Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Bride of Chucky

By the time Bride of Chucky was released, in 1998, it had been seven years since the last entry in the Child’s Play franchise. That movie, Child’s Play 3, had made a profit, and it was a better film than the first sequel, but it was clear that things were beginning to slip. Franchise fatigue was setting in. Series creator Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner must have recognized this. Their series was a contemporary of franchise slasher giants Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Surely Mancini and Kirschner saw the depths these franchises sank to in search of a cheap buck, and perhaps they decided that wasn’t for them. Whatever the thinking behind the fourth film in the Child’s Play franchise, Mancini and Kirschner did a brave thing when they decided to pivot and embrace the black comedic elements of the possessed killer doll Chucky, and make a film unlike the previous films. Continue readingAttack of the Franchise Sequels: Bride of Chucky”

Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror

Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror movie posterLike the previous Children of the Corn flick, this fifth entry in the series, subtitled Fields of Terror, features a future star in the cast, in Eva Mendes. But, that’s not all. There’s also a lesser Arquette and a Zappa progeny. The best part is, all this is wrapped up in a package more in tune with the ley lines of shitty cinema — more aware that bad movies survive on spectacle, and less on good intentions.

From 1998, Fields of Terror, like its previous two predecessors, was released direct-to-video. Ethan Wiley handled both screenwriting and directing duties for this one. The film sees the return of the He Who Walks Behind the Rows child cult, which was jettisoned for the fourth film.

A group of teens (none played by anyone under the age of 21) is road tripping through rural Nebraska with the ashes of one of their friends. Don’t think about this part of the plot too much.

Along the way, two of the group are murdered in grisly fashion by the cult, and the others are left stuck in the small town.

Strangely, the cult in this film is led by an adult, Luke (David Carradine), with assistance by creepy kid Ezeekial (Adam Wylie). The cult has claimed the cornfields surrounding the town, and woe be to anyone who wanders in uninvited. Continue readingAttack of the Franchise Sequels: Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror”

October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Halloween H20 movie posterWhat a clumsy title. H20. Does it relate to water? Not at all. That’s a zero on the end, not the letter ‘O’. H20, then, is the shortened version of what this movie should have been called — Halloween: 20 Years Later — only shoved right in the middle of the title. Beware films that can’t even get their titles right. As it turns out, though, this flick is redemption for a franchise that had been foundering for the entire 1980s and ’90s.

Halloween III is the stepchild no one talks about, while Halloweens 4 through 6 are little better than straight to video cash grabs, relying on brand strength over competence. The plot threads in 4-6 were so tangled and messy that for this film, all that nonsense was retconned. No more Jamie Lloyd, no more Undertaker impersonator, no more missing baby. The series went back to the core elements that made it such a success in the first two films — Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Once upon a time, horror flicks couldn’t get enough Jamie Lee Curtis. She starred in five horror flicks from 1978 through 1981. Her piercing scream became instantly recognizable to horror fans. In fact, her first line in this film is a vintage scream, as her character, Laurie Strode, awakes from a nightmare. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”

October Horrorshow: Phantoms

Phantoms movie posterPeter O’Toole was one of the greatest actors who ever lived, perhaps. He was classically trained and made a name for himself on the English stage. He was nominated for Oscars for his performances eight times, yet never won. One of his roles, that of T.E. Lawrence in the epic Lawrence of Arabia, will survive for hundreds of years, at least. By the latter stages of his career, grand roles evaporated, and he was stuck, for the most part, in roles that provided a payday, yet little glory.

O’Toole was in his mid-60s when he filmed Phantoms, the cheap horror film from 1998 directed by Joe Chappelle and penned by Dean Koontz, adapting one of his own novels. But he looked older, his once hard-drinking lifestyle having taken its toll. Phantoms may have just been a paycheck for O’Toole, but if he mailed it in, I couldn’t tell. We’ve all seen aging stars blow in and out of a movie like a hurricane of contempt, gracing the production with their talented, god-like presences, but O’Toole let none such pretense leech into the performance itself. His natural snobbishness was apparent, but he was a pro. For that, I thank him.

As for the rest of the film...yikes. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Phantoms”

October Horrorshow: Ringu & The Ring

RinguIt’s the October Horrorshow! It’s no secret that I hate autumn. It’s a shit time to be alive here in the northern latitudes, where the air takes on a chill, the days become noticeably shorter, and every plant from here to Seattle looks like it’s dying. Thank goodness, then, for Halloween. The festival of death is a yearly finger in the eye to the fall season, when we, and by that, I mean me, watch lots and lots of horror flicks. I choose to embrace nature’s inexorable slide into hibernation by watching fake snuff films, paradoxical as that is, and I love every minute of it. Like last year, there’s a full slate of reviews this year. No gaps. And the first is a double billing.

Ringu is the king of J-Horror. It’s not an undisputed title, but, as of this October Horrorshow, Ringu ranks as the highest-grossing horror film in Japanese history. That’s a fairly good argument in the film’s favor.

From 1998, Ringu is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki. The film was directed by Hideo Nakata. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Ringu & The Ring”

October Horrorshow: Vampires

The year 2010 will be a treat. In this coming year, a new John Carpenter film, The Ward, will be released. It will be his first film since Ghosts of Mars, from way back in the far distant days of 2001. This has been a long layoff for the director — the longest in his career. One could easily have concluded that Carpenter had retired, maybe not completely with his own consent. The backend of Carpenter’s directorial career has been one box office bomb after another, none of the films able to capture or build upon the mastery of schlock, and horror, that he showed in his peak days three decades ago. His professional tale is one of the inevitable slide that all creative people who live long enough go through eventually. Depressing? It shouldn’t be, because even though his films have kept getting shittier and shittier, he still had the skill to crank out something like Vampires, a film that just reeks John Carpenter from start to finish. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Vampires”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Soldier

Paul W. S. Anderson is close to being the official filmmaker of Shitty Movie Sundays. I would present this honor outright to John Carpenter were it nor the fact he has displayed far too much competence as a filmmaker in the past, despite the fair amount of shitty films that mar his oeuvre. Other candidates could include b-movie monster master Bert I. Gordon, or even Cash Flagg, as a tribute to his recent demise. Flagg would be an interesting choice, as he was, without a doubt, one of the most unique filmmakers of all time, quality notwithstanding. Anderson, on the other hand, has written, directed, or produced some of the most quotidian dogs to ever make it to the silver screen, number of explosions notwithstanding. The only factor that keeps me from committing Shitty Movie Sundays to total Anderson worship is that he has peppered his career with films that are so shitty as to be unwatchable, and there is no joy in a bad film that repels the viewer so thoroughly that it can’t be sat through without giving up one’s movie-going self to the unique absurdity of substandard cinema. It’s almost a religion in that way. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Soldier”

October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Deep Rising

Yikes. Sometimes a shitty movie crosses my path and I don’t know whether to lose myself in the fun of it all, or to hate it. Deep Rising, written and directed by Stephen Sommers, whipsawed me back and forth between deep belly laughs and outright revulsion so quickly that by the end I was praying for something, anything, to appear just for a moment, a fleeting second, and justify the mystifying amount of time I spent with this dog. Didn’t happen, so now, instead of letting the experience fade away into the deep recesses of my memory, I’m going to write about it. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow, Retroactive: Deep Rising”