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Ahem… “Hot Shit”

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COLD PREY

5 Stars  2006/15/94m

“You’ll catch your death.”

Director: Roar Uthaug / Writers: Thomas Moldestad, Martin Sundland, Roar Uthaug, Jan Eirick Langoen & Magne Lyngner / Cast: Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Endre Martin Midtstigen, Viktoria Winge, Rune Melby.

Body Count: 5

Hands up in da air for a Final Girl Filmclub entry.

Fans of Friday the 13th have long wanted an episode set in the snow. To date, Cold Prey is the closest any of us are going to get. And I say this as a long time Jason advocate… Cold Prey would probably still be better.

Seems as if in the wake of the Scream generation, European slasher films are where it’s at. Them toyed with the concept of uninvited guests long before The Strangers; Haute Tension lived up to its name; and Norwegian export Cold Prey not only packs in more tension than its French counterpart but unfolds as possibly the best slasher film in a long, long time. Combined with its equally well-crafted sequel, this is one franchise to be reckoned with. Although reports of the yet-to-be-released-internationally prequel, Cold Prey III, paint a picture of inability to leave well enough alone. Apparently, it sucks.

EDIT: I’ve since seen it, it doesn’t suck after all.

Never mind, it can’t change the fact that Cold Prey is a sensationally well made film, constructed out of a thousand cliches but using them wisely rather than retreading old ground and falling into a pit of topless babes going off to check on weird noises and dialogue no deeper than “oh my God, Todd looks soooooo hot!” Beautifying its simple story with a good eye for what looks scary and an evident lack of spoon-feeding the audience, it perfectly avoids the kind of executive meddling that has plagued way too many bigger budget American releases of the test-audience era.

Five young friends – horndogs Mikal and Ingunn, cutesy couple Eirik and Jannicke, and singleton Morten Tobias – drive out to a desolate frozen landscape for a day of snowboarding, which is soon cut short when Morten Tobias breaks his leg and they end up seeking shelter in a long-abandoned ski-lodge.

They bed in, stoke up a fire and the generator, get loaded on booze and get wasted by the hulking pick-axe toting psycho who resides there.

Cold Prey adopts the kind of slow burn approach often preferred in European horror. Little horrific happens for the first half, we simply spend time with the group, who have a few unspoken issues between them, most notably, sweet natured dork Morten Tobias’ unrequited love for Jannicke. The debut murder, some 40 minutes in, is set up just like something out of a Jason movie and remains undiscovered until the next morning, after Eirik opts to trek back to the car, leaving the other three alone at Hotel Creepshow.

Meanwhile, Jannicke and Mikal come across a room filled with ‘abandoned’ ski apparel, jewellery and keys, echoing that creepy cabin scene in Wrong Turn. Spooked, they decide to actively look for their friend who hasn’t been seen all morning and when they realise the extent of their dilemma they barricade themselves in a room until Eirik returns. Of course, we already know he’s been incapacitated by the nutter, who looks like he’s just hiked in from Lapland. Maybe he has. Maybe he’s Santa and they’ve all been bad.

The Friday-meets-Shredder outlay is soon cranked into overdrive as attempts to raise help are repeatedly thwarted by the killer until only Jannicke is left to battle him, culminating in a scene reminiscent of something I saw in Hostel of all things, but used to better edge-of-your-seat effect here. Despite the formula, the fact it comes from foreign shores leaves a gap in your expectation – the first time I saw the film I found it positively nerve-shredding.

All in all, while there’s not much to say about clever plotting elements in this otherwise standard slasher flick, Cold Prey undoubtedly benefits from believable and – gasp! – likeable characters, none of whom ‘have it coming to them’, their complicated personal motivations and the unrelenting cloud of bleakness that hangs over proceedings, ever threatening to shower things in sticky blood.

Director Uthaug’s vision was that the true horror was found in the helplessness of the situation and the killer was just a conduit for converting the underlying brood to a more accessible legion of terror. It works.

The byproduct of this is that we don’t really know what drives the killer. It’s hinted at and even shown in brief flashbacks towards the end but it makes little sense. It’s left up to you to decide rather than rammed down your throat.

Low-concept, high-art stalk n’ slash with a fond recollection of what actually made the hey-day films so good. Impressively, all cast members were brought back for roles in the 2008 sequel, which I frankly didn’t have time to fawn over so will follow some time soon.

To see how Cold Prey fared when pitted against similarly-named band Coldplay, go here.

Backtrack Baby

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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD

2.5 Stars  1989/18/86m

“Freddy delivers.”

Director: Stephen Hopkins / Writers: Leslie Boehm, John Skipp, Craig Spector & David Spector / Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Danny Hassel, Erika Anderson, Joe Seely, Nick Mele, Valorie Armstrong, Burr DeBenning, Clarence Felder, Beatrice Boepple, Whitby Hertford.

Body Count: 3

So I had this dream about A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 t’other day; I can’t remember much of it now apart from ‘being at’ the graduation scene. As it probably stands as my least favourite Freddy flick (including the remake), this subconscious soiree was enough to at least make me go back for a reappraisal…

While it’s still the most disappointing Elm Street (though I love the artwork), The Dream Child still houses just about enough charm to slink by, thanks mainly to that nostalgic drag the late 80s has as all three major slasher franchises began to wane. Seriously.

Halloween 5 was a subplot-scuppered mess, Jason Takes Manhattan tried to light a spark that fizzled out seconds later and as for Freddy, well Freddy’s problem was that he’d become way too big, way too recently…

If you’ve watched the excellent 4-hour documentary Never Sleep Again (and if not, what the actual fuck?) you’ll know that the fifth trip down Elm Street was rushed out in no time at all, with an unheard of four week pre-production schedule and the same time again to edit the film, it was done and dusted less than a year after The Dream Master, which probably highlights New Line’s then-greed with the franchise as the fourth film raked in an unprecedented $50million and favourable reviews.

Freddy’s worldwide fame notwithstanding (the TV series had begun, he was being namechecked by Ronald Reagan, he released a rap LP…), the producers made the error of attempting to back-pedal to the gritty, gothic feel of the first film, keeping Mr K pretty much out of sight for most of the film as he returns to torment Springwood teens through the dreams of an unborn baby. Desperate? Yes. Clever? Kinda.

The foetus in question belongs to Alice, who returns from surviving the last film along with boyfriend Dan and also her recovering alci dad. Now, I never really liked Alice in The Dream Master, she was all willowy and enfeebled, like some simpering Jane Austen chick who then went kick-ass. It was a by-the-book heroine that grated me. Thankfully, she’s a lot more resolute and likeable in The Dream Child.

No sooner than do she and Dan conceive, Freddy is able to enter the bub’s dreams and using Alice’s ability to suck other people into hers, eliminate her new circle of friends one by one. Or rather one, then two, then another one and no more.

A measly three victims are served up this time around, giving FK little to do and Alice and dwindling pals too much to do. Inexplicably, nobody seems to remember nor mentions the spate of deaths at Springwood High what, a year earlier? When Alice tries to convince her buddies of Freddy’s existence, they shut her down. Hello? Dead brother Rick? Kristen. Sheila. Debbie. Have they all developed amnesia?

A recycled subplot concerning Amanda Krueger and her lost remains is tossed in rather haphazardly (the producers admitted the end was not even written until the shoot was half over) and all manner of visual effects are wheeled in to try and divert the attention: Freddy as a chef who feeds one victim to death; cartoon super-Freddy; loads of gothic shit.

To be fair, the effects work – for its day – is excellent. One of the last films to make extensive use of claymation before the CGI dawn, The Dream Child at least puts effort into killing what few doomed teens there are. The MPAA, however, was not impressed and subsequently all grue scenes were cut back, rendering the film rather impotent on the gore stakes. Thus, it also became the lowest grossing entry, turning a decent profit but falling far short of the dizzy heights of the two former entries, which are arguably the best sequels.

Fortunately, they cut back on the comic one-liners as well – eventually going into overdrive in Freddy’s Dead two years later – to aid the reversion to Scary Fred Krueger. But it doesn’t work. By ’89 the brand was too ingrained in pop culture and no matter how off-screen you keep Englund, no matter if you bring back the finger-blades screeching along steel surfaces, he’s still the guy every other kid dresses up as at Halloween. Freddy fail.

Essentially, the rush-job that was the movie hurts it. Director Stephen Hopkins produced a good looking flick with no real surface issues but the drained ideas tank shows and is almost bone dry come the third act, which makes almost no sense at all. A couple more victims, more made out of the don’t fall asleep keystone that the whole series should pivot on might’ve drastically improved things but who can say?

But the black girl didn’t die – hurrah! Progress.

Blurbs-of-interest: Kelly Jo Minter later starred in Popcorn; Stephen Hopkins also directed Dangerous Game; Robert Englund can also be seen in Behind the Mask, Hatchet, Heartstopper, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) and Urban Legend; Whitby Herford was in Mikey.

When wrong is right

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WRONG TURN

4.5 Stars  2003/18/81m

“It’s the last one you’ll ever make.”

Director: Rob Schmidt / Writer: Alan B. McElroy / Cast: Desmond Harrington, Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Jeremy Sisto, Lindy Booth, Kevin Zegers, Julian Richings, Ted Clark, Gary Robbins.

Body Count: 10

If you venture on to the IMDb message boards on the Wrong Turn page, there’s plenty of “this is the worst film ever ra ra ra…” declarations, which plague most slasher horror films on the site. Why people can’t distinguish between fact and their opinion is a continuing mystery as far as this is concerned. There’s no way one could see every film in existence to make a sound judgement.

Also, they’re twats. Because in the arena of be-forested body count films, Wrong Turn is fucking awesome.

A sort of inbred cousin of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s antics mashed up with 70’s cannibal features into one of the best back to basics horror films of its era. What Wrong Turn does and why the idiots who continually dismiss it on the IMDb are stuck in a sort of perpetual motion twat-wheel that they can’t get out of (coooool!!) is to ignore comic relief, over-intellectualisation of the product and just tell the story of what happens when city folk are thrown together with admittedly ridiculous looking backwoods freaks.

After the requisite opening slaying of a couple of luckless rock climbers, we swoop in and meet Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) on his way through West Virignia to an interview, persumably for some medical post from his banter, when he is caught in tailbacks that thwart his tight deadline. He doubles back and finds a turn off and a map at ye olde ramshackle gas station (complete with snaggle-toothed hick for an attendant) that shows him Bear Mountain Road will serve as a good shortcut. This, as we might’ve guessed, will be the wrong turn from hell. Or to hell if we’re going to get pedantic about it.

Some way down the road, Chris rear-ends a stranded SUV belonging to five teens on a camping trip who’ve fallen foul of some barbed wire tied across the road. With both vehicles totalled, Chris and the kids hike off to find help, leaving a couple of their friends to babysit the cars and, quite quickly, get murdered by whomever lives in them thar woods.

Lunch is up

Their friends, perky to-be-weds Carly and Scott and evident final girl Jessie (the lovely Dushku) and Chris come upon a shack-of-a-house in a clearing and go inside to look for a phone but find jars of questionable meat-products, pots full of car keys and other belongings and a body in the bathtub but before they can flee, the inhabitants return with their vehicles in tow and, as the group hide, flop a dead friend on the table and saw off her leg for lunch.

Things take a turn for the (even) worse when the group are caught creeping away and madmen give chase, which is essentially what the rest of Wrong Turn is. The simplicity of the opus makes for easy viewing (unless you’re squeamish) and a bunch of sequences that aren’t altogether original play out nicely and have you rooting for the kids – surprisingly all of them – to either get the fuck outta the woods or fight back with gusto. Working from a what-would-you-do perspective, the group don’t make too many idiotic decisions that get them killed. They try to hide and create diversions that don’t go to plan but it just seems like luck ain’t on their side.

While it’s content is pretty inconceivable, there’s an awesome scene where the fleeing protagonists come upon a clearing chocka with discarded vehicles, most of which have blood splattered all over them and recognisable belongings spilling out of them; climbing ropes, picnic hampers, shoes, sunglasses, a child’s doll. It’s jarring and upsetting, far more than most slasher flicks manage to be because they trade only in offing the kind of hateful twats that say “worst movie ever” and nobody in the audience cares. But the belongings found in the Wrong Turn parking lot of death are everyday things; luggage of the missing. And it is sad.

The characters gasp and question how the psychos been getting away with it for so long? Yeah, it’s a bit dumb to think so many families could disappear in one region and nobody fly a chopper over and spot a massive clearing full of cars! Hey-ho.

Later on there’s a great tree-top cat and mouse game and then finally the last ones standing – pretty damn obvious from the moment it begins and the DVD cover – get to dish up some sensational revenge. The scene is sadly a bit short lived as I was almost yelling for them to hit, punch, kick, poke, scratch harder first time I saw it, but the city people channel enough primal inner guts to let the cannibals have it and walk away largely intact.

Wrong Turn is short, punchy and to the point. No legacy and no pretence, it’s a rare ‘honest’ production that surfaced the same year as the suspiciously similar Texas Chainsaw remake. If I had to find fault, it’d be the excesses taken with the trio of inbreds; their malformations taken to the extreme that it becomes a bit of a joke, which was pushed to new levels of stupidity in the sequels. Nevertheless, it’s fictional – who cares? Suspend your disbelief and cynical “that would never happen” mindset and get into it. It rocks.

Blurbs-of-interest: All three cannibals have been in slasher movies before – Julian Richings was the creepy caretaker of Urban Legend; Ted Clark was the gorky newscaster-frat in Happy Hell Night; and Garry Robbins was the loon in Humongous. Lindy Booth was in Cry_Wolf and American Psycho II; Jeremy Sisto was in May; Kevin Zegers was in The Hollow. Writer McElroy earlier scripted Halloween 4 and the Wrong Turn reboot in 2021.

The 13 best Friday the 13th characters

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After recently declaring on Twitter that I’d willingly have Jason Voorhees’ babies, I realised we were coming up to THAT DAY in our calendar again! Last Friday the 13th, I listed 13 things to love about Friday the 13th, this time my favourite characters from the series (bar Jason and Mrs V. of course) get the countdown treatment…

Linderman / Freddy vs. Jason

Hopeless high school dork Linderman (Christopher George Marquette) sported an equally hopeless crush on squealy final girl Lori (Monica Keena) that resulted in him bleeding to death after being impaled after getting between Jason and Freddy’s brawl. Before he went though, he had the chance for a mildly touching exchange with Kelly Rowland, sending her off for help so he could die quietly without upsetting her. Chivalry.

Sissy / Jason Lives

Camp Forest Green counsellor, sassy Sissy (Renee Jones) went for a Janet Jackson-lite ensemble and uttered some cheeky lines about rather dealing with Jason than the busload of kids that rolls in. Well…she gets her wish when a revenge prank on an already-dead cohort sees her lose her head.

Jimmy / The Final Chapter

Another sympathetic dork of a victim, Jimmy (pro weirdigan Crispin Glover) gives up his face as choice resting place for a meatcleaver but, until then, whines and recoils from accusations of being a “dead fuck” by assholey bud Ted. But who bags the babe? Jimmy. Hell yeah! At least he got to go out on a post-coital high.

Whitney / The Reboot

This choice could have more to do with me recently declaring that Amanda Righetti is the most attractive woman on earth but aside from that (which is mostly down to her role on The Mentalist), I really liked Whitney. Even with comparatively little to do, I was rooting for her survival.

Melissa / The New Blood

The fabulously evil Melissa (Susan Jennifer Sullivan) has never been equalled in Friday terms of nasty girls. They tried recreating her in Jason Takes Manhattan with Tamara but nobody has succeeded in being more scheming and using people than Mel. She mocks Tina, uses Eddie in a ruse to make Nick jealous (unsuccessfully), breaks into a house that isn’t hers and tells Nick and Tina to go fuck themselves when they try to warn her about Jason. Still, she does it all with sorority president style, pristine hair and awesomely Hampton-esque pearl necklace.

Crazy Ralph / Parts 1 & 2

Ralph (Walt Gorney)  is a rarity in Friday lore because he appears in two films – same actor n’ all!

Who couldn’t love his town crazy schtick, warning them younguns to stay well clear of Camp Crystal Lake – although never offering to explain why…

I think we all whimpered a little bit when he was garroted by Jason.

Nick / The New Blood

The best of the Final Boys, Nick (Kevin Blair) is the requisite nice-guy who befriends and be-romances psychic Tina and is thus protected by her when Jason tries to wipe him off the slate.

This was another role from Part VIII that they tried unsuccessfully to copy for the next film, offering up a diluted Shaun, who took all of Nick’s modesty and vulnerability and added to it a big splodge of bland.

Chewie / The Reboot

One of the few likeable characters from the 2009 film and played by the ever-amusing Aaron Yoo. I thought he was called ‘Troy’ for most of the movie.

Chewie may fare no better than his friends when it comes down it, but at least he goes out with some choice lines of dialogue and a self-awareness missing in his one-dimensional buddies, all of whom conform to anodyne type.

Violet / A New Beginning

Robo-dancing Violet has sub-Madonna hair and some sort of undiagnosed attitude problem, all forgiven because of that dancing and the fact that Tiffany Helm is the daughter of Brooke Bundy, who played Kristen’s unsympathetic mom in Elm Street‘s 3 and 4.

Theeeeere’s a man with no life in his eyezzz…

Shelly / Part III

Shelly (Larry Zerner) is the bubble-haired joker who introduces Jason to his hockey mask. Like brethren Linderman and Jimmy, Shel’s a bit unlucky in love. His attempts to impress Vera all but go up in smoke and eventually when he has his throat cut, everyone thinks it’s just another prank.

Brenda / Part 1

Awww lovely Brenda (the late Laurie Bartram), sensible and grounded counsellor at Camp Crystal Lake who initiates a game of Strip Monopoly and likes healthy food. Unfortunately, her helpful nature is her downfall as whimpering cries through the storm lure her out to her dooooooom…

Maddy / The New Blood

Poor Maddy is the girl equivalent of Jimmy, Linderman et al. She likes David but he’s totally into Robin who’s, like, supposed to be Maddy’s BFF but tells her she totally needs a makeover.

Lipstick, a vile turquoise blouse-skirt combo and even bigger hair later, Maddy comes to the entirely logical conclusion that David would be in the woods. She finds a man alright, but the only thing he wants to stick in her is a sickle.

Ginny / Part 2

The natural choice – what is it about Amy Steel that makes her so damn good? I can’t even answer it myself, she just seems to effortlessly rule the joint.

Child psychology (she cares); jogging (she’s in shape); weak bladder (she doesn’t like rodents)… The list is endless and it’s not like she does anything other final girls haven’t, she just does it flawlessly.

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