House of Bones

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Lately I’ve come up against a bit of a brick wall so far as my reviews are concerned. I’ve watched so many movies in the past month, but they’ve all ended up being direly boring and I couldn’t think of a single way to write reviews for any of them (although the good Lord knows I’ve tried). It might just be that my standards have dropped, or I was just so desperate to write about something that my mind is making it all up, but I actually found this to be a decent and passable horror movie. It’s certainly not original, it doesn’t try to shake anything up and it doesn’t try to elicit any kind of emotional response from the audience, but as a standard haunted house story it works in the sense that what it does, it does well. I wouldn’t recommend rushing out to get your hands on a copy, but if it happens to come on TV sometime and you haven’t anything better lined up, give it watch. You may end up being mildly entertained.

WARNING! WARNING! Smarm overload!

In a move that may briefly leave you confused and mistakenly thinking that you’re watching Grave Encounters, the movie opens with us following the crew of a ghost hunting show. The show’s a little old school and is made up primarily of stock footage that they’ve green-screened their rather smarmy and pony-tailed host in front of. Since nobody appreciates a classic anymore, the ratings for the show have started to dip tremendously, and the producers are threatening to axe the show unless something is done. Enter the man who knows buzzwords! In his opinion the show needs to take on some elements from reality TV shows (no it doesn’t – nothing EVER needs to take points from reality shows. EVER.) and place the producer in the haunted houses and record his overly dramatic responses.  So essentially they’re going to make it into Ghost Adventures.

Let’s just call it a feminist fertility rite and leave it at that.

The powers behind the show have found the absolutely perfect house! It’s set in a lovely neighbourhood, plenty of room for a family, fresh coat of paint, slave lodgings, the works! It also has a terrible history of people going missing as soon as they set foot inside of it, and the neighbours keep complaining about disembodied voices pleading for mercy, but it’s nothing that a new lamp and a mild exorcism won’t take care of. When the crew arrives there’s nobody there to open up for them; thankfully the movie’s a bit racist and has equipped its only black character with the skills to pick locks and a desire to break into white folks’ homes. It’s all a bit strange inside though: why is there a fully stocked fridge in a house that’s been abandoned since before the 1950s? Why is it so spotlessly clean? Why is the psychic they brought with them bleeding out of her eyes? Nobody seems particularly concerned with these questions, so it’s on with the show they go.

Bitch needs an extra-strength lozenge! Stat!

It becomes quite apparent quite quickly that this isn’t one of those fake haunted houses – there is some genuine malevolent shit going on in there. Unfortunately the crew is headed up by the biggest asshole of a producer that a film has ever dared to create, so despite the fact that people are disappearing into the walls he absolutely forbids anyone to abandon their posts. As it turns out it isn’t that the house has evil spirits in it – the house itself is the evil spirit. To survive it literally eats its victims in order to maintain itself (gorgeous wallpaper and a meticulously clean crystal chandelier come at a cost, you know), and it isn’t interested in letting any of its new meals out. It’ll be up to the bleeding-eye psychic, a black dude and a melted corpse to solve the case if there’s any hope of them living to see the sun rise again.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Haunted houses are known to spin people right round (baby, right round, like a record baby right round, round round).
• Haunted houses have no right to go around giving themselves fresh coats of paint.
• When the ratings for your TV show are down, it calls for life threatening situations to revitalise them.
• It’s supernaturally dangerous when a haunted house’s pleasure to pain ratios are too high.
• The colour of the ectoplasm you find indicates the level of malevolence you are dealing with.
• It’s very important to routinely check your psychic for hairballs to ensure optimum health.

HOUSE OF BONES TRAILER

BUY HOUSE OF BONES AT AMAZON.COM

Final Destination: The Ultimate Movie Marathon

Since some people seem to insist that I be an adult and hold down a real job (people are really inconsiderate that way), it’s taken me ages to do this write up, but this UMM was actually done back-to-back with the Twilight one. The UMM rules state that for it to be an actual UMM, there needs to be at least 7 movies to the franchise (the gods forbid that that should ever happen to Twilight), so my elite crack movie watching squad (Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and the Occult Specialist) and I decided we’d just bend the rules slightly and watch another short franchise, thus bringing the evening’s final movie tally to 10.

By the time we started watching these movies my life was already in jeopardy, and there was a very real chance that my team would tar and feather me. We’d just watched +- 10 hours of stares, and I was really hoping that these movies would redeem me. I’m not sure if they did, but I think they went a long way to easing some of the tension.

The Final Destination franchise, in my opinion, is one that should truly be treasured because there isn’t a single bad movie in it. Yes, some movies are better than others when compared against one another, but on the whole all of them are very watchable and a lot of fun. It’s difficult to decide what sub-genre of horror these movies fall into, since they aren’t really slashers, but the whole idea that Death itself can come after you really puts a fresh twist on things. It’s also a lot of fun to watch just how a string of incredibly convoluted events can end up killing people in some truly horrific ways. Most importantly (and where other movies have long since fallen off the bandwagon), the Final Destination movies have, for more than a decade, introduced audiences to movies with people standing in a triangle on the cover. Not enough movies do that any more, and I think it’s a truly important cinematic event that should be passed on to future generations.

By this point in the evening the idea of any form of critical analysis had long since gone out of the window, so I’ll just give you a brief rundown of each movie, followed by our Twilight-riddled stream of consciousness. Enjoy!

FINAL DESTINATION

Year of Release: 2000
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 6.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Be honest – when you first saw this movie it made you think twice about getting on a plane. Starring a frightfully young Ali Larter, this is the movie that introduced us to the notion that Death might have a rather sick and fiendish plan for us all. Young Alex Brown and his friends are all getting ready for a fun school trip to France on Flight 180 when he has a horrifying vision that the plane will blow up just after take off. No one really believes him, but he and a few others are ejected from the plane for unruly behaviour anyway. Lo and behold, the plane actually does blow up, killing everyone on it.

In what may be Death’s equivalent of Wikileaks, these premonitions do not form part of Death’s ultimate plan – the survivors were never meant to get off the plane. Now, Death is coming for them and plans on getting them back in gruesome (but sometimes also hilarious) ways. Just how long can Alex and company actually cheat death?

• Dad supports copulation with French bitches.
• This scene warns us that there may be a slight draft.
• No hookers in the airport!
• Kill a Hari Krishna!
• Death laughs in the face of subtlety.
• Don’t fart in the bathroom!
• One should always aspire to do some tittie fucking while flying over Greenland.
• Behold: the Maltesers of DOOM!!
• Thank god for pre-911 – Alex would be hung and quartered by the FBI now.
• Awkward orphans are awkward.
• Survivor guilt!
• Freedom! (from life).
• He’s really not clairvoyant; Death only had a brief chat with him.
• Cold drafts are apparently Death’s preferred mode of transport.
• How do you get your toilet water to be that immaculate shade of blue?
• Behold: the Alsation of impending DOOM!!
• Mortuary break-ins are such a rush for randy teenagers.
• Furniture for movie kindly sponsored by Death by Design.
• Agent Shrek stages a daring coffin drop.
• Police brutality – the best kind of brutality.
• Tube monitors are the Devil’s work.
• Caramelised blood. Sweet, delicious caramelised blood.
• Death’s a sneaky bastard and willing to let you go slowly.

FINAL DESTINATION 2

Year of Release: 2003
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 6.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

In the franchise’s apparent bid to make us afraid to do anything at all, Final Destination 2 takes the terror on the road and presents the viewer with a delightfully horrific pile up on the highway. Remember when that giant log went through the policeman’s car? Yeah, that.

This movie centres on Kimberly, who was beginning a roadtrip with a bunch of her friends when her premonition happened. By backing up traffic, she manages to save a lot of people from the enormous crash, once again setting Death up to take back what it feels rightfully belongs to it.

This movie is the only one in the franchise that has any direct connection to the first film (or is it?), with a still-frightfully young Ali Larter reprising her role as Clear Rivers to help this new bunch of kids escape from Death’s wispy clutches. The movie is also interesting because it examines the consequences of the first one and how the (temporary) survival of the Flight 180 passengers created a ripple effect in Death’s greater design. More bodies, more explosions, and more pigeon-related deaths than you can shake a stick at. What’s not to enjoy?

• Crazy people are really useful for providing background info into Death’s design.
• Oh, how I miss a good old VCR.
• Condoms, whips, and chains are all really useful items to pack for a roadtrip.
• Irony is all around you, ergo, Death is all around you.
• Drink pale ale responsibly.
• Warning lights in cars aren’t really there to tell us anything important.
• White guys can be totally thug.
• “Call 180” – The devil got a new number.
• This police station has a capture and release system in place for witnesses.
• Back at Stately Wayne suburbia…
• Hygiene and safety standards – this guy has none.
• Magnets and microwaves really aren’t compatible.
• Well done! You just made things much, much worse.
• Dear God, not my iMac!
• Remember to evacuate your apartment in a calm and orderly fashion.
• Remember kids – spaghetti kills.
• Smoking is healthy if you do it on a treadmill.
• It must be refreshing when a mental patient WANTS to be there.
• Clear could still die from 1000 paper cuts.
• Good luck beating Death, and don’t fuck it up.
• Find Nemo: Killer Version.
• All Nitrous, all the time!
• Terrible: dying after you’ve racked up an enormous dental bill.
• Welcome to the Crazy and Clothed branch of the FBI.
• Death sees you when you’re coming. How awkward.
• Valium: like Smarties, but for adults.
• Don’t go accusin’ no one that their ass is any less alive than yours.
• Behold: the ripple effect of DOOM!!
• Death by Design has a rift that even duct tape can’t fix.
• Splash the Magical Flying Ambulance.
• Death has been vanquished and Dawn reveals her rosy bottom to everyone.
• KABOOM!

FINAL DESTINATION 3

Year of Release: 2006
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 5.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Alright, so we can’t fly anywhere and we can’t drive anywhere. Now, even if we somehow manage to make it to an amusement park, we can’t ride rollercoasters either? Not that I’m a huge fan of rollercoasters (I don’t like going upside down), but I’d at least like to have the option. Oh yeah, and don’t ride on trains. Ever.

This time around we’re following Wendy, who only wanted to spend a fun night out at the amusement park with her friends and boyfriend to celebrate their senior year of high school. Death and his ever-fabulous designers over at Death by Design, however, have a different plan. Wendy’s premonition kicks in just before a rollercoaster ride, showing her in detail that the human spine and metal support columns should never meet one another at high speed. She panics and gets off the rollercoaster, taking several people with her (sadly, boyfriend not included), thus setting in motion a chain of events that means Death and his designers need to put in a little overtime.

The key to survival here will be Wendy’s passion for amateur photography: she took pictures of everyone that night before the rollercoaster derailed, and they seem to hold clues to preventing peoples’ decidedly squelchy ends. Can Wendy and her friend Kevin beat Death and his array of faulty tanning beds, fork lifts gone wild and flying truck engines? Probably not, but it’s boatloads of fun to watch them try.

• Thank you New Line Cinema.
• It’s the Rollercoaster of Love!
• There’s some reckless foreshadowing being thrown around here.
• Camel toes, duck face and warp speed, oh my!
• Hydraulic fluid: Gone.
• Tyres: Gone.
• Who knew teenagers could fly?
• Oh wait, they can’t.
• She whips her hair (and spine) back and forth.
• Spear tackle a bitch! Bitches love to be spear tackled.
• Getting a tune-up tan for a funeral is so thoughtful.
• That’s a good work lamp there.
• This, on the other hand, is only an average work lamp.
• Mmmm… delicious fried whore.
• Death by Design releases its Equality range of murder.
• Drink pale ale responsibly.
• There’s so much ‘Merica! going on here it hurts.
• This guy works for Osama bin Supervisor.
• Watch out for the overreaction over steer!
• Wendy’s camera has all the megapixels.
• Fuck you Ben Franklin!
• We’re on the love train!
• OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!

THE FINAL DESTINATION

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

I don’t get why people are so down on this movie. Yes, of all the Final Destination movies it is the weakest. It suffers from being a little over zealous with the CGI (at times going up to Syfy levels) and it was clearly made with 3D in mind because everything just wants to fly out of the TV at you, but it’s by no means a bad movie. Oh right, and it isn’t REALLY The Final Destination, but I guess they couldn’t have known that at the time.

OK, we couldn’t fly anywhere, drive anywhere, or ride on rollercoasters, and this movie also wants us to stop going to races at the speedway. Again, this doesn’t really affect me because I find Formula 1 and that kind of thing boring, but I’d still at least like to have the option.

Death by Design’s out in force again, and this time they’ve set their beady little eyes on Nick. Nick, his girlfriend, and two of their friends, have decided to pass a decidedly American afternoon watching some very American racing surrounded by some very American spectators. Courtesy of the worst pit crew in the world, things go a tad bit awry, several crashes happen, and the entire speedway collapses. Or, at least that’s what’s going to happen according to Nick’s premonition.

Nick and Co., along with several other people, manage to get out before the crash happens, and Death by Design must ride their obsidian unicorns into battle once again. Keep a look out for some KKK-style burnings, a movie theatre on the verge, an over enthusiastic pool pump and the 1001 dangers of standing too close to a chain link fence.

• Thank you New Line Cinema.
• It’s like Daytona, bitches!
• The Nickelback alone should be a clue that bad shit is gonna happen.
• Oh neo-nazis, you’re really such a lovely crowd.
• A flaming pancake! A flancake!
• I’m feeling a little racial tension in that enormous hook and petrol can.
• Yet more irresponsible pale ale consumption.
• Absent parenting is the best kind of parenting.
• Scissors to the face!
• Gotta love some redneck bottle drinking.
• Clear Rivers water. Death by Design must be close…
• Slowest draining pool EVER.
• There’s nothing more horrifying that explosive ass decompression.
• It can’t be fun to be flattened by a bath.
• Death by Design got really greedy in this movie.
• Death’s Hobo walks amongst us.

FINAL DESTINATION 5

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 5.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

If the 4th movie took the series into a little bit of a dip, then this movie brought the franchise right back on track again. As if to reinforce the lesson we learned in the 2nd movie, if you hadn’t already learned that driving is dangerous, Death by Design is also more than capable of making the bridge you’re driving over collapse right out from underneath you.

In this last movie, we’re going to follow the escapades of Sam, a terrifically talented chef in the making, on his way to a retreat with his co-workers from his day job as a salesman. A leak in the space-time-gruesome-death continuum causes him to have a premonition where the whole bridge they are on completely collapses. This results in people drowning, being crushed by cars, getting impaled, and one unfortunate guy landing up on the wrong end of a vat of molten tar. It’s all rather unpleasant, really.

So Sam panics and gets some people safely off the bridge before the collapse happens. By this stage, Death by Design is getting bloody fed up trying to patch all of these leaks in the Grand Design, so the survivors land up getting killed one-by-one in yet another series of horrifying (and, in one instance, bone breaking) incidents. What I really liked, though, is this movie has a really good twist ending that I really didn’t see coming. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you keep a close watch on the characters throughout the movie you’ll see all the clues. Enjoy!

• Thank you New Line Cinema (and Warner Bros.)
• In the end, it’s often salesman against chef.
• Final Destination continues the franchise’s strict 1 black person per movie quota.
• Bald really is the new black.
• Yet another good work lamp. Well done movie.
• Gymnastics should really be restricted to 9-year-old boys.
• If he’s bereaved, he must be bereaving. In fact, he’s a bereaver!
• Stationary theft is deadly.
• Angst is difficult to pull off if you’re wearing a suit.
• Angst is a dish best served in jeans and a t-shirt.
• The fat guy really needs to die – horribly.
• Laser to the eye!
• Eyes pop well, especially when you drive over them.
• These people are just dumb as rocks.
• Psycho killers are that little bit more serious when they have a skillet.
• The _ _ _ _ _ _ _ has landed!
• Token black guy outlasted everyone!
• Final Destination: Changing movie stereotypes.
• The black guy survives the horror!
• Oh wait, I take that back…

FINAL THOUGHTS

After the miserable morning / afternoon / early evening that we spent watching the Twilight movies, these movies were just a complete breath of fresh air. People still weren’t speaking to me, but it was a step up from them threatening to mummify me alive. In a small way, I think these movies went a decent way to saving my life at the hands of a hair-eating Tropical Mary that night, and for that I’m thankful.

Like I said in the beginning of this write up, this is one of the best franchises, in my opinion, that horror has to offer. Whilst it may be purely by virtue of the fact that this franchise has fewer movies in it that many others, there really isn’t a bad one in the bunch. Yes, number four was comparatively weak, but on the whole it still stands up better than many other franchises’ weaker members. They key to these films’ success lies in the fact that they more or less follow a very well thought out system that was laid down in the first movie. They tweak it here and there and the deaths gradually become more gruesome and inventative, and leaves the audience in that fun place where they know exactly what’s going to happen, but you have no clue just how it’s going to happen.

Now, as for the scientific calculations that form an integral part of any UMM night, keeping track of the deaths in the Final Destination movies is a slightly tricky affair. Using a highly scientific and complicated system of spreadsheets, pie charts, clay tablets, and counting on our toes, we settled on a final death count of 499. Breasts were few and far between in this franchise, with a total of only 11. That works out to a death-to-breast ratio of roughly 45.3:1.

When all was said and done, it was nearly 5am and the sugar crash was starting to kick in hard, so it was off to bed for all of us. The next day was spent with a sugar-deprived headache that allowed me some time to reflect on the kinds of friendships that can withstand what I subjected them to on that bright and sunny Good Friday. So long as I promise to have no part in choosing the movies for the next UMM, I think we’re all gonna be friends for a good while yet 🙂

As always, I’m always looking for suggestions for the next UMM, especially for franchises that may be slightly more obscure.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and a big thanks to all those who kept us company through the live tweeting madness of the day!

Until next time 🙂

BUY THE FINAL DESTINATION MOVIES AT AMAZON.COM

Smiley

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!
Breast-O-Meter: 0 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There is no better feeling than that occasional time when I go into a movie thinking that it’s going to be awful and I walk away from it being pleasantly surprised. I’d read a few things about Smiley, none of them particularly good, but I found myself loving this movie for all the reasons that the critics panned it. Granted, I think it’s the kind of movie that only a child of the 90s can truly appreciate – it has the same kind of feeling that I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend and Scream had. Since those were the movies of my era, I thought Smiley was awesome for being able to capture that feeling, although I suspect it may fall a little bit flat with the kids of today. I would thoroughly recommend you watch this both for the 90s slasher vibe and for the fact that the whole movie is an elaborate tapestry of interwoven awkward moments that somehow come together to form a cohesive film. So many awkward moments, so little time…

In my day we didn’t have the internet! Weed? Well that’s another story…

Ah, college life. The beginning of adulthood where those years of toil and slog in high school finally pay off and you can begin to pursue a path of education that will help you become a productive member of society. Yeah, that was Ashley’s plan until approximately 3 minutes after she met her new housemate, Proxy, and then the training wheels came off in a big way. Proxy’s going to a party that’s been completely organised online by anonymous strangers, and she wants Ashley to go along. Ashley’s never done a bad thing in her life, or heard of a computer by the sounds of things, but she’s willing to give anything that good old college try. Drinkin’ them drinks and smokin’ that wacky tobacky…

Ermahgerd! Merdehr!

At the little gathering is a small group of hackers, hacktivists, active hackers, hackers in training and a mild sprinkling of hipster hackers. From this group Ashley seems to learn her first urban legend – the one about Smiley. Now, Smiley’s a man who sowed his eyes shut and carved a smile into his face so he looks like a rather macabre emoticon. The legend is very similar to Bloody Mary, except this one involves the internet. If you go onto a video chat with a stranger, imagine Smiley killing them and type in ‘I did it for the lulz’ three times, Smiley will actually appear and commit the crime. But that’s just urban legend, right? Nobody actually believes this stuff do they?

Ah yes, she’s mastered the ‘bosoms forward’ death pose…

Running with that thought, Ashley and Proxy decide to test it out and see what happens. After trolling the internet for the most revolting individual they can find, they tease him for a bit and then type in the fated words. Suddenly, a wild Smiley appears, uses knife stab and it’s super effective. This is understandably a little frightening for the girls, but how exactly do they go about reporting it to the police? It all seems a little bit strange, and it certainly doesn’t help that Ashley has a history of mental disorders. The only thing to possibly remedy this situation is more partying! But soon Smiley starts to break the rules of the game – instead of just going after people he’s sent to, he starts coming for those that did the sending, and Ashley needs to decide whether it’s her mind playing tricks on her or if something more sinister is at work.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• 12-year-old girls really shouldn’t be on sites where men take their pants off.
• Broadband has now reached a point where serial killers can download themselves into your house.
• Entire research teams are now looking into the intersection of the strange and the retarded.
• There’s about a 50/50 chance of either God or the Chupacabra actually being real.
• At some point all the internet’s evil is going to coalesce and manifest itself as a disfigured serial killer.
• There’s nothing quite like a roofied walk under the stars.
• Filing cabinets in academic institutions are there solely for the purpose of storing various types of booze.

SMILEY TRAILER

Hellraiser: The Ultimate Movie Marathon

Another epic evening, another entire franchise of horror movies covered. The entire team (myself, Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and The Occult Specialist) gathered for this one. With 9 movies ahead of us, it lay quite comfortably between the perhaps-overly long Friday the 13th marathon and the rather short Nightmare on Elm Street one. Plus, if I’m honest, the four of us are more than a little depraved and the prospect of spending the next 15 hours watching Pinhead-style torture was more than a little exciting. Couple that with the fact that we’d all taken a 3-day weekend and we were good to go 🙂

The day began as so many Ultimate Movie Marathon days do. We landed at Tropical Mary’s house at 10 hundred hours with a planned commencement time of 11 hundred hours. The fridge was stocked with many a litre of Coke, the snacks were in bowls and several of Tropical Mary’s amazing blankets were at hand to ward off the ravages of a Cape Town winter. With a few libatory coffees in us, we sat down and began the great trek through 24 years of Pinhead madness, blood spillage and what I think is one of the best horror franchises out there.

HELLRAISER

Year of Release: 1987
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 7 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

And so we begin with Pinhead’s first adventure, and from the very get-go the movie was incredibly gooey. In the beginning (or the 80s), there was The Cube, and Frank Cotton wanted it. Not content with mundane regular sex and pleasure, Frank wanted to explore the absolute extremes of pleasure and sensation. Little did Frank know, however, that such delights really only equated to having inter-dimensional chains fly out, bore into his skin and rip him to shreds before being dragged back into the other dimension by a pin-headed man with a serious leather fetish. Perhaps not the auto-erotic evening he had in mind, but it does set the tone for the movie delightfully.

Later on we meet the other Cottons: Frank’s brother Larry, Larry’s wife Julia, and Larry’s daughter Kirsty. Larry and Julia are moving into the old family home where, unbeknownst to them, Frank was torn to shreds and drained into the floor. During the moving process Larry cuts his hand on a razor-sharp nail head and bleeds all over the new / old floors. This somehow revives a somewhat juicy Frank and, when Julia discovers him dripping all over the attic, it brings back memories of their passionate affair and epic chin snogging. The usually ice queenish Julia is now filled with blood rage and brings Frank a never-ending stream of victims that he can use to rebuild himself.

Kirsty, being super intelligent by virtue of the powers vested in her by her epic hair and mom jeans, knows that something really bad is going on but struggles to come to terms with her gooey uncle running around the house. A problem arises when Pinhead and the other Cenobites (affectionately dubbed Lips McCoy, Tracheotomy Girl and Phat Morpheus) realise that Frank has managed to escape them, and they’re prepared to take him back by any means necessary. Butterfingers Kirsty will have to watch herself or be strung up in yet another of the Cenobites’ sadomasochistic experiments.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• In the 80s the phrase ‘the higher the hair, the closer to God’ was taken to scary and ridiculous extremes.
• The circle of life now includes an extra resurrection cycle.
• Clive Barker doesn’t believe in spending money on extra lighting.
• Nothing says class like a set of ninja star earrings.
• Tears are a waste of good suffering.
• If Jesus weeps your house will bleed.
• You know Cenobites are coming when Daft Punk lighting appears in your walls.

I love Tracheotomy Girl so much!

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II

Year of Release: 1988
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 6.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

After a quick recap of the first movie Butterfingers Kirsty wakes up in a psychiatric hospital. The doctors want to help her and the police want to know what happened that caused her house to destroy itself so Kirsty, like a genius, tells them what actually happened. Shockingly the doctors are more inclined to believe that Kirsty is a nut job rather than that her dead uncle came back as a gooey corpse and was aided in rebuilding himself by her evil stepmother while the two were being hunted by sadomasochistic demons from another realm. She is handed over as a loon to Dr Channard without any ceremony to be kept under watch until she regains her senses.

At least that’s the story she’s been given. Channard actually knows all about the Cenobites and has been dying to find a way to get in touch with them. Before he does that, however, he steals the mattress that Julia died on in the first movie and uses one of his more deranged patients as a blood bank to resurrect her. Like Frank before her, Julia is very gooey, and the good doctor takes her back to his white, white house and puts her in a white, white outfit to take some time and recover. A few choice victims later Julia is decidedly less juicy and ready to help Channard come into contact with the Cenobites.

To do this they will need an expert puzzle solver, and as luck would have it they have Tiffany, a catatonic puzzle solving prodigy just sitting around the hospital. She quickly figures out how the puzzle box works and summons Pinhead, Lips, Phat Morpheus and Tracheotomy Girl. Channard and Julia enter The Labyrinth, home of the Cenobites, while Kirsty and Tiffany go in to try and find Kirsty’s dad and bring him back. When the good doctor does become a Cenobite and attempt to usurp Pinhead’s position, Hell’s in for a big showdown and the Cenobites are forced to remember the only thing that can defeat them: their own humanity. I’d like to say that it’s up to Kirsty to save the day, but since she’s frequently outwitted by rusty pieces of cutlery, it’d be more safe to place your bets on Tiffany.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Music boxes to hell entice people like an ice cream man entices children.
• The best kind of policeman belongs to the ‘shoot everything to hell’ school of thought.
• The particularly mental wing of an asylum doubles up nicely as a giant maintenance cupboard.
• You’re quite the stud if you can get to 2nd base with a juicy walking corpse.
• Beware the pimp slap of justice.
• Everyone should have an orgasmic tunnel installed in their basement.
• Incest is best – IN HELL!
• In hellbound relationships it’s usually the woman that wears the skin.

Do you need a Kleenex for that?

HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH

Year of Release: 1992
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Things haven’t been going so well for Pinhead lately. When hell imploded on itself at the end of the last movie he and a Lament Configuration (the puzzle box) became trapped in a beautifully crafted, if somewhat disturbing, pillar. Completely drained of power he’s been unable to move. His luck turns around, however, when the pillar is bought by J.P. Monroe, owner of the greatest hole-in-the-wall nightclub, The Boiler Room. As people are prone to doing around Pinhead, J.P. bleeds on the statue, somewhat reviving him and setting us up for another round of gruesome torture.

This movie has no actual continuity with the first two, so we have to meet a whole new range of characters. Joey’s an ambitious young television reporter looking to find that one big story that will define her career. She thinks she may have found it one night when she sees a young man being ripped to shreds by hooked chains apparently acting of their own accord. If she were to have spoken with Butterfingers Kirsty she’d know that this was Pinhead’s general MO, but dear Joey’s gonna have to figure it out herself with the help of Terri, J.P.’s slutty (and seemingly underage) ex-girlfriend.

At this point in the long strand of time that we call eternity Pinhead’s decided that he’s sick of playing by the rules. Lips, Tracheotomy Girl and Phat Morpheus are dead, he’s been a statue for 4 years and Hell’s in need of some serious rebuilding, so screw the rules of the game. Lying and deceiving people to get what he wants, Pinhead plans on taking over the entire world and wreaking pain and havoc as he sees fit. Unfortunately, as is often the case, our worst enemy is often ourselves, and Pinhead’s human form is now alive and well, albeit in limbo. The revelation that he was once human in movie 2 has split Pinhead in half, and the human version is intent on bringing the Cenobite half down.

This movie has a death count that’s virtually off the charts and enough blasphemy to make your dear grandmother cry, which is why I think I liked it so much. Also, Joey’s far more intelligent than Butterfingers Kirsty and does battle beautifully with a DJ Cenobite. I’ll agree that it’s not as great as the first two, but it’s definitely still a great addition to the franchise.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Nothing says hardcore like a guy in a self-bedazzled leather jacket.
• True love means walking into madness for someone.
• Pinhead’s a modern killer and fully embraces the use of new technology.
• Pinhead strongly disapproves of stained glass windows.
• There’s nothing quite as relaxing as a mind trip to the luscious grasslands of Vietnam.

Blasphemy, blas for you, blas for everyone!

HELLRAISER IV: BLOODLINE

Year of Release: 1996
Genre: Horror / Sci-fi
IMDB Rating: 4.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Low

Sadly, this was the last movie in the Hellraiser franchise that Clive Barker wanted anything to do with. As the other reviews will show, his input is really what made this franchise work. Bloodline was the first dip in the series. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s very clear that by this point they were starting to run out of ideas. The movie’s perfectly watchable, but it never really grabs you in the same way the first 3 do and its ending was more than just a little anticlimactic. As a general rule, if you need to take it into space, consider calling it a day with the franchise.

The year is 2127 and Paul Merchant is trying to rid the world(s) of Pinhead and the Cenobites once and far all. Why ‘don’t open the damn box’ never seemed like a plausible solution is a mystery to me, but anyway. In the process of trying to destroy the Lament Configuration Merchant is taken captive by a group of soldiers who storm the space station he’s on, demanding to know what he’s up to. Held captive by an Hispanic Hilary Swank in space, he is forced to tell us the Cenobites’ story from the very beginning.

Over 400 years ago Paul’s ancestor was a poor toy maker commissioned to make a box for a wealthy French magician. The man has no idea that what he’s built is the very first Lament Configuration. The magician uses the Configuration to summon a Cenobite slave, Angelique. Through a process very similar to how we make chicken McNuggets today Angelique is poured into the skin of a woman the magician and his apprentice, Jacques, killed. Before Jacques and Angelique kill the magician he is warned that a demon must only obey its master until you stand in hell’s way. Not heeding this warning will come back to bite Jacques in the ass later. The two later kill the toy maker as well, discovering that he was trying to build the Elysium Configuration, a device that would keep the Cenobites trapped forever.

200 years after the first Lament Configuration was built John Merchant, another of Paul’s ancestors (the original toy maker’s wife was pregnant when he died), is essentially building an Elysium Configuration without knowing it. Angelique learns of this and comes to America to stop him before her and her kind are banished from the human realm. Pinhead’s none too pleased about any of this either and joins in the fight, bringing with him Cenobite Rottweilers and creating The Siamese Twins, the second coolest Cenobite lackey after Tracheotomy girl. They manage to kill John but are sent back into the Lament Configuration by his wife. All while John’s son is watching.

Back in the future Paul has EVENTUALLY figured out how to make the Elysium Configuration work. Either it was a very tricky design or this family just really isn’t all that great when it comes to higher brain functions. Having made a robot open the Lament Configuration to let Pinhead and the others loose it’s now just a matter of keeping Pinhead busy long enough to activate the Elysium Configuration (wow, never thought I’d use the word ‘configuration’ so often in one paragraph) and trap the Cenobites once and for all.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The future is astonishingly lacking in its use of technology.
• Despite being a vacuum, it’s really noisy in space.
• French people communicate with one another through slutty moaning.
• It’s not necrophilia if the body’s still warm.
• Many female demons are pillar-sexual.
• Security guards double up as expert door identifiers.

♫ ‘Cause you got me, and baby I got you. Babe. I got you babe. ♫

HELLRAISER: INFERNO

Year of Release: 2000
Genre: Crime / Horror
IMDB Rating: 5.5 / 10
Level of Awful: High

Wow, talk about a terrible downward spiral! After 3 awesome movies and one so-so one, we were suddenly lurched into this piece of crap. In itself this isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a Hellraiser movie. After suffering through about 30 minutes of it I was pretty convinced in my mind that this was originally a spec. script and Dimension had simply shoved Pinhead in somewhere where he really didn’t belong. Turned out I was spot on. It has a good concept and an absolutely brilliant ending, but it isn’t worth suffering through to find out what it is.

The movie follows Joseph Thorne, a rather shady and incredibly corrupt policeman, as he goes about his days being a general asshole and philanderer. Out on a routine investigation to look into a gruesome shredding of what might have once been a human body, Thorne discovers a Lament Configuration that’s been turned into a candlestick holder. As any other corrupt police official would do, after stealing $300 from the dead man’s wallet, Thorne steals the aesthetically pleasing Configuration and decides to play with it a little after banging a prostitute.

As one might expect tinkering with the Lament Configuration opens up a direct portal to hell. First the hooker’s dead, then Thorne’s ice-cream man / cocaine dealer / paedophile informant is killed, then he’s being chased by the Wire Twins and half a Lips. All of this seems to be tied to a man called The Engineer, and Thorne makes it his personal mission in life to try and stop this man. Not for selfish reasons, of course, but rather to avoid getting his own flesh ripped apart or licked off with an acidic tongue.

At one point Tropical Mary was actually considering killing me and the rest of the gang to try and liven things up while this movie was on. It has every miserable stereotype in the book, the characters are loathefully unlikeable, it takes forever to get anywhere with its storyline and you barely see Pinhead at all. It also wanted to redefine the Cenobites in that, rather than simply being other-worldly beings who took their love of whips and chains to strange and gruesome extremes, they are now actually demons out on some moral crusade. Maybe that works for some people, but it just left me cold.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Spines make really juicy noises when you rip them open.
• Some movies are as exciting as eating tofu on a rice cracker.
• Walker Idaho Rangers are nowhere near as cool as their Texan counterparts.
• It’s possible to make a movie with only internal monologues and sighs.
• Nothing says badass-criminal like a pair of ‘coon chaps.
• There are few people you want to hit more than a coked-up, smarmy, asshole, magician policeman.

Well, here’s the problem: you have two Cenobites embedded in your chest!

HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER

Year of Release: 2002
Genre: Horror / Thriller / Mystery
IMDB Rating: 4.9 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

And we’re on the up again, which was a very pleasant surprise after the last one. I don’t know if any of us could have taken two Infernos back-to-back with one another. Pay attention Dimension Films: if you must shove Pinhead into a script that wasn’t meant for him in the first place, this is the way that you should continue to do it.

Kirsty’s back! Having taken some time off to relax and improve her mental capacities so that she can at least match wits with the rusty cutlery, her and her husband Trevor are out for a little drive to rekindle their love. It’s all sweet and lovely until one particularly passionate session of neck nomming distracts Trevor long enough to put their car in the path of an oncoming truck. Trevor’s quick reflexes allow him to manoeuvre the car out of the path of the truck and throw it off a bridge into an icy-looking river instead. Trevor manages to haul himself out the car, but sadly for Kirsty and her recently improved mental capacities, Pinhead never cut her a pair of gills and she drowns when she can’t get her door or window open. Maybe the rusty cutlery would still win after all.

When Trevor wakes up in the hospital he’s pretty much fine except for some minor amnesia and the inability to tell fantasy apart from reality. This will result in some difficult times for him, like when he coughs up a live eel. Meanwhile Kirsty’s body has disappeared from the car and a search has yet to find where she drifted off to. This results in Trevor becoming the prime suspect in Kirsty’s suspected murder, an investigation headed up by the most condescending policeman to ever grace the small screen. With strange things happening all around him, the people he knows turning up gruesomely murdered and Cenobites at every turn, Trevor will quickly need to figure out what’s real and what isn’t before Pinhead gets to him.

This movie was everything that Inferno wanted to be. It has a tremendous ending that will make you rethink everything you’ve just watched, but at the same time the rest of the movie manages to convince you that what you’re watching is really happening.

By this point in the evening this movie spawned one of the best comments of the whole marathon. Wondering why Trevor was such an absolute slut magnet, I voiced this statement: “His amnesia brings all the sluts to the yard.” Stygian Mole, who doesn’t say a lot but is tremendously useful for his quick one-liners, promptly responded: “And he’s like, ‘what the fuck are all of you doing in my yard?'” Perhaps you had to be there to truly appreciate it, but we laughed ourselves silly for about 20 minutes at that.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Only in ridiculous movies does a man wear white shoes.
• Pinhead doubles up as an apartment-cleaning magician in his spare time, and is well versed in the Dead Hooker Be Gone spell.
• Very few people actually understand what amnesia does to a person.
• No matter how hard the sex against the vending machine is, that thing’s never gonna give up a free pack of Lays.
• Morgues should be stored at the centre of the Earth so that the soul has less distance to travel when it goes to Hell.
• Technological advances mean that Lament Configurations can now be more rounded in shape. This also makes them more child-friendly.

Acupuncture for the guilty soul.

HELLRAISER: DEADER

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Low

And we’re on a dip again, although not too bad a one. Deader isn’t necessarily a bad movie, it’s just one of those films where you could always see what it was trying to do but it never quite got there. Based on yet another spec. script (how many of those damn things does Dimension own?), it again puts Pinhead in a story that he doesn’t really blend in with completely, although it’s still a far better attempt than Inferno was.

By this point in the franchise Hell has become a prime location for the hip and trendy, with everyone wanting a piece of the pie. Enter the Deaders, a little cult in Bucharest led by a man who can hold back death and grant his followers eternal life, albeit with giant chunks of themselves missing. See, in order to become immortal you have to die first, at which point the cult’s leader, Winter, will bring you back. Everyone chooses to kill themselves in the most gruesome manners. Why no one thought a bottle of pills with a nice glass of wine in a bathtub wouldn’t be a better choice the Lord only knows, but this is what’s apparently happening in Eastern Europe when we’re not keeping an eye on them. Investigative journalist Amy Klein is on the job and tracking the story.

Now, Pinhead’s not loving this little cult one bit. He’s the only one that should be allowed to come and go from Hell as he pleases, and it ultimately all boils down to these people choosing Winter as their master over Pinhead. Amy, being the smart girl that she is, manages to find a Lament Configuration in a run down crack house. Literally prying the thing out of some poor, dead crack whore’s hand, she takes the thing home and solves the puzzle. Along with many, many chains, Pinhead appears in the middle of Amy’s lounge, but this time he’s in a far better and more helpful mood than usual. He warns Amy about what’s happening, and tells her to be careful and that he’ll be watching.

In order to push the story forward, as well as force some kind of continuity between this movie and the rest of the franchise, we are told by Winter that he is a descendant of the Toymaker who created the original Lament Configuration. Despite having the skills to bring people back from the dead he has been unable to solve the Configuration’s puzzle (it really doesn’t look that complicated: feel it, run fingers in a circle, click down and voila!), and his back-from-the-dead followers have all been an experiment to try and find someone to open the box so that he can travel to Hell and take command of the Cenobites. Like Pinhead’s gonna let that happen…

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Nobody really needs the other half of their brain.
• In the crack whore version of Bridget Jones’ life, she lives in Romania and only gets eaten by one Alsatian.
• Nothing says class like a plastic bottle of gin.
• Romanian trains are a more hedonistic form of transportation.
• ‘Romania’ is a suitable answer to any confusing moment you may have while watching this movie.

I hate that spot on my back! You can never quite reach the damn thing!

HELLRAISER: HELLWORLD

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

The end is in sight people! Finally, three movies later, we happen upon an entry in the franchise that isn’t based on a spec. script. Granted, the short story it’s based on wasn’t written by Clive Barker either, but beggars can’t be choosers. Although I’d seen most of the Hellraiser movies over the years this one, for whatever reason, was the one I remembered the most vividly, so it was kinda cool to watch it again. Definitely not an all-time classic, but fairly decent watching nonetheless.

If you’ve watched all the Hellraiser movies back-to-back in one caffeine-fueled evening the one thing that you will probably notice is that Pinhead isn’t afraid to move with the times, and it really shouldn’t be surprising that at some point he’d embrace the use of the Internet in tracking down today’s more tech-savvy victims. Welcome to Hellworld, an online MMORPG based on Pinhead’s adventures that have, over the years, been granted the status of urban legends. Some people who become a little too engrossed in it may land up apparently committing suicide, but you really can’t put a price on a good game.

Let’s meet Chelsea, Derrick, Mike & Allison. These guys are the best of friends and LOVE playing Hellworld. Their friend Adam doused himself in petrol and set himself alight two years ago because of playing it, but that hasn’t stopped them. A true fan is a true fan. For the purposes of this movie, the four plan on attending a special Hellworld party held in a remote mansion by a strange billionaire recluse. Not that this is at all dodgy or possibly dangerous or anything. They’re joined by their estranged friend Jake, who never quite got over Adam’s death.

And the party’s underway! Oh, what an evening of debauchery and hedonism this will be! Anonymous sex with strangers (anonymity ensured because everyone’s wearing a mask and has a special cellphone provided by the man hosting the party), excessive drinking, possible drug abuse, minor orgies breaking out all over the place… Mmm, the air is rife with slut, and these kids like it. Well, Chelsea doesn’t, but that’s because she’s been pegged to be the heroine from the very beginning, but that’s fine, because she and her skin-tight latex pants (even the Cenobites’ leather outfits aren’t that tight) are locked in a bathroom.

Naturally, with all this pleasure going on and so many people having opened digital Lament Configurations, this is the perfect opportunity for Pinhead to reap a soul or two, which he does very effectively. All in all this is a good movie, although the ending may leave you a little cold. For a truly gratifying experience turn it off about 10 minutes before the credits roll and you’ll be left thoroughly satisfied. If you don’t that’s also fine, but you may be left thinking “Well, that was great and all, but why make it a Hellraiser movie?”

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• In this modern age, if Jesus weeps he will be deemed a sissy.
• Never let people into your house – they just want to touch all your stuff.
• Every rich billionaire has a secret Pickled Babies R Us store in his basement.
• There’s nothing quite as scary as seeing a dead man denoming [to denom, verb: the act of wearing an all-denim outfit].
• True friends help no one while getting a blowjob.
• Latex pants will really slow down a decent escape.
• Private Number is an asshole.

And Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ video concept was born.

HELLRAISER: REVELATIONS

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.9 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

And then there was this crock of shit. Even if me and my team hadn’t been high on caffeine, nicotine, sugar and saturated fats, even if we hadn’t been watching movies for over 13 hours, and even if we had been in the mood to watch a movie that would make us rather have Pinhead do what he felt like to us rather than be forced to watch it, EVEN THEN we would not have been prepared for Revelations. Dimension made this so that they wouldn’t lose the rights to the franchise you say? IF THEY MADE THIS THEY DON’T DESERVE THE FRANCHISE!! Right, that’s my little rant over 🙂 But seriously, don’t watch this, it’s crap.

So Steve and Nico are best friends who, like many other spoiled American teenagers, just feel that mommy and daddy don’t really understand them and that they need to get away from it all for a bit. They decide to road trip down to Mexico for a bit of fun, a few drinks and one or two prostitutes here and there. It’s all harmless fun really, at least until the two go missing one day.

A year passes by and still no one’s heard from the boys. Back home their respective parents are worried sick, and Steven’s sister Emma makes Kirsty seem like a Nobel Prize laureate. You know those mouth breathers who drag out the last syllable of every word? Yeah, she’s one of those. Emma, sadly, looks to be the brains of this little outfit and, whilst rummaging through her brother’s room and finding his video camera, learns that her boyfriend (Nico) casually murdered a hooker while banging her in a bathroom. What ever is a distraught and mournful girl to do? Seduce Nico’s dad in front of his mother, that’s what!

But she’s not gonna do any of that before she plays with the Lament Configuration in her brother’s bag, which shoots a blood-covered Steven back into our dimension. Following this secrets are revealed, the movie will try and shock us with things like incest, shotguns and couches covered in a horrendous floral print, there’s a showdown of some sort, Pinhead (who apparently has really let himself go in recent years) will pace back and forth in someone’s garage while stringing together incomprehensible sentences, families will be drawn into the garage / Hell and, if you’re fortunate enough to make it through all of that, the movie will end. You will never be the same and will be sorely tempted to throw heavy objects at the TV, but it will all be over and you can go on with your life.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Tijuana is now pronounced ‘Teechwaaana’ (with the ‘ch’ making the sound it does in German).
• Tijauna / Teechwaaana is located somewhere in Mexicamerica.
• Pinhead now has a five-head.
• Pinhead does an amazing duck face.
• It’s only ever a bad lie if it’s a filthy, filthy, lice-infested hobo lie.
• It’s rare to see a plot that thickens with whore juice.

And they really thought no one would notice the difference?

FINAL THOUGHTS

We were doing so well up until Revelations, which really just pushed us completely over the edge. 5 more minutes and there would have been a Lord of the Flies situation on our hands. That aside, this marathon rocked. On the whole the franchise is really strong if you consider that (in our collective opinion at least) only 2 out of the 9 movies were actually bad, and only 1 out of those 2 was abysmal. Compared to many other franchises, which tend to start out strong and then slowly go down hill, this really is quite something.

And then there’s Pinhead. I’ve never really been that invested in the Hellraiser movies so I didn’t know that much about the franchise’s main antagonist until this marathon, but he truly is a god amongst movie killers. What I liked so much about him is that he’s intelligent; unlike many other killers from movies that came out around the same time as the original Hellraiser, Pinhead isn’t some brute out on a rampage. He’s an articulate, highly intelligent creature that operates within very well-marked boundaries. If you open the Lament Configuration you’ve made a deal, and that’s all there is to it. At the risk of sounding like a highly deranged individual, the methods of killing his victims are also just plain awesome. Yes, Jason has the machete and yes, Freddy has the knife glove, but the chains and sheer calm brutality that Pinhead uses are what really make him a terrifying figure. And that’s just one (albeit the most important) Cenobite. Looking at his lackies and seeing what has been done to them makes the viewer wonder which is worse: suffering an agonising death at the hands of the Cenobites, or suffering an agonising eternity by becoming one of them.

And now, for the part we’ve all been waiting for, the death and breast counts. In total, the 9 movies gave us roughly (Stygian Mole did his best, but sometimes the deaths were just coming too hard and too fast to keep track) 579 kills. Whilst this is truly impressive, they’re spread very unevenly, and around 400 of those took place in the 3rd movie alone. When it comes to breasts we didn’t do so well (much to The Occult Specialist’s disappointment, since I had made him the official Breast Counter for the evening) with a total of 22 across the whole franchise, most of them coming in the later movies. This gives us a final death-to-breast ratio of 26.3:1

I loved this franchise, and I now rank some of these films as my best of all time. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming, but I must give a huge shout out to my team, without whom these marathons would not be possible, and an equally big shout out to all the people who tweeted us and helped keep us sane throughout the process. Follow us on Twitter to see what madness we’ll take on next! Until next time 🙂

BUY THE HELLRAISER MOVIES AT AMAZON.COM

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Ultimate Movie Marathon

Wherever Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and I go you know the madness simply won’t stop! Following on from the pure, unadulterated epicness that was the Friday the 13th marathon we decided that our next mission, in light of Freddy VS Jason, was to take on the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This time we felt a little more prepared: with a little experience under our belts we knew that we could hold out in the face of movie after movie after movie, and this time there would only be 7 films as opposed to the previous marathon’s 11. Sadly we were lacking our Occult Specialist for this one but the 3 of us decided that we were going to tackle these movies head-on anyway.

Working from what is admittedly a good system we piled into Tropical Mary’s lounge with a variety of snacks, many litres of Coke, several boxes of cigarettes and the necessary money to do a pizza top up later on. Sadly, in my opinion at least, this series of movies simply could not live up to Jason and his never-ending killing spree. Equally sadly our pizza was not delivered by a guy named Freddy, which just seemed an enormous let down after a Jason delivered our last batch. Join me now as my Elm Street Retrospective comes to a computer screen in your city this morning / afternoon / evening / weekend 😉

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Year of Release: 1984
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 7.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

And we’re off with Freddy’s first adventure! It’s the mid-80s, flannel isn’t as abundant as it once was and Johnny Depp was a fresh-faced young man ready to break into acting. Elm Street falls in the beautiful suburban town that is Springwood but, in amongst these idyllic little houses and perfectly trimmed rose bushes, the children living on the street are about to experience something strange and horrifying.

Our main girl is Nancy, a plain little thing with the emotional range of a plank of wood, and, while her face would never give it away, she’s been experiencing some terrible nightmares. Nightmares about a horribly burned man in a dirty jumper with knives on his fingers. Nightmares that the other children on the street seem to be having as well. Nightmares that, if you get hurt or injured in them, then you’re hurt in reality as well. Nightmares that have Nancy’s friend Tina being dragged across the ceiling and ripped to shreds after a riveting around of premarital sex with her boyfriend Rod. Sadly for Glen, Nancy’s boyfriend, there will be no premarital sex that night.

In the face of a killer that stalks their dreams, parents that believe they’ve lost their marbles and the unbearably orange and never moving face of Nancy’s mother the kids will have to find a way to either stay awake for the rest of their lives or make battle with a monster that has a taste for young children and is out for revenge.

So the franchise got off to a reasonable start. It’s not without its faults and Heather Langenkamp really couldn’t act, but given that it was done on a fairly modest budget credit has to be given where credit is due. Plus Freddy Krueger’s just brilliant in a really disturbing kind of way.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Pants are for the weak!
• Teenage girls will be crapped on by their fathers for going to school, their friend’s houses, visiting friends in prison and virtually anything else you can think of.
• Burns can be migratory.
• Judging by their output bedside lamps in the 80s were nuclear powered.
• Running in ’84 was still being properly developed.
• Marshmallow floors are just impractical.
• Cupboards are the perfect temperature for storing booze.
• Apple cider melts skin beautifully.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART II: FREDDY’S REVENGE

Year of Release: 1985
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: Low

And we’re a go for Part II! In what seems to be a pattern in these franchises the second movie takes us on a bit of a dip. This one is a beautiful example of being able to see what they were going for, but then there’s what they actually did with it. I propose that the name of this movie be retroactively changed to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Bitch’, which is far more in keeping with what the story is actually about.

We’re 5 years down the line from the last movie and, since Nancy has apparently gone nuts after the death of her mother, 1428 Elm Street went on the market and a new family has since moved in. Our main character in this film is Jesse, a boy with an oddly shaped chest who appears to live his life in a constant state of sweatiness and tighty whiteys. Freddy appears to be a little weakened at the moment and needs a host body through which to perform his dirty work. Since Jesse has conveniently moved into Nancy’s old room he’ll do just perfectly.

To begin with it’s all fun and games as Freddy takes out people who Jesse doesn’t particularly like, such as his leather-clad gym teacher. With delightful dialogue such as “he’s inside me, he wants to take me again” and “he owns me”, combined with the constant state of tighty whitey-ness that Jesse lives in, there appears to be a definite homoerotic undertone to the whole movie. Jesse, along with his would-be girlfriend Lisa, will have to battle their way through their nightmares, Jesse’s possession and a pool party gone horribly wrong if they are ever going to live out the rest of their lives in peace.

The main problem with this movie, and one that becomes apparent across the franchise as a whole, is that it can’t live up to the characters it creates. Freddy, as always, is disturbingly brilliant but doesn’t appear as often as you’d like because we need to deal with everyone being awake for so long. While Jesse isn’t perhaps the most memorable character he plays the disturbed teenager very well but the whole pseudo-possession storyline neither does his or Freddy’s character much justice. The biggest waste, however, is Lisa. The Sydney Prescott of her time, Lisa will beat the crap out of Freddy with any available object at any given time but the storyline is just too weak for this character to stand out.

Despite these many problems this movie did bring out what is perhaps my favourite comment from Tropical Mary for the whole evening: “For a lesbian-headed, dyke-looking woman she’s very romantic.” Watch the movie and see if you can spot who this applies to 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Off-road school bus rallies are a  lot of fun.
• The art of egg making hadn’t been perfected in the mid-80s.
• Your liver can function as a heart.
• Running was still in its infancy in ’85.
• Feeding your bird cheap seed will cause it to burst into flames.
• 80s parenting meant being constantly aloof.
• Like running and making eggs, kissing also hadn’t been perfected in the mid-80s.
• The power of love will lead to internal haemorrhaging.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS

Year of Release: 1987
Genre: Horror / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 6.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

And we’re on the up again! Freddy’s back and ready to take on a mental asylum full of sleep deprived children. This was Patricia Arquette’s debut role and, in my opinion, she’s the glue that pulls it all together.

Kristen Parker has a mother who isn’t very sympathetic (and, by the movie’s implication, a whore) to her night terrors or the fact that she’s waking up with her wrists slashed by Freddy. Convinced that she’s just out for attention her mother locks Kristen in Westin Hills, the psychiatric hospital we would see again later in Freddy VS Jason.

Along with Kristen the other misfits at the hospital are Joey (who doesn’t say anything), Phillip (a would-be sculptor who shows a little promise), Jennifer (who dreams of becoming an actress), Will (this movie’s answer to Artie from Glee), Taryn (an ex-druggie) and Roland (the stock black kid with behavioural issues). These guys are the last of the so-called Elm Street children, children of the adults who murdered Freddy. So locking them all up together really is going to make Freddy’s job a whole lot easier.

Thankfully help is on hand. In her spare time between growing up and losing her mind Nancy somehow managed to become a doctor and specialise in sleep disorders. She herself is now taking Hypnosil, a dream suppressant that helps keep Freddy at bay. She will be aided by Dr Neil Gordon, the hospital’s resident psychiatrist, who in turn is aided by Sister Mary Helena (Handbasket).

This movie serves as Freddy’s origin story, explaining how his mother Amanda used to work at this very same institution. Back then the hospital used to house people who were far more insane, and Amanda managed to get herself locked in with the mental patients. Raped repeatedly by the 100 patients in this wing over a prolonged period of time, she fell pregnant and gave birth to Freddy at Westin Hills. Being the bastard offspring of 100 deranged lunatics (a medical impossibility, but we’ll run with it) is what made Freddy so evil.

But Freddy’s in for one hell of a fight this time round. Kristen has a remarkable ability to pull people into her dreams, allowing the rest of the group to follow her so that they can do battle as a group rather than being picked off one by one. This power, coupled with Nancy’s experience in Freddy hunting, will pave the way for one amazing showdown between Freddy and the last of the Elm Street children.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Tricycles are creepier than wheelchairs.
• By ’87 wearing polka dots to a funeral was out and normal attire was in.
• Sleep therapy in the late 80s comprised a blend of hypnosis and induced epileptic fits.
• You can go from high school senior to doctor in the space of 6 years.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER

Year of Release: 1988
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

And we begin our downward spiral. To give credit where credit is due, I think the movie makers behind this one must have realised that they were eventually going to run out of Elm Street children and needed to somehow tie them into new characters. I can see what the overall plan was, although I may have blinked and missed some important bits since I’m still not 100% clear on who / what the Dream Master is. Nevertheless, the marathon had to continue and we girded our respective loins and dived head first into our next instalment.

Kristen’s back and she’s doing quite well for herself. Not only have her and her surviving friends been released from Westin Hills but her face has also morphed from that of Patricia Arquette to that of Tuesday Knight. Naturally someone needs to be nervous about Freddy coming back so why not let it be Kristen? Living in a state of perpetual panic and paranoia she often pulls Joey and Kincaid into her dreams. The dreams, however, are sitting quite comfortably at room temperature so Joey and Kincaid reason that Freddy must still be dead. He will be, until a dream dog with resuscitating flaming pee digs him up and lets him loose on the world again…

Joey and Kincaid are killed off reasonably soon into this little adventure to make way for a new group of people: Rick, Kristen’s never-before-heard-of boyfriend, Alice, Kristen’s friend, Dan, your stock studly jock whom Alice has a crush on and, last but not least, Debbie, a friend of Alice who epitomises virtually everything that was wrong with the 80s.

With Freddy back one of the first people he’s going to after is obviously Kristen. Panicked at being brought face to face with him again she accidentally pulls Alice into the dream, bringing her to Freddy’s attention. Kristen is killed by Freddy trying to defend Alice, but she manages to transfer her power to Alice right before Freddy swallows her up as a little soul food.

Admittedly there are some interesting methods of death in this movie, including being utterly deflated, an interesting take on being a karate kid and the art of getting an invisible ass whipping, and teenagers being turned into cockroaches. After doing a little reading I’ve seen a lot of things about different gates, different guardians and absorbing different powers, resulting in Alice and Freddy becoming supernatural guardian mortal enemies, but if any of that actually happened I genuinely missed it.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Over time boiler rooms tend to become more and more chainey.
• As a year 1988 was a lyrically desperate time.
• You can dedicate entire closets to shoulder pads.
• Vegetation is not a meal.
• The real problem with Freddy is that he wants to dance with someone (who loves him).

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD

Year of Release: 1989
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High

And then there was this. The Dream Child is this franchise’s equivalent of Jason Goes to Hell. Freddy, supposedly dead, has to be brought back some way and made to be even more threatening than before. While the story and concept are weak in themselves the movie’s main problem is that it takes itself seriously. This could’ve been played so differently and, had it been done with tongue planted firmly in cheek, it probably would have been a lot of fun. Even Freddy seemed to be fighting against the movie at times, but his delightfully disturbing humour just wasn’t enough to save this.

Nothing says ‘this is going to hurt’ quite like an opening credit sequence that doubles up as the movie’s first sex scene. Alice has returned and she and Dan are enjoying many rounds of passionate premarital sex. With all their friends dead Alice has also had to expand her social circle and make new ones (for Freddy to butcher) but her first priority now that she’s graduated from high school is to go on a little whirlwind tour of Europe with her beloved. That at least was the plan until Alice starts dreaming about a baby Freddy climbing into his old grownup clothes and somehow regenerating himself, being stalked by Freddy while she’s awake, chatting with the spirit of Amanda Krueger (AKA Sister Mary Helena Handbasket) and having Dan die on her in a rather epic (but admittedly painful) fashion.

Now the $1 million question is how Freddy is stalking Alice while she’s awake. To be honest I was more curious as to where the hell her body was hanging out for the 4 hour blackouts she was experiencing, but Tropical Mary said I shouldn’t get distracted and just watch the movie. The answer to that question (which also justifies the movie’s title) is that Alice is with child. Since children in the womb apparently spend a lot of their time dreaming Freddy can attack through the baby’s dreams without having to wait for the grownups to eventually go to bed.

Trying to beat Freddy this time will involve Alice not only using her supernatural powers once more but also trying to reason with the dream consciousness of her unborn child. What part of ‘this could be amazingly funny’ the people behind this movie didn’t see I’m not sure, but again they decided to take themselves terribly seriously. Freddy’s dealt with many things in his time but he’s never taken on a mother trying to protect her child so he’s in for a very big fight. Throw in the ghost of his own mother with a bone to pick with her son and the stage is set for the biggest family feud you’ve ever seen.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• As the 80s drew to a close polka dots at funerals decided to make one final, desperate stand.
• As the 80s drew to a close the art of running had STILL not been perfected.
• Shirts are for the o’ wedgie (like 20 to llama llama, this came as the mind was starting to go).
• You can be just a little pregnant.

FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE

Year of Release: 1991
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

Finally! Someone had the brains to realise that they could take the piss out of this series, and it really paid off. This was my favourite movie of the day, mainly because it seems like this was the point that the morbid humour of the franchise’s antagonist and the movie’s plot finally decided to align themselves. Had some of the humour of this movie been injected into the series about 4 movies earlier I may have enjoyed this marathon a whole lot more than I did.

Freddy’s been a very busy boy since the events of the last movie. 10 years have passed and he has successfully managed to kill off all the children in Springwood, leaving the once-beautiful suburban town a shadow of its former self. The only surviving teenager, who can’t remember who he is, is being sent on a special mission by Freddy (although he doesn’t know that). Freddy can’t leave Springwood, with the city limits acting as a barrier that he cannot cross, and there’s someone very special on the other side that he wants brought to him.

Through a little retconning and some imagination from the audience we are informed of the fact that Freddy is actually a dad, just another reason why The Dream Child was utterly unnecessary. His child is floating around out there in the big bad world somewhere and he wants it back. Where on earth could it be? Surely not at the home for troubled youth that our dear John Doe has landed up at? Surely our little gang of street waifs – Terry (sexually abused by her father), Carlos (beaten by his father and now partially deaf as a result), Spencer (“former” drug addict) – and their psychologist Maggie couldn’t possibly be candidates to be Freddy’s offspring? That’s just crazy.

But is it crazy enough to work? Through a series of amazing coincidences (and after coming face to face with a wild and possibly rabid Roseanne Barr) the five of them land up in Springwood and strangely cannot seem to find a way to leave. Could Freddy be behind this? Could he be the one making people’s heads explode? Possibly. Turning people into some 8-bit gloriousness and beating them up? Yeah, sounds like something he’d do. Re-enacting The Wizard of Oz and throwing people onto a bed of spikes? Definitely sounds like something he’d find fun.

The movie also addresses the greatest question of all: how the hell does Freddy manage to keep coming back? The answer: dream demons, that’s how. These demons are inherently malevolent and granted Freddy his power on the night when the parents of Springwood initially burnt him alive. We’ve retconned a child, so let’s retcon some malevolent tadpole dream demons while we’re at it, anything goes here. Prepare for the ultimate father VS child showdown as we see just which generation of Kruegers deserves to wield the knife glove.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Blowing up the garage will get you a lot of attention.
• Intense daddy issues are intense.
• Throwing yourself on the floor doesn’t make a sound.
• It’s very important that you ignore any and all ominous omens in disturbing situations.
• Despite being an immortal dream demon Freddy gets the crap beaten out of him quite regularly.
• Synapses fire in technicolour.
• The fact that Freddy was a ginger kid explains virtually everything about his character.

WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE

Year of Release: 1994
Genre: Horror / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 6.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High

You know what? I can totally understand a fan base calling for another sequel to a film franchise they love that has supposedly come to an end. I myself would do many things to see another Halloween movie that had nothing to do with the two bastard offspring of Rob Zombie. But was this really what the fans wanted? I remember seeing this movie for the first time a few years ago and thinking it was utter crap. Watching it as part of this marathon did nothing to change my opinion. Again, I can see the concept and I think it was a very interesting one, but the execution left me cold and bored stiff.

Since Freddy was (supposedly) killed once and for all in the last movie we need to do something completely different to bring him back round this time. So what if he had never been around at all? What if the last 6 movies were just that and nothing more? That’s the path that New Nightmare wants to take us down, so let’s all go for a little walk.

It’s been 7 years since Heather Langenkamp last portrayed Nancy, but she’s a mother now and needs to think carefully about the kinds of rolls she decides to play. She’s happily married, lives in a beautiful (if somewhat earthquake prone) neighbourhood in a lovely house. She’s still friends with Robert Englund and many other people from the films and is currently doing a few promo gigs to discuss the franchise’s 10th anniversary, life after Elm Street and being a mother. But someone isn’t prepared to let the franchise go quietly into that good night; someone is stalking Nancy and making threatening phone calls to her. Someone who sounds remarkably like Freddy.

Already on edge, Heather’s state isn’t helped when her husband dies tragically in a car accident after falling asleep at the wheel, his chest sliced with mysterious claw marks. In the aftermath of his death their son has also begun to behave very strangely, saying that he can’t sleep without his pet dinosaur to protect him from the bad man who comes out of his dreams to get him. But this isn’t a movie, so how can Freddy possibly be coming for Heather and her young son?

Wes Craven, that’s how. It would seem that, after writing the script for the initial movie, it began to dawn on him that Freddy was perhaps a little more than a simple character on paper. What if he were an ancient malevolent spirit that needed a means to gain access to our world? Well, that’s what he is and that’s what happened, with this demon using the Elm Street movies to play himself out but, while the franchise kept going, his thoughts were trapped in the scripts and unable to hurt anyone. It would seem that the demon enjoys being Freddy and isn’t quite ready to let the character die just yet. Heather’s going to have to reprise her role as Nancy one more time if there’s any hope of finally laying Freddy to rest.

If only she could have managed to do it without an hour going by where nothing happened it would have been so much less painful than it actually was. This was not worth the nearly two hours it took to watch it. While the concept was interesting, it was also the movie’s main weakness. Because it was brand new it took a long time to develop on screen, time where very little else was happening and the audience just sits and watches a child become gradually creepier and creepier.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Good hygiene practices are entirely unnecessary in a morgue.
• You can just leave corpses littered around the hospital halls at night.
• TVs don’t need to be plugged in to work.
• 90s programming had a lot of subliminal Freddy messaging.
• ICU is a perfect place to keep a person with a sleep disorder.
• In new age fairy tales a trail of bread crumbs can be replaced by a trail of sleeping pills.
• Ferns are evil and must be punished.
• Freddy is a genie, you gotta rub him the right way.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Right, I’m just going to come out and say it: I didn’t enjoy the Elm Street movies. I love Freddy Krueger and think he is an absolutely brilliant and disturbing character but these movies simply did not do him any justice and, at times, seemed to actually work against the primary character they had developed. While the concept of him as a killer that stalks dreams makes him particularly frightening and difficult to defeat it also creates the problem when it comes to people being awake. Freddy can’t kill people when they’re awake, meaning the times that the audience would have to worry about seeing him were very defined, which takes away a lot of the suspense. Attempts to rectify this through the dreams of an unborn child were not very successful.

Although we didn’t rewatch Freddy VS Jason during this marathon the memory is fresh enough that I can say that I think Freddy’s character was best suited to that movie. A more powerful presence in the waking world, his disturbing character can run a little more wild. That’s the Freddy you want to see, and that’s the Freddy that’s missing from this franchise.

Perhaps it’s also a sign of the times we live in when we expect more gore and brutality at regular intervals, but this franchise’s total death count of 38 across 7 movies with a Breast-O-Meter reading of only 3.5 just seems a little depressing. Freddy has just been so built up over the years that you expect so much more, yet in some movies he killed a grand total of 3 people. You’re constantly waiting for this murderous rampage that simply never comes.

Perhaps one day Tropical Mary will be able to give us her thoughts on our marathons, but until then I leave you with my little musings. I’m sure I’m in a minority when it comes to my feelings on these movies, and I’d really like to hear from people who did enjoy them. Good to get some different perspectives. Let me know in the comments below.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming of trashy horror movies reviewed by myself with the occasional guest appearance by Tropical Mary. Follow our ramblings on Twitter for the next Ultimate Movie Marathon!

BUY THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET COLLECTION AT AMAZON.COM