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HALLOWEEN HAVOC 2021


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SATAN'S LITTLE HELPER (Jeff Lieberman, 2004)

SELECTED BY @No Point Stance

We have a Halloween setting, genuinely likeable characters, some familiar faces in the cast, pitch-black humour and a really memorable antagonist. Lieberman's run of quality horror movies didn't stop in the 1980s.

REVIEWED BY @Lawful Metal

Satan’s Little Helper resembles my Halloween Havoc pick, Psycho Goreman, in theory.  But it lacks the scares, laughs, and heart that that PG soars with.  As a result, this film is largely lacking. 

Dougie is an impressionable kid who is obsessed with a video game called Satan’s Little Helper, where you play as a kid who helps Satan murder random people in side-scrolling fun. 

Dougie loves his older sister, who has always taken him trick or treating.  But this time, she brings home a boyfriend from college, and Dougie is jealous. Ultimately, Dougie finds the Master, who’s gleefully murdering people in broad daylight, and nobody suspects a thing, because Halloween. This apparently includes a lovely black cat, whom he smashes against a wall and paints “BOO” in its blood.  Tacky.

Since Alex’s plan is to dress up like Satan and play along with Dougie’s act, nobody suspects a thing when Dougie and the Master ambush Alex on the way back from the Halloween store.  Everyone just assumes the Master is Alex.  This happens a lot, regardless of whether the Master is openly groping the sister, saran wrapping the mom’s mouth and nose shut, poisoning the punch with bleach, or straight up murdering old grannies in front of everyone. 

It’s played for laughs, but running over pregnant women, the blind, and a baby carriage in a shopping cart isn’t that funny. 

Then, there’s two count ‘em two spots where the good guys finally defeat the bad guy, but oh no he switched costumes and they really just killed someone else. 

The non-ending is so non-sensical it’s not even worth discussion. 

This is a movie where no lessons were learned, the humor is ultimately forced, there’s a distinct lack of interesting kills (the Master mostly stabs people in the stomach or bashes them against walls). 

Oh, and Dougie the character and actor are both just terrible.  But you knew that. 

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I rewatched Phantasm II but I have basically nothing to say about it except it is still badass. Bigger guns, bigger chainsaws, crazier effects, still makes absolutely no sense. Great movie. 

Also caught a big chunk of The Pit and the Pendulum with my folks, because we all love Vincent Price. Completely forgot Barbara Steele was in it. I don't quite think it was the best of the AIP Corman/Poe films (that title still belongs to Masque of the Red Death) but Price chews the scenery fantastically. 

EDIT: Oh! I also watched about half of the '82 Thing again. Even less to say about that; it is incredible. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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PHANTASM II (Don Coscarelli, 1988)

SELECTED BY Can't Imagine Who (aka @Curt McGirt)

My pick for this year is Phantasm II. Considering the list and given the recent History of Horror that brought up sequels, and the need for a fun film for the holiday after all this bullshit, Phantasm II is perfect. It's a road trip movie, a blast-up action movie a la Mad Max, has a lot of awesome '80s practical FX, and makes absolutely no sense at all. The first didn't either but this just complicates everything thus making it even more of a trip. 

REVIEWED BY @No Point Stance

“What are we doing here, Reggie? I'm a nineteen-year-old kid. You're a bald, middle-aged, ex-ice cream vendor! “

“You believe that when you die, you go to Heaven. You come to us!”

Hey, I got lucky this year – the draw not only gave me a film that I’m familiar with, but a film that I’ve absolutely adored for over 30 years!

For the uninitiated, the Phantasm saga concerns a sinister, apparently supernatural menace, in the form of The Tall Man (the late, lamented Angus Scrimm, who was already getting on in years when he appeared in the original film in 1979) and the ongoing efforts by middle-aged Reggie, his younger friend Mike and, sporadically, Mike’s older brother, Jody, to thwart his diabolical plans to convert the human race into Jawa-like undead slave labour on another planet / dimension / timeline. The Tall Man likes to move from town to town, set up shop as a mortician and begin harvesting the dead from the graves before moving on to the town’s living residents.

Phantasm II was released in 1987, a full eight years after its predecessor was a modest hit. The sequel was a negative pick-up of sorts for Universal, meaning a bigger budget but also an entirely new way of doing things for the remnants of the small creative team behind ‘79’s modest independent. As was common practice in such situations in the mid-80s, certain elements were pushed to the forefront for Phantasm II – humour absent from the original (as in Evil Dead II, released the same year), and a heavier emphasis on action (paralleling the tonal shift from 1979’s Alien to its first sequel, released a year before Phantasm II dropped). Thankfully neither the (understated) humour nor the ramped-up action sequences are detrimental to what made the Phantasm universe work in the first place. This film also establishes the template for future entries by taking our protagonists on the road in Jody’s now-iconic 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda.

You can’t talk Phantasm without talking about the spheres, any more than you can talk about Star Wars at any length without lightsabres coming up – and here the baseball-sized flying orbs of bloody death are no longer just one of many dangers but perhaps the true stars of the film. Functioning as a sort of automated (at least until subsequent sequels) security system, and always foreshadowed by their trademark high-pitched electronic whine, the spheres (of which there are now a small fleet) have evolved, sporting new and fantastically violent concealed weaponry and a terrifying tenacity. Little wonder then, that Universal put them front and centre in the advertising, even giving the film its tagline: ‘The Ball is Back!’. Sadly, the main players involved in the design and operation of the sphere in the first two films, Willard Green and Steve Patino, are no longer with us.

Anyhoo, this is supposed to be a review and not a history lesson, so let the gushing commence; Phantasm II is a fucking masterpiece IMHO, the creative work of a visionary writer/director (Don Coscarelli, otherwise best known for The Beastmaster) unimpaired by working within the studio system. Replacing the first film’s low-key, deliberate pacing with explosions, balls-to-the-wall car crashes, chainsaw duels, four-barrelled shotgun mayhem and frantic set-pieces works so much better than it should. The bravura final reel alone, with Mike and Reggie tooled up and storming the tall man’s latest gothic mausoleum and its myriad threats, is a joy to behold. This is when the film really comes to life, and where many other films start to fall apart; everything is so creative, and the spheres’ apparent inability to tell intruder from funeral home resident means nobody is ever safe from their latest jaw-dropping upgrade.

Mention should also go to the excellent cinematography by Daryn Okada, stepping up big-time from his position as a lowly grip on the original Phantasm.

Time for the elephant in the room. Where the film has been most roundly criticised is in the recasting of Mike. Played by skinny, teenage Michael Baldwin in the original (and in each of the later instalments), he’s now buff pretty-boy James LeGros. It’s a change made in large part due to Universal’s influence, and has long been viewed as a major mis-step. But LeGros does a great job, for my money at least. Would I have preferred to see Baldwin in the role? Probably, but – all things considered – imposter Mike fills his shoes admirably and is never not likeable. As a sidenote, and talking of casting ‘What Ifs…’, a young and unknown Brad Pitt was one of those who read for the part, and the role of a peripheral character (a priest haunted by witnessing the Tall Man’s predations) nearly went to John Astin of The Adams Family fame.

Phantasm II is pretty much a perfect 80s horror film. I’ve seen this thing probably a dozen times since it first saw the light of day and it never gets old for me. The power drill to the armpit still makes me wince, too.

I had intended to watch the workprint footage excised from the final film before I wrote this but time has gotten waaaaaaay away from me, so I apologise for not covering it here.

Apologies also for getting this in so late. Happy Halloween, all and sundry!

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To all the way back to the Escape the Undertaker thing

Stumbled across an interview with the director

Quote

What was the most challenging aspect of Escape the Undertaker and how did you overcome that?

For a number of reasons, we were under a very tight timeline. Luckily the talent are all live performers so that was a huge plus. Our incredible crew was able to build and light every scene so we could essentially shoot almost as if it was a live show, yet still maintain high production value as well as the look and feel of a movie. In any production, you’ll always have budget and timeline challenges, but this was easily the fastest I’ve shot anything of scope.

Do you have any fun behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Escape the Undertaker?

I really enjoyed choreographing and shooting the fight scene. Having characters that are essentially their own stunt doubles was such a luxury. We had an incredible stunt team working in conjunction with the performers that knew their capabilities and how to push those. As a result of the timing between choices and the age demographic, we ended up really having to tone down some of the fight and lost some great moments to time… Hopefully, someday there will be a version of the full sequence.

So yeah - this was definitely made with PG in mind

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BONUS REVIEW: DEAD OF NIGHT (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, 1945)

Reviewed by @Execproducer
 
An architect receives an invitation to an English cottage to consult on adding additional rooms. Upon arriving, he is immediately hit with a feeling of deja vu. That feeling is only compounded when he meets his host and other guests of the cottage. After awkward introductions he informs everyone that they, as well as the cottage itself, are all a part of a recurring dream he has been having for sometime. Though he cannot quite remember the details, he knows that the dream ends very badly. As he discusses this with all assembled, bits of conversation and a seeming familiarity with his surroundings illuminate flashes of his dream and he is able to predict events that will happen both very shortly and much later while still not knowing his dreams' awful conclusion.  With the exception of a visiting psychologist, who offers reasonable explanations for all of his forebodings, the architect soon convinces the amused house-guests that there is, at the very least, something to his dreams and they take turns offering up their own strange experiences for the doctor to explain away. The architect becomes increasingly convinced that he is going to commit an evil act and attempts to leave in order to thwart fate, only to be talked into staying by the doctor whose professional instincts lead him to believe that he can help this man. But fate will have its way  and soon it's the doctor who will suffer for his skepticism.  The film ends with the architect in his own bed waking from another nightmare to a ringing phone. It's an invitation to a weekend in the country to consult on renovations. "That's just what you need, Darling," says his wife. "It'll help you get rid of those horrible nightmares.".   
 
Dead of Night is a 1945 Ealing Studios film. It's one of the earliest portmanteau films of the horror genre and the the first of the sound era, acting as a direct influence on the films in that style produced by Amicus Productions in the 60's and 70's.The segments relating the tales of the house guests were adapted from stories by H.G. Wells and E.F. Benson or penned by screenwriters John Baines and Angus MacPhail and had various directors.  The stories slowly ratchet up the tension beginning with The Hearse Driver in which race car driver Hugh Grainger (Antony Baird) receives a warning from beyond.  It was directed by Basil Dearden who also directed the framing story that features architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns). The Christmas Party, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, tells how young Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes) meets the ghost of a murdered boy.  Robert Hamer directed The Haunted Mirror in which Joan Cortland (Googie Withers) and her new husband Peter (Ralph Michael) contend with the malevolent looking-glass. Ealing Studios was known primarily for their comedy films and the Charles Crichton- directed segment The Golfer's Story was meant as a bit of relief. A cool-down match, if you will. It features Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as golf buddies whose rivalry over a woman continues beyond the grave. It also turns out to be a joke by the cottage's host Eliot Foley (Roland Culver) who has managed to live his life without supernatural encounters but didn't want to be left out of the proceedings. Radford and Wayne performed similar roles in several films together. The best tale is saved for last and, ironically, comes from the incredulous Dr. van Straaten (Frederick Valk). The Ventriloquist's Dummy, also directed by Cavalcanti, has the good doctor consulting on the case of Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave) , a ventriloquist whose battle of wills with his own dummy leads to the shooting of an American rival. This is followed by the conclusion of the framing story which is actually the beginning of this circular plot.     
 
If you're a fan of classic cinema in general and British film in particular, Dead of Night should go on your watch-list. Unlike the Abbott & Costello Meet.... films, where the comedy and scary elements go hand in hand, I find The Golfer's Story intrusive though I'd have probably watched an entire film built around it. If I see a few more Googie Withers films she might replace Ida Lupino as my 1940's crush. The whole film is well acted in the style of the time though the standout here, unsurprisingly, is Michael Redgrave (later Sir Michael). If you are a fan of The Twilight Zone you may get your own sense of deja vu as it also owes a debt to Dead of Night.

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