Editorials
Ranking Every Twist in the ‘Saw’ Franchise!
If it’s Halloween, it must be Saw! For seven years, Lionsgate made Halloween even more of an event than it already was for horror fans. From 2004 to 2010, a new Saw movie was released at the end of every October. In preparation for Jigsaw (read my review), the eighth film in the franchise, I went back and re-watched all of the Saw films. I was flooded with memories of how excited I used to get when Charlie Clouser’s score (specifically, “Hello Zepp“) used to play over the plot reveals, starting quietly before building up in intensity as the franchise’s signature erratic editing sped up and revealed the big twist. This is why people came out in droves to see these films, and the success of each installment hinged on whether or not its twist(s) was/were effective. With Jigsaw being released this weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to look back on the previous seven Saw films and their twists to see what the new film has to live up to. Which twist was the best? We’ll tell you!
***MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW***
7. Saw V – The Fatal Five Could Have Survived If They Had Worked Together…and Strahm is Framed/Murdered
First, big thanks to the Saw Wiki for naming the central victims in Saw V the Fatal Five. That’s clever. Unfortunately, the twist in Saw V is not. Saw V is the only entry in the film that could be wiped from the face of Earth and, save for the death of Agent Strahm (Gilmore Girls‘ Scott Patterson), it wouldn’t make a difference to the overall continuity of the series. The bulk of the film is devoted to the aforementioned Fatal Five as they traverse through the rooms in one of John Kramer’s (referenced as Jigsaw from here on out) traps. One member of the group is killed in each room, but the film climaxes with the realization that they were meant to work together to move from room to room as opposed to killing one of their own in each room. What hurts this twist is that its so far removed from anything having to do with Jigsaw (they are being tested because they all had a part in covering up an arson that has no relation to anything else) that it holds no emotional weight whatsoever. That’s saying something because the fablous Julie Benz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dexter) is one of the victims. What’s shocking is that Clouser’s score starts playing after that when Strahm, who has spent the entire film running around talking to himself, learns that he has been framed by Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) and is killed. It lacks the “oomph” of the twists from the other films. While by no means the worst film in the series (that honor would go to Saw 3D), Saw V is certainly the most superfluous. This unexciting “twist” perfectly illustrates why.
6. Saw 3D – Dr. Gordon is an Accomplice
What makes the twist in Saw 3D disappointing is that it is telegraphed so early in the film (and had been rumored long before the film’s release). After being absent for the past five films, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) reappears in the pre-title sequence of what used to be the final film in the franchise. He then disappears again for the majority of the film before popping up in its closing minutes to show us that he’s been working with Jigsaw ever since he escaped his bathroom prison in the first Saw. It make no sense. I mean, sure, Jigsaw would need the help of a skilled surgeon to assist with many of his traps (the skull behind the guy’s eye in Saw II is given as an example), but why would this man join up with this psychopath? It just doesn’t hold up. At least the series finally rid the world of Hoffman with this twist, but it was still a predictable way to end a franchise that has prided itself on its unpredictability up until that point.
5. Saw IV – Takes Place During Saw III, Hoffman is Jigsaw’s Apprentice and Rigg Could Have Saved Everyone By Doing Nothing
Saw IV is the first film to show the Saw franchise losing its grip on its own story. After all, what do you do with a franchise that just killed its antagonist? Set the sequel in a parallel timeline as the previous film, that’s what! Or at least that’s what Saw IV does anyway. Clues are peppered throughout the film, like a random doctor casually mentioning that Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh, Saw III) just went missing, but it still plays well and manages to be quite the jaw-dropping reveal. The way in which the timeline is revealed (Strahm walking into the room where the climax of Saw III is taking place) is well done too. As if one twist weren’t enough, Saw IV crams in two more, the best of which is introducing Jigsaw’s successor: Detective Mark Hoffman. Rather than stop there, it also reveals that Lt. Daniel Rigg could have saved his comrade Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg, Saw II) if he had just sat at home and not played the game. Saw IV tries to cram so much into its climax that it nearly falls off the rails (and Lyriq Bent is not a compelling protagonist), but 2 of the 3 big reveals work, so that’s something.
4. Saw VI – Easton’s Family Isn’t Who You Think They Are
Like Saw V, the bulk of the story in Saw VI is essentially a standalone affair. What makes it more compelling than that film is that it A) serves a commentary on the healthcare system and B) is actually surprising. Throughout the film, William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), an insurance agent for Umbrella Health (haha), moves through Jigsaw’s various trap rooms, sometimes killing and sometimes saving his co-workers during various trials. During all of this, Tara (Shauna MacDonald) and Brent (Devon Bostick) are watching Easton’s game from their caged-in observation room. We are led to believe that they are Easton’s wife and son. Also watching is a reporter named Pamela (Samantha Lemole), who seemingly has no relation to anyone involved. When “Hello Zepp” begins, Easton makes it to Tara and Brent, who are revealed to actually be the wife and child of Harold Abbott, a man that Easton denied insurance coverage to and basically sentenced to death. Pamela is actually Easton’s sister, who is forced to watch as Brent kills him with some strategically placed needles filled with acid. It’s a great, blood-soaked finale, but Saw VI also squeezes in a smaller twist with the reveal that Hoffman blackmailed Amanda (Shawnee Smith) to kill Lynn Denlon in Saw III. The film ends with Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) putting Hoffman in the reverse bear trap that Amanda wore in Saw. Hoffman escapes and the film cuts to black. Weirdly enough it’s the storyline involving Easton that proves to be more successful, with Hoffman’s story wearing out its welcome by this point. The fact that we know he survives in the end causes Saw VI to end on more of a whimper, a pity considering the film was such a huge step up from the previous sequels.
3. Saw III – It Was Amanda’s Test the Whole Time and Jeff & Lynn are Married
Saw III has the distinction of being the longest film in the Saw franchise. At 108 minutes, the film is the definition of a bloated sequel, as evidenced by its 10-minute climax (it takes up two YouTube videos, seen below). In all honesty, Saw III could have served as a solid capper to a trilogy, but it made $80 million domestically on a $10 million budget so a sequel was inevitable. Anyway, Saw III follows two seemingly separate stories: 1) Dr. Lynn Denlon is captured by Amanda (revealed to be Jigsaw’s protégé at the end of Saw II) and forced to keep Jigsaw alive while a man completes one of his trials. Strapped to Lynn’s neck is a collar that will destroy her skull if Jigsaw’s heart monitor flatlines. 2) Meanwhile, Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) is forced to face all of the people who failed to send the drunk driver that killed his son to prison. In the film’s final moments, the whole ordeal is revealed to have been Amanda’s test. When Jigsaw was no longer able to make traps (due to his inoperable brain tumor), Amanda started doing them for him, but she made them inescapable. Because of this, the victims never learned anything. They just died. Jigsaw knew this and set up an elaborate game with Lynn and Jeff as a test for Amanda. Unfortunately, she fails when Jeff kills shows up and killers her and Jigsaw. Jeff is also revealed to be Lynn’s husband, but since he kills Jigsaw Lynn’s collar explodes and she dies too. Saw III ends in a bloodbath that is both gruesome and cathartic. It’s overstuffed in the best way possible.
2. Saw II – Amanda is In on It & The Video Feed Was Pre-Recorded
The best sequel has the second-best twist(s) in the franchise! In all honesty, it would probably be the number one spot on this list if one of the twists didn’t completely rip of The Silence of the Lambs. In Saw II, eight victims wake up in a house and are told that there is a poisonous gas flowing through the vents that is slowly poisoning them. There are antidotes hidden throughout the house, but each victim must pass a test before acquiring the antidote. Among the the victims are Amanda Young, back in one of Jigsaw’s traps after relapsing some time after the events of the first film, and Daniel Matthews (Erik Knudsen, Scream 4), son of Detective Eric Matthews. While the victims traverse the house, Eric and his team catch Jigsaw, who tells Eric that he will see his son again in a “safe and secure state” if he agrees to talk with him alone until the two hours are over. During their conversation, TV monitors are showing Eric and his team the video feed from the house where the victims are. If there’s one thing that can be learned from the Saw films it’s that you should always do what Jigsaw tells you. Eric Matthews learns this the hard way, as he beats Jigsaw to a pulp and drives him to the house where his son supposedly is. While that is happening, his team tracks down the source of the video and discover that the video feed of the victims was pre-recorded and the game ended long before they even found Jigsaw. A safe opens in Jigsaw’s safe house and Eric is inside, bound and breathing into an oxygen mask. As if that weren’t enough, Amanda is revealed to have been under the tutelage of Jigsaw and she locks Eric in the same room where Adam and Dr. Gordon were locked in the first Saw! Sequels are supposed to outdo the original, and Saw II‘s way of doing that was adding an extra twist into the mix. Making Amanda an accomplice instead of a victim was a fantastic way to one-up the original. It may not be quite as shocking as the moment when Jigsaw stood up in that bathroom, but it comes damn close.
1. Saw – Jigsaw is the “Corpse” on the Floor
What makes the twist ending of James Wan’s Saw so effective is that no one was expecting it. Because of Saw, everyone walked into the sequels expecting some big twist, which automatically dilutes their impact. The ending of Saw works because it still has that element of surprise. Helping matters is that Saw is more of a mystery film than a torture porn gorefest (Saw II is also admirable for this trait), which means the plot is the focus rather than the violence. The plot of Saw is simple: Adam and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes, respectively) wake up in a dingy bathroom chained to the wall with a corpse in between them. Adam is instructed to escape the bathroom while Lawrence is instructed to kill Adam by 6pm or else his wife and daughter (Monica Potter and Makenzie Vega, respectively) will be killed. The man holding them hostage is Zep (Michael Emerson), an orderly at the hospital where Lawrence works. We are led to believe that he is Jigsaw. In the twist that defined the franchise, Lawrence cuts off his foot and escapes the bathroom and Zep is revealed to have also been a victim of Jigsaw, being coerced to hold Lawrence’s family hostage and kill them in order to receive the antidote for a slow-acting poison that was injected into his body. The corpse in the middle of the room then stands up and is revealed to be Jigsaw. That’s right! Jigsaw was in the room the whole time! The twist may seem like small potatoes compared to the batshit insanity that would pervade the franchise moving forward, but it earns its place on the top spot simply for being the first one to do it.
What is your favorite twist in the Saw franchise? Let us know in the comments below! And don’t forget to catch up on the Saw films before seeing Jigsaw this weekend! All of them are currently on Netflix and the Blu-Ray set is just $9.99 on Amazon!
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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