It's Been a While

 Hey, there, everyone!  I hope that you're all doing well.  I'm sorry that I've been so quiet for so long, I've had ideas to come back to the site, but I just kept getting sidetracked with everything that was happening.  If it wasn't work, then it was family issues, plus all the 2020 stuff happening (some of that would've been perfect fodder for the site: Japanese murder hornets, anyone?).  I do miss writing up my posts, though, and watching the movies in order to create them.

So, what has everyone been up to?  Keeping safe, I hope.  Staying caught up with everything you like to watch or listen to or read?  I've mostly been watching TV, or YouTube (been thinking about expanding over to that, as well, but nothing concrete's come up yet).  I hope you had a great Halloween (I had to work on mine, but it was fun) and that you'll have a great holiday season coming up!  I'll be working hard, myself, again, but that's fine.

So why am I posting this now?  First off, to let everyone know that, yes, I'm still here, and still thinking about this site.  This site (or, at least, the original version, but this is an extension of that) was created by my friends and I, and though one of them's passed away, it's still important to me to keep it going.  I just have to start getting things running on it again.  Secondly, as I said above, I'm missing this.  I may not get a lot of readers, but I appreciate the ones I get, and I enjoy the few interactions I get in the comments section.

I'm not sure when I'll have another review up, but I will try to make it soon.  I hope that everyone takes care of themselves.  Until next time, have a good day and this is Red Hawk signing out!

The Dead Don't Die (2019 film)

The Dead Don't Die movie poster.  Look at all those names!

"So the dead just don't want to die today, is that it?" - Zelda Winston

Hello, everyone, and welcome to 2019's Happy Horrorween celebration.  Now, I know every year I promise that I'll bring you a whole month's worth of reviews, and only one year was I ever able to do that (and just barely, at that!), so I'm not going to promise it at all this time.  Instead, I'm going to do as many posts as I can, with my offline work schedule, and see if I can't start posting up more than I have been.  Considering my last post was a year ago, about that year's Happy Horrorween, and then I didn't follow through, I think I'll be able to post a little bit more.

So, on to The Dead Don't Die!  I started seeing the ads for this one earlier in the year and was looking forward to seeing it.  When the time came for its release, we checked online to find out when it would be showing at our favorite theater... and it wasn't.  Neither was it at the second choice, or third.  Turned out, it was playing at a small independent theater nearby, so we never got a chance to go over and see it.  Fortunately, the movie just came out on DVD a couple weeks ago, so I got my hands on it and am happy to bring a review to you!

The movie starts off with some shots of a cemetery that I thought for sure was the same one that was in the original Night of the Living Dead (it looked VERY similar).  After the opening song (called "The Dead Don't Die", oddly enough), we meet our two main stars, Chief Cliff Robertson and Officer Ronnie Peterson, as they try to track down Hermit Bob in the woods.  It seems that Bob was accused of stealing one of local farmer Frank's chickens.  After encountering him, the two drive back into town and talk about how off the daylight seems to be, with it approaching 8 or 9 at night and the sun still shining.  Once the sun finally goes down, however, two figures approach the local diner from the cemetery and wreak havoc there.  It seems the town of Centerville has a little zombie problem.

I really enjoyed this movie.  At it's base, it's a pretty by-the-book zombie apocalypse, with an ever-dwindling cast of human characters, and some pretty good zombie make-up.  There are a few surprises along the way that I really enjoyed, plus a few fourth wall breaks that I laughed at.  The film is a horror comedy, so there are a ton of jokes, wordplay, references, all pretty cleverly done.

The cast was pretty well picked, with many well-known actors playing both big and small parts.  Bill Murray plays overwrought Chief Cliff here, who you know from Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters and a ton of other movies.  Adam Driver plays Officer Ronnie.  Mr. Driver, of course, played Kylo Ren in the recent Star Wars trilogy amongst a lot of other things.  Tilda Swinton plays Zelda Winston, the new owner of the town's funeral parlor.  She played the Ancient One in Doctor Strange (to a bit of controversy), as well as several roles in the recent Suspiria remake.  Other cast members include Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Iggy Pop, RZA, Carol Kane, Selena Gomez, Tom Waits and many, many more.

All in all, I got a laugh out of this one and give it a 4 out of 5.  I hope this is a great kick-off to Happy Horrorween, and will get back to you with another review soon.  Until then, take care of yourselves, and this is Red Hawk signing out!

Welcome to Happy Horrorween!

It's that time again!  Time for me to make my annual attempt at building up articles for the month of October.  So, to kick things off this year, I have reviews of all five Phantasm movies on tap and ready to post!  So join me sometime tomorrow where we start our reviews of one of the most interesting and surreal horror series of all time, Phantasm!

Friday the 13th: The Series; Episode 1: The Inheritance

It's been a long time, Happy Horror fans.  Did you miss me, and my unique take on horror?  I've missed writing these articles, these little windows into both the past and into my opinion of whatever I'm covering.  Today, we're going to open a different kind of window.

Back in the early days of the site, my cofounder, Wolfgang Nibori, covered just about everything he could think of, from B movies like Frankenfish (one of the first movie reviews on the original site) to Terror Tracks Tuesday, where he posted reviews of various horror related music acts.  He also reviewed episodes of Fear Itself, a horror anthology series that was short-lived but excellently done.  It's in that vein that I wish to open up a new chapter for the site: episode guides and reviews for horror television past and present!  We've got your Tales from the Crypt, your Twilight Zone, your Z Nation, and this, one of the more unusual series from the late 80s, Friday the 13th: The Series.

Unlike shows like Freddy's Nightmares, which had some straight tie-in to the original films it was based on, Friday the 13th had its own original premise: a group hunts for items that are haunted or possessed before they cause bad things to happen to the people who bought them, or for the people they were bought for.  Instead of basing it around the film series (though there was talk of including a hockey mask as one of the items they were hunting for), the series producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. had more of the superstitious elements of the date in mind, focusing on bad luck and curses (originally, the show was to be called "The 13th Hour").  The series ran for 3 seasons, so we're going to have quite a bit of material to work with on this one!

There will be some spoilers ahead for this one, so if you don't want to see what happens in this episode, skip ahead!

The first episode of the series was called "The Inheritance".  It starts with a couple entering an antique shop with their young daughter, the mother (stepmother, we soon find out) telling her daughter not to touch anything.  Heading away from her parents, the little girl, Mary, finds a (in my opinion) rather creepy looking doll and immediately pulls it off the shelf and into her arms.  Sneaking outside with the doll, she's stopped by some teenagers who ask her what she's doing there.  The doll then slashes one of the guys' neck and Mary runs back into the shop, where the owner takes the doll and throws the family out.  Then the owner, Lewis, starts gathering up items from around the shop, including the doll, and takes them down to a vault deep in the basement.  As he's locking them away, some flames start flaring up, trapping him and herding him into an elevator.  The floor of the elevator disappears, dropping him into an equally fiery pit.

Flashing ahead a few months, we meet Micki Foster, apparent co-heir to Lewis's antique shop, talking to her fiancé about the situation.  She wants to just get rid of the shop itself, sell off the merchandise from it and be done with the place.  When she gets to the shop, she meets her cousin, Ryan, who is a little more reluctant to sell, liking the idea of owning the shop.  However, Micki prevails on him to sell, and, with a little reluctance regarding a certain doll, just about everything gets sold off.  Later that night, however, someone breaks into the shop.  Said someone turns out to be Lewis's friend and ex-partner in acquiring items, Jack, who tells them about how their uncle made a deal with the devil to curse the items in the store in exchange for immortality.  Finding the store's records and Lewis's personal diary, the trio see how the sale of the items correlate with disastrous happenings shortly afterwards.

Deciding to start with the doll they sold, Micki and Ryan locate the house the family live in, only to find an ambulance taking the stepmother away, and the father and daughter climbing in along with the doll.  It seems that, after the stepmother tried to take the doll away from Mary, she suffered an accident and fell down the stairs.  At the hospital, Mary and the doll finish the deal and finish the stepmother off.  Shortly after, the father leaves Mary with a neighbor and the cousins approach the house just as things start getting out of hand with the doll again.  Chasing her to a nearby playground, Micki tries to get the doll away from her but runs afoul of the doll as storm clouds start rolling in.  Finally, they separate the doll from the girl and the weather clears.  The episode ends with them returning the doll to the basement vault again, preparing to go after the rest of the items.

The episode was a good one, an excellent start to the show.  The little girl, Mary, was a bit of a brat so that could get on your nerves after a while, and I don't know how anyone could not see the doll as being as creepy as it appeared to me (even when the stepmother took it away from her, it was just because Mary wasn't listening and not due to any supernatural occurrences at the time).

The cast has a few standouts in it.  Playing Lewis Vendredi was R.G. Armstrong, who was a character actor in a number of old westerns, as well as playing Pruneface in the Dick Tracy feature film.  John D. LeMay played Ryan, he was also in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, so at least there was an eventual link to the movies!  Playing Mary in this episode was a very young Sarah Polley who went on to star years later in the Dawn of the Dead remake.

All in all, a great start to what looks like an interesting series.  Hope you enjoyed this review and summary.  I'll be back soon with some more great movies and television!  Until then, this is Red Hawk signing out!

Friday the 13th Part III (1982 film)

Copyright: Paramount Pictures

So, we have here the third installment of the Friday the 13th series, and was one of the earlier films in the short-lived 1980s 3-D boom that took advantage of third installment titling (Friday the 13th 3-D, Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, etc.).  From what I've read, the original idea for the film was to have the survivor from the second film check herself into a mental institution, only to have Jason, who survived his injuries, stalk her through the building, killing anyone in his way.  This was somewhat complicated, though, by the fact that the plot is very similar to Halloween II's, and the fact that the actress, Amy Steele, didn't want to come back.  So, they changed the storyline to focus more on the area around Crystal Lake.

Following the events of the second film (not shown in 3-D), Jason ends up walking through some laundry outside a grocery store near Crystal Lake.  The owner's wife sees him, thinking it's her husband, and calls out for him.  Her husband surprises her, knocking over one of the posts the clothesline is hanging on, then picks it up (giving us our first 3-D trick) and sets it right.  Then, he heads to the store, finds a pet rabbit in the produce and scolds it, then starts opening products and helping himself.  His wife catches him in the act, scolding him for eating more than he should (instead of, y'know, eating the profits from the grocery), then tells him to take the rabbit back to its cage.  The grocer finds the rabbits dead in their hutch, then almost gets attacked by the culprit... a snake strikes.  The guy runs back to the house and straight to... the bathroom?  Needless to say, shortly after this sequence of events, Jason makes short work of the grocer and his wife, then moves on.

The rest of the film is about a group staying at a cabin on Crystal Lake, with the lead girl, Chris, coming back for the first time after two years.  Everyone seems to be having a good time... not realizing that, from a nearby barn, Jason Voorhees is watching them.

As I mentioned, this film has a few of the old 3-D "tricks" that you come to expect.  Stuff comes flying at the screen, or lifted into shot, or just stuff flying or dropping into your face.  We get the laundry pole, the snake strike, some popcorn, some yo-yos and juggling balls, plus a few more macabre items.  The tricks do work, for the most part (though I still sometimes have difficulty with the snake when watching the 3-D version).

This also marks the first occasion that Jason starts wearing his hockey mask.  Before this, we had the "fashionable head bag" (so named in Horror Hound Magazine and I still like using it).  We also get a looks change of a different sort... in the second film, under the head bag, we saw that Jason had a lush, full head of red hair.  Probably realizing that his hair didn't match that of the child Jason we saw in flashbacks and at the end of the original Friday the 13th, they decided to give Jason a bit less hair here... quite a bit less, actually, as he's completely bald behind the mask in 3.  This was also, originally, intended to be the last film of the series, at least until they decided to do an official send-off in part 4.

A pretty fun ride, with some interesting effects, especially considering the 3-D stuff.  I give this one a 4 out of 5.  I'm going to try to bring you Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter next, but I might have to jump ahead to Halloween and come back to that one later on.  Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988 film)

Copyright: New Line Cinema

Halloween's closing in, and we have this year's Nightmare entry.  I believe this was the first Nightmare I saw in the theater, a drive-in in this case.  If you ever get a chance to go to a drive-in, I highly recommend it.  Getting to watch a film in the comfort of your own car is pretty fun.  They're sort of rare nowadays, but if you look, you should be able to find one.

So, on to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4!  This is the second of the Dream Trilogy, with Kristen and her friends from the previous film returning to deal with Freddy, alongside a new group of friends.  The film starts with Kristen dreaming bout the house again, and a little girl drawing in chalk on the front porch.  Going inside, and being trapped there, she calls in Kincaid and Joey for help.  The two, not too pleased with being drawn into her dream, show her that the place is abandoned, and Freddy's furnace is cold.

Unfortunately, their assertions prove invalid, as Kincaid awakens in the trunk of a car in an old junkyard.  Freddy arises from his grave and dispatches Kincaid, then goes after Joey, as well, in his own dream.  Kristen knows what's happening, and tries to warn Alice and the others about the undead killer.  But, with Freddy tearing through the group, can Alice stop his rampage as her own set of dream powers increase in strength?

This film was really good.  It has a nice pool of victims, good special effects, a pretty good storyline, everything worked out for this one.  Patricia Arquette was west to reprise her role as Kristen here, but she had to bow out due to a pregnancy (she had to leave another role in a different film for the same reason).  The new Kristen, Tuesday Knight, did well with the role, showing the right amount of paranoia at times.  She was also in The Fan and The Babysitter.  Playing Alice, the heir to Kristen's experience and Freddy's new target, is Lisa Wilcox.  She's also been in Watchers Reborn, the Fear Clinic series on FearNet, and the recent film The Church.

Another excellent entry in the Nightmare series, and a pretty good entry in my list of articles.  I give it a 5 out of 5.  Next up, I'll be tackling the third and fourth entries in the Friday the 13th series.  Until then, this is Red Hawk signing out!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987 film)

Copyright New Line Cinema.  Ever notice Freddy's eye always bulges out on these posters?

Before we get into today's article, a bit of an announcement.  My originally schedules Week 4 event (1981 Week: Revisited) is going to be postponed until a later date due to schedule slip.  I am way behind on posting several of my other articles, as well, so I decided to just shift my focus to the month's end.  And so, we go from one slipped schedule over to rectify one from last year!

When I was working out last year's October, I had rewatched this and Friday the 13th 3D in anticipation, but never got around to rewatching the third Halloween.  Even worse, I never posted my reviews of the two films I had watched, which just isn't right.  I reviewed the Elm Street series documentary, at least, but I should have been more on the ball there.  I always pride myself on, if nothing else, keeping my Big Three reviews consistently posted, and I flubbed the ball there last year.  So, time to correct that!

Nightmare 3 follows the story of Kristen who, after a seeming suicide attempt after a Freddy nightmare is locked away at the Westin Hospital.  She's put together with other similar cases, all teenagers having problems with nightmares and seemingly suicidal.  Supposedly safe within the facility's walls, Freddy starts focusing in on the small group, picking them off in ways that look like suicides.  It's up to newly hired therapist Nancy Thompson, a survivor of Freddy Krueger's night time attacks, to help them harness their dreamland abilities and take the fight to Freddy himself as the Dream Warriors.

Returning as Nancy Thompson from the first film is Heather Langenkamp.  She also plays herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and is appearing in an upcoming Hellraiser film, Hellraiser: Judgment.  Patricia Arquette made her film debut as Kristen Parker.  She wouldn't return for the fourth film, but she did go on to star in a lot of other films, including True Romance, Ed Wood, Stigmata and the television series Medium.  Laurence Fishburne plays Max, an orderly at the Westin Hospital.  He's made a lot of movies, including Event Horizon, The Matrix series, Predators, and the television series Hannibal.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time Freddy lets his sense of humor out.  It's sadistic humor, of course, but it helps!  You also get a bit more creativity in the kills.  In the original films, he more or less relied mostly on his glove to kill off someone (outside of the sheet hanging and blood fountain in the first film, of course).  Here, you get puppeteer Freddy, faucet handle Freddy, TV Freddy and the ever-popular Freddy Snake.

This film starts the Dream Trilogy, as I call it.  Three films with an ongoing storyline and characters to tie them together.  After the slight "oddball" that was Freddy's Revenge, it's nice to see Freddy get back to doing what he does best: invading dreams and causing carnage.  I give this film a 5 out of 5.  Next up, we'll be checking out A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.  Until then, this is Red Hawk signing out!