GhoulieJoe

‘Annabelle Comes Home’: It’s No ‘Conjuring,’ but You Can’t Go Wrong with the James Wan-iverse

The movie opens, in case we forgot, with Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed (Patrick Wilson) collecting the evil Annabelle doll from the two nurses who were in possession of it and bringing it home to lock in the evil-shit-you-never-touch room. If you need a recap of the previous movies, here are synopses from Wikipedia: Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation. One year later, the Warrens are planning to leave overnight on exorcising business, and daughter Judy (McKenna Grace replaces Sterling Jerins, who’s getting too old for this shit) is staying with babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman). Mary Ellen’s nosy friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) and love interest Bob (Michael Cimino) crash the party, and Daniela talks Judy into letting her go into the room-that-must-not-be-entered, which releases a cadre of demonic entities.

anna4 — This is an actual Milton Bradley board game from the ’60s; demons not included–probably

Despite its PG-13 feel (low body count and yet another fucking sing-along with Ed), the film is for some reason rated R for “horror violence and terror.” Mary Ellen and Judy get into the convenient files detailing what each of the monsters are, which include a haunted wedding dress, a TV that tells the immediate future, a werewolf/giant dog-thing, and samurai armor. Yup, just as scary as it sounds. As we saw in the other Conjuring films, adding a whole lot of antagonists totally improves the movie and is not at all distracting. My favorite is the Ferryman, who goes around dropping coins–that guy’s payin off! Though there are a couple of creepy moments, like when Daniela is asked, “What else did you touch?” and she replies, horrified, “Everything.”

anna1 — “POSITIVELY do not open! That oughta do it!”

Yes, these folks are real brainiacs, Daniela in particular, spouting phrases like, “Don’t your parents keep any really creepy stuff around?” She asks the spirits themselves to let her into the room, and once inside, she says, “If there is a presence in this room, please give me a sign.” Ed has a hand in this too, as he leaves the key to the room at home and doesn’t even hide it very well. Meanwhile, Mary Ellen leaves her inhaler in the car. Not like she needs it to live or anything.

anna2 — “Ooh, you’re so cute, I can’t wait to let you out and cause havoc!”

Despite my jabs, I enjoyed it. The characters are dumb (except for Judy, the voice of reason, she’s a little badass) but likable. Check it out if you’re in the mood for something light and fun.

Peter Jackson’s ‘Meet the Feebles’: Not Technically a Horror Movie, but it’s Pretty Damn Frightening

Peter Jackson‘s second film. It concerns the cast and crew of the childrens’ show Meet the Feebles, all puppets, who are trying to rehearse for their upcoming bid for syndication. We have Heidi the Hippo (Mark Hadlow), a binge-eating has-been, Wynyard the frog (Brian Sergent), a heroin addict with PTSD from his tour in Vietnam, Robert the virtuous hedgehog (also Hadlow), Harry the hare (Ross Jolly), who has a nasty STI, the cruel producer Bletch the walrus (Peter Vere-Jones), sleazy director Trevor the rat (also Sergent), Lucille the chorus dog (Donna Akersten), Sebastian the gruff gay manager fox (Stuart Devenie), and a whole lot more debauched animal-type-things.

fee4 — Heidi, a Miss Piggy look-alike–if you guessed that she’s gonna whip out those melons, you would be correct

This had been on my watchlist for a while, and my friend Paula dared me to watch it so she could see my reaction. I invited her to watch it with me, along with our friend Tabbitha, who had also never seen it. We were duly horrified. These were our faces when we paused half-way through to take a selfie:

meet1 — Tab on the left, me in the middle, Paula on the right

Like Jackson’s film Braindead (AKA Dead Alive) it’s creative, with amazing special effects…and absolutely disgusting. So, so disgusting. Fluids. All the fluids. I’ll spare you specific examples. We spent the first hour and fifteen minutes or so incredulous at the continuously building level of grossness. Even the characters are ugly. Especially the racist ones, like the Vietnamese gophers (who speak a white person’s approximation of what Vietnamese sounds like to him), or the Indian Gandhi wannabe who in the course of navel-gazing gets his head ensconced in his anus. We couldn’t decide whether the racism was an example of racism or actual racism, but judging by Dead Alive, Jackson is against prejudice but not stereotypes.

fee5 — What the fuck? He doesn’t even do anything of import in the movie; he exists only as a one-note “gag” of having his head stuck up his ass

We didn’t fully decide whether the movie was bad or bad to make a point, but I stated that I trust Jackson as a filmmaker, even in his early days, and I think he had the wherewithal to have made us suffer purposely. There are definitely a handful of scenes that seem out of place, like Bletch golfing or Wynyard’s extended war flashback, but overall we did agree that it’s a clever parody of Hollywood, from its beauty standards to the exploitation of young actresses to rampant drug use. It also addresses suicide and psychosis. And let’s not forget the media, represented by an obnoxious fly that eats poo. When Heidi starts bringing down the show, that’s when we finally became emotionally invested. See the clip below, if you don’t mind spoilers.

I do resent the use of Muppet-like puppets to show corruption and behind-the-scenes mayhem with the child-friendliness being only a facade. Jim Henson was dedicated to educating while entertaining, but was rarely overly sweet, like Robert and his pasted-on love story with Lucille. Honestly, I was rooting for one or both of them to die.

I’m glad I didn’t watch it alone; it’s so bizarre and misanthropic I would have been depressed afterwards. It’s like the film from The Ring–you see it, are haunted by it, and have to show it to someone else. It has to be seen to be believed. Check it out if you’re in the mood for something grotesque but oddly compelling.

‘The Curse of La Llorona’: The Scariest Thing About it is the Poster Art

America, 1973: mother Patricia (Patricia Velasquez) has issues with alcoholism, which isn’t helped by angry spirit La Llorona targeting her two sons. When her well-meaning social worker Anna (Linda Cardellini) takes the kids away (Patricia had been hiding them in a closet), La Llorona gets them, which makes Patricia less than pleased. In fact, she sics La Llorona on Anna’s two kids, Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) and Chris (Roman Christou), leading Anna to seek help from curandero Rafael (Raymond Cruz).

curse4 — “Saving white ladies is tight tight tight!”

It’s common in horror movies for aspects of other cultures to be used as extra horrifying for white people, like in The Grudge or The Other Side of the Door. At least the white lady in this case has two multiracial kids, but her Latino husband is dead before the movie starts. Sean Patrick Thomas has a small role as the husband’s former colleague, but he doesn’t do much. But *spoiler alert*–he doesn’t die saving the white people, which is what you might expect from the folks who made Annabelle *belated spoiler alert*. The movie was not made with a Latinx audience in mind, despite capitalizing on their folklore.

Film Box Office — “I should be the main character! You’ve made a huge mistake!”

The premise is disturbing, but only really shocking enough for an R rating if you’re totally unfamiliar with the legend. In which case, Father Perez (Tony Amendola), who seems to spend his time wandering around looking for puzzled gringas to explain things to, tells Anna (and us) all about it: 300 years ago, in Mexico, a woman whose husband was unfaithful killed their two children out of spite, instantly regretting it. She still wanders around crying and taking other peoples’ kids to try to replace hers. For the non-Hollywood version, you can go here. The movie is not scary. Not even close. Although it’s loosely tied to the Conjuring franchise, clearly the Warrens need to be directly involved in order for the film to be frightening; they save their best villains for Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. There’s a lady in a white dress with yellow eyes. That’s it. I had to laugh at the scene when Rafael secures the front door with magic seeds, and seconds later, La Llorona just tries the back door. Then she’s foiled by a standard chain lock. My favorite scene, which is intentionally funny, is when the family pooh-poohs Rafael’s method of checking for the presence of an evil spirit by rolling eggs on various surfaces in the house. (Most ungracious, fucking white people.) Rafael cracks one, and black sludge, followed by steam, comes glopping out. Anna, unimpressed, states, “I saw that on Johnny Carson.” Then three other eggs start vibrating, and they all explode, spraying Anna with goo. “Ta-da,” deadpans Rafael.

I didn’t hate it. Despite my gripes, anything with James Wan‘s influence is apt to be at least watchable. There’s a nice score by official Waniverse composer (and Lipstick Demon) Joseph Bishara. Give it a look if you’re in the mood for something entertaining. Hell, Rafael is worth the price of admission.

‘YellowBrickRoad’ is Disturbing, Engaging, and Creative

1940. Friar, New Hampshire. The entire population, obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, walks off into the woods. Some are found frozen, some are murdered in grisly fashion, but most vanish entirely. A lone survivor is recorded, terrified and nonsensical. Cut to 2008. An intrepid band of explorers set out on a book-writing expedition: writers Teddy (Michael Laurino) and Melissa (Anessa Ramsey), mapmakers Daryl (Clark Freeman) and Erin (Cassidy Freeman), intern Jill (Tara Giordano), forestry expert Cy (Sam Elmore), psychologist Walter (Alex Draper), and local Liv (Laura Heisler). Unfortunately, that neck of the woods is less than friendly to intruders, and soon they’re lost and at each others’ throats.

yel2 — Also, the woods blares old-timey music. Not a joke. It’s creepier than it sounds.

I love a good mystery with my horror, the subgenre “a whole bunch of people disappear without a trace” being one of my faves, and this one doesn’t disappoint. The movie opens quite effectively with audio of the found Friar man, overlaid with eerie black and white photos, and I knew then that, as my notes state, “It’s not crappy!” Neither is it shot found footage style, which it easily could have been. (I prefer objective style.) It does share some plot points with more famous movies, probably the most obvious being the Blair Witch series, but it’s not overly derivative. In fact, it’s quite pleasantly unpredictable. Tension is built up early, and is maintained through to the end. The tone is relentlessly dark, with drab, muted colors. In one scene when Liv produces a bright pink sweater, it’s like the first Technicolor scene in The Wizard of Oz. Supposedly, the cast and crew had nightmares during filming, probably exacerbated by filming on location in the New Hampshire woods.

yel5 — “I can’t get ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’ out of my head!”

Normally I complain when there’s no diversity in a movie, but in cases like these, when the characters doom themselves, I don’t mind as much. The male characters are fairly easy to tell apart; they’re all white, but they have distinctive features, like a beard or an obsession with a dirty old hat. The ladies, however, are a bit harder. Let me help you out. Melissa=short blond hair; Jill=long, ginger-colored hair–she looks like an average woman, size-wise; Liv=New Hampshire accent; Erin=long brown hair.

yel3 — Erin, trying to remember which one she is

If you judge the movie by its cover, it looks like a forgettable, low-budget snooze. (I can’t remember what made me want to watch it, but it was on my list.) But don’t judge it by the cover, or even the synopsis–it’s awesome. I may be slightly biased because it’s written and directed by Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton, the folks who brought us the wonderful We Go On. BUT Holland is also the guy who brought us the undeniably terrible laugh-a-minute-AT-the-movie-not-WITH-the-movie The Crooked Man (2016). If you decide not to watch YellowBrickRoad, why not give We Go On a try–it has John Glover.

‘Three…Extremes’: Quality Stuff

Three short films by acclaimed Asian directors. “Dumplings” by Fruit Chan concerns an aging actress (Miriam Chin Wah Yeung) who finds a disturbing way to look more youthful. Park Chan-wook‘s “Cut” shows a director (Lee Byung-hun) taken hostage in his own home. “Box” by Takashi Miike involves a writer (Kyoko Hasegawa) whose horrible childhood comes back to haunt her.

Of the three…extremes, the one I feel I understand (and like) the least is “Box.” It’s creepy, surreal, and sad. You can read the theme as being that one can’t escape one’s past, but overall I didn’t get much out of it. “Cut” is funny and repulsive at the same time. The characters go comically insane, and there are surreal moments like Stranger recreating all of his scenes from Director’s movies (see below). His motive is very thought-provoking, once he reveals it.

“Dumplings” is the most disturbing of the three to me. Mrs. Li is eating dumplings made with human fetuses. Which is disgusting even in theory, but we’re also treated to shots of her dealer Aunt Mei (Ling Bai) chopping up said fetuses and audio of Mrs. Li slurping them down. As Mei says, “So cute and so nutritious.” The ending is the penultimate gross-out—stick around if you can stomach it.

In all three films, characters seek to control the uncontrollable and take charge of their destinies—to no avail. Kyoko can’t escape her guilt, Stranger can’t change Director’s nature, and Mrs. Li looks about the same, only itchy and smelly to boot. Overall, the film is highly enjoyable. Check it out if you’re in the mood for something creepy, with great performances, direction, and writing.

1982’s ‘The Thing’: Please No More Remakes

John Carpenter‘s reimagining of 1951’s The Thing from Another World. A group of people at the National Science Institute Station in Antarctica are menaced by a shape- shifting alien that can pass itself off as a myriad of seemingly harmless things, from a dog to a fellow colleague. Since the being could rapidly infect the whole world, the crew are hard-pressed to tell who’s been infected and who hasn’t, leading to a hostile atmosphere as they battle aliens and each other.

I’ve seen The Thing twice now, and still find it hard to follow. I have no idea who these people are or why they’re in Antarctica. Also, the cast is comprised mostly of a multitude of white guys; they don’t look alike, but their names aren’t used often and they don’t do much to stand out. If I had to describe the cast, I would say there’s leader Mac (Kurt Russell), badass Childs, my favorite (Keith David), nutcase Blair (Wilford Brimley), and Bald Guy Who Got Shot, Dog Guy, Sassy Cook (T.K. Carter), Sunglasses Guy, and Autopsy Guy. (I find it highly ironic that the cast is all men, since even the 1950s version had a female scientist.) But as gripes go, these are small, and don’t spoil the movie for me.

For 1982, the special effects are great—mostly because they involve explosions and gooey aliens, which aren‘t computer-generated. The blood and guts are quite realistic; thus the movie is often plain disgusting, what with guys’ bodies regularly splitting open and such. There’s even a convincing severed head, which is hard to come by in any time period.

01 thing — Aside from the hair, this is a look any filmmaker can be proud of

A scene when Mac ties up the crew members suspected of being aliens and tests their blood (causing the alien among them to reveal itself in gruesome fashion) made #48 on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments. It’s a fairly effective scene, but for me the most eerie is earlier in the film, when Mac, also accused of being an alien, is threatening to blow up the base because they won’t let him inside; meanwhile, one of the crew is applying a defibrillator to an ailing team member, when…dun dun dun! The tension is focused so much on Mac that the background happenings are truly shocking. (If you do watch the movie, forget I said anything.) While it’s more gory than scary, the film manages to cultivate a creepy sense of paranoia, as nobody can trust each other. Most human-to-alien conversions are off-screen, so we don’t know who’s what either.

thing4 — Okay, this one’s not so realistic

There is very little humor and only a few one-liners for a movie with one foot in the action genre, most notably Mac’s “Fuck you, too!” Its tone is dark, but it manages to keep from being depressing. And thanks to Family Guy and his own lousy commercials, I can’t take Brimley seriously. When he warns, “Watch Clark. And watch him close,” I couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking of “Check your blood sugar. Check it often.” Check it out if you’re in the mood for hostile, slimy aliens—and check it out often.

‘Fragments of Horror’: Junji Ito is a National Treasure (book review)

Junji Ito, to a J-horror fan, is probably best known for the film adaptations of his mangas Tomie, Uzumaki, and Marronnier. I recently discovered the joys of horror manga with a Grudge comic, but Ito’s artwork leaves it in the dust. His illustrations are wondrously eerie, and his stories are both disturbing (in a good way) and highly original. If you’re bored with J-horror movies featuring silent, crawling dames with their hair hanging in their faces (wonderful though they may be), look no further.

Stories include “Dissection-chan,” about a girl obsessed with dissecting and being dissected, “Magami Nanakuse,” an eccentric author with a dark secret, and “Futon,” the story of a man who refuses to leave his bed because of the nightmares in his waking world. It’s hard to pick a favorite of the eight stories. “Tomio—Red Turtleneck” has a lot of flesh-crawling imagery, like a woman putting a cockroach in an open wound. “Blackbird” probably has the creepiest villain, a harpy who force-feeds her victims rotten meat of questionable origin.

Occasionally the dialogue comes across as a bit stilted, like in “Wooden Spirit” when main character Megumi’s father asks whether their prized house is really wonderful after all. She exclaims, “That’s out of the blue! What are you talking about? It’s a tangible cultural asset, and more than that, it’s the house we grew up in.” Also, this is the villain’s typical evil laugh: “Ho ho ho!” There are some occasional WTF moments, like what the heck is going on with Ruriko in “Dissection-chan”? She complains of pain in her stomach, which is attributed to…nothing that makes a whole lotta sense. But overall, the eight stories are solidly written and exquisite. A quick warning: if you’ve never read manga, be prepared to learn to read right to left. Also, this book’s artwork is nowhere near safe for work; don’t make the same mistake I did. Ho ho ho, enjoy!

ito3 — Why yes, that is a woman gleefully banging a house

My Root (essay)

When I am asked why horror movies are appealing to me, I think of the (non-horror) movie But I’m a Cheerleader. It’s about a group of gay teenagers sent to a conversion camp. Part of their “therapy” is wracking their brains to find their root—the trauma that made them gay. Their answers are ridiculous—for example, one reports being a lesbian because her mother got married while wearing pants. I feel similarly subversive for my passion for the horror genre; I must have a root somewhere.

I’ve struggled with writing this piece for over a year, and ultimately I decided the best way to approach it is to blatantly steal my structure from David Sedaris’s essay “12 Moments in the Life of the Artist.” You could call this “12 Moments in the Life of a Horror Fan.”

One: When I was small, I was watching MTV with my mother’s boyfriend. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video was on, and I was freaked out. I was looking out the window, and asked him to tell me when I could look. He told me I could look before the video was over, to purposely scare me. It worked. As I got a little older, my parents would watch Indiana Jones, and I would be horrified but interested when a man’s heart is ripped out. I had gone from afraid to fascinated.

Two: My mother worked a lot when I was a kid, and often my sister Leslie and I were left in the care of our uncle, Earl. It was a relationship I treasured; he was fun and interesting and funny, and I definitely inherited my love of trivia and pop culture from him. He was one of the few stable adults—men in particular—in my life at the time. He introduced us to many things, including our first horror movies. We watched a variety of genres, but I’ll always remember the glorious afternoon he brought over all three Poltergeist movies. I don’t remember being scared—I felt safe.

Three: My oldest sister, Suzy (a half-sister who mainly lived with her own mother), became a bigger part of Leslie’s and my life, and often she would babysit. We had a regular rotation of kids’ movies (one memorable day we watched Fern Gully three times in a row), but we also got curious about the many drawers of VHS tapes containing movies my mother and oldest brother Jeremy had recorded off of HBO. Jeremy was a fan of martial arts movies, and one such was called Ninja III; it involved a woman possessed by the ghost of a ninja taking revenge on the police squad who killed him. We also discovered an ’80s gem called Witchboard, which I still enjoy to this day.

Four: My sisters and I were best friends with our neighbors, also three sisters, named Hope, Jillian, and Amanda. We used to gather together and read from Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. The terrifying stories were accompanied by terrific gory, goopy-looking pictures. We also used to make up our own scary stories, Jillian being the best at this. She could tell an epic scary story that stayed with me. It was disturbing but fun.

Five: Another of our favorite activities was to record ourselves. We made haunted house tapes similar to Halloween sound effects tapes, and we also acted out skits. As teenagers, Hope and I made new recordings, lampooning our earlier efforts to hilarious effect. We also recorded original songs, such as our Poltergeist song. I don’t remember the whole thing, but the chorus went, “You son of a bitch, you only moved the headstones!” And the last line was, “Damn ghost followed me home.” We thought we were so funny. And we totally were.

Six: As our sisters paired off, Suzy with Jillian and Leslie with Amanda, Hope and I, the youngest, were thrust together and became closer friends. We spent less time playing outside and became movie buddies. Hope acquired a copy of The Silence of the Lambs and brought it over. We tried to watch it, but we were so bored that we turned it off before Starling even leaves Quantico. We had a similar experience with The Exorcist, only we fell asleep. Carrie we liked. To this day, we don’t get together often, but we keep each other updated on which horror movies are good and which ones should be stayed away from.

Seven: I’ve been a voracious reader since I learned how. One day Leslie was going to the library, and I asked her to get me some R.L. Stine books. She instead brought me Stephen King’s Christine. What’s a ten-year-old to do? I needed something to read! After getting over the shock of the salty language, I settled in and enjoyed it. And then I devoured everything else he’d ever written. The last time an adult read to me was when I had a migraine and I asked my father to read The Tommyknockers. He was uncomfortable, but complied. Love ya, Dad.

Eight: Our father, who was in and out of our life, used to take Leslie and I and sometimes Suzy to the movies. We generally insisted on horror movies. I remember regaling my mother with the tale of how in Leprechaun II the titular character made a pot of gold fly out of a guy’s stomach. My father has since passed away, but I have fond memories of seeing movies like Wolf with him, and as an adult the re-release of The Exorcist.

Nine: When I was in sixth grade, I was given an assignment to write a story, bind it into a book, and decorate the book. I wrote my first piece of horror fiction, a gory tale of a Howdy Doody style ventriloquist who ate children for some reason. The booklets were meant to be showcased for our parents and read to kids from younger grades. Mine did not make it to the display. I went on to write many more books and even a couple of novels before I hit puberty. They were terrible, but I got a lot of encouragement from Leslie, Suzy, and Hope.

Ten: As teenagers, my sisters, Hope, and Amanda fell in with an older crowd of friends. I often stayed home while they went to the park. While they were drinking wine coolers and trading shirts (somehow Suzy and Hope began a tradition of trading t-shirts every Friday), I was reading Clive Barker and finally appreciating The Silence of the Lambs. I never did try cigarettes or drugs or underage drinking. The Books of Blood and dyeing my hair blue was inflammatory enough for me.*2020 edit: Leslie gave me so much shit about this section of the essay, claiming that I made them sound like hoodlums. I was trying to say that they were normal teens and that I was boring, so there!

Eleven: In college, I had a cool professor who let me write term papers about horror movies as long as she had seen the movie in question. I wrote a paper on the absent presence in The Shining and a psychoanalysis of Carrie. I had another professor, not nearly as liberal, whom I shocked by writing a poem about the link between sex and death in slasher movies.

Twelve: I made the acquaintance of Matt Molgaard, editor of both Addicted to Horror Movies and Horror Novel Reviews. I began receiving praise and attention for my writing that I haven’t seen since college. I have a wise mentor and a direction and reason to write.*2020 edit: Matt has since passed away at a shockingly young age, and we are poorer for having lost him.

I can wax nostalgic about how fun and wonderful those times described were; I can go all Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes about how when I was telling stories with my sisters and friends, the golden, endless summer days seemed infinite and the future was full of anticipation of good times. It’s true, I look back on those times as an integral part of my youth. So my short answer is that my root lies in nostalgia. That and parents who stopped censoring what I read, listened to, and watched at a young age. But I don’t need to explain my love of horror movies. At the end of But I’m a Cheerleader, the main characters learn that time spent with people who don’t love and accept them for who they are is time wasted. Yes, I love horror movies. I’m married to a gaming nerd who tolerates the genre and loves me. I don’t need a root. Sometimes you just like shit.

‘The Tommyknockers’: Hostile Aliens, Corny Gadgets, and Gratuitous Sex Scenes

Bobbi (Marg Helgenberger) is a writer living out in the Maine woods who (literally) stumbles onto a spaceship. Deciding it would be a good idea to dig it up, she and soon the whole town feel the effects of the aliens inside: they “become,” which involves having a ton of energy and being inspired to invent things. Everybody’s blissed out except Bobbi’s boyfriend Gard (Jimmy Smits), who has a metal plate in his head that makes him impervious to the aliens’ influence. It’s up to him to stop his fellow townspeople from “being eaten up”.

tom2 — Who let early ’80s David Bowie in here?

It’s made for TV, so one can expect bad special effects and barely passable acting from a C-list cast. There’s also the occasional bit of cheesy dialogue: “Just because she was your partner’s wife and a damn fine constable besides is no reason not to speak your heart.” In addition, there are continuity errors (which I normally don’t notice, but these are extremely obvious), for example blood disappearing and reappearing on Gard’s face. Also rather silly are Nancy (Traci Lords) and her laser gun (most of the inventions these people cobble together out of batteries make sense, but how does anyone make a weapon from a tube of lipstick?) and a guy getting killed by a soda machine (that’s how I wanna go).

tom1 — No caption necessary–this pic makes fun of itself

I did find a few things to like. It’s not unbearably dated for the early ’90s, though Bobbi has a giant cordless phone and printer paper with perforated sides. Though it’s more sci-fi in style, there’s an eerie scene or two, like Sheriff Ruth’s (Joanna Cassidy) already unsettling dolls that come to life. It’s also entertaining—despite the four-hour running time, I wasn’t sitting there waiting for it to be over.

tom4 — ‘Only a year until NYPD Blue, only a year until NYPD Blue…’

Stephen King has said that The Tommyknockers is an allegory for drug abuse. Critics and fans tend to revile the book for not being up to King’s generally stellar standards (ya know, like the meatballs who eat planes or the sentient grass). The metaphor is firmly in place here; becoming is described as “an incredible high.” The users lose their teeth and become manic with their newfound ideas and drive. Similarly, the transformation is taking an unhealthy toll on their bodies—their masters are gradually killing them.

According to IMDB, James Wan has optioned the rights to remake it. If anyone can make this mess into something cool, it’s him. As for this one, give it a look if you’re in the mood for something silly but occasionally creepy.

‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’: Worth Watching, Even if You’re Not a Fan of the Show

Remakes of episodes of The Twilight Zone, organized into four stories. Segment 1 involves angry, racist white man Bill (Vic Morrow) being suddenly transported back in time, finding himself in the shoes of oppressed members of society. Segment 2 takes place at a rest home, where Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers) shows the elderly residents that a game of Kick the Can will restore them to their childhood—though not without consequences. Segment 3 revisits one of the show’s most famous episodes, with Helen (Kathleen Quinlan) meeting a young boy named Anthony (Jeremy Licht), who manipulates his family with his ability to wish for (and receive) often horrible things. Segment 4, also based on a famous episode, has John (John Lithgow), an airplane passenger deathly afraid of flying, battling with a monster on the wing of the plane.

Fans of the show may be either disappointed or delighted with this film. Segment 3 especially changes a lot of its source material; I feel the changes are interesting, but on the other hand the notion of one child controlling an entire town is scarier than just controlling his family. But I think overall the film, after all made twenty-some years after the show premiered, keeps the spirit of The Twilight Zone, at least in the sense of characters experiencing weird situations with a wacky twist at the end.

twi3 — Look, it’s Kevin McCarthy (far left) and Nancy Cartwright (far right)!

I could do without Segment 2; I enjoy Scatman Crothers, and the child actors playing elderly people suddenly regaining their youth are charming, but the cutesy-poo, lighthearted tone throws off the whole movie, which is darker and somewhat more cynical. Not that the movie is overly scary. There are some eerie moments, like Anthony’s sister being punished by having her mouth removed from her face, but on the whole it’s ironic that the film, made in 1983, tries to modernize the show, but is ridiculously dated and corny itself.

twi6 — There’s altogether too much damn smilin in this segment!

However, what bothers me most about the film is the scene in Segment 4 when John shatters his window with a gun to get at the monster—does airplane glass break that easily? One would think the courts would be inundated by lawsuits of passengers being continually sucked out of airplane windows.

The face of a man who can break airplane glass?

The film can at least boast that it’s written in part by Richard Matheson (Segments 3 and 4), who wrote for the original show, including the episode remade in Segment 4. It’s also directed by masters of the horror genre, including John Landis (Segment 1), Steven Spielberg (Segment 2), and Joe Dante (Segment 3). Maybe it’s adolescent nostalgia talking, but despite my complaints I have a great deal of affection for the movie, from its serious and effective scenes to its goofy cornball parts. Give it a look if you’re in the mood for something campy but creepy.