the 80s Archives - HudsonLee.com

Tag Archives: the 80s

Drew the right thing

October 11, 2018 Hud 2 comments

FAR FROM HOME

1989/18/89m

“One boy wants her love. One boy wants her dead.”

Director: Meiert Avis / Writers: Ted Gershuny & Tommy Lee Wallace / Cast: Drew Barrymore, Matt Frewer, Richard Masur, Karen Austin, Jennifer Tilly, Andras Jones, Anthony Rapp, Susan Tyrrell, Dick Miller, Stephanie Walski, Connie Sawyer.

Body count: 6

The main critical objection to Far From Home upon its 1989 release was that it exploited then 13-year-old Drew Barrymore – who was at the peak of her personal problems – and it’s hard not to agree, just look at the VHS cover there. From the outset, we’re shown her character Joleen slo-mo swimming in a little black bikini, having ice seductively rubbed over her skin, and then almost date-raped by a character played by then 20-year-old Andras Jones. It’s… icky.

On the eve of her 14th birthday, Joleen and her dad Charlie (Barrymore and Frewer – Drew n’ Frew) are nearing the end of a summer driving around freeways as part of his journalism career, when they run out of gas and find themselves stuck in the small Nevada hamlet of Banco, population 132. Rented a trailer for the night by the crotchety Agnes, Joleen meets Jimmy, Agnes’ hunky son, while Charlie spends his time looking for gas to buy so they can get home to LA.

Someone is prowling the area with murder in mind, and Agnes is soon electrocuted while she takes a bath. In the trailer park, they meet fellow strandees Louise and Amy, and agree to use what little gas they source to carpool back to California. Joleen, meanwhile, flirts with Jimmy, who attempts to rape her, only to be saved by awkward teen Pinky (Rapp, recently notable in the Kevin Spacey scandal).

When they attempt to leave, “mystery”-killer punctures the gas tank and drives a remote controlled car with a lit candle underneath, blowing up their only means of escape (and the poor soul trapped inside). Jimmy is the natural suspect and eventually apprehended, but the actual identity of the loon is startlingly obvious to the rest of us.

Nicely photographed with some elements of decent direction from music video helmer Avis, it’s also nice to see a film not confined to middle-class suburbs. But the paper-thin whodunit, ridiculous over-acting by Tyrrell, and the Dear Diary narration from Barrymore undermine what could’ve been achieved given the capable cast (Masur is good as the anti-cash mechanic, though other actors are wasted in thankless roles) and crew (Tommy Lee Wallace! Mary Woronov’s late husband!). Sadly though, the exploitation of an underage girl is what you’ll remember most. Eww.

Ultimately, the film failed due to studio problems that resulted in it playing in barely a handful of theaters (like, four).

Blurbs-of-interest: Barrymore, of course, would later play Casey Becker in Scream; Andras Jones was Rick in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4; Jennifer Tilly was Tiffany in Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and Cult of Chucky, as well as appearing in The Caretaker; Tyrrell was the psycho auntie of Night Warning; the woman being seen to in the trailer was adult star Teri Weigel, who was in Cheerleader Camp.

Uncategorized

Wisconsin Mine Syndrome. With Cher.

September 26, 2018 Hud Leave a comment

TRAPPED ALIVE

1988/92m

A.k.a. Trapped

“There’s evil underground.”

Director/Writer: Leszek Burzynski / Writer: Julian Weaver / Cast: Randolph Powell, Sullivan Hester, Mark Witsken, Laura Kalison, Alex Kubik, Elizabeth Kent, Cameron Mitchell, Michael Nash.

Body Count: 9

Laughter Lines: “Do you realise that just five miles down the road a horde of beautiful and horny young men are panting for our bodies?”

Thank you to @AFinalBoy for making me aware of this… intriguing… product… of film.

Shot in Wisconsin in 1988 and shelved until ’93, the cover image was clearly sought from some adult video store section as the hair styles of the two leading ladies would fool nobody in thinking it was shot anywhere near the 90s.

Three prisoners break out of jail on a snowy night before Christmas and end up car-jacking two poodle-haired party gals on a backroad. Police checkpoints send them careening off the road and literally falling down a shaft at the largely abandoned Forever Mine.

A deputy later shows up to investigate and almost immediately has sex with the clearly desperate wife of the sleeping mine caretaker, who looks like a regional Cher tribute act if ever there was:

“Do you believe in life after Trapped Alive?”

Down in the mine, the lead prisoner – Face – makes one of the girls do a striptease for him, while locking the other girl in some dark room, and the requisite almost-reformed young inmate tries to get an old generator running. They’ve failed to notice a few human skulls lying around and when the muscle is found with his face chewed off, they grow suspicious. The deputy then enters the cave system and is trapped with them when somebody cuts the rope.

Mucho talking occurs until – almost an hour in – a murder finally happens. A largely goreless, ridiculous slaying, where the victim sounds more like he’s yodelling than shrieking in pain. Deputy guy takes charge, makes almost-reformed bloke continue fixing stuff while he… does something else. Good girl Robin holds a flashlight for the guy and uses the time to fall madly in love with him.

The cannibal mutant thingy returns and grabs the other girl, forcing almost-reformed to shoot her dead before a worse fate can unfold. The remaining three try to escape, Robin strips to her bra and panties to dive through a flooded shaft (it’s snowing above, so how cold is this water likely to be?), kills the monster, then Cher rocks up, back-fills the story that the monster is her papa and blows up the mine with deputy dude inside, allowing Robin and almost-reformed to escape, then kiss loads.

As the countdown on my VLC player refused ever to tell me there was anything less than 17 hours of the movie remaining, I felt trapped alive by Trapped Alive, a film so terminally boring they toss in a scene where Cameron Mitchell talks to a photograph for about nineteen minutes just in case you might still be awake. The monster only kills two people and is defeated at first strike and there’s very little grue. However, my main question at the end was did Cher’s husband actually sleep through all of this??

Blurbs-of-interest: Cameron Mitchell was also in The Demon, Jack-O, Valley of Death, Toolbox Murders, and Silent Scream.

Uncategorized

“I don’t kill people anymore.”

September 11, 2018 Hud 2 comments

PSYCHO II

1983/18/108m

“It’s 22 years later and Norman Bates is coming home.”

Director: Richard Franklin / Writer: Tom Holland / Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Meg Tilly, Robert Loggia, Dennis Franz, Hugh Gillin, Claudia Bryar, Robert Alan Browne.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “I don’t kill people anymore.”

An Australian girl who I used to work with, Tammy, told me a few years back that her father’s girlfriend is the widow of Richard Franklin, and has the knife-in-the-mouth prop from the movie. Envy.

Franklin, who was chosen to direct after his rather awesome Road Games (with Jamie Lee Curtis), and the story picks up 22 years after, as Norman Bates is granted release from his institution, much to the chagrin of Lila Loomis, the kind-of final girl from Psycho, whose sister, Marion Crane, was the infamous shower victim.

It’s a bit of an unlikely contrivance that he’s sent back to the very place where he committed the crimes, but, hey, it’s an 80s horror flick. Provided a job at a Fairvale diner, Norman meets young waitress Mary Samuels, who just happens to need a place to stay after her boyfriend trades up. Norman initially offers her a room in the motel but, upon learning the new manager has turned it into a by-the-hour party joint, so insists she lodge in the house.

Before long, weird things start to happen: Creepy phone calls from ‘mother’, a toilet that overflows with blood, spyholes in the bathroom wall – and also some disappearances. First to go is the sleazy manager, then a couple of horny teens stop by to make-out in the basement and find themselves set upon by a woman in a long black dress wielding a scary-ass kitchen knife…

Psycho II is something of an unlikely horror sequel, which, in later years would’ve been shot the year after the original and called for a re-cast, so Perkins returning to the role is a major plus – indeed the film was planned to be a TV-film until he agreed to star. Franklin, a protegé of Hitchcock, liberally peppers the film with visual homages to the original. High angles, aerial shots, and step-zooms echo the style nicely – that awesome crane shot from the attic window down to the basement is everything.

Several revelations uncapped at various points throughout the movie thicken up a slightly convenient plot, but also push it beyond the confines of the average sequel: is Norman blacking out and dressing up as mom again? Is someone else on the scene? The decision to implement more standard slasher clichés of the era was a wise one and results in some inventively grisly murder scenes, the knife-in-the-mouth being the standout, at the same time retaining the classiness of a high-end movie.

The story segues neatly into Psycho III (released in ’86 but set just a month or two later). This should be textbook material when it comes to creating quality follow-ups.

Blurbs-of-interest: Perkins was also in Destroyer; Vera Miles top-billed The Initiation around the same time; Browne and Gillin also returned for the third film.

Reviews

5 more things I wish they’d stop doing in horror films

August 27, 2018 Hud 2 comments

In 2011 (!) we enjoyed a good long moan about the shitty tropes that keep cropping up in horror movies. Well, now that I’m officially in my 40s I’d better get used to moaning more… Here are another five things that need to fucking fuck off:

Conveniently named towns and/or psychos

hell-town-name

A killer who goes to work ridding the local area of virgins in a town that happens to be named Cherry Falls? Or the Tooth Fairy who can’t go into the light torments the townsfolk of Darkness Falls? Gimme a break!

Oh, but then we have loons ‘ironically’ named Marty Sickle, Jack who uses a Jackhammer, and Bobby Carver who likes to carve people up.

Waiting patiently for Bob Knifewielder to start offing the residents of Murderville, Missouri.

Grindhouse homages

The House of the Devil looked the part alright, but suddenly we’ve got all these ‘back to basics’ or ‘lost classics’ tumbling out of the sky: The Sleeper, Lost After Dark, The Final Girls, Terrifier, Pool Party Massacre, Summer of ’84, Party Night… Rough-around-the-edges production attributes are one thing, but missing reels? Rubik’s cubes and Cabbage Patch Kids everywhere while Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Karma Chameleon blast from the radio?

Give your cast short-shorts, big hair, and make them say ‘rad’ a lot, but the biggest giveaway though is always the eyebrows: So preened, so post-millennial. No one is fooled!

5, 10, 20 years later…

It’s not that hard, is it?

Some killers wait a year for their revenge, Kenny Hampson waited three years, Alex Hammond waited six, Mrs Voorhees waited 21… but most appear to be so crippled by OCD that they can only work in multiples of five, with a 10 year wait being the most common anniversary for sexy teens to go hangout at the olde rollerdome.

“What? No nudity!?”

This is more a complaint about the short-sightedness of some genre fans who flock to various forums and boards to complain that any given film is “the worst ever” because it doesn’t feature a pair of tits, seemingly living under the illusion that slasher movies have to have them. Hell Night, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me… all nudity free. Hell, even the original Friday the 13th shows nothing but a fleeting, under-lit glimpse.

Invincible killers

Randy told us: “This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer comes back to life for one last scare!” Unless your surname is Voorhees or Myers, or you exist beyond the plain the rest of us live on, being shot, impaled, burned in an explosion should kill you. Loons who successfully avoid death more than a couple of times are becoming a little too prevalent – Mick Taylor, I’m looking at you here, mate.

Lists

Give auntie a kiss

July 28, 2018 Hud Leave a comment

NIGHT WARNING

1982/18/93m

A.k.a. Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker; The Evil Protege; Momma’s Boy; Nightmare Maker; Thrilled to Death

Director: William Asher / Writers: Alan Jay Glueckman, Boon Collins, Stephen Breimer / Cast: Susan Tyrrell, Jimmy McNichol, Bo Svenson, Julia Duffy, Marcia Lewis, Britt Leach, Steve Eastin, Cooper Neal, Bill Paxton, Caskey Swaim.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for a fag to rape your aunt.”

More of a prelude to the glossy 90s psycho thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female than any kind of Halloween clone – this title was highlighted as a Video Nasty back in 80s Britain and has yet to be re-released after a failed attempt to resubmit (as The Evil Protege) in 1987.

Tyrrell impresses as the over-protective aunt of Billy (McNichol), having raised him since his parents were killed in a suspicious car accident fourteen years earlier – which featured decapitation-by-log before Final Destination 2 did it. As Billy approaches 17, Aunt Cheryl decides she’ll do just about anything to ensure that he never leaves her, including screwing his chances at a basketball scholarship by drugging him before an important game.

After she stabs to death a gay TV repairman who rejected her advances and tells everybody he tried to rape her, the homophobic Detective in charge of the case suspects it was actually a closeted Billy instead. Sooner or later, she loses it entirely and begins killing anybody who comes close to learning the truth, in a twisted play on themes from Friday the 13th.

Despite being bundled in with grue-fests, there’s nothing particularly repellent here. In fact, Night Warning is one of the classier slashers from the early period, with more thought going into character motivations rather than a string of nubile teens lined up for the slaughter. Look for a young Bill Paxton as the jerky jock who gets the carton of milk poured over his head.

Blurbs-of-interest: Tyrrell played another unstable matriarch in Far From Home; Julia Duffy was also in Wacko; Bill Paxton was also in Mortuary around the same time, plus Deadly Lessons and Club Dread; Britt Leach was in Silent Night, Deadly Night; Caskey Swaim was the arsey paramedic in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning.

Reviews

1 2 3 … 66 »