31 Days of Horror: Halloween II (1981)

I have always thought that John Carpenter directed Halloween II. Up until today, I would have told you that he didn’t want to direct it, but after the massive success of the first one, he was told by the studio, the producers, or some such higher-up that they were going to make a sequel with or without him, and he decided it would be best if it was with him.

Turns out I was wrong on the first part, and the second part I guess I just made up. It is true that Carpenter didn’t really want there to be a sequel, had no interest in making one, but was pressured into making it. But he was never given an ultimatum, and he never agreed to direct. That job fell to Rick Rosenthal. Carpenter did write the script, along with the original film’s co-writer Debra Hill. He was also a producer and, depending on who you believe, Carpenter either came in during the filming stage and directed a few scenes himself, or had a large hand in post-production, adding in some extra violence and gore.

It is easy to see why I believed this was a John Carpenter film. His name is featured prominently in the credits (I guess I always overlook the Directed By card), he did write and produce this one (he basically completely bowed out of all the other films featuring Michael Myers after this – he did produce Halloween III, but Myers isn’t in that one), and this looks and feels like a John Carpenter film. That feeling is helped by the plot of this one taking place immediately after the original one; it stars most of the same cast and utilizes the same cinematographer, and Rosenthal has stated he intentionally mimicked Carpenter’s style in the first film.

This one gets a lot of hate in certain corners of the internet (and I now wonder if that isn’t because it was helmed by Rosenthal and not Carpenter), but I unabashedly love it. True, it isn’t as good as the first one, but it looks fantastic, has some great deaths, and the hospital setting is terrific.

It really does begin just as the original ends. Actually, it begins a couple of minutes into the ending of the first one. We revisit Michael Myers getting “killed” by Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), but from a slightly different perspective. Then we watch him walk away.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to the hospital with some cuts and bruises and a pretty banged-up leg. Weirdly, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t have a whole lot of screen time in this film. She’ll spend the first half of it basically lying in a hospital bed. She gets plenty of action in the back half, though. But first, we’ll spend time with various nurses and staff members of the hospital. They will mostly become cannon fodder for Michael Myers.

Myers will spend that first half of the film wandering around the town of Haddonfield, randomly killing folks. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) will do a poor job of hunting him down. Eventually, Myers will hear someone say something about how Laurie was sent to the hospital, and he’ll head that way. It all leads to a long showdown between Laurie, Loomis, and Michael Myers.

The stuff in the town is fine. There are some good kills, and it helps build tension to the hospital showdown. Pleasence plays Loomis even more hysterically than he does in the first. Having shot the man multiple times at the end of the first film, he’s now more sure than ever that Michael Myers is not human but something like a demon.

The hospital stuff is well done, if a little silly at times. One of the nurses, after getting yelled at for being late, decides to slip off with a boy to the lower decks, where there is some kind of therapeutic hot tub where she gets sexy (and dead). It always drives me a little crazy when hospital lights are turned off or dimmed. Sure, you can turn your room lights off, but hospitals are notoriously bright. They have to be. Doctors, nurses, and staff can’t function if they can’t see. But yeah, it makes the movie a lot moodier.

Those long hallways are used effectively, and Michael Myers still has a way of popping into a scene seemingly out of nowhere. I’d argue that Halloween is not only one of the greatest horror movies, but is a great movie on its own merits. Halloween II is a great slasher, but not a particularly good movie.

Still, I love it so.

31 Days of Horror: Sweet Sixteen (1982)

At the heart of this relatively obscure, early 1980s slasher is Marci Burke (Dana Kimmell), a teenager and daughter of the town’s sheriff (Bo Hopkins). She’s bright, outgoing, and a bit of a detective herself. When Sheriff Burke comes across a murder scene, she is with him. But she doesn’t recoil from it; she’s enthralled. She gives her Dad ideas on how to best investigate. He calls her Nancy Drew and tries to keep her away from the gore.

The scenes with her are delightful. I could watch a whole movie of her and her dad solving crimes in this small town. But this isn’t a fun little mystery movie; this is a slasher horror, so of course we don’t stick with those two.

It is Melissa Morgan (Aleisa Shirley) who is our protagonist. She’s the fifteen-year-old who thinks of herself as much older and wiser than the kid she really is. She’s also new to town; her father has moved her there for some kind of Native American archeological dig. And she’s a big flirt. The film begins with her walking to the seedier side of town, talking a boy into giving her a ride home, and almost immediately making out with him.

The thing is, every boy she flirts with gets himself brutally killed. Naturally, she becomes a suspect. But Sheriff Burke is a good cop. He’s not going to arrest a 15-year-old girl right before her Sweet Sixteen birthday. Bo Hopkins has such a natural screen presence. I immediately like him, and he plays the Sheriff with real warmth.

There is a lot of typical 1980s slasher nonsense in this film. We get a skinny dip in the local pond, a bit of sexing, some blood-soaked gore, and a whole lot of racism. The film tries to be on the right side of history for that last part. There is a native American character, Jason (Don Shanks). He is repeatedly harassed by some local rednecks. The film clearly depicts them as racist, but it still seems to delight in those scenes. He’s also a little too stereotypical for my tastes.

Most of the men in this film, including some of the “good guys,” do an awful lot of leering at Melissa. Jason practically wags his tongue at her.

If you can overlook those things (and admittedly it is quite a lot to overlook), there is a pretty good film underneath. Seriously, I would have loved a whole series of films with the Sheriff and his daughter solving crimes.

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.