Fear Itself: "The Sacrifice"

JUNE 5, 2008

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Tonight is the premiere of Fear Itself, a semi-sequel to Masters of Horror that is airing on NBC. Like MoH, each week will have a different director/writer, and is billed as a ‘new movie every week’. Of course, even if one considered an hour to be a movie, that’s not even the case here, with commercials we are talking less than 45 minutes, and with some obvious restrictions (while the gore seems intact, there is no nudity or profanity to speak of here). Tonight’s is called The Sacrifice and is written by Mick Garris (based on a short story by Del Howison) and directed by Breck Eisner.

Wait what? Breck “Sahara” Eisner? Why NBC chose to lead off their horror director-themed show with an episode by a guy who has only made one (non horror, or even successful) movie is beyond me, especially since it’s not even supposed to be the first (it’s listed as episode 4), but whatever. But what’s more troubling is that, if they are going out of order, they must think this is a stronger episode than the real episode 1, which is by Stuart Gordon. Which sucks, because this is hardly a home run.

The setup is fine (an isolated, borderline Amish town with a vampire problem), and the makeup on the vampires is good, but the way everything plays out is just so by the numbers, and I was hoping for a twist or two to the proceedings. Even for a TV show, the entire thing feels very generic, from the carefully laid out revelations (our female “villains” aren’t really the villains after all!), the downer ending, the horny guy whose desire to nail a broad he literally met 10 minutes before leads to his doom, etc. There is nothing we haven’t seen before in a regular, unrestricted film. And yes, the gore is there, but gore does not make a horror film – good ideas do. Whether Garris/Eisner just botched Howison’s original story or it was simply bland to begin with, I do not know, but either way it’s not exactly a strong start for the series.

It’s not a total loss though. The three girls are all hot, and Friday Night Lights’ Jesse Plemons is amusing as the talkative and nervous sidekick to our hero (Jeffrey Pierce). And the pacing is good – the heroes end up at the vampire infested compound in the first five minutes, and folks begin being attacked in the first 15. Not too shabby. There's also some great lines here and there, like "If this is luck I hate to see misfortune." - again, I don't know if this is Howison's doing or Garris' (and I am really sort of peeved that Howison's credit is buried in the end credits - it should be up front with Garris and Eisner. If it was based on Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe, you can bet your ass it would be more prominently credited), but either way it's one of more than a couple instances where the talent behind the scenes really shone through. And honestly, for all its shortcomings, it’s still better than say, the MoH episodes Dance of the Dead or Cigarette Burns, but it’s nothing worth setting up a new Tivo recording for either. The very first MoH to air was also one of its all time best (Don Coscarelli’s Incident On And Off A Mountain Road); if that’s the case here, yikes.

And that is a shame, because there are a lot of great directors on board (Gordon, Brad Anderson, Darren Bousman) and NBC is certainly not against canning a show before giving it a chance. They aren’t as bad as FOX in this regard, but if the next couple episodes are as bland as this, I can’t imagine this thing lasting all 13 planned episodes, because hardcore horror fans will just watch their unrated DVDs and non-horror fans won't find much to win them over. Luckily, due to their ties with Sci-Fi and USA, it’s not like the episodes will be lost forever, but since horror is so rare on the major networks (with Moonlight canned, it’s basically just Supernatural), I want the show to be a success.

So uh, ignore my review and watch tonight’s episode!

What say you?

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Anthology, Television, Vampire,

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Someone's Watching Me!

OCTOBER 24, 2007

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Despite being my favorite filmmaker, I’ve never gotten around to seeing either of John Carpenter’s TV movies. Elvis is still not available on DVD and bootleg copies are said to be atrocious in quality, so that’s OK, but I even owned Somebody’s Watching Me! on a bootleg for a while, and STILL never watched it until today (on the newly released DVD, which came with the Twisted Terror Collection). As it turns out, I really wasn’t missing much.

Granted a TV movie doesn’t hold much promise, but Wes Craven’s Invitation To Hell was a lot of fun, and since Halloween only had to lose some nudity in order to be fit for national broadcast, there was no reason to believe that this couldn’t at least be a good, if not great, effort from the days when Carpenter actually gave a shit.

But it’s mostly a bore. There aren’t many characters, and since we know Lauren Hutton will survive, it doesn’t really give the film much to do until the climax. So instead we get lots of not very interesting phone calls, Hutton palling around with Adrienne Barbeau (playing a lesbian, which I think had to have been pretty rare on national TV in the 70s), developing a relationship with a guy we know isn’t the killer, etc. In addition to Barbeau, Charles Cyphers shows up, giving the film some much needed additional true Carpenter feel (the film isn’t even shot 2.35:1, which is pretty much standard for Carpenter; even the additional scenes he shot for the TV broadcast of Halloween were shot in Panavision), but it’s not enough to elevate this above any generic Lifetime movie.

That is, with the exception of the borderline mentally unstable actions that Hutton commits during the film, particularly in her introduction. Her dialogue, and her character in general, is mind-bogglingly awkward. Upon looking to rent an apartment, she makes up a story involving her mother dating an aluminum siding salesman (?); when she meets a guy she tells him that she’s afraid of being raped by dwarves (??); plus she has a habit of talking/singing to herself at all times, often making puzzling comments throughout these monologues as well (calling her TV “Cyclops”, daydreaming about her new boss being 80 years old and hitting on her...). It’s just fucking weird, to the point of being genuinely upsetting. Shouldn’t this woman be getting some help, instead of building telescopes and getting her friends killed??

Yes, poor Barbeau gets murdered when trying to help Hutton discover the identity of her stalker. It would be sad anyway, but Barbeau’s character was offered a job in another state earlier in the film, and Hutton talked her out of it. What the hell kind of friend is so selfish that they would put their own insecurities over their friends’ financial and career wellbeing? Even if she DIDN’T get killed, Hutton should be ashamed of herself!

One thing I dug about the film – its Hammer style ending. Like a lot of Hammer films, the movie ends exactly when the killer dies. We don’t need a wrapup, we don’t need to see her moving into a new building, or anything like that. Killer’s dead, movie’s over. It’s even more refreshing being from Carpenter, who ended nearly all his films on an ambiguous note (ironically frustrating, given his hatred of sequels).

It’s certainly not a bad movie, but you gotta wonder why, AFTER Halloween, Carpenter would bother with this sort of thing. Nowadays it wouldn’t seem strange, but back then he was truly a master of horror/suspense, and this certainly doesn’t have any evidence to support it.

What say you?

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Carpenter, Serial Killer, Television, Weird,

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Invitation To Hell (1984)

AUGUST 9, 2007

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

As Invitation to Hell began with a woman being run over and then getting up and killing the driver, I began to ponder the directing style of Wes Craven. Specifically, the fact that he doesn’t really have one, in terms of certain angles or motifs (i.e. Spielberg always working in "people looking" and daddy issues). Unlike early John Carpenter films (the ones with Dean Cundey as DP), which were always recognizable as Carpenter’s, Craven has never really had that significant ‘look’ to his films. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s worth noting. I think.

Anyway, bizarrely enough, the DP credit came up, and guess who it was? Dean Cundey himself! Weird.

A 80s TV movie starring TV staples like Robert Urich, Soleil Moon Frye, and Susan Lucci doesn’t really have much promise regardless of who is directing it, and I’m not sure anyone could pull off a really great movie about a secretive health spa, but for what it is, it’s enjoyable enough nonsense. Though I should point out that the family apparently lives next door to the Freelings, so maybe I was just clouded by my memories of their suburban nightmare.

Either way, I always have a soft spot for movies with nonsensical computer technology. The spacesuit they are designing somehow knows if something is benign or not, and there’s a scene of Urich looking at a computer database that left me laughing out loud. He asks it to search for all the people at the company that have been promoted, and it lists them all. That’s OK enough (though he puts about 20 words too many in his search), but then he types in “How many of them belonged to the Health Spa?” and the computer replies, in RED text (previous was white), “ALL OF THEM!” It’s like what Ask Jeeves pretends to be, almost 20 years before it was created!

I also took particular interest in young Punky’s rabbit doll, which is the most sinister looking goddamn doll I have ever seen in a film, even the ones where the doll was the killer.

Isn’t that haunting? Later in the film, when the health spa cult (there’s a term you don’t see often enough) has taken control of her, she goes apeshit and begins stabbing and cutting the damn thing to pieces, and from my perspective, she wasn’t really doing anything wrong.

The ending of the film is also a howler, as Urich dons his spacesuit and literally goes into Hell (which resembles one of the mid level sets from an old Star Trek episode). And then fires a laser gun at the Devil. Wow. Nowadays, TV movies are either about detectives or battered women or true crime stories (or all three), it’s nice to know that back in the day, you could see an original film of a guy wandering around hell firing Flash Gordon weapons at Satan right before the nightly news.

Oh Wes, I never thought I’d see a film of yours top Shocker in terms of pure nonsensical storytelling, but I have been proven wrong. Bless you sir, bless you.

What say you?

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Craven, Supernatural, Television,

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