Mr. Sandman, he's home again!

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Halloween" has its firm place in the horror genre, a classic shocker that moved with the slow, creepy pace of menacing, inevitable evil. "Halloween II" is nowhere in the same league as the original, but it also has an unstoppable, menacing sense of movement - the killer moves slow and the victims are doubly scared by the menace.

"Halloween II" differs from most sequels in that it is a direct continuation of the original. The original "Halloween" ended on the night of October 31st and this sequel continues on that very same night. The wounded Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to a hospital while Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is obsessed with tracking down this inhuman killer, known in the credits as The Shape aka Michael Myers. "I shot him six times, and he got up and walked away," admits the good doctor.

The Halloween of this town has all the hallmarks of a bloody evening waiting to happen. There are kids dressing up in Michael Myers masks, lustful doctors, kids biting into razor-sharp apples, irate dogs, and a largely nonexistent hospital staff caring for the weak Laurie who mostly sleeps and has nightmares. Laurie is taunted by Michael Myers (who may be her brother!) and teased by a lovestruck ambulance driver (Lance Guest). During this very long night, each member of the short hospital staff is murdered by Michael Myers in particularly gruesome ways, while the nearly blind Laurie manages to escape from one room to the other with a limp. And where is Loomis in all this? He is facing a court-martial back at the institution. Towards the end of the film, he finally pulls a gun on a state trooper when he realizes Michael is related to Laurie.

Directed by Rick Rosenthal, "Halloween II" continues the same sense of dread and menace that the original had but the gore is accentuated making the goings-on less suspenseful than they should have been. I could have lived without seeing a syringe inserted in a woman's eyeball, or a half-naked woman scalded to death. There is also a character who slips on a puddle of blood! These are not necessities. These are merely distractions considering we don't learn much about said victims. Another problem is the screenplay, which gives motivation to the snail-paced killer Michael Myers by telling us that Laurie's sibling status is the sole reason why he came back to Haddonfield! Sometimes not knowing a murderer's motives is more frightening than knowing. On the other hand, future sequels tied his background to the Druids! John Carpenter has been on record saying he had no intention to write a sequel but he and producer Debra Hill did not receive much money from the first film's grosses, hence the sole reason for the sequel.

If nothing else, "Halloween II" is a guilty pleasure because the ending works so well, and Curtis is believably sympathetic as Laurie (despite an obvious wig). She continues to be endlessly pursued by Michael - she hides but he finds her. Eventually, Loomis and Laurie battle Michael to a fiery, suspenseful finale. I also liked Dr. Loomis's scenes of trying to explain the inhuman quality of his escaped mental patient. The music still works, this time re-recorded with synthesizer sounds. The film ends with an overcast morning day while "Mr. Sandman" plays on the soundtrack - a reminder that the nightmare is over. It is the opening scenes and the closing climax that come close to Carpenter's original (who reportedly tweaked scenes due to Rosenthal's inexperience in crafting menace), evoking a real sense of terror. "Halloween II" is worthwhile if you can live through the distractions.

John Carpenter's evil has escaped!

HALLOWEEN (1978)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Just as the original "Psycho" sired the slasher genre, John Carpenter's "Halloween" solidified the genre that became more shockly gore for your buck than genuine scares. Amazing that so few directors followed Carpenter's model - atmosphere to spare and a chilling sense of doom that none of the sequels or "Friday the 13th" films ever came close to capture. "Halloween" is a superb scare show - a triumphant exercise in style that dictates its substance.

"Halloween" begins with a young kid walking around the outside of his house, looking for his sister. He grabs a mask and a kitchen knife, approaches his sister's bedroom by walking up the stairs and finally stabs her. All this time, Carpenter shows us what this kid does from his point-of-view - a very subjective stance that comes from Hitchcock and, of course, the notorious "Peeping Tom," which showed the killer filming his subjects as he killed them. The kid is Michael Myers, who is admitted to a mental institution. Nearly a decade later, Michael is still in an institution, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance), is checking on him obsessively, aware that he is pure evil. During a rainy night, Michael escapes and drives away and now Loomis is in hot pursuit of someone he calls "inhumanly patient."

The story then shifts to October 31st, the celebrated day of Halloween, at the calm, homely town of Haddonfield, Illinois. We see a teenage woman named Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) walking to school with a young kid who believes in bogeymen. They make plans for the evening since Laurie will be babysitting him (the title of the film was originally "The Babysitter Murders."). Then we meet some of Laurie's friends, who are actively dating and dreaming of sexual escapades yet Laurie is the lonely, straight girl of the trio. There is the brunette-haired Annie (Nancy Kyes), whose father (Leigh Brackett) is a local cop, and Lynda (P.J. Soles), the ditzy blonde who ends every sentence with the word "totally." They all make plans for the evening since Annie and Laurie are babysitting, and Lynda wants to bring her boyfriend over at one house. And in this town, terror awaits - Michael Myers is paying a visit to wreak havoc.

"Halloween" is almost monochromatic in its look - the scenes during the day are overcast and the nights are truly dark where silhouettes and shadows exist - perfect time for Michael to attack (in one scene, Michael kills a dog and we hear it whimper offscreen). Carpenter uses the hand-held camera effectively to build the tension by choosing to follow the subjective nature of its characters. Examples of such moments are when Annie hears noises outside her house as she prepares to do laundry; the car that comes to a screeching halt when Annie shouts, "Speed kills"; the discovery of the dead bodies by Laurie, and so on. Subjectivity is especially well-handled when Laurie walks across the street to the house where Lynda and Annie are supposedly and this scene, accompanied by Carpenter's famously eerie electronic score, is a hark back to Vera Miles' similar walk to the Bates House in "Psycho."

What is particularly arresting about "Halloween" is that the characters are not killed immediately - Carpenter lets us observe these teenagers and who they are. The long takes of Laurie, Annie and Lynda walking home from school show us the daily activities and thoughts of teenage girls, oblivious to the unseen terror about to take place. Laurie is not as oblivious, and conveniently sees Michael Myers hiding in bushes, driving by, or standing by his car while she looks from behind windows. The suspense builds with a real pulse eschewing any of the gore or blood that would have diminished its overall power. Those tree-lined avenues of Middle America hide something inexplicable and without emotion, and all Laurie can do is run and cry when she finds that this killer is after her (in a way, Laurie's escape from an unstoppable killer led the way to Linda Hamilton's escape from the unstoppable Schwarzenegger in "The Terminator") There's a terrifying moment where Laurie begs for help from a neighbor, and the neighbor observes and closes her shades, thinking it is a Halloween prank. "Oh, my God! Help," shouts the helpless Laurie.

There is a strain of Catholicism in "Halloween" emanating from its semi-Production Code morals (though the Production Code was eliminated back in the late 50's). The idea is that any teenager girl or boy who has sex or lustful thoughts is killed by Michael Myers. Laurie is the only survivor because she is still a virgin, though she may have lustful thoughts about a guy in her class. "So. You do think about things like that, don't you Laurie," says Annie at one point. The only thing Laurie does that may make her a member of this triad is that she smokes marijuana, yet has more interest in chemistry and studying than any of her friends do. Since this premarital sex-is-a-sin complex began in "Halloween," it became a mode for all rip-offs to follow. You have sex, and you will die, as indicated in the post-modern "Scream." Carpenter has denied this, stating that Laurie is simply more aware of her surroundings than her friends are. I'll go with Carpenter's explanation.

Back in 1978, "Halloween" was made for a low-budget and went on to gross millions of dollars making it the biggest independent film ever (initial reviewers panned it until someone from the Village Voice spoke highly of it). It is a superb motion picture, reveling in its atmospheric, nocturnal pull guaranteed to give you some major shivers. Precisely, what makes this horror film so central to the genre is acknowledging that it is what you don't see that can kill you in the dark.

The real walking dead

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When I first saw "Dawn of the Dead," back in 1986, I found it to be a huge disappointment. I loved the original "Night of the Living Dead," and "Dawn" was like a gory second cousin in living color. Remember that I was a teenager at the time and was a big fan of Freddy Krueger (still am). But having watched "Dawn of the Dead" since, I was amazed at how much I missed. "Dawn of the Dead" is a comic horror film, full of satirical touches and director George Romero's own fiery theme of man's inhumanity to man and dead men.

The film does begin rather unevenly. The setting is a TV station (the only one presumably on the air) where the host is arguing back and forth with his guest over the zombies - they are everywhere and are turning the nation into zombies. How can we stop them? Can we study them, perhaps to find what drives the urge to eat humans? The scene is a study in chaos and paranoia, as we also hear the rumblings from the TV crew watching the host and the guest argue vehemently. To make matters worse, the military is in the building (or so I thought - the editing is haphazard but maybe that is the point), and they are busily wiping out every zombie by shooting them in the head. Eventually, after witnessing ten minutes of quick shootings and the rumblings of a priest with a wooden leg, four survivors take off in a helicopter and land on the roof of a shopping mall. All is fine and dandy until they realize that the entire mall is flooded with zombies! So how do you manage to take whatever you want from a mall while fending off zombies who are fascinated by elevators and do a lot of window shopping?

"Dawn of the Dead" has several moments of gore delicately crossed with brazen black humor. The film is a satire of consumerism, and what better place to consume and shop than a shopping mall? The zombies are drawn to this place because they feel they have been there before (and they like to consume as well), and I only wish that director George Romero pursued this idea further. If a zombie can recollect a specific memory by being in a familiar setting, can they think? If so, what channels it? And if they can think, can they see that maybe human flesh is not something to consume? Well, I just posed some existential questions here which Romero may not have thought of, but they went through my mind while watching this film. Most fans of the film will say that this a graphic geek show, designed to entertain and scare the bejesus out of you. It is that, and Romero has successfully managed to do so. But the setting of the film brings other questions to mind, considering this is not a nonstop avalanche of gore. The human survivors of the film stay at the mall for a long period of time, enough time to convert the dressing rooms into bedrooms. They even have a living room and a kitchen - it all looks like an advertisement for "Good Housekeeping." The dawn of America, Romero seems to say, is that the survivors of the Apocalypse will focus on living the good life of rich foods, TV, clothes, and all in great quantities, of course. Oh, and it helps to be armed and ready. The zombies are merely interested in consuming human flesh.

"Dawn of the Dead" is often brilliantly unnerving, fitfully gory and offhandedly scary, using a perfectly bland setting where you would never expect zombies to scour the regions of something so sacred to the American consumer. The ending goes on a bit too long (particularly after seeing Tom Savini, the king of gory makeup, as a motorcycle rebel), and the characters never truly come alive beyond being caricatures with glints of humanity. I must add that you still care enough about them to hope they make it out of the mall alive. "Dawn of the Dead" has a purpose and it fulfills it to a tee - to scare you and to gross you out. It does those things as well as any director could, but it is clear that George Romero has much more on his mind.

Baby Chucky, how cute

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

  
Years ago I argued briefly with a friend of mine that the "Lethal Weapon" films got 
progressively worse after number 2 and became comedies. My friend felt that the 
third entry was the best because of the humor. So it goes with sequels. The 
original "Child's Play" was a first-rate thriller about a killer doll with the 
mind of a psychopath (though "Trilogy of Terror" has the scariest doll ever 
seen). Then came "Child's Play 2" and "3" and they were as bad as sequels get. 
Director Ronny Yu injected new life into the series with "Bride of Chucky," 
which came on the heels of the "Scream" postmodernist horror trend. "Bride of 
Chucky" was more funny than scary but it was at least entertaining. "Seed of 
Chucky" is an aberration and an abomination, a movie so awful that I was more 
sickened by it than anything else. I am no prude and I enjoy horror films. 
Horror movie parodies is another matter but "Seed of Chucky" is wildly uneven 
with its mix of blood splatter and bad Hollywood puns that went out of style 
shortly after Robert Altman's "The Player" in 1992.

Consider what I thought this movie was going to be. I thought Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) and his bride, Tiffany (voiced by Jennifer Tilly), were going to have a baby (ick!) and discover that the baby was far more murderous and psychotic than they were (at least the teaser trailer seemed to hint that). But the movie begins with a sexually ambiguous doll (voiced by Billy Boyd, yes, from "Lord of the Rings") that runs away in E.T. style from an abusive ventriloquist. The Doll With No Name is looking for his parents and discovers they are Chucky and Tiffany, who are being used as props for a movie called "Chucky Goes Psycho." So the doll brings Chucky and Tiffany back to life thanks to an amulet. Oh, and for students of postmodernist horror, Jennifer Tilly plays herself and Tiffany, and there are precious few digs at Hollywood and at Tilly herself. Then we have rapper Redman as a film director making a movie about the Virgin Mary (a rap song about the Virgin would've been funnier) yet he prefers to cast Julia Roberts over Tilly (once again, the Julia phenomenon was more effectively used in "The Player").

Yes, "Seed of Chucky" has the requisite blood and gore. There's also a Britney Spears look-alike and John Waters as a determined paparazzi. But the movie is not even gruesome fun and stalls at truly mocking Jennifer Tilly and the Hollywood game. What I found were homages to Ed Wood and Brian De Palma, glorified gore, truly lame jokes and in-jokes, and a sickening feeling that the Chucky franchise is far from over.

Chucky gets Tilly

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Bride of Chucky" is another one of those guilty pleasures - you know, a movie that you're ashamed for having liked because everyone else hates it. This 1998 sequel is campy, dumb, unscary, but always teeming with a tongue-in-cheek attitude that is refreshing to watch back in the days of late 1990's "Scream"-like homogenized horror movies.

This time, Chucky (voiced by the ever-reliable Brad Dourif) is assembled out of broken doll parts by his girlfriend Meg (the big-breasted Jennifer Tilly). She reads a book called "Voodoo for Dummies" and presto, Chucky is back with several scars running through his once cute Good Guys Doll appearance. No matter, he's back in business and kills Meg and then transfers her spirit into a female doll named Tiffany! Why? I wish I knew, but this isn't the kind of movie that thrives on logic.

The plot has to do with two teenagers in love who run away to Niagara Falls to get married for two reasons - to escape the girl's domineering father (John Ritter), the Chief of Police of a small town; and because her beau is about to collect a reward at a New Jersey cemetery (!) by bringing two dolls courtesy of Meg. Guess who the two dolls are? Oh, and guess who the girl is? A younger Katherine Heigl, back when she was willing to take a role that did not advance the state of dumb teenage girls in movies (oh, how I'd like to kick her for her comments post-"Knocked Up").

"Bride of Chucky" is certainly original and miles ahead of the last two Chucky fests, which helped destroy the horror genre before "Scream" came along. This is due partly to series creator and writer Don Mancini, who brings a level of wit and satire to the proceedings. The dialogue is chock full of references to "Natural Born Killers," Martha Stewart, "Boogie Nights," "Bride of Frankenstein," and several infamous horror icons.

The performances are crude but always riotous, including scene-stealing Jennifer Tilly and her whiny voice that carries the day, and a Marilyn Manson look alike that is hilariously played by Alexis Arquette. Brad Dourif's high-pitched laugh and various asides redeem what could have been schlocky junk. The teenagers are throwaway roles that could have been slipped in by any number of anonymous teenage actors from the "Dawson's Creek" variety.

"Bride of Chucky" is campy, outrageous fun that keeps moving at a fast clip (thanks to solid direction by Ronny Yu) and was part of the string of postmodernist takes on horror movies. It's not real horror but it will do as a worthy follow-up in the Chucky series.

Hi, I am Chucky, want to play?

CHILD'S PLAY (1988)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(originally viewed in 1988, not reviewed till 1998, hence all the postmodernist horror comments)

Let's begin by saying that I am heartily sick and tired of post-modern, cleverly designed horror/slasher flicks which try to comment on the whole slasher genre, only to end up becoming what it is that they are pretending to satirize. The year 1998 had the following in store: "Urban Legend," "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," "Halloween H20," and "Bride of Chucky." The latter has the same degree of self-awareness, considering there's one shot of someone watching a clip from "The Bride of Frankenstein."

"Child's Play" is one of the better horror films that was released around the time of "Halloween 4" and "Monkey Shines." It unfolds at a quick pace with some tense, scary scenes. No one really needs a description of what this film's story is about - a killer practices some voodoo magic and his soul enters the Chucky doll (a toy every kid desires). The best scene is when the mother (Catherine Hicks) picks up the package that the doll came in, and the batteries fall on the floor! Oops! How can the doll speak without batteries? When she threatens to throw the doll into the fireplace, the doll's face contorts into the angry, evil Charles and emits some Exorcist-like obscenities: "You filthy slut!", and so on, and so forth.

"Child's Play," however, has some unbelievable moments that hinder the tension towards the end. For example, the suave cop (Chris Sarandon) who shot Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) disbelieves the kids stories about the doll speaking and giving orders, and he disbelieves the mother after she's obviously been attacked (she's bitten on the arm). Then the cop is attacked by Chucky and, curiously, when he sees the kids' mother afterwards, he doesn't even tell her that he was attacked! Why not? That's hard to swallow, and it is unlikely that such a doll would travel through the cold city of Chicago unnoticed, but that's a trivial complaint. The ending, as effective as it is, is a cross between "Terminator" and "Halloween" where the killer just keeps rising back from supposed death. They could have easily blown the doll to kingdom come, so you can see why it was stupid to make two inferior sequels about the same damn Chucky doll.

"Child's Play" is done the old-fashioned way (even for an 80's horror movie) by not including a high body count or any needless gore - the movie builds its suspense with thrills and chills thanks to the able hand of director Tom Holland (who helmed one of my favorite upbeat horror comedies, the original "Fright Night"). The performances are decent (including Alex Vincent who appeared in the next two installments) and, most importantly, we care about the characters' plight. Although it doesn't come close to the unrelenting terror of the voodoo doll episode in "Trilogy of Terror," "Child's Play" is still better than most recent horror slasher flicks. Oh yeah, and there are no clever post-modernist jokes.

1970 predates Evil Dead by several equinoxes

EQUINOX (1970)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What happens when you have a film where two young couples run around a half-mile of desert and bush only to enter a cave and then exit it? "Equinox," that is what happens. What about a smiling old man who laughs like Woody Woodpecker inside a cave and hands a magic book with strange symbols to one guy? "Equinox," that is what happens. What about a park ranger who turns out to be the king of demons, known as Asmodeus, who is mad that the magic (and very dusty) book is in their hands? "Equinox," that is what happens. What happens when you have a pair of Ray Harryhausen stop-motion effects including a giant ape-like creature with hooves? "Equinox," that is what happens.

The movie begins with an institutionalized young man, Dave (Edward Connell), who survived the attack with demons. He tells his story in flashback to a curious reporter. In the flashback (which is the whole film), Dave is looking for a geologist in a park that looks more like a series of dunes surrounded by some bush and caves. He is joined by two girls and another guy, and we get a strange dimension where they can see a castle that is more of a mirage. Creatures appear after the magic book is taken, though none of the symbols are uttered in any incantation that opens any portal. The demonic creatures chase the victims who run around endlessly. That is the film, folks.

"Equinox" was directed by three people, one of them being the uncredited Dennis Muren (who also helmed the special photographic effects). Muren went on to do fantastic visual effects for "Jurassic Park," "Star Wars," "Terminator 2," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," and much more. Actor Ed Begley, Jr. was assistant to the cameraman. He also went on to better things. The reporter at the end of this snoozefest sums up "Equinox" best: "There is no story here."