Halloween Scene: Graduation Day (1981)

So, last night I was flipping through my Netflix Instant Watch queue and wanted to watch a short horror movie, so I settled on the 90-ish minute Graduation Day (1981). After I was a few minutes in I realized the movie sounded a bit familiar thanks to a post I read over at
Horror Movie A Day (the best horror site around as far as I’m concerned). Now, sometimes, like in the case of Troll 1 and 2, which I’ll get to shortly), I check out a movie because HMAD’s BC watched it and wrote about it. Other times, like this one, it’s just a coincidence, though we both watched it on Netflix.

Anyway, though our opinions of Netflix on Xbox differ (I only have a problem about 10% of the time), our opinion of the movie is pretty similar: it’s not great. Check out his review for a good assessment of things. Okay, done? There’s a few ridiculous things I’d like to add. First off, there is a roughly 7 minute scene which is based around a band playing a song at a roller rink or some such. The scene isn’t all that interesting, but it seemed like this performance garnered more of the budget than the rest of the flick as there’s lights and people moving all around. I wonder if they thought being in Graduation Day would be their big break?

There was one other cool kill in the movie (though completely ridiculous). This dude on the football team (though what he’s doing in pads in June is beyond me) is walking through the same woods that a bunch of kids have already been killed in and after running into Vanna White and some other girl who tosses his ball into the woods, he comes across the killer who puts a sword through the ball and then throws a perfect spiral into his torso. Hey, it’s creative, if not physically impossible.

And speaking of Vanna, her role really sucks in this flick. Like BC says, she’s one of two annoying girls that doesn’t do anything important except facilitating the football guy’s death. The funny thing is that the other girl gets more face time on camera. So, while we can hear Vanna’s distinct voice, you rarely get to see her face, which is the fun part of watching these horror movies with young stars.

Okay, one last ridiculous thing about Graduation Day. The girl who dies in the beginning has an older sister int he military. I’m not sure which branch because I wasn’t really paying attention. We do know she was in Guam though for whatever reason. Anyway, this woman who has been trained by the greatest fighting force on the face of the planet has a hard time not getting killed by some douchey teenager with a knife. She at least uses some hand-to-hand techniques when he tries attacking her under the bleachers (where he’s keeping all his victims in various poses), but both parties move so slow I thought the Netflix was flickering. Nope, just bad choreography. I was really hoping that she would really jack this dork up (who looks a lot like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers). When will we get a movie where the “victim” really knows how to handle themselves? I want a Leatherface vs. Rambo-type movie.

Oh jeez, I forgot, there’s actually one more ridiculous moment I want to mention. It’s kind of spoilery, but I don’t recommend you actually seeing this movie unless you’re a completist slasher fan. Anyway, there’s a fake scare at the end where the dead girl’s sister is in bed before going back to the military and she imagines the killer has come back and is going to stab her in her bed. But wait, he’s dead right? Right, but instead of this just being a dream sequence, it turns out that it’s her step dad (I think he’s her step dad, again, I wasn’t paying attention. He’s at least the guy nailing her mom) yelling crazy stuff at her and holding an empty bottle. It reminded me of that scene from the Simpsons where they’re in the witness protection program and Homer keeps busting into Bart’s room with a knife and then later a hockey mask and chainsaw. This guy definitely belongs in horror’s crazy old guy hall of fame.

Halloween Scene: With (Robot) ‘Friends’ Like These…

You know how sometimes your friend will tell you about a movie that sounds pretty awesome and then, in fact, turns out to BE pretty awesome? Well, I was hoping that would happen after Rickey gave me the following description of Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend (1986) (paraphrased, of course): “So, there’s this kid who built a robot and he likes this girl. A neighbor shoots the robot and the girl’s abusive dad accidentally kills her, so the kid combines them and the robo girl starts killing people.” He then sends me a clip of a girl throwing a basketball at an old woman and her head EXPLODES (it’s on YouTube, just search for Deadly Friend) and I was sold.

Unfortunately, Deadly Friend is a freaking boring movie. If the above premise sounds awesome and you love the YouTube clip, don’t bother with the movie. Just watch the clip over and over and you’ll get more enjoyment out of this flick because, even though the clip promises Machine Girl levels of gore, that one scene is about all you get. There’s also a really weird scene at the very end (I guess this is a SPOILER, but seriously, don’t bother seeing this movie) where the kid is standing over the dead girl and her skin starts tearing away to reveal a sleeker version of the robot underneath her skin. It’s actually a pretty cool looking scene, but it doesn’t make any sense seeing as how he merely put some kind of chip into her chest cavity to bring her back from the dead.

To be completely honest, I don’t remember a lot of the other details about the movie because it was boring, I watched it a few weeks ago and I was probably either dozing off or reading a trade towards the end, but I do remember that the robot looked like a weird combination of Wall-E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit (a movie I freaking LOVED as a kid). Oh, also, Christy Swanson plays the girl/robot, but even that wasn’t interesting enough to keep me, well, interested.

Speaking of Johnny 5, his human companion, Steph-a-nie (a.k.a. Ally Sheedy) stars in the other robot movie I watched in the past few weeks, Man’s Best Friend (1993). I can’t say that Man’s Best Friend is a movie I’ve been wanting to see for years or anything, though I do remember seeing the box in my local video store. In fact, the only reason I watched it is because it was going to disappear from my Netflix Watch Instantly thing. Plus it boasted Lance Henriksen in a starring role, so I figured, what the heck?

It’s not a great movie, but I’d probably watch it again before I’d watch Deadly Friend. The basic idea is that Sheedy’s a news lady who’s trying to expose animal testing at some kind of facility only to accidentally free a dog named Max that turns out to be an experiment in genetics and robotics. You see, Henriksen and his scientist buddies combined the DNA of animals like monkeys, owls and squirrels (or something) into a dog, but he’s also part robot for some reason (again, I got bored and missed some presumably important plot points).

Anyway, the dog’s dangerous and has some pretty cool kills, especially if you keep telling yourself it’s not a real dog climbing a tree and devouring a clearly real cat (the dog is the obvious fake in this case). The kills are pretty cool, but the whole time I was kind of dumbfounded this this movie got made. I’m not really familiar with either Henriksen or Sheedy’s careers at this point, so this could either have been a movie with pretty big names or a desperate grab for cash from two not-so-hot-anymore stars, but man, what a weird movie.

So, if you’re feeling like watching a robot movie, watch Wall-E or Short Circuit. If you’re looking for a robot movie about killing and you’ve seen the Terminator movies a million times, I guess you could check out Man’s Best Friend. And, if you’re a Craven completist, I still recommend skipping Deadly Friend.

Halloween Sccene: Halloween The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Wow. Faithful readers will remember that I was pleasantly surprised watching the Halloween sequels by how much I liked them. Well, that all changed with the fifth. The best part about Curse is Paul Rudd, an actor I love in his comedic rolls (Wet Hot American Summer, Knocked Up, Friends, etc.). Rudd plays Tommy Doyle who you may remember as the kid Laurie’s babysitting in the original flick. Well, now he’s a melodramatic college student obsessed with Michael Myers. Rudd jumps into the role with an intensity that gives Donald Sutherland’s Loomis a run for his money. Seriously though, as bad as the movie is, it’s kind of worth it just to watch Rudd.

Of course, that might not be enough for most people and I don’t blame ‘em as there’s all kinds of craziness going on. First off (not chronologically, of course, just the first thing to pop into my head as I watched this movie over a week ago), the Myers house is being lived in by Laurie Strode’s adoptive family the Strodes. Now, this is incredibly frustrating on a few levels. First off, it looks absolutely nothing like the house. It’s the wrong shape, the wrong color, the rooms are different, the basement is different and the yard is the wrong shape. Maybe you’re average viewer wouldn’t notice something like that, but your average Halloween fan will. Oh, also, the Strodes appear to have no knowledge of Michael Myers and the dad is a complete jerk. He’s close to unbearable to watch.

Really, the only reason they’re in the movie is to have some weird connection to Laurie, oh yeah and their daughter has a kid who has some unexplained connection to Michael which leads him to wander over towards the killer at times. What?! It makes no sense and the only purpose it serves is to get his mom closer to Michael.

So what’s the plot? To be honest I’m not all the way sure. In the beginning you’ve got Michael’s pregnant niece Jamie as a teenager. Some weird dudes in robes kidnap her and force her to give birth in their weird warehouse place. Jamie eventually escapes with her baby but dies. Somehow (I can’t really remember, to be honest) Paul Rudd winds up with the baby. Meanwhile, Loomis is on the hunt as Michael starts attacking again, older and crazier than ever. Loomis is dealing with a doctor (played by Greg’s dad from Dharma and Greg) who SPOILER turns out to be head of the cult.

We also find out that Michael appears to be related to some kind of druid curse, which is an element I actually liked as it’s a fairly creative use of what’s been laid down before it and makes sense (like a Geoff Johns comic). Anyway, it gets fumbled by the poor directing. The whole movie looks like it was made for TV instead of the big screen (which may have been the case as I don’t really remember seeing ads for this movie in 1995, but hey, my memory sucks).

Meanwhile, the rest of the movie gets pretty well fumbled as there’s no real ending (apparently Sutherland passed away during filming and they didn’t really have an ending so they just threw something together, ugh). Michael does way too much corpse-posing which is an element I appreciated in the early films, but after watching 6 or so Friday the 13th movies, it’s getting old. That added to the poor choice for the Myers house and the general lack of likable characters and a coherent plot really make this a disappointing finale to the original Halloween series. I’m still waiting to watch H2O and Resurrection (or whatever it’s called), but I’m not really looking forward to them which is why I’m taking a bit of a horror break to watch some (hopefully) good action movies.

Halloween Scene: Turkey Day Round Up Part 1

Hey gang, hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving break. My apologies again for my lack of updates these past few weeks. Whatever staying-up-late stamina I had must have been completely spent in October. But, over the Thanksgiving break, Rickey, Em and I went to visit her parents in New Hampshire where they have FearNet and movies on demand so Rickey and I spent every evening watching as many horror movies as we could. Hopefully this long post with reviews will make up for some of my lack of posting.

WAXWORK (1988)
So, after working most of the day, waiting for Rickey to come up (traffic was pretty bad between him and us) and the four hour drive from our place to Em’s parent’s house, we were understandably tired. But that didn’t stop Rickey and I from attempting to watch our first horror movie of the weekend and boy did we choose a doozy. Waxwork is about a bunch of kids who decide it’s a good idea to go to a wax museum that pops up in their neighborhood one day. Actually, there’s a pretty funny scene where two of their group decide it’s a bad idea and bounce. I loved that scene. It reminded me of what I would do in that situation. “You want to go into a stranger’s wax museum even though we have no idea who he is or whether the wax figures will come to life and kill us? No thanks, I’m good.”

In actuality the movie is a bit more creative than that as the kids get sucked into whatever kind of scene the wax figures represent. So, when the girl approaches the vampire set, she’s transported to a creepy castle where she’s forced to eat what looks like cranberry surprise. And then…

Okay, we didn’t get any further than this scene. We were both tired and bored by this point and I’m pretty sure we both fell asleep while watching it. The only other interesting piece of info is that Zach Galligan, of Gremlins fame, stars as a spoiled rich kid. The funny thing is is that Rickey and I are both avid readers of Horror Movie a Day and it turns out that he watched the movie too, though he actually finished it. Sounds like it actually got kind of cool towards the end. Oh well, the on demand stuff saves your progress in the film for 24 hours, but by then we were watching…

CHRISTMAS EVIL (a.k.a. You Better Watch Out, a.k.a. Terror in Toyland) (1980)
And boy, what a stinker. After a long day of being terrorized, uh, I mean spending Thanksgiving with Em’s family, we came back and everyone eventually went to bed so we decided to get ready for Christmas by watching a movie about a dude dressed as Santa killing people. According to my beloved Creature Features, this is the first incident of such a film and it is not a good one. The whole plot revolves around this dude who saw his parents not really doing anything sexual (they were barely touching and fully clothed while pops was dressed as Santa) who now sleeps in Santa PJs, works in a toy factory and keeps tabs on the neighborhood kids to see who’s naughty and nice. That’s a big chunk of the movie.

I think we both fell asleep at about the same time Thursday night. The next evening we figured we didn’t have too much time left and put the boring flick back on. It’s actually kind of interesting in the last 15 minutes. If you feel compelled to watch this movie, do so from that point on and you’ll get the gist of it. Once the killings finally start happening (on the steps of a church with the jerkiest, most apathetic clergy I’ve ever seen), the movie doesn’t really pick up as our killer finds himself back at his company Christmas party celebrating with the people who were earlier making fun of him. It really doesn’t make any sense. Oh, there’s also a scene where Santa scares a kid by hiding in the bushes in his bright red suit. In true horror movie fashion, the kid’s mom doesn’t investigate her son’s accusations of a man in the bushes and just gives them a quizzical look before driving off.

But the best part of the movie is the very end where Santa runs into some kids who he then uses as human shields once the parents get a look at him. By this point, we’ve already seen some Santas in a line-up, so you know the police are on the case. The problem is, how do these people know this Santa is the killer? One dude is so convinced that he pulls a switchblade on Santa. Santa gets away which leads to a Frankenstein-like mob with torches and everything chasing Santa through the street. He just barely escapes into his chimo van with a sleigh and reindeer painted on it (how the cops weren’t able to track this down after the church murders while it was just sitting outside the office party, I’ll never know). He heads over to his brothers house, where his brother almost chokes him to death, but he gets up and hops back into the chimo van just in time for the torch-carrying mob to catch up, causing him to swerve off of a bridge and…fly off into the sky Grease-style. I guess there’s some discussion about whether he survives or not, seeing as how you can hear a car crash sound at the same time as the van flies away. I don’t really care either way because this movie’s not good, but the image of that van flying away is just great. Rickey took a picture with his iPhone and it’s awesome. So, after finishing Christmas Evil on Thursday we watched an actual good movie called…

MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008)
Which I had thought was a Clive Barker movie ever since I first heard about it, but it turns out it’s based on one of his stories. Anyway, some of you who are more into the goings on of the horror industry know that Lionsgate kind of buried this movie by giving it a limited release in cheap theaters only, which I’ve never actually heard of before. I was really surprised when I first heard this and still thought it was a Clive Barker movie, but I was still surprised after watching it because the cast is fairly well known, though less in the star power vein and more in the “hey, it’s that guy from that thing” way. You’ve got Bradley Cooper who will always hold a special place in my heart for his involvement in Wedding Crashes, Vinnie Jones who’s just awesome, Brooke Shields (?!), Ted Raimi and Leslie Bibb who played the reported who tried to corner Tony Stark in Iron Man (and then slept with him). With the right advertising and one of those annoying “from the creator of Hellraiser/Nightbreed/Lord of Illusion/half my nightmares” things, I don’t see why MMT couldn’t have had a fairly successful run in theaters. I understand the whole concept of studios wanting to make money on valid properties, but how the heck did Saw become a valid property? Someone needs to give another new franchise a chance. Gimme Trick r Treat already!

Anyway, I didn’t fall in love with MMT, but I did really like it. Cooper plays a photographer who’s trying to capture the real, raw underbelly of late night New York. While doing this he comes across a man (Jones) who he thinks killed a model he photographed the night before. As he slips further and further into obsession (following Jones at all hours of the night and showing up at his job as a butcher), Cooper’s girlfriend, Bibb, gets more and more concerned for him. From here on out, I’ll be in SPOILER territory.

So, as you can imagine this being a work based on Clive Barker, this movie doesn’t just lie in the real world, though there are plenty of real world scares. Jones is pretty terrifying as the killer. He’s already a huge dude, but by making him a huge silent guy in a crisp suit with a meat hook and a huge metal meat mallet, man, he’s just creepy. As Rickey pointed out, he doesn’t even need a mask like your typical slasher. And Cooper as the obsessed photographer really kills it, especially because it turns out that he’s right, but no one will listen to him. That’s one of my big fears in life, to know what’s really going on but not having anyone listen to you. Plus, there’s some real nail biters with Cooper getting way too close to Jones.

Like I said, the ending comes with some unearthly elements as it turns out that Jones isn’t exactly what he seems to be (even though he does murder people, remove their clothes and leave them hanging naked in a car of the subway. I don’t want to ruin it all, but it’s definitely worth checking out for fans of any of the above actors (though Shields only appears as a photo critic), Barker or horror.

Uncharacteristically, Rickey and I weren’t done with horror movies so we moved on to…

PUMPKINHEAD (1988)
I’d actually watched Pumpkinhead before at Em’s parents’ place so I wasn’t really paying attention. Lance Henriksen stars in this Stan Winston-directed flick in which SPOILER WARNING Henriksen’s son gets killed by a dude on a dirt bike (it’s okay to laugh, it’s kind of silly) and then finds a witch who brings a vengeance monster called Pumpkinhead to life so it can kill the killer and his friends. That brief summary doesn’t really do the movie, which is actually pretty interesting, justice. There’s a lot more to this whole thing than just a revenge plot, as Henriksen grows to regret his decision and tries to actually stop Pumpkinhead. There’s really a lot going on and Winston did a great job with the movie, it’s too bad he didn’t direct more movies. And, of course, you can’t talk about a Stan Winston movie without talking about the creature effects. Pumpkinhead does look an awful lot like an alien, but it’s a really cool design, though I’m not really sure why they bother calling him Pumpkinhead (he looks nothing like a Pumpkin, though his grave is surrounded by pumpkins. Like I said I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but the movie doesn’t really end like you might expect and is definitely a fun one to check out.

Okay, that’s enough for today. Check back tomorrow for the second and final part!