"The Ghost" and The Darkness

Horror Movie Marathon

Day 2, Movie 3

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Directed by Alan Rafkin

What can one say about this movie? It has a lot going for it, but suffers from the same problem that a lot of horror comedies do: it can't truly decide what to be. Granted, it's a Don Knotts movie so we can assume that comedy is going to be prevalent in it. The horror (if you want to call it that) is very subdued. It turns out there is no actual ghost. It's all some convoluted Scooby Doo plot. I suppose it makes sense, but as with a lot of other movies like this, it could have been a ton better.

The plot pertains to a typesetter at a small town Kansas newspaper who gets the idea to write a story about a twenty year old murder suicide and sends the small town into a small panic. Because of the huge impact the small story had on the community, the head of the newspaper tells Don Knotts to write a follow up story, a story that could lead him to a byline. Knotts jumps at the opportunity, trying to face his fears of the house as the editor tells him to spend a night in the house to get inspiration.

While in the house, paintings bleed, organs play by themselves and bookcases move to reveal secret rooms and staircases. He leaves the house, writes the story and the town goes into even more of a panic. The owner of the house (the son of the victims of the murder/suicide) sues Knott's character for libel, saying that all of it was a lie fabricated by a creative mind.

This is where the movie takes an odd left turn. It goes into a trial where Don Knotts is being sued and the judge, after little consideration, decides to bring all the members of the prosecution and defense, as well as the jury to the house to determine if the house is truly haunted. Things don't turn out as they should, Knotts looks like the boy who cried wolf and the suit is imminent. Just as Knotts is walking away from the house, he hears the organ playing again.

He runs back inside, seeing someone at the organ. It's his friend at the newspaper. Turns out, he used to be a gardener of the house when the murder/suicide happened and he witnessed what actually happened. I guess it all makes sense in a really convoluted way, but that's what I couldn't get over.

A lot of people tell me I take somethings too seriously. I wouldn't disagree with this, but I would say that I feel I am justified. I know it's just a Don Knotts movie, but it could have made more sense. As with Friday the 13th Part V, the plot should make more sense than it does. If they're going to be doing this bait and switch thing, they really should only do it once. Once we realize that Don Knotts could be crazy, that could be enough. They don't keep it light and airy enough. It'd kinda be like scooping up a nice spoonful of whipped cream and it's got chunks in it.

I feel like it could have been more about the investigation instead of the trial. I think that would have been more interesting. Just think of Don Knotts playing detective when he's not supposed to. Snooping around a house, asking questions to people when he doesn't know what he's doing. Instead, the movie does the trial which doesn't make any sense and isn't particularly funny.

It's really too bad. The movie could have been a hell of a lot better. Not only that, but when the movie ends and all is revealed, Knotts is barely involved. Sure, he subdues the bad guy in comic fashion, but it takes too long. There's a certain punch missing to the movie. Something it could have used.

I will say I laughed quite a few times and the score was excellent, so it's not all bad.

Maybe I'll do a Ghost and Mr. Chicken reboot. Then I'll be like all the rest of the assholes that make movies nowadays without an original idea in my head.

The one thing I will say that this movie made me realize is that I haven't watched The Ghost and the Darkness in a while. I think I might have to break that one out soon.

Ghoulies on Parade!

Horror Movie Marathon

Day 2, Movie 2

Ghoulies (1985)

Directed by Luca Bercovici

I don't think I'll have a hell of a lot to say about this movie because there's not a lot to latch onto. Yes, there's a bunch of small creatures. Yes, there are a lot of green eyes. Yes, there is an old mansion. This would seem like it would be a decent set up for a horror movie.

Not so much.

The movie starts off with a seance at a mansion and this old guy taking a baby away. We don't know the baby, we don't know much. The movie continues on to show this guy inheriting the same house from the beginning and he wants to quit college and remodel it because something is compelling him to do so.

He goes downstairs, finds these symbols on the ground and gets immediately drawn to the whole idea. He reads a book and eventually tries holding a seance to open a door to another world. He keeps saying how there will be something coming through and appearing in the middle of a triangle. Nothing comes out. He and his friends walk back upstairs. Just as they do, these really ugly creatures come out. These are the Ghoulies.

There really isn't a plot and I shouldn't be too upset about this. But, not only is there no real plot, there's no real drive to the movie. Evil Dead 2 really has no plot to it, but there's that inherent drive by Sam Raimi that pushes the picture to the limits and it's one of the most fun movies you'll ever see. This movie is just dead in the water. Sure, there are some throwaway jokes like one of the Ghoulies covering his eyes as someone gets gruesomely killed, but nothing really besides that.

If you look at a movie like Gremlins (which this movie obviously was made because of), the creatures had personalities and you cared about the humans. This movie you're just waiting to get over. I've watched this movie once before today in my friend Mike's basement pool room. I remember falling asleep to it that time. This time, I did the same thing and it was four in the afternoon. The movie couldn't even keep my interest. I had plenty of sleep last night, I shouldn't have been tired at all, but instead, I fell asleep like I was watching some four hour Biblical epic. This is an 81 minute horror movie with creatures and killing. There is absolutely no reason why I should have fallen asleep.

That being said, the DVD that I bought with it on it comes with the sequel. It's nine minutes longer. I would be lying if I were to say I wasn't the least big intrigued by watching the second one. Maybe someday.

Who knows. Could be some night when I really need to fall asleep...

There is always that part that the Ghoulie comes out of the toilet. That's something to latch onto. But it's not enough. The movie should have been a lot more fun. A lot more.

Brokeback Freddy

Horror Movie Marathon

Day 2, Movie 1

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

Directed by Jack Sholder

I can't exactly remember which franchise I saw all of first. I'm thinking that it was the Friday the 13th franchise because I could never get a hold of Halloween 4 to watch it. The Nightmare on Elm Street movies were definitely the last for me to see them all. I had watched a few here and there, but it wasn't until I got the huge box set of all of them that I watched them all the way through.

Since I've seen it, the second one always left an odd taste in my mouth. I never quite understood what the fuck it was, it just always bothered me. Not in a way that a horror movie should either. More like it made me uncomfortable. There was some odd quality about it that I never understood.

Then this past spring, it all made sense.

There is a channel in the late hundreds on Time Warner Cable called Bio. It specializes in reality TV, if there is such a thing as specializing in reality TV. Back in March, they had a special on about the Nightmare on Elm Street films. When they got to the second of them to talk about it, they explained what it was that was bothering me all these years.

The screenwriter wrote the script with a homosexual subtext attached to it. Certain imagery and plot points always seemed a little weird. With this explanation, I wanted to go back and watch it. Earlier today, I finally got the chance to watch it again.

Another quick story about the box set of these movies. A buddy of mine that I worked with two years ago had never seen all of them. One day I brought them into work so he could watch them. This was the last I saw this box set until about August of this year. Within that time, I had transferred to another store thirty miles away and he moved away to California.

When I watched it today, a lot of it made sense, a lot of it didn't. If you were to watch this film with a homosexual context, it makes sense to an extent. The main character is a man (when in slasher films they are typically a woman), he has this ridiculous high-pitched scream anytime Freddy jumps out and he has this odd relationship with a rival/friend at school. For instance, just as he's about to have sex with his oddly Meryl Streep looking girlfriend, he turns away because Freddy is about to take over. He then runs away from her and goes to his guy friend's house so he can keep an eye on him in case he changes. Freddy, of course, jumps out of the main character's body and kills his friend. The movie then cuts back to the main character, not Freddy, with the glove on.

This is where the movie starts to play fast and loose with the filmmaking. We see the main character looking in the mirror, seeing himself as Freddy. So, we as the audience assume that the main character now looks like Freddy. Okay, that makes sense (I guess...).

Later, in the movie, we see the main character go to his girlfriend's house covered in blood. Not Freddy. Then Freddy comes out of seemingly nowhere and starts killing people left and right. So, now it's Freddy again, right? Maybe...

Freddy holds all these asshole kids at the party at bay. This one guy walks up to Freddy and says something to the effect of, "Hey man, calm down. Don't worry..." He then gets promptly fucked up by the Freddy claws. Are we to assume that the main character is acting like Freddy, not looking like him? Or, is this guy that got killed just a true hero and was trying to calm down a burned to death, child-murdering, dream master of a ghost into compliance? We'll never know...

Then later in the movie, the main character's Meryl Streep looking girlfriend goes to this factory to confront her boyfriend/Freddy. She keeps telling Freddy/her boyfriend that she loves him and even kisses him on the lips. Freddy! She kisses Freddy on the lips! The burned guy that kills people. I mean, a lot of people will do anything for the person they love, but Jesus, this woman is committed. But she kisses Freddy, reacts to him as Freddy, not as her boyfriend. Meaning, she sees Freddy. Maybe the asshole at the pool party was just that. An asshole...

Now, if you read all this crap with the homosexual context, sure, yeah, the main character is repressing his homosexuality and it comes out from time to time. But, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it infers that homosexuality is akin to pedophilia and homicide. But, at the same time, you have to admire a movie like this. It's not your typical slasher film and it has a message to it. It might be extremely wrong and not completely fleshed out, but it took a chance. Not many franchises do that.

All in all, I think it's a decent movie. I don't think it's nearly as good as the first, the third or New Nightmare, but you can't expect miracles. That eighties feel permeates the entire film, too. That's part of the appeal of it.

Oh yeah, and it has an exploding, psychotic parakeet. How many horror movies can say that? Not many, not many...

Jason and Tommy, sittin' in a tree...

Horror Movie Marathon

Day 1, Movie 1

Friday the 13th: Part V-A New Beginning (1985)

Directed by Danny Steinmann

Jason Vorhees is an icon, simply put. There's nothing around it. Granted, he's not the best written character around. (Big deal, you were relatively retarded and drowned because of horny teenagers.) But his legacy lives on. Often imitated, pretty much every slasher film from here on out owes something to Jason, even though he owes a lot to Michael Myers.

Michael Myers was really a product of suburbia. There is a certain rural-ness to Jason. He's the reason you don't want to go into the woods alone, or at all. I know for a fact that I've avoided sets of woods deliberately at night. I'm not sure exactly what it is that bugs me so much about them, but I don't believe I am alone.

To put things in perspective as to how much of a pussy I truly am when it comes to these things, my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to venture into the woods behind my friend's house a little over three years ago. I remember, we went to Allen's house after we got done seeing Pineapple Express at midnight. He, myself and Greg thought it would be a wise idea to walk out into the woods. The moon was full, it was foggy and cold. We couldn't see much in front of us, even though we took a flashlight with us. We stayed out there for about ten minutes and left. As soon as I turned my back, I felt like something was right there behind me.

This has been a common occurrence in my life. When I was a kid (and even more recently), I'd turn all the lights off downstairs and have to go upstairs to my bed. As soon as that light got turned off, I sprinted up the stairs in order to avoid whatever it was I believed was directly behind me. It was never anything (least so I think), but I can say that it resulted in a lot of stubbed toes and swearing.

Is this phenomenon from watching the Friday the 13th movies? It certainly could be. But really, domestic horror belongs to Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. Jason will always be something I think of when going into the woods.

I'm not really sure when my love of these movies began. I don't even know if I can seriously say to myself or anyone else that I love these movies. They're a secret, or else should be. I try posing myself as this serious minded film guy, watching the occasional foreign film and trying to pass myself off as smarter than I probably am. But when it comes down to it, everyone has guilty pleasures and each of the Friday the 13th movies falls under that category.

When I was younger, my cousin Matt and I would meet up at family functions. We would get talking about different things, but eventually, it became known that he was able to watch R-rated movies. And not just Lethal Weapon 3 and Speed, but actual horror movies. The types of movies that I was pulled away from when I was at the video store. Once I knew about this, I mined Matt for all the knowledge on these movies. He and I would walk off, talking about various scenes in each of the Friday the 13th movies. He would describe them as if they were stories around a campfire, urban legends that weren't supposed to be heard. I had a ball getting the shit scared out of me.

This is probably most of the reason as to why these movies hold a special place in my heart. I know a lot of people wouldn't find it as appealing as I do to get whole movies ruined, but it was awesome. My imagination filled in the blanks, just like a good campfire tale. I took what information I had or could get from VHS boxes and plot summaries, along with Matt's stories and constructed these elaborate scenarios.

Needless to say, I was slightly disappointed when I actually watched the movies.

But, then again, I wasn't really.

I didn't actually start watching the movies until I was working at Blockbuster. I don't exactly remember what the dates were, but I'm pretty sure it was around spring of 2003. The reason I remember this (at least slightly) is because I watched the latter three films in my parent's bed, recovering from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I sat there, gauze filling my mouth, and watched these movies. The mix of actual decent filmmaking (read: only decent, nothing more) and the nostalgia I felt for the stories Matt told me on my grandmother's farm resulted in a genuinely pleasing movie watching experience.

When I watched Part V at first, I was pretty confused. The whole plot was a little strange: Tommy (portrayed by Corey Feldman in the previous film and someone that looks like a low rent Mark Hammill in this one) from The Final Chapter is now crazy and recovering from his stint of running away from Jason and ultimately killing him. He goes to a countryside mental institution with a cast of characters that ranges from your typical slasher movie nymphomaniacs to rip-offs of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest characters.

Tommy shows up and, before long, a fat, chocolate eating, well-meaning, mentally challenged young man gets axed to death by another man who has a remarkably short fuse. The EMTs show up to take the body away. It's after this that the killings start. And man do they start.

SPOILER ALERT

A lot of fans of the Friday the 13th fans tend to not take this one seriously. Almost like On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But as with that film, this really isn't a bad movie in respects of the rest of the series. The reason that people have such a problem with this movie is that the killer is not Jason. Rather, it's the EMT father of the fat, challenged boy. He goes crazy, but not crazy enough to not have a way to explain his way out of the killings by making them all look like the work of Jason.

This is all well and good, a decent plot. But the movie is not concerned with plot at all. While watching this, my sister was sitting to the side, talking to me about different things to do with the movie. She started asking me about the plot and things of nature. I explained to her that the plot of a Friday the 13th movie is about as important as how many bullets a six-shooter has when being used against a living dead mummy. (Thanks Dad for that one.) The movie hints that the killer is someone besides Jason, but goes along with the assumption that it's him for the entire of the movie until the end.

Everyone thinks it's him. And why not? They should. He has superhuman strength, he appears out of nowhere, he kills people in an over-elaborate fashion and wears a hockey mask. But the movie never hints at anyone besides Jason being the killer. Granted, they linger on shots of him after he sees his son dead, but they never actually imply anything else besides that. I always found that weird. The movie could definitely been a decent whodunit, but it never quite elevated itself to that level.

That is not to say the movie is without merits. Oddly enough, for the killer not being Jason, it has the highest body count of any of them. It has a few inventive kills here and there, nudity and the like. This one always holds a special place in my heart because of the atmosphere it contains. I don't know why I like it, but I do. It's up there with the first and the third.

And really, though I like Jason Lives, I was always more of a fan of Jason being alive than resurrected Jason. Call me crazy, but there it is.

Jason will always hold a special place in my heart, even if he'd rather be ripping it out of my chest and holding it in front of me while I die slowly.

Dedicated to those who never saw a Saturday the 14th...