Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 12 of Scream 3 (0:36:54-0:47:26)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 12 of Scream 3
Length: 10mins 32secs
Primary Characters: Dewey Riley, Gale Weathers, Jennifer Jolie, Steven Stone, Angelina Tyler, Tom Prinze, and Ghostface
Pop Culture References:

• None so overtly, but I'm sure there are plenty!

Weird double feature idea: Peter Deming Lensed Hollywood Flicks from the Early 2000s! There's Scream 3 and there's also Mulholland Drive. The nighttime shots of Los Angeles certainly look the same.


"Is this a wrap party of this a wrap party? Scene 34, Maureen's murder flashback."
"I never liked that scene."
"That's because you weren't in it."
Not for nothing, a lesser franchise would have done a scene like that by now, and thank gawd they never did. Obviously they couldn't have given the reveal of the climax being facts about Maureen death, but they still could have done one at some point. I shudder to think. I do like that the next joke is about "the Prescott house flashback", as if the entirely of Stab 4 is just made up of Sidney returning to Woodsboro and having flashback after flashback.

I think we all remember where we were when we first caught a glimpse of Matt Keeslar, don't we? Mine was Waiting for Guffman and boy that was a sight! He had a great run, actually, with Guffman, Urbania, and The Last Days of Disco. Sadly, I think he expected Scream 3 to be a breakout role for him. A look at his IMDb profile shows a lot of television one. One suspects many of them are pilots that never got picked up. Sad. He's such a good looking man. Such a good looking man.

Some time ago when I sat my friend Suze down to watch all three Scream films (so, "some time ago" was before Scream 4 came out at least) because she'd never seen any of them, and by the third film came around we just spent most of the time mocking the clothes because MY GAWD WHAT WAS GOING ON IN THAT WARDROBE DEPARTMENT. It's actually very amusing on Jennifer Jolie because her character so flamboyant and over the time that you can totally see her wearing clothes like that, even if they are horrendous most of the time (She'd be on Go Fug Yourself daily). Gale, though?

Yikes!

I seem to remember when this scene happened we both burst into tears of laughter. Look at her! Consider for a moment what she is wearing and I dare you not to laugh. I mean, despite the fact that they're just heinously ugly to look at, are those red leather pants not the most inappropriate attire one could wear when there's a killer on the loose? And that bag. Oh my lordy, that bag! As if her hair wasn't bad enough...

I know Scream 3 is about Hollywood, but I'm surprised they put in so much smoking. I have nothing to say about it per se other than I think it's curious and somewhat uncomfortable.



I have nothing to say about these shots either. Except maybe "has Parker Posey ever played a mid-century vampire?"

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 11 of Scream 3 (0:35:32-0:36:53)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 11 of Scream 3
Length: 1mins 21secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Ghostface (voice),
Pop Culture References:

• When a Stranger Calls

Okay, look, let's just get this out of the way right now so we can swiftly move on. Yes, it has been a very long time since I last did an entry in this series, and yes, I got all of your emails and comments asking me to continue. What took me so long? Basically, I'm a lazy git. If they'd just go ahead and announce that maybe-probably-not-sorta-well-who-knows Scream 5, or if information started to leak about that upcoming television series then my inspiration would have been sparked all over again (plus, let's face it, Scream 3 isn't exactly the best of the trilogy!), alas... anyway, here we are. I hope to be able to commence the series at regular intervals, but don't hold me to anything.

Remember in Scream 4 when they just decided Neil Prescott was dead?

The Scream movies are good for a lot of things, but one of the lesser mentioned ones is the watch the development of telephone technology. The first film is predominantly landline based, so much so that a character with a "cellular telephone" is viewed upon with instant suspicion. The second film sees mobiles featured far more predominantly, while the third seems them all but taken over. Scream 4, of course, features everyone using smartphones and bluetooth.

Oh, how very Carol Kane in When a Stranger Calls. "The call is coming from inside the house", and all that jazz. Let's just be thankful that Maureen Prescott didn't return from the bloody grave like the last time we visited Sidney's house in the hills.

Oh. That was a brief return, wasn't it? Still, I like that it mirrors the bait and switch nature of scene 10 from Scream at the same moment of the film. But that's just preparation for all the toxic, explosive gas we're about to sniff in the next scene. I promise it won't take months until I do it!

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14. Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, End Credits

Scream 3
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10

31 Horrors: The Town That Dreaded Sundown (#24)

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.

Curiously unreleased on DVD (not even in America, let alone Australia), I didn't feel quite so guilty acquiring this 1976 small town slasher through a few dubious means. There's a decent quality version currently airing on TCM in the states, but the copy I watched was a pretty shoddy VHS rip that, if little else, added to the atmosphere of watching an old horror title that came to exist in the age of video cassettes. I watched Charles B Pierce's film on Halloween (after Vampyr and before Hardware) so I was very much set for it to blow me away, and given it is one of the more obscure (yet amazing) references in Kevin Williamson's screenplay for Scream - "It's like The Town that Dreaded Sundown!" - I was really hoping for it to blow me away, too.

"It's about a killer in Texas, huh?" - Deputy Dewey, Scream

And whenever the movie was directly following the killer on screen The Town that Dreaded Sundown was a fabulously freaky experience - and the VHS transfer made the deep midnight blues and blacks that permeate these sequences feel appropriately grubby ala The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The stalk-and-kill scenes featuring the baghead killer who wields a shotgun and, in one particularly odd yet scary scene, a trombone are really well done and reminded me of David Fincher's Zodiac in the way they happen to matter of factly and straightforward. Another film it reminded me of was Maniac, but I think any film I watch from now that features a shotgun blast through a car windscreen is going to remind me of that fantastic film.

Sadly, the killer - known as "The Phantom", and based on a real unsolved case in Texarkana, Texas - isn't really the focus of the majority of the film, but rather the police investigation into his case. I say "sadly" because these passages of the film, centered around Ben Johnson's detective character, are like the dopey cop sequences of Last House on the Left stretched out to feature length. Much like Wes Craven was somehow able to juxtapose the absolute horror of the action with bumbling idiocy of those two police characters, whenever the Sundown killer isn't on screen it succumbs to tedium. It's all so incredibly uninteresting and silly and goofy and I don't understand how these scenes fit into the same film that the killer himself was a part of. There are far too many banjos and cross-dressing coppers getting felt up by overweight detectives. It amuses me to find (after having written most of this) that Jason at My New Plaid Pants had the exact same opinion as me. If Jason agrees then I know I'm on the right page and not just watching a movie in the wrong mood.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown: B+; All that other crap: D+. Let's give it a median C+, shall we?

31 Horrors: Peeping Tom (#23)

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.

I still have a few of my October viewings left to write up, but Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom is officially the first of my horror selections to have been screened in November. I ran out of time, but am still wanting to watch the 31. It was inevitable given my late night start times usually resulted in me going "oh, I'll leave that movie that is hailed a masterpiece until another time when I won't have a high chance of falling asleep and, instead, will watch something sillier and lighter." Ya know? Yeah. I still very much anticipate watching Changeling and Don't Look Now, but at the time I felt more like, oh I dunno, Student Bodies instead.

Still, no matter whether I watched it in October or in April, I'd still want to talk about Peeping Tom! More of a thriller than horror - certainly less horror inclined that the film it is frequently linked to, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (yet another instance of my October horror selections having a connection to that particular masterpiece) - it still manages to conjure up an intensely nerve-wracking world that I found entirely captivating. Whether deliberately or not, Peeping Tom embraces an artificial aesthetic that is both glorious to look at and yet a prominent thematic device. The film is, after all, about voyeurism and what better way to subliminally instruct an audience that filmgoing is, essentially, an act of voyeurism than by playing up the cinematic language? Catching audiences off guard with damning themes seems to go down a lot easier when its drawn in bold colours and deliciously constructed imagery.

Known as the first "slasher" film - "Peeping Tom, 1960, directed by Michael Powell. The first movie to ever put the audience in the killer's POV", Scream 4 naturally - and released the same year as Psycho, it's actually quite easy to see how this film caused such a ruckus in Powell's home country of Britain (also Hitchcock's home country, but Psycho was an American production). Presenting England in such a light, especially by one of their own, can't have have endeared him to too many people. The seemingly rather easily replicable nature of the crimes with the increasing popularity of home cameras, too. As a member of the famed Powell & Pressburger team, this was a detour and one that essentially ended his career, which is a particularly cruel fate given the (eventual) rapturous response that Hitchcock's Psycho received. The film was also a very obvious inspiration on the aforementioned Scream franchise (especially number 4), which gets it bonus kudos points from me.

Peeping Tom's biggest hurdle is its lead actor, Karlheinz Böhm. With his breath, somewhat posh, vocal delivery, the character of Mark Lewis is hardly a charismatic one. Of course, he doesn't necessarily have to be. I guess if he were then the scenes wherein we're meant to believe he's coming out of his shell thanks to the inquisitive Helen, played by Anna Massey, wouldn't come off quite as creepy as hell as it does, which was surely Powell's intention. He's a weirdo that most viewers would have had a hard time responding to (much different to Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates) and the acting style that Karlheinz Böhm utilises is occasionally quite distracting in its lack of subtlety.

Still, Peeping Tom doesn't rise or fall simply on the actor's shoulder (and, it must be said that Maxine Audley is super fantastic as the blind mother of Massey's Helen). It's a film deep in rich context that's so wonderfully explained by one Martin Scorsese:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."

Furthermore, the character of Mark Lewis frequently alternating between real world and the world as viewed through his camera, it's almost as he really isn't there. Much like Patrick Bateman who used those almost exact words in one of his pre-homicide monologues, Mark seems permanently poised on the verge of disappearing altogether. Swathed in oversized jackets and uncomfortable without his prized camera possession, his meek demeanor only forms flesh and blood when, well, in the presence of somebody else's flesh and blood. Much like Halloween begins from the perspective of Michael Myers before effectively moving onto a permanent otherly plain of existence, Peeping Tom portrays this man as somebody who never really was. He floats about seemingly unnoticed by many, and those who do don't tend to think too highly of him. Years of seeing his predominant male figure pursuing the act of perverse voyeurism has allowed him to slink through life determined to not be the sort of person that anybody would care about.

Peeping Tom is, perhaps more than anything else, a ravishing visual treat. The cinematography of Otto Heller is marvellous and works wonders in bringing a sort of film noir meets technicolour palace to life. The human figures that navigate his frame frequently weave through as Heller's camera glides ever so gracefully around them, cornering them in their own shadows. The confrontation sequence between Mark and the blind Mrs Stephens is a master of this blend of styles and was, for me, the film's greatest moment. Maximum suspense is wrung out of the otherwise innocuous camera that Mark carries around like a comfort blanket. It's spinning gears capturing death intensely and up close makes for a stunning piece of set decoration long before we discover the secret device hidden within it.

There's obvious much more to go into with this movie, but in a more formal way. I'm sure there are plenty of people who've done that and with far more intelligence than I. I was deeply involved by Peeping Tom, and parallels to Psycho aside, found it to be a startlingly original and daring piece of work. It's entirely apt that Michael Powell's career was ruined because of Peeping Tom since he almost seems to be going out of his way to make a film that can very easily be seen as him blasting audiences for their cinematic bloodlust. It's an endlessly fascinating film and one that shan't forget too soon. A

31 Horrors: Hardware (#22)

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.

Well this was insane and I loved it.

It's hardly surprising to discover that Richard Stanley's 1990 sci-fi/horror action flick received a poor critical reception upon its release. It's a tough film to pin down, seemingly a pastiche of so many different films that it's hard to keep count - post screening my friends and I labelled Blade Runner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Terminator, Alien, Short Circuit, Rear Window, Total Recall, Vertigo, and several more as obvious influences - and yet one that, despite it's mad sloppy screenplay, proved to be an intoxicating winner. It's an exhausting hoot of a film that shows flutters of such astonishing technical finesse that I couldn't help but admire its chutzpah even when it was flapping about like a fish out of water. I loved this movie, perhaps against my better judgement.

Set primarily in one of those futuristic dystopian cities that became so popular in the aftermath of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner where the skies bleed red from nuclear radiation and the cityscapes are dark masses dotted with neon and fluorescent. Hardware begins with the emergence of Dylan McDermott's Moses out of the desert where he has been scavenging for spare parts. Taking some mysterious, but uber-cool, electronics home to his girlfriend who uses these type of foreign objects in her industrial artworks. They live in a world riddled with dirty violence and people are lining up for voluntary sterilisation to reduce population growth. Naturally, the machine from the desert wakes up from its robotic sleep and begins to wreak havoc in exceedingly violent and explosive ways.

I'd never actually heard of this movie before I saw it on a Halloween night double bill with, what else, Halloween at the Astor Theatre. It shares nothing in common with that 1978 classic, so it was a double bill in horror goodness only, but I'm glad I got the chance to see it and to do so on a big screen. The astonishing editing and production design is best experienced on a cinema screen where they merge to form a dizzying collaboration. As the film continues to go higher and higher with its batshit craziness - culminating perhaps in a truly confounding, eye-popping sequence that takes a bit of visual influence from 2001 and Vertigo - I was continued to grow fonder and fonder. Richard Stanley, working from a screenplay (an admittedly odd, muddy one) by Stanley, Steve MacManus, and Kevin O'Neill, never lets up and isn't afraid to go to some truly unexpected places. The gore, too, which rears its head in the final act is certainly a bright and red in a gleeful fashion.

As a visual feast, it ranks alongside Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix as dying worlds on life support. It's visually stunning. The claustrophobic one-set nature is obviously derived from Alien, but Stanley is still able to do some interesting, fresh things with it. I admired the performance of Stacey Travis, more the star of the film than McDermott, and found she was able to make the preposterous sequences glisten with genuine emotion, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even when it descends into a grotesque Real Window moment of voyeuristic perversion, she keeps the film from spinning off of its axis, something that Stanley clearly had no interest in.

This hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic, weird, crazy horror extravaganza was a real treat. Evil robots are always fun, but I don't recall seeing anything this flat out bonkers. A movie without blinkers on in its wide-eyed technology-is-evil-yo attitude and that has the balls to really go to some odd places. I loved it! And who can resist a movie in which Iggy Pop features as a radio DJ? A-

31 Horrors: Night of the Demon (#21)

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.

I was entirely surprised when I happened across the DVD of this film at the local library. A Jacques Tourneur film described as "one of the scariest films ever made"? I've already discussed my affinity for this French director's horror output - specifically Cat People, but also I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man - and I'd never heard this British film from 1957 mentioned alongside them in any real reverence. It's not produced by the esteemed Val Lewton so that probably doesn't hurt, but I imagine that maybe its newfound recognition comes from this list by Martin Scorsese wherein he labels Night of the Demon as one of the "eleven scariest horror movies of all time." Why eleven we'll never know, but it's hard to not see the internet culture immediately rushing to claim it as such after somebody of Martin Scorsese's stature says it's that good.

As if the title and the poster up top (a fabulous original UK quad) didn't alert you, Night of the Demon (retitled to Curse of the Demon for its recut American release) is about a demonic spirit that forms itself into the form of a cross between a roller-skating Godzilla and the creature from the Black Lagoon. As silly as that sounds, the demon's brief appearances are actually quite startling in their effect. That instant, unexpected appearance of something unnatural in an otherwise benign scenario will always work at eliciting a chilly shudder up the spine at a far greater ratio than anything other scare you can manufacture and Tourneur does a remarkable job when he utilises it here.

Night of the Demon is actually far less about a demonic apparition than it is about a skeptic's ambition to reveal a cult as false. It that respect it would make a surprisingly apt and fabulous double with Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. They both have a very cold, but beautiful, way of getting to the core of the institution that is the cause of so much conflict with a robust and lively central figurehead and a meek, if feverishly determined, younger man trying to work it all out. Night of the Demon, of course, twists its story of a cult and its charismatic leader into a very literal horror direction, but it works.

I loved that Tourneur and writers Charles Bennett and Hal E Chester utilised classical elements into the story. Stonehenge being a particularly inspired choice as that mysterious formation will always make for an easy backdrop to something supernatural. Several set-pieces are indeed flatout terrifying for what they suggest and how they're framed - how about that visit to the homestead of a "demon" victim with the reveal of the parchment? - although an extended storm sequence at the mansion estate of Niall MacGinnis' Karswell perhaps could have been shortened (maybe the US version does as such) and causes the pace to lag. Filmed in a way that utilises Tourneur's trademark film-noir aesthetic, Night of the Demon is surely a beautifully made film. While it doesn't quite all come together as a whole that warrants the title as one of the scariest films ever made, it does make for a delicious surprise and a wonderfully smart take on the issues. B+

31 Horrors: Vampyr (#20)

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.

Well, it's easy to see why this has been deemed as so influential, isn't it? Per the Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVD sleeve, Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr was deemed by Alfred Hitchcock as "the only film worth watching... twice", Vampyr is seemingly a very obvious inspiration to Psycho. Vampyr, also the inspiration to Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep in a far more obvious way, is about a man who leaves his life and descends into a fantasy horror upon arriving a motel in the middle of nowhere. What is Janet Leigh's Marion Crane is not a fantastical being on the run? Where does she end? A middle of nowhere motel. While Marion met a far crueller fate than Nicolas de Gunzburg's Allan Gray (the film's unofficial subtitle is The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray), Vampyr too descends into a mystery-solving horror ala Psycho, just with vampires instead of mummy-dressing psychotics. The similarities don't quite end there, however, as Hitchcock appears to have aped several slices of striking imagery too.

Vampyr is the first sound feature that Dreyer ever made, coming on the heels of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Having said that, Dreyer has stuck to a silent aesthetic for the most part and there is minimal dialogue as a result of the producer's wish to record the film in both French and Germany languages. Title cards are frequently used and many of the actors - unprofessional actors for the most part I've since discovered - work more in sinister glances than horrific speeches. Dreyer, too, uses static imagery more than the theatrical horrors of his international brethren. Vampyr's release was actually delayed in Germany so that Dracula and Frankenstein could be released first, certainly one of the earliest sign posts of the international film world working with a domino effect.

At only 72 minutes, Vampyr doesn't exactly dig deep into the vamp mythology, but it does manage to craft an excessively eerie atmosphere. As Allan Gray attempts to solve and break the vampire curse that has swept across his village without succumbing to it himself, Dreyer infuses it with enough images of wrinkled, doom-ravaged faces and sickle-wielding townsfolk to power several films. It's holds an incredible power, a spell if you will, that doesn't break until it's over. A bewitching and altogether stunning piece of brilliantly crafted cinema. A-

31 Horrors: Island of Lost Souls (#19)

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.

I knew as I popped in the Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray for this 1932 (by coincidence, the second of October's horror flicks to have come from that year) that Erle Kenton's Island of Lost Souls was an adaptation of sorts of HG Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. Given the title change I figured it was one of those unofficial adaptations where everything's the same, but not. Alas, I was wrong. By the time a character is introduced called, you guessed it, Dr Moreau, it became obvious that this was just a straight out filming of the novel. Well, as close to one as you could probably get in 1932. I haven't read the book so I can't tell you how similar they are, but at least in Europe it was marketed with its original book title in tow.

The film isn't all that special, to be honest, but as an almost schlocky pre-code genre title, it makes for some interesting viewing. Starring Charles Laughton as the aforementioned doc, and Richard Arlen as the shipwrecked man who uncovers his research (if one can call it that) into regeneration and vivisection. There is also Bela Lugosi (Dracula!) as a half-man/half-beast creation known as the "Sayer of the Law", and Kathleen Burke as The Panther Woman. She was supposedly chosen amongst a group of 60,000 candidates and, on the marketing, wasn't even credited by name, but merely as "The Panther Woman". Those old Hollywood types really knew how to sell a woman's soul for financial gain, didn't they!

Island of Lost Souls came out a year before King Kong, and the two share quite a few similarities. So much so that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that 1933 classic used some of the same sets as Kenton's picture. It opens with a boat sailing the choppy seas and various characters finding themselves amongst a island dense in as much flora as mystery. Admittedly, the first and the third acts hold most of what I found interesting here, with the middle - basically everything about the boring Panther Woman - losing my patience. I enjoyed the opening with its gruff sailors and charming, yet sinister, Charles Laughton. The end, too, is quite intense as the beasts retaliate against their maker - certainly it was Laughton's final scene that earned this movie its status as banned in the UK? At only 71 minutes long though even the stuff I didn't too much care for didn't stick around long enough to prove too detrimental. To be honest, I watched this early in the month and forgot to write it up. I have as little to say about now as I did then, I suppose. B-

31 Horrors: Ghostwatch (#18)

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.

It's like Paranormal Activity in Prime Time!

Imagine Lake Mungo, with it's investigative Dateline/Australian Story/60 Minutes approach to a family's haunting, but done live to air. In 1992, before "found footage" was a term used to identify films of its kind. When the prospect of national celebrities portraying themselves on a BBC special event wasn't even entertained as fiction, but rather a very real documentary. Such is the idea behind Ghostwatch, a British television program that would become one of the most controversial of its time and scare almost an entire nation into believing that ghosts were real. That is, until those involved were forced to apologise for misleading the public even though the program's credits don't leave much in the way of ambiguity. Such is the rabid hysteria of the public.

Man oh man, did I love Ghostwatch! Relatively obscure outside of Britain I should imagine, but its ten year ban by its own network, the BBC, suggests it should be held in higher regard. Playing the ol' Orson Welles/War of the Worlds trick on unsuspecting British TV viewers on Halloween night resulted in thousands of calls and even a controversial implication in the suicide of a mentally unstable man several days after it aired. Ghostwatch, beyond its scary surface and spine-chilling revelations, digs deeper into the national psyche than, say, Paranormal Activity, by also working as a tell tale sign of society's more gullible nature and the domination that television has (well, had) over them.

Ghostwatch was supposedly a special event piece of television, broadcast on BBC1 and heralded as live reality. Cameras and reporters were placed in the scene of a house on Halloween night that had, before then, become known as a hub of poltergeist disturbances. Hosted by famous chat show personality Michael Parkinson, featuring several well known British identities (including Red Drawf's Craig Charles), and including actors portraying psychic professionals as well as the very haunted family of mother and two daughters, Ghostwatch takes its time to really get going, but those who are paying close attention will get chills out of the entire enterprise.

By the time the film's final 20 minutes or so comes around, I was already well and truly intrigued and had experienced a couple of very decent frights (my suspicions were right when I thought I'd caught a glimpse of the mysterious "Pipes"). What I didn't expect was the level of almost paralysing fear that the climax would throw at me. Rigid with fear and audibly gasping on a high frequency, Ghostwatch worked spectacularly well and more than justifies its reputation as an oughtta be eminent Halloween classic. The final image especially of a dazed Michael Parkinson - remember, he's a huge star both in the UK and Australia - mumbling about the BBC set before creator Stephen Volk's last chilling utterance made getting to sleep a harder task than I'd expected.

Readers would be aware that I am very much a fan of the Paranormal Activity features as well as The Blair Witch Project and the aforementioned Lake Mungo. When this type of film works well there's almost nothing I find scarier. Ghostwatch is another stellar example of it, made even more provocative by the project's history and the way its makers went about it. I watched it nearly 20 years to the day since its British premiere (it's never played since) and it's very much as effective now as it was in 1992. It's also the best thing I've seen during my month-long horror trek. A

31 Horrors: Mad Monster Party (#17)

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.

Another horror spoof after the earlier Student Bodies. Inarguably more original and inventive, I didn't however find it anywhere near as entertaining. Taking on monster movies rather than slashers, Jules Bass' stop-motion animated film was the American's first animated feature since he co-produced the wildly successful Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The style is most definitely the same, and I give him props for making something a little bit left of centre for a G-rated animation, but I'm not sure how successful it ultimately is.

There's Dr Frankenstein (voiced by Boris Karloff!) who lives on Evil Island, and he's invited all the world's most famous monsters (Count Dracula, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and so on) to his castle to announce his retirement as well as his successor. That turns out to be a meek drug store employee who sounds a lot like James Stewart with the whispy appearance of Niles Crane. Throw in all sorts of other references - including a copyright skirting beast named "It" and looks and sounds and acts identically to King Kong, plus a reference to Some Like It Hot (because, well, ya know... why not?) and you've got yourself Mad Monster Party. Oh, did I mention Phyllis Diller? Because there's Phyllis Diller doing her best kid-friendly version of her routine, her plasticine figure laughing at every one of her groan-inducing one-liners.

I didn't particularly like Mad Monster Party. I found it all a tad too flat for my liking. I imagine Tim Burton is a very big fan since he's tread into similar waters with his own wacky family friendly work on Frankenweenie and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Unlike those features, however, Mad Monster Party certainly has the feel of a TV movie. Unsophisticated humour for the most part - oh gawd, it reminded me of "Oy to the World"! - with only a few really great laughs hidden amongst the madcap musical adventure. I would recommend it most of all as a perfect movie to play in the background of your next Halloween gathering. It's an idea movie to be able to catch brief glimpses of without really having to pay all that much attention. And that you you also get to avoid the songs.


Songs like that one. It's all a bit nauseating, really. A DRACULA TAP ROUTINE! Of course, if I had seen this when I was younger then maybe I'd be crowing a different tune, but it doesn't hold much value as an adult when viewing it without the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. It's rather innocent demeanor really could have been played with a bit more of a wink and a nudge. Baby's first horror movie, if you will, but hopefully not the last. C

31 Horrors: Student Bodies (#16)

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

31 Horrors: Pulse (#15)

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

31 Horrors: Dead & Buried (#14)

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.

It took actually seeing this movie to realise I've spent my entire life having absolutely zero idea of what it was about.

One of my earliest movie memories is adoring the video cover of the Dead & Buried VHS in the horror isle of the local video store. So many of the images in that section of the shop left imprints on my brain, but Dead & Buried was one of the greatest. As I've said though, you could have asked me what it was about about and I would have had to shrug my shoulders. I certainly wasn't aware it was about voodoo zombie clans running around taking photographs of victims. I would have guessed it was about some sort of alien creatures emerging out of the Earth to attack a group of horny teenagers. Ya know, I'd just assume.

The poster labels Dead & Buried as from "the creators of ALIEN", but there's really nothing at even remotely similar to Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece. Not in terms of scope or talent, and certainly not in terms of scare factor. It has a nice, novel setup - new arrivals to the town of Potter's Bluff start popping up dead and the new Sheriff must investigate, leading the way to all sorts of grisly revelations involving the town's beloved mortuary owner (Bernie he is not) - and several scenes really work fabulously, but it never really gets out of its shlocky '80s groove to become anything more. It actually reminded me a lot of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers (or vice versa, I suppose, since that novella came out in 1987 and the miniseries several years later) with its horde of calm zombie creatures.

There are moments throughout Dead & Buried that give major hints at what the final product could have been, but director Gary Sherman somewhat fumbles the ball in the final act. The reveal of just what has been going on this town doesn't have quite the impact as it should. It has a great look to it, with a lot of beautiful polish - certainly more than I was expecting from a film of that era - and the make-up effects are deliciously grotesque from time to time (although what's up with the baaad finger effects of the final scene?), but I never truly got the horror of the story. For a film that was once designated a "video nasty" in the UK, it comes off as awfully easy to watch. B-

31 Horrors: Frankenweenie (#13)

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.

Frankenweenie

Dir. Tim Burton

Country: USA

Running Time: 90mins

Aus Rating: PG

Social outcasts? Check.

Monochrome colour palate? Check.

Horror references? Check.

Yup, must be another Tim Burton film. Thankfully, Frankenweenie – the American director’s second film of the year following the dire Dark Shadows – is a return to form and a delight. While it is essentially a “kid’s movie”, its themes of re-animation and horror may not be appropriate for younger crowds. Still, Frankenweenie does a far better job of teaching pre-teen and early-teen audiences the sort of values that will be far more beneficial to their lives than being able to kick a football, and does it with more invention and originality than other more colourful, cutesy animations.

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31 Horrors: The Omen (#12)

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.

Not even I can quite understand why I hadn't seen Richard Donner's The Omen until now. Sometimes one just has films pass by them, I guess. At least I can't say I've never seen the original, but have indeed seen the recent remake (like, say, House of Wax or The Fog). I remember the remake was released on 06/06/06 and that it starred Julia Stiles and Mia Farrow (and maybe Liev Schrieber?) - actually, I seem to remember more about it than I probably ought to about a film I haven't seen.

Oh wait, we're meant to be talking about the 1976 original.

Actually, maybe we can just scratch talking about The Omen - which is nicely effective with a couple of justly famous scenes (the fish bowl and the hanging) and a couple of wonderful kills (the spike and the decapitation - let's face it, who doesn't love a good beheading in a movie? Except for the, er, beheadee, I guess) amongst a nicely-scored piece of bitter chilly Brit horror - and focus instead of Lee Remick's scared face. She gets to use it enough times and it's rather fabulous.

Other than that, is there really all that much to say? I'm sure more than enough has been said about The Omen that I don't really need to go into what works and what doesn't (although maybe in the hindsight of 30 years maybe somebody needs to address some of the more ridiculous aspects of the film like that trip to Israel... surely there was a less silly way of getting that exposition out of the way? And what's going on with the church-goer expressions?) Still, for every somewhat out-of-place moment there is an even more amazing moment like this.


Or this.


Incredible. B

Can anyone say whether the sequels are worth checking out? Does Damien eventually become the President? Because that would be wild, it really would.

31 Horrors: Amer (#11)

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.

You guys, I really hated Amer!

So I sat down to watch this movie on Blu-ray late last night as I was kinda in the mood for something stylish and scary, but a little bit off-centre, too. Turns out Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's giallo homage, Amer, was not the way to go. A rather lifeless, sketchy, snooze of a film that didn't engage me on any level. Even the visuals, arguably the film's raison d'être, weren't all that lush and deep. I was genuinely shocked to discover Amer was filmed on 16mm given the cheap, digital coldness that I found within the imagery. I would have turned it off if I wasn't positive that there was going to be some super icky violence to enliven the final act. I really needn't have bothered as I found the finished product amounted to little more than a pair of directors wanking directly to camera and laughing all the way to critical applause.

Given its giallo connections, it's natural for the mind to drift not only to the classical works of Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and so forth, but also this year's fantastic Italo-horror love-fest, Berberian Sound Studio. My knowledge of the genre is admitted quite limited, but Amer appeared to lack anything beyond the most basic of giallo tropes. Oh, I noticed the colour palate of the opening act, the close-skinned erotic nature of the second act, and the film's obsession with eyeballs and zooms, but they felt like pure superficial elements. The film didn't have the allure or the off-kilter mechanics of a giallo title. At least none of the giallo films that I have seen. It lacked the griminess within it prettiness that I've found so interesting before.

Where was the central murder mystery and the graphic reverberations that come with it? If you're going to make an ode to giallo then where is the poorly looped sound design? Amer, I found, lacked any of the suspense that I've found in titles such as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, nor the mad playfulness of Suspiria. Even the lone bloody sequence of Amer's climax lack the aura of a classic Fulci feature. As I've said, perhaps my knowledge of the giallo genre is just too narrow to truly "get" what Amer was doing, but it struck me as little more than, say, that trailer for Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis' The Canyons. All dressed up in its tarted up genre clothing, but seemingly lacking the inherent soul of the films its trying to cover.

It's certainly a fine line, but I certainly don't think Amer got there. Consider the aforementioned Berberian Sound Studio. I know some were disappointing in it, probably finding the same issues with Peter Strickland's film as I did with Amer, but I ultimately think it succeeded because it told a story as filtered it through the soft focus gauze of a giallo production. It's twists on the traditional Italo-horror narrative built to something - that something being a third act that essentially becomes the giallo horror that the film proposed to be a behind-the-scenes deconstruction of. That title was fabulously sneaky in the way it build suspense and terror in unconventional ways. Amer does its thing in such a flavourless way that the third act's amped up action climax comes off as little more than an obvious attempt at getting the pulse racing and leave audiences on a heartbeat high as a means of forgetting that nothing else in the picture served any purpose whatsoever.

Maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way, but I found nothing in Amer even came close to what some of the best giallo films are capable of. And capable of without the virtues of computer colour tinting. Nothing in either of the three segments appear to have much to do with one another, and if there was then it certainly went way over my head. Maybe I'm still just annoyed at the terrible make-up effects in that opening act? The use of pre-existing music, too, wasn't used in any real effective manner. Unlike this review that states "especially present in the phenomenally tense climax, when the music lets the viewer know that the end is near", I don't need music cues to forecast for me that a movie is nearly over, although I wish this one had finished much sooner than it did. D

31 Horrors: Paranormal Activity 4 (#10)

Paranormal Activity 4

Dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 88mins

Much like the Friday the 13th franchise, or the Saw series for a more recent example, the Paranormal Activity films have more or less settled into a comfortable groove by its fourth entry in as many years. While sequel rules dictate that the stakes be raised with each subsequent entry, the films – originally a $15,000 “found footage” movie directed by Oren Peli that took the box office by storm – have rarely reached beyond their fairly simple origins: a family find themselves haunted by a demonic spirit with a fondness for loud bangs in the night, levitation, throwing people around like rag-dolls, and pulling the doona covers off sleeping victims. The added extra of a cult-like institution in the series best Paranormal Activity 3 is about as radical as it has gotten so far, and Paranormal Activity 4 adds little that hasn’t been seen before. Alas, many viewers probably won’t have a problem with that.

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31 Horrors: Livid (#9)

Livid

Dir. Julien Maury & Alexadre Bustillo

Country: France

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 88mins

Lost in translation seems to be the theme I keep coming back to for Livid, the new spooky house horror thriller from the French filmmaking team of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside). Maybe this is genuinely new for French genre cinema, but nothing here comes off as remotely fresh or even particularly interesting. Perhaps there is stuff going on in this film that makes total sense to some people, but not me. And then there’s the look of the film, which is awash is murky digital aesthetic that lacks any warmth and depth. I wonder if it looked this bad and poorly lit when they looked at the action through the camera viewfinder?

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