Schlock Watch: The Horror Movie Blog

Fright Night (1985)

2012-02-05T00:30:00.000-08:00

directed by Tom Holland

starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall

Columbia Pictures, August 2, 1985, 106 minutes
Rated R

“When a teenager learns that his next door neighbor is a vampire, no one will believe him.”

So, with the recent home video release of the Colin Farrell-David Tennant remake of Fright Night, I decided that I had better refresh my memory of the original (not that I have any plans to see the remake in the theaters, being unemployed and having kids does have its drawbacks), so we queued the original up in the ol’ Netflix and sat down to watch.

Alisa walked out after about 20 minutes and went to do other things.

In the interest of fairness, I sat through the whole thing. While it is nowhere near as bad as it could be, Fright Night has not aged well in the last 26 years. However, if aging is the worst of the films’ faults, then it is still worth seeing. I think that the last time I saw this film was some time in middle school at a sleep over (it was the same sleepover where we had also rented House II: The Second Story (I still remember the zombie-cowboy-grandfather) and Critters) and I had forgotten much of it, so it was like I was coming to the film anew. While there were some hokey moments (I’m pretty sure I saw a string on the vampire bat-thing at one point) there are still some genuine chills, especially as the story gets going and Charley (William Ragsdale) is still trying to figure out if his new next door neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire or not. I find that this is a problem with many films of this ilk, that the suspense and tension that is created in the initial ambiguity surrounding the monster/killer/antagonist of a horror film is often dissipated once the monster/killer/antagonist is revealed. John Carpenter calls this the “Monster Problem” and it is something that horror directors struggle with (at least the good ones do).

Fright Night has the Monster Problem, and while it does not have a perfect solution it does stretch it out as long as possible. Jerry as a monstrous vampire thing in the end of the film that is threatening to disembowel Charley is not as scary or threatening as the Jerry who is stalking Charley and his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) through the streets of their town and into a dance club. That predatory vampire is much scarier than the grotesque bat-creature.

The true saving grace of this film is Roddy McDowall’s performance as the aging and fading horror film star. As Peter Vincent, McDowall is brilliant and steals every scene that he is in. Really, it is worth it to see the film just for McDowall’s performance.

In the end, I would classify this film more as a “cult horror classic” than a “horror classic,” and it is far from the best vampire film ever made, but it does have its moments, and it is worth the time.

RATING: B

Fright Night at IMDb

Fright Night trailer:

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Saturday Trailer Park: Silent House

2012-02-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

Now, I know that often you cannot judge a movie on its trailer, especially when that movie is an American remake of a foreign film, but when I was at The Grey last week I saw the trailer for Silent House which piqued my interest. I do want to see this next month and hopefully I won’t be disappointed.

My concern is that the movie has a gimmick and that gimmick is that it is supposed done in one take with no cuts … for all 88 minutes. I highly doubt that, Hollywood has all kinds of ways around that, but it’s enough to get my butt in the seat next month, so we’ll see what happens.

Silent House

directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau

starring Elizabeth Olsen and Adam Barnett

Open Road Films, releases March 9, 2012

“Trapped inside her family’s lakeside retreat, a young woman is terrorized."

Silent House at IMDb

Official Trailer:

The Grey

2012-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

directed by Joe Carnahan

starring Liam Neeson, Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney

Lidell Entertainment, January 27, 2012, 117 minutes
Rated R

Once more into the fray

Into the last good fight I’ll ever know
Live and die on this day…
Live and die on this day…

“John Ottway (Liam Neeson) is an unlikely hero who is forced to lead a group of roughneck Alaskan Pipeline workers in their fight to survive and return home when their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan Wilderness. Battling injuries and merciless weather, the men must escape the icy elements—and a vicious pack of wolves on the hunt—before their time runs out.” —Synopsis taken from the film’s website.

I don’t want to sound like a hipster, but I have been genuinely excited about this film since I first read about it in Entertainment Weekly, I guess it’s been almost a year now. The concept really spoke to me, and I was intrigued by the idea of these men trying to survive against the elements and a pack of wolves. Since that time I have eagerly soaked up everything about this film, watched the trailers and clips, read the interviews, etc., etc. and in the end negotiated with my wife for some time to go and see it.

I was not disappointed.

However, I will say from the outset, that the trailers—while a lot—of fun, make this movie out to be a one-note man vs. wild story; a story where after a plane crash these oil roughnecks need to outfight the wolves for their survival. While there is that element to The Grey, there is also a very deep philosophical element to this story that surprised me and took this film to the next level for me. What Carnahan has done is not just create Jaws with wolves, but has made an action thriller that is not just about physical survival but about mental and philosophical survival as well. The Grey is a meditation on life, death and what comes in between. It is a film about men trying to find their place in the world, and I know that this is a very loaded phrase—what place do men need to find? Every place in the world is a man’s place—and this is very true, the crisis of manhood is a false crisis at best, however, what The Grey accomplishes is it creates a space where men are able to acknowledge both sides of their nature: the bestial and the spiritual.

For me, it created a reflexive response within myself that caused me to ask, as the men in the film do, what it is I have that is worth fighting for. Who can I rely on to help me fight for those things? God? Man? Myself? There is a lot of questioning of the place of faith and spirituality in one’s life. Who is God? If He is a caring God, as religion would have you believe, why does He not intercede more often? How much of our lives are foreordained, or predestined by the hand of God, and how do these concepts affect our actions? If one is spiritual and believes in God, how does one account for the seemingly random and often destructive things that happen to people all the time—in the particular instance of this film the plane crash, the seemingly random choice of survivors, the pursuing wolves? And if one is not spiritual, if one does not believe in God, what does that disbelief mean for these same events? Is life just randomly cruel? Is mankind inherently animalistic? Can man rise above his underlying animal nature and truly do something wonderful and/or beautiful with one’s life? These are all questions that come up in the film, and are discussed at length in the lulls between wolf attacks. And while I’ve brought it up, let me say that the handling of the wolves in the film is very interesting. There has been a lot of outcry and protest over the choice of wolves as the “monsters” in this film, and while those concerns have a place in a discussion, I will say that they are based chiefly on the trailers for the film which, as I have said, are somewhat misleading. There is a lot more to the wolves in this film than just mindless beasts that attack and devour.

Most interestingly is that the pack structure of the wolves, Alpha male, Omega males, territoriality, organized and coordinated hunting, etc., etc. are used to not only create dangerous opponents to the men in the film, but it also is a mirror to the relationships and power dynamic of these oilmen. There is an alpha, there is an omega, they become territorial, they look out for their own, they attempt to organize and coordinate their defenses, in short this is a film that explores how thin the veneer of civility is and what it takes to strip that away and what it takes to try and keep that veneer in place. The wolves are simply the MacGuffin in this film that allows Carnahan to explore these issues.

On top of all of these philosophical issues, The Grey also features incredible directing, beautiful cinematography and some really superb acting, in all honesty, as much as the Academy Awards have become a joke, I really do hope that the film is remembered when it comes time to start making nominations because the film deserves that kind of recognition. Director Joe Carnahan, stars Liam Neeson and Frank Grillo, screenwriter Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, editors Roger Barton and Jason Hellman, composer Marc Streitenfeld, all deserve to be nominated for their work on this film. In particular I want to single out Liam Neeson and Frank Grillo for their performances. Neeson is outstanding as Ottway, a man who is left with little left to live for after his wife leaves him and who must find what it is he needs to keep on going. This must have been a particularly personal role for him seeing as filming began less than a year after he lost his wife Natasha Richardson in a skiing accident. Though, Neeson is an excellent actor to begin with, and in this movie his badass quotient is raised considerably. The actor with whom I was most impressed was Frank Grillo and his portrayal of ex-con John Diaz. Grillo’s character, in the hands of a less-competent screenwriter, less-competent director or even a sub-par actor would have been easily one-dimensional and stereotypical: either the hardened criminal who is the human antagonist, or the con with a heart-of-gold beneath his tough façade. Yet what emerges in The Grey is a portrayal that is exceptionally complex and highly engaging, and is easily the best performance in the film, even better than Neeson’s.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Grey, especially since it works on a couple of levels, the philosophical as well as the visceral. This is not the bloody gorefest that is typical of such nature-run-amok films of this type (in fact, Jaws may be bloodier and more violent than The Grey, now that I think of it, and certainly your average episode of Bones or CSI on television is bloodier and gorier than this film is) but it does manage to pack in the thrills and has some real genuine scares and chills. There are a number of extremely frightening moments and I will admit that there are two occasions that made me jump out of my seat, and while there is not a huge amount of blood spilled, there is enough to keep even the most hardcore of horror/thriller fans interested. It also had one of the most intense and grueling plane crashes I have ever seen on film.

With its small single-gender cast, vast scope, a shocking sense of claustrophobia (given its locale in the Alaskan wilderness), the fight against bestial opponents and its shocking meditations on life, death, friendship and one’s place in the world, The Grey reminded very strongly of Neil Marshall’s 2005 film The Descent. I don’t think I’m too far off in stating that what Marshall does in The Descent with expected female roles not just in film but in the real world as well and how they can be subverted and redefined, Carnahan does in The Grey but with masculinity. I’m still working through this idea, and may revisit it at some point in the future, but I really think there is something there that puts these two films into conversation.

In the end, given the current cost of ticket prices and the state of the economy, I guess the highest praise I can give this film is to say that I would gladly plunk down money to see this in the theaters again. The Grey is a very surprising, incredibly meditative film that manages to deliver more than the usual amount of scares and chills that this kind of nature-run-amok film has.

I cannot recommend it enough.

RATING: A+

The Grey’s official website

The Grey at IMDb

The Grey trailer:

P.S. Stick around after the credits. There is a brief post-credit scene that while it might not elaborate on the film’s ending, it might help you come to terms with it.

Welcome to Schlock Watch

2011-06-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

After being in higher education (at least seriously) for the last six years--four years completing a Bachelor's degree that was 15 years in the making, and two years working on a Master's degree--I made a bit of a namesake for myself in writing academically about horror literature. I've written papers on Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Stephen King's The Shining, Bag of Bones, Rose Madder and Gerald's Game and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, just to name a few.

Then, last Spring, I started venturing into horror film starting with Julie Taymor's Titus and branching out from there to write papers on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Frank Darabont's The Walking Dead, Neil Marshall's The Descent, Alexandre Aja's Haute Tension, Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland and Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn.

But, more than being an academic who has made a name for himself in horror criticism, I am a fan ... there is nothing I love more than a really good horror movie, or even a really bad one for that matter. With the end of my Master's program and my graduation--and being unable to, as of yet, find gainful employment--I have time to watch movies, and when my three kids aren't around I've taken to watching horror films to fill some of the time, and since I already review books, I figured why not blog about horror movies? Thus was born Schlock Watch.

I'll talk more about my relationship and history with the genre later, for right now it's just important to know that while yes I am an academic horror critic I am first and foremost a fan of the genre and I hope to bring a lot more of my fandom than academia to my posts. I'm sure it will slip in from time to time, but mostly this blog will be a fan's reaction to films.

Initially I plan on just writing about/reviewing films, but as time goes by I hope to include horror film news and who knows what else. This isn't going to be Fangoria or Bloody-Disgusting, this is just a fan watching horror films and talking about them to whoever will listen. There will be good films and bad films here. Films by Tobe Hooper and Roger Corman. New films and older ones ... probably more older ones than newer since I am restricted by fatherhood and unemployment from going to the theater and am therefore constrained to what is on Netflix and in my own collection. So, with that ... welcome to Schlock Watch Sit down, turn out the lights, have a seat and let's venture into the darker corners of the theater to talk about horror films.