From Nightmare on Elm Street to Freddy's Dead

A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984
★★★★½  Rewatched  14 Oct, 2014

At one point, sleep-deprived Nancy reaches to her face. "God, I look like I'm 20". After getting over my initial reaction of "oh, fuck you", I realized it was a pretty clever little reminder how young everyone's supposed to be.

What sets this movie apart from the sequels is that pervasive feeling that everything matters. Not that the others have low stakes, people are still getting knifed to death, but Nancy grows and changes until she's forged in steel by the time she's the final girl. At the end, she's more alone than ever before.

Also, it's fairly impossible for me to watch this movie without zeroing in on the image on the wall of the sleep institute. It's a pair of cats wearing hawaiian t-shirts on a San Francisco Cable Car. I gladly welcome the Room 237-esque documentary decoding the subtext behind that.


A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge 1985
★★  Rewatched  15 Oct, 2014

Freddy's Revenge has a lot of problems. I find myself liking it more with each watch, though. Part of the bizarre and just completely different nature of the movie must have come as a refresher while watching the first 6 or so of these movies in a row.

One of those quirks that works well in this movie is the constant heat. Our hero Jesse is constantly sweaty, even when sleeping nude (more on this later). This somewhat culminates in the regrettable part where a killer bird terrorizes the family until spontaneously combusting. But until that part, it somewhat adds to the atmosphere of the heat and terror constantly building.

If this movie was shot the exact same way, with the genders flipped, it would become lesbian softcore porn very fast. Jesse and Grady are constantly sweaty, naked, wearing short shorts, and in various states of embrace throughout the movie. An early "prank" is just Grady pantsing Jesse in front of some girls during recess. The guys are relentlessly objectified, with Lisa and her friends' conversations about sex sounding much like the guys in American Pie and other high school sex comedies.

More of the scary stuff works in this movie than I remember. The opening school bus sequence is really effective and scary, and starts that unbearable heat motif rolling for the rest of the movie. Lisa sees Jesse's face bulge out in Freddy's stomach saying "Kill me, Lisa" before her chase through the boiler room. There are dogs running around with baby faces.

Unfortunately, the scary stuff is undercut by the rest of the movie's weird tone. It's weird enough to be worth a watch, but it's still mostly a mess of a movie.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors 1987
★★  Rewatched  16 Oct, 2014

The narrative veers sharply back to the Nancy story (she's back) and the normal Freddy rules (he kills you in your sleep). It's a pretty nifty twist to have this take place in an insane asylum, surprisingly realistic. Despite the cooler and more varied death / dream sequences, this is still mostly a mess. Freddy gets called "the bastard son of 100 maniacs". And the goalposts of "how to kill Freddy" gets moved to "bury him in holy ground".

The kids getting superpowers in their dreams works in the movie's internal logic, I'll admit, but it still comes across mostly lame. There's no way to make lines like "I'm the wizard master" and "You found your dream power, man" work.

"Welcome to Primetime, bitch!" - still an angry misogynistic classic.

It feels a little short-sighted to sweep the table clear so to speak and kill off Nancy and her Dad and pin their hopes to the new girl. It looks even worse when the character is played by a different person in the next movie.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master 1988
★½  Watched 16 Oct, 2014

The fourth entry gets even meaner, moving on to kill off the two most likeable characters from the last movie (albeit in really cool dream sequences). There's not much else going on here, this is a kind of bad example of a horror movie just lining up people to kill and exploiting their one personality trait in the dream.

"How's this for a wet dream?" - RIP Joey.
"I wanna draw some blood" - Robert Englund in drag, call it Mrs. DoubtFreddy.
"How sweet, fresh meat" - This line makes the "how sweet, dark meat" part of Freddy vs Jason a little less gross since it's partially a reference?
"You flunk"
"Sayanora, sucker"
"I love soul food"
"No pain, no gain" - Actually a Cronenberg-esque cool body horror sequence when she
"You've got their power, I've got their souls"

That last quote reminded me - the whole thing with her gaining parts of her dead friends was really weird and didn't make sense, even for this series. Just stop thinking and wait for the Freddy Rap over the closing credits.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child 1989
★½  Watched 17 Oct, 2014

So, now we've evolved to - the only way to kill Freddy is to have his dream child and have the baby kill him? Okay, fine, dream murder baby, whatever.

There are some one liners and alright dream sequences here, but this movie veers way darker. The lead girl is pregnant, and somehow sees her baby's dreams? Freddy is using the dreaming baby to somehow attack everyone. Abortion is even brought up, albeit not directly.

"It's a boyyyyyy!"
"Bad year, Dan! Buckle up!"
"Fuel Injection! Better not dream and drive!" - There are not one, but two motor vehicle related dream sequences.
"Bon Appetit, bitch!"
"Things to do today: Die, bitch!" - Glad to see angry Men's Rights Activist Freddy is back.

No quote, but there's another pretty cool sequence where Freddy kills a comic book nerd in a dreamy comic book. The dream baby merging / destroying Freddy at the end is kind of lame.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare 1991
★  Watched 18 Oct, 2014

"Every town has an Elm Street!"

The most horrifying line maybe in the entire Elm Street series comes in the most overtly comic entry yet. Anyone masochistic enough to marathon these (hi) shouldn't be surprised by this, though. There's always been an uneasy balance between evil Freddy and wisecracking Freddy. The backstory gets laid on thick throughout this movie. Freddy's only living relative is mixed up with a Foster youth group home, and he's terrorizing them to get more victims.

This setup gives the movie an extra sadistic twist. Freddy kills all the kids using their fears and circumstances that got them homeless in the first place. He takes the forms of abusive father (twice), abusive mother, and makes a deaf kid's hearing aid explode his brain. The video game dream sequence is completely played for slapstick laughs, though. The last ~10 minutes of the movie go into "Freddy Vision", a 3D gimmick of sorts. Even in the movie, the character puts on goofy 3D glasses to "activate the memories". Then this hellish nightmare landscape shows all the horrors other people put on Freddy Krueger before he turned into the monster of Elm Street. This is supposed to be the last word on Freddy, so some going back to the beginning is kind of expected. But there's just no reason really to try to humanize him at this point, some 30 dead kids later.

Despite all the supernatural bents of the previous few movies, and even earlier in this movie (see everything Yaphet Kotto says), the real only way to defeat Freddy is, of course, putting a dynamite stick in a gaping chest wound. "Happy Father's Day!" chirps the blood-soaked heroine that just saw everyone she knows butchered. "Kids." deadpans Freddy as he looks at the camera. Then Freddy's body parts fly at the camera in the last gasp of 3D Freddyvision. Freddy's Dead, indeed.

The Shining

The Shining never forgets it’s a horror film. It’s meticulous, relentless, and also lives in a world where horror stories exist. There’s an amazing sense of space in every shot. The opening is sky blue titles flying over wide open mountain air. The Overlook is immaculately framed between pillars and windows as Jack (Nicholson) walks through to the office for the interview promised on an opening title card. The office is cramped and tight compared to the earlier open air and hotel lobby. The focus shrinks visually, now focusing in on Jack as we learn about him for the first time.

Or was the opening title referring to Wendy’s interview with the doctor? In addition to the cabin fever murders revealed to Jack, Wendy has her own horrors with which to deal. The iconic blood elevator shot shows up first very early in the movie as their son Danny has his first dramatic shining vision. Wendy also admits to being a “horror film nut” here as well. Jack hasn’t even accepted the job yet, and things are already very tense and strained. The family can’t even get through the car ride to the Overlook without going into the Donner Party story. In other movies, this foreshadowing could stick out like a sore thumb. But Kubrick keeps the entire world so off-kilter and terrifying in the first few sequences, that it’s just part of the world’s fabric.

Back to that space. The Overlook is gloriously explored through these opening shots, both in the tour and the first few scenes after winter begins. Kubrick does a great job of laying out the different locations before they’re turned into gruesome scenes later. One in particular is the family’s cramped apartment. It sits in contrast to the huge lobbies, kitchens, and hallways elsewhere in the hotel. It’s in these small, cramped areas and shots that the most intimate terror takes place. Jack kills the poor cook in a huge entryway. He sees the ghosts in the party, the former caretaker, and the bartender in the large ballroom. But when he attacks Wendy, he’s chopping down a small door to a small bathroom with a small window as the only escape. And finally, Danny is able to outsmart his father in the claustrophobic hedge maze.

I watched The Shining earlier this year and didn’t finish it. It’s a polarizing film. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, or just wasn’t paying that much attention, but it all felt completely false and phony to me then. Shelley Duvall and Kubrick were nominated for the Razzie Awards. This time through, I really was able to notice the depth and tension of almost every scene. The care in framing every shot also stood out. There are a dozen things to love about The Shining. Jack Nicholson is great. The effects on things like the blood elevators, the frantic parade of ghouls near the end, and the lady in Room 237 all look amazing. But this time through, I kept coming back to the way everything is seen and explored. No one makes a movie like Stanley Kubrick.

October 8th: Ghostbusters

What more is there to say about Ghostbusters? It's 30 years old and has aged remarkably well. This could easily just be a long list of great quotes and moments and nothing else. It's not a controversial statement to say it's the funniest movie of all time. It also is probably Harold Ramis' best movie which is a high bar to clear.

The three scientists are drawn remarkably well, remarkably fast. Venkman's introduction using a pseudo-science to hit on a young co-ed is pitch perfect. He's later called "more of a game show host than a scientist", which is another really great description. The first bumbling ghost encounter is such a great set piece that lets the three leads really shine. Egon's "that would have worked if you hadn't stopped me" line is a great way to show his confidence and stubbornness. Ray's positively giddy at everything in the library until his master plan of yelling "AHHH" falls through. And of course, Venkman has several great moments of sarcastic detachment, even in the face of seeing his seeming crackpot friends proven right when they see the first ghost. "What now?" he asks his dumbfounded colleagues.

So, what now? The theme of Ghostbusters gets a lot of respect and attention. But there's another great song in the periphery as well that stands out. The Busboys' "Cleanin Up The Town" plays three times during the movie. The first is the slapstick shot of the trio running out of the haunted museum after their first encounter. Then again during a full-fledged ghostbusting montage later. Finally, during the ending and credits. The song has a really great, jaunty piano hook (the only part heard during the first playing), and is a song about the movie and made for the movie. Sad to say that trend of movies having really on the point theme songs mostly died out around Will Smith's first Oscar nomination. Ghostbusters had two! The theme is great and rightfully gets all the credit, but this song is also great, too.

There are a ton of laughs, but something slightly overlooked is how scary Ghostbusters is in some parts. The most famous ghost, Slimer, is a joke and mostly kid-friendly. And of course the marshmallow man is the biggest (ahem) joke in the movie. A lot of the rest are not played for laughs at all. The wonderfully-animated dogs working for Zuul chase Louis down and eat him while he screams in terror. When they come for Dana, hands burst out of her chair and hold her down roughly before she's dragged struggling into the dog's clutches. Murray does a good job undercutting the scene with his usual funny self, but the possessed Dana is pretty chilling while booming "There is no Dana, only Zuul". And of course, the ending showdown with Zuul has the lives of billions in the balance and nothing short of world destruction.

There's something sexual going on during the climax (ahem) as well. Gozer first assumes a form that appears to be a woman, and is at least androgynous. Later, the god eggs on the Ghostbusters to "choose their destroyer". Had they already chosen the female form earlier, being afraid of all women? Egon rejects Janine's very forward advances, and earlier during the montage, Ray gets a blowjob from a ghost woman. The proton pack shooters are undeniably phallic as well. The way they're held during the climax also makes it look like a giant dick. Finally, crossing the streams can easily be read as gay panic. They defeat the Stay Puft man by crossing all four streams and circle-jerking in to the portal (vagina) that birthed Gozer, leaving everyone covered in white marshmallow goo. Come on.

Part of the greatness of Ghostbusters is being able to see a little more each time. Laugh a little more. Every viewing brings some little funny part to the forefront, or some little angle never seen before. That quality is one of the main reasons this movie will probably keep getting re watched for the next 30 years as well.

October 7th: Texas Chainsaw 3D / 2013

The first warning sign here is fitting this movie into the others like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. The credits do a pretty slick recap of the events of the first movie, but then it clunks into a really long sequence set between 1 and 2. Another is the complicated name. Texas Chainsaw. Is it 3D at the end? There's no "Massacre", so it's technically different than the 1970s and 2000s one, but it still feels necessary to throw a (2014) in there. The movie would have worked just as well without the prologue. When Heather (Alexandra Daddario) finds out all the sordid history in the police station, it's double the exposition on the crap we already saw in the flashback!

The cast of doomed teens does a pretty good job with their characters before the soaked-in-blood part of the movie ramps up. And once that inevitably rolls around, the action is mostly pretty quick and brutal, reminding of the best parts of the original. The 3D really starts to grate around the time Heather has a first big chase with Leatherface. She ends up in a coffin with the chainsaw coming down at her face, then escapes from that only to get a chainsaw thrown at her and our heads. Daddario does a great job with all of her scream queen glory in the first hour or so of the movie.

There are a couple of cool, somewhat-clever set pieces. Leatherface stalks a couple people in an overturned van in a way that brought to mind Scream and Jurassic Park. Later, a police officer searches a dark and scary house holding a gun and his phone as a flashlight, while giving the sheriff and mayor a live look via FaceTime. This one sounds obnoxious on paper, but it works pretty well in the movie even though the officer in question is the definition of a throwaway character. The more interesting / revealing part is the sheriff/mayor's reactions, playing on their 20-year, 1 and a half movie long relationship.

Mild spoilers follow. I'm warning even though the plot developments are fairly blindingly obvious and I'm not sure many people clamoring for the latest turn of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre haven't seen it yet. But the ending parts of the movie put the viewer in a precarious situation. It flat out paints Leatherface as the good guy, as just misunderstood and needing help. The movie goes out of its way to make a villain so reprehensible that we cheer for him to be slowly dragged into a meat grinder. There's a moment of exhaling, relaxing at the trail of dead bodies being over, but there are still a lot of dead people. Horror movies are supposed to be bleak, and there are certainly great endings where no one wins. But this one comes off more as a triumphant action movie villain death than something deeper or darker. Leatherface is only missing a one-liner.

Is Heather still the hero and a good person after it all? Did we watch her transform into a monster in response to a monster? Was that monster the evil sheriff or her cousin that turned her boyfriend and best friend into meat? The movie's over too quickly to really think through any of this before the credits roll and blast you with the loudest song from the soundtrack.

October 6th: The Colony

Watching The Colony is a mistake. It's readily available on Netflix. The preview image clearly shows Bill Paxton and Lawrence Fishburne. One could see them and immediately think of Aliens or The Matrix or any other number of their hits. But watching The Colony is a wholly boring experience that will only faintly remind the viewer of other, better movies.

Before you can even notice how much everything in the post-apocalyptic winter landscape looks like The Thing, you're assaulted by the obnoxious knockoff John Carpenter soundtrack. Then the endless voice over begins, trying to be so clever as it introduces Sam and the world in which he lives. Characters don't have any actual conversations as much as they spout madlibs cliches back and forth as the plot's gears wind into motion. Fishburne's noble, loyal leader tries to keep his humanity while raging asshole Paxton wants to kill everyone that threatens to spread disease. Our bland lead man sits in the middle as nothing really happens for a long period of time.

Fishburne and the good guys take a very long (time-wise, and feeling-wise) journey to another distressed colony eventually. The slow, boring trod in the snow is finally shaken to life when our crew happens upon a man chopping a human leg into pieces inside the empty colony. The movie finally lurches into motion as it trades The Thing for any number of cannibalistic marauder pictures. The villains seem closest to the Firefly universe's Reavers, but with none of the nuance, intrigue, or menace.

A lot of the chasing, running, and getaway from the Reavers actually works. Maybe just ANYTHING happening looks appealing next to the staring out into the snow and bad dialogue that precedes it. Who knows. There's a particularly cool fighting and chasing sequence through the vents when the evil gang inevitably assaults the home base. Our hero Sam watches a couple weirdly repetitive honorable sacrifices to help him escape. There's a hoary plot with seeds and the world thawing and a hope for the future that feels tacked on just to give the movie some sort of a point. Anything just to end the movie.

The Colony attempts a few genres- post-apocalyptic, zombie, survivalist, slick action and fails at all of them. Paxton and Fishburne really sleepwalk through their scenes until their stunt doubles take over for the mayhem. The lead really makes no impression and doesn't really make the viewer care if he survives "The Colony" or not. That's a bit of a problem for a movie begging you to cheer his escape from certain death at every turn.

October 5th: Carrie 2013

Remakes aren't necessarily a bad thing. I never feel the anger others do when I hear a favorite movie of mine is getting a new telling. This telling of Carrie is only really effective when it's slavishly copying the original. The changed bits add nothing at their best, and stick out obnoxiously at their worst.

The movie opens with a POV shot creeping through the house. It lingers on iconic images and tableaus from the original Carrie. This will unfortunately be one of the most subtle reminders of the first movie. After the credits, the first scene at school is the girls' gym class playing volleyball yet again. But the slight twist is that it's water volleyball. Right here, it might seem like they're going for a different, more visually interesting inciting incident. But no, we're immediately to the locker room, and the familiar shower. Halfway through the movie, I realized it would be impossible to count up all of the moments that are the exact lines and/or shots from the original.

There's way too much flashy CGI stuff that doesn't really add anything more to the story. In one of the early scenes practicing her powers, Carrie levitates her bed and several books. Chloe Grace Moretz actually does a great job showing the experimentation, wonder, joy, and fear at exploring her powers (aka new found sexuality) in these scenes. But the focus seems much more on the pretty shiny things flying around the screen than the character moment.

The most egregious less is more example is the climatic rampage. It becomes much larger, more elaborate, and sadistic for really no reason at all. You get the sense the remake is trying to have its cake and eat it too. In this version, Carrie spares her teacher and saves Sue. But then she just gruesomely tortures everyone that she does kill. Poor Chris and John Travolta just get their car flipped and immediately exploded in 1976. Here? The boyfriend gets his head scrambled by the steering wheel after Carrie stops the car faster than a brick wall. Then Chris is flung to a gas station, and has her head slowly pulled through the cracking windshield. Carrie walks away with her bleeding to death, then blows up the gas station as an afterthought, like an action star.

The base story of Carrie is still a good one. This remake keeps close enough to the original to keep it from being too bad. But it doesn't really take enough chances to stand out. In the end, it keeps the general plot of the original, but unfortunately has none of its unique style or vision. It's also a weird commentary on the changing morality in movies that nearly 40 years later, we're way more scared of seeing the female body naked than seeing a female body crushed and spewing blood under a trampling mob.

October 4th - Carrie 1976

Carrie forms a very distinct memory in my childhood. Many of the horror movies I saw as a kid were me and a cousin on a Saturday night staying up late before church. Not this one. This one was a group of boys, elaborate subterfuge and lies, and a sleepover geared around watching this movie. Why were a bunch of boys so interested in a Brian De Palma horror movie? The opening shower scene, duh. However, we did watch the rest of it through. And as corny as it is, by the end of the movie, I was more interested in the actual movie and what it meant and how it was showing us than the fleeting 3-5 minutes of bare chests.

The movie fills around Carrie and her mother nicely with interesting side characters. Look out for the secretary from Ferris Bueller. She looks young for the only time in her career as one of Carrie's tormentors. There's also Joanie, aka the ball cap girl. She barely gets any lines, but bizarrely stands out with her perfect color coordination. Then later, she is wearing a ballcap still at the prom. It's kind of disturbing and actually never commented on whatsoever. There's also a really ugly streak of abuse going on between Chris and her boyfriend (John Travolta). They're pretty physically and verbally abusive to each other throughout the lead up. Chris stays fixated on Carrie White and her revenge plot, while he is pretty much oblivious and along for the ride. The funniest example of this is Travolta's incredulous reaction to Chris obsessing over Carrie while they're trying to fool around in his prized car. He would rather yell "Git R Dun!"(this actually happens), and taunt pigs about not having "to worry about the bomb no more" as a gleeful idiot than be a part of Chris' fury.

De Palma pretty much pitches a perfect game, at least the cinematic equivalent, once the prom finally arrives. There is an epic tracking shot showing the entire layout of the gym and dance as Carrie enters. It does a great job showing most of the characters and setting up the geography of the mayhem to come. Another long shot follows the rope from Chris' eager hands all the way up to the bucket of pig's blood waiting above. She grips it tightly under the stage as she casts a silhouette over the sheet hanging off the stage. It looks like a delicious Psycho shower curtain reference. Another close up of Chris' glossy lips right before all hell breaks loose. It's decidedly sexual, titillating us right before the money shot.

Other weirdnesses creep in throughout as well. An early standoff between Carrie and her mother happen across a long table with a huge Last Supper painting on the background wall between them. Lightning flashes with each yell back and forth, lighting up Jesus' face. I love how it still commits to a goofy and light-hearted prom montage. A funky 70s tune plays while Bobby Ross and a couple of nameless bros try on tuxedos. All of this would play as a parody today, but it's completely strait-laced. Seemingly coming in from another movie that ends at the lakehouse party where everyone gets laid and grows a little bit. By the time the prom band plays "the Devil's got a hungry soul", and Bobby tells Carrie "to the devil with false modesty!" it's laying it on a little thick.

The sheer terror once Carrie's rampage starts doesn't disappoint. The king and queen announcement is shown over the shoulder of the bucket of pig's blood hanging over the stage. Even through the soft-focus walk towards the stage, it's obvious that this is all going to get very bad, very fast. The use of blood red lighting and split-screens really keeps the carnage vivid and kinetic throughout her massacre. It's a fitting and iconic climax for one of my favorite horror movies.