Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.
Student Bodies, a very early (the first?) entry in the dubious subgenre of horror spoofs begins with successive establishing shots labelled Halloween night, Friday the 13th, and then Jamie Lee Curtis' birthday. I kinda knew I was going to like this 1981 horror spoof from right then. If the rest of this brief 86-minute film from 1981 don't quite live up to the hilarious opening ten minutes, then that's hardly surprising. Throwing so many jokes at the audience in rapid succession, I'd be willing to bed that this is some of the hardest I've laughed in, well, ever. My flatmate can attest to that. I was in hysterics. It's the old "I was laughing so hard I missed the jokes" story and boy is it relevant with Student Bodies.
An obvious precursor to Scary Movie - there are even jokes from this film that the Wayans brothers appear to have copied nearly 20 years later, which is saying something - Student Bodies came on the heels of the Zucker, Abraham, Zucker masterpiece, Flying High (or Airplane if you're not Australian). It's easy to see the inspiration and while the ratio of jokes that work to those that don't is obviously higher (people remember Flying High for a reason, although I'd say Student Bodies should at least have a fond reputation amongst the horror community), it works spectacularly well more often than not. 86 minutes is, apparently, too long - especially during the elongated prom investigation scenes towards the end that act as little more than reasons for characters to do jokes that the writers couldn't shoehorn in elsewhere - but, if nothing else, the opening thirty minutes allow for enough good will for that to not matter quite as much.
Most curious of all is that the film appears to spoof horror movies that hadn't even been invented yet. One could easily for forgiven for thinking several gags are aimed at Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, when in actual fact that dreamtime slasher wasn't released until three years later. Furthermore, the horror conventions that we now all see as cliche and easy to ridicule surely weren't that entrenched in cinema by 1981, were they? Friday the 13th is the most obvious influence, what with its "sex = death" mantra and the unseen killer revealed in the closing segments gambit, but the film's other influences, like When a Stranger Calls (1979), Halloween (1978), Prom Night (1980), and even Carrie (1976) and Carnival of Souls (1962) from which the film heavily borrows some specific sequences, work in entirely different ways to the Friday blueprint that became rather standard throughout the decade. "Ahead of its time" is a term that could probably apply here, wouldn't you think?
Perhaps Student Bodies' most odd element is The Stick, an actor (of sorts) whose skinny frame gave him his nickname. He never acted again outside of the TV series Out of Control in 1984, but he remains a mystery. In fact, many of the actors featured either never worked again (such as the "final girl" or sorts, Kristen Riter) or not much. I think this has to do with a strike that was going on at the time, an event that lead to the director, Michael Ritchie, being credited as Allan Smithee. I'd assumed that name appearing in the opening credits was just a joke, but further research informs me that's not quite the case.
I really enjoyed Student Bodies, and it's certainly a stronger horror spoof comedy than any of the Scary Movie films (albeit, lacking a go hard or go home performance like that of Anna Faris). Even though it diminishes in value over the run time, that opening scene will certainly be something I'll be giggling about for quite some time. B
Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.
No not the Japanese one
This is the 1988 electro-horror-sci-fi-thing that came from writer/director Paul Golding whose only previous directorial credit was for a short film called Herbie (not related to the famous family movie of the same name) in 1966 that he co-directed alongside George Lucas. 22 years between films and he then never directed again. In 1984, however, he did write a personal favourite of mine - the east coast hip-hop musical, Beat Street. What an odd footnote of a career he has. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page! Pulse, then, rates as his only feature film as a director and it's curious why he never went on to make anything else given he's hardly the most incompetent director you'll ever come across. Oh well.
Pulse actually does share basic similarities with the more well known 2001 Japanese title (and its 2006 American remake) in that it involves people being plagued by the horrors of modern technology. In this case it's good ol' fashioned electricity that's the villain after the grid of one particular neighbourhood is infected with a (to quote the film's Wikipedia entry) "malevolent, paranormal intelligence" that fries your garden grass and sends out flares of electric activity that eventually traps the home owners inside by manipulating people's overly protective existences (security systems, bars on windows, mechanical devices of various kids). It's actually an intriguing concept, and I think it's safe to say that Paul Golding was coming at it from a socially conscious place, trying to say something about our modern day existences being very much ruled by machinery. In that respect it's still a very topical film and one that could very easily be remade today with a simple update of technology (and even then, there really isn't all that much in the film that dates it all that terribly - a prevalence of electricity towers won't vanish for some time yet).
That being said, Pulse doesn't always work. Golding does indeed get some great mileage out of his close-ups of melting outlets and firing circuit boards, as well as turning those creaks and groans that we hear throughout the night - personally, the sound of the back of my TV creaking as it contracts between warm and cool temperature drives me batty - into a very literal, menacing threat. The creak of a staircase or the hollow breeze of a central air conditioning unit taking the place of zombies, ghosts, and serial killers if you will. Frustratingly though Pulse doesn't quite take the concept far enough on occasion and the logic behind the hows and the whys goes more or less unresolved. Perhaps as a result of its limited cast - only three major characters - it's not until the second half where things start to get truly interesting, especially with a nifty twist on the concept of a tired shower death scene, and some wonderfully playful bits and pieces throughout the big climax (loved the screw in the basement bit, didn't you?)
The lead character, a young boy played by - oh HAH! - Joey Lawrence, is quite annoying as a these sorta things go. Trying to convince your family (CLIFF DE YOUNG! ROXANNE HART!) that the electricity's evil is tricky, and being this annoying whilst doing so isn't going to help. I liked the idea of the stepmother actually being the more sympathetic of the kid's two parental figures, but the father is a bit dim, isn't he? I know in real life it'd be darn hard to convince anybody that electricity is evil, but this is a film and it shouldn't take so long for him to cotton on. Or, maybe while he's coming around to the idea, something could happen besides innocuous heating systems firing up in the middle of the night. That stuff was all a bit ho-hum, really.
Curiously, Golding appears to have cribbed some of the style - typeface, score, general aesthetic mood - from The Terminator and A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's odd to be watching a scene and feeling as if they are using Charles Burnstein's actual Elm Street score rather than just a cheap knock off (by Jay Ferguson if you really want to know). It makes sense though that those two films should so immediately come to mind since the former is very much about technology turned bad, whereas the latter is about American suburbia being plagued by something that something that has been turned on its head and become evil. The film I thought Pulse would work best with on a double feature, however, was Wes Craven's Shocker. Electricity was having a rough couple of years of it in the late 1980s, wasn't it? If you want to branch out, you could say Todd Haynes' [safe] resides in the same place, with its lead character (Julianne Moore) allergic to the modern world.
I eventually came to enjoy Pulse quite a bit. I think the second half really makes up for the too uneventful opening half (although I admire that part of the film in how it sets up this Americana suburbia that, even without the threat of electrical death, has an unknowing menace to it). Curious points come from watching this just days after Paranormal Activity 4, both of which feature sequences in which the young protagonist gets trapped in a car garage by a mysterious force and nearly dies due to toxic gases and can only escape by reversing the car into the faulty garage door. Hmmm.
As a matter of fact, it's probably the end credits that I'd rank as Pulse's best and most interesting scene. As the cast and crew's names come and go on the screen, the backdrop plays a revolving set of imagery that becomes increasingly unclear. Are they circuit boards of city streets? The ominous music and the vague, beautifully photographed imagery adds a final kick to what was an already rather interesting film that was well worth the watch. B
The boy at the centre of Lynne Ramsey’s first film in nine years is a slip of a thing. A skinny 15-year-old boy named Kevin, played here by Ezra Miller, whose tight shirts hug his lithe frame in a way that his mothers arms never did. The scant amount of scenes featuring this boy interacting with those who aren’t his family see him as somebody who goes generally unnoticed, unwilling to rock the boat with anyone who isn’t his long-suffering (and often insufferable) mother. Was Kevin born bad or were his actions, dutifully played out in Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear’s unconventional and non-linear adaptation of Lionel Shriver novel, the result of a childhood being raised by a mother who saw him as little more than the reason she had to leave the big city. It’s the nature versus nurture debate and like the similarly themed (albeit, complete different) Elephant, the answer is probably a hearty shrug and flip of the hands, but the manner with which Ramsay has handled the material is the more inspiring accomplishment than anything resembling a resolution.
We Need to Talk About Kevin opens with a dizzying overload of sensory envelope pushing. What feels like a solid half an hour of little more than criss-crossing images from the life of Tilda Swinton’s brash Eva Khatchadourian, layered with an intricate and fragmented kaleidoscope sound design that paints a vivid and architectural image of this woman’s life before, during, and after the worst moment of her life. The bold, striking red of a visit to the La Tomatina festival in Valencia oozes into the flashing neon red of a police car’s headlights, which then flows into the imagery of Eva scraping dried red paint from the façade of her rickety house. Screams, chants and cheers merge on the soundtrack alongside Jonny Greenwood’s musical score before twisting into a stunning moment of revelation as Eva stands with her baby in a pram right next to a jackhammer at a construction sight, barely able to drown out the never-ending sound of her wailing child. Swinton’s face binds all these images and ideas together and it’s such a heady, intoxicating swell of emotions and feelings that it’s actually disappointing when Ramsay has to get down to actually telling the story that, ahem, she needs to talk about.
I was having trouble making heads or tails of the second half of this movie when a friend suggested that Swinton’s character is actually just a really unreliable storyteller. Was Kevin really that terrible of a child? Was her husband – John C Reilly as Franklin – really as cowardly and noncommittal as he appears or is it merely a figment of Eva’s unwell mind? Either way, I suspect an audience member’s reaction to the film as a whole will rely heavily on wheather they find these characters at all tolerable. Unfortunately Kevin becomes little more than a sociopathic Jason Voorhees with only one mode and a seemingly never-ceasing desire to inflict pain. Franklin on the other hand seems like such a whitewashed character that it’s almost as if there’s nothing even there for Reilly to perform.
The film’s best moments, outside of that exemplary opening gambit of a collage, are when it navigates the prickly aspects of Eva’s rotating world. The way a co-worker berates her under his breath at a Christmas party when she refuses to dance with him; her fierce determination to be normal as she waves across the street to a neighbour; the itchy skin she experiences when a wheelchair-bound student crosses her path and he proves to be the most sympathetic of all. Swinton is mesmerising to watch and her aghast facial expressions are some of her finest work. We Need to Talk About Kevin really does work best with Kevin is on the outer, a force that encroaches upon the lives of this world, but never really comes to be. It’s like when Hannibal Lector was so maniacally terrifying when seen briefly in Silence of the Lambs, and yet became a carnival freak show when given the increased camera time in Hannibal. Kevin is a forceful, powerful character on paper more than he is in flesh and blood. In flesh and blood he’s annoying and drags the film down no matter his age (played by Jasper Newell at age 8, and Rocky Duer as an infant).
We Need to Talk About Kevin is, like its UK quad posters suggest, some sort of radicalised horror movie. A demon child story in arthouse clothing with a villain as wise-cracking as Freddy Krueger and unrelentingly clunky as Michael Myers with Tilda’s Eva his tortured "final girl". Lynne Ramsay here is always doing interesting things with the medium and that certainly makes for involving filmgoing even when the characters and their actions are frustrating beyond belief. As it plays out in frenetic bursts, I admired its audacity, but just wished that somebody had indeed talked to Kevin rather than merely about him. B-
In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!
SCENE 6 of Scream 3 Length: 2mins 30secs Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Neil Prescott (Lawrence Hecht) and "Maureen Prescott" (Lynn McCree) Pop Culture References:
The Curse of the Cat People (Sidney's mother appears in her garden dressed in white, perhaps most reminiscent of this 1944 sequel)
I like this short bit at the start of this scene purely because it features...
NEIL PRESCOTT!
I like that they didn't forget him in Scream 2, especially since the whole plot revolves around the original Maureen Prescott storyline that he is directly a part of. I think I read that there was meant to be a bit in Scream 4 that explained his absence. He supposedly died between Scream 3 and 4, but for some reason it was excised (like so much other stuff), which is disappointing since it would've made the whole family angle of that film even more potent since her Woodsboro relatives were probably all she had left.
"Psychos can't kill what they can't find."
But they can kill other people to get to you and to get you out of hiding. Well done, Sidney. Great plan.
No, but seriously, Scream 3 and Halloween H20 share a bit in common in this regard, just another way that film and the Scream franchise feel like curiously linked entities. Oh, and hey, both feature dream sequences!
I love that this shot mirrors the first film right down to the way Sidney is asleep on the couch and next to her is a table with a telephone and that very same photo of she and her mother. Of course, you think Sidney's about to get "the call", when really all that happens is a strange, out of place dream sequence. Or maybe since it is a dream sequence, that is why it mirrors the setup of her Woodsboro home? Hmmm.
Meanwhile, the same scene from Scream (scene 7, which I linked to just now with "the first film") I mention a similarity with Twin Peaks and just thinking about it now, this moment of Sidney having a nightmare about her dead, secretive relative on the couch is very much like what Mrs Palmer (played by Grace Zabriskie) did. Although with fewer dwarf's spouting dialogue like "fire walk with me." Naturally.
The best thing that I can see about this scene is that at least it's well lit.
Really well lit.
And yet so dumb.
Seriously.
I really do question the - to use a popular phrase on a show I just watched an entire series of, Project Runway - taste level of this scene. It irks me to see Sidney dreaming of her own mother this way. It comes off as crass and unnecessary. I much prefer the bed sheet mother scare later in the film because it's a genuine "WTF?" moment. This is never anything other than a dream (nightmare, sure) that fails to scare. If they had to have it, why not have Sidney think she's being stalked by the killer only to discover it's not him, and then have it revealed to be a dream? At least that makes sense for the franchise. The Scream films never went here and I wish they hadn't.
The scene doesn't even help set up the later mother scare. I mean, we can all assume that Sidney is "haunted" by the memory of her mother, we don't need this ghoulish scene to tell us this. Basically, I think this moment ranks alongside the "fuck Bruce Willis" quip from Scream 4 as the series' worst moment. Although maybe I've forgotten something else from Scream 3 that we'll discover along the way was worse than both. Martha Meeks, maybe? Nah, that scene is hilarious (for all the wrong reasons.
It did provide a good trailer moment though. Seeing the bloodied hand moving down the window had us Scream fanatics asking who it was? It looked like it was from a doozy of a chase and kill scene. Alas...
Likewise this shot, but it's such a superficial scare. I mean, these films are all about giving us the superficial scare to weaken the audience and then giving them the gut punch (gut stab?) of actual human violence, but this is just the filmmakers getting their money's worth from hiring the boo machine over a couple of weekends. It's not in aid of anything bigger, it's just there. If Scream 3 was really going to go there then why not get Wes Craven to work some of his old A Nightmare on Elm Street magic?
In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!
SCENE 18 Length: 2mins Primary Characters: Principal Himbry and Ghostface Pop Culture References:
A Nightmare on Elm Street (the janitor, "Fred", wears Freddy Krueger's sweater)
Happy Days (Principal Himbry checks his hair just like The Fonz)
This is an interesting scene since it was actually never in Kevin Williamson's original screenplay, but the producers (that'd be the Weinstein brothers) thought - rightfully so - that the movie needed another murder before the big climax at Stu's house. The scene works in the way it eliminates a red herring, shows off the killers' new-found spontaneity (they had a very definite plan, but seem to divert from it - or Stu does) and desire to murder even those who have no connection to the central story, gives the superfluous characters a reason to leave towards the end of the movie and is a neat way keeping the rhythm going in these pre-finale scenes that could have become skippable in a "get us to the good stuff!" kind of way.
"Oh shit, they're gonna kill Fonzie?!?"
Yes. Yes they are!
This shot may not seem relevant, but it took my a lot of viewings to figure out what they did there.
This is a funny little moment in which Principal Himbry gets frightened by the sight of the Ghostface mask in his own hand. I like how he realises how silly he is, which ties into the idea of all these characters having watched horror movies before all this began. He knows he's just being paranoid. I like to imagine that the character knows that if this were all a movie then it would've been a fake scare and he's be embarrassed to have jumped at it.
I'm not sure if this moment was improvised or what, but it's amusing nonetheless. It really is like The Fonz ended up being the Principal at Californian high school!
He's getting his angry face on. I'm not quite sure how Billy/Stu (whichever one it is) managed to hide during this bit since he would have had to be wearing the chunky black boots and they'd make noise when having to run away fast, which is what he would've had to do since Himbry opens the door almost immediately. Bah! I think about this sorta stuff way too much.
That'd be Wes Craven as "Fred the Janitor" wearing the same costume as Freddy Krueger does in Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. This was the first of three cameos that Craven had throughout the trilogy. The others we'll get to, but Fred will always be the best because it's just such a wonderful wink to audiences. Even if it wasn't Craven himself, it would still be fun seeing this old, wrinkly Freddy Krueger now being overtaken by the younger, hipper serial killers. Somebody should have told everyone involved with the terrible, terrible remake from earlier this year.
And now the blind is down.
It's Fonzie's jacket! Right there! To the left (to the left)! This is a scene that keeps on giving.
I couldn't capture it very well, but at this moment Himbry AGAIN frightens himself in the mirror. A nice little tension reliever before...
Oh dear.
As I was screencapping this moment I thought of the worst pun.
Are you ready?
"So this is what it sounds like, when The Fonz dies."
OH DEAR!!!
I'm not sure what Prince and the Revolution have to do with Scream, but whatevs.
The scene ends with this shot, which - I assume - is meant to be all "look at me!" but I find it kinda silly. I don't think it belongs in Scream and doesn't feel organic enough. In Scream 2 it would since that movie is far more polished, but here it comes off looking less like artistry and more like wank.
In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!
SCENE 5 Length: 31secs Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Deputy Dwight "Dewey" Riley (David Arquette), Sheriff Burke (Joseph Whipp) and Principal Himbry (The FonzHenry Winkler) Pop Culture References:
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Henry Whipp appears in Scream as a Sheriff, in the original Elm Street, directed by Wes Craven, Whipp played a police officer)
Henry Winkler as Principal Himbry is a creep. I find it interesting that the screenplay seems to make a big deal about how... off he is. Off being a good word to describe him, I think. He's a little too tender, a little too angry (as we'll see later), and little bit off. Perhaps that's why the killers decide to off him later in the movie, I don't know. But I do know he's a creep.
*shudder*
Even Sheriff Burke sees it! That very subtle look he gives the Principal is just one of many subtle moments that are easy to miss.
Bless Dewey's heart, isn't he a cutie (in this movie, anyway). What I like about this brief scene is the way it further develops this *thing* that has happened to Sidney. Already mention by Billy when discussing their once "hot and heavy" relationship and then again by Tatum. This time it's Principal Himbry's turn to lay down the backstory:
Sidney Prescott. She was daughter of...
Although why he'd need to tell the Sheriff that I'm not too sure.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Dir. Samuel Beyer Year: 2010 Aus Rating: MA15+ Running Time: 94mins
It had to happen. The last of the big 1980s horror franchises to receive the Hollywood remake treatment is A Nightmare on Elm Street. Originally conceived as a horror film about the power of the subconscious from the mind of genre pioneer Wes Craven, the franchise eventually descended into never-ending sequels that were more interested in laughs than scares. Unfortunately for filmgoers, this 2010 incarnation of the famed series is a humourless and scare-free bore.
There were so many issues with this movie that I couldn't put them all into my word limit. I really just couldn't believe that despite everything they had at their fingers - a series worth of memorable kills to drawer from plus a budget and improved effects - all Freddy seemed to do was show up behind someone to the sound of big loud crash sound effect and then carve them up. Nothing to it. So boring. I just wanted him to do something. And, furthermore, I think Jackie Earle Haley was entirely miscast. Hire an actual actor and do that to him? All he does he stand around. Occasionally he walks around the room, but that's about it. And his voice, ugh, his voice. And, dear filmmakers, when I go see a slasher movie I do not want five minute long scenes devoted to hearing about how a man likes to rape little children. Disgusting.
I have soured on this movie even more since seeing it on Wednesday. It's not quite as bad as the Friday the 13th remake, but it's bad. Really bad. D
Speaking of the Friday the 13th remake, over at Trespass Mag I also have a piece on modern day horror remakes where I throw some praise on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and, ahem, House of Wax, while eviscerating Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. I ran out of words to write about Psycho, but that movie has been on my brain quite a bit lately so I might just have to write about it anyway. Enjoy.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE 1985, dir. Jack Sholder
Or as I like to call it; Gaymare on Camp Street Part 2: Freddy's Queer. In this, the first of many sequels to Wes Craven's 1984 original Nightmare on Elm Street, is an odd affair. It takes a much different thought process to the mythology of Freddy Krueger. Instead of the burnt child molester haunting and murdering people in their sleep, in Freddy's Revenge he actually takes over the body of a high school student called Jesse who then goes around unsure as to whether he is killing people or just dreaming it. To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not even sure I followed the storyline or whether that description I just gave is correct. That didn't stop me, however, from thinking it was ridiculousness of the highest order. Freddy even appears in the real world for the second half the film, something that strains credibility even in a movie such as this. Nevertheless, I'm not here to talk about this movies shortcomings, I'm here to discuss how incredible it is.
Before I get going into this movie I need to question something. So, in then original Heather Langenkamp starred as Nancy along with others like Johnny Depp. They were the first set of kids to be tormented by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in their dreams. However, nobody from that movie returns for the sequel. So how is it "Freddy's Revenge", exactly? It's not exactly revenge if you're targeting people who don't even know about the events from the first film, is it? "Freddy's a Bastard", perhaps? And then there's the little issue that this sequel is set five years after the first... five years! And yet the fashions haven't changed a bit. The '80s must have felt like an eternity in this town!
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge actually starts off quite well, with a nicely done opening sequence involving a runaway yellow school bus (that is such an American thing, isn't it?) and three teenagers. It has a wonderful edge of "whose nightmare is this?" and then it ends with this, which is the sort of imagery that the series has become known for.
Unfortunately after this it descends into idiocy. I think it's fair to say that Freddy's Revenge is the campest slasher movie ever made. The pièce de résistance comes early when the lead character, Jesse (played by - as revealed years later - gay actor Mark Patton), is told to go clean his room. Now, normally, when a teenager gets told to clean their room they get angry and put on some loud music and make a big scene. What does Jesse do? Well, he sort of does that. Except instead of a big heavy metal track like you might expect (remember when Dokken made the theme song for A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warrior? I was expecting that) he pops a cassette in the tape player and on comes...
Why yes, "Touch Me (All Night Long)" by Wish featuring Fonda Rae. That'll get that adolescent anger brimming. FONDA RAE, people! He handles the fact that he's not allowed to go to his girlfriend's house and swim in her pool rather well, actually.
What follows is, most definitely, the gayest thing I have ever seen in a horror movie (excluding stuff like Otto. Actually, no, let's include it, my statement still stands). He proceeds to dance around his bedroom in Elton John gold glitter glasses, while bumping and grinding to a mid-80s freestyle dance track. I feel like a reel of Footloose got misplaced and inserted in here. There is masturbation simulation, oh yes.
Watch it below on YouTube. It is amazing. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G-!
The film's quite incredible amount of homo-erotic tendencies isn't just relegated to impromptu dance numbers. Oh no! One of the stranger aspects of Freddy's Revenge is the gym coach, played by Randy Quaid lookalike Marshall Bell. When he's not watching his students wrestle in their jock straps and short shorts...
or watching them after a hot shower...
he's going to S&M bars!
This particular development is especially strange since when the underage Jesse is caught - *gasp* - drinking beer at a bar, Coach Schneider then takes the young kid back to the school gymnasium (in the middle of the night?) and makes him do laps before the camera watches him slowly clean himself off in the showers. All of this while in the very next room the coach is getting pummeled by balls. I don't mean that as a euphemism, but balls do actually fly at his face. He is then strung up by his wrists like in a scene from a porn movie before getting whipped by magical flying towels.
I seriously couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!
There is, indeed, more male nudity in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge than there is female nudity. In fact, there is NONE of the latter whatsoever, and yet we see multiple male arses plus quite a few close-ups of barely-covered genitalia. The closest a straight male viewer gets to any titillation is at the pool party sequence when the girls where their bikinis. I must say, that pre-Baywatch number is quite sporty, don't you think?
Then, of course, we get to the other big scene that sends off rainbow-coloured fireworks. Having left his girlfriend's cabana pool party midway through a breast-tonguing (I believe that is the technical term for it) because he was "worried" that something was trying to "come out" of him (oh dear, poor gal was oblivious to it all) he runs away. Runs away to where?
The bedroom of the high school jock who he got into a wrestling match with and bonded with during detention with Coach Schneider in the locker rooms, of course. Oh yes, that high school jock. What follows are these fantastic dialogue exchanges. Words cannot express how hilarious they are. Really, honestly, truly.
"Tonight with Lisa in the cabana it started happening again... Something is trying to get inside my body."
"Yeah, she's female and she's waiting for you in the cabana and you wanna sleep with me."
"No! I don't... know. I'm all messed up. What difference does it make? I'm in trouble."
"Alright man, what do you want me to do?"
"Just watch me."
Ooh, scintillating. For a brief moment I thought he was going to go into a Naomi Watts slapper routine. Did I mention that Grady has a Limahl poster in his room? Somebody's an awfully big fan of German fantasy films with Giorgio Moroder soundtracks. This is perhaps the best part of the movie, for reasons that should be easy to figure out.
I haven't shown any caps involving the lead actress who looks so much like a young Meryl Streep at times that it occasionally took me out of the movie. Well, took me out of the movie as much as you can with a movie like this, I suppose. It was quite scary at times watching this Kim Myers chick (hey, her surname has four letter from Meryl's first name - what a scary coincidence!!!) but let us just say that Myers' talents lie in resembling Meryl Streep more than actually acting like her. Even today she still looks like her quite a bit.
I will finish this entry with one bit from the movie that I don't understand at all. Not sure where it comes from, but it's there and it's weird and... well, you'll see.
In conclusion, this is probably the most absurd entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street canon. The entire franchise could probably count as being absurd, but the overriding fantasy element and it's place in the storyline makes it acceptable and the films are better of for it. Part two, Freddy's Revenge, on the other hand, is absurd for completely different reasons. Homoerotica, Meryl Streep lookalikes and crazy camp dance numbers specifically. I'm honestly not sure what the makers of this movie were doing. On the Scale of Absurdity I give it a 4/5. The series' over-riding strangeness diminishes some of the absurdity, but - in all fairness - this movie is extremely bloody absurd. Bravo!
