Hack-and-stack – Page 15

Return to Horror High (1987)

Once again I’ve been overtaken by a bout of idiotic nostalgia, so hold onto something. Let us return now, to the mid-1980s, a time when George Clooney was a nobody; when women strutted about in loose-fitting jumpsuits, and men wore break-dancing pants and white sneakers—all the better to flee from the axe-wielding maniacs, who seemed to be popping up everywhere.

Return to Horror High wears the trappings of a slasher film, but it’s really more of a sly primer on the genre as well as a goofy tribute to those resourceful filmmakers who routinely found a way to finish a crappy movie that no one would even admit to watching in the first place, because slasher movies have no redeeming qualities. And yet, watch them we do.

A schlocky horror picture crew sets up shop in an abandoned high school, where a few years before, a series of grisly murders took place. (Let’s face it, we’re not here for non-grisly murders.) Somehow, the killer was never found! (Which doesn’t say much for the competence of the local constabulary. Just sayin’.)

As the film crew, including cheapskate producer Harry Sleerik (the great Alex Rocco), director Josh Forbes (Scott Jacoby), and leading lady Callie Cassidy (Lori Lethin, from Bloody Birthday and The Prey, among others), feverishly tries to re-create the mayhem of the original murders, they begin to notice that both actors and techs are disappearing all over the place.

The premise allows writer/director Bill Froehlich to zoom in on the nuts and bolts of the slasher movie, even as his characters gamely go about the business of unmasking a killer and finishing the stupid film. “Why do people walk into dark basements without a flashlight?” wails Callie, as she and her policeman boyfriend Steven (Brendan Hughes) prepare to do exactly that.

Return to Horror High is like Truffaut’s Day for Night—as directed by Roger Corman. It both lances and enhances the illusion of low-budget filmmaking, and in doing so, offers up periodic glimpses of why so many of us cheerfully waste our lives watching such wretched nonsense.

Froehlich layers past and present like a cake boss, telling the story of the original massacre, the making of the film, and the comic police investigation (featuring Maureen “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” McCormick) that follows, all with a wink, and a few timely “meta” observations from the cast.

When Callie objects to having her shirt torn open in a meaningless scene, Harry realizes a compromise is called for. “Write ’em a hopeful, life-affirming scene where they talk about love and children—and make sure it’s set in the showers,” he commands the hapless writer.

Note: A very young and boyish George Clooney does indeed get top billing, even though he only lasts about 10 minutes. That’s called shrewd marketing. Harry would approve.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Happened to catch this on SyFy today and felt compelled to wrangle a few words. Now, there have been some wretched, wretched entries in the Friday the 13th series—but this is the worst. Not only does Jason NOT take Manhattan, his reputation as a first-tier remorseless killing machine takes a serious knee to the groin.

Yet another crop of one-dimensional teens takes a slow boat from Crystal Lake to the Big Apple, and recently revived Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) decides to hitch a ride. (Probably wants to audition for Phantom.) See, it’s a senior class trip for good ol’ Crystal Lake High (?), and Sean (Scott Reeves), the son of the ship’s captain, is in love with Rennie (Jensen Daggett), who as a kid was nearly drowned by the child version of Jason (?) because her asshole Uncle Charles (Peter Mark Richman) dumped her in the middle of Crystal Lake to force her to learn to swim shortly after her parents were killed in a car crash— *has aneurism* Cue funeral march.

Just a few notes for writer-director Rob Hedden: Dude, I’ve read Shakespearian comedies with fewer subplots. All we really want is for Jason to strap on his hockey face and amass a respectable body count, preferably utilizing a battery of imaginative and colorful devices. Fail.

And how come when Jason (finally!) gets to Manhattan, he ignores the teeming masses of street gravy in order to pursue a handful of pipsqueaks from his hometown? Hell, they get mugged within 5 minutes of arriving! Couldn’t Jason go after the Mets or something? Why doesn’t he just merrily filet the entire city? The regulations that govern Jason’s behavior are awfully vague. What’s his deal anyway? I mean, I like the guy, but he needs a reboot. What’s Quentin working on at the moment?

And aside from a shot of Times Square and a few Statue of Liberty cameos, the New York location doesn’t figure into the story at all. Hell, they could have been going to Halifax. Consider this the nadir of Jason Voorhees.

Student Bodies (1981)

This early attempt at slasher satire is pure, unadulterated corn.

Student Bodies is an “Alan Smithee” production, written and directed by television veteran Mickey Rose (The Odd Couple, Happy Days, The Love Boat, Too Close for Comfort, and like a hundred others).

Cheap, goofy gags abound as repressed virgin Toby (Kristen Riter, who would later appear in the J. Geils Band “Centerforld” video) tries to figure out who’s killing off her horny classmates.

A maniac known as “The Breather” (he sounds like an obscene phone call—especially when he’s making obscene phone calls) stalks an assortment of high school kids, waiting until they’re getting ready to get it on before killing them with a ludicrous assortment of weapons, including paper clips, an eggplant, an eraser, and a horse-head bookend.

Final Girl Toby tries her best to stop the fiend—who strikes during the homecoming parade, the big game, and the prom—but ends up as the prime suspect instead.

Student Bodies isn’t especially witty, but the sheer volume of schtick keeps it afloat, as it turns out the entire faculty, as well as the brain-damaged janitor, are all murderous psychopaths.

No real nudity or gore, but at one point, a man appears on screen who explains that “R” rated movies make more money. So he says “fuck you” to the audience.

An interesting curiosity from decades past that’s at least as funny as anything from the Scary Movie franchise. Yeah, I know, faint praise indeed.

Donner Pass (2012)

A little R&R in the heart of cannibal country? What a great idea! Donner Pass may have a teeny weeny budget, but I have grudging admiration for director and co-writer Elise Robertson’s commitment to blood-and-guts filmmaking and her insistence on adding a few surprise ingredients to the (human) stew.

A quartet of students in search of a winter’s idyll take up residence in a remote snowbound cabin. Sure, it sounds innocent enough, until a truckload of their drunken buddies crash the party and a partially devoured body count ensues. Apparently the rumors of cannibal pioneer George Donner haunting the hills in search of a little warm flesh have some basis in fact. You just can’t keep a good man down!

Although she’s playing with well-worn tropes (e.g., should they leave the cabin and try to get help during a blizzard or sit tight and await the dinner bell? Decisions, decisions …), Robertson gamely tries to instill some believable humanity in her doomed characters—a bold gambit considering we’re not tuning in to see if Kayley (Desiree Hall) and Mike (Colley Bailey) can work out their relationship difficulties or if reluctant host Thomas (Erik Stocklin) is going to get in trouble with his parents for having a rowdy soiree in their absence.

Although the trail of misdirection that leads to the hungry mastermind isn’t exactly revelatory, it’s got a pinch of panache and a dollop of entertainment value. There’s also a straight out of left-field date-rape revenge subplot that has no reason to exist beyond padding the movie’s scanty 80-minute run time.

All things being equal, I’m going to give Donner Pass a cautious recommendation. Robertson and her amateur cohorts display enough dexterity and creative moxie with these frozen leftovers to warrant a watch—but only if you’ve finished your chores and walked the dog.

7 Below (2012)

A lukewarm, paint-by-numbers haunted house entry mainly notable for the presence of Ving Rhames and a doughy Val Kilmer. Rhames tries his best, but 7 Below never really heats up.

After a bus accident and the threat of bad weather, seven uninteresting people take refuge with the mysterious Jack (Rhames) in a house where 100 years ago an evil little boy sliced and diced his kinfolk.

It’s slow, contains little gore and no nudity, and by the time the final scene washes up on the beach, just barely alive, you’ll probably have switched it over to ESPN.

I watched so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

Shallow Ground (2004)

A screwy mish-mash of elements somehow makes for a modestly entertaining melange of mayhem.

Even though the overall execution is just slightly north of made-for-TV and the performances indicate that the actors were given perhaps an hour to familiarize themselves with the script, Shallow Ground managed to keep me engaged. Never underestimate the value of abundant gore and the occasional unclothed actress, I suppose.

The story reveals itself in very haphazard, what-the-hell fashion, as if a team of lemurs was busily typing out new scenes even as the cameras commenced rolling.

In a middle-of-nowhere rural community called Shallow Valley, a tiny police department is in the midst of disbanding when a naked young man (Rocky Marquette) covered in blood makes an unwelcome appearance.

Apparently, the townspeople are packing up after the completion of a nearby dam (don’t ask why, they just are), and Sheriff Jack Shepherd (a gaunt, haunted, and inexplicably Irish Timothy V. Murphy), still tormented by an unsolved murder from a year before, has to deal with a new string of deaths that are somehow connected to the presence of the mysterious blood-splattered adolescent.

The conclusion of Shallow Ground is clumsy and confused as writer-director Sheldon Wilson, another enthusiastic Sam Raimi acolyte, requests that the viewer obligingly stitch together several disparate story lines: the accidental death of a local man and his daughter during the dam’s construction, the subsequent disappearances of several people connected with the dam project, a crooked deputy (Stan Kirsch) who murders a drug dealer in a nearby large city (huh?), and a vengeful hausfrau (Patty McCormack from The Bad Seed!) with an axe to grind.

It doesn’t coalesce in any meaningful way, but in this case the sum of Shallow Ground‘s grisly parts are (barely) enough to sustain us to the hastily constructed finale.

You will have questions. For me, it was why is the incidental tension music so shitty and stupidly applied?

Sinister (2012)

This one was described to me as “pants-shittingly” scary and I’m happy to report that I emerged from the experience high and dry.

But it’s not a flop, either.

Despite some really uneven pacing, Sinister registers on the high-voltage jump-scare meter, though you can see most of them coming a mile away.

True-crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) recklessly moves his wife and two children into a house where a family murder/suicide took place in the not-too-distant past so he can write a book about it.

Editor’s Note: Frankly, this is another case of the protagonist being such a selfish prick that all the bad things that happen subsequently can be laid at his stupid feet. He doesn’t even bother to tell his rather dim wife about the house’s history till it’s far too late.

Oswalt discovers some disturbing home movies in the attic and begins to piece together the biggest story of his career—ritual serial killing that dates back several decades, with the killer(s) in thrall to an obscure Babylonian deity named Bughuul.

The pacing problems in Sinister I refer to earlier can be attributed to way, way too many scenes of Oswalt wandering through his house at night. Sometimes something happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But I felt like writer/director Scott Derrickson’s (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) decision to spend three-quarters of the movie skulking around in low light waiting for the scary face to emerge, wasn’t the most inspired.

The lack of contrast in scene after scene becomes an irritant.

Still, the occult concept is well-executed and profoundly creepy as Oswalt slowly comes to the realization that his ego has caused him to step foolishly into an inescapable trap—even as he can’t help but be impressed by its horrible shape and grandeur.

Frontier(s) (2007)

Parisian robbers on the run pick the absolute worst place in the universe to hide out.

Frontier(s) writer-director Xavier Gens is obviously smitten with genre classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, but I suspect there’s a sneaky tip of the beret to French New Wave provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, as well.

See? I studied film.

A quartet of reasonably attractive thieves flees the political turmoil and violent protests in Paris for the anonymity of the French countryside in order to count their loot.

Editor’s Note: What could people in Paris be upset about? You live in Paris! Have another creamy pastry and wash it down with some fine wine. Sheesh!

Unwilling accomplice Yasmine (Karina Testa) and her three co-conspirators decide to hole up in a bed and breakfast/pig farm staffed by Cannibal Nazi Hillbillies (Canazibillies?) and are soon horrified to find themselves on the menu.

The Canazibillies have little trouble subduing the brash bandits, but then old resentments boil over during the divvying of the spoils and the Master Racists are reduced to fighting amongst each other.

Even as Paris is awash in violence after the election of a right-wing candidate, Yasmine and her friends use the opportunity to commit robbery, preferring cold, hard cash to either side of a political demonstration.

I believe it is their cynical lack of commitment to a cause that makes them suitable candidates for torture and a trip to the pantry. What happens when shameless opportunists meet fanatical sadists? Well, it ain’t pretty that’s for sure.

Even if the revolutionary subtext is stretched thin to the point of invisibility, Frontier(s) provides effective shocks to the system with frantic regularity as captor and captive alike meet a succession of grim fates.

Perhaps Gens is pointing out that the fruit born of violence, whether calculated or chaotic, is equally bitter and deadly.

Don’t worry, this won’t be on the test.

Crowsnest (2012)

Another found-footage cautionary tale about the dangers of a rural partytime weekend with your buds. Seriously! It sounds like a good idea on paper, especially, as in this case, if the hot-girl-to-dude ratio is 3:2.

But just look at what can happen! And if you must roister in the wilderness, for the love of gawd, don’t videotape every moment along the way.

To be fair, this doomed crew has a better excuse to shoot endless footage of their misadventures than most (documenting evidence of a crime), but it’s become apparent to me that one look through the cursed viewfinder is enough to cook your goose.

A quintet of assholes (really, is it too much to ask that our protagonists have at least one or two attributes that aren’t thoroughly annoying?) pile into their four-wheel drive for a roadtrip to a remote cabin. Needless to say, they never arrive, because the dudes brilliantly decide to take a detour to the middle of nowhere (Canada? Upstate New York? Can’t remember. It ain’t important.) so they can buy a bunch of half-priced beer.

Seems like a solid plan until they find themselves pursued by a pack of cannibals in a Winnebago. Yep. Hungry, hungry hillbillies.

The camera gets passed around from one victim to the next, followed by the inevitable chaotic, shaky handheld footage as the unfortunates get chased through the tall timber by mostly unseen predators looking to restock their larders. After all, winter’s coming.

Crowsnest contains some genuinely grueling scenes of savagery, and the gradual decay of trust and friendship amongst the assholes is effectively documented. It’s a fairly slow journey into terror, but once you’re there the blood and guts come pouring down in buckets.

Writer John Sheppard and director Brenton Spencer aren’t reinventing the wheel here; they’re just reemphasizing a lesson we know all too well. A carload of attractive jerks doesn’t stand a chance out there.

Hatchet II (2010)

There’s no need to fret if you haven’t seen the first installment in writer-director Adam Green’s Hatchet opus. The burgeoning schlockmeister is generous enough to replay the origin of the “Bayou Butcher” Victor Crowley, a monstrous swamp-dwelling child cursed by his own mother who dies while giving birth.

Hey Ma, this is what happens when you opt for home delivery—and your home is a goddamn swamp!

The deformed kid is raised by his father, dies (I guess), accidentally killed by a blow from papa’s axe, and now it’s his alarmingly corporeal ghost that runs amok in the Louisiana bayou, artfully dismembering intruders. Was all of this backstory really necessary?

Marybeth (Danielle Harris) is the lone survivor from the first Hatchet movie, and for some reason, she wants to return to the swamp to retrieve the mutilated corpses of her family members that got chopped into kindling last time around.

Really? That’s the best motivation she can come up with?

Enlisting the aid of voodoo charlatan Reverend Zombie (the reliably nefarious Tony Todd) she puts a greasy white-trash posse together to salvage the remains and hopefully dispatch Crowley (Kane Hodder) into the afterlife on a more permanent basis.

Adam Green is a filmmaker of limited abilities and funds, so he wisely concentrates on the gruesome details in Hatchet II. A hunter gets his jaw torn off leaving his tongue lolling ludicrously. Another victim is bifurcated and while still alive, gets rudely yanked out of his skin by the spinal column. This is why we we’re here.

There’s no story, no character development, no life lessons; just plenty of splatter. Crowley is a Southern-fried Jason Vorhees sans mask and dressed like a cast member from Hee-Haw.

Is he a vengeful ghost? An unkillable thing? An evil spirit?

Don’t worry about it. Just savor the carnage. Green sends sufficient cannon fodder to foolishly confront the monster and the body count is more than respectable, while old pro Tony Todd chews the scenery with relish.

Reason enough, I say.