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!

Don't Go in the Woods (1981 film)

Just don't do anything!  That's the lesson I've gathered from this week.

The last of our Don't Week coverage is a film that I saw at the video stores but never got to see until last night.  I purchased it just so I could review it here, so had no real idea what I was going into, outside of the description of someone stalking travelers in the forest and picking them off one by one.  Boy, did I get my money's worth with this one!

The film starts with an idyllic, perfect shot of a forest stream... the lovely trees, the babbling water, the... submerged camera..., the... screaming girl?  Yes, our first victim comes in within seconds of the start of the movie, and she doesn't last very long at all.  We cut from her to a group of four who are backpacking through the woods.  This is our main group, and we get shots of them interspersed with random other people running afoul of... someone or something that's stalking them.  It soon becomes clear that the woods are not a safe place to be.

This one was an alright time.  The acting could've been a bit better in places.  The dialogue seemed a bit forced at times, there were certain parts where it was hard to tell what was going on, even a couple places where it seemed like someone should've seen an obviously placed dead body.  Another spot was near the end, where, in between shots of the search party sent to find the killer, we get scenes of a  guy in a wheelchair struggling up the hill trails set to wacky music that just made me shrug my shoulders.

The film was alright, the acting not so good, the setting was beautiful.  I give the film a 3 out of 5.  It was a fun time, and I'm tempted to watch the commentary on the DVD soon, but for now, this is the last of Don't Week, and this is Red Hawk signing out!

Don't Go in the House (1979-1980 film)

Can't tell any of the fiery death that awaits in there, can you?

So, here we are, at the second to last article for Don't Week.  It's been an interesting journey, through zombies and madness, but there's a small light at the end of the tunnel.  But is it a light we want to approach, or is it something a bit more dangerous?  We find out here, not all lights are safe!  We meet Donald, a mother's boy with a dark secret.

The film starts at a waste disposal facility, where Donald is watching the flames in one of the furnaces.  One of his co-workers sees him and pulls him away from the open furnace door, warning him to wear his mask, then moves to another furnace and starts raking the coals, not realizing an aerosol can is inside, in the middle of the flames.  As it cooks, it suddenly explodes, coating Donald's coworker with flames.  Donald stands there, watching the flames dance over the asbestos suit, as others run in and put the flames out.  Later, Donald's boss, Vito, grabs him in the locker room and asks him what his problem was, why he just stood there, until Donald breaks free of his grip and rushes out.

Donald leaves, driving home and calling out to his mother that he was home and making her tea.  After putting it all together, he brings her tea up to her room and finds her dead in her chair.  At first, Donald reacts with sorrow, then starts hearing a voice in his head, telling him that he's free, he's now able to do everything his mother would never let him do.  He starts by putting on music and cranking up the volume, then jumping on a chair downstairs in the living room before lighting up a cigarette and putting it out on a small, white statue.  Suddenly, Donald's mother's voice comes calling from up the stairs, scolding him, so he hurriedly puts everything back.  The other voice returns, telling him that it'll protect him, that it'll help him.  He goes back up the stairs to his mother's room with a lighter to burn her... just like she burned him to punish him for so many years.

The film follows him building a special room in the house... a room with metal walls, where he'll take women to burn the evil out of them, just like his mother did to him.  But will his insane plan, born of his trauma, bear fruit, or will he cave under the weight of his madness?

This was an interesting one, and I was glad to add it to my collection.  I saw it in one of my Horror Hound magazines and looked it up online, wondering what the film was about.  When I conceived the idea of Don't Week, this was definitely one of the films in the forefront of my mind.  This was definitely a good addition to my site.

Playing Donald was Dan Grimaldi, and he brought the perfect blend of slight creepiness and insecurity to the role.  This was his first listed film role (he'd done stage acting beforehand), but he's been in a lot of stuff since, including playing the Parisi twins on The Sopranos.

All in all, I give this one a 4 out of 5.  It was entertaining, but it wasn't the best film out there.  For my next article, we'll get kicked out of the last remaining area left after the other titles... Don't Go in the Woods!  See you there soon!  Until then, this is Red Hawk signing out!