The Kids Are Alright (1979)

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
(PG, New World Pictures, 109 minutes, theatrical release date: June 15, 1979)

I was listening to music on magnetic tape for years before the conversion to compact disc, a transition eased over by my subscription to the Columbia House music catalogue. My early music education were repeated listens to whole albums by Peter Gabriel, The Beastie Boys, Michael Jackson, and Green Day on cassette. By the time I was in junior high, I had discovered The Who and coveted a huge chunk of their discography, chiefly the mid-1990s MCA remasters which often doubled their original track listings in rare and unreleased material. I had become intimately familiar with at least 50 Pete Townshend compositions, such was the gifts he gave as a musician and songwriter. And I realized just how unique a collective The Who were, acknowledging the volatile but passionate chemistry which Townshend shared alongside flexing blonde frontman Roger Daltrey, the stoic but striking bassist John Entwistle and, of course, Keith Moon "the Loon" on the skins.

There isn't a documentary which can fully do justice to the combustible, crazed push-and-pull between these four unique geezers who started out as totems of London youth culture before becoming stadium-packing superstars who straddled the line between the conceptual and the cataclysmic. However, a teenaged super fan named Jeff Stein was given a go in the latter half of the 1970s. Stein had already published a photo album compiled with Chris Johnston before he found himself pitching the idea of a visual scrapbook to an indifferent Pete Townshend. Band manager Bill Curbishley convinced Pete to reconsider, and soon Stein had edited together a 17-minute demo reel which inspired gales of psychotic laughter amongst the band and their spouses, thus Stein won their collective approval.

The Kids Are Alright is a preservationist's passion project more than an official band bio, but therein lies the appeal. Stein had to hustle his way into rounding up reams of classic Who footage, even going through the dumpster of the band's former label, and also coaxed the group into filming new material beginning in the summer of 1977 to fill in the blanks. But this wasn't the same band Stein witnessed as an awestruck 11-year-old in front of the Fillmore East stage, especially given Townshend's insular manifestos of middle-age malaise on albums like The Who By Numbers and the forthcoming Who Are You. Also, Keith Moon's wild man tendencies were getting the best of him, resulting in chemical dependency treatment and a paunchier physicality which curbed his ability to hold a drum stick.

The group agreed to perform a handful of one-off concerts in Kilburn and Middlesex, their last shows with Moon, so that Stein could definitively capture early 1970s warhorses "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again." Despite Townshend's reluctant cooperation, as he wasn't keen on doing an encore performance having given it his all before, and the post-production assistance of John Entwistle as musical director and overdubbing wizard, Stein and The Who ended the project in acrimony. Entwistle himself, contentious of the project to end of his days, oversaw a re-edit of the film for the European market and was even one step close to filing an injunction out of disgust. This truncated version, which was also egregiously sped up in spots for time constraints, became the norm when The Kids Are Alright made the rounds on home video, with only the rare television airing presenting a quality viewing in its intended cut. The humble, well-intentioned Stein proved wary in discussing his experience until a friend of Townshend contacted him about adding his insights on the 2003 special edition restoration.

Despite the fractured working relationships, frustrating archival forages and the specter of the late Keith Moon, The Kids Are Alright remained a critical and fan favorite in the rockumentary subgenre. Stein panned a goldmine of sorts before MTV and VH1 came along into popular consciousness. The Who would never truly be the same, but their legacy as one of the loudest, proudest rock bands from the British Invasion from 1965 to 1978 was secure. And you can definitely sense the personalities of each individual band member in every sound bite and amplified blast. In short, this is a movie that thrives on the spirit of rock ‘n' roll without the dispiriting need to explain the magic away.

Before Elvis Costello and The Replacements punked Saturday Night Live, for instance, The Who pulled one of the greatest on-air practical jokes when they were asked to appear on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in September 1967. Tommy Smothers introduced the band following a "performance" of their biggest U.S. hit, "I Can See for Miles," and you can definitely get a sense of the quartet's individual attributes. There's Pete Townshend, self-effacing, windmill-armed and still in his rambunctious, guitar-abusing prime. There's deadpan John Entwistle, "The Quiet One" with the perpetually-bored demeanor and also the earliest person alive to justify the bass guitar as a melodic lead. There's Roger Daltrey, gritty-voiced but goofy enough to introduce himself as "Roger from Oz."

And then there was Moonie…

From his prickly retorts ("My friends call me Keith, you can call me John") to his mockingly dainty miming of the drum track to his excitable, anything-for-a-lark energy, Keith Moon was uncontainable. His reckless attitude pushed him into one-upping the pyrotechnic conclusion of "My Generation" by enticing a stage hand to add ten times more explosive charge to his bass drum. And poor Pete is clearly in the line of fire, resulting in unscripted, spontaneous reactions from him and Tommy that are practically the funniest moments ever broadcast. This anarchic American appearance remains as disturbingly hilarious now as it did back when The Who were still British Invasion novices.

This wasn't the last time The Who turned talk show appearances into a farce. Scattered throughout the film are clips from their 1973 guest appearance on ITV's Russell Harty Plus, in which Moon damn near drives both Townshend and Harty to nervous breakdowns. All you need to know is that Moon refers to Daltrey as a "rust repairman," tears apart Pete's shirt, strips off his own clothes ("You just carry on, Russell"), and starts to rip into Harty with his own interview questions.

Don't worry, there is still music to be heard, and The Kids Are Alright does a fine enough job spanning The Who's career. The earliest live footage on display comes from their post-High Numbers tenure playing what the band called "Maximum R&B," unveiling their first original tunes such as "I Can't Explain" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" whilst still performing electrified James Brown funk ("Shout and Shimmy"). But compared to contemporaries The Kinks and Brown's own skin-tight rhythm section, The Who were eager to color in the margins of their harmonic pop tunes with rapid-fire drumming and squealing, feedback-laden guitar heroics.

"My Generation," the stuttering, slinky signature song which defined The Who in and beyond the 1960s, is the very first number heard in the Smothers Brothers excerpt and is reprised throughout various points in their repertoire. Both their Monterey Pop and Woodstock sets are represented by "My Generation" and a 1975 stadium performance in Detroit, played to a record 78,000 attendees, repurposes it as a blues song which fits it snugly into a medley alongside Bo Diddley's "Road Runner." It serves as a place-holder of sorts which charts the evolution of The Who from bratty Brits of cultish fancy to mainstream rock royalty.

The Who's assimilation could best be chalked up to the successes of concurrent albums Tommy, Who's Next and Quadrophenia, only the latter of which is not represented in any of the song selections. Maybe they were afraid of teasing Franc Roddam's impending, impeccable feature-length film adaptation of that classic double-LP. Also, there was a dearth of professionally-shot live footage for much of the early 1970s, which means the two most famous rockers from Who's Next were captured exclusively for this film. "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" sound monstrous in the takes recorded for posterity on The Kids Are Alright, even with Moon's diminished abilities. The first appears early enough and benefits from seeing Townshend's strutting, spastic energy up close, whilst the laser-light spectacle which accompanies the latter ably leads you into the vocal-shredding, power-sliding conclusion of the film.

Sadly, not every glorious note of the band's past can fit into this one film. Their 1970 performance at the Isle of Wight, which has since been well preserved and issued commercially, had tracks such as Entwistle's "Heaven and Hell," "I Don't Even Know Myself" (a prelude to Townshend's bloodier midlife crisis confessionals) and their pulverizing cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" (immortalized on Live at Leeds) which are indispensable. But it's a treat to hear the likes of "A Quick One, While He's Away" (from a ‘68 slot on The Rolling Stones' Rock ‘n' Roll Circus which wasn't officially released until 30 years after; ironically, the widely-available European cut it to a fifth of its full-length until the 2003 special edition DVD of The Kids Are Alright restored it right), "Success Story" (Entwistle's satirical contribution to 1975's The Who by Numbers) and the Moon composition "Cobwebs and Strange" (played over footage shot for a promotional video to accompany the obscure non-LP single "Call Me Lightning" among other such debauched ephemera).

Throughout it all, the band members are presented mostly self-effacing in their off-stage moments. The team-up of Keith Moon with Ringo Starr proves doubly cheeky when the Beatle drummer inquires about Moon's relationship to his band mates, whilst Entwistle is the subject of a mock-fantasy sequence where he skeet-shoots his platinum and gold records. Ever contradictory, Townshend's attitude changes with the weather during his many interviews, from catty (slagging off The Beatles to a teenybopper crowd) to bored (nodding off during a long-winded interview) to mischievous (recalling his childhood adventures in shoplifting to Melvyn Bragg) to deadly honest. Even in his earliest comments, you can clearly sense the discontent which he exercised lyrically throughout the later half of the 1970s. But along comes Roger Daltrey at the end to remind you that "Rock & roll's never ever stood dissecting or inspecting it at close range...It doesn't stand up. So shut up."

That's it, review over!

No, Daltrey and Stein clearly share the same "let the music do the talking" ethos, the thing which makes this such a compulsive watch. Songs like "Substitute," "See Me, Feel Me" and "Happy Jack" don't need me talking about the context and clips in which they are presented, as they are simply three of the most levitating slices of prime sixties rock any band would kill to have written. I don't need to delve into the primal frustration of Pete and/or Keith destroying their instruments onstage, as it's just an awesome way to end a show. And why should I prattle on about how poor Keith sounds out of his element taking the lead vocal on an impromptu cover of The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," when it's far more rock & roll than the finale of Surf Ninjas?

The Who Are You (who-who, who-who!). If you really wanna know, The Kids Are Alright will be more than happy to show you. You run less of a risk of jumping on the stage and having Pete's foot join together with your balls.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II
(Unrated, New World Pictures, 99 mins., theatrical release date: December 23, 1988)

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"Fairy tales. My father didn't believe in fairy tales, either. But some of them come true, Mr. Ronson. Even the bad ones."

Well, that's mighty clever of Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) to recognize one of the many allegorical strands of Clive Barker's sepulchral sex 'n' splatter classic Hellraiser. Having survived the ordeal of the 1987 original, albeit with a few confusing contrivances, this is one of the first lines of dialogue Kirsty relays to a skeptical cop upon waking up at the Channard Institute. It establishes the traumatized ingénue as having more of a level head than the authorities around her, no small feat for a teen girl whose father was skinned in a crime of passion by both her stepmother and rogue spirit uncle, who required the disguise to trick his demon/angel captors, a quartet of undead fetishists known as the Cenobites.

Kirsty's worst fears now involve a blood-stained mattress from the scene of the slaughter, the literal death bed of reluctant murderess Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins). But even though she is smart enough to know she survived a Brothers Grimm nightmare made flesh, Kirsty is powerless to stop the déjà vu which she should have seen coming ("It's not fair"). For her caretaker is the chief of medicine, Dr. Phillip Channard (Kenneth Cranham), and like Uncle Frank (Sean Chapman) before him, his malevolent curiosity will compel him to raise Hell. Only he wants to go even deeper than this...

Hellbound: Hellraiser II saw Clive Barker relinquishing his screenwriting and directorial duties over to a pair of newbies, close friend Peter Atkins and New World Pictures ladder climber Tony Randel. The now-famous novelist and first time filmmaker instead hatched the story idea, which was naturally compromised by issues with budget and casting. Gone was the hope of Andrew Robinson reprising his role as Kirsty's cuckolded carcass of a daddy, so the thread involving Larry reaching out to Kirsty from supposed Hell (which already makes no sense, since the feebly milquetoast Larry Cotton was hardly a sinner) was resolved with a thud. In was the notion that Kirsty and Channard would be driven into the Infernal labyrinth which the Cenobites call their kingdom, and also some back story in regards to their prior human existences, chiefly the central figure of Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his past life as WWI captain Eliot Spencer. The Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 dealt a blow to such ideas, although these are still realized to a minor degree.

The real crux of the sequel turned out to be an even more sadistic spin on the Mad Scientist trope. A brain surgeon introduced dissecting a conscious patient whilst espousing on "the lure of the labyrinth" that is mind within the gray matter, Phillip Channard is in dogged pursuit of absolute knowledge. He's also a latent sadist with a Ph.D. whose sanitarium is pretty much its own Hell on Earth, with a whole sub-basement wing where he keeps the nuttiest of his charges celled in. Having already pursued the mystery of the Lament Configuration box, Channard tests Kirsty's theory of resurrection by allowing a far-gone inmate called Browning (Oliver Smith), who imagines maggots feasting on his skin, to go at his body with a razorblade atop the cursed mattress.

Out of the gory mess bursts Julia, now in the same half-formed condition as her illicit former lover Frank. But one of the hospital orderlies, Kyle (William Hope), has followed Channard and bears witness, sympathetically freeing Kirsty for further investigation. Also caught in these machinations is teenaged Tiffany (Imogen Boorman), who is mysteriously autistic and spends her time solving puzzles, the perfect key to calling forth the Cenobites and opening the doors to Hell. But Pinhead demands his minions stand down, aware that "It is not hands that call us. It is desire."

Mainly it is the desires of three individuals, including Tiffany, who has repressed her dark past through a possible lobotomy, and Kirsty, who seeks to rescue her father only to be once again taunted by the Cenobites and take part in a rather more unsavory family reunion. Yet it is Dr. Channard who pays the ultimate price, as Julia leads him to Leviathan, the diamond-shaped figurehead cum storage shed for souls, and sacrifices him out of maniacal obligation. The born-again Channard, his brain scrambled not unlike his patients via a demonic tentacle, is freed from all pretense of Hippocratic decorum and relishes his Cenobite status vengefully.

The filmmakers were clearly keen to begin building an intricate mythology, one which would be worth learning more about along the path of subsequent sequels. Alas, the only story line with any intrigue and weight here is Dr. Channard's arc, conveyed mainly thanks to Ken Cranham's jolly professionalism. It is his grotesque Frankenstein-as-monster metamorphosis ("And to think...I hesitated") which helps to humanize the four principal Cenobites, just in time for an impotent showdown. Kirsty remains ingenious as ever in the face of immortal danger, but much of her screen time is spent calling out to either her daddy or to Tiffany. Her confrontations with the Cenobites are also pretty limp and insensible; given that she was right about Frank's escape, the Cenobites go from chaotic neutral to kangaroo court bullies with woeful absurdity. You'd think they'd be wiser to sense Channard's destructive impulses over Kirsty's stubborn naiveté. No wonder they prove so easily vanquished. Julia's newfound nefariousness is also good for a few distractions, as Higgins ably matches Cranham's grandiose commitment, but fizzles out rather unspectacularly.

The first half of Hellbound: Hellraiser II is quite potent in spite of its redundancy, which makes the clichés abundant in the latter section seem unflattering. Returning crew members such as composer Christopher Young and cinematographer Robin Vidgeon have clearly stepped up their game, building upon the style evident in Barker's film. And there is much in the early going, particularly the sick humor of skinless Julia's seduction of Channard, which is as engrossing as it is plain gross. There is a broader yet welcome sense of wit going on when Julia moans "I'm cold" so that Randel can cut to multiple high-burning ventilators and Julia bleeding through white formal clothing. You do appreciate the subtleties more than the hysterics, which sadly end up engulfing the movie's focus.

There's plenty to admire technically, from the grisly make-up effects, handled once again by Bob Keen's team, and set designs teeming with lonely corridors and evocatively doom-laden palaces of pain. Not for nothing is this film's greatest subtext in regards to medical malpractice, as the parallels between the Channard Institute and Hell are ripe for the reaping. Kirsty and Tiffany are confronted with their own past torments in momentary tableaux of exquisite suffering. But these visions are all too fleeting and buttressed by a whole lot of hoariness.

Maybe rushing into this sequel so hastily, as per the opportunism of its American distributor, was like running into the open arms of a succubus. As it stands, Hellbound: Hellraiser II draws tons of blood, but not enough to conceal the lack of real ideas on the drawing board. It's less Clive Barker and more Carnival Barker.

The best release of the film thus far remains Anchor Bay's 2008 anniversary edition of the unrated cut, coming roughly 20 years after its Christmastime theatrical premiere (expect something similar for Wolf Creek in 2025). The package never received a proper Blu-Ray upgrade in time before Image Entertainment took control of the AB catalog, which means their hi-def release is comparably bare-bones. Both the previous cast/crew commentary, vintage EPK reels and 20-minute "Lost in the Labyrinth" retrospective make return appearances where they are joined by several new interview pieces which spotlight director Tony Randel, star Kenneth Cranham and the three peripheral, non-Pinhead ghouls, reprising performers Nicholas Vince and Simon Bamford as well as Barbie Wilde, who took over the Female Cenobite costume from Barker's cousin. Both Wilde and Vince seem to be writing their stories of Hellbound Hearts, so allow me to say this once again with feeling: "I have such sights to show you."

The Slumber Party Massacre Trilogy

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE
(R, New World Pictures, 77 mins., release date: Nov. 12, 1982)

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II
(R, Concorde Pictures, 75 mins., release date: Oct. 30, 1987)

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III
(Unrated, New Concorde Pictures, 87 mins., release date: Sept. 7, 1990)


You have to admire the Roger Corman-produced Slumber Party Massacre series in providing the exploitation cinema's equivalent of affirmative action. The glass ceiling of schlock was shattered in 1982 when Amy Holden Jones made her feature debut, having worked up the ladder from assisting Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver to becoming a prolific film editor, even turning down the prospect of cutting together Spielberg's stellar E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial to have a go behind the camera. Not only that, but Jones was fascinated by a script from Rita Mae Brown, an activist/novelist in the feminist and lesbian societies. Never mind that in the same year, another first-time director named Amy was at the forefront of the definitive teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (whose most memorable song cue is recycled in the trailer for the first film, suprisingly), as we were still in the era of the Dead Teenager Movie, and there was a marked estrogen famine in that quick-buck field.

Thus New World Pictures' original The Slumber Party Massacre, with its familiar-sounding title and proverbial slasher scenario, managed a cult reputation as subversive and satirical. Jones and Brown have made a film with a predominantly female cast, all of whom are uninhibited in their bodies and attitude to the point of parody, and their persistent panicked screams are matched by the rather wimpy male characters. Even the killer, an unmasked sanitarium escapee brandishing a portable power drill, is taken down a beg by Freudian means.

It all begins so demurely, as Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels) rises from bed on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, inspecting her budding figure in front of the closet mirror and clearing her dresser drawer of girlish trinkets like stuffed animals and plastic dolls. Trish's parents are heading off for a vacation, conveniently affording her the chance to invite her close friends on the basketball team over for a pajama party with plenty of alcohol, marijuana and pizza. One of Trish's pals, the catty Diane (Gina Smika), jealously tears into a luminous transfer student, Valerie Bates (the late Robin Stille), who declines Trish's gesture of atonement, deciding to spend her night babysitting her firebrand kid sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers). But they are all uniformly ignorant of the news of a killer on the prowl, Russ Thorn (Michael Villella), who stalks the night hoping to put his depraved love into the chicks.

Around the halfway point of Thorn's massacre, the withdrawn Valerie switches on the TV to watch Hollywood Boulevard, the 1976 Allan Arkush/Joe Dante patchwork picture on which Amy Jones served as co-editor. The moment resembles an inversion of Laurie Strode's desperate pleas for rescue at the Doyle house from Halloween, with the damsel-in-distress here being one of the leery boys who crashes Trish's sisterly soiree. It ends with Thorn stabbing the kid to death out of Valerie's sight as Jones cross-cuts between that and clips from the televised film, thus sowing the seeds for Scream a good decade or so early.

But Jones' overall approach is less post-modern than Wes Craven's, which means that most of The Slumber Party Massacre is pro forma pandemonium, replete with an synthesizer-based suspense score akin to Rick Wakeman's soundtrack for The Burning and a handful of "Psyche!" scares not limited to suspicious-seeming hands over unsuspecting shoulders, characters feigning death for practical jokes and, lest you forgot, the classic "It's Only a Cat" standby. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with such tactics, as they sometimes are followed by a traditionally grisly pay-off, but wasn't this supposed to be more clever than this? The deadening devotion to cheap tricks coupled with the rigid interchangeability of the film's starlets, all of whom given short shrift by a screenplay stuck between the poles of dry academia and dull convention, allow for instances of compromise to leap out of the shadows just as much as the villain does.

Villella, who gives the film's liveliest performance as the rape-minded slaughterer, bears a striking resemblance to Mal Arnold, a.k.a. the psychotic caterer Fuad Ramses from H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast, his motivations distinctly Mansonite ("I love you"). He also affects a peacock's body language as he pursues his victims, and the demented mannerisms of this Method-heavy performance are admittedly humorous. Top it off with the phallic nature of his murder weapon, which dangles down his groin with every intent of penetration (Brian De Palma was surely watching when he recycled this in 1984's Body Double), and you can sense the female empowerment manifesto teased at in the film's distinct pedigree.

The movie does have some particularly entertaining, borderline-camp ideas about female sexuality, from the giggly small talk of Trish's clique, the lingering close-ups of butts (step forward and turn around, Brinke Stevens!) to prepubescent Courtney's restless curiosity, which prompts her to raid Valerie's stash of Playgirl mags. At times, it gets hard to believe this wasn't written by a gay man. Still, The Slumber Party Massacre is a clearly Corman affair, a tried-and-true amalgam of bared and bored flesh which has its rewards (one of the gags involves the therapeutic ingestion of cold pizza crushed by a dead delivery boy because, hey, "life goes on") and is not too shabby for a 77-minute hunk of nostalgic ephemera. It's just a shame it's too leaden to truly embrace its playful side.

Deborah Brock, on the contrary, puts an even more outlandish spin on the original with her Slumber Party Massacre II, writing/directing a phantasmagoric quasi-musical which may as well be one of the guiltiest pleasures I've ever witnessed. In the spirit of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II and Sleepaway Camp II, tragedy gets reborn as dopey farce with the surviving Courtney (Crystal Bernard, of TV's Wings) still traumatized by her encounter with the Driller Killer as she experiences her own Birthday Girl sexual awakening. Hormones and horrors kick in simultaneously as her fantasies of hunky athlete Matt Arbicost (Patrick Lowe) are interrupted by eerie flashbacks (many of which, naturally, she wasn't there for), premonitions and regular visits from both her insitutionalized sister Val (Cindy Eilbacher) and a perverted Elvis impersonator (Atanas Ilitch) whose guitar, which resembles a Satanic trident, has a functioning drill bit where the neck should be.

Courtney herself carries a six-string given that she is in a girl band with her best buds Amy (Kimberly MacArthur, 1982 Playboy calendar girl), Sheila (Juliette Cummins, from Friday the 13th V and Psycho III) and Sally (Heidi Kozak, from Friday VII and Society). The quartet arrange a festive weekend away at the condo owned by Sheila's dad, but Courtney's mental state continues to worsen until finally she and Matt are alone and the temptation to "go all the way" brings out the Driller Killer from her subconscious.

Despite not salvaging the original's squandered theme of sisterhood under pressure (once the kangaroo meat hits the grinder, its practically every woman and man for themselves), Brock's central characters have a greater sense of camaraderie at the start. Even better, the roles at played earnestly and with a measure of natural charm by the four ladies. Bernard makes for a fetching, sympathetic lead star, whilst Cummins has waaay more fun as the requisite exhibitionist than her previous credits allowed. Kozak gets the wildest acne-based gross-out gag in history, and even if Sally's songwriting prowess is hardly on the level of the solid power pop on loan from Wednesday Week (whose "If Only" and "Why" are mimed rather adorably), Kozak is bubbly cute, as is MacArthur. There is a more casual sense of sexuality (read: swimsuits), too, that makes up for the noted lack of T&A.

And then there's Atanas Ilitch, a real life Detroit Rock City underdog who cackles and preens his way into slasher film infamy, a homicidal goofball who fires off quotes classic rock song titles with deranged gusto ("I can't get no...satisfaction!") and even turns a routine murder into a sock hop ("Let's Buzz!"). Not even Pamela Springsteen's reconfiguring of Angela Baker as a cheery psycho-Puritan can compete with Ilitch, a nutty send-up of John Travolta's Greaser image. Call that description a stretch, if you must, but he's the most talented, charming Fred Krueger clone of them all.

You know what they say, "Trixters are for kids."

Brock's screenplay and direction are the right kind of unpretentious, although the ending is pretty much a doozy in what is already a succession of moments worth inducting in the WTF? Hall of Fame. What's better is that she's taken the original's fanatical insistence on love-as-rape and comes up with some jubilantly dark comedy in Ilitch‘s presence (listen to him sing "I can't stop loving you, I won‘t stop until I do" as he chases after Courtney and Amy in a construction site). Some of the visual effects are dodgy, especially the fiery conclusion, yet Slumber Party Massacre II produces a couple of nasty prosthetic delights and boasts more ingenious production design and camerawork for its low budget than the original. Forget about the film's curmudgeonly one-star reputation; this is certainly the most hummable, quotable and repeatable entry in the series.

If the first film had all the nudity and the sequel all the fun, Slumber Party Massacre III, made under Corman's bottom-scraping New Concorde banner, has all the unpleasantry. It's a blunt retread of the original that literalizes the maniac's impotence and his reliance on the power drill as substitute for his limp manhood. The very first drill kill in this one involves a young woman cornered in her car, with her hands bound behind the headrest and the murder thrusting his drill pornographically. Once again, we have a female director looking for her break in Sally Mattison, as well as an intellectually-gifted writer in Harvard grad Catherine Cyran, but watching this queasy-making, assembly-line gorefest only makes me pine for the minor subtleties of Jones and Brown's original.

What else is there to say about the plot? Much like the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacres, it's plug-and-play-and-slay stuff in which a gaggle of close-bonded girls try to enjoy a night of revelry, are interrupted by their boy toys and end up falling prey to a vicious killer. The few cosmetic differences include: hostess Jackie Cassidy (Keely Christian) is selling her childhood home and the party is kind of a long goodbye; there is a hapless dork named Duncan (David Greenlee) filling the woobie position, who trades places with the pizza delivery girl (Marta Kober from Friday II) to assert himself into the party; two red herrings are on hand to provide devious glares; and there is a back story for the psycho involving Uncle Touchy, also a recently suicidal retired cop.

The character roster is overstuffed with uninteresting characters, as there are now seven spunky girls and five horny guys in attendance. Mattison has trouble managing her cast of twelve, and after duly isolating a couple off for a quick bumping off, there are at least seven survivors by the time panic ensues. This is about 30 minutes until the end of the film, which means the last act is a protracted, tedious chase sequence where some will conveniently stand off to the side whilst one of their ranks is assaulted. The villain will continually have objects broken over his head to slow him down, and even takes a bucket of bleach to the face, but the girls continue to stand around like idiots. And this is even when poor Maria (Maria Ford as one of the two characters who doff their tops) desperately tries to reason with and console the killer to delay her inevitable death. You start to miss the proactive courage of Trish Devereaux and the Bates sisters something fierce.

I don't get how anyone could say this is an improvement over SPM II. At least the women in that had personality and pep and were distinguishable by virtue of their musical hobby. They were so appealing, I myself fantasized about crashing their party. The chicks in this film seem utterly directionless and ditzy. It gets so dire that one character (played by Hope Marie Carlton, the fantasy girl in the waterbed from Nightmare on Elm Street 4) leaps through a glass pane out of defiance and commits suicide. I guess that's supposed to be funny, but the cynicism and brutishness prevalent throughout the rest of the movie just made this particular viewer want to say "Lucky lady. Give me Atanas Ilitch or give me death of Preppy Terminator already!"

Slumber Party Massacre III doesn't quite know the drill as much as either of the previous films and just ends up coming across as straight-up boring. That pun-heavy sentence both sums up my final thoughts about this flick as well as provides the one chuckle the film failed to give me. The poster is art is also amusing, in that none of the models who pose for it bear any resemblance to the film's stars, including the likes of Ford and Carlton. If Roger Corman doesn't care, why should I?

With only the original being planned for a BD upgrade, all three films can be found in Shout! Factory's The Slumber Party Massacre Collection DVD set, which in the company's proud tradition goes the extra mile in supplemental material. Each of the film's have their own full-length commentary track, moderated by diehard fan Tony Brown (webmaster over at the Old Hockstatter Place), and twenty-minute retrospective piece which recounts the experiences of working for the notoriously thrifty Corman, the juiciest anecdotes going to Deborah Brock and producer Don Daniel of SPM II. The mogul himself is missing, but the stories told do a good job of making you feel like he's monitoring your living room, too. Amy Holden Jones and Sally Mattison provide frank remembrances of their own, and we also get to hear from the likes of cast members Michael Villella, Debra Deliso, Brinke Stevens, Heidi Kozak, Juliette Cummins, Jennifer Rhodes, Brandi Burkett, Hope Marie Carlton, and Yan Birch. Also included are original red-band trailers and photo galleries corresponding to each entry.

Warlock (1989)

WARLOCK (1989)
(R, New World Pictures/Trimark Pictures, 103 mins., theatrical release date: January 11, 1991)

Time travel and Satan worship, two great tastes that go together in Warlock, one of the last New World Pictures productions which got a belated theatrical release two years after its completion. The former Corman house, several years after going public and branching out into video and television (thank them for Alan Spencer's cop comedy Sledge Hammer!), were in financial ruin after failed acquisitions and court cases deprived them of any gains they stood to earn from such successes as Soul Man or the Hellraiser series. Like Cannon Films, the dissolution of New World was a messy one, although unlike Golan/Globus, New World went out with a bang when they acquired Michael Lehmann's seminal teen comedy Heathers. They also had Warlock, but it was shelved until early 1991 when another independent company, Trimark Pictures, properly unleashed it to the world at large.

Producer/director Steve Miner had done two movies for the company in 1986 with the aforementioned Soul Man and the previously reviewed House, but here was perhaps the best of the three, a black magic take-off on the premises of Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time (1979) and James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) which shifted from Salem to SoCal as the forces of good and evil waged ancient war in modern times. Part of the reason Warlock worked so well was the casting of the primary combatants, two rising British talents in the form of Julian Sands and Richard E. Grant. Sands was already familiar thanks to notable parts in The Killing Fields, Gothic and the Mechant/Ivory drama A Room with a View, whereas Grant had made his debut in the cult classic Withnail and I. This was a considerable boon, as they play admirably straight characters who would've tempted a more winking treatment had they been instead filled by established superstars.

Sands and Grant admirably resist the allure of parody, playing cool and consistently their respective parts as the nameless Warlock and witchfinder Giles Redferne. The film opens during the supernatural scare in Massachusetts circa 1691, as the Warlock has been successfully captured and incarcerated for heresy by the dogged Redferne. On the eve of the prisoner's execution by funeral pyre (with cats for kindling, natch), the Devil throws a curve by whisking the Warlock away through a time-vortex twister, although Redferne catches wise and jumps in after him. Their destination is three centuries later in Los Angeles, where first the Warlock and then Redferne happen upon Kassandra (Lori Singer), a twenty-something Valley Girl waitress with diabetes who rents a room with the openly gay Chas (Kevin O'Brien).

No sooner have the two taken in the stray sorcerer than our villain literally plants the kiss of death on hapless Chas, eventually making his way to a dubious spiritualist played by the great Mary Woronov, an old guard from the New World (Death Race 2000, Rock 'n' Roll High School). She channels the spirit of the Devil against her will, informing the Warlock of his mission: to retrieve the scattered pages of the Grand Grimoire, the coveted anti-Bible which contains the true name of God which, when spoken backwards, can beget the apocalypse. Intrigued by the notion of becoming "the new messiah" (watch the theatrical trailer, where the line is taken from an unused alternate death which apparently also involved demonic eyes pasted over the psychic's nipples), the Warlock sets about collecting the various sheets starting at Kassandra's house, after she has already been introduced to and called the cops on Redferne.

The vain Kassandra is cursed to age twenty years per day thanks to his machinations, and has no choice but to bail out Redferne for help. The two reluctantly travel cross-country in an attempt to catch up with the witch, who has already murdered an Arizonan preteen (Brandon Call, the boy sidekick to Rutger Hauer from Blind Fury) of impure soul so that his fat can be harvested for flying potions and hidden in the basement of a Mennonite farm out in Colorado close to completing his task. The final pieces of the puzzle will take them back to the hallowed grounds of Boston, but can Redferne finish the job when his archenemy is more hellbent than ever before?

Figuratively speaking as an eighties B-movie enthusiast, Warlock is very much a witches' brew of a movie. Miner and screenwriter David "D.T." Twohy (co-creator of the Vin Diesel Riddick series) have all the proper ingredients to fit the recipe, especially when you factor the cast by itself: lips of Sands, larynx of Grant, legs of Lori, eyes of Mary (and yes, that's voice actor Rob "Yakko Warner" Paulsen in a walk-on role as a gas station clerk). Miner doesn't quite stir the pot with the kind of cackling vigor of a Witch Hazel, but instead relies upon the leisurely dry humor evident in all of his prior horror efforts. Case in point: the ironic cut from a severed tongue sizzling in a pan to Kassandra serving an omelet at her place of work, a joke which frankly would've gotten the point across without a cop immediately making the connection via interrogation. After the bottom-line bloodbaths of the Jason films and the broad farce of House, Miner is refreshingly droll with the basic tone of Warlock.

Twohy's script allows for Middle English and Malibu personalities to contrast against each other with aplomb. While Redferne sets up his witch compass in his first sudden, uninvited appearance at Kassie's ("Now, brute, one last time we play the game out"), she phones the emergency police line ("He's got a thing for blood...draw your own conclusions") with no intention of waiting for them to show up ("I'm skatin' right now!"). Redferne demands her to stay until the cops arrive, at which point he matches whips with tasers and is suitably outmatched. Kassandra is bewitched and fools herself that she can pass for 40 with a tennis skirt and a new dye job on her hair. The script has plenty of requisite references that show just how far out of time the ancient duo has come (The Wizard of Oz, faucets instead of wells), but this doesn't act as the movie's only source of comedy.

The visual effects are of a particularly rough quality, dependent on wires and bright orange opticals whenever the Warlock flies or lets loose with magic. Luckily for Miner, he doesn't lean too much on either, which is fine since he got some natural magic out of two proper actors in Julian Sands and Richard E. Grant. One of the more delightful tricks involves Kassandra nailing the Warlock's tracks as a means of crippling him, and Sands' agonizing screams get the point across with gusto. It should be said that Sands, here suggesting the heir to Malcolm McDowell's charismatic creepiness, makes a top-flight antagonist by virtue of his smolderingly Aryan good looks, wicked smirk and verbose grandiosity.

Although Sands returned for the first sequel in 1993, the hammier Anthony Hickox-directed Warlock: The Armageddon, missing from that film was an opposite number of Grant's caliber, a personality every bit as wry and wonderful as Sands was initially. Grant as the blue-eyed, fur-lined, God-fearing Redferne has an equally likely commanding presence and knack for character-specific subtleties that is truly dignified. Lori Singer's part is a bit less distinctive than that of the male leads, but she has a spacey comic timing and manages a solid job of her own.

Linger too long on Warlock and its ridiculousness becomes transparent, especially in the bizarre sight of Lori Singer in shoddy old-age facial make-up trying to limp about as a 60-year-old in her glittering leather miniskirt. The rubbery Richard Moll zombie from House looked more convincing. The true delight of Miner's film is in the way he and Twohy spin such a breezily entertaining chase pic out of superstitious sundries, from the painted-on hex mark outside the Mennonite barn attic to the various threats and colloquialisms dropped by the main characters. You've got to love how Redferne warns a priest of the imminent danger of the Warlock reversing all of God's designs into something akin to "Satan's black, Hell-besmeared farting hole," whereas that same man of cloth is later threatened by the witch to aid him lest his "children be born slugs of cold flesh."

In a word: Huzzah!

Warlock remains available on DVD in the American market specifically in a full-frame, bare bones release. A special edition would be a preference, especially considering how Jerry Goldsmith's colorful, ominous original score would benefit greatly from an isolated music track. Also, a crisp widescreen print mastered in HD would undo my murky VHS memories and bring new life to the film's rich scenery and production/costume designs. There are Blu-Ray releases from certain European territories, but this is something British distributors Arrow Video would do wise to explore for one of their own catalog titles. Chances are Lionsgate Home Entertainment in the U.S. won't be getting around to this one until the world ends. Must be the Devil, I don't know.

House (1986)

HOUSE

(R, New World Pictures, 92 mins., release date: February 28, 1986)

"Believe it or not, he's crawling the walls

He never thought he could feel so free-eee-eeeaked..."

Overburdened author Roger Cobb is having trouble getting both his career and his personal affairs in order. He's trying to make the transition from cheesy if popular horror titles to something more autobiographical, but too many inner demons have stalled his momentum. Cobb has recently been willed the house he grew up in after the suicide of his Aunt Elizabeth. Could her mysterious death have dampened his drive? Or is it something else, be it the dissolution of his marriage to a working actress, the unsolved disappearance of his son or the palpable grief over the death of a comrade during the Vietnam war?

Roger moves into his abandoned former home to find peace and solitude, but stranger things are about to happen. Something in this house knows his every weakness and unless he can conquer his fears, Roger's troubled mind might just be foreclosed permanently.

From the creators of Friday the 13th comes House, a deadpan, lightweight riff on the possessed house genre which borrows liberally from both the supernatural Amityville saga and the phantasmagoric A Nightmare on Elm Street. William Katt, The Greatest American Hero himself, suffers a fate worse than prom night with Carrie White as the beleaguered hero. The house preys on his subconscious gradually, beginning with the ghost of his aunt (Susan French) warning him to get out of the house for the sake of his own free will, all the while fashioning the noose around her neck. Recurring visits from grotesque creatures turn personal once they assume the form of Sandy (Kay Lenz), the soap star from whom he's currently divorced.

And his slipping grasp on reality is tested by levitating garden tools, a mounted marlin flapping loudly against the walls and the insistent snooping of his new neighbors, corpulent busybody Harold (George Wendt, TV's Norm) and vivacious knockout Tanya (Swedish pageant queen Mary Stavin).

The tone as adopted by director Steve Miner and screenwriter Ethan Wiley (based on a story by Fred Dekker, author of Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad) is one of somnambulant, stoic surrealism. Roger cracks early when he mounts a line of cameras to capture a gross poltergeist whilst dressed in his aged camouflage and runs out of the house, gliding down the front porch in premature victory only to find Harold standing startled. The awkward if well-meaning Samaritan tips off Sandy to Roger's madness and calls the cops after hearing a shotgun blast he assumes to be Roger attempting suicide. Alas, it's just Roger's mind, and the machinations of his Victorian digs, playing tricks on him.

House is very reminiscent of the concept for Stephen King's 1408, which became a movie in which John Cusack himself played a disillusioned writer spending time in an eerie isolated environment which plays practical jokes at the expense of his psychology. That Mikael Håfström film was a more earnest, roller coaster-style thrill ride that Steve Miner, who had directed the same year's Soul Man with C. Thomas Howell in blackface, doesn't quite predict. Instead, the movie jumps from one comical commotion to the next. Roger has to dispose a dead body whose dismembered hand crops up at the worst possible moments, namely when Tanya arrives asking him to babysit her son Robert. Alas, it's not so extreme he needs to call Bruce Campbell for back-up, instead buttressed with covers of R&B staples "You're No Good" and "Dedicated to the One I Love."

Roger's scattered memories of the Vietnamese tour of duty which he's trying to translate to literature finally make sense by the final act, when the bony zombie of a captured grunt named Big Ben (Richard Moll, TV's Bull) is revealed to the source of Roger's deepest anxiety. The reckless, overeager soldier is still stewed that his brother-in-arms didn't kill him before the enemies put him in torture camp. The stakes suddenly become too high for Miner to deal with, as the previous events have all been tinged with sardonic, sitcom-style inconsequence. Never mind the rubber-bodied Ben looks like a wimp compared to Kane Hodder's hulking Jason from Friday the 13th Part VII, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance (the legendary stuntman himself worked on this project).

House is the diametric opposite of the portentous family dramas found in any of the three Amityville adventures from prior. The heroically V-necked William Katt doesn't quite give the impression of someone gone completely unhinged, even when he frets over possibly killing his demure if caring ex-wife. Like Wendt and Moll's supporting characters, the handsome small-screen Superman plays the King-style lead with enough reserve to keep the film's comedic tone afloat. And House is primarily a farce when you get right down to it, not particularly nightmarish but genial and ghoulish enough to have become enough of an item that it spawned three sequels, the most extreme of which was the unofficially-titled third entry The Horror Show from 1989.

Watching it now, I confess that I find House less charming than fellow Class of ‘86 horror-comedies Night of the Creeps, TerrorVision, April Fool's Day, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Luckily, there is a modicum of slight if smirking gallows humor and many subtle touches of insanity to entertain. And Steve Miner seems proud enough of it to have made a rare appearance in world of DVD bonus features, recording a group commentary with Katt, Sean Cunningham, and Ethan Wiley. Alas, you need to seek out the OOP Anchor Bay edition for this addition, as Image Entertainment's "Midnight Madness Series" reissue drops every single extra from the older release, even the Percy Rodrigues-narrated theatrical trailer.