Category Archives: Review

Horror Comfort Food – part I

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Generally, I try to put some degree of thought into what goes here – taking a text as an opportunity to really consider something and put the brain to work. But sometimes, you don’t want to work. Sometimes, you’re not even looking for a scare. Sometimes, you just want to put on that movie you’ve seen countless times before and dwell in familiarity, draping it around you like a warm blanket. Towards that end, here is the first half of a list of ten of my favorite Comfort-Food-Horrors. 

Cinnamon rolls I made one Halloween – delicious really.

These are not necessarily my favorite movies (though some are), but they are all great pleasures to return to, and I tend to do just that. I think that when it comes to repeat viewings, it’s rarely the scares that bring me back. On a certain level, once a scare has worked, it is hard for it to do so again. But comedy works, atmosphere works, character works, and I think it’s those that rise to the surface in this case.

I’m listing these in no particular order (and I’ll list more in even less particular order later this week). I don’t think it makes sense to rank such unrelated films.  Some are horror-comedies. Some are atmospheric. Each has its own merits and can offer succor in its own way.

The Lost Boys (1987)

Everything about this one pleases.  The beaver. The soundtrack. Death by stereo. Using window cleaner as cologne, maggots in Chinese food, and possibly the very best final line of any film in history.  Seriously, I love it.  The boardwalk vibe is great – dark and lively, sexy and wild – and unlike any real boardwalk I’ve seen. My parents live in Ocean City, MD, which has a boardwalk – and it’s perfectly fine, but I think I’d enjoy the town more if it came with vampires with big 80s hair.

All of the characters draw you in. It’s easy to go along with Michael as he descends into this sensual underworld of blood and lust and dirt bikes. The story of Sam and the Frog brothers rallying to kill all vampires based on the lore found in a ‘very serious comic’ is one of the most satisfying kids-vs-monsters fights out there, and Nanook is a very good dog. And finally, who couldn’t feel for Lucy, the single mother trying to make a go of it after relocating with her two teenage boys, and just trying to have a bit of a life, a job, to even date?

While I like all of the acting, music, and film making on offer, I think the star of the show for me might be the writing.  It walks such a fine line between a more adult, sensual, traditional vampire tale and a light, funny, boys-own-adventure.  The comedy really lands, but so does the allure of the night. The twists and turns of the boys trying to suss out Max are very cleverly handled and really pay off in the final reel. And it knows what to hold back. Keifer Sutherland really shines as David, the leader of the young punk vampires, but he is wisely given rather little to say.  Mostly he is a presence, a threat, a seduction, with only a few sardonic lines. For a film that features an oiled muscleman playing saxophone to a wild crowd on the beach at night, surrounded by pyrotechnics, it has a surprising degree of restraint.

Suspiria (2018)

This is one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years, and I’ve already mentioned it here.  Luca Guadagnino creates such a strong sense of a time and a place, making the whole film so tactile. It has a physical presence, as does the dance work at its center, inspired by the choreography of such pioneers as Mary Wigman and Pina Bausch.  It would probably be difficult for a remake to be more unlike its progenitor, and I think, in a way, that honors the original work more than any slavish imitation could, taking the original idea and going somewhere wholly new with it.

Throughout, there is a subtle but powerful air of attraction. Whether between the characters (Susie and Sara, Susie and Madame Blanc), the draw of a place (Berlin, and specifically the dance company, calling to Susie since childhood, the beauty of its artistic freedom and vibrancy in contrast to her conservative, religious upbringing), the inherent sensuality and physicality of dance and movement—bodies in space, touch, weight, breath, or ultimately the drive to power, with its dark potential to become fascistic, be it political, magical, or abusively interpersonal.  The whole film is a mood.

Somehow it manages to be totally over the top and subtle and understated; oppressively gray and rainy and utterly vibrant; sexual without being explicit and cerebral without being tedious. It envelops, guides you, and calls on you to jump higher, to sigh.

Suspiria (1977)

While I loved how unlike the original the 2018 version is, that does not in any way lessen my love for Dario Argento’s dark fairy tale.  This is a wholly different and no less satisfying sensory encounter.  Light and color and sound wash over you. Art designed within an inch of its life, every still from this movie could be framed.  Nature, architecture and interior design conspire to enrapture and overwhelm.

This was probably my introduction to Argento and Italian horror in general and it’s a hard one to top.  It has it all. Style up the wazoo? Check. Elaborate, bloody, intense, artful kills? Check. Fantastic, driving, sometimes discordant music (from Goblin, one iteration of which I got to see play live in a small local club a few years ago)? Check. Weird dubbing of its international cast who were all speaking their lines in different languages and sometimes couldn’t understand each other, resulting in some interesting acting choices? Check. Udo Kier playing Doctor Exposition? Oh yeah. A cheesy bat on a string? You better believe it! A captivating female lead (Jessica Harper as Suzy) drawn into a web of conspiracy, witchcraft, deep red back lighting, and really gorgeous wallpaper? But of course.

This film is such a perfect choice if I’m having a stressful day and I just want to hide in fantasy, in sound and light, in something magical, and threatening, and beautiful.  It will always have a warm place in my heart (which is happily, unlike in the film, not exposed, still beating, and about to be stabbed).

Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Another beloved horror-comedy that I have mentioned once before (same link as above), I clearly remember the experience of seeing this in the cinema.  As the story began to come into focus and the Lovecraftian vibe – in confluence with its pointedly-critical-of-its-target-audience stance – coalesced, I just got so excited.  At once, it delivered such fan service (in offering up its amalgamation of every horror concept they could think of) and undertook a trenchant critique of horror viewership (in casting us into the position of the great old ones, hungry for blood, desirous of suffering). 

Cleverly, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s film manages to really bite the hand that feeds it, suggesting that we, horror fans, are the real monsters, while housing it all inside a celebration of zombie redneck torture families, deadly puzzle boxes, mermen, ballerinas that are all teeth, murderous unicorns, and plot adjacent frontal nudity. The guys in the control room are just the film makers trying to keep the customer satisfied. I think it’s a really bold choice and it’s rich in its irony.  It feels made with love, but not without some ambivalence, which makes the whole thing that much more effective.

At the end of the day, as a kind of comfort food, it’s the fan favorite jubilee of horrors and fun play with genre tropes that brings me back again, but that other undercurrent always adds a soupçon of critical thought that I savor.

The Wicker Man (1973)

It should come as no surprise that if I am to list favorite films to return to and be comforted by, I’m probably going to end up writing about films that I’ve already discussed in some form. This is no exception.  A favorite film in any genre, I probably watch The Wicker Man at least once a year and I listen to the soundtrack with far more frequency.

I mean, Summerisle just seems like such a great place to live (at least in theory—in reality, I’m not actually that folksy). I can always come back to its cozy charms, even if I have to eat tinned fruit. The life of the community, so vibrant in the public house – singing about the landlord’s daughter, in front of the schoolhouse – erecting the phallic Maypole, nakedly jumping over a bonfire on the way to the Lord’s manor, or leading a patronizing jerk from the mainland on a merry chase before burning him alive in a sacrificial pyre, just comes across as warm, fulfilling – basically good.

It is a fantasy, I’m sure (I am fairly allergic to religiosity and probably wouldn’t really fit in).  But such an enticing one.  And such a cheap vacation – pop it on and instantly sink into the comfort of being on a small prop-plane, surrounded by the drone of bagpipes. I suppose that, put that way, it doesn’t exactly sound comfortable, but there we go…

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And that’s already a long post, so let’s save the next (and final?) five for later in the week.  More to come… stay comfy and cozy out there.

A Recurring Nightmare

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So far in writing this blog, I’ve often tackled films that, if not obscure, are at least somewhat off the beaten path, at least enough that I feel there is still something to say about them. But this week in looking for something to write about, I just had such a hankering to re-watch one of the biggies, one about which I’m sure most has already been said.  So, standing on the shoulders of horror bloggers, critics, and fans of yore, let’s dig in to Wes Craven’s original Nightmare, kicking off one of the biggest horror franchises.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

As I’ve written previously, I’m not really a franchise kid. My entrance to horror fandom did not revolve around Freddy, Jason, or Michael. That said, in my youth, as in film, they were unescapable. Late night on HBO at my grandparents’ who had cable, it was easy to stumble into these guys. They were on magazine covers, in newspaper ads. Other kids who were more into this kind of stuff (which I was totally not ready for at the time) would recount on the playground, scene by scene, the terrifying events on display.  And I think of all of the 80s boogeymen, no one loomed larger for me than Freddy Krueger. 

Ubiquitous in the second half of the 80s, Robert Englund’s Freddy was in Mad Magazine, on t-shirts, on a 900 paid phone service, in the toy aisle, and being rapped about by the Fresh Prince. You couldn’t avoid him if you tried. And I tried. He creeped me out. And it wasn’t the burned face or the knives on his fingers (though both of those were disturbing to my young imagination). Rather, it was the essential, perfectly scary idea at the heart of the character: that your dreams could hurt you. That they could kill you. That this evil, laughing sadist could hunt you where you were most vulnerable and that there could be no respite, no egress.

I mean, I didn’t use the word ‘egress.’ I was like 8 or 9. But still, the concept rattled me.

It didn’t matter that I never watched any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies until I was in my 20s, this monster already haunted my dreams, and I didn’t want him there.  I never actually believed that this was somehow real, that I could be attacked in my sleep, but I would still avoid images of him, scared that they would cause me to dream exactly what I most wanted not to. But I did – many times. Even into adulthood, drifting into sleep, I might have the passing thought that I wouldn’t like that dream again, and therefore, would be doomed to; aware that I was dreaming, that awareness not allaying the fear, but rather, making it worse. The very fact that it was a dream made it more real, more seemingly dangerous.

It didn’t help matters that in my middle school years, I lived on Elm St.

Eventually, having come to love Horror, I finally sampled some of Freddy’s filmic wares and honestly really like them, but I think it wasn’t until a few years ago when I fully ran the series, including the later entries of varying quality, that I finally overcame my trepidation by means of overexposure.  While there is still some value in those later films, such as the endless room for visual creativity afforded by the dream settings, I doubt I’ll ever revisit them.  However, the original, as well as Part 3 – Dream Warriors, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which I think stand together as a kind of trilogy, have become strong favorites to which I return again and again.

Craven’s original film really holds up.  Though it had a relatively low budget, it really doesn’t look that way at all. The story intrigues, the kill scenes startle, the effects wow. And it is just fun. Just as Goonies would do one year later, this offers the thrill of young people up against terrible odds and unthinkable threats, with no help or support from their parents (though I think fewer kids get eviscerated in Goonies). Really, all of this is the parents’ fault anyway and at this juncture, they are absent at best. (I particularly love when Tina wakes up from her first nightmare, her nightshirt mysteriously clawed open, and her mother offers the helpful advice, “Tina honey, either cut your fingernails or you gotta stop that kind of dreamin.”)

But I think the film’s success is largely due to how it offered something different from many other Horror films of the time.  Until Nightmare, most slashers had primarily offered non-verbal, looming, stalking killers.  Blank, vacant stares, ‘the devil’s eyes,’ or wild madmen whose POV we looked through, but who we didn’t get to know.  Freddy, on the other hand, actually talked, joked, taunted, played.  This would get taken to further extremes as the series progressed (by the sixth film, he was almost an evil Bugs Bunny, with endless one-liners), but it was already there from the beginning. He only spoke a bit, but it was always playful and cruel. And he wouldn’t stop laughing. It was a wholly different kind of monster. At once threatening and fun. At least he was always having fun.

Additionally, the fantasy element of dreaming really opened the door to something other than a standard stalk and kill scenario.  In later films, the dreams got more extravagant, but even in this relatively low-budget first film, the dreams work. Images and sounds drift in and out of them without explanation, but always feeling very natural. Locations come and go around dreamers who smoothly move towards a point of focus, not questioning the impossible geography. Horrible images, glimpsed for a moment in waking life (such as a friend’s arm slipping out of her bloody body bag) resurface in dream, making the events emotionally scarring as well as scaring.

And the other key element, which I am not the first to praise – but that won’t stop me, is Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy. In her, the trope of the ‘final girl’ evolved in a deeply satisfying way into something of an action hero.  Now, I’m not enough of an expert in the subgenre to confidently claim no one had done so before her, but she did it so well.  The traditional ‘final girl’ was a survivor – the last survivor of the terrible events, the one who, hunted and terrorized, finally could turn on her attacker, take up a sharp implement, and take him down.

Nancy, on the other hand, while certainly hunted and terrorized, is just so proactive.  She has these nightmares, starts drinking coffee, learns her friends were having them as well, has some caffeine pills, seeks out their source, avoids warm milk, investigates the sins of the fathers (and mothers), and armed with knowledge of local history, a book on ‘booby traps and improvised anti-personnel devices, and something she heard about Balinese ‘dream skills,’ she goes into the dream to hunt the monster, bring him out again with her, and take him down. All on her own. Because somebody has to. She has to.

And I think the thing that’s really special here is that she is not cool. She is not a badass girl who’s trained in kicking things while wearing improbably sexy tight pants. No. She’s a kid. A nice kid. With nice friends who are being murdered. Langenkamp was 18 at the time of filming and I could have believed she was much younger. She feels like a teen, and not a 90210-30-year-old-teen, but a teen who is still basically a child. In her own words, “she looks like an average teenager. She has ugly hair. She’s wearing a pair of boy’s jeans. All of her clothes are kind of pink. Like, who wears pink?” This normal young person, who is not aggressive or hard, has to walk towards unimaginable danger, and rise to be a legitimate hero. When that happens, it’s particularly rewarding.

And still, while she does go after this monstrous killer of children with the tenacity of Schwarzenegger in Predator, she never stops being a believably endangered horror film heroine. Thanks to this, the final reel takes on something of the charge of an action movie, but without losing the nightmare quality of horror. It is exciting. And scary. And thematically sound (at least until it has to carry the weight of a producer mandated second ending so the series could continue – but oh well, that part’s kinda cool too).

I think every time I come back to this, I appreciate it more.  As its own film, I think it is an impressive, nearly perfect horror flick (easily overlooking some occasional shaky dialogue and acting). But it also somehow serves up a kind of nostalgia for my own childhood, bringing many warmly unsettling memories from a time long before I ever watched the film itself.

Life is weird, huh?

Unknown Cruelty and Delight

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You know, it’s easy sometimes to feel like you’ve seen everything worth seeing.  You’ve seen the classics, the cult-classics, the so-bad-they’re-good treasures, and so much of the new stuff you sample fails to make a particularly deep impression.  But then, every once in a while, you can find something unknown that’s been hiding in plain sight all along, that you had just never heard of before, that can really blow you away. This is one of those.

The Unknown (1927)

This late silent era collaboration between director Tod Browning (who would later direct the horror talkies, Dracula and Freaks) and Lon Chaney, the ‘man of a thousand faces,’ is a blisteringly intense and occasionally hilarious tale of obsession, manipulation, madness, and murder.  And somehow, I had never heard of it until very recently. I’m so grateful that I finally did and sought it out.  Wow. It is a doozy.

I will say, The Unknown is quite plot heavy and it’s practically impossible to discuss effectively without spoiling it, so I suggest you do yourself a favor and go check it out first.  It’s only 50 minutes long and it is worth every second.  It’s currently available at this link (which I hope will stay active indefinitely—if you’re reading this years after I wrote it and I never noticed that the link died, sorry—try google).

Great, you’re back! Wasn’t that a kick in the pants?  The Grand Guignol extremity of it all, the absurd moments of self-realization, the double amputations!  But seriously, let’s run through the story in brief.  So, we follow here the story of Alonzo the armless, who performs in a circus, using his feet to shoot the clothes off of and throw knives at the object of his secret affection, Nanon (a young Joan Crawford), the daughter of the circus owner. She has an overwhelming fear of the hands of men, so it is unfortunate that she has attracted the attention of Malabar the mighty, a big goofy puppy dog of a guy who works as the circus strong man.

Alonzo, determined to keep Nanon all for himself, consistently gives Malabar the very worst advice he could, suggesting that he take her in his strapping arms to make her feel the strength of his love. Malabar is pleased to notice that he does in fact have arms and goes, once again to try hugging the pretty girl. This of course terrorizes her and causes her to feel ever closer to Alonzo, the only man with whom she can feel safe. 

What we soon learn is that Alonzo is actually a criminal on the run from the law, who has contained his arms in a special corset to avoid suspicion. On his left hand, he has a double thumb, which would immediately give him away as the perpetrator of various crimes.  And then a new infraction is added to the list when he strangles Nanon’s father, who had sought to keep Alonzo away from her.

Aided by his friend Cojo, a little person who is sometimes dressed as a devil, Alonzo comes to realize two things: Should Nanon ever marry him, on their wedding night she would discover his subterfuge, as well as his extra thumb, and she had seen her father murdered by a man with just such a thumb. Furthermore, he has grown so accustomed to doing everything with his feet that he no longer needs arms at all.

Thus, Alonzo blackmails a surgeon into amputating both of his arms for real so that he could finally consummate his love.  But of course, in the weeks that Alonzo is away, recovering, Malabar finally comes to understand what he’s been doing wrong all this time, and learns to keep his hands to himself, thus winning the trust and the love of Nanon, who ceases to fear his touch.

Finally Alonzo returns, learns that Nanon and Malabar plan to marry, and sets out to sabotage their new act in which Malabar has his arms strapped to two horses running on treadmills while Nanon whips them on from above.  Should the treadmills suddenly stop, nothing would prevent the horses from running off, taking Malabar’s arms with them. Have you noticed that it’s a film about arms?  Anyway, Alonzo attempts this treachery. The horses almost tear the sweet goofball apart. Nanon tries to stop them and is almost killed. And finally, saving her, Alonzo is trampled to death. Love triumphs. Hate dies. Horses eat hay.

At the end of the day, it’s a straightforward bit of melodrama, but it just plays so well.   The emotions are all so heightened, but in a way that really lands, that you can feel.  I believe Nanon’s fear. I believe Alonzo’s hate and his madness. I believe the earnest charms of Malabar the mighty.  And there are moments here that are simply staggering. 

When Alonzo comes back from his surgery and goes to find Nanon, she initially expresses joy at his return, saying, “now we can be married.” Of course, she’s referring to Malabar, who she calls into the room.  As their arms entwine and Alonzo sees that his self-mutilation has been in vain, we are treated to a perfect moment of cinema.  The film cuts back and forth between the young couple intimately holding each other and warmly laughing and Alonzo laughing in a building crescendo of mind shattering madness, before screaming in despair and collapsing.  The whole sequence last less than 90 seconds, but it feels like it goes on forever, and by the end of it, you may feel a bit mad as well.  It’s a hell of a performance.

And that ending.  The set piece of Malabar between the horses, Nanon lashing them into a frenzy, and Alonzo carrying out his final act of betrayal, builds to such exhausting intensity.  In the end, no arms are extracted, but that almost doesn’t matter.  The horror of the possibility is what lingers.  The mind has already seen it.

And the themes of the film feel surprisingly modern.  When Nanon laments that “all my life men have tried to put their beastly hands on me…to paw over me…I have grown so that I shrink with fear when any man ever touches me,” the sentiment resonates today.  Malabar may come across as a good hearted doofus, but the way he is oblivious to how he is menacing this woman he loves feels…not okay.  To his credit, when he finally gets it through his thick skull what’s going on, he makes the requisite effort not to be so grabby and she warms to him, even coming to love him.

Alonzo, on the other hand, is a fascinating character.  He is truly the protagonist. This is entirely his story.  It is his choices that drive the action, and he is enjoyable to follow.  Crafty, clever, bitter and lovelorn, he is a charismatic presence. And he is undoubtedly a monster. An unrepentant killer, he manipulates and deceives the woman he purportedly loves, murders her father, subjects her to assault by advising Malabar to keep trying to take her in his arms, and finally tries to maul and murder her lover.  He is not a good guy.

But he also feels reflected in the contemporary context.  My whole life, popular culture has prominently featured the trope of the ‘nice guy,’ an intelligent but physically unimpressive outsider, who wants the pretty girl and hates the jock who seems more likely to win her, who insinuates himself as her friend, only to be locked out of her romantic considerations,  and who performs some deceitful act to try to win her. Typically, this has been in a romantic comedy and after this trickery has come to light, the lovable loser is forgiven and finally loved.  But in recent years, this trope has lost allure, has come to feel quite toxic.  He was never a ‘nice guy.’ This guy is a dangerous incel.

And here, while he is our protagonist, Alonzo is never shown as anything other than a monster.  From the beginning, his obsession with this young woman (Chaney was 42, while Crawford was 18 at the time of filming) is shown as possessive and ugly.  He repeats that “no one will have her – no one but me!” The happy ending involves him being crushed by a horse. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

The Blurb: The Final Chapter

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The Hunt (2020)

The political drama of this film’s release somewhat overshadowed the political drama inherent in the film itself.  It was supposed to have been released in the fall of 2019, but when conservative media, not to mention Trump, caught wind of the premise, there was a huge manufactured outcry which got the film shelved indefinitely.  It was only when Covid struck and the cinemas closed that Blumhouse released it straight to VOD, skipping the theatres and skirting the drama.

So, why so much drama?  The premise is that there’s a group of well-heeled, pretentious, hypocritically self-righteous, Hollywood liberal stereotypes who kidnap a group of closed-minded, mean-spirited, red-state conservative stereotypes, bring them to some remote location and hunt them for sport.  It had seemed obvious back in ’19 that the outrage was pretty stupid as the liberals were the bad guys (or at least the only ones directly capturing and murdering people), but to be fair, the red hats aren’t presented in a terribly good light either.

One person, Betty Gilpin’s (of Glow) Crystal, stands out as not being a flat cultural stereotype and that’s why she’s the protagonist.  She was taken by accident, mistaken for a different southerner whose mean tweets had set the whole story in motion.  She’s some kind of combat veteran, and while she doesn’t seem to identify much with the ugly socio-political views of the group she’s been placed in, she also doesn’t identify with being hunted by a bunch of rich morons either. So, she kills everyone. Everyone. It’s pretty great.

The politics is facile, peddling an obvious kind of ‘plague o’ both your houses’ equivalence, but at the same time, there are some easy targets on both sides to make fun of, at least socially.  But, it must be said that this is a really fun movie. Gilpin is just a pleasure, start to finish. The violence is enjoyably extreme. Some comedy lands. There is at least one stand out knife fight.  I only felt that, given its brand of politically simple, everyone is terrible, satirical perspective, it was actually too well produced. I felt that this kind of crude making-fun-of-everybody would just work better as a Troma production (I mean, it directly reminds me of ‘Troma’s War’). Some messages are benefited by less money somehow.

But I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it.