Deathdream

Deathdream (1972) aka Dead of Night aka The Night Andy Came Home aka the Veteran aka Whispers

Dir. Bob Clark

Written by Alan Ormsby

Starring Richard Backus, John Marley, Lynn Carlin

When young Vietnam vet (that's "veteran," not "veterinarian") Andy (Richard Backus, basically nothing) returns home to his family in spite of an earlier notice that he’d been killed, his parents (John Marley  --recipient of the famous “horse’s head” in THE GODFATHER-- and Lynn Carlin, TAKING OFF)* and sister (Anya Ormsby, CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS) are thrilled to have him back. Sure, he seems a little bit “off,” but who could blame him after what he’s been through? Dad tries to counsel his son by relating his own war experiences, Sis tries to help Andy get his social life back, and Mom is happy just to fawn over him as much as possible. But it becomes clear pretty quickly that Andy is a little beyond their help. For example, he kills a dog. In a movie, we might forgive him for murdering the occasional trucker, but a dog-killing tells us he’s an irredeemable villain. Also, he wears a turtleneck, a clear signal of evil on any white man who is not named Steve McQueen. And as if that weren’t enough, he spends all day and night sitting in a rocking chair in his room, maniacally ratcheting back and forth in the dark. All worrisome warning signs that Andy may be some sort of undead blood-fiend who drains corpses of their lifegiving bodily fluids (well, the blood, anyway) to prolong his own unholy existence. .

Will Smith was right. Parents just don't understand.

I gotta admit, I was pretty unimpressed by the last Bob Clark foray into horror, 1972’s overrated and irritating CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. But this one, which came out the same year from the same writer and director, is undeniably great, a splendid, surreal nightmare packed with tension, gore, and a light dusting of social commentary. It begins at a confidently slow pace while the tension is allowed to gradually mount, but it’s never dull, and there’s always a sense of creepy strangeness hovering over the proceedings, even before it gets outright violent. Everyone is so overjoyed by Andy’s unexpected return that they’re overwhelmingly reluctant to admit that something is not right here; hell, not even sure if they ought to say anything. I mean, jeez, are you gonna be the one to tell this guy’s poor mom that he’s a dangerous psychopath? But the longer things go, the more it becomes impossible to ignore that the fact that the Andy who has returned is most definitely not the same one who left. Eventually, everyone knows it; they can’t say it aloud, but speak volumes in worried glances and awkward pauses in conversation. But they have no idea what to do about it. There’s something wonderfully upsetting about a scenario like this, where everyone has to know, on some level, that something is terribly wrong, but no one seems willing or able to outwardly acknowledge it. And how can they? It would seem shamefully judgmental, even hypocritical, to condemn this kid who suffered so much, who, in fact, was willingly sent into danger by the very people now thankfully welcoming him home. Who wants to be the first one to accuse a combat veteran, who miraculously made it home alive against all odds, of having turned into a monster? So they all try to talk around it, to pretend. Until there’s no possible way of pretending anymore.

It’s a great scenario, and full of wonderfully executed sequences. But the thing that truly pushes it into the sublime is its star. Richard Backus is nothing short of amazing as the mysterious, coyly sinister returned soldier. His smile alone is enough to make you shiver -- the eyes never smile, but the mouth does. So when he starts to get more openly aggressive, it’s even more disconcerting. As an actor he did almost nothing else --a few roles on daytime soaps in the 80’s and a handful of now-forgotten TV movies-- but fuck it, this is the role of a lifetime. He’s so blandly handsome and soft-spoken and yet utterly, skin-crawlingly alien. He’s perfectly able to talk and interact with others, and eerily even does so quite charmingly when it suits him. But most of the time he barely even needs to bother. He’s predatory and reptilian, secure in the knowledge that his family is so desperately glad to have him back that they’ll convince themselves he’s fine regardless of what he does. He’s clearly able to think and plan and move with his own motivations, but what precisely is on his mind is as unknowable as the circumstances which brought him to this state.

Ol' blue eyes.

Andy is intentionally a cypher, and it suits the movie marvelously. I do wish the parents were a little better defined as characters, since their vagueness sometimes makes it a little difficult to know why they’re acting the way they are. There are implications that Dad may have been abusive or neglectful (perhaps even as a result of his own combat experience?) but the audience never sees him being anything other than reasonable and supportive. Meanwhile, Mom seems to go straight fucking bananas, to the extent that she becomes actively hostile to the rest of the family. I get that mom may have the most trouble coming to terms with the idea that her son’s miraculous return is actually even worse than having him dead, but in my opinion she still goes a little overboard here. Neither parent seems to necessarily behave in what I’d consider a natural or realistic manner, so you get the feeling the movie is trying to tell us something about who they are and how they got this way, but damned if I know what it is. 

The same problem kinda applies on a larger scale, too: this was one of the first movies which dealt with the Vietnam war and the cultural trauma it produced, and it arrived at cinemas nearly at the height of American involvement. I mean, the war was everywhere in '72, and it had been going on long enough that the ugly truths of our military actions there were well established, even in the mainstream. In fact, at least one person on this production had actually spent time in Vietnam: makeup artist Tom Savini (in his first movie!) had served as a combat photographer. So there's clearly no way of avoiding talking about the war here. But while it seems like the idea of a returned soldier becoming a blood-drinking psychopathic ghoul must be intended as some kind of metaphor, it’s a little too vague to parse out exactly what it’s trying to tell us. Is it a metaphor for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, with Andy coming back a shell of his former self? Is Andy actually a metaphor for America as a whole, the country that thought it could just have a morale-boosting little proxy war half a world away and chalk it up as a win for truth justice and the American way, only to become a monster in the process? Or is it more along the lines of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT -- less explicitly a metaphor than an angry lashing out, a harsh reminder of how ugly death and violence are?

Apparently this is the actual cover they went with for the Gorgon video betamax release.

I don’t really know the answers there, but in the end, DEATHDREAM doesn’t need an explicit moral to be good. The shots of Backus maniacally rocking back in forth in the dark, just by themselves, are such a wonderful little moment that it’s kinda a miracle they haven’t been ripped off a million times by now. But then again, I don’t know another movie with a character even remotely like this. Whatever it means, DEATHDREAM is an intense, blackly comic little nightmare, and a fascinating snapshot into a world nearing a half-century in the past.** It’s elusive, evocative, and still manages to be an enormously entertaining horror film that delivers some genuinely scary images and even some respectable bloodletting. Clark would go on to make one more horror movie --the excellent BLACK CHRISTMAS-- but honestly, this thing is one-of-a-kind. There’s really nothing else like it. That seems like kinda a shame since it’s such a good one, but then again, maybe it’s just as well. As we discover herein, sometimes you just can’t go home again, even if you go through the motions well enough.

*Marley and Carlin also played a married couple in John Cassavetes’ FACES, for which Carlin was nominated for Best Actress. While we're down here, I should also mention that a bunch of actors from CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS have cameos.

**For contrast: consider that the amount of time between DEATHDREAM and today is the same amount between DEATHDREAM and the Great Depression! And the odds are you're reading this even further in the future than that! Feel old yet?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: None
• SEQUEL: None
• REMAKE: None. Although we already encountered a movie called DEAD OF NIGHT (the movie's alternate title) this Chainsawnukah, they appear to be completely unrelated.
• FOREIGNER: Filmed in Canada
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Well, neither Marley nor Lynn was exactly A-list, but both quite respectable at the time, and Lynn even had an Oscar nomination.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None
• BOOBIES: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: No
• HAUNTED HOUSE: None
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: Andy does appear to be some variety of undead.
• POSSESSION: None
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Andy could almost be looked at as a slasher, but the structure of the movie doesn't really support it (in fact, director Bob Clark would make arguably the first true American slasher with his next film, 1974's BLACK CHRISTMAS)
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Here we go. This feels more right.
• EVIL CULT: None
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: Nope
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Nah
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid, too little known for such a good one.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Be extremely suspicious of any white man wearing a turtleneck. I cannot stress that enough, people.
• TITLE ACCURACY: A mess. I have no idea what a "deathdream" is, but I'm pretty sure it's not this. The other American title, DEAD OF NIGHT, is no better, since mostly it happens during the day. Some of the seemingly hundreds of video titles they slapped on this thing are a little more accurate: THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME, for example, is a literal thing that happens in the movie. But both American theatrical titles are totally meaningless.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Yes!

House of Wax 3-D

House of Wax 3D (1953)

Dir. André de Toth

Written by Crane Wilbur, from the play by Charles S. Belden,

Starring Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Charles Bronson, Carolyn Jones, Phyllis Kirk

Poster from the 1982 re-release.

In the role that cemented his career playing demented villains, Vincent Price (THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE) plays wax sculpter Henry Jarrod, a great artist who has his work destroyed by a dastardly investor and nearly dies in the ensung fire. Later, he recovers somewhat, but can no longer ply his craft due to his ruined hands, requiring a mute assistant (a young Charles Bronson, unrecognizable without his mustache!) to aide him in rebuilding his wax museum. Sounds like an inspiring story, except that there’s a mysterious fire-scarred madman about Price’s height and build who’s going around murdering Jarrod’s enemies. But who? And why?

This highly enjoyable early slasher movie has always been fun and pretty to look at, but watching it in Blu-Ray 3-D is absolutely jaw-dropping. Painterly images abound; rich colors, gorgeous framings, and luxurious deep focus gives the film an eye candy effect that turns an already highly watchable mystery into something close to art. This was the first major studio color 3D movie (after the indie color sensation BWANA DEVIL and the major-studio black and white MAN IN THE DARK) and its enormous success helped prompt the deluge of 3-D movies which would follow in 1954 and straggle into 1955. And that’s not hard to understand, because it’s honestly a joy to look at. Ironically, director André de Toth (mostly known for Westerns and crime tales before this) was the one person unable to appreciate what a success he’d created with this new technology: having lost an eye as a youth, he was unable to see in 3-D. Though it means he may not have been able to enjoy the extended extraneous scene where a man outside a theater plays tricks with a paddleball that leaps out of the screen in 3-D, his handicap may have helped him focus on color and texture instead of depth, resulting in handsome images which look even more striking and textured with the added dimension. Paddleball hijinks notwithstanding, the movie (mostly) avoids 3-D gimmickry and just focuses on telling an intriguing story, and is all the better for it.

Pleasantly, once you recover from the initial thrill of the images, there’s actually a pretty unique idea for a horror movie here. You assume immediately that you know who the disfigured killer is -- it’s gotta be Jarrod, disfigured from the fire and now menacing those who have wronged him. But then the movie shows Jarrod himself again, now wheelchair-bound but facially unscarred. What the heck is going on here? Price is really great in his first attempt at a classic horror madman --he’s funny and  charming, with just an edge of casual menace-- and already seems to have the perfect cadence which would make him such a beloved fixture playing this kind of role. If anything, he’s perhaps a tad too sympathetic and nuanced for the movie. But it’s all in good fun. The rest of the cast is basically window dressing, but they serve their role of advancing the plot along just fine. Look for blacklisted Academy-Award-Winning Screenwriter* Nedrick Young as Jarrod’s other assistant if you’re in the mood for some good trivia.

At its heart this is a pretty creepy idea, although the movie is too breezy and charming for you to really realize it while watching. For a 50’s film there’s some surprisingly perverse stuff with corpses, and man, that veiny scarred face on the killer still looks absolutely repulsive. Lotsa times you get a film on Blu-Ray and start to see the seams, the cheats, the fakery that wouldn’t show up on something with lower definition. This makeup job, though, just looks better the clearer you see it. Well done. Anyway, this one was already a delight, but seeing it in glorious 3-D blu-ray manages to make it better still. It’s totally my favorite movie called HOUSE OF WAX, though I gotta confess, I actually sort of enjoy the remake, too. Am I the only one?

*For THE DEFIANT ONES in 1958, he also wrote INHERIT THE WIND and… uh... JAILHOUSE ROCKS.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Based on a the screenplay for MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) by Charles S. Belden
• SEQUEL: None
• REMAKE: It is a remake of the 1933 movie MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM directed bu Michael Curtiz, and it spawned two remakes: a made-for-TV remake in 1965 called CHAMBER OF HORRORS and a surprisingly enjoyable 2005 version called HOUSE OF WAX directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. ahem. Featuring Paris Hilton. Neither remake follows the plot of the 1953 version in any major way.
• FOREIGNER: No
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: Nah
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None at the time, but its cool to see Bronson in this.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Vincent Price
• BOOBIES: None.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Nah
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Yup
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: None
• THE UNDEAD: None
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: I'd say this counts as an early iteration
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: None
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: Yes! Finally, some creepy dummies!
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Man into wax!
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Low, beloved classic
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Wax is a surprisingly dangerous material to have lying around. You might be better off with gasoline-drenched firewood.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Alas, there is no literal wax house in here. There is lots of wax, though, it's just inside a museum.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A

Horror Hotel

Horror Hotel (1960) aka City of the Dead

Dir. John Llewellyn Moxey

Written by George Baxt

Starring Venetia Stevenson, Christopher Lee, Dennis Lotis, Betta St. John, Valentine Dyall, Patricia Jessel

I think that's supposed to be Lee up there in blue, not sure why he's dressed like a nun though. Don't be fooled by this blatant false advertising, at no point does Lee dress up like a nun.

Boy, this one surprised me. It was the third film on one of those copyright-questionable Horror anthology DVDs you find around, I didn’t really know anything about it except that it featured Christopher Lee in a fairly early horror role (of course, he’d been around since time began, but his big breakout as Dracula came only two years earlier in 1958). I’m somewhere around 90% sure the version I watched was taped off of television and subsequently transferred to DVD, mostly because a TV station logo appears in the bottom right of the screen from time to time.

But the surprise here is that this is actually a startling, eerie and impressive horror film which seems bafflingly overlooked. Even if it wasn’t an intrinsically good movie, you’d think it would at least be remembered as historically important for being the first pre-Amicus Studios production by Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. But life just ain’t fair sometimes, I guess. Maybe it’s just that crappy name? HORROR HOTEL sounds like a Fawlty Towers Halloween Special, and CITY OF THE DEAD (the alternate title) sounds like one more of the endless Italian ripoffs of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Both titles are both profoundly generic and utterly misleading as to what the film is actually about. So that might have hurt it, I don’t know, what am I a business major?

Walkin' on the clouds

Anyway, “what the film is actually about” turns out to be witches. Graduate student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson, ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN, DAY OF THE OUTLAW*) decides, with some prompting from her highly suspicious professor (Christopher Lee, JINNAH) to pursue her academic study of witchcraft by traveling to the mysterious, secluded Massachusetts town of Whitewood, which apparently is full of witchy history including the famous burning of Elizabeth Selwyn in the 17th century. Only, this is one of those historical old towns which really makes history come alive, if you catch my drift.

I still got some problems with this oft-used premise where we find revenge being enacted by long-dead witches who ended up burned, because the premise suggests that the ignorant villagers were right to burn these people to begin with, in fact the problem is they didn’t kill them quite dead enough. But I’m willing to put aside my morals a little for something as interestingly crafted as this one. From the opening shot, you can tell that director John Moxley (THE NIGHT STALKER, in his film debut) is going for some serious atmosphere here. He’s not quite an elegant enough visualist to make this a classic, but --with the help of the nation’s entire strategic reserve of dry ice-- manage to capture some genuinely nightmarish black and white images. It’s filled with great, spartan sets and seriously dark lighting with just a few slivers of hard light sometimes, and occasionally traffics very close to out-and-out surrealism. There’s a unique first-person image of car headlights piercing thick tendrils of fog and finding a ghostly figure emerging suddenly out of the mist which --particularly in the lovely high-contrast black and white-- feels positively phantasmagoric. There’s some pedestrian framings in here too, but the atmosphere and mood are strong enough to grow a real sense of dreamlike unease for an eerie, old-fashioned spookfest just on the cusp of more experimental modern techniques.

Hey, let's stop and pick this guy up!

There is some flirting with first-person perspectives, exaggerated, distorted closeups, unsourced hard lighting, etc. but the most cutting-edge thing here is the plot, by novelist George Baxt** (NIGHT OF THE EAGLE), which features a couple twists and turns which must have been downright shocking in 1960 and are pretty unconventional even today. I don’t want to spoil it for you but (MILD SPOILERS ARE IMPLIED BELOW) around the halfway point here something very unexpected happens with turns the movie you think you’re watching into a very different one. It’s an incredibly ballsy and unexpected twist, but unfortunately ended up being overshadowed by another much more famous horror movie which came out the same year. The two were produced at the same time and premiered only a few months apart, so the similarity appears to be mere coincidence. I would actually argue that HORROR HOTEL works better as a narrative than this other movie whose identity I’m dancing around, but it doesn’t approach its level of artistry (though few movies do). You can probably guess what I’m talking about if you try, but don’t think about it too hard until you get this one safely watched. (END MILD IMPLIED SPOILERS).

Most of the movie is pretty well-written, as benefits a novelist working as a screenwriter, although there’s also some noticeably trashier dialogue thrown in at random my Milton Subotsky, who wanted to add an unneeded love interest to the story. Nevertheless, the actors all acquit themselves quite nicely -- Stevenson is likable, and British pop star Dennis Lotis (Terence Fisher’s THE SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST) is a surprisingly strong, Sam-Neill-esque presence as her brother. But of course, it’s the villains who really shine here. Lee is great (boy, was he ever this young!?), but isn’t in it as much as you might think. Instead, the job of head villain falls to Patricia Jessel (A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM), a veteran stage actress who positively exudes icy menace and completely dominates the film. Rounding things out is Valentine Dyall (THE HAUNTING) as a mysterious, sinister hitch hiker.

...And he, he himself, the Grinch, carved the roast beast.

The edgy, feverish story line, a solid cast, some sharp production design and an ominous classical score helps the film overcome a few stagey bits and achieve a surprising intensity, especially for the time. Frankly I can’t figure out why this isn’t more widely known and admired, it really deserves to be rediscovered as an early 60’s horror classic which stands firmly in old-school 50s horror but just at the precipice of something new and more aggressive. Plus, it gave the world the Christopher Lee dialogue “Burn Witch! Burn! Burn! BURN!” from Rob Zombie’s Dragula. So obviously you should all go out and find it (or, just watch it on youtube, since the copyright has expired and it’s now legally public domain). But before you do, consider the following as penance for watching yet another movie which tacitly condones the practice of witch-burning: I want to make a horror movie just like this one, but it turns out that the evil shenanigans are not due to witches, but rather the ghosts of the townspeople forever trapped on Earth for burning innocent women. If we’re gonna revisit the sins of the past let’s point out the real villain, OK movies? Obviously I’ll accept as many LORDS OF SALEMS sequels as you’re willing to throw at me, but after that let’s rethink this whole concept a little, got it?

*Also formerly married to both Don Everly (the Everly Brothers) and noted Twin Peaks character actor Russ Tamblyn.

**Baxt wrote a few mid-profile horror movies, but was better known as a writer of detective fiction and most importantly for his character Pharoah Love, a gay, black detective featured in a series of novels from the 60s onward. Man, somebody’s gotta make a movie about that guy.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No, but written by novelist George Baxt
• SEQUEL: No, alas
• REMAKE: None, although there's a Tobe Hooper movie of the same name
• FOREIGNER: British film, but it's supposedly set in America so everyone has varying degrees of American accents.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Christopher Lee
• BOOBIES: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No, just the regular kind
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: No
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Nah
• MONSTER: None
• THE UNDEAD: I think they may be ghost witches?
• POSSESSION: Nah
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Killing is part of the plan here
• EVIL CULT: Yes, a rare straightforward example!
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Public domain now.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't get your masters degree in witchcraft, what the fuck were you thinking lady. I mean, even if it doesn't get you sent off to a mystery village to be sacrificed to the devil, what in God's name are you going to do with that degree?
• TITLE ACCURACY: There is a hotel, and horror does occur there. But I can't help feeling that the title misses some of the nuance here. Still technically accurate. "City of the Dead" is more misleading, because while there may be some dead people here, it's clearly not a city, it's a town, tops, and probably a village.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A

Very strong 4-thumb effort, easily in the B+/A- range.

The Awakening

The Awakening (1980)

Dir. Mike Newell

Written by Clive Exton, Chris Bryant, Allan Scott. Based on novel by Bram Stoker

Starring Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist, Ian McDiarmid

So here we got no less than muthafuckin’ Charlton Heston (WAYNE’S WORLD 2) starring in an adaptation of a Bram Stoker Novel (You know, Bram Stoker, from BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA) directed by Mike Newell (HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, DONNIE BRASCO) lensed by famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff (THE AFRICAN QUEEN, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA) and edited by the venerable Terry Rawling (ALIEN, CHARIOTS OF FIRE). And yet you’ve never heard of it. Wonder why that is?

The answer would be that this a mostly dull, curiously unfocused tale of a mummy’s revenge. Honestly it would be almost completely pointless except for a fun way-over-the-top performance by Heston (in a British accent, sometimes?) and some nicely lensed images from Newell (in his sophomore film) and Cardiff. Basically, it revolved around (British?) Egyptologist Matthew Corbeck, a guy so fucking obsessed with Egyptology that while he’s in Egypt on the verge of one of the most major archeological discoveries of all time he chooses to actually be on site doing work rather than staying home with his pregnant wife (Jill Townsend, THE SEVEN-PERCENT SOLUTION). The movie and the wife seem to regard this decision as roughly equivalent to genocide, and not just of some little wimpy native tribe or something, I’m talkin’ genocide of attractive wealthy white people with little blonde girls. Maybe 1980 was just a different time --I guess they did have that sitcom A Different World so that might explain it-- but I have a hard time getting mad at this poor motherfucker for the apparent crime of being an Egyptologist. I mean, what the fuck did the wife think was going to happen when she agreed to go with him to Egypt? Why would he bother to go to another fucking continent if it was just to sit in a hotel room with his whiny pregnant wife? Women are just the worst, amiright fellas? #Gamergate.

The most interesting Egyptologist in the world.

Anyway, wifey’s not currying much favor with me by standing in the way of a great scientific discovery just cuz she gets bored sitting in desert tents, but I gotta admit it turns out she was right, conducting archeological studies on Egyptian tombs is a bad idea. As soon as they open the damn thing people start dying right and left. Well, mainly right, not so much left since it happens pretty infrequently over the course of many years, but still. As the years pass, this guy Corbeck can’t seem to learn his lesson and stop being interested in archeology, which again, what a fucking tragic character flaw. But curiously, his now-18-year-old daughter Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist, Remington Steele) who was born the same day as he opened that fateful tomb not that that has anything to do with the plot, I don’t even know why I would mention it, is almost as into Egyptology as he is, and in fact is starting to get a little pushy about wanting to try some ancient Egyptian ritual rigamarole.

The big problem here is that the film spends way too long getting to this point, and once it finally gets there doesn’t seem to have a clear plan for where to go next. It can’t seem to resolve around a central character; Margaret has probably as much screen time as Chuck, but not really any kind of character arc. Heston, ostensibly the protagonist (or at least the only one with a conflict) gives a weirdly opaque (British?) performance so despite his enojyable overacting (do Egyptologists really shout and grimace so much all the time?), you can never quite tell what his deal is. I guess he gets possessed, too? Or something? The whole affair has a very LORDS OF SALEM problem with protagonists who are passive victims. Nobody really seems to have any idea what is happening to them, nor does there really seem to be much they could do about it even if they wanted to. So we’re left with a lot of listless scenes of people acting vaguely weird while Heston sweats in the toasty Egyptian sun (and man, motherfucker sweats a LOT; I’m not sure if he’s acting weird because he’s possessed or just woozy from dehydration) not really having much to do.  

People with beards that prodigious would be wise to avoid open flames.

There movie runs a tad too long at 101 minutes, and a lot too uneventfully most of the time. But while the kills are way too infrequent, I gotta admit that when they kill, they kill hard. If the movie has a saving grace, it’s the sheer overkill it lays down on its rare victims; anyone getting killed here suffers a minimum of two or three times the death that would be visited on the bodycount of a normal slasher. Several times here the victim will seem decisively and definitively dead, and then the movie decides to go the extra mile to double-tap them just to be sure. One soldier falls about a thousand feet off a cliff, breaks every bone in his body bouncing off the jagged cliff walls, and THEN gets tangled up in a rope and hung before he hits the ground. A lady falls off a roof into a glass greenhouse, breaks every bone in her body, THEN there’s a hanging shard of glass to cut her head off. A minor character gets stabbed by spring-loaded statue with sword, which admittedly is only one death but it’s a good one. And it’s not enough that this poor guy gets impaled on a syringe, he’s gonna get stabbed about 20 times before he finally kicks it. Oh, also the guy in question is Ian McDiarmid (The Emperor), so overkilling him is probably worth a few extra points. It’s cool to see him in here, seems like he doesn’t do a lot of movies, plus he has a huge red fro and looks a little like a laid-back Phil Spector. Gotta like that, right?

The ancient Egyptians had rockin' metal faces.

So this one has some high points, and of course it’s enjoyable to watch a real titan of acting like Heston hamming it up in a straight faced killer Mummy movie.* I might be a little more forgiving if it had a little more mummy action, though. What the fuck is the deal with these mummy movies, like this one or the 1932 Karloff THE MUMMY or the terrible 1999 TRANCE: THE ETERNAL KISS OF THE MUMMY, that think what we want is a mummy movie which just has some guy get possessed and skulk around? Look at the fucking poster for this movie you assholes, what the fuck do you see? Some possessed guy? No, it’s a goddam creepy glowing-eyed MUMMY. Where is the mummy in these mummy movies, I ask? Let’s get some guy wrapped up in bandages stumbling around eating some mutherfuckers, OK? Next year I’ve got Hammer’s MUMMY series on the list, so hopefully they can avoid this apparently tempting pitfall and make a series of mummy movies that actually has a mummy in it. In the meantime, this one ain’t a disaster, but it should probably be a lot better than it is.

OH, also as a side note you can’t just fucking throw a kinky incestual kiss in there out of the blue in the middle of your movie and then act like its no big deal and never mention it again. Jesus guys. What the fuck.

Still gotta like seeing Chuck in something like this, though. Hey, it’s better than his other big archeologist role in Van Damme’s THE ORDER. Plus he’s (sometimes) doing a (British?) accent! If that doesn’t sell you on this one, it’s seriously time to re-examine your priorities in life.

*He would return to the subject of Egyptology for the controversial 1993 documentary MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX, in which Heston’s narration makes it sound extremely convincing that the Sphinx’s water erosion is evidence that it’s thousands of years older than “mainstream” Egyptologists believe. The geologist who makes the claims is now a regular on Ancient Aliens, so maybe it’s a tad harder to endorse this line of reasoning today than it was in 1993. But shit, if they got Heston to narrate Ancient Aliens I got a feeling I’d take those claims a lot more seriously, too. Anyway I don’t know if Heston got the idea while shooting THE AWAKENING or not; as a scientist, I’m merely reporting what I see.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Yes, of Bram Stoker's other, other famous horror novel The Jewel of Seven Stars.
• SEQUEL: None
• REMAKE: None, although there's a couple other movies with the same name.
• FOREIGNER: No
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Charlton Heston, possibly at the time Academy-Award nominated actress Susannah York as well.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None
• BOOBIES: ....I honestly do not recall.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: None
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Embalmed organs in jars, head sliced off
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Nah
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: Mummy!
• POSSESSION: Yes, it's more a possession movie than a mummy one.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Nah
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: I can't recall if the awakened Mummy was the result of an evil cult or just normal mainstream ancient Egyptian religion.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: Nah
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Nah
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High, especially considering the cast and talent
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Just as BLOOD BEAST TERROR taught us to beware entomologists and WEREWOLF OF LONDON taught us to hate and fear botanists, now we learn that Egyptologists are also an untrustworthy and dangerous lot.
• TITLE ACCURACY: The mummy kinda awakens, I guess. I'll allow it.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Good god, no.