Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 4

Hey, I just realized I watched and wrote about 32 horror movies this month instead of 31. So now we're in bonus time! Although I guess technically a bunch of the posts were about TV episodes and/or segments of episodes, so I guess it's fair.

Now for the last film Craven ever directed: 2010's SCREAM 4, released about a decade after the last sequel. This time Kevin Williamson came back, and it kind of shows, though this was not the franchise-saver that the filmmakers and fans probably wanted.

 

This flick brings us back to where it all began, sleepy small town Woodsboro where David Arquette is now a bumbling sheriff and Courteney Cox is now married to him. She has writer's block! But Neve Campbell does not have writer's block. Because she has finished a self help book and is now on a book tour – last stop… WOODSBORO!

 

Also it's the anniversary of the murders from the first movie.

 

We meet a new crop of teenagers led by Campbell's never-before-mentioned cousin (Emma Roberts). There's Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin and Erik Knudsen as the resident horror film buffs and Nico Tortorella as Roberts' estranged boyfriend.

 

The bodies start piling up, everyone starts wondering who is doing it, etc.

 

The movie opens with a series of "gotcha" "scares" as we quickly learn there have been way more STAB movies than SCREAM movies in the intervening 10 years, with only the first 3 being based on the original "true life" murders and the rest getting crazier and crazier. During this sequence we get a staggering number of cameos of all of the actresses offed in the various openings of the various STAB movies, including Kristen Bell and Lucy Hale.

 

I guess this is Williamson's attempt to outdo the meta-ness of the other flicks but like the movies-within-the-movie in both SCREAM 2 and SCREAM 3, it seems like a wasted opportunity. We're shown this stuff but what are we supposed to do with it? What's it mean?

 

This time out Williamson attempts to school us on some "new" horror rules (they all seem made up to me and not based on real movies) as well as the rules of a "remake" (although this is not a remake). Enough has happened in the realm of horror in the last 10 years that I think Williamson and Craven could have probably come up with something clever – references to torture porn flicks or Japanese horror or something. I guess CABIN IN THE WOODS basically already skewered all that stuff so there's not much left for SCREAM 4 to take on, other than maybe itself, which it pretends to but doesn't.

 

One way this could have worked would have been to go fully insane and make it a literal remake of SCREAM. Then, talking about remakes would make sense. Maybe the characters have even seen the original movie. So it's not slasher clichés they're familiar with so much as the specifics of an actual movie.

 

Or, this would be funny. There's copycat crimes inspired by the movie SCREAM. So, in a sense, the crimes are the "remake." But it's been over 10 years since the original film so none of the teens even know what the fuck it is. Some nerd has to be like, "Wait, this is like that movie SCREAM," and then everyone else goes, "What movie?"

 

Anyway – that's it for CRAVENFEST. SCREAM 4 is not Craven's best work, but it's way better than his worst and it's cool that he kept creative control of this series, instead of the insanity that went down with the NIGHTMARE flicks. He didn't quite get the chance to reinvent horror for a fourth decade, but he definitely made his mark.

 

You might notice I skipped some movies. The best of these is THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW. I didn't watch it just because I've seen it before, but it's super awesome. I also didn't watch RED EYE since I've seen it before, and it was fine. I skipped NIGHT VISIONS because I'd seen it and because it sucked.

 

Craven had a really interesting career. Basically three big spikes in popularity, with spotty films in between. It's not every guy you find making a made for TV movie right after a huge game changer. Then again, it's not every guy who changes the game three different times in as many decades. The thing is, with the exception of CHILLER, all these movies are pretty entertaining, they're all imaginative and they all have some legitimate scares.

 

Happy Halloween! Time to go watch MUSIC OF THE HEART.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 3

By the time SCREAM 3 came out in 2000, I was in college and had a couple years of freelance movie reviewing for the McMinnville News Register under my belt, so I can proudly say I was paid to see this movie. I also saw it at the McMinnville Cinema 8 (now 10) that I was paid to help build. So I got paid to watch a movie in a theater I was paid to help build. I was going to just re-print my News Register review and interject with my current thoughts when necessary, but I reread the review and it is God awful and embarrassing. So, I won't be doing that. WHO DID I THINK I WAS?! A little prick I guess.

So, Craven's back on board for SCREAM 3 but we've lost Williamson who has been replaced by Ehren Kruger (hehe) a writer who went on to write terrible things like TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN and TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON.

This time out, people connected with the production of the movie-within-the-movie, STAB 3, are being murdered. This includes Liev Schriber (a holdover I forgot to mention from the previous movies) and Jenny McCarthy (a woman who would prefer children die of preventable diseases rather than get life saving vaccinations). The movie's director, Scott Foley, is pissed that the bad publicity is shutting down his production. The movie's stars (Emily Mortimer and Parker Posey among them) are also not happy.

David Arquette has gone from bumbling deputy to bumbling bodyguard and boy toy of movie star Parker Posey who is playing Courteney Cox's character. Courteney Cox is drawn to the murders, of course, and gets all jealous about this whole situation.

You might notice there's not much Neve Campbell talk, yet. That's because she's not in this movie very much. Her character has retreated to a house in the wilderness where she spends her time alone, working for a women's crisis hotline. To be honest I kind of can't remember why she ends up going to Hollywood to hang around the scene(s) of the murder(s), and I just watched this movie a couple days ago. Anyway, she shows up and the gang's back together.

This is probably the worst film of the series, and I guess you could make the argument that that is because Williamson is not behind the scenes. The movie is well directed and well acted, but it just feels kinda lifeless. It continues down the path of settling for normal slasher status, rather than subverting anything. There's a painful cameo from Jamie Kennedy's character in which he explains the conventions of trilogies, but the scene is contrived, feels shoehorned and lacks the effortlessness of Williamson's more assured fanboy dialogue.

Once again, it's a mystery, but once again, basically anyone could be the killer because once again we don't know much about any of the new characters. I guess my favorite of the new characters is probably Parker Posey as the actress hired to play Courteney Cox's character, but I think this is largely just because it happens to be Parker Posey and she's hard not to like. Still, she does have chemistry with Courteney Cox, and the scenes in which the two of them are sleuthing things out have more energy than most of the rest of the movie, including a moment in which they run into Carrie Fisher for some reason.

So anyway, I said this is probably the worst SCREAM flick but guess what? It's way better than the worst NIGHTMARE flick, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 2

Unlike the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series, Craven directed every one of the SCREAM sequels, including part 2, which is probably the best of them, but still a sharp drop off after the original.

I was 17 by the time this movie came out, so no more family time for me: I saw this one at the Mac Tri with my hetero life mate David Toth. I've seen many glorious movies at the Mac Tri with David, including the all-time comedy classic SON IN LAW and the obscure minor success, TITANIC. All joking aside, though, 97 was a great year for movie-going with David because we were both 17 and able to go to movies like JACKIE BROWN, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and U-TURN without parental guidance.

Anyway, Williamson is back as screenwriter as well, and this time goes all meta on the subject of sequels. Unfortunately SCREAM 2 suffers from the fact that SCREAM had already come along and shaken everything up – so all the in-movie talk about the conventions of sequels, and the story's attempt to subvert these, isn't as entertaining or fresh or funny as the first time out.

This time Neve Campbell's in college, along with Jamie Kennedy, and copycat killings start up, targeting Campbell's friends (including Sarah Michelle Gellar). This brings Courteney Cox and David Arquette to the campus. They had a budding romance in the first movie and are now on the outs. I wonder if it will work out?

The biggest strengths of this movie are when it works like the original. Probably the biggest weakness is that it kind of seems to be all over the place. It starts off with a self-contained scene, like the first movie, about a couple who goes out to see the movie within this movie that was made based on the events of the first movie, STAB. The couple is played by Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps, and Williamson takes the chance to give their characters some dialogue about racism and stereotyping in horror flicks. They make some good points, but to what end? None of this stuff ends up really being dramatized or addressed or fixed throughout the movie. They just bring it up and move on.

Additionally, the whole opening sequence is weird. The movie theater is out of control – the moviegoers are jumping up and down, dancing in the aisles, screaming, cheering. Both Pinkett and Epps get up and go in and out of the movie multiple times within the first few minutes of it starting. What universe does this take place in? I mean I saw O at the Ontario Mills one time and that was a huge mistake, but it wasn't nearly as bad as this free-for-all.

Later, we get to Courteney Cox's cameraman who is the stereotypical "fraidy cat." This is fine and everything except he's also played by a black actor, Duane Martin. So after the opening conversation about black stereotypes in horror movies, what are we supposed to think about this guy?

There are also wasted opportunities with the movie-within-a-movie concept. We see several clips from STAB, which are basically parodying familiar scenes from the original SCREAM, and they're re-cast with actors like Heather Graham, Tori Spelling and Luke Wilson. These scenes are mildly amusing but they seem like they could have been something more, in a movie that's about movies. SCREAM 2 seems more timid and afraid to go into the meta territories of SCREAM and NEW NIGHTMARE, and more content to just be a slasher.

Aside from these cameos, there are a million others, including my boy Joshua Jackson, and an extensive cast of both newcomers at the time and old hands including Timothy Olyphant and Laurie Metcalf. Everyone does great work, and again, anyone could be the killer, but the mystery is not as compelling this time because the script is thin when it comes to character development.

I read a little bit about the making of this flick and discovered that the original script was leaked shortly before or maybe even during production, so Williamson rewrote it and shuffled around characters so that the surprises would still be intact. This meant changing who kills and gets killed. This might be the reason why the whole thing seems so arbitrary. It works okay when it's dealing with the characters from the first movie, but isn't very interesting when it's dealing with the new blood.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream

Now we move on to Craven's second biggest claim to fame, 1996's SCREAM, the movie that single-handedly brought the horror genre back to life while also holding a satirical mirror up to it. Written by fledgling screenwriter Kevin Williamson, SCREAM was notable for being the first slasher flick where the teenage slasher victims had seen OTHER slasher flicks and knew the rules of the game. Even the killer was in on the joke.

Like I said before, SCREAM was such a huge mainstream success that even non-horror fans were into it, and I even went to see it at the theater with my whole family which was unheard of for this type of movie. So Craven cemented his status as an influential horror filmmaker over 3 decades: first in the 70s with exploitation fare like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, then in the 80s with the most famous face of modern horror, Freddy Krueger, in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and finally in the 90s with SCREAM.

For about a decade after SCREAM's release you probably can't find a single horror movie that isn't directly influenced by it, which is funny, since SCREAM itself is directly influenced by the history of horror that preceded it. In that sense it's kinda like PULP FICTION – that flick came along in the mid-90s, aping other flicks that had come before it, and then single-handedly defined much of indie (and mainstream) cinema for the next decade or so.

But enough about the legacy – how's the movie? It's good. It starts off with a  super awesome sequence in which Drew Barrymore is stalked over the phone by a killer who quizzes her on scary movies, and then moves right into the story of Neve Campbell and her friends as they're similarly stalked by the same killer.

Courteney Cox is on hand as a tabloid reporter looking to exploit the killings for her own gain and David Arquette rounds out the cast as a bumbling deputy who is a joke around town but takes his job very seriously.

Probably the most entertaining character, though, is the video store clerk by day, film buff by night played by Jamie Kennedy. He basically works as writer Kevin Williamson's voice in the film, directly commenting on the dos and don'ts of slasher flicks. This commentary is both funny and insightful, and serves to pull the rug out from under what would otherwise by a tired retread.

But that's not all that SCREAM has going for it in the meta department: Craven shoots and constructs scenes in such a way that the very shot composition starts its own satirical commentary on the events as they unfold. Craven had some practice with NEW NIGHTMARE, and on top of that was reportedly becoming tired of the violence and misogyny of the slasher genre, so SCREAM must have come at the perfect time for him.

Aside from all of this, one interesting thing about SCREAM is that the killer is pretty human. I won't give away who the killer is, in case you haven't seen the movie, but that's another strength: it's a mystery. In most of the NIGHTMARES and FRIDAYS and HALLOWEENS, we know who the killer is. The suspense, if any, is just about who's going to get killed and how. In SCREAM, part of the plot involves trying to figure out who the killer is. Because of this, the killer is not some supernatural entity, but a real person who can be knocked down and outsmarted. That's a refreshing change of pace.

I forgot to mention the rest of the cast. Skeet Ulrich makes a nice Johnny Depp circa-NIGHTMARE replacement as Campbell's love interest, Matthew Lillard goes WAY above and beyond as the local rich kid and Rose McGowan brings a lot of personality to a spunky best friend character. Even Henry Winkler's on board as the school principal.

Craven would go on to make several more films after this one, but SCREAM was really his last masterpiece. But that's great – not many directors get to redefine an entire genre that they helped create and prove themselves the master 3 decades after they got started.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Finally, after a long hiatus, Wes Craven has returned to rescue us from the continual march into awfulness that is the NIGHTMARE sequels with 1994's WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE. Get ready: shit's about to get meta.

So apparently Craven had this idea for NIGHTMARE 3 but wasn't given the greenlight to go ahead with it until the franchise was all but dead. Heather Langenkamp returns to star as… HERSELF! You see, this flick takes place in "the real world" where Langenkamp starred in NIGHTMARE. Now it's 10 years later and she's set to appear on a talk show to discuss the legacy of the film. In conjunction with that, real-life producer Bob Shaye wants to talk to her about a new NIGHTMARE script real-life director Wes Craven wants to cast her in. Even John Saxon and Robert Englund are on hand… as themselves!

Unfortunately, all is not well. Langenkamp is getting prank calls from a Krueger-quoting apparent NIGHTMARE fan, her kid (Miko Hughes) is having nightmares, and earthquakes are rocking Los Angeles. Before she can even get out the door in the morning she has to deal with all of these obstacles.

Since this is a NIGHTMARE movie it's only a matter of time before Freddy shows up. Spoiler alert: turns out there's actually an ancient demon that was satisfied with appearing as Freddy in the NIGHTMARE movies, but now that the movie are over he's growing restless and trying to break into the real world to do some real damage.

Freddy himself goes back to being frightening in this flick – he still gets in a couple one-liners, but his whole character design and the way Craven shoots him takes him back to the realm of terror. He's still the same recognizable character, but now he has a long black trenchcoat that makes him look more cool and less cartoon, and a newly designed bladed hand that is more menacing than the glove we've grown accustomed too. He's also used more sparingly here, more like the original film than its sequels, with Craven saving the majority of his appearances for the grand finale, and even then, allowing silhouettes reminiscent of NOSFERATU to do some of the work for him. Craven's also wise to bring in fairy tale elements, likening Freddy's luring of children to their doom to the witch from Hansel and Gretel.

This is a great premise for the sequel, especially for a franchise that has been done to death, and a very adventurous, cool route to go. Instead of thinking, "It's the seventh movie, we better play it safe and give people what they expect" they do the exact opposite – "Hey man. It's seven movies. Who gives a fuck. Let's get crazy."

Craven comes back in a big way, showing the makers of the various sequels exactly what they did wrong and how it could have been done better. The dream sequences are classically creepy, Langenkamp's lead performance is great, the special effects are top notch, Freddy is more Krueger than ever and even all the non-professional actors like Shaye and Craven himself get the job done.

This movie clearly set the stage for what was to come shortly for Craven – the SCREAM series, taking the idea of the slasher movie within a slasher movie to the next level.

Of course, there was one last sequel to NIGHTMARE, the crossover FREDDY VS. JASON. I saw that movie back when it came out, and remember it as being a lot of fun and, while not as ambitious as the original NIGHTMARE flick or NEW NIGHTMARE, at least not as offensive or tone deaf as the worst of the sequels. Still, I won't be watching or reviewing it for CRAVENFEST this year because it's time to move on.

Same for the NIGHTMARE remake – I'm curious to see what it's like, but I haven't heard good things, and there are only so many days left until Halloween!

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

And now we reach the nadir of the series. 1991's FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE is terrible. It also makes no sense. The movie is notable for being the only NIGHTMARE flick (and one of the few slashers) directed by a woman, Rachel Talalay. Unfortunately it's not notable for anything else.

 

Where do I even start with this one? An opening title crawl lets us know it's now 10 years in the future and there are no kids left in Springwood because Freddy has killed all of them. How we got there from the last movie is beyond me. In any case, after that we're treated to possibly the dumbest dream sequence yet as a kid played by Shon Greenblatt is dropped from an airplane before seeing Freddy Krueger riding on a broomstick and dressed as the wicked witch.

 

So, it's not Freddy's greatest moment. None of this movie is Freddy's greatest moment. Poor bastard (son of 100 maniacs).

 

This kid played by Greenblatt doesn't know who he is or where he came from and ends up in an orphanage run by Lisa Zane and Yaphet "Across 110th Street" Kotto. Zane figures out Greenblatt has some connection to Springwood, so she takes him on a road trip to check it out.

 

Some of the orphans stow away and come along for the ride to up the body count – Breckin Meyer as a stoner, Ricky Dean Logan as an abuse victim with hearing impairment and Lezlie Deane as a victim of sexual abuse by her father. So with this dark subject matter you can see that it's totally appropriate when Freddy shows up and starts chewing scenery.

 

The most painful sequence involves Freddy torturing the hearing impaired kid, but he moves on later to make the sex abuse victim relive her trauma as well. So it's a fun night at the movies. The only sequence that's not offensive on moral grounds is the one in which Krueger murders Breckin Meyer by video-gaming him to death, but that one's offensive on another level. An artistic one.

 

The climax of the movie was meant to be seen in 3D. You can tell by the way Yaphet Kotto hands our heroine a pair of 3D glasses to wear.

 

The only joke that works in this flick is the one where Johnny Depp (God bless his soul) shows up on TV in a "this is your brain on drugs" ad. But that's promptly ruined by Freddy butting in.

 

Perhaps the only redeeming quality of this flick is the additional glimpses we get at Freddy's history. So now we know his nun mom was raped by 100 maniacs, he was abused by his stepfather, made fun of by his classmates (because he's certifiably insane), and killed his wife in front of his… daughter! He has a daughter! Who could it be?

 

If you guessed Breckin Meyer guess again. No, it's not Yaphet Kotto, either.

 

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

The series continues its descent with this 1989 entry. Wilcox returns, marking the second entry for her.

The film starts off on a gruesome note with Wilcox hallucinating/dreaming herself into the role of Freddy's mother on the worst day of her life: the day she was locked into the mental institution and raped by everyone.

This bit of unpleasantness keeps popping up, continuing with an equally gruesome "birth" scene in which Wilcox hallucinates/dreams herself giving birth to some kind of Freddy/goblin baby, in the same mental institution.

Like some of the other movies in this series, this movie's biggest struggle is with tone. It wants Freddy to be kind of a funny antihero but also wants to be a gory, scary movie. So, the dream sequences have gone back to being dark and disgusting, like in the originals, but Freddy continues down the path of being a clown.

Wilcox once again has a whole new set of teen friends (she makes a new set of friends each year as her previous friends get killed off, but the movie doesn't acknowledge this, just expects us to accept it). Once again, her whole new set of friends is less likable than the last one. This is where things get problematic with slasher flicks: are they supposed to be unlikable so that we're happy when they get graphically murdered? If so, fuck that shit.

Either I wasn't paying close enough attention due to boredom or this movie makes no sense, but there was a little bit of a plot about Krueger's plans to somehow impregnate Wilcox and make her have his demon baby. Or something like that. I’m not quite clear on it.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

This 1988 fourth installment in the franchise gets a lot of stuff right but makes enough crucial missteps to make it markedly worse than the first and third films in the series.

The things it gets right: we have another direct sequel here. Instead of pretending part 3 never happened, this movie looks and feels like an immediate follow up to the well-regarded 3rd one, and even carries on with some of the main characters. Big time action director Renny Harlin is on board, so the whole thing looks beautiful. The special effects are amazing for the time. The script is competent, possibly thanks to co-writer Brian Helgeland who went on to write stuff like L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and MYSTIC RIVER.

The biggest problem is that, although the movie stars the character Patricia Arquette created in the 3rd movie, Arquette has been recast with Tuesday Knight who is quickly dispatched and replaced with Lisa Wilcox. Wilcox is perfectly fine, but it's hard to follow in the steps of a super talent with great presence like Arquette.

Next, we almost instantly lose the super memorable character from part 3 played by Ken Sagoes. So I went from super happy that he was in the flick to super sad that he was instantly killed off (though his death scene was memorable). In fact, it's kind of depressing to go from the totally likable group of teens from part 3 to a B-team of less likable teens in part 4.

Appropriately, Robert Englund finally gets top billing in this flick after playing second fiddle to the teens 3 movies in a row. This movie, more than the previous ones, definitely allows Krueger to steal the show from the heroes, although here he has moved almost exclusively into the realm of over-the-top comedy and out of the realm of horror.

One interesting note is that this flick is kinda similar to Craven's later MY SOUL TO TAKE, which is notable only because Craven had nothing to do with this movie. Basically, Wilcox feels like she starts to take on aspects of her fallen comrades as the movie progresses and then she goes on to use these powers to battle the villain.

The final battle is a very cool sequence featuring superb (and gross) special effects, so while this movie doesn't quite reach the heights of the third one and is far from the greatness of the first one, it gets points for trying.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

All right, this is where things get back on track: Craven returns to help craft the story and oversee production for 1987's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, and his influence can definitely be seen. This flick basically discards part 2 and acts as a direct sequen to part 1, even going so far as to bring back Heather Langenkamp as our heroine and John Saxon as her father.

This time out, Langenkamp's character has grown up to become a psychiatrist specializing in dreams who has recently joined the staff at the teenage ward of a mental hospital. The patients include Patricia Arquette who was committed after a Krueger dream left her looking like she attempted suicide. In fact, that's Krueger's M.O. this time out: manipulating the teen's dreams to make their eventual deaths look like suicides.

Arquette's character turns out to have a special ability, to call other people into her dreams. She used to do this as a kid but doesn't re-discover the ability until a particularly awful Krueger dream she pulls Langenkamp into for help. This is when Krueger first sees Langenkamp is back on the case and glares at her with a satisfying, "You!"

Embracing the dream aspect of the premise works to the film's benefit. Instead of shying away from it and making Freddy a traditional slasher, the narrative heads happily into fantasy territory and the sky is the limit when it comes to the images and set pieces that follow, including one of the most striking and memorable images of the entire series: Freddy lifts his sweater to reveal the faces of the souls he has murdered, visible but trapped beneath his burnt skin.

Langenkamp's character empowers Arquette and the other kids in the institution to take control of their own dreams, to the point where they form a team of titular "Dream Warriors" who have special powers to fight Freddy with together. The most memorable (aside from Arquette) is Ken Sagoes, who plays a patient who is somehow simultaneously a super tough guy and whiny and effeminate.

The movie's not as good as the original but it's a masterpiece compared to the first one.  The biggest misstep is the wasting of Laurence Fishburn in a thankless role – why cast him as the janitor? He could have been the doctor love interest of Langenkamp (Craig Wasson) who had a way bigger role but was 10x as boring.

This movie probably strikes the best balance when it comes to the unique tone of Freddy Krueger as a villain – he's at his most frightening in the first film, and was pretty ridiculous in the second, but here he's able to be equally funny and scary and never quite hit that balance again in the rest of the series, though not for lack of trying.

This movie also delves into more of Krueger's backstory: apparently his mother was a nun who was accidentally locked into the mental ward and raped by the inmates. This leads to the line explaining that Freddy is the "bastard son of 100 maniacs."

So, if New Line ever hires me to write the next NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie, you can rest assured it will be named: FREDDY KRUEGER: BASTARD SON OF 100 MANIACS.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

So, things go swiftly off the deep end here. 1985's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE almost instantly takes the once frightening Krueger into comedy territory and subverts a lot of the carefully constructed "rules" of the first movie.

 

This time out, Mark Patton stars as the new kid in town whose family has just moved into the house Langenkamp's family lived in in the first film. Her diary's even still in her bedroom. Patton reads the diary and finds that his current nightmares are similar to hers. It isn't long before Freddy is apparently possessing Patton's body in one way or another to carry out murders for him.

 

Because of these possessions, a lot of the murders take place outside of the dream world, which runs counter to what Craven established in the first film and ruins some of the more creative elements of the premise. In this movie, probably moreso than any other in the series, Freddy is reduced to a clichéd slasher villain, almost indistinguishable from his contemporaries.

 

So, those are the negatives. On the plus side the movie does have a lot of energy and is never boring. Even if Freddy's acting a little out of character when he shows up at a pool party and starts stabbing everyone, it's still cool.

 

It's also important to note that the movie has gained a cult status for some perceived subversive homoerotic undertones, starting with the casting of Patton as our hero. I know it's not cool to say, but he reads as gay, even if he does have a crush on a chick (Kim Myers). He also has a budding friendship with a jock (Robert Rusler) who he runs to for help at the climax of the film, much the same way Langenkamp goes to Depp for help in the first movie. There's also a scene in an S&M club and a couple other elements that never really add up to make any kind of definitive statement, but do serve to make the movie more interesting than it would be otherwise.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street

When I started Cravenfest earlier this month I decided I was going to skip A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET even though it's his most famous film for two reasons: I'd already seen it, and not only that, I'd already written about it for Horrorfest. But guess what? That's stupid. It's Cravenfest! So here we go.

 

I read my NIGHTMARE review from a previous Horrorfest the other day and was disappointed to find that I was kind of dismissive of the flick. This year I saw it on the big screen at the Hollywood and although I don't remember being dismissive of it before, apparently I liked it a lot more this time.

 

The movie is so famous the premise doesn't really need to be restated, but here we go: the teens of small-town Springwood are having nightmares in which the same mysterious man appears. One teen (Amanda Wyss) turns up dead under mysterious circumstances and her boyfriend (Nick Corri) is blamed for it. But their friend (Heather Langenkamp) was there, knows about the shared nightmares, and suspects something supernatural might have been to blame.

 

Craven does a great job on a fairly low budget creating a contrast between the real world and the dream world with probably the most fantastic sequences coming early on: there's one scene in which the ceiling above a sleeping Langenkamp seems to morph into a ghoulish figure looming above her and ready to strike, and another in which Wyss is murdered by an invisible force, lifted first onto the wall of the bedroom and then onto the ceiling as her helpless boyfriend watches.

 

This is 1984 so we're nowhere near digital trickery at this point and you have to hand it to Craven and his team: they've gone above and beyond to do something different with what was already becoming a tired genre, the teen slasher film.

 

Of course every teen slasher film needs a memorable villain and this one has probably the most memorable of all, for better or worse: Freddy Krueger, as played by Robert Englund. He doesn't get much screen time on his first outing but that's to the movie's benefit. Unlike most of the other NIGHTMARE flicks, this one benefits from a little bit of mystery involving just exactly who the knife-handed nightmare visitor is, and how he's connected to the kids he is haunting.

 

Watching this film in the context of the rest of Craven's work was interesting because some connections I never noticed before instantly jump out. The most obvious was probably the famous bath tub scene, in which Freddy's knife-gloved hand emerges from the bath water between an unaware Langenkamp's legs. This directly echoed the snake-in-the-bath sequence from his earlier (and less successful) flick, DEADLY BLESSING. Hey, if it isn't seen or appreciate the first time, why not use it again?

 

The movie also co-stars John "Enter the Dragon" Saxon as Langenkamp's police lieutenant father and Ronee Blakley as her alcoholic mother, not the only negligent parents in good ol' Springwood, but among the first in a long-line of notably neglectful adults in Craven's film universe.

 

The first NIGHTMARE is also known for being Johnny Depp's screen debut and he arrives onscreen in full heart-throb mode, able to convincingly play a goofy teenager while also stealing audience hearts.

 

Now, even though this is CRAVENFEST, I'm going to take a break from Craven-directed flicks for a while so I can focus on the rest of the NIGHTMARE series. After all, it is Craven's greatest creation and even if his personal stamp isn't on all the movies, it only feels right to cover them all.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: The Road Less Travelled

Now we jump ahead to season 2 of THE TWILIGHT ZONE for ROAD LESS TRAVELLED. By this time the series had given up the multiple segments per episode approach, so this episode marks Craven’s only full-length segment of the series. It’s nice he has more room to work here but ultimately this installment isn’t one of his better ones.

Cliff De Young stars as a family man whose daughter (Jackie Bernstein) has started to claim a man in a wheelchair has been visiting her in her room. There’s no evidence of the man at first, so De Young writes it off as a dream or imagination, but soon finds himself sucked into strange, super-real visions of combat in Vietnam.

De Young’s been living with guilt since dodging the draft by moving to Canada, and the visions of Vietnam are making things worse. The twist comes when it turns out the mysterious man in the wheelchair is him – from a parallel universe in which he DID go to Vietnam.

So it’s fitting that Craven’s last story in the TWILIGHT ZONE universe echoes his first story, about a man who meets another version of himself. Unfortunately the first attempt at this story, SHATTERDAY, was much better, more emotional and more haunting, even without the benefit of being about an “issue.”

All right, now we’re done with THE TWILIGHT ZONE, I promise.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: Her Pilgrim Soul

This segment has a premise that doesn’t make much sense, but tells a pretty compelling story. HER PILGRIM SOUL stars Kristoffer Tabori as a scientist working on some kind of hologram program. Somehow the hologram program becomes host to the spirit of a long dead woman (Anne Twomey). At first she appears as a child, then grows more and more every day, and seems to experience her life and memories as she grows.

Tabori interviews her and watches her grow, and as time goes by, the two grow closer and closer until Tabori is in love – living at the lab and neglecting his already troubled marriage.

This is a very touching, romantic segment, showing a softer side of Craven than he’s usually allowed to show, being typecast much of his career as a horror director.  There’s also a mystery involved, as the scientist looks into this spirit’s tragic past. She was a strong spirited woman in a time even less hospitable to women than this one, so she had it rough.

Tabori’s performance is great and it’s a wonder he’s not in more stuff. It’s especially impressive when you consider he probably did most of his work without his co-star on the set, since she’s mostly seen through special effects.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Danica “Winnie Cooper” McKellar appears as a younger version of the ghost, and Gary “Bill Lumbergh” Cole is also on hand as another scientist.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: Dealer's Choice

DEALER’S CHOICE is a real treat and a good example of the strength of a show like THE TWILIGHT ZONE – it’s packed with wall-to-wall talent and shows how versatile an anthology show can really be, focusing on comedy this time, even though there’s still a supernatural element.

So, you’ve got a bunch of dudes meeting up for their usual poker game. But check out who’s sitting around the table: Morgan Freeman, M. Emmet Walsh and Dan Hedaya. Not only that but we’ve got Garrett Morris of SNL fame and Barney Martin of Seinfeld’s Dad fame.

It’s tough to describe the premise of the episode without giving away one of the surprises, but I’ll do it anyway: Dan Hedaya turns out to be Satan and the guys end up playing for their lives.

It’s so cool to see something like this where every single performance is great. Craven must have had a blast working with these guys, all seasoned pros. This segment left me wanting more. Who knew the 1980s TWILIGHT ZONE was so good?

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: Chameleon

CHAMELEON is probably the least exciting of Craven’s TWILIGHT ZONE offerings. It gets off to a rough start, using stock footage of a real space shuttle mission to help tell the story. Pretty cheap,  if you ask me. I mean, it’s cool to see the footage, but kind of lame to see it in a TWILIGHT ZONE episode.

This one’s a little sci-fi horror story about an alien being that is brought back to Earth from a NASA space mission and promptly causes the disappearance of a crew chief (John Ashton, the dickhead seargent from BEVERLY HILLS COP).

So, the NASA scientists group together to try to figure this out, only to be faced with the sudden return of Ashton, who they now suspect has been taken over by the alien.

There’s not much to this one, though there are a couple well-written sequences. The first is when one of the scientists uses a neat logic trick to stump the alien and the second is when the alien takes the form of a nuclear bomb and one of the scientists has to try to convince the alien why it shouldn’t destroy everyone, as the clock ticks down.

This segment is an example of how the 1980s TWILIGHT ZONE might have been a little better if it allowed an entire episode length to tell a story, rather than trying to tell multiple stories in one episode. Even though CHAMELEON is kind of boring, it’s ultimately unsatisfying because it rushes to its conclusion, which ends up being a philosophical one.

But you need time for philosophy, to set a mood and a tone. You can’t rush it.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: Wordplay

Craven continues with two more segments in the 2nd episode of the 1985 season of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, starting with WORDPLAY, starring Robert Klein as a salesman who slowly begins to lose grasp on the meaning of words.

It's pretty cool how the episode develops, with people seemingly misusing words in throw away conversations. Soon the misuse and substitution of nonsense words in the wrong context starts to build up until Klein can't turn around without someone calling a breed of dog an "encyclopedia" or refer to their anniversary as a "throw rug." The nonsense continues until Klein (or the viewer) can't understand entire sentences, and of course, no one around him can understand him either, including his wife (Annie Potts).

Things come to a head when his child becomes sick and has to be rushed to the hospital, and luckily the language barriers don't stand in the way of saving the kid's life. Still, when it's all over, Klein still can't understand anyone, and no one can understand him, and this segment ends with a particularly touching and bittersweet moment when Klein sits down in his child's bedroom to open a "how to read" book for children and start to learn from scratch.

Craven's actors do really well with the changing language – even though they're using the wrong words for everything, everything sounds like natural speech and seems totally convincing. If you came in halfway through the episode, you might think you're going just as crazy as Klein thinks he is.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: A Little Peace and Quiet

In the second half of the first episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, we have Melinda Dillon of CHRISTMAS STORY and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS fame as a beleaguered housewife in A LITTLE PEACE AND QUIET.

Craven really makes crazy use of the sound design here to illustrate how full of chaos Dillon's life is – here 3 kids are crazy, spilling milk, screaming over each other, bringing snakes into the kitchen, you name it. Her husband is useless, unable to turn off a malfunctioning washing machine, demanding Dillon mend his clothes when she's clearly busy with other stuff. Even the neighborhood is loud, with constant lawnmowers droning, cars going by, dogs barking.

The noise gets so insane, it almost becomes unwatchable. That is until Dillion discovers an amulet buried in her yard that allows her to start and stop time at will. If she screams "Shut up!" at her family, they freeze in place and free her up to do whatever she wants to do, whether it's eat breakfast in peace or go grocery shopping without harassment. All she has to do to bring them back is say, "Start talking."

Dillon is good as the frazzled mom, employing some of the same offbeat mannerisms she's known for in her more famous roles, but tweaking it a little to be even more off kilter than usual.

Of course this is THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and there is an ominous twist ending dealing with the nuclear arms race and the cold war, which reminded me how large the specter of nuclear war loomed even as late as the mid 80s.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Twilight Zone: Shatterday

In the mid 80s the classic TWILIGHT ZONE series was rebooted and ran for 3 years with brand new episodes. This was probably at least in part due to the presence of the big screen version of the TWILIGHT ZONE co-directed by 3 of the biggest directors working at the time: Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller and bringing the series back into the popular consciousness.

So, it was only fitting that another big director got the debut episode (and several others) of the new series – Wes Craven!

The series opens with two Wes Craven directed segments in one episode, the first of which is SHATTERDAY, starring none other than Bruce Willis and written by Harlan Ellison. So right out of the gate, you can see the sheer amount of talent stacked up in this production.

I wasn't sure what to expect. After the disappointment of the other anthology series, NIGHTMARE CAFÉ, I was afraid this would be a cheese fest. It's anything but. This 1980s TWILIGHT ZONE is truly worthy of the famous name, even if it lacks the presence of Rod Serling himself.

The premise of SHATTERDAY is simple: overworked businessman Bruce Willis accidentally calls his own home number from a bar, only to have himself pick up on the other end. At first the two Willises are confused to discover they exist in the same time and place, but it isn't long before they're fighting over which one gets to stay.

One Willis is safe at home. The other is out in the world. The one who is out in the world sets about closing bank accounts and doing things like that to force the Willis at home out of the house so he can take over. But the Willis on the street just gets more and more frantic and eventually sick while the Willis at home becomes more and more confident and put together.

It's a heartbreaking metaphor for growing up – the old, messy, disappointing Willis gives way to the mature, together, reasonable Willis, but it's sad to see him go.

It's cool to see Willis in a dual role, especially since he becomes so unhinged. The cool and collected Willis is what we expect to see, but the one who is spiraling out of control is a real treat. It's too bad he's never really forced to go crazy in movies anymore, because it really shows he not only has star power, but also legitimate talent.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - The Hills Have Eyes Part II

We’re going to jump out of chronological order (again) here to go back to 1985 real quick for THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II, which sucks.

Real quick: It's the tale of another bus-full of cannibal fodder who breaks down in the middle of the desert and is attacked by Michael Berryman (who I guess lived through the other movie) and the rest of his crazy family. The only difference is this time the bus-full of cannibal fodder knew they were in a desert full of cannibals and went ahead and stopped there, anyway.

This time around our main characters include the cannibal sister from the first film (Janus Blythe) who has reformed and is now leading a group of young motorbike enthusiasts into the desert to get to a motorbike race. The dude who survived the first movie (Robert Houston) has invented some kind of super motorbike fuel and everyone wants to try it out. But Houston's like, "Desert? Cannibals? Fuck that shit," and immediately drops out of the film.

Well, not immediately. First he's the source of a shitload of flashbacks. I didn't do any scientific studies or anything but I'd guess roughly 15 of the first 30 minutes of this film are flashbacks. After Houston's done with his flashbacks, Blythe has some and just when you think you're done with recycled footage, everyone's favorite dog, Beast, shows up and starts flashing back.

There's some other stuff dealing with a blind psychic (Tamara Stafford) who I couldn't tell was blind until like halfway through the movie. But it doesn't really matter, basically there's a bunch of flashbacks, then some violence, then it's over.

Jees, Wes, even your TV movies were better than this shit. Except CHILLER. Nothing is worse than CHILLER.