Monthly Archives: October 2018

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

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Never say never, but I think this will be the only movie we ever feature on this site that has a love theme by Barbara Streisand in it. I could be wrong, but I just get the feeling that there aren’t going to be many more crossovers quite like this one.

Eyes of Laura Mars was adapted from a spec script titled Eyes, written by John Carpenter; making this Carpenter’s first major studio film. Producer Jon Peters, the beau of Barbra Streisand in this era, bought the screenplay as a vehicle for her, but Babs felt that it was too “kinky” and passed. However, she felt that “Prisoner,” the song that she lent to the film, would be a great single. She wasn’t wrong — it peaked at #21 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Instead of Ms. Streisand, we get Faye Dunaway, who had just won an Oscar for Network and had not yet become Mommie Dearest. She plays Laura Mars, a fashion photographer whose Chris Von Wangenheim by way of Helmut Newton-style photos (Newton and Rebecca Blake supplied the actual photos for the film) glamorize violence. As she’s due to release the first coffee table collection of her work, she begins seeing the murders of her friends and co-workers through the eyes of the killer. I love how until now, she’s only been detached and seen things through the eye of a camera.

John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) is the cop in charge. After she rushes to a murder scene exclaiming that she saw who did it blocks away, the cops keep her in custody, showing her numerous unpublished crime scene photos that match her new fashion photos perfectly. Throughout the film, Larua and Neville fall in love as her visions — and the murders — increase in intensity and violence.

This is a great example of an American giallo filled with the twists, turns and red herrings of the genre. It’s done with a much higher budget and way better locations than you’re used to. And it gets closer to the psychosexual elements, but as great a director as Irvin Kershner is, he isn’t a maniac like Argento and his ilk. It’s also packed with talent, like Raul Julia, Battle Beyond the Stars‘ Darlanne Fluegel, Rene Auberjonois and Chucky himself, Brad Dourif.

The Eyes of Laura Mars would be parodied as The Eyes of Lurid Mess in MAD Magazine #206, with art by Angelo Torres. As was often the case with R rated movies when I was six years old, I first experienced this movie through the black and white ink lens of MAD.

Want to see it for yourself? It’s free with an Amazon Prime subscription.

Opera (1987)

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Mara Cecova is a diva and the star of a whole new way of performing Verdi’s Macbeth. But when she’s hit by a car as she argues with the director in the middle of the street, her role goes to her understudy, Betty. Ironically, in his book Profondo Argento, director Dario Argento claimed that the person playing the role of Betty, Cristina Marsillach, was the most difficult actress he would ever work with.

Despite her initial worries, Betty becomes an instant success on her opening night. At the same time, a black-gloved killer sneaks into one of the boxes to watch before murdering a stagehand with a coathanger. Grab your barf bags and motion sickness pills, everyone, Argento is behind the camera!

Of all the powerful shocks in Opera, perhaps the one that means the most to the viewer is that we share Betty’s torture — she’s repeatedly gagged, tied up and forced to watch the killer at work again and again as he tapes needles under her eyes. If she blinks too long or shuts her eyes, they’ll be shredded. It’s like Fulci’s wettest dream ever. In the same way, we are nearly complicit with the crimes we are forced to watch, particularly because they get more and more artfully composed.

Throw in the fact that Betty believes that the hooded killer is the same person who murdered her mother, she follows the giallo path for a protagonist and confides in someone else rather than the police. Her reason? The killer may know who she is.

Inspector Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini, Demons) is on the case, because there are so many clues, like the fact that the producer’s pet ravens were found dead after the show. As for Betty, she runs from the police and calls her agent Mira (Daria Nicolodi, Argento’s former wife and the writer of Suspiria and star of Shock) for advice.

Betty’s costume gets cut to ribbons, so she asks the wardrobe girl for help. While she works on the dress, they find a gold bracelet that they can almost read. But here comes the killer and his needles again, forcing her to watch him kill one more time. The wardrobe girl accidentally swallows the bracelet, so of course, we watch as the murderer slices her throat open to get it back.

Betty runs back to her apartment where Santini is waiting. He promises to send a detective named Soavi to watch over her (yep, The Church director Michele Soavi), but she doesn’t trust the man and leaves her apartment. That’s when her agent answers the next knock on the door by looking through the peephole. What follows is the most grand kill in the entire film — which is saying something — as we follow the bullet POV-style out of the gun and directly through her eyeball. Again, Fulci is somewhere wringing his hands.

Nicolodi had just ended a long relationship with Argento and did not want to be in this film. However, the shocking and complicated murder of her character changed her mind, even if she had to deal with an explosive device being put on the back of her head to achieve the final shot.

Betty escapes the killer again and runs to the opera house, convinced there is a connection between the murderer and her long dead and totally abusive mother. The next night, as she performs, the producer unleashes what is left of his ravens in the hopes that they’ll find the killer. Oh, they do alright — tearing his eyeball out of his head — FULCI ARE YOU THERE, IT’S ME DARIO — and rewarding you, the viewer, with POV shots that threaten you with vertigo. I’m getting dizzy even typing this.

I don’t want to give away the killer or even the second ending where the killer isn’t really dead. I just want to talk about the sheer Argento-ness of the final scene, where Betty wanders in a field and releases a lizard, giving him his freedom. Argento claims that this ending was inspired by Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. Of interest, the director does NOT like the Michael Mann movie Manhunter. Me? Well, I love that movie. But I’d love to see Argento’s take. There’s was also a thought to another ending where Betty would fall in love with the killer.

Your enjoyment of this film really comes down to how much you like shocking amounts of bloodshed and Argento’s arty side. He based the film on his own failed staging of Macbeth, basing the role of the nervous producer on himself. And the idea of pins under the eyes? It comes from a joke about how Argento hated when people looked away during the death scenes in his films.

Believe it or not, Orion Pictures planned on releasing an R-rated version of this in the US called Terror at the Opera with eleven minutes of mayhem removed, as well as the Swiss Alps epilogue. Argento refused and Orion was losing money at a fast clip, so the movie only saw a limited video release. 

Opera is something else — filled with style and brutality. I loved it, but remember my warning as to how much you can handle. You can check it out on for free with an Amazon Prime membership.

2018 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 30: Absurd (1981)

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Day 30 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is Slash Your Face. A solo maniac is out to get ya. You can run but you can’t hide! I’ve been wanting to watch Absurd, the truly bonkers movie from the scumbag team supreme of Joe D’Amato and George Eastman.

Originally called Rosso Sangue (Red Blood), this movie is also known as Zombie 6: Monster Hunter, Horrible, The Grim Reaper 2 and Anthropophagus 2. This really has nothing to do with Anthropophagus (well, D’Amoto and Eastman were involved there, too and that movie ends with Eastman’s guts all over the place and this one starts that way), as it’s more of a Halloween ripoff. And I don’t mean that as an insult.

Mikos Stenopolis (Eastman) starts off being chased by the Vatican priest (Edmund Purdom, of all people) who created him. So let’s get this crazy set-up out of the way: a Greek monster who can’t be killed because his blood coagulates very quickly was created by the Roman Catholic church somewhere and when that maniac escaped, he ended up in some small American town that only cares about the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Los Angeles Rams, so I’m just going to assume that they’re in New Castle or Zelienople.

The chase leads to a fence where Mikos is impaled. He makes his way to the front door of the Bennett house, holding his bloody guts as he passes out. He’s revived in a local hospital — shades of Haddonfield Memorial — and escapes after murdering a nurse with a drill. This being an Italian film, that entire murder appears in great detail.

The priest — let’s call him Father Loomis, cousin of the other Father Loomis in Prince of Darkness — informs the authorities that there’s only one way to kill Mikos: destroy his cerebral mass.

Synchronicity rears its head when Mr. Bennett, in a hurry to get home and watch Terry Bradshaw thread the needle to Lynn Swann, hits Mikos with his car. He just keeps going. When he gets home, he’s brusque with his wife and kids. Seems that his daughter, Katia, has a spinal condition and must stay in traction. All she wants to do is use a compass to continually draw the same drawing over and over again, while her brother Willy is obsessed that the Boogeyman is coming to kill him. Guess what, Willy? You’re right.

Mikos spends the rest of the movie randomly killing anyone who gets in his way, like a young Michele Soavi playing a biker and a butcher who gets the top of his head sawed off. He finally makes his way to the house. Peggy is on her way to watch the kids when she gets a pickaxe to the head. And the other woman who was watching them? Well, she gets her head forced into a lit oven that bakes the flesh off of her face in an extended sequence before being stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors.

Willy goes all Tommy Doyle and runs to get help while Katia finally frees herself from her bed. She stabs him in the eyes with her compass and leads the killer on a chase throughout the house, using loud music to distract him. The priest arrives and struggles with Mikos, just in time for Katia to chop off the killer’s head with a ceremonial axe.

The police arrive late, but Katia assures her little brother that everything will be fine as the camera reveals that she is holding Mikos’ bloody head.

Absurd inspired the German black metal band who took their name, who eventually went from watching gore films to killing people for real as their music went further and further into far right extremism.

Your enjoyment of this film will be colored by how much you like gore, how much you understand that Italian movies are often very hard to understand and how much you’re willing to forgive a film. Personally, I loved it. The oven kill scene is really uncomfortable to watch and the gore is incredibly effective.

Severin Films has just re-released this film with all of their trademark quality and insanity. It’s the first uncut release of the film in the U.S. and features an interview with Eastman and Soavi, as well as a bonus soundtrack CD. They’ve also rereleased Anthropophagus and also offer an amazing bundle that comes with pins of Niko and Joe D’Amoto, as well as a George Eastman stuffed doll. I love that Severin gives films as disreputable as these all the care and concern that Criterion would to a movie from a director much more esteemed and talented (but so much more boring).

Night Killer (1990)

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Say what you will about Claudio Fragasso. From the films he co-wrote with his Rossella Drudi for Bruno Mattei, like Robowar, Zombi 3, Rats: Night of Terror, The Other Hell and Shocking Dark to the films he’s either co-directed or directed, such as Scalps, Troll 2 and Beyond Darkness, he’s created movies that you can see as inept and strange that were made by someone who has no understanding of how human beings think, act or speak. Or you can see it my way — they are works of pure genius, the fruits of a demented mind that doesn’t need to be grounded by such concerns as budget, traditional storytelling or common sense.

Fragasso saw this as a tense psychological thriller with little to no gore and the original cut of the film resembled his vision. However, the producers wanted more violence, so they brought in Bruno Mattei to add the gore. Those very same producers also retitled the film Non Aprite Quella Porta 3 (Don’t Open the Door 3) so that it would appear to be another film in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series (yep, this is getting into La Casa/Demons territory).

Within the first eight minutes of this movie, we’ve seen nudity, aerobics dancing on stage while a director has a near meltdown of amateur acting proportions, the killer disemboweling two women and the director falling off a balcony to her death, all set to some of the most chipper synth turns you’ve ever heard. Buckle up — this movie gets even weirder from here.

The film picks back up after the quick credits to introduce us to Melanie (Tara Buckman from Silent Night, Deadly Night; The Cannonball Run; Joe D’Amato’s Blue Angel Cafe and Never Too Young to Die, the kind of credits that make you royalty around these parts), who is tooling around in a flimsy negligee while some dude picks up her daughter Clarissa and delivers her to another woman. Soon, she’s furiously typing and smoking in a sweater that reveals one shoulder, all while she’s wearing a blue scarf. She also has a teddy bear on her desk that the camera focuses on, which is yet another Fragasso directorial tic.

It seems like our heroine has two phone lines to handle all the calls she gets, which are mostly harassment from her ex-husband. One dude that calls her is so upset that he smashes a glass in his hand while bellowing, “Melanie? Melanie! MELANIE!”

What soon follows is one of the most batshit moments I’ve seen in film (imagine how much that statement covers), as Melanie gives herself a breast exam in front of a mirror while saying, “Well here you are, Melanie Beck. This is you. You have a daughter, you’ve got a marriage on the rocks and nothing but gray skies ahead.” Soon, another phone line rings and another voice says, “You’re a fine looking woman, Beck. Just begging to be fucked senseless.”

Imagine if Cobra Commander called you and wanted you to talk him off. That’s the Night Killer. Let’s talk about the villain of this film. He has a face kind of sort of like Freddy, but instead of attacking you in your dreams, he relies on the aforementioned obscene phone calls. He also has a clawed hand, but instead of sharp razor-like knives, he has bendy rubber fingers. They’re either really sharp or he’s really strong because he keeps punching women through the stomach in an insert shot that looks like the same effect every single time.

Melanie calls the police for advice and trust me, these cops are second to the dumb fuzz in Stagefright. Officer Gabrielle asks for her phone number, to which Melanie tearfully replies, “I have two lines.” The cop is unfazed. “Give me both numbers.” Dialogue like this is why you have not only Fragasso but his wife Rossella writing your script.

The cops tell her to lock herself in the house and not let anyone in, but this being an Italian horror movie, they’re going to rip off that “the calls are coming from inside the house” moment from Black Christmas at the very beginning of the film, instead of waiting for the end. The Night Killer is in the house and horny!

The Night Killer may not be able to haunt your dreams, but he can certainly imitate voices, as he calls the cops back as Melanie’s husband and then survives getting shot at by her. He then whispers more sweet nothings before kidnapping her for eight hours. Why doesn’t he kill her? Who knows!

We cut to a hospital where a cop and a fake Dr. Loomis named Dr. Willow are discussing the case. She’s seen the killer’s face, but now she can’t remember who he is and even the fact that she has a daughter. And now we have a reporter wearing an outfit that can best be described as Italian cowboy ala 1990, as she interviews the next door neighbor who had the gift for Melanie’s daughter, who shows off the scar the Night Killer gave him and discusses how he and his wife have temporary custody of Clarissa. His wife then tops every bad performance you’ve ever seen in a Fragasso film with a line reading that can charitably be described as vapidly morose. This is also when we learn that Clarissa’s dad was a cop kicked off the force for excessive violence.

I remember in seventh grade English that our teacher told us that in a mystery story, there’s no extraneous information. Everything could be a clue and that we had to learn to listen for them and discover how each small piece of the puzzle adds up to the solution to the crime. Obviously, she had never seen a Claudio Fragaasso film, where red herrings are thrown with the force of Major League Baseball fastballs right at your brainstem.

Note: Nearly every woman in this movie wears a fur coat.

With that in mind, we catch up to Melanie who is driving around in her convertible when Axel (Peter Hooten, who we all remember was the 1970’s Dr. Strange, as well as appearing in the truly ridiculous Slashed Dreams/Sunburst, Orca, 2020 Texas Gladiators and Just a Damned Soldier with B&S About Movies all-star Mark Gregory) drives up to her and starts sexually harassing her. He follows her into a women’s bathroom where she pulls out a gun and forces him to disrobe, then flushes all of his clothes down the toilet. If you learn anything from Night Killer, this is where you will learn that Peter Hooten has massive balls. I’m not talking nerves of steel. I’m worried that his massive testicles are about to burst that purple thong he’s wearing.

There are times in my life where I laugh so hard that I lose consciousness, where it feels like I can see through the very fabric of reality and I need to hold onto this plane of existence so that I don’t push my soul into another plane. One of these moments happened during this scene, as Axel chases after Melanie in his boxers. A guy at the front desk looks up and says, “Hey bud, what happened to your clothes?” Axel replies, “I got molested…in the little boy’s room!”

Melanie follows this moment of insanity by going to the beach, setting up a blanket, laying out all of her booze and the biggest prescription pill bottles you’ve ever seen in your life and proceeding to overdose. Axel arrives just in time and fully dressed, taking her into the seawater, which he claims is the only cure.

Axel: What the hell do you think you’re doing?

Melanie: Committing…suicide…

Axel: Well you gotta drink seawater so you can throw up all of that shit you’ve been taking!

Melanie: Are you…crazy?

Has Claudio Fragasso discovered the hidden secret to the opioid epidemic? Is it having Peter Hooten get you in a doggy style Heimlich maneuver while making you ingest H2O and NaCL as stirring synth music plays?

Keep in mind that we are literally one third through this movie and it’s already blown my mind numerous times. Folks, this is why you watch Italian ripoff cinema.

We cut to a dinner party where a drunk blonde girl is talking to a mysterious stranger. “You want me to go with you? Where? I wasn’t born yesterday. If a stranger asks for something, there’s a rat in somewhere. What my mama used to always say. But seeing as how I could never stand the sight of the old lady, I’ll come out with you and risk the unknown. To hell with the old bitch, here’s to the unknown!”

Melanie wakes up in a strange hotel room as more synths play.

We then cut right back to another room that’s filled with paintings of the Night Killer that look like the work of a small child. Our villain then takes that blonde from the bar into his apartment, puts on his mask and glove, and she says, “What are you doing?” Again, indulge me as I transcribe this dialogue.

Night Killer: Do you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?

Girl: Sure. Ah. I get it. I’m Little Red Riding Hood and you’re the big bad wolf. You know, I think I’m just a little tipsy.

Night Killer: Go on with the story.

Girl: Oh grandmother, what big claws you have.

Night Killer: All the better to hold you with.

Girl: What a nutcase!

Night Killer: Don’t stop.

Girl: OK. Granny, what a big, ugly mug you have. Well? Now you’re the one who’s stopped. Oh, why grandmother. What big schlong you have. I don’t like this game anymore. Please take me home.

That’s when the Night Killer murders her by repeatedly shoving her face into liquid latex before he, of course, punches her through the stomach. It’s his signature move, after all! He then fondles her and tells her dead body that now, they’ll make love and he kisses her.

We cut back to Melanie locked in the hotel room with Axel, who comes in with a fresh box of KFC and her clothes dry cleaned. How long was she out? He goes through her pills (“Valium. Syringe. A gun! Barbituates!” which is dialogue that sounds like a Queens of the Stone Age song.) Melanie then puts a gun to her own head, to which Axel replies by eating fried chicken right in her face. “Takes balls to kill yourself. And the only person with those around here in the right place? Yours truly.” Yes, Peter Hooten. We’ve seen your giant massive beanbag, so we’ll agree.

Axel somehow gets her gun and puts it in her mouth, telling her he’s going to kill her when he says so, when she least expects it. He tells her that he’s her master and she lays down on the bed. They make a pact as he puts a switchblade up against her face. He then decides to go out and let off a little steam, leaving her locked up with all his fried chicken.

We then cut to an aquarium, where a doctor checks an overflow valve. The Night Killer shows up, slowly chasing her before feeling her up and ripping open her blouse. She screams and runs as he gives ever so slowly chase. I’ve seen plenty of girls run in slasher movies, but never one as lazy as this. She soon pays by taking the Night Killer’s big move backward.

Melanie isn’t doing well. She’s written “I kill you kill me” on the mirror in lipstick. Axel comes back to tie her to the bed as we get long shots of Hooten slicing up fabric against his manly chest.

More news footage follows as we see a press conference interrupted by the victim from the aquarium being loaded into an ambulance. “The maniac tore her into pieces and fed her to the fish. It’s enough to hurt my stomach thinking about it!” yells a cop. Hey look! It’s Claudio Fragasso as a reporter hitting the cop car window, trying to get more of the story!

We’re back to Melanie and Axel in bed, as he kisses her and she asks to be untied. Somehow, this movie went from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Fifty Shades of Spaghetti. Or, more likely, The Devil’s Honey. Of course, they make love.

Another press conference follows as the media wants to know where Melanie is. Dr. Willow fills them in, as he explains how the Night Killer has impacted Melaine’s life.

Dr. Willow: Melanie Beck is living in a state of dissociative schizophrenia, triggered by the trauma of the experience she was forced to undergo. The poor woman went through the most traumatic ordeal that a human being can experience. A clinical examination of the patient revealed an inordinate amount of seminal fluid. The pure evil of the violence that was put upon her has unhinged her mind. The patient now has a very fragile grip on reality.

There’s also an insane theory by the doctor here where he believes that she gave in during her eight-hour ordeal so that she could survive and now, she’s punishing herself and wants to kill herself as the result. It kind of reminds me of that scene where all the old men discuss how a woman should behave in The Entity. The doctor claims if she goes through the same ordeal again, she’d be back to normal. But then, the psycho would recognize her and kill her.

One of the few movies that Lee Lively, who plays Dr. Willow, was in other than Night Killer was the Barbara Streisand vehicle The Prince of Tides, a fact that pleases me inordinately.

Peter Hooten is all sweaty and drinking outside the hotel room when Melanie decides to put a bullet into her mirror, leading him to do a spit take. No normal human being would ever make a movie that combines all of the words I’ve just said above this other than Fragasso.

The cops find Melanie’s car, but now they’re arguing with Dr. Willow, who had a plan to catch the Night Killer that has gone to hell.

Another press conference. Another fur coat. Now, the police reveal that they think the Night Killer has abducted Melanie. We cut to a Christmas tree as the next door neighbor watches the press conference. And the manager of the hotel calls the police to tell them he’s found Melanie.

The black cop gets to the hotel just in time to get jumped. And the next door neighbor grabs a gun and decides to go out after the Night Killer. Dude, seriously, I’m in the dark. Is he her ex-husband? Is the kidnapper her ex-husband? And now the neighbor’s wife is going crazy! How many red herrings can one movie have? When Fragasso at the helm, the number is beyond comprehension.

Melanie has on yet another fur — and the largest hat ever — as her kidnapper makes a taunting call to the cops, leading to her escaping. The tension is, well, not palpable, but there sure are a lot of f-bombs.

Now we have a multiple person chase with Melanie running, the kidnapper chasing her and the neighbor saying that he’s trying to help her as a sad saxophone plays and the kidnapper screams, “NO!”

The neighbor tells Melanie to lock herself in the house — that worked so well last time — while he gets help and her daughter. She watches as a man calls her from a pay phone outside her window. It’s the Night Killer! He’s back! She’s shocked and screams, but come on. Who else would it be? The phone rings again and there he is — back in the house. The Night Killer reveals himself to be the next door neighbor, who we finally learn is named Sherman. He claims that his wife is right, that she’s a bitch in heat and Mrs. Beck is the reason why he’s scarred for life.

We flash back to how he tortured her, which is the same way that Axel treated her. So wait — was Axel a cop and maybe even her ex-husband doing the same torture so that Melanie would remember who the killer was? What kind of cops and psychologists are these people? Also: all of these memories appear in a weird haze with liquid effects over everything.

Melanie comes on to the Night Killer, telling him how much she missed how he touched her, kissing him and cooing in his ear. She finds his knife and stabs him right in the cockmeat. Axel arrives just in time, jumping through a glass window and firing multiple bullets into Sherman. Melanie and Axel embrace, so I guess he is her ex-husband?

If you think this movie is going to end without more press conferences, you haven’t been paying attention. Dr. Willow says that Mr. and Mrs. Beck were guinea pigs and they had to make her relive this all to find the killer. Seriously, these are the worst cops and people ever. Axel Beck isn’t just getting his job back, he’s getting a promotion. And now, he’s back in bed with his wife and daughter. Seems like a happy ending, right?

Nope. Clarissa interacts with a gift box in the slowest of motion, carrying it lovingly up the steps as we catch up with the Becks in bed. Now, Clarissa is jumping up and down on the bed, ever so languidly unwrapping the gift. You just know what was inside the box — the Night Killer’s mask.

Clarissa is wearing it, as she ends the movie by saying, “Do you recognize me Miss Beck? I’m back. Just for you. Just for you!” and laughing.

Not since the end of Rats: Night of Terror has Fragasso pulled off an ending this audacious. Some would say moronic. Not me. After all, the Night Killer had to give Clarissa that gift before Axel kidnapped his own wife, knowing that they would kill him and Sherman/Night Killer would have to somehow teach her — or maybe his wife did it — how to talk like the Night Killer. Or maybe the mask is possessed? And why did he switch from claws to a switchblade and gun?

This movie is utterly confounding. This is why traditional movies end up boring me, because they make too much sense. If you’re looking for narrative jumps that leap into orbit, if you’re seeking out the unhinged, if you have ever wanted to watch a movie that goes from Elm Street to giallo to pre-Seven box related ending five years before that film was released and if you watched Troll 2 and said, “But what if the same people made a movie that makes even less sense?”, please consider this a strong recommendation.

Want to see it for yourself? You can order it like I did from Cult Action.

UPDATE: Of course, Severin put this out. I feel like I have to make some kind of blood sacrifice to pay them back at this rate.

WATCH THE SERIES: A Nightmare on Elm Street part one

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I’ll admit it. I’m guilty. I’ve unfairly maligned this franchise because of where it ended up versus where it began. And it’s time that I rectified that situation. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching them all over again from the beginning and have come to change my opinion. Well, at least until the fifth film.

The original film was based on a lot of director/writer Wes Craven’s life, as well as Asian Death Syndrome, a medical condition that impacted a group of refugees who had left behind Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, yet were still trapped by nightmares of war. Many of them refused to go to sleep as a result and some even died while sleeping.

He also was inspired by a satirical horror movie his Clarkson University students made in 1968 which was filmed along Elm Street in Potsdam, New York. And the film’s villain, Freddy Krueger, is based on an incident where a young Craven felt like an elderly neighbor was coming after him. The name comes from a childhood bully that kept beating on Craven and it’s not the first time that he used that name, as Krug from The Last House on the Left is also named for this past teenage demon.

Freddy Krueger doesn’t look like any of his slasher brethren. With every other slasher wearing a mask, Craven wanted a villain who could talk and threaten his victims, while striking even more fear into their hearts with his burned and scarred visage. He also based his soon to be iconic sweatshirt on the pattern of DC Comics superhero Plastic Man, but changed the colors to red and green as he learne dd that those were the colors that clash the most in the human retina. And his weapon wouldn’t be a knife, but an entire glove made of them.

A Nightmare on Elm Street – 1984

Upon watching this again for the first time in probably thirty years, I was struck by how European the movie feels. Perhaps it’s the color tones throughout, suggesting the patina of Italian horror cinema (both Fulci and Craven cite surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel as an influence). It could also be John Saxon having lead billing. Or just that it doesn’t feel like any horror cinema that was currently being made in the United States.

The real villain of this piece is not Freddy Krueger — more on him in a bit — but the parents of Elm Street who have allowed secrets and their assumed authority over their children to do unspeakable and unspoken things. All of them are haunted by it, divorced, depressed and self-medicating with over-dedication to their jobs or their addictions.

There are stories that David Warner was originally going to play Freddy, but that’s been disproven. After plenty of actors tried out and failed to win the part, it went to Robert Englund, who darkened his eyes and acted like Klaus Kinski (!) to get the part.

The other feeling I have about this movie is that it owes a major debt — as all horror movies post 1978 do –to John Carpenter’s Halloween. Much like that film, the true horror happens within the foliage of the suburbs, with shadow people showing up and disappearing. Much of the action on the final night happens within two houses. One of the main characters has the ultimate authority figure, a policeman, for a father. And the cinematography by Jacques Haitkin glides near the characters and around them, much like the Steadicam shots that start Carpenter’s film.

The film starts with Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss, who puts the events of Better Off Dead into motion by breaking up with Lloyd Dobler) waking up from a nightmare where a disfigured man chases her with a bladed glove. I loved the way this scene looks, as you could almost consider Freddy off brand here, as his arms grow comedically long and he moves way faster than he would in the rest of the series. Yet by keeping him in the shadows, he’s absolutely terrifying.

When Tina awakens, her nightgown has been slashed and she’s afraid to go to sleep again. She learns that her friends, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp, who left Stamford University to be in this), Glen (introducing Johnny Depp) and Rod (Jsu Garcia, credited as Nicki Corri) have all been having the same dream. To console Tina, they all stay at her parent’s house overnight. But when Tina falls asleep, Krueger is waiting. Rod awakes to find Tina flying all over the room and up the walls — an astounding effects sequence in the pre-CGI era — and he flees the scene after her death.

Soon, Rod is arrested by Lieutenant Don Thompson (Saxon), Nancy’s father. Freddy now starts pursuing her, chasing her as she falls asleep in class (look for Lin Shaye as the teacher) and later in the bathtub, as his claw raises like a demented and deadly phallus between her thighs. Rod tells her how Tina dies and now she knows that the same killer is definitely after her (Garcia’s watery eyes and lack of focus made Langenkamp think he was acting his heart out; the truth is he was high on heroin for real in this scene). She tries to find the killer, with Glen watching over her, but he’s a lout and easily falls asleep. Only the alarm clock saves her, but no one can save Rod, who is hung in his sleep while rotting in a jail cell.

Nancy’s mom Marge (Ronee Blakley, who was married to Wim Wenders, sang backup on Dylan’s song “Hurricane” and is also in Altman’s Nashville) takes her to a sleep clinic, where Dr. King (Charles Fleischer, Roger Rabbit’s voice) tries to figure out her nightmares. She emerges from a dream holding Freddy’s hat to her mother’s horror. Soon, she reveals to her daughter that the parents of Elm Street got revenge on Freddy Krueger, a child murderer after a judge let him go on a technicality. In a deleted scene, we also learn that Nancy and her friends all lost a brother or sister that they never knew about.

While Nancy is barred up in her house by new security measures, Glen’s parents won’t allow him to see her. Soon, he’s asleep and is transformed into an overwhelming fountain of blood. Nancy falls asleep after asking her father to come in twenty minutes. He doesn’t listen and she pulls Freddy into our world. On the run, she screams for help until her father finally comes to her aid, just in time to watch a burning Freddy kill his ex-wife and them both disappear.

This is an incredibly complex stunt where Freddy is set ablaze, chases Nancy up the stairs, falls back down and runs back up — all in one take! At the time, it was the most elaborate fire stunt ever filmed and won Anthony Cecere an award for the best stunt of the year.

Nancy then realizes that if she doesn’t believe in Freddy, he can’t hurt her. She wakes up and every single one of her friends is still alive, ready to go to school. As the convertible hood opens up in the colors of the killer’s sweater, she realizes that she’s still trapped by Freddy, who drags her mother through a window.

In Craven’s original script, the movie simply ended on a happy note. Producer Robert Shaye wanted the twist ending so that the door was open for a sequel, something Craven had no interest in. Four different endings were filmed: Craven’s happy ending, Shaye’s ending where Freddy wins and two compromises between their ideas.

Obviously, the series would continue. And the follow-up would be one that left many unsatisfied.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge – 1985

With Craven stepping aside, Jack Sholder (Alone in the Dark, which was the first New Line movie before the original Elm Street and The Hidden) was selected as the director and David Chaskin was selected to write this (it was his first Hollywood script and he’d go on to write I, Madman and The Curse).

Chaskin’s theme for the film — which until the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy he would always say was just subtext — is the main character Jesse (Mark Patton) coming to grips with his homosexuality. Patton struggled with his anger over this film for years, as he felt betrayed as the filmmakers knew that he was in the closet. Between this role and playing a gay teenager in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, he feared being typecast at best and labeled at worst. Yes, in 1985, this was the world that we lived in.

Chaskin claimed in interviews that Patton just played the role too gay, but Patton bristled at that claim. The emotional stress led Patton to quit acting for some time to pursue a career in interior design. That said, Chaskin claims that he has tried to reach out and apologize to the actor over the years.

Director Sholder has said that he didn’t have the self-awareness to think that the film had any gay subtext, but an unfilmed scene almost had Krueger slide a knife into Jesse’s mouth. Makeup artist Kevin Yagher talked Patton out of filming that scene for the sake of his career.

Years later, Patton would write Jesse’s Lost Journal, a series of diary entries that would set his feelings — and his character’s — straight, pardon the horrible pun.

The sequel starts with a dream sequence where Jesse Walsh (Patton) dreams of being stuck inside a school bus with Freddy at the wheel. Jesse’s circle of friends include Lisa, who he’s friends with but too shy to ask out, and Grady (Robert Rusler, Sometimes They Come Back), a frenemy that seems more like a crush.

Jesse has moved into Nancy Thompson’s home, which was on the market for five years after she was institutionalized and her mother killed herself. His family has Clu Gulager from Return of the Living Dead as his dad, Hope Lange from Death Wish as his mother and a little sister that he bothers when she’s trying to sleep.

Lisa and Jesse discover Nancy’s diary, which explains how ridiculous the house is to live in. It’s always 97 degrees, birds attack you at will before they spontaneously combust and your parents accuse you of setting it all up.

Meanwhile, Jesse is dealing with all sorts of strangeness, like a sadistic gym teacher who really likes to go to punk clubs and get whipped. One night, a dream takes him to that bar and the gym teacher makes him run laps in the middle of the night. That gym teacher is played by Marshall Bell, who was George in Total Recall, the host for Kuato. Freddy possesses our hero and the coach gets clawed up in the shower. The cops find Jesse wandering the highway naked, which doesn’t seem all that weird to his mother.

Lisa and Jesse go to Freddy’s lair in an abandoned factory, then she has a pool party. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. At the party, they kiss and have perhaps the most awkward make out session ever, until Freddy causes changes in Jesse’s body that make him run to Grady for help. Yes, he gets so upset about making up with a girl that he runs to his male crush, only to transform into Freddy in an astounding practical effects sequences and kill Grady. He returns to the pool party and lays absolute waste to the partygoers as Freddy before getting chased off by multiple shotgun blasts.

Only Lisa’s love — and kisses — can bring Jesse out of Freddy. But it’s all for nothing, as the nightmare from the beginning becomes real and their schoolbus turns into a deathtrap. Even though their friend Kerry (who has the best outfits in the movie) tries to calm them down, Freddy’s claw emerges from her chest.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors – 1987

After the much-criticized second installment (I actually really enjoyed it, as it has a lot of European flair and its subject matter seems like a middle finger in the face of teenage boys who would seem to be its biggest audience), Wes Craven returned to write the inspiration for this script, which was originally about the phenomenon of children traveling to a specific location to commit suicide (think Japanese murder forests).

Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell took that direction and convinced New Line that the series should go further into Freddy’s dream world. The success of this film proved that A Nightmare on Elm Street would be a franchise, as this film made more than the first two movies put together. The team would go on to create 1988’s remake of The Blob before Darabont went into making Stephen King adaptions and Russell would direct The Mask, The Scorpion King and Collateral.

Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) is obsessed with the abandoned house on Elm Street (which one assumes is the last house on the left), making papier-mâché sculptures (which makes for a great compressed credit sequence, showing headlines of what has gone on before) and dreaming of Freddy chasing her. She awakens from her nightmare to discover that she’s slicing her own wrists as her mother Elaine (Brooke Bundy) has to interrupt her sleepover date to save her daughter’s life.

Kristen ends up in Westin Hospital, run by Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson, Body Double), battling the orderlies and doctors who want to sedate her. Check out a young Laurence Fishburne here as orderly Max Daniels! She’s eventually helped by the new therapist — Nancy Thompson! — who recites Freddy’s nursery rhyme to her. Continuity be damned, Nancy’s grey streak is now on the opposite side of her head.

We meet the rest of the patients, who will soon become the Dream Warriors: Phillip the sleepwalker (Bradley Gregg, Class of 1999), wheelchair-bound Will  (Ira Heiden, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark), streetwise Kincaid, actress Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow, After Midnight), the silent Joey and Taryn, a former drug addict (Jennifer Rubin, who is also in a movie that totally rips off this one, Bad Dreams).

The Dream Warriors is pure entertainment. Freddy makes his move toward being more of a joking character while transforming into a snake, a TV set, a gigantic puppet master and even turns his fingers into drug-filled hypodermic needles. Kristen can pull the rest of the teens into her dreams, which they’ll need as Freddy and all of their doctors are pretty much against them.

Dr. Neil learns from Sister Mart Helena the true origins of Freddy, the bastard son of one hundred maniacs, and how he can stop him. Enlisting Nancy’s dad (John Saxon returns!), Neil digs up Freddy’s bones, which are still deadly, while Nancy tries to save as many of the kids as she can within the dreamworld.

The film puts an end to Nancy’s saga while setting things up for a new cast of characters to do battle with Freddy. At least that’s what you’re supposed to think, as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master pretty much wipes the slate clean within the first ten minutes. We covered it not long ago, so follow the link to read more.

We’ll be back soon to cover the rest of these films! Don’t fall asleep!

Neon Maniacs (1988)

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Neon Maniacs is literally an unfinished film. Some of the maniacs are played by two different performers, as financial difficulties shut the movie down for three months and some actors had to be rehired. Plus, a lower budget meant that the ending of the film was scrapped, which resulting in an ending that comes out of nowhere and resolves nothing. And because of bitter feelings and bad memories, no copies of the original script exist and the people who made it either don’t know or don’t remember why the creatures exist and what their motivations were! Yet I found myself loving this sloppy movie.

Under the Golden Gate Bridge, in scenes obviously shot with no permit, the legions of the dead lay in wait for the night. Then, they can attack teenagers stupid enough to park their van and have sex. Only Natalie survives their initial assault, losing friends dumb enough to give head and smoke weed in the Neon Maniacs’ domain.

Those Neon Maniacs look awesome yet have no connective reason to be a group. There’s a surgeon (Andrew Divoff from Wishmaster!), a cop, a samurai and even one that looks like a furry cyclops dinosaur. The only thing that can stop them is water, so of course, they choose to live right next to San Francisco Bay because the 80’s.

There’s also Paula, a girl who is supposed to be the horror loving geek next to the supposedly gorgeous Natalie, but who outshines her in every scene, even wearing a hat that looks suspiciously like it came from the USCSS Nostromo. That said, it’s hard to know whether Paula is either 14 or 22, so having a crush on her is problematic. That said, she’s totally gonna end up with Tommy Jarvis when she grows up.

If you also like movies that suddenly become more about a battle of the bands than looming supernatural evil, Neon Maniacs also has you covered.

Joe Mangine directed this and while he didn’t direct many films, he was the cinematographer for Alligator, Alone in the Dark and I Drink Your Blood. You can watch it on Amazon Prime or buy it on DVD from Kino Lober and do what I did: imagine the film this could have been. Who is with me to Kickstart a new one?

2018 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 29: La Venganza de los Punks (1987)

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Day 29 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is all about gangs. Specifically, one where a group of ne’er-do-wells do some serious menacing. I’ve been wanting to talk about this movie for some time, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to blow some minds.

The sequel to 1980’s Intrepidos Punks, this one ups the ante from the very first five minutes. After Tarzan (luchador El Fantasma, father to Lucha Underground’s King Cuerno) is freed from prison, he instantly gets revenge on the man who put him away, Marco (Juan Valentin) by interrupting the cop’s daughter’s quinceanera. His gang proceeds to rape and kill every single person there, leaving Marco alive so that he can be tormented by his loss.

Let me sum this up the best way I can: Tarzan and his gang look like the best Italian post-apocalyptic movie ever, if a Mexican wrestler led a gang that’s mostly made up of Japanese women wrestlers circa the Crush Girls era that had constant Satanic orgies. Tarzan even yells, “Long live death, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol!” at one point, sending me into ecstatic bliss.

Marco’s partner says that “We are all guilty. We are all accomplices. All of us!” Probably no one listened to the police chief when he claimed that the gang was only the tip of the iceberg at the end of  the last film. Now, Marco is getting kicked off the force, slowly eating soup and planning his horrible vengeance on the gang.

This movie quite literally comes from inside my brain. It’s the only place where luchadors can lead Satanist drug gangs against an ex-cop willing to take things so far that he pours acid on people, all whilst a surf punk band jams out and curvy dancers gyrate to their completely offbeat (and off beat) performance. Everybody has aluminum foil on their spikes or metallic hair or is naked or has a bad dye job or looks likes the random dudes you beat up in Final Fight. Throw in a black mass where a goat is beheaded and devoured and you have the feel good movie of 1987!

The only thing I don’t like about this movie is its ending, which Roberto Ewing’s the entire movie as one bad dream. Fuck that. If you just stop the movie right before that, all will be much better with your world. I also want there to be more movies in this series and am willing to Kickstart anything that attempted to make this happen.

WATCH THE SERIES: Fright Night

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Fright Night was the first modern horror film I ever watched. I remember painting in my parent’s kitchen and my father telling me not to be afraid and just watch it with him. It’s a great start — combining the Hammer films that I loved that didn’t scare me with new school special effects and metacommentary.

The very first film in the series, this one really speaks to me as I was part of the last generation to grow up with horror movie hosts on UHF channels. Sure, there’s Svengoolie today and some internet shows, but it’s not the same. Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) is one such host, a washed-up actor who was in a few great movies decades ago and now goes from town to town, playing the same old 1960’s Z list horror films, saying the same lines. 

The defining moment for him is that Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale, Mannequin 2: Mannequin on the Move) believes in all his bull. And when Jerry Dandrige (the untrustable Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and shows all the signs of being a vampire, Charley finds he needs Peter Vincent more than ever before.

Plus, you get a pre-Married with Children Amanda Bearse as Charley’s love interest and a pre-gay pornography/976-EVIL Stephen Geoffreys as Charley’s best friend/worst nemesis Evil Ed. And I just love Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark, House II) as Jerry’s thrall.

This is a movie made for those who love horror movies. After all, Peter Vincent is named after horror icons Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. Creator Tom Holland wrote the part for Price, but the acting great had stopped appearing in horror movies at this time in his career. As they made the film — and the sequel together — Holland and McDowall became life-long friends, with McDowall introducing the young director to Price, who was flattered that the part was written to honor him and thought that Fright Night “was wonderful and he thought Roddy did a wonderful job.”

He’s right — this is a movie that taps into the mind and heart of horror fans, as so many of us have wondered, “What if the monster — and the monster hunter — was real?” The lighthearted yet dangerous tone of the film is letter perfect. That scene in the nightclub, where Jerry takes on the security guard? As good as it gets.

Want to watch it now? You can catch it streaming on Hulu.

Also of note: I’m glad the original ending wasn’t used. It was to close with Charley and Amy making out with Peter Vincent coming on the TV to host Fright Night, saying “Tonight’s creepy crawler is Dracula Strikes Again. Obviously about vampires. You know what vampires look like, don’t you? They look like this!” Then, he would transform, look into the camera and say, “Hello, Charley.”

After the unexpected critical and financial success of this film, a sequel was inevitable. Holland and Sarandon were both making the first Child’s Play, so they couldn’t commit to the film, although the actor did visit the set. Stephen Geoffrey’s didn’t like the script, opting to star in 976-EVIL. Ultimately only Ragsdale and McDowall would return.

Three years and plenty of therapy later, Charley Brewster now believes that Jerry Dandrige was a serial killer and that vampires don’t exist. Now a college student with a new girlfriend, Alex Young (Traci Lind, who dated Dodi Fayed before Princess Diana), Charley sadly discovers that Peter Vincent is back to hosting Fright Night. As they leave Peter’s apartment, a new nemesis, Regine steals Charley’s attention. There’s even a new version of Evil Ed, a vampire named Louie (Jon Gries, who is great in everything he’s done from Joysticks and Real Genius to The Monster Squad and TerrorVision) who is making Charley and Alex’s lives hell.

It turns out that she’s Jerry Dandrige’s brother and here for revenge. Now, the tables are turned and Peter Vincent is the one who has to convince Charley that vampires are real. Even worse, she’s turning Charley into a vampire and has stolen the Fright Night hosting job away from Peter! There’s also a transgender rollerskating vampire, putting this movie years ahead of others in presenting LGBT roles (even if Belle is evil).

One small trivia note: the vampire form that Regine transforms into at the end was modeled after 45 Grave lead singer Dinah Cancer. If you don’t know her band, they sang the song “Partytime” from TThe Return of the Living Dead.

There’s no way that this movie could live up to the original, but it tries. It hasn’t really been seen much, as LIVE Entertainment barely released it on home video. Artisan Entertainment released it on DVD in 2003, but it’s been out of print for a long time and commands big bucks. You can often find a bootleg of the high definition TV edition of the film at conventions (that’s where we got it!).

Written by Holland and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the original It, as well as the writer of Amityville II: The Possession, a movie I never cease trying to get people to watch), this movie suffered at the hands of a very real tragedy.

McDowall loved playing Peter Vincent and was eager to bring Holland back to make a third film, so he set up a meeting with the two of them and Carolco Pictures chairman Jose Menendez. Legend has it that the meeting did not go well. Later that night, Menendez and his wife were infamously murdered by their sons, Lyle and Erik. When McDowall learned of the news, he called Wallace and said “Well, I didn’t do it. Did you?”

As a result of the murders, Fright Night Part 2 lost its nationwide release schedule and only played in two theaters before being released directly to video. All of the planned advertising and public relations were canceled as well, which meant that most folks didn’t even know it was released until it showed up on video!

If you thought Hollywood was done with Fright Night, you’re wrong.

Colin Farrell plays Jerry here as “the shark from Jaws.” Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays Evil Ed as a geeky kid who was once best friends with Charley, who is now one of the popular high schools (remind me to tell you about the child vampire that used to chase me through my grandparent’s backyard someday). And former Dr. Who David Tennant is more Criss Angel than Zacherley.

This is a film that I really tried to get past and enjoy, but I just couldn’t be entertained by it. I’m not the only one. Tom Holland said, “Kudos to them on every level for their professionalism, but they forgot the humor and the heart. They should have called it something other than Fright Night, because it had no more than a passing resemblance to the original. What they did to Jerry Dandrige and Peter Vincent was criminal. Outside of that, it was wonderful.”

That said, there is a nice moment where Chris Sarandon makes a cameo as a victim of the new Jerry. Otherwise, this one is mean-spirited where it should have heart. No part of it feels fun. I was shocked to learn that it was directed by the same person who made I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl, Craig Gillespie.

And if you think that one is bad…

This direct-to-video sequel completely ignores the first remake, instead being a simultaneous remake of the first two films. The Gerri Dandridge in this one is a Romanian history and culture professor who teaches Charley, Evil Ed and Amy when they take a class trip to Romania. And this Peter Vincent hosts a reality show where he hunts vampires.

For some reason, Fox greenlit the movie and rushed it into being at a record pace. The first draft was written in a week and it was finished in 23 days. If only it didn’t feel like it went on for 24. This movie is a complete waste of time and the name of this franchise. It was like they heard someone say, “Nobody can make a worse remake than the last Fright Night.” And replied, “Hold my cup of blood and apple.”

Here are some other spinoffs:

NOW Comics released 27 total issues of a Fright Night comic that adapted both movies, as well as starting new stories where Peter and Charley battled a spider boy, squid people, aliens, a minotaur and the Legion of the Endless Night, which eventually brings back Jerry Dandrige to begin a new army of the undead peopled by French prostitutes!

Terror Time put out a new Fright Night comic book this year, Fright Night: The Peter Vincent Chronicles, which explains what happened to Peter between the first two original films. You can grab it — and the Fright Night coloring book and the screenplay too — right here.

In 1988, an Amiga video game was released. Strangely enough, you play as Jerry, trying to make it through your home and transform people into vampires. Everyone from the original Fright Night appears in the game as enemies and potential victims except Billy Cole.

And in 1989, the Indian film Kalpana House was released. It’s a loose remake, with Peter Vincent’s character being a priest and plenty of musical numbers. Yep. Really.

Finally, there’s the exhaustive 3 hour and 37-minute documentary You’re So Cool, Brewster! The Story of Fright Night. In addition to pretty much everything you’d ever want to know about the original two films, the filmmakers also created a series of trailers for the fictional movies The Resurrection of Dracula, Psychedelic Death, I Rip Your Jugular and Werewolf of Moldavia, which starred Peter Vincent (Simon Bamford, Ohnaka from Nightbreed and the Butterball Cenobite from the first two Hellraiser films) and Christopher Cushing (Nicholas Vince, Kinski from Nightbreed and the Chattering Cenobite from the first two Hellraiser films).

Sadly, these trailers are on the hard to find physical release of the documentary. You can watch it on Shudder right here, though!

Last year, Tom Holland announced that he’s writing Fright Night 2 as a book, with the goal of obtaining the rights to the series by 2019 and making a new movie. In the past, he’s talked about continuing the series by having single-father Charley Brewster inherit his mother’s home with his two teenage children learning that something evil is in the house next door — Evil Ed, who is trying to bring Dandrige back.

Whew! Here’s hoping you enjoyed our look at the past, present and hopefully future of a horror classic. And if you haven’t seen the original sequel, hunt it down! It’s pretty good!

The Blob (1988)

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When I first started dating Becca, I was at her apartment and we were looking for something to watch. This is what she picked, making me aware of my luck. It’s one thing for me to find a hot girl. It’s another when that lady loves great movies.

We were excited to catch this in the theater recently and this is one remake that does not disappoint. It was great to hear people loudly gasp during the gore in this. It was made in 1988, when life must have been much cheaper than today, because hardly anyone makes it out alive.

Just like the original, The Blob starts with a meteor crash being investigated by an old man and his dog. But unlike that 1950’s science fiction film, this movie exists to confound expectations. It spends so much time setting up Paul (Donovan Leitch) and Meg (Shawnee Smith, Saw II) as the leads that when Paul is eaten by the Blob early in the film, it really comes across as a surprise. The real hero is Brian (Kevin Dillon), who is constantly in trouble with the cops and always rides a Triumph motorcycle, a nod to the star of the original, Steve McQueen.

For the rest of the film’s running time, Meg and Brian have to convince the town that the Blob is real. By the end, they’re trying to expose the fact that whatever the Blob is, it’s not from space. No, it’s a U.S. government-made weapon.

The Blob is packed with familiar faces, like Jack “Eraserhead” Nance as a doctor, Candy Clark as a doomed waitress, Second City braintrust Del Close as a priest who starts to worship The Blob, Paul McCrane as a cop (he’ll always be Emil Antonowsky in RoboCop to me) and Bill Moseley as a memorable soldier who mutters a strange soliloquy about The Blob before dying.

The credit for this movie being a sequel that actually works belongs to the team of Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont, who started working together on the film Hell Night and co-wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. There’s enough to remind you of the original while aspiring to be a movie on its own merits. It may have been a box office failure, but time has been quite kind to this movie.

Here’s a drink for this movie.

Sewer Jelly (from the book Let’s Get Monster Smashed by Jon and Marc Chiat)

  • 8 oz. vodka
  • 8 oz. water
  • 1 1/2 oz. cherry Jell-O
  • 1 1/2 oz. grape Jell-O
  • 8 oz. cherry yogurt (they recommend vanilla, but I’m going bloody)
  • About 20 or so small pineapple chunks
  1. Combine gelatin and 8 oz. water in a pot over low heat ad cook until the gelatin is dissolved.
  2. With the heat off, add the vodka and mix thoroughly.
  3. Combine pineapple chunks with the gelatin and mix.
  4. Pour into a bundt cake pan and add the yogurt. Mix thoroughly.
  5. Chill overnight or until set.

2018 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 28: Hardware (1990)

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Day 28 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is 28. Home Invasions. Unwanted visitors can really make a mess out of things. I’ve always been a major favor of Richard Stanley, from his documentary The Otherworld to his attempt to direct The Island of Dr. Moreau and the documentary that ensued, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau. Today, we’re talking about his 1990 film Hardware.

The world has become a wasteland filled with radiation. Scavengers roam the decimated zones, taking whatever they can to survive. One of them (Carl McCoy, the lead singer of goth rock band Fields of the Nephilim) finds a robot and takes it to Alve the junkman (Mark Northover, Burglekutt from Willow). McCoy’s character, who he calls Preacher Man, is supposed to be the same as his Nephilim character, a drifter with a fake hand, yellow eyes and dressed in dusty cowboy gear.

A former soldier, “Hard Mo” Baxter (Dylan McDermott, nearly unrecognizable with cyborg parts and facial tattoos) and his friend Shades buy the parts, dividing up the body with Alvy while Mo keeps the head as a gift for Jill (Stacey Travis, Phantasm II), his artist girlfriend.

Mo is a wanderer who finds his way in and out of Jill’s life. At first, she doesn’t want to let him in, but after he gives her the robot head, she allows him in. They fight initially about an upcoming government sterilization plan and whether or not they should bring children into the world before having passionate sex that’s watched by her creep of a neighbor, Lincoln (William Hootkins, Porkins from Star Wars!).

They awake to another argument about the way that Jill has used the head for a sculpture when Alvy calls. He wants Mo to come back, as he wants to tell him what he’s learned about the robot, which is a M.A.R.K. 13. Mo wonders if that’s a reference to Mark 13:20, “no flesh shall be spared.” When he arrives, Alvy is dead and the robot is gone. A note here: the actual text is “In fact, unless the Lord shortens that time of calamity, not a single person will survive. But for the sake of his chosen ones he has shortened those days.”

The rest of the machine has reassembled itself inside Jill’s apartment and attacks her. She escapes and Lincoln appears to help her. He seems initially nice until his pervert side emergers, but he’s soon pulped by M.A.R.K. 13. As Mo, Shades and the building’s security team battle the robot, it drags Jill away.

Mo has talked throughout the film about how deadly he is, but when he fights M.A.R.K. 13, it uses the same toxins on him that killed Alvy, sending him into hallucinations before killing him, too. The robotic intruder now hunts Jill throughout the building, killing everyone in its path. She even tries to reason with the robot’s AI before she learns its secret: an issue with moisture. She and Shades get it into her shower and destroy it.

The movie ends with gorgeous shots of the drifter from the beginning as he disappears back into the wasteland as DJ Angry Bob (Iggy Pop) talks about how the M.A.R.K. 13 is about to be mass produced to sterilize the country.

Hardware is an intriguing film. It’s not great but it has a heart and soul that wants to be. It feels like a Phillip K. Dick story, but finds its influence in a post-apocalyptic short film Stanley made in his teens and his time in a guerrilla Muslim faction while acting as a journalist during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The TV broadcasts in the film are based on the work of Psychic TV and add a lot to the film (indeed, music really influences this one, particularly a quick cameo by Motörhead frontman Lemmy).

However, one influence that has dogged this movie is how close it is to Steve MacManus and Kevin O’Neill 2000AD comic strip “SHOK!” Later releases give full credit to this story.

Richard Stanley tried to get a sequel made, Hardware II: Ground Zero, which would have been a bigger Western-style movie. Sadly, the project died as the rights to the film are split between Miramax and the producer, Paul Trijbits. In this bigger, badder world, the US government would already be mass producing M.A.R.K. 13s to patrol the US-Mexican border and wipe out illegal aliens. There, Shades and a veteran named Lyle Maddox would find Jill living in a hippie colony of “destructuralists” in Splendora, Texas who are under attack by the M.A.R.K. 13s and Mexican guerrillas. According to the site Everything is Under Control, the script is “a definite page-turner, but it’s also violent, challenging, and ultimately, perhaps even too crazy for its own good.”

I really wish that movie had been made. I love the vision that Stanley has, the cinematography in this film and the sense that it’s all part of a much bigger story. Throw in music by Ministry, Motörhead, Public Image Ltd. and a score by Simon Boswell (Santa Sangre, Stagefright) and you have a film I’ll be coming back to soon.

Hardware was released by Severin in 2009 but was out of print for awhile. You can get a new re-release at Ronin Flix.