The List of Shame: The Sunday Night Slashers (Part One)

The List of Shame: The Sunday Night Slashers (Part One)

Men Women and Chainsaws, the Parties I Wasn’t Invited To, and the Glories of Being Excessively Intellectual 

Here’s where I would like to start:

• Have you ever finished a book and realized that nothing would ever be the same?  Your whole view of the world has been drastically altered, and henceforth you will be living as a different human being.  I’ve heard stories of people moving to India after breaking the spine of Be Here Now.  There are also millions of potentially alienated teenagers who feel that only Holden Caulfield can understand them.  I originally thought that this could never happen in your thirties.  However, all my suspicions have been proven untrue by finishing a copy of Carol J. Clover’s Men Women and Chainsaws.  
• Here’s the part of this little essay in which I feel (by virtue of my college education) that I need to elaborate.  I can’t even begin to summarize the revelations contained within Clover’s book.  There are just a few key points which I would like to trumpet in this particular case.  The biggest bang comes at the end of the book, in which Carol links horror movie watching to the Freudian theory of Repetition Compulsion.  That is the idea that a confused person will keep repeating the same destructive behavior in hope of a better result.  Carol ties this to masochism in the horror audience.  They will sit through various sequels, rip offs, and (in later cases) variations on a theme in the anticipation of getting a good scare.  
• Carol’s biggest issue of concern is, of course, gender.  Why does a primarily male audience choose to side with a female character?  (This is the “final girl,” the lone woman left standing at the end of a slasher.  There is an entire blog dedicated to this idea, and so I will not encroach on someone else’s territory).  The real shocker for me, though, was Carol’s analysis of possession and haunted house films.  Remember the terrible thing that the little girl gets sucked into in Poltergeist?  That’s a womb, and an elaborate metaphor for rebirth of the family unit.  Once I thought about it, what else could it be?  
• My real fascination with both Clover and the Book: Carol J. Clover is a legitimate scholar (she was for most of her career a professor of Scandinavian literature).  She is not “slumming,” but making a very valid and well researched attempt to examine an undeniably trashy brand of film.  You never catch her condescending to the material (there’s no trace of a Roger Ebert-like star rating.)  She is simply using her intellectual talents to ask: “What the hell is this really about?”  I initially started this blog with similar interests, though my aim was slightly different.  I wanted to examine what movies told us about the big questions: the meaning of life and all that nonsense.  

That’s all well and good, but the goal of this is decidedly two pronged.  

Here’s where I would like to go, Part Two:

• Remember all those amazing sleepovers you went to as a child?  You stayed up all night watching Friday the 13 and the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels?  Wasn’t that the most wonderful thing ever?  Well, fuck you then.  I didn’t get invited to those parties, and so I have no knowledge of them.  The other unfortunate event of my youth was that my Mom caught one of the Freddy movies on late night TV.  She was a teacher, and she wanted to see what all her students were raving about.  She let me know quite bluntly (after being disturbed by what she saw) that I would never be allowed to see a single Nightmare movie.  I didn’t even get to see the original Nightmare until I was 22 years old.  (You might see this as a deprived childhood.  I would probably argue that my Mom made the right decision.  I had enough to be afraid of as a kid without worrying about being slashed to death in a dream by a childhood molester.)   
• I loaded the deck in the above bullet, and you probably know what I’m getting at.  Despite being a major horror film, there’s quite a few classics (and non-classics) of the genre that yours truly has not seen.  What will an educated man in his thirties make of something like Slumber Party Massacre?  Keep in mind that the “Yoda” to my “Luke” is now Carol J. Clover.  I won’t ape her every movement, but I will most certainly be using her book as a reference.  My inclination is more towards being a judge of “good” or “bad,” but her issues of identification and gender are in the back of my mind. Here’s my chance to finally scratch a lurking cinematic itch and be a li’l Smarty Pants too.   

The Accidental Birth of a Tradition (the Sunday Night Slashers)

As with most things in life, the desire to undergo this journey through horror is not a new idea.  I have already been catching up on a few slashers here and there.  I recently watched a different slasher film on consecutive Sunday nights.  This has given birth to what I shall now (and for a bit) dub the “Sunday Night Slashers.”  I don’t know if I will have the momentum (or free time) to keep this up.  I have a relatively low threshold for “burning out” on just about any given activity.  (My electric guitar sits in the garage covered in dust as a testament to this fact.  I did stick with it long enough to play a bitchin’ c-chord, though).   

I’m not going to stick exclusively to stalk and slash movies.  I would like to sample as many films from different sub genres as I possibly can.  The rule being that the film must be a completely “new to me” watch.  People, I haven’t even seen the original Friday the 13.    

Now you’ve been very patient in waiting for some movie reviews.  Let me talk a bit about the two flicks I chose to start off this little movie club of one.  

Slumber Party Massacre and The Burning

There’s been a ton of hubbub made of the fact that Slumber Party Massacre is one of the rare slashers written and directed by women.  The author of the screenplay is the famous feminist writer Rita Mae Brown, and the director is Amy Holden Jones (who went on to quite a career as a screenwriter which included drafting Mystic Pizza).  Does this mean that there is some kind of hidden agenda I should be aware of in the flick?  

I would argue that Slumber Party Massacre is edged far enough towards parody.  The most obvious tip off is the killer’s use of a long, phallic shaped power drill as his weapon.  I just about groaned: “What could that possibly represent?”  The acting is also on par with a Junior High knock off of a SNL skit.  Even that seemed like an intentional choice to me as well.  Brown and Jones clearly know where every bit of the formula should be located, and the plot is very cynically constructed.  (Do I even need to summarize it?  There’s a killer loose in the neighborhood during a sleepover, hence the title.)    

What is the price of being so self aware?  This is a tedious movie to sit through because the emphasis is not on jolts.  There’s no suspense generated, and it’s tough not to be constantly taking snack and soda breaks.  Could it be that this is not an elaborate in joke and just a badly made horror movie?  The over all (lack of) “quality” feels just a bit too premeditated for that. 

Clover’s points are almost all nailed on the head.  The killer is emasculated when one of the girls chops off the tip of his drill.  What can be made of the swimming pool he falls into at the end?  As Kurt Vonnegut would say: “and so on.”   

Now on to the mysteries of The Burning.  The most blatant difference that we see here is the nature of the monster.  He is created by one generation of summer campers only to come back and haunt the next one.  This happens because of a teen age revenge prank gone awry.  The caretaker that the kids intend to scare ends up nearly getting burned to death.  

What is the unintentional side effect of this?  The killer is oddly sympathetic, and you root for him in a half-assed fashion.  You know he is going to get out of the hospital and go back to the place of his torment and near death.  Sitting through typical teen age antics becomes a bit boring as you wait for his return.  

The Burning does have a jolting last half hour.  The teenagers are efficiently disposed of  (seemingly) almost all at once.  The final confrontation with the killer (in an abandoned cabin) is quite scary.  

There is a point of contention I have with Carol in the analysis of this movie.  She makes a big deal out of the fact that the “final girl” is a boy.  She seems to have neglected the fact that the “hunky” head counselor is the one that ends up axing the bad guy.  The dorky boy only managed to restrain him for a bit.  Is he really the “final girl” if he can’t kill the beast?  He needs to stab him with the steely knife, even if he can’t kill him.  (Yes, that’s a belabored and ill planned Eagles reference.)   

So That’s It

There’s a very long first entry in a series.  Now what?  

Movies I Actually Enjoy: Paul Williams: Still Alive

Losing the Battle With “Success”

A year or so ago I posted a long, unforgivably whiny rant that coincided with the loss of my job.  This commonplace occurrence was made even worse because the company I worked for rejected the video I made for it.  My team and I had high hopes for the project; thinking that it would be the cornerstone in the launch of a viral campaign.  This slight disappointment led to everything changing despite my sincerest wishes that it wouldn’t.  

I won’t post a link to the aforementioned entry because it would incriminate me for being a sore loser (as opposed to a graceful and resilient future champion).  

I’m reasonably sure that I can summate it with the following points:

• I’ll never be able to make movies, and my life will be over.
• I’ve come this far in life and my expectations differ drastically from reality.
• What am I supposed to do if I can’t get my first career choice?
• One more thought: “WAAAHHHH!”

There’s unfortunate consequences to these kind of events.  You have to (shudder) “grow as a person” (gag) and (gasp) “look into doing something else.”  

I found myself asking many questions:

• Why do we always confuse “success” with “achievement?”  The fact that I made the video from soup to nuts should be enough.  The problem was that (for me) everything was hinging on “what happens next.”  That made me extra tense about every aspect of the production being as close to perfect as it could be.  Unfortunately, that over shadowed my enjoyment of just “getting to make a movie.”   Making the video was the “achievement,” and the “success” should not have been so important.  
• Has this whole “art thing” done me any favors?  Because of my life circumstances, I have an enormous reservoir of what I like to call: “I’ll show you.”  (There’s many air quotes in this particular piece, isn’t there?)  I would finally have chance to prove many naysayers I’ve known wrong.  When would that happen?  The precise moment that I got my much sought after recognition.  The problem inherent in this thought process is that I started to see success as a cure all.  
• What would happen if I got what I wanted?  Would anything change all that much?  I hate the myth of the humble celebrity who claims that all the riches in the world have done nothing to alter their personality.  (Cue the horrendous Jennifer Lopez song: “Jenny from the Block.”)  I’m more likely to subscribe to the philosophy of: “If you’re an asshole going in, then you’ll be an asshole going out.”  The people that need this kind of validation are not exactly stellar humans to begin with.  I’ve seen plenty of evidence of that in my time spent making movies and writing plays.  
• What do I really want?  What do I believe in?  I’m not entirely sure.

This is all fascinating, I’m sure.  The reason you are here, I presume, is to read some movie reviews.  

There is one particular film that I saw during my sojourn which speaks to these issues.  That would be a documentary called Paul Williams: Still Alive.  (An intelligent reader might note: “Dusty, that’s a much newer and more current film than you usually cover.  You’re just angling for some sweet google traffic, and that makes you both a hypocrite and a sell out.”  I would say: “No comment.”  But I’m laughing on the inside...oh, yes...)

Paul Williams: Still Alive (2011)

There’s an interesting trick at work in this particular documentary.  The film is just as much about the filmmaker as it is about the subject.  The makeshift director, Paul Kessler, gives the (perhaps unintentional) impression that he is in the midst of a midlife crisis.  What does one do when in the throes of such a predicament?  You start to wax nostalgic, and that is what leads Paul to google his childhood hero Paul Williams.  Kessler had just assumed that Paul was dead.  The complete opposite ends up being true: Paul is still alive (hence the title), going on tour, and working a day job as a drug and alcohol counsellor.  

Paul Williams is not exactly a guy who would have instant name recognition these days.  Kessler does a thorough job of introducing this singer/songwriter/occasional actor to a new audience.  Paul is shown to be reasonably unassuming, around 5’5”, bespectacled, and slightly brooding.  The “a-ha” moment came for me when I realized that I recognized just about every song the man wrote.  This included standards like “Rainy Days and Mondays” and Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.”  He was also wrote the script and music for the Brian DePalma classic Phantom of the Paradise.

This success as a musician led to a second career as a TV personality.  He hosted variety shows, showed up on “Hollywood Squares,” and was (in the ’70’s at least) a star.  That’s enough of a history lesson about Paul Williams. 

The Gist (or what I got from this movie): Kessler uses an endearingly low-fi technique, with hand held camera and his own humble voice over.  Paul is at first (understandably so) a reluctant subject for a documentary.  This is the “Michael Moore” section of the movie: Kessler chases after Paul with a camera and hounds him.  Something in Paul changes, and he eventually consents to being interviewed.  

This is where Kessler’s film hits its particular stride.  We get the “behind the scenes” story about what was really going on with Paul during his peak.  He was getting divorces, accumulating a sizable stack of addictions, and doing everything in his power not to grow up.  

Paul has obviously (and this is not a spoiler) come out the other side as a much saner man.  He uses his notoriety to talk to recovering addicts...his message seems to be that success is not a substitute for true happiness.  The most poignant part of the film comes near the end when he tells Kessler that he’s happy.  He knows this revelation “fucks up the movie” for the documentarian. This is not a story about a great star going to waste.  This is about a life long unhappy man going through trauma and finding some peace at the end.  He walked away when he was at his peak for good reason.     

I almost felt like I had Paul leaning over my shoulder saying: “You know that stuff you want?  It’s really not worth it.”  

I’m starting to agree with him.  

Movies about F'cking Losers: Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Heavy Metal Parking Lot: Bonus Educational Content, Right at the Start of the Review.  

I have a feeling I’m preaching to the converted by writing about Heavy Metal Parking Lot.  

However, if you’ve never heard of it, here are a few words of introduction:  

This is exactly what the title indicates it to be.  Two novice documentarians paid a $5 fee to park outside an auditorium before the mighty Judas Priest played.  They conducted a series of “cinema verity” interviews with the people they found there.  The heavy metal fans play beautifully into their cultural stereotype.  Loud, stupid, ignorant...yes, even in their own words: “fucked up, man.”  

Heavy Metal Parking Lot: “It’s Funny What a Man Remembers...” or “Why I Cheated on This Particular Entry.”    

I first became aware of Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986) somewhere in college.  A friend of mine pressed a bootleg copy of it into my hand with the understanding that it was a laugh riot.    I remember watching all sixteen odd minutes of it (this barely qualifies as a “film”) and feeling confused about my pal’s assertion.  

Yes, it was ironic.  I would even go as far as “tragic” in some cases.  The plain truth is that I had a heard time finding humor in the whole ordeal.  These people were not presenting themselves as objects of ridicule...they were just out for a “good time.”  The “good time” involved some chemicals, some ill advised ideas, and idol worship of a once revered band.  They weren’t expecting a pair of aspiring filmmakers to show up.  They didn’t intend to be part of a video which kept circulating for decades after it was shot.

I found the whole affair rather uncomfortable.  I remember feeling an intense bafflement that didn’t let up once the credits rolled.  I mostly just felt unsettled and vaguely empty (not a giant change from my natural state, but still...).   

I usually don’t preview the movies I select for my semi-regular feature “Movies about F’cking Losers.”  This was an exception to the rule...I always wondered what it would be like to go back and reexamine Heavy Metal Parking Lot.  Has age embittered me?  Would I find it easier to chuckle at someone else’s expense?

Heavy Metal Parking Lot Viewing Part 2: The Equally Confused Sequel

Before I give you my assessment, please allow room for a bit of a digression:  

My friend most likely paid a good twenty dollars for the sought after VHS (please forgive this expression) “back in the day.”  The entire thing is now up on youtube for absolutely no charge at all.  Does that take a bit of the adventure out of the hunt?  I sometimes wonder if the thrill of finding the obscure has been taken away from us.  I wonder if a day will come when we even forget what “instant gratification” meant.  I can only speculate about why Heavy Metal Parking Lot has an enduring popularity.  I imagine that one of the reasons is the miracle of the circulating tape...traded, borrowed, and pawned into infinity.  

Now I will end my digression on a somewhat ironic note.  

I totally “youtubed” Heavy Metal Parking Lot.  I wasn’t about to do anything brash...like pay for it.  

So what I did find?

I was even more bewildered this time around.  

What’s the problem?  Several, and I’ll list a few.  

• I don’t believe the filmmakers (Jeff Heyn and Jeff Krulik) have much of a perspective on what they have decided to show us.  There are many reasons why I believe this: The movie is so brief that we don’t have much of a chance to delve into the culture beyond the “Hey, look at these freaks” surface.  Heyn and Krulik haven’t put enough thought into their questions.  Perhaps a better approach would have been to ask the interviewees: “Why are you really here?”  This is playing at the sociological implications of the film.  They might have gotten nebriated nonsense...but it would have been more illuminating than people listing off “Judas Priest” and “Dokken” constantly.  I’m stating these concerns as an audience member.  What was I supposed to learn from watching this?  
• Truth be told: Heavy Metal Parking Lot grows a bit tedious, with not much to differentiate one crazed metal head from another.  The die hard fans of the film will probably insist that there are fine points between the “Zebra Suit Guy” and the “Jump His Bones” girl.  I can’t remember any one person sticking out...the subjects all sound the same after a bit.  That can make for a very long sixteen minutes.   
• I find the most affecting bits of Heavy Metal Parking Lot to be the ones without irony or malice.  The filmmakers interview one group of friends who are attending the concert in tribute to a dead friend.  They plan to hold up a banner that says: “Timmy Loved Judas Priest” during the show.  This is the most poignant thing on display here by a considerable distance.  The long distance tracking shots of the crowd have a strange beauty about them...like one of the poetic shots from The Road Warrior.  They also made me think about Slacker era Richard Linklater, with the effortless but keen observation.  I wish the editing hadn’t been so choppy, because it ruined this effect.  
• I had the same sense of depression that I did the first time I watched Heavy Metal Parking Lot.  There’s just something about knowing the people you see here are going nowhere in life.  

Does All of This Mean I Don’t Recommend Heavy Metal Parking Lot?

On the contrary: You should see Heavy Metal Parking Lot at least once as the odd piece of pop cultural flotsam and jetsam that it is.  I wouldn’t be having this contradictory conversation with myself if there wasn’t something vital there.  Something that is worth being discussed, even if it with a tone of bewilderment.  

There is also no doubt in my mind that Heavy Metal Parking Lot will endure.  The fact of its existence and reputation is enough to inspire viewings for years to come. 

Come to think of it: Maybe I should break down and watch it plastered, man!  Rock and fucking Roll!  Yeah!

Why Remember Anything?: Don't Look in the Basement (1973)

Part One: A Little Bit of an Intellectual Opening (and a warning)

The inside of my cinematic closet (or memory) is a complete mess.  There is half remembered images (“What the hell was that?), dimly recollected experiences (“Did I see that in a theater?”), and a fair amount of dashed expectations (“That was not nearly as good as I wanted it to be.”)  

Occasionally, however, a little morsel surfaces for me to gnaw on.  This time it’s the (questionably labeled) horror classic Don’t Look in the Basement (1973). 

Here are a few questions to ponder during this entry:

• When does something become frightening?  
• Along that line of questioning: Under which circumstances does a person frighten themselves?
• What’s the aftermath of that said scare?  When does a reaction to a horror flick just become ridiculous?

I ask these questions because (spoiler alert) the following story is about two grown men getting irrationally scared by Don’t Look In The Basement.  

Yeah, really. 

That leads me to a warning: I don’t want to mislead anyone about this film.  You’re welcome to track it down, but I consider myself blameless when you find it “not scary enough.”        

Part Two: The Unearthing of Don’t Look in the Basement

  

Have you ever learned something by accident and then come to regret it?  

I was in grad school when I came across these dismal “Horror Classics” collections.  I didn’t immediately recognize them as dismal...not at the time.  I was more drawn into the titles on the back of the plain black boxes that promised some kind of nirvana.  How could you turn down titles like Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory?  (Yes, that is a real movie.  It’s middle of the road...black and white, badly dubbed from Italian.  I’m relatively certain that it is set in a boarding school...was there an actual werewolf?  I don’t recall.)    

I regret this discovery because it was the catalyst for my cheap DVD addiction...but never mind that.  

I quickly took them home to my roommate at the time and shouted: “Look at this.”  That was the beginning of what was destined to be a regrettable waste of time (with some exceptions, as we shall see).  We started plowing our way through ‘em: there was a few choice picks.  A Bucket of Blood, The Devil’s Hand (which had a killer surf rock theme), and a creepy little flick called I Bury the Living.    

Mostly though, there was just a ton of boredom.  The Wasp Woman sounds terrific, but try sitting through it.  There’s no fucking wasp woman...not until the last five minutes and it’s a cheap ceramic mask.  (Spoiler?)  

I had a sense that my roommate (who was much less of a die hard) was burning out.  That’s when I spotted something called Don’t Look in the Basement.    There were some slight differences in the blurb: it had an R-rating and was in color.  That meant we might see some blood and boobs (and to be honest I don’t remember much of either).  I was also drawn in by the summary: this was a movie about the inmates (literally) taking over the asylum.  That’s a can’t miss premise, isn’t it?  

Part Three: The Immediate Experience of Watching Don’t Look In the Basement

(Editor’s Note 2: I decided not to re-watch Don’t Look in the Basement for this particular entry.  I almost don’t want to taint my memory of it...that’s happened before with other movies that have frightened me.  That said, I have swiss cheese sized holes in my memory of what the thing was about, blow by blow.  I’ll just be delving into my experience of watching it, as honestly as I can recall.)  

We cued it up, and within five minutes we watched one of the inmates hacking a doctor to death.  (I believe it started with the doctor testing the inmate to see if he could handle chopping the firewood.)  I’ve seen some professional looking axe killings in my day, but this was not one of them.  The blood had that special cherry syrup look to it, and the actor playing the doctor didn’t exactly know how to pull a good “fall.”  

My roommate started laughing hysterically as he proclaimed: “It’s already starting!”  I chuckled a little too, thinking we were in for a camp fest.  The whole shebang would be over in less than 90 minutes, and that would be the end of it.  

What happened?  Where was the change in the film?  I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but I can tell you that I noticed the laughter stopping cold.  

Perhaps I should backtrack: I would try to find this movie years later and ended up doing some accidental research about it.  The production was put together by a classic huckster (and independent filmmaker) named S.F. Brownrigg.  The people he dug up to play the inmates were not professional actors. They were closer to local yokels that had a tad of “real” crazy in them.  

What happens when you start shooting with non-actors?  The acting becomes a little too authentic, and the audience has the feeling of witnessing something it shouldn’t.  The natural craziness couples with the ominous setting (in reality, a shut off branch of a local university).  The behavior becomes more erratic, and the tension escalates to a fever pitch.  

Another bit of trivia: The original title of the film (before it was dumped into the drive-in circuit) was The Forgotten.  That seems more appropriate, considering the nature of the story. 

I distinctly remember the ending: An African American character (who has been demanding a popsicle for the entire film) goes bug nuts and hacks the rest of the living inmates to death.  The last shot is a masterpiece of dark humor.  Our inmate finally has his popsicle as his murder weapon rests at his feet. 

The ending credit montage reveals that the people we have been watching are indeed paid actors.  Their names are proudly displayed by still pictures of their (pretend) dismembered corpses.  

The film ended, and my roommate turned to me and said something to the tune of: “That sort of freaked me out.”

Part Four: The Aftermath

Here’s the real question: Why have I wasted so much ink on this particular story?  What does it have to do in a broader context of film study?  What am I trying to convey with my patchy memory and blabbing about cheap DVDs?   

This is a story about how film is, above all else, a psychological medium.  I can’t tell you if I had some kind of deep seated fear of asylums that was waiting to break loose.  I don’t spend much of my waking life contemplating what happens in a nut house.  There was just something about Don’t Look in the Basement that lingered in my imagination.  You couldn’t just laugh it off as a cheap and dirty horror flick.  Something had cut a little too deep, even if it was undefinable.    

The same could be said of my roommate’s experience.   

He was on the board of a local community theater, and had to go lock up after a rehearsal.  He told me the next day that he rushed through the ritual, leaving as fast as he could.  “After watching those crazy fuckers?  I just had to bolt out of there...” 

As for me:  

I went to bed, and tried to get some sleep.  I kept looking at my closet door, which was hanging open.  I kept imagining someone jumping through it with an axe.  

I suddenly realized that we didn’t live in the best location.  Our house was backed up against an alley...and what was across the street?  Unfortunately, there was a mortuary and crematorium that was quite active.  (“Zombies?”)  I even stopped to contemplate the seven story high nursing home that was close by.  Were all the old folks under lock and key?  

I kept inviting nightmarish scenarios that were only vaguely related to Don’t Look in the Basement.  The film had planted an unfortunate seed, and now it was in full bloom.  

Part Five: The Coda

I haven’t watched the film since this one traumatizing incident.  I do, however, reflect upon it fondly and occasionally still reference it.  I have long since lost touch with this particular roommate.  Though I would imagine it might be one of the few things we’d have to talk about if I saw him.  

I wonder how many people have similar stories about this obscure, grim little flick.  I imagine that you can also substitute just about any other film for this one.  The history of cinema is rife with people becoming irrationally freaked out by the most unlikely of sources.  

Isn’t that why we watch horror films? 

P.S. Don’t Look in the Basement is in the public domain, available for free on Youtube and Internet Archive.

P.P.S. Since writing this, I’ve learned that a remake is under way.    

Movies I Actually Enjoy: Grave Encounters

You Could Call This a Guilty Confession, or You Could Just Call It Honest

Let’s start with a little story, shall we?

A few months ago a film known as Grave Encounters showed up in my Netflix Instant Queue.  Now, truth be told, I had heard of this thing and shrugged it off as one more cheapie horror flick in a sea full of similar monsters.  “Found footage?”  Check.  “Menacing location?”  Put that on the list too.  “Obnoxious and irresponsible film crew who mess with something unholy that should just as well be left alone?”  That would be the proof in the pudding for Grave Encounters to be one more bastard child of The Blair Witch Project.  (If you’re savvy, you would do me one better by pointing out that The Blair Witch Project is just a bastard child of The Last Broadcast.  Touche.)  

This is where it began, and continued one late Saturday afternoon when I decided to give Grave Encounters a try.  

I already told you what the set up is:  A television crew (responsible for one more generic ghost hunting show) gets locked inside an abandoned mental asylum.  They receive all the requisite warnings about the history of the place (which I don’t remember...other than “It’s haunted.”)  Astute horror movie watchers will know that this is a recipe for disaster...and so it is.  

The only reason I often tell stories on this site is to illustrate an ironic truth.  About half an hour into Grave Encounters, I put up the white flag of surrender.  You can call Grave Encounters a knock off or derivative.  My honest opinion, though, is that you can’t say that it isn’t incredibly effective.  

I’ll tell you what I think a good horror movie should do in a few simple lines.  The best horror flicks create a very distinct atmosphere that is nearly impossible to shake.  You know you are in the grip of a great horror flick when you have trouble leaving the couch to go the fridge or the shitter.  What’s down that dark hall and how do you know it’s safe?  

Grave Encounters pulls this trick off with reckless abandonment.  I’ll give it a heap of extra credit for not falling back on cheap gimmicks.  The best word to be used here is “dread.”  There are jump scares, but only when they are damn well earned by a fair amount of tension.  I kept putting the movie on pause to steel myself against the next shock.  

I will also give the filmmakers (known by the hokey moniker The Vicious Brothers) a round of applause for tapping into my biggest fear.  That would be a basic fear of the dark.  Would you like me to use some fancy film jargon?  The mise en scene (look it up) of Grave Encounters allows for much of the action to be happening in the unlit portion of the shot.  The lighting design is very simple, with many shadows in the foreground.

The Vicious Brothers blow it a little bit towards the end when they start using some poorly done CGI.  The ghouls are not nearly as ghastly as they could have been with traditional make up.  You know what?  That’s a minor gripe that I’m willing to forgive.

What’s the point?  Grave Encounters is a terrifically scary little fright fest and a total surprise.    

Let’s Talk About the Aftermath

This is what happened after I watched Grave Encounters.  I was very thankful for the daylight when I stepped out side my little house.  There was a space of about twenty or thirty minutes when I just stayed out in the garden and took it easy.  Then I decided to go back in my hole and try to do some Grave Encounters inspired research.  Why didn’t I know about this?  Had there been a similar reaction by other people?  I know anonymous (or semi-anonymous) people on the internet aren’t the best source to go to.  This was just the immediate fix at the moment, and I soon found that I was in for a shock.  

Men Women and Chainsaws and the Self Aware (Possibly Bluffing) Audience.

Now this is the part of the review in which I try to juggle two seemingly separate balls.  

Ball #1:

• Grave Encounters has a shockingly low Internet Movie Database rating of 6/10.  If you don’t speak the language, that translates to a bit below good and traveling towards average.  
• I started doing some digging through the IMDB user comments and they could be easily summarized.  “No, this was not scary.  I was not remotely phased...and it was a waste of time.  LOL!”  
• Surely the “real film critics” in the external reviews section would have some more conclusive wisdom.  The Village Voice states in the first paragraph of the review that Grave Encounters is nothing but a “blatant pilfering of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.”  The critic then continues to bash it into pieces and might as well be saying: “It’s just not that scary.  LOL!” 
• I wanted to ask these internet scribes the question: How could you not be scared by this?  Did you see the same movie I did?  I’m in my 30s and it scared the tar out of me...so what gives, dudes?  (I would like to point out that I have an MFA in Dramatic Writing.  That gives me license to use vernacular like “What gives, dudes?” and not sacrifice my intelligence.)   

This was disheartening to me, and I wondered if I should just keep my little scaredy-cat reaction to myself.  

Let’s now skip ahead to a few months later.  A friend of mine lent me a copy of Carol J. Clover’s Men Women and Chainsaws.  One of the many astute points that Clover makes is that modern horror movie audiences are self aware.  They know the beats of a slasher flick by heart, and their reaction is based on that.  She talks about the glory days in which low budget horror still got released theatrically.  The crowd in screenings of Friday the 13 and I Spit on Your Grave were vocal participants who provided an in depth commentary.  The kind that began with: “Girl, don’t go in THAT BASEMENT!  She WENT IN THAT BASEMENT!  Bitch, I told you so.”  Clover is so thorough in her research that she backs up speech like this with a foot note and ten sources.    

What was the reason behind this sort of elaborate acting?  The people were scared, and it was all an act to mask that primal fear.  (Clover builds on the work of Robin Wood, another academic whose bread and butter was analysis of B-flicks.)  

What’s the connective tissue here?  I will present this argument: You can replace the crowded movie theater with an internet site.  You still have the performance aspect of announcing publicly that you are not scared.  The litmus test for a supposedly brave person is that you don’t shake in your boots.  That’s the wonderful catharsis that a quality horror flick provides.    
  

I’ve been told that I’m honest to a fault and that I should change it.  So here we go!  I would like to amend my previous statements with the following paragraph.  

That Grave Encounters Crap Wasn’t Even Scary

No, it didn’t bother me at all...go watch a different movie that’s really freaky...LOL!

The Playground Gets Ponderous: The Wonderful (and Confusing) World Of Film Format

“Going to the Movies”

What does the above phrase even mean anymore?  I’ve read several woefully composed online essays in the last few years about how “going to the movies” has been eradicated by the onslaught of other options.  You can pop in the DVD, you can hit the “streaming” button, and you can pay a few bucks and get something downloaded from a mysterious cloud.  (You even have the option of not paying anything: but I won’t go there.) The pieces that I have read suggest that this is a bad thing.  

I understand the argument to be as follows:

• The proper place to see a movie is in a theater.  This is almost like saying the only place for the word of God is in a church.  
• Once the film leaves the confines of the theater, it becomes something entirely different.  Let’s extend the church metaphor: it becomes blasphemous for something that is “really good” to be shown in other formats besides the big screen.  
• Here’s a common one: The fact that there are so many options to watch films these days is killing the independent movie theater.  (I know of one local theater in my area that blatantly displays a “death to Netflix” emblem on their site.  I was talking to a friend of mine once about how much this bothered me.  We both agreed that the manager of the theater was just using Netflix as a convenient scapegoat for his lack of an audience.  The real reason no one went to his theater was because he kept programming intentionally esoteric movies that people didn’t want to see.  I left the majority of his screenings feeling excruciatingly bored or depressed.  I could have stayed home and streamed the latest Die Hard sequel.)
• This is all fuel for the fire of the “evils of Hollywood” argument.  The reason that the film industry keeps pumping out dreck is because that is what gets people to leave the house.  They’ll pay for a ticket to Twilight much faster than something like Safety Not Guaranteed or Jeff Who Still Lives at Home.  The “good” movies languish in theatrical release, faltering to find an audience and “dying” on DVD.  The fact that “good” independent films don’t find their rightful lovers while in the theater is seen as a demotion of some sort.   

What do I think about all this?  I don’t agree with any of it (and feel free to call me a contrarian).  

I’ve started thinking about this for highly personal and subjective reasons.  This is the first one that I can think of almost immediately. 

I Don’t Enjoy Going to Chain Theaters Anymore

Saying that out loud instantly qualifies me as a grouchy old man.  

• I have an almost chemically negative reaction to “coming attractions.”  When I was younger, this insult to my intelligence used to be relatively fleeting.  The atrocity has now been extended to bombard you from the instant you enter the theater.  I will never, ever watch a teenage soap opera on the CW.  Why do I need to be told I’m being allowed an “exclusive sneak peak?”  I also have learned to distrust trailers; I’ve been fooled one too many times.  The last thing anyone needs is one more disappointment in life (“but the previews made it look so good.”)  
• My hearing has become more sensitive with age.  Yes, that sounds like superstition, but I believe it to be true.  This is what I hear whenever I go see a film at the multiplex: the constant crinkling of candy wrappers, the inane and unintelligent banter of the other patrons, and the terrifying sudden storm of footsteps leaving the theater.  
• There’s no room: I saw Lincoln in a crowded multiplex, bunched up into a corner seat.  That was all I could find to sit in, and it was claustrophobic.  I didn’t pay $10.50 so I could accidentally be touched by some stranger who was constantly adjusting themselves.  
• I’m past the age where you get extremely excited about seeing an “event” movie.  The recent rash of Star Wars updates proves that point a bit too well.  That might have been thrilling news when I was twelve.  Now I’m just too old and apathetic to care.  I also don’t want to deal with the other issues listed above. 
• The process of seeing a movie feels oddly “soulless” to me as of late.  I don’t like walking out into a crowd of literally hundreds of people and knowing I’m one more number.  This is part of me feeling manipulated, and it puts a pit in my stomach.  

If a Movie Works, it just Works

The film format argument should not do anything to “ruin” a perfectly good film.  I’m a child of the ‘80s, and everyone in my era grew up with VCRs.  Most of my favorite films were “discovered” on VHS, or late at night on TV.  I never felt like I was being cheated out of the theatrical experience because of the simple fact of technology.  If a filmmaker has truly done their job, the over all impact of the movie will forever be the same.  This should not be altered by someone watching it on an ipod, a laptop, or a large screen TV.  

The first time I watched Five Easy Pieces was on a ratty old 19 inch TV.  That, for me, was absolutely the best way to see it.  There was a perfect union with the format I was watching it on and the nature of the story.  There was something oddly emotionally appropriate about the experience...the Jack Nicholson character was just like the ill fated VCR I had at the time.  

Sometimes the best way to watch a movie is to see it alone.  You are divorced from the judgement of your fellow moviegoers.  This means that you can achieve a sort of intimacy that’s all too rare in a crowd.  I’m not saying that movies can’t touch a person in a crowded theater.  I’m just allowing for options.  

And the Options are Staggering

Here’s a story from my recent movie watching life.  I finally checked off Abel Farrera’s Ms. 45 from the “movies I need to see before I die” list.  This was something I desired to see since I first read about it in Guide for the Film Fanatic over twenty years ago.  

Where did I find it?  The whole thing is available on Youtube, for free, and without interruption.  I sincerely hope that the person who posted it isn’t doing jail time as we speak.  I watched it on my ipad, and it was just the right way to see it.  (The synchronicity between format and movie again.)  I wouldn’t have been able to seek out this oddball flick in any other way.  

The last three or four years have allowed me the ability to scratch various cinematic itches at rapid fire.  I can hardly believe my good fortune as an avid film watcher.  It might have been great to see Ms. 45 in a flea bitten 42nd street theater (as it was first shown in the early ‘80s).  That said, I don’t feel like I was deprived by not being able to.    

This is the true golden age for movie watching, in my honest appraisal.  Movies that got overlooked are now being welcomed into people’s homes like lost orphans.  I can’t see any problem with that.

I also can’t afford the $10.50, but that’s a different story.    

Evolution of a Film Snob: High Times at the Rio Rancho Twin

The Sticky Sweet Smell of Nostalgia

I remember one of the first times I felt what might be labeled as an unpleasant “pang” of nostalgia.  This must have been around my mid-twenties, and happened in a relatively innocuous setting (so I could be alone during the episode).  I was channel surfing and came across a wildly exaggerated “Best of the ‘90s” ad (“from Time Life.”)  People that were a good five to ten years younger than me were bouncing around in flannel shirts proclaiming: “Remember the Butthole Surfers? How long has it been since you heard this hit by the Magnificent Bastards?”   

The mid-to-late nineties were an enormously mediocre period of music in my opinion.  I rebelled with my headphones and a copy of The Wall, but something must have seeped in underneath Roger Waters.  

I found myself saying such “old timer” giveaways as: “I used to hear that when I was in the back of the car...I heard that while I was music shopping at the mall once...”  

I’m clearly not immune to nostalgia, and my memories are just as faulty as yours.  There might not be a golden nugget of happiness in my life associated with “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden.  I’ll be damned, though, if I can’t manufacture something to fill the void.  

Where am I going with this?  

This Was Supposed to Be a Review of Cool World

Do you remember the Ralph Bakshi epic Cool World (1992)?  There’s no conceivable reason why you (or anyone) else should.  However, I have a very distinct and age appropriate memory of watching it in the theater with my parents.  Why?  Because it was a colossal marketing snafu on behalf of a major studio.

Cool World was essentially about this: A comic book artist (Gabriel Bryne) somehow falls into the world of his own creation (though I can’t remember how and don’t care).  He is confronted with his signature character Holli Would (an animated version of Kim Bassinger) who wants to become real.  How does this happen?  She has to have sex with the cartoonist...that’s the central plot point.  

This was rated PG-13 and inexplicably sold as a family film.  (There were kids in the audience that had to be as young as eight.  I can only imagine that they went home and got “the talk.”)

The only impressions I have left are these: 1.  This was a massively uncomfortable experience.  2.  Even though I was only 12, I found Cool World to be an enormously mediocre film.  There was no real need for me to track it down and watch it again, was there?  No.  

This is when I began to have my nose curl up like a cartoon character.  I started to smell that sticky sweet smell of nostalgia that has been aforementioned...

Why?  Let me introduce you (some 500 words after the start of this entry) to the real subject of this piece.  

The Rio Rancho Twin

The title of the heading above perhaps has very little meaning to people without direct knowledge of it.  I just did a google search and found exactly one article about the Rio Rancho Twin Cinema.  This was sort of an obituary, and I had to pay to read the whole thing...so fuck that.  

The real question is this: Is it possible for me to rebuild the Twin in my mind one crappy mortar brick at a time?  

I’m going to do my best, and we’ll see what happens.  

The Rio Rancho Twin was (obviously) located in the wonderful, exotic burg of Rio Rancho, New Mexico.  There were a number of strikes against this establishment from the very beginning.  

The first of which was the location: The Twin was sandwiched into the back corner of a strip mall that was right off the main highway.  I would wager a guess that the space it occupied was never meant to hold a movie theater.  Everything was cramped, the seats were compacted together, and the concession stand was a cute little after thought.  

The most interesting hook that the Twin offered was that it showed “first run” movies at “second run” prices.  How would this work?

The example I remember most was Jurassic Park (1992).  The tent pole feature would blast itself on legitimate screens nation wide to box office breaking records.  The managers of the Twin would pretend that never happened.  Two weeks later Jurassic Park would be “new to Rio Rancho” and open at the Twin with the same amount of hoopla.  

I realize I’m not making any of this sound very enticing.  Would you like to know what has been missing from this particular description?  The palatable feeling of excitement as I stood in the line.  I can only hope that I wasn’t just projecting all of this onto everyone else.  I genuinely believed that everyone who was crammed into the limited space of the Twin was just as happy to be there as I was.  The quality of the accommodations didn’t matter much, but the sheer joy in going out to see a movie did.  

Here’s a few of the films that I can very clearly recall watching: 

• Dad (1989): This was way over my head (or life experience) at the time of my original watching of it.  I can reconstruct the story in a nutshell: Ted Danson spends two hours taking care of Jack Lemon who plays his ailing father.  The subjects of death and mortality were not heavily discussed with nine year olds.  I remember that the fact this movie so heavily dwelled on them was a bit of an eye opener for me.  I’m sure there was an enormous amount of Hollywood gloss lacquered on thick, but I wouldn’t have recognized it.  
• The trailer for My Boyfriend’s Back struck a chord with me.  This was another one of those PG-13 oddities: a girl loses her boyfriend who comes back as a zombie and she loves him anyway.  I never saw the entire film, but the knowledge that such a thing could exist resonated with me.  Who would ever come up with anything that twisted?  You could get away with pumping that into a mainstream theater?  I had the same kind of eye opening experience around the same time with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions...which was something that I was entirely too young to read.  (I was unfortunately telegraphing my future interests.)  
• The very last film I saw there was the Jerry Bruckheimer opus Con Air (1997).  What was Con Air if not a glorified B-movie with an A-movie budget?  What better place to see it than a rag tag theater?  

That’s enough with the memories, what am I really trying to say?

This is About a Sort of Grief

Here’s a much later memory: I went back to see the Rio Rancho Twin right after I got out of grad school.  The place had been closed for some years, but I had a bit of a hair brained scheme.  Why not apply for some kind of small business loan and try to buy the theater?  I could start up an art house (catering to Rio Rancho...why wouldn’t Rio Rancho need an art house theater?  Perfectly reasonable thoughts.)   

I got in the car and drove to the strip mall, finding myself peaking in the scum covered window a few minutes later.  

Remember the ending shot from The Last Picture Show?  The one where the dust blows through the empty streets.  Peaking in on one of my old childhood haunts gave me the same sting of sadness.  

Going to the movies has become a “processed” experience.  You are bombarded by advertising and dumbed down by comfort.  We’ve all had to sit through the mind numbing repetition of “The Twenty.”  Who hasn’t fallen asleep in the over sized couch like easy-chairs?  Do you look forward to going to the multiplex in the same way that you do seeing an old friend?  I would have to say honestly and emphatically no.  

The more seating a theater offers, the more strangers that you end up having to share two hours with.  I’m not saying that Rio Rancho Twin was like a neighborhood church in which everyone knew each other.  There was, however, more of a sense of some kind of communal event.  I’m also not going to tell you that independent theaters are completely dead.  There’s a few left here and there, and some of them still do quite well.  I just wonder if most modern audiences are glossing over them in the movie listings and going to see garbage like Identity Theft in the “real” theaters.  

My nostalgia isn’t just getting the best of me here.  I’m also suffering from a normal human hunger to have something more than an empty experience.  Shouldn’t two hours of your life leave you with a little something?  Look at all the scholarly writing about the function of the Marx Brothers in Depression era America.  I’m not just pulling this out of my ass, am I?   

I decided not to go through with that plan to buy the theater at the exact instant I looked in the windows.  Could I handle the heartbreak when the general public didn’t share my enthusiasm?  Could I stomach the financial burden?  I wasn’t certain that I could.

That said, I stood out in the parking lot and did some respectful thinking about what had been lost.