October Horror Marathon! Part 1: Bad Librarians, Subpar Sequels, and a Whole Lotta Screamin'!

Thank the gods.  It's that time of the year again, where horror freaks everywhere inundate ourselves with as many horror films as humanly possible (or, in some cases, inhumanly possible).  Goal is to have at least half of 'em be first time viewings (FTVs).  I'll be off to a rough start this time around, due to general life craziness, but that won't stop me from trying to meet my annual goal of sixty-six flix.  And, ON WE GO!  Please note that these mini-reviews will be spoiler-free, unless otherwise noted.

10/1

1)  THE ATTIC 

(1980, USA. Dir: George Edwards)

 

Where has The Attic been all my life?  This unexpectedly bizarro movie is set in a small-town public library, where young twenty-something Emily (Ruth Cox) is taking over head librarian duties from unbalanced, middle-aged spinster Louise (played with wonderful whackitude by Carrie Snodgress).   Considering we're looking now at a point in time where librarians are competing for entry level library jobs, it's amusing to hear dialogue like "Look, being a head librarian isn't exactly my idea of a career...but let's be honest, it beats being a college librarian!" coming from the young character..  In fact, the dialogue had me in stitches all the way around.  Louise has it pretty rough--forty-something and single, she still lives with her abusive dad (Ray Milland), who she fantasizes about dispatching in various weird ways (one of which involves a man in a monkey suit).

For whatever reason, the two ladies decide to become buddies (naturally, that's what most older folks do when a young, uninterested person takes their job of nineteen years) and end up at a Mexican restaurant.  "I'm not much of a drinker," says Louise, while she desperately clutches her 'rita with her shaky wrist-wrapped hand, "but it's such a warm day, and I just love the Mexican people!  So happy!"

Safe to say, Louise has already earned a spot in "Stever's favorite loony ladies in horror," but she gets more apeshit (or chimpshit, I should say) as the story progresses.  We quickly learn why Louise is being booted out of the library:

I don't know what happened that day in the library--the books, so many I have fingered before--they started attacking, and the voices told me, 'destroy them! Before they destroy you!'

Yes, a book-burnin' crazy librarian. YES.  Louise's icky word-choice is a common thread throughout the script, penned by Tony Crechales and director George Edwards.  This is the same writing duo behind Curtis Harrington's deliciously disturbing The Killing Kind  (1973), which features B-movie fave Luana Anders as a weirdo librarian to sneak in a named...Louise.

All laughs about pervy dialogue aside, it is fascinating to watch Snodgress's balls-out performance as our heroine, who becomes increasingly more haggard, hornier, and freakier as the All About Eve on hallucinogens territory is explored.  Desperate to sustain her friendship, Louise buys young Emily a plane ticket to marry her out-of-state boyfriend.  Emily, in turn, does some pretty weird shit too, like buying Louise a pet chimpanzee to help ease her loneliness.  Unsurprisingly, Daddy isn't too happy to have a chimp named DICKIE in the house.  As we learn more about Louise's relationship with her father, it's clear that there's more to be revealed about her descent into lady-lunacy.  The Attic is probably too slow for many tastes, especially when it comes to getting to the horror.   Even if you don't care enough to figure out what's in the attic, you'll at least have a hoot watching Snodgress in this incredibly strange movie.

My Rating: 7/10 (ftv)

  

2)  FINAL DESTINATION 5

(2011, USA. Dir: Steven Quale)

 

Hey, what gives, wasn't The Final Destination supposed to be the last one?!  I've actually enjoyed this franchise over the years, mostly because I appreciate a healthy dose of unapologetic mean-spiritedness in the multiplex.  Sadly, the latest installment is about as repetitive and forgettable as the last one.  I watched Final Destination 5 in 2D, and it's one of those movies where the gimmickry is obnoxious and distracting.  At least when you watch a classic 3D film in 2D, like House of Wax, it's charming to watch the intermission can-can girl scene, knowing that audiences back in the '50s were probably wowed by the scene that serves no purpose other than to make use of the 3D technology.   When you watch a modern 3D movie in 2D, you just wonder why they couldn't get better CGI for the random eyeball sitting on the screen.

My Rating: 3/10 (ftv)

10/3

3)  HOSTEL: PART III 

(2011, USA.  Dir: Scott Spiegel)

 

I don't love the franchise that is responsible for making Eli Roth a household name, but my curiosity with tickled when I heard Scott Spiegel (Intruder) for the straight-to-DVD third installment.  Filmed in Spiegel's home state of Michigan near the tail end of the short-lived "film tax incentive" glory years, Hostel III makes use of various iconic Detroit locations, from the Masonic Temple to Michigan Central Station.  Not that the viewer would really notice, considering this time the story is set in...Las Vegas, with the abandoned train station dubbed onto a desert setting.  

I dig the opening sequence here, mostly because it plays on the expectations audiences have developed from the Asshole-Americans-Abroad plots of the first two films in the series.  The characters are all still Asshole-Americans, it's just they're at home and not shoving their privilege in every crevice possible in humbler land.  Sin City makes for an effective setting, with shady prozzies, shadier dude-bros on a "boys weekend" (really, it's like The Hangover meets Hostel), and a theatrical flair that was necessarily absent from the dingy Eastern European towns in the other movies.  There are some sweet costumes (an Avatar-meets-steampunk skin-tight leather number is particularly memorable) and set-pieces, as well as some effective prosthetic gore effects.   Of course, these are typically followed by shoddy CG.  In the end, it's just more of the same, and after the absurd finale(s) are finally over, you're left hoping there will be no more torture in our future.

My Rating: 4/10 (ftv)

10/4

4)  SCREAM 4 

(2012, USA. Dir: Wes Craven)

 

Speaking of the MI film tax incentive!  The rebate brought none other than Mr. Wes Craven to my city to film the long-awaited fourth installment to his Scream trilogy.  Wait, that was supposed to be a trilogy, right?   Well, Neve Campbell needs work, people, so let's cut everybody a little slack here.  New decade, new rules, indeed. I have been meaning to check this one off my list since it was released over a year ago.

The summer Scream 4 filmed here was filled with lots of amusing Facebook posts from friends--David Arquette is wasted and hitting on ladies at the local business kickball game!  Wes Craven just got a traffic ticket from U of M's police dept!  Courtney Cox is at Art Fair!  There are posters from The Bang! (Ann Arbor's notorious dance party) in Hayden Panettiere's bedroom!  Despite the fact that nobody really asked for a fourth installment of Wes Craven's 90s slasher series, it was pretty freakin' awesome to have a major horror production filming in town.

Funny enough, other than my pal's super awesome poster art showing up in the high school classroom and Hayden's walls, I could barely tell that the final product was shot in Michigan, which is good, considering it is set back in Woodsboro, Wherever.   But the most surprising thing about Scream 4 is that they actually somehow manage to continue a plot line ten years after a closed trilogy, by cleverly lampooning modern horror remakes.  See, Sidney is now a best-selling "survivor self-help" author, returning to Woodsboro on her book tour.  Her little cousin Jill (Emma Roberts), along with her gang of film geeks, mirror Sid and her group of pals from the original film.  Meanwhile, the community is obsessed with the STAB series (decorating the town with Ghostfaces to commemorate the murders--it's like a mini Salem!), which by now seems to have spawned as many convoluted sequels as the Saw series.

Sure, the post-modern shtick is beyond grating, and even more blatant than the third film.  Teen victims name-drop Channing Tatum, torture porn, and Saw 4 within the first few lines of dialogue.  This is quickly followed by Sookie Stackhouse and Veronica Mars randomly babbling about "post-modern horror deconstruction" for a few minutes before being dispatched.  Yes, Scream 4, thinks kids really talk like this, but shit, those of us who suffered through Craven's My Soul to Take know that the dialogue could be a lot worse.  At least Craven grabbed his old standby, Kevin Williamson, to pen this.  That's not to say there aren't eyebrow-raising teen talk and self-referential moments in the screenplay.   And then there's every moment involving the pathetically plastic Gail "how meta can you get?" Weathers.  But there are also teenagers who watch Shaun of the Dead to relax after a rough day of seeing friends getting slashed.

And that brings me to the only thing that's actually special about Scream 4: Jill's best friend, Kirby (played by Panettiere).  Kirby's a high school girl, but also a life-long horror buff, thanks to her BFF's cousin being Woodsboro's very own "Angel of Death."  She can out-trivia any of the boys in the film club, has "the staples" (Don't Look Now and Suspiria) in her DVD collection, monster movie posters lining her walls, and most significantly--she's normal.  Well, sure, there are lots of "is-she-or-isn't-she the killer?" moments, but that happens with every character in every Scream movie.  But at the end of the day, female horror fans are generally underrepresented in genre cinema.  And when there is representation, the character's horror fandom is connected with some kind of major flaw, or she's seen as a misfit, loser, or a freak.  Kirby is none of these things--she's the hot girl whose also a horror fan.  And that's kind of fucking awesome.  At one point in the movie, she shouts out every US horror remake at the top of her lungs as if someone's life depends on it, and it's like hearing the voice of frustrated horror fans everywhere.  The rest of Scream 4 isn't as unexpected as this refreshing character, but it does make me think Craven still has some tricks up his sleeve.

 My Rating: 6/10 (ftv)

10/5 

 5)  SCREAM... AND DIE! 

aka THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED

 (1974, UK.  Dir: José Ramón Larraz) 

 

   

Scream... And Die! is a really strange piece of sleaze that feels like an Italian giallo but British and artless.  The story revolves around Valerie (Andrea Allan), a young model in London who gets herself mixed-up in a not-so-groovy scene.  When we meet Valerie, she's posing for a photographer who tries to get her to go nude.  After she declines, he snaps back, "What, you think I'm porno?  You're so suburban!"  Uh, whatever, dude.  He's not the only bloke who is unpleasant to Valerie.  The next scene has her riding through the countryside with Terry, her verbally abusive beau (who tells her to "shut up" at least 15 times in 15 minutes), the destination being a remote manor that he plans to thieve from.  After busting-in to the house, they quickly realize that the owner has come home with a ladyfriend.  They hide in the closet, and watch as the seduction turns into murder.  Valerie escapes, but her boyfriend is nowhere to be found.  The killer (a black-gloved mystery man whose face we never see) chases her through the foggy woods and a car junkyard.  She finally escapes and hitches back to the city.

Instead of reporting the murder and her missing boyfriend to the police, Valerie goes on with her life, acting as if nothing horrible had happened.  After waking up one day and seeing Terry's car in front of her flat, she decides to figure out WTF is going on.  She seeks help in some industry gal-pals (one of which has a pet monkey), and they go back to the junkyard, trying to locate the house, but it seems to have vanished.  Valerie goes on with her life, and soon meets a weird, lonely mask-maker named Paul (Karl Lanchbury), who lives with his creepy spinster aunt (Maggie Walker).  Valerie grows an attachment to Paul, but his relationship with Auntie takes precedence, as evidenced by the scene where she comes in to tuck him and ends up mauling him with her muppety-mouth.  The audience is treated to a repulsive sex scene between Aunt and nephew, and it's somewhat graphic for a 70s UK horror movie.  Icky stuff.   Between this and a scene where Valerie's roommate is raped and murdered by the killer, it illustrates what really sets this apart from real gialli.  The movie just doesn't look that great.  The sex and nudity are a gritty breed of softcore, lacking the artistry of the Italian movies it mimics.  There are many other flaws, notably the Allan's performance, which could have used a few uppers (hey, it was the 70s!).  Throw in some wonky editing, inexplicable face-zooming, and a mystery that's too easy to solve, and it's easy to remember why the Italians do it better.

My Rating: 4/10 (ftv)

6) SCREAM

(1981, USA. Dir: Byron Quisenberry)

Long before Ghostface revitalized the slasher genre in the late 90s, there was a little movie released in the early 80s called Scream.  But in place of ironic teenagers getting hacked-up, we have a bunch of thoroughly obnoxious rednecks trapped in a ghost town getting dispatched by an unseen force.

Scream starts out w/ our ragtag group of imbeciles on a rafting trip.  They're having a wonderful time, as indicated by the 70s sitcom music playing over the opening scene.  They decide to rest in a ghost town, which is apparently thirty miles away from the rest of civilization.  Pretty good idea!  As night falls, they realize there is some kind of killer on the loose.

There's like fifteen people here and they don't get picked-off quickly enough, so the movie consists of the large group bumming around the ghost town with their hands in their pockets, looking super bored, moving collectively from building to building, room to room.  It's like watching the footage from a hidden camera inside a local Jaycee's haunted house.   

All of the violence--hell, even the discovering of the bodies--is off camera, making it not entirely clear who the intended audience was supposed to be back in the slasher boom of the early 80s.  The acting is like the worst community theater you've ever seen.  The characters are all stock, from the middle-aged dude who ain't take no orders from a fe-male, to the ostensibly mentally-challenged fella who keeps ruining it for everyone else (who invited that guy!?).  There's a bit of half-baked supernatural nonsense, and even ghost animals.  Spooky!

My Rating: 2/10 (ftv)

And now the screaming has stopped!

 

Total Films: 6

First Time Viewings: 6