Bartholomew (Tommy Rettig) hates taking piano lessons from the odious Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) so he takes a nap instead of practicing.  When he wakes up, Bartholomew is horrified to discover that he is being held prisoner by Dr. T in his fortress.  Dr. T’s big plan is to kidnap 500 kids and force them to play endlessly on his big ass piano.  Bartholomew wants no part of that and with the help of a kindly plumber (Peter Lynd Hayes), they plot to escape.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T was co-written by Dr. Seuss and as a result, it’s the only live action Seuss film that actually “gets” Seuss.  It’s much better than say Ron Howard’s abominable Grinch movie.  The art design is awesome and the film looks like a living breathing Dr. Seuss book.  Because of that, it’s highly recommended. 

Story-wise, it’s very similar to The Wizard of Oz in many ways (it’s all a dream, people from the kid’s life appear in the dream, etc.).  I personally think it’s better than Oz, but that’s just me.  The reason is that Tommy Rettig gives one of the best performances by a child actor ever.  He’s quite likeable and doesn’t go overboard with trying to act cute.  Conried also puts in a quirky turn as the megalomaniacal Dr. T.

The flick has it’s share of problems which prevents it from being a true classic.  Nearly all of the musical numbers go on too long and aren’t very memorable.  The story is also stretched too thin for too long but these are all rather minor qualms and won’t get in the way of your enjoyment.

This was a big flop and subsequently, it took five decades before another live action Seuss movie was made.

AKA:  Crazy Music.

I really like Kevin Sorbo.  I thought after Hercules went off the air, he’d be able to have a big screen career.  After the failure of Kull the Conqueror, that never came to fruition.  He now stars in about seven hundred SyFy Channel Originals a year.  Tonight, SyFy had a triple feature of the man’s recent films and while none of them are nowhere near as much fun as Never Cry Werewolf (the Citizen Kane of Kevin Sorbo SyFy Channel Originals), they nevertheless are a good showcase for the man’s considerable acting chops.

LIGHTNING STRIKES  (2009)  **

A small town is plagued by an ominous electrical storm.  The sheriff (Kevin Sorbo) and a group of storm chasers investigate a death of a young boy by a lightning strike; much to the chagrin of the metrosexual mayor who doesn’t want any bad publicity for the town’s upcoming pumpkin festival.  With some help from a creepy drifter (David Schofield from An American Werewolf in London), our heroes learn that there is actually life form inside of the lightning that singles out people and kills them. 

It’s not as stupid as it sounds; mostly because the actors play it very realistically.  (Well, except the sissy mayor.)  Sorbo does a fine job in the lead and his “Aw shucks” persona is a perfect fit for the material.  Schofield also brings his A-Game to the Captain Ahab role who holds a major grudge against the Lightning Monster.

You know things are going to be bad though when you start praising the performances in a SyFy Channel Original.  The thing that ultimately sinks the flick is that the kills are pretty weak and interchangeable (the creature’s victims just get a little crispy).  Plus, there isn’t too much action until the almost the very end.  

Another thing that irked me about the movie was the fact that nothing was ever really done with the creature.  The idea of a monster hiding in lighting is intriguing enough (“intriguing” for a SyFy Channel Original anyway) but we never learn anything about it except it kinda looks like Syngenor.  The “rules” of the creature are pretty lame (it can vanquish people into a white void that resembles The Matrix) and the reasoning why it can’t “strike twice” is stupid.

Director Gary (Boogeyman 3) Jones films things in a straightforward manner but every now and then he will toss out a hilarious slice of WTF.  My favorite scene was when Sorbo opened up a body bag of a charred corpse in the middle of the festival in plain view of several onlookers.  Why wouldn’t he wait until he got to the morgue to do that?  The answer:  Because then we wouldn’t have the priceless reaction shot of the only black guy in the town looking over Sorbo’s shoulder at the corpse and hollering, “DAAAAAAMMN!”, that’s why.

Schofield gets the best line of the film when he says, “The only way to save Billy is to send me straight to Hell!”

FIRE FROM BELOW  (2009)  * ½

Miners unearth some Lithium for a wealthy jackass industrialist.  When the element gets wet, it turns into a deadly fireball with a mind of it’s own.  Kevin Sorbo (who also executive produced) stars as a seismologist who along with his wife tries to figure out a way to stop it before it completely destroys a small town.

While Lightning Strikes was consistently mediocre all the way through, Fire From Below (not to be confused with the Steven Seagal flick, Fire Down Below) is non-stop shittiness punctuated with moments of laugh out loud insanity.  The “plot” sucks more than a two dollar hooker on half-price night.  When it comes to the kills though, it’s downright hilarious.  See huge ass fireballs torch miners, flambé water skiers, barbeque rednecks in their outhouse, and cause horny teens to explode while taking a leak.  Most of the flick unfortunately is devoted to lame-o action sequences where Sorbo and company narrowly outrun giant balls of fire.  Then there are the intensely stupid scenes of a news anchor reporting on stuff we’ve already seen that only helps to pad out the running time to fit a two hour time slot.

Sorbo skates by on his easygoing charisma and does what he can with the sorry script he was given.  Needless to say, that isn’t much.  No one else in the cast comes close to delivering as good a performance as old Kev.  Maybe that’s what you get when Andrew (The Terror Within 2) Stevens and Jim (Extreme Limits) Wynorksi are in the directors’ chairs.

SOMETHING BENEATH  (2007)  * ½

Kevin Sorbo stars as a kindhearted preacher attending an ecological conference in a fancy hotel.  Unbeknownst to anyone, the hotel’s foundation was built on a fountain of hallucinogenic black goop.  When this onyx ooze gets on people it causes it’s victims to have bizarre visions until they eventually die.

Something Beneath takes a potentially interesting Lovecraftian premise and squanders it.  Most of the “scary” scenes mandate that the actors walk around aimlessly with the black gunk on them for what seems like forever until their hallucination finally kicks in.  Unfortunately, the majority of their freakouts end up being pretty crappy.  (The opening severed head scene being the lone exception.)  The final confrontation with the goo beast (it looks like a multi-tentacled turd) is a major letdown as well.

Sorbo nearly salvages this mess.  He gives the hunky priest a lot of depth and manages to make his character three-dimensional.  Anyone who thinks Sorbo is just a pretty boy should check him out here.  His performance is easily the best thing about this middling movie.  All the other characters, from the bratty socialite (clearly modeled on Paris Hilton) to the crazed scientist who lives in the basement are thoroughly annoying and cancel out Sorbo’s admirable acting abilities. 

The crooked cop gets the best line of the movie when he tells Sorbo, “Preacher, get the flock out of here!”

The Falcon (Tom Conway) returns for his ninth murder mystery.  In this one, he tries to help a pretty senorita in distress and winds up being blamed for the murder of an art dealer.  In order to clear his name, the super sleuth heads down to Mexico where he teams up with the daughter of a missing artist to solve the mystery.

The Falcon in Mexico is a pretty tepid entry in the franchise.  Although it features an interesting location (scenes of the local color were taken from Orson Welles’ unfinished film, It’s All True) and some supernatural elements (the chick sees the “ghost” of her dead father), The Falcon’s south of the border adventure is about as appealing as a three day old burrito.  Much of the action is slow moving and the dapper detective basically just chases his own tail for the better half of the film’s running time.  The lame musical numbers are particularly gratuitious.

While this installment is a bit of a letdown, the performances certainly help.  Conway does some fine work as the silver-tongued sleuth.  His air of regality helps to elevate the ho-hum material.  Nestor (The Creature from the Black Lagoon) Paiva also gets some pretty funny lines as The Falcon’s loyal comic relief Mexican chauffeur. 

Screenwriter George Worthing Yates also wrote The Amazing Colossal Man.

The third Falcon adventure was based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely with The Falcon filling in for Phillip Marlowe.  While in the midst of investigating the murder of a nightclub owner, The Falcon (George Sanders) agrees to help track down a stolen jade necklace.  The Falcon eventually uncovers an elaborate blackmail scheme and is nearly killed by an alluring femme fatale (Helen Gilbert).  Luckily for him, her jealous musclebound psycho boyfriend Moose Malloy (Ward Bond) gets to her first.

The Falcon Takes Over is considerably darker in tone than the other films in the series.  The mashing up of the gritty Raymond Chandler and the lightweight Falcon is an odd one to say the least.  Unfortunately, the flick shifts unevenly from comedy and film noir and never really gathers the steam necessary to become wholly involving.

Again, Sanders is a complete badass and nearly succeeds in saving the film.  Ward Bond also does a good job as the hulking killer Moose Malloy.  His constant run-ins with The Falcon’s sidekick Goldy are the highlights of the film.  I also liked Gilbert’s sultry turn as the deadly blonde.  It’s Inspector O’Hara who gets the best line of the film when he says, “It’s either sing or Sing Sing!”

A newspaper editor grows tired of the increasingly boring news stories coming out of Europe.  To liven things up, he sends a reporter who doesn’t know Jack Shit about foreign diplomacy named Jones (Joel McCrea) over to Europe to get a fresh take on things.  While in Holland, Jones uncovers a nest of spies in an abandoned windmill.  No one believes him naturally but the spies (who are trying to start up another World War) learn of Jones’ meddling and try to kill him.  He also ends up falling in love with the daughter of the villain, which predictably complicates the situation.

Foreign Correspondent is a mixed bag.  Although much of the movie is dull and bland, there were several things that I quite enjoyed about the film.  I liked the early scenes of the brash McCrea hobnobbing and schmoozing with a bunch of stuffy European types.  The scene where he flirts with a hot dignitary chick while she’s giving a speech is pretty funny too.  The majority of the film is just too stilted and bloated to be truly effective.  The running time clocks in at an even two hours and the flick would’ve been a lot better off if director Alfred Hitchcock had been more judicious about the pacing.

Although the film goes on for far too long and kinda fizzles out towards the end, Foreign Correspondent is still worth a look if you’re a die hard Hitchcock fan.  The Master gives us a few impressive scenes that showcase his trademark knack of combining murder and humor.  The highlight comes when a cold-blooded crooked cop played by Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle from Miracle on 34^th Street!) tries in vain to push McCrea off a tall building.  This scene is a good example of one of Hitchock’s major themes:  Killing someone is a lot harder than it looks.  There’s also a pretty graphic (for the time) shot to the face in there too.

Hitch’s next was Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Suggested Drinking Game:  Take a shot every time someone says “Foreign Correspondent”. 

Movie stars on the set of their latest film start to hear rumblings of possible Oscar nominations.  They all deal with the news in a variety of different ways.  Eventually, none of them get nominated but they enjoyed the buzz while it lasted.

I’m a big fan of director Christopher Guest’s work so I was looking forward to this flick.  With For Your Consideration, Guest eschews his usual mockumentary style and gives us a straightforward comedy.  Surprisingly enough, I missed his shaky-cam aesthetic.  Out of his quartet of comedies (which include Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind); I think this is the weakest of the lot.  It’s still pretty funny though.

The film really cooks when it’s sending up the pressures of the Hollywood system.  The scenes that work the best revolve around the faux Entertainment Tonight TV show and the studio “suit” (Ricky Gervais) who undermines the director’s vision in order to sell more tickets.  A lot of the on-the-set stuff doesn’t really work, which is a shame because that’s what makes up the bulk of the movie.

For Your Consideration is lightweight material to be sure; but the dynamite cast really delivers.  John Michael Higgins gets some big laughs as the clueless publicity man (“The internet?  Is that the one with e-mail?”); as does Eugene Levy as the idiotic agent.  Hands down the funniest performance comes from Fred Willard, who plays an entertainment show host.  Willard also gets the best line in the entire film when he says, “You know what they say about blind prostitutes… you really have to hand it to them!”

A smug scientist (Mark Stevens) and his pouty assistant (Marianne Koch) discover how to cryogenically freeze chimps.  When they get a grant to further their experiments (READ:  Human Test Subjects), their asshole boss won’t let them.  Meanwhile, the scientist’s floozy wife (Delphi Lawrence) thinks he’s cheating on her so she starts shacking up with some reporter bozo (Joachim Hansen).  Mr. Upstanding Scientist Guy then decides to try to freeze himself and while he’s in the fridge, his wife commits suicide.  The idiotic police force thinks he’s responsible though so they order him to be thawed out; but will he survive his unscheduled de-freezing?

If Frozen Alive was a mixed drink it would contain:

5 Parts boring ass General Hospital level melodrama.

2 Parts science-y stuff.

1 Part dull police procedural crap.

Shake contents well and serve over ice.  Garnish with a slice of chilled chimpanzee shit.

This is one of those movies where the idea is sound but the filmmakers drop the ball and give us a bunch of soap opera bullshit instead.  Although the scenes in the laboratory were kinda tight (especially the stuff with all the frozen chimpanzees) and the finale is sorta tense, the movie gets bogged down rather quickly with all the pathetic Love Rectangle nonsense.  It doesn’t help when the performances are bland as fuck.  Lawrence puts in a good turn as the slut wife though.  

AKA:  Der Fall X701.

Synapse Films returns with their latest compilation of exploitation trailers.  All of the trailers come from the folks at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas, who know a thing or two about exploitation cinema.  As with most compilations in this series, it has it’s share of faults (too many dumb trailers in the middle section), but it also happens to be a lot of fun.  Out of the ever growing 42^nd Street line, I think I have to say this one may be my favorite.

The opening sets the tone perfectly for what’s to come.  It’s a MPAA promo designed to explain the Ratings system and it’s hosted by none other than Charlton Heston!  For some reason though, “Chuck” is delivering his lines from a tennis court.  This only adds to the bizarreness.

First up is a chunk of Kung Fu previews.  The highlights include:  A Life of Ninja, The Bodyguard (“Viva Chiba!”), and Mad Monkey Kung Fu.  The trailer that really needs to be seen is the one for Lucky Seven.  It looks like The Little Rascals Take on the Mob.  What’s so great about this trailer is that nearly all the kids look like they do their own stunts and take what looks to be a LOT of abuse.

After a few lame trailers we get into the 70’s sex genre with the likes of Danish Love Acts, Group Marriage, and Caged Virgins (AKA:  Requiem for a Vampire).  The highlight of these previews is Chatterbox (starring Candace Rialson from Hollywood Boulevard).  It’s all about a talking and SINGING pussy!  Man, I have to see that flick!

Next up is a handful of trailers for Sci-Fi movies like Message from Space (which looks nuts), Mind Warp (AKA:  Galaxy of Terror; a movie that pretty much rocks), and awesome looking Megaforce.  (“The good guys always win… even in the 80’s!”)  After a few ho-hum action trailers, we get to Stacey; a movie directed by Andy Sidaris that I’ve always wanted to see.  Boy do I ever want to see it now!  Some so-so trailers follow until we see a trio of black themed previews (Putney Swope, Norman… Is That You?, and Redneck County) that all look pretty great for wildly different reasons. 

Then comes a run of trailers that is definitely the crown jewels of the collection.  These previews are all for family films of the 60’s and 70’s.  If your sanity is intact after you see The Magic Christmas Tree and Pinocchio’s Birthday Party, you’re a strong individual.  However, I guarantee the trailer for The Secret of Magic Island will be enough to make your head explode.  It’s all about puppies and ducks fighting a “villainous space age monkey”.  What’s even crazier is that the film’s stars are all played by real animals!  Unbelievable!

I still say my favorite trailer is the one for Sorceress.  It has everything you could possibly want in a movie.  Topless Kung Fu fighting twins, magic, monkey men, zombies, giant space griffins, witches, barbarians, imps, and even more.  Vol. 5 also features vintage ads for air-conditioned theaters, BBQ, coming attractions, shrimp rolls, and hot dogs too so you aren’t constantly bombarded with nothing but trailers.  Hopefully Synapse will put the Alamo in charge of their next release!

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has finally whittled Springwood’s teenage population down to one.  He gives the kid amnesia and sends him to the next town to bring his estranged daughter Maggie (Lisa Zane) to her old home.  Freddy then travels in her memory (don’t ask) back to the youth shelter where she works so that he can continue murdering kids there.  (“Every town has an Elm Street!”)  In the end, Maggie gets help from a hippie dream therapist (Yaphet Kotto) who gives her the tools necessary (3-D glasses) to destroy Freddy once and for all.

They said it was the “Final Nightmare” (yeah right) but I have to hand it to New Line for pulling out all the stops to at least make you think it was the last one.  There’s a cool flashback showing Freddy’s prototype gloves, a decent 3-D sequence (nowhere near as good as Friday the 13^th Part 3-D though) and even some celebrity cameos (Johnny Depp, Roseanne and Tom Arnold, and Alice Cooper) too.  With all of these ingredients, it certainly felt like they were giving him a send-off. 

If you can’t already tell, Freddy’s Dead:  The Final Nightmare features everything but the kitchen sink.  It’s that kind of attitude that I like about this movie.  Of course, this approach also makes the film uneven as all get out.

First thing is first, Englund plays Freddy in game show host mode.  It’s probably his worst portrayal of the character but since this was intended to be Freddy’s fond farewell, I guess you can’t complain about him being the life of the party.  Let’s face it, you know not to expect anything remotely “scary” from Freddy in this flick when he shows up four minutes into the movie dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and saying, “I’ll get you my pretty… and your little soul too!”

On the other hand, the dream sequences are top notch in this one.  My favorite was when Freddy put the dude from Garfield into a video game.  When the other kids disconnect Freddy’s controller, he uses “The Power Glove” to kill the guy.  Yes, I know this is stupid as Hell but you have to remember that I first saw this movie at the age of 13 when two things consumed my life:  Nintendo and Elm Street movies.  To me, this scene was the pinnacle of the series at the time.  Watching it now, it’s cheesy as the Kraft factory, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make me feel like I’m 13 again.

There’s also a cool dream scene where a deaf kid gets a giant Q-Tip shoved in his ear.  Then Freddy gives him another hearing aid that over amplifies his hearing so that when Freddy scratches his razor nails on the chalkboard, it makes his head explode.  (“Nice hearing from ya, Carlos!”)

Of course, there is plenty of dumb shit here too.  I think the lamest part was when the kid’s parachute broke.  As he’s falling, we see Freddy pushing a bed of spikes out into the middle of the road Wile E. Coyote style.  I don’t know what was stupider, the Looney Tunes aspect of the scene, or the fact that Freddy makes a winded sounding “Phew” after pushing the spikes.  What the Hell was that about?  I mean The Dream Demons gave him all this infinite power to conjure up horrifying imagery to torment teens in their dreams but he gets winded from pushing this little bed of spikes? 

Oh yeah, I neglected to mention The Dream Demons.  Freddy’s Dead breaks the Horror Movie Sequel Rule of adding an idiotic back story to its killer.  Apparently these slimy little fuckers (they look like turds with faces) gave Freddy his power just before the parents burned him alive.  While I liked seeing the flashback of the townsfolk torching Freddy, the Dream Demon crap is pretty weak and adds to the film’s needlessly silly tone.

I still laughed though.  I have a little rule that states that an unintended laugh is as good as an intended one.  From the “Damn, that was pretty funny” laugh to the “What the fuck were they smoking when they made this shit” laugh, Freddy’s Dead delivers on both counts.

Example:  At one point, a kid gets hit by a bus driven by Freddy who says, “No screaming while the bus is in motion!”  Lamesville, right?  Still I chuckled because it was so bad.  Then later in the flick Freddy battles a kickboxing broad and he says, “Kung Fu this bitch!”  Now that is genuinely funny.  I laughed a lot during this movie, more than most comedies.  Laughter is such a precious commodity that we can’t be too judgmental when something makes us laugh without meaning to.

The 3-D sequence is OK.  Nothing spectacular or anything, but I liked it.  Bad 3-D is better than no 3-D at all and this 3-D is slightly better than average.  Although the 3-D sequence only takes up the last ten minutes or so of the flick, it still hurtles its fair of shit out of the screen like:

• 3-D Hand
• 3-D Dream Demon Statues
• 3-D Razor
• 3-D Molotov Cocktail
• 3-D Arsenal
• 3-D Knife
• 3-D Spiked Bat
• 3-D Freddy Glove (naturally)
• 3-D Arrow
• 3-D Pipe Bomb
• 3-D Exploding Freddy Head

Freddy’s Dead:  The Final Nightmare is goofy and juvenile but it delivers what you want in a Freddy movie, namely teenagers getting killed and Freddy saying funny shit afterwards.  I don’t even hate it for lying to me about being the “Final” one either.  I mean Freddy even says during the film that, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but nothing will ever kill me!”  That should’ve been your clue that he’d be back.

Special Note:  It had to happen sooner or later.  After watching four Elm Street movies in a row, I finally had a dream about Freddy last night.  I hesitate to use the word “nightmare” because it wasn’t scary.  I was on my mom’s deck looking into her swimming pool and then Freddy suddenly burst through the lattice work and said “Boo” and knocked me into the pool.  That’s when I woke up.  I think the dream would’ve been a lot cooler though if Freddy had said something funny like “No lifeguard on duty!” but whatever.

<Tomorrow's Horror Franchise Movie:  Wes Craven's New Nightmare>

Ever since 1993 when Freddy’s glove dragged Jason’s hockey mask down to Hell at the end of Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday, dedicated Fred-Heads and die hard Jason fans had been clamoring for this movie.  When it arrived in theaters ten years later, it didn’t disappoint.  Freddy vs. Jason was well worth the wait.

The Elm Street kids are now on drugs that take away their fear.  With nothing to fear, there are no nightmares.  Since there are no nightmares, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) can’t kill anyone.  Freddy “searches the bowels of Hell” to find someone that can start scaring the shit out of the kids until he finds Jason Vorhees (Ken Kirzinger).  Freddy impersonates Jason’s dead mom and convinces him to travel to Elm Street to start hacking up teens.  Once Freddy has enough strength to start murdering kids on his own again, he tries to kill Jason.  Freddy underestimates him though and soon discovers that stopping Jason is a lot tougher than he thought.

You know right off the bat that this movie is going to rock because the music in the opening titles cleverly incorporates Jason’s Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha music into Freddy’s theme.  Likewise, the film is a perfect balance of an Elm Street movie and a Friday movie.  It delivers everything a Freddy fan would want and enough excellent Jason action to keep Friday purists entertained. 

Throughout the course of the movie Jason kills teens via machete impaling, decapitation, spearing, 180 degree head twist, flaming machete through the chest, multiple machete slashings, squashing a guy under a door, electrocution, and cutting a dude in half.  His best kill comes when he folds up a bed while a teen is still in it.  J-Man also has an awesome scene where he gets set on fire and walks through a cornfield slashing the shit out of stoners.

Freddy only kills one person in the flick but he did enough crazy cool nightmare chicanery to make up for it.  The most random and bizarre thing he does in this one is appear to a stoner as a hookah smoking caterpillar.  His one-liners are kept nicely in check (the “Got your nose!” scene is the only groaner in the bunch) and Englund yet again essays the role with his usual gusto.

Most importantly, director Ronny Yu does something I didn’t think was possible:  He actually made Freddy scary again.  During the opening sequence, we see a pre-burned Freddy suggestively smoking a cigarette and licking a photo of the child he just killed.  That shit was raw.  This says to the audience that this Freddy isn’t the punster you remember.  He isn’t the Bastard Son of 1000 Maniacs.  He is a fucking child molesting sonofabitch.

Jason is given the underdog/Frankenstein treatment.  He really is just avenging his mother’s death after all.  Freddy only tricks him into killing the Elm Street kids in her name, so we should probably root for old Hockey Face when it comes time for The Main Event.

And what an event it is.  The final brawl between the two titans of terror goes off better than anyone could’ve expected.  There are actually two main battles.  One takes place in the Dream World (Freddy dopes Jason up on tranquilizers so he can take a nap), the other at Crystal Lake.  Both of them are doozies.  What really makes them work is that the screenwriters have a semi-plausible scenario to get them fighting.  It’s not Shakespearian by any means but it’s just reasonable enough that you buy into it.

Freddy vs. Jason was made for the fans and Yu puts in a lot of geek-gasm moments that are worth their weight in gold and compensate for any petty qualms you may have with the movie.  I mean how cool is it when you first see Jason strolling down Elm Street?  Or how about Freddy’s “Oh Shit” face when he realizes that he’s in the Real World and has to fight Jason?  My favorite geeky moment came during Jason’s nightmare where he was a little boy and some cruel kids put the potato sack over his face.  I also dug the part when Freddy tormented Young Jason with his mother’s decapitated head too.

I have to give Yu a lot of credit, he sure knows how to film fight scenes, gore, and titties; three very vital elements to a movie called Freddy vs. Jason.  He brings a lot of kinetic energy to the fight sequences.  These are some of the best scenes of monsters kicking the shit out of each other since King Kong vs. Godzilla.  Yu also has an admirable approach to the bloodshed which is:  The more the merrier.  Seriously, every little cut results in a gushing geyser of plasma.  Plus, the man puts in a good half dozen titties in the flick.  Yu is a guy who really knows how to cover all the bases.

I also have to give a shout out to screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift.  These guys seamlessly blended the two character’s mythologies and found a nice balance of traditional Jason victims (stoners and fornicators) and Freddy fodder (outcasts and weirdoes) too.  They also struck the right tone, combining equal parts of “creepy” scary (like when all the coma patients wake up from their slumber) with “fun” scary (like when one of the chicks has to save Jason by giving him mouth to mouth). 

People’s biggest complaint with the movie was that Kane (Jason 7-10) Hodder didn’t reprise his role as everyone’s favorite hockey masked killer.  Sure, I wish Kane had been Jason but Kirzinger does a smashing job behind the mask and didn’t make me miss Hodder one bit.  Besides, Kane’s built like a Mac truck and could’ve easily snapped Englund over his knee like a twig.  Kirzinger’s svelte frame is a much better match-up for Englund.

Freddy’s best line in this one comes when he sees that chick from Destiny’s Child and says, “How sweet; dark meat!”

The stoner gets the best non-Freddy line of the film:  “Dude that goalie was pissed about something!”

Both Freddy and Jason’s next cinematic outings were Michael Bay perpetrated remakes.

Freddy vs. Jason is on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 2003 at the Number 6 spot, sandwiched in between House of 1000 Corpses and Final Destination 2.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:  Freddy’s Revenge>

Jason goes to New York and the franchise goes into the toilet. In fact, Jason Takes a Dump might have been more fun to watch than this ungodly mess.  The filmmakers must’ve known they were making something seriously shitty; why else would they have staged the finale in the sewer?

This one doesn’t even feel like a real Jason movie.  There is no opening credits sequence accompanied by the strains of Harry Manfredini’s Kill-Kill-Kill-Ha-Ha-Ha music.  Instead we get red and white titles over shots of New York while headache-inducing spoken-word beatnik poetry is read and soft rock crap plays on the soundtrack.

The plot has Jason getting shocked back to life by a stray power line and rising out of Crystal Lake.  A group of teens are going on a field trip to New York via cruise ship and Jason boards the boat and starts dispatching teens left and right.  When the boat finally docks in New York, Jason chases his prey into the sewer where he gets his comeuppance thanks to some handy toxic waste.

Filmed with too much light and zero atmosphere by an idiot named Rob Hedden who had obviously never seen a Friday the 13^th flick in his life before directing this one, Jason Takes Manhattan is one supremely awful waste of 100 minutes.  Yes, you heard me… 100 minutes.  Why on earth anyone would make a Jason movie that freaking long is beyond human comprehension.  I could see maybe if the movie was actually good, but this one is a non-stop suck fest. 

God, where do I begin to describe the sheer suckitude that is Jason Takes Manhattan?  Let’s start with the fact that Jason doesn’t even get to Manhattan until about the 65 minute mark.  And even then, it’s just Vancouver.  (The cop Jason kills even has an obviously Canadian accent.)  Once in Vancouver, it takes another 20 minutes to get to the REAL New York.  Even once Jason steps into New York, very little is actually done with the concept.  Mostly he just walks down alleyways and docks.  Occasionally, he’ll get on the subway but instead of doing something cool like slaughter everyone on board, he just kinds shuffles along stalking The Final Girl.

Jensen Daggett, who plays The Final Girl in this one, is probably the worst Final Girl in history.  At one point she gets shot up with heroin by some gangbangers but her drugged up blank stare is basically the same as her acting in the rest of the movie.  What’s worse is that she sees a bunch of visions of Young Jason but nothing is ever done with it.  After about her 17^th hallucination involving Jason, you’ll want to bitch slap her into the next county.  Her hallucinations are stupid as Hell because they show Young Jason sporting a full head of hair.  Everybody knows that even as a child Jason was a bald-headed, droopy-eyed mongoloid.  Further proof that this Hedden fuck never watched a damn Jason movie before stepping behind the camera. 

Even if I could forgive the fact that The Final Girl sucks, the fact that half the movie takes place on a boat, and that the real New York is only on screen for about 1% of the running time; you’d still be left with the dumb ending.  If you thought the ending of The New Blood was bad, brother, you ain’t seen shit.  Jason gets drowned in toxic waste and melts down to being a little boy again.  (Complete with a full head of hair and non-mongoloid-ian features.) 

To make matters worse, just before Jason gets deluged with the toxic waste, he actually SPEAKS!!!!  I hadn’t seen this movie since the DVD first came out and I thought I had remembered just about how sucky this movie was, but completely forgot about the part when Jason spoke.  God this movie is terrible. 

The only thing that gives Jason Takes Manhattan it’s ½ * is the deaths.  None of them are particularly good but there are a lot of them, which should count for something.  There’s impalement by spear gun (the gun part, not the spear), spear (minus the gun), guitar to the head, steam room stone through the chest, broken mirror to the whatever (couldn’t tell; it happened off screen), harpoon to the kidney, machete to the throat, strangulation, electrocution, impalement (sideways), axe in the back, hypodermic needle through the chest, slamming a Cholo’s head into a pipe, drowning in a barrel of toxic waste, and a wrench to the head (at least I think it was to the head, I couldn’t tell cuz it was one of those shadow puppet deals).  The novelty death this time around involves a boxer that gets his head punched off by Jason.  This is just so cartoonish and dumb that it’s not even good for a laugh. 

What’s irritating about these deaths is that most of people are introduced simply to be killed off.  This isn’t the worst thing in the world but when the victims are merely victims, and not characters, it takes the fun out of it.  All of the victims are paper thin (I take that back; that remark is an insult to paper).  There’s the film geek nerd that films everything, the Joan Jett look-alike rocker, the jock, the slut, the token Asian chick, the stuffy asshole teacher, the kid who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, etc.  Jesus, just thinking of these people again pisses me off something fierce.

The obvious joke of the movie is that there is a masked killer stalking and killing people and New Yorkers just ignore him because they are typical New York assholes.  This joke isn’t even all that funny to begin with and Hedden can’t even deliver any good punchlines.  There is one particularly pathetic scene where Jason lifts up his mask to discourage some punks from getting in his way.  Hello Jason, you are a complete badass mongoloid zombie killing machine; you don’t need to resort to stupid shit like that.  Leave the jokey crap to Freddy.  (Jason’s face by the way doesn’t look scary in the least and resembles a jack o’ lantern covered in week-old bubble gum.)

Jason Takes Manhattan is the nadir of the Friday the 13th series.  It’s only slightly more terrible than the next entry, Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday.  That’s like saying syphilis is more fun that gonorrhea. 

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday>

As a kid, Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) had a telekinetic temper tantrum and killed her abusive alcoholic father by drowning him in Crystal Lake.  Ten years later, she goes back to the lake for some therapy with her demented doctor (Terry Kiser from Weekend at Bernie’s) who just wants to exploit her powers.  Shortly into her treatment, she has a meltdown and tries to wish her father back to life from out of the lake.  She doesn’t realize that Jason (Kane Hodder) is also down there and instead of resurrecting dear old daddy; she summons Jason by mistake.  It doesn’t take long for old Hockey Face to start hacking up teens left and right.  Eventually, Tina learns to harness her powers so that she can battle Jason.  In the end, she finally brings her father back to life and he returns Jason to his watery grave.

The New Blood is one of those Jason movies that I have a soft spot in my heart for.  First off, it was the first Jason movie I ever saw in a theater.  It gave me nightmares as a kid, which means it gets high marks in the scary department.  More importantly, it marked the first time Kane Hodder essayed the role of everybody’s favorite hockey mask wearing psychopath.  Hodder would go on to play Jason three more times and he really puts forth an authority and a personality into the character.  This is probably my favorite Kane performance of them all.

Unfortunately The New Blood has one of the worst endings to ever come out of Hollywood.  As good as most of the movie is; the ending is so heart-stoppingly bad that it will literally make you pull your hair out from the roots.  If the movie ended with Tina blowing up Jason in the house, everything would’ve been fine and dandy and the flick would’ve skated by with *** ½.  As it stands, we get 83 minutes of a pretty great Jason movie; then the flick thoroughly shits the bed in record time once the dead dad comes back to life to defeat Jason.  So bad is the denouement of The New Blood that I have to knock an entire Star from the rating. 

Let’s face it folks, this ending is dumb as all get out.  Are we really supposed to believe that Tina’s dad comes back to life and chains up Jason?  Let’s talk logistics here for a second.  Why would her dad’s body still be in the lake after ten years?  Wouldn’t the police have dragged his corpse out of the lake after his death?  And even if they didn’t, why is his corpse perfectly preserved?  This shit is just hurting my brain it’s so damned dumb.

Before he completely botched the ending, director John Carl (Troll) Buechler delivered the goods more often than not.  I particularly liked the atmospheric opening montage of Jason’s greatest hits narrated by Crazy Ralph himself, Walt Gorney.  (“People forget he’s down there… waiting!”)  The Jason sequences are top notch and feature some good kills.  There is:  a spike through the neck, a spike through the back, a hand through the back, an axe to the face, a drowning, the requisite head crushing, a party favor to the eye, a knife in the chest, a machete to the neck, a bimbo thrown out of the second story window, a sickle through the chest, a weed whacker to the stomach, and another axe to the face.  Then of course, we have the immortal sleeping bag kill; one of Jason’s finest moments.

Jason gets as good as he gives.  The extended brawl between the telekinetic Tina and Jason is a doozy and although it has a tendency to get a bit hokey, it’s still loads of fun.  She electrocutes him, throws a sofa (as well as a potted plant) at him with her mind, brings down a porch on his head, tosses a ceiling lamp at him, strangles him, send some nails flying in his face, sets him on fire, and resurrects her dead fath…  Umm… the less said about that, the better.

Buechler also did the special effects for the movie and his work is second only to Tom Savani’s in the series.  Jason’s make-up is simply incredible.  Buechler took Jason’s new zombified look and ran with it.  You can even see his exposed ribcage and spinal cord poking out from his coveralls.  The coolest part is that you can actually see his skeletonized knee joints move when he walks!  His face is also pretty dope too as he looks like a cross between The Colossal Beast and an oatmeal cookie.  The gore for the most part is so-so.  That’s because the MPAA neutered the majority of Buechler’s gore effects in order for the film to get an R rating; so we can’t really be mad at him for cutting away so quickly once Jason starts doing his thing.

Performance-wise, things are fairly generic.  Lincoln does a decent enough as Tina.  She isn’t great or anything but she hits her marks.  If we’re singling out great performances, I’d have to say that Elizabeth Kaitan had the two best perfectly rounded performances of the whole movie. 

When all is said and done, Friday the 13^th Part 7:  The New Blood should’ve been called Carrie vs. Jason.  The stupid ending aside, this was not the worst gimmick they could’ve come up with for poor Jason.  Future gimmicks included Jason in Manhattan, Jason “dying” (although he had already “died” in Part 4), Jason in Space (Leprechaun beat him there though), battling Freddy Krueger, and the ultimate gimmick:  Being remade by Michael Bay.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 8:  Jason Takes Manhattan>

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) is all grown up and looking to put Jason to rest once and for all.  He heads out to the cemetery with his pal Horshack to cremate Jason’s body but in the process has a bit of a freakout and stabs his carcass with a big metal pole.  Lightning strikes and it naturally brings Old Hockey Face back to life.  (Frankenstein rules are in effect.)  Because Jason is a maggot-faced zombie, he has superhuman strength and can’t be killed.  Tommy’s solution?  Chain that sucker to a big fucking rock and leave his ass floating in Crystal Lake.

Director Tom McLoughlin imbues the movie with a sense of fun that has not been rivaled before or since in a Jason movie.  Some have argued that Jason “jumped the shark” when he became a zombie but in the confines of the movie it works incredibly well.  After not being in the last movie (except for a brief dreamlike cameo), it was good to finally have Jason back.  The fact that he was zombified and possessed superhuman strength amped up the carnage he was able to create.  

I mean hearts get ripped out, metal posts are shoved through the stomachs and faces, arm and legs are ripped off, broken whiskey bottles get put into people’s throats, faces are put through walls, knives get stuck into skulls, heads are twisted off, spikes are thrown into faces, and heads are crushed.  Jason also gets two people at the same time with the same machete while they straddle a motorcycle and beheads three paintball playing jackasses with one swoop of his trusty machete.  My favorite kill was when Jason folded up the sheriff like a lawn chair.  People usually complain that this entry is bloodless but there is enough gruesome stuff here to please any die hard Jason fan.

While I prefer the Mongoloid Jason of Parts 2-4 (I’m not counting Part 5 because that featured JINO, Jason in Name Only), there is nothing wrong with a super-strong Zombie Jason.  Everybody has their favorite version of a beloved character.  No one is “right” or “wrong”; it’s just a matter of preference.  It’s just like when Roger Moore took over for Sean Connery as James Bond.  To some people, Connery will always be Bond while others enjoy the more humorous aspects that Moore brought to the table.  And while we’re on the subject of Bond, the Jason Bond opening is just too awesome for words.

McLoughlin also plays with the conventions of the series a bit.  Like how he cannily shows you what Jason looks like right at the beginning so you don’t have to wait 90 minutes to see his face.  Since we already know what the fool looks like from the get-go, the movie can get down to business.

In addition to foiling our expectations, McLoughlin also tosses more intentional humor into the mix which gives the flick a kind of rollercoaster momentum.  Let’s face it, Jason Lives was self-referential a full decade before Scream made it hip.  When confronted by Jason, one victim remarks, “I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly!”  I think the best line came from the caretaker who looks directly at the camera and says, “Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment!”

The intentional humor works well because it’s never at Jason’s expense.  The exception is the one scene where he rips off a dude’s arm and looks at it funny.  That’s fine though because Jason was still getting used to his superhuman strength at this point so he had every right to be like, “Oh shit, I just ripped this guy’s arm off!  Tight!”  

McLoughlin also does little things no one has ever tried to do in a Jason movie.  For example, this is the only Jason flick where kids actually come to the summer camp!  You already know Jason won’t kill the little kiddies, but it sorta ups the stakes a bit.  I even liked how McLoughlin acknowledged that the town of Crystal Lake would have changed its name to Forest Green to disassociate itself from the Jason legend.  (Although they subsequently went back to calling it Crystal Lake for the remainder of the series.)

Thom Mathews gives a great performance as Tommy and does old Corey Feldman proud.  He’s deadly serious and commands the screen with authority.  This flick is great to watch back-to-back with Return of the Living Dead as a Mathews Meets the Undead Double Feature.  Also worth mentioning is the fact that Darcy DeMoss (who plays the chick who gets her face pushed through the wall) previously appeared in the series in Part 4.  She was one of the chicks in the aerobicise video the coroner watched before he got killed.

Friday the 13^th Part 6:  Jason Lives unfortunately features no boobies.  Now this is something that I’d probably take an Half Star off for under normal circumstances.  There is of course The Video Vacuum rule that states that any movie I’ve seen more than ten times automatically gets Four Stars.  Since I’ve seen this flick well over a dozen times, I can’t bear to give the film any less than Four Stars.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 7:  The New Blood>

Jason wakes up in the morgue after taking an axe to the face in Part 3-D and butchers a coroner and a hot tamale nurse before heading back to Crystal Lake.  Now residing at the lake is a single mom and her two kids, Trish (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy (Corey Feldman), as well as a house full of horny teens.  Jason makes short work of them before coming after Trish.  Fortunately Tommy is a special effects wizard and makes himself look like Young Jason, which thoroughly puzzles the shit out of the killer.  This gives Trish enough time to plant a machete in Jason’s face.  Thank God Jason is dead so the series can now at last be over.  Right?  Right?

I don’t think there was anyone who honestly believed that this was going to be the FINAL chapter of the series.  Hollywood would not let any movie that costs a measly 2 million dollars that makes back 32 million be the “Final” anything as long as they can still wring a buck out of it.  Paramount Pictures is not stupid, so why would they kill off their biggest cash cow?  The studio just called it “The Final Chapter” to lure the audience into the theater.  I’m willing to bet that Paramount probably already had the next flick in the works before they made the decision to call this one The Final Chapter.  In fact, the Friday the 13^th series is the only movie franchise in which the studios used the word “Final” in their sequel’s title TWICE to make audiences believe that it was going to be the last one.  (Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday being the other film.)

The Final Chapter was directed by Joseph Zito, the man who did Missing in Action.  That means he’s really good at the survival portions of the film where Tommy and his sister fend off Jason’s attacks.  Zito also brings a lot more technical know-how to the flick.  There’s a long opening dolly shot that starts out focused on the full moon, then it pans down and follows some ambulances and cops cars to the crime scene, and ends with a close-up of Jason’s body.  This is a pretty great shot.  We’re not talking the restaurant scene in Goodfellas great here, but it’s a lot more stylish than most of the films in the series.  There’s also a cool shot where the camera is mounted on a gurney containing Jason’s body as it makes its way down the halls of the hospital too.

Zito also gives us more time to get to know the victi… err… kids, which is different from the usual approach.  I’m not saying the characters are Shakespearean or anything but they’re all quirky and have distinct personalities.  Lawrence Monoson has some good scenes while high as a kite and watching vintage stag movies and Crispin Glover’s wacky dance moves has already become the stuff of legend.  These kids are definitely not your cookie cutter teenage stereotypes and they really stand out from 99% of the characters in the series. 

I’m not saying that I didn’t want Jason to turn them into walking Jackson Pollack paintings.  Jason does his mama proud in this one and delivers:  a hacksaw to the throat (accompanied by 180 degree head-twist), knife to the chest, knife through the throat, knife through the back, spear gun to the gonads, spear through the back, corkscrew to the hand, cleaver to the face, chick thrown out of a two story window and onto the hood of a car, knife in the head, head smashed through shower tile, axe to the chest, and three-pronged garden hoe to the chest.  Not to be outdone, Tommy and his sister give Jason his just desserts via a hammer to the neck and a TV to the face, plus a few dozen or so whacks from a machete.  The best part is when Trish plants the machete into his head.  Jason falls to the ground face first on the hilt; then he slides ALL THE WAY DOWN THE MACHETE.  I know Jason will still come back from that but… ouch.

Tom Savani yet again did the excellent effects.  They aren’t as impressive or groundbreaking as the FX from the original, but they still pack quite a punch.  Zito knew full well that Savani was the real star of the move and showcases his work nicely.  (The duo had previously worked on The Prowler together.)  I also liked how screenwriter Barney Cohen shrewdly made Feldman’s prepubescent character an FX expert as a special nod to The Master.  (He even named his character “Tommy” after Savani!)

The Final Chapter was my favorite Friday movie when I was a kid I think mostly because of Corey Feldman.  His character was really refreshing because you very rarely saw a kid in a slasher movie.  Plus, I was just a huge Corey fan anyway.  The abundance of titties, the high body count, and the tense finale were also factors which made me love this installment.  As an adult, I think I still prefer 3, 1, and 6 to this one, but it’s still one heck of a great Jason movie.

And I neglected to mention this in my Part 2 review, but what’s up with the title sequences in these movies?  The title almost always explodes!  In The Final Chapter, Jason’s hockey mask blows up before the credits start.  I mean you hardly ever see any explosions in these films so what’s up with all the exploding titles?  Maybe that’s how Zito got the job directing Missing in Action.  Chuck Norris took one look at the exploding hockey mask and said, “Shit, this dude doesn’t fuck around; he’s blowing shit up before the movie even starts!  Hire him!”

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 6:  Jason Lives.>

Jason Vorhees is still upset that a camp counselor chopped off his mother’s head with a machete.  In what can only be described as a case of Extreme Therapy, he begins hacking up a set of counselors who dare to open up a camp across the way from his home of Crystal Lake.  Jason picks them off one by one until Ginny (Amy Steel), The Final Girl is left.  Jason chases her back to his shack in the woods where he keeps his mom’s decapitated head on an altar.  Ginny is able to play mind games with the poor boy long enough to distract him and plant a machete into his shoulder, which puts him down for the count until the next sequel. 

The Jason in Part 2 isn’t quite the Jason we know and love.  He doesn’t wear the hockey mask in this one (that comes in Part 3-D) but a potato sack.  I don’t know about you but I like the potato sack era Jason.  (Hey if your face looked like one of the Oak Ridge Boys crossed with a microwaved eggplant, you’d be wearing a potato sack too.)  As much as I dig his bag head phase, I have to admit that his overalls are stupid looking.  Seriously, who can be menaced by someone wearing Osh Kosh B’Gosh? 

Friday the 13^th Part 2 is a better than average entry in the series.  There are a number of quality kills yet most of them were so neutered by the MPAA that they wind up being rather anticlimactic.  We get an ice pick to the skull, a hammer to the back of the head, throat slashing, a machete to the face and the piece de resistance; the spear through the two humping horndogs.  It’s not quite up to snuff with the similar scene from Twitch of the Death Nerve (in that movie, the lovers kept on fucking while the spear was through them), but it’ll do.

Since a lot of the FX were cut out by the censors, the best special effect in the movie is Kristen (Gas Pump Girls) Baker skinny dipping.  Yowsers.  Kristen, all I have to say is that I am an Animal Rescue Technician and I want to adopt your puppies.

While were on the subject of excellent performances, Amy Steel makes for a feisty and likable heroine.  Re-watching the film, I was surprised that they actually make a point of Ginny’s degree in child psychology.  This no doubt figures into the finale where she makes Jason think she’s the reincarnation of his mom by donning her ratty ass sweater.  Steel isn’t like the prototypical Final Girl because she actually has sex in the movie but her background in child psychology coupled with her fascination with the Jason legend (when she speculates about Jason’s frame of mind while drinking in a bar, her friends just laugh at her) gives her the edge she needs to defeat the masked mongoloid.

Steve Miner’s workmanlike direction enhances the film nicely.  It’s not out and out scary like his next film in the series, Part 3-D but it’s never boring.  The opening pre-title sequence where the first film’s heroine Adrienne King gets Janet Leigh’ed is a good example of how Miner works.  He establishes a threat, gives a false scare (courtesy of a leaping cat), then allows the scene to naturally pay off.  This scene is also important because it also brings the audience up to speed.  (King dreams the last five minutes of Part 1.)  What I found especially creepy about the opening is that Jason actually LEAVES Camp Crystal Lake in order to get revenge on her for killing his mother.  Before Jason went to Manhattan, Elm Street, or even space; this was his first road trip.

Miner is also good at establishing a moody atmosphere.  The campfire tale where John Furey explains Jason’s origins is extremely well done and sets a perfect tone for the movie.  I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that it’s the definitive campfire scene of the genre (that would probably belong to Madman) but it works really well.  Miner does go overboard when it comes to showing Jason’s feet while he’s stalking his victims though.  There are so many fucking close-ups of his feet in this movie to make you wonder if maybe Doris Wishman had a hand in directing it.

Part 2 delivers about half as many scares as the original and has features about half as much blood but it still has a nasty edge to it that I admire.  Like when Jason kills the guy in the wheelchair.  When we first see him, we’re like, “Wait.  They wouldn’t kill the handicapped guy would they?”  Then it’s revealed that his legs are the only thing that doesn’t function and he’s perfectly handi-capable in the Boot Knocking Department, so he’s fair game for Jason’s machete.  There’s also a gnarly scene where Ginny is hiding from Jason under a bed and gets so scared that she pisses herself.  There’s even a close-up of the urine running out from under the bed.  It’s down-and-dirty touches like that that separates Part 2 from some of the lesser entries in the series.

However the flick does reek of some missed opportunities.  Like the introduction of the chainsaw.  This would make an ideal weapon for Jason (hey if it’s good enough for Leatherface, it’s good enough for him) but he never uses it.  After Ginny nicks him with it then conveniently drops it next to his seemingly unconsciously body, Jason never picks the damn thing up!  I was also kind of miffed that he killed Crazy Ralph too.  He was one of the best parts of the original and it was a shame to just seem him written out of the story like that.  I mean you’d think Jason would want a PR man running around telling people all about his legend, but I guess not.  Jason is human after all and being human, he’s entitled to make mistakes.

That’s why I prefer Jason when he’s Mongoloid Jason and not Zombie Jason.  He’s not just some unstoppable killing machine but a real character.  I particularly liked the scene in this one where Ginny kicks Jason in the nuts.  This is a great moment as it shows that Jason can be vulnerable too.  A swift kick to the nads is something Zombie Jason wouldn’t have had to put up with, that’s for damn sure. 

Miner returned the next year with Friday the 13^th Part 3-D, my personal favorite of the series.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 4:  The Final Chapter>

<Folks, I’m back with another movie in the Horror Franchise Marathon.  Not only will this review be the first of many Friday the 13^th movies I’ll be reviewing over the next few days, it also marks the return of the popular ongoing series:>

THE GREATEST MOVIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE

Watching the original Friday the 13^th after over 25 years, 10 sequels, and a remake is still a special experience.  It’s a brutally effective slasher movie; one that set the benchmark for all slashers to come.  Like the seminal Halloween; Friday the 13^th has a prologue where someone got killed years earlier that sets up the murderer’s motive.  It also firmly establishes The Final Girl, the fact that it’s mandatory for The Final Girl to drop a murder weapon whenever she renders her attacker unconscious, the creepy music, the idea that fornication leads to death, the hungry young actor Before They Were Famous, and the customary POV shots of the killer. 

What Friday adds to the mix is the setting.  It took the terror out of small town USA and planted it in the woods of summer camp.  Everybody hates summer camp, so turning a killer loose in the cabins is an inspired touch; one that would go on to be imitated countless times.  It also establishes the need for the town drunk (in this case, Crazy Ralph) to warn the impending victims that they are “Doomed”.  Friday even contains what I think is the first case of the Jokester character who goes around goofing off and isn’t missed when he gets killed.

More than anything, Friday the 13^th is a showcase for Tom Savani’s excellent gore effects.  Savani was hired after the producers saw his great FX work in Dawn of the Dead.  Unlike the effects in that movie, the gore here is more personal because it’s happening to a smaller group of people you actually care about and not to a bunch of zombies.  Savani gives us multiple throat slashings, axes to the face, and arrows to the eyeball, and a decapitation that is truly one of the crowning achievements for FX in the slasher era.

Some of the film’s critics said that director Sean S. Cunningham favored the gore over the suspense but I don’t buy that.  The original Friday the 13^th is extremely suspenseful.  The difference between this and many of the lame sequels is that Cunningham could actually direct the suspense scenes.  Savani’s groundbreaking work does not outshine Cunningham’s suspense; it perfectly compliments it.  Watch the film on broadcast TV after the network censors have cut out all the gore and it’s still effective.  While my favorite Friday is still Part 3-D (this one is a close second), the original still packs one heck of a wallop and the climatic confrontation between The Final Girl Alice and Mrs. Vorhees is dynamite stuff.  Not to mention The Last Scare; which is one of the best in horror history.  This scene fucked me up so bad when I was a kid.  No scene before or since has come close (well, maybe the end of Sleepaway Camp).

Speaking of historical landmarks, how about Harry Manfredini’s score?  The Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha music ranks right up there with the DA-dum DA-dum score from Jaws.  It’s part of pop culture now.  Tell me you’ve never been walking with someone in the woods and made the Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha sound.

Cunningham’s real inspiration for Friday the 13^th wasn’t Halloween though.  At heart, the movie is a simple twist on Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve with nearly a dozen apparently motiveless murders happening in an isolated area.  The only difference is that the killer is getting revenge for the death of her son and not trying to get their hands on a piece of property.  In fact, Twitch’s signature kill was blatantly ripped off in Friday the 13^th Part 2; further proving that the Friday series would’ve been lacking something had it not been for Bava’s film.

As with Twitch of the Death Nerve, the killer’s identity is almost an afterthought.  There are no typical whodunit scenes where red herrings are introduced.  It’s just a killer killing people.  While some clues are laid out (there’s a brief mention of a boy drowning); Cunningham doesn’t beat the audience over the head with it.  The fact the murders are more or less random (until the end at least) makes it that much scarier to me.  Later installments of the Friday saga are steeped in the mystique of the larger than life legend of Jason, so this one is refreshing because the counselors don’t know who is killing them or why until the very end.

Yep, Jason doesn’t kill people in the movie.  His mother does.  Some fans don’t like that Jason only makes a cameo in this one but I don’t care.  I like Mrs. Vorhees a lot.  What makes the original Friday the 13^th different from its sequels is that Mrs. Vorhees is able to pull tricks on her victims that her son Jason couldn’t even dream of doing.  Jason couldn’t pick up hitchhikers and scare the shit out of them before killing them.  I dig that about her.  And what about the creepy scene in which Mrs. Vorhees lures an unsuspecting chick into the archery range by yelling “Help me” in an eerie childlike voice?  Bet you all forgot about that little ditty.  That’s some freaky stuff.  Then there’s the awesome finale where she’s chasing Alice around the camp speaking in Jason’s voice saying, “Kill her mommy!  Kill her!”  That shit is scary.  They can bring Mrs. Vorhees back to the series any time.

While I’m we’re on the subject of strong willed women, I do have to get something off my chest.  It has to do with all those feminists who condemned the slasher movies of the 80’s.  Now I don’t want to get off on an anti-feminist rant here but it always pissed me off how those broads would get their bras in a bunch (the ones they didn’t burn, that is) and say that slasher movies were misogynistic.  They’d always protest and say things like the filmmakers were all moralistic, depraved lunatics who got off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock.  I have nothing against feminists in general (especially the ones that actually LOOK like females), but their claims are thoroughly ridiculous.  Look ladies, I don’t know if any of y’all have actually sat down and watched a horror film, but it’s not the directors of horror films who get off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock; its the killers IN the horror films that get off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock.  I thought that was obvious. 

It REALLY infuriated me whenever the feminists singled out the Friday the 13^th movies as being the most misogynistic of the bunch.  Actually, nothing can be further from the truth.  Feminists, allow me to now set the record straight once and for all.

Friday the 13^th can’t be misogynistic because there’s a goddamned WOMAN doing all the killing. 

That’s right, before the potato sack, before the hockey mask, before match-up with Freddy Krueger, heck before there even WAS Jason, there was Mrs. Vorhees.  You feminists didn’t know that did you?  That’s because you never bothered watching the first Friday movie; you just condemned it on general principals. 

And I hate to tell you this girls but Mrs. Vorhees was a card carrying FEMINIST!  You can tell she’s a feminist not only by her close-cropped hairdo, ill-fitting sweaters and over-sized combat boots, but because of her convictions.  The best feminists saw a problem with the way the world was and set out to change it.  In the 60’s, they wrote folk songs, protested, and went on talk shows declaring their equality.  In 1980, Mrs. Vorhees did all that with a vengeance.  Except that instead of burning her bra and going on marches, and demanding equal rights, she stabs people through the throat, buries an axe into someone’s face, and shoots an arrow into their eye.  Mrs. Vorhees showed that equality among the sexes wasn’t just a dream; she set out to prove that a woman could be just as fine a killer as any male slasher in the movies.  As it turns out, she was right.  She was one of the best. 

Okay so she was ostensibly murdering people at Camp Crystal Lake for having sex because the counselors were too busy having sex and let her son Jason drown.  But let me break it down even further for you.  We know why she killed the men (scum) but the reason why she killed the women isn’t obvious at first, but it’s downright simple:  THEY WEREN'T FEMINISTS.  They weren’t independent minded females.  They relied too much on their boyfriends to supply them with pot and screw them.  They didn’t have that “You Go Girl” spunk.  Therefore, they had to die.  That’s why during the final reel, Mrs. Vorhees doesn’t kill Alice right away because Alice at first doesn’t seem like all the rest.  Since Alice has a tomboy haircut and wears pants, Mrs. Vorhees initially thinks she’s a feminist too.  Ultimately though, Mrs. V sees through Alice (she must’ve smelled weed on her breath) and decides to try to make veal cutlets out of her. 

And if you can get buy that argument, I beg you to consider the fact that Jason wasn’t a misogynist either as he was merely carrying out the work of his dear departed mama.  If you can believe that, then you have no reason to hate the sequels either.  (Well except for Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell; they suck.)

I’m telling you feminists, watch the ORIGINAL Friday the 13^th again (not while you’re on your period of course) and see if I’m not right.  Then get back to me.  I’d love to hear from you.

Friday the 13^th is a solid Number 10 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten for the Year 1980, ranking just below The Exterminator.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 2>

A Mexican bandito (Rod Steiger) wants to rob a bank so he blackmails a wanted IRA terrorist (James Coburn) into arranging the explosives necessary to get inside.  As it turns out, the building is no longer a bank but a jail used for the holding of political prisoners.  After the explosion, all of the prisoners escape and Steiger becomes a reluctant hero of the Revolution.

Steiger overacts into a frenzied fervor which doesn’t necessarily endear him to the audience.  Using a Speedy Gonzalez accent and chewing the scenery at every chance he gets; Steiger pretty much gets on your nerves right from the beginning.  Coburn fares slightly better but like Steiger he speaks in an irritating accent (he sounds like a constipated leprechaun).

Sergio Leone directed the film and it’s nowhere in the same league as his previous Dollars Trilogy.  Whereas those films benefited from the larger than life treatment Leone gave them; A Fistful of Dynamite would’ve been better off on a smaller canvas.  Neither Steiger’s or Coburn’s characters are likeable enough to be worthy of such a grandiose plot.  Now sometimes Leone’s overindulgence works (like the bloody shootouts), but mostly it’s just succeeds in testing the viewer’s patience (like the boring slow motion flashbacks to Coburn’s past).  The bloated running time (154 minutes) doesn’t help matters any either. 

A Fistful of Dynamite does have it’s moments of fun.  Coburn’s introduction is quite memorable and starts the movie off on the right note.  There is also a great action scene where Coburn and Steiger gun down a platoon of German soldiers before blowing the shit out of a bridge with some dynamite.  The best thing about the flick though is Ennio Morricone’s bizarre score.  It’s experimental, odd, and immensely enjoyable.  Too bad this same spirit didn’t cross over to the film itself.

AKA:  Duck, You Sucker.  AKA:  Once Upon a Time… The Revolution.

Buster Crabbe returns for his third go-round as Alex Raymond’s classic Sci-Fi hero, Flash Gordon.  This time out, Flash has to stop his arch-nemesis Ming the Merciless (the infinitely awesome Charles Middleton) from infecting Earthlings with a deadly disease known as “The Purple Death”.  The sole antidote is a substance called “Polarite” which can only be found on the icy world of “Fridgia”.  That means Flash and his band of do-gooders has to take off for the planet in their plastic toy rocket ship.  Along the way, Flash does battle with Ming’s minions and gets himself in and out of increasingly precarious situations.

Crabbe’s plucky spirit coupled with his bland charisma (he seems like a badass version of Zeppo Marx) makes him an ideal matinee idol.  He may be pretty wooden at times, but he’s still the definitive Flash in my book.  Middleton is also great and while he acts a bit more restrained than usual, his menacing performance is still a joy to watch.

Sitting through all 12 chapters of this serial at once will be somewhat of a chore (heck, even the condensed 87 minute version has its share of lulls) but there are still enough moments of geeky coolness to keep you pleasantly entertained.  From the cheesy props (the ray guns look like laser pointers) to the corny effects (those exploding robots are hilarious); this serial has it all.  Most importantly, it has tons of near death experiences for Flash to narrowly escape on a week to week basis (bottomless chasms, avalanches, explosions, etc.).  Of course, Flash survives it all without even getting his hair mussed. 

I also liked how this Flash serial was a bit more serious than the others.  At one point Ming talks about keeping prisoners in “concentration camps”.  They don’t really make a big deal out of it, but the parallels between Ming and Hitler are there if you wanted to compare the two.  The filmmakers know that this is just a kiddie Sci-Fi serial about toy rockets floating around on strings so they keep that highbrow stuff to a bare minimum.

Probably the coolest thing about the whole deal for me was seeing all the stuff that George Lucas stole from this serial when he made Star Wars.  There’s the scene where Flash dresses up like a guard to rescue Dale that’s almost exactly like the time Luke disguised himself as a Stormtrooper to free Leia in A New Hope.  Also, the snow planet looks a lot like Hoth from Empire Strikes Back.  And Ming’s castle resembles Jabba’s palace in more ways than one.  (The obvious similarity:  They both feature dancing slave girls.)

AKA:  Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe.  AKA:  The Purple Death from Outer Space.

John Wayne stars as Wedge, the head of the American wartime Construction Battalion (AKA:  The C.B.’s.  AKA:  The Seabees.)  After losing a few good men in a surprise Japanese sneak attack, Wedge urges the Navy to arm his construction team but Uncle Sam won’t allow it until they are fully trained for combat.  With a bit of reluctant diplomacy, Wedge is eventually able to get his men building Naval bases in the Pacific.  Wedge isn’t much for following orders though and when he disobeys a command during a particularly brutal Japanese invasion; it leaves his best gal wounded.  Since Wedge is kinda thick-headed he ignores another important order later in the picture that nearly causes the death of his good friend.  In the end, Wedge finally makes amends by kamikazing a tractor into a tanker of jet fuel and blows up several enemy soldiers.  This naturally paves the way for his buddy to marry Wedge’s girlfriend. 

The Fighting Seabees is a solid and serious World War II movie that is anchored nicely by a top drawer performance by The Duke.  The war sequences pack a punch (the scene where a Japanese sniper picks off a bunch of Wedge’s workers was intense) and lots of shit gets blown up real good.  Although the action scenes are handled well, the flick is not without its faults.  There is at least one painfully dumb song as well as a thoroughly inexcusable dance number.  Seriously, I used to think Wayne was a badass but seeing him do the Jitterbug at a USO dance severely put a damper on his machismo.

The Fighting Seabees was made by the B Movie vets at Republic Pictures and it lacks the distinguished polish of a big studio war film.  I think this is a good thing.  The scrappy look of the film (intentionally or otherwise) gives the flick a sense of authenticity and the war battles are more down and dirty than you’d see in The Duke’s bigger budgeted films.  Sure, the love triangle bullshit is sappy as all get out, but I’d much rather catch Wayne in a low budget vehicle with an edge to it than a more prestigious and banal studio film.  The Fighting Seabees is also a rare film in which The Duke’s character actually dies, so it’s got that going for it too.

AKA:  Donovan’s Army.

Since the wife goes back to teaching school on Monday and the baby is due in just a few weeks after, I figured now would be the time for us to check out Halloween 2 and The Final Destination in 3-D before both of our schedules get jammed up.  Plus, it’s been ages since the two of us had seen a double feature since the demise of The Diamond State Drive-In.  So we fired up the Taurus and gunned her up to the Salisbury Stadium 16 for a Saturday Horror Sequel Double Feature.  Here’s the lowdown.

HALLOWEEN 2  (2009)  **

Now I wasn’t the biggest fan of Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of the seminal John Carpenter classic Halloween, but I do still say that the flick had it’s moments and wasn’t too bad whenever Robby Boy wasn’t copying off The Master.  I think what drove me nuts with Zombie’s Halloween was that I was frequently comparing it to the infinitely superior Carpenter film.  Going in to this flick, I had some hope that it would be fairly decent since I would be more or less comparing it to the remake and not the original Halloween.  (Or for that matter, the original Halloween 2.) 

First off let me just say that I have a big problem with calling this thing “Halloween 2” because there was already a great movie called Halloween 2 that was made in 1981, which was a sequel to Halloween.  I know THIS Halloween 2 is a sequel to Rob Zombie’s Halloween 1 but to me, it’s just way too goofy to have 2 separate Halloween franchises.  Now whenever I tell somebody about that great scene in Halloween 2 I have to add, “Uh, no not the Rob Zombie one”.  I HATE that.

It makes more sense to me to just called the Halloween remake Halloween 9 and call this one Part 10, but that’s just me.  In fact, it would’ve made an infinite more amount of sense to have waited until Part 10 to make a remake, that way when you did Part 11; you could just call it Halloween 11 and make everyone think it was a Roman Numeral II.  For argument’s sake, I’ll just call this flick Halloween 2; just know that it irritates the living shit out of me to do so.

This Halloween 2 starts off almost exactly like the original Halloween 2 with Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) stalking Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) in a hospital on Halloween night.  Then the action abruptly switches to one year later with disturbed Laurie seeing a shrink (Margot Kidder!) because she has a lot of bad dreams.  Meanwhile Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) is on a book tour of his latest tell-all expose on Myers, which fittingly is released on Halloween.  In the book, he drops the bombshell that Laurie is indeed Michael’s sister.  Laurie reads the book and it screws with her mind so much that she decides to get drunk to forget it all.  Since this is Halloween night we are talking about, that means Michael is in town looking to hack her up.

Halloween 2 started off just fine.  Zombie crafted some surprisingly suspenseful scenes (like when Laurie gets locked into a parking attendant booth) and really delivered on the gore.  In the first half of the flick we get a severed head, butcher knife to the skull, axe to the back, eye slashing, deer antler impalement, dog eating, and face stomping.  Disappointingly, the gore dries up once Halloween night rolls around as Zombie starts making the killings bloodless and/or leaves them off screen entirely.

Likewise, the movie gets worse as it goes along and completely falls flat on its face once it enters the homestretch.  In addition to the deaths becoming increasingly weak, we also have to contend with an extremely annoying subplot that is supposed to explain “why” Michael is going after Laurie.  Okay, apparently Michael sees visions of his dead mother dressed in a white gown accompanied by a white horse who goads him into going after Laurie.  These scenes are goofy as all get out and seem more like an opportunity for Zombie to put his wife Sheri Moon Zombie into the movie than a logical reason for Michael to murder his sister. 

Then there’s Zombie’s continual mishandling of the Loomis character.  Again, Loomis is portrayed as a money grubbing asshole and not a caring physician.  Again, he’s given very little to do besides act like a prick.  Again, he just kinda shows up at the end so Michael can kill him.  (I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here because Loomis died in the first movie and came back, so I’m sure he’ll do likewise if there’s a Part 3.  Unless Zombie remakes Season of the Witch that is.)  The final confrontation between Loomis and Michael is particularly lackluster and anticlimactic. 

Also, Zombie goes overboard on Laurie’s dream sequences.  Rob:  trippy psychedelic shit doesn’t really belong in a Halloween movie.  Save that shit for one of your music videos, buddy.

And you know, as much as Zombie previously stated that this Halloween 2 was not a remake of the 1981 Halloween 2, then why would he stage a major murdering spree in a hospital, the same setting where the original Part 2 took place?  Not that I mind.  I mean the hospital massacre scene IS the best thing the movie has going for it.  Zombie also cleverly lifts things from Part 4 (the ambulance escape scene as well as the idea that a Myers relative may take up Michael murderous mantle) and Part 5 (there’s a Halloween party in a barn plus the fact that Michael lives the life of a long-haired drifter during the other 364 days of the year that aren’t October 31^st).  For all his talk about making this movie “his own”, he certainly did swipe a lot of stuff from the other installments.

I will fess up and say that Halloween 10 err… 2 is marginally better than its predecessor.  The first half is moody and atmospheric (as opposed to the bland and rushed second half) and I liked the restrained use of John Carpenter’s classic Halloween theme.  Another plus is that Mane actually GETS how to play Michael Myers now.  His portrayal of the slow moving and emotionless Michael is miles better than his previous turn as the masked killer.  He actually feels more like Michael Myers and not that White Trash Jason wannabe from the remake.  Of course, he does have to play a lot of his scenes with Ghost Mommy and her White Horse though.

And then there’s the random Weird Al cameo, which is as hysterical as it is bizarre.   

Overall, Halloween 2 is a middle-of-the-road entry in the series.  The kills are quality for the most part and the nudity is plentiful so those bases were covered.  Had Zombie 86’ed all the dreams and Ghost Mom shit (not to mention made Loomis a likable character), it could’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with Part 7.  It could’ve been worse I guess:  Busta Rhymes could’ve been in it.

A horny coroner gets the best line of the movie after ogling a hot dead chick:  “I got wood just Ziplocking her up!”

After the lights went up on Halloween 2, me and the wife headed to the concession stand (“Let’s All Go to the Lobby”) to refill our Big Ass Soda and get some Twizzlers before slapping on our 3-D glasses for: 

THE FINAL DESTINATION IN 3-D  (2009)  ***

It is my hope that 2009 will be remembered for being the year that marked the return of the 3-D horror movie.  It will probably be best known however as the year Hollywood made clever use of the word “The” in the title of a fourth film in a successful franchise.  Earlier in the year, The Fast and the Furious Part 4 dropped the “Thes” out of its title and simply became Fast and Furious.  The latest installment in the Final Destination franchise on the other hand simply ADDED a “The” to its title to make it THE Final Destination; implying that this will be the last in the series.

Sure, and if you believe that, you’ll believe that Jason Goes to Hell was REALLY the Final Friday. 

I don’t know about you all, but I LOVED me Final Destination 2.  It was one of the greatest Teenage Shish-Kabob Movies of the New Millennium.  While Final Destination 1 and 3 are good and all, it’s 2 that’s balls out brilliant.  What made me want to see The Final Destination so badly was that it was directed by David R. Ellis, the man who also did FD2 (not to mention Snakes on a Plane). 

That and it’s in MUTHAFUCKIN’ 3-D. 

Now I do have to chastise New Line, the studio responsible for the Final Destination pictures here for a second.  Why on God’s green Earth did you make Part 4 in 3-D when everybody knows the classic Part 3’s are all in 3-D?  Final Destination 3-D could’ve been whispered in the same breath as Friday the 13^th Part 3-D, Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, and Spy Kids 3-D but….NOOOOO!   You had to make Part FOUR in 3-D.  Where’s the logic in that?  The only way that it would make sense is if you made Final Destination 4-D where not only images came out of the screen, but REAL blood splashed on them too.  (Think the Shamu show at Sea World except with protoplasm.)  As it is, we have to settle for the title The Final Destination in 3-D.  Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?

The Final Destination in 3-D is just like the other three movies.  Someone sees a premonition of mass death.  They, along with several others narrowly avoid death.  Later, death comes after them and kills them in a myriad of gory Mouse Trap inspired ways.

Seriously, this movie is exactly like the others.  In fact, I think some of the dialogue is exactly the same.  The only thing that’s different is the site of the initial accident (this time it’s at a Nascar race instead of a rollercoaster, freeway, or airplane) and the way people die. 

The screenplay must’ve been written like Mad Libs:  (Boy’s Name) sees (Girl’s Name) die at a (Place) in a premonition and prevents her death.  Later, (Same Girl’s Name) dies when a random flying (Sharp Object) goes straight into her (Body Part) and kills her.

Because The Final Destination in 3-D is exactly like its predecessors, the only way to accurately judge the film is on two things:  The body count and the 3-D effects.  We get: 

• 3-D flying screwdriver.
• 3-D flying tire.
• 3-D white trash couple being cut in half.
• 3-D motor to the lap.
• 3-D splintered bench through the mouth.
• 3-D pole through the stomach.
• 3-D flying flaming severed head.
• 3-D pedicure.
• 3-D flying rock to the eye.
• 3-D chunks of human torso squished through a chain link fence.
• 3-D extreme underwater enema.
• 3-D flying cork.
• 3-D 3-D movie of death.
• 3-D chick ground up through the escalator.

Now on the basis of death and destruction, Final Destin… excuse me, THE Final Destination in 3-D is easily the least of the series.  Just because it’s not quite up to snuff with the previous films doesn’t mean there isn’t some good stuff here.  Of all the gory deaths, the escalator scene was probably my favorite.  Now when I was a kid, I used to have an acute fear of escalators.  I would have horrible nightmares where my shoelace got caught in the steps and I’d get sucked in feet first screaming.  The Final Destination brings this childhood fear of mine to the big screen.  Not only that, it presents it in 3-D no less.

The other kills are adequate but they didn’t make me jump or say “Oh damn” or anything.  Likewise, the 3-D didn’t really bring the gore sequences fully to life (death?).  They enhanced them to a certain degree (like the chain link fence scene) but they didn’t fly off the screen the way My Bloody Valentine did.  But… even the worst 3-D adds fun to a movie just for the sheer novelty of the 3-D effects.   The Final Destination in 3-D’s effects, while no means great, definitely bumped the flick up a notch or two.  And that, combined with the generous amount of goodwill I’ve built up for the series over the years, was enough for me to give it a positive review.

Henry Fonda plays this asshole Colonel (who resembles General Custer in more ways than one) that takes over the title fort and immediately starts bossing people around.  His second-in-command (John Wayne) knows he’s an asshole but he dutifully obliges the arrogant prick.  Meanwhile, the Colonel’s daughter (Shirley Temple) falls in love with one of the pretty boy officers (John Agar), which pretty much pisses him off to no end.  In the Colonel’s never-ending quest for glory and fame, he double-crosses the great Apache chief Cochise and goads him into a fight.  Fonda eventually gets his comeuppance when the Apache nation massacres much of his platoon.

Fort Apache was the first in director John Ford’s “Calvary Trilogy”.  (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande were the other two.)  While I didn’t enjoy this installment as much as I did the other films in the unofficial series, it still had enough memorable moments to make it worthwhile.  Although the action sequences were a long time coming, they were exciting and shot with Ford’s usual machismo.

I watched Fort Apache almost solely because John Wayne was in it, so I was taken aback by the fact that he had such a small role.  His only function in the whole movie is to get bitched out by Fonda and then solemnly follow orders.  The Duke did a good job all things considered but I just wish the script had given him more to do.  Fort Apache is Fonda’s movie through and through and he really digs into his role.  He imbued his character with a lot of piss and vinegar which is kinda surprising since he’s more or less known for playing the good guy.

Then there was Shirley Temple.  She was all grown up and looking like a fox.  She was married to co-star Agar (who was making his screen debut) and their on screen rapport seemed pretty genuine.  In fact, Agar looks like he’s two seconds away from making her suck his Good Ship Lollipop. 

Ford and Wayne once again teamed up for 3 Godfathers later in the year.

AKA:  War Party.

The Army is testing their new nuclear powered radar in a small town because they want to spy on Russia.  Some of the townsfolk start mysteriously turning up with their brains sucked out and it’s up to a gruff Major (Marshall Thompson) to get to the bottom of things.  Turns out an old scientist who had been performing telekinetic experiments used the radar’s generous amounts of radiation to create a litter of brain-sized monsters that are now running rampant in the town and draining the locals of their medulla oblongatas. 

Now here’s a movie that gave me nightmares as a kid.  I still remember the first time I saw the squirming brain monsters.  Those things were fucking freaky to an 8 year old.  I just saw the flick again for the first time in decades and it still held up fairly well; despite a somewhat protracted build-up to the first reveal of the monsters. 

I could put up with that elongated wait to see those little suckers do their thing because the last 20 minutes where the heroes make a stand against the brain monsters is pretty awesome stuff.  Those little beasties crawl around using their spinal cords, and leap onto people’s necks and attach themselves to their victim’s heads so they can suck out their brains.  Good times all around.  The creatures themselves are an excellent mix of stop motion and practical effects.  They are suitably nasty and have lots of personality, despite of course not having a face.

I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this before but FWAF is probably the first gore movie on record.  Although it’s the brain monsters that die in gruesomely gory ways and not the human victims, the scenes of the monsters oozing thick rivulets of blood and mucous out of their throbbing craniums after they’ve been pierced with bullets and axes is delightfully gross.  The way the monsters melt after they are vanquished is disgusting and the sound the gurgling creatures make while sneaking up on their prey is quite unsettling.

Even though most people wouldn’t exactly categorize the flick as a gore movie, it certainly paved the way for more explicitness in horror films.  For example, this is the first horror movie I can think of in which there is a legitimate autopsy and the coroner actually uses the word “autopsy”.  (He also says “their brains were sucked out like eggs”, too.)  There’s also a shower scene in the movie as well and while they don’t show any boobies or anything, its shows a definite progression towards the horror film standards of today.  I mean what’s a horror movie without a shower scene?  And the exciting climax where the heroes board up the windows happened a full decade before Ben and Co. did it in Night of the Living Dead.

Setting the bar for future horror movies is nice and all but what makes Fiend Without a Face rock is that it’s simply a Hell of a lot of fun.  Although some will not share my sentiment (again, the long-winded first half won’t be for everyone), there is no denying that the last two reels of the film contains some of the best monster bashing of the 50’s.  Of all the killer brain movies ever made; this one is the best.

Fiend Without a Face has enough scenes of pus-spewing brain monsters to land it on the Video Vacuum Top Ten for the Year 1958 at the Number 4 spot, which puts it just below The Blob and right above Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is a famous comedian who learns he has a rare blood disease.  He goes on a comedy club tour to try to get back to his stand-up roots and takes a shine to a struggling comic named Ira (Seth Rogan).  George hires Ira to write jokes for his act and be his assistant and they gradually become friends.  When George kicks the illness, he tries to get it on with a former flame (Leslie Mann) who is married to an aggressive Australian (Eric Bana), much to the chagrin of Ira.  

I highly enjoyed director Judd Apatow’s previous flicks 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up so Funny People was a bit of a letdown for me.  Things started off rather well and the scenes of George and Ira bonding had a lot of heart to them (think Punchline meets Terms of Endearment).  I also loved all the famous comedian cameos (everyone from Norm MacDonald to Sarah Silverman) too.  The third act is where the movie really shits the bed.  The Lifetime Channelly romantic triangle is trite and there is very little for Rogan’s character to do by that point.  (He’s basically a substitute for the audience as he just wants the whole mess to be over with so he can go home.)

Sandler does a fine job in the flick and handles himself well in a dramatic role.  He’s not as good as he was in Punch-Drunk Love but solid just the same.  I can’t definitively tell what his dramatic range is like since I didn’t see him in Spanglish or in that other drama he did.  (I think it was called 9/11 Sucked.)  I’m sure there are a lot of autobiographical touches in the film (Sandler and Apatow were roommates before they were famous) that helped add extra dimension to his character.  Rogen comes off best out of everyone in the cast yet his character more or less just becomes an innocent bystander for the latter half of the film.  Mann is also quite good as the foxy object of Sandler’s affections.  Since she’s the director’s wife, there is a No Ta-Ta’s Clause in her contract, which is unfortunate cuz she’s pretty banging.

Out of all the celebrity cameos, hands down the funniest was when Eminem wanted to fight Ray Romano.  Luckily, Rogen broke it up by delivering the best line of the movie:  “I thought everybody loved you!”

John Wayne plays a hardass squadron leader with a heart of gold that leads his men into a bunch of dogfights against the Japanese during WWII.  In the air, he battles a bunch of blurry stock footage.  On the ground he butts heads with his second-in-command (Robert Ryan).  Meanwhile, his ragtag team of pilots…

Fuck it.  Flying Leathernecks is just like every other goddamn John Wayne WWII movie, except it’s not as good.  It features every single goddamn war cliché in the goddamn book and features more goddamn stock footage than you can shake a goddamn stick at.  Producer Howard Hughes probably thought that by filming this flick in eye-popping Technicolor that no one would notice all the tiresome clichés and predictable goings-on.  Boy was that rich fucker ever wrong.

The flick was directed by Nicholas Ray, who went on to helm the immortal Rebel Without a Cause.  His heart must’ve not have been in this one because it’s dramatically flat as a pancake.  Even Wayne seems to be on cruise control.  Wayne sleepwalks through his all too familiar role and never imbues his character with the brawny machismo you’d expect from The Duke.  No one else in the cast has half the screen presence that Wayne does so he’s pretty much the whole show. 

That said; bad John Wayne flicks are still better than good flicks starring lesser movie stars.  I’m a Wayne completist, so despite the film’s many, many, many flaws; it still managed to keep my interest for the most part.  The Duke went on to star in The Quiet Man the next year.  

In the “future”, a bunch of dorky college students have to dress up like “mutants” (they basically just look like punk rockers) and kidnap another mutant so they won’t get kicked out of their fraternity.  It doesn’t go well when “Splatter” (Edwin Neal), the leader of the mutants, kills the frat boy’s intended prank victim and then blames it on the idiot teens.  Then, the frat rats have to find their way home while avoiding Splatter’s legions of mutant hotheads.  

So it’s Escape from New York Meets The Warriors Meets Revenge of the Nerds; except that it’s pretty much one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve rented from Netflix in the past year.

This movie is only of note for two reasons.  1)  H.R. Giger, the man who designed Alien, drew the film’s kick ass poster.  2)  The flick reunites Edwin Neal and Marilyn Burns from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  It’s also of note because it happens to be one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve rented from Netflix in the past year.

I mean, I can almost hear the producers now.  Hey, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a great movie so if we team up Edwin and Marilyn again it will be guaranteed to be a classic.  Right?  Guys?  Too bad they didn’t foresee it being one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve rented from Netflix in the past year.

What really made me hate this movie was that for all the talk about mutants and radiation fallout, there aren’t any REAL mutants in the whole goddamn movie.  The “mutants” are merely liberal protestors trying to show the conservatives what we’d all look like if there was an actual nuclear blast.  (Basically these jackasses just watched Road Warrior one too many times and went a little crazy with the eyeliner and Aquanet.)  Another thing that I didn’t like about Future-Kill was that it was one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve rented from Netflix in the past year.

On top of that, the flick is terrible.  It’s also too dark to make out any of the action.  And it doesn’t make one lick of goddamn sense.  In addition, Future-Kill is one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve rented from Netflix in the past year. 

The silver lining in this turd cloud is that some of the dialogue is pretty priceless.  I guess you have to give respect to Neal for that because he also wrote some “Additional Material” for the film.  If “Additional Material” means that he was responsible for lines like:  “I’m not fagging out for anybody!”, then I guess I can’t be too harsh on the man.

AKA:  Night of the Alien.  AKA:  Splatter.

<Special Note>  I don’t know why the heck Frontier(s) has that little (s) on the end of the title but since it was pretty cool flick, I won’t press the issue.  

Frontier(s) is basically a French version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  A quartet of people run(s) afoul of a demented cannibal family who intend to eat them for dinner.   As with Chainsaw, there is a disgusting family dinner table scene (except instead of a Grandpa, there’s a Grandma), a scene where someone is hung up on a meathook (except the victim is hung upside down with the hook through his ankle), a Final Girl who escape(s) the house only to be picked up hitchhiking by another member of “the family”, and a similar scene where said Final Girl finally leaves the house at the end of the movie covered in blood and screaming at the top of her lung(s).  What makes Frontier(s) different from Chainsaw is that the family is a bunch of degenerate Nazi(s) that live in France.  That’s about it really.

Frontier(s) ain’t no Chainsaw however.  Director Xavier (Hitman) Gen(s) set(s) up the flick in a weird alternate reality where the French government is collapsing and the country is engulfed in riot(s).  This shit take(s) up about 20 minute(s) of screen time that doesn’t add anything to the overall film.  The only thing that this shit does is add to the film’s already whopping 109 minute running time.

Luckily, Gen(s) deliver(s) the gory good(s).  Despite its pokey paced set-up, Frontier(s) is positively dripping with over-the-top death sequence(s).  There’s trach ring spewing, bolt cutters to the Achille(s), a guy getting steamed alive like a crab, and a gnarly exploding head too.  If Gen(s) didn’t take so damn long in between the gore set piece(s), Frontier(s) might have been a classic.  As it is, Frontier(s) is still the Best French Horror Movie Featuring Gratuitous Violence Against a Pregnant Woman I’ve seen since Inside.

The best line of the flick comes after a guy get(s) shot and his buddy says, “He look(s) like a tampon!”

After learning that one of their buddies has terminal cancer, a quartet of Star Wars nerds go on a cross country trip to sneak into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to see the rough cut of Star Wars:  Episode I:  The Phantom Menace.  Along the way, they run into some vengeful Trekkies, wind up stripping in a gay bar, and eat peyote-laced guacamole with Danny Trejo.  Eventually, they make their way into the ranch and have to contend with Lucas’ heightened security and a very familiar trash compactor.

There was a big debate before this flick was released because The Powers That Be wanted the cancer subplot removed from the film.  The filmmakers held their ground and kept it in, which resulted in the movie getting a limited theatrical release.  I can’t really blame the studio though because the cancer stuff doesn’t really add anything to the film other than giving the fanboys a deadline to see the movie.

Being a huge Star Wars fan myself, it was easy to forgive Fanboys for some of its slower, unfunny stretches.  The film really works best during the final act where the fanboys break into the ranch.  The funniest part (for me anyway) was that Lucas’ guards were dressed up like the security robots from THX-1138.  I wasn’t expecting that. 

I also enjoyed seeing a slew of awesome Star Wars memorabilia and particularly liked the painted van featuring an interior laced with Star Wars Topps trading cards.  The best thing about the flick though was seeing Kristen Bell dressed up in Princess Leia’s metal bikini.  That should be in every movie. 

Speaking of people who were in the movie, I have to say that neither of the fanboys left much of an impression on me.  That’s OK though because there are so many awesome cameos in the flick that I’m willing to give it a free pass in the acting department.  Seth Rogen has not one but two hilarious cameos as an overzealous Trekkie and as a Star Wars obsessed pimp.  (He even gets to fight himself at one point.)  There’s also Will Arnet, Danny McBride, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, and even William Shatner as himself.  (“I’m William Shatner, I can score anything!”)  If that wasn’t cool enough, we also get to see Star Wars alums Billy Dee Williams (as Judge Reinhold), Ray Park (as a security guard), and Carrie Fisher (as a doctor) too.  It’s a shame about all the Rush music though.

Best line:  “1.21 jigawatts don’t come cheap.”

I have an affinity for Bruceploitation movies (movies that featured Bruce Lee look-alikes that cashed in on his untimely death) so I thought I’d enjoy this movie.  It’s a mockumentary about the casting process involved in finding someone to replace Bruce Lee for his final film, Game of Death.  If you’ve seen Game of Death, you know that the producers hired a body double (Tong Lung) for Bruce Lee and disguised the fact that he didn’t look anything like Bruce Lee by A) making him wear a motorcycle helmet B) making him wear a phony beard C) covering his face with bandages.  Game of Death isn’t exactly a good movie but the fact that the filmmakers finished the film the way they did is wonderfully absurd. 

Unfortunately, Game of Death is a lot funnier than Finishing the Game.

The flick follows a couple potential Bruce Lee wannabes as they audition for Game of Death.  Breeze Loo (Roger Fan) is a martial arts star that himself is accustomed to using a body double, Cole Kim (Sung Kang) is a naïve kid new to Hollywood, and Raja (Mousa Kraish) is an Indian doctor who gives up his stethoscope for a chance at being an action hero.  Predictably they have to deal with an oblivious director, a bitchy casting agent, and their own touchy egos.

Director Justin (Fast and Furious) Lin gets some mileage out of the initial concept but the flick runs out of comedic steam as it wears on.  The film suffers from a lot of over-fictionalization since what the real producers did after Lee’s death to complete Game of Death was much more surreal than what’s depicted here.  In addition, I think the mockumentary format also hurt the film’s chances of being successful.  If Lin had played things out realistically, the film could’ve worked much better and given the characters more of an underdog quality.  

Hopefully, some day someone will direct the definitive movie about the making of Game of Death.  That would rock.  Till then, I guess we’re just stuck with this.

Best part:  Look for James Franco (who also starred in Lin’s Annapolis) in a cameo as an ill-fated 70’s TV actor.

Fist of Death features not only a fake Bruce Lee (played by Tong Lung, Lee’s stand-in from Game of Death), but also a fake Jackie Chan (Jackie Chang) as well.  The plot has “Bruce” returning home and finding out that his master has been killed.  He teams up with a comic relief rickshaw driver (Jackie) and together they take on the nefarious clan responsible for the murder known only as the YMCA.  

Yes, you read that right.  The bad guys in this movie are called the YMCA.  (Although I could’ve sworn that their jerseys said YMGA, but never mind.)  That means you should feel free to make as many Village People jokes as humanly possible throughout the course of the film.  I sure as shit did.

Lung makes for a pretty good fake Bruce Lee and even gets to wear the old yellow jumpsuit from Game of Death several times during the movie.  Chang also does a decent job at ripping off Jackie Chan and has a memorable scene where he shoves red hot peppers into his opponents’ mouths.  He also does some great drunken boxing too.  Speaking of fighting, Fist of Death also contains a couple passable Kung Fu fights and the scene where the YMCA sticks bamboo shoots under Jackie’s fingernails is kinda tight too.

Even though Fist of Death has all that going for it, it still manages to be pretty lame for the most part.  First off, let’s start with the title, Fist of Death.  I don’t know why the heck they called it Fist of Death because nobody in this movie gets killed by a fist; they all die from being stabbed with a knife.  Secondly, the inexplicable final fight with the henchman that looks like Captain Kangaroo and has the power to teleport doesn’t make one lick of sense either.  Bruce and Jackie just stab him and then the movie ends.  They never bother to go back to get the main bad guy or see if Bruce’s girlfriend (who creepily calls him “Brother”) is still alive or anything.  Weird.  This flick also has to have some of the most pitiful dubbing I’ve ever seen in my life.  Folks, I’ve watched a LOT of poorly dubbed Kung Fu flicks in my time, but this might be the worst.  Sometimes characters move their mouths and no sound comes out!  NOTHING!  What’s up with that?  Was the sound editor deaf or something?  Fist of Death is certainly no Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave or anything, but devoted followers of Fake Bruce Lee movies might get a kick (no pun intended) out of it.

Lung went on to play Bruce Lee again in the immortal No Retreat, No Surrender.

AKA:  Jackie vs. Bruce to the Rescue.

If you’re a fan of Larry Cohen’s Q:  The Winged Serpent, you might enjoy this cheapie horror flick from the Poverty Row film studio, PRC.  As with Q, this movie is all about Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec monster that is part bird and part reptile.  George Zucco stars as an uptight archeologist who controls the monster and orders it to kill anyone who meddles in his affairs.  Since the monster kills anyone who possesses one of its feathers, Zucco will plant the feathers on his intended victims and then let Quetzalcoatl go to town on them.  A nosy radio mystery writer is eventually brought on the case to stop the winged beastie and his unscrupulous master.  

The Devil Bat was a big hit for PRC and The Flying Serpent more or less follows the same basic outline.  Unlike that flick, The Flying Serpent is relatively low on chills and chuckles and takes itself very seriously.  The special effects aren’t bad for the time (and budget), although you can see the marionette strings that holds the monster up sometimes.  Zucco is OK in the lead but he’s no Bela Lugosi, whose wonderfully hammy performance made Devil Bat the classic that it is.  He does seem pretty convincing while giving Quetzalcoatl his little pep talks though.

I have a soft spot in my heart for these Poverty Row horror movies from the 40’s so I probably gave this an extra ½ than most people would.  The serpent attack scenes were a lot of fun and the scant 58 minute running time flew by.  (No pun intended.)  Most everything that takes place in between the serpent attacks is fairly low-grade, but monster movie fans should get a kick out of this flimflam.

Director Sam Newfield and Zucco also made the equally amusing The Mad Monster.

AKA:  Killer with Wings.