Friday the 13th 8-Movie Collection

For many years, I wrote for Cinema Sentries and never posted any sort of links to those reviews on this site. In those days, The Midnight Cafe was music only; I figured movie reviews would only muddy the waters. That has changed, of course, many times over, but I’ve still not linked to all my Cinema Sentries reviews.

I try to keep up with the new stuff, and sometimes I go back to the earliest reviews and systematically try to link to them. Or I start at the end and do the same. But there is still a surprising amount of stuff in the middle that I haven’t got to.

This boxed set of Friday the 13th movies, for example. I wrote this in August of 2021. Which seems like forever ago. You can read my review here.

31 Days of Horror: The Burning (1981)

John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the most successful independent films of all time. Its budget ($300,000) to box-office results ($70,0000) made it the most profitable movie for a long time. It arguably started the slasher boom. It certainly helped create many of the tropes of the genre and spawned numerous imitators.

Friday the 13th was one of those imitators. Its massive success solidified the tropes, and it spawned its own imitators. The Burning is one.

I was far too young to have seen Halloween, Friday the 13th, or The Burning in theaters. But the success of the first two films meant I did see them years later on cable TV and home video. But The Burning was not so successful and thus didn’t get repeated on late-night TV. I don’t recall ever seeing it in the aisles of my local video stores. Which either means they didn’t carry it, or possibly that the VHS cover just wasn’t that memorable.

But lately it has been showing up in my feeds. I see it nearly every time I browse through my streaming services for something to watch, and it pops up regularly on my Bluesky and Reddit accounts. I don’t know why that is, except that we are probably all unknowingly led by the algorithm.

Presumably, The Burning is cheap to buy the rights to, which leads all the streaming services to put it on their services, presumably around this time of year. And then it adds that to the recommended lists of horror nerds like me. Some of us watch it, and then we talk about it on social media, which makes more people watch it, and that tells the algorithm to recommend it more, and the circle continues.

The Burning was also the first film credit for a young Jason Alexander, and Holly Hunter has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role. No doubt that adds fuel to the algorithmic fire.

I finally watched it, and it’s not bad.

Like Friday the 13th, this one is set at a summer camp with a bunch of horny teens. Unlike it The Burning’s camp doesn’t have a horrible past. That would be another camp not far from Camp Stonewater. In our opening scene, we see some campers play a prank at the other camp. This is five years before the events of our story really begin. Camp Blackfoot is run by Cropsey, an alcoholic arsehole whom the kids all detest. Their prank goes wrong, and Cropsey finds himself burned alive. He doesn’t die, but is grotesquely mutilated. Five years later, he gets out of the hospital and starts chopping up kids at Camp Stonewater (Blackfoot having been shut down after the incident).

At Camp Stonewater, we get the usual nonsense with the usual assortment of characters. There is the awkward nerd, the buff jerk trying to make it with the hot girl, the attractive counselor and his girl, and the jokester (Jason Alexander). Plus an assortment of others playing pranks, sports, and generally goofing around.

It is all more or less done well. There is nothing new here, but the characters are enjoyable enough. There is a lot of stalking by the killer in the first half. The now-common view of things from the killer’s POV from behind some bushes and the like happens quite a bit. That amuses me. The killer stalks these kids for like two days before he does any killing. Funny to think of this burned-up man standing around in the trees all that time just spying on them.

The older kids (who make up our main cast and get rid of most of the extras) go on a long canoe ride for a couple of days. That’s when the killings begin. The killings are pretty good (the effects were done by Tom Savini). Who lives and who dies is a little surprising. And the conclusion is pretty cool.

I’m using faint praise because this isn’t a great movie. It isn’t as good as Halloween or the original Friday the 13th, but it is better than a lot of slashers, and if you like the genre, then this is well worth watching.

31 Days of Horror: Let Us Prey (2014)

One of the main reasons I enjoy doing monthly movie themes is that it pushes me to watch movies I might not otherwise watch and to discover films I’ve never heard of before. Let Us Prey falls into the latter category.

It starts out pretty strong. It has an interesting story with convincing lead actors, but then it falls down a hole of ridiculousness.

PC Rachel Heggie (Pollyanna McIntosh) has been reassigned from the big city to a tiny little town in Scotland. On her way to her first day of work, she witnesses a speeding car smash into a man walking on the street. The driver is Caesar (Brian Vernel Sargison), and he is both panicked and belligerent. The man he hit has disappeared. Rachel arrests Caesar even though he says that without a victim there is no crime.

She takes him to the station, where she meets Sgt. Jim MacReady (Douglas Russell), a laid-back man who is exactly the kind of police boss you meet in stories like this, where bad things are about to happen in places where bad things don’t usually happen. Rachel tells him the story of Caesar and how the guy he hid has vanished. He calls in to PC Jack Warnock (Bryan Larkin) and PC Jennifer Mundie (Hanna Stanbridge) to be on the lookout for a wounded man. We meet them as they are having sex in the patrol car.

Caesar is thrown into the slammer next to a cell occupied by Ralph Beswick (Jonathan Watson), Caesar’s former teacher and intellectual who likes to beat on his wife.

Warnock and Mundie do find the injured man (Liam Cunningham), except he’s not all that injured. But he is strange and prone to making prophetic proclamations. He also seems to have some supernatural powers.

Things will get weird, and dark, and scary from there.

It is a pretty great setup. I love small-town stories where strange and horrible things occur. I like Liam Cunningham, and Pollyanna McIntosh is good. But the film’s second half turns into one big action/horror stew that’s mostly really stupid.

There is a character who shows up wearing a bunch of barbed wire fencing wrapped around his torso. That’s about the point I rolled my eyes and decided things were just going to go downhill from there.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Nude Vampire (1970)

There is nothing quite like a Jean Rollin film. He’s famous for making dream-like erotic vampire movies with loads of nudity and a fascination with women wearing nothing but sheer fabric draped over their naked bodies. It comes as no surprise that he finally made a movie and called it The Nude Vampire.

This one plays out very much like a dream, with scenes that have very little logic to them. Or connective tissue. It begins with three men in masks taking blood from a naked woman in a hood. Another woman (wearing a sheer fabric, of course) is walking down some dark alleyways, pursued by several men in dark clothes and wearing animal masks. A man named Pierre (Olivier Rollin) tries to help her, but before they can escape, the animal-masked men shoot her dead.

Pierre makes it out alive and follows the masked men to a gated building. He sees some other people, dressed in fancy dress, go in. But a man at the gate stops him, for he has no invitation.

The next day his father chastises him for being there for he’s been warned to stay out of his business. But what are they doing in there? And how is his father involved? The next night, he attacks a man just before he gets to the gate, steals his invitation, and crashes the party. Inside, he’s given what is basically a bag to put over his head. The other partygoers are given the same. Then a woman’s picture flashes on a television. That same woman is given a gun, and she shoots herself in the head.

Then the woman from the night before shows up. But how can she still be alive? She drinks the dead woman’s blood. Then another face shows up on the screen. It is Pierre’s. He’s given the gun and is asked to kill himself. Instead, he shoots the guy who gave him the gun and makes a run for it.

I’m explaining all of this clearly, but it is far from clear in the film. Everything is a little hazy, clouded by shadows and fog. The film eventually explains a few things – Pierre’s father is involved in some shadowy experiments with the girl who didn’t die. Apparently, she can’t die. Her wounds heal. But she also drinks blood and cannot stand the sunlight. Maybe she’s a vampire, or maybe she has some kind of mutant genes. They want to find out. They want to find a way to live forever.

At the same time, there is a rebellion going on. Some of the scientists’ workers want to help the girl escape. Others are planning to break in and kidnap her. All of the rebels seem to think Pierre is one of them.

Rollin gives everything a psychedelic dream quality. It is both very well made and cheap-looking. He somehow manages to blend the arthouse with the grindhouse. He’s created something beautiful and ethereal with gratuitous nudity and blood drinking.

It is a wild, trippy experience.

31 Days of Horror: The Haunting (1963)

Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) is a meek and mild middle-aged woman who has spent most of her adult life caring for her invalid mother. Now that her mother has died, she doesn’t know what to do with her life. She’s wracked with guilt, thinking she is responsible for her demanding mother’s death, but also filled with a new hope that she might actually do something with her life.

When Dr John Markway (Richard Johnson) invites her to Hill House, a supposedly haunted old mansion, to study the paranormal activity there, she excitedly accepts. Also on the adventure is Theodora (Claire Bloom) a much more worldly and cunning young woman, and Luke Sannerson (Russ Tamblyn) the heir to the house who would rather it not be haunted so he can sell it for a large profit.

The film is slow and meditative. There are scares, but they rarely jump out at you, and you are never quite sure if they are real or not. This is slow-burn horror, designed to build a mood and atmosphere, not to make you leap out of your seat.

Theodora is clearly coded as a lesbian. It is interesting how this mainstream 1960s film deals with that and how the other characters react to it. She attempts to seduce Eleanor, who is completely oblivious. Theodora says kind things to her and comforts her when she’s scared. Late at night, when things go bump, she’ll hold her hand and hold her close. It is never overt, but it’s there. Later, Eleanor will say something cutting and mean, letting Theodora know she knows what’s been going on.

The main focus is on Eleanor. She’s a jangle of nerves and anxieties. Dr. Markway encourages her at first, but the more disturbed she becomes, the more he begins to think she should leave. But she refuses. She tries to be strong. But the house, the noises, the strange occurrences all seem to be happening to her and no one else.

Director Robert Wise shoots it in stark black and white (with some gorgeous cinematography by Davis Boulton). There are plenty of disorienting angles in this monstrous house. This is very much a mood piece. Perhaps a little too much. With a run time of just under two hours, I could have used a little more straight horror.

The acting is good. Eleanor’s emotional plight is an interesting one. I especially enjoyed her ever-changing relationship with Theodora. It is a good film, just don’t go expecting any real ghosts.

Little Shop of Horrors is the Pick of the Week

Welcome to another edition of what’s coming out this week on Blu-ray and UHD. It was a bit of an odd week for me as there were several popular releases that I have no interest in (another Harry Potter boxed set? No thanks). There are several other things I am interested in, but none that really stood out. So I picked a fun musical that reminds me of my childhood.

You can read all about everything I found interesting here.

31 Days of Horror: Alone in the Dark (1982)

Dr. Leo Bain (Donald Pleasence) is one of those wacky doctors who thinks the patients at a psychiatric ward shouldn’t be called crazy or locked up and heavily medicated. They need kindness and understanding. They should be more or less allowed to do what they want, and instead of correcting their delusions, you should just run with them. Except for the people on the third floor. Those guys are nuts. They have to be securely locked away.

Even then, they make the floor look rather cozy. Oh, there are big, strong doors that can swing shut and lock in an instant, and if anyone tries to open a window, barricades come down fast. But if everyone behaves, then the place looks like a nice place to live.

The film makes a big deal about the electric locks. Those doors open and shut electronically. The windows are the same. A guard says they are perfectly safe as long as the power doesn’t go out. So naturally, the power goes out.

The four guys on the third floor escape and wreak havoc. They will eventually find their way to Dr. Dan Potter’s (Dwight Schultz) house. He’s a new psychiatrist at the hospital, having just replaced a guy who moved to another town. But the third-floor guys think he must have killed that guy, and now they want revenge.

The back half of the film becomes a station-under-siege film. It’s pretty good.

It’s also pretty weird. The third-floor guys are played by Martin Landau (as a pyromaniac preacher), Jack Palance (and a disturbed former POW), Erland Van Lidth (as a child molester known as “fatty”), and a dude who only shows his face at the end and is only known as “Bleeder.”

Before they lay siege to Potter’s house, they go into town where everybody is looting because all that stands between society and chaos is a little power outage. They have some fun and get some weapons. It is a bit silly, really.

Our villains are having a lot of fun. Donald Pleasance isn’t really given enough to make his character interesting. Once the siege starts, things get interesting. I love a good base-under-siege story, and this one’s done well.

It is a film I’m happy to watch during Spooky season, but not one I’m likely to ever return to.

Listen to Van Morrison Perform “And The Healing Has Begun” from Vienna (12/29/01)

When I tell people I collect concert recordings, I often get blank stares. Sometimes I get questions like, “Why?” or “How many versions of the same songs do you need?” Sometimes I wonder the same thing. Do I really need hundreds of shows from a single artist?

And then I hear things like this. This is why I collect shows. This is why this insane hobby is so gratifying. Every once in a while, you find a version of a song that is transcendent. And that makes it all worthwhile.

31 Days of Horror: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

My wife and I are pretty big fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series. We came to it late. I had some friends in college who loved it, and I gave it a shot back then, when it was originally airing, but I found it to be cheap-looking and cheesy. It wasn’t until years later, after my daughter was born, that we finally got into it.

When our daughter was a baby, we spent a lot of time binge-watching TV shows. We weren’t big on taking her out on the town – way too much prep work for our tastes – so we’d just sit with her watching TV. That might have been the beginning of our homebody years, come to think of it.

We’ve since watched it a couple of times through, and we’re currently watching it with our now-teenage daughter, and she’s become a fan, too.

But before the series, there was this movie. Joss Whedon wrote the script for the movie, but he was quite dissatisfied with the result. The studio removed a lot of his jokes, toned down some of the darker elements, and apparently Donald Sutherland did a lot of improvisation in his dialogue.

It’s probably a good thing the movie didn’t turn out as well as Whedon wanted it to, for this caused him to create the TV series. And it is kind of amazing that someone gave him the money to do so, as the film bombed.

The film, like the series, follows Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson), a stereotypical California valley girl. She’s blonde and pretty, a cheerleader who cares about fashion and boys. One day, she is approached by Merrick (Sutherland), who tells her she is the “Chosen One,” a vampire slayer, and that she has a calling.

It takes him a while to convince her, but when the vampires attack and she’s able to easily kill them, she decides to listen. There is a fun training montage, and some decent jokes, and then a final showdown with the head vampire (Rutger Hauer) and his main minion (Paul Reubens).

This is not a good movie. You can see the beginnings of something special, the bones of what became the TV show, but something feels off. Swanson is good. You get a sense in those early scenes that she’s not exactly happy being the ditzy blonde. Like she doesn’t really like her friends, but this is the lot that’s been chosen for her, so she just runs with it. It is interesting to think about how things would have gone had she been given the role in the TV series.

Sutherland can’t seem to get the tone right. He’s good at playing mysterious men who know more than they let on, and he can play the jokester as well. But he doesn’t get the blend right. And yeah, his improv isn’t great. It is a little difficult to understand who he is and what he’s doing.

Paul Reubens is the only one who seems to truly understand what kind of movie he’s in. He’s wonderfully campy and funny. It is no wonder they show some of his outtakes as the credits roll.

It isn’t a terrible film, but it certainly isn’t a good one. Worth watching if you are a fan of the series, just to see a different take on the material.

31 Days of Horror: The Conjuring (2013)

I’ve been married for twenty-four years or so. I love my wife. I enjoy spending time with her. I enjoy watching movies with her. We share an interest in animated films and fantasy films, certain types of comedy, etc., but she has little to no interest in horror. For most of our married life, we only had one television. So, when I wanted to watch a horror film, I had to wait until she was in bed or gone somewhere without me. We now have two televisions, so I can go upstairs and watch what I want in our bedroom. But before then, it was a bit of a challenge.

Several years ago, she took our daughter to visit her parents in Kentucky. I had a lot of work going at the time, so I stayed home. For the first few days, it was a lot of fun; I felt like I was single again. But then I just missed them and counted the days down until they came home.

With nobody home, I watched a lot of horror movies. Including The Conjuring.

Obviously, I love horror. I watch a lot of it. But I got to say watching two or three horror movies a night for several nights in a row and then going to bed in an empty house proved a bit much for me. By the third night, I started freaking out a little. I’d lie there in bed, eyes wide open, jumping at every little creak or crack, knowing some monster was out to get me.

After that, I started watching comedies.

The Conjuring is a movie that’s capable of giving me nightmares, even if I hadn’t watched numerous other horror films over the course of those few days.

A lot of modern horror just throws jump scare after jump scare at you. As if all we need from a horror movie is for something to jump out at us from the darkness or for the editor to make stark cuts.

Good horror movies know how to build tension over the course of a film. They can create a mood and build on it. That’s the kind of thing that gets under your skin and stays with you long after the initial fright of a jump leaves your memory.

The Conjuring does a great job of mixing the two. It takes time to develop its characters and build its story. It creates a mood of tension and builds upon it. But it also utilizes some great jump scares. Jumps can be effective, especially if they come out of the story. Anybody can have a maniac or a monster or a cat jump out at you unexpectedly. That will generally elicit a scream. But a good jump scare has been well developed. It makes sense within the realm of the story. There is background to the scare.

The film begins with some college girls telling a story. They were dabbling in the supernatural and were talking to a spirit. They invited the spirit into a doll called Annabelle. The doll started acting up. It started to scare them. They are telling this story to Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga), two self-described demonologists who study the supernatural and help those with infestations or possessions.

From this brief scene, we understand who the Warrens are, what they do, and that within the confines of this film, the supernatural is real. Then the movie pulls out a bit, and we realize the story we’ve just been watching is actually being told to an audience at a college seminar by the Warrens. The Annabelle story is in the past; it has been solved. The Warrens use it as an example of what they do to academics and students.

Then our story shifts to Roger and Carlyn Perron (Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor) and their five daughters. They’ve just bought a big country farmhouse. We watch them move in, unpack, and play. They are a nice family. The film takes its time with them; it lets us get to know them and like them. Nothing bad happens at first.

For its first half, the film will move back and forth between the Perrons and the Warrens. The Warrens will give more talks. We’ll see them go to a possibly haunted house and determine that the spooky noises are coming from the pipes and the wind. Not every case is real, you see. The Warrens are good people, not charlatans or fakes. If your house isn’t really haunted, they’ll let you know. But if it is, they are here to help.

This has drawn quite a bit of criticism from critics because the real-life Warrens were charlatans and fakes. Their cases have been proven to be false. Their personal lives have been inspected and found severely lacking. This film and its sequels make them out to be saints. I’m not here to criticize those decisions or really to talk about the real-life people. I’m here to talk about the movie, and it’s a good one.

Slowly, weird stuff starts happening at the Perron house. There are strange noises and terrible smells. The dog refuses to come indoors. They discover a basement whose entrance has been covered over. One of the girls begins sleepwalking, banging her head into a wardrobe. One of them creates an imaginary friend.

As the horror escalates, eventually the Warrens are brought in. There are some nice scenes between the families before things get crazy. Again, the film takes time to develop relationships. The Warrens are caring and kind. The Perrons are frazzled, but they take comfort in their new friends.

The Warrens bring a crew with them. They set up cameras and audio recording devices. They need to prove the house is haunted before the Catholic church will do an exorcism. These scenes are so well done. They bring a new edge to the thrills and terror. It all culminates in a big showdown between the evil spirit and these two families.

Not everything works. Some of the stuff with the Warrens before they meet the Perrons runs a little long. They keep returning to the Annabelle doll, and after a while it really feels like they are just prepping us for the inevitable Annabelle movie.

I’ve seen this movie three or four times now, so the jump scares no longer thrill, and it no longer keeps me up at night. That’s to be expected. But I do keep coming back to it. That’s the sign of a good horror movie – when you watch it again and again even though it no longer truly scares you.