Editorials
30 Years Later: A 1989 Theatrical Horror Retrospective
In terms of theatrical releases, 1989 marked a year of aquatic horror, major horror franchise sequels, and a lot of Robert Englund at the box office. Overall though, the final year of the decade was pretty light for horror. Notable films like Puppet Master and C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. went straight to video, and other films like Warlock and Society fell into release limbo until the early ‘90s. The glut of practical effect driven ‘80s horror was coming to an end, and it really showed in 1989. Looking back, it’s interesting to note that we’re slated to receive new adaptations of Pet Sematary and Swamp Thing, almost exactly 30 years later. In order of theatrical release, these horror films are celebrating their major anniversary milestone. How many have you seen?
DeepStar Six
The first major aquatic horror film dropping into theaters on January 13 was helmed by director Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th). This one followed the experimental Naval facility, DeepStar Six, as the crew uncovers a massive cave system below during the final week of their operation. In it contains a strange, primordial ecosystem, and from it a menacing lifeform follows them back to the facility to wreak havoc. The creature effects are fun, especially the great kill highlighted on the movie poster, but the strongest aquatic horror of 1989 was yet to come.
Parents
Released on January 27, this strange horror comedy veered between satire and surrealism. Set in the 1950s, the Laemle family are the idyllic American suburban family. On the surface, anyway. Only child Michael has an overactive imagination, and after accidentally catching his parents having sex, he suspects they might actually be cannibals. He’s not wrong. Michael gets caught in a battle of morality and will, as his parents hope to teach him the family way of eating flesh. Parents stars Randy Quaid.
The ‘Burbs
Yes, I know; The ‘Burbs isn’t horror. But this dark comedy was directed by Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins), and screenwriter Dana Olsen based the story from a simple question – what if his neighbor down the street was a serial killer? Starring Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher, Bruce Dern, Corey Feldman, Dick Miller, Courtney Gains, and more, there’s a lot of genre vets in the cast. Hanks plays stressed suburbanite Ray, a man who suspects his new neighbors may be homicidal maniacs. The truth is delightfully twisted. This is the type of comedy that horror fans will enjoy, it’s adjacent enough. So, we’re including it.
The Fly II
Following up David Cronenberg’s pièce de résistance was always going to be an arduous task, no matter who picked up the reins. For this sequel, it was The Fly’s original creature effects creator Chris Walas who picked up the directorial duties, based on a story by Mick Garris. Picking up months after the events of the first film, poor Veronica Quaife dies after giving birth to a larval sac. Inside is a seemingly normal baby, who is then raised by the company that funded Seth Brundle’s experiments. As he ages, Martin Brundle (Eric Stotlz) seeks out a cure to avoid following in his father’s mutated footsteps. Walas also handled the creature effects design. It released on February 10.
Leviathan
This aquatic horror movie may borrow heavily from Alien, but it’s still a ton of fun and full of creature effect greatness. Released on March 17, it followed a deep-sea mining crew contending with one monstrous mutagen when a crew member drinks from a flask found on a sunken Soviet ship. Starring Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Amanda Pays, Daniel Stern, Hector Elizondo, and Meg Foster, Leviathan also boasts Stan Winston Studios behind the creature effects. It was directed by George P. Cosmatos (Tombstone, Of Unknown Origin). Body horror meets creature feature meets deep sea adventure almost always equals a win.
976-Evil
In 1989, 976 was the 1-900 premium phone number prefix, and the plot themed around it meant you could dial 976-Evil and speak with Satan himself. He’d grant you supernatural powers, but the downside is that it would also turn you into a sadistic killer. Starring Stephen Geoffreys (Fright Night) as Hoax, a bullied teen who uses the hotline to get revenge, 976-Evil marked the directorial debut for Robert Englund. Enjoyment level will vary depending on how much you love Englund, Geoffreys, or ‘80s horror, but it’s definitely dated. It released in theaters on March 24.
Pet Sematary
Released on April 21, this Mary Lambert directed classic was adapted for screen by Stephen King himself. The result is a pretty faithful adaptation that sees the Creed family descend into horror and destruction when Louis Creed is introduced to an evil burial ground with the power to revive the dead. Lambert delivered pure nightmare fuel in the form of Zelda, and it still remains a standout today. Starring Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, and Miko Hughes, Pet Sematary is the perennial reminder that sometimes dead is better.
The Horror Show
Another example that Hollywood releases similar movies in close proximity (like DeepStar Six and Leviathan), The Horror Show saw serial killer Max Jenke return from the grave, post electric chair execution, to get revenge on the detective responsible. Starring Lance Henriksen, this horror film released in theaters on April 28. In Europe, though, it was confusingly released as House III: The Horror Show. The better electric-chair-killer-turned-vengeful-ghost movie would follow just a few months later.
The Return of Swamp Thing
Directed by Roger Corman protégé Jim Wynorski, who frequently dabbles in exploitation and soft-core films, The Return of Swamp Thing is a very different beast than Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing. Adrienne Barbeau’s Alice Cable is swapped out for Heather Locklear’s Abby Arcane, who’s much more fainting damsel here than Barbeau’s tough-as-nails heroine. The flip side is that Dick Durock is a better Swamp Thing in both makeup and performance. This sequel dropped into theaters on May 12. Considering the new DC show scheduled to premier sometime this year, it might be a good time to revisit The Return of Swamp Thing.
Fright Night Part II
Released on May 19, this follow up to Fright Night follows a very similar blueprint as its predecessor but switches up the gender. Now its Charley Brewster, who believes the events of the first film was simply his imagination, that’s become the damsel in distress while his girlfriend Alex and Peter Vincent work to save him. The vampire after Charley is Regine Dandridge, Jerry Dandridge’s sister out for revenge. She’s brought her monstrous henchmen with her. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), this is a worthy sequel.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
The 8th entry in this franchise took Jason Voorhees out of Crystal Lake and put him on a boat. To Manhattan. The SS Lazarus becomes the new campground for Jason as he slaughters his way through a group of graduating high schoolers. Never mind that Manhattan doesn’t actually come into play until the very end of the movie. The lowest grossing film of the franchise upon release, this one is for the diehards, completists, or fans of camp (that boxing death is the best). It was released in theaters on July 28.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child
The summer of ’89 marked consecutive lows for major horror franchises. Following closely on the heels of Friday the 13th Part VIII, The Dream Child released in theaters on August 11. Set a year after the events of The Dream Master, Freddy Krueger once again sets his sights on final girl Alice Johnson. This time, he decides to get to her by way of her unborn baby. An all new low for the franchise in terms of box office and reception, The Dream Child is frequently ranked among the worst sequels. But we still love Alice.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
On October 13, franchise fatigue really set in hard with the release of Halloween 5. Ignoring the twist ending of the fourth film, which saw young survivor Jamie Lloyd turning homicidal, this sequel saw Michael Myers returning a year later to kill his now mute niece. To make it worse, the sequel also unceremoniously dispatches fantastic final girl Rachel very early on. In other words, this sequel is boring and uninspired, with one of the worst takes on Myers’ iconic masks. Halloween 5 marked the lowest point of the franchise, in terms of box office numbers.
Shocker
October 27 brought Wes Craven’s horror comedy Shocker to the box office. Mitch Pileggi starred as Horace Pinker, a serial killer executed in an electric chair, who returns from the grave and uses electricity to seek vengeance on the college football star responsible for his arrest. Look for original A Nightmare on Elm Street final girl actress Heather Langenkamp, who cameos as a victim. Craven imbued this film with a serious sense of humor, though it also had a lot of gore trimmed to achieve on R-rating.
After Midnight
A horror anthology with a wraparound that sees two college students attending private lessons from a professor on his Psychology of Fear course. He tells them three tales of terror involving a car breakdown near an old house, teens stranded in a rough part of town with vicious dogs on the loose, and a night operator contending with a stalker. Directed by Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat, co-writers behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, the most recognizable name in the cast is Marg Helgenberger. After Midnight arrived in theaters on November 3.
The Phantom of the Opera
Also dropping in theaters on November 3 was the gorier take on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel. Jill Schoelen stars as Christine Day, the young opera singer who finds herself the object of a disfigured composer’s obsession. The Phantom is played by Robert Englund. Christine finds herself transported to London in 1885 to discover the origins and horror of the disfigured composer. It didn’t perform well at the box office at all, and the sequel that Englund was contracted for was subsequently canceled.
Stepfather II
Originally slated for direct-to-video release, test screenings impressed producers enough to give it limited theatrical release on November 3, a popular day for horror releases in 1989. Terry O’Quinn reprised his role as the creepy Stepfather, this time escaping the asylum and posing as a psychiatrist. He sets his sights on single mother Carol (Meg Foster) and her son Todd (Jonathan Brandis). Horror vet Caroline Williams plays Carol’s best friend Matty, the first to become suspicious of the new man in her friend’s life. This sequel went more traditional slasher in its format.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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