31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 10: GREAT WHITE/THE LAST SHARK (1981)

Surprisingly, not a remake of Disney's "Willie the Operatic Whale."

It's the summer of 1981 and as the Port Harbor windsurfing regatta approaches, the local beach and waterways are terrorized by a huge, voracious Great White shark, so it's up to a horror writer and a grizzled professional shark hunter to handle the man-eating fish. But until they take care of business, their toothy adversary munches a bloody swath through dozens of innocent beachgoers. 

Sound familiar? It sure as hell should, since JAWS has existed for nearly half a century and is a cinema classic that carved the tropes of the shark attack movie genre in stone. There have been other fun shark movies since Spielberg's 1975 mega-blockbuster landmark, but none have yet come close to that study in cinematic storytelling and suspense's perfect encapsulation of the form. That said, while most of the post-JAWS shark flicks bite the big one, there have been a few of note, such as DEEP BLUE SEA (1999), OPEN WATER (2003), and the superlative THE SHALLOWS (2016), and all of those brought something worth sitting through to the table. The majority, however, range for merely mediocre to outright boring and bad, but none of them are as balls-out shameless as Italy's L'ULTIMO SQUALO (THE LAST SHARK), which made it to the U.S. as GREAT WHITE. I distinctly remember seeing ads for it when I was a junior in high school and eagerly wanting to see it, as it didn't make even the slightest attempt at hiding what a complete and utter fucking ripoff it was. Unfortunately, its time in U.S. theaters was cut short by a cease-and-desist order tendered by the makers of JAWS, so I missed it during the theatrical run. It would be just over a decade until I finally got to see the film via a bootleg VHS obtained from Video Search of Miami, and it was worth every moment of the wait.

Just a sample of the film's cornucopia of ludicrous mayhem.

Calling GREAT WHITE a bald-faced ripoff would be a colossal understatement, as the film may as well have just been called "JAWZ." The only major differences between JAWS and GREAT WHITE, aside from artistry and overall quality, are that the police chief has been swapped out for a horror novelist, while the marine biologist character is completely absent. The grizzled shark hunter is this time essayed by Vic Morrow — who was tragically killed during an horrific mishap on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE a year later — and he bears virtually zero differentiation from Robert Shaw's indelible Quint from Jaws, save for the level of thespic craft that Shaw brought to the role. 

And while Spielberg's film hid its mechanical shark until seeing it was unavoidable for reasons of the plot's action, GREAT WHITE's makers gave not one fuck when it came to the obviousness of its shark's bogusness, and in fact they seemed to relish the sheer Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade quality of its appearance. It was a huge, rather stiff-looking practical prop (and sometimes a small model that looked like a bathtub toy that might fight a pre-1980's G.I. Joe doll, along with generous amounts of stock footage from nature documentaries) and when it breached, it let out a roar that cannot fail to elicit laughter from all in attendance. It's even more of a straight-up sea monster than the shark in JAWS ever was, and as such it's terrific fun. The film also contains waaaaay more deaths and mayhem than the 1975 template, which, since the film cannot hope to compete in any other department, is wholly welcome. 

Yes, GREAT WHITE/THE LAST SHARK is  the definition of a shameless ripoff and a naked cash grab, but it's an unintentional laugh riot and crowd-pleaser if you can get your hands on a copy. It is unlikely to ever get a legitimate legal U.S. release, but it can easily be had if you do a bit of digging online.

Poster from the American theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 9: THE OTHER (1972)

Let's talk about THE OTHER.

I'm not certain of exactly how old I was when I first encountered THE OTHER, but it was definitely during a network TV airing sometime around when I was eleven or twelve. It was the perfect age in which to discover it because I was right on the cusp of adolescence, the point where one leaves behind the carefree games and frivolities of one's formative years and prepares to step into the changes wrought by adolescence that subsequently usher us into the experiences and concerns of adulthood, and its story addresses the oft-romanticized seemingly-endless summer of childhood through a dark and disturbing lens.

Set during the summer in the rustic Connecticut of 1935, the story tells of 11-year-old Holland (Chris Udvarnoky) and Niles Perry (Martin Udvarnoky), identical twin brothers who live on a farm with their family, and the events are depicted from Holland's point of view. To outward appearances, all of the tropes of a childhood yarn taking place in that era are in place for a wistful evocation of the sort of innocence forever lost in the wake of World War II, but the twins' world is marked by tragedies that have left the family with much to deal with while the boys carry on as though little or nothing had happened. Earlier in the year, their father died in an accident in the farm's apple cellar, a location that is declared off-limits afterward, and their mother (Diana Muldaur) is left in a state of deep depression that renders her in a dis-associative state, hardly ever leaving her room. Taking care of business around the farm are a few hired hands and a number of relatives, key among whom is the boys' loving Russian immigrant grandmother, Ada (Uta Hagen). Ada teaches the boys "the Great Game," a form of consciousness projection, as members of their family sometimes possesses a gift of minor psychic powers, an ability that allows them to inhabit the bodies of other living creatures, like birds and such, and see and experience the world through their eyes.  Of the twins, it should be noted that Niles is sweet and gentle, while Holland has a bearing marked by a mischievous and vindictive streak.

Ada (Uta Hagen) coaches Niles (Chris Udvarnoky) in "the Great Game."

Over the course of the summer, a number of shocking deaths occur on and around the farm, and Niles realizes that they all are the work of his brother. Ada also figures out what's going on, and as of that point the story takes a hard left into the especially disturbing flavor of darkness involving children as a major twist is revealed...

Holland (Martin Udvarnoky) preforms a magic trick. Penn and Teller he ain't...

Like a Norman Rockwell painting gone horribly wrong, THE OTHER crafts a portrait of idyllic early-20th century America as seen through the filter of supernatural murder, and as such it is quite effective. It's not gory but its shocking moments are made that much more shattering due to that aspect. The viciousness and cruelty of the acts is more than enough, and seeing it all as a kid was very much a visceral punch to the head and guts. You may have noticed that I have not described any of the main events in any real detail, and that's because doing so would rob the first-timer of the full impact of the piece's utterly horrific moments. (Those of you who have seen it are no doubt thinking of the very worst moment, and you are likely agreeing with me that it's best left for the audience to witness for itself.)

THE OTHER is leisurely-paced, gore-free, and very low-key in how it presents itself, but believe me when I tell you that its shocks are intense and unforgettable. One of the very best in the "scary kids" sub-genre, this one is definitely worth your time.

Poster from the original theatrical release. 

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 8: ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS (1969)

NOTE: This piece originally ran in 2010, but has been slightly updated.

Though I've been a diehard giant monster fan my whole life I can't really say I was a Gamera booster during the formative years of my addiction, despite repeated doses of the character's films on the Tri-State Area's venerable 4:30 MOVIE during the 1970's and early 1980's. Many of my fellow daikaiju addicts absolutely loved the Gamera series at the time, but before moving to Connecticut I had lived in San Francisco and so had been exposed to the charms of ULTRAMAN before seeing Gamera, and while the ULTRAMAN television series was certainly made as a low-budget kid's show, it had a charm and imagination sorely lacking in the Gamera movies. The Gamera films to me seemed like nothing more than cynically-churned-out product to cash in on the success of the contemporary Toho Godzilla films, plus their aggressively kiddie-oriented tone (after the first two films) drove me fucking crazy as a child, especially once the protagonists became precocious kids in those disturbing short pants common to the genre. And as if that weren't bad enough, Gamera itself, once a feared (though rather tatty) city-destroying flying saber-toothed turtle — yes, you read that right — was re-tooled into the ultimate in safe and sanitized nausea, namely "Gamera, the Friend of the Children," complete with a jaunty and utterly sickening signature tune sung by a chorus of untranslated Japanese rugrats. Pee-yuke.

The one thing the Gamera series did have going for it was a stable of opposing monsters that gave those found on ULTRAMAN a run for their money when it came to being both laughable and ludicrous. However, the thing that distinguished one batch of those monsters from the other was that you laughed with the monsters on ULTRAMAN, while you invariably laughed at those who fought Gamera (then again Gamera itself was a giant, flying, saber-toothed turtle, so I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different). Gamera took on such beasts as Barugon (not to be confused with Toho's Baragon), which was basically a humongous iguana that could emit a death-ray rainbow from its back (???) and wielded a tongue that shot a freeze-ray; the evil space-squid Viras that looked like Gumby on LSD, the super-sonic, death-ray-emitting and vampiric Gyaos, and a couple of others of considerably lesser note, but none of Gamera's opponents was anywhere near as endearingly idiotic as Guiron from ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS. Amazingly silly in concept, Guiron is the one Gamera baddie that absolutely everyone remembers, and its memorable status is helped immeasurably by the film being perhaps the best of the original Gamera series. (NOTE: the Gamera series was given a much needed and completely kickass reboot in the mid-1990's, but that's fodder for a whole post on its own.)

ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS, the American dubbed version of GAMERA VS GUIRON, the fifth in the original run,  is a study in simplicity. The story involves three kids, Akio (Nobuhiro Kajima), his apparently American friend, Tom (Christopher Murphy), and Akio's younger sister, Tomoko (Miyuki Akiyama), and their adventure when they witness a flying saucer landing nearby. The kids investigate the saucer and the boys enter it, unwittingly finding themselves trapped when the ship takes off, guided by remote control. Poor Tomoko is left behind and tries to tell her assholishly dismissive mother what happened, but she's continually brushed off as having too much imagination and believing in foolishness (this subplot will piss off every right-thinking person on the planet). The only grownup who believes her is local comic relief cop Officer Kondo (Kon Omura), but his belief in her word is little consolation as she worries for her brother and their friend.

The brain-hungry space-chicks get down to business.

The boys' flight beyond the sun is tailed by Gamera but the saucer's propulsion system kicks into overdrive, leaving Gamera sucking fumes, and in no time the boys have crash-landed on a barren alien world (a crash that happens offscreen, presumably to conserve the obviously limited budget). While checking out the abandoned city they landed in, the kids encounter Flobella and Barbella, two space-cuties who seem friendly at first but are soon revealed to be brain-eating cannibals whose people fled their planet when they lost control over the monsters they had created. One such monster, an outer space analog to the Earth's own killed-by-Gamera Gaos (you can tell it's a "space" version because they spray-painted the leftover Gaos suit silver), flies aimlessly around the place, blowing shit up with its orally-emitted beams, so since they have nothing better to do, the space-chicks send the remaining monster under their control, Guiron, to kill the Space-Gaos.

The unforgettable visage of Guiron (or "Knife-Head," as the kids who weren't paying attention liked to call it during my youth).

Guiron's a squat-bodied, dog-like living knife that uses its face as a brutally effective cutting edge, and when that isn't enough it can also launch shuriken (that's "ninja throwing stars" to us gaijin) from sockets located above its eyes. Guiron kicks Space-Gyaos' bargain basement ass in no uncertain terms and, demonstrating an aspect that distinguished Daiei Studios' Gamera flicks from the more upscale Toho efforts featuring Godzilla and pals, uses its blade-face to semi-gorily chop the fallen enemy into several pieces. Beginning with the second Gamera movie, WAR OF THE MONSTERS (1966), Gamera engaged in cartoonishly bloody combat with its foes, even spewing blue/gray monster blood from its own wounds, so this came as no shock to Japanese audiences, but it was quite a surprise to see on American TV in a slot reserved for heavily-sanitized children's programming. Anyway, there's a bunch of mishegoss where the boys try to run away from the cannibalistic aliens, but then Gamera shows up and engages Guiron in some spirited and ridiculous combat before the evil aliens are killed and the boys get to go home (much to the relief of Tomoko, whose tales of a close encounter are satisfyingly vindicated at last). And upon going home, Akio relates that what he's learned from the adventure to another "star" (apparently the screenwriter didn't know or care about the difference between a star and a planetary body), namely that mankind must strive to do better and work to no longer have wars or traffic accidents (the kid is apparently obsessed with traffic accidents since he mentions them at least three times during the film's running time; since his dad is never seen or mentioned, was his father the victim of one such accident?).

The battle between Gamera and Guiron has justly gone down in giant monster history as one that is spectacular and crowd-pleasing in its silliness, and it even includes Gamera executing moves straight out of an Olympic gymnastics routine involving swinging around bodily on the uneven parallel bars (although Gamera uses a singular bar).

No, you are not hallucinating.

It's simply something you have to see to believe, and I defy you to keep a straight face or not exclaim "You've gotta be fucking kidding me!" when you see it for the first time. But while that bit may stop audiences dead in their tracks, the scene that made me scream "No way!!!" at age eight was when Gamera picks up the flying saucer after it had been sliced in twain by Guiron and spot-welds it with his flame-breath into good enough shape to comfortably support the boys as he carries the saucer back to the earth.

Apparently Gamera is expert at impromptu body work.

Though obviously a kiddie movie, one thing that I always respected such films of Japanese origin for was the fact that Japanese storyteller seldom shied away from including dark and disturbing aspects in stories for children. Most of the original run of Gamera films have some form of weird or eerie content, and in the case of this movie that would be the sinister intent of Barbella and Flobella. Unlike the villains in stuff like SCOOBY-DOO, the space-cuties flat-out state that they are going to eat Akio and Tom's brains, and they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling monsters! Even classic fairy tales had horrific elements that frightened and delighted children, which served as a sneaky way of advising caution and awareness during one's own real-life childhood adventures, so stuff like this is a great way to break the little ones in early.

So when all is said and done, ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS is a fun way to spend roughly eighty minutes, and even the kid characters in it are tolerable (for once). And long after the days when it ran in after-school time slots, the film resurfaced in a pointlessly and terribly re-dubbed version when it (and apparently the rest of the original series Gamera films) fell into the hands of TV producer and film distributor Sandy Frank and was re-titled GAMERA VS GUIRON for VHS release. The movie would probably have gathered moss on the nation's home video retailer's shelves had it not been scooped up for an epic session of verbal abuse in a 1991 installment of the frequently hilarious cult TV showcase for truly awful movies, MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.

As seen on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.

If you ask me, the other Gamera films were the ones that really needed the MST3K treatment to make them bearable, especially the turgid GAMERA VS BARUGON, but the MST3K handling of GAMERA VS GUIRON makes the most of a film that is both silly as hell and entertaining, so it was a win/win. But it was good to see the film in its initial American version again and it was well worth the five bucks it cost to add it to my library of giant monster movies.

And I have to ask: why the fuck did Sandy Frank feel the need to re-dub all the Gamera movies that fell under his company's banner? The new dubbing is truly appalling, far worse than even some of the most poorly-dubbed kung fu films I've seen (it's worse than the dubbing found in SHAOLIN KUNG FU MYSTAGOGUE, and that's really saying something), so does anyone out there have an answer s to why it was done? Please write in and let me know!

Poster form the original Japanese theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 7: PET SEMATARY (2019)

NOTE: This review originally ran when the movie opened, but I'm cheating and repeating it here for those who may have missed it.

A tragic funeral procession...for a deceased beloved pet, or for the movie?

I just saw the latest adaptation of PET SEMATARY and, in the immortal words of Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" 

 

I freely admit that PET SEMATARY is hands down my favorite Stephen King novel and that I was never a fan of the 1989 adaptation, which to me looked and felt like a cheap made-for-TV movie, so after the superb recent remake of IT, I approached the new PET SEMATARY with hope. 

WARNING: FROM HERE ON, SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

• The film starts out with a flash-forward to nearly the end of the film, then promptly skips back to the start if the story proper. Why this was done I cannot begin to tell you.
• The characters are given little or no fleshing out and what we do understand about them is hugely dependent upon the viewer having read the novel. I cared about no one onscreen.
• The pacing and omission of certain plot elements renders the narrative into a Crib Notes version of itself, eradicating most of the story's atmosphere and thematic weight.
• Unlike in the novel, Church is never put down after his resurrection as something malevolent, thus robbing the story of Louis truly understanding why using the burial ground is not a good idea.
• The sub-plot about Rachel's judgmental asshole of a father is completely omitted, and with it goes one of the most intense and emotionally wrenching moments in the original story, namely the wake. In fact we only see brief glimpses of her parents, or at least I assume they were her parents, as they are never identified as such and they also have maybe one line each.
• The filmmakers switch the wrenching narrative purposes of  the Creed children, so it is now Ellie who is killed by the truck, the reason given by the filmmakers being that they could get a better performance from an older child. That made sense on paper, but by swapping 9-year-old Ellie for two-year-old Gage, her resurrection is just nowhere near horrific enough. Also, as a result of that change, the last third of the story is more or less rewritten and swapped out for a headlong descent into full-tilt stupidity.
• When Ellie returns, she is at first merely stoic and Louis attempts to restore things to normal with her. She, however, twigs to the fact that she was dead and soon becomes malevolent. Her mother, sensing the cosmic wrongness afoot, returns home with Gage and finds her husband, who basically says "It's okay, honey. I just dug up our daughter's corpse, buried her again in a magic burial ground, and now she's back," at which point Ellie shows up and freaks her mother the fuck out.
• As the shit hits the fan and Ellie goes all Norman Bates, Louis locks Gage in the family car and tells him not to unlock the door for anyone, "Not even mommy and daddy." He then goes inside the house, where he is knocked unconscious by Ellie, who has just murdered her mother. Ellie drags her mom's body to the burial ground and inters her, only to have her father show up and the two engage in a final battle...until the resurrected Rachel drives a handy piece of rebar through Louis's back and out of his chest. The scene fades and then things fade back up to the opening flash-forward (now the present), and we see the house ablaze. Gage, still in the car, notes the burning house, then his parents, sister, and cat approach the car. They beseech him to let them in and the credits roll (to the feeble accompaniment of a wan remake of the Ramones' 1989 PET SEMATARY theme song).

Less than a half-hour into the film, groups of people got up and walked out, and the exodus continued throughout. During the last half-hour, there were numerous audience exclamations of "What???" and "What the fuck???" before things degenerated to outright booing. I even let fly with "This is some fucking bullshit!" which was met with "You said it, muthafukka!!!" When the film finally ended, I have never seen a movie theater's auditorium clear out so fast.

Anyone who can find enjoyment in this film has probably never gotten within ten miles of the source novel and what this adaptation did to it can be considered nothing less than a desecration, especially when taking its sequel-bait "zombie family" ending into account.

PET SEMATARY, my caramel-colored ass. "Shit Sematary," more like. AVOID.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 6: THE DESCENT (2005)

 There are very good reasons to be afraid of the dark.

A year after a life-changing family tragedy, outdoorsy Sarah Shauna Macdonald), four old friends, and one newcomer, meet up in a North Carolina section of the Appalachian Mountains for a group spelunking excursion. Old friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who seeks to mend her relationship with Sarah after not being there during Sarah's period of grieving, takes the lead and guides the party into a cave (that she does not tell the rest of the group is unexplored), only for the passageway they've just passed through to collapse, effectively trapping them. Juno then comes clean about it being an unexplored cave, and because of that state of unchartedness, rescue is simply not going to happen. As the group presses on, they discover the equipment of a previous hiker and a painting on the cave wall that hints at an escape route. But this is a horror movie, so everything that can possibly go wrong with  their attempt at making their way out of the caves does, with serious injuries injuries, further disorientation in the blackness, and revelations about hidden depths of Sarah's tragedy are bad enough, but our protagonists are not alone in the gloom, and what lives down there is very nasty and very hungry...

From Neil Marshall, writer/director of the superlative werewolf film DOG SOLDIERS (which we will be getting to later this month), THE DESCENT is a very effective followup that makes the most of its dark and claustrophobic setting, and is at time nail-bitingly intense. Unfortunately, in-depth discussion of the plot's particulars would give away its many surprises, both emotional and visceral, so all I'll say is that it's genuinely good and worth your time. And it should also be noted that the American and U.K. cuts of the films have different endings, that I cannot discuss for aforementioned reasons, but given a choice between the two, go for the U.K. director's cut.

Promo poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 5: MIDSOMMAR (2019)

 In the realm of ritual.

The relationship of anthropology grad students Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) is clearly nearing its end, but the pair find themselves ill-advisedly staying together in the wake of Dani's sister's suicide by carbon monoxide asphyxiation, an act that also takes the sisters' parents as well. With nerves already frayed by the impending breakup, Dani is reduced to a clingy, emotional mess (which is wholly understandable), which puts the reluctant Christian in a position where going through with the breakup would be an act of horribly-timed cruelty. The pair stay together but Dani finds out about Christian's plans to embark on a combination vacation/anthropological trip to a remote area of Sweden with two friends, Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter). Invited to Hälsingland by native exchange student Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) to his ancestral commune, the Hårga, Christian and his buddies are psyched for the excursion and plan to study the community's annual midsummer festival, with this year's event being a special version that occurs only once every ninety years. When Dani assumes she is to accompany the group on the trip, Christian reluctantly invites her along, much to the displeasure of his friends. Though they play nice and invite Dani to join them, it's very clear that the presence of Dani throws a monkey wrench into what the three men envisioned as a good time, and now all are aware that they'll have to instead be Dani's emotional babysitters.

Upon arrival at the Hårga, all are charmed by the commune's rustic beauty and the quaint ways of its people, though Dani remains on edge. With Pelle as their native guide, the students are introduced to the community and a pair of British exchange students, Connie and Simon, who were also invited by Pelle. Once introductions are made, the first of a number of psychedelic experiences occurs, with the inaugural trip consisting of psilocybin mushrooms. Dani's fragile emotional state does not react well to the magic fungi, and she experiences distressing visions of her dead sister. 

Things soon take a hard left from the idyllic, modern day hippy-dippy vibe as the visitors are invited to witness the first phase of this special festival's rituals and immediately find themselves confronted with the Hårga culture's "old ways" — and I do mean very old ways —and to say more would be to ruin a truly intense banquet of visual sumptuousness that collides head-on with visceral arcane rites that have managed to survive into the new millennium.

Though at its heart a warped metaphor for a relationship's complete and utter erosion, what struck me about MIDSOMMAR was its matter-of-fact outlining of the Hårga's way of life and its rituals without really passing judgement on what occurs as being "evil," per se. Their ways are ancient and very, very pagan, and if you have ever studied up on such rites throughout European history, you know that a considerable amount of violence and what we today would consider outright gruesome and barbaric torture goes with the territory. Saying more would give away some major-league splattery and sensual shocks, but keep in mind that while I personally would not consider this a straight-up thriller-style horror film, MIDSOMMAR does include some horrifying moments of gore and one especially graphic sex scene that I'm kind of surprised that the MPAA allowed to slide by without granting the film an NC-17 rating. And if you need some kind of frame of reference, MIDSOMMAR falls into the category that has come to be known as "folk horror," and as such it's very reminiscent of what is perhaps the acme of the sub-genre, namely THE WICKER MAN (the superb 1973 version, not the unintentionally hilarious 2006 remake with Nicloas Cage), and coming from me a favorable comparison to THE WICKER MAN is high praise indeed. That said, this is in no way a date movie...

Related anecdote: When I saw the film with my dear friend Suzi, a young couple was seated to my immediate left, and whenever the gore occurred and especially when the aforementioned sex scene took place, the male immediately covered his girlfriend's eyes to shield her from the "objectionable" material. She did not object in the least.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-DAY 4: MA (2019)

 Getting their underage drunk on in Ma's basement.

16-year-old Maggie Thompson (Diana Silvers) moves with her mom (Juliette Lewis) back to her mother's podunk hometown in Ohio after her mother's dreams of making it big in California amount to squat and her marriage falls apart. Now the new kid at the local high school, Maggie is soon befriended by a quartet of average, nice-enough fellow students whose one goal in their boring, go-nowhere lives is to get as stoned and drunk as possible, as often as they can. 

While trying (and failing) to get adults to buy booze for them at a liquor store, the gang manages to convince veterinary secretary/assistant Sue Ann Ellington (Octavia Spencer) to help them in their quest for underage wastedness. The sympathetic Sue Ann recalls what it was like for her growing up in their boring-ass town and continues to buy the kids liquor, eventually inviting them to party in her remote house's basement. Despite them knowing absolutely nothing about this kindly grownup, the desperate kids accept her invitation and begin regular visits to their illegal speakeasy and find Sue Ann, whom they now refer to as "Ma," to be an affable and fun hostess who is more than happy to join them in their hard-partying shenanigans. But almost immediately her mask of lovable sweetness occasionally allows glimpses into a much darker true nature, and though she gives the gang free rein of the basement, they are warned never to go upstairs, as "that is my world."

Though sensing that something is rather "off" about their overly-benevolent hostess, the allure of a safe place in which to get fucking shitfaced on the regular is too great a temptation, and in no time Ma's place becomes the off-the-chain hangout spot for a legion of teens from the local high school and beyond. But Ma's facade slips more and more with each passing day, as she stalks the kids online, gathering as much information on them as possible and serially bombarding them with requests for them to hang out at her house. She even begins stalking Maggie's mother at her job as a casino waitress, and during that bit of creeping we start to piece together Ma's back story and exactly why she obsessively wishes to hang with Maggie and her pals. When all of the pieces come together, what we are left with is a cautionary tale centering around one deeply (yet understandably) deranged, lonely, and damaged sociopath.

 Sue Ann "Ma" Ellington (Octavia Spencer): behind that sweet smile lies the heart and mind of a deeply pathetic and damaged psycho.

MA is concrete proof that the sensibility and thrills of '70's era psychological horror exploitation has not died out, and it's a hell of a fun thrill ride that is best appreciated when seen with a black audience. My people's "audience participation" with movies in general but horror flick in particular is so well-known that it is now its own punchline, and scary movies, especially those with crazed antagonists of a dusky hue, elicit unbridled reactions that are often hilarious but that also engage the Chalkasiains in attendance to find common ground with us. MA is old school grindhouse horror and social commentary rolled up into a satisfying burrito that starts out very deeply-rooted in an all-too-recognizable suburban purgatory. A death trap for personal growth or progression, wherein the youth seeks to numb its senses as it faces the inevitable departure from the mundanity of high school social politics and cruelty into an adult world where hopes and dreams are crushed by the realities of dead-end jobs, loveless marriages, and unwanted progeny.

MA connected with me in a rather visceral way because a lot of its over-the-top depictions of teenage partying excess rang absolutely true when compared to my own experiences growing up when and where I did. Westport, CT in the late 1970's and early 1980's was a far cry from rural Ohio, what with its affluent ostentation and atmosphere/culture that bore little resemblance to the American reality at large in other locales, but its teen culture of driving around aimlessly in search of any sort of altered state of consciousness, regardless of it being had in someone's home or in the weeds-choked and secluded confines of random, remote parking lots, was exactly like what is seen in MA. Between the ages of 15 and 18, I went to a good number of out-of-control parties that were sanctioned and participated in by adults — sometimes the parents of some of my peers — and during those gathering I and many of my classmates learned how to drink and even do assorted drugs, often with the parental implication that it was safer for us to do so under their roofs than having us drive somewhere while wasted. The police were seldom involved and I and many of my peers developed drinking and drugging tolerances that would have impressed the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. (Consequently, there were also a considerable number of drug and drunk-driving-related deaths to go along with all of the pre-collegiate debauchery.) Anyway, the party insanity seen in MA actually did and does happen, so go into the film knowing that some of us lived it (and, miraculously, lived through it).

The kids in the cast all do serviceable jobs, but the film is unquestionably Octavia Spencer's spotlight in which to draw the viewer in with her initially lovable aspect, but when Sue Ann goes into full-tilt crazy-as-a-soup-sandwich mode, Spencer chews the scenery like a motherfucker. And it is glorious.

 Sue Anne: Proof that monsters are made, not born.

"But," you may ask, "What drove the formerly sweet and shy Sue Ann over the edge into full-on bunny-boiler territory," you might ask? Well, I won't give away the specifics, but throughout the film we are given glimpses into her memory of her adolescent crush on a hunky white classmate and how her vulnerability let her become the victim of an incredibly cruel and humiliating prank engineered by her school's cadre of "mean girls" and her unobtainable love. If you are a horror fan, you are no doubt familiar with what was arranged for and done to poor Carrie White, but what befalls Sue Ann eclipses Carrie's tragic humiliation, something that would seem almost impossible, but I assure you that Sue Ann's victimization is the single worst example of "They're all gonna laugh at you" that I have ever seen. Seriously, if it happened in real life today, it would result in harsh prosecution, with the possible tacking-on of classification as a hate crime, as Sue Ann was one of the school's minute number of students of color. (An aspect noted to pointed effect by Sue Ann in the film's climax.)

With all of that said, it should be pretty obvious that I very much enjoyed MA, though it should be made clear that it perhaps best enjoyed by those of us whose bread and butter is old school exploitation trash cinema. Though there is social commentary to be had, the true meat of the narrative lies in the fact that it is an old school tale of cruelty-spurred vengeance, and though quite believable for its first two thirds, the film goes out-the-window insane with some of the shit that happens during the final reel. It should also be noted that if one wants approach the film with a minimum of knowledge regarding some of its more shocking elements, I advise avoiding Google Images and other sites that features promotional stills released by the studio. Some of them spoil some major nasty moments, so I'll just leave it at that. RECOMMENDED.

Oh, and Juliette Lewis is great as Maggie's struggling mom. I always liked her, and it's good to see her in another of her down-to-earth relateably-trashy roles.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 3: THE VAMPIRE (1957)

 The real curse of vampirism: transforming into Lee Marvin.

A kindly doctor (John Beal) becomes addicted to pills made from the blood of vampire bats, pills meant to regress animals to a more primitive state before restoring the subject to their original temperament, and he ends up transforming into a vampire every evening around 11pm. The doctor rampages nightly, wiping out people who know him in his daytime existence, and it's only a matter of time until he murders someone he loves. As the police investigate the murders and start noting the forensic evidence that lends credence to the killer being a scientific vampire, the doctor's loss of control escalates and it seems the only way out is self-execution...

THE VAMPIRE attempts to reinvent one of the classic monsters for the modern age by adding a scientific twist, and while rather tame and cheesy by today's standards, the story is told with considerable heart and intelligence (even if at times it reads like a knockoff of Universal's  THE WOLF MAN). The performances are solid and its 76 minutes are briskly paced, and the filmmakers had the good sense to keep the look of the vampire hidden until the last reel, as the makeup renders him a darker-hued twin of Lee Marvin's drunken gunfighter, Kid Shelleen, from the western comedy CAT BALLOU (1965).  That said, though its effort was noble, nothing beats the appeal of the classical gothic vampire and all of its trappings and tropes. The seductive terror and elegance of the undead suckface is utterly lost when transplanted into 1950's suburban California, so while I respect it for trying something new, I rate THE VAMPIRE as worth a look for genre completists only. It's not terrible or anything and it's completely suitable for the kiddies, but your life will be totally unaffected if you give this one a miss.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 2: SPIDER BABY or, THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD (1968)

Playing the deadly game of "spider."

In an unspecified rural location, high atop a hill off of a remote back road sits the Merrye House, home to the last remaining members of a branch of the Merrye family. Cursed with a degenerative disorder wrought by generations of inbreeding, the brains of the Merryes regress to a childlike state as they age, eventually leaving them in a permanently, homicidally feral. The family's chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), promise the dying Merrye patriarch that he would care for the remaining members of the clan, so he keeps them isolated within the confines of their decaying house while serving as their surrogate father figure. Allowed to roam about the place freely are siblings Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), titular "spider baby" Virginia (Jill Banner), and non-verbal grownup toddler Ralph (Sid Haig), a bizarre trio who would be right at home in an even darker answer to the cartoons of Charles Addams. All are young adults and the girls are both quite appealing and nubile, but they both possess roughly the mental/emotional development of a five-year-old, with Elizabeth being the craftier and more dominant of the two, while Virginia adores spiders and plays disturbing games where she imitates them and arms herself with a pair of wicked butcher knives that serve as her "sting." 

The Merrye sisters: Virginia (Jill Banner) and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn).

Their brother Ralph, on the other hand, is a borderline-feral, non-verbal, open-mouthed and perpetually smiling idiot who is not unfairly described as "just a big kid." That said, his look and behavior are quite unnerving, as he is a grown male who is apparently sexually functional, and he brings to mind a larger variation of Schlitzie the pinhead from the classic FREAKS (1932).

Exploitation cinema legend Sid Haig as Ralph.

Lastly, residing in the basement are the fully-feral Uncle Ned, Aunt Clara, and Aunt Martha, while the skeleton of Daddy is housed upstairs in a bedroom and regularly bid "goodnight" by Virginia.

The bizarro family has become the stuff of local legend and are actively avoided by nearby townsfolk after Virginia trapped two trespassing kids and nearly did them in while playing her "spider" game, but the children escaped and spread the word that the Merrye house was to be avoided at all costs. Nonetheless, loyal and diligent Bruno shepherds and protects the family and manages to keep them and their secrets out of the spotlight of the general public and the authorities. 

Into this warped, insular environment come cousins Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker), who seek to boot the current residents and take possession of the house and land. Emily is a nasty bitch but her blonde good looks arouse unmistakable desire in Ralph, while the affable Peter wins over the girls with his friendliness. Along for the ride are Emily's assholish lawyer, Schlocker (Karl Schanzer), and his secretary, Ann (Mary Mitchel), and the outsiders make it clear that they plan to stay the night, which does not sit well with Bruno. Taking the hint, Ann asks Peter to drive her into town so she can stay in a motel instead, which leaves Emily and Schlocker with the Merryes. As the evening progresses, Bruno's control over the "children" drastically erodes as the creep factor escalates with acts of torture, murder, and rape, leading to an apocalyptic climax.

A bad day for Emily...

A throwback to the "old dark house" sub-genre, SPIDER BABY is an atmosphere-drenched little low-budgeter that may be the first of the "inbred weirdo family" flicks and stands as one of the weirdest films of the 1960's. Shot in 1964 but held in release-limbo thanks to its producers going bankrupt, the movie bears distinct echoes of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) with its setting of a creepy old house on a hill, taxidermy birds as home decorations, outlining of familial insanity, infantilism, voyeurism, and disturbing sexuality. It also shares another aspect with Hitchcock's masterpiece, and that's the fact that it's the blackest of black comedies, though SPIDER BABY's humorous intent is far more blatant than PSYCHO's. Writer/director Jack Hill has frequently crafted exploitation features that managed the difficult balance of visceral content juxtaposed with utter, delirious cartoonish ludicrousness in such grindhouse classics as THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971), THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972), COFFY (1973), FOXY BROWN (1974), SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975), and SORCERESS (1982), and that flavor is fully evident even in a work that came this early in his career. If taken at face value, the events of SPIDER BABY are downright unsettling, but the dialogue and performances bring to mind a 1960's sitcom like THE ADDAMS FAMILY or THE MUNSTERS if it had been crafted by Tobe Hooper while on a tequila and Gabapentin-fueled bender somewhere in a Tennessee Williams fever dream.

The comedy of bedlam.

Basically an eerie live-action cartoon, SPIDER BABY is not at all what one would expect from a film of its era, not even from a film within its genre, and it's something of a quirky little gem that deserves better recognition from dyed-in-the-wool horror enthusiasts as well as casuals. It's fun seeing Lon Chaney Jr. in a late-period performance that's actually good — he made far too many embarrassing turds after his 1940's heyday — , young Sid Haig is a hoot, and the dynamic between the sisters is a hell of a lot of mad fun.

Two very bad "little girls."

Though obviously made on the cheap, SPIDER BABY makes the most of what it had to work with and comes up with a humble study of an ultra-dysfunctional family that initially fools us into accepting it as a lark, only to take a hard left into gore-free bleakness. Definitely worth checking out for its atypical flavor and also as a look at the unpolished days of the legendary Jack Hill.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2019-Day 1: FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984)

Surprisingly, not a scene from DELIVERANCE 2.

This one's going be a little different, folks, as it's a look back at an event I actually attended back in 1984. This may read like utter bullshit but I assure you that this actually happened, and only about a year ago I found out that another local who later became a good friend upon our meeting during our college years also bore witness to what you are about to read, with her younger brother in tow. With that by way of introduction, allow me to set the Wayback Machine and take you to...

OPENING NIGHT- FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (4/13/1984)

In the bygone days of pre-gentrification, Norwalk, Connecticut was a scuzzy little town with a large quotient of criminals, junkie hookers, drugs, violence and questionable activity; sort of Connecticut's answer to Baltimore. In other words, a great place to for a kid stuck in Westport, the ultra-boring affluent town next door, to hang out in.

The movie theaters in Norwalk ranged from those owned by a theater chain to the independent art/porno/cult movie house, the Sono Cinema. The Sono could get pretty wild, but nothing could compare to a rowdy audience at the infamous Norwalk Theater. Norwalk Theater was the closest thing that Connecticut ever had to the classic Times Square grindhouses insomuch as it specialized in violent, sex-laden exploitation flicks, the kind that drunks and heroin addicts like to sleep it off to. The derelicts in the audience would even make non-sequitor comments at the screen, such as the time when a junkie started yelling "Give her the big one!" enthusiastically during a scene of two cab drivers talking. This sort of evening was my true baptism of fire into the culture of the grindhouse, and I made it a point to attend as many of such screenings as I possibly could.

As anyone who came of age in the United States during the same era when I did no doubt remembers the ubiquity of the "slasher movie" as a transgressive rite of passage for '80's adolescents while simultaneously drawing a deluge of outrage from parents and censors over the genre's gleeful transformation of the silver screen into a celluloid abattoir. The kids ate up the showers of gory dismemberment and murder (with considerable amounts of sex and nudity thrown in for good exploitative measure) and the resulting box office windfall led to filmmakers of wildly varying skill and talent churning out such fodder by the dozens for close to a decade. John Carpenter's landmark shocker HALLOWEEN (1978) served as a solid launching point from which a legion of less-accomplished copycats sprung, but the one that really ignited the craze was the first in the long-running FRIDAY THE 13th series, which debuted in 1980 and in retrospect serves as amusing overture for a considerable amount of the decade's cinematic fare.

Odds are if you're bothering to read this you already know the drill regarding the series formula: Youthful camp counselors turn up at Camp Crystal Lake in order to get the place ready for the summer season, but years before it was the site where malformed and "mongoloid" child Jason Voorhees drowned in its lake while his inattentive counselors were engaging in *GASP* pre-marital sex, after which the pair are murdered by un unknown killer. Since the drowning and murders, Camp Crystal lake has been shut down and is now considered a cursed location by the locals, but some idiot always decides to reopen the place and carnage ensues. In the first film the killer is revealed as Jason's quite-insane mother, as it is made clear that Jason himself has been dead for 22 years, and his mother is quite decisively dispatched via beheading. When the shot-on-the-cheap shocker proved an unexpected box office smash — earning $59.8 million dollars off of a $550,000 budget — a sequel was immediately green-lit and FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2 (1981) made it to theaters less than 12 months later. The problem of continuing the mayhem after the death of the original killer was solved by bringing Jason back from the dead (with no explanation) and unleashing him upon wave after wave of idiot counselor fodder on pretty much a yearly basis, as the films continued to rake in the bucks despite being pretty much creatively bankrupt from the word "go." It was not until the third entry that Jason donned his now-iconic hockey mask — why there would be ice hockey equipment at a summer camp is a question that has haunted me since 1982 — and from there the character joined the pantheon of 1980's horror films' Mount Rushmore, alongside Freddy Kreuger, Pinhead, and Chucky, with the FRIDAY THE 13th/Jason series continuing into the 2000's and bringing the total number of films up to 12. Pretty impressive for what's essentially a case of telling more of less the same "story" — or rather and excuse for gory murders, really — over and over again.

Anyway, opening night came along for the "final" film in the increasingly unimpressive and predictable franchise (which got progressively worse as it lurched on), so I called the aforementioned Norwalk Theater to get myself and a couple of pals in to see it on opening night (I worked for the Cinema National theater circuit at the time, and got in for free to most theaters in the state). The manager said "Come on down," so my friends and I went. Imagine our surprise when we arrived and found the theater looking like it was in the center of a demilitarized zone.

The front doors had been torn off, popcorn and spilled soda had turned the lobby into a quagmire that required a swamp boat to navigate through, and the poor concession girls were shivering and crying. I asked the manager what the fuck had happened and over the Zulu Nation-like din that issued from the audience, I heard her tell a tale of misery and violence. She told me that the patrons had been worked up into such a frenzy over the possibility of finally seeing the previously un-killable Jason Voorhees get his ass kicked that they had actually stormed the entrance, barbarian-style. The place looked like it had been sacked by an army of crazed Visigoths on a PCP bender, was filled beyond capacity (over 550 seats), and roughly ten people in the audience had paid for admission (yet they did pay for their refreshments. Go figure...). There were even four squad cars full of police in attendance, and the poor bastards advised that it would be best to run the movie or else there would have been a full-scale riot.

My friends and I waded into the tumult, and actually managed to score seats when a bunch of stoners got up to sneak a few bowl-hits behind the screen. The lights went down and an unholy roar exploded from the adrenaline-charged throng that would have been totally appropriate at a public beheading. The trailer for 7 DOORS OF DEATH came on, but it was impossible to see due to the impromptu shower of popcorn and malt liquor that obscured the screen. A chant of "Jay-son! Jay-son!" began and only died down when the main feature began.

Wholesome family entertainment!

What followed can only be called the greatest display of audience participation that it has ever been my pleasure to witness. Foul rejoinders hurled at characters who couldn't respond, people in the balcony sticking their hands into the projector beam and creating shadow hands that played with the actresses' tits, an out-of-nowhere sing-along to the old "car rock" hit "GTO" (which would have made a modicum of sense if the song had been included in the film)... Folks, we're talking two hours of humor, insanity and "Will I make it out of this movie alive?" terror. If I could download the memory of this show and sell it on DVD, I would be a millionaire overnight.

Anyway, the crowd dispersed peacefully, no one was arrested and the doors were repaired the very next day. Surprisingly, the subsequent showings went off without incident. Oh, and Jason is killed by a young, machete-wielding Corey Feldman (until he returns two films later; don't ask).

Poster from the theatrical release.