Tales of Halloween (2015) – Review

Horror anthologies can be tricky things to pull off as each story has a relatively short allotted time to provide the set-up, the scares and the punchline.  George Romero’s original Creepshow way back in 1982 is probably the most notable example of how to do this right but we’ve seen some more recent attempts such as 2007’s Trick 'r Treat, which also did a wonderful job of balancing the episodes and connecting it all together. Now in both those cases a single director helmed all the segments, which makes it easier for a coherent structure and theme to be maintained, but with Tales of Halloween there’s not only a different director for each segment but there are ten stories in the anthologies limited 97 minute running time and that's a lot.  So let's take a quick look at each of the segments that makes up Tales of Halloween to see if they were able to pull it off.

 

"Sweet Tooth"

In this first segment, directed by Dave Parker, we get a babysitter and her boyfriend telling her young charge about the legend of “Sweet Tooth” who apparently was a young boy whose parents let him trick or treat but then didn’t allow him to eat the candy, which one must admit is kind of dickish, then one fateful Halloween the kid snuck down to find his parents eating all the candy and so he brutally murdered them.  He ate all the candy even the stuff that was already in their bellies. The legend states that if you don’t leave some candy for Sweet Tooth his evil spirit will come and take it…all of it. These two teenage jerks of course told him this story so that they’d be able to pig out on his candy while the poor kid cowered in his bed, and needless to say Sweet Tooth does show up and the two teens pay the ultimate price. This segment has some solid gore and the “Urban Legend” is something one could believe would be told around campfires and on Halloween night.

 

"The Night Billy Raised Hell"

The second segment is by director Darren Lynn Bousman, who is mostly known for directing a couple of the Saw movies and it deals with a hapless kid who is bullied into egging the house of a Halloween curmudgeon. Turns out the neighbour is the Devil himself (Barry Bostwick) and this version of the Devil is not one to spare the rod to spoil the child and his lesson to this kid results in a night of Trick ‘r Treating carnage. Bostwick is clearly having fun with this role, and the episodes twist ending is pretty good, but I’d say the title over sold how much Hell was actually raised.

 

“Trick”

Director Adam Gierasch brings a dark tale of revenge as a pair of couples whose plans to spend their Halloween night getting drunk or stoned ends badly. Their fun time is interrupted when a little girl dressed as witch practically disembowels one of them. This segment had a cool “Children of the Corn” vibe to it but when the motivation behind the killings is revealed things we realize things are even darker than we’d first suspected. The premise and twist to this segment is quite good but it probably would have worked even better if given a full length feature length and not crammed into a ten minute spot.

 

"The Weak and the Wicked"

In this segment we have three teen-age sociopaths harassing trick or treaters until they come across a teen whose parents they’d murdered years ago when they themselves were children. The kid runs from the trio of killers but surprise surprise the bullies soon find themselves on the receiving end of a supernatural ass kicking and blood does fly. Of the ten stories that make up this anthology director Paul Solet’s entry is easily the weakest and as its following another revenge it comes across even lamer, as does the rubber mask of the monster. At least it was one of the shortest episodes.

 

"Grim Grinning Ghost"

Anthology creator Axelle Carolyn helms this segment and it is one of the more moody and atmospheric entries as it follows a poor woman who after leaving a Halloween party finds herself being stalked by a malevolent spirit. The tension and suspense is palpable as the she tries to make it home, not helped by her car breaking down of course, and the use of light and shadows is fantastic and spooky as hell. Sadly it all adds up to just a “gotcha” ending that really undercut all of that the director had managed to achieve up to that point. The result is thirteen minutes of terror that only builds to a weak pay off.

 

“Ding Dong”

This segment is just too fucking bizarre. Director Lucky McKee helms this weird short about a woman so upset at not being able to have children that she becomes some sort of witch/demon who abuses her husband and puts on a creepy act for Trick or Treaters. This segment even starts off with an unnecessary prologue that not only doesn’t reveal anything useful but doesn’t even set-up where the story is going, which sadly is nowhere. This piece should have been jettisoned to allow some of the better ones more breathing room.

 

“This Means War”

Written and directed by Andrew Kasch and John Skipp this segment is the Halloween version of all the Christmas decoration wars we’ve seen in other movies.  In this instance we have a guy with the traditional “Spooky Haunted House” theme going, one he’s been displaying every Halloween for twenty years, but now he must deal with the new neighbours who’s decoration lean more to the Rob Zombie meets Saw kind of thing. Sadly all this leads to is the Halloween rivals fighting each other while the neighbouring residents cheer them on. Another possibly cool premise that went nowhere.

 

"Friday the 31st"

Director Mike Mendez gives us easily the best entry in the anthology with his segment that drops us right in the middle of classic horror movie scene where a Jason Voorhees type killer is stalking what one would normally assume to be the film’s final girl, but then she is brutally killed and aliens show up. Did not see that coming.  A tiny little alien is beamed down from a spaceship and asks the Jason Clone “Trick or Treat?” What follows is very much in the Sam Raimi vein where gore and humor run hand in hand.

 

"The Ransom of Rusty Rex"

Two idiots decide kidnapping is a safer bet than bank robbing in this entry by director Ryan Schifrin and it’s the segment that really has the fun vibe of those old Tales From the Crypt television shows. When these two knuckleheads kidnap the son of a local millionaire they get the shock of their lives when their abductees “father” refuses to pay the ransom. Turns out millionaire Jebediah Rex (John Landis) is more than happy at this turn of events because Rusty isn’t actually his son but a demon that has been harassing him for years. This is a one joke premise that may have gone on a bit longer than it needed to but the laughs are good and it had the perfect E.C. comic ending.

 

"Bad Seed"

What’s a Halloween anthology without a killer pumpkin? Well in this last installment, directed by the great Neil Marshall, that is exactly what we get as we follow a police detective as she tries to track down a murderer who is clearly not your garden variety killer. Pun intended.  This is a fun segment but is also another one that would have worked so much better as feature length movie; Kristin Klebe as Detective McNally is given no real character to work with as she runs from crime scene to crime scene and even Joe Dante’s cameo as a scientist can't save this good premise from being criminally wasted. The segment ends with a silly cliffhanger that is a clear nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark but only makes you wish you were watching that film instead. If given a movie of its own Bad Seed could have been the new Jack Frost but as is stands it’s kind of a flat ending to what is a rather so-so anthology.

Stuffing ten horror stories into a 97 minute movie was a bit of a gamble and sadly it didn’t pay off, the few segments that work almost do it in spite of how they were crammed into the anthologies framework, which is kind of held together by the voice of radio DJ that is provided by Adrienne Barbeau in what I’m assuming is a nod to her character in John Carpenter’s The Fog. All ten stories take place in this one town, with some characters popping in and out of each other’s segments, but in the final shakedown what we are left with are a bunch of promising ideas cut short and some that should have been cut completely.  This isn’t a terrible horror anthology but with the amount of talent on hand I was hoping for better.

Geostorm (2017) – Review

Geostorm is a political/thriller/science fiction action film disguised as a disaster movie; the marketing of this film is clearly hoping to get fans of such films as The Day After Tomorrow and San Andreas, but even though this film does contain moments of massive destruction as nature runs amok this movie is more about Gerard "Action Star" Butler running around a space station while his idiot friends scramble from location to location in an attempt to uncover a major conspiracy that could end the world as we know it. If that premise seems at odds with what the trailer showed you welcome to the world of “Bait and Switch” as Geostorm has more in common with the James Bond film Moonraker than it does with any disaster film.

 

Note: This moment from the poster doesn’t even remotely happen.

The film begins with narration explaining how the world was reaching the end of days due to global warming and extreme weather until brilliant scientists Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) developed a weather satellite system called “Dutch Boy” that could control climate on a global scale, but unfortunately bureaucratic assholes like Senator Cross (Richard Schiff) don’t like Jake’s straight shooting attitude and he is fired by his younger brother Max Lawson (Jim Sturgess) who works under Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom (Ed Harris), a character who practically screams “I’m the real villain” the moment he appears on screen. Three years later we find Jake living in a trailer near Cape Canaveral with his precocious little girl Hannah (Talitha Eliana Bateman), the cute and smart daughter/son are almost a requirement in these type of films, and they are visited by Max who informs Jake that something has gone terribly wrong with Dutch Boy.

 

These people from a village in Afghanistan would have to agree.

President Andrew Palma (Andy Garcia) wants Dutch Boy fixed before its official handover to the international community, which is to take place in a few months, and thus Jake is pulled out of retirement, launched into space, and thrown into an investigation that quickly starts to look more like sabotage than it does a mechanical malfunction. Meanwhile on the ground Max gets help from his friend Dana (Zazie Beetz), a Department of Defense hacker and not the love interest, and the two of them uncover a mysterious plan called “Project Zeus” which is a program meant for simulating extreme weather patterns in an effort to create something called a Geostorm.

 

Owning beachfront property is never a good thing in these movies.

Could there be nefarious parties secretly working to turn Dutch Boy into some kind of super weapon? Of course there are, and this leads to sinister agents eliminating any one who could be a threat to Project Zeus, and by this I mean over-elaborate murders and insanely silly car chases fill up way too much of this film's screen time. Lucky for us Max is secretly dating a Secret Service agent Sarah Wilson (Abbie Cornish) who is on the President’s personal detail and she is able to grant the White House access, and sadly she is this movie's love interest and it is terribly lame. Seriously, this film spends an inordinate amount of screen time on a stupid subplot about their "illicit relationship" that literally has nothing to do with anything.

 

You will be begging for these two to make the Romeo & Juliet suicide pact.

When we are not dealing with unfunny rom-com moments earthside, with the two blandest people on the planet, the movie will subject us to Gerard Butler running around a space station as he tries to uncover the saboteur and remove the virus that has turned his baby into the Death Star. He is teamed up with Ute Fassbinder (Alexandra Maria Lara), the International Space Station's current commander, and we can only thank our lucky stars the film doesn’t have enough time to turn this dynamic into another painful love subplot. In the short time spent on the space station we come to the conclusion that Jake Lawson is a cross between James Bond and The Terminator as he survives several attempts on his life that would have killed any normal man. So while Jake is fighting for his life Dutch Boy is targeting cities across the globe as it works its way up to the “Geostorm” event, and the clock is ticking, and I mean literally as the movie ends with Jake racing a countdown to the end of the world.

 

And wasn't kidding about that Death Star comment.

Now earlier Max’s friend and whistle blower Cheng Long (Daniel Wu) informed him that if these “malfunctions” continue the world will suffer from "Geostorm" an unstoppable chain reaction of extreme weather patterns globally and simultaneously, yet when Jake *spoiler warning* is able to take Dutch Boy offline, with mere seconds to spare, the disastrous weather events stop almost instantly. THAT IS NOT HOW WEATHER WORKS! Now one doesn’t expect to see accurate science in movies of this nature but there is a fine line between the ridiculous science of something like The Day After Tomorrow and the insulting nonsense we are subjected to in Geostorm.

 

At times one wonders if we'd stumbled into one of those other disaster films.

This is Dean Devlin’s first time in the director’s chair, having produced such successful films as Stargate and Independence Day, and it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s doing in this position. He’s even credited as one of the writers so he can’t even hide behind its failure because of bad source material. The plot of Geostorm is ludicrous, the characters barely qualify as two dimensional stock types, and the disaster stuff that everyone had paid to see isn’t all that jaw dropping. I’m not saying the CGI wasn’t top notch it’s just that none of it pacts any emotional weight, there is no sense of awe or gravitas when these occasional moments (and I do mean occasional as they only really pop in just to keep the audience from falling asleep) do show up its all sound and fury signifying nothing. Save your money and watch a Sharknado movie on Netflix at least there you expect to get cartoon characters and cheesy dialog.

Final Thoughts:

• The man who invented the satellite system that saved the world is reduced to living in a trailer? You’d think he’d be able to afford at least a little cabin new Cape Canaveral.
• When Jake arrives at the International Space Station none of the department heads recognize him. Didn’t he save the fucking world three years ago, wouldn’t his face been on Time Magazine at least once or twice? And aren’t those idiots working inside a facility he designed and helped build?
• Once again we are treated to people trying to out run the cold. It was dumb in The Day After Tomorrow and even dumber here.
• And exactly why must Sarah keep her relationship with Max a secret? Is there some law that states Secret Service agents can’t date?
• The villain targets the city he is currently visiting, barely making it out before lightning blows up the building he just exited, is that not really bad planning?

 

Couldn’t he call in sick that day?

Annabelle: Creation (2017) – Review

Universal may have hit a stumbling block with The Mummy, in what they had hoped would be the first chapter in a shared horror universe, but that is certainly not the case over at New Line Cinema where they have released four successful horror movies in The Conjuring/Annabelle series. Even the critically panned Annabelle made over $250 million dollars worldwide, which is pretty good when you consider its budget was just over $6 million, and with each film linking and teasing further installments it’s almost become a license to print money.  So today let us take a hard but fair look at the fourth installment.

Rarely do prequels perform well in comparison to the original but for some reason that isn’t the case with this new crop of horror films; the 2014 horror dud Ouija was followed up by the excellent Ouija: Origin of Evil and now we have Annabelle: Creation that is a prequel and superior follow-up to the 2014 Conjuring spin-off Annabelle. It's like we are living in some kind of Topsy-turvy world.  This prequel jumps back to 1943 where we meet dollmaker Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia), his loving wife Esther (Miranda Otto) and their adorable daughter Bee (Samara Lee); they were a happy family with Samuel being a good father and devoted husband, as well as being an admired toymaker, but because this is a horror move we know that can't last for long and before you can say "Speed Bump" little Bee is killed in a tragic automobile accident. The movie then jumps a head twelve years as we are introduced to Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman) and a group of orphan girls bussing in to stay at the Mullins’ house because their orphanage was closed. The reasoning behind the Mullins' kind offer is tad on the moronic side but as it's a bit of a spoiler I won't get into that here.  It’s not too long before one of the girls is finding a locked room suddenly open, a hidden key in a dollhouse that reveals a secret closet, and a creepy-ass doll sitting inside.

Note: Director David F. Sandberg softened the doll’s features to make it more believable as a child’s toy, but he clearly failed as it still looks creepy as hell.

Annabelle: Creation does provide excellent spooky atmosphere and the prerequisite number of jump scares; the house is sprawling and full of shadows, there is a dumbwaiter for our heroes to hide in, a masked woman that possibly haunts the halls, we even have creepy music being played on a child’s record player to provide the proper amount of goosebumps, and we also get the ever popular eerie figure seen standing in the background or caught as a fleeting glimpse. Everything an audience could want from a scary movie and more.  In fact the modern horror formula solidified by Jams Wan, that he kickstarted back in 2010 with his film Insidious, is now being used by a variety of directors to lesser degrees of success, and with Annabelle: Creation you can almost predict the jump scares and spooky moments with a stopwatch.

Now this is not to say that Annabelle: Creation is a bad movie, quite the contrary as all those techniques are effective regardless of how many times they’ve been used before, but don’t go into this movie expecting to see anything revolutionary. What does make this movie stand out is the performances by the young actresses who play two of orphan girls; Janice (Talitha Eliana Bateman) crippled by polio and forced to use a crutch and a leg brace, and her best friend Linda (Lulu Wilson) who is more sensible when encountering creepy dolls in the dark. These two actresses steal the movie away from all the ghosts and goblins.

 

Their prayers may not be answered here but I bet their agents are getting a few calls now.

One of my pet peeves with horror movies is that when rules are established they are often broken just because the plot requires it, but in the case of The Conjuring and Annabelle movies the filmmakers do their best to not give much in the way of rules so as avoid this problem. Unfortunately this can cause even more problems as it leaves the audience unclear as to what the evil forces can and cannot do. In these movies demonic forces try and possess our characters in a variety of ways but just what steps the demons must follow is never made clear, nor is what powers the demons have in the mortal world.  This causes problems when it comes to discerning what kind of threat the demons provide and how our protagonist can stop them. If a demon can jump a small child and instantly possess her or if it can rip an adult into two gory halves without much effort just how are we to believe anyone stands a chance?

 

Do powerful demons have to resort to picking on little girls in wheelchairs?

In this movie girls will scream but for some reason no one in the house can hear them, that is until at other times when a scream is heard and people come rushing to see what's going on, and it’s this kind of inconsistency that makes for a troubling story. Do the demons have power to localize audio or are we to believe the other residents in the home very heavy sleepers? An even worse example of this type of inconsistency is the ability for the demonic force to open doors and dumbwaiters at will but then for some reason when a major character slams and locks a door the demon is left outside banging futilely. Is the demon actually thwarted by the locked door or is it just fucking around with them so that it can jump out at them later? The doll can clearly teleport at well so why can’t the demon?  It's these kind of questions that the filmmakers hope you are too engrossed in the terror of the situation to notice, and to be fair most of the time they're probably right. Annabelle: Creation is full of people running up and down corridors with things chasing them, or crawling and hiding when possible, and I’d have been just a little happier if I knew they had a chance.

 

Who do you think will survive?

If the evil in your movie can kill at will one has a hard time believing a plucky little girl could stand a chance but that is what is expected of us when viewing Annabelle: Creation, and during the film’s final act our suspension of disbelief is stretched well past the breaking point as the scenery practically explodes around our heroes. That all said the film does succeed at being scary, which is really the film’s sole job and by this criteria it clearly succeeded, but I wish they’d played a littler fairer with the “rules” and maybe spent less time establishing further chapters and gave us more backstory on the evil forces that are put in play.

 

And can someone please mail that thing to the Vatican?

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) – Review

When it comes to blending genres comedy and scares go hand in hand beautifully, the Abbott and Costello monster movies for Universal Pictures being classic examples of this, and it was in 1966 that Universal Pictures once again dove into the horror/comedy world when they enlisted the king of cowardice Don Knotts for their take on the “Haunted House” movie.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was inspired by an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, funnily enough called “Haunted House” and featured Don Knotts who played Deputy Barney Fife entering a supposed haunted house looking for a lost baseball, so it's no surprise that years later Knotts would start a multiple-movie deal at Universal with a movie that would revisited that very premise. To make the whole project even more synergistic it was directed by Allan Rifkin who was one of The Andy Griffith Show’s most prolific directors, and along with him were two of the series writers and several cast members. At a glance The Ghost and Mr. Chicken could almost be mistaken for a theatrical version of that show and the town the movie takes place in could easily double for Mayberry RFD with the names changed to protect the innocent…or protect those guilty of copyright violations.

 

“You’re out of order, I’m out of order, and this whole backlot town is out of order!”

Like some of the best haunted house movies The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is more a mystery than it is a horror movie, no long haired ghosts crawl creepily down stairs in this movie, in fact whether or not there is even an actual supernatural presence is thrown into question. The movie follows the adventures of Luther Heggs (Don Knotts), a typesetter at small town newspaper who dreams of becoming a reporter, and his big break which involves staying the night inside the town’s notorious “Murder House” to report on his experiences there. Unfortunately for Luther he is pretty much the butt of many a joke to the town’s populace due to his excitable nature, hysterically reporting a murder when the supposed victim is standing behind you doesn’t help, and only local beauty Alma Parker (Joan Staley) has any faith in him; sure editor and owner of the paper George Beckett (Dick Sargent) seems to be on Luther’s side but when things look bad even he abandons poor Luther.

 

You’d think someone married to a witch would be more understanding

Central to the plot is the Murder House itself and its sordid history; twenty years ago Mr. Simmons apparently murdered his wife and then killed himself, jumping from the organ loft after playing one final refrain, and now two decades later Nicholas Simmons (Philip Ober), nephew of the deceased couple, intends to demolish the mansion once the lean on it from the bank is cleared. The one fly in the ointment is of course Luther Heggs, who after his chilling report of strange knocking on the walls, secret passages, the cobwebbed organ playing itself and the portrait Mrs. Simmons bleeding from gardening sheers stuck in her neck, has the town getting all caught up in Ghost Fever. Mrs. Halcyon Maxwell (Reta Shaw), the wife of head banker and holder of 51 percent of the bank’s controlling interest, is the head of the local spiritualist club called “Psychic Occult Society of Rachel” and she prevents her husband from signing over the bank to the nephew. Nicholas Simmons being very eager to see the place bulldozed sues Luther and the paper for libel citing that the article Luther wrote damaged his family name.

 

Is his family name Munster or Addams?

I’m not sure how you could sue a paper for printing a ghost story about your family’s decrepit mansion.  What kind of evidence would be allowed on either side is beyond me, but more importantly just how much damage could you cause a “Family Name” when said name is already connected to a notorious murder/suicide?

The courtroom scene in this movie is certainly not on par with such great courtroom moments found in films like Twelve Angry Men or even A Miracle on 34th Street but Don Knott's explosive crumbling on the stand makes it work and it's really quite funny.  Yet everything is made even more ridiculous by the judge (George Chandler) deciding that the only way to settle this case is to visit the Simmons mansion at midnight, apparently if the ghosts don’t appear for the judge and jury the verdict will be against Luther and the paper.  How does that make a lick of sense?  I think even a judge in a hick town full of rubes would get kicked off the bench after such a ruling. Of course this movie is a comedy and not to be taken as a serious look at the American Justice System in Middle America, it’s about world class scaredy-cat Luther Heggs and his night of terror.

 

To be honest I'm not sure I'd fare any better than Luther.

Comedy or not when I was a little kid the stuff with Don Knotts in that house terrified me; finding the secret passage way, heading up to the organ loft to discover Mr. Simmons bloody fingerprints still on the organ’s keys, and hearing the organ began to play its haunting refrain, it all scared the bejeebers out of me. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is one of those comedy classics that I can watch again and again; the direction by Alan Rifkin is pitch perfect, the cast of character actors led by Don Knotts are all wonderful (especially Playboy Playmate Joan Staley who is our heroes love interest), and the importance of the score by composer Vic Mizzy cannot be overstated. If you have little ones that want to watch something scary on Halloween, but you don't want a film that will give them nightmares, this could be what you're looking for.

Trivia Note: The film’s original working title was Running Scarred but it was changed to The Ghost and Mr. Chicken as humorous riff on the classic film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017) – Review

With the success that Warner Animation had with last year’s release of Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders it’s no surprise that they’d give the classic campy world of 1960s Batman another spin, and back are Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar to provide voices to their most iconic creations. But alongside them an icon in his own right William Shatner joins are trio of television legends to lend his voice to one of Batman’s most dangerous adversary but also one who never got the chance to make an appearance on the original Batman series.

In a pre-credit sequence we find Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) being asked by his friend District Attorney Harvey Dent (William Shatner) to oversee a radical experiment to be performed by Doctor Hugo Strange (Jim Ward); with the assistance of Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Sirena Irwin) Hugo Strange will attempt to use his "Evil Extractor" to remove the evil essence to be found in the volunteering criminals; Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Egghead and Mr. Freeze, but of course things go wrong when the supervillains begin to laugh maniacally which causes the machine to overload and explode. Quick action by Batman manages to spare his pal Harvey from the full blast but enough of the evil toxic cloud hits Dent and horribly scars one side of his face.

 

“Holy, new origin story Batman!”

Now this movie isn’t about the birth and rise of Two-Face, all that is brilliantly covered in a nice montage of Batman and Robin fighting Two-Face over the years, but the story really begins at the hospital where reconstructive surgery has not only restored Harvey Dent’s face but his sanity as well. Of course the years of terrorizing the populace of Gotham City cannot completely be overlooked so Harvey has to settle for being the assistant to the Assistant District Attorney. Bruce Wayne is happy to have his old college chum back on the straight and narrow but not so happy is Robin who is not only jealous of this rekindled friendship but also of all the time Batman spins visiting Catwoman (Julie Newmar) in prison.

 

The romance in this outing is one of the shows highlights.

Before Batman can sit back and relax he and Robin are called into action when King Tut and his Tutlings steal a valuable bi-plane and hi-jack a millionaire party on a double-decker bus, and then the Bookworm must be thwarted in his plans to steal rare editions of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde and A Tale of Two Cites. It doesn’t take the Caped Crusader long to realize that these arch enemies are committing crimes that all have duality themes to them and that of course spells Two-Face. Batman can’t believe his reformed friend is behind these dastardly crimes but Robin is more than eager to see his rival pushed out of the limelight, and this leads to Robin rushing off on his own and getting into double trouble. Turns out someone has taken up the Two-Face mantle and has teamed-up with disgraced Hugo Strange to use his “Evil Extractor” create a gas that will mutate people into Two-Face versions of themselves.

 

How this gas results in the deforming of only half of your body is never explained.

What mastermind is setting up Gotham’s top criminals? Is there a new Two-Face in town? Could the reformed Harvey Dent be involved? Will Batman and Catwoman ditch Robin and go on a well-earned romantic getaway? All these questions and more are answered in the exciting action packed entry. As in the previous film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders director Rick Morales is at the helm and once again he manages to capture the vibrant madcap fun that made the original live action series so entertaining, and not only do Batman’s top rogues gallery show up as they did last time out we also get appearances of not only King Tut and Bookworm but Mr. Freeze, Egghead, Shame, Clock King all pop in to join Joker, Penguin and the Riddler in an auction for Batman’s secret identity.

 

How can they possibly get out of this predicament?

Batman vs. Two-Face has the campy fun of the Adam West television series but it also has great nods to the original comics from Batman’s golden age; with giant props and death traps that fill this film’s 72 minute running time to the brim with excitement. As to what the great William Shatner brings to the table...well he manages to readily hold his own against Adam West in giving a nuanced and tragic portrayal of a man tortured by his duality.  While all the other villains are camping it up Shatner’s Harvey/Two-Face plays it just as straight as Adam West does his Batman. The two worked very well together and I would have loved to see them in further entries, but alas with the passing of Mister West this will never come to pass and though this is a farewell to character beloved by millions it at least it went out with a BANG, a BOFF and a big KAPOW.

 

Adam West, you will be missed.

Burnt Offerings (1976) – Review

If something seems too good to be true it most likely is; this age old adage is no better exemplified in the horror genre, whether it’s a Monkey’s Paw or a cemetery that supposedly can bring back your dead loved ones you just know there is going to be a catch. Today we will look at the 1976 film Burnt Offerings, directed by Dan Curtis and based on the book of the same name by novelist Robert Marasco.  Both book and movie deal with a typical American family getting a sweet deal on a summer vacation home, needless to say it all ends in tears.

The broad strokes of the plot is about how this family moves into the big ole house and how the evil inherent in the structure possesses one of them and has that person try to kill the rest of the family. Now if you are thinking, “Hey, isn’t that the plot of Stephen King’s The Shinning?” Well you’d be right, but The Shinning wasn’t published until 1975 while Robert Marasco’s book came out in 1973 and Stephen King himself has listed Burnt Offerings as novel well worth checking out in his own book Danse Macabre. Now even though they do share similar premises there wasn’t enough to get lawyers involved so take that for what it's worth, and for one the house in Burnt Offerings is lot smaller than the Overlook Hotel.

 

Note: The Dunsmuir House where this film was shot later became more famous as the funeral home in the horror film Phantasm.

The movie opens with Marian (Karen Black), her husband Ben (Oliver Reed), along with their son David (Lee H. Montgomery) arriving at this rundown neo-classical 19th-century mansion to see if it would be suitable for a vacation spot. They are shocked to discover this 37-room mansion though rundown is being offered insanely cheap and they at first can’t imagine being able to afford rent, and this leads to my first question, “What were they expecting? Are we to believe they drove all the way from the big city in response to an ad that didn’t provide a picture or even a brief description of the place?” I’m not saying these people deserved to get possessed and killed by an ancient evil force but a little due diligence on their part may have ended this all before it began. Yet things get even dodgier when they meet the owners; Arnold (Burgess Meredith) and Roz Allardyce (Eileen Heckart), a brother and sister team who if not a few bats short of a belfry are eccentric enough to ring warning bells in Ben's head. When questioned about the upkeep of the house Roz informs Ben that, “The house takes care of itself.” This kind of foreshadowing should get any sensible person running for the hills.

 

In the 70s you weren’t a true horror film if Burgess Meredith didn’t at least make a cameo.

When the prospective tenants are told that the rent would only be $900 for the entire summer Ben immediately suspects there must be a catch, and it being a definite fixer upper isn’t apparently an issue, but there is one stipulation as the Allardyces inform them of a particularly odd requirement for their rental; it seems their mother will continue to live in her upstairs room and the Rolfs will be required to provide her with three meals a day during their stay. Great rental deal or not the weird siblings and the idea of having the responsibility of an eighty-five year old woman is a deal breaker for Ben and he’s more than ready to walk away from the whole thing, but the house has already sunk it’s hooks into Marian and she is able to convince Ben to go along with it.

Now the Allardyce house isn’t your typical haunted mansion as there are no spectral figures roaming the halls, nothing goes bump in the night nor do the walls bleed, but instead it is more like a vampire in that it survives by sucking the life force from its inhabitants, feeding off their pain and suffering. When we first see the house’s large greenhouse it is full of dead plants but after young Davey skins his knee while playing in the yard suddenly one of the dead plants has a fresh green sprout, and of course that is only the beginning.

 

“It’s going to swallow our souls, isn’t it?”

Joining our little group is Ben’s Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) who though elderly is full of vim and vigour, that is until the house slowly drains her of energy making her listless and tired all the time, but the real first shots fired is when Ben and Davey’s horsing around in the pool turns dark as Ben suddenly starts to try and drown his son. The kid survives by bashing his father in the face with his scuba mask, drawing blood and snapping his father out of his murderous fugue state, but what is more unusual than a father trying to murder his kid is that Marian tries to placate her husband by telling him that he’s fine and that there is nothing wrong with him.

It’s here that we really start to get indications that something may not be all right with Marian. At first we see her bit perplexed that the food she is leaving for Mrs. Allardyce is being left uneaten, but then once the food begins to disappear as if eaten she still doesn't seem all that suspicious that she still hasn’t met the woman face to face. That none of the Rolf’s have ever seen this old woman is beyond belief, even if the possessed Marian was okay with this oddity you’d think Rolf would at least demand to see the woman they are supposed responsibly for. Any connoisseur of horror films will at this point come to the conclusion that either Mrs. Allardyce is some kind of monster or she doesn’t even exist and as the summer days pass we see Marian beginning to dress in Victorian clothing while also shutting down her husband’s sexual advances, and this eventually leads up to the reveal that it is Marian herself who has been eating Mrs. Allardyce’s meals.

 

A little night time snack of evil.

The film enfolds slowly with us seeing Marian gradually becoming obsessed with the house and her possession by the demonic forces in a very Norman Bates spit personality fashion. As pain and tragedy continues to flourish the house begins to rejuvenate; after the pool incident Marian is shocked to find that the entire pool area has miraculously changed to a pristine condition but later when Ben remarks at the change Marian takes credit for the work. When Aunt Elizabeth suddenly takes ill and dies the greenhouse that was once full of dead flowers now explodes with its colourful bounty, and it is at this point that Ben finally confronts his wife about her obsession with the house, she wouldn’t even leave it to got to the funeral, and when he declares that tomorrow he and Davey will be leaving, “With or without you” the terror kicks into high gear.

While sleeping in an armchair next to Davey, who also survived a second attack by the house when the gas in his room mysteriously turned on all by itself and almost asphyxiated him, Ben is awoken by the sound of the house shedding its old shingles and sidings. He grabs his son and they flee the house only to have their escape cut off by a fallen tree, and when Ben tries to work the tree to the side he is attacked by the surrounding plant life.

 

Lucky for Ben these aren’t Evil Dead trees so they don’t try and rape him.

This movie is not a special effects extravaganza, evil forces aren’t constantly grabbing our heroes and dragging them into the darkness, but instead the film’s almost two hour running time consists of no real showy horror moments as the film is more about the family being mentally destroyed than it is about ghosties and goblins. The closest the film gets to an iconic horror character is the introduction of a nightmarish hearse chauffeur (Anthony James) who has plagued Ben’s dreams since his mother’s death when he was a child.  His grinning visage of death will send chills down the heartiest of spines but as terrifying as he is, and the scene where he rams a coffin at poor dying Aunt Elizabeth is pretty great, he’s just a symptom of the house and not a real physical threat.

 

Well his appearance does eventually cause Ben to go catatonic.

Director Dan Curtis and screenwriter William F. Nolan were not interested in explaining how the house works, we don’t even learn if Roz and Arnold were even human as they could easily be just phantoms created to lure potential victims to the house, and Curtis and Nolan hated the ambiguous ending of the book where the kid drowns in the pool and the catatonic dad cracks his head on the cement poolside as the possessed mother looks on, instead the film has Marian shake off her fugue state when she sees her son drowning and despite the house trying to prevent her she manages to save him.

 

The house has a killer wave pool.

This incident awakens Ben out of his catatonic state and Marian finally comes to the conclusion that maybe it’s time for them to leave, but as they are loading up their family truckster she decides that it wouldn’t be right to leave without going up and giving Mrs. Allardyce their contact information. This is your standard horror movie moment designed to have your audience shouting, “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t go back into that house!” and of course when she fails to come back down Ben goes in looking for her. He heads up to the room of the mysterious Mrs. Allardyce and finds the old lady sitting in an old fashion wheelchair with her back to him. She fails to respond when he asks her where his wife is and when he demands that she answer he spins the chair around to discovers not some strange old crone but his wife, now aged and looking like an evil witch.

 

“I’ve been waiting for you Ben."

This may have some viewers wondering if there ever a Mrs. Allardyce but we never find out and though this ending is not quite the "Mrs. Bates skeleton reveal" from Psycho it's still pretty effective, but unlike Vera Miles in that movie Ben doesn’t fare as well as he is thrown out the window to crash face first into the windshield of their car. Poor Davey rightfully freaks out and races around the house calling for his mother but he's killed when the house’s chimney crumbles and crushes him under a load of falling brick.

 

Poor kid, took the house three tries but it finally got him.

Burnt Offerings is an atmospheric mood piece with the horror being more psychological than overt, and as in Stephen King’s The Shinning it is more about the destruction of the American family unit than it is about ghosts and supernatural nonsense, but it’s slow pacing and two hour run time may find modern horror fans growing a tad antsy. It’s really Karen Black who makes this movie worth checking out as her Norman Bates like split personality possession is pure cinematic gold, one crazy look from her and I’d certainly run screaming from that house, but as the movie doesn’t set any clear rules as to what the house can and cannot do we get the impression that the Rolf family never have stood a chance which does take some of the fun out of it. If you compare this film to Kubrick's version of Stephen King's book the film it's not going to hold up all that well but it is certainly worth tracking down if only to check out Karen Black’s stellar performance.

 

Who will be next?

Rings (2017) – Review

Do you think vengeful spirits hang around the afterlife sharing tips on how to be cryptic or what would be the best ways to annoy the mortal world? Back in 1998 Japanese director Hideo Nakata gave the world the chilling horror film Ring (Ringu) where an angry ghost would crawl out of television set to seek revenge, and then in 2002 Hollywood remade it as The Ring with Gore Verbinski at the helm and kick-started the J-Horror boom in North America, but then The Ring Two was released to poor critical reception as well as lacklustre ticket sales and almost killed it. Now thirteen years after the original film hit theatres we have a third installment which beats the dead horse of the series in ways that even Samara could never have imagined.

As in the first movie Rings has a cold open only instead of two girls discussing a creepy video tape we have a man aboard an airplane who has apparently watched the mysterious video and his seven day grace period is now up.  At first it looks like we are dealing with a guy’s fear of flying until he eventually confides to a fellow passenger that he had watched a spooky tape and then received a chilling call from a girl stating he would die in seven days. I’m guessing we are supposed to assume this idiot believes being 20,000 feet in the air will save him from the vengeful Samara and that no one briefed him on the “Make a copy and show it to someone else” escape clause, but of course Samara does arrive and she pops out of one of the cockpit monitors.

 

“Forget calling the Air Marshall, we need an Exorcist!”

The film jumps ahead two years where we find college Professor Gabriel Brown (Johnny Galecki) checking out a garage sale that apparently contains the property of the dearly departed idiot who died on the plane during the film’s opening. Gabriel purchases an old VCR which he later discovers contains a VHS tape simply labeled “Watch Me” and of course it is the “Death Tape” and after watching it Gabe’s phone rings and a voice tells him, “Seven days” and he then starts seeing weird shit like a fly crawling out his joint, rain falling upwards and the appearance of a stone well outside his apartment.

 

He’s academic so none of this fazes him.

The movie then jumps forward again (we don’t know how far this time but does any really care at this point?) and we are finally introduced to our main protagonists; Holt (Alex Roe) who is bound for college and his girlfriend Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) who will stupidly involve herself in these supernatural shenanigans. It’s when her boyfriend stops returning her calls or texts that she becomes concerned and when she gets a weird Skype call from a strange young woman (Aimee Teergarden) she decides to drive 500 miles to find out what happened to her man.

 

I wonder if Skype paid for this product placement.

When Julia arrives at the college her boyfriend is nowhere to be seen; she pops into a lecture being held by one of his professors and low and behold but it’s good ole Gabriel from our second opening and he denies even knowing who Holt is. Julia follows Gabe to a secure floor that can only be accessed by a private elevator key that she just so happened to have found in Holt’s dorm room.  The elevator opens onto what looks to be a standard office floor but at the end of the corridor there is a camera, a monitor and book titled The Samara Enigma: Neuroscience of the Afterlife. It seems that Gabe is leading a group of students in the exploration of the “Death Tape” and he hopes to prove that souls exist beyond death. We learn that students voluntarily watch the tape which they would then study and report on the weird effects that follow the viewing.  But Gabriel isn't a complete irresponsible idiot so he had set up a sort of "fail safe" where as the countdown to day seven approaches a fellow student would be assigned to the initial viewer and that person, or "tail" as they call themselves, would then watch a copy you made of the video thus allowing the curse to move on to them and spare you a gruesome death.

 

It’s basically a modern version of a chain letter only with the added bonus of possible death.

When Julia spots Gabe talking with the crazy woman from her late night Skype call she follows the girl out of the building, she confronts the woman and is told that she will explain where Holt is after Julia watches something. Three guesses as to what that is and the first two don’t count. Lucky for Julia she intercepts a phone call from Holt to this woman and is warned away from watching the video and thus Samara arrives and kills the idiot woman who was setting Julia up. Holt arrives shortly and explains he didn’t return her calls because he wanted to keep her safe, and I call bullshit on that. All he had to tell her is that he was working on some class project and that he'd be out of contact for seven days, mysteriously vanishing not required.

 

Instead his girlfriend arrives at the Samara party.

The rest of the movie works much in the same way as the original film did with our two leads trying to unravel the mystery of Samara; they study the video and try and deduce where the images came from, they will visit said locations and encounter weird people and dangerous situations and then Samara will try and kill them. The only added bonus here is that one of those people is a blind cemetery caretaker named Burke played by Vincent D’Onofrio and he brings a nice sense of menace to the proceedings, but overall Rings is a complete waste of time and is about as scary as an episode Goosebumps, and not a particular good episode I might add. Neither Julia nor Holt are particularly likable, Johnny Galecki’s attempt to escape his Leonard character from The Big Bang Theory fails miserably, and though the idea of people taking a scientific approach to Samara’s curse was intriguing the film quickly abandons that premise to have our heroes stumble around in the dark for the bulk of the movie.

 

Though seeing Samara climb out of a cellphone was kind of neat.

As a horror movie Rings fails on pretty much every level as it brings nothing new to the party.  When it comes to this kind of horror film rules are very important but in the case of the Ring series they keep changing them for the simple reason of being able to then churn out a couple more sequels. In conclusion if this phone rings don’t bother to answer it.

Final Thoughts and Spoilers:

• Did Samara crash an entire plane to get one dude? Talk about collateral damage.
• Julia’s copy of the video all of sudden has more video hidden in between the frames of the original so that we can get “new” creepy images for our heroes to investigate.
• An image of a burning skeleton leads them to believe that only burning Samara’s remains will lift the curse, but it doesn’t.  Sam and Dean Winchester will be so disappointed.
• Samara is the product of rape yet for decades she seemed “happy” to kill any random person who saw her tape. Someone has to tell her how vengeful spirits are supposed to work.
• The man who imprisoned and raped Samara’s mother blinded himself to escape the reach of his daughter’s powers but when he is confronted at the end of the film Samara cures his blindness so she can kill him. Isn’t this something she could have done years ago?
• Like the previous films it has a hook ending where it’s revealed that “The horror is not over” and in this case its finding out that Julia is now the vessel of Samara’s rebirth and her computer sends copies of the video to all her contacts.  Talk about your nasty computer viruses.

 

Samara will return in…Thunderball.