Hi, everyone. Moriarty here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
As I sit down to write this, it’s early Tuesday morning, and I realize that I’ve got a lot of ground to cover if I want to stay even close to caught up with this coverage. Harry’s already posted his thoughts on the ‘80s Horror Marathon from Saturday, and there are two more nights since then to write about. No time to rest, despite being sick.
Oh, yeah... that’s right. I’m sick. But more on that later.
The second night of the festival kicked off for me with a trip to Threadgill’s with a bunch of local friends. This is one of my favorite restaurants in town, and it was a good way to fuel up for an all night batch of movies. We weren’t supposed to know the titles ahead of time, but someone goofed and printed the full list in the programs that we were handed on opening night. Quentin tried not to look too annoyed when someone mentioned this to him, and he threatened to show a totally different line-up. In the end, though, knowing what’s coming doesn’t really hurt the experience at all.
I saw more familiar faces show up on the second night. Greg Nicotero showed up, and we got a chance to chat about MASTERS OF HORROR some more. I also spent some time catching up with Matthew Kiernan, who I first met at FanTasia 2001. Quint brought his younger brother Tony with him, and at 14, he may have tied local filmmaker Emily Hagin as the youngest person in the theater. Everyone talked about how much sleep they’d gotten (or not, as the case may be) in preparation for the all-night marathon, and by around 8:00, we were all settled into our seats, ready to go.
Tim League took the stage first, and he spoke about the recent move at Telluride to ban cell phones completely from what they call “sacred spaces.” Evidently, the decision led to quite a bit of controversy at Telluride since ushers got openly surly while enforcing the policy.
But maybe it’s time we started getting surly about protecting our moviegoing experiences. Maybe it’s time that theaters hire ushers who will not only enforce the “No talking, no cell phones” policy, but who understand exactly why it’s important. One of the reasons I was so moved by the film GOODBYE DRAGON INN when I finally caught up with it this year was because it seemed to understand the notion of movie theaters as a house of worship. The best films work on us almost as waking dreams, and nothing interrupts those dreams faster than some asshole who thinks he’s sitting in his living room. One of the reasons that I think of the Alamo as a second home is because Tim League has created a place where movie lovers can come together to enjoy movies in a protected atmosphere, and it’s the reason filmmakers like Quentin love to come here to show films.
Quentin took the stage wearing a CABIN FEVER t-shirt, and he launched into his introduction, talking about the ‘80s. Now, for better and for worse, I am a child of the ‘80s. Even though I adore ‘70s cinema, I was too young to fully appreciate a lot of it upon initial release. The ‘80s is when I came of age as a film viewer, and that means I grew up watching a whole heaping bunch of crap.
It was sort of reassuring to hear Quentin kick the ‘80s around during his introduction to the evening. So many of my friends are blinded by nostalgia that I find myself having to force a smile during conversations about the merits of TEEN WOLF or the auteur theory as it applies to John Hughes.
For horror fans, though, the ‘80s were a golden time. FANGORIA had a wealth of titles to choose from every month when picking the cover. Guys like Savini and Bottin were rock stars. It was a great time to be a horror fan. Critics of the day sneered at the slasher films, but for those of us who were hungry for red meat, we would sit through almost anything just hoping for the gems.
It seems that many of you misinterpreted Quentin’s admonition that Harry wrote about in his article. “Laugh because something is funny,” he said, “not because you’re superior to the movie.” That doesn’t mean that no one was supposed to laugh at anything in any of the films we watched during this marathon. Far from it. But this wasn’t MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.
The whole reason for a festival like this is to watch these movies as a group. It’s so we can all sit together and react. There were plenty of laughs during the marathon, and not all of them were intentional, but all of them were genuine. Sometimes you laugh at the audacity of a moment or an idea. Sometimes you laugh at how a filmmaker wrung some bit of tension out of you. Sometimes you laugh just because something onscreen is completely absurd. No one told the audience to sit in stony silence. Far from it. But when you watch a film with your mind wide open, you find yourself connecting to all sorts of unexpected things, and frequently you find that movies sneak up on you, no matter how inexpertly made.
We got a few trailers before the first film that really set the tone for the evening. PSYCHO II was first, followed by DRESSED TO KILL, a nice back-to-back that illustrated how younger directors regurgitated the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Next up was HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, complete with its classic William Castle come-on about how no one will be admitted during the shocking last ten minutes. Finally, we saw a red-banded FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Retarded hillbilly Jason has always been my favorite in the series, so I enjoyed this trailer in particular.
It’s no secret that Tarantino worships at the altar of De Palma, so it’s small wonder that he’s not a huge Hitchcock fan. As hard as it is to believe now, there was a stretch of the ‘70s where critical opinion had turned against Hitchcock almost completely. He was viewed with disdain in film schools everywhere, and his work was dismissed as slick Hollywood hackery. De Palma wasn’t slammed because he borrowed from Hitchock. He was slammed for having the bad taste to borrow from Hitchcock. Personally, I’m hit and miss with Hitchcock’s films, but I can appreciate his place in the pantheon because of his contributions to the language of film. There would be no Spielberg if there had been no Hitchcock. So many of the ideas that he created have passed into common everyday usage in film that you cannot overestimate how much influence he’s had on filmmaking at large.
When Richard Franklin was still a film student, he struck up a friendship with Hitchcock, and the director ended up mentoring him. Little wonder, then, that Franklin was the man to direct PSYCHO II when Universal finally made a sequel to the classic thriller in 1983.
I watched PSYCHO II a lot when it came out on video in ‘83, and then I haven’t seen it since. I’m pretty sure my reasons for watching the film so much back then had more to do with Meg Tilly’s brief shower scene than any narrative merits, but looking at the movie now, I’m impressed by how clever it is at inverting all of the ideas of the original PSYCHO. In that film, you spend most of the running time convinced that Mrs. Bates is the killer and that poor Norman is cleaning up after her, covering for his deranged mother. It’s only at the very end that you realize she’s been dead all along, and he’s the one who has been carrying on both sides of those creepy conversations. In the sequel, you start out convinced that everything that happens must be Norman’s fault, only to learn that he’s innocent and that there is indeed an outside force killing people, trying to make Norman feel like he’s insane again. Richard Franklin pays homage to Hitchcock in scene after scene, but he does it in a way that feels organic, not like a greatest hits from the first film. Tom Holland’s script isn’t great, but it’s solid, and Franklin’s direction and the performance by Perkins that walks the delicate line between creepy and self-parody both manage to sell the picture. It’s incredibly effective, and Vera Miles also reprises her role from the original to great effect. Robert Loggia shows more restraint than normal as Norman’s psychiatrist, and Dennis Franz shows up to give some good scumbag before he gets slashed. There is some gore in the film, something that many fans of the original hold against it, saying that Hitchcock would have eschewed anything like that, but I don’t agree. Look at his last few films, FRENZY in particular. As standards changed, I think Hitchcock would have changed, too. I think he would have used gore in his films when he felt like it was appropriate, and there are elements of this script that I think would have appealed to him greatly. It was a real pleasure to finally see this film again after all these years and to see it hold up. If you’re the sort of person who hates sequels on principle, don’t bother, but otherwise, this really is a fun film.
Between films, the Alamo waitstaff came around to everyone and handed out order forms with a list of various types of pie. We were told to rank which type we’d like most, along with a second choice, since we’d all be getting a slice of free pie during the second film.
As Quentin said, “Horror movies and free pie. Man... Austin is the place to be.”
QT’s introduction to the next film was all about the tradition of Canadian slasher films and how you’d see the same faces over and over again. He talked about how good the talent pool was in Canada. I just experienced this myself on CIGARETTE BURNS. Our two main actors were brought in from elsewhere, but every other role was filled by Canadian actors I didn’t know, and they all turned out to be really good. Quentin ran through a list of titles that had been shot in Canada. MY BLOODY VALENTINE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. And, of course, BLACK CHRISTMAS. He also spoke fondly of the director, William Fruet, who directed HOUSE BY THE LAKE and BLUE MONKEY. He told us to keep our eye out for one of the great creepy cats in film history, and then did his patented throw-the-mic-over-into-the-air-and-let-it-bounce-off-the-stage move that closes every introduction.
The horror trailers continued with THE FUNHOUSE, one of Tobe Hooper’s sleaziest films, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, a nasty red-banded GALAXY OF TERROR, a surprisingly well-cut HITCHER trailer, and DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE, which features “the room of steel,” or as we call it, “Harry Knowles’s basement.”
The way Quentin scheduled these movies was weird, because he kept showing movies doubled up that are basically riffs on the same idea. For example, FUNERAL HOME is essentially a PSYCHO ripoff. Heather (Lesleh Donaldson) is sent to stay with her grandmother (Kay Hawtry) to help her convert the family funeral home into a tourist home. Seems that Grandpa (Jack Van Evera) vanished a few years ago, and the only way Grandma can keep money coming in is to open their home to strangers. Stephen Miller plays Billy Hibbs, the best retarded handyman this side of Torgo. Of course, people start dying around the funeral home, and of course, Heather starts piecing together the mystery of what happened to Grandpa. Some of the people who are killed earn their demises, while others just seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are some original notes struck over the course of Ida Nelson’s screenplay, but in the final stretch, it becomes blatantly obvious that PSYCHO is the template they’re following. You’ve got to hand it to Kay Hawtry for her performance, though. She really sells it, and in the last few minutes of the film, especially, she makes it work. FUNERAL HOME isn’t particularly gory, but it makes up for it by placing the emphasis on character and suspense, and the result is a solid little b-thriller.
It’s also strange how certain details jump out at you when you’re watching movies like this. That handyman, for example, has the most repulsively hairy ears I’ve ever seen on a human being, to the point that I found it actively distracting during the climax of the movie.
And, for the record, my apple pie was really, really dry and nearly flavorless. But it was free!
The introduction for the next film gave Quentin an excuse to do an impression onstage, something you can tell he dearly loves. In this case, it was an impression of an impression, which is even funnier. When he first mentioned SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT to Robert Rodriguez, it turns out that RR loves the early scene in that film between a grandfather and his grandson. Evidently, Robert will do the entire monologue if you ask him. “IF YOU SEE SANTY CLAUS, YOU BETTER RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, BOOOOOOOOOY!!” This is an unusual film in the slasher genre, because it focuses on the perspective of the killer, not any of the victims. As QT says, the whole film sets up why this guy has to kill, and by the time he goes on his rampage, “the earth fucking deserves it.”
The trailer ring this time out included BLOW OUT (one of my favorite trailers for one of my favorite thrillers), VENOM, VIDEODROME (a horrible trailer for a great movie), VISITING HOURS (“So frightening you may never recover!”), and OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN.
I remember the controversy when SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was first released. People went berserk and protested the film and managed to get the wide release shitcanned. It’s so funny... people never learn. The more noise you make about why people shouldn’t watch a film, the more you’re going to encourage some people to see it. In this case, I can see why moral watchdogs were offended, because this is one of the meanest films I’ve ever seen. From the very start, this movie is all about Billy Chapman and the raw deal that the world gives him. On Christmas Eve, his parents take him to see his grandfather, who is in a psychiatric hospital. The old man tells him that Santa Claus will punish him for being naughty, terrifying the kid, and perfectly setting up the next sequence, where he and his parents are driving home. They encounter a guy on the road who had just robbed a liquor store dressed as Santa Claus, and he kills Billy’s parents.
Flash-forward a few years, and Billy and his little brother Ricky are now living at an orphanage where the Mother Superior is determined to break Billy of his fear of Christmas. She punishes him for every little transgression, beating him severely, and when she tries to force him to sit on Santa’s lap, he snaps and decks the guy. The scene ends with poor Billy curled into a ball in a corner, barely holding it together.
The majority of the film takes place once Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) is 18 years old, employed for the season at a toy store. He’s grown into a baby faced pituitary case, and he obviously does his best to live an upright life. Because it’s Christmas, though, all of Billy’s old phobias are brought up again, and he ends up snapping at the Christmas party where, for some ungodly reason, they’ve actually forced him to dress as Santa Claus. The rest of the film is basically him spilling his wrath on everyone who crosses his path as he makes his way back to the orphanage, where he plans to punish the Mother Superior. The film does its best to make you sympathize with Billy, even though he is obviously unhinged. Director Charles E. Sellier Jr. is a stone cold sadist, and this film retains the power to shock after all this time because it plays so nasty.
After the film, I stepped outside to catch some fresh air, and that’s when I started to notice the sore throat and the congestion. I was hoping it was just a mild something, and that I’d feel better if I walked around. I saw Greg Nicotero again and stopped to say hi. He was talking to Nicky Katt at the time, who gave me a death glare. This wasn’t the first of the weekend, either. In fact, I’m not sure what I did to the guy, but I’m starting to feel like Adam Goldberg in DAZED & CONFUSED, like he’s going to throw me a beating any moment now.
Back inside, I walked in as Quentin was already onstage, midway through his intro for the next film. He said we were switching genres from slasher films to possession movies, which are very different. He talked about how good John Saxon and Lynda Day George are in the film, and how they’re better than they should be considering what the movie is.
That really cuts to the heart of why Quentin loves these movies. He can watch the cheesiest, silliest film, but if he sees something recognizably human in it, he responds. He’s the ideal audience. He surrenders himself to a film until it gives him a reason not to, which is what every director hopes is going to happen when he shows his film. He talked about how the marriage in the film was what made him care about it. “[This film] has a human heart beating in it.” He also admitted that he has a fetish for films for the Philippines, and since this whole film was shot there, that may have played some part in his love for it.
More trailers flashed past. AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION, DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE, Bill Malone’s CREATURE, SILENT SCREAM (starring Carol, the bitch who tried to ruin Jody’s life on SOAP), and HE KNOWS YOU’RE ALONE, which sadly does not feature any Tom Hanks in the trailer at all.
BEYOND EVIL is beyond cheap, but I can see why Quentin fell for it. John Saxon does a good job playing a husband who can’t understand what’s happening to his wife, and he struggles to wrap his head around these changes that are making her into a stranger. They move to the islands at the start of the film so that Saxon can work as a construction foreman on a project that’s being run by his friend, played by Michael Dante. Dante buys the couple a house, and then explains to them that they got a deal on the place because it is allegedly haunted. The backstory has to do with love betrayed and witchcraft and murder, and both Saxon and his wife find it all terribly romantic and interesting. Of course, it all turns out to be true, and slowly, Lynda Day George begins to change into this woman who was once the mistress of the house. She gains mysterious occult powers as a result, and people begin to die. Saxon tries getting her medical help, then turns to a local faith healer to try to get spiritual help. The exotic setting is what makes the film interesting, but the bargain basement special effects can be laughable at times. Saxon’s performance is the best thing about the movie, and watching it, I am reminded of how frustrating it is that Hollywood didn’t figure out exactly what to do with the guy. He was so often so much better than the material he was given that it can be a little depressing to read through his filmography. He’s such a great tough guy, and there’s an honesty to almost every line reading. His mounting frustration with the situation gives the film a real sense of urgency, no matter how silly it gets.
By this point in the evening, I was sick. No question about it. My nose was running freely, and I was alternating between coughing and sneezing. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it through the rest of the night, but I was determined to try.
And then MAUSOLEUM happened.
Let me back up a moment. This was the film that Quentin warned us at the start of the night would be the one most worth laughing at. “It’s okay. MAUSOLEUM is funny,” he said. I think ludicrous is the word he was looking for, actually. This is pretty much the same film as BEYOND EVIL, but told with much less finesse. Marjoe Gortner plays the husband trying to sort out what’s happening to his wife this time around, and Bobbie Bresee plays his wife, who inherits her family curse. Considering their last name is “Nomed,” can you guess what that curse might be? Do you think it might have something to do with demons? Maybe? The movie just barely makes sense, and there are some truly lunatic digressions, including a montage featuring the gardener that is howlingly silly. There is a copious amount of nudity from Bresee, though, and she’s got a pretty killer body, so the film’s not a complete loss. Also, La Wanda Page shows up as the family maid and kills in a couple of scenes that appeared to be almost completely improvised. By the time Bresee unveils her snapping demon titties, courtesy of the always-crappy John Carl Buechler, the film has completely hopped the rails, and the very ending has to be one of the most confounding insulting conclusions ever committed to film. It makes no sense, and it feels like the director is laughing in your face at the idea that you actually sat through the entire film.
I think it was that last shot that did it, actually. I was having trouble breathing, I couldn’t stop my nose from running, and then this fat asshole sat there laughing at me at the end of this fairly terrible movie, and it just drove me out of my seat, out of the theater, and right into a WalMart where I could load up on Nyquil and other cold medicines. I knew full well that I was going to get labeled a loser and a pussy for leaving before MADMAN MARZ, the final film of the evening, but I also knew that getting some sleep was the only hope of me showing up at all the following night.
I’ll be back later tonight with a few more days worth of QT Fest coverage, and I’m also going to weigh in on a film that is getting unfairly lambasted out of Toronto, a movie that I think is getting a really raw deal. Until then...
Moriarty out.
