The Mummy

(1959) ***1/2

The Mummy has always been the poor man's classic monster. Menacing, I suppose, but just never able to compete with Draculas's focused intensity or Frankenstein's freakish size and strength. Even the self-loathing Wolfman would not likely opt to trade places. To top it off, the name itself sounds dangerously close to "mommy". The original Mummy movies from the 30's are harmless fun, but mostly just laughable. The Boris Karloff incarnation would wreak a fair amount of havoc, but he wasn't capable of mustering up a sense of intimidation. He hobbled through his reign of terror looking like a mortally wounded patient on the run from a nursing home.

Recent years have not been kind either. The Mummy sat on the bench while the Frankenstein monster was brought back to life by Deniro, the Wolfman by Nicholson, and vampires by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. I won't get into the recent Mummy endeavors but it looked like the character tried to find relevance by switching genres entirely. Brendan Fraser? The Rock's head on a scorpion's body? What the hell was that? BRENDAN FRASER?!

So it's a relief to know that there is a great Mummy movie out there and that movie is Hammer's 1959 rendition. The story stays the same. A group of archaelogists defy local warnings and remove the ancient Princess Ananka from her tomb to display her to the world. The ancient spirit of Kharis is brought back to life to seek revenge on those who intruded. While the Mummy picks off the infidels one at a time, the tortured backstory of Kharis is slowly revealed. Christopher Lee showcases his horror range and takes the character to new depths, both as the young Kharis and the monster it has become. Peter Cushing plays the last survivor of the expedition and the two of them go at it. No love loss there, Lee and Cushing faced off countless times over the years. The feud continued even after Cushing's death when Lee moved in on his Star Wars turf. Someday soon they'll be duking it out in Hell. Excuse me, I have something in my eye.

Dominique is Dead

(1979)**1/2

David wants his wife Dominique dead. Instead of just offing her in the usual manner, he decides to slowly drive her insane. By playing mind games with her (e.g., hanging a “corpse” in the den, scary sounds, etc) he achieves this goal fairly easily. Convinced that she is going crazy, Dominique kills herself. However, the tables are soon turned as Dominique haunts David; or is he just going insane himself?

Not bad for a .50-cent film picked up in the supermarket on an impulse buy. Although I didn’t predict the ending, I’m assuming that most will. Still, this low-budget effort is just gripping enough to warrant a viewing if you’ve run out of other things to watch. One thing I love about 70s horror is that reputable actors were cast in these films, lending some credibility and respect to the genre. Here we get Cliff Robertson and Jean Simmons. I know, I know, those names aren’t too familiar to you, but when you see them you’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I recognize them’. Certain trends emerge when you watch as many horror films as we do. We’ve spoken about the awful humor of 80s horror, yet we haven’t really discussed the age sea change. Up through the 70s the casts of horror films were, for the most part, older and more distinguished. During the 80s reputable people shied away from the genre and studio heads became bent on casting younger actors and actresses. From a business perspective this would seem to make sense. After all in the end films are ultimately just a business and horror films typically court the youth market. Unfortunately this means that we get idiots like the Smallville guy starring in The Fog. The best horror films in the past decade have had older casts with better actors and actresses. Look no further than The Ring, The Others, and Frailty to see my point. Ultimately older and better casts make even weak horror efforts more tolerable. Dominique is Dead is not a good film, yet it's made more tolerable, and dare I say more respectable, because of the cast.

Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People

(1963) ***

I was drawn to this film as I had a similar experience at a Phish show a few years back. A group of seven set out to sea to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. The group consists of a writer, a professor, a student, a couple of sailors, a movie star, and another woman who isn't a movie star. Let's just call her Marianne. One inevitable severe storm later, the crew are shipwrecked on a desert island. Unfortunately the island is not as user-friendly as Gilligan's. The only potential sustenance is a meager supply of turtle eggs, some roots and an abundance of giant mushrooms. When they peruse the log of another abandoned ship that washed ashore, they learn that the island was once used to study expermental radiation. Every member of that crew who set out to find food never returned. The log also warned not to snack on the local mushrooms or else you run the risk of mutating into some sort of half human/half mushroom person. Eventually one crew member succumbs to temptation and it all culminates in good old fashioned bugout.

Toho Studios (famous for the Godzilla flicks) delivers what is promised in the title and I must say I took quite a shine to the look of the mushroom people. The story drags for a while (including a love triangle subplot that took precious time away from the mushrooms) but all is forgiven in the grand finale.

Phantasm II

(1988) ***1/2

Man, I really overestimated the amount of flicks I was going to cover. I wanted to get to the remaining Hellraisers, Phantasms, and also Army of Darkness. I ditched the Child's Play movies altogether. However, having some rare access to a VHS player, I couldn't resist packing Phantasm II into the home stretch.

The second outing doesn't have as much of the whacko charm of the first one, but it's the same uniquely-flavored whacko charm. The movie opens with the end of the first, except we get to see what happened next. This is courtesy of footage I assume they shot in 1979 but didn't use (yay!). Then we see Mike all grown up, lying his way out of the asylum he's been stuck in since he related the story we just saw. Mike has gone from skinny kid with 70's hair to James LeGros, who kinda Melrose-Places up the movie a bit with his hunky good looks, but that's fine. Reggie returns to drive Mike home, and with him returns the "get things done" attitude I was so jazzed by in the first flick. In F13 #5 they gave fake Jason the high body count by introducing characters and instantly whacking them; here we don't even see the characters. Reggie spouts off all the people waiting at home to see Mike: "Aunt Martha's coming, my daughter can't wait to meet you," etc. -- and then through the windshield we see his house blow up.

Two minutes later and the movie is where it belongs: reckless gun use and muscle cars. Mike and Reggie pursue the Tall Man, whose corpse-enslaving repertoire has expanded to wiping out small towns. They grab some girls and soon we're fighting creepy morticians, enraged jawas and flying death balls. (About those things: ever notice how they don't discriminate between intruders and the evil staff? No OSHA on the Tall Man's world.)

The mystery dynamics of the Phantasm universe are such that it's easy to accept every whackadoo thing they throw at us, like the weird claw that pops out of the Tall Man's head at one point. I admit I made a little "hmm?" noise when he uses telekenesis to hang the priest with his own rosary, but he caps off the scene by saying "You think you go to Heaven when you die? You come to us!" I thought Yowza, that's right. Whatever the Tall Man's strange origins are, they do involve enslaving the dead. Is he a sci-fi type threat or a supernatural one? To its credit, the movie doesn't tell us.

This is a worthy successor, displaying the same creepy, gory fun as the original. Recommended.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

(1976) ****1/2

(In preparation for this review, I watched both the original Don Siegel version and this one, consecutively. I maybe could have squeezed two reviews out of this, and looking at the scoreboard, I could certainly have used the other one, but onward.)

The basic nuts and bolts of the two movies are the same: duplicate humans, sprouting from enormous seed-pods, replace our loved ones, copying their mannerisms and their memories down to the very finest detail, but with no emotional edge whatsoever. These newer vege-humans are detached and logical --- frictionless and free from sensitivity. Comparing the '56 and '78 versions won't be at all fair to the original, which is simpler fare for a simpler time. The '78 version is grimmer and meaner. The cinematography, writing, and acting are all far more polished, two decades later. This is all to be expected: social thought became more sophisticated, so our movies had to as well. So no more picking on the '56 version, which did the best it could.

Things that make the flick tick:

1 - Big-city setting -- Gutsy move placing this story in the middle of San Francisco. I always get a kick out of recognizing my haunts onscreen. But a bigger setting means an inability to hide behind dialogue. Who needs a 10 minute description of how awful it would be to see these meta-humans shuffling lifelessly down Market Street when we can see it for ourselves? Also, the SF setting makes for some outstanding establishing shots, including one pearl of a shot of a thin mist passing over the Transamerica building. I don't think I've ever seen SF look so gorgeous on film, nor so stark or imposing.

2 - Music -- It's odd how effective the Moog-synth sound is here. It sounds crappy and dated in the contemporary music of the time. Here though, it sounds just the way it's supposed to sound: weird.

3 - Leonard Nimoy, bitches -- In an age of extreme anxiety, in which psychological problems weren't treated with namby-pamby sensitivity, but rather carved like a pumpkin with the knife of cold logic, is there anyone in the entire world that would have made a better choice for the role of the psychologist than Mr. Logic himself, Spock? He's made a career out of just being smart and his arguments here are so clear and earnest. His central argument to his co-stars is pretty much, "the reason you're freaking out right now is because you're silly and human, so just calm down and be rational." This concept in psychology was overwhelmingly popular in the 70's --- the reason you're unhappy is because of this thing, this thing, and this thing, and if you'd just calm down and see that, you'd be happy. And it's one of the most remarkable mechanisms of the script that this is the *exact* point of view of the invading organisms. There's genuine relief when our cadre of stars finally convinces Nimoy that they aren't deluded. And that this scene is immediately followed by the revelation that Nimoy is, in fact, already one of the vege-men, is one of the most delightfully shocking moments in the script (which I've now ruined for you by not putting a spoiler warning beforehand -- sorry).

Other points to note: *Great* lighting, especially in the chase scene at the pier; Jeff Goldblum at his most Jeff Goldblumy; yes, that's Robert Duvall as the priest on the swingset; the shot of the vege-man, pressed against the pebbled glass in the Public Health building as Brooke Adams and Donald Sutherland walk by gave me a huge jolt -- and this movie is full of huge jolts; did we really need to watch Veronica Cartwright massage oil into that big fat belly for so long? Yes, we really did.

An outstanding film on all levels.

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D

(1982) Film *** Film experience in actual 3D **

Octopunk has been doing a bang-up job covering the Friday the 13th series and he already covered this film earlier in the Horrorthon (see below). I managed to catch a midnight showing of this film in Boston with 3D glasses, a barrel of popcorn, and Summerisle. What should’ve been the culmination of all our horror movie wet dreams was somewhat marred by the twofold detriment of having a projectionist who repeatedly screwed up the film and a morbidly obese twenty-something who sat behind us insisting on making “pithy” comments throughout the ENTIRE film. You know the guy I’m talking about. He’s that guy who believes he’s really funny but in the end he’s about as funny as a fart in an elevator. For example, in one scene a man is in a convenience store holding a jar of peanuts. Mr. Fat Fuck Funny yelled out, “He’s nuts!” Now you might be asking yourself, ‘Why didn’t you tell Fatty Arbuckle to shut the hell up?’ The main reason is because for some ungodly reason the audience kept laughing at everything he said, fueling his desire to continue his running MST3K commentary. Sigh. The other problem is that the projectionist kept screwing around with the duel projection system so that only the middle third of the film worked in 3D. When it worked, it was a lot of fun. However, most of the time the glasses didn’t make any difference whatsoever and we were seeing double. Sigh. I must remind myself that there’s a reason I don’t really enjoy going to the movies too much anymore. I don’t care if I’m labeled a cranky old man.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

(2005)**1/2

This is the Exorcist film that was never released theatrically because the studio heads deemed it too slow for audiences expecting to see projectile vomiting and heads spinning around. After shelving this effort, it was remade into “Exorcist: The Beginning” (reviewed below).

In this initial effort, Father Merrin experiences a crisis of faith at the hands of the Nazis. After giving up the collar, he heads to East Africa where he joins an archeological dig that has discovered a Byzantine church buried and completely preserved. Learning too late that the church was built on top of ancient crypt where satanic rituals were practiced, Merrin unleashes a demon that immediately takes possession of a local peasant.

Brimming with theological discussions and ultimately lacking much in the way of gore or even true scares, the studio heads were on to something when they prevented Dominion’s release. If you’ve seen “Exorcist: The Beginning” already, than you’ll have a sense of déjà vu as you work through Dominion. Many of the actors are the same and some of the sequences, particularly a brutal scene involving Nazis, are almost note for note. There’s nothing wrong with creating a cerebral film, however, by inserting the word “Exorcist” in your title, you’re inviting trouble if you don’t deliver on the frights. Dominion was merely okay and probably would’ve been more interesting if it hadn’t been marketed as an “Exorcist” film. By asking timeless and provocative questions (e.g., why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?), this story might have fared better if it had been released as a stand-alone film without the pressure of shouldering the Exorcist name.

Carnage

(1972) **

Carnage starts in the past. A newlywed couple is shown standing in a romantic embrace with wedding music playing on the phonograph. Slowly, the groom reaches into a drawer, pulls out a gun, and blows his beloved’s head off. He then turns the gun onto himself. We later learn that this was a suicide pact because the bride was terminally ill or something like that. Fast forward to the (1972) future. A newlywed couple moves into the very same home, which is now apparently haunted by the ghosts of the first newlywed couple. When kitchen appliances start to do weird things, the couple slowly realizes that the house does not want them to live there.

So I watched this thinking that it sounded like an Amityville Horror kind of thing. The problem is that for the most part the “evil” house is merely an annoying house rather than really evil. In one scene the bride wants to write something down on a piece of paper. The house, apparently sensing her desire, hides the pad of paper she wanted to use! In another scene the bride is speaking to her father on the telephone and needs to do something in the kitchen for a moment. She tells her father to wait and she’ll be right back. As she goes into the kitchen, the house hangs up the phone! This isn’t a scary house at all; it’s a house that thinks it’s funny when it’s not. Okay eventually the house actually does a few lethal things, but for most of the film it just inconveniences its inhabitants. It’s never made clear why the suicide newlyweds don’t want anyone else living in their home, I mean, why would they care? With occasional sprinkles of graphic gore, Carnage definitely falls into the so-bad-it’s-fun category.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

(1991) **

Whether it was intentional or not, the sixth Freddy movie has some elements in it that could have generated a much better movie. The story idea is solid enough, in which Freddy has wiped out the juvenile population of Springwood, IL and sends out the last surviving teen to fetch more (why did Freddy kill little kids while alive and teens after he died? Anyone?). Another plus is the cast; I liked both Freddy’s daughter and tough girl Tracy, who has a lantern-jawed Jodi Foster thing going on. Add a quality name like Yaphet Kotto to the mixture, as a radical shrink who accepts the danger without question, and Freddy’s ass is ready to get kicked in style. What could go wrong?

The same thing that usually goes wrong, which is big buttery slabs of misguided humor. It starts early, when the genuinely scary airplane anxiety dream turns into a sendup of Wizard of Oz. Freddy on a broomstick, ugh. This trend touches every potentially good idea. The kidless Springwood filled with psycho grown-ups could have been scary, but then Rosanne Arnold shows up. Even the much-maligned video game death starts out with some promising visuals, but then suddenly we’re hanging out with Freddy in his…what, his office? Rec room? while he plays the video game his victim is trapped in. Had enough? Well, get ready for more as the real-life victim bounces and flips all over the house with accompanying cartoon sound effects. Abysmal.

I think this movie wandered into a zone of good ideas completely by accident, and then wandered back out again.

April Fool's Day

(1986) ***

This is one I'd seen once a long time ago and decided to revisit. Deborah Foreman (Valley Girl!) plays Muffy, a rich girl who invites her college friends to her family's island for the weekend. Things go south immediately upon arrival when one of the ferry workers gets horribly injured, yelling "they did it!" His ire is based on a prank the kids just pulled, but I thought it was actually his own damn fault.

Now, at this point in the Horrorthon I've seen a ton of pranks. You'd think that would put me off this movie, in which the whole house is laid with mild, funny booby traps. But as a theme (instead of a fakeout scare), it was pretty amusing. The minor bits of unreality opens the mood to worse events, and sure enough members of the group start disappearing. A trick doorknob is a totally different thing when you're running for your life. And what's with Muffy? It's like she was replaced in the night by an evil twin...

There's something about this movie that really works, and it's the cast. On the surface, their banter doesn't seem too far off what we're used to: this guy wants to get laid, that guy wants in with Muffy's rich family, etc. But the actors really manage to feel like an actual group of friends, and that makes all the difference. Worth enough of a look that I'm not going to spoil the ending.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

(1989) **

I remember hearing that they were trying to make Freddy a more shadowy figure in this one, get him back to his roots. While they do manage that in a scene or two, nothing really changed.

Alice is back with blonde hair (and I think maybe a nosejob), her old jock boyfriend and a couple of new sacrificial lambs. Soon she spots some slow-motion children dressed in white and the trouble starts. The trick is that she's pregnant and Freddy's using her unborn child's dreamtime to attack her friends. I'll admit it's kind of a clever idea, but right away they screw up: Freddy can attack when Alice is awake, but he attacks the jock boyfriend when he's awake. Wrong!

The nightmare killings in this one are goofy and tired. Freddy's still rolling out quip after lame quip and doing lame things like merging someone with a motorcycle, riding a skateboard or turning into a supervillain version of himself. Very little worth seeing here.

I accept that horror flicks tend to fall back on a Christian framework while handling the frequent themes of supernatural evil, but in this one I found it grating. Personally, I don't go automatically rosy at the prospect of someone just out of high school having a baby, and this definitely has pro-life overtones. I wouldn't mind as much if the movie had the guts to say the word "abortion" while discussing it, but in 1989 I guess it was still too hot.

Politics aside, this one ends flaccidly with the unborn Jacob tricking Freddy so that Freddy's nun mom can grapple with him for all eternity. Yawn.