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.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Dr. Terror’s House of Horror (1965)

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I was planning on watching The Substance tonight and writing about it. I’ve wanted to watch it since it came out. I ordered a free 7-day trial of Mubi just to watch it. I had to force myself to wait until Friday to watch it so I could make it my Friday Night Horror Movie.

Then Friday finally came. It was a long, busy day at work. I was unable to knock off early like I usually do. By the time I was done my daughter had already taken over the television upstairs in my bedroom. That’s usually where I watch my horror films these days as my wife doesn’t like them and she’s usually downstairs.

That’s where she was this evening, watching some crafting videos on YouTube. I was being blocked from watching The Substance, or any horror movie. I wound up back in my office playing games until supper.

After eating I did talk my wife into watching a movie, just not a horror movie. We watched Certified Copy, a very arthouse film about…well I’m not entirely sure what it was about, but I’ll be writing about it soon for Foreign Film February.

As it started getting late I started having little panic attacks. It was Friday Night and I’d not watched a horror movie, let alone written this article.

It was too late for The Substance as it is a bit long and I didn’t want to be up past midnight trying to write something. We are both big fans of Hammer Horror films and so I talked her into this film (which is from Amicus Productions, not Hammer, but they always treaded in the same waters).

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors is an anthology film consisting of five short films all tied together by an encompassing story. Five men board a train in the dead of night. Just before it leaves another man (Peter Cushing in heavy makeup) joins them in their car.

He is a soothsayer, a fortune teller, and he agrees to tell everyone their future by reading his deck of Tarot Cards. Naturally, their futures are our movie.

Five stories plus introductions to them on the train all told in 98 minutes doesn’t leave much time for each story. This is one of the reasons I don’t tend to like anthologies. All you get are quick sketches of a story. The good ones leave you wanting more and the bad ones only accentuate the fact that you could have more of the good ones.

Four of the five here are pretty good and quite economical. If your story is only going to last fifteen minutes or so it needs to be slim and lean – no fat on that bone. The one bad one is all fat. It takes time for no less than three musical interludes.

Quickly here they are.

Werewolf: A man returns to his ancestral home to help the new owner with some renovations. In the basement, he discovers a coffin in a secret room and a curse. The curse is, of course, a werewolf. It comes with a nice twist ending.

Creeping Vine: A couple comes home to find a large vine growing in their garden. When they try to cut it down it attacks them back.

Voodoo: A jazz musician gets a gig in the West Indies. There he stumbles upon a voodoo ritual and digs the music. He takes the mad beats home with him and is cursed by the voodoo gods.

Disembodied Hand: By far the best story stars Christopher Lee as a snobby art critic who lambasts artists he doesn’t like (Michael Gough) resulting in his suicide. The, you guessed it, disembodied hand of the dead guy takes its revenge.

Vampire: A doctor (a young Donald Sutherland) takes his bride home only to discover she’s a vampire (the titles of these stories are pretty obvious don’t ya think?)

The film does pretty much exactly what these types of things are supposed to do. The stories all have a very basic premise and they get in and get out with economical speed. None of them are great, but most of them are quite fun, and that’s all I’m looking for.

Well, what I was really looking for was getting to watch The Substance, but this will do in a pinch. I guess I’ll be paying for a month of Mubi in order to finally watch that movie.

Backdraft (1991)

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Sometimes I’ll watch a movie that I had seen years ago, when I was a teenager or in college, or whatever. Sometimes it is a movie that I didn’t like that much but I want to revisit to see if my feelings have changed. Sometimes they do, and I’m glad I watched it again. Sometimes they don’t and I realize my feelings were right all along.

Backdraft falls into the latter category. I didn’t like it when it came out, and I don’t like it now. It does, however, have some spectacular effects, and ones that are not CGI which makes it even better.

You can read my full review here.

31 Days of Horror: Don’t Look Now (1973)

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I recently read a short story collection by Daphne du Maurier which contained the story upon which Don’t Look Now is based so I thought it would be fun to rewatch the film. Truth be told I started it several days ago, when the calendar still read September, but I had to pause it and didn’t return to it until this past Sunday. But since it can be considered a horror film I’m counting it for my 31 Days of Horror collection.

After their young daughter accidentally drowned John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura (Julie Christie) move from their home in England to Venice, Italy. John has been hired to restore an old church. While there Laura meets two elderly sisters, one of whom is blind and proclaims to have “second sight”. She says that she could see the dead daughter standing by the couple while they were eating and that she was happy.

Laura, still deep in her grief, takes solace in this notion and wants to speak to the ladies some more. John, also still deep in grief but maintaining absolute rationality, thinks the sisters are up to something.

That’s the very basics of the story, but in director Nicolas Roeg, and editor Graeme Clifford’s hands the film is much more than the details of what actually happens in the plot. Most of it was shot in Venice and the city comes off as a shadowy, crumbling old town filled with strange characters, dark corners, and ghosts. The film flashes backward and forwards, often for just flickering seconds. It flashes back to the day when their daughter drowned and to moments we’ve already seen in Venice. It flashes forwards as if premonitions of a future they want to avoid.

There is a famous scene in which John and Laura make passionate love (so passionately that rumors persist to this day that the actors were fully engaged on set) and the scene flashes forward ever so slightly to the couple dressing afterward. We see them pull their clothes off to make love then immediately they are individually putting new clothes on for dinner. They kiss passionately then shirts are buttoned. Etc. Over and over throughout the film scenes do this, giving it a dream-like quality. Little moments mirror each other too. We’ll see a reflection in the Venice canals and then a flash of the pond where the girl drowned. Time loops in on itself.

The ending is one of the more startling finishes to a film I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is marvelous. I enjoyed it more this time than the time before.