Harefooted Halloween: Psycho II

What I Liked: Anthony Perkins’ (Murder on the Orient Express) performance is pretty good.  At first he seems too plain but as the movie progresses you see a nice transformation regressing back into madness.  He has an innocent boyish charm like someone who hasn’t finished growing up (the ol’ mother’s doing no doubt) but he can flash just the right amount of wild eye to make you feel uneasy.

I gotta admit the story idea is interesting.  They found a way to continue the Norman Bates tale without rehashing the original film and I’ll give kudos for that.  I can’t go into it because of spoilers though and this will play better if you don’t know what’s coming.

However, spoiler on this last point

Like T2 and the Undisputed sequels it’s cool how they flipped the good guy and bad guy roles around here.  I really felt for Norman and thought Lila (Crane) Loomis (Vera Miles (The Searchers)) from the first picture was a mean bastard despite the fact that Norman tried to kill her twenty three years ago.  It’s so weird how a filmmaker can manipulate how you feel about any character and you’ll accept it.  They got me.

What I Didn’t Like: Meg Tilly (The Big Chill) is pretty bad in this.  Her acting is so wooden with no emotional change in any situation.

Does anyone else think it’s strange that they let Norman out of prison because he’s totally not insane anymore even though he murdered seven people (we actually only see two in the first movie, I guess he did some other murdering before those took place)?  He still owns the house and the motel somehow too.  I feel like that isn’t right and after doing a quick Google search I think the government would seize this guy’s property.  I understand the filmmakers needed to use the same locations so people would recognize them and get excited but it doesn’t make very much sense.

There’s too much use of the overhead shot.  There were those two iconic ones in the original so I get the reference but why quadruple the number of them?

Initially this was going to be a TV movie and that cheap feel carries through a bit.  Almost the entire thing takes place in the house and anything outside of that was done on a backlot, the effects don’t look so hot (especially the killings), it’s shot pretty uninterestingly for the most part and etc.

The movie opens with the infamous shower scene from the first one and that was a bad decision.  I can understand the urge to put it in because home video was still in its infancy back in 1983 so a lot of folks probably either hadn’t seen that scene in a long time or had never seen it on the big screen before.  But it adds nothing to the sorta unique film they ended up making and it violates one of my golden rules: never show a good movie in your crappy movie.  It’s distracting as all hell and will make a number of people wish they were watching that other movie instead.

Overall Impressions: You’d think a sequel made over twenty years later to one of the best and most beloved (horror) films of all time would be total garbage but shockingly it’s not.  I mean this isn’t a forgotten gem or anything but there are a bunch of neat ideas in here that take a more nuanced approach than I think anyone could’ve expected.  It would’ve been so easy to just make a gory slasher picture like was the hot trend at the time.  They did make some accommodations for the modern audience (teens smoking a joint and making out, one particularly nasty death where the knife goes through the mouth and out the back of the head, etc.) but not a ton.  And the callbacks to the original are fun to spot (there’s a lot too).

I’d say this is worth checking out.  It’s more of a hybrid psychological thriller-slasher which is hard to come by.

Harefooted Halloween: Angst

What I Liked: The camerawork is amazing.  There are a few long shots that creep, there are bodycams that swivel every which way (in 1983!), POV shots, extreme closeups, high, low and awkward angles of all sorts.

Erwin Leder (Das Boot, Underworld) as the psychopath (we never learn his name) is off the charts.  He’s completely insane, obsessive, compulsive and deranged.  He has a scrawny build, bulging eyes, a wide mouth and is so nervous all the time that his appearance and attitude are off putting.  Leder gives it his all like a man possessed with his wild yet precise performance.

I love the way the story sucks you in as it builds.  You go deeper and deeper into madness with this completely fucked up individual.  We start right off in a bad place as the psychopath is being released from a ten year stint in prison for killing an old woman.  He admits he never lost the urge to kill while inside and plans a carnage spree as soon as he’s released, like maybe only a few hours after.  At first he fantasizes about it, then makes a half hearted attempt on a cab driver but then finally goes through with attacking three innocent people in their own home.  That progression is unstoppable and it’s an arduous journey you take with him.

The drum machine and hollow synth driven soundtrack is dated but in the best way possible.  It gives this a very early 80’s feel and on paper it shouldn’t work with the dark mood but somehow it does.

What I Didn’t Like: I think I kinda like everything about this one.

Overall Impressions: I saw this last year and was so blown away I had to revisit it again this year.  What this man does is so awful but you can’t look away.  And what makes matters worse is this was based on a true incident, the St. Pölten murders in Vienna.

It’s interesting to compare this to The House That Jack Built because they share many similarities.  They’re both character studies of an extremely sadistic and dangerous person who cannot function in society and is a serious threat to anyone they come across.  The protagonist narrates throughout letting you know their thoughts on the acts they commit, they’re unrelenting in their portrayal of violence (in Angst apparently pig’s blood was used instead of fake blood), they don’t rationalize the behavior of the killers and they both push the boundaries of what the viewer is willing to participate in.

Angst is a much better movie than Jack though.  It doesn’t have any tonal problems, is more straight forward in its approach and much more focused in its execution.  But it’s difficult to watch all the same.

Guys this is an incredible film, one of the best and most truly frightening horror movies I’ve ever seen.  Like top five disturbs me.  So even though I’m recommending it and you probably got the gist already, it’s gonna be a rough ride.  Thank god this is a brief 78 mins because you wouldn’t want it to go on any longer.

Intriguingly this was the only picture Gerald Kargl ever made.  Well, he certainly left his mark.

Harefooted Halloween: The House That Jack Built

What I Liked: The premise about a serial killer regaling Death/God/Angel about five of his favorite murders is pretty good.  They have a philosophical conversation about life, death, love and the meaning of it all.  It’s a very old European style of storytelling like a French or Italian film from the 50’s or 60’s.  Nobody makes movies like that anymore (at least I don’t think so) and it’s a refreshing throwback.

Matt Dillon’s (To Die For) performance is weird.  Sometimes he’s manic like Nicolas Cage and other times he’s downright mean.  But I never found him terrifying which is interesting.  He’s a handsome dude that can throw a goofy smile your way and it becomes hard to take him seriously.  I’m putting this in the “liked” category because some serial killers have the ability to flip between charming and conceited on a dime and Dillon mostly pulls that off.

Some of the imagery towards the end when it gets abstract and dream-like is quite stunning.  I can’t really go into what you’re looking at without spoiling it but the shift to this more extreme art style, especially compared to the very matter-of-fact pseudo-documentary style the rest of the film uses, isn’t as jarring as you might think.

What I Didn’t Like: The two and a half hour running time could’ve been tightened up.  Most of the stories drag a bit with Dillon playing with his victims for too long either before or after the kill.  And because we have these one on one conversations in between the segments there’s a lot of material to get through.  At least one segment should’ve been cut.

The editing is erratic.  There’s too much use of repeated shots and moments we’ve already seen throughout the movie.  There’s also a lot of closeups and jumping in time and parts where Dillon holds up white placards with stuff he’s narrating written on it like in Dylan’s music video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.  So really the whole way this is shot and edited is kind of a mess.

The brutality of the slayings is pretty damn uncomfortable.  Just to give one example Dillon hunts a mother and her two adolescent sons with a rifle.  Later he poses one of the sons like he’s waving and gives him a Joker wide smile that’s infinitely creepy.  He freezes the corpse in a walk-in freezer so it’ll remain in that position.  Probably the thing that sticks with me the most though is a quick shot of Dillon as a ten year old snipping off a duckling’s leg and throwing it back in a pond.  That got to me more than any of the hostile stuff towards humans.  This level of bluntness isn’t my cup of tea, however…

Overall Impressions: movies like these need to exist.  I don’t really like this one but someone needs to push the viewer’s buttons and find out exactly where that line in the sand we all have is.  I’m an unabashed lover of horror films and a good chunk of my favorites include some very nasty shit.  But the way the violence is portrayed, the characters, the technical aspects, the storytelling, etc. is generally entertaining.  I don’t think Lars von Trier (Antichrist) makes entertaining pictures.  It’s more like you get through them.  This is only the third movie of his I’ve seen and the one I like the most so far but I’m not a big fan of the guy.  His shit is depressing as fuck and he’s too obviously poking at you deliberately to get a reaction.

With Jack von Trier probably thought he was making either a satire or the most realistic depiction of a serial killer ever.  The tone is hard to pin down because there are appalling moments like the ones I described above but also silly ones like when Dillon haplessly tries to convince a woman to let him in her house.  He’s failing hard getting nowhere until he finally flat out promises to give her money if she opens the door.  The movie also ends with a cover of Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” which completely clashes with the last moments and everything else you’ve sat through.  Again, I firmly believe von Trier is messing with you and daring you to hate it.

I appreciate the existence of von Trier’s films but goddammit, I do kinda hate them.

Harefooted Halloween: Ice Cream Man

What I Liked: Everything

What I Didn’t Like: Everything

Overall Impressions: My usual format won’t really work with this one because it’s a campy low budget B horror movie that falls under so bad it’s good. 

Clint Howard (Backdraft) is a psychotic ice cream man who kills people and incorporates their remains into his hard pack ice cream.  So to play it safe you should get a prepackaged item from him.  Or don’t buy anything from this guy in the first place.  Yea, that’s probably the best thing to do.

There’s a lot to love here particularly Howard’s maniacal performance where he constantly looks surprised and crazed, acts like a little kid, walks with a hunched over shuffle and speaks in a scruffy voice (he screamed on his way to the set every day to get his throat raspy).  There’s also a scene where he dances by himself next to his truck in an empty back alley to no music.  Oh, and another scene where he plants two severed heads on sticks and has them talk to each other like he’s playing with some action figures.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the plethora of bizarre shit in this picture.  Howard kills a guy with a waffle iron and then places his head in a giant waffle cone, he puts an eyeball in someone’s rocky road scoop, there’s a mental hospital that gets overrun by the unstable patients, the filmmakers wanted one of the kid characters to be fat but decided to cast a slim kid and clearly just stuffed a pillow in his shirt, there’s a rich sultry blonde who wants to get with the ice cream man for some unknown reason, the black and white opening depicts a mob hit on an ice cream man in the 50’s, the title is simply “Ice Cream Man” without any “The” and etc.

This is director Paul Norman’s (credited as Norman Apstein) only non-porn feature which is pretty interesting.  I mean I can’t tell if he was trying to break into more mainstream filmmaking and this was a serious effort or if he intentionally made a goofy as shit horror film.  Either way it’s a fun watch.  It won’t make you think of ice cream men or their trucks the same way again.

Harefooted Halloween: The Devil's Rejects

What I Liked: For this one it’s easier to say I liked just about everything.  The performances, writing, cinematography, editing, most of the soundtrack (“Midnight Rider” over the opening credits doesn’t quite fit though in my opinion), it’s all very well done.

What I Didn’t Like: The one thing I’ve always had a bit of an issue with is the deus ex machina ending.  By no means does this ruin the movie but I really wish Rob Zombie had found another solution.

Overall Impressions: If you compare this to House of 1,000 Corpses it’s a tremendous improvement.  Every technical and creative aspect is way better conceptualized and executed.  This is especially true of the editing, the acting (Sid Haig is still amazing but Bill Mosley as Otis almost steals it with his captivatingly vicious performance; and special shout out to badass William Forsythe (Out for Justice), he’s the fuckin’ man), even the 70’s classic rock music is wonderfully period appropriate this time.

However, if you want to look at this movie on its own that works too.  The ties aren’t very strong to the first installment so you could skip to number two here and not be lost at all.

Rejects stays grounded in reality and I think that’s what makes this one more horrific and effective than its predecessor.  All the shit that takes place in the motel room for example where Otis and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie (Lords of Salem)) humiliate and degrade their hostages is the hardest part to watch because the trauma will leave such a large mental scar that may never heal.  Zombie doesn’t need to carve a person’s face off to make you squirm (although he does that too!).

And I dig that almost the entire thing takes place during the day (as opposed to 1,000 Corpses which occurs mostly at night) letting you know you’re not safe at any time.

Rob Zombie’s films have a sort of Quentin Tarantino vibe and Rejects probably exhibits the most qualities.  There’s the intense adoration of the 70’s, a retro rock/pop soundtrack, it’s more about hanging out with the characters than the actual story, performances just over the top enough, casting of lesser known actors or actors from years gone by who he loves and wants to revive, editing choices like use of wipes and freeze frames and it’s impossible to miss the snappy slick pop culture and trivia infused dialogue.  Most of the time it’s successful like when Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) exclaims he doesn’t want his prostitutes dressing up like Princess Leia because it’ll lead to weird shit like horny droids running around.  And sometimes it falls a little short like when Otis knocks his victim down and yells “Consider me Willy fuckin’ Wonka!  This is my fuckin’ chocolate factory!”  In all cases though it feels natural coming from these characters and flows really well.

I can’t recommend Rejects enough.  It’s kind of a masterpiece where everything comes together in just the right way.  It has a timeless quality to it that’s remarkable.  Still Zombie’s best.

Harefooted Halloween: House of 1,000 Corpses

What I Liked: The production design is excellent.  Rob Zombie had a strong visual aesthetic in mind with the 70’s era costumes, the dilapidated farmhouse that’s packed to the brim with trinkets and fixtures and garbage, Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen with oddities like you’d find in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum, even having half the movie take place during a roaring thunderstorm is deliberate.  And I have to mention the one room decorated floor to ceiling entirely in human bones and skulls looks amazing.  Everything has a layer of filth that Zombie did not want you to wash off easily.

The lighting is pretty exaggerated at times with neon pinks and greens popping up all over the place.  It doesn’t exactly blend but I still like it.

Sid Haig (Coffy, Jackie Brown) is fantastic as the demented clown Captain Spaulding.  He’s so rude and crude without being annoying which is difficult to pull off. (The man just died recently by the way, RIP Sid)

The movie delivers on the mayhem and nasty imagery of mutilated and disfigured bodies.  It’s not gory at all though and that works in the film’s favor.  By suggesting and showing the aftermath of the torturous killings the point clearly gets across.  And more importantly this technique makes the picture more palatable.  Apparently Zombie had alternate takes that showed more of the butchering but went with the toned down material to get an R rating.

What I Didn’t Like: The editing is quite bad.  There’s so much goddamn intercut footage of old black and white horror movies and of the Firefly family members (shot on video so it looks like shit) where they talk directly to the camera like a diary.  This stuff adds nothing to the film and gets very irritating very quickly.

The attempted robbery opening didn’t need to be included.  It’s the worst scene, the most amateurishly executed, it doesn’t do a good job of establishing the world we’ve entered and it’s so disconnected from everything else.  If you cut it nothing changes plot-wise.

Overall Impressions: This is definitely someone’s first movie.  Almost all the components are a mixed bag like the acting, the script and the camerawork (that’s why I didn’t want to put them into either category above).  But Zombie has undeniable passion for the project and it’s genuinely touching to see him pledge his love of all things horror.

Zombie’s biggest influence on this seems to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre so it’s hard not to draw comparisons.  Admittedly I had a difficult time getting past this on my first viewing but have embraced 1,000 Corpses for its own style over the years.  Zombie does have a unique voice in filmmaking and you can see the beginnings of that take shape here.  It’s very similar to Quentin Tarantino but I’ll get into that more in The Devil’s Rejects piece.

This one’s difficult to recommend.  The characters are loud, the humor is abrasive and the editing is obnoxious.  It feels like Zombie’s main focus was to maximize visual impact at the cost of everything else.  If you pause the movie at any point you’ll see that the frame is dense with so many objects and details to pick out and pore over.

Zombie also wanted a nightmare atmosphere and goes full on fantasy with it by the end.  We don’t know if we’ve left reality or are really trapped in an underground cave system filled with murderous crazies (sorta like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) and a dude performing revolting surgery.

1,000 Corpses shows a lot potential in a new filmmaker and like most debuts serves as a sort of sacrificial lamb to gain some experience and learn the process.  It’s an ok film that tends to get better each time I see it.

Just a Few More Days

Just a few more days