Editorials
31 for 31: Through the Decades Challenge – Final Week
It’s almost time for Halloween which means it’s time to watch a crap ton of horror flicks! This year with my 31 films in 31 days of October I wanted to branch out a bit. I realized that most of the films I watch are generally from the 80s (with a sprinkling of late 70s). To push myself outside my norm, I’m donning this year’s adventure “31 for 31: Through the Decades Challenge”. Simply put, each day will correlate to a specific decade, and I must watch at least one film a day. No exceptions! Of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I had to make a further set of rules for myself to ensure I’m getting lots of variety. Those rules as follows:
- One film must be watched from each decade (50s – 10’s)
- One film must be watched from a major horror franchise.
- One film must be watched from one of our late-great masters (Craven, Romero, or Hooper).
- One film must be watched that deals with witches or witchcraft.
- One film must be watched that deals with the undead.
- One film must be watched that stars either Christopher Lee or Vincent Price.
- One film must be watched that contains sci-fi/horror elements.
- One film must be watched that is a remake.
- One film must be watched that is from Italy.
- One film must be watched that takes place during Halloween.
October 23rd – The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Rules Met: 1, 5, 6
“Victor Frankenstein builds a creature and brings it to life, but it behaves not as he intended.”
As I stated at the beginning of this challenge, Hammer Films are a pretty big blind spot on my horror viewing list. When it comes to Dracula and Frankenstein, I tend to prefer the original Universal adaptations and all the numerous reboots, remakes, and reimaginings leave me fairly cold. There’s only so many times you can see the same story play out and maintain interest. So, that’s a large part of why I have avoided the Hammer versions. I assumed they would all be the same thing ad nauseum. Luckily, I was wrong. The Curse of Frankenstein is a successful adaptation, and it’s clear to see why it launched the company’s brand in a big way. While it does follow some of the same beats as the Universal film, it manages to play with audience expectations in fairly inventive ways. Christopher Lee as the monster manages to imbue the character with a wounded vulnerability that elevates him from simple mindless boogeyman. There’s a humanity in his portrayal that quickly gives way to animalistic rage during the more horrific moments. Peter Cushing is simply a captivating delight. His version of Dr. Frankenstein as a full-tilt sociopath is a refreshing and often darkly comic take that has me excited to follow his further adventures in the various sequels.
October 24th – The Witches (1966)
Rules Met: 1, 4
“Following a horrifying experience with the occult in Africa, a schoolteacher moves to a small English village, only to discover that black magic resides there as well.”
The Witches is another Hammer production but not one that is considered upper tier. It is, however, fairly entertaining despite a languid middle act. Following an intense opening, we follow the lovely Joan Fontaine in her final film role as she transfers to teach in a small village with a lot of strange inner-politics. We quickly realize, this town has more than a few witchy secrets up its sleeve. The big reveal isn’t all that revealing, most horror fans will have spotted it about ten minutes in. But it’s a trippy “hysterical woman” tale that will keep fans of such retro thrillers engaged for most of the running time.
October 25th – Primal Rage (1988)
Rule Met: 1, 9, 10
“A scientist at a Florida university inadvertantly creates a “rage virus” while performing experiments intended to restore dead brain tissue in baboons. When a journalist for the college paper breaks into the campus lab, he’s bitten by one of the infected baboons; the virus soon spreads to a trio of rapists and a valley girl, all of whom go on killing sprees.”
In honor of the late Italian sleaze-meister Umberto Lenzi who passed away this month, I decided to break out my old Code Red DVD of the Lenzi penned Primal Rage. The story is your basic zombie-not-zombie 28 Days Later rage virus pic, except that you get a cool Halloween party with absurd costumes and a red-assed baboon. Ultimately, people aren’t checking this film out for the narrative and complex characters (though they are slightly more developed than most Italian mozzarella). If you like 80s gore flicks, this is certainly one of the more underseen gut-munchers. Primal Rage is perfect beer and pizza movie night fodder.
October 26th – Critters 4 (1992)
Rules Met: 1, 7
“After being cryogenically frozen and waking up on a space station in the near future, the Critters aim to have the unwitting crew for lunch.”
Critters 4 doesn’t necessarily count as a major franchise sequel (I saved that for later), but I’ve alway been pretty partial to theses little buggers. This “such and such in space” sequel is not quite as good as I remember, though. It’s saved by a faulty computer system named Angela who provides most of the film’s humor. She refuses to complete the commands of the crew who find themselves stranded on this abandoned space station, so they simply request Angela do the opposite of what they need. It’s a cute joke in what is yet another Aliens “homage” (read: ripoff). We also get both Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif in lead roles which is always welcome. The stars of the show, the critters, are sorely underused, however. Unfortunately, space is where most franchises go to die and it was no different for the Crites.
October 27th – Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Rules Met: 1, 3
“Two siblings visit their grandfather’s grave in Texas along with three of their friends and are attacked by a family of cannibalistic psychopaths.”
Damn. This movie is intense. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the top horror films of all time for a good reason. It’s a complete, almost documentary style descent into one nightmarish evening of cannibalism, shrill screams, bbq, and “Grandpa”. Yes, of course, I’ve seen Tobe Hopper’s film before, but this was my first chance to see it on the big screen. My local drive-in (the one who did the awesome Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street double feature last week) screened the film just in time for Halloween. Despite how many times I’ve seen this, seeing the restored version on a massive screen with sound pumping through my car speakers was a revelation. This is how the film is meant to be seen. No other viewing has ever been as effective. To put it mildly, I was losing my shit. Grandpa has always given me the willies, but this time it felt like I was truly there with Sally with each failed blow. Thank you Coyote Drive-in, this was easily the highlight of my Halloween viewings this year.
October 28th – House of Wax (2005)
Rules Met: 1, 8
“A group of unwitting teens are stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit.”
The Dark Castle remake of House of Wax is far better than it has any right to be. Director Jaume Collet-Serra has made a career out of taking well-worn genre conventions are breathing entertaining life into them with the killer kid pic Orphan or the killer shark thriller The Shallows. With House of Wax he takes another “kids take a wrong turn to hell” tale and cranks up the style, suspense, and gore. The film plays more like a remake of the Full Moon film Tourist Trap (itself a riff on Texas Chainsaw) than a remake of its namesake. Despite all the Paris Hilton sex tape hoopla surrounding the film’s release, it manages to defy expectations and deliver a roller coaster thrill ride that was part old school slasher and part torture porn, which was still all the rage at the time. Thankfully, the film holds up well long after the craze has ended.
October 29th – Leatherface (2017)
Rules Met: 1, 2
“A teenage Leatherface escapes from a mental hospital with three other inmates, kidnapping a young nurse and taking her on a road trip from hell, while being pursued by a lawman out for revenge.”
Well, I’d put off checking out the prequel to Hooper’s original TCM for a while. On one hand, I had zero interest in yet another origin story for the hulking, chainsaw wielding maniac. On the other, I love directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (Inside, Among the Living). Unfortunately, after watching Leatherface, it’s clear the rumors are true. A lot of the film was reportedly reshot and re-edited without Bustillo and Maury involved. Their style is almost completely absent from the film I saw. Perhaps one day we’ll get a director’s cut or, at least, a clearer idea of just what changes were made. The version we are currently left with is more uninteresting than just outright bad. It feels like Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects in its style and structure and only feels like it exists in the world of Chainsaw during the final ten minutes. Chalk this one up as a miss.
October 30th – Halloween (1978)
“Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again.”
I’ll keep these next two flicks short and sweet as they’re likely films you’ve watched yourself. The last two days of the month I decided to pare down to one simple rule: Films must take place at Halloween. What better film for Devil’s Night than the original film that kicked off the slasher craze, John Carpenter’s Halloween. This is real meat and potatoes stuff, and that is, of course, why it works so well. Michael Myers stalks a babysitter and hacks up her friends along the way. You don’t need much more than that and it’ll be interesting to see how David Gordon Green taps into that simplicity for the upcoming remake.
October 31st – Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
“Five interwoven stories that occur on Halloween: An everyday high school principal has a secret life as a serial killer; a college virgin might have just met the guy for her; a group of teenagers pull a mean prank; a woman who loathes the night has to contend with her holiday-obsessed husband; and a mean old man meets his match with a demonic, supernatural trick-or-treater.”
After a tumultuous journey to release, Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat was an instant classic among fans once they finally had the chance to see it. Warner Brothers dumped the film straight to video (at a time when straight to video still carried a heavy stigma), luckily the fan base seems to grow every year to the point where a sequel is inevitable though who knows how much longer we may have to wait. Thankfully, we can easily bide the time as this anthology only seems to get better with each viewing and it’s always fun to share it with those who haven’ yet seen it.
Happy Halloween! The challenge is complete and I’m excited to hear what films you guys have been enjoying this Halloween season. Sound off below.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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