Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been at this for about 4 years now, having written about 184 horror movies new and old in all sorts of sub genres – slashers, hauntings, monster movies, possessions – I try to cast a wide net and cover a lot of territory. And of course, I take an active interest in what seems to stick with visitors to the site. What brings people here? What do people actually take the time to read in full, having clicked through? What goes largely unexamined? And according to Google Analytics, far and away, there are two leaders of the pack: my comparison of King’s book of “The Shining” and Kubrick’s film (nice – I’m proud of that one) and my (to date) five part series on “Lesbian Vampire” movies. I’m happy to say that the text on The Shining clocks more minutes of being read than any other individual post, but it can’t compete with the massive number of visitors that come in to read about “lesbian vampires” (which should really be otherwise named, lest we contribute to bi-vampire erasure, but the sub-genre is called what it’s called).

If that includes you, and you would like to check out the other entries in the series, you can do so here: Part I (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary), Part II (The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, The Shiver of the Vampires, and Vampyros Lesbos), Part III (Nadja, Blood of the Tribades, and Bit), Part IV (Requiem for a Vampire and Alucarda), and Part V (Daughter of Dracula and Vampyres).

Having done those 5 previous posts, about two years ago, I stopped. I knew that, for all that they generate a ton of clicks, not everyone stays to read (I suppose many are looking for a more lurid presentation of the content than I offer – but not you, gentle reader, I know you’re here to stay…). And also, I had just kind of run the course on most of the, let’s say, “more highly regarded” examples of the genre. But I hadn’t actually exhausted the canon, and it is nice to bring new readers in (if you just got here, I hope you stick around and check a few other things out), so here come a few more: some newer, more modern takes and some classic 70s Eurosleaze as well.

It is an odd sub-genre, but I do consistently like it. Some of my all-time faves (i.e., Daughters of Darkness) fall within its borders, at that sweet-spot nexus of arthouse and grindhouse – a description for which I must give credit to blogger and podcaster, Stacie Ponder. They can feature idiosyncratic takes on the concept of the vampire and frequently it’s a stretch to say that they always even feature “lesbians” (more accurately, most are bisexual – probably the best description might be “Sapphic”); they can be trashy and artsy and veer more towards erotic dramas than horror; and it must be said that there is consistently a weirdness (to say the least) about the juxtaposition of their generally emancipatory textual messaging and their frequently male-gaze-y form, overwhelmingly directed by men with a desire to titillate. But I do dig them. So let’s dig in. Today we’ll be covering (in no particular order) two films from the heyday of the subgenre: The Female Vampire (1973) and The Velvet Vampire (1971), and two more recent entries: The Moth Diaries (2011) and We are the Night (2010). There will be spoilers.

The Female Vampire (1973)

AKA The Bare Breasted Countess, AKA Erotikill, AKA The Black Countess, AKA The Swallowers

Ah, Jess Franco, what a specific filmmaker. An auteur’s obsessive pursuit of the precise themes and images that fascinated him, and a 14 year old boy’s choice of those obsessions. He directed hundreds of films, most of which no one outside of a select circle of cult cinephiles has ever even heard of. He could exert masterful control over the camera, framing shots of great beauty and evocative, wistful sadness, and he would often snap zoom in on a breast or patch of female pubic hair like a salivating cartoon wolf with his eyes bugging out of his head. He contained multitudes I guess.

Now, I would not recommend this film as a starting point for Franco. It is simply too much like him and I think it could be a hurdle too high for one who hasn’t already decided they appreciate what he offers (perhaps start with Vampyros Lesbos). And I must say I appreciated The Female Vampire (or at least aspects of it) more than I liked or enjoyed it, but it is surely worthy of consideration.

If you know Franco, you know pretty much what to expect: Lina Romay, basically naked for most of the run time (she was in more than a hundred of his movies over the course 30 years – and they were a couple for 4 decades before marrying in 2008, both passing away four years later), sexualized vampirism, vampires that don’t mind sunbathing, gorgeous photography of a lush exotic location (in this case, the Portuguese island of Madiera), an erotic death trip wherein the physical act chases a kind of oblivion reflected in the all-consuming vampire of the title, groovy tunes, awkward, but enjoyable dialogue, and editing less concerned with narrative drive than mesmeric flow, totally comfortable lingering on a given shot as long as the director’s fascination is held.

The plot comes off as almost a porn parody, but that isn’t the way the film actually feels. At its heart is Romay as Countess Irina von Karlstein (We have a Carmilla reference – Lesbian Vampire box checked), an ancient vampire cursed to voraciously consume any she is drawn to. And in this case, the metaphor is taken to a literal extreme. She not only seduces the objects of her desire and inevitably destroys them, but she drinks their life force by performing oral sex, the “little death” (as the French would have it) of her victim’s orgasm not so little in her case.  And it must be said that this is one more “Lesbian” Vampire better described as bi-, pan-, or omni-sexual (not that I can claim to really grasp the distinction between those terms, but the point is that she’s an equal opportunity seducer/predator).

Again, the concept reads as laughable – the vampire who “sucks” her victims to death, and the early seventies featured plenty of silly sex farces in this vein (impossible to avoid the puns), but this is not one of them. There’s no silliness, no (intentional) absurdity. The tone is somber – Franco takes it all seriously; these themes and story beats could seem puerile or trashy, but for him, it is all worthy of artistic investment; whether or not it consistently captivated me as an object of art (not always, honestly), I never doubted that it was one. And while I run hot and cold on Franco, I love that commitment – to have the courage of your convictions that what you, personally want to see is truly important and should be shown – that’s a guiding star that many artists fail to hew to. Regardless of how you judge his work, I wouldn’t call it compromised. And that purity of artistic intent (even in something schlocky and sexploitational) really speaks to me.

Irena is a magnetic black hole at the center of everything. She carries a stillness, a quiet (she is mute), soft, sad insistence that others simply fall into. And it is easy to feel for her loneliness – she is drawn to new lovers, and they to her, and it always ends the same, with her alone, and yet she can’t keep herself away, can’t stop (some of this becomes textual in voiceovers, but it would be clear without them). There is a striking early scene when she appears before a reporter who had questioned her about mysterious deaths on the island. The reporter is startled to find Irena in her bedroom as she returns from the bath. She’s terrified, comprehending that Irena is a threat, that she is in danger, but as Irena’s gaze becomes more lascivious than predatory, the woman softens, and before long, she invites the countess into her bed. The scene is erotic, full of reciprocated desire, and it goes the way of all the sex scenes in this movie – eventually, the reporter convulses in pleasure and lies still. Irena is left alone with a corpse. She rubs herself against the cooling body in futile necrophiliac desperation, but the former paramour will not return. She’s gone and Irena is still here. There is so much nudity and so much sex in this film, but it rarely feels ‘pornographic’ in the sense that it should “get the viewer off.” In this moment, it is much more a feeling of pathos. And Franco takes more time with it than I think anyone else would have.

Which brings me to what was most difficult for me – I just wish it were all a bit shorter, tighter. But I know that isn’t what he did. As I’ve read, there are many different versions of this film. When he made it, he shot three different cuts for different markets: a very short (72 minutes) “horror” version (which I’ve read had all of the sex excised, without which, it made little sense), a medium length (82 minutes) “erotic horror” version, and a longer (96 minutes) porn version which included hardcore inserts. What I found available to watch was an even longer (100 minutes) cut, released many years later (and I believe this was Franco’s preferred version). This one lacks the hardcore shots, but seems to include much that wasn’t in the other three. And I must honestly say that it did try my patience a bit, leaving me more than a little sleepy by the end. I appreciated it, but I probably would have appreciated it more if there had been at least 10 minutes less to appreciate. But this was the only one I could find, and I’m glad to have checked it out. Furthermore, for all of my initial coolness, as a couple days have passed, I find myself thinking about it often and liking it more and more. It does linger in the memory.

There is a lot to take in here – it is frequently beautiful, a real mood, and it makes such good use of its setting. Madiera, the subtropical island where it takes place, is uncharacteristic for a Carmilla riff, as is the fact that the action occurs mostly during the day (Franco’s been here before), but is kind of thematically perfect. I’ve never been, but I understand that Madiera is an island of perpetual spring. Always about 23 degrees Celsius (approx. 73 F) and sunny on the coast of the island, and always wet and lush as you near the mountains at its center. This eternal, unchanging beauty mirrors Irena’s stasis. She cannot change. And her unending need is what pulls others to her.

Otherwise, the music is far-out and fun (with one recurring theme that sounds so much like a jazzy piano bit from a Peanuts special – did I miss the one about Charlie Brown and the sex vampire?), the performances are enjoyably uneven, and I rather dug a playful subplot with Franco as a Forensic investigator who figures out that vampirism is afoot, but the cops won’t believe him. And it must be said that Romay is very, very good. This was her first lead role at 19 and she carries the film in a mostly unassuming fashion. There is something very intimate and private about both her performance and how the camera watches her. She is an enigmatic presence, but there are moments when something surprising shines through, such as a scene where she seems to have really fallen in love and tries hard not to destroy her lover – in the early moments, she is girlishly sweet in a real departure from the rest of the film, before things go the way they inevitably must and she is despondent.

As a “vampire” movie, you don’t get much of the typical markers. It’s generally sunny and outside of a scene of sado-masochistic whipping, there’s nary a drop of blood (except when Irena carnally wriggles about in a blood bath in the final scene), but it is giving a different kind of vampire, and hey, we have a big tent in horror land.  Again, this is not recommended if you haven’t already seen and liked at least one other Jesús Franco film. But if you have, this is worth giving some time to – but don’t be in a hurry or start watching it too late. A strong cup of coffee might be a good idea as well.

We Are the Night (2010)

This next movie is almost the opposite of the last. Whereas Franco’s film paid only the smallest lip service to the concept of “plot,” this one has plot to spare, maybe even too much. Directed by Dennis Gansel, Wir sind die Nacht follows a young woman, Lena, who starts the film getting chased by the cops for pickpocketing the wrong Russian gangster, before she gets pulled into the orbit of a trio of attractive female vampires (in this world, there are only female vampires- whether by choice or because it simply doesn’t take for men, I wasn’t quite sure). Of course, she gets chosen to join them and has to struggle with her newfound need for blood. It’s all fun at the beginning (as it usually is), but everything eventually takes a dark turn (as it usually does), particularly due to the fact that Louise, the main vampire, gets jealous of the burgeoning romance sparked between Lena and the cop who was chasing her in the first scene. It’s all well-worn territory, and it is…fine.

When we first meet her, Lena is an intriguing character – low on glamour, but she’s a street rat with a striking self-assurance, a presence that draws more attention to her than she might like. And it is initially fun to hang out with the vamps and party the night away – there’s plenty of somewhat generic clubbing, but also some enjoyable thrill of danger – playing Russian roulette or speeding the wrong way down a tunnel in a stolen sports car, courting disaster, knowing you’ll walk away from it, but it’s still dangerous, and exciting.

Otherwise, it is capably filmed with some decent action here and there (the initial chase, a climactic fight that moves from wall to ceiling to out the window, etc.) and there are occasionally some nice shots that stand out. But ultimately, I gotta say, it wasn’t really for me.

As I keep writing about “Lesbian Vampire” movies, I’ve had to put some thought into the subgenre’s attraction. Now, they are not uniform of course, but their most common narrative pattern features some striking older female vampire targeting an ingénue, seducing her to the dark side and probably away from her dickish husband (though to be fair, the first feature today was not telling this story). That vampire is often presented as cruel, as a monster; perhaps she’s even coded as a kind of fascist (as Kümel did in Daughters of Darkness), but wow is she appealing, and even as the young woman is pulled into a possibly abusive relationship of drastically uneven power dynamics, her embrace of the vampire’s offer, her rejection of her socially expected role as “wife,” of, let’s say more broadly ‘the patriarchy,’ tends to feel downright emancipatory and sexy. And in that, there is the pinch of horror that keeps bringing me back to the genre – that dramatic tension of beauty and awfulness, and desire and fear, and freedom and bondage, out of which abject monstrosity is preferable to constraining normalcy. It’s good stuff.

Now Gansel’s film, on the surface, seems to follow very similar story beats, but it really feels different in a way that at best left me cold, and at worst turned me off. Louise is in fact an older female vampire, targeting a younger woman. And unlike many, she would seem to actually have no interest at all in men. But she doesn’t enrapture – she doesn’t enthrall, fascinate, beguile, or any other synonymous verb. And it’s not because she’s a vicious monster – I mean there’s some of that, and it’s a good time, but mainly she lacks appeal because from the beginning, she’s just a pushy, jealous, boringly petty figure. She just wants Lena to ‘love her’ instead of the pretty boy she’s actually into, and the film doesn’t give her much to do to successfully entrance Lena (I have a thesaurus), or more importantly, us. By the end of the movie, she doesn’t feel like a delicious, compelling monster so much as simply “the bad guy,” and (spoiler alert!) the bad guy loses so that the young lovers can run off together.

I don’t mean to be some closed minded ideologue, but it’s hard to cheer the victory of bland heteronormativity in my Lesbian Vampire movies. It’s like Ally Sheedy at the end of The Breakfast Club getting all pretty in pink and suddenly being happy with the athlete. Honestly, there was something off about this movie from the beginning – in an early scene, celebrating Lena’s new nightlife, Louise takes all the vamps shopping and Lena does come out of this almost unrecognizably glammed up – just put a pink bow in her hair. Really, if I’m going to watch this story again, I’d rather just re-watch Bit (2019), which uses its collection of intentionally exclusively female vampires to interestingly examine something about power – how it is abused, how it empowers, how it can or can’t be managed – who gets to wield it and why, and do they do any better than those who had it before? It is emotionally significant that its main character is invited into this sisterhood, giving extra meaning to everything. Plus, it’s just more fun.

So yeah, this was not my favorite, but hey, maybe it will be yours. Who knows? If you do choose to give it a try, I strongly recommend finding it in the original German with subtitles. The subtitles aren’t great (often things feel poorly translated), but the English dubbing is really wooden.

The Moth Diaries (2011)

So off the top, I must say that when I first watched this about 8 months ago, I really liked it and knew that I wanted to write about it whenever I got back to the Lesbian Vampires, but then when I re-watched it last night, I found I had cooled quite a bit on it. Which impression is most accurate? Who knows – but I’ll try to give voice to both experiences as best I can.

Directed by Mary Harron (known to genre fans for American Psycho, but I also really liked her non-horror The Notorious Bettie Page), this is an adaptation of a 2002 novel of the same name about Rebecca, a student in an all-girl boarding school who feels jealous and threatened when her best friend, Lucy, falls into the orbit of Ernessa, a mysterious new girl (who’s probably a vampire – or maybe a ghost?). Despite the fact that the novelette is directly discussed in the protagonist’s English class, this is very much a riff on Carmilla, and generally it does well by that source material, while also being rather its own thing.

What I liked best here are the relationships. At the beginning, Rebecca loves Lucy so fiercely, and it’s not clear if we’re simply seeing the intimacy of a dear childhood friendship, or if there is, in fact, a romantic or sexual component to that love. I don’t think it’s clear to Rebecca either. She’s been through some hard times (her father committed suicide a few years back) and Lucy has been her lifeline to the world – they enjoy each other, and it all seems totally positive, but Rebecca is also utterly dependent. Thus when Ernessa shows up and Lucy starts drifting away, Rebecca is thrown into absolute crazy making crisis, and the possessive jealousy she feels regarding her friend is dark and controlling. Still, she’s not wrong – Lucy is being seduced by a vampire who will use her up till there is nothing left – an abusive partner who cuts off ties to former friends.

And the Ernessa – Lucy relationship reads. Ernessa does fascinate. Played by Lily Cole, she has a vaguely otherworldly quality and it’s easy to see how Lucy falls for her. It’s also easy to see how bad she is for Lucy (who does, in fact, begin to waste away). But it’s hard for Rebecca to help her friend when she, herself, is so transparently being motivated by her own jealousy (leading to unengaged with questions as to the nature of her own desire for Lucy). Everyone can see it. No one really talks about it.

Along the way, there are little touches that contribute to the vibes and themes of magnetic attraction, power imbalance, and emotional abuse inherent in the story: a sexy new English teacher who is inappropriately familiar with Rebecca, harsh treatment by the matrons of the school, a moving scene in which one girl sneaks out to lose her virginity in a field near the school, but brings along all of her friends to camp out nearby in case she needs them – the sex is unpleasant and unsatisfying, but she accomplishes what she set out to do and the presence of the other girls in their sleeping bags just out of sight helps establish a sense of shared repressed desires, even for something that may hurt and leave them wanting. There is a repeating visual motif of moths (it’s in the title), creatures that are drawn to light, incapable of pulling themselves away, doomed to be burned by its brightness.

And I do appreciate that this is a rare example of a “Lesbian Vampire” movie in which the vampire is only actually interested in women (also, out the 17 films I’ve written about in this series, only one had a woman as a (co-)director, so having Harron behind the camera is rather a novelty). The attraction between Ernessa and Lucy is evident, and this is both threatening and enticing for Rebecca. Lucy has the room next to hers and Ernessa is always there. One night Rebecca wakes to her friend’s moans and goes to investigate – and is startled when she opens the door and finds the two having vigorous sex, or is Ernessa feeding on her? Either and both – though no blood is visible and this is a vampire movie with no fangs. She watches for a moment and then closes the door and goes back to bed, but I think there is a shocking appeal for her, just as it is frightening in its near-violence and sexual domination. And then, it’s never discussed – no one needs to “come out” and you don’t have the impression that the other girls would take issue with it. But given how the door is unlocked and they are making such noise, it feels like they (or at least Ernessa – Lucy has little agency at this point) want to be heard, that Rebecca is being invited into the room – a part of the larger seduction that Ernessa is attempting on Rebecca throughout the whole film, reaching out for the protagonist to join her in death.

So all of this has been of the good. What about last night’s viewing? I guess it just came off with less drive for me on re-watch. There is an evenness to the pacing that just felt plodding, and the knowledge from the beginning (even with direct textual reference) that this was a Carmilla story sapped rather a lot of tension from the narrative. Of course Ernessa is a vampire – even if Rebecca has mixed motivations, we never doubt that she’s right about the danger her friend is in. It all just felt a bit flat last night. Was that the fault of the film, or was I simply in a different headspace? I’m not sure.

Either way, there was a lot to like here. I appreciate how Harron uses this school setting to manufacture images of gothic fiction in modern day – the gorgeous old stone walls of the dormitory, the girls all sleeping in long white nightshifts as they sneak about by the light of the moon. It is generally a bloodless vampire movie, except for one dream sequence, which must have given good grist for the trailer, in which Ernessa showers in blood as Rebecca watches and screams, spattered with it herself – as she is taunted with her friend’s destruction, and prompted to, like her father before her, open up her wrists. It’s an effective moment in a film that has many. I just wish it had pulled me through a bit more forcefully.

So, yeah – I wouldn’t call it a “top tier” Lesbian Vampire movie, but if you’re looking for something made this century, this is a decent option, and I imagine it might have played better with its intended audience, who I assume were teen girls in 2011 – sometimes I think it’s important to temper criticism with the knowledge that a given piece was not really made for you.

The Velvet Vampire (1971)

Finally, riding directly on the coattails of Daughters of Darkness (1971) comes this desert bleached take on the Lesbian (bisexual) vampire from Stephanie Rothman, making this the only film from what I’ll call the “golden age” of Lesbian Vampire movies directed by a woman. Rothman worked in the field of exploitation cinema and this is no exception. Made on a sixth of the budget of Daughters of Darkness, this hits many of the same beats: a young married couple with a strained relationship dynamic is pulled by a glamourous female vampire in an isolated location. She seduces the husband first, as he’s simply easy sport, making the wife uncomfortable and jealous, but the wife may really be her main target. I was struck watching The Velvet Vampire at how even some costume/set choices seem to overlap. Can it be a coincidence that they both have dining room scenes with the alluring, elegant vampire in sparkling silver by candlelight?

On the exploitation front, this is clearly a cheap B-movie and outside of Celeste Yarnall as Diane Le Fanu, the titular vamp (and also, her name is our de rigueur Carmilla reference – the book was written by Sheridan Le Fanu), the acting is more what one expects of an American cheapie than a European Arthouse flick. One also imagines that the desert setting and the almost exclusively daytime shooting were money saving choices. There are some odd choices here and there and some lapses in logic, along with a middle stretch that lags. But in spite of all that, I really liked this movie.

For all of the modesty of its budget, it is frequently gorgeous to look at in terms of setting, costumes, and cinematography, occasionally touching on real beauty in some of its vampiric moments, as well as the essential sadness of Diane’s endlessness, outliving (and using up) all of her lovers, all of her servants, anyone whose life she touches. It also clearly has a sense of humor, and while it’s not at all a “comedy,” I’m sure that at least some of its absurdity is intentional, representing successes of the script rather than failures (I wasn’t sure for a little while, but by the end, that was my read). There are some bigger laughs, but also a lot of small smirks here and there, such as when on the first night, Diane is watching the couple in bed through a one way mirror as she sits in her sumptuous red room on her voyeur throne. She clearly enjoys watching the husband pleasure his wife, but then when she refuses to reciprocate and, satisfied, rolls over to go to sleep, Diane looks so put out that her show has ended early. It’s not hilarious, but it is a funny little moment in a film with many such moments. Additionally, there are some solidly surreal dream sequences with the couple in a bed in the desert and Diane entering to seduce them each through a rather Magritte-esque mirror. And the music absolutely cooks. Seriously, I would buy this on vinyl if it were released, but as far as I know it hasn’t been. It’s got this great mix of distorted psychedelic groove and folksy strings, as well as a bit of tight Blues. Vibes for days.

Most significantly, any movie in this subgenre lives or dies (or, um, un-lives? Un-dies?) based on the strength of its central bloodsucker. Earlier in this post, I criticized We Are the Night for failing to give its Louise many opportunities to beguile her film’s ingénue or us the viewers. That is absolutely not true in this case. Yarnall’s Diane is gently magnetic, with a sly, sardonic smile and an easy confidence that pulls in husband, wife, and viewer. She is allowed to be entirely a predator, a cold hearted user through and through, but you can’t help but love her and want the young couple to fall into her trap (plus, they’re no gems, so it would be no great loss). Past that, her take on being a vampire is rather specific and, generally, I’m there for it.

First of all, there is the daytime. She tends to stay pretty well covered up during the day in her long gloves and wide hat, but the sunlight doesn’t stop her from tooling around in her bright yellow dune buggy (ye gods, is it funny when she first appears in it, leaping over the dunes in the most incongruous appearance of a vampire I can think of). This leads to a hilariously thinly veiled seduction of Lee (the husband) as she describes handling the vehicle in the most explicit terms (“as you move in rhythm with it – up and down, in and out… through the dunes,” prompting him to huskily respond “Diane, I think I’d like to drive your buggy.” Sexy. But to be fair, a surprising amount of Lesbian Vampire movies ignored the notion that vamps were “creatures of the night.” A) Carmilla was active during the day, and B) it was cheaper to film in daylight and especially in the early 70s “golden age,” these things were on a tight budget.

Past the day lit dune buggying, I rather like how she isn’t particularly magical or powerful. Sure, Diane needs to drink blood, and she does, but other than being eternally young, she has no supernatural powers. In the very first scene of the movie, as she walks to the art gallery where she will meet the young couple and immediately invite them to visit her remote desert home, she is assaulted by a guy on the street who attempts to rape her. She makes quick work of him, but it is a bit of a struggle first. No, she’s not turning into a bat (or a cloud of moths for that matter). She isn’t super strong. She isn’t particularly fast. At one point, her hand is stabbed and a couple of scenes later, she’s still wearing a bandage. Her only power is her easy charm. Her power is sexiness. I don’t think she literally mesmerizes husband or wife, but she is mesmeric, even as she smiles and glows through tales of people’s throats being ripped open by some mysterious threat. There is an easy going self-assurance that comes with eternity – she knows she will get what she wants and she knows she is wanted. Also, that wanting defines her – she is an eternal hunger – always wanting and inevitably destroying, but always appealing.

The young couple was, however, not particularly appealing for me, but they are interestingly written. When we first meet them, Lee (the husband) is trying to pick up Susan (the wife) at an art show. He’s pretty pushy and she gives him a real hard time. When we learn they’re married, it’s evident that they are playing a kind of game with each other. Within minutes, Lee has gotten them invited to Diane’s place and Susan is already jealous at his interest. You have the impression that they are trying to live an early 70s ideal of sexual freedom – young, without hangups, both able to have romantic adventures, and yet, the moment the captivating Diane enters the picture, it is clear that neither is as modern or as unbound by convention as they’d like to believe (I think of John Lennon singing, “You think you’re so clever and classless and free, but you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see”). They can be possessive, be jealous, be hurt. Still, they are both lured by her and thus, keep pushing the line, pushing themselves, pushing towards their end.

I can’t say that the ending entirely did it for me, but that’s because I don’t like my evil sexy vampires to lose, but at least when she does, I feel it is tinged with tragedy rather than feeling like an unquestioned triumph of good.

So yeah, this was a fun one – not very successful on release, but it’s rightly acquired a ‘cult’ status over the years. It won’t be for everyone as it is a cheap production and some of the acting suffers, but if you like these kinds of movies (and perhaps if you’ve read this far, you do), then I definitely think this is worth checking out. Honestly, its low-budget “failings” are really part of its charm, and when it succeeds, it really pops. But do try to find a good copy. I started watching it on Tubi and the quality was terrible, leading me to think it was simply an ugly film. Then I noticed it was also on Shudder (which I understand always tries to have the best quality available) and the difference of the transfer was night and day.

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And so I think that’s it for this most recent foray into the realm of Lesbian (read: Sapphic) Vampires. As always, it’s been gratifying to explore this kinda-trashy/kinda-artsy slice of horror cinema at the intersection of the vampire’s erotic promise and a compulsive fascination with oblivion (romantic poetry smuggled under the sensationalistic cover of a bit of blood and a lot of nudity). I wouldn’t generally recommend any of these movies as an entry point to the subgenre, but for the initiated, there are still depths to be plumbed (that came off dirtier than intended). There are still characters who can beguile, still filmmaking that can wow. And it is always one of the great pleasures of digging into genre, to gain a more complete view of the permutations of where that genre can go. Even in the case of a variation that rubbed me wrong, such as We Are the Night, it feels enriching to puzzle out why and to be able to look at it in the context of the history, the ongoing tradition, of certain stories and characters and tropes.

I don’t know when the next entry of this series will come – it could be another couple of years for all I know. But sooner or later, it has to happen – I mean, I just today learned that a made for TV Polish black and white adaptation of Carmilla was produced in 1980. How could I possibly resist?

Just as we are forever dissecting the divisions between the generations, prosecuting their comparative strengths and weaknesses in order to passive aggressively complain about millennials, zoomers, and boomers, it seems that pretty much every horror fan has strong opinions about the decades, enumerating their favorite eras as an act of self-definition, and deriding the “worst” epoch to establish their cool by looking down on the “right” things. And while the first decade of the 2000s sometimes gives them a run for their money, I think most people prefer to hate on the 90s.

The 50s and earlier (even if there were great lulls for the genre in the middle of the century) all count as obvious classics. In the 60s, the modern horror film found itself, with standout examples like Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby leaving a stamp on all that came after. In the 70s, things got gritty and genuinely horrific, just as certain genre tropes were being formalized. In the 80s, there was an explosion of horror movies, of advancements in practical special effects, of both genuine classics as well as simply really entertaining schlock. But I suppose the train couldn’t keep chugging on forever, and sooner or later, it had to slow down. Ah, the oh so disdained 90s.

That said, some of my favorite horror (and horror adjacent) movies came out in that much maligned decade: Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, Craven’s New Nightmare (plus of course Scream, which set the stage for the whole late-90s teen slasher cycle), as well as one of the highest heights of the genre, Candyman. And it’s not only high profile “great films” that stand out – there was tons of just fun, quirky stuff as well. Return of the Living Dead Part III has tons of wild special effects and a cool, kinky sexiness. Exorcist III has got one of the best jump scares of all time amid Oscar worthy performances. Cemetery Man is artsy and funny and delightfully weird. And Army of Darkness just oozes campy charm and an army of pre-cgi animated skeletons that could give the great Ray Harryhausen a run for his money.  There was plenty of great horror to go around.

But while I can make a full throated defense of the decade, I must admit that I haven’t dug into it as deeply as I might, and so today, I thought I could remedy that with a few movies that didn’t really make the biggest splash, some of which were rather discounted at the time, but which nonetheless may be worthy of attention. So here is my assignment, my little series of “lesser” entries in big horror franchises from the 90s: Candyman 2 (1995), Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990), Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 (1994), The Howling 5 (1990), and Halloween 6 (1995). All new to me, all filling gaps, all about 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. What could go wrong? I’ve never written negatively about a movie on this blog – generally I only want to write about things that I appreciate. But none of these are particularly well thought of – will I be able to keep up my positive streak, or am I dooming myself to snark? Only one way to find out…and of course there will be spoilers.

Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman just may be my favorite horror movie of all time. I’ve written about it before here, but in short, I think it comes pretty close to perfection, full of poetry and social commentary and true horror and deep feeling, all wrapped up in a truly scary package that is expertly filmed and scored and performed. It is beautiful and grisly and rich in ideas – a real classic of both the genre and film in general. It was also instrumental in making me a horror fan and not just a person who might watch a scary movie from time to time. In fact, I love it so much that I’ve never had the slightest interest in checking out either of its direct sequels, though I did see and mostly enjoy the 2021 requel (of course, I have thoughts – someday, I will finally write about it, but today is not that day). They just didn’t look good and I felt I would be disappointed and/or flat out angry.

Well, I’ve finally watched the second entry and I’m happy…that I didn’t watch this sooner. I feel like at this point in my life, I can see something like this, observe issues I don’t like, and move on with my day. Twenty five years ago, I would have had blood in my eyes, raging at the desecration of something so dear to me by such a subpar, unnecessary continuation of its story – the utter offense of some executives taking the seeds of something beautiful and significant and using them to make just the worst kind of generic crap. Now, as I wrote above, on this blog, I don’t really write “bad” reviews. I only choose to write about something if I’ve already decided that it is interesting enough to invest the time and effort of considering it seriously, which usually means that I liked something about the given film. But, here I’ve given myself a homework assignment, and so I better do it, but maybe I can keep it short and sweet (“for the sweets”).

Let’s just say it’s a missed opportunity. While I still don’t feel a sequel needed to be made, I understand that money is nice, and people want it – also, Tony Todd was a special talent, with such a tremendous voice and a real physical presence, and it’s fair that he got to make some more movies in this very striking role (though I would need real convincing at this point to watch the third). Following his 1992 performance, he deserved to lead a franchise – it’s just a shame that this was what he got. Sigh. So anyway, they could make a sequel, and even use a similar jumping off point as they did here, and that could have been interesting. Could have been…

One of the things I love about Candyman, both the original film and the Clive Barker short story on which it’s based (“The Forbidden”) is how the titular villain is an embodiment of an idea, a story made flesh, but not a historical character who has come back as a vengeful ghost. I feel this was implicit in the 1992 film (though, to be fair, the “Helen is his reincarnated lost love” thread undercuts this, but hey, nothing is perfect), but the 2021 movie explicitly states it. Thus, in a way, all stories about who he is, where he’s from, and why he kills are true if people tell them. This movie sets a more concrete origin – Candyman is, in fact, only and exactly the tortured spirit of Daniel Robitaille, a slave who had fallen in love with a white girl, and who was lynched, had his hand cut off (he’d been an artist), was covered in honey, and stung to death by bees, the honey earning him the moniker “Candyman.”

I personally prefer the more open, folkloric version of 1992 and 2021, but I can accept that it could be worthwhile to dig into him as more of a real person, as a more human character with psychological motivations. So I wish we had more of that here. There is one flashback close to the end when we see his murder, as he presents how he was transformed from who he was into what he is, and what it means when the Candyman name is used. We see the lynch mob laughingly, jeeringly calling him this and we understand the dehumanizing cruelty inherent in it (bringing to mind the revelation at the end of The Autopsy of Jane Doe *spoiler* They tortured and killed her for being a witch, but it was the harm they did that made her one – and here it is the pain done to Daniel that leaves a scar in world and makes him a monster). That is interesting. I wish we had more of it, more of his role in the local culture, more sociological exploration of race and class and disappearance and generational suffering (one of the things I think makes the original significant is how Cabrini-Green was such a focal point of the fear of the city that Candyman’s presence and activity within it poetically resonated and rang true). Apparently, Bernard Rose, the director of the 1992 film, had been developing a script which would have all taken place in the past, dealing exactly with this becoming, and possibly with these issues – but the studio nixed it because they weren’t comfortable filming an interracial romance. Oof.

Instead, we get a long (not actually as long as it felt) story of a fairly uninteresting White family down in New Orleans who have a blood connection to Robitaille – a bit of a procedural mystery to unravel – who was he to them and why do people keep getting gutted by this hook-handed ghost with a silky voice? Also, there’s a magic mirror macguffin that holds his “power center,” some dodgy mid 90s CGI, a whole lot of grating voiceover from a local DJ, rote police investigations, and shockingly flat filming of the vibrant city of New Orleans. Seriously, how do you set such a gothic, folkloric story in a city known for having so much atmosphere and life (at Mardi Gras, no less), scoring it with the same composer riffing on his original themes, and produce a film so grey, so dry, so blandly generic and muted of all color, contrast, or passion? That is some kind of feat.

And if you will indulge me one last mini-rant, I love the score Phillip Glass did for the original movie, looooove it. Maybe my favorite. Got it on vinyl. It’s been my ringtone for 20 bloody years. And here, it seems they have more original music from him and it simply does. not. work. It’s as if someone had a Phillip Glass cd and just put it on quietly in the background with no care to which bit of music underscored which bit of screen action. It is seemingly omnipresent and distracting, never dominating the mood and shaping our emotional journey. Never effectively used, it’s just noise. I’d never imagined that I would get more Glass Candyman score and wish they would turn it off cause it’s getting in the way of the very boring scene I’m futiley trying to stay awake through.

So, yeah, that’s that. I can’t say that I recommend it (if you couldn’t tell), but hey, maybe the third one was better. If you know that it does, if it is worth my time, please leave a comment and say so – I’ll otherwise keep my distance. Hopefully the rest of these will fare better.

Post Script: I just watched Final Destination: Bloodlines. If you’re in the mood for more Tony Todd, maybe check that out – it’s a beautiful goodbye.

Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990)

I have written here before about my love for the original Slumber Party Massacre. I think it’s a really special flick, embodying all of the tendencies of the golden age slasher (and having fun with them – cheap, fake-out scares abound, for example), while at the same time, being drenched in irony and rich with a perspective critical of the content it contained. I think it beats Scream to the punch as a meta-slasher, and it gets extra points for doing so while the first wave of slashers had not yet fully crashed on the shores of the mid 80s. The second movie is interesting, weird, and just a rollicking good time, somewhat indebted to A Nightmare on Elm St., with some weird Freudian stuff thrown in. It has a totally different tone and is basically a musical – like I said, weird. But it does, in a way, continue the story of the first picture.

And then comes this third film in the “series,” such as it is. As far as I could tell, there is no connective tissue between this entry and what came before (Part 2 did continue the story of a character from Part I), except that once again, there is a group of girls having a slumber party, and a killer with a power drill is picking them off. Also, as with the first two films, this has the rare distinction of being both written and directed by women (something that sadly stands out in the genre and Hollywood in general – plus, it is notable for a subgenre like the Slasher, given how often it’s been accused of base misogyny).

I expect the less one knows the first two movies, the better this one seems. Both of those were really quite interesting and subversive in their ways, and while this one does actually sneak in a bit of viewpoint and better characterization and representation than one might expect, it doesn’t pop as something truly unique. But it’s not actually terrible. I mean, it’s clearly cheap and looks it, it’s pretty by the book as slasher fare goes, and it is flat and televisual in its style. But I kind of liked it. It isn’t the most suspenseful thing I’ve ever seen, but the kills were properly brutal and sometimes quite gory – they worked. It is a bit playful with the identity of the killer, dropping in three or four red herrings along the way, all of whom are at least a bit ridiculous – like the guy actually credited as ‘weirdo’ or the next door neighbor who is spying on the girls and their party (a far cry from Mr. Contant from the first movie – who was weird with his moonlit snail hunting, but surprisingly ok). And most significantly, I really do believe in the main characters and their friendships – I even like them.

The group of girls having the party largely come across as real young people who actually like each other. I can’t say that I remember their names and it’s not like we learn particularly interesting things about them, but for a movie this focused on delivering blood and breasts, I feel they are well drawn and, I don’t know, present. There are people there, and I always appreciate when a cheap scare flick takes the time to let me give a damn about the lambs being led to the slaughter. They don’t feel disposable and that helps the kills actually feel like something, actually hurt a bit.

Finally, as with the first two movies, there is still a point of view here. This is not as satirical or clever (also, sadly, nowhere near as good) as the other two films, but under its veneer of exploitation, it still slips in a concrete view of women, men, and the dynamics between them. The film is full of female characters who are confident and in control, who can unselfconsciously act in their own interests, can serve their own desires: The main character, Jackie, has to move across the country cause her mother got a promotion and her dad will just have to find a new job. When Juliette takes Ken to bed with her and he can’t perform, she tells him that “there are other ways you can make me happy” and then guides him to perform oral sex on her – good for her. Even early on, when all of the girls first get to Jackie’s house, there is something nice about their simple joy in eating and drinking – cookie dough and beer (charmingly, “beer” brand beer, no less) and pizza and basic bodily pleasure and having fun together.

And of course, the men are mostly awful: the aforementioned ‘weirdo’ (who is stalking the girls and lurking around the house at night) and the supremely creepy neighbor, but also the male friends who crash the party, sneaking up to scare the girls when they’re half naked, or the cop working the phone who keeps ignoring their pleas for help, dismissing them as stupid, drunk girls wasting his time, and is only moved to act when an older male neighbor calls to complain of a noise disturbance. The movie has opinions, but I think they come across more subtlety than they did in the first two, admittedly better, pictures. Honestly, in many ways, this feels a bit like a reboot of the first film – without the ironic spark and also less artful, but still quite watchable and more progressive than it might seem at first glance.

In the end, this is no classic, but I’m glad I watched it and you could certainly do worse for a cheap slasher flick. Fun, decently paced and generally well-acted – I don’t mourn the 87 minutes I gave to it.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4: The Next Generation (1994)

Ok – wow. Hmmm. This was genuinely interesting. I might not go so far as ‘good.’ But then again, maybe I might? I’d always heard this entry was pretty weird, but the word doesn’t do it justice. Either way, I’m really happy to have seen it – a thoroughly enjoyable experience from top to bottom, even when I thought it was terrible (and there were other times when I thought it was, if not great, then at least utterly fascinating).

So I’ve written about the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre here before, and I will reiterate that I think it may be just about the most effective horror movie I know – if it’s not the best horror flick ever, then there’s no top 5 that doesn’t include it. And just as I very rarely choose to watch it so that it might retain its nightmarish power, it also probably didn’t need any sequels. And yet, it has gone on to be one of the big franchises, with 9 entries (counting remakes and reboots) and Leatherface firmly implanted on the Mt. Rushmore of horror villains (though he (or even perhaps ‘they’) is/are quite an odd inclusion given how much the character mostly just flails around, freaking out – in this entry, no one is even successfully ‘chainsawed’).

So yeah, sequels it has had. Tobe Hooper’s part 2 (which I mentioned briefly here) took a very different tack than his first film and wasn’t as powerful and influential, but is still great in its own way – and quite a wild ride. I still haven’t seen part 3, so I can’t comment on it, but I’d long read that part 4 was really strange and probably awful, but that both its oddness and the fact that it featured early performances from both Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger made it a curio worth seeking out, and I gotta say that’s true.

First of all, the bad. So much of this movie, written and directed by Kim Henkel, an early Tobe Hooper collaborator and co-writer of the original film, just comes off as a direct rip off of that film (with one bit at the end seemingly stolen from part 2), and none of that serves this movie. I honestly don’t know what the intention was – are we supposed to read all of this as references to the first? There are reasons to think he might have wanted us to. Was he just returning to a well that had served in the past? I don’t know, but if you want to see a movie where a group of young people come to a rural Texas house and get terrorized by its residents, with one girl getting dragged, screaming into the kitchen and hung up on a meathook, with the main character spending half the movie running away from a chainsaw wielding, stolen-face-wearing maniac, jumping out of a window at one point before finding temporary refuge at a local business with someone who is actually part of the chainsaw family, and is then tied up and beaten with a stick and taken back to that house for a madhouse dinner scene, but who manages to get away, running to the road at dawn, riding off in a passing vehicle, leaving Leatherface dancing in the early morning light, waving the titular chainsaw around impotently, if you want to see a movie with all of that stuff, I suggest you check out the one from 1974. It did it first and it did it better.

Buuuut…I honestly really liked it. All of it. Even when it felt like a cheap rip off of itself. First of all, if you haven’t seen all that before, it is all delivered adequately and has a lesser but not insubstantial effect, and then there are other strengths – or at least other features that make it worth your time. Oddly, for something so self-referentially derivative, the writing is sharp, funny, and intriguing. From the beginning, when we start out with our young cast at the prom (with a soundtrack that really pulled me back to 1994), I was struck by how much I was enjoying its low key teen hangout movie dialogue, and I appreciated how Renée Zellweger’s Jenny (the requisite final girl) could so effectively cut through the bullshit of the main teen boy character. She is quiet and mousy, never making eye contact, but we come to learn she comes from a difficult home life and has had to learn to deal with real trouble, and she never just lets things slide – she keeps her cool and calls out his manipulative lies. And as the film progresses, so too does she.

Also, there are tons of great, quirky little details, like that one girl at the dance who was somehow spiraling. I don’t know if she was meant to be on drugs or on the spectrum, but for a small background element, I really enjoyed the specificity of her inclusion. Similarly, later when we meet the Sawyer clan in their current incarnation (Leatherface being the only holdover from previous entries, though once again recast), they are constantly spewing out interesting, peculiar stuff. From W.E., who almost exclusively speaks in classical quotations, to Darla, who constantly offers sisterly comfort to Jenny while explaining away her current horrors with conspiracy theory nonsense, to, of course, Matthew McConaughey’s Vilmer, the primary antagonist who balances threatening venom with both ominous doom and gleeful vigor, all while talking a blue streak, they all held my interest and offered a constant stream of engagingly bizarre textual content (except, obviously, the non-verbal Leatherface, who only squeals and screams and cries, while continuing to play with gender and gender roles in unique ways that I’m sure others have written on extensively). I had the impression that there was much more “writing” in this movie than I’d expected, if that means anything (honestly it seems an odd thing to say, but I feel it’s true).

And of course, the film is lifted up by its casting. When this was made, both Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey had been in a few movies (they were in Dazed and Confused together right before this), but I’m pretty sure this was the first time either had a starring role, and Henkel really hit the jackpot when he hired these young local actors cause both are obviously movie stars, giving a spark to their performances that you wouldn’t really expect to find in something so small, cheap, ugly, and strange. (I’m going to focus on the two of them for a bit, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the rest of the cast is actually uniformly strong as well – I particularly liked Tonie Perensky’s Darla.) McConaughey brings a sadistic, unhinged intensity, but all with a charm that makes his abusive insanity a heck of a lot of fun. I loved a late moment when Jenny has run off, having hijacked Vilmer’s mechanical leg with a tv remote (yup), and he’s sent Leatherface on to catch her. He cycles through like ten different remotes before his leg finally works again and then triumphantly throws up his arms and calls out his own name, “Vilmer!!!” His joyful victory is so absurd and stupid, and he is such a wretched monster, but this elicited such a guffaw from me and left me grinning.

Similarly, Zellweger is great here. Jenny is a terrific final girl, and it is a treat to see her grow into her own, but not just as ‘a survivor’ or ‘a fighter.’ As we understand her background, she already was. But before, it had all come in a soft, demure package. But by the end, she grows dominant, such as a shocking scene when she has had enough of all of the shouting and chainsaws and craziness, and she browbeats Vilmer:

“If you’re gonna kill me, then do it! I’m not gonna put up with any more of your crap! It’s bullshit! Nobody believes any of it except your idiot girlfriend. It’s fucking pathetic! … Now, I’m gonna leave and no one is gonna stop me. (Leatherface rises and starts to squeal.) You sit the fuck down! (Leatherface sits.) And shut up! (Leatherface is silent)”

I’ve seen countless young women rise to the occasion and do what they needed to do to cling onto life, turning some monster’s weapon back on him and, in turn, becoming monstrous herself. But I’d never seen this before. She doesn’t descend into madness to survive; she doesn’t give into brutality. She does the opposite. It’s like she’s the only grown up in the room and she demands respect. It even works for a moment (before Vilmer lights her friend on fire and we’re back to the madhouse). And Zellweger does a great job with the material.

But then finally, there is one more element of all this, the part when the movie really surprises, and perhaps the reason that it stands out for me as actually noteworthy and not simply a curiosity. Shortly after Jenny’s commanding outburst, a new character enters the scene – looking like some kind of businessman in a long black limo. He comes into the house, criticizes Vilmer for doing shoddy work, opens his shirt to reveal arcane ritual scarification, licks Jenny’s face repeatedly like an over-amorous snail, tidies up some slices of pizza from the floor and leaves. That is all quite odd, but it’s the words of his criticism that pop: “This is appalling. You are here for one reason and one reason only (…) It’s very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror. Is that clear?”

Now throughout the movie, there had been inklings of a larger conspiracy which felt out of place with the Texas Chainsaw vibe, so it was easy to discount them as conspiratorial blathering. Darla had earlier explained to Jenny that her boyfriend, Vilmer, worked for a secret group that is in charge of everything that happens in the world, and on the side of his tow truck, you can see something about “illuminati.” But no, it actually ends up being true – he does work for a nightmarish conspiracy, and his very stressful and important job is to torture and kill for them. I honestly didn’t see that coming.

But past that direct read, the impression I got was much bigger, more interesting, and also more puzzling. Overwhelmingly, during this speech, I felt that we were getting authorial voice, that Henkel was criticizing the horror genre, Texas Chainsaw movies, and even his own movie that we are watching right now for failing to live up to their potential, for being silly, for being entertainment rather than something deeper, more important. Closer to the end of the movie, his limo pulls up again as Jenny is fleeing, and he has one more small illustrative speech: “This…all this, well, it’s been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it’s something we all live with – people like us who strive for something, a sense of harmony. Perhaps it’s disappointment that keeps us going. L’ raison d’etre.”

I’ve seen plenty of repetitive slashers that underperform, but I’ve never had one look at the camera and apologize to me for not being better. For not being art. What is this movie? I kinda love it. It reminds me of the first time I saw Cabin in the Woods when one of the technicians said they weren’t doing this all for their own enjoyment, but for “them” – of course he was talking about Lovecrafitan ancient evil gods, but he was also talking about us in the audience, right? – about our own insatiable hunger to see the worst. Now maybe Henkel’s speechifying is meant to be critical of others only, or maybe only himself, or maybe it’s all sending up a kind of artistic pretentiousness. I truly do not know. Perhaps he is ashamed to have ripped off the first movie, offering such a pale imitation, but perhaps that failing repetition is all part of a big meta joke, maybe it is all intentional failure, and hence success – but I think that could be over-generously stretching it. Either way, what a freaking hoot!

So yeah – I can’t promise that this is a ‘good’ movie or that you will ‘like’ it, but in spite of its notable flaws, I think it’s rather singular.

The Howling 5: Rebirth (1990)

So, first off, I’m even cheating by including this one. A UK/Hungarian co-production, it was actually released in 1989 in the UK, but it came out in the States in 1990 and I was hard pressed to find a part 5 released in the 90s that I hadn’t seen – so this is it. And it is … ok, I guess.

I mean, The Howling was not famous for having good sequels (of which there have been seven) – Part II (aka  Your Sister is a Werewolf) is one of the all-time great “bad movies” (seriously, check it out if you haven’t – it’s a blast), and while I must admit I haven’t seen any of the others, for some reason I trust that when people say Part III: The Marsupials isn’t likely to get a Criterion release, that it’s likely true. And so this is probably one of, if not the, best in the series following Joe Dante’s pretty great 1981 original. It’s not amazing by other standards, but for a Howling sequel, it’s pretty good.

And it is, at least, something different: A group of strangers are all invited to the grand re-opening of a remote Hungarian castle that’s been sealed off since the Count and Countess living there mysteriously murdered all of its other inhabitants before committing suicide back in 1489. It’s a spooky old place, all torch lit and snowed in, with secret passageways and an underground labyrinth (like you do), and a very small staff who speak no English and seem quite suspicious. It isn’t long before all involved have split up to unlock the secrets of this long abandoned stronghold and they of course start getting picked off one by one by something big and fanged and hirsute.

It’s kind of Ten Little Indians meets a bodycount Slasher meets The Howling. I can’t be the first to make this observation. It does rather show its budget, but it does have moments that work. I rather liked some of the initial scenes of the characters meeting each other and discussing the old place. It was all a bit stagey, but it had its charm. I like that it really keeps its cards close to its chest as to the identity of the werewolf until the very, very end. It periodically had some halfway decent atmosphere, and moments of propulsive editing.

I can’t say it was an amazing film or that I’m likely to rewatch it, but it’s not a bad way to pass an hour and a half on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I’m always appreciative when films set in foreign countries feature local people who actually speak the language (rather than speaking English with a faux Hungarian accent). And there is one element that really does stand out: I dug the music. The credits attribute it to someone or something called “The Factory” but some cursory googling is failing to find any real info about it/them. But the score is really surprising (not least of all, due to its tendency to blare really loud, industrial sounds at you suddenly before reverting to silence). The music seems so out of place for this gothic, folkloric mystery, but honestly, it works, and I think it’s pretty cool and actually serves the story though it features a flavor of sound I wouldn’t expect in a movie like this. Check out the theme on Youtube at least.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Ok, I’ve been waiting for this one. Waaay back in 1994, I wasn’t yet a horror fan. I’d watch a horror movie occasionally, but I hadn’t, you know, converted. Still, I’d always dug the dark and gothic and Halloweeny and when The Crow (1994) came out, its tenebrous industrial music video/supernatural revenge / comic book love story vibe just captured my little 14 year old heart, and after seeing it a few times in the cinema, when it was released on VHS, I had to own it – I watched that tape till it wore out and could pretty well recite the whole thing, including the one trailer it included, which was for Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. I’m not sure if I’d even seen the original Halloween at that point, but I vibed on Donald Pleasence’s sorrowful inflection as he said “I knew what he was, but I never knew why.” And I’ve got to say, I’ve always been more than a little bit curious. Since that time, I have become a horror fan (I’d better be, or else what am I doing here?) and have seen all of the Halloween movies (and have written about a couple). Well, all but one. Yeah, there’s long been just one I hadn’t seen, until today. You know, the one with the shining 8% on Rotten Tomatoes… so let’s go…

And I gotta say, that was actually pretty solid. In various versions even – after enjoying the movie this morning, I read that what I’d just watched was the “Theatrical cut” and that there was also a “Producer’s cut” which is quite different and preferred by many, so after a bit of internet digging (I saw a claim that it was available for rent on Amazon, but not in my country – happily the Internet Archive has it), now I’ve watched both, and I’m really surprised with how perfectly enjoyable (far from perfect, but I had a fine time) both cuts were. I really don’t know why this has such a bad reputation among the series or why it was so poorly reviewed. I’ve never been the hugest fan of the franchise (the first is a real classic and the third is fun, but for me, the rest are all just basically ‘fine.’), but I feel that this stands among them without drawing any great shame on itself. It continues the storylines of parts 4 and 5, both of which centered around Jamie Lloyd (Laurie Strode’s daughter and Myers’s niece since they made Laurie Michael’s sister in the second movie), it’s well paced and attractively filmed, and it delivers what you generally expect from a Halloween sequel: Michael Myers appearing out of the shadows to surprise and murder hapless victims, atmospheric music and cinematography, and a needlessly convoluted backstory revolving around family permutations that send you back to Wikipedia to check which timeline you’re in and who is related to whom. That last part isn’t my favorite, but the rest was all good fun.

In this case, Michael and Jamie have both been held by a mysterious cult since the events of the last movie and poor Jamie has grown up in captivity (at least 6 years) and under what (in the theatrical cut) are unknown, but clearly bad, circumstances (and in the producer’s cut are downright creepy and incestuous) has come to be pregnant. The movie starts with her ritually giving birth and running away with the baby before something nefarious can be done to it. Michael follows her back to Haddonfield and the story is set in motion. We then meet our other players, Tommy Doyle (who Laurie had been babysitting in the original film), all grown up and obsessed with occult research into the origins of Michael’s power, Kara Strode and her son Danny (who have moved into the Myers house because Strode Realty somehow never managed to move the murder house), and, of course, good old Dr. Loomis (and it is nice to see Pleasence get top billing – he passed away a few months before this was released).

Generally, the 96 minute Producer’s cut spends more time on the Cult of Thorn (set up in the last film), establishing an “origin” for Michael’s need to kill. I know there are many who object to this since Michael’s whole thing is being simple, inexplicable, implacable evil. I’m fine with that, but also, it’s Part Six of an endless franchise and all of these movies, even when they work well and give cinematic pleasure, can get kinda samey, so I’m really ok with shaking things up a bit. Alternately, the 88 minute Theatrical cut (which is much easier to come by – it’s what you’ll probably find on a streamer) eschews much of the cult stuff (like it’s ashamed of it, like it’s just too silly). The shorter version is generally tighter and runs at a better clip, but also makes considerably less sense. Watching them back to back, it’s kind of crazy to see how the last act gets chopped up, with significant reshoots in order to spend less time with the wierdos in robes.

I watched the Theatrical cut first and did rather like it, but after watching the other version, it’s easy to see why many fans prefer the Producer’s, even if it explains away Michael’s evil with a kinda silly cult story (not to mention Tommy Doyle and his magic rune rocks – um, ok). The shorter version feels much more like a product of 1995. It’s got music stingers for jump scares up the wazoo and gone is a lot of Carpenter’s theme and scoring riffing on his compositions, replaced with very mid-90s sounding rock songs (none of which ring a bell, but they sound of the era). Whereas the Producer’s cut has a strange ending, it’s almost as if the Theatrical cut doesn’t have an ending at all – after a very odd edit, it just stops more than it ends. Also, there is a clear difference in one of the main performances.

So this was Paul Rudd’s first big starring role, having previously been in just a few smaller things, and I understand he came in for some strong criticism on release. Sadly, I get it. After watching the Theatrical cut, I was thinking that I really like him, but he was just not the right guy for the part. He feels very much like Paul Rudd – likeable, charming, kinda sardonic. These elements of his performance feel very mid 90s (thinking of the comedy of a movie like Scream, but also just thinking of him in Clueless, and really, the whole Gen-X irony thing). That just didn’t work for a role where he’s supposed to be obsessed with unravelling the dark forces that he knows are out there, that scarred him as a child, and of which he is terrified. There’s an inordinate amount of smirking and “hey this is crazy” laughs and wild smiles, and it undercuts the horror. But then, having thought about how he was miscast, or at least misused, I was surprised when watching the Producer’s cut to find all of the smirks and laughs and any note of sarcasm gone. He didn’t exactly blow me away, but it’s a much more grounded portrayal. Clearly, when they did reshoots for the Theatrical release, he was prompted to lighten things up. Bad idea.

So yeah, if you like some of the Halloween movies and haven’t seen this one, check it out – I think it’s worth your time. It’s got some fun sequences, decent kills, some ok performances (better in the longer cut), and one thing it has in spades is Halloween atmosphere. It gives such a feeling of late October – all is damp and kinda chilly looking, a gloomy pallor hanging over the town, brightened only by the colorful decorations and costumes adorning the houses and children, respectively. You can almost smell the sour tang of wet piles of decomposing leaves. I loved it – a great backdrop for all the stalking and killing and culting. My only gripe is that, you know how at the beginning I mentioned that one line I always remembered Pleasence saying in the trailer? It’s not in the movie! Blatant false advertising!

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And so, that’s my brief foray into some poorly regarded horror sequels of the 90s, and for the most part (let’s never again speak of Candyman 2), they weren’t that bad. Sure, none of these will become my new favorite, but there was plenty worth taking away. Other decades might indeed be “better” for the genre, but I think there are gems to be found in any time or place if you’re willing to dig. And if you can find so much good in stuff that’s supposedly “bad,” then there must be a lot worthwhile out there. Keep digging.

Ah tradition – the little recurrences that free us from the burden of decision making. What will we eat for this important meal? What we always eat for that important meal! How do we mark the anniversary of someone’s birth? Cake and song, of course! What will I write about on my blog at the beginning of the year? My favorite things from last year – like I always do. As do so many others.

Now, do I keep all traditions holy? Like writing about something for Christmas? Or even just writing on a regular schedule (twice a week, twice a month, once a month, etc.)? Sigh. No, not remotely. 2024 was not a good year for blogular regularity (this blog needs more insoluble fiber). I started off strong, but life intervened, and well, you do what you can. And today, after a long delay, is the long awaited day of said doing.

So, as the year turns, I like to look back at the one previous and take a moment to praise those works I saw for the first time and really loved, but just didn’t get around to writing about on this here blog. Some I really thought I would have written about by now, and maybe I still will someday – I reserve the right to return to these – they wouldn’t be on this list if not for some element contained within that stands out as really special. I’m making no claims that these are the “best” films of the year. Most are older movies and they might not even be “good” (whatever that means), but each had something that really sparked with me and has lingered in my mind as the months came and went.

So, in no particular order (scratch that – this is the order in which I saw them), let’s dig in to my top ten new to me in 2024…

Death Game (1974)

As I understand it, this was a very contentious set with a tremendous amount of conflict between first time director, Peter S. Traynor, and both the actors and other creative staff. But you wouldn’t know it to look at it. I went into this one completely blind, just because the poster on Shudder was intriguing, and it is a gorgeous, rich, confounding, and addictively watchable piece of work (probably thanks largely to the efforts of its outstanding cast and abovementioned creative staff, most notably cinematographer, David Worth – it is beautiful to look at).

George is a middle class, middle age “normal guy” whose wife is called away on an emergency and is thus home alone one rainy night when two young, attractive girls show up on his doorstep, asking to use the phone. He invites them in, and though he initially hesitates (but doesn’t put up much of a fight), ends up having a sexual tryst with both of them in his fancy hot tub. And then they refuse to go away and subsequently lay waste to his entire life. If it sounds familiar, it’s because Eli Roth’s Knock Knock (2015) is a recent remake (I’ve heard good things about it, particularly the performances of Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas, but haven’t checked it out yet). It is a classic tale of a character making one mistake and never being able to climb back from it. It is tense and wild, weird and erotically charged, socio-politically deeply ambivalent and searingly angry. It is full of extremes bouncing off of each other – on one level an effective, engaging feminist diatribe against male privilege and on another, a cautionary tale about how women are crazy and dangerous. It is scary and joyful, and most interestingly, it is the same things that both frighten and delight.

If that sounds confusing, I think it’s probably because the film doesn’t really know what it’s trying to “say,” if it’s actually trying to say anything at all, but that makes it all the more effective – its ideas and feelings can all live freely, in dialogue with each other, and they are more vibrant for their life-like messiness. It’s a film of ideas, but one without a “message” (which I feel is often more effective – if what you really want is to communicate a message, then the best medium is a banner).  And as a horror movie, it is genuinely discomforting and exciting, eliciting a wide range of reactions from me throughout. The two girls, who give the names Jackson and Donna (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp, respectively) are downright terrifying agents of grotesque chaos and violent destruction whose truth is utterly impenetrable to both George and the viewer – we are not given tools to understand what their true intentions or actual backstories might be, and it makes them fearful – dangerous and menacing. But they are also awesome, and it is hard not to cheer on their bizarre, playful chaos and devastation, and not just as punishment for George transgressing in terms of his infidelity, but in the sense that his whole life represents a mendacious, iniquitous, privileged power structure – in terms of gender, but also class, education, capital, and politics, that assumes a respect and authority, but is built on lies and deserves to be shattered. Jackson and Donna feel like avatars of some primal trickster energy – impossible to contain or control – here to violate the bullshit of a respectability which only serves to maintain hierarchies of gender and class.

They are the villains, but also the heroes. We support them and we want them and we fear them and we vicariously get off on their often ridiculous, cruel, baffling actions. The film is simultaneously alluring and confusing and weird and wonderful. I really, really dug it! Now, as everyone who worked on it seemingly hated the director and felt he had no idea what he was doing, it seems that the movie’s strength could have been somewhat accidental, but watching it 50 years later, who cares? Good is good, intentional or not.

Red Rooms (2023)

This was a really uncomfortable but captivating watch – an often quiet, tense emotional piece, and one with a real mystery of character at its cold heart. It is chilling and unsettling in all the best ways – Juliette Gariépy is Kelly-Anne, a Montreal model fixated on the high profile trial of a man accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering three young girls in a “Red Room,” broadcasting his crimes on the dark web to the highest bidders. She does freelance modelling work, but earns most of her money playing high stakes on-line poker, which funds her expensive, well-curated, and almost entirely solitary lifestyle. Unhampered by other human connections, Kelly-Anne is free to rise before dawn every day so that she can get to the court early, thus earning a public seat for the much publicized trial.

For almost the whole movie, she is a magnetic cypher – a fascinatingly opaque central presence. What is her interest in this case, in this man? Is she a groupie for this soft spoken accused killer the way that many women were for Ted Bundy? Is she a former victim, plotting her revenge? Is she a true crime fanatic, addicted to the most salacious details of this horrific case? Are any of these mutually exclusive? The fact that, though she is probably in every scene of the film, we are locked out from her inner life and will never know what truly lives behind her eyes, pulled me in, the experience of the film becoming an intriguing, sometimes disturbing meditation on our interest in darkness, our fascination with the worst things imaginable.

By all genre classifications, this would be normally be considered a drama or a thriller, but this exploration of that draw to see the worst, to not look away, to possibly even love it, and to have to reckon with how you feel about that, this is absolutely the stuff of horror.

The only clues we really get as to her actual intentions are in the form of contrast with another daily viewer of the trial – Clémentine, a young woman convinced that “he couldn’t have done it,” who has hitchhiked to Montreal and is living in a homeless shelter so that she can come to trial every day and support the man she’s fallen for. Whereas Kelly-Anne is cold, distant, unknowable, Clémentine wears her big heart on her sleeve, coming across as quite sweet but also naively deluded. But there is a kind of kinship there and Kelly-Anne, in her way, befriends her for a time, but as things develop, we come to see how different they truly are, and the friendship cannot survive this.

This is one of the tensest, chilliest, most intense viewings I’ve had in quite a while – if I saw enough new movies to make such a list, it would definitely be in “best of the year” territory. And while the film lives and dies by Gariépy’s performance, it also must be said that as a piece of filmmaking, it is tight as a drum and impeccably filmed (notably, one very long take in the first courtroom scene really wows – by the end of that, I was hooked and really excited about the film I had chosen to watch). This is the third feature of writer-director, Pascal Plante – I’m not at all familiar with his other work, but on the strength of this, I’m certainly keen to check it out.

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964)

This is an interesting curio more than I can exactly say that I loved it, but I must admit, it was very, very interesting. Apparently the first Brazilian horror film, director José Mojica Marins’s first entry in the Coffin Joe series (in which he also stars as the titular character – later, he served as a late night horror host in the persona) is a bombastic, atmospheric, idiosyncratic, and taboo breaking exploration of the nexus of egoistic, self-serving evil, heroic individualism, Nietzschean will to power, Byronic romanticism, and exploitation cinema, all within a totally culturally specific, ultra-Catholic Brazilian context. There’s a lot there to dig into.

We follow Joe (or, more precisely, Zé), a black clad little man in a cape and a top hat with long, sharp fingernails who has the town in which he lives fearfully under his thumb. He scoffs at religion, morality, and emotion, caring only about his own status, power, and the continuation of his bloodline through a male heir. He beats (and eventually kills) his wife, he drowns his friend and rapes his wife, he bullies the townspeople, forcing them to do shocking things (like eat meat on Good Friday – I mentioned it was really Catholic), he pokes a guy’s eyes out, he murders and abuses and tortures and humiliates any and everyone who crosses his path. He’s the worst.

He’s also free in a way no one else is. He does what he pleases and takes what he wants. As already mentioned, he is diminutive in stature, but that doesn’t prevent him from terrorizing and dominating the whole town. Besides his claw like fingernails and the tendency of his eyes to go all bloodshot when he’s angry, he has no supernatural abilities, and yet he is stronger than everyone else simply by virtue of his lack of morality; his willingness to do wrong is his power. That power is exciting, and for all that he is a terrible, hateful, cruel, petty person, it’s hard not to vibe on his defiant commitment to his own interests, as in a later scene when he gets a wild monologue like something out of the climax of Marlow’s Faust, as the lightning crashes, the bells chime, and midnight draws nearer – he is initially cowed and fearful, but as his dark fate creeps towards him, he rallies, spitting in the face of god and all that is good, tearing a cross off the wall and throwing it to the ground – how do we not read that as heroic? Admirable? Awesome?

It is an interesting viewing experience start to finish. We have no ‘nicer’ character to lean on – we only have Zé, and he is monstrous – an awful person to spend time with, but he’s also never not the most interesting guy in the room, and there is a point at which his evil crosses the line into allure. As a film, the style is varied, creative, and while sometimes less than “Hollywood-professional,” it is always full of energy and ideas.  I really found it engrossing and intriguing, especially as it hails from a culture with which I’ve had particularly little contact. Really glad to have seen it.

Ghostwatch (1992)

I often have a problem as a horror fan and blogger. When someone finds out that I like horror, they frequently want a recommendation for a good horror movie, by which they often mean a “scary” movie. And that is just hard. Different things scare different people, and also as I have watched so many horror movies at this point, it is really rare that one can succeed in freaking me out in that “scary” way. Many are just comfort food repetition of familiar elements. Some might disturb me. Others might unsettle in delicious fashion, or give me a taste of that sweet dramatic tension inherent to horror. But they don’t often keep me up at night.

Well, I’m happy to say that Ghostwatch really got under my skin – it was the scariest first time watch I’ve had in years, and after it was done, I had to go around my apartment turning on all the lights – always a good sign. First aired on BBC1 on Halloween night in 1992, it shares DNA with works such as The WNUF Halloween Special, Orson Wells’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and the recent Late Night with the Devil. But for my money, it’s much scarier then all of them.

There are twists, turns, and revelations that I wouldn’t want to spoil, but the essential premise is that a TV crew (all played by known real-life TV journalists and presenters) is investigating a haunted house on Halloween night in a live broadcast.  Without going into detail, the deeper they dig, the more disturbing it all becomes, and by the end, it goes big, at the very least, nation-wide – much more so than I might have expected. It is all very well done, and until late in the game, evidence that anything supernatural is really happening is kept to a minimum, contributing to a really effective sense of reality and possibility, which must have been greatly aided by the inclusion of known TV presenters as the investigating crew. As I understand, though it was advertised and aired in a “drama” slot, many people who bumped into it while channel surfing did not realize it was a work of fiction and, ala War of the Worlds, believed this to be a work of documentary reportage. People went crazy.

For good reason – I thought it was properly terrifying – really realistic in its exploration of an uncanny experience, that is probably not supernatural, until it definitely is. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if you believed you were actually watching the news. Wow… Ok – no more details –if you get a chance, go watch it, and try to imagine you know all the characters as real TV news presenters – It’s something else!

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Where had Brian De Palma’s problematic masterpiece been all my life? Sitting on the shelf at the video store I guess, but I finally got around to checking it out back in the spring, and it blew me away. Any criticisms of it are fair. Its ‘homage’ to Psycho could easily be taken as a rip off. It taps into the unfortunate, deeply harmful trope of the ‘trans killer,’ and its representational issues don’t end there – see the discomforting and rather rapey black street gang in the otherwise top shelf subway chase scene (it would be nice if, other than the deeply unhelpful subway cop, they weren’t seemingly the only other black characters in all of NYC). It is sleazy and exploitative and it cheats by having the killer played by a different performer from the one who will later be revealed. But in spite of all that, Dressed to Kill towers above just about any other thriller I’ve ever seen, and it is impossible for me not to love it. Sexy, scary, cinematically playful, with a protagonist I enjoy hanging out with (a charming Nancy Allen as an independent, proactive, stock-exchanging, murder-investigating prostitute), Michael Caine giving an interesting, nuanced performance, and a movie cop leading the murder investigation who’s really, really fun to hate (Dennis Franz, later known from NYPD Blue – golly, what a schmuck – the character – I know nothing about Franz as a real person), this might be one of the most enjoyable movies of any genre I’ve seen.

It is a thriller that genuinely thrills (see the above mentioned gasp-inducing subway scene), with multiple sequences that found me holding my breath, so expertly did they play with ratcheting up and releasing tension. And not only scary ones. An early centerpiece of the film finds Angie Dickinson’s dissatisfied housewife in a wordless sequence of seduction, cat and mouse eroticism, and life affirming sexual satisfaction, all before things go way south for her in a wide variety of ways and the film is off to the races. For about 22 minutes, barely a word is uttered and it is cinematic perfection, as she follows an unknown man around an art museum before going home with him, where an unpleasant penny will drop. It is pure visual storytelling, totally captivating, erotic, funny, scary, stressful, sad, moving, and ultimately shocking. Just a perfect, perfect example of what a movie can be (on the strength of this, I also dove into other De Palma films of the era – there’s a lot there to love, but nothing surpassed this for me), an exhilarating exercise in matching the inner experience of its viewpoint character to cinematic technique.

This is one of those blurry genre flicks – people who like it, who don’t like horror, will call it a “thriller” and people who love horror claim it as our own (we are the genre of blade wielding maniacs, are we not?). But I think this underlines the ultimate pointlessness of genre classification, largely a marketing tool to help producers reach audiences. Does it really matter what it’s called? It has scares and jumps and unsettling qualities a plenty, all tied up in an unselfconsciously pulpy, lurid package. Past that, it offers a variety of cinematic pleasures, stylistic in a way that exceeds base realism, which I feel is often characteristic of the horror genre more than any other – it is one of the very things I come to horror movies for. So I think it’s ours. It is a mood – rich and sensual, even in parts that have little to do with sex. The camera stalks its characters in a lusty way that excites and puts on edge in equal measure. There is a playfulness with the darkest thematic material, resulting in this tale of madness and sex and death and despair being a real hoot. I think that’s a horror thing. But I would.

(Also, I won’t go into them now, but if you like this, do check out Blow Out (1981) (for my money, far more enjoyable than the Antonioni film it references) and Body Double (1984) – which together with Dressed to Kill see De Palma celebrating what can be done with the camera and sound and editing, all in the form of sleazy, fun, highly entertaining thrillers – all art, no pretention.) Other movies in his oeuvre are great too, such as Carrie (1976), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), or Sisters (1972), but Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double all feel of a piece somehow.

Maxxxine (2024)

It was actually the trailer for Maxxxine that sent me to De Palma back in the spring. When it dropped, I just got so excited for its promise of seedy, 80s, neon-lit murder vibes, that I found myself on an eighties pop kick on Spotify and seeking out classic (and not-so-classic) films of the era that I’d previously missed.

I loooove X (2022), and I rather liked Pearl (2022), so I was eager to take in the third film in Ti West’s Mia Goth led trilogy (one of these days I will finally write about the rich tension in these three films between the beauty of individualism and the ugliness of egoistic greed which feels so specifically “American,” but today is not that day). I can’t say that this was the strongest of the three, and in all actuality, it is probably the weakest, but I still experienced such pleasure watching it, that it stands out as a top film of the year for me.

Now, my appreciation of Maxxxine is doubtlessly flavored by circumstances that had nothing to do with the film itself. It came out last summer when I had been having a tough time of it – there were stresses having to do with family health concerns, I was tremendously busy, and I was just feeling burned down. But finally, after a hard run of fielding heavy responsibilities (which I was happy to be able to do, but it’s a lot), I was able to give myself a day for myself. I went to the beach for a half an hour, I got a coffee milkshake (my favorite), and I drove 45 minutes to a town where I could finally see this movie that I’d really been looking forward to for months, and I just had the best time.

It is, admittedly, not the strongest movie. After a promising opening, the third act suffers, failing to pay off early character promise, and resolving its story in a fairly obvious fashion. Characters make choices that are sometimes hard to follow, and most damningly, Maxine, in my judgment, hasn’t changed in a particularly interesting way by the end of the film (Goth’s journey doesn’t feel as significant as it had in the two previous films). But I generally don’t care – I really dug it anyway.

Having survived the bloodbath of X, Maxine has established herself in LA as a tough, hard working, driven young woman, thriving in the adult film industry and doggedly pursuing crossover success in a horror movie. She is a creature of ambitions that will not be denied. Her straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor makes her a really enjoyable guide through West’s vision of mid-80s Hollywood, which is just as appealingly sordid and enticingly dangerous as the trailer had promised. We’ve got a killer stalking attractive women on the strip. We’ve got Satanic Panic up the wazzoo. We’ve got porno chic and bloody, excessive practical effects and a killer soundtrack. And it is a film of scenes, groovy and dark and sexy and violent and cool. Notably, I loved the run-in with the Buster-Keaton attired wannabee rapist in the dark alley – he never stood a chance, and the film’s evident glee in Maxine’s dealing with him (and boy is he dealt with) is gorily infectious.

And that glee is key to what makes this such a fun watch – it might not be the height of filmmaking, but it is a film that loves filmmaking, that loves style and genre and technical artistry. West et al. are clearly having great fun crafting scenes and set pieces, such that even if the film as a whole is no more than the sum of its parts, it has loads of great parts that, moment to moment, one can really savor. There is homage all over the place, but that’s superficial – I think the real heart of the movie is in its own excitement at building each moment, each look, each vibe. I rather loved it.

Plus, it was a really good milkshake.

P.S. Just to say, I did rewatch Maxxxine under other circumstances about a month ago and while the experience wasn’t as rapturous, I still really enjoyed it, so that seems like a good sign.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Another new film, and another “thriller” that I’m including cause it taps into something of mood and atmosphere and style, elevating it above base realism to earn a place on my “horror” blog list (something to which I know all significant filmmakers aspire). Essentially an erotic-crime thriller, it has standout moments of compelling, visceral violence, and by the end, it takes a surprising turn into a kind of magical realism which I had not seen coming. It was easily one of the most gripping movies I saw last year, and I really hope to watch it again soon.

Lou (Kristen Stewart) is a standoffish gym manager, estranged from her crime boss father (a truly scary Ed Harris), just trying to keep to herself, when she meets Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a homeless runaway passing through town, chasing dreams of success on the female bodybuilding circuit. Lou is immediately smitten and as they strike up a volatile romance, she also starts supplying Jackie with steroids, which Jackie abuses, bulking her up, but also messing with her emotional stability. Eventually, a whole series of things go particularly wrong, they run afoul of Lou’s crime-boss dad, and everything hurtles towards a taught, intense conclusion. Really, this is crime thriller territory more than horror.

But it’s also really, really good. The crime/family drama story is emotionally gripping and I believe the dynamic between Harris and Stewart. The action/thriller stuff is exciting and sometimes brutal in its execution (a horror gorehound would be satisfied with at least one scene that ends poorly for Dave Franco’s head). And most significantly, the erotic element really lands. There is only one sex scene per se, but the feeling of physical attraction between Lou and Jackie is palpable and encompassing and dangerous. There is a need of the body and of the psyche that makes demands and doesn’t care about the fallout. And notably, I really buy it – something that isn’t always exactly a given in romances. Bad decisions, murder, betrayal – life can be completely turned upside down and Eros cares not. Maybe there was something in that that made me feel a kinship with horror. I’ve written before about the similarities of horror and tragedy, and there is something of that tragic pinch here. Lou and Jackie are good for each other, but also bad for each other and they give each other life and are also catalysts for self-destructive behaviors.

Minor spoiler alert – though dramatic tragedy is present, it doesn’t end in the tragic, as the film stretches further and further from reality into something less obvious and more interesting, but that psycho-sexual-emotional-violent tightness is still there, and that feels like my genre of choice – to paraphrase a line which has nothing to do with this, it might not actually be horror at all, but perhaps it rhymes (with apologies to Mark Twain).  It’s pretty special.

Lifeforce (1985)

Wow! This one is a hoot and a holler. Right around the time I was writing up The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for its 50^th anniversary, I went on a bit of a run of Tobe Hooper movies, including both this and also the next on the list (among others that didn’t make the cut – I’m looking at you, Invaders from Mars – oof!). I’d always heard this was a weird flick (naked, body-swapping energy vampires from outer space!), but I had no idea just how much fun it was going to be.

Written by Dan O’Bannon (writer of Alien (1979) and Return of the Living Dead (1985), among many, many others), this was a critically panned box office flop on release. And I can understand why. It is a pretty strange flick with an outlandish story that somehow makes 25 million bucks look cheap. But I think it has rightfully found its audience over the years. The key for me is that it is just pure, unadulterated, non-ironic sci-fi/horror pulp, and it is glorious, crazy, top-shelf pulp at that. Every idea, plus a couple of kitchen sinks, is thrown at the screen, and it tries to do so much that its pretty decent budget is simply stretched too thin. We’ve got sequences in space, as a crew investigates the organic, cavernous ship they find hidden within the coma of Halley’s comet, filled with giant, dead bat creatures and a few naked folks encased in space crystals. We’ve got fun revisionist folk lore, positing that all of humanity’s stories of vampires are rooted in these peculiar alien beings that like hopping from body to body, leaving desiccated husks in their wake, but are apparently allergic to pants. We’ve got every pulpy attraction on offer – sex, violence, lasers, monsters, gratuitous nudity, goopy blood rising out of a barely believable (if you squint) Patrick Stewart mask and forming a floating, bloody, expository naked girl, exploding zombies, mid 80s visual effects zapping all over the screen, a spot of sci-fi gothic, and oodles of pop-psychology mythic resonance. And while the movie is clearly having a blast with every incongruous element that it packs in, I also think it actually takes itself seriously and is really trying to spin a great adventure yarn, full of wild stuff.

While the story could be criticized (and it was) as pretty peculiar (true), it also really cooks. This is not a boring movie – we race from one surprising scenario to the next, and I was there for it. Sure, it’s odd, but it’s not formulaic – not something I’ve seen a thousand times before. It is a movie in which, somehow, everything happens, and generally, it worked for me. I think we don’t get too many things this big and weird and not even remotely boring, and it’s worth celebrating them when we do.

Salem’s Lot (1979)

So I know some folks grew up with this one and that it’s much beloved, but when I first gave it a try a few years back, it just didn’t do it for me. Something about the pacing or its late 70s aesthetic (there’s a lot of brown and tan) just put me off and I didn’t finish. But a couple months back, I was working my way through the Hooper filmography and this showed up on Shudder, and now I am sold. It’s great.

A 2-part CBS miniseries, Hooper’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about vampirism spreading plague-like through a small New England town takes on some of the vibes of an old EC horror comic (Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, etc.), something also true of Hooper’s earlier, weirder Eaten Alive (1976), with creeping blue lit fog and monsters lurching through the muck and dramatic lighting and framing and color. If that style doesn’t do anything for you, neither will this, but I love it. And I’ve gotta say, for something shown on primetime TV, this gets really spooky and scary – it’s perfect Halloween season viewing – mixing comfort food atmospherics, enjoyably era-specific (now charmingly kitschy) fashion and personas, and legitimate old-fashioned, skin-crawling  creep-outs.

As with so much of Stephen King’s work, this is a work of character over plot. A who’s who of late seventies talent populates the town with nuance, emotion, and specificity. I was only one year old when this came out, so I can’t claim to know them all, but I was constantly going, “hey, that guy!” This is of course a tale of vampirism, but it is also one of base human venality – bullies, drunks, philanderers, abusive spouses, cheats, and cowards – all humanely rendered (and well-drawn) as real people with their own foibles, haunted by their sizable failings.

But on top of that, there is a rousing story of one of the creepiest cinematic vampires (clearly indebted to Nosferatu), Kurt Barlow, coming to a small town and utterly laying waste to it, of course resulting in all underlying tensions exploding to the surface. It is a kind of story that King has told many times, and while there are significant departures from the source material, I feel it does very well by the spirit of his work. And it gets scary. No one is safe (the first victim is an innocent child, and he’s not the last). It has some top notch horror set pieces, such as poor, dead Ralphie Glick scratching at his older brother’s second story window, asking to be let in, and if you can settle in for its unhurried 2-part TV movie pacing, I think it builds tension really well and delivers some successful terrors.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t go into one performance. I’d long known the name James Mason, but I hadn’t really been familiar with his work. Ye gods, he is so freaking good in this movie! He plays Richard Straker, the vampire Kurt Barlow’s “partner” (technically business partner – they travel from town to town, opening antique shops, Straker always arriving first and laying the ground for Barlow to arrive and feed – but as is often the case in these kinds of stories, the gay coding is strong in this one – two elderly men who live together, running their New England antique shop – and Mason is just so villainously silky smooth – which also feels like classic coding). Mason’s Straker is just the best kind of delicious bad guy in the tradition of a mustache twirling Vincent Price (who may have never actually twirled a mustache, but you get what I mean). There is a wonderful scene in which the local sheriff is questioning him about recent unexplained deaths and, all in subtext, Straker, with a sinister, mischievous twinkle in his eye, communicates, “yes, you know I’m bad, but you have no idea how I’m bad, or how bad I am, and also, you have nothing on me and I’m going to walk out of here and continue to be worse than you could possibly imagine – and on top of it all, you will do my dry cleaning!” He is an absolute wicked delight. Just gleefully evil and dominating, but so polite and civil. Perfection.

So, yeah, I’m a convert – this was spooky-ooky, old fashioned horror gold – I might have to watch it again next October. For a certain kind of old-school, big-vibes horror, I’d put this up there with something like John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980), high praise indeed.

The Majorettes (1986)

As I near the end of this annual round up, I notice how heavily horror-adjacent “thrillers” have featured on the list this time, and my last entry is no exception. To some extent, that is a result of the Maxxxine trailer leading me on an 80s sleazy thriller kick, which deposited me down a De Palma rabbit hole where Tubi noticed what I’d been watching and offered more of the same. And to some extent, I think it’s just a coincidence. I watched plenty of other stuff that I loved last year, but some of it already got its own post, or at least a passing mention (e.g., The Substance, Immaculate, Infinity Pool, or the Spanish language Dracula). The borders of genre are permeable and inconsistent. There is such little significant formal difference between a “slasher” about a masked-stalker picking off teens, a “giallo” about a black-gloved madman dispatching stylish, beautiful Europeans, or a grimy NYC or LA set “thriller” about police hunting a psycho who’s murdering, for example, workers at a phone sex line (it didn’t make the cut, but I rather enjoyed Out of the Dark (1988) in which a clown-masked maniac does exactly this). Sure, there are identifying markers – masks, gloves, police, but any of those could easily (and often do) surface in any of the other genres. Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), clearly a giallo, features a murderer in a motorcycle helmet which feels like a slasher mask; Killer Workout (1987), an enjoyably absurd slasher, rather turns on the police investigation (which feels like a thriller thing); and the above-praised Dressed to Kill, a thriller, has a killer with black giallo gloves. In all cases, there is a confluence of generally human killers, psycho-sexual death drive, a sense of iterative tropes/procedure, multiple stalk/chase/kill set pieces, and a lurid, sensationalistic mood.

Which, finally, brings be to The Majorettes. This was a random watch on Tubi while stranded on a recent layover – I knew nothing about it going in, and this genre busting film really delivered. This could easily be taken as a low quality effort, a cheap hack job of a flick that can’t figure out what genre it’s in and has little new to offer, but boy oh boy, did I enjoy it (I’d thought I might devote a post all to it, but then decided that I was already late with this year-in-review post – I mean, it’s almost the end of January already, geez – and that I should therefore just include it here). Is it cheesy? Yep. Are there jaw dropping moments of what-the-hell-am-I-watching? Oh yeah! Do many of the performances strain credulity? You better believe it! But this was also one of the most consistently enjoyable movies I watched all year, fun both as a gloriously campy curiosity and surprisingly effective as a twisting, turning mystery that made choices I had not seen coming. Given how some aspects feel, let’s say, “less than professional,” I’m shocked at what a tight little flick it is, with an ending that packs a chilling, icky punch.

If, by the end of its opening credit sequence of twangy-zappy- synth groove overlaying old-school video toaster graphics of a florescent, animated twirling baton, ending in a bewigged, skeletal majorette behind the title card, you’re not already in love, turn back now – this movie is not for you. If, past that, the way too long sequence of high school majorettes lamely dancing in the gym for a photo session while a creepy janitor ogles them, setting him up as a possible suspect in the killings to come, doesn’t tickle your fancy as an lovably inessential ingredient of a kind of 80s slasher, you should really know better than to go on. But if this is, instead, comfort food for you like Thanksgiving leftovers, you are in for a treat.

The movie continues for a little less than an hour as a relatively normal slasher flick – mostly teen girls (some boys, but they’re not really the targets) being murdered by a masked man – necking in a car in the woods with a boy, in the school shower, in the pool, with a very ‘regional’ charm. This does not feel like a product of Hollywood, but something smaller, more personal, with some shaky performances to be sure, but like a piece where the filmmaker has some perspective on themes of religion, sex, youth, and violence, and is making his movie his way. The fact that nothing in that perspective is new doesn’t detract from the amiability of its expression in some editing and camera choices, not to mention a startlingly unpredictable script. It was directed by William Hinzman, who appeared in many George Romero films (he was the first zombie in the graveyard in Night of the Living Dead), and he brings something unique to what could have been a very routine outing (I guess he only directed one other film, Flesheater (1988), which now I have to check out).

Notably, less than an hour in, the movie sloughs off the skin of its genre trappings and reveals itself as something completely different. As we’ve been watching kids get killed, many possible red herrings have been set up as likely murderers, but then, out of the blue, one villainous character (who is not the killer) unmasks the slasher-killer shockingly early in the runtime and ropes him into her schemes to rip off and murder an old lady for her fortune. This twist felt kind of giallo to me – backstabbing backstabbers backstabbing each other with the narrative thrown into a kind of engaging instability.

But then, just when you think you know what kind of movie it has suddenly become, it flips again, and that whole giallo subplot is disrupted by the absurdly, laughably eeeeevil motorcycle gang (oh my, seriously) killing the wrong person – totally randomly. Once again, we have no idea what movie we’re watching – what is it even about now? And with the little time left, how will we ever resolve the plot about the masked killer, the kids targeted by him, and the police on his trail? Well, we sort of will, but first we need to go on a wild detour into revenge-action territory as a previously unremarkable kid Rambos it up, shirtlessly taking his assault rifle (yup) into the local woods to hunt down the abovementioned, hilariously bad-guy-ish gang of local drug dealing toughs. At least four different vehicles blow up, cause it was 1986, and (kind of a big spoiler coming here – so if you might want to check this out, skip the rest of this review – at the time of writing, it’s free to stream on both Tubi and Youtube) with the previous murders incorrectly attributed to the newly dead leader of the gang, the slasher-killer gets away with it all, the movie ending in honestly disturbing fashion with him watching a new, much younger group of girls having what seems like their first majorette training, not yet mature enough for their adolescent sexuality to trigger his repressive religious murder drive, but knowing that one day it will, and patient enough to wait for it. Damn.

This movie, sometimes so silly and weird and totally free with genre “rules,” slams shut so very, very hard. All the sub-plots are tied up in a neat little bow and just as it began with horror in its approximation of a pretty typical slasher, before going off on a wild journey through cop procedural thriller, giallo murder mystery, teen-gang drug drama, and finally, explosive action-revenge flick, in the final moments, it leaves a revolting, horrific taste in the mouth. The killer is free, unpunished, unsuspected, and will do it all again, to these innocent children in right front of him (and us) now. And no one will stop him – this will go on forever – this is the world. Ugh. Seriously, it hits hard – that is horror.

So yeah – I loved it – I watched it twice in a week, and while the twists and turns could no longer surprise on second viewing, its weird mix of exuberant camp, surprising narrative strength, personal thematic expression, and independent, regional boldness still shone brightly. If you can vibe with its early genre tropes (and they don’t turn you off), I really recommend it. Thanks Tubi!

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And that is that. Happy New Year everybody! The last week of January, and I’m finally wrapping up 2024. I hope this new year treats you well, and I hope to be back sooner rather than later with more…