TGI Friday: Hold it in
Pretty much the ONLY awesome scene in Jason Goes to Hell. This moment screams Classic Friday.
Monthly Archives: November 2013
The horror of… The Unexplainedening!
ROOM 33
2009/92m
“A ghostly presence has awoken.”
Director/Writer: Eddie Barbini / Writer: Donnie Dale / Cast: Nina Hauser, Austin Highsmith, Chad Collins, Adam Key, Dee Kevin Ace Gibson, Kim Manning, Olivia Leigh, Nicole Dionne.
Body Count: 9
Laughter Lines: “This place ain’t right, man! Can’t you feel it?”
In life, points for trying rarely get you anywhere – and the same is sadly true of this Los Angeles-lensed supernatural slasher flick, which looks like it was shot waaaay earlier than 2009 and stirs up best forgotten memories of Doom Asylum. Brrrrr.
Because Room 33 opts for what I’ll call “the generic approach”, here’s a checklist to make sure it covers the expected bases of its genre:
- A group of (mostly) attractive young people are going somewhere in a van
- Something happens that strands them far from assistance
- Said location is shared with a creepy old place for them to take shelter for the night
- Thereafter, members of the group find various reasons to venture off on their own
- Death! Death! Death!
In the case of Room 33, our group is comprised of a team of three roller-derby chicks, their coach, and driver dude, and a couple who’ve hit a tree and need a ride. The reason for their enstrandening is they’re outta gas, and the nearest thing is a disused mental institution.
They later find a crazed girl running about and soon they’re spooked, some go outside to find the girl who went to practice her skating (in the middle of a road), and a teleporting man in black crops up and murders some of them off-camera. The others find their friends sans eyes, requisite macho-asshole character (a girl!) blames the girl, fall outs ensue…
In the final third, Room 33 goes a bit weird. Well weirder. The titular location is not mentioned until 64 minutes in and even then, its significance is never clarified. I’m not even sure anybody even goes there. More people turn up, some of them die, then the villains well… I’m not sure. Were they real? Unfortunately, I watched this only in the company of my dog, who, though more enthralled than I, seemed perplexed by it as well.
So it’s a bit like Doom Asylum, part Savage Lust, with a touch of Session 9 (just a touch, mind, don’t go blaming me if you think it’ll be as good), and a whole side order of What-the-Fuck!? I didn’t hate it, just had no frickin’ clue what was supposed to be happening and then it just sorta…ended.
Blurb-of-interest: Austin Highsmith was later in Scream – The TV Series (Season 2).
The Dark Age
MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16 PART 2
2010/85m
Director: Jacob Gentry / Writers: Jed Elinoff & Scott Thomas / Cast: Lauren McKnight, Chris Zylka, Matt Angel, Alex Van, Kirsten Prout, Stella Maeve, Myndy Crist, Robert Pralgo, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Sun Bell, Devin Keaton, Julianna Guill.
Body Count: 8
Dire-logue: “A time to celebrate – a time to rollerskate. It was supposed to be the party of their lives, until it became the party of their deaths.”
Picking up just days after the end of the first film, where masked loon Lord of the Rink slashed up vile, ungrateful teenagers, his daughter, Skye Rotter, has fled town and tracked down her mother for sanctuary, where she meets her half-sister Alex, who is being used by a bitchy high schooler – Zoe – who wants to throw a huge party, drink, and do drugs.
Meanwhile, Skye’s boyfriend Brigg and dorky best friend Derek are trying to find out where she is and the cops are also looking for her after her father evaded capture and has, of course, followed Skye – who conveniently is turning 16 that very day! – to her new abode to kill various bystanders, crash the party and reunite the family.
Part 2 is notably more subtle than the first film. There’s no MTV show to parody as such, so it plays like a rather standard sequel with the bonus of getting most of the surviving cast members back. There are some interesting ideas and, like before, production qualities are nicely taken care of, though it plays like one of those 90s stalker films that sprung up off the back of Sleeping with the Enemy and its ilk, distant relatives of the slasher film.
The new trifecta of nasty girls up for the chop
A few good murders ensue: A girl gets an electric knife in the back of the head whilst making out with an annoying teenage boy, and a nasty girl is immolated inside a giant stripper cake. Characters this time around are even more repugnant: Derek’s girlfriend, especially, is a one-note jealous cow and, as before, everything is blamed on the females in a finale where Skye, Alex and their mother confront the Lord of the Rink.
And why does he care so much anyway? Skye was the one who squealed him up in the first place!
Though, how Skye left Madison (who appears in a dream cameo) for dead at the end of the first film brings up an interesting possibility with regards to her own sanity when she threatens Zoe in a particularly effective scene that shows McKnight’s considerable acting muscle, then the film flips that with an ending that looks like it’s going to neatly set up things for My Super Psycho Sweet 16 Part 3.
The high school memorial service that opens the film is good, one of those scenes that you don’t often see in horror sequels, and McKnight acts her pants off as secretive final girl Skye, while Maeve is a convincing calculating bitch, though her eventual demise is somewhat contrived, as Charlie Rotter appears quite scattergun in his choice of teen victims this time around.
A minor step down from the heights of the first film, but a solid follow up and better than the rather lacklustre third entry.
Blurb-of-interest: Matt Angel was in Mischief Night.
La oscuridad de la selva
Here’s a preview of the really quite marvelous new comic The Dark of the Forest, uh, ‘drawn’ by Sergio Calvet and written by Russell Hillman.
Spain, 1978 (THE best year), a VW camper, a group of birdwatching teens, a mythical bloodthirsty creature, T&A, deeeeath…
Who will survive to pass on the legend?
*
Think one part The Prey, one part Night of the Demon (with better acting), and one part something Spanish. With dead teenagers in it. From the 70s.
You can – and will – buy The Dark of the Forest from November 27th, here.
This home is not a House
THE HORROR SHOW
1989/18/91m
“They tried to electrocute ‘Meat Cleaver Max’. It didn’t work.”
A.k.a. House III: The Horror Show
Director: James Isaac / Writers: Alan Smithee [Allyn Warner] & Leslie Bohem / Cast: Lance Henriksen, Brion James, Rita Taggart, Dedee Pfeiffer, Aron Eisenberg, Thom Bray, David Oliver, Lewis Arquette.
Body Count: 8
Laughter Lines: “I was working on a theory of pure evil as a form of electromagnetic energy.”
Wes Craven may have fallen out with people over the mass-commercialization of one Frederick Krueger from 1985 onwards, but it didn’t stop him almost recreating the character with the rather lame Shocker in 1989, which also came out a few months after this similarly derivative Elm Street squatter, in which basements and boiler rooms are prominent set pieces.
While it’s known as House III virtually everywhere outside of its home country, there’s nothing that connects The Horror Show to the previous – or subsequent – House films.
Instead, this is one is the generic tale of cleaver-wielding sicko Max Jenke (James), who, after murdering 100+ people, is subdued by Henriksen’s archetypal detective-cum-family man. At Jenke’s execution, he swears to come back for the McCarthy family and, of course, does so through something to with electromagnetic energy, as later explained by grad-student Bray (see Laughter Lines).
And so, Jenke offs a few ancillaries while trying to turn Henriksen mad and make him look like a killer when his daughter’s boyfriend is found cut to pieces in the basement.
Some amusing scenes occur along the way, most memorably the mutant turkey, but the film seems so desperate to create a franchise for itself that it forgets to be either scary or particularly entertaining. The ever reliable lead battles with his badly written character, but James appears to be having fun as diet-Freddy, complete with requisite high-pitched cackle.
’89 was the year that the nails were hammered hard into the slasher movie coffin, with disappointing outings for the main three boogeymen and an emphasis on FX over plot. There’s some nostalgic hair, fashion and music here, but it’s not enough to grab a third star.
Blurbs-of-interest: Henriksen was in Color of Night, Madhouse, and Scream 3; Lewis Arquette was in Scream 2; Aron Eisenberg was in Playroom; James Isaac later directed Jason X. Sean S. Cunningham produced.