backstory or motive. This movie, not so much. Michael is a person here. Not a better person, mind you, but he’s human.

But lo, for then I was doubly vexed to find that all the talk of the “boogie man” was left in. At first I thought it was because this movie was sort of ‘Halloween’ through the looking glass – the same story, but from Michael’s point of view. So all the same stuff happens, except now we watch Michael the killing man instead of Michael the killing machine.

But even that’s not true and that’s why I’ve chasing this review around like the million blind kittens it is. If this was truly from Michael’s point of view, then we wouldn’t see the scenes that set up Laurie and her friends; we wouldn’t see Loomis go to Sheriff Brackett and try to convince him that evil has come to his little hamlet. If these direct lifts were just reminders, wouldn’t Zombie, who has come up with so much new stuff here, at least put a new spin on things? I’m thinking along the lines of ‘Back to the Future II’ (and who isn’t, I wonder?)

It feels an awful lot like these scenes are in the movie purely for the fans, to provide some kind of nostalgic kick. Or maybe Sherrie Moon called Rob to bed, so he jotted down “Then they do what happened in the original.” There’s no real difference outside of the distressed look and it feels hackish.

For example:

It’s difficult to tell which movie this still came from and that’s a shame. Remakes like “Amityville Horror” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” are hack jobs and never tried to be anything but. They’re old furniture with a new coat of Michael Bay stain. Zombie’s gone to the trouble rebuilding the chair, but used some of the old upholstery.

And then there’s the ending, one of the best endings of a horror movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Scout Taylor-Compton, absolutely bland as Laurie Strode, delivers the line you’ve heard a million times – “Was that the boogie man?” – and then the ending begins. There’s a connection Michael feels with his younger sister, Laurie, and it plays out nicely in the scene in the basement. That goes badly and there’s a good 5 or 6 minutes of cat-and-mouse that feels beneath this movie, like something out of one of the other sequels. But then it comes down to Laurie, Michael and a gun. That’s when Zombie gives me the ending I’ve been wanting to see since I saw the first ‘Scream’. It’s hard to describe how pitch perfect this last moment is, but I’ll probably rent this just to see it again. And best of all, there’s no obvious sequel suggested – this movie leaves us almost zero options. And that’s a big plus right there.

Also on the plus side – Zombie takes all of this very seriously and manages to steer well clear of pretentiousness. He really hit a sweet spot here. And the young Michael is a great casting choice – with his weird moon face and awkward mop of blonde hair. Sherrie Moon Zombie is the best she’s ever been. I felt a little embarrassed watching her in ‘The Devil’s Rejects’, sort of feeling like, ya know, okay – the director’s wife is pretty and she wants to be in movies. But here she owns this part purty dang hard. You’ve also got that mask, that is introduced a little awkwardly, but when it is found later and is starting to disintegrate – what a great look. Then there’s Danielle Harris, completely wasted as Annie and should’ve so obviously played Laurie.

In the end, it’s a fine movie, easily the best of Zombie’s. Also easily the best of the recent remakes. And probably the second best of the ‘Halloween’ series. If only more filmmakers would follow in Zombie’s footsteps. Hopefully, ‘Halloween’s huge opening will cause studio heads to ask for remakes that change things up, in which case Rob Zombie will be my number one horror hero.

The following review is written as part of the Final Girl Film Club.

Somewhere inside the movie “John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness” is the moment when the John Carpenter who made “Halloween” ends and the John Carpenter who made “Ghosts of Mars” begins. I’m not positive what that moment is, but it involves this guy:

And that’s not to say Jameson Parker, playing college student Brian Marsh, is a poor actor. Instead, he exemplifies everything that’s right and wrong about “Prince of Darkness”. On the right side, he’s a low key, believable dude, hip enough to gain our sympathy and square enough to be a one of a handful collegiate, meta-physics nerds. On the wrong side, the mustache. Porn-era facial hair is always welcome in a B-grade horror movie, but this story aspires to something better that it never really becomes.

[WARNING: This review will spoil just about everything.]

The story breaks down like this: A priest dies, leaving behind a box with a key inside. The key is passed to Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance, of course), who also looks through the priest’s diary (not cool, Loomis). In it are writings that portend a coming evil – “The sleeper awakens.” and “I have witnessed His stirrings.”, etc. Why the priest must wax poetic and can’t just write “The devil is coming! Satan, I’m talking about. Run!” I’m not sure, but it does move the plot along.

Father Loomis heads to the nearby college where Professor Birack is holding court with his class, talking about how logic breaks down at the sub-atomic level and while I want to write “blah-dy, blah-dy, blah” at the end of this sentence, I have to admit that the conversation had me somewhat intrigued. It was a simple set up, I guess; the idea that what we perceive as time and space isn’t necessarily true and that there are plenty of things we don’t understand going on under our noses all the time. Neat.

So Loomis talks to Birack about the key, the priest, the sleeper awakening and so on, and the two head to the church where our dead, poetic priest used to hang. It’s filled with a million candles, a dusty ol’ book of important writings, and a big tube of swirly green evil.

Next thing you know, Birack rounds up some students (including Brian and totally hot science-nerd Catherine (who DO IT almost immediately), each with their own area of expertise in the various sciences and moves them into the church to investigate. Computers are set up, technical jargon is thrown around, and we discover that there are two – count ‘em, TWO – members of great 80s TV – Parker (seen above) of ‘Simon & Simon’ fame, and Thom Bray, known to most people as the “Boz” from ‘Riptide’. Sweet.

A translation of the big ol’ dusty book reveals passages much more straightforward than the dead priest could probably handle – “And the Prince of Darkness was Himself sealed, that old life, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” – and characters exchange worried looks. Worms crawl up windows. More worried looks. Then the “Boz” get impaled on a broken bicycle by Alice Cooper (followed around by an eerie army of the homeless) and all hell starts to break loose. A girl is possessed by devil water and starts killing her classmates. A bearded dude says the whole operation is “caca” – seriously, he says “caca” – then gets knifed about 50 times by a bag lady. Somewhere in here, Brian and Catherine continue to make googly eyes at each other.

Through all these rote (though well handled) 80s horror hijinx, we get one sweet morsel of creativity – the dreams. Our heroes start having dreams that look like a video of the front of the church. In the doorway is a figure, persumably Satan or someone similarly evil, and a voice warns that this is an image of what is to come, that this transmission had to be sent as a dream.

Wow.

Video footage of the devil sent through time to your dreams is way, way cool. Worms on windows and dudes saying “caca” is effin’ ridiculous.

Things progress from here in a fairly predictable manner – more people are possessed, more people die and the students become increasingly convinced that they’re dealing with something big and evil. Then comes one of my favorite lines in the movie – “Caca” guy comes back from the dead as a suit filled with bugs and says this – “I have a message for you. You’re not going to like it.” What an awesome understatement.

More water gets squirted around, one lady turns into sort of the lead evil character and develops a serious bout of pizza face and… man… I start getting bored at this point. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I feel like the movie isn’t building on anything. I feel like maybe we’ve reached that sub-atomic level of filmmaking at this point, and all logic has broken down. Mirrors become the portal from which whatever it is is going to enter our world. All the unpossessed people are fighting possessed people. And Pizza Face reaches into a big mirror and starts pulling out a big demonic hand. Catherine sees this and loses it, blitzing evil through the mirror, back into its own dimension.

And after 100 or so minutes of veering madly from terrible lameness to super cool creep out, we come upon the moment that, I think, used up all that Carpenter had left in his big bag of awesome – Father Loomis hurls an ax at the mirror, smashing it. Then on the other side of the mirror, we see this:

Catherine, reaching back for the light of the real world as it flickers out and leaves her on the other side, forever. It is one of the eeriest images in film and I wonder now if this image wasn’t the image in Carpenter’s head when he first came up with this whole idea. It would make sense – it is so strong it nearly stands up all on its own. In most movies I feel like they wouldn’t have even bothered with this shot. She would’ve just disappeared never to be seen again and we would sympathize with Brian for losing his girl (which would be totally beside the point, but all about the usual formula (which the movie slips into anyway in its last two scenes)).

Finally, the movie winds down, showing the dream/video again, only this time the form in the doorway is Catherine. I’m not sure if that means she’s saved us (I think so) or if now she is the embodiment of evil (why not?). Then there are a couple of jump scares and we’re off into the credits.

There’s a lot that’s predictable and sloppy about “Prince of Darkness”, but there’s plenty that still seems fresh, too. I’ve seen this movie probably 4 or 5 times since I was a kid and each time I expect it to be better than it is. Of course, it’s not, but maybe someday if I ever reach that sub-atomic level of watching movies, then blah-dy, blah-dy, blah.

So there’s this thing called the Final Girl Film Club. You can read all about it at Final Girl or you can read about in the next sentence: our founder, Stacie Ponder, picks a horror movie. We all watch and review. What fun! What? Fun? Yes!

This week we watched ‘Visiting Hours’, starring one of our most under-appreciated horror movie heavies of all time, Michael Ironside. I don’t care that Shatner was also in the movie and I can barely remember who the woman was. We’re talking ol’ Ironside. Even in a movie based on material this threadbare, he shines like the sun.

To be honest, I really didn’t follow the movie so well, as it didn’t so much hold my attention. And let me balance that by saying I have an affinity for really long, slow movies (2001, Once Upon a Time in the West), so for a movie to not hold my interest, it’s gotta be lacking something, if not a truckload of somethings. But the story goes something like this: a woman, a television personality, is coming out hard on spousal abuse, and Ironside don’t like that none. So he attacks her, putting her in the hospital, then spends the rest of the movie trying to finish her off.

This might even be a good basic premise except for one big problem: the woman is in that hospital for most of the movie. So you have a movie in which Ironside is getting into the hospital, almost killing her, but then being foiled. This seems to happen 1,700 times. I wasn’t completely clear on Ironside’s motivation to kill the woman, though flashbacks alluded to him being sexually molested as a child, which was probably still a pretty fresh idea in 1982. But now? Not so much. It actually seemed kinda funny. And with Ironside spewing intensity all over the screen, who needs this backstory? Just let him be the symbol of the male ego bruised to the point of homicidal brutality. What’s wrong with that? But no. We have to watch flashbacks. Flashbacks that don’t make the movie one iota scarier.

Still… Ironside. You can’t argue with Ironside.

I’d seen this box art in rental stores for years and always assumed that it was about a haunted hospital of some kind. To find out that the actual movie behind that great poster is just a scary Lifetime movie is worse than disappointment. It feels like injustice. Can you make a new movie and use a poster from another film? If not, why not? Plots are re-used with absolute abandon.

To cop Final Girl’s scoring system, I give this movie 4 out of 10 Shatner’s Eating Ice Creams.

Hmmm… I’m not so good at the scoring yet, I think.

Now go read the Girl’s review.

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My car was stolen over the weekend. And now I’m paranoid about everything. Trust no one!

Also, buy The Club.