Harefooted Halloween: Bad Moon

What I Liked: In a move you generally only see in light hearted family movies the dog is the main protagonist and hero.  Thor (actually played by three different dogs) doesn’t speak, we never hear an inner monologue, there’s no narration or anything else like that.  Yet we know exactly what he’s thinking and feeling through his body language and actions and it’s an impressive feat.

Another unique aspect is the dynamic of the human characters.  Ted (Michael Paré (Village of the Damned (1995))) comes to visit his sister, Janet (Mariel Hemingway (Manhattan)), and her son, Brett (Mason Gamble (Arlington Road)), and stays with them for a few days.  There’s no romance or father figure dealings or any of the usual hokey crap you get with a typical setup of a husband and wife, estranged lovers or a single parent and their kid.  The mood is refreshing with a lack of sexual tension and strained parent-child relationships.

The werewolf design is really good.  It’s ferocious, wild eyed, tall, imposing, muscular and hairy.  The head is very pointed and wolf-like and it’s bipedal which are two features I strongly prefer in a werewolf (ones with flatter human faces or that roam on all fours aren’t as neat looking in my opinion).  The animatronics used for the facial movements are well done too.  They weren’t afraid to show this thing off either as it’s in a lot of the picture.

What I Didn’t Like: The way they shot the werewolf though is a mixed bag.  Half the time they use a good angle, throw some dramatic lighting on it, play with the shadows and try to make the beast look terrifying.  Then the other half of the time it’s shot so flatly exposing the effect for too much of what it is, a robot wolf head on a dude’s body.  It’s so weird to me how inconsistently this was handled.

The opening involving a sex scene in the jungle that gets interrupted by a werewolf attack feels out of place with the rest of it.  Even though all the werewolf attacks are kinda gory and nasty this one comes across more graphic and certainly gratuitous.

There’s a transformation scene that has some very bad looking CGI.  This part is wisely excised in the director’s cut (from what I read).

Overall Impressions: Doing a dead serious dog vs. werewolf movie is a cool and unique approach to a tale we’ve otherwise seen many times before.  This was based on a book called “Thor” by Wayne Smith and even though I’ve read that some pretty sizeable changes were made the core idea is there.

The screenplay was adapted by Eric Red (he also directs) who was Kathryn Bigelow’s writing partner back in the day on Near Dark and Blue Steel.  He likes to explore different twists on tried and true storylines and Bad Moon definitely fits in with those in that respect.

One big thing I appreciate is that Red and co went for a truly deadly and vicious version of the werewolf.  It doesn’t fuck around.  The monster tears everyone to shreds in a horrific manner each time.  The end battle with Thor is actually a little hard to watch because that dog gets aggressively thrown around and swatted a ton.

The juxtaposition of this ferocity and the non-werewolf stuff is sorta jarring though.  Aside from the sex scene at the beginning there isn’t any other sexuality, cursing or lewd behavior.  It’s pretty squeaky clean.  Whether it was done on purpose or not this makes the violence feel extra brutal.

I recommend this guy.  It has confidence in the material and its creature design.  Switching up the hero to a dog and playing around with the other characters’ relationships is a welcomed change.

Plus it’s got such a 90’s vibe with the pacific northwest setting and a soundtrack that could be straight out of a thriller from that time like Disclosure or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.

Harefooted Halloween: Twins of Evil

What I Liked: The visual style is awesome, especially the scenes that take place in Karnstein castle.  There’s a large main room with a massive fireplace, balconies, a sacrificial alter in the middle with a pentagram on the floor, there’s creepy cobweb filled catacombs, dimly lit passages and there’s always some fog roving around.  Great atmosphere.

Peter Cushing (Tales from the Crypt (1972)) as a puritanical religious zealot is fantastic.  It’s weird to think he was in Star Wars only the year before because he’s so reserved in that and here he plays a very passionate man.  He’s a terrible person though who burns innocent women at the stake, forces his extreme views on everyone he comes across and excites others to do the same.  With so much fire in his eyes this is probably one of his best performances.

In fact I’ll say the acting is good all around including Mary and Madeleine Collinson who were Playboy playmates that oddly always appeared as twins in a handful of movies.  And Damien Thomas (Shogun) as Count Karnstein may be hammy but I like him in here anyway.

What I Didn’t Like: One of the twins is good and the other is evil but it’s not established why.  I guess they were just born that way?  I feel like there’s a scene missing setting up these dispositions.

There are a couple of confusing continuity issues.  When the wicked twin comes back from sneaking out of the house seemingly for the first time the decent twin confronts her about having to cover for her over several days.  So either these night excursions have been going on for a while or the bad twin was gone for days.  It’s not clear.  And then towards the end when Cushing’s mob storms the castle most of the shots are in the daytime but there are some that look like nighttime.  And this isn’t the day for night technique you sometimes see in older movies.

Karnstein’s hairdo is rough.  He’s got a wall of hair Elaine from Seinfeld sorta thing going on.

Overall Impressions: A really fascinating direction the film goes in is turning the gang of murderous Puritans from the bad guys into the good guys by the third act.  They’re completely wrong in their thoughts and actions but they become validated through the existence of real vampires committing despicable crimes.  On one hand this bothers me a lot.  On the other it makes for a thought provoking viewing.  Even one of the townies (David Warbeck (Duck, You Sucker)) who abhors these guys joins up with them because he recognizes there’s a greater evil that needs to be taken care of.

This is a cool Hammer picture with a bunch going on.  It’s a good deal better than Vampire Circus form a few days earlier (they apparently used the same sets although you never would’ve guessed).

It’s also the third in the Karnstein vampire trilogy.  The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire (which came out the same year as this) are the other two.  I’ll have to watch the second installment one of these days.

I find it amazing how effortless these Hammer movies come off.  It kinda feels like they’re always flying by the seat of their pants but they turn out alright in the end.  After you get through the A tier stuff like Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein and The Mummy (1959) check out this B tier piece.

Harefooted Halloween: Vampire Circus

What I Liked: In typical Hammer fashion the film involves familiar horror tropes used in a story that’s just different enough to be interesting.  This time it’s about a town that kills the local malicious vampire and fifteen years later a vampire circus comes rolling through seeking revenge.  They specifically target the group who did the slaying and their families.  The vampires go through the entire routine of seeming like an ordinary circus which is kinda funny.  I mean I don’t know how they landed on the circus as their cover but it’s nice to see dedication to the part.  They even hire a few non-vampire henchmen to fill the rolls out like the strong man (David Prowse (Darth Vader from Star Wars)) and the dwarf clown (Skip Martin (The Masque of the Red Death)).

Again, as per usual with a Hammer production the cinematography is colorful, the effects are charmingly cheap, the acting is solid and the pacing is great.

What I Didn’t Like: While the base plot is fine the circus element makes the picture pretty hard to take seriously.  I don’t have anything against the circus per se (except for making animals do tricks, whipping them and keeping them in small cages) but it’s not something that excites me or that I’m interested in.  In fact it makes me less likely to check a movie out.  But that’s personal preference and not a real knock against the film.

The vampire at the beginning that sets this whole thing in motion is way too 70’s looking for what’s supposed to be the 1800’s.  It might be the haircut primarily.  Although the choker necklace is weird too.

Overall Impressions: Among the handful of Hammer pictures I’ve seen this is a weaker one.  It’s still fun and engaging though.  When the vamps flash their fangs, hiss and go for the jugular it’s immensely satisfying because this is classic bloodsucker aesthetic and behavior.  Instead of reinventing this type of character Hammer likes to put them in different situations.  Like with Dracula A.D. 1972 they predicted how the main man himself would react to (then) modern day London.  Or with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires they took the show on the road and wondered what a gang of ancient Chinese vampires would be like.  It’s fantastic that somebody was willing to explore these ideas and throw an actual budget and talent behind them.

Vampire Circus is in line with the brand and an easy watch.  If you’re looking for a vampire film with a slight new twist you could do worse.  However, if you’re looking for a movie that has an interpretive dance between a naked woman painted to look like a large green cat and her tamer then this is probably one of the best in that category.

Harefooted Halloween: Candyman: Day of the Dead

What I Liked: This one follows the adult daughter of the previous film’s protagonist which means that it’s amazingly set twenty five to thirty years after Farewell to the Flesh which was in 1995.  The thing is everything looks like modern day 1999.  It’s just funny that the filmmakers clearly didn’t think about this at all.

The visions Caroline (Donna D’Errico (The Big Easy TV show)) has of her dead mother with the Candyman are effectively kinda disturbing.  She’s got her throat slit and she’s still bleeding and her eyes are all black and she’s smiling like she’s thrilled to be a Candyman victim and job well done with this one thing.

What I Didn’t Like: Everything else, even Tony Todd doesn’t look like he’s into it.

Overall Impressions: They combined parts 1 and 2 where Caroline is framed for several murders by the Candyman but she keeps eluding the cops so there isn’t a descent into madness.  And without that this has a slasher-y feel.

The New Orleans backstory is stuck to as well as the Candyman going after his own family members (once they do the chant into the mirror of course).  And again it’s fucked up that for the second time the Candyman wants an incestuous relationship with his own kin.  Since he couldn’t swoon his great granddaughter he aims for his great great granddaughter.  What’s this dude’s problem?

Another strange aspect is the movie has an almost soft core porn vibe.  Aside from this being a low budget direct to video production several women get topless, one woman licks and fetichizes honeycomb, our hero has a few scenes in just her underwear and one in the shower and there’s a sex scene.  Director Turi Meyer’s biggest claim to fame is producing and writing Smallville so I don’t know where this sleazy shit is coming from.

Part 3 here is definitely the weakest in the franchise.  For one thing the racism is too in your face with a couple of asshole cops at the forefront.  Where the other films left it more subtle this one overcompensates and has racism ultimately be the bad guy.

However, the main issue with the movie is it’s redundant.  And not in the usual slasher picture way where even though all the Halloweens and Nightmare on Elm Streets are basically the same the sequels are still fun to watch because of the inventive twists on how the victims are dispatched and how that fits into the overall story.  We also typically learn something new about the killer putting a wrinkle in what you thought you knew about the monster.

When it comes to the Candyman he pretty much murders his victims with his hook every time and he almost always attacks from behind.  Aside from some backstory shenanigans in part 2, which doesn’t fundamentally change the character, we learn practically everything we know about the guy in the first film.  In number 3 we don’t gain any new knowledge whatsoever about the Candyman’s past.  I think that’s why this installment comes off particularly tired and uninteresting.  We’re just going over the same ground as before.

Setting each film in very different locations highlighting unique local cultures was a good idea though (I can’t imagine that was done on purpose).  The first involves inner city Chicago, the second New Orleans Mardi Gras and the third Los Angeles Day of the Dead festivities.  I’m not saying it makes any sense but the diversity is neat.

Harefooted Halloween: Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh

What I Liked: Tony Todd (The Rock) delivers another eerie performance as the Candyman.  He’s just as vicious except this time he looks tortured being relegated to a restless murdering ghoul.  The all black overcoat looks cooler too.

What I Didn’t Like: Once again the rules with the Candyman aren’t totally clear.  Like in the first movie after you say his name in the mirror five times sometimes he appears immediately, sometimes it’s a while later, sometimes he doesn’t show up at all and sometimes he’ll drop in unexpectedly without the chant.  What was the point of the mirror conjuring gag if they weren’t gonna stick to it at all?

The sound effect stings on the jump scares are these over the top screeching noises and they’re loud in the mix.  They’re some of the most obnoxious I’ve ever heard in a horror movie.

Overall Impressions: I know I went real light on the previous sections but there isn’t a ton to say here.  The most interesting (and strangest) thing the filmmakers did was change up the Candyman’s backstory.  Him having an affair with and impregnating a white woman in 1890, being chased by an angry mob of white people, getting his hand sawed off and being stung to death by bees is still here.  The big changes are this all occurred in New Orleans instead of Chicago, the woman he was sleeping with was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and they didn’t burn his corpse.  I have no idea why these changes were made.  Maybe the filmmakers were hellbent on shooting in New Orleans for creative reasons.  Or they got a tax break or something.  In any case these changes are fine.  They don’t make the Candyman’s tale any more or less intriguing.

Another difference is we got a straight up slasher picture this time which I have to admit makes a lot of sense with this hook wielding gut spilling character.  And the Candyman is after a woman (Kelly Rowan (Assassins)) who is the descendant of his lover so it makes sense why he would pursue her and not kill her right away.

What I’m trying to say is Farewell to the Flesh feels like it should be the first movie in the series and the original feels like the sequel where they decided to go in a different direction instead of repeating the slasher formula.  I don’t think I’ve felt this way before where an array of films seemed out of sequence.

Candy 2 is alright though.  It’s easier to digest than its predecessor but it’s also less interesting overall.  Except for the really fucked up fact that the Candyman wants to get with his own great granddaughter.  Did this get by everyone?  I feel like the filmmakers wouldn’t have made the protagonist and the villain so directly related if they realized the connection.  Just something to keep in mind when you watch.

Harefooted Halloween: Candyman

What I Liked: This is a unique horror tale of a demon ghost killing people but pinning it on a regular living person.  That’s kinda mean but hey, it’s an evil spirit after all.

Virginia Madsen (Sideways) as Helen Lyle gives a good performance as a driven post graduate student working on her thesis about urban legends.  Madsen feels very natural in the role.  She’s great at being serious and disciplined with her paper and then completely freaking out when the Candyman starts fucking with her.  It would’ve been easy to fall into the scream queen routine but instead she remains a strong character resisting the Candyman with all her power.  And it’s a shame the Candyman picks her as his long term victim (as opposed to the others he knocks off immediately) because she’s not a bad person or has a heinous past or anything.  So the hell she’s put through seems undeserved and extra terrible as a result.

Tony Todd (The Crow) is fantastically menacing yet suave as the titular character.  He has such presence to begin with but when you throw in a cumbersome fur trimmed coat, an ascot and a big ass hook for a hand he becomes elegantly creepy.  There’s a sense this guy enjoys being the Candyman too which is weird considering that wasn’t his goal before he died.  In 1890 he was going out with a white woman and got her pregnant which some other folks didn’t like so they sawed off his hand, smeared him with honey and let bees sting him to death.  He gets revenge on everyone now though, not just white people.

The opening music piece over the credits is cool.  Philip Glass did the score and made it sound huge by using gothic themes and adding a chorus.  I’m not a fan of the whole thing but I like that first song.

What I Didn’t Like: The story meanders.  We don’t move towards a goal or work on solving a problem exactly.  I mean the Candyman gives Helen an ultimatum to join him or he’ll kill a baby that he’s kidnapped but this conflict is more in the background.  The Candyman’s motives need to be clearer and the plot should be a little more focused.

Similarly, we don’t know the rules of the Candyman.  He’s a demon that only certain people can see sometimes but he can murder anyone indiscriminately.  Even the method of conjuring him up by saying his name in front of a mirror five times is janky.  Most of the time he shows but one time he doesn’t and other times he appears when nothing is said.  I don’t get it.

Overall Impressions: This one’s just ok.  I appreciate the attempt to take what would otherwise be a typical slasher character and picture and change it up to be more indistinct and psychological.  The Candyman is definitely committing the crimes here but I can see an argument that Helen has done it all and is completely insane.  If this aspect had been played more ambiguous you could’ve had a very interesting little movie.  That would’ve been much more difficult to pull off though.

When I found out this was based on a Clive Barker short story called “The Forbidden” (he also gets a producer credit) it suddenly made sense.  He likes to come up with offbeat horror stories which range in success.  This one involves a commentary on class and race.  One way to look at it is poor people are invisible.  A supernatural killer is wiping out the destitute and no one cares.  If you take the view that Helen is the real killer then you could say that wealthy white people are oppressing and murdering poor people of color.  Or the Candyman could represent racism itself where he’s an omnipresent force that literally tears communities apart.

Of course a few out there are gonna say it’s about black men terrorizing white women through the years.  I don’t buy this message though because the guy isn’t selective in who he kills in terms of race or gender.  Plus Barker’s original story was about a demon of uncertain race stalking victims in Liverpool.  In that version he was going for a class angle and not a race one.

Personally I like to think of the Candyman as an iconic slasher villain, one who aims for poise but is also a monster lashing out at the world because he was an innocent man who was mutilated and tortured to death.  I’m sure there’s symbolism and everything there but that’s strong enough for me.

Harefooted Halloween: Silver Bullet

What I Liked: The pacing is really good with concise storytelling and three werewolf attacks in the first half hour alone.  Initially I thought they may have tipped their hand too early with who the murdering beast is but they end up building off that knowledge to great effect.  The whole thing is just well constructed.

Amazingly the kid protagonists are not annoying.  Corey Haim (The Lost Boys) as Marty is likeable and not smart-alecky at all.  He does somehow predict that a werewolf is killing everyone in town but it’s a tossed off idea that he doesn’t bring up again until he witnesses the thing with his own eyes.  And the relationship he has with his sister is believable where they may fight sometimes but one of them sheepishly apologizes without actually saying sorry and they move on.

They assembled a cool cast for this.  You got Terry O’Quinn (Stepfather II) as the town sheriff who doesn’t know what the hell to do about his citizens being mutilated, Everett McGill (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory) as the priest who tries to comfort the community, Bill Smitrovich (Renegades) as the leader of a mob inciting vigilantism and Gary Busey (Under Siege) as Marty’s drinking, gambling, rude joke telling uncle (in other words he plays himself).

It’s cute how the title has a double meaning in that it takes a silver bullet to stop a werewolf and it’s also the name of Marty’s motorized wheelchair.  However, I have to admit I’m disappointed they didn’t use the wheelchair to deliver the death blow at the end.  Seems like a natural with the setup and it would’ve been a good twist on the legend.  Oh well, maybe next time.

What I Didn’t Like: The movie ends fairly abruptly.  There’s some good suspenseful cat and mouse stuff with the person who’s the werewolf and Marty but then we jump ahead a month and suddenly it’s all over in a rushed finale.

The werewolf itself isn’t the best design.  It’s definitely not the worst but when the camera stays on it for more than a half a sec you can tell it lacks.  This is especially true in the final battle where there are a few shots that are clearly some dude in a modified bear costume.  Most of the time the cuts are very quick and they only show a small part of the wolf so it works well enough.  It’s those couple of shots sprinkled in that unfortunately sorta ruin the illusion.

Overall Impressions: What a nice little werewolf movie.  It doesn’t try to do too much or blow you away with spectacular special effects or anything.  Nah, this guy only wants to gnaw on some arms, knock a head off or two and beat a few folks with a baseball bat called “The Peacemaker”.  Sounds like a good time to me.

Harefooted Halloween: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

What I Liked: The commitment to theme is very nice to see.  These really are clowns, oh excuse me, klowns from somewhere in space that come to Earth and kill people.  The Chiodo brothers took clown and circus elements and figured out clever ways to turn them into something evil for their klowns to use in the invasion.  The most famous example is wrapping the victims inside huge pink cotton candy cocoons.  I also like when the security guard gets pelted with cream pies and he melts.

For a low budget movie the effects look pretty good.  The klown faces are somewhat expressive, the matte paintings of the inside of the circus tent spaceship make the place look massive and cavernous, the gargantuan klown boss fight at the end is handled well with getting the scale of everything right, there’s a shadow hand puppet monster that eats a group of folks up and lots of other stuff.

That main theme song by The Dickies is awesome.  It’s catchy and has a great feel.

What I Didn’t Like: It’s hard to rag on a movie like this that’s just meant to be good fun.  I mean sure the acting isn’t the best, the klowns are obviously guys in circus outfits with foam rubber head pieces as opposed to something more elaborate like full blown animatronics and there isn’t really a story.  The klowns land on our planet, they murder people, the protagonists try to stop them.  That’s all.  It’s more of a series of gags the filmmakers came up with and strung together.  But in this case it’s barely a negative.

Overall Impressions: What’s smart about this movie is the approach to the material.  The filmmakers came up with an incredibly silly concept and shot it as seriously as if they were making any regular horror movie.  They didn’t go gory or for gross out stuff or anything too heavy though.  And by keeping things a bit more on the lighter side the film becomes a good time and not an awkward clash of styles.  This could’ve easily been a disaster with a lot of terrible contrived humor but I’m so glad the filmmakers played it straight and let the material be funny on its own.

I don’t love this picture like a lot of others do but it’s definitely a cool one.  I don’t know how you can get too upset over something that only wants to hang out and harmlessly goof around for a while.  You can tell a lot of thought and work went into it which gives the whole thing a small town let’s put on a show kinda vibe.  I dig it.

Harefooted Halloween: Psycho IV: The Beginning

What I Liked: I don’t think I liked much.  Let’s see, uh, Henry Thomas (E.T.) who plays young Norman Bates is alright.

What I Didn’t Like: Can we skip to the next section?

Overall Impressions: The story they came up with for this is awful.  The events of Psycho II and III are ignored which is fine but going back to when Norman was a teen and being abused by his alive mother (Olivia Hussey (Ice Cream Man)) isn’t all that interesting.  We already know they had a fucked up relationship so this doesn’t shed any new light on the character.  The whole thing builds towards Norman poisoning his mother (which is done by iced tea instead of hot tea which Psycho II used, is this some kind of jab at that movie?) but, again, we already know this so the big moment isn’t nearly as dramatic as the film thinks it is.

Plus the intercut scenes that take place in modern day with Anthony Perkins are the worst.  Having Norman Bates call into a radio talk show to discuss his past murders isn’t an idea I can get behind.  Sure, a lot of serial killers want the credit for their work but Norman was never a boaster so this idea doesn’t fit.  Also Perkins does not give a very good performance.

And the ending where complete redemption is attempted makes no sense to me.  This is something that keeps coming up in the series too.  Each of these films pitches the idea that Norman can be cured and if we only give him another chance we’ll see that he’s a changed man.  You know, forgive and forget the numerous grisly murders he committed, he owned up to them what’s the big deal?  With crimes this serious I have a real hard time believing that this person will ever be able to re-enter society and live a somewhat normal life.  This may sound harsh but the guy can’t be trusted on that kind of unsupervised level ever again.

I don’t understand this compulsion in the horror genre to give us an origin story way down the road when the series has run out of gas.  Leatherface, Hannibal Rising and Dracula Untold are just a few in the last bunch of years that went this route.  They’re all unnecessary after thoughts that make these characters less scary because they’re not nearly the threat they will eventually become.  They pale in comparison to when they’re fully formed so there isn’t a need to watch a watered down version.  Anyway, Psycho IV: The Beginning is another one to add to the pile.

Harefooted Halloween: Psycho III

What I Liked: Once again Anthony Perkins (Crimes of Passion) delivers a great performance as a schizophrenic, deranged and disarmingly amiable monster.

Good production design with the house looking grimier than ever, there’s one cabin with all these nude pictures cut out from magazines taped to the walls and the gnarled mother looks like something straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

I really like how stylishly shot the entire thing is.  This is Perkins’ directorial debut (he would only direct one other movie) and he goes for dramatic neon lighting, lots and lots of shadows, nice Dutch angles and he came up with some different scene transitions like when Norman goes to leave a hospital room the doorway he passes through turns right into his mother’s room.  This reminds me of a couple of the Saw sequels where the same technique was used.  I didn’t like it so much in those films but I found it novel this time.

The story picks up a month after Psycho II and that was smart.  We get to find out what the consequences were of all the shit that went down and this plot progression remains engaging.  It makes sense and grounds the movie in reality more.  If we had picked up three years later like we are in real life we would be left wondering what Norman had been up to all that time and why he decided to brandish the knife at this moment.

What I Didn’t Like: There’s a bunch of very stupid 80’s stuff in here like a fair amount of nudity, a terrible sax tune during a sex scene, obnoxious teens wreaking havoc at the hotel, a few gross out moments like when Jeff Fahey (The Lawnmower Man) kisses Norman’s mother’s grizzled corpse and so on.

Don’t know if I would say this is necessarily a bad thing but I just wanted to point out that there’s a helluva lot of overdubbing in this thing.  I don’t know what went wrong or if that was a conscious decision (doubtful) but it’s strange.

Overall Impressions: I gotta congratulate Perkins on a job well done.  There are so many neat little touches like Norman obliviously mixing taxidermy stuffing material into his peanut butter and eating it, a quick shot of the book a character from the previous installment was reading lying on the ground in the weeds, a blood curdling scream of “There is no God!” kicking the whole thing off and the many nods to the original which should feel contrived by now but most come off like cool Easter eggs.

There’s more of the mother in this one than ever before and she’s a frightening character.  We almost never see her face hidden in the shadows and that gives her a real eerie presence.  Norman struggles like mad to deal with her but can’t get her out of his head.  And that one abrupt shot of Norman dressed as the mother with a creepy huge smile is an amazing moment similar to Christopher Lee’s shocking closeup reveal in Horror of Dracula.

This is a good companion piece to part 2.  If you liked that one then you should definitely check out part 3.  I actually dig it more.  They may have gone slightly more in a conventional slasher direction but there’s plenty to make it stand out.  Wow, never would’ve guessed I would like Psycho III this much.

But what the fuck is that poster?  It’s like for a Psycho satire.  Man that’s shitty with the cartoon Norman Bates looking frisky.  No wonder this bombed.