Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010 documentary)

So, I'm a long-time fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street films, and when I heard about a documentary about the series, I was extremely excited to hear about it.  Flash forward these few years and I spotted the film on Netflix as I was looking for some ideas for this month.  I knew I had to cover it, I just didn't know where to slot in a movie that was close to four hours long!  I got it watched today, so here's my thoughts on the film.

The documentary takes a look at each individual film, from A Nightmare on Elm Street up to Freddy Vs. Jason (nothing about the remake in it, though).  It features interviews with various actors, crew, makeup artists, etc., that were involved in the creation of each film.  Almost every Elm Street kid is represented, with the exception of Johnny Depp, Patricia Arquette and Breckin Meyer.  They even had Jason Mewes in for a joke about his resemblance to the Freeburg stoner character in Freddy Vs. Jason.  There's also a segment regarding some of the Freddy merchandise that came out, plus the TV series Freddy's Nightmares, with footage from that included.  Finally, it also covered the rise and fall of New Line Entertainment.

Now, I'm not normally a fan of documentary films.  I usually find them somewhat slow and boring.  However, this one kept me pretty riveted to the screen.  The stories the actors told, the footage included from behind the scenes or storyboards, some of the revelations I found out from the people on the movies themselves was just amazing.  I was happy to sit through it, and I really didn't want it to end.  I also got a laugh at the end credits, as the actors recited some of their best known lines from the films they were in.

This movie gets a 5 out of 5 for me.  It's not the usual fare for me at Happy Horror, but I definitely liked it.  It was well worth the almost four hours of running time.  If you get a chance to see this one, definitely go for it!  As always, take care of yourselves and this is Red Hawk, signing out!

The Boogeyman (1980) and Return of the Boogeyman (1994) - Joint Review

So, sorry for the extremely long delay in posting this.  I'm going to do my best to salvage the rest of the month, and to cover what I meant to cover in the weeks following.  This was intended to go up the third and fourth of this month, but due to the convention I went to, plus an unexpected allergy, I was down for a little bit and then got sidetracked with other things, so everything got pushed back more and more.  But, I'm ready to finish off the week!

So, this post finds us with a supernatural slasher, 1980's film The Boogeyman, and its 1994 sequel, Return of the Boogeyman.  There was another sequel in there, The Boogeyman II, but I didn't get a chance to see that one.  The Boogeyman took a bit of flack from critics for supposedly cribbing stuff from Halloween and The Exorcist.  Were there similarities?  Maybe a few.

The film begins with two kids, Willy and Lacey, as they watch their mom getting a bit intimate with her boyfriend, whose head she covers with the panty hose she's wearing.  Seeing the kids watching through the window, she yells at them and the boyfriend grabs Willy and drags him to his room, tying him to his own bed and gagging him as Lacey watches on.  Soon afterwards, Lacey brings a knife in and cuts Willy free.  Willy and Lacey sneak up to the room where Mom and the boyfriend are still making out, him still wearing the panty hose on his head.  As Lacey watches in the mirror, Willy creeps up and stabs the boyfriend in the bed.

Twenty years later, the children have grown up into not-so-adjusted adults.  Willy hasn't spoken a word since that night (and has secretly been collecting sharp knives in his top drawer).  Lacey is married, with a little boy, but her guilt over the incident is starting to carry over into her everyday life.  Trying to find refuge in both religion and psychology, she freezes up during dinner when she spots a mirror.  A later encounter with the original mirror unleashes a murderous force on anyone in its vicinity.

I'm sort of on the fence with this film.  On the one hand, I was entertained by it, which is the goal of any movie out there, but I felt that it could have been more.  The climax is exciting, but not a lot happens leading up to it.  The rest of the film just felt like... buildup.  Other than the boyfriend getting stabbed, there aren't a lot of killings leading up to the finale, which causes the film to sort of drag on.  The film's villain felt less like a boogeyman and more like Death in Final Destination, except more outgoing and manipulative of events.  Some may say it's just a product of its time, but many films before and after it gave a better feeling to me than this one did.

Adult Lacey was portrayed by Suzanna Love, the wife of the director, Ulli Lommel, at the time, and also co-wrote the script with him.  She was also in The Devonsville Terror, BrainWaves and the original sequel, The Boogeyman II.  Her brother, Nicholas Love, played her brother, Willy.  He was also in Jennifer 8 and The Dead Pool.  Probably the most famous actor in the film is the late, great John Carradine, playing psychiatrist Dr. Warren who Lacey turns to to try to exorcise her mental demons.  His list of films is extremely long, with a few excerpts being The Monster Club (with Vincent Price), House of the Long Shadows (with Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), The Howling, and many more.

All in all, I give this film a 3 out of 5.  It was alright, but it could've been a lot better.  Now, the reason I decided to cover both of the films together is that they are extremely similar.  So similar that the sequel uses a lot of footage from the first film!  I figured I'd combine the film reviews like I did with Mystery of the Wax Museum and the original House of Wax last year.

So, The Return of the Boogeyman deals with a new woman, Annie, receiving psychic visions of the first film's events, along with flashes of current happenings.  The psychic visions take the form of the footage from the original movie.  In a way, it reminds me somewhat of the sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes, which featured a LOT of flashbacks to the first film, as well.  Even the dog flashed back in that one!  Getting back to this film, Annie's been seeing what she calls the Faceless Man, really the Boogeyman from the first film still with the panty hose over his head.  A psychiatrist, Dr. Love, is trying to help her sort out her visions.  We only get one new kill in this film, with all the other deaths happening in footage from the first one.

There are some surface flaws that keep this movie down, most of which is the narration of the previous events.  Lacey gets a new name, Natalie, from Annie as she looks to the past, and the aunt and uncle her and Willy were staying with are referred to as her parents (even though we see her mother in the flashbacks to the opening scenes of the film).  A lot of this could be explained as Lacey considering her aunt and uncle as parents since they did raise her and her brother; also, the name change could be chalked up to what she thought Lacey's name was, like a miscommunication in how her psychic link works.  However, these explanations are never given and that leaves a bit of confusion: one wonders if the original names were forbidden from use in this one, even though the same guy directed it.

All said, this is a rather mediocre effort.  I hate to do it, but I give the film a 2 out of 5.  The presentation of the original film again (something that was also done in The Boogeyman II, apparently) wrapped up in very little new footage just didn't work for me.  So, that concludes my reviews of The Boogeyman films.  If I get a chance to see The Boogeyman II (aka, Revenge of the Boogeyman), I'll be sure to add it to the site.  Until next time, take care and this is Red Hawk signing out!

House (1977 film)

House (1977) Japanese Theatrical Poster

Day Two of 2015's Happy Horrorween and we have something special for you!  Longtime readers know I'm a sucker for Japanese horror and television shows (the tokusatsu in my slogan should say that... in the original version of the site, I had a five part review of the Super Sentai 25th anniversary movie, Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai).  When somebody on the H.P. Lovecraft related Facebook group I'm a member of mentioned Turner Classic Movies was airing this film last weekend, complete with trailer showing just what I would be in for, I jumped on watching it, knowing it would be a perfect addition to my articles.

House (or Hausu) is a surreal acid trip of a movie in places.  The basic, beginning storyline has seven girls traveling together for a cheerleading camp when, due to some mishaps, the trip gets cancelled.  One of the girls, Gorgeous, suggests her aunt's house as a place to stay for the camp and the friends jump at the opportunity.  All seven girls have somewhat descriptive names:

Gorgeous (very beautiful)
Fantasy (very imaginative)
Melody (musically inclined)
Prof (highly intelligent)
Kung Fu (lots of martial arts scenes with her, the toughest of the girls)
Sweet (always the first to help her friends)
Mac (big eater)

Our intrepid group sets out for Gorgeous's aunt's house (accompanied by Gorgeous's cat, Blanche, who always seems to show up ahead of them, even on the train).  I'd like to say the surrealness starts when the girls reach Auntie's house, but the whole movie has its moments, from a whole street singing in harmony to a stop motion sequence of their teacher, Mr. Togo, falling down some steps and landing on (and in) a bucket, to a watermelon responding to a vendor's conversation, everything just seems completely unreal.  The use of painted backdrops in a lot of scenes also lends to that air.  Needless to say, though, once the group reaches the house things take a serious turn for the worst (and go even stranger!).

Auntie and a friend enjoy a dance

Going into the movie, I didn't know what to expect, barring what scenes I saw in the trailer.  When I first saw the girls' names, I thought maybe they were nicknames but that was the actual names given to them.  I found out, looking into the history of the film, it was originally intended to be an answer to Jaws (that film keeps popping up!).  So, instead of a shark that eats people we got a house that eats people.  And the concept works!

The cast is made up mostly of actresses who worked in commercials, advertisements and independent films.  Kimiko Ikegami plays Gorgeous (and her mother, in flashbacks).  She has had a pretty good career, with 48 IMDb credits to her name.  She has some rather famous Kabuki actors in her family, too, one who encouraged her to go into acting herself.  Miki Jinbo played Kung Fu.  An earlier film she did was called The Possessed (not to be confused with the 1977 American film of the same name that featured Harrison Ford).

All in all, I had a great time with this one.  I laughed, I blinked, I had to run the movie back to be sure I'd seen what I thought I saw, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.  I give this one a 5 out of 5.  I'm going to a gaming convention over the weekend, but I should still be able to post on those days (if not, triple posting on Monday!).  Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!

Halloween II (1981 film)

Original Theatrical Poster

Sam Loomis: I shot him six times!  I shot him the heart but... HE'S NOT HUMAN!

Welcome to another October-long celebration on the New Happy Horror.  Yes, it's time for Happy Horrorween again!  This year, with a very few exceptions (including the usual Big Three reviews I originally founded the event on), this time I'm going to try to review all films I've never seen before.  Thanks to Netflix and Frightpix on the Xbox 360, I'll be able to find more than ever before!

So, we start with a review of Halloween II.  I was supposed to cover it last year at the end of the month, but I couldn't locate my copy of the film at the time.  But, I found it so I'm finally bringing it to you again!

The film starts were the first leaves off.  Doctor Loomis (the late, great Donald Pleasance) has saved Laurie (Jamie Less Curtis) from certain death by shooting his former patient, Michael Myers, and sending him out of a second story window.  However, this seems to have barely winded Michael, who vanishes from the yard.  As the paramedics wheel Laurie out, Michael targets another girl in a nearby house, using a knife stolen from an old couple's house.  As Loomis and the police try to track him down, Michael heads for the hospital Jamie's been taken to.

This one was pretty fun.  It was good to get back to an earlier installation of the series... heck, it was good to get back to an earlier film, period!  Halloween's been a constant favorite of mine, series wise. This film was supposed to be the last Michael Myers installation, with director John Carpenter wanting to take the name in a new direction by focusing on a different aspect of the Halloween holiday each year, starting with the masks of Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  How did that idea go?  We'll find out at the end of the month!

The film pushed some interesting ideas, things which would become canon and rather well-known, mostly the link between Michael and Laurie, and the idea that Michael is more than human as he stalks his intended victims.  There are a few hints towards some things that get paid off in the sixth film.

In addition to the main two actors, we had a good cast.  Lance Guest played Laurie's would-be love interest, Jimmy.  He went on to play main character Alex in The Last Starfighter alongside Dan O'Herlihy who played his alien trainer, Grig, and also played main villain Conal Cochran in Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  Mr. Guest also played Michael Brody in Jaws: The Revenge. Speaking of Jaws, the coroner, Graham, was played by Jeffrey Kramer, who played Sheriff Brody's deputy in both of the first two Jaws films.  He also played the Motorist in board game turned movie Clue.  And playing Michael himself, aka The Shape, was Dick Warlock, who has 150 stunt credits to his name.  He was also in Pumpkinhead, Firestarter, and most recently Camp Massacre.

All in all, a good film, easily a 4 out of 5.  Tune in next time for a Japanese film from the 1970s.  It's freaky, in a good way!  Until then, take care of yourselves and this is Red Hawk signing out!

RIP Wes Craven

I was saddened to learn that one of the greatest horror directors of recent years, Wes Craven, passed away yesterday due to brain cancer.  He brought us a number of amazing horror movies and was the creator of such horror icons as Freddy Kreuger and Horace Pinker.  In my first site's run, I had what I called the Happy Horror Hall of Fame that I would make inductions for in October, followed by a week of movies associated with said induction.  Alongside Robert Englund and Vincent Price, I also inducted Wes Craven.  Here is the article I posted regaling him and his films:

Greetings, Happy Horror fans!  Today, we gather to induct a new face into the Happy Horror Hall of Fame, a true icon of the horror genre.  He’s created several iconic characters including Horace Pinker, Ghostface, and Fred Krueger.  Today, we are happy and honored to induct Mr. Wes Craven to the esteemed Hall of Fame.

Mr. Craven was born in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio to Baptist parents.  He briefly taught English and Humanities before he first started his long career in film.  During his boyhood, an experience with a strange man on the street later influenced his creation of Freddy Krueger.  He looked out the window one night and saw this man walking up the sidewalk wearing a sweater similar to how Freddy’s would be.  The man stopped and turned and looked at young Wes’s house and scared him, so he got away from the window really fast.  A while later, he decided to look out the window again and found the man still standing there watching the house.  Scared now, he ran and woke his brother up and they both went to look out and found the man right at their window, looking in at them.

Mr. Craven has gone on to create several classic horror films.  His first, The Last House on the Left, was created in 1972, followed in 1977 by the crazed cannibal film The Hills Have Eyes.  In 1982, he directed the big screen adaptation of Swamp Thing, followed in 1984 by what would be one of his most famous creations, A Nightmare on Elm Street.  The next year would see the TV film Chiller (with Repo!  The Genetic Opera’s Paul Sorvino) and The Hills Have Eyes Part II.  In 1987, he produced what was intended to be the final Freddy movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  The years 1988-1992 saw a string of projects, with The Serpent and the Rainbow, Shocker, Night Visions, The People Under the Stairs and the television series Nightmare Cafe coming out during the time.  1994 saw him writing, directing and producing Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which introduced the idea of Freddy being more than just a movie character.  He also directed all three films in the Scream trilogy, and has been rumored to be linked to Scream 4.  In 2005, he filmed both werewolf film Cursed and airplane suspense film Red Eye.

Mr. Craven’s been a very prolific director and producer, and it’s with great pride that I hereby induct him into our website’s Hall of Fame.

Tune in all this week as I bring you reviews of some of his noted (and maybe one not-so-noted) films.  Take care, everyone, and this is Red Hawk signing out!

My Bloody Valentine (1981 original)

It happened once, it happened twice.  Cancel the dance, or it'll happen thrice. - Valentine heart poem

Happy Valentine's Day!  The past few years, I've been wanting to review this one, but I just never got around to it.  Either I was still somewhat burned out from the previous October run, couldn't find the movie itself to review, or else just let it slip past.  Well, this year I decided to sit down, rewatch the film and crank this review out.  I hope you enjoy it!

The film takes place in the mining town of Valentine Bluffs.  For the past twenty years, the town has avoided holding the annual Valentine's Day dance they had originally had.  The reason for this avoidance is Harry Warden (Peter Cowper).  One Valentine's Day, he and four other miners were trapped in a methane explosion-induced cave-in when their two mine supervisors decided to leave early for the dance.  After they finally got dug in after six weeks, they found Harry, the only one left, completely insane.  The next year, he took his revenge on the two supervisors and vowed to continue killing if the dances continued.

In the present day, our group of miners consists of T.J. (Paul Kelman), Axel (Neil Affleck), Hollis (Keith Knight) and others are looking forward to the renewed dance along with their assorted girlfriends.  T.J. and Axel are old friends, feuding somewhat over the same girl, Sarah (Lori Hallier).  But, with the dance coming in a matter of days, the deaths start up again and the sheriff and mayor start to wonder if Harry Warden's back again.

When this film was first released, it had a good 9 minutes or so of footage cut out for content, due to blood and gore.  When Lionsgate got the rights to make the 2009 remake, they also were able to rerelease the original with all of the gore reinstated.  The working title of the film was The Secret, an apt name as the director and producers wanted to keep as much of it secret as possible.

My thoughts: This was a pretty good film.  It's one of the several horror films that came out in 1981 (so many I was able to cover a whole week's worth of them a couple years ago and still have plenty left over!).  The special effects were great, the acting wasn't too bad for the type of film and time period and the suspense was high.  The film keeps you guessing on who the killer really is, one of my favorite types of films.

I give the film a 5 out of 5.  A good story, a lot of suspense and some good makeup effects all add up to a perfect score in my book.  I hope you had a good Valentine's Day, faithful readers, enjoy yourselves and have a good rest of the weekend.  Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!

Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981)

I told the others, they didn't believe me. You're all doomed. You're all doomed. - Crazy Ralph

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!  Since I missed out on posting this review last October, I'll be bringing it to you now.  When the first Friday the 13th proved particularly successful, the studio decided to make a sequel.  Originally intended to focus on other Friday the 13th superstitions, when the jump scare at the end of the first proved highly popular, they decided to refocus their efforts on what they knew would work: Jason Voorhees.  And so, they resurrected the little guy, aged him up and sent him in against a whole new crop of camp counselors.

After a rundown of events from the end of the first film, it picks up two months after with the survivor living on her own and appearing to be stalked (a parallel to what happened to the actual actress, who quit acting for over 20 years after this film).  After this opening scene, we start to meet the main characters for this film, a group training to be camp counselors.  It's five years after the events of the first film, and the owner of the training camp, Paul (John Furey), is opening the first business on the lake.  The locals are upset that someone's operating near Crystal Lake again.  Crazy Ralph is up to his old tricks again.  And what's the large figure stalking the counselors in the trees?

This movie was fun.  The kills, while not as inventive as what was to come, were still pretty good.  We get machetes to the face, a double spearing, and a really amazing wheelchair stunt (that seemed a bit cut short, maybe for the rating).  The special effects were good, make-up was great, there was just one problem.  When Jason's unmasked, he has a nice, full head of red hair.  In every other film in the series, Jason has very little to no hair, but for some reason, they decided to give him a full head in this one.  Between this one and the third, Jason loses that full head of hair, even though it takes place within hours of this one.

My thoughts: It was an interesting follow-up to the first film, and a worthy successor, but not the best in the series.  This wasn't my first full Friday the 13th film (that was part 6), but I did like it.

I give the film a 4 out of 5.  Sorry for the delay in posting, but at least I got it posted up within time.  Soon, I'll have the original My Bloody Valentine up and posted, after two or three years of delay.  Happy Friday the 13th, Happy Valentine's Day and this is Red Hawk signing out!

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

Mommy?  Why can't Jesse wake up like everybody else? - Angela

So, we come to the first of what would have been last October's big finale trilogy.  I like to finish the month's articles with a look at the big three franchises, a tradition I started with my original site.  Today, we'll be looking at the second installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series, Freddy's Revenge.

Did you ever notice how there's usually at least one film early in a series that doesn't quite fit in with the others that come after it?  Usually, this will be the second or third film.  Puppet Master 2 didn't quite fit with the earlier film, or later established canon.  Halloween III: Season of the Witch was an effort on John Carpenter's part to move away from using the Shape again by basing the series off of different aspects of Halloween (it didn't work).  We'll look at the oddness of Friday the 13th: Part 2 tomorrow.  And so, we have this film, the oddball of the Nightmare series.

After a nightmare of Freddy Krueger stalking him and a pair of girls on a school bus, our protagonist, Jesse (Mark Patton) wakes up screaming as his parents and sister eat breakfast.  Seems the family just moved into Nancy's house from the first film (which was empty for five years!).  At school, he runs afoul of, then later befriends, tough guy Grady (Robert Rusler).  But at night, he keeps dreaming of Freddy who, instead of trying to kill him, asks him to help him kill others.  Jesse's obviously not on board with the idea, but will Freddy give him the option to say no?

So, this film has Freddy killing people differently from how he did in the previous film, as well as the rest of the films to come: rather than striking in their dreams, he uses Jesse as a conduit to manifest in the real world.  From what I read online, the script started as a standalone film not connected to the first Nightmare on Elm Street, but New Line waned a quick sequel so they changed things to put Freddy in.  Wes Craven bowed out because he wanted the first film to stand alone.  They also almost lost Robert Englund due to a pay dispute, but the replacement for him, seen in the shower sequence, didn't bring any life to the character.

My thoughts on the film: while different from the others, and sort of a black sheep with some fans, I did like this one.  There was some suspense built up, and the mind games Freddy plays with Jesse's girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers), are up there with some of the stuff he pulled with Nancy.  However, in my opinion, Freddy works best in dreams and the next film brings him back to his roots, and also introduces the more wacky, fun-loving, sadistic Freddy we're used to.

I give this movie a 3 out of 5.  Good acting, great special and make-up effects, but overall, just too different from the others for my taste.  Tune in tomorrow for my coverage of Friday the 13th, Part 2, where we get to see, as Horror Hound magazine called it, Jason's "fashionable head bag".  Until then, this is Red Hawk signing out!

House of Wax (2005)

It is wax, like... literally. - Wade, regarding the museum in town's unique construction

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this, my friends.  I intended to review this back in October along with the other wax films, but other things got in the way.  But, I'm back now, and as promised, I'm continuing the wax museum motif with 2005's Tourist Trap... er, I mean House of Wax remake!  Like many other films, I saw this one before I saw the originals, so it was a new experience for me.  Of course, the film, in essence, doesn't share as much with its named predecessors as it does my previous review, but we'll get to that shortly!

After a flashback to a pair of brothers who we don't see as babies, one a good little boy, the other apparently a bit of a hellion, we meet our main characters in the present day: Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend, Wade (Jared Padalecki) and brother, Nick (Chad Michael Murray); Paige (Paris Hilton) and her boyfriend, Blake (Robert Ri'chard), not to be confused with the really close brother and sister team from the second season of The Amazing Race; and friend and avid cameraman, Dalton (Jon Abrahams).  The motley group is heading to a major football game in New Orleans, and along the way, take a detour that leaves them in the middle of nowhere, where they run afoul of someone in a pickup.  The next morning, Nick's car's fan belt has broken, so he and Carly hitch a ride with a weird guy who picks up roadkill for a living (Damon Herriman) who takes them to a weird town that seems abandoned.  That's never a recipe for disaster, right?  Right!?

When this film came out, one of the big draws for it was that it was Paris Hilton's first motion picture.  She'd been known for her series, The Simple Life, where she and friend Nicole Richie got away from their rich girl roots and took up different jobs.  Due to the show, Hilton got a reputation for being a bit of an idiot because of their antics.  She did really well in this film with the screen time she's given, but the movie belongs to Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray, as well as Brian Van Holt.

The set design was good, the town the players are stuck in looking like something out of the 1950s.  The house itself dominates every scene it's in.  As the film quote mentions, the place is made out of wax, walls, floors, everything, which leads to an amazing digital scene later on.  The special effects are amazing, too, besides the digital scene I mentioned, we get a sliced face and, of course, the flowing hot wax (some of it's probably real, of course, but I don't know if all of it was).

Originally entitled Wax House, Baby, after a crew member thought the House of Wax name was unavailable, the film was retitled to House of Wax after the naming rights were guaranteed secured.  However, the film itself actually bears more or a resemblance to Tourist Trap than to the Vincent Price film (or The Mystery of the Wax Museum that preceded that).  Both this and Tourist Trap feature a group of friends who get sidetracked to an out of the way tourist attraction where they're picked off one by one.  Both films also feature a set of brothers making life miserable for our protagonists.  They also both feature victims being turned into part of the attraction.

So, what were my thoughts on the film?  I enjoyed it.  I liked the plot of the film, the acting was good (yes, even from the much-maligned Paris Hilton), the suspense was up there and we got some good jump scenes, as well.  All in all, I give the film a 4 out of 5.  So, while I still had three more movies to cover on the Week of Wax, I'll be skipping to the end of the original October coverage.  With Friday the 13th coming up, I'll be bringing you my review of Friday the 13th Part 2 for that day.  We'll also have a break in the fact that Valentine's Day and President's Day both coming up, I'll have something special for the weekend, too.  Until then, take care of yourselves, and this is Red Hawk signing out!