Friday the 13th (1980) 1/2   (out of 4)

Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Starring: Adrienne King, Betsy Palmer, Kevin Bacon, Peter Brouwer, Walt Gorney

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

By the time Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th appeared on theater screens in 1980, audiences had already been exposed to the concept of Ebert’s “dead teenager” movie. In 1971, Mario Bava delivered Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood, which is the source of a lot of inspiration for some of Friday the 13th Parts 1 and 2 death scenes), 1974 saw the releases of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas , and John Carpenter’s Halloween was a huge hit in 1978. The creators of Friday the 13th aimed to cash in on Halloween’s success, using many of its tropes (killer-point-of-view, and so on), and their gamble paid off. The movie was a smash and its influence on the slasher genre is obvious. (As of 2006, it has spawned 10 sequels). The funny thing about the movie is how different it is from later films in the series like The New Blood or Freddy vs Jason; rewatching it, I felt a minor wave of nostalgia and admiration for its low-key attitude, simplicity and primal appeal.

Thanks for lookin’ out for us, Ralph. Really.

In fact, the tone of the movie and where it ends up narratively completely separates it from parts 2 onward. The sequels are, for the most part, interchangeable in that a monster/golem by the name of Jason Vorhees stalks dimwitted horny teenagers; this first film is a slasher-in-the-woods creation made-up like an Italian giallo flick. It foregoes any supernatural trappings and plants its feet firmly in the footprints of a whodunit, although it certainly isn’t as stylish as a Bava or Argento film and the reveal of the killer in the last half hour is a cheat, since no information is given that would enable anyone to solve the mystery except for the idea that it is somehow connected to events in 1957.

Friday the 13th plays on the idea of curses and prophecies. The camp counselors who attempt to open up Camp Crystal Lake for the summer are told that the place is jinxed, that a young boy drowned there, that a series of mysterious fires and poisoned water shut the place down for years. Ralph (Walt Gorney), the town crazy, constantly badgers the teens with warnings like “it’s got a death curse” and “you’re all doomed!” Head counselor Steve Christy ( Peter Brouwer), his assistant Alice (Adrienne King), and a group of horny teens (including a young Kevin Bacon) don’t listen. The book of Revelations is given acknowledgement as Cunningham shoots the full moon covered by black clouds, and one girl actually dreams of rain turning to blood. The date Friday the 13th itself stems from the unlucky symbolism of the number 13 and the sixth day (in Christian mythology). It’s even more ironic, especially when viewed in light of the Friday the 13th films, that in the pre-Christian era Friday was associated with love and fertility. Actually, the movie is very light on sex and nudity. A game of strip monopoly (which our later heroine happily plays, by the way) never ventures beyond the PG-13 stage.

Kevin Bacon gets the point

It’s obvious that the movie’s attention is centered on Tom Savini’s gore set pieces, which naturally involve throat slashings and beheadings, but the camera doesn’t linger on the gore for too long as Cunningham usually has the scene fade to white (it looks like a film overexposure). There are some creepy moments that involve stalker-in-the-woods scenarios, the best moments coming at the end when our last remaining survivor (or “final girl” as termed by Carol Clover) fights the killer (channeling Jamie Lee Curtis, I’m sure). The movie’s biggest weakness is in its pacing, especially in the middle of the picture. The scenes of Alice running around the cabin making coffee, securing doors and looking for weapons tend to meander for too long; other sequences could have benefited from tighter editing. Then there’s a scene with a motorcycle cop that has no payoff, except perhaps to establish the care-free attitude of the teens.

I hope that by telling you the killer is Pamela Vorhees I’m not spoiling anything (at least you’ve seen Scream, right?). She’s played by Betsy Palmer, who adds a manic energy to the role, even though the character is somewhat derivative of the Norman Bates type (she occasionally talks to herself using the voice of her dead son). The final scene of Jason rising out of the lake is genuinely scary, even though it comes straight from Carrie. Even Harry Manfredini’s score, while now-famous, seems inspired by Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho.

I think she’s a few cans short of a six-pack

No matter - there is no denying the effect of this movie on 80s horror (including the superior Nightmare on Elm Street) and even horror movies today. It has all the motifs, although the “have premarital sex and die” trope is probably a reach. Better to say that kids who don’t have direction in their lives will end up paying for their inattention. It seems like a theme that kids and twenty-somethings at the end of the tumultuous 70s took notice of.

-Bill Gordon

somebody is in sore need of mosquito repellant

The box set Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan has the best quality transfer of the first film. (1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen) Try to get a hold of the uncut Japanese laser disc if you can (cons/Ebay will probably have VHS copies too).

Grindhouse (2007)

1/2   (out of 4)

Directors:

Robert Rodriguez (segment Planet Terror) (fake trailer segment Machete)
Quentin Tarantino (segment Death Proof)
Eli Roth (fake trailer segment Thanksgiving)
Edgar Wright (fake trailer segment Don’t)
Rob Zombie (fake trailer segment Werewolf Women of the S.S.)

Starring: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Naveen Andrews, Tom Savini, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Parks, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zoë Bell, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Bruce Willis

Planet Terror

Death Proof 1/2

Grindhouse, the new movie from directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is actually two movies in one - a throwback/homage to the double bill grind house pictures of the 70s and early 80s. In attempting to recreate the experience, the movies are padded with fake trailers for exploitation pictures and modified with grainy footage effects, disjointed editing in spots, and even missing scenes. The result is a pleasant 3 hour experience as a whole, even if the individual parts turn out to be a mixed bag.

Grindhouse starts out right away tickling the fanboy geek-spot with the familiar Grindhouse Release logo and accompanying music.
First up is a faux-trailer for the movie Machete, which is a hilarious offering about an illegal Mexican immigrant (Danny Trejo, natch) set up by the man, left for dead, who returns to exact revenge using a repertoire of various machetes, knives, and a motorcycle-mounted Gatling gun. With Machete, Grindhouse immedately throws us head-first into the world of political incorrect exploitation on the level of old blacksploitation pics, featuring excessive violence, abundant female nudity, and questionable morality.

It leads in to our first movie, Planet Terror, directed by Rodriquez, which is about a group of folks from a small Texas town forced to deal with a plague of crazed zombie maniacs, caused by secret biological warfare testing at a nearby army base. Our heros consist of stripper Cherry (Rose McGowan) who quits dancing to become a stand-up comedian, only to lose her leg in a zombie attack. Enter her mysterious boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodríguez), who hides a secret (lost in one of those missing reels). Together, with a group of other colorful characters (including Michael Biehn, Tom Savini, and Michael Parks - reprising his Kill Bill role as Earl McGraw), they band together to fight off both the infected zombies and the leader of an infected military unit, headed by Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis). It’s definitely influenced by Fulci’s Zombi 2 (aka Zombi) - one scene of a wood shard in the eye seems lifted straight from that movie - and it throws a lot of I-can’t-believe-they-showed-that moments into the mix. One of the characters is an English businessman fond of collecting the testicles of his enemies; another infected soldier (played by Tarantino) intends to rape a female victim with his private parts, um, dripping down in globs of goo. There’s an insane doctor (wonderfully played by Josh Brolin), various cringe-inducing moments involving expoding pustules, zombie-decapitation by helicopter blades (see Romero’s Dawn of the Dead), and perhaps the best part - Rose McGowan’s new leg-stump machine gun attachment (see Evil Dead 2 for a similar theme).

Her legs are smokin’

It’s all tongue-in-cheek, which makes it quite enjoyable. Only one scene of a child accidentally shooting himself doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the proceedings, and I could have done without Tarantino sticking his face into the camera again. His acting ability, while not as bad as other suggest, isn’t really the issue so much as it is a distraction of seeing a self-indulgent egomaniac take us out of the fantasy world that Rodriguez has built up for us. No matter - Planet Terror is still an enjoyable offering, despite the fact that I can’t really recall Zombi or Dawn of the Dead being this crazed. (I would call From Dusk Till Dawn a closer relative).
The trailers in the middle of the film happen to be the best part of Grindhouse, the most entertaining being a takeoff on all those Don’t pictures of the late 70s/early 80s. You know - Don’t Open the Window, Don’t Go in the Woods, Don’t Go in the House, Don’t Answer the Phone, Don’t Look in the Basement, etc. Directed by Edgar Wright, it’s aptly titled Don’t. The second best faux trailer would be Thanksgiving, which brings to mind all the exploitative holiday slashers (Mother’s Day, Silent Night Deadly Night, Halloween, My Bloody Valentine). Eli Roth directed it and it has an old grainy effect that reminded me of Pieces or maybe Maniac. It also has the funniest one liners (White Meat… Dark Meat… all will be carved!) It’s offensive and gory, and thus comes the closest to the feel of the retro-slashers that just didn’t give a damn about anything. The worst trailer is Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the S.S., a spoof of the Ilsa movies. It’s amusing, I suppose, with welcome appearances from the great Udo Kier and a surprise guest playing Fu Manchu (I won’t tell), but it’s not as inspired as it thinks it is. Finally, out of nowhere, we’re treated to a commercial for a Tex-Mex restaurant (Right next to this theater!)

Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is the weakest of the bunch, and the irony of it is that it’s probably the most thoughtful and deconstructive. Kurt Russell plays a stuntman car driver named simply Stuntman Mike, and he’s absolutely brilliant. It’s too bad that his character takes a backseat to two groups of rather uninteresting female protagonists. It starts out with prolonged scenes of dialogue between a group of Austin girls including local DJ Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), and Shanna (Jordan Ladd). Most of it takes place in a bar and it’s set up to introduce both the girls and the Stuntman Mike character, who is mysterious, charming, and very very dangerous. There are two good scenes involving Mike’s car (1971 Chevy Nova, Death-Proofed because it’s used as a stunt car), the later scene being shown from four different angles (each from the point of view of a certain character). Then there’s a new setup involving a new group of girls including Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), Kim (Tracie Thoms), and Zoë Bell (playing herself). These are characters with a stronger will (although just as banal) who end up in a road duel with Mike using a 1970 Dodge Challenger (apparently the same one from Vanishing Point).

chicks love the car

I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying that I see Death Proof as a rape-revenge/female empowerment fantasy, with rapist (Mike) using his metaphorical tool (souped up muscle car), only to have the tables turned on him as he is emasculated by women stronger than he is. It is sly commentary on films like Vanishing Point (a superior film), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (both mentioned a few times in the movie) , Duel (another superior film), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and if you want to get more abstract, perhaps I Spit on Your Grave. The underlying themes in Death Proof are smart, no doubt about it, which is why I was so disappointed with his female characters. Their scenes of dialogue are absolutely interminable and had me checking my watch a few times. Nothing about them was particularly interesting, and nothing they said was anything approaching the level of dialogue in Tarantino’s earlier movies like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. If I felt bad for Mike in the end, it wasn’t because he isn’t evil enough but because the girls aren’t likable enough. (Only Zoë Bell, playing a heroic stuntwoman - who in real life is a stuntwoman - makes it through as likable, sexy, and spunky, if perhaps way too bubbly given the situation at hand) while Tracie Thoms’ bad-ass black woman character (modeled off Pam Grier’s Coffy/Foxy Brown heroines) with her lines laced with motha-fucka comes off as trying-too-hard and, well, annoying. When you get right down to it, I shouldn’t be watching an extended chase scene with Bell in peril on the hood of a speeding Dodge Challenger and wondering just why in the hell the driver Kim doesn’t just pull off the side of the road. Is it really a good idea to leave Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s naive character Lee, dressed in a cheerleader outfit, alone with a total stranger making him think he’s going to get some? (That particular plot point is strangely abandoned). Not to mention that the much talked about lapdance scene (even shown in the Grindhouse trailers) is yanked just to deliver a Missing Reel joke, which works in Planet Terror but does not work here. The ending of Death Proof is enjoyable, I suppose, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing came off as a self-indulgent masturbatory QT session made only for his own amusement.

The strange thing is that while Planet Terror is pretty much Rodriguez copying the cheesy zombie movie aesthetic, he managed to create likable characters, despite the knowledge that they are simple archetypes, and I could easily see myself watching it again in the future. While Death Proof is a smarter deconstruction of the grind house films of an earlier era, the only character interesting in any sort of way is the villain, with the tense road scenes buried by an avalanche of banality. I can’t see myself going back to it, but I can see myself returning to its influences instead. I was afraid that the QT train was starting to run off the rails with the Kill Bill movies. Death Proof just confirmed my suspicions. (At least we know how Snake Plissken got the eye patch). Now, if somebody actually makes Machete all will be forgiven.

~ Bill Gordon

Sad news today:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Film director Bob Clark, best known for the holiday classic “A Christmas Story,” was killed with his son Wednesday in a head-on crash with a vehicle that a drunken driver steered into the wrong lane, police and the filmmaker’s assistant said. Clark, 67, and son Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were killed in the accident in Pacific Palisades, said Lyne Leavy, Clark’s personal assistant.

In Clark’s most famous film, all 9-year-old Ralphie Parker wants for Christmas is an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle. His mother, teacher and Santa Claus all warn: “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” A school bully named Scut Farkus, a leg lamp, a freezing flagpole mishap and some four-letter defiance helped the movie become a seasonal fixture with “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”

Clark specialized in horror movies and thrillers early in his career, directing such 1970s flicks as “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” “Murder by Decree,” “Breaking Point” and “Black Christmas,” which was remade last year.

His breakout success came with 1981’s sex farce “Porky’s,” a coming-of-age romp that he followed two years later with “Porky’s II: The Next Day.”

Among Clark’s other movies were Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton’s “Rhinestone,” Timothy Hutton’s “Turk 182!”, and Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd’s “Loose Cannons.”

1974’s Black Christmas is an extremely influential film and one of the best horror movies of the 70s. How funny that he would later make A Christmas Story, that movie’s polar opposite (and a film I loved as a kid). I also look upon the Porkys movies quite fondly. May Bob Clark and his son Ariel rest in peace.

Black Christmas (1974)

Directed by: Bob Clark

Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, James Edmond, Doug McGrath

1/2   (out of 4)

The antithesis of Michael Curtiz’ White Christmas, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas has a few firsts in it (as far as I can tell). It’s the first Christmas horror film (I think) and the first modern slasher film (predating Halloween by four years). What about Bay of Blood, you ask? Well, I guess you could make that point, but Black Christmas is so very different in tone from Mario Bava’s picture. To start with, there is tremendous restraint on the gore and great attention is paid to establishing an atmosphere of general creepiness that hangs over the whole thing. Bay of Blood could be considered a major influence on 80s slasher cinema (like Friday the 13th) but Black Christmas influenced 70s slasher cinema, specifically John Carpenter’s Halloween (with the killer-in-the-house and killer-point-of-view motifs) and Fred Walton’s When A Stranger Calls (a film that blatantly rips off a huge plot point).

It must be the 70s

The plot is simple, and I’m going to pull it straight from IMDB: Right before Christmas break, an unseen psycho sneaks into the attic of a Canadian sorority house. At the same time, the girls are being menaced with obscene phone calls. When one of the girls disappears, they contact the police, who don’t express much concern. Meanwhile our main character Jess (Olivia Hussey) is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter(Keir Dullea), a somewhat unbalanced music student, is very much against it.

You’ll stab your eye out, kid!

Black Christmas has recently been remade (as every movie is destined to be, these days) and is to open on Christmas Day, 2006. My guess is that it will betray its origins in crappy modern horror, especially when it comes to handholding the audience. The original Black Christmas gives no explanations for its killer, save for a few snippets of obscene dialogue which gives us clues that his name is Billy, and that somebody named Agnes is involved. In fact, we hardly even get to see what Billy looks like, although a brief flash suggests that he looks like Peter. By the end, it is obvious whether Peter is the killer or not, and that revelation is the key to a parting shot that lingers long after the credits have rolled.

Kinky.

While Silent Night Deadly Night used Christmas and Santa Claus as a gimmick, Black Christmas is deadly serious about its holiday proceedings. Snow falls heavily, darkness sneaks in from around every corner, the the use of the old sorority house with low-light sources allows a pervading dread. The claustrophobia of the movie is accompanied by great performances, especially by Margot Kidder (who plays a fun drunk while looking sexy) and John Saxon (a believable police detective - this role probably helped get him A Nightmare on Elm Street).

A model of restraint and focus, Black Christmas shows us that even during the joyous holidays, bad things are happening. Required viewing for horror fans and Holiday Scrooges. ~Bill G

PS: Yes, Bob Clark gave us that other fun holiday movie - A Christmas Story.