Masterpieces of Horror Theatre- The Hills Have Eyes

 
First, Happy Halloween, everyone.
   I admit, I didn't know what I was getting into when I chose this film to watch. Sure, I knew that it was about a family being terrrorized by cannibalistic rednecks, but... I didn't quite expect what I would get with this. I chose this because of the relatively recent death of Wes Craven, and a desire to speak of one of his works. I admit, I don't want to talk about this too much. Not because it's bad, but rather, it's gruesome. Hence, I will not go into the entire plot of the work, nor will I go into detail about the more lurid moments. So, the history. This was Wes Craven's second film, after 1972's Last House on the Left. It was initially called Blood Relations,but the producers changed it. It was heavily recut to avoid getting an X-rating (which would have damaged its box office prospects), and the original director's cut has been lost to the ages. It was made in part as a homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That's all I could find.
     The film opens with an old gas station attendant (John Steadman) encountering a young girl, Ruby (Janus Blythe). She expresses her desire to trade some items she has in a bag for food. She also pleas with him to leave, but the attendant admonishes her, about what "the pack" particularly "Papa Jupiter" will do. However, the attendant has to suddenly attend to a family passing through from Cleveland. The Carters, consisting of patriarch Bob (Russ Grieve), his wife Ethel (Virginia Vincent), their children Bobby (Robert.... Houston), Brenda (Susan Lanier),Lynne (Dee Wallace), Lynne's husband Doug (Martin Speer), their child Catherine, and their two dogs, Beauty and Beast, are heading to California. The attendant warns them to stay on the road, so of course, they go off road, and their truck crashes. Meanwhile, the atten.. (okay, Wikipedia says his name is Fred, but I didn't hear it in the film itself).. then tries to leave, but his truck explodes.The family splits ups, with Carter going back to the gas station to see Fred. Bobby heads up the hill with Beauty, where Beauty mysteriously barks at the hill. When she goes up, however, she is brutally killed. Bobby is traumatized. Carter reaches the station, and finds Fred trying to hang himself. Bob saves Fred, and Fred explains  that his wife died giving birth to a deformed son named Jupiter, and that son killed his sister, before Fred hit him with a tire iron, and put him in the hills to die. He managed to conceive his own children with a prostitute (Cordy Clark), three sons Mercury (Arthur King), Mars(Lance Gordon), and Pluto (Michael Berryman), and a daughter, Ruby. They largely degenerated into cannibals, who now roam the hills in search of victims. However, Jupiter manages to kill Fred, and subdue Bob. This is only the beginning of the terror the Carter's endure....
        One surprising thing I liked was the fact that the cannibal family talked. Yeah, normally, they would be silent, but they do talk, and that allows for a sort of comparison between them and the Carters. There are a lot of scenes at the beginning where the Carter's interact with each other, and scenes towards the end, when the Cannibals interact with each other. The cannibals, in some ways, act like a dark reflection of the typical American family, as depicted by the Carters. That was a fascinating insight, and sort of symbolizes how they aren't that different. The setting also works, a bleak landscape, with no sign of civilization for miles. An excellent location for a survival horror film.  The acting is largely good, though I had trouble discerning words from the cannibals.
     I've said this before, but I have a problem with excessive gore and violence. This film has that in spades. I'd hate to see that X-Rated cut. I was uncomfortable. Not because I was scared, but more out of my dislike for this. Hell, this is tame compared to some modern grindhouse films, but I still had some problems with it. I suppose some people would be fine with this. Me, personally, I had trouble with it. There is also some scenes, I really do not want to go into, but needless to say, made me uncomfortable. It also stops. Not ends, but stops. I heard there was a legitimate ending filmed, and I can't fathom why they cut it.
      I'm conflicted. I did appreciate the artistry behind the film, and the subtext, but I couldn't get pass some uncomfortable moments in the film. I suppose if you want something extreme, this is in some respects extreme, so you'd like it. It is too intense to be a fun horror film to watch on a lazy weekend afternoon. So, yeah, if you want something to make you uncomfortable, this is the film.
   Happy Halloween, and for my final film, once again, I look at a modern film, The Babadook.

Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- Hellboy

    Hellboy was a comic series written and drawn by Mike Magnola, and published by Dark Horse Comics, first starting in 1993, and continuing into the present. It revolved around the titular Hellboy, a demon who was summoned to Earth in 1944, as an infant, and raised by humans. He fights on behalf of a secret organization called  Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD)(Despite its name, it apparently is an international organization, not exclusively a US agency) against a slew of supernatural threats, while dealing with his own "demons" (har har). The series was quite successful, and garnered a number of fans. One of those fans was none other than Guillermo del Toro, who began to petition for a film adaptation. He directed and wrote the film version. When Magnola and del Toro met, they both said that the best choice for Hellboy was Ron Perlman, and he was signed on. The film was released in 2004 to good reviews and good box office, though it opened against Passion of the Christ, and some theaters refused to run a movie about a demon against that film. Anyway, let's dive right in.
 
      In 1944, a small American troop, accompanied by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) head to a small Scottish island, where a Nazi occult ritual is being held to summon  Ogdru Jahad, a Lovecraftian Outer God, essentially. The ritual is being held by Gregori Rasputin (Karel Roden) (why the Nazis trust a Slav (who are considered racially impure by them) to do this is never explained), as well as his assistants, assassin Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) and Ilsa (because all Nazi women are named that, apparently) Haupstein (Bridget Hodson). The team foil the attempt, though not before an infant demon with a large glove appears. Bruttenholm takes the demon, and actually raises him. Flash forward 60 years, and the demon child, now named Hellboy (Ron Perlman) has become something of an urban legend. However, he is actually now a superpowered government agent for the BPRD, sent to investigate various paranormal activity, under the mentorship of the now aged Bruttenholm  . FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans) is recruited by Bruttenholm to become Hellboy's new partner. Hellboy isn't exactly enthusiastic about having a new partner. Also working with the BPRD is ultra-intelligent fish humanoid Abe Sapien (played by Doug Jones and voiced by David Hyde Pierce, and yes, every time I heard him, I heard Niles Crane as a fishman. If you don't think about it, it gets less distracting). Meanwhile, Kroenen and Haupstein are able to resurrect Rasputin, and he summons a demon. They are sent on a mission to a museum, where said demon appears. After a prolonged fight, Hellboy defeats the creature, but two mysteriously appear near Rasputin. Hellboy than goes to a local asylum, where he meets Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a pyrokineticist, who was a former partner and love interest for Hellboy. She has poor control over her abilities. Hellboy tries to convince her to return to the BPRD, but she refuses. After one visit by Hellboy, she ends up burning down the hospital. Myers manages to convince Liz to come back to the BPRD. During a second battle with the demons, Abe Sapien is injured retrieving some eggs, and Kroenen plays dead in order for the BPRD to deliberately capture them. They learn from the eggs, that the demons (called Sammaers, apparently) hatch twice every time one dies. Hellboy gets jealous when Liz goes out for coffee with Myers, and escapes. (There is a genuinely funny scene involving Hellboy and cookies). While they are gone, Kroenen wakes up and manages to get Rasputin to the BPRD headquarters, where they kill Bruttenholm FBI director Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor), who disliked Hellboy's rebelliousness, assumes control of the organization, and plans a final assault on Rasputin's base in Russia, where he and his cohorts plan to once again summon Ogdru Jahad. A team consisting of Hellboy, Manning, Myers,  and Sherman is sent to a Moscow cemetery to stop this. Hellboy and Manning dispatch Kroenen, while Myers and Sherman go to the lair of the Sammaers. Hellboy arrives, but is subdued. Liz uses her abilities to destroy the creatures and their eggs. Hellboy awakes to find himself and Liz captured by Rasputin and Ilsa. Rasputin takes Liz's soul to force Hellboy to manifest his demon abilities, which summons Ogdru Jahad. However, Myers is able to remind Hellboy of his father's wish for him, and he shakes the influence off, using a giant horn to close the portal. However, enough influence got out, that Rasputin transforms into a giant tentacled monster, who kills Ilsa. Hellboys kills the monster by intentionally getting swallowed, with a large amount of grenades stuck to his body (he is fireproof). The film ends with Hellboy and Liz sharing a well-deserved Romantic moment.

          The action in this film was very well done. It was intense, colorful, but it was very easy to comprehend, and you can tell who is fighting who. There is also a number of inventive kills and inventive scenes, which creates a lot of tension. The plot is a typical pulp style fantasy action adventure, and that's not a bad thing at all. The plot isn't complex or deep, but it is fun. It is fun to see a demon beat up other, more grotesque looking demons.. Particularly because the characters were well-defined, and I liked seeing them do these fun action scenes. Especially Hellboy. Ron Perlman is very charismatic in the role, playing up the childish rebelliousness, while still keeping him a badass action hero. The effects are very well done. I was very surprised to see practical effects used at times, which is always a bonus in my book. Even the CGI is very good, surprising for 2004. It also had a number of very funny moments, particularly involving Hellboy and cats. (That actually didn't sound as weird as I thought it did)

     Rasputin was not particularly enjoyable or memorable as the villain. I hardly remember anything he did. I wanted to see more of Odgru Jahad. He seemed infinitely more fascinating then the designated villain. (Maybe it's my preference towards Lovecraftian beings). I also got distracted, once again, by the fact that Nazi agents teamed with a Slavic mystic. I also feel they didn't focus as much as they should have on Hellboy being a demon raised in a human world. There is that scene where he is about to bring about the destruction of the world through his demon heritage, and the scene right before Bruttenholm's death, where he sees Hellboy as the bringer of doom, but it isn't brought up as much as the film wants me to think.

       This is my least favorite film from del Toro. However, that should speak more for del Toro as a film, because it is still a fantastic film. Once again, made with vision and passion for the material. I just didn't like it as much as his other films. Maybe his more atmospheric style didn't mesh with the more comic action style the film require. I greatly enjoyed this, and I encourage you, if you think you might enjoy this film, to seek it out and watch it.
    We close out with Halloween weekend, and the film The Hills Have Eyes by Wes Craven, and The Babadook.

Masterpiece of Horror Theatre/Film review- Crimson Peak

    So, yeah, this is the crossover I was talking about. I am combining my typical current film review series with Masterpiece, for this feature, Crimson Peak. I admit, this is not the sort of film I'd normally watch. While I do enjoy the Gothic aesthetic, it really doesn't excite me as much as it does for other people.  However, I watched this because of the director: Guillermo del Toro. For the uninitiated, he is the director of works like Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, and Hellboy. I don't bring this up often, but Pan Labyrinth is one of my favorite films. It is the only film I have ever seen that doesn't have a single flaw with it. It is a perfect film. Nothing can add or take away from it. Everything in it is done with complete perfection, from the screenplay, to the acting, to the cinematography. And I really like Pacific Rim and Hellboy (I'll talk more about the later in the second part of this double feature). So, I saw this primarily because of the director's pedigree. And, it actually may be one of his best.

     In 1887, when Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) was young, the ghost of her deceased mother (Doug Jones) visited her, and warned her of "Crimson Peeak" (I think I have that right). Years later, in 1901, she is a aspiring writer, hoping to one day become the next Mary Shelley. Her father,Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), is a prominent steel tycoon, one of the new money capitalists of the Guilded Age. She is also friends with Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) Edith meets Sir Thomas Sharpe, Baronet (Tom Huddleston), an English lord with a decreasing budget, who hopes to acquire some capital from Mr. Cushing to fund a clay mining machine. Cushing is skeptical, especially since he has disdain for Sharpe's aristocratic background (having slowly acquired his wealth with hard work). However, Sharpe takes a liking to Edith, especially after they dance at a party. Also at said party is Sharpe's sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain, who is in everything now, apparently. Not that I'm complaining). After the party, the ghost of Edith's mother returns, and gives the very same warning about Crimson Peeak,  though once again, she can't decipher the meaning. As Sharpe and Edith become close, Cushing hires a PI to dig up some info on the Sharpes. The PI returns with some incriminating files, and Cushing bribes them to leave New York at once, while Sharpe has to break Edith's heart.However, the day after, Cushing is murdered by a mysterious assailant, while Edith pursues Sharpe, and learns the truth, AND later her father's death. A few months later, Edith and Sharpe are married, and they move to the Sharpe estate in Allerdale Hall, where they will live with Lucille. However, there is a number of strange occurances around the house, and, also, Lucille's behavior is increasingly suspicious, as is Thomas'. Eventually, she begins to see a succession of increasingly grotesque ghosts. She is understandably horrified at first, but she slowly begins to investigate the history of the Sharpe family, especially after learning that the name of the hill the estate is on is called ....Crimson Peak (duh, duh, dummm.) As she delves into the mystery, dark and ugly secrets begin to rear their heads....

        First, the acting is really, really good, particularly from Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain. I note how well del Toro writes women. Seriously, he has a long line of very strong female characters in his films. And this film is sort of the prime example this. Both Edith and Lucille (who, spoiler, is the main villain) are both well-written, and well acted. I suppose you could use any del Toro film as a guide to write good female protagonists and antagonists. Also, although it is not a horror film per se,  it is scary at times, and the atmosphere is very creepy and dark. The sets are beautiful. My eyes were stuck on the sheer detail placed on everything. It also gets... icky towards the end. No, seriously, there is a twist, which, while well foreshadowed, is just.. eww. Not, like eye balls sticking out, but more of a societal taboo. It still works, despite that, and the actions are committed by.. Okay that will spoil the film, but point is, it is icky, but it works in the context of the film.

    I could discern some flaws with this. The pacing is a little slow. There is actually more than I just described, but it isn't consequential. Somethings are unresolved, like why a little dog was at Crimson Peak. The ghosts, while interesting, kind of lose their importance after the entire mystery has been solved. I wouldn't call them unimportant, as they do initiate Edth's investigation, but I assumed they would play a big role in the climax. Okay, one does, but not that big. A hallucination could have served the same purpose.

      They shouldn't have marketed this as a horror film. It is a dark Gothic fantasy. The ghosts are scary, but they slowly become less scary, as we learn about their backstory. Some of the backlash towards this film is the fact that it isn't scary, but it wasn't meant to be that scary. It is a romance and thriller at heart, with ghosts in a prominent role. If you are interested in that, you'll love this. It has enough scares (and horrifying implications) to be a good Halloween feature, so you could watch it in that capacity too. Don't go in expecting a typical horror film, because it really isn't. Thanks for reading, and next, we delve into another de Toro film,Hellboy.

Masterpieces of Horror Theatre- Prince of Darkness

       Not much interesting about the history of this. John Carpenter was reading works about theoretical and atomic physics, and became intrigued with the idea of God and Satan in terms of matter and anti-matter. (I'll admit, that was the primarily reason I decided to watch this particular feature ) He penned the screenplay as "Martin Quatermass," in homage to the Quatermass series, I discussed several weeks ago.  It was made independently, after the financial failure of Big Trouble in Little China in 1986, and was filmed around Los Angeles. Shep Gordon, the executive produce, was also Alice Cooper's manager, and managed to get Cooper involved, both as an actor and recorded a song for it. Released in 1987, it was financially and critically lukewarm. However, it has since garnered a cult following on home video and DVD, and is retroactively considered the second in the Carpenter "Apocalypse trilogy" alongside the Thing and In the Mouth of Madness. And, it does deserve some critical revaluation.
      The film opens with the death of a priest, who is holding a mysterious metal box. Another priest (Donald Pleasence) comes to the convent he died in, and is given the box, which has a key. The key opens an area inside a derelict church in Los Angeles, which contains a mysterious green substance floating in a jar. The Priest seeks the help of Professor Howard Birack (Insert Obama jokes here) (Victor Wong) in understanding this substance. Birack decides to bring some of his students including Brian Marsh (a guy with a very distracting looking pornstache) (Jameson Parker), his love interest Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), Walter (who's defining character trait is his skepticism, the only one amongst a group of scientists) (Dennis Dun), Kelly (Susan Blanchard), and several other physics, linguistic, and religious experts. While they set up their equipment, the vile is mysteriously quiet. As the physicists examine the vile, the religious and linguistic students look at the book in the church, which is written in several languages, and sometimes erased and written over. They manage to decode the book, and find it to be about....Satan.  At the same time, several homeless people (including a leader played by Alice Cooper) have gathered around the church, killing anyone who tries to leave. The equipment picks up a surprisingly detailed stream of data from the green liquid, including differential equations, which suggests some form of intelligence. They also begin to have visions of a mysterious figure emerging from the church, which they theorize as being a tachyon induced vision of the Future. Eventually, they theorize that the green liquid is, in fact, Satan incarnate. Further, they speculate that perhaps Satan is the offspring of a more powerful being known as the Anti-God, who resides in an Anti-matter dimension. And sure enough, Kelly is possessed by the Dark Prince himself, and begins to possess others in the research group. The remaining people (Catherine, Brian, Walter, Birack, and the Preist) fight off hordes of various evils brought out by Mr. Lucifer, while they are trapped in the church. The various infected members are slowly killed off by the still living scientists. Eventually, Kelly (now a largely grotesque figure resembling Satan) tries to get into contact with the Anti-God through a mirror, and bring him into the matter world, but Catherine sacrifices herself, and pushes Kelly and the Anti-God into the Anti-Matter dimension (which should kill her, but whatever). Brian sees a full version of the vision, with Catherine as the new incarnate of Satan. He sees a heavily disfigured Catherine in a dream, and later reaches into a mirror, ending the film.

      The imagery is very invocative, creating an atmosphere of mystery and darkness. The acting is mostly good as well. It has a number of great ideas. The idea of setting good and evil in the same vein as matter and anti-matter is genius, as is having Satan be the offspring of an Anti-Matter God. I admit, it appeals to my sensibilities. Perhaps that's why I enjoy films like this and The Thing  more than Halloween. They sort of utilize topics that appeal to me personally. While it is a film that has religious themes, it gives a good scientific basis to it. That always gets an A+ from me.  It is also very, very creepy, though not as scary as Halloween. Hell, even though you already know that the vile is Satan, (I mean, the film is called Prince of Darkness) you still are sucked in by said mystery, and what is exactly happening with this vile. The Anti-God is almost Lovecraftian in concept, particularly like the extradimensional Outer Gods, which ties into the unknowable Thing, and the horror of unknowning in In the Mouth of Madness. The Anti-God may have been explained in scientific terms, but in the end, he is still a being so complex, so mysterious, it is still unknowable. Finally, the score fits the film perfectly, the same way the Thing's score was.

    I've noticed something with Carpenter's films. They tend to drag towards the middle, and don't pick up until the end. This was basically the entire run time of Halloween II, but it was also a flaw with the original, and  The Thing. They slow down, and get somewhat boring in the middle. One more script re-write could have fixed this. This film sadly suffers badly from this. Most of its third act is basically the scientist fighting off the homeless, the possessed scientists, which gets tedious after seeing it for 30 minutes. Also, besides Marsh, Danforth, Birack, and the Preist, none of the characters are well defined. Granted, I know it's not about them, but a little more characterization would have been nice, just so that I cared when they got possessed. Since I didn't care, it didn't have much of an impact on me.

    I liked this picture. Certainly it's one that didn't deserve the critical panning it got. Luckily, it has since gone down as one of Carpenter's finest, and I agree. Of the four I've seen, I'd probably put it second, behind The Thing, and before the two Halloweens.  I'd recommend it to those who enjoy John Carpenter's films, or just want a good science fiction horror film, that doesn't involves aliens (unless the Anti-God counts. I suppose if..., nevermind). If you liked the Thing, you'll like this. Next week, I do not only a double feature, but a crossover, both involving the films of Guillermo del Toro.

Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- Halloween II

      Forgot to mention this earlier. When I was trying to find Halloween on Netflix, I found two of its sequels instead. Yeah, they show the panned sequels, but not the critically acclaimed original. Netflix is weird. So, after the success of Halloween. a sequel was comissioned. While Carpenter and Hill considered making a sequel where Michael Myers stalks Laurie in a new high-rise apartment, they ultimately decided to simply set the film immediately after the events of the first one.  Akkad and Yablans endowed the film with 2.5 million dollars, larger than the original. However, Carpenter refused to return directing, claiming he didn't want to do a sequel (Should've thought of that when he made Escape from LA), and newcomer Rick Rosenthal was chosen as his replacement. The cast, with the exception of Nick Castle (who played Michael Myers, and I just realized I forgot to mention that in my review of the last one) returned in their original roles. The film was released in 1981 to financial success, bur negative reviews. And it's not hard to see why.
       Set immediately after the events of the first film (on October 31st, 1978), Michael Myers (Dick Warlock) disappeared after Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) shot him several times. Loomis immediately goes to hunt him down, becoming more hysterical because of Myers near superhuman healing factor. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is sent to a nearby hospital. Myers steals a knife, and kills another teenager (because....). Anyway, Laurie is kept in the hospital, sedated by drugs. She learns that her pursuer was Michael Myers, who was a local legend because of the murders. Myers eventually learns of her location. Laurie begins to have visions of her as a little girl with her adopted parents, and visiting a young boy (interesting). Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cypher) try to hunt Myers down. They seemingly kill him by crashing a car into him, but it turns out to be a pedestrian with a similar mask. However, when Brackett learns of Anne's (Nancy Loomis) death, he leaves the film, and is replaced by Deputy Gary Hunt (Hunter von Leer), and they investigate the former Myers residency, and find nothing. Meanwhile,(God, I watched this last night, and I don't even remember the sequence of events!) Myers makes it to the Hospital, where he cuts the phone lines, and kills the staff. Eventually Laurie is left to flee him while still sedated and weakened. Loomis and Hunt go to a local school where Myers was spotted, where the term "Samhain" is found in blood. Samhain was a pagan holiday celebrated on October 31st, so Loomis begins to suspect an occult connection. However, he is confronted by his assistant Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), who was forced by the Illinois governor to take him back to the hospital. Meanwhile, paramedic Jimmy (Lance Guest), who was developing a romantic interest in Laurie, is rendered unconscious, when he sees a dead nurse, and slips in her blood. (No, really). Having offed most of the staff, Myers continues to pursue Laurie. Laurie eventually finds peace in the boiler room. After killing another nurse, Myers chases Laurie through the room. Meanwhile,(yeah, this movie jumps around a lot), Dr. Loomis learns that Laurie was, in fact, Michael Myers' younger sister, who was adopted by the Strodes after Myers incarceration. Realizing that Myers was targeting Laurie, Loomis forces the Marshal (John Zenda) to the hospital. Laurie barely escapes Myers in the boiler room, but is unable to start a getaway car. Jimmy walks in, but becomes unconscious again on the wheel, alerting Myers to her presence, just as Loomis, Chambers and the Marshal arrive. Laurie is able to alert them, and Loomis shots Myers again. However, Myers once again rises, and kills the Marshal. Finally, he mortally injures Loomis, and is about to kill Laurie, when Laurie shots him in the eye, confusing him long enough for Loomis and Laurie to fill the room with gas, and for Loomis to lit it on fire, killing himself in the process. Laurie looks on as Myers steadily burns to death. As an ambulance takes her back home, Laurie sees the body of Myers burning....
          I'll say this. It still had some legitimately creepy moments. Like a scene where Myers sneaks into a home and steals a knife. Or when he is slowly approaching Laurie in the Boiler Room. The twist that Laurie was Myers' younger sister, whilst not making sense, at least is somewhat interesting, and actually provides motivation for Myers seemingly random rampage. It also had its fair share of good kills, and the final scene is fairly well done. The cinematography is still good, with many of the same tricks that made the original such a classic, and the cast still does very well. The new guy playing Michael Myers does well with the role.
      The main problem with the film is its tedium. It gets really repetitive seeing Myers kill these random people. Seriously, I didn't really care about the kills in this. They get old really fast, and that loses the horror of these scenes. Further, it goes so slowly,. The pacing gets really slow in the middle, and it pads it out more than a car built for skydiving. Like I said, I could barely remember what sequence the scenes went in, because I stopped caring somewhere in the middle of the film. Dr. Loomis is even worse in this film, than in the original, having murdered an innocent teenager.
     Out of all the films I've seen for this, this is probably one of the worst. Not because it's bad, because there is some elements that save it, but it just pales in comparison of the original. It started scary, but it gradually just becomes slow and boring. And not scary. This would have worked better as the ending to the original. Urgh. If you wanted to see the cliffhanger of the original resolved, I suppose you could watch it, but otherwise, skip it.
   Next time, we take a look at another John Carpenter film: Prince of Darkness.

Masterpieces of Horror Theatre- Halloween

     Welcome back to Masterpiece of Horror Theatre, and today we take a look at the very influential slasher film Halloween. So, yeah, in 1976, action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 debuted, directed by relative newcomer John Carpenter, whose only previous credit was a dark satirical science fiction film called Dark Star. Among those who saw Assault were producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad, who wanted Carpenter to make a film about a killer stalking babysitters. With the help of his then-girlfriend Debra Hill, Carpenter was able to churn out a script The Babysitter Killer, but was renamed Halloween by Yablans. Filmed for 20 days in 1978, and with a low budget of 300,000 dollars, it was a finacially successful, with 70 million in gross, but critically mixed. And we're looking at it today.
     On Halloween day, 1963, 6 year old Michael Myers (Will Saldin) murders his older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson), and is forced to spend his life in an insane asylum. Years later, on Halloween Night, 1978, his psychaitrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) witnesses his escape, and is able to determine that he will head to his hometown of  Haddonfield, Illinois. There, a young girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) made plans to babysit her neighbor Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). In the background, Myers is stalking her using a car he stole from a farmer, after he spies Laurie in front of his old residence. Eventually, as night falls, Laurie is babysitting Tommy, while her friend Annie Brackett babysits a girl across the street, all while Myers watches. Meanwhile, Loomis and Anne's father Leigh (Charles Cyphers) try to locate Myers in the community.  After Annie dumps her child, Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards) with Laurie, Myers makes his first move, strangling Annie in her car as she is going out to see her boyfriend. After Laurie's other friend Lynda van der Klook (P. J. Soles) and her boyfriend Bob arrive at the Wallace residence to.. ahem "frolick" around as it were, Myers offs them as well. Eventually, Laurie tucks the children in, and goes across the street, where she finally encounters Myers, who dumps her down the stairs. She survives and after failing to get help from a neighbor, goes back to the Doyle house, and instructs Tommy to lock their door. However, Myers infiltrates that house, and the two struggle, before Laurie is able to seemingly kill him. However, just as Laurie is calming down the kids, he climbs up the stairs, and engages her again. After she seemingly kills him again, he rises again, and almost kills her. However, she shakes him off, briefly reveals his face (which is very normal, despite the letters)and Dr. Loomis (tipped off by Tommy and Lindsay after Laurie instructs them to go find help) shots Myers over a window. However, when he looks down from said window, he has vanished....
     Okay, first off, this was terrifying. It had a number of effective scares, which stems from its excellent use of tension. Every scene builds its tension, slowly building up the kill, and then catching you by surprise when it does happen. You know it's going to happen, but you are biting your nails waiting for it to happen. That is how you create an intense jumpscare. Not making fakeout scares, which will create mild surprise by causing a spike in the score, which subsides very quickly, like most of modern horror does. Speaking of the score, it is also very well done, fitting the mood many times, and never distracts from the killings. In fact, sometimes the killing or scare happens while the music is still playing, which makes it scarier. Also, all the actors do their very best. Michael Myers is a very effective villain. He is a silent, but deadly killer, clearly able to bid his time, and plan to ensure that he could psychotically kill this random assortment of teenagers. The low budget actually serves the films suburban setting quite well, with  authentic looking houses, which never feel cheap.
     I do have a few problems with the movie. It does get very slow towards the middle and the first half of the end, when Myers simply stalks his victims. While this has its share of creepy moments, it largely drags on for a little bit. Also, Dr. Loomis doesn't seem to have much consequence until the very end. Hell, you could cut him out of the movie, and reshot it, so that Myers escapes undetected, and Laurie herself shots Myers, and you basically lose nothing in the main plot.
   Overall, a very chilling and intense film, one which solidifies John Carpenter as one of the most influential directors, and stands head and shoulders over its imitators. If you want a chilling and intense film, give this a watch. Next week, I take a look at the sequel.

Masterpieces of Horror Theatre- Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth)

         For those of you who have been following my Facebook for the past two years, you probably already know every year, during the week of Halloween, I do several horror movie reviews. These were rather short (simply because I don't like doing particularly long Facebook posts, that's why I started this thing in the first place), and last year, I adopted the guise of a horror host called the Storyteller, and reviewed them in costume. This year, my University does not have a fall break at the end of October, and I don't really want to do the Storyteller schtick again this year, so I'll just do them here, every weekend of October. This is "Masterpiece of Horror Theatre," where I take a look at the obscure and the classics the horror genre has to offer. I cheated a little bit with this first film. I watched this a few months ago. However, I never said this had to be a first impressions, and it is a good film, so I might as well review it. First, a little background. The Quatermass Experiment was a BBC science fiction serial that aired in the summer of 1953, created Nigel Kneale. It revolved around Professor Bernard Quatermass, a scientist in charge of the "British Rocket Group", who coordinated the first manned spaceflight (remember, Sputnik hasn't happened yet). When said mission returns with two astronauts dead, and one infected, it is apparent that aliens interrupted the mission, and now Quatermass must stop them from destroying the Earth. This serial was so successful that it spawned off two sequel serials, Quatermass II(Electric Boogaloo), and Quatermass and the Pit, and became very influential in British television and culture at the time. Most notably, it was one of the main inspirations for Doctor Who. Around the time the second serial was being aired in autumn of 1955, Hammer Films (later notable for a series of Dracula films starring the late Christopher Lee in the titular role) released a film adaptation of the first serial, called the Quatermass Xperiment (Because "e"s are uncool), which starred American actor Brian Donlevy in the main role, and directed by Val Guest. Kneale, who had little involvement with the film, wasn't very fond of the casting, but when they adapted Quatermass 2 in 1957, he wrote the screenplay, though Donlevy still returned in the role. However, while Quatermass and the Pit was released in between December 1958 and January 1959, and the film rights were purchased by Hammer shortly after, distribution issues prevented the film from being produced until 1966, with a new script by Kneale and Anthony Hinds. In the role now was Scottish actor Andrew Weir, and the director was Roy Ward Baker, who made the Titanic film A Night to Remember. Quatermass and the Pit was released in the United Kingdom on November 9th, 1967, and in the US on February 16th, 1968, as Five Million Years to Earth. After this film, Kneale would write one final Quatermass serial, simply named Quatermass in 1978, and the character was retired, until a remake of the Quatermass Experiment was made and released in 2005, starring future Doctor David Tennant, But, we're primarily focusing on the 1967 film, so here we go...
      The film opens with in the London Underground, where several diggers find a number of fossilized human remains while digging a new extension. Paleontologist Dr. Rooney (James Donald) and his assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara... Shelly) are on the scene, excavating the remains, when another surprise arises. A mysterious metal. A bomb disposal unit is sent to examine the object, but needing further consultation, they call in Colonel Breen (Julian Glover, or as you may know him, General Veers from The Empire Strikes Back, or Walter Donovan from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). Breen is in a meeting with Professor Quatermass (Andrew Keir), who is irate that the military plans to hijack his Moon colonization, and that Breen is assigned to the British Rocket Group. Quatermass accompanies Breen to the dig site, where he witnesses the full uncovering of the object. Breen suspects  that the object is V-weapon left over from the war.  Underneath the object, however, is another fossilized human, which Dr. Rooney calculates to be 5 million years old. Quatermass and Barbara then go to around the area, called Hob's Lane, and learn of a number of local legends about devils and goblins haunting the region. Meanwhile, continued examinations of the object reveal it to be harder than any known Earth substance. It also appears to damage anybody who touches it. After a Borazon drills fails to open a door within the object, the door is destroyed, and it is revealed to have various insectoid residents. When Quatermass and Rooney examine them, they find them to be Martian in origin, and they bear a striking resemblance to the Devil. Quatermass uses this to hypothesize that they had come to Earth from a dying Mars to establish a colony. They increased the intelligence of the native humans to serve as the colonizers, and those eventually became modern homo saipiens. However, Breen gives an alternative hypothesis, that it was a Nazi propaganda weapon meant to scare Britons by giving the start of an alien invasion ( A theory that has a number of holes in it. Like: why would the Nazis develop such a hard material, and then waste it all on this one trick, when they could have made tanks or planes with the stuff? Why is it buried under the city, where no one could find it? Finally, why place all these fossils next to it? Was it just a nice touch?) The minister of defense decides not to think, and not only accepts Breen's theory, but plans to unveil the craft. Meanwhile, Sladden, the Borazon drill operator, is going to get his equipment out of the cave, and is haunted by the images of Martian hordes.Quatermass hypothesizes that it was a "survival of the fittest." style event, and fear that a similar event will occur. At the unveiling, disaster strikes, as the ship begins to use the television equipment to cause the population to riot. Further, some are drawn to the ship, and are killed, including Colonel Breen. Quatermass almost suffers the same fate, only for Rooney to snap him out of it. The two realize that the ship intends to destroy London, and remake it as a Martian colony. A large virtual image of a Martian insect looms over the city. Eventually, drawing on a legend that the "devils" could be repealed by metal, Rooney climbs a crane, and smashes it into the Martian. The film ends with Quatermass and Barbara tired from the experience.
      First, all the actors do very well, particularly Andrew Weir as Quatermass (a person of strong intellectual conviction and scientific mind; a character someone like me is inclined to like), and Colonel Breen (who is thoroughly unlikable, but at least you understand his positions). The effects, for the 1960's, are well done. It is very B-Movie, but not too distracting. I admit, I do find the idea expressed in this work fascinating. I don't subscribe to the ancient alien theory at all, but I do find the idea that aliens came in the distant past, and altered humanity to make them intelligent fascinating, if unrealistic. Granted, this is not the first work to show such a view (The Star-Begotten by H G Wells did this in 1937, with Martians no less.). However, the way it is portrayed was the most interesting part of the story. The mystery also does progress very well, and you do wonder why an alien ship is inside a London tunnel.
    I'll admit, the climax and ending were somewhat confusing. It was hard to follow exactly what was happening due to the chaos. They also don't explain why the ship looked like an organism towards the end. Hell, they don't explain why the Martians decided to use proxy humans to colonize the Earth, instead of doing it themselves. Once again, the Colonel had a very flimsy theory, which thinking about it ten seconds makes it fall apart easily, given what we were shown earlier. Finally, it is very slow and prodding, and it does take a while to go through.
     An incredibly entertaining, if slow film. I'll admit, the image of the Martian insects and the chaos of London are horrifying enough to justify this as a horror film. If you prefer more bloody and grotesque horror, you'll not find it here. However, if you enjoy watching a compelling mystery, with horrifying implications, and intense moments, I would give this a watch. Thanks for reading. Next time: I take a look at the seminal slasher horror film Halloween, and its sequel, Halloween II

Mr. Lowell and his Amazing Canals

        So, here is the more appropriate update for the recent Mars discovery. The discovery of perochloridate salts in the seasonal flows on Mars, hence indicating the presence of ( briny) liquid water on the planet, is a tremendous discovery. However, it confirms previous observations that water was present on Mars, in one form or another. Not on the surface, obviously. It is too cold on the surface for liquid water to exist as a liquid. However, it likely existed billions of years ago, and it might exist subsurface, where the seasonal flows likely come from. And if water, however salty, exists, the chances of life of some form existing on Mars does increase. Of course, this mode of thinking is only around 50 years old. From the time of William Herschel (who was the first to demonstrate that the white parts of Mars were ice sheets), it was believed that water, and presumably life, was abundant on Mars. Especially with the presence of the icy poles. In fact, a dark shadow that would go from the pole to the Equator was considered to be a seasonal plant growth in the late 19th and early 20th century (Astronomer Gerard Kuiper would say that the dark spot was windblown dust, and this hypothesis was later confirmed by Carl Sagan, and his student James Pollock). And the idea of life on Mars was ingrained, actually still ingrained, in our fiction. The aliens that invaded late Victorian England in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds were Martian in origin.  In Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series (which you may know from that overall descent, but disappointing film John Carter a few years ago), was full of various races and creatures roaming the planet Mars. And there are many other examples, from Tweel in the 1934 short story Martian Odyssey (it's in public domain, so you might be able to find it) to Looney Tunes' Marvin the Martian.  The biggest influence on all of these ideas was a man named Percival Lowell, and his ideas about Martians using canals to transport water.

          Well, I call them in the title "his canals", but Lowell didn't actually discover them. They were first described by an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli, during the Opposition of 1877. Basically, when Mars is on the opposite side of the sky from Earth. He had drawn several extensive straight lines on Mars, which he described as canali. Before I go any further, I would like to put that particular term into context. Apparently, while it is spelled like canal, the word "canali" actually roughly translates to channel, as in a natural channel. Schiaparelli also never hypothesized that they were artificial in origin, though he didn't oppose the notion. However, in the Anglosphere, the term canali became canal, and soon, it became a very popular idea that canals existed on Mars. Then came Percival Lowell, whose name would come to be associated with the canals. Lowell was not a professional astronomer. He was a business man and diplomat by training, and Harvard educated to boot. After hearing about Schiaparelli's discovery in 1893, he set out to discover see them himself. He built his own observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and looked at Mars, and drew the canals that he found.  Using these, he concocted an entire story, (based in part on William Pickering's speculation on the canals) about a civilization which was dying due to a lack of water. They needed to transport the water via canals to keep them alive. He popularized this particular story in a large variety of books and articles on the topic, where the idea of Martian canals was disseminated into the general culture. He would promote these ideas until his 1916 death. Note that this was the time that technological progress of all kinds, particularly transportation, were being celebrated, so the public was ripe for this idea, much as ancient aliens appeal to modern audiences.
       Despite the popularity of the canal hypothesis, professional astronomers were skeptical. Why? They couldn't see them! No professional astronomer could actually see or describe the canals. Astronomers like Asaph Hall (who discovered the Martian moons), and Edward Bernard (who discovered Amalthea, one of Jupiter's moons.) viewed the Planet and couldn't find any of the canals Lowell described.  Other, non-astronomers also criticized Lowell. In particular, was biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who was notable in formulating the theory of evolution independently of Charles Darwin, and influencing him to some extent. In 1907, Wallace wrote a rebuttal against Lowell, and his theories, noting that the so-called “canals” are likely just cracks in the Martian crust, where volcanic carbon dioxide rises from the mantle of the planet, and into the plants on the surface. Even if this explanation wasn’t true (its validity based on the idea that Mars had non-contracting core inside a contracting crust),  Mars  also had a mean temperature of -35 F, far too cold for any life to exist.  And in In 1909, during  an observation in a thirty-three telescope in Meudon, France, astronomer Eugene Antoniadi proposed that the canals were optical illusion, based off the fact that the surface of the planet were naturalistic. Despite the rejection of the mainstream astronomy community, the canals of Mars persisted into the 1950's. Werhner von Braun mentioned them in his Mars work, and Ray Bradbury was influenced to some extent by Lowell, when he was writing the Martian Chronicles. However, it was the arrival of Mariner 4 to the Red Planet in 1964 that finally killed off the idea of Martian canals. It not only showed that Mars was virtually dead, but there were no canals at all, confirming the observations of the astronomers of Lowell's time.
     So, what were some good things to come out of this? Well, towards the end of his life, Lowell would turn his attention towards a ninth planet, which he called "Planet X", which he and the observatory at Flagstaff would try to find. Eventually, in 1930, an astronomer working at the Flagstaff observatory (at this point named the Lowell Observatory) named Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, and the initials PL (as in Percival Lowell) was chosen as its sign. Also, it did popularize the idea of water on Mars. Further, Schiaparelli's initial idea of "canalis" as natural features have been shown in the form of various channels and canyons, which were more than likely formed from the erosion of liquid water in the distant past. While there were no dying civilizations or large artificial canals, this weeks discovery does demonstrate that water does exist on Mars, and with water, there is the possibility of life on Mars...

Sources:

The Scientific Exploration of Mars / Fredric W. Taylor.

Cambridge, UK; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

The Exploration of Mars/ Wernher Von Braun, Willey Ley, with illustrations by Chesley Bonestall

New York; Viking Press, 1960

Canals of Mars- The Worlds of David Darling:

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Marscanals.html 

The Canals of Mars- ScienceBlogs

http://scienceblogs.com/universe/2012/09/28/the-canals-of-mars/ 

Tracing the Canals of Mars: An Astronomer's Obsession by Richard Milner, Astrobiology Magazine- Space.org: 

http://www.space.com/13197-mars-canals-water-history-lowell.html 

Is Mars Habitable? by Alfred Russel Wallace:

http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S730.htm