BIKINI ISLAND

1991/18/82m

“Sex, sun, and murder…”

Director: Anthony Markes / Writers: Emerson Bixby, Diana Levitt & Anthony Markes / Cast: Holly Floria, Alicia Anne Kowalski, Jackson Robinson, Sherry Jansen, Kelly Pool, Gaston Le Gaf, Cyndi Pass, Shannon Stiles, Cathleen McOsker, Terry Miller.

Body Count: 9

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Bikini Island…where the moon is out during the day and women favour one-piece swimsuits instead. How can it fail?

‘Based in part on a true story’, five swimsuit models duke it out for cover-star status and a $100,000 prize. Trouble is, somebody is expiring their modelling contacts earlier than expected. The pesky killer likes to do away with victims primarily with a fucking sink plunger to the face or, later on, a bow and arrow.

There’s more nudity and sex than there is horror in this translucent tat, a carbon copy of which was created by near on the same team and cast a year later in the slightly more watchable Last Dance - in which the killer had pretty much the same motive.

Here though, the fiend’s identity is thinly disguised by ‘suspicious’ zooms and the sound of a cello around various supporting characters, including a bitchy assistant and a freaky hotel custodian who appears to be the only member of staff.

It takes a good (read: not good) 40 minutes before the action takes flight, struggles, and ditches into the sea, culminating in the killer’s archery massacre in the last five minutes that ups the body count significantly before a short but amusing chase scene when the bimbo heroine confronts the killer but in the end I felt sorry only for the VW Camper Van which sails over a cliff edge.

Blurbs-of-interest: director Markes and actor Kelly Pool were involved with Last Dance.

PSYCHO

1998/15/100m

“Check in. Relax. Take a shower.”

Director: Gus Van Sant / Writers: Robert Bloch & Joseph Stefano / Cast: Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Anne Heche, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, Robert Forster, James Remar.

Body Count: 2

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With all the horror community hoo-hah over the endless stream of remakes n’ such ruining our favourite classics, it’s easy to forget that the most classic of classics got refunked back at the arse end of the 90s.

Although calling Psycho ’98 a remake isn’t strictly true, it’s more like a cover version without any stamp of ownership. You know when Simon Cowell drones on about “you made that song your own” (even though they quite clearly bastardized it), Gus Van Sant’s strangely hollow project to simply re-shoot Psycho in colour with very few modifications of era is similarly perplexing. Cowell, of course, would’ve made it into a musical and cast Leona Lewis as Marion Crane so she can keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding… OK, crap joke. I’ll slap myself in the face with a custard pie for that one.

And so it came to be… Various filmians moaned before the project even went into pre-production and now it’s all but forgotten and it’s easy to see why – it’s been asked a gazillion times but, Mr VS – what was the point?

Besides being in colour, and updating some dialogue and the amount of money Marion Crane makes off with, Psycho ’98 re-treads the boards down the composition of shots, angles, effects work (Arbogast’s backward tumble down the stairs) and characterisations. All I remember of the “new-ness” was that Norman Bates cracks one out watching Marion take a shower and Julianne Moore utters the batty line “hold on while I get my Walkman,” upon which the audience decided to start laughing.

Curiously, Van Sant adds a surreal little montage right before Marion is stabbed, which, I assume was supposed to represent life flashing before her eyes, which included a cow (or possibly a sheep?) in the road. Whassat about? Did she run it over? Was it a foreshadowing? Is it Psycow?

Otherwise, things otherwise clunk along in a Xerox of 38 years before but the dialogue now sounds out of place (Walkman line excepted) and the almighty cast of players is reduced to imitation rather than expression, making me wonder why any of them would’ve signed up to star in something where there’s so little ‘acting’ for them to do…

Vince Vaughn wasn’t the big star he now is (and possibly now was) back then and does okay with the role but is simply too hulking and broad to play a cross-dressing mama’s boy convincingly. While les hasbian Anne Heche (where’d shego?) is acceptable as Marion and the always lovely Moore is equally fine with being Lila, as is Macy as the detective. Herein lies the blandness of it all – they’re all just fine. Nobody’s gonna win anything for tracing a masterpiece and then painting by numbers.

That said, a ‘re-imagining’ would’ve only incited more wrath. I recently read an amusing analogy on the IMDb where somebody wrote: “If I put balls on Grandma, that doesn’t make her a ‘re-imagining’ of Grandpa!” I’m not sure what his point was but the carbon-copying does not make the story any less intriguing – it’s still a good yarn and therefore I award ye, strangely pointless remake, three stars.

Blurbs-of-interest: Heche played Missy in I Know What You Did Last Summer; Viggo Mortensen had been in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III; Robert Forster was also in Uncle Sam and Maniac Cop 3; James Remar (Dexter’s dad!) was in coma-inducing med-stalker Exquisite Tenderness.

BERSERKER

1987/18/79m

“It’s too late to run. There’s no time to scream… Just close your eyes and pray to die.”

Director/Writer: Jef Richard / Cast: Joseph Alan Johnson, Greg Dawson, Valerie Sheldon, Rodney Montague, Shannon Engemann, Beth Toussaint, John Goff, George ‘Buck’ Flower.

Body Count: 5

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The video box says that it’s based on “an old Nordic Legend.” Wow… that’s like saying it’s based on an urban legend – you know it means nothing. But given the final product, working the promo for this film couldn’t have been easy…

According to the stock-nerd character, a Berserker is some kind of Viking dude who has a bear mask, eats human flesh and has coincidentally been reincarnated in a descendant to “terrify” a group of “teenagers” who go on a camping trip where an elderly couple were shredded at the start. So far, so The Prey. But somehow even less engaging.

Who is the ancestor likely going to be? Mike, Josh, Kathy, Larry or Pappy Nyquist? I’m going for Josh.

Berserker barely qualifies as a slasher film at all, with a dismal body count and only two of the “teenagers” actually dying – both female, while the complete and utter dickhead guy is spared, as is the nerd, the cry-baby jock and a girl who does or says next to nothing.

Good opportunities to create tension slip right through writer-director Richard’s fingers and the lack of any strong, central heroine loses marks also. 79 minutes never felt so long.

Blurbs-of-interest: Flower turns up here and there in Cheerleader Camp, The Gas Station and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama; Joseph Alan Johnson was not only in the original Slumber Party Massacre but also wrote and starred in Iced! But the true before-they-were-famous star here is Beth Toussaint – and she gets naked!! She supplied the voice of the female caller in Scream 3 and has appeared in numerous soaps and TV shows.

Way back when I first experienced that wee-hours viewing of Friday the 13th in my folks’ lounge and became enchanted with the idea of ski-masked madmen slaying promiscuous teenagers, there were only a couple of academic texts around; no almanacs, film guides or documentaries. The only mention of slasher films in the books I had for my Film Theory degree was that they were “hate-women films!” (exclamation mark included).

After Scream and the contemporaries that were washed up in the tide it created, the genre became accessible once again and in our age of curiosity about things of yore that pre-dated the behind-the-curtain-ness of DVD, it wasn’t long before all the people who grew up on the golden age were old enough to write and even film their own love letters to the genre. That’s what Vegan Voorhees is about.

So, books beget DVD featurettes and eventually came the retrospective documentary features, released on anniversaries of eve’s of high profile “remakes” (that word again!!) here are four of the five I have. The fifth? It was a Channel 4 Mark Kermode thing that didn’t venture beyond the big franchises or have much to say about them…

GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM

2006/18/88m

Field Director: Jeff McQueen

The only one to have started life as a book, Adam Rockoff’s overview of the genre up until 1986 was never available in the UK so I can only judge by what’s on the screen, which, for all we know is advantageous because it’s a great hour and a half retrospective, chronicling the humble beginnings of human fascination with voyeurism of suffering, quickly on to Psycho, the Italian films of Bava et al, and going in-depth for Halloween, Friday the 13th, Prom Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street, whilst giving nods to The Prowler (including at-the-time unavailable footage from the uncut version), Graduation Day, Happy Birthday to Me, Terror Train, The Slumber Party Massacre and Sleepaway Camp – at which point I would like to add that Felissa Rose is not only beautiful but makes good counterpoints when the legendary parental backlash over the Silent Night, Deadly Night commercials is explored.

Later chapters look at the late 80s/early 90s decline and then re-emergence with key cast members and directors dropping anecdotes and theorizing about the genre they contributed to. And it must also be said that while I can’t call myself a fan of Rob Zombie’s output, I quite like the man himself; he’s well-versed, articulate and, like Felissa, presents a good argument for horror in general. Amy Holden Jones also has a lot to say about unfounded criticism of the films by the Siskell and Ebert crowd – their unintentionally amusing TV diatribe is covered: “these movies hate the independence of women!”

Going to Pieces is best appreciated from a nostalgic point of view - it is genuinely nice to hear what some of the directors have to say, given that it’s a common myth that they only did it for the money or as a stepping stone to greater things, unaware that (for many of them) they were making the most notable films of their respective careers.

Who else turns up: Armand Mastroianni, Paul Lynch, Herb Freed (“It was good – but it’s good that it was”), Lilyan Chauvin, Fred Walton.

Triv: some poor TV movie actress got ditched shortly before Prom Night began shooting when Simcom secured Jamie Lee Curtis. Bet there’s a few darts in that poster on someone’s wall somewhere… Elsewhere, Tom Savini states that he sees The Prowler‘s effects as his best work.

HALLOWEEN: 25 YEARS OF TERROR

2006/18/84m

Director: Stefan Hutchison / Writers: Stefan Hutchison & Anthony Masi

On to the big boys we go with the first icon-centric love-in, filmed around the titular covention that celebrated a quarter-of-a-century since the (screen)birth of one Michael Myers in – more importantly the year of my birth – 1978.

Despite covering my second favourite franchise, I was less impressed with this one that I was with the documentaries for Friday the 13th and Elm Street. Possibly because it came first, there’s little sense of structure or – dare I say it – effort that went into the other two and also Going to Pieces.

PJ Soles narrates, which is great, and there’s some convention-set talking heads with Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell amongst others but it feels a bit fleeting, like a local TV news crew dropped in to grab a quick word. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis appears only in archive interview footage. Late series mainstay Mustapha Akkad takes the reigns from John Carpenter and Debra Hill after Halloween III is all but apologised for and, in turn, makes public his regret that Halloween 5 was rushed into production too soon.

There’s some insight and box office blah, interviews with some fairly unhinged fans (one of whom goes so far as to ape Soles’ “see anything you like?” moment for the camera – and then wins a contest to appear in what was then known as Halloween 9) and Marianne Hagan laments the troubles that plagued Halloween 6 but it all stops short of Rob Zombie’s redux, which would have made for some interesting insights from fans and series alumni alike.

Attention-holding enough for what felt more like a few DVD featurettes strung together to flog that thousandth reissue of the original, which was included in the 2-disc pack.

Who else turns up: Brian Andrews, Tom Atkins, J.C. Brandy, Jeff Burr, John Carl Buechler, Jason Paul Collum, Charles Cyphers, Chris Durand, Gloria Gifford, Sasha Jenson, Nancy Loomis, Brad Loree, Kim Newman, Rick Rosenthal, Don Shanks, Beau Starr, Tommy Lee Wallace, George P. Wilbur.

Triv: Rick Rosenthal says he shot the hot-tub murder scene from Halloween II in a thong! Marianne Hagan talks about the test screenings for Halloween 6, where an ‘articulate 14-year-old’s’ opinion that “the ending sucked” ensured re-shoots for two thirds of the film! Rob Zombie goes on to detest the process, commenting that when he was 14 nobody gave a shit what he thought about re-editing Jaws! Danielle Harris had a creepy stalker. There were multiple masks used in H20 as various big-wigs cyclically disapproved of them.

HIS NAME WAS JASON: 30 YEARS OF FRIDAY THE 13TH

2009/90m

Director: Daniel Farrands / Writers: Anthony Masi & Thommy Hutson

Released to cash-in on the impending Friday the 13th “reboot” and shown on TV in the US – and strangely released in the UK in April 2010 – like, thanks now…

There’s more in common with Going to Pieces than the Halloween doc, as Tom Savini presents a segmented skate through the merry history of Camp Crystal Lake, starting with a superfast overview of films 1-11, appreciating Jason’s greatest hits, the score, the mask, pretty much everything you learnt from Peter Bracke’s Crystal Lake Memories book with a little less cast interaction, although Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King and (swoon) Amy Steel appear so who cares about the rest? The lovely Felissa appears once again out of mutual respect for a fellow summer camp slayer and everyone attempts to replicate the ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma sound with varying degrees of accuracy.

Several horror bloggers get screentime to admire the best of Big J but there’s even less technical information here than in the Halloween doc, as if the whole project was dumbed down to suck in airheaded fanboys who only care about the method by which various teenagers are disposed of.

That said, Friday is the brand I champion the most. It’s organically the classic slasher series, despite its commercialand critical failures throughout the years, it’s like the kid you love just a little more than your other two, who might be smarter and better turned out, but Friday the 13th needs only to don that puppy dog expression and I’m sold.

The second disc includes extended interviews, fan films and the like. Was VeVo asked to contribute? No. *sulks*

Who else turns up: Diane Almeida, Erich Anderson, Judie Aronson, Diana Barrows, Richard Brooker, John Carl Buechler, Chuck Campbell, Gloria Charles, Jensen Daggett, Steve Dash, Darcy DeMoss, Todd Farmer, John Furey, Warrington Gillette, CJ Graham, Seth Green (!), Kane Hodder, James Isaac, David Kagen, Elizabeth Kaitan, Ken Kirzinger, Paul Kratka, Adam Marcus, Tom McLoughlin, Lawrence Monoson, Camilla & Carey More, Lar Park Lincoln, Catherine Parks, Amanda Righetti, Shavar Ross, John Shepherd, Danny Steinmann, Lauren-Marie Taylor, Russell Todd, Debisue Voorhees, Ted White, Larry Zerner.

Triv: Darcy DeMoss’ murder scene was actually filmed underwater.

NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY

2010/239m

Directors: Daniel Farrands & Andrew Kasch / Writer: Thommy Hutson

Back in the 80s, Roger Ebert said in his review of Elm Street 3 that the Krueger franchise was like a high-rent version of the Friday the 13th saga… Never more is that represented than here in this staggering FOUR HOUR retrospective of the eight Freddy films prior to the 2010 remake.

Narrated by the wonderful Heather Langenkampenschultzenburger and punctuated by stop-motion interludes, each and every film, plus that horrendous TV series, is explored to maximum effect, uniting nearly all the principal cast members who reflect on their time on set, what they thought of the films and the appeal of Freddy himself. Plus the riddle of Elm Street 2‘s notorious gay subtext is finally resolved – yes, it was intended to be a low-key theme, although it seemed most of those involved did not notice at the time.

Wes Craven and Robert Shaye talk freely about their dispute over the sequel rights and, on the second disc, the present cast members regurgitate memorable lines that recreates the saga from beginning to end and there’s a set visit which takes us to 1428 Elm Street, Nancy’s school and Tina’s house amongst others as well as extended interviews that cast a grim shadow over the then-incoming remake.

Comparatively, this grandiose slab of nostalgia wins hands down for sheer effort to please the fans, but could you watch it more than once? It took me three sittings just to get through it.

Who else turns up: It would actually be easier to say who didn’t participate – almost every main cast member is interviewed, the only obvious exception to me being Ronee Blakely, who avoided it all by getting good and loaded.

Triv: For Jennifer’s TV-nightmare in Dream Warriors, Dick Cavett was allowed to choose his interviewee and so picked Zsa Zsa Gabor, citing her as the dumbest person he’d ever met, who he’d never have on his show and who he’d gleefully see slashed by Freddy.

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All this shows that we are much indebted to Daniel Farrands, Thommy Hutson and Anthony Masi for all they’ve put into three out of four of these documentaries and Jeff Katz for appearing in, quite possibly, all of them, symbolic of their love and respect for a genre most people couldn’t have cared less about. We love you.

WRESTLEMANIAC

2006/18/73m

“Let the face off begin.”

Director/Writer: Jesse Baget / Cast: Rey Misterio, Leyla Milani, Jeremy Radin, Adam Huss, Margaret Scarborough, Catherine Wreford, Zack Bennett.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “Hasta la vista…you fuck!”

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Six teenagers driving through a Mexican scape that looks suspiciously like California take one of those classic film wrong turns on their way to a beach where they intend to shoot a porno on a camcorder and end up in La Sangra De Dios, a ghost town inhabited solely by lobotomised wrestler El Mascarado who, in spite of the solitude, rigidly sticks to the rules of south-of-the-border wrestling: that your opponent is permanently retired upon the removal of his mask. Or, in the case of lost teenagers, removal of the face will do fine.

After a start is indistinguishable from a sombrero full of other ‘comedy’ slashers, with heavy injections of skin and girl-on-girl action, the killing ushers in a quite enjoyable slasher opus that remains loyal to the genre cliches for the most part, whittling down the players until the surprisingly capable final girl embarks on a quest of vengeance against the killer.

Played by Mexican champ Misterio and under six feet tall, our loon looks far more imposing than the hulking American WWE wrestlers who have ventured into the body count genre.

Clocking in at a comfortable 73 minutes, nothing gets boring and Wrestlemaniac plays like a gored-up version of Scooby Doo and ends with the sentiment ‘keep it simple’, a mantra which has served the film quite well.

Blurb-of-interest: Catherine Wreford was in The Butcher.

THE BUTCHER

2005/15/84m

“Rest in pieces.”

Director: Edward Gorsuch / Writer: Ellis Walker / Cast: Catherine Wreford, Tom Nagel, Myiea Coy, Alan Ritchson, Bill Jacobson, Nick Stellate, Ashley Hawkins, Tiffany M. Kristensen, Anne M. Mackay, Leila Garvyier.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “Leave her – she’s dead now, she’ll be dead when we get back.”

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When road trips go bad… Don’t they always? Even if you don’t run afoul of hillside cannibals, motels run by transvestite mama’s boys or rusty old tankers hell bent on running you off the road, the people you’re stuck in the car with will inevitably piss you off and make you wish for any of these distractions, as will local radio and the dull scenery that tumbles by.

In this instance, six teenagers on their way to Las Vegas to celebrate their graduation take the short cut from hell and, whilst fooling around, have an accident that kills one of them: they hit a tree while one of the girls is dancing out of the sunroof. Needless to say, they end up calling on the local malformed psycho’s house for aid.

This no-budget second-gen photocopy of Wrong Turn is competently enough put together and has a handful of decent, likeable characters as well as traces of what could have been a nightmarish sequence of events had it been in more professional hands or in possession of more moolah but it ultimately moves too slowly and looks too cheap to leave a lasting impression.

It also has a mean streak with all black or gay characters meeting particularly nasty ends at the hands of the truck-driving loon but this kind of minimalist approach is usually pretty effective, it just leaves very little to say about it.

Blurbs-of-interest: Catherine Wreford was in the similar (and slightly better) Wrestlemaniac; Tom Nagel was in Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove.

HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS

1989/18/97m

“Michael lives. And this time they’re ready!”

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard / Writer: Michael Jacobs / Cast: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Wendy Kaplan, Jeffrey Landman, Tamara Glynn, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Betty Corvalho, Troy Evans, Frank Como, David Ursin, Don Shanks.

Body Count: 17-ish

Dire-logue: “Stay away, OK, you know you’re really creepy filling that little girl with all that boogeyman crap!”

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1988 and 89 were notable years for the three big franchises, all of which saw releases in both years. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 raked in the most but all of the ’88 releases far superseded their 1989 follow-ups, all three of which paled both commercially and creatively.

In later documentaries on the series, cast and crew freely admitted that Halloween 5 was taken on too soon, entering the stage of pre-production before the script was even finalised and eventually competing with the home video release of the far more successful Halloween 4 in October of 1989.

The narrative holes are evident from the outset, picking up immediately from the end of the previous instalment where Michael is gunned into the ground by the Haddonfield cops. He crawls off underground and tumbles into a river, eventually winding up at the shack of a hermit, where he collapses. One year later, we’re asked to believe that the hermit has looked after the comatose stranger for the whole fucking year without telling another soul! The ever grateful Michael, waking up on October 30th, kills his saviour straight away. How nice.

Little Jamie Lloyd is a patient of Haddonfield’s Childrens Clinic, is mute, and shares a psychic connection with Unkie Mike, aware he’s on the prowl again and coming back for her. Her sorta-sister Rachel and her good time gal friend Tina are dismissive while the increasingly loopy Doc Loomis plagues Jamie for information.

Michael kills Rachel and stalks Tina and her friends to a party at an old farm, casually killing off the bit-parters, a pair of ridiculously conceived “comedy cops” who come complete with their own circusy theme and chasing down Jamie, who eventually agrees to Loomis’ plan to bait Michael back to his old house “where it all began…”

Things climax at the Myers house, which has inexplicably morphed into a mansion-sized clone of Garth Manor from Hell Night, where Jamie is stalked and terrorized beyond entertaining parameters into the uncomfortable arena of cruelty over kicks. Then there’s some stupid twist about the newly introduced ‘Man in Black’, something that fans of the series would have to wait six years to get answers for.

Halloween 5 is probably the least effective of the Myers films; clunky and strangely paced that generates more questions than answers about stuff we don’t really care about. Does Michael simply deactivate on November 1st every year? Who killed those people at the clinic? Why the hell did nobody spot that his mask looks funky throughout and needs to be tucked the fuck in!!? Overlong sequences of soon-to-be victims wandering around pad out the already testing running time and the mean spiritedness of killing Rachel and subjecting a nine-year-old to an endless array of running and screaming trample over the atmospheric imprint left by Halloween 4.

There are some workable elements in the film; the first two thirds are watchable stuff and consistent with a lot of themes of the earlier films, stronger than a lot of low-rent examples of the same era and only really disappointing in contrast to the strengths of its parent franchise and it packs Kaplan’s Tina, a divisive character many believe to be one of the most annoying people to cross paths with Michael but is also kind of a fun diversion – and, hey, she dies so who’s complaining?

Blurbs-of-interest: Pleasence, Cornell, Harris and Starr had all returned from the previous film. Danielle Harris returned to the series as Annie Brackett in Rob Zombie’s re-imagining and its sequel and also played Tosh in Urban Legend; Pleasence was in five of the first six Halloweens, Alone in the Dark and also Phenomena; Don Shanks was a stunt double for Santa in Silent Night, Deadly Night, appeared in Sweet Sixteen and was the psycho fisherman in I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.