A Farewell to Arms: EVIL DEAD II

Success within horror or comedy, those two cousinly genres, is highly elusive- for every DR. STRANGELOVE there are a dozen Happy Madison productions, and for every SILENCE OF THE LAMBS there are a dozen Friday the 13th movies.  The great, culturally-resonating successes are instances of catching the figurative lightning in the figurative bottle, a matter of luck as much or more than talent.  Time and time again though, we've seen those that have done it once try to do it twice, and 99.9% of the time, they only end up electrocuted themselves, resulting in a stinking, oozing, unfortunate mess.  The exception that proves the rule comes no more than once in a few decades...

 EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN  (HORROR-COMEDY, 1987) 
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley, Ted Raimi, Denise Bixler, Richard Domeier, John Peaks, Lou Hancock
Rated R for unspecified reasons (strong bloody horror violence and gore throughout).
84 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (very creepy, but mitigated by consistent humor)
GOREmeter: 10/10 (lots and lots of gushing bloody geysers, gory mutilations)
LAUGHmeter: 6/10
OVERALL: 3.5/4 
**Available on Netflix Watch Instant**

When last we saw Ashley "Ash" Williams (Bruce Campbell), he had just seemingly destroyed the Book of the Dead, referred to as the Naturon Demonto, by throwing it in the fireplace and reduced his demonically-possessed friends to fragments of bone, blood and oatmeal.  Stepping out of the cabin at the break of dawn, Ash was then left to an unknown fate as the unseen evil spirits swooped down upon him.  Things get a little confusing when we slip into the sequel though.
Is it a remake?  Is it a sequel?  What the hell is this madness?!  Well, it's mostly a sequel, with a little bit of cheating.  The continuity between the Evil Dead trilogy is not at all clean, partly because Sam Raimi didn't have the rights to THE EVIL DEAD when making the sequel, but mostly because 'screw you'.  At the beginning of EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN, also known as EVIL DEAD II, we get a recap of the original film's events, but to save time and prepare a few adjustments for this film, only Ash and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler, replacing Betsy Baker from the original film) show up at the cabin, but again, after a little bit of romancing of course, the recorded translations of the Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, left by archeologist Professor Knowby (John Peaks), are played, unleashing the evil spirits.  Linda is possessed by the spirits, prompting Ash to chop off her head with a shovel and bury the body.  This revising of THE EVIL DEAD ends when Ash is temporarily possessed by that unseen force that attacked him.  The sun rises, causing the spirits to flee, but Ash can't escape, because the only bridge out is completely destroyed.  Linda isn't completely dead either, and when night falls, her body climbs out of the ground, picks up its loose head and attacks Ash, biting his hand and attacking him with a chainsaw.  After gaining the upper hand, Ash is able to make short, bloody work of Linda's head and body, but his bitten hand has become possessed, attacking him.  Meanwhile, Professor Knowby's daughter, Annie (Sarah Berry), has just come into possession of the lost pages from the Necronomicon and is eager to share them with her father, bringing along her boyfriend, Professor Ed Getley (Richard Domeier).  On the way to the cabin, they discover the wrecked bridge but Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Joe (Kassie DePaiva), a couple of hillbillies, agree to act as their guide on a hidden trail, bringing a few new victims of the evil spirits, known as "Deadites", while Ash is still battling his now very evil hand.

"Give me back my hand!"

I don't watch a lot of horror sequels.  They're almost never worth the time, but Evil Dead is an exception.  EVIL DEAD 2 is the most popular of the trilogy, which follows an odd trajectory, from horror, to horror-comedy, to comedy.  EVIL DEAD 2 lies in the middle, deftly balancing horror and comedy (personally, I like ARMY OF DARKNESS best, but we'll get to that), although admittedly, it might be a little confusing for first time viewers who jump straight into it from THE EVIL DEAD, because of the overlap.  Most people just keep the sequel in their Halloween viewing rotation.
Stephen King, who gave the original film a big hand up by writing an enthusiastic review for the obscure student film, showed up again to give the sequel a pitch to the money-men.  Mr. Eighties Movie Excess himself, Dino De Laurentiis, was producing several King adaptations adaptations at the time (including the infamous killer semi trucks movie MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, also directed by King), and King was all like, "Hey bro, you should give some money to this guy, so that he can make a ridiculously bloody, funny horror movie starring little-known actors, but it'll be awesome."  I'm sure it was something like that.  Anyway, after looking into it, De Laurentiis approved the film for $3.6 million, not much, but still about ten times as much as the original.  Together with a bigger budget and some added experience, EVIL DEAD II is a much more polished production with better makeup and special effects (the fun B-movie practical kind with stop-motion animation, rubber puppets and pre-digital compositing).  Bruce Campbell is also a better actor, more Bruce Campbell-y and has a better haircut.  Taxidermied deer heads and gooseneck lamps laugh maniacally, after it smashes a bunch of plates on his head, Ash cuts off his hand with a chainsaw and fires at it with a shotgun, people die in geysers of blood reminiscent of a blender with a loose lid and fat old crones scream, "I'll swallow your soul!  I'll swallow your soul!"
If that doesn't sell you, then shut your face.

"Let's head on down into that cellar and carve ourselves a witch."

"Don't Let Them in Your Mouth!": SLITHER

The horror and comedy genres are directly related, even though comedy has an edge in terms of wide appeal.  Both typically revolve around absurd misfortunes, characters tend to be a bit more incompetent, but most importantly, the build and payoff of both a joke and a scare use similar techniques to create suspense and relief of tension.  So why not have both?  

SLITHER  (HORROR-COMEDY, 2006) 
Directed by James Gunn
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Tania Saulnier, Matreya Fedor, Don Thompson, Brenda James, Jenna Fischer
Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, and language.
95 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (freaky monster scenes and such, but more funny than scary)
GOREmeter: 9.5/10 (ridiculous, over-the-top gory gross out scenes, mostly comedic)
LAUGHmeter: 7/10
OVERALL: 3.5/4 

Filmmaker James Gunn went mainstream in a big way last summer when his film GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY opened in number-one, then returned three weekends later to take the top spot at the box office four weekends in a row, grossing over $600 million worldwide to date and currently ranks as the #1 movie of the year domestically.  Gunn got started writing films at Troma Entertainment, the independent film company whose name is synonymous with the sort of cheap, self-aware, lurid horror films they make, those being characterized graphic, disgusting violence and bizarre overt sexuality.  For instance, in Gunn's first big gig, TROMEO AND JULIET, which he wrote with director Lloyd Kaufman, Juliet is transformed by the apothecary's potion into cow monster with gigantic male sex organ.  Gunn then moved on to writing the abysmal SCOOBY-DOO and its abysmal sequel, and the Zack Snyder-directed DAWN OF THE DEAD remake.  Gunn moved into directing with his own script SLITHER, a homage/parody of the old-timey B-monster movies with alien invaders, small town politics and gratuitous gory violence, God-willing.
One night in the unsuspecting little town of Wheelsy, South Carolina, a meteorite crashes down unnoticed.  Walking around in the woods, well-to-do businessman Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) discovers the meteorite, which fires a barb into his chest, infecting him with an alien parasite and transforming him into a big, disgusting, carnivorous slug/squid thing that only exists to turn people into either part of a zombified hive mind or huge pregnant stomachs full of slimy baby alien slugs with which to devour all life in the world.  Bad news.  Grant's beautiful wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks), a sweet-natured girl who married for money, is concerned, so she asks for help from police chief Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), her childhood sweetheart who still harbors feelings toward her.  Surrounded by slugs that want to get into his mouth and take over his brain, Chief Pardy has to contain the disease before it spreads out of town, kill his lifelong crush's deformed husband and see how things go from there.

"Something's wrong with me."  "Uh, yeah."

It's hilariously disgusting, from people splitting clean in half lengthwise to an enormously inflated woman ripping apart as thousands of slimy alien slugs explode from her, while none other than Nathan Freakin' Fillion, aka Captain Hammer, aka Captain Malcolm Reynolds, aka Richard Castle (not sure about that one, haven't seen it), aka the big guy that Groot lifted by the nostrils in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, wisecracks his way through the carnage.  Speaking of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY cast connections, Gregg Henry, SLITHER's crass mayor, played Starlord's grandfather in GOG's prologue, and Michael Rooker, as Grant Grant, also played Starlord's blue-skinned, jilted employer, Yondu.
SLITHER is a horror comedy, but more comedy than horror, and your stomach won't know what to do between the rapidly alternating gut-busting and churning.  The film was a box office failure, which is a real shame, because it's probably Gunn's sharpest film (I wasn't a fan of his other cult-classic, SUPER).  It's a great kind of Halloween party movie, with the trappings of a cheap horror movie, but not cheap or particularly scary, very gory and grotesque, but absolutely hilarious.  The plot gets pretty lazy in a few spots, arguably part of the homage to much worse movies, things like aliens transferring their memories to a victim who then explains things to everyone, but even that's kind of funny.  If more people had seen this, everyone would be quoting it.  Heck, this movie's great, just go watch it.

"Martians is from Mars, Jack."  "Or it's a general term meaning 'outer space f***er!'"

The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror: THE EVIL DEAD

Funny thing about horror is, there are exceptionally few cases of a greatness in the genre that comes along by financial resource and professional experience; movies like John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and Tobe Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE come along from young and hungry artists with the freedom to craft their vision with real nerve, but the line between the dreadfully inept PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE or TROLL 2 and the inspired but rough-around-the-edges schlock that makes careers can be surprisingly thin.  Mixing graphic gory mayhem with Three Stooges slapstick can be a step in the right direction though.

THE EVIL DEAD  (HORROR, 1981) 
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Hal Delrich, Betsy Baker, Sarah York
Rated NC-17 for substantial graphic horror violence and gore.
85 minutes
SCAREmeter: 5/10 (fairly scary, but mitigated by overall cheesiness)
GOREmeter: 10/10 (gratuitous though generally unrealistic blood and guts sprayed and splattered with reckless abandon throughout)
LAUGHmeter: 4.5/10
OVERALL: 3/4 

The Part Where I Talk All About THE EVIL DEAD in the Context of British Film Censorship and "Video Nasties"
Conservative social activist Mary Whitehouse called Sam Raimi's ultra-low-budget horror film THE EVIL DEAD "the number one nasty," which is obviously how you know it's amazing.  When Mrs. Whitehouse referred to the film as a "nasty", she was referring to "video nasties", a term she is also attributed with coining.  Back in the early 1980s, when home video technology, ultimately dominated by VHS cassettes of course, was just then becoming widely available and popular, films that had been banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) when seeking theatrical release were then being released on home video, which the BBFC had no jurisdiction over at the time.  The BBFC was and is charged with enacting the UK's obscenity laws by discerning which  media materials (primarily films) are "obscene" and "harmful" to the public, and thus illegal.  Their decisions are not final and may be overturned by local film boards, but it is the BBFC's legal mandate to interpret the laws and apply them to films seeking distribution in the UK.  A "video nasty" was any film considered prosecutable as "obscene" under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and a total of 72 films were identified by the Director of Public Prosecutions Office as "obscene"; these 72 films were the official video nasties, THE EVIL DEAD being amongst them.
The title of Number One Nasty as bestowed by Whitehouse was a little misleading, considering that it would be hard to argue that THE EVIL DEAD was the most graphic or violent or traumatizing on the DPP's list, but it was probably the most popular, or at least, one of the most popular (it's doubtful that many of these films would have been as popular as they became without Whitehouse's moral crusading against them).  Among the small few that are still given much attention, and even then only by film fans, and especially horror aficionados, including CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (particularly notable as an early "found-footage"-style film with extreme violence that led the director to arrested in his home country of Italy, because legal authorities believed it was a "snuff film" showing actual murders, however, after demonstrating the gore effects in court, the film was still banned in many countries for showing actual animal killings), THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and ANDY WARHOL'S FRANKENSTEIN.  The video nasties panic was finally resolved by the Video Recording Act of 1984 passed by Parliament, which authorized the BBFC, re-dubbed the British Board of Film Classification, to interpret and enact obscenity laws, making the film classification system a legal mandate for films to be distributed theatrically or on video with only a small few and very specific exceptions, and unclassified films not excepted by the law were made contraband.
The BBFC was not so sure that THE EVIL DEAD was as bad as Whitehouse made it out to be, considering the highly stylized context of the violence and over-the-top gore blended with comedy.  It had been cut by 49 seconds to play in theaters in 1982, and that was the same version released on video without a classification.  The 49 seconds of cuts involved reducing the "potentially imitable" stabbing of a girl's ankle with a pencil, a lengthy eye-gouging and some more explicit bodily dismemberment.  Due to its since-developed notoriety, the BBFC was forced to apply stricter standards, and to be released on video with an '18' certificate, it was subjected to a total of 1 minute and 55 seconds in 1990.  It wasn't until 2000 that an uncut version of THE EVIL DEAD was passed by the BBFC, which decided the film could no longer be considered taboo.

"It's your sister Cheryl!"

The Part Where I Finally Get to the Film Itself
Sam Raimi was only 20 years old when shooting began on THE EVIL DEAD, which he made with a bunch of friends and associates in rural Tennessee for an unspecified budget estimated at no more than a few hundred thousand dollars which Raimi scrounged together from investors and friends.  His high school friend Bruce Campbell was cast as the leading man, and other cast members had worked previously with Raimi on his similarly-themed short film Within the Woods or responded to an ad that Raimi placed in a newspaper.
It may not have been the first "Cabin in the Woods" horror movie, but it is the definitive one that others try to imitate.  Five Michigan State University students drive into the Tennessee hills to spend spring break in a woodland cabin that they've rented for cheap.  Ashley "Ash" Williams (Campbell), with his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), their friend Scotty (Hal Delrich) and his girlfriend Shelly (Sarah York) all arrive at the cabin and discover the Naturon Demonto, the Sumerian Book of the Dead in the cellar, along with the audio recordings of scholar who had been studying the book at the cabin.  Playing the recording, the scholar recites some of the ancient book's passages which, unbeknownst to them, unleashes evil spirits in the woods.  The first victim is Cheryl, who is physically attacked by demonically-possessed trees in the forest which rape her.  You read that right, a girl is raped by trees.  There is a shocking but mostly sickening humor to this, but it's undoubtedly the big unfortunate misstep of this film made by crass young men, so there you have it.  Not long after this attack, Cheryl appears possessed by the demons herself, which threaten and taunt the others and Cheryl cripples Linda with a pencil to the ankle.  They lock her in the cellar, which she peeks out from, continuing to taunt.  One by one, they fall victim to these demons which, as they learn from the scholar's recordings, can only be stopped by physical dismemberment.  Heads are chopped off with shovels, possessed girlfriends are hacked to pieces with axes, and when they try to leave, the bridge on the only road out of their has been destroyed.
Ash, our strong-jawed hero with a bad haircut is soon the only one left, relentless tormented by the demons, but nothing a little hacking and burning won't cure, even if he'll have to get dirty, as in lots and lots of gory substances spraying him in the face, to get the job done.
In the Evil Dead trilogy, THE EVIL DEAD is the only one that is really a true horror movie, even if it has its humorous touches, which would become more prominent with each subsequent installment.  This humor came to be called "splat-stick", a combination of slapstick comedy and splatter horror.  Although it was a tiny, no-name film, Raimi met with producer Irvin Shapiro, one of the co-founders of the Cannes Film Festival who expressed an interest in distributing it and arranged an out-of-competition screening of it at the 1982 Cannes, where none other than horror author Stephen King, a well-known purveyor of low budget horror.  King loved the film and raved about it to just about anyone who would listen, which rocketed the film into a spotlight rarely afforded such an otherwise obscure film.  The critical attention and word-of-mouth publicity turned the film into a sleeper hit, grossing over $2.5 million, which is nothing to say of it phenomenal success on video release.
It was the first NC-17-rated film I'd ever seen, although I didn't even realize it was rated at the time.  I had assumed it had never been rated when I first saw it some years ago, but that rating, which was issued in 1994, opens some interesting questions about the rating system and violence in film.  It's no secret that the MPAA rating system is inconsistent at best, but don't get a film student going on that topic, because they all think they know something just because they've seen THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, a dreadfully overrated documentary.  The 2013 remake, EVIL DEAD plays it a lot more straight than the original, and while the gore isn't quite as in-your-face as the original, it's far more realistic and disturbing, while it received an R rating (it also had the "tree-rape", which there's just no excuse for a second time, jeez).
THE EVIL DEAD is not a well-produced movie; it looks cheap, feels amateurish and the acting leaves something to be desired to say the least (Hal Delrich as Scotty is probably the lowest point in that regard), but it doesn't just get by on luck alone.  There are glimmers of young talent, diamonds in the rough, and their enthusiasm and ingenuity shine through their inexperience, which gives the movie an affable quality.  Most of the tracking shots depicting an unseen, evil force speeding through the woods, including the famous opening shot, would most likely have been achieved using a Steadicam (a camera stabilizing mount to create smooth, non-shaky footage unaffected by the cameraman's movements, notably used in THE SHINING (1980)) on a big budget studio production, but Raimi's crew settled for a plank of wood to mount the camera on, and with one person carrying each end, sprinted through the swamp.  Other shots that might have been created using a dolly (a large rig on rails used to smoothly capture movement over a space) were made by sliding the camera across a board.  Joel Coen of the Coen brothers (with Ethan Coen, the makers of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and FARGO) was also among the crew of THE EVIL DEAD as the assistant film editor, and would later use some similar innovative techniques on films like BLOOD SIMPLE and RAISING ARIZONA.
It is a schlocky, exploitative horror movie; cheesy, gory, demented and dumb, but when its enjoyable, it isn't quite in the sense that you enjoy a crappy low-budget horror movie because it's not just a crappy horror movie.  It's a dumb movie with sparks of brilliance and aware of its limitations without caring.  It's the ultimate experience in grueling terror, just because, but it would only get better with the sequels.

If chins could kill, right?

"The Apocalypse is Nigh!": THIS IS THE END

THIS IS THE END  (COMEDY-HORROR, 2013) 
Directed by Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen
Starring: James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Rihanna, David Krumholtz, Aziz Ansari, Paul Rudd, Kevin Hart, Channing Tatum, Mindy Kaling, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jason Segel
Rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence.
SCAREmeter: 4/10 (some dark and slightly spooky, but mostly humorous, horror parodies)
GOREmeter: 7.5/10 (many very bloody/gory death scenes in a comedic context, lots of bodily fluids)
LAUGHmeter: 9.5/10
OVERALL: 4/4
 
A low-budget adaptation of the popular Protestant Christian book series Left Behind starring Nicholas Cage was released this weekend, but it hardly seems worthwhile after summer 2013's comedy hit THIS IS THE END, which is the final word on "rapture fiction."  Nah, I get the point; LEFT BEHIND is for the fundamentalists, but THIS IS THE END is for the rest of us rotten bastards.
On the night of actor James Franco's housewarming party, filled with dozens of the hottest Hollywood talents, the Rapture hits, beginning the Biblical Apocalypse as the righteous are taken up into the sky in conduits of blue light, and the Hollywood Hills burst into flames, while fiery chasms open up in the Earth taking down Michael Cera, Rihanna, Aziz Ansari, Paul Rudd and other popular entertainers to burn in the fires of Hell.  A group of survivors, Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill hole up in Franco's fortress-like mansion, but soon discover they have an unexpected guest, Danny McBride, who everyone hates and crashed the party.  Tensions frequently threaten to explode as Seth and Jay struggle to salvage their friendship threatened by Seth's new L.A. life and Jay's old Canadian life, Jonah hides behind a facade of psychotic friendliness, Craig and Jay try to follow the teaching of the Bible to get raptured and Danny pisses everyone off.  Emma Watson even shows up for a moment, but ends up stealing their food storage.
THIS IS THE END is incredibly, achingly funny, but also a great Halloween-time movie, with many homages to classic horror movies like ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST, some surprisingly tense demon monster attacks and an awful lot of gore.  The extreme slapstick violence of this movie is right up my alley, like when the guys freak out at a severed head, kicking it at each other and Jonah tries to respectfully pick up the head, then panics when an excessive amount of blood gushes out the neck.  This movie has a lot of twisted humor, which is probably the only really big reservation in recommending it; it is not shy about taking its often-gross (violent, scatological and/or sexual) gags all the way, sometimes just past the point that it gets too sick, just before shifting gears into something else.  It's not a significant detriment to the film, but may very well be a turn-off for some sensibilities. It's so funny though.
A-listers (and B-listers, they acknowledge their differing levels of fame) play ridiculous versions of themselves, in the process taking notice of some of their worse movies ("Let's not make a YOUR HIGHNESS 2") and the funny excesses of celebrity life, and then seeing that all play out under the pressures of the Apocalypse- it's like a dream come true.

Jay Baruchel (left) and Seth Rogen (right) have an encounter with Satan in THIS IS THE END.

"Signing Off...": GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS  (HORROR, 2011) 
Directed by The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz)
Starring: Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Merwin Mondesir, Mackenzie Gray, Juan Riedinger, Arthur Corber, Bob Rathie, Ben Wilkinson
Not Rated (contains R-level pervasive language and intense terror/violence).
SCAREmeter: 7.5/10 (very frightening, disturbing)
GOREmeter: 6.5/10 (some brief, gruesome, bloody supernatural and surgical images)
LAUGHmeter: 3.5/10
OVERALL: 2.5/4 
Available on Netfilx Streaming

I loathe "paranormal reality shows," such as Ghosthunters or Destination Truth.  I just plain despise them.  I can barely stomach reality television as it is (they're supposed to be "unscripted," but somehow their plots are more contrived and trite than the average church video), but then you mix in "paranormal investigator" hacks and false scares in a lurid combination, and it's a media travesty.  So I got a few light laughs out of the early scenes in the 2011 cult independent horror film GRAVE ENCOUNTERS, as the cast of one such paranormal investigation crack up off camera at their dramatic "in-character" antics.  Ironically, the movie occasionally succumbs to a similar approach, but most of the time, it's a fun haunted hospital chiller.
Presented as "found footage," the raw footage (edited for time) of the unfinished last episode of a short-lived series called Grave Encounters, in which a crew led by host Lance Preston (played by Sean Rogerson), along with "occult specialist" Sasha Parker (played by Ashleigh Gryzko), "medium" Houston Grey (Mackenzie Gray) and a sound and camera crew.  For their ill-fated six episode, Grave Encounters goes to the Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where Dr. Arthur Friedkin secretly performed experimental surgery on thousands of patients before the hospital was closed in 1965, and is now reputed to be haunted by former patients and hospital staff.
Like these things tend go, it starts off uneventful, as the characters attempt to spend a single night locked in the hospital, but gradually, the spooks start to present themselves, and by then, it's too late to leave.
I'm not partial to horror as a genre; it's fine, and a great horror movie is as great as any other great movie, but like comedy, there's a distinctly lower success rate for horror movies than say, drama or action, because it's a trickier atmosphere and pacing and relies more on the particular audiences' experience.  But there are types of horror movies that I'm more likely to be entertained by, even if it isn't particularly smart or creative, and GRAVE ENCOUNTERS falls into that category.  I get a kick out of atmospheric horror movies, especially haunted houses and similar ilk, with morbid tropes and ghosts.  Basically, I enjoy a scary movie that translates the traditional haunted house ride to the screen.  It's not like that's the only kind of horror movie that I like, but a lesser movie playing by those rules gets an advantage with me.
GRAVE ENCOUNTERS is occasionally corny.  I do not like the "found-footage" technique, especially as the characters start having to justify why they're still filming the onscreen horrors ("We gotta document this," and "People are gonna want to see this,").  The characters aren't terribly likeable to begin with, but similarly to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, as tensions rise and the characters start acting more stressed and on edge, I tend to hate them.  But when people wake up from a nap to find hospital I.D. wristbands with their names and information strapped on without explanation, I love it.  When the ghosts of suicide victims explode from within a bathtub of blood-red water and drag unsuspecting victims back with them into oblivion, I love it.  When ghostly doctors strap the living down to the operating table and perform a lobotomy, I'm having a hell of a time.

"We're Honoring Murderers": THE FOG

Even when people wish to put aside the wrongs of the past, we are all too eager to revere the progenitors of our communities and our creeds within a sanitized history.  As Americans, we love to be the country that fought to free the slaves for instance, but we don't like to be the country where so much was built on the backs of slaves.  We also like the First Thanksgiving and the taming of the West, but turn a blind eye to the King Philip's War and Trail of Tears.  Don't believe it?  You might consider checking out conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza's disturbingly backward documentary from this past summer, AMERICA: IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT HER, which received rave reviews from its Tea Party-based audiences.  Turning toward the darker side of our history can be a little, or even a lot, scary, and maybe we can't change what's been done, but we can try to fix what remains broken in our own time.  In hoping that the dark secrets of our past remain buried in the grave, you can be sure that they won't.

THE FOG  (HORROR/THRILLER, 1980) 
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, John Houseman, Tom Atkins, James Canning, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Loomis, Ty Mitchell, Hal Holbrook
Rated R for unspecified reasons (PG-13-level; intense thematic material involving terror/violence, and some disturbing images).
89 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (good old-fashioned chills)
GOREmeter: 4.5/10 (a maggoty face, drowned bodies, people killed violently but bloodlessly, nothing explicit)
LAUGHmeter: 4/10
OVERALL: 3.5/4 

The moment that the clock strikes midnight on April 21st, 1980, marking the 100th anniversary of the little coastal township of Antonio Bay, California, the supernatural is afoot.  Clocks shatter, objects move as if by themselves, car alarms blare without apparent reason.  In the town church where Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) preaches, a chunk of the wall breaks away, revealing the hidden diary of his grandfather, one of the town's six founders, and within, he discovers a dark secret.  At midnight, exactly 100 years ago, the six founders met and conspired to send a ship full of wealthy lepers, seeking to establish a colony a mile down the coast, to a watery grave and claim their gold, which they used to found Antonio Bay and build the church.  As a thick, luminescent fog rolls in, Father Malone, local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), hitchhiking drifter Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis), her momentary ride Nick Castle (Tom Atkins), centennial celebration organizer Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis' real-life mother) and the rest of the townsfolk will struggle to make it through the 24 hours of the town's centennial, and shadowy, bandaged figures wielding rusty weapons are approaching in the fog because "6 Must Die".
THE FOG was considered a let-down from John Carpenter's just-previous HALLOWEEN, a bona fide landmark of the horror genre, and Carpenter was himself displeased with the film.  It had a troubled production, and after cobbling together the initial footage, Carpenter realized he had to go back to do extensive re-shoots.  Reportedly, about a third of the finished film is from the re-shoots, which were intended to make the film easier to understand and to make the film edgier.  When the film was released in 1980, the horror genre was about to break out into its goriest era, 1980s body horror, and gore-wise, THE FOG is extremely tame.  While some of the footage from re-shoots was intended to make the film gorier, I'm not convinced that it couldn't get a PG-13 rating today; in fact, I'm pretty sure that THE FOG is pretty well within a PG-13 rating.  A guy is run through with a sword, someone is stabbed in the neck with a hook, and very briefly, a body with the eyes gouged out appears, but never with any blood at all, which is almost always the clincher between an R and a PG-13.
THE FOG may not be as fierce or as tightly-structured as HALLOWEEN or THE THING, but it's full of top-notch spookhouse scares, unpretentious and fun.  It's chock-full of references to other movies too; Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred in HALLOWEEN and had been cast partially thanks to her connection to a star of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, Curtis' mother Janet Leigh, and in THE FOG, they both have supporting roles.  The character of Nick Castle, played by Tom Atkins, is named for the actor who played the adult Michael Myers, credited as "The Shape", in HALLOWEEN, before he went on to direct THE LAST STARFIGHTER and a bunch of crappy family comedies in the 1990s.  The local weatherman Dan O'Bannon, a schmuck played by Charles Cyphers, is named after Carpenter's film school friend who he collaborated with on the low-budget sci-fi comedy DARK STAR.  Carpenter and O'Bannon had a bitter falling out and O'Bannon went on to write ALIEN.  In THE FOG, O'Bannon is killed by an iron hook to the throat.
Even while THE FOG is a light horror film, more about spooky fun than wet-your-pants terror, there is a worthwhile subtext in the story of a community celebrating their heritage, a heritage created by murderers and thieves.  Carpenter, an unabashed liberal, may have been partially inspired by the bicentennial of the United States which preceded the film by four years, as well as the well-publicized Wounded Knee Incident of 1973 and other events of American Indian Movement in the early 70s.  While the corpses of the disenfranchised, the indigenous tribes that were ultimately forced from their land or, in some cases, wiped from existence, won't rise from the grave and claim vengeance on the living, the crimes of the past should not be left to stand, and when we look back on our heritage, we would do well to remember what out heritage is and learn from the lessons of the past.

"A House That Was Born Bad": THE HAUNTING

 It's that time of year again!  Halloween may not be my favorite holiday (not sure what is, I don't really care that much), but no holiday has such strong ties to movies.  There is a whole genre of movies integral to Halloween ritual: horror movies.  More far-reaching than that is "scary movies" which can range from horrors and thrillers (sometimes there's barely a discernible difference between those two) to sci-fi and adventure movies.  There's also a great many family movies applicable to this season, mildly spooky comedies that all ages can enjoy together.  It's a good thing too that Halloween doesn't come until the final day of October, because even a whole month is hardly enough time to get through all the worthwhile Halloween movies, but hey, it's enough time to get through a good-sized chunk.  Throughout the month of October, I'll be writing about some of the movies I'm watching (maybe a couple that I didn't watch this year, but still have some things to say), most them I think good, some of them great, a smaller few less-than-good, and I'll try to cover a wide range of films to cater to every taste.  Are you ready?  Then come along on a journey into dark, beginning with the film that many of today's filmmakers erroneously cite as the "scariest film ever made," a haunted house movie that played no small part in inspiring Disneyland's The Haunted Mansion and featured one of the earliest examples of a positive portrayal of LGBT characters- Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING!

THE HAUNTING  (HORROR/MYSTERY-THRILLER, 1963) 
Directed by Robert Wise
Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Fay Compton, Rosalie Crutchley, Lois Maxwell, Valentine Dyall, Diane Clare, Ronald Adam
Rated G (strong PG or PG-13 level; thematic material involving frightening moments and scary images).
112 minutes
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10 (scarier than the average "old" movie)
GOREmeter: 2/10 (only a couple brief morbid images; a hanging)
LAUGHmeter: 2/10
OVERALL: 3/4 

THE HAUNTING is undoubtedly one of the most highly-regarded haunted house movies ever, alongside Stanley Kubrick's more widely-seen THE SHINING.  Martin Scorcese, the cineaste director of GOODFELLAS and THE DEPARTED (in the horror genre, he's made CAPE FEAR and SHUTTER ISLAND), declared it the scariest horror film ever made, and it's also been hailed by horror author Stephen King and film mogul Steven Spielberg as one of the scariest films ever made.
Myself, I wasn't so aware of its reputation when I first saw it- what drew me to check it out was actually a loose connection that the film had to Disneyland, one of my other major interests.
It's based on a novel called The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, about a house that was "born bad".  With a 90-year history of terrors, Hill House mansion has remained uninhabited for some time; as the mansion's owner, Mrs. Sanderson (Fay Compton), states, "The dead are not quiet in Hill House."  The eccentric Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), interested in investigating paranormal activity, recruits people to spend some time in the house with him.  In hopes of perhaps provoking the spirits of the house, Markway's experiment includes Eleanor "Nell" Lance (Julie Harris), a homely and unstable woman who feels guilty for the recent death of her invalid mother, to whom she acted as caretaker, and Theodora "Theo", a bohemian lesbian woman with psychic abilities.  Also in the mix is Mrs. Sanderson's skeptical nephew Luke (Russ Tamblyn), who stands to inherit the mansion.  The disturbances of Hill House are not long coming, causing havoc on the very first night as mysterious pounding is heard by some of the inhabitants, but not others, and the ghosts appear to favor Eleanor, in particular, to make a permanent resident.
THE HAUNTING is much more finessed in its scare tactics and execution than you'd expect from a film of that era, but declarations that it's one of the best or one of the scariest horror films are hardly deserved.  What constantly keeps it at a distance for me is Julie Harris as Eleanor, a character who is simply too contemptible, too whiny, too dull, and yet we have to deal with her the most of all the characters.  She's never sure, never smart and never likable.  The most interesting performance in the film is Claire Bloom as Theo, a rare and positive portrayal of an LGBT character for the time and the only character who seems to have a handle on what's going on and with a sense of human decency (which Markway lacks).  Being released during the Production Code era, prior to the introduction of the MPAA film ratings system in 1968, it can never be made explicitly clear that Theo is lesbian, but there's little question to it anyway, based on her interactions with other characters and a few lines of dialogue.  In any case, the filmmakers have been explicit about their intentions in interviews.
Now for that Disneyland connection: it's pretty obvious for anyone familiar with Disney's The Haunted Mansion when watching THE HAUNTING, Disney Imagineers borrowed some of their inspiration from Robert Wise's film.  THE HAUNTING is actually a fairly minor influence of The Haunted Mansion, which opened to the public six years after the film was released and which also borrowed ideas from the famous Winchester Mystery House, among other things.  The most obvious parallel between THE HAUNTING and The Haunted Mansion is the "Breathing Door", an effect featured in the attraction in the "Corridor of Doors" and what is probably the film's most famous moment, where something causes a wooden door to bulge outwardly, like a breathing chest, inflating and deflating.  Also, the interior decorating of Hill House is in a chaotic Rococo style with clashing patterns, tasseled drapes and excessive ornamentation similar to the hallways and rooms of the Haunted Mansion prior to the Graveyard finale scene.