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.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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