Welcome To Spring Break (and the Mystery of Harry Kirkpatrick)

Welcome to Spring Break (1988) aka Nightmare Beach

Dir by Harry Kirkpatrick (?) and an uncredited Umberto Lenzi

Written by Harry Kirkpatrick, Vittorio Rambaldi, and Umberto Lenzi

Starring Nicolas de Toth, Sarah Buxton, John Saxon, Michael Parks, Lance LeGault

WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK is the terrifying title of a story which presents us with that most classic of all screen conflicts: gimmicky slashers and drunk college coeds. A time-worn classic certainly, but hey, no need to reinvent the wheel if you’ve found something that works. The particulars in this case are fairly trivial: You’ve got some podunk beach town overrun by drunken frat boys and the scantily clad sorority chicks that… well, not love them, that might be a little strong. I guess maybe find them vaguely less repulsive than normal people would. Our instantly forgettable hero is Skip Banacheck (Nicolas de Toth, presumably their original preferred name Skip Bananahammock had copyright issues or something), who we learn recently blew the big football game. This fact keeps coming up again and again, and it really makes you assume he’s gonna have to kill the baddie by throwing a football at him or something, but no dice, it never ends up being relevant. Just the kind of subtle character detail that’s so important to a movie with a title like WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK, I guess.

But all is not well in Springbreaksville. Dark clouds are on the horizon, in the form of the exhaust from a nasty band of bikers* pissed off that their leader has just been executed in some sort of weird, vaguely defined conspiracy between the town’s alcoholic doctor (Michael Parks, trying way, way harder than is necessary here) shifty sheriff (John Saxon, trying the exact minimum amount necessary here) fire-and-brimstone preacher (Lance LeGault** …trying?) and smarmy Mayor (...not sure if he’s trying or not, I’m not 100% sure who he is. I think Ben Stotes, although it’s hard to be sure since the credits just list him as “Al” and I think it’s a bit ridiculous to imagine we’ll remember the mayor’s first name by the end of this, anyway he’s in the Lezni-scripted Vittorio Rambaldi-directed vampire flick PRIMAL RAGE, so good for him). Point is, bikers are pissed and there’s been some sort of shady doings, but the spring breakers just want to party. So when teens start getting bumped off, everyone immediately jumps to the same entirely logical conclusion: the head biker is back from the dead, and he’s getting revenge, I guess, on random drunken teens (?). Admittedly this theory is lent some credence by the fact that we see a devilish mystery biker using generally motorcycle-and-electric-chair themed gimmickry to murder, but they had no way of knowing that, only our omniscient moviegoer eyes can see this.

Murderous, sure, but at least he's a role model for motorcycle safety gear.

It’s pretty rad, though, at least at first: he picks up a hitchhiker, who gets into the motorcycle’s backseat only to find that…. it’s been turned into an electric chair!!!! That has to be quite a shock bwa hahahahahahaaha. Anyway, that’s a good one, unfortunately they get weaker from there.

A lot of this movie is taken up by weird, obsessive repetition of the same scenes over and over. There’s three or four stereotype characters who keep doing the exact same specific thing in slightly different circumstances. You got this pickpocket thief guy who keeps stealin’ shit, this prostitute who’s working her way though a wide variety of different schools, this dipshit who keeps faking his own death and then complaining that no one has a sense of humor about it, I think maybe one or two others. Each time, the scenario is played out almost identically with mild circumstantial differences. Is this some sort of existential horror about the cyclic nature of existence and the inevitability of our own failings? Or did they just  realize they only had enough plot to fill 50 minutes and had to go back and add some filler? Obviously, these are questions that film scholars have debated for years, I’m sure the Criterion release will have a whole second disk dedicated to the rich academic discourse WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK has produced. You owe it to yourself to see this and make up your own mind.

I'm honestly not 100% sure if this image is actually from this particular movie or one of the countless others which looks exactly identical to it, not that it especially matters.

The other thing that academics have discussed about this movie is who actually made it. Normally that’s the kind of thing you just count on knowing, but such is the mystery of WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK. Here the movie is credited to a mysterious man named Harry Kirkpatrick, long assumed by the public to actually be NIGHTMARE CITY’s Umberto Lenzi in disguise. Many Italians trying to make money in American cinemas changed their names in a ridiculous attempt to make Americans think they were one of us, as if all the insanity and rape and shit wouldn’t be an immediate tip-off. There is no IMDB listing for Harry Kirkpatrick outside of this film, and an exhaustive internet search finds no other evidence of anyone actually named Harry Kirkpatrick who could conceivably be related to the filming of this movie. Seems pretty cut-and-dried, right? 

But wait, an uncited, uncredited wikipedia article (EDIT 3/26/2015: now credited and cited by me) claims that Lenzi has stated in interviews that there really was a Harry Kirkpatrick. What could this mean? Well, an IMDB search reveals only three people who share that pseudonym. One is Alec Baldwin, but he did five movies in 1988 so that wouldn’t leave him a whole lot of time to direct this one. He’s out. The second is Lenzi himself, who usually used some variation on the name Hubert Humphrey when was was working undercover (including Humphrey Humbert, Humphrey Milestone, Humphrey Longan and Hank Milestone). This one is the only movie he has credited under the name “Harry Kirkpatrick,” but the evidence for it still seems strong. But wait, there is one other person on IMDB with that nom de plum: the porn-tastically named James Justice, screenwriter for a TV movie in 2006 starring Clint Eastwood’s daughter and… my God, WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK! During which he also used the pseudonym Harry Kirkpatrick. He’s got an IMDB page and a photo, so even if that’s not his real name I’m going to assume he’s a real person.

Based on the admittedly flimsy circumstantial evidence here, I have a theory as to what happened: Lenzi was originally hired to be the director on this one, but quickly ran into problems with his American producers and left the directing job (multiple sources online, though no primary sources on the movie, confirm this). However, the movie needed to be finished quickly, and so screenwriter James Justice, who had collaborated with Lenzi on the script, took over to finish directing. Having no experience in that regard, though, he asked Lenzi to remain on-set as a consultant, essentially serving as director in a non-official role so as not to run afoul of the irate producers. “Harry Kirkpatrick,” then, is actually two people, Justice and Lenzi co-directing, presumably with Lenzi really calling the shots. Admittedly this case is built largely on hearsay, but if you’ve got a better theory I’d love to hear it. So the legend goes. EDIT 3/26/2015: an interview with Lenzi in 1996's Spaghetti Nightmares confirms that there really is a Harry Kirkpatrick (still can't say with 100% certainty that his real name is James Justice, though this maddeningly vague interview with the real James Justice seems highly suggestive) but Lenzi claims he was a "technical advisor" on the film only, and that "WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK should be considered the work of Harry Kirkpatrick, a very pleasant screenwriter who lives in Flordia and with whom I got along very well."

If you asked John Saxon today if he was in this movie, I'm 90% sure he would have to check his own IMDB.

Anyway, enough about that asshole Kirkpatrick. I can see why no one was clamboring to take credit for directing, this isn’t really a very good movie to be perfectly honest with you. Though there are no fewer than five gawking wet T-shirt sequences, the movie is depressingly low on actual horror. No atmosphere, only a handful of kills, most not especially imaginative.  Really, the movie is something like 70% teen romp and 30% slasher, neither very good. Michael Parks gives something resembling a real performance as a pointless doctor character, and it’s always fun to see John Saxon coasting, but, and this may surprise you, most of the acting is not very good, at least from a technical standpoint (there’s one female biker character who I swear is just reading her lines phonetically) and the characters are all dull whitebread weenies. Carlo Siminetti from Goblin did the score, but I’m pretty sure he only recorded 4 minutes of music for the film, and that same 4 minutes plays over and over for much of the runtime (sometimes with screaming metal guitar sounds synthesized over it, sometimes not). I guess you know what you’re in for when the DVD menu screen has clips from the movie playing on it, but then when you start the movie you realize the menu screen just plays the first 20 seconds of the movie unedited.

So, having an electric-chair motorbike turns out to be kind of like JAWS: it only really presents a danger before people are told not to go to the beach/sit on strange motorbikes. So after the first two, you gotta change up the gimmick a bit. Fuckin' shark never came out the ceiling at you, that's real hustle. These big studio stars, I swear, no effort at all.

Still, for some reason I can’t exactly bring myself to hate it. At the very least, it seems like it moves along at a brisk pace, there’s almost always something cheerfully stupid and funny happening, and it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. There’s a lame but consistent strain of dorky humor which runs through it, kinda a refreshing change from the usual feverish Italian horror plots. It has a devilish motorcycle murderer, that delightful animated 80’s electricity, and a plot which is at least closer to coherence than most of the Italian films which were made around this time would be (not that coherence should necessarily be confused with watchability, but still). Oh, and there’s a song by a band called “Rough Cutt,” that’s pretty metal. At the very least, this is pretty much the perfect slasher to watch with a bunch of drunk people, especially if you accept my challenge to take a shot for every 100 actors we see without a single non-white person appearing on-screen.*** Realistically, that’s about the best you could hope for from a movie called WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK, so in that sense, this one doesn’t disappoint. If “laughable enough to just barely get by” is what you’re in the market for, Harry Kirkpatrick**** has got a fine one for ya.

*They’re called The Demons, and they have the logo from Lamberto Bava’s film of the same name on the back of their jackets, one of the few overt signs that this is made by Italians.

**Holy shit, he’s in PRINCE AVALANCHE?

***Warning: Do not actually do this as it will result in vomiting, death, and a lingering desire to join the Nation of Islam.

****By the way, the most notable person with the real given name of "Harry Kirkpatrick" was the famous IRA agent who turned states evidence, resulting in much bloodshed in the mid 80s. I guess it’s possible that by ‘88 he was directing teen slasher films in America, cleverly using his own name because he knew no one would ever believe it.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: I like to think it started at an adaptation of Camus's The Stranger and just gradually went off-track.
• SEQUEL: None, oddly.
• REMAKE: You know it's coming, but as of October 2014, not yet.
• FOREIGNER: American/Italian co-production.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Michael Parks, John Saxon, Umberto Lenzi
• BOOBIES: Wet T-Shirt contest quickly becomes a No T-shirt contest.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: None that I recall.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Lots of burning deaths, and one popped-out eyeball.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Haunted Motorcycle. Oh my God, Mitch Hedberg was right!
• MONSTER: Nah
• THE UNDEAD: There is implied to be an undead killer, yes.
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Classic Slasher, though he tends to use electricity.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): None
• EVIL CULT: Evil gang of bikers?
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: No dolls.
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: College kids are just the worst. Also, just like PRISON, I guess don't frame a criminal and then kill them in the electric chair, you are just setting yourself up for electrified gimmicky revenge.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Spring Break occurs, I don't remember any welcome but close enough.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A

Prison

Prison (1988)

Dir. Renny Harlin

Written by Irwin Yablans, C. Courtney Joyner

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Chelsea Fields, Lane Smith, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Ivan Kane, Tommy “Tiny” Lister

Well, can’t blame me for trying. Renny Harlin, one year before he directed the delightful NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, directing Viggo Mortensen (in his first starring role!) in a haunted prison movie? Sign me the fuck up. In fact, forget the whole “can’t blame me for trying” thing; shame, shame on me for allowing even a day's time when I was aware of this movie but hadn’t yet watched it. And hey, can’t blame Renny for trying, either; he’s obviously working hard here, filling his first American movie* with nice lighting, a good cast, a couple funny bits. There’s stuff to like. But not much, not enough. And obviously not as much as there should be, based on the parts assembled here.

There’s definitely a distinct whiff of effort. The opening sequence of a guy getting executed is pretty intense, mostly thanks to Harlin’s exaggerated camerawork and a nicely evil set design. One guy later tries to escape, only to find the prison’s pipe system turns against him and brutally perforates his body before dumping the bloody mess into, appropriately, I guess, the mess hall. There’s voodoo, lots of implied prison rape (though no shower scenes, weirdly), fancy lighting shots, a guy climbs up a barbed wire rope with his bare hands, and it does have one phenomenally inspired kill which involves a chair, barbed wire, a shotgun, electricity, and two separate prison floors. And Kane Hodder shows up in the finale with that delightful cheesy 80’s animated lighting every movie made between 1979 and 1994 had. But unfortunately nothing here is able to overcome the anemic storyline, which wanders around a number of pointless tangents which lead to nothing interesting before finally settling down for the most rote possible outcome, unpredictable only in that it bafflingly has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the ostensible main characters.

Viggo and Lasagna, contemplating the different directions their careers will go.

Seriously, it’s weird, because Viggo is playing this new prisoner who looks and sounds exactly like a notorious killer who was executed in this very prison under dubious circumstances years ago (and in fact, Viggo plays that role too). You got to assume he’s a reincarnation or a son or something, and it seems like his presence must be the catalyst for all this weird stuff happening. But nope, I guess not, the fact that he looks exactly like this other dude is never addressed. In fact, he has fuck all to do in the entire movie, he just sort of stands around glowering most of the time and contributes exactly nothing to the plot (of course, he shouldn’t complain. Chelsea Fields has even less to do, she’s not even on premise for most of the movie, although at one point her home computer blows up for no reason, so that’s fun). The two people who actually have anything to do with the narrative are both old guys, a prison inmate and the asshole warden (surprise!) but the movie really wants to be about everyone else, from the Stallone-worshiping Travolta-wannabe Italian guy (I swear to you I’m serious, his name is “Lasagna.” Look it up if you don’t believe me.) to the rapey bearded guy (“Rhino,” as far as I can tell not related to the Spider-Man character recently played by Paul Giamatti) to the mild-mannered giant (“Tiny,” played by Tommy Lister**). None of these people have any relevance to the meager plot, nor are they even used as cannon fodder, nor, honestly, does anything interesting or dramatic come of them. They’re just there, taking up time. OK, Lister does have a pretty good death scene, although weirdly it’s not related to the whole haunted prison thing.

Still a less horrifying prison movie than INTO THE ABYSS.

Harlin’s infectious enthusiasm for chaos and spectacle means that this one isn’t a total wash; at least he knew to throw in an exploding computer for no reason. But a lot of this one wants to be some kind of atmospheric suspense ghost story, which isn’t really Harlin’s strong suit and anyway is a lost cause from the start because the story is so dull. At 102 minutes, the whammies are far too scant to keep any energy going, and gradually the whole thing sort of peters out.  Little surprise that it got only a limited release and promptly vanished from the face of the Earth. Weird, since writers Irwin Yablans (producer of HALOWEEN and TOURIST TRAP) and C. Courtney Joyner (writer of FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM) surely knew their way around a decent horror movie, and of course Harlin would go on to make some damn entertaining ones (including another one that same year, and as recently as last year). But I guess this just shows you can’t simply assemble a bunch of fun elements and expect to have a movie. You also got to figure out how to make it work.

On the other hand, there’s a moment when some asshole steals Viggo’s football, so he goes up to him and grabs his nuts and says “You let go of my ball, and I’ll let go of yours.” Now that’s a whammy. The movie as a whole needed a couple more of those, but at least they’ll be able to put that scene in Viggo’s Hollywood retrospective someday.

*And only second film overall, after his appropriately named Finnish debut BORN AMERICAN.

**What the fuck, I’m looking at his filmography right now, and he’s gonna be in HUMAN CENTIPEDE PART III?! With his DARK KNIGHT co-star Eric Roberts? And it’s a prison movie? What is happening to the world?

In Soviet Russia, Lighting Rides You!

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Someday Renny's gonna make that adaptation of Ulysses that he's always dreamed of, but that day was not today.
• SEQUEL: None, I guess Viggo got too expensive after TEXAS CHAINSAW 3
• REMAKE: None
• FOREIGNER: Nope, despite the fact that Harlin could barely speak English at this point in his career, this is pure Hollywood.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No.
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Viggo, in his first starring role.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None. Well, I guess Viggo was in this, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3 and THE PROPHECY, maybe he counts?
• BOOBIES: No.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Lots of implied non-consensual prison sex, but nothing explicit.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Plenty of blood, but no limb loss I don't think.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Haunted Prison, but sure.
• MONSTER: Nah.
• THE UNDEAD: Vengeful spirit of a wrongly-executed prisoner.
• POSSESSION: No, this ghost just wants to kill you.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Nah.
• EVIL CULT: None.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None.
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Limited release only, out of print for years.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't conspire to execute innocent men in the electric chair, because they come back with ironically electric-themed vengeance. Unbelievably, this will be the theme for the next movie as well.
• TITLE ACCURACY: There is a Prison. Product was as described.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Nope.

Dead of Night

Dead of Night (1945)

Dir. Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer

Written by John Baines, Angus McPhail

Starring Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Googie Withers, Frederick Valk, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Michael Redgrave

"A Thriller... THE CRITICS HUGGED IT!" .....wut?

This one turns out to be a very early anthology horror film, I had assumed maybe the very first one but apparently the tradition goes back at least to 1919, with Richard Oswald’s EERIE TALES that year and Paul Leni’s classic WAXWORKS in 1924. No problem, it doesn’t have to be a pioneer to be a classic, it just has to be good. And this one surely fits that bill. If the concept of a horror anthology was already old hat by 1945, well, that just serves to make this one more ambitious, incorporating a clever framing story which both informs the segments and focuses the whole affair. Four directors tackling different segments might sound like a recipe for inconsistency and tonal swings --and indeed, it is-- but somehow everything still manages to feel fluid and well-paced. Yup, this one is pretty great.

The story begins with milquetoast architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns, Bob Cratchit in the Alistair Slim 1951 SCROOGE) arriving at a country house party, where he insists he’s familiar with the guests (despite having never met them before) due to a prophetic dream he’s been having over and over. The guests, led by skeptical Teutonic psychologist (is there any other kind?) van Straaten (Frederick Valk), attempt to test his story by asking for his predictions and by sharing their own tales of the supernatural. OK, that doesn’t sound like the most surefire thriller plot (British people in sitting rooms talking about dreams? How does this not have a sequel yet?!), but Johns’ harried and paranoid performance helps carry it past the somewhat repetitive and chatty structure while we wait for things to get good.

The Scooby Gang

And they do get good, but you’ve gotta wait a bit. The first segment, based on an E.F. Benson short story and directed by Basil Dearden (KHARTOUM, THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF), has a serviceable atmosphere but is over rather abruptly before it has time to do much building. The second tale, by Brazilian director (Alberto) Cavalcanti is worse, a meandering anticlimax with an irritating performance from a very young Sally Anne Howes (CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG). But things start to get better with Robert Hamer’s (KING OF HEARTS AND CORONETS) haunted mirror sequence. The sublimely named Googie Withers (“let me Googie that for you,” you’d say in a much happier world) holds the thing together, and the fairly standard possessed possession story is treated seriously, with a surprisingly intense build. It’s pure Twilight Zone, of course, but in what world is that a bad thing? A slow, classy setup with a light dusting of clever effects followed by an ironic payoff will never get old, especially when it’s packed into a slim but effective 10 minutes or so.

But all that is merely prelude to the final two sequences. The first, directed by Charles Crichton (A FISH CALLED WANDA!?) is an unexpectedly hilarious story about two golfing obsessives (Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne) who decide that the winner of a golf match should get to marry the girl they both fancy (she’s so content in her role as an agency-free object that she cheerfully accepts this arrangement). When one golfer loses and obligingly drowns himself in the water hazard, his friend thinks he has it made… until the spirit, realizing he’s been cheated, comes back to fuck with his only true achilles heel: his golf handicap. Radford and Wayne are a hilarious mismatched duo --Radford is all bluster and gut, While Wayne’s slight frame and hangdog mug makes him the perfect victim-- and the segment is packed with goofy slapstick and fun concepts. Ordinarily, one would think a broad comic segment in the middle of an otherwise quite seriously ominous horror film would derail everything (TUSK, looking at you) but somehow it doesn’t; the humor here is so delightful that in fact it energizes the film and sets us up beautifully for the capstone segment. Horror and humor are not always the most comfortable bedfellows, but maybe this segment is cause to reconsider if there’s a fundamental reason for this apparent conflict or if it’s simply that horror directors usually aren’t this good at (intentional) comedy, and so their attempts don’t work as well.

Finally, a movie that understands that no human concept is as terrifying as golf.

The final sequence is the most famous one, with Michael Redgrave (classy shit) and Hartley Powell (ROMAN HOLIDAY) as two famed ventriloquists, caught between the affections of a sociopathic dummy. This segment --interestingly directed by Cavalcanti, who also did the worst sequence here-- is an unmitigated classic, a sweaty, uncomfortable descent into insecurity, madness and violence. Even an unlooked-for musical sequence (I guess a studio requirement in those days) can’t derail what turns out to be a tense tale of a dummy who is getting a little too aggressive for everyone’s good. In many ways, this segment is an obvious template followed by every subsequent evil doll movie, most obviously the excellent 1978 MAGIC with Anthony Hopkins, but also pretty much everything from The Twilight Zone to Goosebumps to Batman (the evil ventriloquist mobster Scarface is a logical extension of Redgrave’s disturbed pupeteer) to PSYCHO, whose slim, mildly mannered (protagonist?) has quite a lot in common with Redgrave here.

Obviously, this had to be absolutely brain-meltingly terrifying to audiences seeing it for the first time in 1945, but even with the better part of a century of ripoffs and boundary-pushing between us and DEAD OF NIGHT, this story is still startlingly intense. Director Cavalcanti drapes everything in harsh film noir bright lights and deep blacks, and always seems to find an angle to turn the grimy, claustrophobic sets into something alien and unsettling. But it’s really Redgrave as ventriloquist Maxwell Frere who walks away with this one; his sweaty desperation and ratcheting panic are so palpable that you can’t help but buy into his crazy worldview. Juxtaposing him with self-assured, masculine American Powell (as visiting ventriloquist Sylvester Kee) is equally a stroke of genius: Kee is a friendly, utterly confident guy, he genuinely has no reason or desire to compete with effete, insecure Frere. But in a way that may be the problem; he feels pity for the poor man instead of fear, and it may be a mistake that will cost him dearly. And am I wrong to see a subterranean sexual element here? Frere’s self-hatred is projected through his dummy, but what’s the deal with his intense fixation on Kee? Is it mere coincidence that the dummy turns up in his bed? Actor Redgrave certainly struggled with concealing his bisexuality during his own life, and I can’t help but feel a little of his own self-disgust and horror at his lack of self-control simmering beneath the surface here.

Once, just once, I'd like to see a movie with a Ventriloquist that ISN'T evil, he's just helpful and well-balanced and has a unique talent that he enjoys sharing. Wouldn't that blow your mind?

The Dummy sequence is the film’s high point, but it’s not quite the end: Most of these anthology films have framing stories which end with a clever twist or a bit of irony to tie things up, but here the ambition is a little stronger. You see, the quiet tension that’s been almost imperceptibly building from Johns’ certainty that he’s seen all this before and knows something bad will come from it finally erupts to the surface at the end. The long low-key ambiguity of the framing story is suddenly shattered by an absolutely nightmarish finale, a surreal hellscape populated by cameos from all the preceding segments but tied together in a fever dream of persecution and terror. This end segment is simply stunning, and obviously an influence on every subsequent work of psychedelic horror, where a director finally abandons all logic in favor of a mishmash of frightening imagery, finally bypassing any reason and hitting you right in your subconscious. But again, it’s not just that this is influential -- it’s that this is good. Way better, for example, than the end of Rob Zombie’s LORDS OF SALEM which is obviously trying for the same thing (but with more masturbating baghead bishops, something I did not notice in DEAD OF NIGHT for whatever reason).

When all’s said and done, the movie even manages a nifty little coda which suggests something else about the possibly cyclic nature of the storyline. After all the terror, the only thing that could make it worse is to remind us of the awful inevitability of it all. It adds up to a movie that Martin Scorsese called one of the 11 scariest movies of all time* and I gotta say, I was really fuckin' impressed by. Obviously a huge influence on other horror movies which followed it, this still really stands the test of time as a imaginative and scary movie in its own right. Curiously, none of the directors who worked on it seem to have done any other horror movies that I can find; they weren’t genre directors, just talented Ealing studios regulars who did this one masterpiece and then moved on to other stuff. Apparently during the war years in England horror films were actually banned, and it wasn’t until the late 50’s when Hammer began its classic run that the genre would really come back into style. But at least here, for a brisk 102 minutes, English horror reach a genuine high-water mark.

*of course, he also directed SHUTTER ISLAND, so what does he know?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: A few, from E. F. Benson and H.G. Welles (who I guess wrote the golfing story? What a world!)
• SEQUEL: Is DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT a sequel? Anyone seen that?
• REMAKE: There's a 1977 anthology called DEAD OF NIGHT, but it doesn't seem to have any plot elements in common with this one. Also 1972's DEATHDREAM is also sometimes called DEAD OF NIGHT, but it doesn't have any connection either. So.... no?
• FOREIGNER: Yup, British Import.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Redgrave? As far as I can tell it was his only horror movie.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None.
• BOOBIES: None.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: None.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: No dismemberment.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Haunted mirror for sure. There is a ghost who lives in a house in one segment, but I dunno if that's the same as a haunted house.
• MONSTER: Alas, despite the cool poster there's no giant bat.
• THE UNDEAD: Ghost child.
• POSSESSION: Yeah, from the possessed mirror dealie, and maybe the dummy too.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Nah.
• EVIL CULT: None.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: Evil dummy.
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Nope.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Low, deservedly beloved classic.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: If you think something terrible is going to happen, get the fuck out of there and don't sit around listening to a bunch of British people prattle on about it.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Uh... low, I guess. Most of it takes place during the daytime... or does it?!?
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Alas, no.

The Frankenstein Theory

Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Dir. Andrew Weiner

Written by Vlady Pildysh, Andrew Weiner

Starring Kris Lemche, Heather Stephens, Brian Henderson, Eric Zuckerman, Timothy V. Murphy

False advertising, the Monster does not look cool like this in the film, nor is he seen at all, nor are there any trees in the background, and also I can't figure out what they mean by "creators of THE LAST EXORCISM" since as far as I can see, no one involved with that one was involved here, not that that would really be a selling point anyway.

THE FRANKENSTEIN THEORY is a particularly dull found-footage clusterfuck, even by the woefully low standards we usually set for such things. Like most found-footage films, it lurches around treading water for nearly the entire runtime, wallowing in painfully banal conversations and tedious setup before finally getting around to some horror payoff. But unlike most found-footage films, here the payoff never actually happens at all, it just sort of lurches to an end without delivering any goods whatsoever. Everything even remotely interesting happens off-camera. It might as well be a radio drama, except that no human would ever listen to this crappy dialogue for an agonizing 87 minutes.  

There are a few decent things here. For one, the premise at least is pretty cool: young professor Jonathan Venkenheim (Kris Lemche, FINAL DESTINATION 3) discovers old letters in his family’s archives which are identical to the ones which open Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Turns out Shelley fictionalized the book from those letters, but the main characters were all real! This was before the days where things were based on a true story, so everyone just assumed it was all made up. But now we know for sure unambiguously that it wasn’t, these are real paper letters, they prove it, case closed. But for some reason the Ivory Tower eggheads from Venkenheim’s university don’t see it the same way, they think he’s nuts and demand some kind of proof for his perfectly logical theory that his great great great grandfather genetically engineered an immoral supermonster by combining human DNA with turtles and birds back in the late 1700s. “Fuck Mendel,” he argues with the film’s characteristic eloquence, but for some reason they still insist on some kind of proof, so he decides that he’ll head over to the Canadian Tundra with a film crew and find the creature for himself. If Canada seems like an odd place to look for Frankenstein’s monster, don’t blame me, I’m just reporting what I saw.

Oh man, this is really going to yurt.

Well, I think we can all see the logic of taking a snowmobile and two cameras up into the combined 1,200,000 square miles of frozen, isolated Northeastern Canada in search of an elusive monster who’s managed to stay hidden for the last two hundred years. But unfortunately for Venkenheim (and for us), he’s taken along the lamest, whiniest film crew this side of CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, and at least they had the excuse that they were theater actors and couldn’t really be expected to know better. Vicky, our director here, looks a little like Jessica Chastain (she’s played by Heather Stephens, “Lanie” from LOST HIGHWAY and “Hot Springs Woman” from DANTE’S PEAK) and mostly tolerable, but their sound guy and producer are just insufferable babies about the whole thing. They just make lame jokes (one guy laughs over giving his friend a wet willie for an uninterrupted minute and a half) and bitch and moan about how crappy this job is, over and over, for the whole movie, until you’re seriously considering that it might be worth leaving civilization forever to escape from them. Fortunately they’re somewhat offset by their Canadian guide, Karl (Timothy V. Murphy, bit parts in LONE RANGER and APALOOSA, plus an episode of V.I.P!) a real hardass type with a genuine charisma to him, boy, they oughtta put him in a real movie someday.

It’s kinda tragic, actually, because Lemche, Stephens, and Murphy are all good performers, and are given characters who might even have been interesting in a better movie.* Unfortunately the stupid found footage gimmick means that in place of narrative, we must have “realism” and hence can’t expect character arcs or growth, or expect them to have interesting/literate/intelligible conversations, or anything that might actually take these characters and turn their experience into a story, rather than a long dull incident. I definitely think a good movie could have been made with this concept. The Alaskan wilderness (subbing for for Canada because it was cheaper to shoot there, when does that ever happen??) is gorgeous, and one can easily imagine a horror movie milking some genuine paranoia from the extreme conditions and isolation. It’s kind of a cool idea that Frankenstein’s monster could still be alive somewhere, 200 years later. What would he be like by then, what has he been doing all this time?

Certified hardass, in the Lance Henriksen role of somehow maintaining dignity in the midst of total shit. 

But alas, this is not the movie to make that magic happen. The found footage angle means that rather than an engaging story or interesting characters, it’s just a bunch of pointless banal arguments and footage of people’s backs. These characters can’t evolve or engage in any narrative drama, they’re just sitting around waiting to finally be killed at the very end (not nearly soon enough). Moreover, the shitty camerawork erases any hint of atmosphere, they can’t use music or editing to evoke tension, the dialogue is lame, and can we agree once and for all to retire the idea that long green night vision sequences have any place in a commercial film produced by adults? Thank you.

Most tragic of all, though, is that they completely waste the essential concept here -- the fact that it’s Frankenstein’s monster out there ends up having exactly zero bearing on anything. Not only do we only get the most fleeting look at it (it’s a big guy dressed in rags, so he looks kind of like Sweetums from the Muppets), but it just skulks around their tent roaring and killing people bloodlessly off camera. I mean, it might as well be a bear or a Bigfoot (in fact, for all we see of the creature it might very well be a bigfoot) for all the concept ends up paying off. Horror fans are used to dealing with crappy acting, unfocused plotting, amateurish production work. But when you bungle all that and get all coy about delivering the genre goods… well, what the fuck is left? You’ve literally removed every single element of cinema that might be enjoyable to someone.** This is one lousy theory, this Frankenstein theory, and now we have the experimental data to prove it.

*Director Anthony Weiner hasn’t directed any other films, but he was casting director for TROMEO AND JULIET. So that makes him the second best big leagues alumni from that movie this year, as well as a true American hero. But maybe he should stick to casting, he seems to have a better knack for that than putting those casts into action.

**It’s about at the level of  one of those stupid fauxumentary monster shows on cable. But at least those are only 45 minutes with commercials -- this is twice that long, and somehow even more uneventful.

They're gonna be killed by that giant green amoeba!

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is referenced, but it turns out to be a true story.
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: No
• FOREIGNER: Alaska subs in for Canada.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: Egregiously so.
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None, although Tim V. Murphy has small roles in some A list films.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Frankenstein?
• BOOBIES: Too cold
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No, although they interview a guy who creepily hits on the one girl.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: No. Barely even any blood.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: None.
• MONSTER: Frankenstein's monster is called a monster, but...
• THE UNDEAD: ...I think his fits he bill better.
• POSSESSION: No.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: None.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Nah.
• EVIL CULT: No
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: Frankenstein is shown to own a doll, its a normal one though, not too creepy.
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Pretty high, deservedly so.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't go to Canada (emerging as a theme here), plus, I dunno, don't try and find Frankenstein, because he's kinda a dick?
• TITLE ACCURACY: This dude has a theory about Frankenstein, story checks out.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A