Review: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Sometimes, watching a horror movie (or a horror adjacent one, such as Rocky Horror) is all about the communal experience at the theater.  I'll never forget the collective gasp at a certain scene in The Witch involving a bird, or the tension throughout the theater during the opening scenes of A Quiet Place - on occasion, being with others elevates the moviegoing experience in ways that watching at home just cannot compare to.

Which is why, for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a friend and I went to a live shadow-cast performance in San Antonio for the experience.  As an added bonus, Patricia Quinn - who plays Magenta in the film - was also there and talked a bit about the making of the film.  And this, really, is what watching this movie is about - costumes everywhere, toast thrown into the air, shouts of 'Asshole!' and 'Slut!' scattered through the viewing.  If you are watching this quietly at home, you are missing out on what made this movie an essential watch every October for its many fans.

Indeed, part of the joy even for those that have been to multiple shadow-casts is seeing how different people partake in the movie.  From grand introductions of 'Alfalfa's shadow' to inserted words into the lyrics of the various musical numbers - it's rare that longtime fans don't get to experience something new every time.

This also makes the movie critic-proof.  I'm not really even trying to discuss the value of the sets, or the performances, or even the songs in any critical sense because none of it matters when discussing this movie.  You either get it, or you don't.  The most I would say is that without Tim Curry, I don't think the cult status of this movie would have ever reached the heights it has today.

Which is why I recommend that anyone watching this for the first time, do so with friends.  I can understand not going to a shadow-cast, but any theatrical experience of it would be suggested.  And make sure that at least one of those watching with you has experienced this movie before, to help along with the rituals and the fun.

8 out of 10, factoring in the audience.

Now let's do the Time Warp again!

Review: Friday the 13th (1980)

There's a lot to be said about this movie - it's not the grandaddy of slasher films (I'd give the 'grandparent' titles to 1978's Halloween and 1974's Black Christmas), but in many ways it is the father of modern slashers, with its penchant for sequels and high body counts, not to mention the (for 1980) extreme gore used to shock the audience.  While many have come after - some better, some worse - nothing quite like this movie existed before 1980 in American cinemas, and its success changes the landscape of horror.

Do I even need to summarize this film?  Everyone knows the basics: at a summer camp shortly before the campers arrive, the counselors are stalked and killed by a mysterious figure.  Some people forget it was Mrs. Vorhees (Betsy Palmer) who was the killer in this film instead of the more famous Jason, but otherwise the story for many of these films plays out the same.

I think sometimes modern looks at this film come down a little too hard on it - it is frequently called boring in the first half, with some even questioning how it was 'shocking' with such tame kills.  And while they are not wrong in the first point - not completely - the second point conveniently forgets that these sorts of effects (done by the legendary Tom Savini) were shocking - nothing so explicit was given a wide release in US theatres before.

The problem is, by the time this is being watched and evaluated, most reviewers have already seen movies that improved on the formula that this movie set.  Yes, the whoddunnit aspect is undercooked, but that's mainly because we've seen it perfected with the Scream movies.  The movie is slow and spends time getting you familiar with both the counselors and the layout of the campground, when later movies realized that people were mostly there for the kills and sped along that process to get to what the audience wanted.

I'm not saying the film cannot be criticized, but remember it's place!  I don't think it is one of the great films of horror by any stretch - the best in this series, Part 4, probably wouldn't even crack my personal top 20 - but it's a movie to be watched to appreciate where the genre started.  It's akin to watching a retired Hall of Fame pitcher come out and throw the first pitch of a game: It might not have the heat it used to, but respect should be given for what it accomplished.

How to rate this movie?  In all fairness, it probably is a 6 at best.  But given it due respect, I think 7 is a perfectly respectable rating.  So that is where I will set it.

7 out of 10

Review: Feast (2006)

One thing I love about the horror community is how readily we recommend other horror flicks to each other.  We all have our preferences - like my love for creature features - but ask anyone who considers themselves a horror buff what their favorite movies are or what they'd recommend, and you will get a list and enthusiastic summaries of said movies.  One of the blogs I frequent, Final Girl, has made that very exercise a feature of multiple Shocktober celebrations.

Feast came into my life in such a way.  A now-defunct blog had posted what they considered the 50 greatest horror movie kills, and a scene from Feast 2 happen to catch my attention.  Not long after, I came across collection of the trilogy and made the purchase.  With my brother, I marathoned the trilogy and it became one of my absolute favorites right on the spot.

Set at a remote bar in the late hours of the night, Feast follows the patrons of that bar as the try to survive an attack from extremely tough, extremely gross creatures.  Will they be able to escape, or are they doomed to be killed by the monsters?

Very quickly, the viewer realizes that this is an anything-goes movie: People die left and right - even those you'd expect to last much longer.  And while many movies have aspired to an 'anyone can die' approach, this movie truly lives in that world.  No one has script immunity, which adds to tension of each attempt to kill or escape the creatures.

Despite a limited budget (the filmmakers were the winners of the third season of Project Greenlight), the creatures look great, and the setting is used judiciously.  A lot of horror films have problems with developing the layout of their locations, but Feast very quickly (and very smartly) establishes the levels of the bar and how to get to each.

The movie is also incredibly funny, with each major character getting an intro card summarizing their character and alluding to their potential fate.  Most of them don't even use the character's real names, and quite a few are bitingly mean in giving their rundown with such lines as "Life Expectancy: Losers and dorks go first... ...He's both."

For fans of no-holds barred horror, this is a great movie for you, as long as you can deal with gore.  And this movie is gory - limbs are ripped off, eyes are pulled out, amongst other things - and the movie finds ways to be gross in other ways that are not for the feint of heart.

A great, little-seen movie that is a blast.  Easy recommend for me (the sequels provide diminishing returns, sadly)

8.5 out of 10

Review: Scooby-Doo (2002)

I think critics were unfair to this movie when it first came out.  It was critically drubbed to such a degree that it sits at a sad 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score that is almost as low.  And while it might not be the greatest film ever made, I thought it was fun enough, with some fun performances from the main cast.

The movie opens with the humans of Mystery Inc (Freddie Prinze Jr as Fred; Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Linda Cardellini as Velma) solving a case and quickly breaking up to go their separate ways after.  Only Shaggy and Scooby-Doo (voiced by Neil Fanning) stick together while the others go to find and improve themselves.  2 years later, they are all called to Spooky Island to solve a mystery with the expected tension.

Now, again, this is not the greatest film ever made.  The CGI for Scooby wasn't particularly great in 2002, and it's aged about as well as one would expect - and that's without mention the many other CGI creatures scattered throughout.  Aside from the main four, no cast members stand out (although Rowan Atkinson as Spooky Island owner Mondavarious is obviously having fun) despite having a few notable actors like Isla Fisher and Miguel Nuñez Jr.  The plot gives about as much information as the original Scooby-Doo cartoons, but spreads it out amongst the 86 minute running time and makes you realize just how compact those cartoons were in comparison.

But dammit, I enjoy this movie all the same.  Prinze Jr plays proto-himbo Fred with just enough charm to make you forgive the character's more boorish behavior, Gellar is having fun as a Daphne who is trying her best not be a damsel yet constantly finding herself in trouble, and Cardellini and Lillard are pitch-perfect casting even before you get into the meat of their performances, which are great.

I love just how late 90s/early 00s this movie is, from the colors to the hairstyles to 'bad slang' to the cameo from the band Sugar Ray.  The jokes are dumb, but they are told well and with energy, and there are enough that aren't for the kids that you don't have to rely on the juvenile ones for entertainment - although those juvenile ones work for me as well.

Hell, there is an extended burp/fart contest between Shaggy and Scooby that is just as sophomoric as it sounds, but I'll be damned if Lillard's facial expressions and the sound of that last, partially-contained fart when Daphne catches them doesn't make me laugh out loud every time.

All in all, this is a fun movie - light and thin and the equivalent of cotton candy in film form.  But you know what?  Cotton candy has its place, as does this movie.

7.5 out of 10

Review: Hell Fest (2018)

So, when reviewing movies, you have to factor in two major things:  Is the movie entertaining?, and is the movie well made?  Just because a movie is entertaining doesn't necessarily mean it is a good production, just as a well-made movie can be tedious and boring.  You might be asking why I lead my review of Hell Fest with such a statement, and it is because the movie succeeds at one of these two major considerations while failing absolutely in the other.

The basic premise is that a (traveling?) carnival called Hell Fest comes to town and a group of twenty-somethings - yes, teenagers get to survive this time, as the movie decides to focus on college-age people - decide to attend while, unbeknownst to them, a serial killer also attends.

I will be upfront:  The movie does not live up to the premise.  It does create some interesting sets and works as a decent MacGuffin for why no one notices all of the dead bodies, but that is about all the gold spun from the straw that is this script.  None of the kills are especially inventive, although there is one scene that works exceptionally well during the setup but makes no sense upon the reveal. Afterwards, the movie shifts into the Final Chase, so it sort of deflates quickly at that point anyway.

The acting is adequate - no one is especially terrible, although it feels like a waste of both Tony Todd and Bex Taylor-Klaus' talents giving them the roles that they have.  But it doesn't have the clunky acting that usually accompanies a slasher with no big names.

On the plus side, the movie moves along at a quick pace and doesn't overthink the premise to the point of distraction.  It actually does surprise a little bit on who lives and how it ends, but still pays homage to the 'rules' of the horror genre.

The movie still manages to be entertaining.  It won't ever make any Greatest Horror Movies lists, and if it fades into obscurity in 2 years time, it won't be a huge loss to the genre.  But if you have an hour and a half to kill and you like horror movies, there are worst ways to spend your time.

2024 Addition: In retrospect, I was a little harder on this than I should've been.  The setting, especially, works really well and is used in more interesting ways than I alluded to in my original review.  I think I was correct in my basic assessment - perfectly adequate but ultimately forgettable - but I've bumped up the score from 5 to 6, and my feelings towards it are much warmer.

6.0 out of 10.

Review: Late Night with the Devil (2024)

I have a confession to make: I am an easy mark for possession movies.  Even ones such as this - where possession is only a part of the overall film - have a tendency to get under my skin much easier than other horror films. So, given the positive reviews of this film, I was a bit nervous to see it.  And, even watching it in daylight, it got to me a little bit.

Set on Halloween night in 1977, the film is part found footage, part documentary about the last airing of Night Owls with Jack Elroy, a fictional competitor to The Tonight Show.  Jack Elroy (David Dastmalchian) is on hard times, and the show is a grand attempt to boost rating during sweeps and save it.  So, he has an assortment of psychics, skeptics, and parapsychologists on to capitalize on people's need for scares.  Elroy's wife has also died recently, and it comes into play during the night's events in horrific ways.

First off, having been a fan of Dastmalchian for awhile, it is great to see him get a lead role that he can tear into.  He manages to shade this character in all sorts of interesting ways, especially as the night and the creeps start to affect him.  Desperation weaved with cynicism mixed with longing and terror makes this one of the great performances of the genre.

I also want to mention Ian Bliss as the skeptic, Carmichael Haig.  He perfectly plays someone who thinks the other guests are charlatans, and stubbornly refuses to budge even as evidence piles up that this particular instance is a most real one.  It's an infuriatingly perfect performance of a secondary antagonist.

The 'lost footage' aspects is also done well - so much of it reads like an odd, but interesting late night talk show that when it goes 'behind the scenes' for the documentary aspect, it is seamless despite a hard shift in coloration (the documentary section is black and white) and stylization. 

As the movie continues, it starts to get a bit surreal, and I can never quite pinpoint when it shifts from real footage to unreal(?), which is a great piece of editing.  Without spoiling too much, things take a very dark turn - leading a very dark (but very earned) ending - and it is left ambiguous how much of what happens is caught on camera.

All in all, this is an absolutely spectacular horror movie. I'd recommend it to any fan of horror, and it might become a regular watch during future Halloween marathons.

8.5 out of 10

Review: Crawl (2019)

There's something to be said for a simplistic creature feature.  A bare-bones, no-frills film that gets to the action and doesn't let up until the credits roll.  Crawl is such a film.

When I say bare-bones, I mean it.  The plot?  Stuck in a house swarming with alligators during a hurricane.  The actors?  Mostly a two-person show between Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario (if anyone else appears, assumed they aren't long for this world).  The run time?  A cool 87 minutes.  It takes about 15 minutes for the movie to get to the titular crawl space and it is a fight for survival almost until the credits cross the screen.

It isn't without some shading - Pepper's character is the father of Scodelario's, and they are somewhat estranged.  It easily explains how she is able to outswim the alligators (she is a collegiate swimmer) and then lets the action take it from there.

Frankly, both actors are giving this movie more than it needs - which might be why it is such a gem of a film.  Pepper tears into this like it is a family drama, and Scodelario's Haley is a topnotch final girl.  If the movie was a bigger hit - it only grossed $39 million in the US - I think she would easily be included amongst the best in this particular genre.

The movie does earn its R rating.  Both of our main characters get attacked multiple times, and the movie doesn't shy away from gore (though it is less gory than director Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3-D).  The movie is just as relentless on its characters as it is the audience, and the feeling of fatigue that both actors portray by the end feels both real and earned.

The alligators of the film are well rendered.  Even in the water, they have weight to them, so you never feel that you are looking at computer-generated creatures.  Really, all of the effects are well done - the house is a perfect piece of set design, as is the exterior.  During brief moments where they are outside of the house, the surrounding area looks like a neighborhood people would live in (well, outside of the torrents of water).

I cannot recommend this brutally efficient film enough.  Obviously, those who don't like gore or creature features will want to avoid it, but for everyone else, it is a good time.

Also, they don't kill the dog, which kicks it up a notch as far as recommendations go.

8.5 out of 10