Hippie Hippie Shake n’ Slash

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THE TRIPPER

3 Stars  2006/18/94m

“Move over Jason. Look out Freddie. Heeere’s Ronnie!”

Director: David Arquette / Writers: Arquette & Joe Harris / Cast: Jaime King, Lukas Haas, Thomas Jane, Paul Reubens, Jason Mewes, Balthazar Getty, Marsha Thomason, Stephen Hrath, Paz de la Huerta, Richmond Arquette, Rick Overton, Redmond Gleeson, Chris Nelson, David Arquette, Courteney Cox.

Body Count: at least 23

Dire-logue: “Sir, will you spank me? My father never spanked me. I’m in desperate need of discipline.”

As actress Marsha Thomason points out in one of the DVD extras, being British, we have limited knowledge of American politics. Furthermore, while I have clear memories of Ronald Reagan being President, all that he did or didn’t do was eclipsed for us by what Maggie Thatcher was doing here.

Therefore, I may have entirely missed the point David Arquette was trying to make with The Tripper, which is essentially about the hippie revellers at a Free Love Festival being indiscriminately chopped up by an axe-wielding loon in a suit and Reagan mask. The why and what-are-you-getting-at? is what prevents things from making total sense – for Marsha and me at least.

Three peace-lovin’ couples in an old Mystery Machine-type van rock up to the event expecting to have the drug-fuelled time of their lives, but shy newcomer Samantha is paranoid that her controlling Republican ex may have followed them there, while her new beau Ivan keeps getting off his face and the others just want to have sex and get fucked up. Meanwhile, local Sheriff Thomas Jane is battling with the corrupt mayor and bogus organiser Paul Reubens and a growing stack of dead hippies. Are they being done away with by the now-grown little kid who went apeshit with a chainsaw in the prologue? Yes. Yes they are.

While Arquette (who has a small role as one of a trio of rednecks) may have mastered his character of Dewey in the Scream films, as a director he’s quite noticeably unfocused, erratically going from scene to scene without any cohesive plotting: we don’t know where characters are or what they’re doing most of the time and many of the scenes appear to be constructed around a target joke rather than have it appear incidental.

That’s not to say The Tripper fails, it’s still quite funny, liberally bloody and doesn’t shy away from jabbing at errors Reagan evidently made during his time in charge but the whole project lacks clarity. Is the objective to underscore the evils of Republicans? To try and reassert the point of the Free Love movement? A comment of capitalism, that nobody can really be trusted? Or is it just a simpleton slasher flick?

Where The Tripper unquestionably succeeds is in its cast rota: Arquette ropes in family and friends who gleefully make the best of their roles: Jane is great as the beleaguered man in charge and getting Jason Mewes to do what he does best (having cameoed as Jay in Scream 3) is always good; Courteney Cox has a small bit as an animal loving flower child. Only Lukas Haas and Balthazar Getty seem wasted (not in that sense) by the slim nature of their parts. The latter’s red herring status is completely screwed up by the fact that we pretty much know who the killer is from the outset.

I’ve watched the film three times since I picked it up and each time I’m reminded of how gorgeous California is and how awkward The Tripper plays out. It’s a bewildering film with context perhaps too upfront and deep-rooted for a bodycount pic but serves as a sort of rest-stop between Screams 3 and 4. But then maybe I just don’t get it and when somebody makes a sequel about Thatcher offing miners up north I’ll have an epiphany and give it another go.

At very least, it’s worth watching just to prove that sometimes, sometimes you get full frontal male nudity in these things.

Blurbs-of-interest: Lukas Haas and Marsha Thomason were in Long Time Dead together; Jaime King was in My Bloody Valentine 3D; Jason Mewes played a stoner (again) in RSVP; Paul Reubens was in Pandemonium; Chris Nelson was leter in ChromeSull: Laid to Rest 2; Paz de la Huerta was in The Editor.

The Clueless and the Headless

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DEAD ABOVE GROUND

2 Stars  2002/15/90m

“School is hell. And it just got far, far worse.”

Director: Chuck Bowman / Writer: Stephen J. Cannell / Cast: Antonio Sabato Jr., Lisa Ann Hadley, Charlie Weber, Josh Hammond, Adria Dawn, Lauren German, Stephen J. Cannell, Corbin Bernsen, Keri Lynn Pratt, Adam Frost, Tony Denman, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Craig Kirkwood, Robert Conrad.

Body Count: 8

Fan of The A-Team, 90210-esque soaps and Kevin Williamson? Then this fusion the two latter styles written by the creator of the former  could be for you! So much so, in fact, that it may as well have been called Murder at Melrose.

Yes, written by he who gave us Hannibal, B.A., Face and Murdoch and directed by nobody you’ll ever have heard of, things begin with the obligatory double slaughter of Corbin Bernsen and his missus. Then the film jumps forward five and a half months to Sweet Valley Bay City High – school for the offspring of LA’s most affluent families.

Uber-goth student Jeff is violently appalled when his “communications” class laugh at his film project (a five minute gore pic) and is sent to the school shrink Dr Boone, who can’t get through to him. At a pool party soon after, Jeff punches a girl and flees in his car, pursued by said girl’s jock boyfriend, Dillon. Jeff eventually succeeds in driving over a cliff to his fiery death… Or so you’d think.

On the first anniversary of his rather embarrassing demise, his equally bizarre friend Zara predicts his spirit will return from the Celtic Plain or whatever to seek vengeance on his tormentors. To nobody’s surprise but theirs, a cloaked and hooded, axe-toting nut begins doing away with Bay City High staff and students.

Enter slick detective Sabato who suspects pretty much the entire cast but still finds time to romance Dr Boone. Meanwhile, Zara holds a seance, inviting a bunch of classmates to contact Jeff’s spirit and prevent any further murders, as each death seems to hold a clue as to who will be the next to go.

Dead Above Ground shifts from character to character at such a rate, spending so little time on each that there’s nobody to root for (except the killer under certain circumstances). The sizable group of teens therefore serve only to annoy and virtually all of them walk away unscathed by the time the credits roll.

In its favour, the director manages to cull good performances from most of the cast, although Josh Hammond goes for the thespian jugular as Looney Toon Jeff, but Charlie Weber impresses as the kid from the wrong side of the tracks and Sabato’s chief suspect. Like whatever though, Dead Above Ground is, like, totally dead in the water.

Blurbs-of-interest: Bernsen had the titular role in both Dentist films; Hammond was one of the besieged school bus kids in Jeepers Creepers II and was also in 7eventy 5ive; Weber was a regular in Series 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lauren German was the lead in Hostel: Part II. Chuck Bowman later directed The Tooth Fairy.

Stock Background Characters 101: The Oracle

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In this feature, we examine the lesser beings of the slasher movie realm, which, if you’re making your own slasher film, could provide a good cast roster for you.

No killer or final girl profiles here, this is a celebration of those underlings who made the most of their fleeting flirtation with stardom. And usually died.

Let us recall with love, THE ORACLE

“There is a force at work here. It is not human and it is unspeakably EVIL!”

Overview: If you are a teenager and you live in a town that has a creepy old house, summer camp, closed down asylum or cemetery with a blood-soaked past, chances are there’ll be some old drunk who remembers what went down X years earlier and never stops rabbiting on about it. Everyone ignores him or her, especially when they begin spouting warnings that history is about to repeat itself and you – as one of the teenagers – are fucked if you go meddling. This person is an Oracle.

Linguistic Snapshot: “You’re doomed if you go exploring the old MacKenzie abatoir… It’s cursed! It’s evil! Nobody who goes in ever comes back again… Mark my words or you’ll be sorry tooooo!”

Styling: Because the Oracle is normally old and generally looked upon with disdain by the rest of the townsfolk, he or she is normally adorned in smelly old-person clothes, maybe a kooky hat or a cloak, oversized glasses and a crooked smile with some missing teeth amidst a cloud of alcohol-scented air.

Hallmarks: Being the only person around who actually has a Scooby about what’s going to happen, the Oracle maintains a sort of creepy aura of foresight and will either rock back on their porch chair with a smug ‘I told y’all so!’ grin or make the error of following the sexy teens to either A). perv or B). be proven right and succeed only in C). getting killed early on.

Downfall: Every oar-sticker-inner gets their comeuppance at one point or another. Take Oracle extraordinaire Crazy Ralph for example; he told the counsellors of Camp Crystal Lake that they were doomed and was right. Five years later – and in exactly the same clothes – he tried to go for a twofer and ended up pissing off JV and getting garrotted to death.

When you think about it, the Oracle is actually trying to help rather than hinder: from Dr Loomis’ cryptic rants about Michael Myers being the devil incarnate to the local psychic Jazelle in Jeepers Creepers, these folk are putting their own lives on the line for the sake of half a dozen stupid-ass teenagers.

However, sometimes the Oracle isn’t so pleasant. Take Happy from My Bloody Valentine, for example, goes off on anyone who dares disrespect the legend of Harry Warden and decides to teach those no-good young folk a lesson with a scary prank, which backfires on his ass big time!

Others give in and try to get the hell outta Dodge, much to the amusement of those around them: the old lady who’s crushed by her own house in Children of the Corn II (though not before uttering the excellent line, “Have you ever seen…evil?”); Estes the handyman from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer – they both at least had the sense to flee, albeit too late in both cases.

Genesis: Dr Loomis and Crazy Ralph are doubtlessly the earliest seers-of-doom in Halloween and Friday the 13th respectively: both went out of their way to warn folk of the impending danger, one out of known-authority and the other as the town crazy, but it’s worth noting they were both right and survived to tell everyone so. Presumably over and over and over as old folk do.

Legacy: The Oracle became a bit of a rely-on cliche in later years, cropping up with cryptic nonsense here and there, from the Ralph-lite Deckhand of Jason Takes Manhattan, to all the bartenders and shopkeepers who eyeball nubile newcomers on roadtrips to their deaths…

The most recent example was a toned-down example in the Friday remake – the old lady who appears to know about Jason Voorhees living out in them there woods. Her policy being that if they leave him alone, he’ll leave them alone. No questions asked. Stupid teens come along and try to steal his pot, he takes action.

And less stereotypically, there was the college kid who appears at the dorm room door of Sara’s in Halloween: Resurrection, who tries to scare the girls with the briefest of retellings before descending into some stoner-comic impression. What was that about?

Anyway, any good old fashioned slasher flick should have a crazy old biddy to warn people and stuff. Cliche or not, it’s always fun to watch the arrogant teenagers shrug off the advice and go to the haunted logging camp anyway. Long live you, Oracle! (unless you decide to follow the kids and end up with a hacksaw in the mouth).

Accidents *will* happen…

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FINAL DESTINATION 2

4 Stars  2006/15/87m

“For every beginning there is an end.”

Director: David R. Ellis / Writers: Jeffrey Reddick, Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber / Cast: Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, Tony Todd, T.C. Carson, Keegan Connor Tracy, Jonathan Cherry, Lynda Boyd, James N. Kirk, Justina Machado, David Paetkau, Sarah Carter.

Body Count: 11

Dire-logue: “If Clear was right then Nora and Tim are going to be attacked by pigeons!”

Cementing the decade’s most popular horror franchise (unless you prefer Saw?), Final Destination 2 is probably the most accessible entry in the series, pulling together the elements that have made the series so successful. It’s not as good as the first one but it’s definitive in being the best example of what the FD brand is all about, including the tie-in novels, which borrow much of the lore from what happens in this film.

On the flipside, the beginnings of what drowned the more recent sequels in the cliche tide were pulled in with the same net: tits, short cuts to defining characters and dumb jokes – none of which were present first time around.

Set on the first anniversary of the explosion of Flight 180, the subsequent events that befell Alex, Clear and friends have become a Chinese Whisper, so when Spring Break teenager Kimberly (Cook) foresees her own death and those of many others in a highway pile-up, history looks to be repeating itself. As Devon Sawa did last time, our psychic takes steps to prevent being caught up in the carnage, meaning that the pesky force that is Death has got it in for her and the on-ramp patrons who were denied access to the road.

Final Destination 2 essentially takes the bus-splatter shock from before and repeats it ad nauseum with a whole new array of every day items conspiring to take down the mixed group of death-evaders: this means there is death by ladder, elevator, air-bag and barbecue among others, all of which are more gruesomely played out than before – Death has upped the ante.

You can sort of sense a struggle with its own IQ here. The theories of mortality are absent in favour of a jacked-up body count and more bloodletting, which clashes with some of the smarter aspects of the plot, mainly the good ‘outward-ripple’ theory discovered halfway through. Unfortunately, its effect is dampened by clunky acting and then it’s all but forgotten about in Final Destination 3, which could’ve further explored the consequences of the premonitions. And there’s still no questioning just what force provides these foresights in the first place? Life working against Death? Why don’t they visit a psychic rather than Tony Todd?

Ali Larter’s return as an embittered hard-ass is great and A.J. Cook makes a functional heroine while the very easy-on-the-eye Landes floats around in the background like a spare part. Everyone else fulfills their obligatory pin-cushion bond, becoming targets for every possible piece of flying shrapnel that are hellbent on hacking, slashing, severing and dissecting them.

Effects wise, the car crash is nothing short of sensationally realised though some of the CG that ensues further through the film becomes a bit ropey (especially fire) – though the grue is full on, especially in the first two demises, which make perfect use of our innocuous looking surroundings. You’ll never look at your kitchen appliances or dental surgery decor in the same way again.

The next two Destinations ramped up the sadism in favour of coherent plotting and characters we care about, whether or not the fifth film will revert to the slightly more thought-out fundamentals of the first two films remains to be seen but, to date, FD2 represents the commercial peak of the franchise.

Blurbs-of-interest: A.J. Cook was the final girl, Molly, in Ripper: Letter from Hell; David Paetkau appeared in I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer; Tony Todd cameos all over the show and can be found in both Hatchet films, iMurders, Scarecrow Slayer, Jack the Reaper, Hell Fest, Candy Corn, and will return for the fifth FD movie; David R. Ellis directed The Final Destination which was written by Bress and Reddick (the latter created the original story). Shaun Sipos, one of Kim’s friends in the car, later turned up in Texas Chainsaw 3D.

Is there something you’re trying to tell us?

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Something new today as Vegan Voorhees hands over the writing reins to Ross Tipograph, who looks into some of the most popular horror flicks that seemed to be hiding parts of themselves in a subtextual closet with only a little more subtlety than this:

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The horror and slasher genres are notoriously for carrying weirdly sexual undertones… It’s really unavoidable, when you think about it: One predatory killer (always a man, or for shock value – gasp! – a woman) stalks and obsesses over a group of usually gorgeous, usually young characters, waits for that one dark night or empty hallway moment, gets up to them real close in a one-on-one moment and… penetrates them, usually with something sharp and phallic (if not shooting, decapitating, or creatively terminating them in any way other than stabbing).

The sexual is imagery is RAMPANT! So, as a focus, we’ll take a look at an underrated way of observing the horror & slasher genre(s), through this sexual lens:

THE TOP UNINTENTIONALLY GAY HORROR MOVIES

1.  A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

This sequel was abysmal, not only because it was following / attempting to cash in on one of the greatest horror movie classics of all time, but also because it was just downright horrible and unwatchable. The entire movie follows one guy, Jesse (played by Mark Patton), as he tries to escape the taunting, phallic knives of predatory Freddy Krueger.

First of all – why the hell is Freddy setting his sights on a teenage boy? In almost every other Elm Street movie, Freddy stalks a luscious young girl, staying true to the weird psycho-sexual stereotypes of movies – a creepy man chasing a girl. So, what is the aggressive, arguably heterosexual genre audience supposed to gain from Freddy chasing a guy? The answer is: nothing. Except for weird parallels to gay porn.

At one point, Jesse has a nightmare that takes place in a bar with his gym teacher… Which leads to a naked shower scene with said character… Which leads to a series of wet and wild ass-whippings. In another scene, Freddy literally emerges from Jesse’s body, tearing through his flesh, coming out from within. Explanations? None.

Why confide in your girlfriend when your unnaturally-hot sparring partner will do?

2. The Lost Boys (1987)

(What is it with these eighties movies?)

A cult classic with some definite gay undertones, The Lost Boys is awesome. It is also, yes, kinda gay. The brooding, buff Michael (Jason Patric), his eager younger brother Sam (Corey Haim), and their cool, single mom (Dianne Wiest) move to a new town on the coast of sunny California. Already, we have a queer vibe of “the outsiders” trying to fit in. And soon, they sort of do, when they meet a gang of snarling, hungry vampire teens – a group of touchy-feely guys with one hot girl (Jami Gertz), whom they virtually ignore.

The girl is so neglected, she’s actually used to lure new boys into this vampire coven. She bounces around and shows off her goods, leading these unsuspecting newcomers to a seriously scary Kiefer Sutherland, complete with bleached-blonde mulleted hair, along with Bill & Ted reject Alex Winter and others. Also, in one scene, Corey Haim has a poster hanging up in his closet of a naked Rob Lowe. Go see for yourself.

The vampire genre has always been pretty gay, drawing parallels to homosexuality with its intense man-on-man eating (seen here in The Lost Boys), secrecy and self-hatred (seen here in The Lost Boys), and post-1980 comparisons to the HIV/AIDS  crisis, passed on through blood, just like vampires (see: The Lost Boys).

"I have so much to show you, Michael..." Never trust anyone with a peroxide blonde mullet.

3. Rope (1948)

Alfred Hitchcock’s notorious attempt at a eighty-minute continuously-shot movie, tied together with a few suave editing tricks (which surely tricked the crowds of the late ‘40s) is so entertainingly, blaringly gay you can’t help but wonder if it was intentional. Taking into account the casting of two closeted Hollywood actors and the rumors of Hitchcock’s own sexuality, anything is possible.

The film opens in a Manhattan loft, where two men… do something sinful, in the dark, with the blinds closed. John Dall, one of the two, is more suave and accepting of it, lighting a cigarette after the deed is done and wanting to open the blinds. The other man, Farley Granger, is much more terrified, disgusted by this act they’ve committed together and wanting to die. What they’ve actually done is kill a man, but with lines like “Don’t open the curtains yet; let’s just stay this way for a minute,” and moments like the killers removing each others’ rubber gloves – you decide.

The movie amps up when the two guys have a dinner party with several guests, trying to keep their secret quiet and acting like nothing is wrong. It’s up to old Jimmy Stewart, their professor from their boarding school days (gay!), to figure out what’s really going on between these two men. A thrill.

"I can't believe you didn't choose orchids for the centre-spread!"

More ‘mo fun to look for:

Jeepers Creepers (2001), in which a mythical man-hungry beast stalks and eats a teenage Justin Long. Written and directed by shady gay filmmaker Victor Salva

Interview with the Vampire (1994), in which Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and Tom Cruise (of course) battle for Most Theatrical Queeny Performance while sucking each others’ necks, wearing corsets and crying

Fright Night (1985), another eighties (and another vampire) entry, in which a guy who can’t have sex with his girlfriend because he’s too distracted by the charming man next door and this neighbour’s creepy, unexplained male “roommate”.

Scream (1996) – there’s always been a thing between Skeet Ulrich & Matthew Lillard. (Ever notice how Stu screams “yeah baby, get it up!” when inviting Billy to knife him? – Hud)

Ross Tipograph is a film buff and Emerson College screenwriting major. When he’s not reviewing movies, he’s writing about Halloween costumes.

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So there you have it Voorheesians, vampires are gay, Hitchcock might’ve swung wider than a pendulum and, well we all knew Elm Street 2 was one big pride parade, didn’t we?

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