Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Funhouse (1981)

The Funhouse is a Final Girl Film Club Selection:

I do not know the reason why I did not go see Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse during its 1981 theatrical release.  But I do have some very distinct memories of being really excited about the movie, and of being greatly disappointed with having missed seeing it.  (Until it came out on VHS, that is.)

I was so excited about seeing the movie that I read Dean Koontz's novelization of the film - the only film novelization that Koontz ever wrote, and that had originally been published under the pen name of Owen West- long before the film was ever released.  (A common enough occurrence, even in the early 1980s.)  Although I did not know it at the time, Koontz had hated the film's simplistic screenplay enough to take some important liberties with the film's back story and both its central and supporting characters, so the novelization wound up resembling the film about as much as Hank Searls' novelization of Jaws 2 resembled the film it was supposedly based on. (In case you do not know, Searls novelization of Jaws 2 was adapted from the discarded screenplay written by Hank Searls and Dorothy Tristan, not the Carl Gottlieb re-write that was ultimately used.) Unaware of what Koontz had done, reading the book made me even more excited about the movie. 

Then there was the photo of the monster’s nightmarish face on the cover of Fangoria magazine.*  That had me almost squealing with delight.   I could not wait for it to come out it!  

[*The cover evidently also got the editors of Fangoria in trouble with Universal, as the studio wanted the monster movie aspect to come as a surprise to the audience and it was rather upset that the creature had been revealed on magazine racks across the country long before the movie even opened.  Fangoria actually printed an apology about the cover in a later issue.] 

So, why didn’t I go see it when it did come out?  I have no clue, but I do know that I missed out on seeing something that would have made for a very memorable night (or afternoon) at the movies.

 

Two couples go on a double date to a traveling carnival with a troubled history.  Their evening out goes well (after getting off to a bit of a shaky start) and the group decides to do something fun and silly: spend the night in the carnival's funhouse.  Everything seems fine, until the group sees the Barker's assistant kill someone...

The Funhouse, despite its deceptively slight premise, is one of the few true high water marks of Tobe Hooper’s highly uneven directing career.  While it is certainly not perceived as a great or "classic" film, it is nonetheless a solid and very entertaining one.  It's biggest drawback is that it was sandwiched between two of Hooper's biggest commercial and/or critical successes, the original Salem's Lot mini-series and the box office smash Poltergeist.**

[**Whether or not Hooper truly "directed" Poltergeist is something that will always be up for debate.]

Watching it again after having not seen it for several years, I was pleasantly surprised at how assured and stylistic Hooper's direction was.  (Hooper's post-Cannon Group film career has been marred by so many truly wretched films that it makes it far too easy to forget that he has made some truly great films that did not involve working with Steven Spielberg.)  Hooper and director of photography Andrew Laszlo create not only a palpable feeling of dread later in the film, but in the early, quiet sections, they also create a fully realized world that feels every bit as lived in as our own.

That early, quiet section also showcases (as both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salem's Lot did) that Hooper is capable of directing actors and drawing strong, believable characters out of their performances.  Elizabeth Berridge's cheerful snottiness in delivering the line "It's a first date, and we're not getting married" tells us all that we need to know about her relationship with her mother.  Another fine moment is when the Barker (a wonderful Kevin Conway, who convinced Hooper to let him play all of the carnival's barkers - something that makes the character's referring to one victim as "family" more than a little bit icky) is talking to his deformed son.  The scene, a long monologue during which the Barker talks his son into murdering the group hiding inside the funhouse, not only fleshes out the sketchy back story of the two mysterious characters, it also allows Hooper to showcase the emotionally complicated bond that exists between the two.  Especially when the Barker offers the seemingly heartfelt apology for some earlier verbal abuse, "As God as my witness, I do not hate the sound of your voice."

Another thing I could not help but notice was how, in retrospect, The Funhouse seemed to be a visual and thematic bridge between Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its maligned first sequel, which Hooper also directed.  The finale to which was set inside the ruins of an abandoned amusement park.

I like to think that means something.

Three stars out of four.

Scarecrows (1988)

Scarecrows is a Final Girl Film Club selection.

"If I were a crow I'd be someplace else."

After stealing three and a half million dollars from the Army, a group of commando style thieves hijacks a small plane and heads for Mexico.  Their clean getaway is ruined when one of their own (B.J. Turner) decides to double-cross them and tries to escape with the cash.  The crooked crook parachutes into the dead of night, leaving his former partners for dead, and lands in a field full of scarecrows... 

To say anymore would spoil all the spooky fun.

Watching Scarecrows takes me back to a time when I was younger (by about twenty years, damn but the time does fly) and far more daring in my entertainment decisions (i.e. I'd give just about any horror movie under the sun a whirl in the old VCR).  That time is long past, but the fond memories of being caught completely off guard by William Wesley's sturdy little thriller remain.

It was 1988 and horror movies had pretty much lost their teeth, having lapsed into "splatstick" self-parody and, more often than not, filled with ear torturing electronic scores.  I can only ask that you imagine my delight when the credits started rolling and Terry Plumeri's orchestral score began slithering out of my television speakers as the camera slowing zoomed in on what had to be one of the creepiest scarecrows I had seen since Dark Night of the Scarecrow aired on TV when I was kid.  (Shit, am I ever getting fucking old.)  This movie stated loud and clear that it was going to be serious about trying to scare the ever living shit out of you and, I am happy to say, it does a pretty good job of doing so.

That is not to say that the film doesn't have the usual problems of low budget films.  Some of the acting is dodgy, the script, while certainly tighter and better crafted than most of the other schlock that clutters up the video racks, could have been strengthened in the characterization department, and, because the movie was shot out of sequence (as most are) and over the course of several months, some of the edits are a beat or two off.

None of that distracts from the solid work that co-writer/director William Wesley has done.  He takes his time building up the situation and suspense, letting the supernatural menace gradually surround the unaware thieves as they talk amongst themselves on their radios and taunt their double-crossing former partner, before pulling out the stops.  It works so well that the complete and utter failure of Wesley's follow-up film, Route 666, baffles me to this day. I mean it, what the hell went wrong?

While it might not be considered a classic by some, Scarecrows still offers more than enough suspense, spooky atmosphere, and gruesome gore to satisfy a viewer seeking out a horror movie that tries to be smart and scary rather than silly and stupid.  I give it four out of four murders of crows.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Prince of Darkness is a Final Girl Film Club selection.

"What is it?"

A priest (Donald Pleasence) asks a distinguished scientist (Victor Wong) to investigate a strange substance hidden in the basement of a Los Angeles church.  What the scientist and his team discover is a very old and very real evil.

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness is a nifty little tribute to the classic thriller Quatermass and the Pit.  (Carpenter even went so far as to use the pseudonym Martin Quatermass, to let the genre geeks in the audience know well in advance just what kind of horror movie he was making.)  Although the characters and events are quite different, both films do share an almost identical plot concept: an otherworldly object is discovered beneath a major city, said object has links to an extraterrestrial intelligence that can best be described as Evil, and said object is capable of turning people into murderous automatons.  But the similarities end there.

Prince of Darkness certainly gets off to a strong start, with plenty of mysterious and foreboding imagery as an English priest (he is never given a name) discovers the devastating secret behind "The Brotherhood of Sleep," while the distinguished scientist warns his students that Classical Reality ceases to exist on the subatomic particle level.  From the start, Prince of Darkness drops some sizable visual and dialog hints that, just like Quatermass and the Pit, a scientific reason for our religious/spiritual beliefs (the Judeo-Christian ones, at least) will be offered up.  Unfortunately Carpenter's narrative focus quickly drifts away from that intriguing concept and instead moves into far too familiar "jump scare" zombie movie territory.  The film's third act really isn't anything more than a cross pollination of the third acts of two of Carpenter's earlier films, Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog.  Instead of an atomic cross, this time it's an atomic mirror.  Instead of glowing red eyes, it's a demon hand that looks like something purchased at a Halloween Superstore.

Not that Prince of Darkness is an utter failure (although some do consider it to be one), it's really nothing more than modestly effective thriller from a director who stopped taking serious cinematic risks after the thrashing he took for making The Thing.

The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen)

The Exorcist is a Final Girl Film Club selection:

"I think the best explanation is always the simplest."

While on a Georgetown location shoot for a major motion picture, actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) becomes concerned about the growing emotional problems of her daughter, Regan (Linda Blair).  When medical science proves ineffectual in handling Regan's problems, MacNeil turns to a local priest (Jason Miller) for help.

My earliest memory of The Exorcist is of my mother's terrified response  to seeing the movie during its original release.  She, like so many others, considers the film to be absolutely terrifying.  "After [a certain point] I just lowered my head and stared at my shoes for the rest of the film," she once told me.  "I never watched it through to the end."  My second strongest memory regarding the film is of my mother forcing my brother and I to close our eyes and cover our ears when the trailer for the film (during its original release or a re-release) played at the local drive-in.

Clearly this was a movie capable of fucking me up for life.  If I were to simply look at a single frame of this horrifying film, then my eyeballs would melt and my liquefied brain would ooze out of the sockets.  My mother was certain that The Exorcist would turn me into a slack jawed, eyeless, and brainless catatonic.

I had to see it, obviously.

Imagine my surprise when I was finally allowed to watch this horrifying spectacle when it debuted on network television, and I discovered that The Exorcist was nothing more than a mere movie.  While it's very well made, I have never found it to be the terrifying experience that my mother and so many others have.  But that doesn't stop me from acknowledging just how good a job screenwriter William Peter Blatty (who adapted his own bestselling novel) and director William Friedkin have done in selling their absurd story.  What makes the film (as well as the novel) so effective is how it uses the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes - "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" - to convince the viewer (or reader) that Regan is possessed by a demonic spirit.

William Friedkin has stated that the notorious reactions to film (the fainting, the vomiting, etc) did not revolve around the supernatural aspects, but rather the medical ones.  Everybody fainted or vomited during the section where Regan undergoes a torturous series of medical tests, the worst being a spinal tap.  Evidently that is what sent people fleeing the theaters, not the spewing, the cursing, the rattling, or any of the other spectacular visuals that fill the film's flamboyant second half.

It's the first hour of The Exorcist that works best for me.  The gradual unraveling of Chris MacNeil's emotional knot as her daughter sinks into violent and seemingly psychotic behavior that defies any and all logical explanation gives the film an awesome emotional power.  A power that few, if any, other horror films have managed to achieve.  Burstyn's performance during this section is nothing short of brilliant.  While Jason Miller creates a solid and sympathetic character in the crisis of faith troubled Damien Karras, his personal struggle is rendered moot because he faces a foe that is blatantly supernatural.  All he can do is look shell shocked (obviously thinking, "Jesus Christ, this devil shit is fucking REAL!!!") while the possessed Regan is floating around and spinning her head like a top.  It is here that The Exorcist overplays its hand and ceases to be frightening for me.  The special effects drown out the emotional core of the story.

This why I have to say that I think the original version of the film was superior to this version that I've never seen, because director William Friedkin keeps a tighter grip on the revelation of the growing supernatural answer to the mystery of Regan's bizarre behavior.  In this new version, spooky faces flicker here, there and everywhere, making obvious something that was originally kept in the shadows.  The more we see of the demonic pasty face, the less effective it becomes.  I'm also unsold on the need to restore the infamous "spider-walk" sequence.  It adds nothing to the film but a cheap jump scare.  However, I have to agree with William Peter Blatty's stance that cutting the brief conversation Karras and Merrin (Max Von Sydow) share before the story's tragic ending actually hurt the film.  That conversation restores the emotional thread that the barrage of over-the-top special effects had almost severed and, I think, the scene should never have been cut.

Although I have never considered The Exorcist to be all that harrowing or frightening, I do think it is one of the best constructed horror films of all time.  That alone makes it well worth watching again and again.

Visiting Hours (1982)

This is a Final Girl Film Club Selection review:

"He'll slip through."

When news anchorwoman Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) asserts herself during an interview regarding the murder trial of a woman that killed her abusive husband, this angers woman hating serial killer Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) to no end.  His attempt to silence Ballin only sends the traumatized woman to the hospital, not the morgue, as intended.  Hawker knows that, if at first you don't succeed, then try, try again...

Earlier this week I reviewed Sorcerer, a movie I had seen way back in the 80s and only had the vaguest memories of.  Revisiting it I found the film to be far better than I had originally thought it to be.  This inspired me to give Visiting Hours, a movie I watched on HBO back in 1982, a twenty-four years in the granting second chance.  After seeing all the nifty ads for the film in the local paper and such, I was bitterly disappointed with how lethargic and confusing the movie turned out to be.  Well, it seems that my memory of this particular movie was pretty darn accurate.

Visiting Hours isn't really a slasher movie, though it is structured like one.  I would even hesitate to call it a genuine horror movie, though the effective ad campaign (just look at that classic poster art) did a terrific job of selling it as one.  What Visiting Hours feels like, more than anything, is a routine suspense thriller that had been reconfigured into a slasher style horror movie during its production.  The script by Brian Taggert, a genre workhorse whose list of writing credits includes Of Unknown Origin, Poltergeist III, and the stunningly dreadful Omen IV: The Awakening, is a series of somewhat effect set pieces in search of a coherent plot.  But a coherent plot is something that Visiting Hours lacks, this movie literally takes place in bizarro world.

When Visiting Hours was released in America (it's really a Canadian film, eh) the movie was pitched to audiences as starring Lee Grant.  But after the elongated stalk and slash set-up, one filled with plenty of false scares, Grant fades into the film's background, becoming more of a Hitchcock style plot MacGuffin than a strong central character.  The real focus of the movie is Hawker the stalker and Ballin's kindly nurse, Sheila Monroe, who is played by Linda Purl, an actress that would be most recognizable to 1982 audiences as the woman who married Fonzie on Happy Days.  Hawker is given almost no dialog and, for a great deal of the movie, very little detail is given about his motivation.  Why he is able to come and go at will is never addressed.  Nurse Monroe is given a family, but her personal life is never explored.  Her children exist only to be placed in jeopardy for a gratuitous and grueling, for all the wrong reasons, suspense sequence that only prolongs a film that has already been dragged out for far too long and had lost all of its narrative logic about an hour earlier.

Director Jean Claude-Lord (Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!) does what little he can with the nonsense that screenwriter Taggert has given him.  He drags out each and every suspense sequence for maximum effect, and also hammers the audience with relentless false scares, but the impact is gradually diluted as the story wiggles around one implausible plot development after another.  It got so bad that I fully expected Grant to quote her co-star William Shatner's famous taunting to his character's James T. Kirk's arch nemesis Khan.  "You...keep...missing...your...target."  Hawker slips into the hospital and kills someone who is not Ballin, because he can't find her room, not once, but twice!  After the first incident Ballin is not placed in protective custody, just moved...to another room...on the same floor.  Why don't they just roll her out into the street?  I got the feeling that she'd be safer there.  Oh, and did I mention that there are several witnesses to Hawker's stalking and attacks?  Oy!

I kept asking myself exactly how it was that Hawker managed to evade notice and capture for so long.  Everything he does, his every behavior, screams "I'M A PSYCHO!" to any and all that get within an arms length of the sweaty creep.  I guess it is the fact that the so-called security in "County General Hospital," as well as the police force of the unnamed city in which the story is set, are of the Keystone Kops variety.  These clowns couldn't find the noses on their own faces, much less a serial killer that leaves a trail in bright day-glow colors.

It is highly unlikely that I will be making all that many return visits to Visiting Hours.