Showing posts with label Slasher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slasher. Show all posts

The Deaths of Elm Street: Blow by Blow

Let’s take a grim trip down memory lane and examine some of the standout death scenes from one of the best horror/slasher franchises ever, A Nightmare on Elm Street, may they rest in peace...

Best Death - Tina Gray (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Most Elm Street fans agree the death of Tina Gray is Freddy’s finest kill.  Tina is not only Freddy’s first kill, but we as a collective audience are introduced to one of the greatest characters in horror cinema, through Tina Gray.  It’s her nightmare that opens the series and her thoughts that invite us into the nightmare world of Freddy Krueger, a violent force to be reckoned with.  Unfortunately for Tina, she is the vessel for which we see firsthand just how violent a force Freddy is.  No one really knew where this movie was headed, who this Freddy guy was, or how he was going to end this innocent girl’s life.  In my opinion, this is one of the most violent and disturbing deaths in film history, not just for a horror film, but for any film.  

By 1984, slasher films had already become a caricature of themselves, with dumb, uninspired death scenes that made more people laugh than scream.  Why would this be any different, it is just a slasher film, right?  Initially thrown off by the fact we can’t actually see Freddy in the room killing her, four single slash marks appear down Tina’s chest, an obvious infliction of the weapon Krueger wears on his hand, and immediately bleeds profusely.  Before we even have a chance to cover our mouths and bid this girl farewell, she is ripped from the mattress and violently thrown around the room like a ragdoll, blood splattering the surrounding walls and ceiling.  To make matters worse, Tina isn’t quite dead yet, and if the sights are too much to bear and you planned on covering your eyes, plan on bringing some earplugs too because the sounds may be even worse.  Tina does nothing but beg for her life, a life she’s already lost, based on the amount of blood on the floor, and we can only imagine what’s going through her mind as her body is dragged up and down the walls.  Moments before finally plummeting to the mattress below, she reaches for her semi-conscience boyfriend who's witnessed the whole thing, unable to defend her from this unseeable force.  Tina dies, and this is a scene I can’t imagine made anyone laugh.  End act one, and don’t even get me started on how the deleted footage on the Infinifilm DVD managed to make this scene even more frightening.

Tina’s Death also wins the award for “Scariest Death” and “Most Violent Death.


Worst Death - “John Doe” (Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare)

Freddy’s Dead sucked, and so did the “John Doe” character and the way in which his character is killed.  Basically, John thinks since he is the last surviving child (now a grown man) of Springwood, he must be a spared offspring of Freddy.  He’s wrong, and Freddy wastes no time disposing of him.  Freddy seems as bored with this guy as the audience is, thus, what is probably the weakest, most unfulfilling death of the series.  As John dangles from a parachute way up in the clouds, Freddy cuts the straps, sending him falling to his death.  We then see Freddy on ground level positioning what can only be described as a bed of spikes, for John to land on.  He does, and that’s that.  It’s a real Wile E. Coyote moment for Freddy, except in this case, he successfully catches his roadrunner.


Most Climactic Death - Glen Lantz (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

By “most climactic” death, I am referring to a death that everyone saw coming, knew would be glorious, and despite this, still shocked the hell outta us and lived up to our own built-in hype.  Johnny Depp’s onscreen debut is that moment.  Glen is a surprisingly likable boyfriend to lead heroine Nancy Thompson, and because of this, you know he’s doomed.  Foreshadowed quite heavily, Glen is urged by his girlfriend not to fall asleep, or else Freddy will get him.  Fully aware that his closest friends are mysteriously dying around him, he still isn’t completely convinced by Nancy’s claims of a dream stalking dead killer, so he doesn’t heed her warnings as best he should and ends up dead because of it.  In a very well edited sequence, as we go back and forth between what’s happening in Nancy and Glen’s bedrooms, Freddy informs Nancy he is about to kill her boyfriend, as Glen passes out with his headphones on.  As she scrambles to save him, we cut to Glen’s bed literally chewing him up then spitting him right back out in a geyser of dark blood.  It’s an amazing moment in horror cinema and has become quite the iconic Elm Street moment.  Only one question really remains: what did Freddy do to him down there?


Most Anticlimactic Death - Donald Thompson (Part 3: Dream Warriors)

Estranged for years, Nancy reunites with her policeman father when the kids of Elm Street begin dying again.  He’s now quite disgraced, drowning the sorrows of his past, a past that involves vigilante justice and the death of many children.  He unkindly aids Dr. Neil Gordon on his quest to defeat Freddy once and for all, at the site of his original junkyard burial.  In the end, Freddy’s bones emerge into a fully functional Freddy skeleton (reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen’s work) and impales Thompson with the rear of a pink Cadillac.  Aside from the ridiculous use of weaponry, it’s just a pointless extra piece of gore.  There is no glory whatsoever in the death of what is essentially a pivotal character in the series.  I personally thought he should have died in a more honorable way.  Sure, he was a sourpuss, but who wouldn’t be in his position.


Best Personal Death - Debbie Stevens (Part 4: Dream Master)

When Freddy’s feeling extra cruel, he likes to get personal.  He likes to deliver that last fatal blow in a manner that hits way too close to home.  He’s used many personal feelings, ideas, and objects against his victims; everything from hard drugs to naked swimsuit models.  In the case of Debbie Stevens, a girl terrified of cockroaches, Freddy has her turned into a cockroach, literally.  But Freddy takes things even further by not just turning Debbie into a cockroach but making it, so Debbie is torn apart from the inside out by a cockroach.  He actually doesn’t even lay a hand on her, except the initial barbell he pins Debbie’s arms down with, tearing them wide open at the elbows, unleashing the horrific monstrous insect within.  The arms, legs, and eventual face of the cockroach emerge, tearing off Debbie’s face with it.  As though all of this isn’t bad enough already, this particular cockroach isn’t free and happy to be alive, but trapped inside a roach motel, fighting for its new life.  So not only has Freddy murdered Debbie, but he’s also even torturing the cockroach he killed her with.  Freddy then squashes it.


Best Quick Death - Roland Kincaid (Part 4: Dream Master)

Sometimes Freddy just means business and doesn’t have time to screw around with flashy set pieces.  Sometimes he needs to get in, get out, and move on to the next victim.  On occasion, Freddy has been known to simply stab his razor blades somewhere into someone’s torso and be done with them, and I’d say the best occurrence of this has to be fan favorite, Kincaid.  Always a force of entertaining energy, Kincaid was a character most fans enjoyed and did not want to see killed.  The fact that he’s Freddy’s first order of business in Dream Master, tying up loose ends from Dream Warriors, makes you really feel for Kincaid.  It still comes as a bit of a shock; assuming the writers let Kristen, Joey, and Kincaid survive the previous film, they wouldn’t just kill them in the first reel of the following film, would they?  Well, yes, they do.  Overall, it’s a pretty tense scene, and one of the series’ best.  Freddy is resurrected through burning dog piss, climbs from his grave, and after some hide and seek, finds Kincaid, sticks his razor glove into his stomach and bids farewell.  Honestly, if Freddy’s gonna kill you, I think this may be the best option, one quick swipe and hope it’s over.  For Kincaid fans it’s a sad moment, even Freddy seems kinda touched as he cradles Kincaid’s lifeless head on his shoulder.  They also exchange some final parting words which help break the tension and make this the most entertaining “quick death” of the series.

Most Creative/Unique Death - Phillip Anderson (Part 3: Dream Warriors)

Phillip is the first to die in one of the greatest sequels of all time, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  He’s a nice, laid-back kid, talks like Corey Feldman and has a collection of marionettes he makes himself.  None of this foreshadows Phillip’s death, but we do wonder why we’re even made aware that the kid collects puppets, until one night a puppet morphs into Freddy and murders him.  In one of the series’ most memorable moments, Freddy literally turns Phillip into a human marionette, complete with strings and everything.  The only thing is those strings are Phillip’s own veins and tendons.  In what can only be described as torture, Freddy uses Phillip’s insides and “walks” him to the roof of the hospital he’s admitted to, brings him to the edge, cuts his strings and laughs as he falls.


Most Undeserving Death - Sheila Kopecky (Part 4: Dream Master)

Sheila, the meek, nerdy girl with huge glasses and serious case of asthma, really didn’t deserve the “kiss of death” Mr. Krueger indulged her in.  That isn’t to say anyone in the Elm Street universe deserves to die, but Sheila, for one thing, was not an Elm Street child.  Kristen Parker was the last of the original (the real) Elm Street children, so anyone killed thereafter is simply a greedy extra point for ‘ol Freddy.  Maybe this is exactly why as soon as Freddy eliminates Kristen in a fiery inferno, his kills get zanier and more comedic for the duration of the series.  Perhaps with Freddy, knowing he’s achieved his goal of killing every offspring of his vigilante killers, he’s now able to enjoy himself more and have fun with his kills.  Enter Sheila, the first “bonus kill” of Freddy’s career.  Semi-long story short:  Kristen’s ability to pull people into her dreams is transferred to new series heroine, Alice, and Sheila is the unfortunate guinea pig in this unplanned experiment.  While taking a test at school, Sheila is confronted by Freddy, who slowly slithers to her desk and literally sucks the life out of her.  It’s a perfect cover for Freddy, not that he really needs one; but with Sheila’s medical problem, and since Freddy made it appear as though she died by loss of breath, her death is still not enough to convince many that she was murdered by an invisible force.


Saddest Death - Ron Grady (Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge)

Grady’s death is a perfect example of wrong place at the wrong time.  Had Jesse simply not shown up at Grady’s house that night, Grady would most likely still be alive.  He already avoided being a victim of the pool party massacre earlier that evening, content to spend a grounded night in his room watching tv and hitting the sack early.  However, awkward friend Jesse shows up with claims of possession, and just like a good friend does, Grady lets the kid crash at his place for the night.  Obviously, Grady doesn’t take Jesse’s warnings seriously, otherwise he’d have told him to get the fuck out.  But Grady was a good dude, despite his moronic bully nature in the film’s first act and remained loyal to his friend.  A loyalty which unfortunately gets him killed moments later.  As soon as Jesse dozes off, a relieved Grady bids goodnight, only to be confronted by Freddy himself, literally tearing through Jesse’s body from the inside out.  Grady also wins the award for most realistic reaction to a charred killer emerging from your friend’s stomach.  He, like most other level-headed human beings, immediately heads for the door, then upon realizing he’s locked in, screams at the top of his lungs and pounds on the door as loud as he can for help.  Perhaps we only get this reaction from Grady because his death, unlike most Elm Street deaths, actually occurs in reality, thus making screaming for help a viable option.  Regardless, the realistic, non-comedic nature of this scene (like Tina’s death) leaves you in a stunned state of silence once Grady is dead.  It’s almost too realistic for its own good, leaving many with a bad taste in their mouths, and think what you will about lead character Jesse, or the now infamous reputation this film has on alleged/confirmed homosexual themes, but Jesse’s guilt-soaked reaction to his friend’s death is heartbreaking and one of the most surprisingly poignant moments of the series.


Best Freddy “Death” A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master

Last but not least, the many deaths of Fred Krueger.  Being that he’s already dead, Freddy is never “killed," just defeated, which probably deserves to be in quotations just the same.  But the best instance of this has to be the finale of Dream Master, as Alice helps the souls of Freddy’s victims fight back and take their killer down once and for all, or at least until next time.  Accompanied by some pretty gnarly effects, Freddy’s chest of souls (first introduced in Dream Warriors) comes alive as the heads, hands, and bare breasts attempt to escape the confines of Freddy’s twisted cauldron, busting through his burned skin with everything they’ve got.  In a somewhat bland maneuver, they basically tear his jaw apart, which then instantly releases their souls to continue peacefully into the afterlife, as Freddy’s carcass drops to the floor.  Alice then caps the scene nicely by kicking Freddy’s glove like it’s nothing.  No surprise he’s reflected in the fountain a minute or so later, but that’s their problem to figure out in the sequel.



- Peter DiGiovanni

Review: Jack Frost (1997)

Jack Frost (1997)
Director: Michael Cooney
Writers: Jeremy Paige (story), Michael Cooney (story)
Stars: Scott MacDonald, Christopher Allport, Stephen Mendel



As a young child in snowy Minnesota, this movie not only horrified me but, to my mother’s dismay, caused a severe aversion to venture outside in the winter months. Watching it again, now I’ve realized that while this movie is technically a horror flick it, like the chest burst scene from Freddy’s Revenge, is only scary in my adolescent memory.

Jack Frost, a 1997 so-bad-it’s-good horror/comedy, features serial killer Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) who, through a Marvel-worthy accident, involving a genetic research vehicle on the way to his execution, turns into a mutated snowman. Freed from his death sentence and given a new body, Jack travels to the fictional small town of Snowmonton in order to extract revenge on the sheriff (Christopher Allport) who sent him away. As you can imagine, death, destruction and even a mild conspiracy plot involving the FBI ensue.


The technical aspects of this film aren’t anything to get excited about, the acting isn’t that great, and the effects are cheap at best (the snow looks more like coconut flakes than anything that could have ever come out of the sky) but it’s all of that cheese, along with the comical editing and over-exaggerated expressions from the actors, that makes it so fun to watch. There are more puns in it than an episode of CSI, and the amount of foreshadowing is near nauseating, not to mention the film seems to drag on forever (who knew a mutated snowman would be so hard to kill) but that’s all easy to forgive. From the intro alone, it’s obvious that this movie isn’t to be taken seriously and by the halfway mark its status as a cult favorite becomes inarguable. It’s no Silence of the Lambs but considering the basic plot you shouldn’t expect it to be.



When it comes to this movie, just lower your standards, turn off your brain and allow yourself to both laugh with it and at it while you decorate your Rocky Horror themed gingerbread men or try to get hammered off eggnog. While I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to watch Jack Frost for scares or thought-provoking dialogue (although some of it is surprisingly clever), putting it into your Holiday movie line up is a must.   

 - Marysa Storm

Trailer:




Review: Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

Alice Sweet Alice (1976)
Director: Alfred Sole
If you survive this night…Nothing will scare you again.


Set in the 1960s (which, due to lack of budget, was lost among more contemporary details) and heavy on anti-Catholic rhetoric, Alice Sweet Alice is definitely the odd one out of its time. It stars a young Brooke Shields as Karen, the first victim and younger sister of our deeply unnerving yet oddly likable antagonist, Alice. Between the constant whining and carrying on of Karen and the overt favoritism of children by the mother, it’s easy to sympathize with poor Alice.  Although the film starts right off with all kinds of emotional tension, the first death definitely sets the mood for the rest of the film.

Alice becomes main suspect in murder of sister. I mean, she did just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have the same creepy smiling mask and yellow raincoat as the murderer, and have more than enough motive. Throughout the film, it becomes more and more apparent that Alice is less than innocent, but her involvement in the terrors to unfold would remain to be seen. However, there was much hinting at the idea that the ghost of Karen, back for revenge may be to blame.

One character, which we are introduced to briefly after the death of Karen, was the creepy apartment manager with all of the kittens. I feel he could have been explained or integrated into the plot a little more. He seemed to both hate and take a “liking” to Alice and reminded me a bit of a John Waters character. Alice seemed to return the favor, somehow possibly liking his creepy, pedophilic attention, adding to the Alice character as deeply troubled and demented. Indeed, a disturbing but weirdly compelling relationship.

Throughout the film, Mom refused to listen to anything and anyone, ready to fight everyone about her children, and was always hysterical and uncooperative. She was also kind of an enabling pushover. There was also the aunt. She seemed to always know what was up, but no one listened and came off as overzealous at times. Between the two of them, there was quite a lot of tension and screaming, especially in regard to the guilt of Alice, who later may or may not have stabbed her aunt several times. As you can imagine, the following scenes would be littered with yelling, denial, and hysteria. The estranged father played the role as the voice of reason, although he started off by being uncooperative and silly about everything. However, he begins to pull himself together and actively aid in solving the mystery of who attacked the aunt in the stairwell.


I do believe that had the film followed along the “disturbed little girl dodging everyone’s radar on a killing spree” path that it would have been more compelling. The final murder and the reveal of the real killer at the end were a bit of a letdown (although it didn’t not make sense). However, the notion of the idea that Alice could very well be capable of murder and was not completely innocent was compelling and would have made for a fine storyline in of itself. The fact that the ending seemed kind of thrown into place, for the sake of the element of surprise, was more frustrating than anything. Despite the fact that the plot was a little bit all over the place, I would say that this film is deserving of a gander for any horror buff.

- Jasmine Casimir

Review: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

Psycho Beach Party (2000)
Director: Robert Lee King
Writer: Charles Busch
Starring: Lauren Ambrose, Nicholas Brendan, Charles Busch, Matt Keeslar, Thomas Gibson, Amy Adams, Kimberley Davies



Both a loving tribute and merciless send-up of exploitation cinema, Psycho Beach Party gathers the best tropes from three decades of B-movies and tosses them into a joyful stew. Based on the long-running play written by Charles Busch, the film's influences are written right in the title: the Frankie and Annette teen romps of the 1950s and 60s mashed up with the Hitchcockian psychodramas and slasher films of the 60s and 70s. As a capper, Psycho Beach Party then takes the sexual subtext of all those genres and turns it into text, both with single-entendre sex puns and even less subtle kink. More playful than graphic, the film revels in young sexuality in ways that feel more like Beach Blanket Bingo than Halloween, yet still treats the audience to the image of Marvel Anne (Amy Adams) lecturing Starcat (Nicholas Brendon) on responsibility while covering her naked pudenda with nothing but her hands.

Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose) is an innocent teen who, unlike every other teen, goes to the drive-in to watch the movie and is both fascinated and repulsed by all the necking going on in the surrounding cars. But Chicklet has a dark secret. Whenever she sees a circle, another personality takes over and she becomes the aggressive dominatrix, Ann Bowman (gasp!). Foul mouthed, lewd and sophisticated, Ann Bowman proclaims her desires and hatreds with operatic flourish: "Who do I have to fuck to get a hot dog in this place?"



Later, on Malibu beach, Chicklet meets a cadre of surfers led by The Great Kanaka (Thomas Gibson). She's immediately attracted by college dropout and first year psych student, Starcat and begs the boys to teach her to surf. Starcat insists that girls can't surf, citing first year Freudian nonsense about penis envy and the male hunting instinct. When Chicklet takes her case directly to Kanaka, Ann Bowman steps in, and not only gets Chicklet into the surf, but makes Kanaka her sex slave.

Meanwhile, a killer is stalking and murdering the teens one by one and police captain Monica Stark (Charles Busch) realizes that Chicklet is at the center of the mystery. Could Ann Bowman be responsible?

If it all sounds ridiculous, it's because it's meant to. The period movies Psycho Beach Party lampoons were no less so. Using naive and flat out wrong ideas about insanity, 60s psychodramas told thinly veiled cautionary tales about female hysteria and sexual repression. "Schizophrenia" (later called multiple personality disorder or dissociative disorder) was a go-to diagnosis for crazy people in the movies because it was lurid and strange. Norman Bates being the most famous example.


Psycho Beach Party plays on the plot details of those earlier works beat for beat, only it has the sense to turn it into a funny. In essence, Psycho Beach Party is the cinematic equivalent of watching a dozen B-movies all at once and riffing them with your giggling friends. The brilliance of Psycho Beach Party is that you never have to have seen an Annette Funicello movie to get the joke, because like all great satires, Psycho Beach Party is both a parody of the genre and a beautiful example of the genre.


There's also a luau dance battle. Luau. Dance. Battle.

- Katherine Turner

Review: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)


Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
Director: Jeff Burr

Released in 1990, Leatherface is the first movie of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series to lack any involvement of the franchise’s creator, Tobe Hooper. The story follows a young couple played by Kate Hodge and William Butler who are driving across the country to Florida where it is implied that they will break up. That was how the conversation was heading at any rate and I quickly asked myself why I should give a shit about these two people. One is trying to start a conversation and the other is just moping like a poor sap.

While the two are getting some gas, the owner of the station makes some rape-y remarks to the woman and a character by the name of Tex, who just hitchhiked his way over, puts the situation at ease. Tex asks the couple for a ride, and they refuse. Tex then tells them of a road they can use as a shortcut to their destination, and that’s when the owner of the gas station comes out with a shotgun and scares off the couple where they promptly take the abandoned road.

You see where this is going. While being harassed on the deserted road by an unknown truck, the couple crash into a survivalist named Benny and the three of them encounter the Sawyer family, with Leatherface as their hunter.

I was somewhat surprised by the movie’s decision to get right into the action only a few minutes in, but what surprised me more was just how boring it was. It had no problem cutting right to the boredom.  There are some movies that take a while and try to build tension only to leave you hanging sometimes, but with this one, they get to the action, and I was still yawning. It was efficiently banal, because we had seen all of this before. The first TCM was gritty, eerie and savage, whereas the second movie kept that same air to it for the first half of the movie but gave way to a strange bit of humor to the family, while still being exceedingly gory and disgusting. This third movie fails at all of these attempts and adds nothing new to the story.
  
Let me walk you through a quick three minutes and what I was doing during it:
They capture the woman and nail her hands to a chair in the kitchen (yawn). They hit the boyfriend in the head with a hammer (scratching my crotch). The family talks about eating people and the brothers squabble among themselves (doing my taxes). The survivalist they had an accident with, Benny, he shows up and just starts shooting the hell out of everyone (picking my nose, studying the findings).

[SPOILER] The ending of the movie was something that would have gotten a lot more flack if people cared at all. We see Benny get his head cut open by the saw that was somehow turning itself on despite the fact of being underwater and with no one to pump gas into it, but that’s fine. The only problem is that Benny shows up at the very end to escape with Kate Hodge. And I wasn’t paying too much attention, but enough to notice that getting your head placed against a revving chainsaw would cause a bit more damage than the small cut on the side of Benny’s head at the end of the film. [/SPOILER]

Do any of you guys remember Jaws: The Revenge, where we see Mario Van Peebles getting eaten by the shark, only to show up at the end of the movie just floating around the water with a flesh-wound? The same thing happened here. I did a bit of research and found that the Benny character tested well with audiences, so they decided to keep him in there for the end.

Now, do any of you guys remember when one of your friends would pressure you to go see his band or poetry reading, and you don’t really want to do it because you know it’s going to suck, but you feel bad, so you go anyway and watch the performance, and while it is going on, you try to pick out one single solitary thing to compliment your friend on so you can sound supportive, but all you really want to do is get the hell out of there and go to Denny’s? I think that’s what happened with this movie. I think the director showed this to his friends and afterward he eagerly asked them, “So, what did you think?”
And someone went, “Ummm….well….the black guy was good!”
“Yeah,” another one said, “I really liked him! What a great character!”
And so on and so forth, and before you know it, the director is saying to his crew, “Guys! We have to do some re-shooting. The fans really dig Benny, let’s try to have him escape in the end.”
And someone probably said, “But we sliced his head open…”
But the director is probably just shaking his hand at the guy, as if it were a minor detail that can be circumvented.   

This movie surely set a perfect precedent for the slippery shit-slope this franchise would take in the coming years.

- Michael Jenkins