The Screengrab : halloween

The Slasher Movie Comes of Age

Phil Nugent — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In The Atlantic, James Parker sings the praises of "that most misunderstood of genres," the slasher flick. Actually, Parker doesn't really make a case for the genre being misunderstood so much as boldly step up to declare that he watches them voluntarily, and he can quote Ted Hughes (“Its mishmash of scripture and physics, / With here, brains in hands, for example, / And there, legs in a treetop.” ) and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, which, though a fine rendering of a classic work, does not include an appearance by a naked Angelina Jolie in flesh high heels. "The classic slasher flick," he writes, "is produced at high speed, on a squeaker of a budget, and bows briefly for an anointing of critical scorn before going on to make piles of money. With a bit of luck, that critical scorn will be amplified into cultural censure—1980’s rape-revenge slasher, I Spit on Your Grave, for instance, was widely and windily reviled, to the enduring profit of its makers. 'The more the film was attacked,' writer-director Meir Zarchi confided to Variety last year, 'the more money shot into my pocket.'” He must have done pretty damn well. I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen I Spit on Your Grave, but I remember, as if it were yesterday, the 1981 "special" episode of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's old syndicated movie-reviews TV show Sneal Previews that was set aside for the purpose of heaping scorn and disgust on what were then just beginning to be called slasher (or "splatter") films, with I Spit on Your Grave a prime target. Watching a clip from the movie, in which a bunch of scuzzball louts swaggered around the fallen body of a violated young woman, sandwiched between the TV showmen clucking and posturing about the death of civilization, one felt much as one does at a screening of Freddy vs. Jason: it's not clear who you should root for, but you'd settle for checking off the box marked "None of the Above."

Part of the appeal of slasher movies is that they're disreputable. But the fact that a writer like Parker can admit to having taken pleasure from watching slasher movies in a magazine like The Atlantic shows how far we've come since...well, since 1976, when Harper's, a magazine pretty much on the same social outreach level as The Atlantic, ran Stephen Koch's "Fashions in Pornography", which gave the author a chance to step out onto the heath and rend his garments in appalled despair over the fact that Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had been screened at the Museum of Modern Art. (With the title of his screed, Koch clearly anticipated the current term "torture porn", which New York magazine reviewer David Edelstein is so proud of having coined.) In movie circles, Koch is best known as the author of Stargazer, a classic, admiring survey of Andy Warhol's films, and his dismay at seeing some trashy little drive-in slaughter-fest being garlanded by a prestigious New York City culture institution may partly reflect one man's concern that his fringe cinema of choice be recognized as deserving of a place in the canon before some white trash gorehound's fringe cinema of choice. My grandmother was a good Christian Southern lady, and if a bus containing either Andy Warhol or Tobe Hooper had broken down in front of her house, she would have invited both of them in and gorged them on homemade pie, but she wouldn't have watched the movies made by either gentlemen if she'd been able to borrow someone else's eyeballs.

"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all become respectable if they last long enough," spoke Noah Cross (John Huston) in Chinatown, a movie whose nose-slitting sequence speaks to a part of the audience that has no insurmountable problem with being titillated with a little gratuitous shock and bloodshed, so long as there's a story and big stars to go with it. Back in 1981, maybe nobody seriously expected slasher movies to last this long. But they did, and now they're at least half respectable, partly because those of us who, back then, were just old enough to watch clips from them on Sneak Previews but who couldn't see the movies themselves until they hit cable or Mom and Dad left us alone with the VCR, are now adults who, because this stuff was always there, can imagine stuff that's even worse. Some of these adults are now filmmakers whose job it is to imagine stuff that's even worse. As Parker sees it, "Saw and Hostel succeeded, above all, because they are serious slasher flicks. The extremity of their goriness reclaimed the splatter death from mainstream movies (where it’s become unremarkable to see a man fed screaming to a propeller, or run through with a drill bit). And the immersive nastiness of their aesthetic—decayed bathrooms, foul workshops, seeping industrial spaces, blades blotched with rust—distilled the slasher-flick elixir: atmosphere. No franchise thrives without it."

Parker continues: "Just as crucially, Saw and Hostel feature excellent and novel villains." Saw's Jigsaw is, or if I interpreted the art work on the last installment correctly as I whizzed past it on the subway umpteen times, was, a terminal cancer patient whose Rube Goldberg torture devices are intended to impress upon his victims the importance of appreciating life, an area in which he judges them to have been falling short. And the wealthy businessmen who, in the Hostel series, pay top dollar to torture healthy young American backpackers to death can be taken as some kind of comment on the rapaciousness of the class that brought us the new Depression. Earlier generations of genre filmmakers were a little confused when informed that they were in the social commentary business, but Hostel director Eli Roth talks about it as if he thought he might be eligible for a Pulitzer: "“Thanks to George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld," the insists, "there’s a whole new wave of horror movies.”

What's kind of off-putting is how much of the new wave has hit the beach before, with fewer Roman numerals attached. So far this year we've seen remakes of Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, and Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, a movie so proudly vile that the fact that it could provide fodder for a pricey Hollywood remake--let alone the fact that its director could have gone on to work with Meryl Streep--just about single-handedly carried us all into an alternate universe. Later this year there'll be a sequel to Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's original Halloween. This deluge of remakes may be part of what's now respectable about slasher movies: unless you're the Marquis de Sade, it's hard to come up with a really new take on having a madman run around turning people into kindling, and if your movie is going to look a lot like a lot of other movies, why not latch onto the name of a golden oldie and "honor" it with an official remake rather than imitate it and get tagged as a rip-off artist? If Parker, as a fan of the genre, is concerned that it may finally be killed off by losing its capacity to shock, either from endless repetition or misplaced self-seriousness, he isn't letting on: "In a tolerant spirit," he writes, "the slasher fan gets in line for the new sequel or prequel or remake or 'reboot.' If it’s crap, so what? The next one might be better."

Morning Deal Report: J-Lo’s Clock is Ticking

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Are we still calling Jennifer Lopez “J-Lo”? It seems like that sort of nickname should be reserved for someone who’s still famous. Maybe Plan B will get Lopez back on the A-list. Per Variety, the “story centers on a single woman (Lopez) who turns to artificial insemination to answer her ticking biological clock only to meet the man of her dreams on the same day as her positive pregnancy test results.” Oh no! I’ll bet you a shiny nickel the dream man turns out to be the semen donor.

SXSW has announced its opening night film. “The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival announced today that the DreamWorks Pictures film I Love You, Man will be the 2009 Opening Night film. The De Line Pictures comedy, co-written and directed by John Hamburg (Along Came Polly, co-writer of Meet The Parents, Meet The Fockers, and Zoolander) stars Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones. The film centers on a man who, upon getting engaged, realizes he has no close male friends and must find someone to be the Best Man at his wedding. The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival runs March 13 – 21, 2009 in Austin, Texas.”

Two quick sequel notes (or possibly new elements on the periodic table, I'm not sure): Rob Zombie has signed for H2, the sequel to his own remake of Halloween. Presumably this will not actually be a remake of Halloween II, although it “picks up right as the first remake ended, following the aftermath of Michael Myers' murderous rampage through the eyes of the sister he hunted.” Olivia Wilde has signed on for TR2N. If you don’t know what that is…well, it’s the sequel to Tron. “Jeff Bridges will return in the role he played in the 1982 original, about a hacker who is abducted into the world of a computer and forced to participate in a series of gladiatorial games.” The Dude abides.

Related:
Take Five: Halloween
Unwatchable #71: "Gigli"

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Oct. 25-31, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Hello, kiddies! It’s me, Pennywise the evil clown, and I’ve got a bone to pick with the Screengrabbers this week. In fact I just may PICK THEIR BONES CLEAN. It’s bad enough they showed me no respect in The Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). But to ignore me completely in the Screengrab 24-Hour Stephen King Marathon (Parts One, Two, Three and Four)? Unthinkable!

Just look at these other so-called horror classics they saw fit to highlight this week. The Exorcist? I find chunks of guys like him in my stool! Tenebrae? What does that even mean? Seizure? Seize this! Halloween and Friday the 13th? Those are just days of the week to me.

Look, if you want to write about Star Wars auditions or Batman sequels or Zack and Miri making pornos, I’m not going to complain about being left out. Hell, write about farting dog movies for all I care. But when it comes to horror, let’s not forget who’s boss.

Happy Halloween!

Take Five: Halloween

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:45:00 GMT

When a franchise has legs, the people who own it whip it so hard that those legs inevitably come off. That doesn't keep them from flogging its backside, of course; there have been eleven Friday the Thirteenth movies, eight Freddy Krueger flicks, and so many James Bond movies that they're starting to use grocery lists written by Ian Fleming on the back of cocktail napkins as their source material. The Saw franchise is already on its fifth installment, despite the fact that the first movie opened roughly three weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure they were filming the sixth and seventh movies at the craft table of the set of the fifth one. Compared to this level of sequel overinflation, you might think that the venerable Halloween franchise is a virtual model of restraint. That's what I thought, anyway, when I decided to watch every single one of them in a row. Frankly, I didn't even think there was enough of it to make a Take Five; I was completely convinced that the ultra-bizarre Halloween III had killed the thing off until Rob Zombie decided to bring it back with his 2007 remake of the original. It turns out there were five more sequels before the White Zombie frontman took a swing at reviving Michael Myers. A chilling prospect, but lucky you: this Halloween, you won't have to read my mini-reviews of each one. The first five will do, but believe me: simply living in a world that has Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in it should scare you more than anything else about the holiday.

HALLOWEEN (1978)

Often credited as the movie that kick-started the whole slasher-film genre, Halloween doesn't really deserve that title. For one thing, it's too good. Tautly directed by John Carpenter, and featuring performances by genuine movie actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance, Halloween was likewise a big-budget picture with a canny script, a plausible if terrifying villain, and actual production values. The future would belong to movies like Friday the Thirteenth, which would be released a few years later and combine all the low-budget qualities of an indie production with the bloody aesthetic of Carpenter's best work, but none of the smarts or skills. If it can't lay claim to being the progenitor of the genre, though, Halloween can at least say that it's one of the best; it still holds up years later, and makes what came after that more of a waste.

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Literally picking up where the first movie left off, Halloween II had the advantage of being written by Carpenter and his partner Debra Hill and the immediacy of the same characters and situations, but that's about it. The filming was put in the hands of the far less competent Rick Rosenthal; the producers tinkered a lot with Carpenter and Hill's script; the movie looks dismal and kluged-together despite a much higher budget; and, in keeping with the new slasher aesthetic ushered in by the likes of Friday the Thirteenth, it forsook tension, mood and suspense for low-budget mysticism, cheap shocks, and gore, gore, gore. It cost twice as much as its predecessor but made half the money, and it would stand as one of the most disappointing sequels of the era -- until people got a look at the next installment.

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

Almost as if to prove to the millions of people who hated Halloween II that they didn't know how good they had it, the next sequel, made a year later by the mysterious Tommy Lee Wallace, was bad enough on its own: its plot was incomprehensible, its pace was glacial, its story made no sense, and with the exception of cult favorite character actor Tom Atkins in the lead role, its cast was a dud. Worse still, though, it had absolutely nothing to do with the previous movies. Michael Myers was nowhere to be found, and the story -- involving a tycoon who intended to turn the heads of all the children of the world into slithering insects with the aid of high-tech Halloween masks (no, really) -- had no apparent connection to the first two movies. Wallace claimed he was trying to turn the franchise into a sort of horror anthology, a la "Night Gallery"; but he didn't seem to have told anyone beforehand, nor was he able to adequately explain why.

HALLOWEEN IV: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS (1988)

So thoroughly did Season of the Witch tarnish the reputation of the Halloween franchise that it would be six years before producer/propertyholder Moustapha Akkad gave it another whirl. He apparently spent those six years looking for someone who would answer "yes" to the questions "will you put Michael Myers back in the movie?" and "will you take a check?"; that someone Dwight H. Little, and the movie he made featured an answer to the first question right in its title. The plot, such as it is, features the comatose Myers arising to kill and kill again; the movie brings back Donald Pleasance to add a touch of class, but other than that, its new cast, new creative team, and new focus bring absolutely nothing to the table. In some ways, it's even worse than Halloween III; at least that movie had some ideas, even if they were all bad ones.

HALLOWEEN V: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1989)

Made roughly three seconds after Halloween IV wrapped, the fifth installment ended up competing with its predecessor, which was just then being released on home video. To be honest, I have a lot of trouble telling the two apart: the cover art is indistinguishable, the plot is identical, and both movies feature a fucked-up-looking Donald Pleasance collecting another paycheck. If you're still keeping track at home, this is the one that introduces some additional supernatural mumbo-jumbo, with Danielle Harris suddenly discovering, after two movies, that she has a psychic link with her uncle Mikey; other than that, they're pretty much the same movie. Halloween V is the movie that introduced me to the directing talents of one Dominique Othenin-Girard, and, subsequently, caused me to never again seek out said talents.

Related Posts:

Take Five: Friday the Thirteenth

Take Five: Take Four

Set Your DVR!: October 27 - November 3, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Halloween week means more vintage horror! TCM in particular is even exceeding their own high standards this week, shoehorning in a night of Billy Wilder on Tuesday (nothing is recommended because everything is fairly well-known) and a few film noir classics on Wednesday before cranking up the scary on Thursday. As always, let me know in comments if you see something I shouldn’t have missed!

Mon, Oct 27:

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. As I said last week, it’s not a great movie, but it has a few iconic scenes.

Tues, Oct 28:

5/6 am: The Invisible Man on AMC. Based on Ralph Ellison’s classic novel of race in America... whoops, that’s not right. No one’s ever made that movie. This is James Whale’s classic horror film starring Claude Rains.

6:45/7:45 am: Bride of Frankenstein on AMC. And this is James Whale’s frankenlady movie.

7/8 am: The Desperate Hours on TCM. Neat little thriller about convicts on the lam starring Humphrey Bogart.

11 pm/12 am: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Wed, Oct 29:

1/2 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat. Last time I’m going to mention it, in fact.

7/8 pm: Murder, My Sweet on TCM. Killer adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

10:45/11:45 pm: Out of the Past on TCM. Film noir classic with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also made three of the Val Lewton-produced no-budget horror films we’re recommending this week.

Thurs, Oct 30:

12:30/1:30 am: They Live By Night on TCM. Earlier movie based on the same source material as Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us, which is one of his most underappreciated movies.

3/4 am: House of Wax on CHILLER. Vincent Price’s classic. Note: You will not see Paris Hilton in this movie.

3:45/4:45 am: The Thing From Another World on TCM. Howard Hawks directing an early sci-fi/horror movie. The John Carpenter movie The Thing was a remake.

6:30/7:30 am: The Beast with Five Fingers on TCM. FIVE WHOLE FINGERS! YAAAAAARGH!

7:30/8:30 am: 8 Women on LOGO. Francois Ozon assembles every major French actress of our time for a half-musical/half-murder mystery.

8/9 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Jacques Tourneur doing horror on a Val Lewton production.

9:15/10:15 am: Curse of the Demon on TCM. Recut version of the horror film Night of the Demon. Directed by Jacques Tourneur applying what he has learned from doing horror on Val Lewton productions.

10:45/11:45 am: Gerry on IFC (repeat at 4/5 pm and on 11/31 at 4:10/5:10 am). I just keep recommending it!

5:30/6:30 pm: House of Usher on TCM. Roger Corman! Vincent Price! Edgar Allan Poe! You might be surprised to learn that this is a tender romantic comedy.

7/8 pm: Dead of Night on TCM. Creepy little horror anthology from Ealing Studios. And no Sir Alec Guinness to be found!

Fri, Oct 31:

A quick note: TCM owns Halloween programming. You can’t go wrong with anything they’re showing all day.

1/2 am: Kwaidan on TCM. A beloved Japanese horror anthology.

3:45/4:45: Spirits of the Dead on TCM. A triptych of short films from Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini (which of these names is not like the others?). I’ve never seen it, but the cast of Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, Terence Stamp, and Alain Delon sounds promising.

6:30/7:30 am: Cat People on TCM. More Lewton & Tourneur!

7/8 am: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC. Still brilliant, still vile.

8/9 am: Freaks on TCM.

8:30/9:30 am: Halloween on AMC. Halloween? Hasn’t everyone seen this? I suspect that some people have forgotten how effective it is with almost no budget and no special effects.

9:15/10:15 am: The Devil Doll on TCM. How many ways can I say “creepy”? This one’s directed by the creator of Freaks, Tod Browning.

2:30/3:30 pm: The Body Snatcher on TCM. More Val Lewton! With Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi!

4/5 pm: Bedlam on TCM. And even more Val Lewton! This one’s with just Karloff.

7/8 pm: The Host on G4. Korean horror movie with great special effects and a cruel sense of humor.

Sat, Nov 1:

1/2 am: The Host on G4 (repeats at 11/12 am).

1:30/2:30 am: Blood Feast on TCM. Things start getting ugly overnight at TCM. This is a challenger to Plan 9 From Outer Space for the coveted Worst Movie Ever award. Highly recommended! Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, whom you can read more about in our very own Scott Von Doviak’s excellent book Hick Flicks, which is a perfect stocking-stuffer for the film geek in your family.

2:45/3:45 am: 2,000 Maniacs on TCM. A follow-up to Blood Feast. I understand that the name is misleading, as Lewis only had to budget for 1,986 maniacs.

3/4 am: The Blob on CHILLER (Repeat at 6:00 am/7:00 am). Steve McQueen in the no-budget flick that might just be a parable about the insidious effects of CREEPING COMMUNISM! BOOGA BOOGA! Starring Barack Obama’s tax policies as The Blob and Sarah Palin as the small-town mayor who knows how to stop it. If only the people will listen!

5:15/6:15 am: Forbidden Planet on TCM. Ah, the horror is starting to subside. What better way to recover than a movie that puts Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space?

7/8 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. One of the finest classic Westerns of all time. Starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s first film, this is a standard issue wuxia film in terms of plot and progression, but with Kurosawa’s unerring eye behind the lens, there’s moments of stunning beauty to be found. Unreleased on DVD, and a must for Kurosawa fanatics.

9:30/10:30 am: The Last Wave on IFC (repeat at 2:45/3:45 pm). Richard Chamberlain’s most shocking role (in which discernible acting can be detected!) about apocalyptic aboriginal weirdness in Australia. Directed by Peter Weir.

Sun, Nov 2:

Happy birthday to my mom and my brother-in-law Jeff!

7/8 am: Solaris on IFC. This is the Tarkovsky original, not the Soderbergh remake. A deeply sad, meditative movie about love and self and Otherness. I’m being purposely vague, but this review is only two sentences, and this movie deserves much more than that.

8:30/9:30 am: Macbeth on TCM. Orson Welles’s Macbeth with the bad accents and great filmmaking.

5:35/6:35 pm: The New World on IFC. Terrence Malick’s film about how struggle defines all human relationships, despite the transcendental indifference of nature. Did I just write that? This is easily one of the best films of the last decade, so just watch it.

8/9 pm: The Proposition on IFC (repeat on 11/3 at 1:15/2:15 am). John Hillcoat’s Aussie Western written by Nick Cave. It wants to be a Peckinpah movie, but it’s not even a Boetticher. That’s not to say it’s worthless, but it bites off more than it can chew. Hillcoat’s the director of the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I hope is better than this.

9:45/10:45 pm: The Year of Living Dangerously on TCM. Remember when Mel Gibson could act? Good times. Oh, ok. This is most definitely not a good time. Directed by Peter Weir.

11 pm/12 am (11/3): True Stories on VH1CL (repeat on 11/3 at 7/8 pm). It’s not a good movie, but it’s fun. This is David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures. The Talking Heads songs aren’t their best, but they’re pretty good, and pretty good looks good from here.

Mon, Nov 3:

3/4 am: Isle of the Dead on CHILLER. Another Val Lewton production! Why is it on after Halloween? Apparently CHILLER has started the Halloween 2009 season early.

5:05/6:05 am: Tom Dowd & the Language of Music on IFC (repeat at 12:30/1:30 pm). Delightful documentary about the man with the golden ear who flawlessly recorded some of the greats of 20th century music.

10:05/11:05 am: The New World on IFC. Repeat.

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of quirk, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

DVD Digest for October 21, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a Japanese master gets the Eclipse treatment, and the first wave of 007 Blu-Rays hits the shelves.

DVD of the Week: To those who are getting acquainted with Japanese cinema, the three biggest names to know have long been Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. But while the first two directors have been getting the DVD treatment for years, only a handful of Mizoguchi’s best-known films (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) have been released on DVD. This week, Eclipse is taking steps to rectify this, by gathering four of the master’s greatest achievements in a lovely box set. Entitled Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women, the box set includes four of Mizoguchi’s finest and most poetic films about the plight of Japanese courtesans and geishas, a subject to which he’d return numerous times throughout his career. Two of the inclusions are pre-war titles- Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion- while the others came after World War II, those being 1948’s Women of the Night and his final feature, Street of Shame. One of the most interesting aspects of the box set is seeing the differences between how he observes his subjects pre-WWII and post-WWII. As for the films’ other (considerable) pleasures, I’ll leave those for you to discover.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD are headed up by two Universal releases which costar Liv Tyler, The Incredible Hulk (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and The Strangers (Universal, also Blu-Ray). But those more adventurous viewers out there shouldn’t require much persuading to watch Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first feature made outside of Asia, Flight of the Red Ballooni (Genius), starring the ever-enchanting Juliette Binoche. Also of note: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Universal), and Anaconda 3: Offspring (Sony).

On the classics front, Warner will be releasing two new DVD sets of Looney Tunes favorites: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 and Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 6. And Criterion will be represented this week with their new DVD pressing of Missing. Finally, James Bond is back with new “Collector’s Editions” of both versions of Casino Royale- both the late-sixties lark (MGM) and the lean, mean 2006 take on the story (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings the latest box set for the seemingly deathless animated phenomenon, Family Guy Volume 6 (Fox). Or if you’re looking for something less oppressively “hip”, today also brings a handful of old-school series: The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series (Universal), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series (Warner), and The Outer Limits: The Complete Series (Fox).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of the first six MGM-made James Bond titles in the format. James Bond Blu-Ray Box Set Volume 1 (Fox/MGM) includes Dr. No, Live and Let Die, and Die Another Day, while Volume 2 (Fox/MGM) contains From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and For Your Eyes Only. I suppose we’ll have to wait for volume 3 to get more of Connery’s classics, but it should prove worth the wait. Also this week, the bloody trio of Diary of the Dead (Weinstein), Halloween (2007) (Weinstein), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Paramount).

Take Five: Friday the 13th

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Normally, the Friday Take Five feature is built around some new release. But this is a very special day for bottom-drawer cinephiles the world over: today is Friday the 13th, the day commemorated in a series of eleven of the rootin'-est, tootin'-est, sexually-active-teenager-beheadin'-east movies of all time. While there isn't a new Friday the 13th movie coming out -- unfortunately, or thankfully depending on your perspective, we'll have to wait until 2009 for the proposed remake of the first movie -- there's no reason we can't take a look back at what is, despite the universal revulsion of critics, one of the most successful franchises in motion picture history. It's hard to believe it's been 28 years since the first Friday the 13th movie, but the mass-murderous adventures of the scrappy, plucky Jason Voorhees (and what's with all the big-screen serial killers having such WASPy names, from Voorhees to Krueger to Meyers? Aren't there any unstoppable, inhuman psychopathic butchers named Breitkowicz or Morelli?) have manage to last longer than most marriages. With little more than a machete, a hockey mask, and a can-do attitude, Jason has become a cultural icon, almost single-handedly birthing the lamentable teen-slasher genre so popular in the 1980s and managing to set a standard for improbable resurrections that not even superhero comics can rival. I'm not going to say that the movies below represent the best of the Friday the 13th movies; to be perfectly honest, "best" just isn't a word than any of these flicks can aspire to. But at the very least, these are the five that represent, in some way, a hallmark acheivement for everyone's favorite reason to avoid summer camp.

FRIDAY THE 13th (1980)

It's usually claimed that the first of the venerable hack-'n'slash franchise is the best, and we can't argue with that claim. However, while John Carpenter's Halloween was a genuinely good low-budget horror movie that spawned a ton of far inferior sequels, Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th was pretty much a crappy exploitation movie that produced a bunch of sequels that were marginally worse. The francise didn't have far to fall, but at the very least, if you were of a certain age in the 1980s, seeing the original Friday the 13th was something like a rite of passage. Of mild canonical interest due to the fact that Jason Voorhees isn't the killer and doesn't even appear in the film in his familiar form, this would still just be a long-forgotten curio along the lines of Silent Night Deadly Night if it hadn't happened to catch an inexplicable fire and turn into one of the biggest indie movie hits of all time. The sequels that it birthed are all much, much worse, don't get us wrong -- but don't go into this expecting any kind of a diamond in the rough. It's just the least objectionable turd in a very big punchbowl.

FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3 (1982)

Although the franchise was already a runaway hit, it wasn't until the third installment that the Friday the 13th movies finally took the shape with which we're most familiar today. The third visit to woebegotten Camp Crystal Lake was marketed as a gimmick movie thanks to having been filmed in 3-D ("A new dimension in terror!", screamed the posters and newspaper ads), but what really makes Friday the 13th Part 3 so memorable in the series is that it's the first time the immortal and ill-tempered Jason Voorhees first dons his iconic hockey mask. He also picks up a few attributes that would be reiterated, if never actually explained in any way, in all subsequent Friday the 13th movies: his tremendous, almost superhuman strength, and his abilty to come back from almost any injury, however fatal. Hockey goalies are the members of the team least likely to get into a fistfight on the ice, but starting with this movie, Jason Voorhees manages to make them seem like the most bad-ass guys in professional sports.

FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984)

The fourth installment of the franchise promised it would be the last, and some people -- including special effects wizard Tom Savini, who believed this would be Jason Voorhees' last ride, and actor Ted White, who played the killer but was so upset with the script and the poor treatment of the actors that he asked for his name to be removed from the credits -- seemed to believe it. No such luck, though: The Final Chapter made $32 million, which pretty much guaranteed that there would be more to come. In most ways a typical example of the series (Jason goes bananas on a bunch of teens with a variety of sharpened implements), The Final Chapter is noteworthy largely for its cast: a young Corey Feldman plays the male lead in a sure sign that you're watching a movie that was made in the mid-1980s. Additionally, Crispin Glover's fans and detractors alike will be interested to know that in this movie, the always-controversial actor's hand gets nailed to a countertop with a corkscrew. And then Jason whacks him in the face with a meat cleaver.

JASON X (2002)

It's the tenth movie! Get it? If that doesn't strike you as particularly clever, too bad, because believe us, it doesn't get any better from there. By this point in the two decades of the Friday the 13th franchise, the character of Jason Voorhees has already become a sort of cultural punchline for improbable resurrections; in addition, he's already slipped the surly bonds of Camp Crystal Lake and visited, amongst other places, Manhattan, Hell, and the depths of Corey Feldman's soul -- each worse than the one before. So what was left for the venerable franchise to do but send him to an even more absurd location (a spaceship orbiting a post-apocalyptic future Earth) and give him an even more ridiculous method of resurrection (infiltrated by a hi-tech nanobot virus and transformed into a cybernetic superman)? The writers were also clever enough to use the movie's future setting as a way to give the finger to the innumerable continuity nerds who had started swarming around the francise.

FREDDY VS. JASON (2003)

Well, why not? Pitting the two slasher icons against one another was an idea that had been kicking around for a decade, but by the time it finally got made, anyone who expected Hong Kong veteran Ronny Yu to bring the same sly, campy sense of humor to Freddy vs. Jason that he did to Bride of Chucky was in for a pretty big disappointment. The plot to this thing is pretty incomprehensible, even by the convoluted standards of Friday the 13th movies, but it's all just prelude to the big showdown between the two bloodthirsty ne'er-do-wells that makes up the second half of the movie. After a great deal of hurled cutlery, Jason seems to emerge victorious, trudging sloppily out of Crystal Lake with the severed head of Freddy Krueger -- which then proceeds to give us a wink, a laugh, and the terrifying prospect of yet another sequel. Luckily, that's the last we've seen of Freddy or Jason for a good long while, but the remake is less than a year away...

Summer of ’78: “Damien: Omen II”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

Damien: Omen II

Release Date: June 9, 1978

Cast: William Holden, Lee Grant, Jonathan Scott-Taylor, Robert Foxworth, Sylvia Sidney, Lance Henriksen

The Buzz: The son of Satan is back to raise more hell!

Keywords: Devil Child, Satanism, Ice Hockey, Attacked By Bird, Torso Cut In Half

The Plot: I'd never seen any of the Omen movies, but I do vaguely recall reading the novelizations. You know how it is; too young to see R-rated movies in the theater, but not too young to buy the book versions of same down at Mr. Paperback. (They were probably just happy I was interested in reading at all.) So I can’t tell you much about the first Omen movie, but let’s all agree to assume that Damien Thorn was born with the mark of the beast, and that those who figured out he was the Antichrist met with an untimely demise.

One of those people was Damien’s father Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), who apparently did not have the chance to change his will before attempting to kill his own offspring with sacred daggers, because as the sequel begins, the now teenage Damien is in the custody of Robert’s brother Richard (William Holden) and his wife Ann (Lee Grant). Now a military school cadet, Damien is still unaware of his destiny as the prince of darkness, until his sergeant (played by a young-yet-craggy Lance Henriksen) tells him to check out the Book of Revelation. “For you it is just that – a book of revelation, for you, about you.” Hey, who couldn’t use one of those?

Damien learns that being the Antichrist comes with certain advantages. For example, it turns out that he’s very good at remembering historically significant dates. And, you know, he can give heart attacks to old ladies and make people plummet down elevator shafts. It takes him long enough, but eventually Richard Thorn figures out that his brother has willed him a dud, and tries to get his hands on those fancy daggers. Sadly, even William Holden is no match for Satan’s boy.

The Test of Time: I have no idea if Omen fans were satisfied with this follow-up, but if so, they must have been easily impressed. The stakes never seem particularly high in this sequel; those who grow suspicious of Damien are pretty quickly hit by trucks or fall through thin ice on the lake. And there doesn’t seem to be any urgency to get rid of him, since his destiny involves taking over a big corporation with questionable ethical policies. Heck, if he doesn’t do it, someone else will! Damien was released a few months before John Carpenter’s Halloween would usher in the era of the slasher film, so its big scares must have looked dated almost immediately. (Perhaps not quite as dated as Robert Foxworth’s frightening Luke Spencer perm, but still.) Still, it was successful enough to spawn Omen III: The Final Conflict, and now that the first Omen has been remade, who knows? Maybe Damien will be back for another round as well.

Quotable Quote: “You’re not my brother! The Beast has no brother! You were born of a jackal!”

2008 Equivalent: It’s a sequel about the son of a demon, so I’m going with Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Previously on Summer of '78: Capricorn One

Bottom Five of 2007

John Constantine — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:25:00 GMT

With The Screengrab’s overall Top Ten of 2007 going up today, it is high time we let you, the reader, know which movies we thought sucked the most in good ‘ol ’07. Here are five movies that run the gamut from so-bad-you-have-to-see-it down to my-life-is-emptier-after-that-shit. It should be noted that one of these movies actually caused the writer to scream in public for about twenty minutes about how bad it was, embarrassing editor Peter Smith while he tried to order a slice of pizza. Try to guess which one. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

#5: HITMAN (Xavier Gens, dir.)

Big and dumb are words often used to extol an action movie’s virtues. Not so with Hitman, a video game adaptation that, as far as I can tell, isn’t even about anything. It’s shocking that a movie with both a nude Olga Kurylenko and Timothy Olyphant could be this bad.

#4: TRANSFORMERS (Michael Bay, dir.)

Bravo, Michael Bay. Only you could make a movie based on a cartoon - itself little more than a half hour toy commercial - that is actually shallower than its source material. Bravo.

#3: DAN IN REAL LIFE (Peter Hedges, dir.)

Am I really supposed to feel sorry for this asshole? He lies to his motherless children, acts like a petulant child, and makes out with his brother’s girlfriend when he barely knows her. Look not to Evan Almighty for the worst Steve Carell movie of the year. It is before you.

#2: HALLOWEEN (Rob Zombie, dir.)

I checked my watch approximately sixteen times while watching Zombie’s remake of Halloween, desperate for it to be over. Whenever I pass by one of the numerous posters throughout New York City advertising the recently released Halloween: Unrated DVD, I puke a little in my mouth.

#1: SOUTHLAND TALES (Richard Kelly, dir.)

Wow. Just, wow, man. Jesus.

New Holiday Classics: Wind Chill (2007)

Peter Smith — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Although some very good things naturally go together, as we all know from those commercials where some klutz gets his peanut butter on that other guy's chocolate, filmmakers have had a mixed and mostly unhappy time trying to merge Christmas with the horror movie. Sure, it's always kind of fun to stick a psychopathic killer in a Santa Claus suit, but it's seemed anticlimactic whenever anyone has done it since 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night — not a good movie, but its ads got seen by the wrong bunch of tightassed ninnies and inspired a wonderful episode of Donahue where Phil and his legion of overcaffeinated housewives fretted that such films would result in a new generation of demonic hell-spawn hanging out at the Gap. Then there's Bob Clark's 1974 Black Christmas, which was recently revived and remade, just before Clark's death earlier this year. It has earned a reputation as a seminal shocker that established both the holiday-themed horror movie gimmick and the strategy of assigning the killer a trademark tracking shot and an asthma condition before John Carpenter's Halloween, as well as possibly inventing the whole "The calls are coming from inside the house!" wheeze. But some of us have always thought that its ending is kind of a cheat, and besides, so far as tapping the horrific potential of Christmas break goes, Black Christmas kind of misses the point. Because the sorority girls who are its principal victims get murdered in time for school break, they are spared the experience of going home for the holidays, which is when the scary stuff really starts.

The ghost story Wind Chill, which was briefly released to theaters earlier this year and recently came out on DVD, can be seen as a corrective to Clark's error in timing. Directed by Gregory Jacobs, Wind Chill opens in a lonely, eerily depopulated college campus. The heroine, played by the strikingly assured young Emily Blunt (of My Summer of Love and The Devil Wears Prada), appears to be among the last students to get the hell out of Dodge for the holidays. She piles into a car with a guy she doesn't know (Ashton Holmes, Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello's son in A History of Violence) with whom she's agreed to share a ride, and right away a creepy vibe sets in. Holmes, channeling one of Michael Cera's clueless nice guys, keeps trying to charm his new friend, who plainly just wants to get the trip completed as painlessly as possible and then go back to being unaware of his existence. As he keeps trying to make contact, and she begins to respond to his overtures with ever greater displays of contempt and condescension, it may begin to dawn on viewers that they're watching an uncannily well-executed performance of a dance they may recognize from their own college days or, if they're really unlucky, even their more recent lives: the awkward non-mating ritual between the worshipful boy trying too hard to craft a perfect day for himself and the wrong person, and the girl who's only trying to decide whether her unwanted suitor is even worth regarding as a stalker.

One of the nice things about this set-up is that when things switch gears and the supernatural element (which includes Martin Donovan as a hulking, phantom state trooper) comes in, you're kind of relieved; as in a sci-fi story where the arrival of the aliens unites the Earth's superpowers together against a common threat, confusion and fear make it possible for a bitch princess and a geeky dork, trapped together in a stalled car, to actually be civil to each other for minutes at a time. Wind Chill may have just been too small a film to take much away from 300's take at the box office, and it may not be weird or bloody enough to become a cult classic now, but it's a smart little genre flick that ought to be perfect for winter cocooners looking for an excuse to jack up the thermostat, huddle together on the couch, and think about how cold it looks inside that damn car. — Phil Nugent

Enter the Moviedrome

Peter Smith — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:45:00 GMT

British cineastes love Alex Cox for his BBC series Moviedrome, which highlighted cult films. Until its demise in 1994, it was required viewing on a Sunday night, when Cox would pop up and introduce a couple of short films that he felt were neglected, interesting or screwed-up. This was when "cult" didn't have that sniffy sense of intellectual superiority. A lot of filmmakers cite Cox's excellent Moviedrome introductions as kicking off their interest in cinema. Unseen since their original broadcast, they've now popped up on YouTube. The very first Moviedrome introduction, above, for The Wicker Man, also features Cox's definition of cult. Others have included Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Halloween, a film he's reluctant to praise. Hopefully his more enthusiastic intros to Mishima, The Parallax View and Django will make it onto the net soon. — Faisal A. Qureshi

Halloween Costume Contest: We Have a Weiner!

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to Jon Parsons, of Sackville, NB, who correctly ID'd Mandalee and John as Pris from Blade Runner and Lance from Pulp Fiction at 1:43 PM yesterday. Apologies to Kevin Macauley, who got the same correct answer in at 1:45. For the many entrants who thought John was the Dude — well, an understandable guess, but note the un-Dudely Speed Racer t-shirt worn by John and Eric Stoltz's unforgettable character from Pulp. Don't worry, there are more contests to come — you will still have your chance at a free copy of Delta Farce. — Peter Smith

Vintage Trailer Roundup: Halloween Hangover Edition

Peter Smith — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Werewolves on Wheels

Here’s one of my favorite B-movie trailers, advertising "the most thrilling horror motorcycle movie ever made" — and as it turns out, the first. It seems that by 1971, just two years after Easy Rider, the motorcycle-movie well was running dry, so producers started jumping on gimmicks to liven up the genre. . . and bless ‘em for it. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen Werewolves on Wheels in its entirety, although by all accounts I’m not missing much. Then again, there’s no way anything could possibly live up to this trailer.

Torso

Here’s another classic, all the more so for how it tries to make itself look respectable by advertising itself as a production of Carlo Ponti, "the producer of Doctor Zhivago." After all, a bloated David Lean epic dovetails so neatly with classic giallo fare. Torso is an Eli Roth favorite, and it’s easy to see the film’s influence on movies like Hostel. But the teaser itself had to be an influence on Edgar Wright, who paid homage to the use of the endlessly repeated title in his Grindhouse trailer Don't.

The Shining

The greatest horror-movie teaser ever? Yes, it just may be. This goes to show that you don’t need to sell the story, or even show the actors’ faces, to effectively sell the movie. I love that Kubrick makes us wait for the blood — and that he was somehow able to convince the MPAA that it was actually rusty-colored water that came pouring out of the elevator shaft. Even if you don’t like the movie itself, the teaser is pretty stunning.

— Paul Clark

Halloween Costume Contest!

Peter Smith — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Pictured here are two of Nerve's finest, Mandalee Meisner and John Constantine, in their spectacular Halloween costumes from last night. I'm now kicking myself for not getting together that Frank Booth costume I was planning, but in any case, this is your chance to win a Nerve t-shirt and a DVD off my desk. Email screengrab@nerve.com and ID these two characters and their movies of origin; I'll send you your choice of a DVD from the following list:

Jean Renoir: 3-Disc Collector's Edition
Alfred Hitchcock Collection: Rope
Luis Buñuel: 2-Disc Collector's Edition
Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
Dr. T. and the Women (Robert Altman)
Cujo: 25th Anniversary Edition
The Condemned (Stone Cold Steve Austin, naturally)
Delta Farce (Larry the Cable Guy!)
Brigitte Bardot: 5-Film Collection

Got it? Hurry up now! — Peter Smith