BOOGEYMAN 3

2008/15/91m

“She left for college and terror followed.”

Director: Gary Jones / Writer: Brian Sieve / Cast: Erin Cahill, Chuck Hittinger, Mimi Michaels, George Maguire, Matt Rippy, Nikki Sanderson, Elyes Gabel, W.B. Alexander, Jayne Wisner, Kate Maberly.

Body Count: 9

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Boogeyman 2 successfully managed to untangle the wretched mess left by the 2004 original film by turning the crappy CG-laden horror-for-kids premise into an on-point slasher film with some brutality to it. Unfortunately, Boogeyman 3 enters the party, trips over the table and sends all the nicely rearranged apparel over the floor before slipping over and landing on it, crushing anything good that may have survived.

OK, so it’s still better than the first one but out goes the guy-in-a-mask and in steps another ‘genuine’ monster (looking like a zombie Alice Cooper), which has followed Tobin Bell’s daughter back to the college dorm where she lives (and subsequently dies) and proceeds to kill off her group of friends.

The trick here is that the moment you believe in the curse, you become susceptible to it and so the only way to survive is not to believe – difficult when your pals are turning up dead. Even with the body count scenario, this is a lot more like The Grudge films than a slasher movie with the usual stereotype characters led by ex-Power Ranger Cahill’s not-so-competent final girl, atrocious special effects work and wobbly acting, making it a chore to sit through.

A couple of minor chills shouldn’t prevent you slamming the closet door shut on this franchise.

Blurbs-of-interest: Brian Sieve also wrote the previous (better) instalment; Gary Jones directed Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove.

FINAL EXAMINATION

2002/94m

“You fail. You die.”

Director: Fred Olen Ray [as Ed Raymond] / Writers: Sean O’Bannon & Kimberly A. Ray / Cast: Kari Wuhrer, Brent Huff, Debbie Rochon, Amy Lindsay, Richard Gabai, Robert Donovan, Jason Schnuit, Belinda Gavin, Winton Nicholson, Kalau Iwaoka, Kim Maddox.

Body Count: 7

Dire-logue: “Just spell my name right, it’s Shane with a C…” what!?

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A girl drives off the end of an unfinished bridge. Five years later, a cop busts a drug dealer and is then reassigned to Hawaii as a reward. In Hawaii, the sorority sisters from Big Island University have gathered for a reunion sponsored by a glamour magazine, which they are being photographed for by a wasted Rochon. Someone tries to murder them – failing, more often than not – reassigned dick and Kari Wuhrer (remembered by me as the “not J-Lo” female in Anaconda) investigate.

That’s Final Examination for you. It has nothing remotely to do with exams at all, bar the staggering two sorority victims found with test papers marked ‘Failed’ floating nearby. Instead, Fred Olen Ray’s (shoulda known!) dismal little flick is a thinly disguised softcore skin flick. The only examination present is the one the camera oversees while various starlets take showers or just walk around topless…

The cast look ridiculously bored and the police procedural plot (far outweighing any horror) is like a really boring episode of NCIS. There’s an equally insipid backstory unfurled to do with co-ed pregnancy, dirty tricks and cover ups that relate back to the dead chick and bitchy sorority alumnus Kristen – who doesn’t even die!

Ray overcompensates boredom with too many twists, none of which even flirt with being exciting. Turns out there are but three killers, all siblings of the dead girl and between them they manage to off a massive four people. Pathetic.

Chuck in a lieutenant named Hugh Janus and a scene where Kristen brandishes a gun several minutes before the killer busts through a door and attacks her friend. Does she shoot him? No. She hits him with the damn thing. The film finally ends with the dialogue “uh…yeah,” which appears to accurately sum up the opinion all involved likely have when asked about the film.

To spell it out for you in case you, like me, are hell bent on seeing ‘em all: Final Examination is not a good bad film, it’s really, really, REALLY boring, which is a far worse sin than simply being shit.

Blurbs-of-shame: Belinda Gavin was in Scarecrow. Ray also directed Scalps. Debbie Rochon has been in American Nightmare, Bleed, Blood Relic and Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader.

BLOOD TRACKS

 1985/18/85m

“The mountains echoed with the screams of terror.”

Director: Mike Jackson [Mats Helge] / Writers: Mike Jackson & Anna Wolf / Cast: Jeff Harding, Naomi Keneda, Michael Fitzpatrick, Brad Powell, Harriet Tobinson, Peter Merrill, Tina Shaw, Frances Kelly, Karina Lee, Helena Jacks.

Body Count: 18

Dire-logue: “Look at their women – evil! They deserve to die.”

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I love 80s nostalgia. Even though I can’t remember much before 1987, I always look back and smile, while listening to We Built This City. However, all rose-tinted hindsight is usually just a front for some black clouds, for us: Thatcher, yuppie-culture, the Sinclair C5 and Spandau Ballet. The legions of straight to video horror films that also belong in this category can also include this dismal Swedish affair, Blood Tracks, which uses one of the lowest form of horror cliches – thrash metal – as the centrepiece for a Hills Have Eyes-rip set in the mountains.

Solid Gold, a bad marriage of Kiss and Aerosmith on a bad hair day, are to shoot their new promo video in the snowy mountains of your stock small town where, forty years earlier, a woman stuck a knife in the back of her abusive husband and fled to the hills with her sons.

These socially-starved freaks, naturally now deformed and homicidal, aren’t too impressed by sheer amount of trespassing hair - likely causing a solar eclipse – and set about doing away with Sold Gold and their entourage, including their airhead dancers/girlfriends after they are stranded by an avalanche, which fails to stop the female cast members prancing around nude.

Why are there no remotely interesting horror movies about heavy metal bands and death? Seriously, none of them are any good. To make things worse, the film has been developed with such a low exposition that it’s near impossible to see what’s happening nor tell any of the characters apart. The band all look the same, as do the dancers and everyone else dies so early on it makes no difference.

Badly dubbed into English, I later read that Solid Gold were, in reality, a real life band called Easy Action! I wonder if even they still possess a copy of this turkey.

I can forgive Sweden for this faux pas; they gave us Volvo’s, ABBA, Roxette and decent Eurovision entries most years. I expect multiple copies of Blood Tracks are stacked up in a sauna somewhere…

From the camp-tastic Freddy vs. Jason, A-holey boyfriend Trey, ahem, “finishes” with his g/f Gibb and immediately dispatches her to the shower: “Babe! You know I don’t like to be touched afterwards!” Usually, it’s the chick in the shower who is doomed but in this instance, Jason rightly chooses to teach nasty Trey an interesting lesson about having sex in your girlfriend’s best friend’s dad’s bed…

Indicative of the tone the film adopts, it’s a new one for the J-man, who, incidentally, kills almost all of the cast, leaving Freddy just one slaying.

The first slasher film I ever saw was A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was about 11. Brown pants and bad dreams. I flat out refused to watch any other Freddy films until I was 19. Oddly, it was my second viewing of the original Elm Street that creeped the hell outta me.

There’s mucho scariness in the film; the nightmare scenery is classic stuff but I personally find this moment – lasting just a matter of seconds in the run up to Tina’s uber-frightening encounter with Freddy Krueger – to be ingeniously terrifying. ‘Tis the stretchy horror wall…

He’s like…coming through the wall for Nancy!! It’s so horrible! I want to cry.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES

1986/18/83m

“Nothing this evil ever dies.”

Director/Writer: Tom McLoughlin / Cast: Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan, Renee Jones, Tom Fridley, Darcy DeMoss, CJ Graham, Vincent Guastaferro, Ron Palillo.

Body Count: 18

Dire-logue: “Don’t piss me off, Junior, or I will repaint this office with your brains!”

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The general rule of sequels – not least horror sequels – is that they get progressively worse. Although, it’s also worth pointing out that the more you make, the more likely it is that as quality spirals, there’ll be a pleasant bump along the way. Of course, loving slasher films means that I don’t subscribe to either of these theories and will watch any Revenge of, Return of, Rise of, Re-Return of sequel going, no matter what numerical suffix it has.

Friday the 13th Part VI is a case in point of the multi-sequel that takes its rinse-and-repeat formula and manages to make familiar territory interesting, thanks to director/scribe Tom McLoughlin’s energetic script, which was intended to feature an apt thirteen murders (extended to accommodate studio wishes and probably pad out the running time – it’s the shortest Friday).

Sometime after the events of A New Beginning, Tommy Jarvis (this time played by Thom Mathews), drives to Crystal Lake, now re-named Forest Green, to incinerate Jason’s corpse in an attempt to gain closure on his awful past. His nervous friend Hawes tags along to offer words of discouragement as a familiar storm blows in. In a fit of fury, Tommy jabs Jason’s corpse (strangely un-cremated as we were told in Part V) with a steel pole that is subsequently struck by lightning, reanimating the J-man yet again!

With his buddy becoming Jason’s first victim in X number of years, Tommy races into town to alert the cops and instantly makes an enemy of no-shit Sheriff Garris, who locks him away, assuming the boy is just acting out on his traumatic psychosis. Meanwhile, Jason takes out a few more people, including some dorky paintballing execs and the head counsellors of the recently re-opened Camp Crystal Lake, I mean, Camp Forest Green.

Yep, camp is back on and this time there are even kids about! This is one element that richly enhances the likeability of Jason Lives. While Parts 1 and 2 were set at camp, neither were operating and, summer camp is what Friday the 13th is all about. Trees, cabins, pontoons and open fires – it’s all here.

It just so happens that one of the four remaining counsellors is the Sheriff’s daughter Megan, who, unlike pop, takes an instant liking to Tommy, who is released and flees back to the cemetery to try and prove that Jason has risen, only to find the grave covered up, albeit now containing Tommy’s friend Hawes. Garris ejects Tommy from town and warns him to stay away permanently while Jason collects additional victims on his way back to the camp.

The murders are discovered and blamed on Tommy, who joins forces with Megan to entrap Jason and send him back to the bottom of Crystal Lake where he belongs. Once Jay finally encounters some horny teenagers, things kick in to gear. There are some creative murders and back to basics stalking sequences and, although the bloodletting is comic-styled and of reduced effect (despite still being cut down), the film plays well to its simplified approach.

Case in point is with the murders of counsellors Sissy and Paula. Jason is lurking around camp, scaring some of the little kids who inadvertently wake up and see him. We know he’s there. They’re paranoid that something’s up… They play a card game called ‘Camp Blood’… After Sissy disappears (snatched out of the window and beheaded), one of the campers discovers a bloody machete and brings it to Paula, who escorts her back to bed and returns to her own cabin to find that the machete has vanished and the phone is out… Then the door swings open…

It’s an excellently directed scene featuring a sympathetic character versus the boogeyman.

Obviously, Tommy and Megan return to save the kids and fight Jason, the Sheriff learns the truth and an Alice Cooper rocker plays out over the credits: He’s back! The man behind the mask! One of several Cooper songs to feature on the soundtrack.

Jason Lives is the (intentionally) funniest film of the series; wisely avoiding out and out parody - save for the ‘Jason does James Bond’ opening – and opting for a classic gothic feel to its horror opus: floating mists, the lightning storm, the creepy cemetery and the shadowy trees. Oddly, it’s about the one entry to feature no nudity but you’d hardly notice, even during the requisite sex scene. The characters are drawn much more sharply than other instalments, where they exist only to die gruesomely. McLoughlin largely avoids stereotypes, squeezing nice attributes out of even the bit-parters, although Cooke’s heroine isn’t ultimately successful in her role.

My third favourite of the series after the original two, things went serious again for The New Blood as theatrical grosses dipped further. But this one is 80′s slasher perfection: big hair, pop metal, and a horror icon.

Blurbs-of-interest: Tom Fridley was in Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge; Darcy DeMoss was in Return to Horror High.

SPIKER

2007/88m

“A ruthless killer… A haunting memory.”

Director: Frank Zagarino / Writers: Richard Preston Jr. & Frank Zagarino / Cast: Frank Zagarino, Giselle Rodriguez, Matt Jared, Josh Folan, Ginger Kroll, Linda Johnson, Adam Shonkwiler, Mike Fedele, Lou Martin Jr., David ‘Shark’ Fralick.

Body Count: 10

Dire-logue: “I’d rather screw a porcupine than touch your spooky ass!”

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Adam Brandis, the Spiker serial killer, who murdered 27 Long Island locals with railroad spikes, is being transported from one joint to another when he fakes a seizure and leaps to freedom off the cross-pond ferry, taking out a few local cops as he goes.

The Sheriff thinks he’s dead but with 78 minutes remaining, it’s fairly likely that he isn’t. Oh look, there he is now, emerging from the water to kill some lineless schmuck working by the docks.

Sometime after, three teen couples actually in their cheerleader / football kits rock up to an old house owned by nominal final girl Lisa’s aunt, Elizabeth Shaw, who died the day Lisa was born – killed by the Spiker. They host a seance, dance to crap R&B music and pair off until Lisa sees a face at the window. “Maybe it was a raccoon,” one of them supposes. Again, Spiker is set in an alternate reality where slasher movies never existed.

Brandis, the Spiker, a tall, Scandinavian looking mute Albino, meanders through the woods clanking his trusty weapons together every time he appears for the time being, making it to the house to start trimming the cheer squad. Lisa finds letters from her dead aunt, which indicate she was Spiker’s lover at some point, sees a ghost bride, overdoes the heavy breathing when scared etc.

While it’s an undeniably limp affair, Spiker held my attention effectively enough and there was a halfway decent scene where one mortally wounded victim is slowly crawling towards the others, who are talking in the foreground. But what’s with the other dude who keeps cropping up with cryptic gibberish and is immune to the horror? Why does Brandis have a bottomless supply of rail spikes when he leaves so many sticking in various corpses? Where is he getting them from!?

Blurb-of-interest: David ‘Shark’ Fralick played the titular role in Uncle Sam.