Thir13en Ghosts (2001) – Review

With the success of their remake of William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill Dark Castle Entertainment producers, Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, decided to tackle Castle’s 1960s classic 13 Ghosts in what turned out to be one of the better examples of taking an original premise and then spinning it in a variety of different and interesting ways, both narratively and visually.

Director Steve Beck and screenwriter Neal Marshall Stevens took the basic germ of the idea from the original film, an impoverished family inherits a haunted house that is populated with a variety of ghosts, and then completely made it their own by creating a whole new mythology for the ghosts, and giving even more sinister motivation behind the villain. In the original 1960 film we never really got to meet the eccentric rich uncle who’d spent his life collecting ghosts – we see him briefly in ghostly form but that's it – while in this movie, right off the top, we are introduced to Uncle Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham) as we see him acquiring his latest ghost. There are quite a few additional characters created for the sequel with one of them being that of Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard) an empath whose psychic abilities Cyrus uses to help locate and create his menagerie of spooks.

 

Not a Ghostbusters so much as Ghostfinder.

It’s in this opening scene that we Cyrus and his team of ghost hunters capture a particularly violent ghost called The Juggernaut, and it's here that the film really sets the tone for what is to follow as it is extremely violent with the ghost brutally murdering most of Cyrus’ men in a variety of fairly gruesome ways and as such, it clearly states “This is not William Castle's goofy movie from the 60s, no siree. So sit back and enjoy the ride!” In this scene, we are also introduced to two more original characters to the story, in the form of Kalina Oretzia (Embeth Davidtz) and her partner Damon (Matthew Harrison), who are sort of a combination of Green Peace and PETA when it comes to the exploitation of the spirit world. These two object to Cyrus imprisoning ghosts but this quickly becomes a moot point when both Damon and Cyrus Kriticos die at the hands of the Juggernaut, or so we think.

 

“Do you seriously think I’d be in this just for a cameo?”

After the bloody carnage we witness in that opening scene the film then dovetails back to familiar territory with the introduction to the rest of our main characters; widower Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub), who has fallen on hard times since the passing of his wife in a tragic house fire, then we have his daughter Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and young son Bobby (Alec Roberts) who are delighted when lawyer Benjamin Moss (JR Bourne) shows up on their doorstep to inform them that they’ve inherited a massive remote mansion from Arthur’s recently deceased Uncle Cyrus. Along for the ride is their nanny, Maggie (Rah Digga), who is another addition and is easily my least favourite as not only is the idea of a family that is having a hard time paying their bills having enough money for a live-in Nanny pretty is pretty ridiculous, but she’s also around to provide “comic relief” and with someone like Matthew Lillard in the cast this was a completely unnecessary addition.

 

“With these special glasses, I can clearly see my character is pointless.”

Storywise, the key difference between this film and the 1960 original is in the reasoning behind the collecting of thirteen ghosts; in the William Castle film, the uncle was simply a rich eccentric dude with a passion for the paranormal, while in this remake we learn that Cyrus’ bizarre glass mansion is actually a complex machine designed by a possessed 15th-century astronomer to open the "Ocularis Infernum" - The Eye of Hell – “Created by the Devil and powered by the dead” and once this demonic device is opened it would allow its user to see everything in the past, present and future, on Earth, in Heaven and Hell. The house they built for this movie is one of the more impressive elements and production designer Sean Hargreaves did a fantastic job creating this glasshouse that is basically a giant version of the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser.

 

If the Devil shopped at Sharper Image this is the kind of place he’d have.

In the original film, the villain was Ben Moss the family lawyer, who murdered the uncle so as to steal the family fortune and then he spent the bulk of the film trying to get the nephew’s family to move out so he could find the hidden money, but in the remake, Ben Moss is initially set up to look like a shady villain – opposed to in the original film where Martin Milner played the lawyer as a nice guy until the dramatic third act reveal – this time out it’s Uncle Cyrus who is the true big bad, and though the lawyer is clearly on the crooked side of things he is literally cut from the film during the first act.

 

Insert dead lawyer joke here.

Thir13en Ghosts is what one would call a “rollercoaster horror film” as once the shit hits the fan its non-stop action until the end credits roll. Now, does it matter that Cyrus’ demonic machine is just one giant supernatural MacGuffin that the film barely explains? Absolutely not, this movie is all about the cool ghosts created by Howard Berger and his amazing crew at KNB EFX Group, from the menacing Juggernaut to the maniacal Jackal this movie hits that aspect of horror right it out of the park, this baker’s dozen of spooks on display here is simply fantastic and makes this entry a must-see for fans of the genre.

Stray Thoughts:

• The reveal that Kalina Oretzia was secretly working with Cyrus all along was pretty pointless and added nothing to the story.
• Cyrus faking his death in the opening scene raises an important question, “If he was supposedly dead how did The Juggernaut end up back to the glass mansion?” The Juggernaut turning up at the house should have been a big tip-off to Rafkin that Cyrus was still alive.
• Arthur decides it’d be best if they split up and search for little Bobby, which has to be the worst example of the “Splitting Up Horror Trope” as they are in a house that is literally a changing puzzle box and getting lost is almost a certainty.
• The use of the “Spectral Glasses” works a lot better in this version rather than how it did in the original, as here they function as a story element rather than just a gimmick.
• Not all the ghosts of the Black Zodiac warrant much screen time but this does make for a good reason to watch the special features on the Bluray for all their backstories.

Aside from the amazing production designs of the house, and all beautiful created and truly horrifying ghosts found within it, what truly elevates this film is in supplying us with such great actors as Tony Shalhoub and F. Murray Abraham in what is a fairly low-budget horror film. William Castle was never going to get “A” list actors in his film so it’s nice to see that these remakes not only upgrade things when it comes to the visuals but also in the acting department as well. Overall, Thir13en Ghosts is a seriously fun romp through a truly original setting, which is a surprising thing to say about a remake.

13 Ghosts (1960) – Review

When it comes to filmmakers William Castle will never be regarded as one of the best because even though his producing credits include the classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby he’s mostly known for low budgeted B-movies that relied on a variety of goofy gimmicks, such as “Emergo” a skeleton on wires that floated over the audience or the ever-popular “Percepto” which consisted of buzzers rigged to theatre seats, and then there was "Illusion-O" which allowed viewers to choose whether or not if they would see the terrifying 13 Ghosts of this movie’s title.

The basic premise of 13 Ghosts wasn’t anything audiences hadn't seen many times before, a small group of people arriving at a haunted house wherein ghostly hijinks quickly ensue, and William Castle himself had visited that trope a mere year earlier with House on Haunted Hill, where guests had to stay the night in an allegedly haunted house to win $10,000 dollars, and with 13 Ghosts we get a somewhat similar monetary incentive, only in this case, it has to do with an impoverished family who inherits a haunted house and have no real fiscal option but to stay put and deal with the spooky shenanigans as best they can. The patriarch of this film is Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods), a cash strapped professor of paleontology who has three mortgages on his home and debt collectors repossessing his furniture, who learns of an inheritance from his rich uncle Dr. Plato Zorba, an expert in the occult who spent his life hunting and capturing ghosts as well as developing special glasses that would allow one to see spectral figures.  At first this inheritance looks like a well-timed miracle, one that will solve all Cyrus's problems, unfortunately, there is no cash windfall just a large and spooky house that is loaded to the rafters with phantoms.

Note: A William Castle budget is not going to provide viewers with especially convincing ghosts and the ones in this movie would be hard-pressed to pass muster at your average carnival’s House of Horrors.

The Zorba family consists of not only daddy dumbass but also his much-beleaguered wife Hilda (Rosemary DeCamp), who isn’t too keen on poltergeist activity in her kitchen, then there is their beautiful older daughter Medea (Jo Morrow ), who could provide the film with a love interest if the plot didn't fail her there big time in that department, and finally, we have their 12-year old son Buck (Charles Herbert), a kid who is quite excited by the prospect of rooming with ghosts. Now, one of the trickiest bits of writing a proper ghost story is in coming up with a reason for the family not immediately packing up and leaving the minute ghosts start chucking meat cleavers at their collective heads. Well, it turns out that Plato Zorba’s will states that if they move out of the house ownership transfers to the state and they will get nothing, so good ole Cyrus tries to put on a brave face for as long as he can.

 

How brave one looks while wearing “Ghost Viewers” is up for debate.

This leads to one of my favourite scenes in this movie, where Buck finds a Ouija board hidden behind a secret panel and the whole family decides to play. They start out asking your basic questions, such as "Will Medea find love" but when Bucks asks how many ghosts are in the house and, “Are they going to kill any of us?” the planchette floats over to Medea and then drops into her lap. Medea’s bizarre reaction is to state, “Don’t ask it when.  I don’t want to know” but what is even more bizarre than her rather blasé attitude to an impending doom is that we cut to the parents getting ready for bed and not them packing the family car and getting the hell out of there.

 

“Honey, it was probably swamp gas.”

Unfortunately, there is more going on than a baker’s dozen of randy spirits as we also have the mystery involving Plato Zorba’s fortune. Despite the fact that Plato Zorba’s lawyer, Benjamen Rush (Martin Milner), assured the family that their deceased uncle had spent all his fortune-hunting ghosts good ole Buck accidentally comes across another hidden compartment, one containing thousands of dollars. This seemingly charming lawyer, and possible suitor for Medea’s love, convinces Buck to keep this “hidden treasure” a secret and then proceeds to try and murder the kid in his sleep. Turns out Rush knew there was money hidden somewhere in the house all along and was doing his best to scare the Zorba family away so that he could search for it – at one point he dressed up as a walking corpse to scare Medea – but being there are actual ghosts in this house Martin soon meets his fate at the ghostly hands of Plato Zorba, who was murdered by the scummy lawyer via a bed with a canopy that would slowly smother the occupant.

 

The movie takes a right turn into Tales from the Crypt territory.

Stray Thoughts:

• Plato Zorba travelled the world collecting and capturing ghosts which is kind of the same premise behind Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction.
• The house comes with a maid played by Margaret Hamilton, who is repeatedly referred to as looking like a witch, a cute nod to her role in The Wizard of Oz.
• When Buck asks the Ouija board “How many ghosts are there” he gets the answer 13, but at this time in the movie there were only twelve ghosts counting Uncle Plato, the thirteenth ghost wouldn’t exist until after the lawyer is killed at the end of the movie, so does this mean the board has a precognitive setting?
• Cyrus discovers the hidden switch that puts the canopy bed into murder mode but he doesn’t think about dismantling such a dangerous device.
• The place the family inherits is in reality the Winchester Mystery House located in San Jose California.

 

I’m betting both the Munsters and the Addams Family live next door.

There are no real scares to be found within the 82 minutes of William Castle’s 13 Ghosts because despite their numbers these ghosts are neither convincing nor terrifying, and the effects used to bring them to “life” are bargain basement at best. What Castle relied on to bring in the crowds was the gimmick du jour and in this case it was something he called "Illusion-O" where audience members would be given a pair of their very own “Ghost Viewers” that gave them the choice of whether or not to see the spooks.  Chose to look through the red filter and see the ghosts or through the blue filter and be spared their frightening visage. This, of course, was a rather silly gimmick as what audience member was going to choose not to see the ghosts they’d paid their two bits to see?

 

Mind you, even looking through the proper filter you could barely see the ghosts.

That all said, William Castle’s 13 Ghosts is still a rather fun outing and a film I can recommend to any fan of the genre, and as a ghost story, it’s one that can be shared with even the youngest of viewers as it is more goofy than scary. The cast on hand all provide solid performances and I especially enjoyed seeing Martin Milner playing against type as the murdering lawyer. 13 Ghosts may not give anyone nightmares but the level of charm and the good-natured silliness of the ghosts makes this film a delightful supernatural romp.

House on Haunted Hill (1999) – Review

In 1999 Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis teamed up to form Dark Castle Entertainment a production company designed to pay homage to the works of legendary filmmaker William Castle and their first project was a remake of the 1960 classic House on Haunted Hill, yet after just two remakes they stopped and went on to make original material, but the two adaptations we did get offered bigger budgets and greater visual effects than Castle could ever have dreamed of, but does that make them better?

This remake of House on Haunted Hill launches out of the gate with an elaborate backstory that will set up the horror that is to follow, no longer is the “House on Haunted Hill” simply a “Murder House” but now in the opening sequence, we learn that back in the early 30s a mad doctor by the name of Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs) used inmates at his asylum for sadistic experiments and when these poor souls eventually rebelled, killing the staff and setting fire to the place, which gives us a dark history to the house. Now, this change has always kind of bothered me as I can’t really see calling a massive psychiatric institute a house, it’s an impressive monolith of a building that juts out of the cliff like the prow of a great ship surging through the waves, but it’s not what one would really consider a house.

 

I'll grant that the hill is probably haunted but in no way is that a house.

We then jump to the present day where we are introduced to the character analogs from the original; we have Stephen Price (Geoffrey Rush), a rich amusement park mogul whose rides are designed to terrify the occupant pay – such as pretending to break mid-run – and next, we have his cold-hearted wife Evelyn Stockard-Price (Famke Janssen) who after seeing a program on the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute decides that would be the perfect venue for her birthday party because, why not? We then get a bit of silliness where some mysterious force hacks Price’s computer and changes the guest list because everyone knows that ancient evil is very computer savvy. The five guests arrive for the party in a funeral procession – a nod to the original film – and the partiers consist of Sara Wolfe (Ali Larter), a film production assistant impersonating her boss so as to attend this party, then we have baseball player Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs), former television personality Melissa Marr (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) and Donald Blackburn (Peter Gallagher), a physician who will later be revealed as to be having an affair with Evelyn.

 

"Are we lambs heading to the slaughter, yeah, I thought as much."

The place has been rented from the building's owner, Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan), who is convinced that a great evil he calls “The Darkness” resides within this house, and as in the original film Price has offered a $1 million dollars to each guest who remains in the house until morning. The only other residual element from the 1960 original is the fact that Evelyn is in cahoots with the doctor in murdering her husband, with the two faking her death – though in this film via electric shock treatment opposed to hanging – and once again guns are provided as party favours which Evelyn hopes will end up being used against her loving husband. That pretty much ends any similarity this remake has to William Castle’s film as it’s more interested in gore and endless shots of people walking up and down dank and dark corridors than it does with mystery and murder.

 

I hope you like dark and dreary because this film is loaded with it.

Stray Observations:

• The rollercoaster gag where the car ahead of you derails and flies off into space would not work as part of a park attraction because it would be impossible to reset the ride on any decent timetable.
• The ghosts hacking Price’s computer to change the guest list is silly enough but then you have the fact that their plan also hinges on Evelyn choosing to hold her party on Haunted Hill simply because she saw it on television. Did the ghosts also produce the Peter Graves program she was watching?
• How did Watson Pritchett inherit Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute? We are told his grandfather built the place but an architect or builder wouldn’t own the building, it would either be owned by the state or if it was a private institution it’d belong to Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt.
• When Melissa explores the bowels of the hospital she discovers that while looking through her camcorder she can see the ghosts of the past, a possible nod to the “Ghost Viewers” from William Castle’s 13 Ghosts which was also the next film that Dark Castle Entertainment would adapt.
• Sara shoots Price but he survives because he’s wearing a bulletproof vest with hidden blood bags and this raises the question “Why is he wearing one if the guns he provided for the party had been loaded with blanks?” Evelyn and Blackburn would have been the ones responsible for the switch in ammunition so what plan did Price have that required his faked death?
• Geoffrey Rush’s character is named Stephen Price in a nod to actor Vincent Price from the original film but he didn’t model his look after the horror icon but instead that off director Jon Waters, of course, dress Geoffrey Rush up as Jon Waters and you get Vincent Price.

 

I’ll admit this is pretty much perfect casting.

The most disappointing aspect is the horror elements themselves, as director William Malone and company fail to provide fans with anything remotely scary, we get nothing but brief glimpses of funhouse exhibits and the occasionally creepy moment with Jeffrey Combs – who I must point out is one of the film’s saving graces – now, to be fair the original wasn’t all that scary, as it was more in the vein of dark camp than actual horror, but that film was about a pair of villains gaslighting a young woman into murdering a jealous spouse, there was no actual supernatural element, while in this film they're definitely is supposed to be actual ghosts. In fact, the remake jumps in with both feet when it comes to the supernatural threat being real, unfortunately, what the filmmakers delivered was less than engaging and also not all that scary. The worst offence is “The Darkness” itself for when it finally shows up during the final act it’s just a messy optical effect that was better in theory than in practice.

 

Are these the souls of the damned or a Rorschach test?

What is odd here is that Geoffrey Rush, Famke Jansen and Peter Gallagher all seem to be relishing in their roles, and all three give performances that are simply bursting with camp and dark humour, sadly, the rest of the cast look as if they’d wandered in from a different movie and are fairly forgettable. It’s as if William Malone and screenwriter Dick Beebe took some elements from the William Castle film and then crammed it into a different horror movie, one about a haunted asylum that is seeking revenge on the ancestors of those who wronged it. Oh, did I not mention that the guests were descendants of the five employees who survived the fire at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute back in 1931? Don’t worry, it doesn’t really matter and has very little bearing on the plot. With the deadpan black humour of the original being overshadowed by gore and cheap visual effects, this remake is a hard one to recommend.

House on Haunted Hill (1959) – Review

If a person were to find themselves in a horror movie a solid piece of advice to follow would be, “Don’t accept an invitation from Vincent Price!” By the late 50s William Castle had made a name for himself as a talented producer of low-budget entertainment, and also as a bit of genius when it came to promoting a film, and with his partnership with writer/producer Robb White and the landing of iconic horror actor Vincent Price audiences were definitely in for a treat as together they brought us a classic horror movie and an unforgettable ride.

For the House on Haunted Hill producer/director William Castle had originally intended to make a typical “Old Dark House” horror movie with a group of people trapped in an isolated location while being harassed by some supernatural threat but writer and collaborator Robb White decided against such an easy take on that old trope and instead twisted it around in a very interesting way. As a film House on Haunted Hill could almost be classified as a film noir/crime thriller as there are no actual supernatural elements and the plot surrounds the attempt of a femme fatale to murder her rich husband while he, in turn, plots to get rid of his wife and her lover. Rattling chains and ghostly apparitions were just window dressing for a plot that would work nicely as a double bill with a film like Double Indemnity.

 

“Would you adore me as much if I were poor? No, all you want to be is a lovely widow.”

As murder plots go the one outlaid in House on Haunted Hill is not only one of the more complicated of its kind but relies heavily on third-party individuals behaving in a way that would pretty much impossible to predict. Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price ) invites five people to a party he is throwing for his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart ), a cold and calculating woman who seethes loathing for her husband, all to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house that he has rented from Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr. ), a man who ensures everyone that they are staying overnight in a "Murder House" that is populated by vengeful spirits, but with Frederick promising to give each person a $10,000 windfall if they stay the entire night these people are willing to overlook such pesky things as murder and ghosts.

 

“Only the ghosts in this house are glad we're here.”

Along with the homeowner, the guests to this party includes test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal), who specializes in hysteria, Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), who works for one of Loren's companies. and all of these people could really use that $10,000 prize but only one of them is key to a certain murder plot coming to fruition. It turns out that Frederick Loren has every reason to be jealous of his wife as she is having an affair with Dr. David Tenant, and those two have cooked up a scheme to knock off poor Frederick, with a plan that relies on one particular party member being scared to the point of murder.

 

So the house is home to the Wicked Witch of the West?

Annabelle and David’s plan revolves around gaslighting poor Nora with a variety of horrifying encounters that include a menacing hag, a severed head appearing in her make-up case and the ghost of the presumed dead Annabelle – this after she was founding hanging by her neck above the stairway – and then her shooting Frederick dead with one of the handguns that were passed out as party favours to the guests. This plan could have easily fallen apart if test pilot Lance hadn’t been such a douchebag, chalking up anything Nora said as a result of female hysteria, and stayed by her side instead of wandering around the house like a low rent Philip Marlowe. And what if, push comes to shove, Nora had just fainted at the sight of Frederick instead of shooting him? This murder plot had way too many variables and any of this working was more about luck than anything else. William Castle and Robb White also cheat quite a bit with this over-complicated murder plot as many aspects of this gaslighting endeavour are never explained and some elements would be impossible to pull off.

Things Never Explained:

• How could the blind caretaker glide like a ghost? How does she get past Lance without him seeing her?
• How did our killers get a rope to crawl along the floor and curl around Nora’s feet as if being manipulated by the ghost of Annabelle?
• Nora sees Annabelle floating outside her window and then seconds later she finds Annabelle hanging over the main staircase, does this mean Annabelle can teleport or does she have a twin in on this scheme?

What makes one forgive these cheats, and the overall ridiculousness of the plot. is the inclusion of star Vincent Price in the cast as his sardonic wit and cheerful malevolence completely carries the film and without him this would have been nothing more than an average murder mystery with a few cheap scares thrown in to spice things up, but with the king of the macabre on hand everything is elevated to the next level. The scenes between him Carol Ohmart were electrifying and equal to anything seen in such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? starring Burton and Taylor, and when we get the final act reveal – that Frederick knew all about the affair and had hatched his own spousal murder plot – well, it just doesn’t get better than that.

 

“It's a pity you didn't know when you started your game of murder that I was playing, too.”

Stray Observations:

• The film opens on a black screen with the sounds of screams, chains rattling and ghostly howls, which reminded me of those old Halloween sound effects records.
• The house exterior is that of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Ennis House but despite its Mayan Rival architecture the interiors look to belong to a Victorian mansion from the 1800s.
• The doors locking at midnight sort of defeats the bravery test element of the experiment. You can’t run away screaming if you can’t run away and none of the guests seem to question this.
• The caretaker Jonas advises Nora to leave with them at midnight if she wants to live, but then he and his “blind” wife exit and lock the house before midnight, giving Nora no opportunity to leave with them. This is a little more evidence that they are on Annabelle’s payroll.
• Is the severed head that Lance finds in Nora’s bedroom closet supposed to be real? If it's just a prop to scare them it would have to be a very convincing fake to withstand any amount of scrutiny.
• After the “murder” of Mrs. Loren the group decides it’d be safer if they all went to their separate rooms alone, seriously, that’s up there with “Let’s split up and look for clues” as the dumbest thing to do when murder is afoot.
• William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill would have worked great as a Scooby-Doo mystery.

 

“I did get away with it, despite those meddling kids and their mangy dog.”

William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill was a creepy and campy delight with the ever urbane Price overseeing a cast of wonderful character actors – actress Carolyn Craig giving Fay Wray a run for her money in the screaming department – but it wouldn’t be a true William Castle production without a cool gimmick and for House on Haunted Hill moviegoers were treated to something he called “Emergo” which simply consisted of a large floating skeleton that would fly out over the audience to everyone’s delight.

But even seeing this film without the promised gimmick the House on Haunted Hill it is still an incredibly entertaining outing and is also an example of one of those movies that actually improves with age as modern audiences can get even more fun out of a viewing of this William Castle classic than those back in the day.

Silver Bullet (1985) – Review

If you name your wheelchair the “Silver Bullet” and you end up having to fight a werewolf, you were basically asking for it. The movie Silver Bullet was based on the Stephen King novella “Cycle of the Werewolf” which itself was originally a calendar illustrated by the late great comic book artist Bernie Wrightson, and with King himself as the screenwriter for the film adaptation, this was guaranteed to be a faithful adaptation, right?

Some of the best Stephen King movie adaptations derive from his shorter works, such as Stand by Me which was based on the novella “The Body” and The Shawshank Redemption based on the novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” but this has also lead to such disasters as The Mangler and Maximum Overdrive, yet the obvious bonus to adapting from a short story or novella is that there is less stuff you have to excise to make it fit into a feature-length running time. In the case of Silver Bullet the biggest changed made was in the condensing of the story’s timeline as in the original calendar form the story followed a series of werewolf kills over the course of a year – on every full moon – which is your standard werewolf mythology, but the movie kind of dances around this notion as its creature attacks on nights that are clearly not during a full moon.

 

“Sorry, I lost my calendar.”

The film does give us a throw-away-line that maybe the killer becomes more “wolfy” as the moon cycle progresses but the film doesn’t seem all that concerned with nailing down its own particular mythology, and as this isn’t the first werewolf film not tied to the full moon we shouldn’t care all that much either, but where the film does work best is in the dynamics of its characters. The three key characters we follow are that of wheelchair-bound Marty (Corey Haim), his much put-upon sister Jane (Megan Follows) and their alcoholic uncle Red (Gary Busey). It’s the sibling dynamic between Marty and Jane that truly holds this film together as both actors have excellent chemistry together, on the other hand, Busey as the “fun uncle” brings a little of his own chaotic energy to the proceedings.

Note: Red builds his handicapped nephew a souped-up wheelchair that can clearly break local speed laws, easily passing your average motorist, but Red doesn’t even give the kid a helmet nor does Marty's parents seem all that concerned that their son has a vehicle that would clearly need a motorcycle’s license to operate.

Speaking of this film’s idea of parenting we have on hand here one of the worst examples of movie parents, not only do they constantly harp on their eldest daughter for not giving in to her "saintly" crippled brother, taking his side in any argument, but they are outright neglectful to the point of leaving their kids alone during a local murder spree. I don’t care if you “win” an all-expense-paid vacation to the city leaving your children in the hands of their alcoholic uncle, while a serial killer is on loose, is about the dumbest thing I’ve heard and should result in Child Services looking into the matter. Mind you, the kids aren’t all that bright either, when Uncle Red sneaks Marty some fireworks after the 4th of July Celebration had been cancelled, the kid drives his motorized wheelchair into the middle of fucking nowhere to set them off.

 

Hell, he’s lucky Jason Voorhees didn’t find him.

This being a werewolf film we must now discuss how this particular movie delivered on this classic movie monster, and by deliver I mean left on the doorstep like a flaming bag of dog shit. The ’80s saw revolutionary changes in physical make-up effects and in particular, the work of Rick Baker in An American Werewolf in London and Rob Bottin for Joe Dante’s The Howling raised the bar on werewolf effects quite high but with Silver Bullet we get Academy Award-winning special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi giving us a costume that could best be described as a Smokey the Were-Bear. What makes this monster even more disappointing is that the character is more frightening while in human form rather than when he is in full-on werewolf mode. The villain of this movie is Reverend Lowe (Everett McGill) a tormented man who attempts to justify his nocturnal murders by saying he is “saving sinners” as his targets consist of a drunk, a woman thinking about abortion and an abusive jerk – his murder of a twelve-year-old kid for being a bit of a dick seems a little harsh – and this is an interesting take on a person and their handling of the werewolf curse, but when he grows fur and claws he not only becomes less interesting but also decidedly less scary.

 

This guy is way more frightening than any damned werewolf.

Stray Observations:

• The movie is narrated by Jane despite the fact many of the events she talks about were not witnessed by her.
• The werewolf climbs a garden trellis to access a second-story window. Considering the size of the monster that is one sturdy trellis.
• A vigilante mob is formed to hunt for what they assume to be a serial killer, but why do they end up in the fog-shrouded woods? None of the preceding kills happened in the woods so why would the townsfolk think they’d find the killer there?
• None of the survivors of the lynch mob massacre comment on the fact that they were clearly attacked by a creature and not a man.
• The Sheriff goes to confront a possible serial killer alone and at night. He clearly knows that he’s in a horror movie and thus gets what's coming to him.
• The nightmare church sequence provided dozens of better werewolves than what we got with Carlo Rambaldi’s monster.

 

Note: Special effects supervisor Michael McCracken provided this wonderful moment.

As a Stephen King adaptation, Silver Bullet is fairly faithful to the source material, or at least when compared to many of the other Stephen King adaptations out there, but as a horror movie it’s a bit of a mess and the film’s constant tonal shifts can leave some viewers wondering if what they are watching is supposed to be funny or scary. What does work is the dynamic between Corey Haim, Megan Follows and Gary Busey as it is this aspect that grounds the film, and then with Everett McGill menacing performance as the self-righteous reverend, we have something that more than makes up for a less than convincing werewolf costume.

 

Note: Gary Busey with a gun, also scarier than this film's werewolf.

Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! (2020) – Review

The Scooby gang have tackled a variety of ghost and goblins over the years, albeit mostly it was some dude in a mask but the point still stands, yet surprisingly not all that many of their mysteries revolved around the spookiest day of the year and with Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! we not only find the gang trying to celebrate the holiday in their hometown of Crystal Cove they also encounter The Scarecrow, one of DC comics classic villains, so what could go wrong?

The movie begins with you standard cold open, with the "Mystery of the Haunted Scarecrow" already in progress, where we find the Scooby gang working undercover on Elvira Mistress of the Dark’s Halloween parade float, but when Mystery Incorporated puts their trap into motion, well, to be more accurate an app on Fred’s cellphone, we get the big reveal that the "Haunted Scarecrow" was none other than the infamous supervillain The Scarecrow aka Dr. Johnathan Crane (Dwight Schultz), who had recently escaped from Arkham Asylum and now threatens our heroes with drones armed with his patented fear gas.  Luckily for everyone involved that Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo's (Frank Welker) love for holiday gives them the ability to shoot drones out of the sky with well-aimed Halloween candy, spitting the stuff at the drones with anti-aircraft gun precision, but one must ask, “Where the hell is Batman?”

 

“He’s at home, washing his tights!”

The lack of the Dark Knight in this mystery is rather odd, what with the fact that Batman has crossed paths with the Scooby gang on multiple occasions, yet in a mystery that has one of his most notorious rogues at center of things not only is the cape crusader missing but he’s not even mentioned. I’m totally cool with Batman not solving this caper but couldn’t he have at least shown up for a cameo, or does Batman not exist in this particular Scooby-Doo continuity?  The interesting thing here is that while being carted away by the authorities, Crane warns Velma (Kate Micucci) that “I may be the one in chains but we are both in the same trap” and before you can say “Ruh Roh” fear gas is mixing with some spilled toxic waste, which then runs into a nearby pumpkin patch, where it causes pumpkins to mutate into horrifying Jackal-Lanterns that then proceed to terrorize the townsfolk of Crystal Cove.

 

I’d have loved it if the “Silver Shamrock” jingle started to play at this point.

A key thing to take note of here is that there really isn’t much of a mystery to found within the eighty-minute running-time of Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo as we are given no suspects and the big final reveal comes completely out of left field.  It turns out that the culprit was the town’s Sheriff (David Herman) who is actually a man named Culter Toe, the head of tech company that made the drones used to create the Jackal-Lanterns, but why does this man have a hard-on for our heroes and Crystal Cove?  Well, it seems he also had a history with Mystery Incorporated as years ago he was the man behind the mystery of the "Trash Monster of Scranton" – some off-camera adventure we get to see in a flashback – and after being released from jail he began to disguise himself as a local Sheriff so as to drive the gang out of business, which would then have allowed him free reign to mine the valuable lithium crystals located beneath Crystal Cove.  Now, one must admit that’s a pretty big info-dump for your last act reveal yet the idea of a villain pretending to be a Sheriff to discourage the Scooby gang from crime-solving was pretty ingenious it's just too bad this clever pay-off was part of a rather lacklustre Scooby adventure.

 

The smell is from the script, not the Trash Monster.

In many of the Scooby-Doo adventures, the villain’s technology on display are complete and utter cheats, pterodactyl hang-gliders and the like, and Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! is no different as the "Jackal-Lanterns" as depicted here are clearly monsters, having legs and tentacles with the ability to bite and capture their prey, and thus they are certainly not some lightweight drone with four propellers as revealed at the film’s conclusion. Of course, this is a Scooby-Doo cartoon and absurd villain plots are what we’ve come to see but where this movie really failed was in its very story structure, we can forgive ludicrous elements if the whole hangs together.  In this outing, we have the Scooby gang “saving” the town from The Scarecrow, followed by “real” pumpkins monsters attacking the town but, sadly, the bulk of the movie is taken up by a rather boring car chase with our heroes fleeing for their lives from the vehicles being operated by the Jackal-Lanterns, which, once again, is something a drone inside a pumpkin would not be capable of bloody well doing!

 

“Scoob, I call bullshit on this entire endeavour.”

Stray Observation:

• A grown-up Red Herring from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo can be seen attending the Halloween Parade.
• One of the parade floats is from "Frankenstein Jr. and the Incredibles!" which means maybe someday we will get a proper crossover with that show.
• The Scooby gang had their first “encounter” with Elvira Mistress of the Dark in Return to Zombie Island.
• Daphne is given a rather bizarre personality makeover that has her going total Single White Female with her attempt at becoming Elvira.
• Daphne denies having a circus history despite her time as a clown in Big Top Scooby-Doo!
• Why is Velma so upset that she wrongly accused the Scarecrow of the crime? Not only is he an escapee from Arkham Asylum but did she also forget that once he was caught he instigated a failsafe program that would have covered the whole town with his fear gas??
• Eating Scooby Snacks apparently allows you to mind-meld. Who knew?
• Fred’s trap obsession reaches its peak when he goes full-on Arnie from The Predator when the Mystery Machine is destroyed.

 

“If it bleeds we can kill it.”

The film’s ridiculous plot and the shoddy story structure was certainly a problem but Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! was also another entry that takes Velma in the direction of being the gang’s resident skeptic, thus denying the existence of any previous adventure where actual supernatural creatures were involved, and I hate this. This was most painful in Return to Zombie Island but it's no better here and made worse by also having Velma act needless cruel towards Shaggy and Scooby and also by stating such nonsensical lines as “I’m not afraid of you, Crane, fear is an illogical reaction to an imagined threat.” That is not what fear is, did Velma not take any psyche courses while in school? Fear is a necessary emotion as it alerts us to the presence of danger or the threat of harm, whether that danger is physical or psychological, and it exists to keep one safe. With this moronic psychobabble the movie tries to give Velma some kind of character arc where she discovers it was her fear of being wrong that was the problem, seriously, that’s the big reveal in this movie.

 

Character assassination, thy name is Velma.

Did I mention that our heroes get help from Bill Nye the Science Guy? Having appeared in an episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who I guess the writers thought it'd be fun to use him again and thus they created a subplot where Bill Nye has created a high tech Mystery Machine after the original vehicle was damaged, and to say this inclusion was unnecessary and distracting would be a vast understatement. His addition to the story is guilty of being both annoying as well as highlighting the idiocy of the Scooby gang – once again Fred (Frank Welker) is depicted as a trifle thick, as well as being insanely obsessed with both the Mystery Machine, while Daphne’s (Grey Griffin) behaviour verges on the truly bizarre with her obsession over Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) and her out-of-the-blue spouting of old cliché catchphrases, which is just weird, but all that could be overlooked if the story itself had made a lick of sense or at least wasn’t so bloody tiresome. Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! isn’t the worst of the Direct-to-Video Scooby-Doo movies and the animation on display is fairly decent, but this entry is definitely guilty of wasting a great member of Batman’s rogues' gallery and an even poorer treatment of the Scooby gang.

 

Though, to be fair, Daphne is allowed a moment or two to shine.

Flash Gordon (1980) – Review

In the early 70s, a young filmmaker by the name of George Lucas wanted to make an exciting space opera that harkened back to the serials of Flash Gordon that he grew up watching, unfortunately, securing the licensing rights to the stories of Flash Gordon’s adventures ended up being strangely difficult to obtain so he went off to make his own space fantasy movie, something called Star Wars. Enter renowned Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis who upon seeing Lucas's little film becoming the biggest grossing picture of all-time he quickly obtained the rights and greenlit his own Flash Gordon movie.

 

With the opening line “Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?” delivered by the great Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless, one must quickly accept what kind of movie you are about to watch. Flash Gordon is a rock opera with a visual style verging between the absurd and the beautiful, and though it derives its roots from the same material that spawned Star Wars it is clear that this film lies heavily in the genre of camp as its tongue in cheek delivery of goofy dialogue, arch-villains and Femme Fatales vamping around various exotic locals was not meant to be taken too seriously. Or was it? What is interesting to learn is that producer Dino De Laurentiis had every intention of audiences taking his Flash Gordon very seriously as he'd been a fan of the character since his childhood, but then he hired screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. to pen the script, which is an odd choice to provide a serious take on the character as Semple J. was most recently known for helping to create the campy Adam West Batman series.

 

“Holy despotic emperors, Batman!”

When it came to updating the story from its original 1930s setting not much really had to be changed as most of the plot takes place on the fantastical planet of Mongo and thus it was only our Earthling heroes who needed a bit of modern tweaking. In the original comic strip, Flash Gordon was a handsome polo player and Yale graduate while in this 1980s version Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) is now a star football player and decidedly not a Yale graduate. In his portrayal of Flash Gordon actor Sam Jones gives the character a sense of innocence and naiveté whose simple nature grounds all the ludicrous and over the top elements of the world surrounding him. He’s teamed up with travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) who at first seems to be fulfilling the duties of damsel in distress, as was the case of the character in the comic strip, but in this movie, she has more agency and isn’t found sitting around waiting to be rescued. She may not want to kill the various soldiers of Ming the Merciless but that won’t stop her from ditching her heels and blasting away.

 

Dale Arden is decidedly against harems and forced marriages.

As for the residents of the planet Mongo producer Dino De Laurentiis, and director Mike Hodges, collected some of the best British and Italian actors to fill out the cast. One of the trickier roles to pull off was, of course, that of Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) as the original character was a victim of the racists “Yellow Peril” stereotype in the vein of such East Asian villains as Fu Manchu, and though Sydow does don apparel quite similar to the one found in the pages of the Flash Gordon comic strip his depiction is more European fascist than it is of Eastern origin, case in point, his mental assault on Professor Zarkov (Topol) brings along with it images of Hitler and The Holocaust. Emperor Ming is given second in command that is totally original to this production in the form of the masked figure of Klytus (Peter Wyngarde) whose melodious dulcet voice adds an extra level of menace to the proceedings.

 

Ming the Merciless and his totally not Darth Vader subordinate.

Dale Arden may be the hero's primary love interest but she has her work cut out for her when it comes to competition for Flash’s attention as Ming’s daughter Princess Aura (Ornella Muti) is not only incredibly beautiful but is also extremely cunning and dangerous. She sets her sites on Flash Gordon, despite being involved in two love affairs while also fending off the attentions of Klytus, and she is quite capable of either seducing or killing someone depending on the situation. As to Aura’s relationship with her father, well, that could at best described as either very complicated or downright fucked up. He has no compunctions about having his daughter tortured for information or offering her as a reward to Klytus for a job well done and this leads to her being one of the more “fleshed” out characters. On the other hand, Flash Gordon has no character arc to speak of, there is no “Heroes Journey” for him, and by the end of the film, it is Aura who has changed and become a better person, while both Flash and Dale are basically the same people they were before leaving Earth. Ornella Muti’s performance as Princess Aura is one of the strongest elements in the film and will be the one most noted during repeat viewings.

 

She epitomizes the term Femme Fatale.

One of Aura’s lovers is Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton), the leader of the forest region of Arboria, who in the comic strip was pretty much a Robin Hood knock and so Dalton was outfitted as if he was Errol Flynn from The Adventures of Robin Hood, and like the character of Aura he actually shows some growth by the end of the film, going from being a rival and adversary of Flash’s to being an ally which, again, is more than can be said for our hero. Next, we have Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed), who doesn’t succumb to Aura’s charm but he certainly doesn’t restrain himself when it comes to admiring the female form, and I dare anyone not to fall madly in love with Brian’s performance in this film. The exuberance and energy he displays in Flash Gordon is simply staggering and he easily carries much of the film on the back of his widespread wings as he delivers almost every line as if they're for the audience in the theatre next door.

 

“GORDON'S ALIVE!”

Great cast of actors aside this film would not be so well remembered if not for how absolutely gorgeous it looked and much of this comes from the work of Oscar-winning production and costume designer Danilo Donati who created an incredibly eye-popping collection of locations and costumes to populate the world of Mongo, often to the chagrin of director Mike Hodges, apparently, Donati was rumoured to not even bothering to read a script and, instead, would make things up that inspired his own creative juices which then forced Hodges to be a quite bit more “fluid” with his shooting and storytelling than he was used to, but one can’t argue with the result as visually speaking this film is a pop art masterpiece.

Stray Observations:

• The opening title sequence uses panels from the original King Features comic strip and many of them show a sword-wielding swashbuckling Flash Gordon, not quite what we get with this football star version of which Sam Jones is playing
• I love that Ming’s disaster machine, which has buttons for such things as earthquakes, hurricanes and meteor storms, also has a setting for “Hot Hail” because, why not?
• Ming seemed strangely fixated on an aircraft whose passengers consisted solely of a football star and a travel agent.
• Zarkov’s conservatory/launching pad looks as if it was designed for Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror.
• Flash Gordon isn’t much of a fighter until he gets a “football” in his hands.
• To escape being raped by Ming the Merciless Dale Arden roofies one of the slave girls and leaves her in her place, and I always wonder what happened to that poor girl.
• Is Princess Aura an actual blood relation of Ming’s? We are told that Aura is his daughter but when she is whipped it’s clear that she is red-blooded yet when Ming is speared at the end of the film he has green blood. Maybe she was adopted?
• Is the “Trial by Combat” aboard the hawkmen’s floating city only for non-hawkmen because tilting platform over an abyss doesn’t seem to be all that much of a threat if you have wings?
• Watching Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin one can’t help but wonder why he was never hired to play Robin Hood.

 

Dalton would certainly have been better at it than Kevin “Bloody” Costner.

One cannot speak of Flash Gordon without pointing out the amazing score by the rock group Queen, with the pounding drums of Roger Taylor and the searing chords of Brian May this movie has some of the best heroic themes ever released, and it should be noted that while the movie failed to set the box office on fire the soundtrack reached number 10 on the United Kingdom charts and number 23 in the United States. But why did Flash Gordon do so poorly in the box office? Well, in fact, it did quite well in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe but with its release in the States it found itself up against the likes of Superman II and The Empire Strikes Back as well as an audience that had become tired of the campiness of the 60s and was ready for more realistic and gritty fare, even when it came to fantasy.

 

Note: The fantastic designs of the ships of Mongo were a wonderful tribute to the style of the original Alex Raymond comic strip as well as that of the serials.

Over the years the 1980s Flash Gordon has slowly grown quite the cult following and with the advent of Bluray and now 4K technology the gorgeous costumes and sets can now be seen as they’ve never been seen before. I hope this latest release will bring new viewers to this wonderful movie as it truly is a film not to be missed and can be equally be enjoyed by the young and the young at heart.