Horror movies has been around for almost as long as movies have been made. Before looking at the horror movie it may be best to look into horror in literature. Knowing this can help our understanding of horror films and where they come from.

Horror in literature left a legacy that helped to propel this genre into films. If there had not been such a legacy of literary works then we may not have the same movies we do now. The term horror was first coined in 1764 in a book by Horace Walpole's called The Castle of Otranto which was full of the supernatural. In the following centuries literary giants like Edgar Allan Poe championed this genre with great works like The Raven. Some of the great horror movies of today are based on old horror stories like Frankenstein and Dracula which were both written in the 1800's.

At the beginning of horror movie history these movies were often ones that had the supernatural in there. In the late 1890's short silent films was where these movies start. The Frenchman Georges Melies is thought to be the creator of the first horror film with his 1896 short silent Le Manior du diable. Around this time the Japanese also tried their hand at this genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei.

The first full horror film was an adaptation of the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Many of these first horror films were created by German film makers as the early 1900's were the time of the German expressionist films. These films have influenced horror film makers for decades to Tim Burton. During the 1920's Hollywood started dabbling in the horror genre with Lon Chaney Sr. Becoming the first American horror star.

MARCH 13, 2013

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Except for the TV miniseries Storm of the Century, Sleepwalkers is the only original screenplay that Stephen King has ever had produced. There's apparently an unpublished short story that it's based on, but over 20 years later that still hasn't surfaced - though I don't doubt it's true because the biggest problem with the movie is that it lacks a middle act. There's 45 minutes of setup and then an overlong climax, basically - like a short story, it lacks any major complications or strong character development, and I'm guessing an editor with a fresh pair of eyes would have this thing clocked in at 65 minutes or so tops.

That's not to say it's a bad movie; it's actually pretty enjoyable considering it's a Mick Garris film (his 2nd and final major theatrical release) and also from the 90s, easily the worst decade of horror (or at least tied with the 40s). I actually saw it back when it came out on VHS after its successful theatrical run (30 million; the equivalent of about 60m today and good enough to be the year's 2nd highest grossing horror film after Bram Stoker's Dracula*), but all I remembered was a bit where Brian Krause was being stared down by a cat and pleaded "Stop looking at me.... stop looking at me you FUCKING CAT!" I didn't even remember the incest subplot! Krause and his mom (Alice Krige) go at it quite a bit in that first half, leading to the weirdest "bring home your new girlfriend to meet mom" scene in history since mom's pretty jealous. Considering that the biggest problem with most 90s horror is that it's safe and bland, I'm actually kind of impressed that they don't even skirt away from it - Krause and Krige go at it quite a bit.

The problem is, Krause never really does much with Amick, his girlfriend. It feels like there should be a period where he almost seems to forget about his mom and actually want a real relationship with her, with Krige having to interfere and get him back on her side, but that never happens. Krause tries to devour her lifeforce (or whatever) on what is basically their first real date, and from that point on the movie is just an endless sequence of Amick trying to get away from the two of them. There are a ton of things that never quite make sense, like how he is able to make his car morph from a convertible to a Trans Am, or why they burn up when cats touch them, or why there are so many mountains in Indiana all of a sudden... I can't help but wonder if these things were ever fleshed out in a longer version of the movie, or if King's script had to be modified so that the production could afford all the morphing FX that every goddamn movie post-T2 seemed to have.

But I'll tell you one thing I loved about the movie (besides Madchen dancing around the Aero theatre and generally just looking wonderful): the cats are the heroes! Our feline pals tend to get a bum rap in movies, so it's awesome to see that they're pretty much the only real heroes in the movie - Amick doesn't do much, and this has to be the least competent police force ever seen in a horror flick - even Ron Perlman is damn near worthless. But the cats, man - they gather around and annoy the two villains, lead the most competent cop to them, and attack when things get hairy. One is named Clovis, who is a sort of partner to a cop with a grudge against Krause, and it's damned heartbreaking when the cop dies and Clovis meows and sits on his chest. But Amick seems to adopt him at the end, so it's all good.

Speaking of that cop - he's like the most Stephen King-y guy of all time, saying folksy/odd things, singing to himself, etc. I can easily imagine reading his dialogue in a book mixed in with long passages about things that don't matter in the slightest (plus song lyrics that are inserted at random between paragraphs), and it's actually one of the few King touches in the whole thing. In addition to the Midwest setting, the supporting cast is largely wasted, which is a far cry from his usual MO which is to have these giant ensembles - even in stories with a clear main character (such as Dead Zone) he finds a way to make a lot of colorful and memorable folks on the side. It seems to be leaning that way by the end, when Amick's parents' roles are bulked up and the cops start appearing more (Perlman doesn't even appear until the hour mark, I think), but it's a bit too late since the battle is in full swing by then. It's ironic; it's supposedly an original screenplay and yet it feels more gutted than most of his giant books that got turned into movies - even Needful Things still gave us a lot of memorable residents of the town.

But it didn't have so many amazing cameos! In addition to King himself, Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante, and John Landis all pop up, making this a sort of Masters of Horror prequel. They're all blink and miss types, but it's still fun to see them all looking so young (Barker in particular) - a shame that they probably didn't have a behind the scenes crew working as those were probably pretty fun days on the set. Mark Hamill appears in the film's opener (which features several dead cats - mortifying!) and Friday the 13th Part 2's awesome Stu Charno also pops up for a bit, though I don't know if that counts as a cameo or if it's just a bit role (ditto for Rusty Schwimmer, who would appear the following year in Jason Goes To Hell). Garris also throws in a few other in-jokes; someone mentions Castle Rock, and Amick's parents are the same two actors who played the Buellers, for some reason. Actually as it goes on it becomes more of a comedy than anything; Krige kills a cop with an ear of corn! And again - they burn up when cats touch them, so the climax involves a bunch of cats flying around and hitting Krige until she catches on fire. Such a weird movie.

But weird = personality, which is what so many others of the period lack, so I'll give it a pass, despite its lacking story and almost complete lack of tension. I had fun watching it, Garris puts a little more life into the proceedings than he usually does, and the creature FX (by Tony Gardner) hold up nicely. It also puts Santo & Jonny's "Sleepwalk" to good use, though from now until the day I die I'll always think of La Bamba when I hear it (it's the song that plays on the radio as everyone hears about Ritchie's death). I just wish I could say "the book was better" - is it too late for King to write a novelization?

What say you?

*Unless you count Alien 3 and Lawnmower Man, both of which are more sci-fi to me. Still, it topped Candyman, Hellraiser III, Pet Sematary 2, Dr Giggles...

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Do you see horror movies as a waste of time? Is it difficult for you to see the entertainment value of a good disemboweling or the odd decapitation? You are not alone. Whether you think torture-porn like Hostel or The Human Centipede take things too seriously, or you're offended by the lack of horror movies set in space, there is a scary movie out there for you. Don't let another frightless Halloween pass you by, and come with us to explore some horror movies for people who hate horror movies.

Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil - This Canadian comedy-horror takes your stereotypical, 'hillbillies slaughter college kids camping in the woods' motif and flips it on its ear. Tucker and Dale are two not-so-stereotypical rednecks on holiday. A holiday marred by a string of misunderstandings and miss-communication with a group of suburbanite kids that leads to a series of gruesome yet hilarious deaths of said kids at the hands of... themselves. Recommended if you hate horror movies because the victims are too stupid to run or fight back.

Event Horizon - The crew of the space ship Lewis & Clark are sent on a rescue mission to investigate an SOS from the Event Horizon, a ship that was lost seven years previously on its maiden voyage, while testing a new gravity drive. The gravity drive was designed to create a wormhole from one point in space to another. It would seem the drive worked, so the question is where did the ship go while in between those two points, and what did it bring back with it? Recommended if you hate horror movies because there aren't enough phasers set to 'kill'.

Blood, mayhem, and plot twists as shocking as its imagery explode across the screen in The Cabin in the Woods (2011), a horror film that manages to be complex and thought-provoking even as it gushes at the seams with gore, pain, and hideous death. Joss Whedon and his fellow director wanted to satirize the horror genre and restore it from a slough of pointless torture porn, and largely succeeded.

The opening shot of the movie shows two professional men talking about which "facility" is most likely to "succeed", with the Japanese likely coming in first and the Americans second, with no further details given. The film then continues as an apparently "ordinary" horror flick, with five teenagers heading off for a weekend at a remote woodland cabin. The party consists of two girls and three boys, one of whom, Marty, appears on the scene smoking marijuana (which is important to the plot later).

The action cuts back and forth between the teenagers and the facility as the film develops. The workers at the facility reveal that the teenagers have been drugged by various means, without offering more details. The teen vacationers encounter a stock character "redneck gas station attendant" who warns/threatens them with their impending fate. They drive on nevertheless and start a game of "truth or dare" at the cabin, while the facility workers watch with great interest.

One of the girls triggers the release of a family of "redneck zombies" by reading the Latin inscription from a diary in the basement, though they do not realize this immediately. The teenagers also start acting oddly and very lustfully, with exception of the pot-smoking Marty, who remains his usual self. The zombies attack one couple as they start to have sex in the woods, and after one teen is killed, the others try to escape. However, they are blocked by obviously high-tech means - explosives collapsing a road tunnel, a force field, and so on.

MARCH 12, 2013

GENRE: POSSESSION, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

The first Witchboard was one of the first horror movies I ever saw, and I was happy to discover it mostly held up when I revisited it at the New Beverly a few years back. I saw the first sequel in the mid 90s at some point thanks to a free Showtime preview (we had HBO for a while but otherwise, premium services weren't usually in our budget), and remember thinking it was OK (my then-crush on Ami Dolenz was probably a big factor, however), but never got around to bothering with the 3rd film, Witchboard III: The Possession (onscreen title lacks the III, for the record) until now. It didn't take long for me to realize I probably should have kept it that way.

I've certainly seen worse movies, but godDAMN is this a chore. I think there are four death scenes in the entire movie, with the rest of it nothing more than the two main characters looking at each other or arguing. This time, a guy named Brian (not me) who was playing with the Ouija to obtain stock tips (how do ghosts know the future?) gets possessed by some demon thing, with his real self trapped in a mirror. Now he's all suave, pulling his curly hair back into a Seagal style 'do and trying to get his wife Julie into a threeway, which worries her. And that's pretty much it; our heroine spends most of the movie mildly concerned about why her husband is acting more manly (he also brings her roses, makes love to her more frequently, etc - apart from the threeway thing, it's mostly a bonus for her), until she finally decides to investigate, i.e. use the damn Ouija board, which leads her to the mirror.

So really it's a haunted mirror movie where a Ouija gets to help out a bit - Paranormal Activity could have been a Witchboard sequel too, using this film's logic. There is no relation to the others at all, which is odd considering original creator Kevin Tenney had a hand in the script. For starters, there's no mystery at all - no murder to solve or anything; the demon just possesses the guy and that's that. The rules seem different, there's no real humor, and again the board is barely even a factor for most of the movie; if Tenney's name wasn't on it I'd be convinced they just slapped the title on an unrelated movie in order to get someone to pay attention to it. I understand the need to mix it up a bit when you're on your third installment, but why drop the things that made the original interesting in favor of a bland possession story where almost no one we know is in danger? The majority of the deaths are no one we care about (a loan shark?) and even when possessed Brian doesn't seem to harbor any ill will toward Julie, who is our heroine - there's just no tension or suspense whatsoever in this thing.

Plus it's a 90s horror movie, which means hideous CGI effects involving souls (or ghosts) flying around and things exploding into balls of light for some reason. Obviously some folks knew how to use this (then) new tech properly, but sadly most seemingly did not, making these things age worse than necessary and further demonstrating why these sort of applications should be treated like advanced weaponry: you'll need training, a waiting period, etc to obtain them to ensure they will be used for good. I swear, some of this stuff looks like the visual effects team were just guessing as they attempted to use the program for the first time. At least they were smart enough to have a practical demon for the climax, though he's "aided" by so many CGI effects (the floating planchette in particular is horrendous) that it barely even matters, especially when it's the finale to just a boring movie anyway.

The most entertaining aspect of the entire thing was wondering when they'd pay off the hilariously clunky foreshadowing regarding Brian's shellfish allergy. Early on, Julie's pal brings her some, and she bemoans about how she can never have any at the house because of his allergy. "I didn't know Brian was allergic to shellfish!" her friend exclaims, as if the medical histories of acquaintances was something people should be privy to. And then Julie explains what will happen to him if he eats it, so of course eventually he will eat it (though it would be hilarious if all of this was merely the screenwriter's ridiculous way of fleshing out his characters), it's just a matter of WHEN. It takes over an hour to pay off, however; if I hadn't laughed so hard at the inane setup I probably would have forgotten about it by the time it came up again.

The director, one Peter Svatek, went on to make the decent (but equally cheap) Bleeders, and then a bunch of TV movies before seemingly landing in the world of documentary filmmaking. It should be a fine fit for him; Witchboard III often feels like raw documentary footage - just a bunch of stuff that happens during the course of a week or so, except if it was a doc eventually it would have been shaped into something interesting. Honestly, I think Candyman may be the only horror series in my lifetime that had a greater decline in quality from part 1 to 3. Oh, and I couldn't find a trailer, so here's someone's video review, which currently only has two views. I haven't even watched it but I know it deserves more than that, since at least three people have seen Witchboard III (me, him, and my friend Matt, who tried to warn me).

What say you?

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