VHS Week Day 3: NUDE FOR SATAN (1974)

No, I did not spend $19.98 on Nude for Satan (although SPOILER ALERT I got at least $19.98 worth of entertainment out of it!). What am I, a rich crazy person? I got Nude for Satan when 20/20 Video went out of business and VHS was 3 for $5 because I'm a poor crazy person.

(Aside: R.I.P., 20/20 Video, I sure bought a lot of crap from you. And while I don't really want to play The Blame Game, maybe if you didn't way overprice stuff like Nude for Satan you could have stayed open for another month or something.)

On a dark and lightning-y night , Dr. William Benson (Stelio Candelli) zips along in his light blue VW Bug on his way to answer an emergency call. The ghostly figure of a woman appears in the road, Benson swerves and crashes, and HOLY MOLY NO LIE it was just like the opening to my film Taste of Flesh, Taste of Fear, where two characters in a light blue VW Bug zip down a dark road and crash when they swerve to avoid the ghostly figure of a woman in the road and I mean "just like" as in the car crash noise was exactly the same even. I guess it must be the Wilhelm Scream of car crash noises or something, I don't know. But I do know that I felt an immediate kinship with Nude for Satan, even beyond my love at first sight with the title and the fact that I was sitting on my couch all nude for Nude for Satan.

Ha ha, that's a joke! It's too cold for nude for Nude for Satan shenanigans. But in my mind I was nude, which is really the only place I ever should be.

Another car crashes behind Benson's, but its driver Susan (Rita Calderoni) is slumped over unconscious. Benson stuffs her into his car and drives off in search of help. Will he find it at the castle down the road? WILL HE? Would your answer change if I told you that the castle belongs to SATAN?

At least, I think it belongs to him. I'm not really sure. The only thing I'm sure about is that shit gets really weird in this movie.

Okay, so shortly after arrival, Benson runs into Susan again. But she keeps calling him Peter and she's all old-timey looking (you can tell she's supposed to be old-timey because she's got a big dress on and her hair is all ten kinds of banana curled).

Susan wakes up and walks around. She finds Benson, but he keeps calling her Evelyn and he's all old-timey looking (you can tell he's supposed to be old-timey because he's got a waistcoat on and his facial hair is all ten kinds of mutton chopped).

Satan appears (you can tell he's Satan because he wears a cape and has a walking stick) and starts with the "What's real? What's not? Good night!" The castle apparently exists outside the confines of space and time, and to represent this a tiny naked Susan is superimposed over Satan's eye. Okay then.

Susan wonders why Satan said "good night" when the sun is still up, but then she's like *shrug* fuck it! and she goes to sleep, only to dream of lezzing out in a room made of white taffeta or tulle or whatever, I don't really know the difference between taffeta and tulle. The women kind of kiss and look at each other while the camera does a kaleidoscope thing and the soundtrack starts "la la LA la la"-ing. It's not a terribly sexy scene, but I guess it's a terribly sexy dream because Susan's eyes are rolling in back of her head.

la la LA la la

Susan wakes up, wanders around, falls into an abyss, and lands in a giant spider web (as you do), only to be almost attacked by a huge spider. By the fakest-looking spider I've ever seen! And I say that as someone who once used a remote-controlled spider in a film! This spider had six legs on each side and it was all some serious pipe-cleaners-and-papier-mâiché shit. In other words, YES it was so great. And to her credit, Rita Calderoni really sold that she was terrified of it, so all the hi-fives to her.

Oh yeah, and this guy shows up every once in a while and laughs:

Benson saves Susan from the web (PHEW). Satan appears again and tells them they're being too noisy and they need to go to bed, but they've decided to escape. But they can't! Instead, they meet their counterparts Peter and Evelyn, and there's some musing about duality and indulging dark natures and the such. Benson is all "No! We must escape!" but Susan is like *shrug* fuck it! and indulges, by which I mean she gets naked and makes out with Peter while some other nudies show up and do a slo-mo frolic around the room.

Then there's an ending that, believe it or not, makes less sense than anything else that came before it.

At this point, I was starting to feel that like Castle Satan, perhaps I existed outside the confines of space and time. What in the hell did I just watch? I'm not sure, but I think I loved it. Nude for Satan has no real violence or even sex in it- the "sex" is basically mouths bumping and hands placed on breasts- and it's nowhere near as sleazy as the title implies. Don't get me wrong, people do get nude for Satan, there's no false advertising here. It's more that the film is sort of languorously gonzo, where I was expecting plain ol' gonzo gonzo.

But who cares? There are worse things in life than watching Rita Calderoni run around naked in a cobwebby, gothic-lite castle while 70s bongo music plays. A worse thing would be not doing that. *shrug* fuck it!

VHS Week Day 2: VALENTINE (2001)

Ah, the early months of 2001. It's not so long ago, really, yet it was such a simpler time. Women's eyebrows ran amok in untweezed glory, movies were released on VHS and the unproven "DVD" format, AOL advertised their amazing new service on those DVDs and VHesses, and Denise Richards was in stuff. It all seems so quaint now!

Horror was in a weird transitional phase at the time. Half a decade into the Scream cycle, audiences were fed the eff up with glossy, tepid genre flicks filled with glossy, tepid actors. The resurgence of on-screen gore ushered in by "torture porn" was still a few years away. It's no surprise, then, that 2001's offerings fall somewhere in between the two phases. There's no shortage of garbage sequels, sure, but there's also some smart indie fare. And there's Arachnid, which is undoubtedly in that timeless "fuck yeah, this is great garbage!" category. In the midst of all this plops Valentine, totally unsure of how to present itself, like a 7th grade girl who wears a blouse that makes her feel sort of human and grown-up except that it's too tight in places and she can't help but focus on that and her whole day is ruined. To wit: Valentine's poster/box art cries "Look at all these young pretty people, arranged in a row! I am just like those 1998 movies you like!" The movie itself, however, cries "Look at my story structure and the killer's mask and all the slasher tropes everywhere! I am just like all those 1981 movies you like!"

To which I say, "1981? Hmm. 1983, maybe. I mean, you're okay, Valentine, but let's not get crazy here."

It's true, though, Valentine is simply a good ol' fashioned slasher movie. You know how it goes: humiliation suffered at the hands of classmates leads to a young nerd disappearing for years as he spends time in mental hospitals and the like...a decade or so later, a masked killer shows up and kills off those responsible for said humiliation, did the young nerd really come back, blah blah blah, all aboard the Terror Train. Because it was released in 2001 and not 1983, however, the violence is obviously snippy-snipped by censors and the cast is full of Hollywood-fresh lily-white faces.

These aren't huge negatives, mind. The acting was perfectly...you know, horror movie adequate, and the characters were blandly likable (or likably bland, perhaps). Valentine is closer to Carpenter's Halloween than Zombie's Halloween in terms of tempo and execution, so the mitigated violence isn't necessarily a strike against it. You won't find anything close to artistry, of course, but you get the sense that director Jamie Blanks admires Carpenter's "less is more" approach to scares.

That said, "scary" is about the last word I'd use to describe Valentine. Yeah, the mask is a little creepy. Sure, it adheres to the stalker cycle formula used so successfully to terrify in the past...but where's the tension? Where is it, Valentine? It's just not there, and everything is a bit ho-hum and workaday. Scream, slash, kill, yawn, repeat. And yet...

Maybe I'm feeling generous, but I might go so far as to call Valentine a high-water mark of the post-Scream horror era. What! I know, I'm as surprised as you. But man, scrub off those slick production values and it'd likely land somewhere on some sort of "notable slasher movies" list on some shitty horror blog.

Ahem.

VHS Week Day 1: SHADOW DANCING (1988)

If there's one thing my mother has told me time and time again throughout my long life, it's "Stacie, don't be so damn easy." Maybe someday I'll take this advice to heart, but how many times must I be burned before that happens? How many times will I take home a movie like Shadow Dancing, thinking we will have the greatest night ever...only to find myself waking the next day saddled with bitter memories and a videocassette taking up space on my shelf? How many times?

Heavy sigh. I suppose I should simply accept that waking up with herpes a bad movie is what you get sometimes when you live life on the edge. But then...would it hurt for my tastes to be a bit more discriminating? Heavier sigh. I just don't know. I mean, you want to know why I brought Shadow Dancing home? Here's why:

1) I saw the word "dancing" in the title and suddenly I was intoxicated by memories of Slash Dance and I thought, "I loved Slash Dance, I'll love this, too!"

2) I saw this picture on the back of the box:

Someone getting zapped by blue movie lightning! I'm a total sucker for it.

That's it! That's it. That's all it took for me to fork over $0.30 and get all hepped up for this movie.

YES ONLY THIRTY CENTS. Why am I making a big deal out of this when the movie cost less than one-third of a dollar, you're wondering. Hmm, now that I mention it, I'm kind of wondering, too. I guess maybe even a mere thirty cents is too much for 100 minutes of crapola, and it makes me think "Well why did you assume it would be good in the first place?" and then I reminisce on my reasoning and then I wonder if I was dropped on my head a few times as a child.

But then I think, what is life without risking thirty cents?

Ugh, do you see how I go back and forth? Do you see how I am conflicted? DO YOU SEE WHAT SHADOW DANCING HAS DONE TO ME?

Here's the trailer, let it do a little bit of that to you:


Geezalou, even the trailer feels long.

So there was a dancer named Lili La Nuit (authentic French name) and...I don't know. Guys fell in love with her and then she was murdered on stage, or maybe it was an accident. And now 40 years later the theater opens again and a dancer finds Lili's shawl and puts it on and is maybe possessed? Or Lili is a ghost?

Trust me, that makes it sound way better than it was. Lili doesn't do anything except laugh and dance. And dance. And fucking dance and I know that the word "dancing" is right there in the title, but there's so much dancing. And it's all to music that's truly awful. Like, so awful that when my neighbor came home during a particularly interminable dance number, I thought "Oh dear, I hope they can't hear this music and they think I'm just, like, listening to it." I'm not one to care about such things, but it was actually embarrassing.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell was going on in Shadow Dancing- not because a true mystery was afoot or anything, but because the film's structure was so damn janky. The "plot", as it were, was essentially pooped out in a couple of piles of exposition in the last seven minutes. Until then, it was unclear why things were happening or even what was happening. I wish Shadow Dancing ended up being the movie I thought it was going to be, because after one scene I thought maybe there was a telekinetic baby. After another scene, I thought there was a telekinetic parrot! But nope. Nothing so exciting, just dancing and laughing. No one even dies in this! (SPOILER.)

So, yes. I wasted $0.30 and 100 minutes of my life on this movie. I'd hoped it would be, like, the love child of Slash Dance and Ninja III: The Domination, which, let's face it, would probably be the best movie ever made. But why did I think that? Because of the title and that picture on the back. Stupid brain.

Oh well. I must admit, a few good things came out of Shadow Dancing, so there's a bright side to all of this.

1) It made me finally admit that I just don't like watching people dance. In fact, I really kind of hate it! I admire the skill and all that (jazz), but as an art form, dance does not appeal to me at all. If this makes me sound like some sort of rube, so be it! At least I'm living an honest life now.

2) There's a scene where Christopher Plummer says, "Oh damn, my corn niblets are burning!" Yes this is a high point of the movie.

3) Thinking about that Slash Dance/Ninja III love child means I'm thinking about Ninja III, which sure I do that a lot anyway, but more is always better. And since I'm living an honest life now, I'll admit that if Lucinda Dickey starred in Shadow Dancing, this review would probably say "Can you believe this movie was only thirty cents!"

Stupid brain.

i wish

Wherein I Say Things

Friends, Romans, non-Romans, lend me your hearing parts so I can blast some words from my mouthhole into your earholes! Even though given that this is a blog and not an assembly, it's more like I'm blasting words from my fingers (fingerblasting, yes, I said it) to your eyeballs but you know what I mean! But for real, lemme tell ya. I have been in a total funk for, like, too long, too many months, like more than a year. A year! And sadly, I don't mean "funk" like I have traveled back in time and now I am a member of Parliament. On the upside, I don't mean "funk" like body odor, either! (At least I don't think so, no one has dropped any hints like handing me some Secret or something, nor has anyone come right out and said "YOU STINK, TAKE A BATH." But I worry, I really do.) No, I mean "funk" like "the sads."

I'm not going to go into all the whys and whyfors of it, nor is this some bid for some "Please, DO cry for me, Argentina!" action. I'm only bringing it up because this Funk of At Least 40,000 Years has, amongst other things, meant that my work has majorly suffered across the board. And that work includes Final Girl! It's hard to create when you find that you no longer care. But I am trying to care, because I want to care, because I want to create.

So, I'm making changes to help myself along, which will in turn help the process along. One of those changes came earlier this week, when I fingerblasted (aw yeah) the Final Girl Facebook page right out of existence. Those of you who were a part of it may have known this already. I had some fun there for sure, but I've come to realize that overall, it contributed to my funk. Instead of writing something on Final Girl, like an actual review, I would simply take to Facebook and post, like, "This movie was pretty good" and that would be that. Some folks might comment. The end. What a cop out on my part! And so stuff continued to spiral into that funky ouroboros my life has been of late: I feel bad because I'm not creating, but then I'm not creating because I feel bad. It is the worst cycle, a real shit-fest penny-farthing of existence. Again, this is where fingerblasting (I'm just going to say it as much as possible apparently) Facebook comes in. I'm breaking out of that "but if it's not on Facebook no one will know" box I'd put myself in, with a "well then who fucking cares, I'm just going to do this because I want to, and if no one knows then tough shit for them." I hope it helps. I think it will.

To help kick off this "fuck off, funk" thing I'm trying, I say let's have an event. Starting Monday, let's have...

VHS Weeks are always a lot of fun. This one should be no different, and it's not going to be one of those lame-ass five day "week"s, either. We're talking seven days of hot, hot videotape action! Here's the lineup- now don't go getting so excited that you don't sleep all weekend in anticipation!

MONDAY: Shadow Dancing (1988) - I don't know that this one will be "horror" per se, but I can't wait
TUESDAY: Valentine (2001) - I know I've seen this, but I don't remember a thing about it
WEDNESDAY: Nude for Satan (1974) - FINALLY
THURSDAY: Leviathan (1989) - I just love the fact that "underwater horror" was a thing for a while
FRIDAY: Dagon (2001) - can't believe I haven't seen this one yet
SATURDAY: Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) - ditto
SUNDAY: Q- The Winged Serpent (1982) - FUCKING DITTO

That's a sweet-looking bunch of movies, no? YES. A little something for everyone, or at least for all the awesome people.

Okay then. I hope to see you around these parts more often! As always, thanks for reading, you're the knees.

THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME (1978)

Even though I am an elderly person, there are plenty of ways I utilize the technologies of the young. For example, I definitely know how to boot up a JPG. For another example, I only order pizzas via the Information Superhighway. However, sometimes my brain completely forgoes new technology in favor of the old. For example, I always have a spiral notebook and a pen at arm's reach. For another example, when I want to watch something like the 1978 made-for-TV mini-series The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, I don't first try YouTube, where the entire 4-hour affair is readily available. Instead, I spend a lot of time tracking down a bootleg, paying for a bootleg, waiting for the bootleg to arrive, and then digging in. (And I would have forgone the bootleg if the long out-of-print VHS edition wasn't edited to half the original length.)

For every second of "Aw man, YouTube would have been way easier and free-i-er," I have several minutes of sweet satisfaction because when you stream a movie, you don't get the crappy bootleg box art to treasure! Behold:

"Betty" Davis! "Sacrifaces"! It's the small things that please me so.

Also, "Sacrifaces" sounds like a new Satanic show by Mummenschanz. More Satanic, anyway.

Typos aside, that sentence...sort of sums up The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, in the same way that "A young woman enrolls in a ballet academy and is caught up in witchcraft and sacrifaces" might describe Suspiria. Like, it works but there's more to it than that.

Wait, is there more to Suspiria than that? Never mind, I'm getting off track here. And YES I'm going to use "sacrifaces" all the time now so get used to it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again until we're all tired of hearing it: I love a movie about a town with a secret. From Dead and Buried to The Wicker Man to Bay Cove to everything in between, give me some fish-out-of-water types trying to figure out what the heck is going on in an idyllic country town and I'm all over it. Toss in some witch robes, some sacrifaces, and some old people and I'm all over it AND all up in it. Let me tell you, friends, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home does not disappoint!

Oh sure, the set-up is as old as them thar hills, but who cares? The Constantine family is fed up with life in the big city and all the big city problems they face. Dad Nick (David "Original Gary Ewing" Ackroyd) yearns to leave the hollow world of Madison Avenue behind and make some real art. Mom Beth (Joanna "There's A Fire-Farting Cockroach in My Hair" Miles) spends her days reclining on a shrink's couch in a bid to overcome her neuroses. 15-year-old daughter Kate (Rosanna "Doesn't Need a Nickname for You to Know Who She Is" Arquette) totally has asthma and her life sucks.

On a little getaway trip to Connecticut, they cross a whimsical/ominous wooden bridge and find themselves in Cornwall Coombe, a small farming community that's super friendly and everyone seems happy and there's an amazing house for sale for wicked cheap and isn't that great let's all move to Cornwall Coombe! So they do, and everything is simply wonderful and for sure nothing will ever go wrong. Widow Fortune (Bette "Betty" Davis) has a tight (if benevolent) grip on the town. Folks are reluctant to talk about the past, and no one ever ever goes "against the ways" if they know what's good for 'em. Why, it's almost as if the town has a dark secret!

Yes! Check out Rosanna Arquette and Widow Fortune. "Widow" is pronounced "widda", by the way. And everyone says "Ayuh" a lot like this is a goddamn Stephen King movie even though they're in western Connecticut. On the one hand, this made my eye twitch, but on the other hand it just made me want to hug New England because I love New England and even though I grew up in eastern Connecticut there was definitely that feeling of "thar werest wytches here" to it at times, like when you go to Devil's Hopyard State Park, I mean who names a park "Devil's Hopyard" come on now

Kate and Beth adjust quickly to life in The Coombe. Widda Fortune shushes away all of Kate's asthma attacks. Beth likes being part of a community and begins busting out the local corn-speak. Nick, however, digs deeper into the town history for a book he's writing and finds that sometimes people go missing and sometimes you see a skeleton somewhere but then when you go to show it to the constable the skeleton is gone and sometimes you find the local peddler in a cabin in the woods and someone has cut his tongue out and no one admits that anything weird is going on or has gone on, ever.

Oh yeah, and a little babby Tracey Gold is a really fucking weird kid who screams sometimes and she picks the new Harvest Lord by smearing sheep's blood on a contender's cheeks. Just another day in The Coombe!

TRACEY GOLD YOU GUYS

So you know how it goes, right? A big Widda Fortune-sized wedge is driven further and further between Beth and Nick as the former adapts to "the ways" and the latter does not. As the year goes on and the mysterious "Harvest Home" ceremony approaches, we begin to wonder: is this a Babiez4Satan thing, or Babiez4Corn thing? Because somehow, it's always about women making babiez for some reason, ain't it?

It is! But I'm not going to tell you everything because this shit was four hours long and because if you like classic they don't make 'em like that anymore made-for-TV horror movies (aka "being a person with awesome taste"), then you should just watch it. I mean, it's right there on YouTube. Bette fucking Davis! A reasonably restrained Bette fucking Davis, even, who doesn't simply bleat-shriek all her lines like she did throughout much of the 1960s.

After you're done watching The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, you can help me settle the argument I've been having with myself since I saw it: is this feminist, or anti-feminist? There's certainly a slight whiff of Neil LaBute's Wicker Man in here as a matriarchal society proves ball-crushingly bad for the menfolk. Then again, there's also a slight whiff of The Stepford Wives in here as Nick frequently asks Beth if she wants to give up her autonomy and life goals to join in "the old ways." I need the Widda Fortune to shush away my social justice anxiety attack!

This is the best thing.

YouTube user gigerbrick has done gone and made a trailer for the trashtastic 1977 film The Car (honk, honkhonkhoonnnnnnnk) using in-game PS4 footage from Grand Theft Auto 5. I bow before the perfection!

SHOCKtober: DAY OF THE DEAD

Dr. Tongue brings you...

Day of the Dead (1985)

Now that is a title screen: zombie front and center. Liberal amounts of grossness. Solid, weighty logo. All of it combining to let you know that George Romero ain't fucking around here. All of it as the climax of a fantastic opening sequence, one that well introduces some of our cast of caricatures (come on, you know they are) and shows just how screwed and desolate the world has become in the wake of the zombie apocalypse.

The font and the soundtrack cry zombie action movie and my heart cries yes!

THE TUNNEL (2011)

"Like the last piece of cereal at the bottom of the bowl, soggy and pale and swollen with milk."

Last night I watched the Australian found footage film The Tunnel, and at some hour long after that I woke up from my sleep, found my notebook, and wrote that sentence. Somehow I thought it perfectly encapsulated...something about the movie and it would be a great opening for this review. At this point I'm hard-pressed to tell you what the hell it means, exactly, and to be honest there's a slightly pornographic quality to it that is making me uncomfortable. But hey, I have to open this review somehow and if it was a great idea last night then I'm just going to go with it.

To help solve a water shortage crisis, local government announces plans to build a water recycling system in disused tunnels below Sydney. Press conferences are held, promises are made...and then nothing. Without a word or a reason why, the project is dropped.

Investigative reporter Natasha Warner (Bel Deliá) finds this curious, but even curiouser when she comes across a YouTube video of some taggers running afoul of something in the darkness of those same tunnels. There have also been rumors of some of the underground homeless population going missing. Is the canceling of the recycling plant related? What's a-lurking in the damp down below the streets of the city? Warner attempts to get some answers, but government officials are mum. She assembles a crew of veteran news-types and decides to get to the bottom of things, so you know what that means: it's P.O.V. horrorin' time!

The crew sneaks into the tunnels and sure enough, they also run afoul of something in the darkness. The Tunnel presents itself as a documentary comprising footage before and during the events, but it's the talking heads reflecting on those same events that eliminate much of the tension of the proceedings as we know by and large who's going to live and who won't. Yes yes, the devil is in the details and the journey is the destination and all that, but ultimately I was just waiting to see how so-and-so died and I knew the other so-and-so was never in any mortal peril. Let's face it, most P.O.V./found footage horror follows a certain pattern; that is to say, there's a fuck ton of aimless-ish build-up and then in the last 15 minutes or so shit really happens ahhhh! The biggest problem in The Tunnel is that the format conceit eliminates the build-up. Sure, there's lots of talking and aimless-ish wandering, but for every moment of tension generated, someone then talks about it and the incline plateaus.

This is not to say that The Tunnel is wholly unsuccessful, because that would be a lie and I'm not a lie-teller. Overall it's a solid film and there are some moments of pull the blankets higher creepiness for sure. Ultimately, though, your enjoyment of it will likely hinge on your tolerance for and/or love of those P.O.V. tropes; you know, people running around panting and screaming in the green hues of a night vision lens.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone who enjoys a subgenre and thinks "Hey, I wanna make me some a that!" Ultimately, however, I feel like this kind of story and format have been tackled before and tackled better in movies like [REC] and Lake Mungo. Maybe I'm just a P.O.V. lover and apologist who needs to take a break and see some other subgenres.

The biggest bummer, though, is that The Tunnel rehashes the "ambitions of career-driven woman lead her to make foolish decisions and doom everyone" storyline of The Blair Witch Project, complete with her dressing-down by male crew members and subsequent teary-eyed confessional of contrition. I'm thankful that there's no dripping snot and ultimately no one kicks the map into the creek, but still. 15 years on and the head bitches in charge are still bitches? What a world, what a world. Totally like the last piece of cereal at the bottom of the bowl, soggy and pale and swollen with milk, amirite?

SHOCKtober: CREEPSHOW

Come on, you lunkheads!

Creepshow (1982)

I bet it would take, like, more than seven hands for me to count how many times I've seen Creepshow and more than a baker's dozen's hearts to contain all the love I have for it. It's so perfect. It's so perfect! By turns gory, scary, and funny, it's an EC horror comic come amazingly to life. Secretly– okay, not so secretly– I think it's some of the best work that either director George Romero or writer Stephen King have done. Romero's visuals are an absolute treat. He plays with comic book framing conventions and the colors and monsters pop off the screen. King gives us five stories and a framing narrative full of frights, humor, and characters, dammit, who deliver dialogue that's got that signature vintage King folksy-realistic charm. Relatable and a bit theatrical, but not artificial and cloying. Everyone is eminently quotable and you love them, hate them, and love to hate them.

Just the little snippet of the title sequence in the GIF I've posted– even without the Bernie Wrightson-inspired illustrations and the thudding "dun DUN!" of the piano in the theme song– encapsulates the feel of the whole thing. It's a funhouse. It's going to scare you, but you'll have a smile on your face the entire time. It's so perfect you guys.

SHOCKtober: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD

I was gonna post about John Carpenter's The Thing today, but you know what? I think we need to go OG on this because Carpenter didn't much change the original title sequence for his remake-ening of...

The Thing from Another World (1951)

It's unusual (particularly for the time) that the names of the actors do not appear until the end credits of the film. Instead, it's "The Thing" itself that's the star here, hidden away in the darkness and emerging slowly until it's front and center. This theme is much better utilized in Carpenter's 1982 remake/adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? In Carpenter's version, the alien entity is able to assimilate and imitate other life forms (man being the warmest place to hide, mind you) until the jig is up and it bursts forth in a big red mess of grue and grossness.

Also, Wilford Brimley. And MacReady's ludicrous oversized novelty sideways cowboy hat! Wait, here I am talking about The Thing instead of The Thing from Another World. Ehhhh SO SUE ME.

SHOCKtober: THE SHINING

Fire up the snowcat and get out of the tub, today we're looking at...

The Shining (1980)

So beautiful, so ominous, right? Notes pinched from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique crash as words scroll by quickly, almost as if they're a necessary nuisance. The camera zooms and winds through a relentless wilderness. The Torrance Family's VW Bug is as insignificant as its namesake out here, dwarfed by the endless Evergreens, the looming mountains, and even its final destination, The Overlook Hotel. It's as if the entirety of nature set out to swallow up this family long before the ghosts of the Overlook gave it a shot. Long before the credits finished rolling, even!

SHOCKtober: ROSEMARY'S BABY

Treat yo self to...

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Love the elegant curly pink font splashed all over the unforgiving brown and grey angles of New York City. It's got me craving Ambrosia salad, really, but that's neither here nor there.

That song, masquerading as a lullaby, unsettles more than it soothes and even at the outset, you might begin to suspect that there's going to be something very wrong with Rosemary's baby.

(Aside: I always forget that this is a William Castle Production. I mean, who could guess that?)

SHOCKtober: THE RING

Okay, today's title sequence is one that was a talking point for quite a while after my friends and I saw the film.

The Ring (2002)

But whaaa? That is not a title sequence and does The Ring even have one? Ha ha ha psych oh DIP I got you! The Ring is, in fact, title sequence-free and I love it. Why mess around with names and animations and blah blah blah? Let's get right to business, the film seems to say, and get right to business it do.

I don't even know how I'd feel about The Ring if I were to watch it today. The bits of CGI are likely dodgy by today's standards, and there have been so many "long-haired ghost girl" flicks in the last decade that the trope has been just about stripped of all its power. It's probably best if I leave my feelings and memories of The Ring in my horror movie hope chest for a while longer, where they are protected from the detrimental effects of time and air, and they smell of cedar and "potpourri sachet."

What a breath of fresh air this movie was, unlike anything else happening in American horror at the time...and part of that was the brazen–brazen I say!– lack of a title sequence. Nothing to lull you into the action. Nothing to soothe you after, say, a shocking five-minute cold open. You just sit down and the movie starts and The Ring happens to you and you get no relief. I love that. We all have shit to do, right? There ain't no time for cinematic gewgaws, we only have seven days!

Watched Fulci's ZOMBIE last night and I just want to say...

...Susan's "there are zombies standing four feet away from me!" face is A++.

News you can use!

Briefcase Woman says YES to news! And to shoulder pads. And to business!

Now that we've got the distance of time and...distance...between us, my breakup with Los Angeles has become like a breakup with one of those people things you read about. You know, it's been so long that you only remember the good times and the highlights, how things were in the beginning, way before Marc Singer ripped off the fake latex face of the city/your significant other to reveal the alien lizard hidden underneath.

The point is, now there is not a day that goes by where I'm all "Aw dang, I gotta get back to L.A." I've forgotten just about everything that made it so cruddy! And I tell you, the fact that so much stuff happens there really doesn't help. Look, I love you, New England, but stuff kind of just doesn't happen here except for Autumn and snow. And I adore those things, believe me! But listen, the other night a friend went to see Halloween at the Egyptian Theater and Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter were in attendance. What! And lo and behold, someone else just notified me about this thing, which is happening.

Again I say: what! See, things like this happen all the time out there. But I am not there. But maybe you are? And if you are, then you need to do these things. That is the news you can use!

Oh, like here's another thing: there's a short film called SLUT, written and directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Chloe Okuno, that'll be featured in the prestigious Screamfest Film Festival on Saturday, October 18. (It's also playing a bunch of other film festivals around the country, so check out SLUT's Faceplace for dates and the whatnot.) I haven't caught SLUT yet but I've seen some of Okuno's other work and I'm super excited about this film. So if you can see it, go see it! What's wrong with you?



And finally, some news you can use that doesn't involve leaving your house (truth be told, that is my favorite kind). The inimitable Alexandra West done went and wrote herself a fantastic essay about the Final Girl's place in the films of the New French Extremity, in particular High Tension, Inside, and Martyrs. I'm a big fan of the subgenre discussed and of West's writing,  and you should be, too. What's wrong with you?

Still, though, it got me thinking. Fucking Martyrs. Am I ever going to actually write about it? Or will I die having only written about writing about it? What's wrong with me? There must be something. I mean, I want to move back to Los Angeles.

SHOCKtober: DRAG ME TO HELL

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

I remember how excited my friends and I were when we sat down in the theater to see Drag Me to Hell on opening night. I didn't know much beyond that it marked writer/director Sam Raimi's return to horror. That was enough to get me giddy, and man, the movie did not disappoint.

The opening sequence ends with a cursed child getting...well, dragged to hell, and then you're slapped in the face by the film's title and a shriek of orchestral strings and horns. The credits that immediately follow feature illustrations of demons and assorted occult goodies accompanied by some sinister carnival-style music, promising a sideshow full of fucked up scary shit and good times, and boy does Drag Me to Hell deliver.

But it was that title's sudden appearance, the assault on all of your senses, that prompted a friend to lean over and simply whisper "Fuck. Yes." I concurred. I concurred so hard. I still do! Sam Raimi dragged me to hell and I loved every minute of it.

SHOCKtober: THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE

Having indulged in the new 40th Anniversary Blu-ray earlier this week, this film has been on my mind even more than it usually is. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Pure, unadulterated grindhouse, my friends. That title– one of the most lurid in all of cinema– laid out as simple and no-nonsense as you please against the roiling, unsettling background of blood and gore and...no wait, it's the sun. It's just the sun. Well what's so scary about the sun?

Nothing, usually. It's "things that go bump in the night" after all, and most horror movies eschew the daytime hours in favor of the dark. It's understandable, obviously, but Chain Saw flips it around and gives us pure terror out in the bright sunshine.

The grueling Texas summer heat is as much a character in the film as any of the beautiful teens, the wackadoo cannibals, or Franklin.

(Aside: holy crap, I don't know what happened when I saw the movie this time, but I loved Franklin. I thought he was pretty great. And I wonder if that sausage he munched on was made of some other unlucky young folk...?)

The weather here is a touchstone, something that makes the world of the film feel more alive. Everyone knows by now what the actors had to endure during the shoot, those stifling temperatures that made them all sick and miserable. And we're right alongside with them, knowing what it feels like to be subjected to the relentless, inescapable, suffocating heat. Their shirts and brows are soaked with sweat. There's a lot of flesh on display, bare chests and backs and legs, but it's not to titillate, it's to survive the weather. What else is there to worry about? Nothing bad ever happens under skies this blue.

Except in Chain Saw, where a man wearing someone else's face will snatch you right out in the sunshine, hang you on a meat hook, and serve you up for dinner.

It's still a shock to me when Sally Hardesty jumps through yet another window in order to save herself and she lands outside...in daylight. It feels like safety, as it always does after a night full of terrors real or imagined. But again, the movie takes that away from us as we're left knowing that Leatherface is still out there, twirling in his manic dance of frustration with his chain saw set against the orange skies of the rising sun. Even so early, it looks to be another hot one.

SHOCKtober: FRIDAY THE 13th

Well you guys, what can I say. As I remarked yon about a fortnight ago on the Final Girl Facebook page, the October Excitement Spirits seem to have passed ol' Stately Final Girl Manor by this year. Why that is, I do not know. The world is drenched in Pumpkin Spice everything, sweater weather is upon us, and my local Rite Aid is fully stocked with glittery skull-shaped candles and crappy-looking "Turtle Ninja" costumes. This is normally my– nay, our– time to shine, so why-oh-whyfor do I feel ever-so meh about the whole thing? How did SHOCKtober sneak up on me without a single blat of fanfare from my brain place? How is it that not a single idea for this year's celebration came to me?

I was resigned to simply give it a rest this year, to close up shop for a month and pretend October never happened. Dire times, dear reader! But pal o' Final Girl Brent Schoonover came up with an idea that struck my fancy, and so here we are at SHOCKtober Day 1. This month I'll be taking a look at horror movie title screens and treatments and talkin' about what's what. Maybe Halloween will happen after all!

Let's kick things off with...

Friday the 13th (1980)

What in the world, Friday the 13th? What is that? It is 100% pure ridiculous, although future entries in the series would defy all laws of math and physics and reach even higher percentages of pure ridiculousness with exploding logos, a James Bond-esque Jason Voorhees, and more.

But it's also absolutely perfect, isn't it? Coming on the heels of more serious and/or artistic horror offerings like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, Friday the 13th came out of nowhere and smashed through audience expectations with its explicit gore and simplistic teens-for-the-slaughter formula. The title sequence doesn't need a "scary" font or dripping blood or any of that; it's a heavy, silly monolith that gets in your face with a punch and a fuck you. It immediately bull in a china shops its way into your consciousness, where it will stay forever whether you want it to or not. I mean, look at it! It's not a logo as much as it's a monument. It seems as if it's 30 feet high and carved from marble...in fact, it should be. I want my picture taken in front of that damn thing!

R.I.P. Marilyn Burns

When rumors started circulating on social media late last night that Marilyn Burns had passed away at age 65, I didn't want to believe it. It's always a bummer when death notices come down your news feed, sure, but some of them hit harder than others, you know? And this one hurts, not least of all because for fuck's sake, 65 is much too young.

Ms. Burns was a convention regular these last few years, and so the announcement of her death has prompted countless "I met her at a convention and she was so nice" posts, usually accompanied by a photo of Burns next to a fan. I'll refrain from posting the Polaroid selfie I have of the two of us (oh man, it makes me so happy, though), but I'll echo the sentiment because my goodness, what a sweetheart.

When I lived in Ohio, I went to a convention– Cinema Wasteland, most likely- where Burns was a guest, and I got the idea to ask her for an interview. She readily agreed and I count the whole experience- meeting her, listening to her tales, and continuing our correspondence after- to be a career highlight. If whatever it is I do can be called a "career", I mean.

After the interview, I moved to Los Angeles and pitched the article to Sirens of Cinema magazine, who asked if I had any hi-res photos to include with it. I have no idea if this is standard practice (though I'm thinking it's not...?), but I asked Marilyn if she had any to email me. I got a packet in the mail full of pictures she deemed "ugly"- of course they weren't...well, maybe ugly in that horror movie way, you know? All tears and grimaces and bloodstains. She drew a Sally Hardesty smiley face and signed the letter "love, Marilyn." We emailed for a while after that, and every email was signed "love, Marilyn." (Told you she was a sweetheart.) We lost touch because, you know, we didn't really have anything in common. But I still get a thrill reflecting on it or whenever I spot the photo of the two of us (even though...aw dang, did I have to lean back so much and give myself that double chin??).

Her filmography is painfully short, and none of the genre movies she did after The Texas Chain Saw Masssacre were remotely in the same realm of quality. But to me, at least, the image of Sally Hardesty tied to that goddamn chair– sweaty and bloody and filthy and screaming her head off in abject terror– it's just such a perfect representation...it should be the picture shown in whatever volume of Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedia references "horror film". It's as iconic as Janet Leigh screaming in a Bates Motel shower. So thanks, Marilyn, for giving everything you had...you helped make film history.

Here's the interview as it appeared in Sirens of Cinema (I love the Elvira bits!) (click to enlarge!) (right click and open in new tab to super enlarge!) as well as some anecdotes that I left out.

Stacie: [Chain Saw] still really gets to me, even though I know what’s gonna happen. 

Marilyn:  I still jump when I watch the movie by myself- it still makes me jump when I’m pushing Franklin (Paul Partain) in the wheelchair and he goes “There’s a light!” and RARR!  You know? It just makes me jump, which is surprising ‘cause I shouldn’t have any reaction at all. 

S:  From that point on Sally is just, you know, that’s her first…she doesn’t enter the house and think, “Hey, something’s not right here!”  It’s like, she’s pushing her annoying brother in the wheelchair… 

M:  Oh, God was he annoying!  The thing is, that guy’s the nicest guy in the world, but I didn’t know it until 20 years later because he acted like Franklin the whole time, he was like a method actor.  He continued to be just as whiny and horrible when they yelled “cut”.  He’d sit in his wheelchair and say “Someone get me a Coke!” and we’d go “Hey, Paul, you’re not crippled.  Get up and get it yourself.”  Nyah nyah nyah- he’d whine!  And I’m sure someone finally got the guy a Coke.  It was weird.  I should’ve known he was acting, but…it was 20 years later when I talked to him and he said “I felt so bad being so terrible!” and I’m thinking, “Paul, I thought you WERE terrible.”  He was just doing his job, and I mean brilliantly, especially since we were so young then…who would have thought some jerk would stay in character the whole time and be such a terrific guy and you’d not know it until 20 years later? 

S:  Didn’t Tobe [Hooper] kind of set you two against each other to get emotion out of you? 

M: I know right before the flashlight scene, where we fight over it, he said “Paul said this about you” and then he went to Paul and said “Marilyn said this about you”, but it was already set. I mean, the whole shoot was real hard and the more Paul whined as a character the more we went “Oh God!”  But it worked good for the film, because we were ready to kill each other. 

S:  You can really tell in the scene outside the van, before you start pushing him and he’s honking that horn… 

M:  He was so damn…I was…yeah.  I mean, I didn’t really think I could push the guy, especially with all the brambles and brush.  But it made it all funny later.  Ha ha ha.  Later.
... 

S:  You had to go back, right?  After it was over, you thought you were finished, and… 

M:  What happened…we filmed the very end of the show, where I jump in the pickup truck- which kills you if you ever try to jump from the cement into a pickup truck and you’re my size, and flip over…like that was a stunt I do daily!  And your boobs are getting, you know, all parts of you…and who flips over in a truck?  I would never flip over in a truck now.  But anyway, when I finally get in the truck and I had to wear all these stupid clothes full of karo syrup and chocolate and shit and then…I mean, the pants stood up!  They greeted me at the set!  And I thought, “Well, I’ll never have to wear that again!”  I mean, your hair sticks to you and everything, bugs and mosquitoes…if I sat on a chair it came with me…and so I thought “I’m through with that”. 

I don’t know how I did it the first time, I know I was crazy- but the second time, whatever happened there, the girl was just (maniacal cackle) “What are you gonna do to me now?  Are we gonna do it tomorrow?  Are we gonna do it next week?  Are you gonna keep calling me?!”  So yeah, everyone talks about how real that was, and…well, yeah, it would have been!  I hate to tell everybody sometimes, they go “Gee, where did all that come from?”  Well… 

S:  You didn’t have to reach too far. 

M:  Right, I was kinda already there.