Not ‘that’ bad – 90s horror

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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 was, 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 Lovecraftian 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.

Consuming Culture in Sinners

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I may have a horror blog, but I rarely catch new films in the cinema. There’s just too much to stay on top of it all, and let’s face it, not everything that comes out is exactly great (plus, movie tickets are expensive and life is short). Past that, I don’t feel like it’s my job – I don’t fancy myself a journalist – I don’t imagine that most readers come here for up to date movie reviews – or if they do, they probably leave disappointed. But every once in a while, something new gets on my radar and I manage to seek it out, and I’m so glad that happened with this week’s movie cause I left Ryan Coogler’s Sinners just buzzing. Since then, it’s come to streaming and I’ve watched it two more times and, while it doesn’t, on subsequent viewings, give me quite the same electrical charge, I do believe it holds up as a great movie: rich in character and cultural detail, excitingly filmed, gorgeously shot, with a fun and thrilling vampire siege and a moving, loving portrayal of a group of people trying to make something of their own, high on the power of music and culture and community, and ready to fight to protect it all. It is an emotional movie, a beautiful movie, even a thematically challenging movie, but as this is a horror blog, it must be said that in spite of its vampires, it isn’t a “scary” movie – so don’t go to it for that or you may be let down (honestly, the same can be said of many a vampire flick). So, that said, let’s get into Sinners… I figure this is a very available film, so there will be spoilers.

Sinners (2025)

Off the bat, it must be said that this movie is a hit, a huge box office success, meaning that people have seen it and people have written about it. This is no obscure gem to sing the praises of. Rather, this is a Imax released blockbuster, which developed tons of hype (without which, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it while it was still new), and inevitably, tons of counter-hype – people writing about how they don’t get what all the excitement is about (which I must say I understand, as I’m often allergic to hype – I don’t even know why it was different in this case). That said, knowing that it has been widely reviewed, I will endeavor to focus less on detailing its qualities (or weaknesses), and rather attempt to dig into what I think is most interesting about it as a whole.

In short, set in a Black community in Mississippi in 1932, Ryan Coogler’s story (which he wrote and directed) follows “Preacherboy,” Sammie, a young aspiring blues musician whose pastor father is trying to pull him back from a life of sin in illicit nightclubs to walk the straight and narrow with him in the Church. His cousins, Smoke and Stack, twin gangsters who left town years ago (I guess they fought in WWI and then stayed gone) have just returned after years of involvement in Chicago organized crime, with a truck full of stolen booze (prohibition is still on, so it’s quite a haul) and a dream of opening their own juke joint nightclub. The first third of the movie consists of Sammie riding around with them as they get the old gang back together so they can open tonight on very short notice. Following that, the next leg of the movie simply consists of the joint itself as it opens and the people come. There are interpersonal dramas along the way (who left whom years ago and why) and conflicts about financials (can they accept company scrip from the poor sharecropper clientele – which supports community, but won’t be economically sustainable?), but overwhelmingly, the feeling of the first half or more of the movie is one of joy and excitement.

There’s that old sense of “come on gang – let’s put on a show,” there’s a Blues Brother-esque camaraderie in “getting the band back together,” and there is such energy and passion in the music making itself (I just love when Stack is driving Sammie to town and has him play for him – Sammie starts with a simple blues riff – ok, but when he opens his mouth to sing, Stack lights up – damn, this kid has a voice – and it is unique and his own and glorious – he exclaims that they are “gon’ make some money!” But you know it’s more than that).

But on top of it all, there is the palpable intoxication that comes with knowing they are making something of their own, with their own hands, their own power, their own music, their history and love and pain. That is what freedom feels like. At one point, the old blues man, Slim, says to Sammie, “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought that with us from home. It’s magic what we do. It’s sacred… and big.” And he’s right.

Around the halfway point, Sammie plays at the juke and just burns the place down (Coogler literally filming that as a striking visual metaphor), and in what has to be the most famous sequence in the film, we see musical ghosts of the past and the future summoned by his song – images of African dancers and a George Clinton-esque Afro-futurist guitarist and hip hop kids and Chinese Opera singers and Ballet dancers drift through the electrified crowd. People carry their histories and their futures. And music brings it to life, gives it all expression, tears a hole in the world and lets all the feeling and possibility pour through – pain, yes, but also joy and lust and pride and glory. But something that powerful casts a bright light and can garner unwanted attention, in this case, from Remmick, the primary vampiric threat.

Before getting into what he brings to the story, I think it is interesting that he could have been excised and this still would have been a powerful flick. Had there been no supernatural danger, this could be a great period drama about community and music and social issues and antagonisms (the KKK very much still being a thing), full of well-researched cultural detail and standout performances (Michael B. Jordan delivers as the twins, Miles Caton’s Sammie really does have a hell of a voice, and I really appreciated little nuances like the role of the Chinese couple who can operate their grocery stores on both the White and the Black sides of the street). The first time I saw the movie, for all that I had genuinely loved it, I read it as a big glorious mess, kitchen sink filmmaking – just throwing in every idea that came to Coogler’s mind that he felt would be fun or moving or exciting, with little care to whether it entirely tracked or was exactly “necessary.” It didn’t need to be a vampire movie, but vampires are cool, siege films are thrilling, and raising stakes (boom, tish) makes for heightened drama. Just put it all in and then make it work (and some of the best parts of the movie do feel like just barely controlled chaos – notably the sequence when Pearline is singing “Pale, Pale Moon” as Smoke deals with the card cheat and the newly vamped Mary lures Stack into the back room to turn him – it is all frenetic and tight and tense and wild).

But the more I thought about it, the more important vampirism became to the story, and the more I felt the influence of a larger theme which I find both engaging and even, as I wrote above, personally challenging. The impression is that Remmick is particularly drawn to the juke this night precisely because of Sammie’s talent, because as an interpretation of the ‘soulessness’ of a vampire, Remmick is cut off from his ancestry, and Sammie’s power can be a bridge to that which he has lost. The music is so soulful that it inspires a voracious hunger and hence, the events of the latter half of the film.

Remmick shows up with two recently turned companions, all presenting as local musicians who have come to join in the party, spend some money, eat some food, drink some booze, and play some music. They audition at the door with a prettified rendition of an old blues song, “Pick Poor Robin Clean.” As I’ve come to read, this is one of the oldest known blues recordings, and has a very rough bluesy sound (as well as a second verse full of racial epithets – but they don’t get to sing that long). The three White musicians (two of whom we come to learn are (former?) Klan members) deliver it in such clean, “old-timey” tones. Their smiles are just a little too bright. Their promise that they only believe in “fellowship and love” and that they hope that for one night, they can all just be one big, happy family just feels a bit too earnest – something is clearly off. Plus, the old song, which is about, I think, cheating someone out of all their money, coming out of their mouths (which we, the viewers, know to be full of fangs), takes on real cannibalistic overtones (“I picked his head, I picked his feet, I woulda picked his body, but he wasn’t fit to eat”).

The twins turn them away, saying that there are many White joints in town where they could play and eat and drink if that’s what they’re after. The vamps challenge this exclusion, seemingly disappointed at being discriminated against for the color of their skin, but for the community within the joint, besides them being creepy, there is a real historical cause for concern. They live in the segregated south. The main street of their town clearly has a White side and a Black side and they really look like completely different worlds. If a White person were in the juke and some kind of argument started, the hell that could befall the Black community could be cataclysmic. Remmick et al. may talk a good game of progressive ideals, but Smoke and Stack live in a world where lynchings and worse are still common.

But eventually, no matter the precautions taken, things inevitably go south and we move into the final act (not counting two or three epilogues still to come – ala Lord of the Rings, this is a movie that ends at least 3 times) – vampires attack, most of the attendees at the juke get turned, and those that remain do their damnedest to make it through the night, with one suspenseful scene of internal suspicion echoing John Carpenter’s The Thing, as they all must eat a clove of garlic to prove their humanity. And for a long time, Remmick and his growing gang wait outside, knowing that they are certain, sooner or later to take what he’s come for. And while they do, they have a party of their own, a Ceilidh if you will, singing and dancing traditional Irish folk songs – featuring a rousing rendition of “Rocky Road to Dublin” with Remmick high kicking at its center. He may feel cut off from the soul of his people, but his culture and its music is clearly still vitally important to him, and he still carries it. He speaks with an Irish accent and we learn that he was alive when Christianity conquered his island (his description of that fact echoing Slim talking about how “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion”), making him at least 1500 years old.

When Sinners finally becomes a vampire movie, it does feel like a big change, but beyond being a good choice for a popular entertainment (exciting action-horror movies can put butts in seats in a way that period dramas may not), I think vampirism is essential to the themes of the story. We’ve already seen a justified need to police the boundaries of a closed space for the protection of the community inside. That is both important for them to be safe, and similarly, for them to feel safe. But this takes it to a larger, more symbolic level.  I don’t remember where I first encountered it, but I read somewhere that “where there’s a monster, there’s a metaphor,” and here I feel the vampire is an embodiment of cultural threat – some amalgamation of cultural appropriation, selling out, and cultural assimilation to the point of losing one’s identity, to the point of disappearance. And, of course, if the bloodsucker isn’t given what he asks for, he will take it by force.

I believe that Remmick honestly loves what Sammie does – he is not disingenuous in his appreciation, but when he says that he “wants his stories,” “wants his songs,” there is a dangerous appetite there – a hunger that could consume until nothing remains, or at least until nothing remains Sammie’s anymore. Is Remmick a bit of a studio executive, here to sign this young artist, offering a better life, in a world where the color of his skin doesn’t matter so much as the color of the money he can make, but who will buy out everything that is uniquely his – and it will all become the property of the label, of the culture at large? In the world of Sinners, when someone is turned, they seem to tap into a bit of vampire hive mind – Remmick knows all of their memories and they know all of his. There is an element that is truly post racial and shared and utopian, but there may also be a horrific loss of personal identity, not to mention the heart of a culture being cut out and put on sale – maybe the real horror is capitalism?

Frankly, this is one bit that I wish were clearer. We have a sense of this endless hunger for culture, for identity, for music; we have a sense of the threat to concept of self; for all that Remmick is charmingly cheeky and fun, he is clearly “the bad guy” and there is little humanizing of the larger vampiric threat – once turned, the vampires seem ‘evil’ and less ‘themselves.’ And yet, when in the mid-credit epilogue, Stack and Mary show up as vampires at Sammie’s blues club in the 90s, they do basically seem like Stack and Mary, albeit wearing painfully early 90s fashion (the 30s look amazing in comparison) – was there actually any danger? Was being a vampire not really that bad? Has it changed them (this question bringing to mind the moment when Smoke stakes his former paramour, Annie, before she can turn, and vamp-Mary cries out in horror – perhaps Mary really saw good in the change and looked forward to the whole gang moving forward together in this new, bloodsucking paradigm)? It wasn’t clear to me. But hey, sometimes things are complicated and it could be better for a work of art for its themes to be a bit blurry around the edges, for there to be questions, to have room to breathe and to be read in different ways. The alternative is polemic, which very rarely, if ever, makes for good art.

And so we have this core fear of culture being stripped away, or of giving it away. This assimilation, this being subsumed feels like more of a preoccupation of the film than the direct assault of the Klansmen who Smoke so effectively dispatches at the end – it is a far more insidious and personal danger. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about all this. I can only come to this discussion as who I am: a White, cis/het, male American. I may never be rich or powerful, but I understand that I benefit from what I was born into and that my culture, such as it is, has traditionally eaten up any other it’s come in contact with. There is a long history of imperialism and theft and exploitation – an endless story of wrongs done, of irreparable harm – some perpetrated out of active cruelty, but much also done out of mere expedience, out of simply wanting and taking and not being all that concerned with how that makes others feel. And yet, even if I understand all that, I have to admit I’ve always bristled at least a little bit at accusations of ‘cultural appropriation’ as if culture is a static thing that can ever be fixed enough to be owned, and thus stolen. I like cultures meeting each other and infecting each other and borrowing from each other. I like cultural exchange. I like cultural cross pollination.

For example, I live in Poland, a country that missed out on the colonialism and imperialism of the 18th and 19th centuries as it was busy being divided up by other European powers at the time (this is not to claim that Poland wouldn’t have liked to have colonies, but they didn’t get to – resulting to some extent in its present homogeneity – it’s generally pretty White, with the vast majority of residents being of Polish heritage – though that is changing as it grows economically and more immigrants – such as myself – show up). But something I think is cool is that there are vibrant communities of people here who study Irish or Scottish Dance, or Blues music, or American Gospel, or Hula, or Kathakali, or Japanese Sumi-e painting, or what have you (without a significant history of communities of Irish, Scottish, Black, Hawaiian, Indian, or Japanese descent). And isn’t that good? Wouldn’t it be restrictive and shuttered if Polish people only practiced “traditional Polish folk” forms (and the same were true for all other nations or sub-groups)? Isn’t that protectionist approach what one expects from racists and nationalists with essentialist views of the unbreakable connection between a given “people,” “race,” “religion,” “nation,” and “culture?” For me, if it comes from a place of respect and appreciation, it’s really difficult to understand how there could be something wrong about a person from one culture meeting, liking, and ultimately picking up forms from another, and in turn making them their own – isn’t that how all art is made? We live in a world, we are influenced by everything we encounter, we process it all inside and put out whatever we are able to – and if we’re very, very lucky, maybe it’s occasionally worth something.

And yet, watching Sinners, I have to say that I can, on some level, understand the discomfort, the hesitance, the fear of what all that could mean, could result in for a person or a people whose ‘cultural product,’ or less abstractly, whose personal expression, is the “form” being “picked up” – how that taking could feel like theft, or at least, could feel disrespectful. If so much of the early joy of this movie is ‘making something of your own,’ then obviously warning flags may shoot up when someone comes along, smiling a bit too wide, making beautiful promises of a loving, open future, who asks you to share that something with him, so that it can also be his. Will it still be yours? Will it even still be, or will it forever be changed by being assimilated into something larger, something more general? It’s easier to dismiss the idea of cultural ownership when yours is the culture taking freely of what all others have to offer, while at the same time, forcing your dominant culture onto them, whether they want it or not.

In Sinners, this is all about the Blues, but I think these are issues that someone from any marginalized group could wrestle with (and it is often out of such groups that new developments of culture spring, whether Black or Queer or representing some specific National Origin or Religion). This isn’t to say that I’ve completely come around to viewing all “appropriation” in a negative light, but the film does, at the very least, challenge me emotionally – it is complicated. I still believe cultural exchange can be a net good but something can clearly be lost in the process, and for those on the losing side, that can be a tragedy. If someone feels harmed, and you ignore that because, at the end of the day, you want what you want, and you value it more than the people who have it, there is a moral cost akin to blood sucking. And what are we, as humans, as art makers, to do with that? I honestly don’t know…it’s hard…

Wow – that all got heavy – wasn’t this supposed to be a fun movie about vampires and stuff? So in closing, I do just want to return to how this movie made me personally feel on first viewing. A lot of the cultural issues came to mind the following day as I went for a long walk to think about it all, but that night, I came out of the cinema electrified, just so excited, so charged with the thrill of creation, art and music and life. It is an earthy movie, filled with lust and sex and laughter and feeling. It is a vampire movie with a cool, charismatic, central bloodsucker. It isn’t a “scary” movie, but it has got plenty of action, intense sequences full of bold panache, and an intriguing vampire mythos. It is an absolutely spectacular movie to look at, to be enveloped by. It made my face hurt from smiling and it made me weep at its beauty. Coogler throws in every idea he can think of (Gangsters, Vampires, Blues, Social Criticism, Sex, Economics, etc.) and pulls it together into a rousing popcorn movie that is, yes, about ‘things,’ but which is also just tons and tons of fun. It lifted me up, but it also left me with stuff to ponder that I could engage with on a very personal level. It was a great night out, and I look forward to seeing what Coogler does next, in the genre or not. If you haven’t seen it yet, well, you probably shouldn’t have read this far – but go give it a chance; it’s widely available.

Dark Ride

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I had the absolute best experience recently. I spent the end of May and most of June in Ocean City, MD, where I come every summer to help my family mount their pirate show at Jolly Roger Amusement Park (magic, songs, pirates, treasure, etc). I build and paint sets and make props and costumes and prepare technical elements. It’s always a huge job and I always use it as an excuse for why I haven’t posted for a while. This year was no exception, but towards the end of my visit, I finally took an afternoon for myself – went to the beach and saw the ocean for the first time since I’d arrived, got a slice of pizza, and most importantly, went to check out something I’ve been wanting to revisit for years.

We moved to OC full time when I was in the 4th grade, quite a while ago. And down on the boardwalk, there is this old ride-through haunted house, what I’ve come to learn is called a “Dark Ride.” I remember going on it last time when I was a little kid – it could have been 35 years ago. And I was totally in love with it then. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember that, inspired by it, I had a short lived ambition to design my own ride-through haunted attraction – for some time I even had recurring dreams about it and just knew that if I could actualize what I’d seen behind my eyes, it would be life-changingly extraordinary.

Well, I never did that. But over the years, I’ve thrown plenty of good Halloween parties, and as I’ve written about a few times, come late October, my cabaret group always does something spookily thematic and I get to come up with new horror effects to do live with an audience (I’m already planning some exciting new tricks for this year – people will gasp I tell you, gasp!), so part of the dream survives…

Anyway, sometime this last year, the OC Boardwalk Haunted House popped up on my social media feed and I learned that it had been designed by a famous ride designer back in the 60s (Bill Tracy) and that it was really worth seeing. For years and years, I’ve been walking by it (I visit my parents every summer – they’ve been doing their shows in OC for the last 25 years!) and loving the exterior, but always assumed that it would be lame inside, just another artifact of childhood that regrettably diminishes when looking out of adult eyes. But then, I got my free afternoon and I went and dropped I think $8.75 for a ticket and had the best damn time! It’s only a 5 minute ride, but I came out just grinning ear to ear – I bought a t-shirt – the owner was there and I got to chat with him for a while (apparently, he’s usually around – it’s been family owned and operated since the very beginning, back in 1964 – and he’s always happy to talk about the ride’s history – still a family business, his son (who took my ticket) comes up with new ideas, and he builds them), and then, with his permission, I bought another ticket and went through a second time to film it so that I could upload it here.

My rockin’ new shirt! Also, yes, it is laid out on a backdrop of my Garfield and Odie blanket, cause I’m a real cool guy.

Now, of course, my cell phone’s camera surely can’t do justice to something so necessarily experiential (and especially something so dark), but this can give some small taste of what it’s like and I really don’t think watching it could spoil the experience, so behold…(and I strongly recommend you turn your sound on)…

Ocean City Haunted House

Once you take your place in the cart, fashioned after a casket, you’re thrust through doors that slam open, into a dark, dayglow world of all manner of ghosts and goblins, skeletons and torture victims. Of the, I believe 11 features designed by famed Dark Ride builder, Bill Tracy, back in ’64, I think 9 remain, but it is amazing that they do as they are largely made of papier-mâché and plaster, and they all move and shake, thus undergoing real material stress over the years. While I’m not certain of the origin of each gag in the ride, a couple that I know to be original are genuinely impressive, both as feats of engineering, and in terms of what they got away with more than 60 years ago and have never abandoned, such as a delightfully disturbing moving tableaux in which a woman is being vertically bisected by a spinning blade in a saw mill. Other gimmicks are clearly more recent additions, such as elements referencing Pennywise or Sadako from Ringu. There’s a fence, holding back hungry zombies, that starts to collapse as you ride by. There’s a tunnel with a train coming straight at you. There’s a giant possum that suddenly lunges for your head (Why a possum? Apparently, because it’s awesome!) and a rather concerning water effect at the end (I was sure I was gonna get soaked). There are constant disorienting optical illusions, startling sounds, and myriad gleeful terrors as you’re shaken along the track. And I loved every single second of it. How can something designed to scare (and which sometimes does) overwhelmingly leave me with an impression of ‘loveliness?’

Opened in 1964 at the behest of Granville Trimper (the Trimper Family having developed much of the Amusement industry on the southern boardwalk), and built by then famed designer, Bill Tracy, the OC Haunted House has been in operation for over 60 years. Tracy was one of the most renowned Dark Ride designers in the 60s and 70s, but today, only a handful of his rides remain around the nation (perhaps 5 or 6).  In the late 80s, a second level was added (utilizing, among other things, tricks taken from a different nearby Tracy ride which had been closed), and there are always new elements being introduced (just as some older pieces inevitably have to be retired). But however much things change, I feel the ride retains its classic style and identity. And I’m so glad it does cause it is genuinely, heart-warmingly, giant-smile-plastered-across-my-face charming – a glorious artifact of a bygone age. But, it must be said, it also got a couple of solid jumps out of me. However joyfully old-timey it may be, it still delivers what it promises.

I don’t know if I have the words to express just how much warmth I felt for this thing. I had gone in expecting something old and janky and cheesy, and to some extent, it may even be some of those things, but it is so clearly loved and lovingly maintained. Every bloody torture, every giant rat, every hooded victim, hanging upside down over a fiery pit as he writhes and screams in desperate agony is infused with endless love and care. And that love is contagious – or at least it was for me.

I loved this ride in very much the same way that I love the horror genre, in the same way that anyone who is a fan of some “cult” item can treasure that beloved object of their obsession. It makes no claim on being “high art,” it is entirely unpretentious, it revolves around “bad” things that you’re not supposed to enjoy – violence, titillation, gore, disgust, cheap jump scares, and simple gags. But it clearly loves all those things and people have obviously poured their hearts and souls into bringing it all to life and keeping it in good working order. Endless labor, ingenuity, and creativity has fueled this ride and just as a medieval cathedral carries the emotional frisson of the fact that generations devoted themselves to its construction, filling each stone with their belief, with their hope for a future life less bleak than that they were living, so too did this ride give me a charge, in its commitment to its scares, to its history, to the way it made me jump and laugh and ultimately walk away beaming with joy.

Pretty sure that bat’s been on the facade from the beginning.

Some artists will never win any awards, will never be recognized by any academy. Some simply go to work each day, pouring all they have into something small and overlooked and unconsidered: a haunted house, a comic strip, a children’s pirate show, a cheap horror flick. But their work is no less valuable than some highfalutin, well-funded, culturally respected piece of capital A “Art” that people shell out big bucks for. And in my opinion, in some cases, it can be worth more. This is the art that is actually in people’s lives, that gives them an experience of the new that makes existence feel slightly more fresh, if only for a fleeting moment. I’ve seen plenty of great works of art: in a museum, in the theatre, in a book, in a cinema; I have been moved and challenged and entertained. But somehow it’s hard to imagine being able to summon the same kind of loving affection for any highly valued work of “high culture” that I so easily can for a bunch of 60 year old papier-mâché and blacklight responsive paint, orchestrated simply to startle me, to disturb me, to gross me out, to take me on a ride for 5 minutes and leave me glowing.

If you every happen to be in Ocean City, MD, I can’t recommend this ride enough. And if you never are (more likely as you could be reading this in Iceland or Japan right now), my takeaway is this: Give these things a chance – when you find yourself somewhere and there is some old thing that’s been around forever and it seems touristy and hokey – a bit of kitsch, give it a try anyway (we don’t need to go through life being so “cool,” do we? We are allowed to like things – to let ourselves be surprised.). There may be a reason it’s still there. It may be just as lovingly cared for as this ride was. And it may not. Who knows? But this cost me less than ten bucks for a ticket, so what is there to lose?

Horror Diary Recap

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I had a good run for a few weeks there, on a roll and banging out blog posts. And then, as it often does, life happened (travel, work, art, Covid, etc.), and now more than a month has slipped through my fingers when they clearly should have been typing away about horror. So, not to overthink it, I just want to very briefly run through some horror stuff I’ve been digging into during that time – nothing particularly deep, but just sharing a few things I’ve enjoyed. Perhaps some of these will warrant more attention in the future, but for now, I just want to jot down some first impressions.

So, here we go…

His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood

Ok – I’ve found a new author to get into. This is a very small collection of short stories published under the name Poppy Z. Bright (who, since transitioning, now goes by William Joseph Martin). I mean no disrespect by using the old name, but I believe their horror fiction was all published under the Bright name, and it’s one that I’ve long heard bandied about, but had yet to read. Wow! Their work kinda gave me Clive Barker vibes, an author whom I hold in great esteem. In this tiny volume, I only had four short stories, but I loved them all – a bit of splatterpunk, a bit of southern gothic, oodles of sex and belief and need and obsession and bodies and art.

Two young lovers on a boundary pushing death trip rob from the wrong grave with fatally seductive results. A possessive ghost pulls the only young woman who can see him to join him in death, a tale both romantic and abusive. A zombie outbreak in Calcutta does little to change the flow of life in the city, but brings the story’s protagonist into an encounter with the holy. Two young musicians travel to New York City for a gig and find more than they can handle, but have solace in music and each other, and this new, overwhelming city. I can’t underline how driving and captivating the prose was and how much the thematics spoke to me. I’ve got to check out more of Martin’s work, published under the Bright name. I’m open to suggestions.

The Black Cat (1981)

I’m not quite sure what box to put this film into, ostensibly based on the Edgar Allan Poe story (but only sharing a title). This has long been on my watchlist – I love Lucio Fulci and it’s been ages since I saw something of his for the first time. I’ve seen this one listed either as top-of-middle tier Fulci or as a disappointingly perfunctory exercise that he did as a favor to the producer, but his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe both are true. The first third of the film, maybe more, I kind of loved. It doesn’t feel so much like a product of the man behind The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, but it does feel a bit like it was made by the mind behind The Psychic, a significant movie in its own right. Early on, I was really into the atmosphere and the absolute confidence of the largely visual storytelling. The music by Pino Donoggio is great – at turns pastoral, like something off of a b-side of The Wicker Man soundtrack, and playful or eerie and tense – really gorgeous work. Patrick Magee (whom I mainly know from A Clockwork Orange) really pops as the sweaty psychic in an unhealthy, abusive relationship with the titular black feline. There is solid atmosphere – all foggy and spooky, and enjoyable sequences of a cat killing (or more precisely, causing the deaths of) a whole bunch of people – and it’s all in the edit – cutting between close ups of the cat or its chosen victim, back to the cat’s eyes (ever watching, waiting, hunting) – I expect the actors were rarely actually in the room with the murderous kitty, but the kill scenes really track.

But somehow, after the midway point, I just had trouble staying focused. Was that the film’s fault, or was that a me problem? I don’t know, but for all that I appreciated so much of what was going on, I just found myself less and less into it.

Anyway, if you dig Fulci, I think it is at least worth checking out: there are endless, foggy abandoned streets; cat scratches draw pints of blood; Magee exerts his psychic domination on others as the sweat pours down his face and his eyes bug out of his head; the practical effects are obvious (there is at least one unmistakable mannequin), but the obviousness really doesn’t matter – the total effect is striking and effective; the dead talk, and scream; and there are more close ups of eyes than you can shake a stick at (Fulci gonna Fulci…). Also, it is just so well crafted. I think people often associate Fulci with extreme gore, and in his goriest work, he threw logic out the window, making pure nightmare flicks, but that doesn’t describe his whole oeuvre. He could be a real craftsman, and I think this film is an example of him in a high craft, though possibly low inspiration, mode.

But one content warning – everything may well have been on the up and up, but watching an Italian production from this era, I’m just always nervous about how the cat or cats were treated during the filming. If that’s the sort of thing you’re going to be distractingly worried about throughout the film, maybe give this one a miss.

So in the end, I’m quite glad to have finally seen this, but I don’t know that I’m going to make a habit of it.

The Metamodern Slasher Film (2025)

So, one of my very first posts here was about this exciting online conference I’d had the pleasure of attending (a lovely side effect of the pandemic was how many things opened up and became accessible when they went online), the “Slasher Studies Summer Camp,” back in 2021, and one of the stand out presentations at that conference was the keynote speech by Dr. Steve Jones on what he’d termed “the metamodern slasher film.” What he was describing felt immediately familiar and it has stayed with me as I’ve watched many recent slasher flicks that do, indeed, seem to share a similar ethos, if not approach. Since then, I’ve followed Jones on social media, so when he announced a pre-order discount for the softcover edition of his full book building on those same ideas, I was eager to snatch it up quick as can be (and happy to get the discount – academic books can be bank breaking).

I must admit, I’m not quite finished with it yet – but it is a consistently enjoyable and intriguing read. I must also admit that I still have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what the “metamodern” entails, but it is basically one interpretation of our current post-postmodern moment, and insofar as we all never fully agreed on one set meaning of “postmodern,” I think it’s fair that I have some difficulty wrapping my head around this proposed sentiment that both grows out of and reacts to what had come before.

Throughout, Jones presents case studies of contemporary slashers (the highest profile example would be Happy Death Day, but his cited filmography is deep), many of which I’ve seen and many of which I haven’t, identifying certain shared elements and/or underlying philosophies. In short, they frequently feature a knowing sub-genre self-awareness, allowing for a great deal of meta-play, but without the ironic distance/genre criticism that postmodernism frequently presented. Jones further identifies a new emotional earnestness in the work, as well as a surprisingly optimistic note – whereas postmodernism may critically suggest that it had all been done before and there was nothing new under the sun – just the same tired old tropes at which to wink, these films show a creative commitment to innovation, aware of tropes, but open to twisting them into something that feels new and fresh and fun. The optimism he reads here, particularly as identified in a bunch of what have been described as cynical “dead teenager” movies, intrigues me, given the extent to which I feel like we live in a scary, pessimistic age, where it is hard to believe that we could possible walk back the harm being done.

Honestly, I’m not always sure about the implied criticism of the postmodern set, Scream (1996) being the dominant example, but I’m curious to follow his ideas to their endpoint. I’m sure it will continue to challenge and enlighten. Also, I am certainly collecting a list of lesser known, very interesting sounding films that I’m now very eager to track down.

Race With the Devil (1975)

First of all – this movie, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is a blast! I feel like we don’t get a lot of horror-action flicks, or when we do, it’s more in the domain of an unseen war between denizens of the night (Nightwatch, Underworld, etc.), featuring horror monsters (vampires, werewolves, demons, etc., but not so much a horror movie of some “normal” person encountering a horrific threat that then takes on action beats (I wonder if it’s about action characters having a certain kind of agency and horror characters more having things happen to them). I think action movies with horror characters are much more common than horror movies with action characters. But this really walks the line – it might not be the scariest movie ever made, but I think it is frequently unsettling and creepy in a way I like horror to be, and then about the last third of the movie is basically a big car chase with assailants attacking our protagonists, trying to climb into their RV or drive them off the road. Cars flip or blow up driving off a bridge or get shot out. It’s exciting the way I like an action movie to be. The cast is great – I really buy the friendship between Peter Fonda and Warren Oats, two buddies who have set off on a long needed vacation in their brand new motorhome, and while the film can be faulted for giving their wives (Loretta Swit and Lara Parker) too little to do, I think they’re both great, really selling the terror and the stress they are buckling under while on the run from Texas backwater cultists. Now, I think it’s an entirely fair criticism to point out that the women disproportionately have to communicate fear and weakness while the menfolk get to heroically fight back, but as a viewer, I think the wives’ reactions are far more likely to resemble my own, and having characters carry that fear is essential to the flick. Also, while they could have had more, they did get small moments to shine, like their great scene doing research on Satanism in the local library, where they end up stealing reference books and running away all giddy. There is a real friendship dynamic there as well, and it was a treat.

In short, these two couples go off on a vacation together, setting off from San Antonio and driving through rural Texas in the direction of Aspen, where they plan to go skiing. Their first night out, having struck camp in a wild spot not far from the road, they witness a group of Satanists across the river as they first dance naked around a fire (oooh, titillating) and then stab a girl with a ceremonial dagger (uh, concerning). Then the black cloaked cultists notice they have an audience and chase the couples as they drive away. Much of the rest of the film features the couples trying to either get the authorities to do something about the murder they witnessed, or just trying to escape to the nearest big city (Amarillo – not even that big) as it seems that every rural resident of the Texas panhandle is somehow in on it. Wherever they go, people watch them strangely, phones mysteriously don’t work, or road accidents seem to have been orchestrated to force them into a trap. Every gas station attendant, every overfriendly, personal space invading neighbor at the campground, every police officer they encounter seems equally likely to be a secret Satanist out to silence them, sabotage their beautiful new motorhome, or kill their dog and fill their camper with rattlesnakes. Travelling around these rural regions, it all takes on a kind of folk horror vibe. Everyone out here in the sticks is part of one big, weird, religious conspiracy – the whole world seems like a slowly tightening noose around the necks of the two couples, until it all explodes (literally even) in the big car chase/fight at the end, not to mention a solid horror downer of a final twist.

This is one of my favorite kinds of horror in that I don’t feel like the filmmakers were trying to “say” anything particularly, so much as to just make a scary, exciting movie; but I feel like something is clearly expressed about the time and the place – the American south (perhaps extendable to non-urban America in general) in the mid 70s. This came only one year after Texas Chainsaw Massacre and while it is nowhere near as harsh or as artful, it has a lot of similarities – in both cases an urban group leaves the city, somewhere in Texas, and finds that everyone out there is a danger. Interestingly, with its focus on a group of young people, Texas Chainsaw shows them, easily identified with the counterculture moment, being hounded by a malevolent, embittered poor rural, group, all of an older generation – the heartland has poison in its heart and it’s not a safe place for anyone who could be part of the future.

In Race with the Devil the sheriff who seems in league with the cultists (or is just really bad at his job – but seriously, he worships the devil) keeps talking about those dang hippies, about the corruptive element of youth, but it’s all a cover for his own, for his group’s own corruption. And rather than attacking a bunch of hippies, he and all the other cultists are coming after four people who, from my modern, non-southern, non-Texan perspective, seem not all that unlike them. They are both working class/middle class/middle aged couples. The guys run an automotive garage and are into motorbike racing. Their big aspiration is to get out of the city, avoid crowds and basically be left alone in nature. But their seeming cultural similarities are no protection – they are no less targets. I feel like the film is just trying to be scary and paranoia filled, and the particular Satanist angle is just a convenient fill-in-the-blank horror threat, but there is a cultural impression in how all of these ‘normal people,’ people not that dissimilar to our protagonists (who are more urban, but hardly what I’d call “big city”), people who might otherwise come across on film as salt of the earth, good old-fashioned country folk, how they are all in an evil conspiracy, all dangerous. They’re not presented like the Sawyer clan in Texas Chainsaw (who are all clearly rather weird, to say the least) – nope – they’re the blood of the soil (if you want to get all 19th century nationalistic about it) and they are everywhere; you apparently can’t throw a rock in rural Texas without hitting a Satanist. The real social danger is not counter culture kids with their long hair and loud music – it’s ‘normal’ folk who will hunt down, harass, and destroy anyone or anything they feel threatens their stasis. That could be the obvious outsider. But it will also be you if you get in their way. I’m sorry to say it has contemporary resonance.

But again, while this may serve as an interesting cultural document, the real reason to watch this is that it is simply fun. Come for the paranoid horror-action flick, but stay for a bit of sociology.

Suspiria (2018) and Stacie Ponder on Suspiria

I needed some comfort food the other week and found myself gravitating back to this recent favorite, which I’ve written about before. I watched it over the span of a few days, savoring it a section at a time, regularly pausing to rave to my indulgent wife about how much I adored a given moment or character or historical artistic reference.

It’s interesting. For all that I love this film dearly, I find that I have difficulty offering my own clear reading of it. It is dense with narrative and symbol and character and simply life. While I feel hard pressed to detail what I think it may all add up to, moment by moment, I am constantly enamored with it. Its politics, its subtextual sexiness, its awfulness. Its witches who are all both monstrous and cruel and cool and utterly aspirational. Its view of a collective art making process that is both inspiring and beautiful and abusive and exploitative. Its nexus of magic and dance and bodies and power and political conflict and sadness and pain and grace. Life is complex and so is this, and I love every single minute of it.

So, having taken such joy in this recent re-watch, and wanting to spend a little more time dwelling in its moods and imagery and ideas, I went to re-read a gorgeous bit of writing from a favorite horror blogger. Stacie Ponder of the Final Girl blog went on a deep dive back in October of 2019, writing a post a day on Suspiria for the whole month, doing what I think is really significant and valuable work in picking apart nuances of the film as well as researching its influences and references. I fear any analysis I might provide would be so indebted to her, that I should just link to her entries and say if you even kinda liked this movie, you owe it to yourself to explore her explications. They were a great pleasure to revisit. Also, it gave me a few mornings of something to read with breakfast instead of the news – I like my horror fictional, thank you very much…

The Coffee Table (2022)

I’d heard great things about this Spanish language feature last year and was so happy to have a couple of hours to sit down and devote myself to something new. Having watched it, I have mixed feelings. There is a lot to like, and many elements linger in my mind, but ultimately I was unsatisfied. Still, I’m glad to have experienced it and to be considering it now.

This will be short, but I need some caveats. First, many horror fans may come away from this feeling that it isn’t really a horror movie, and I get it – there’s no monster, no slasher killer, no supernatural element. Also, it is arguably a comedy, though of the blackest vein. But, I will posit that it is all to do with “horror,” writ large, its protagonist being thrust into an encounter with a terrible truth that is beyond all that he can bear. Also, for all that this could be accurately described as a family drama (or possibly an absurdist tragedy), it features imagery, events, and pervasive discomfort that will be hard for anyone but horror fans to stomach.

Secondly, it is nigh impossible to discuss the movie in any meaningful way without significant spoilers, so if you think you might want to check out this intriguing, frequently intense, doom laden, blackly comic, tight little bottle movie about a man reckoning with the worst mistake of his life (namely, that he bought the wrong coffee table), go do so, even if I found the ending oddly unaffecting. I’d say it’s probably still worth your time.

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Ok, so here are some thoughts:

-I appreciate that when ‘the terrible thing’ happens, we don’t see how, and we never really learn how. It remains shocking, unimaginable. Jesús was there, he saw it, and he still doesn’t understand. But really, the ‘how’ is not important. It was an accident. It is terrible. It can never be reversed. If he could actually explain it to his wife, would it make it any less mind shattering?

-I wonder how critical we are meant to be of Jesús. When he first starts to clean, I was puzzled – how could he think he could actually clean this up – does he think Maria somehow isn’t going to notice? But I get it – he just can’t deal – he can’t face the difficult thing. To be fair, I can sympathize in this case – what could be worse? I think many of us would freeze up and do something stupid, undergoing such a horror. But the more I think about it, the more I feel his failure to deal is symptomatic of his whole character. Maria has to force everything in life because he refuses to make his own decisions (building to the point that he lashes out and buys the stupid table out of spite). Now, few of us are heroes, and most coast through life as he does, trying to avoid difficulties, but there is a cowardice at the center of his character that’s hard to like, though it can certainly be sympathized with (and if we’re to be honest, we all probably share). Furthermore, I’d assumed Ruth was lying/imagining things, but now I wonder – did he do something and his response was then just to shut down and deny and avoid? Who knows? I don’t exactly think he did, but the response would match his life pattern.

-How are we meant to receive the ending? The tension that runs through the lion share of the film is so engaging, and yet when revelations finally come, I feel the film pulls back. The soundtrack covers the screams. The camera looks left, looks right, and Maria has already taken decisive action, and Jesús follows. But I didn’t feel much. I didn’t cry. I didn’t laugh (it is frequently a pretty funny movie). It just felt like a bit of a relief that it had finally happened and we were no longer waiting in suspense for something to predictably go from horrible to even worse. I wonder what the filmmaker’s were hoping for. About that ending, I think perhaps the film suffers from predicating its narrative tension on waiting for something to happen that it’s hard to imagine going much of any other way. Sure, it piles on with its timing, and the actual actions taken by its characters, but sooner or later, Maria was bound to learn the truth. And then, well, it would be bad; and then she does; and it is. Ok.

-Finally, coming from theatre, I did enjoy how much this felt like a play – intense action in generally one location in a contained period of time, with a small set of players. Aristotelian unities all over the damn place. Past that, there is an absurdist approach to over the top tragedy that just feels like it often lives in the theatre more than on screen. I wonder how this would be, staged in a small space, intimate, the audience really trapped in the apartment with him, waiting for the inevitable.

So yeah, glad I watched it, kinda wished I loved the ending, but certainly food for thought.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

I have got to spend more time with silent cinema. Every time I do, I always come away so rewarded. Sure, there are elements of performance that can feel dated, eliciting laughter at moments I expect hadn’t been intentional, but it is a joyous laughter. It is great how much we can understand, connect with, feel without words – how little we sometimes need them. And I love how, only reading a few words from time to time, I’m given additional space in my head to think, to consider, react, and process what I’m viewing. And I feel that happens without at all taking me out of it, but there’s just that extra bit of space left to me when everyone shuts up.

I’d seen Phantom before, but was excited to rewatch it as presented by Joe Bob Briggs on the Last Drive In on Shudder. I knew it was the sort of work that he’d be able to share deep history about, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you’re interested, I recommend the episode and I won’t repeat his research here.

But I will say I enjoyed this, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, even more the second time around. It is a huge picture, executed at such a massive scale. The sets, the cast of hundreds, the early use of color. And it is just fun and exciting from start to finish. It is a crowd pleaser, with tons of successful comedy, atmosphere up the wazoo, and indelible images and sequences that have become icons of the medium (I mean, the unmasking scene alone). It is thrilling and intriguing and beautiful.

And Lon Cheney’s praises could not be sung enough. I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen so little of his work. Basically, I think I’ve only seen this and The Unknown (1927). In this, he brings such flair to the part. Everyone of course talks about his self-administered makeup, but the performance itself is such an absolute delight. The film does everything it can to turn you against him, making him not only physically repellant, but actually a monstrous person. But Cheney’s performance overpowers any efforts of the script. I can’t imagine how anyone today could watch this and not cheer him at every turn – for his charisma, his vivacity, his playful whimsy, his cleverness. I don’t support his actions (he is rather a controlling, entitled proto-incel), but Cheney embodies him as impish and light and brilliant. And the cognitive dissonance of how I receive him makes the film all the more interesting.

He and, by extension, the film are really something to treasure. This was a treat to re-watch.

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And that catches me up on the last few weeks. I’ve honestly watched much less horror than usual, but almost all of it has been really worthwhile – there wasn’t anything that wasn’t worthy of at least a mention on this here blog. Thanks for following along with me. I hope you stick around.