Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street

SCREAM, QUEEN! MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
(NR, Virgil Films, 99 mins., DVD release date: March 3, 2020)

SCREAM, QUEEN! MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET only feels like it has taken five years to complete to those who were in the know when it was originally conceived as “There Is No Jesse” for its initial crowd-funding campaign. For me, however, it feels like it double that time, a complete beginning-to-end decade.

It all began when I bought Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy on DVD way back in 2010. I was in my mid-twenties and still posting reviews on Epinions, so the review I did write and submit to the IMDb is lost to time now. Daniel Farrands, Thommy Hutson and Andrew Kasch did such a fantastic job in providing a thorough series rundown, yet the big draw for me was hearing about the first official sequel to Wes Craven's legendary slasher film. And the best surprise of all was the participation of the lead actor of Freddy's Revenge himself:

Full disclosure: I got to meet Mark Patton in 2014 at Texas Frightmare Weekend as part of a micro-reunion including himself, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Marshall Bell, and Jack Sholder. And then there was Crypticon Minnesota 2016, which had just Patton & Myers, but also some real bucket list personalities, among them Jill Schoelen, Suzanne Snyder, Thom Mathews, and Chris Mulkey. That TFW shindig inspired me to write about A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge on my blog in anticipation of the movie's 30th anniversary. If only October 2016, which was when I went to Crypticon, was a time when the pure elation I felt could overpower the madness that had lasted the entire year. But it was mere weeks away from the seismic cultural change that was going to end a merciless calendar year, in which there were so many blows to the gut, with the knockout hook.

And now it's 2020. The spring of the quarantine. Ever since I got to meet Mark Patton, I imagined getting to see the documentary about his quest for peace with the role that made him both a cult hero and an undeserving pariah would coincide with my own picking up of the pieces from what I pray is the end of a four-year shitshow. And I fear the worst is not over. That for as excited as I am to watch Patton relate his real life story, 2016 could last until 2024. I am not ready for that. As much as I adore my signed copies of Jesse's Lost Journal and the Scream, Queen! poster, as deep the well of respect I have had for Patton as speaker and activist ever since Never Sleep Again, for the inspiration I have received in 2014 that I am paying back once again now...

I might be running down the tunnel chasing that light for a just a bit longer.

I hope I don't have to keep writing these anxious preambles every go 'round. We now live in a world where Never Sleep Again co-director Daniel Farrands decided films like The Haunting of Sharon Tate and The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson were what the world needs the most. Point is, though things can get worse than they are, getting to buy Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street on Vudu (alongside Fat City and Moonstruck, no less) is one of the perks of social distancing.

To get across why I was jazzed about Scream, Queen! for so long, I have to transcribe a couple of quotes from Mark Patton that were featured on the second disc of outtakes from Never Sleep Again:

“Hollywood is terribly homophobic, especially the homosexuals inside of Hollywood. They're the first to make fun of, to denigrate, to try to sabotage other gay people, especially gay actors...I think I would have been decimated, and I think the things about my gayness would have come out in the press in a really horrible way.”

The first half of Scream, Queen! elaborates on these statements with biographical detail. The Missouri-born Patton had a dream at age 4 that he was to be wed to a king, growing up comfortable with his sexual orientation even as he knew the dangers of rural prejudice. When he was 17, he left for New York City with little over $100 to his name, boarding in a hotel/brothel and lucking into a couple of national commercials (Big Red, Mountain Dew) before making it to Broadway. In Robert Altman's stage and screen adaptation of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Mark Patton played Joe Qualley, who experiences that all-too-real brand of violent antipathy towards being seen as one of the girls. Swaying and snapping along to the McGuire Sisters' chart-topping cover of the doo-wop stalwart “Sincerely,” Joe is the male Disciple in a band of women who worship James Dean. But he soon disappears from McCarthy to escape from both bullying locals and his unrequited love, only to resurface 20 years later as the transsexual Joanne, the very name his tormentors bestowed upon him.

Emboldened by the rapturous audience reaction and welcoming professional/social environs of Manhattan, Mark Patton drove to Hollywood seeking equal opportunities. But renewing his five-year plan for the West Coast, what Patton goes through ends his acting career abruptly. In his present-day testimonials, Patton adamantly reminds straight and homosexual audiences that to be a gay performer in the mid-1980s was far from nurturing. You had to consent to a blood test in order to fully pass the audition once AIDS ballooned into a pandemic (Rock Hudson himself died a month before Freddy's Revenge premiered). Agents were telling you which clothes were acceptable with which to pass as a red-blooded American hetero. Religious fanatics and bigots spun an autoimmune virus into a stigma. Nobody was free to embrace their gayness in the public eye and gossip rags like the National Enquirer were invading many people's privacy looking to out them as such. Friends you had could turn up six months later looking like animate corpses, and if you heard nothing about them within a year, you assumed they were dead.

These were the horrors Mark Patton faced firsthand once he was cast as Jesse Walsh in the rushed-into-competion sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street (trivia: Patton screen tested for the role of Glen Lantz, Nancy Thompson's boyfriend, which went to a first-timer named Johnny Depp). Screenwriter David Chaskin's possession-oriented concept was approved by Bob Shaye when he and Wes Craven had their falling out, but despite a two-month refinement period, Patton says Chaskin's script was still being punched-up on the set. And what the writer seized on was an allegory that was close to the bone for the gay male community.

When I reviewed A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 in 2014, I really wanted to do it with fresher eyes. But the film's reputation is inescapable, as comment threads and clickbait articles and that 2010 documentary have branded it upon my psyche. Yes, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge appears to have been tricked out with a LOT of gay themes and codifiers. And though Robert Englund reprised his role (after some initial resistance), this sequel got swept under the rug like it was Halloween III, the source of ironic ribbing ever since it outperformed the original at the box office. We can laugh about the absurdity of it all today, but when the film came out, critics and patrons alike were noticing the exact same peculiarities. And what damaged Mark Patton was the fact that nobody wanted to accept responsibility for the gay subtext, thrusting (erm...) the burden onto the actor at the worst sociopolitical time. His handlers told him upfront that while he could carry a film, he couldn't act “straight” (like the two male leads of The Last American Virgin who basically played the same exact roles throughout the '80s and have since come out of the closet?) Chaskin pussyfooted around the intention of his gay subtext for years, and, inadvertently or not, threw Patton under the bus, claiming his acting completely heightened it. If that weren't enough, Patton's on-and-off partner, Dallas heartthrob Timothy Patrick Murphy, was a casualty of AIDS and passed away on December 6, 1988.

All I can say is that, well...”I Am Jesse.” I opened my article expressing my deepest fears for the future, and though I am now 36, I frequently feel like I am that sullen boy alone on the bus, trying to crack a window as we are heading towards the desert inferno.

Arlene Marechal & Heather Langenkamp's I Am Nancy (2011) was a slick indie documentary that documented a Final Girl as Woman, touring the convention circuit and asking intriguing questions about how we decided to make a creepy child molester in a dirty sweater and fedora an icon. Surely, Langenkamp's Nancy Thompson was the relatable hero who declared autonomy over her fate and vanquished Freddy at the end of Craven's film. We saw something similar in Lisa Wilcox's portrayal of Alice Johnson in the fourth and fifth entries. And say what you will about Freddy's Dead, but Lisa Zane as Maggie Burroughs, psychiatrist and Krueger brood herself, continued such an honorable precedent. Freddy's Revenge had that, too, in Kim Myers as Lisa Webber, but what made Lisa's survival so much more unique and urgent was the plight of Jesse Walsh. Jesse ends up killing his best male buddy, Ron Grady (Robert Rusler), before the cabana massacre and is madly trying to convince Lisa that he is powerless to stop Freddy's continued takeover of his body (“I got blood on my hands!”).

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street threads together tales of Patton's past life in Hollywood with the due resurgence of Freddy's Revenge fandom among young LGBTQ darlings who got their first glimpse of a gay bar the moment Jesse sleepwalked into the wrong place at the wrong time, beginning Freddy's rampage with the outrageous dispatching of Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell, whose bared buttocks was also an anomaly in slasher films). San Francisco drag legend Peaches Christ, fellow hostess Knate Higgins and University of Colorado Denver film studies professor Andrew Scahill provide articulated insight into the legacy of Freddy's Revenge, with Bill Nugent and Jeffrey Marcus helping to flesh out Patton's mid-1980s recollections. And the principal Freddy's Revenge cast/crew who I've mostly met in my own convention adventures, from director Jack Sholder to Robert Englund himself, are all refreshingly candid.

The beating heart of the story belongs to the criminally unsung Mark Patton, and for as generous as he is behind the booth, he is no less beautiful as he is pushing 60. Leaving the industry to become an interior decorator and live “off the grid,” Patton himself would be diagnosed as HIV-positive, and the stories of his troubled treatment (from a tuberculosis-related interference to the AZT regiment that was near fatal) keep the film further harrowing. Having controlled the virus, Patton headed down south to Puerto Vallarta to open up a Prada-esque business, met the Hispanic love of his life in Hector Morales and never looked back, until the makers of Never Sleep Again broke through to him.

The documentary builds to the meeting Patton has been long anticipating as a chance for closure, the one with David Chaskin himself, looking for straight (come on, John!) answers as to why Chaskin denied owning the gay elements he later claimed were intentional and a mea culpa for the hurtful things that were said on record about Patton. Somehow, the revival of Patton's purpose in life and desire to use his platform for the protection and instruction of the newer generation of gays feels resonant to all of us progressive genre nuts. And Chaskin himself, whom Jack Sholder believes Mark may be putting too much of an emotional premium on, does take into account Patton's perspective despite not living up to expectations. It's the ultimate feel-good ending, and it ends with a cute little nod to the famed Bob Shaye coda.

Since 2014, Patton has tipped his toes back into acting sporadically in genre fare, starting with Family Possessions (2016), where he co-starred with Sleepaway Camp cult queen Felissa Rose. Scream, Queen! does create a sense of empathy within the viewer which requires you to understand why Patton's integrity and health were once so painfully at risk. As I said before, the Mark Patton of the 2010s is a delightful, honest and sensitive soul. Credit Scream, Queen! directors Roman Chimenti & Tyler Jensen for molding the footage with emotional consistency, even if the sum of the quilt is less than the feel of the fabric. This duo's doc hits harder than both I Am Nancy and Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films combined, and if you think that's me being tickled a little too pink, understand too that we who have seen Freddy's Revenge know how Mark Patton screams. Now it's our turn.

Enchantéd: The Amityville Murders (For Diane Franklin on her 58th birthday)

Enchantéd: A Retrospective Tribute to Diane Franklin

Part X: The Amityville Murders (2018)

(R, Skyline Entertainment)

Consider the following article my present to Diane Franklin on her 58^th birthday. I have to admit that it took me longer than I hoped for to restart this tribute to the woman, if only because I've spent six years in a kind of existential limbo. Many unfortunate situations have befallen me ever since the nightmare year of 2016, and when I turned 30 a couple years prior, I had my first painful gut feeling about my future as a writer. For someone who has been trying to mature and give life to his dream craft, I observed too much regression and ignorance and insularity, and from all sides. People who I respected for their smarts or their hearts or even for just simple enthusiasm turned out to be closet nasties, with social media exposing their very hypocrisies and corruption.

Quality of life decreased sharply and didn't seem to improve as time went on. I had gotten to the point where the depression was too strong, and I left social media in 2016 for the purpose of clearing my head and then regarded what should have been a healthy return as a big mistake. I could not shake the continued realization of just how disgusted, disillusioned and discouraged I was in the company of two-faced acquaintances who were deadly smug in their noxious attitudes and behavior. I took a lot of abuse out on myself because I let myself take certain people seriously. Even when I tried to make it out in public, using an event in Stockton as an example, there was one certified cult icon who I met for the first time, but who confused me with someone else, someone he himself hated. I was in a bit of shell shock, and said simply, "I'm not that person." But the world around me had changed so much, that even if I was not that person, it was better to perceive and assume.

The event ended awfully for me, with one more supposed "friend" betraying me, although I had thicker skin at the time because I could see that he was a troll in male nurse's scrubs. He was a gay man living in Ceres, CA, with a partner who was critically ill, but also someone with misdirected emotions, and thus was susceptible to the worst kind of cult misanthropy. He was the kind of person who struck me as, to quote Maynard James Keenan, a "smiley glad hand with hidden agendas," and I desperately wanted to cut those people out of my life. I wonder sometimes if he has wizened up, but I don't dwell on it too much. It was just another disappointment in a long string of them, and I had to take another powder.

I was inconsolable for the most part, trying my damnedest to soldier on despite knowing full well that this sense of alienation was growing stronger. The longer I tried to keep a profile, the more I was seeing the very same smug piety in the people I was trying to present myself to. I came into film criticism and hoped it would resemble the "adulting" process: full of drudgery, to be true, but also ripe with discovery and people who would find similar joy in variety and expansion. It didn't happen that way: the internet is but a series of security blanket niche communities, unquestioning and repetitive and hardly as adventurous as I expected. I was seeing mediocrity or worse placed on pedestals, taken as ritual, damn near made the Golden Rule. And respectfully disagreeing, in the most tactful of comments, wasn't endearing me. I wanted to be as much a loudmouth as the next person, but I hated myself more for it, and my confidence was already depleting to near-nothing.

2016 set me on the path to a very clear epiphany, and it was this: I didn't want to be a part of any cults anymore. Even ones I was most active in, these communities were basically what Jello Biafra described in The Dead Kennedys' "Chickenshit Conformist," as "closed-minded, self-centered social clubs." Everything felt homogenized and trivialized and masturbatory to a breaking point, and the eternal misfit within me wanted to leave again. So I closed down my Twitter page, and further pruned Facebook to what was to be only my ten best high school friends. What happened to me is reminiscent of all that I found disreputable in the online environment, but there was no peace I could find. Everybody just wanted their egos stroked, and there was no such thing as genuine discourse.

There was one person who was caught in the emotional crossfire, and unforgivably so, given just how essential she meant to me for so long. Her name was Diane Franklin.

This photo was taken at the 2019 Los Angeles Hollywood Show, an event which I couldn't attend without the participation of my closest friend, John Grigg. Alas, he had moved to the Philippines soon after, and we now compare hardships through Messenger, although at least he had good reason to leave. In 2018, I lost my uncle to a heart attack brought on by prescription medicine. Almost a year later, I watched my grandmother succumb to dementia, having a fatal stroke on the day she was supposed to see a doctor. Even my pet chihuahua, a brown beauty named Rosie, couldn't survive because of a bum ticker. Unable to leave Mesa myself, I rented out the two empty rooms my departed family members occupied to a couple of Millennial manchildren, which means I get to hear the n-word frequently over nightly Xbox benders (to say nothing of the boring ass white boy cover of Sia's "Chandelier" played on a loop). And though I am out of touch with the online world now, I can't avoid hearing more tragic news about our best and brightest passing away. 2016 was a tough one to handle, but I have to dole out R.I.P.s no less frequently, be it for Scott Walker, Rutger Hauer, Roky Erickson, Daniel Johnston, Rip Torn, Rip Taylor, Ric Ocasek, Danny Aiello, Marie Fredriksson (from Roxette), and most recently, the titanic Neil Peart of Rush.

Even when I met Diane Franklin at that L.A. show, it was unavoidable that we would mention the departures of Louisa Moritz, who was the nympho Charo from The Last American Virgin, and James Ingram, the voice behind the Quincy Jones track “Just Once” which was used so much on that movie's soundtrack. I managed to rediscover an old SCTV episode, largely a network-based parody of The Godfather, where Ingram mimed that tune on Count Floyd's “3-D House of Beef,” ending with the singer getting his own in-your-face lampoon. The three members of Rush were no doubt fans of that great sketch comedy troupe, and I remember Geddy Lee made a reference to Mayor Tommy Shanks, played by the gone-but-never-forgotten John Candy, in a comical “dinner” short of their own. Canada, you're alright!

When Neil Peart wrote the lyrics to “Limelight,” a song from the perspective of a renowned musician “living in a fisheye lens,” he stressed the importance of barriers as a means of sanity. I put them up, Diane Franklin has put them up, it does work as long as you have a healthy perspective. Yet something stirred within me that I wonder what Peart would make of: this stranger suddenly made an honest-to-goodness, if not long-awaited, friend. Diane Franklin and I became great supporters of each other, and every piece I wrote about her movies are a testament to the genuine feelings I have towards Diane as a human being. And what I love about writing these is that I don't see Diane Franklin solely as an icon of the 1980s, though she is certainly packaged as that every time she makes a convention appearance or signs on to “'80s in the Sand.” I see her as a very talented and warm lady, compassionate and perky and droll and practical and playful and someone who is always a treat to talk to and spend time with. Given the parameters of our communication, I adore Diane Franklin with every fiber of my human being.

But I am out of the loop now, and it is a very melancholy development. For someone who was so excited about Diane's future, as well as that of her daughter Olivia DeLaurentis, cutting out social media not only limits my ability to network as a writer, but also leaves me cold to the endeavors of these two incredible women. Diane has so many upcoming roles to watch out for, and Olivia is still doing comedy with Sydney Heller and even getting her own feature film shot with producer Kimberley Kates, Diane's fellow princess from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It also didn't help that switching computers last year resulted in a sudden crash upon file transference, which means a lot of convention photos, and ones of me and Olivia in the same room, now lie rotting on an internal hard drive. Kimberley, too...and Kimmy Robertson, Adrienne Barbeau, Marilyn Burns, Virginia Madsen, and so many others. Sometimes I am accused of being too hard on myself, but FML just the same.

All this needed to be said before I summon up my courage and allow myself the chance to watch THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS, which is Diane Franklin's first widely-distributed film role since not only Bill & Ted, but also How I Got Into College, and her performance in Savage Steve Holland's third film seems to have been her recurring character in the short films Diane produced for Olivia. In a few weeks to day I am starting this review, Diane Franklin will be turning 58. Soon, I will be 36. And yet I cannot stop following my heart when the route leads to Diane, because I cherish her beyond comprehension. This should create conflicts of interest, but I hope that I was sufficiently clear-eyed in my past pieces on her, and if you follow me on Letterboxd, you will know that I have been open about my opinions about her filmography.

As it stands, I gave four stars to what I consider my favorite Diane Franklin movie, and you will be surprised to learn that it is the made-for-TV Summer Girl. This is the performance for me that exemplifies all that is not only sexy but superb about Franklin's screen presence. There is so much range that she demonstrates, and I always get a kick out of seeing someone so gorgeous playing such a demented, diabolical villain. I hope for a remastered DVD release, so it will do some justice to cinematographer Fred Koenekamp, who in his prime did Francis Coppola's Patton and Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in the same year.

Better Off Dead and TerrorVision, the latter of which has what I think to be another great Diane Franklin performance, both were rated one notch below, so they were graded 3.5/5. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't watched Better Off Dead since the inauguration of our real life Roy Stalin, but for as big a fan I am of Holland's debut, and the film which made me fall in love with Diane Franklin as a boy, I just want people to realize that Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, which launched John Cusack as a leading man, might possess an edge in terms of the onslaught of teen comedies from 1985. That phenomenally charming romantic comedy may not have the catchphrases and stoopid gags that are admittedly priceless in Better Off Dead, but it too had a heart and even better chemistry among Cusack & Zuniga.

Second Time Lucky (and Deadly Lessons, another two-star decision despite the fine Ally Sheedy and the late Bill Paxton in supporting roles) is where I start to feel less certain about Franklin's past work. It's too cute and unambitious for its own good, and maybe it does play like another transparent chance to admire Diane Franklin in the buff, but her Jean Harlow impression is too irresistible for me to write that one off completely. And I do cop some uncomplicated arousal from Franklin in that film, whereas both The Last American Virgin and Amityville II: The Possession, the films that introduced her to the world, are repellent in insidious ways. These are films that I find a lot of people condescend to in their appreciation, and watching Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films only made like Boaz Davidson's film less than I did when I was 19, initially giving it a cold two stars.

It's that abortion sequence, the camera ogling Diane Franklin as she removes her panties even as it pans up to Karen's scared face. And the cutaway to the pizza being sliced. That kind of tastelessness I don't find celebratory. If we can knock Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds for their dated and off-putting sexual politics, then I don't see why something equally sickening should be ignored. Furthermore, it's the films I watched later which confirmed my initial turn-offs to The Last American Virgin, and not just Davidson's first two homegrown sequels to Lemon Popsicle, the foreign film that people don't know was remade to be Franklin's inaugural cult classic. It was the coming-of-age cornerstone Summer of '42, which laid bare just how derivative the characterizations of the male leads and many of the sniggering sex gags truly were, and also John Duigan's 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke, which starred very young performers (including Aussie character actors Noah Taylor and Ben Mendelsohn) and was also a period piece like the original Lemon Popsicle, dealing with mad teenage infatuation and unrequited love. Yet it had all the graces (character development, comfortable silence, adults who weren't all dunces) Davidson forever lacked as a writer/director, and came across more honest than to be just another mean-spirited quickie pandering to its adolescent audience (“See it or be it,” indeed).

I can't say I anticipate a remake of The Last American Virgin. I get the hunch that the late James Ingram's soulful voice will be replaced by the overwrought crowing of Lewis Capaldi at the end. Blame it on one of my roommates playing “Someone You Loved” to absolute death already, but I can't call that song nowhere close as successful as “Just Once.” Quincy and Jimmy had Brill Building team Mann/Weill as composers, and they also wrote "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin.'" Even if Capaldi's song is on the nose enough to fit, it is not a particularly dignified expression of the particular form of heartbreak which capped off The Last American Virgin, and it's going to make the remake actively worse.

Which brings me to Amityville II: The Possession and, by proxy, THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS. You know, I am proud of the pieces that I wrote for Diane Franklin's 1982 flicks, because they weren't as overbearingly negative as they could have been. But I cannot bring myself to give either more than a 1.5/5. Let Siskel & Ebert be remembered for their unfairly scathing review of Better Off Dead, but also know that Gene elected that sequel (“or was it a prequel?”) as one of the Stinkers of 1982. And I get it more than I do his opinion on Better Off Dead. Compared to the rest of the series, its repulsiveness and opportunism and nihilism certainly makes it stand out compared to its slew of DTV successors. But oh, Diane Franklin does have a bit of a questionable legacy. I can still remember Rhett's observation from HorrorDVDs.com:

“Sonny first flirts with his sister Patricia, then gets her to undress, then has sex with her, and then calls her a slut throughout the rest of the picture. It is incredibly uncomfortable viewing, and as if the clash between suspense-driven and effects-driven horror weren’t enough, the incest flavoring makes the film even more of a head-scratcher...As if it weren’t bad enough that Diane Franklin gets raped by her brother, it is also discovered late in the film that (surprise!) the priest was also leering for her virginal body. Between being leered at by her brother and priest in Amityville II, and impregnated by her irresponsible boyfriend in her other 1982 debut, The Last American Virgin, actress Diane Franklin may just be the teen queen of misogyny.”

Rhett's frank commentary on Diane Franklin's exploitation beginnings sounds like a Malcolm X speech compared to what a Bill Chambers or Jack Sommersby or even a Kim Newman would write, and it does have more truth. Besides, didn't Rick call Karen a whore in the library? The old virgin-whore dichotomy served up for hipsters aiming to one-up the old critics who once called a spade a spade. This ain't no party at all. And Diane Franklin deserved better, as Newman pointed out in his review of THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS.

(Save your TL;DRs, I'm about to transition here.)

Daniel Farrands is certainly an Amityville II fanboy, else why would Diane Franklin be coaxed into making her comeback in the very role Rutanya Alda played back when? There's even Burt Young, although our Anthony Montelli is now Paul Ben-Victor. It's on brand for Farrands, who along with partner Thommy Hutson bankrolled several comprehensive horror franchise retrospectives. In between their Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street exposés, they also produced an independent film called The Trouble With the Truth alongside its leading actress, Lea Thompson. And I recommend that film even if you never once lusted after Zoey Deutch's mom; it's a career-best performance, dialogue-driven but full of honest emotion and nuance, to match Lorraine Baines or Miss Amanda Jones.

I'm learning that Thommy Hutson in particular really loves the scream queens of his youth and has been doing them solids in the industry over and over. I never saw Prank, which was directed by Halloween 4 & 5 stars Danielle Harris (who gets to share the opening scene of The Trouble with the Truth with John Shea) & Ellie Cornell as well as Heather Langenkamp (I can only dream of doing for Diane Franklin what Hutson does for Langenkamp), but my positive response to Amanda Wyss in Hutson's own The Id is on record. And now Farrands in the position to make Diane Franklin come alive on the screen in such a fresh, fascinating way like Lea Thompson or Heather Langenkamp or Amanda Wyss. I am so pumped up that these women have starring/directing/producing roles that are revelatory in a way that proves you don't need only a Tarantino to reward their longevity and professionalism.

If you could imagine me shuffling my feet in the presence of Lea or Diane or Amanda, think of how I'm finally getting to THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS after Daniel Farrands unveiled his followups, The Haunting of Sharon Tate and The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. Then watch me turn and run. As Lionel Richie once sang: “Oh no.” I need to see The Final Interview or Waking Nightmare to reassure myself that there's such a thing as an up to go to.

Farrands takes off from the DeFeo family massacre just like Amityville II: The Possession did, but there have been differences made in the past 25 years besides Franklin aging enough to play the materfamilias. Dino De Laurentiis has given way to Jason Blum. We are no longer plagiarizing The Exorcist, but instead Paranormal Activity and its progeny. Computers do all the dirty work as opposed to technicians. But there are similarities to go with the changes. George Lutz remains a hoax perpetrator, and it's equally tough these days to entertain demonic possession as the catalyst for “Butch” DeFeo's homicidal mania. The more pressing reasons, particularly that toxic household of neurotic relatives, are reduced to caricature. And there's more speculation than immersion to be taken in; though callous incest is no longer a factor, there's a lot of shady mafia ties and dealings to provide non-credence to a claim from the real life Butch.

Farrands has, based on the uniform reception of his three directorial efforts, tried for an unholy mixture of morbid elements, perhaps bucking for that camp value dollar. There are authentic photos and phone calls from the documented tragedies buffering nods to conspiracy theories and conflicting 'n' shifting testimonies, an unappetizing Butterball which is then stuffed with slasher/spookshow conventions, all at store brand prices. Overheated acting cooks the bird, and indiscriminate horror enthusiasts are tasked with the feast. With THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS, at least, the pumpkin pie is served before dinner, as this marketing still will prove:

Hard as it is to believe, I don't have a pin-up of fifty-something Diane Franklin hanging on my walls, but the temptation to bust out the tacks is hard to fight. Diane is a naturally gorgeous guiding light, and I always will acknowledge that in the interest of friendship. But what about the performance behind the portrait?

She plays Louise DeFeo with an accent I haven't heard from her before, that of your atypical Italian-American from Long Island, a description you can levy upon the DeFeo family here. The grandparents are played by Burt Young and surprising fixture Lainie Kazan (My Favorite Year and Lust in the Dust), so she's in good company. The opening credits present home movie footage, narrated by teen daughter Dawn (Chelsea Ricketts) on her 18^th birthday, and though it's clear this is a cutthroat clan in which the father, Ronnie Sr. (Paul Ben-Victor), aims to lord over everyone in orbit with brute force (even trying to dominate Burt Young, who is having none of it), these are comparatively peaceful times. The exposition even affords Kazan a chance to insult repressed Louise's recipe for marinara sauce ("It tastes like your father's old socks").

Dawn DeFeo is a far more normal girl than Patricia Montelli ever was, with a circle of friends she takes to the red room that was the childhood hiding place for she and her twin brother Ronnie Jr. (John Robinson), aka "Butch." Butch himself doesn't come across half as unwieldy as Sonny; he's relatably sullen and rich with shaggy facial hair that is authentic enough to support comparisons to George Lutz. The teens have their own séance in the red room with grandma Nona's book of black magic, and one of the loutish boys breaks the ice with an Exorcist reference. But Ronnie Sr. soon poops all over their party, and goes one further in his physical abuse of his son compared to Anthony Montelli, rolling his belt around his fist and socking Butch in the nose.

Farrands does these scenes far better than Damiani did, and the DeFeo dynamic cuts deeper than the Montellis' cruel fate, especially since Amityville II writer Tommy Lee Wallace can be too nihilistic in his horror efforts (including Halloween III). The performances by Ben-Victor, Robinson and Ricketts are also given more weight compared to Young, Jack Magner and even the younger Diane Franklin. But then Butch notices his father being paid off by some organized crime types, the first in a bizarre motif, and combined with the supernatural elements introduced earlier in the red room, the focus begins to zig and zag unsatisfactorily.

Butch begins hearing those familiar white noise whispers of evil, and while he's out in the pouring rain having sex in his birthday-gifted car with Donna (Rebekah Graf), he asks for a tab of acid and experiences a violent hallucination which causes him to kick Donna out of the car. It's like a twist on the way the demon from Amityville II assumed Patricia's form to accuse Adamsky of lechery. But then the camera pans up to that 112 Ocean Avenue architecture, with those lit rooms as staring eyes. And I have to admit, though it is an image to remember, I was getting a bit worried about the film's catchall ambiguity.

The next morning, Louise learns whilst collecting laundry that Butch has been kicked out of college. If that weren't enough, she comes across heroin paraphernalia and a diary full of ominous ink blots in Butch's nightstand. All the while, the house is creaking and sputtering like it's announcing complicity in these antisocial revelations; a pigeon even kamakazies itself against the door, and Louise is ready to bash it with a rock until it dies on its own. Cut to Halloween 1974. We get a fraction of time to know the youngest of the DeFeo children (one of the more undernourished aspects of the story) before sickly Butch is left alone with his demons and is presumed to have trashed the house, with the familiar inscription of "PIG" on a mirror and dad's dirty money missing from the safe.

THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS pursues this alternating structure I've attended to quite stoically, with scenes of domestic quarrel giving way to worn-out tropes involving Ouija boards, levitating bed sheets and creeping Steadicams. At some point, I wanted more for these very good actors to do than to just go through the same traveling roadshow haunted house. Even Diane Franklin herself, who makes Louise incredibly gorgeous even at her most dowdy. Her face has unmistakably aged, and it will come as a shock to those who idealized Diane's younger appearances, but it's a dignified and darling process in her case. The stage is set for the adult performance Diane Franklin never gave after leaving fickle showbiz at the start of the 1990s. But Louise is another relatively thankless role, her interactions with other characters mostly shows of fretful hysteria. Diane's innate charisma and playfulness kind of gets the shaft (even in Amityville II, there were moments where she grabbed your heart away from the sleaziness), and there is a potential for depth that is compromised. That regal portrait of Louise I showed earlier never rubs off on the script.

It takes 48 minutes before Butch finally picks up that shotgun for the first time, stirred by his dad's callous abuse of Dawn (she is bent over the kitchen table to make a lewd point to her “hippie” friends) and Louise (whose hands are scalded by boiling water and whose stomach takes a sharp elbowing). Daniel Farrands' slow burn approach is admittedly far superior to the Amityville II school of smash-and-grab plotting, and that outburst is followed by Louise's portentous monologue of togetherness ("I see the end coming. A terrible, beautiful end"). All of a sudden, Diane Franklin kills it, especially in the way Louise, who is ready to pack up and take the kids, calls out her pious husband for misplaced religious beliefs ("Butch is not the devil, he's your son!").

Dawn is also distressed enough to want to spirit her brother to safety, given that dad would rather send him to Bellevue. The $500,000 of lost mob money turns up as Butch slides further into dementia, walking around empty rooms as shadowy figures stalk him. We all know where this is going, and if the film wants to leave us with the visceral gut punch of the mass killings, the story needs to demonstrate economy. Instead, we get a loopy "last supper" from which Dawn is absent and the grisly visions keep negging him, his family coming across as refugees from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and escape being magically impossible. The film can't stop dawdling, producing a numbing effect that actively negates the real tensions that have kept the thin plot afloat. There are moments of psychological unease that needed to be drastically streamlined.

When the inevitable finally occurs, and those poor souls sleeping with their faces down get blown away, the result is sloppy. Louise dies with rosary clutched in hand, but the symbolism is unearned, and the pain I would've felt at the murder of Dawn DeFeo is equally undone. If it hasn't already been inferred, Farrands winds up with too much inconsistency that it undercuts his fascination with this true story, trying to stay true to the Amityville brand while reminding us that barbarism, indeed, begins at home. Thus, the true finale of the film is not the collage of vintage newsreels and photos of the DeFeos, but the introduction of the house to the Lutz family, thus handing over the mantle to a far more dubious reality.

It's all so much and yet too half-baked to digest. I felt the same way about The Last American Virgin, which couldn't square the overbearingly smug juvenile humor with the soppy attempt to humanize its teen cartoons. It just didn't really possess true integrity for that tonal shift, and I am left similarly puzzled by THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS. And I honestly believe Farrands to be the better filmmaker, too. I'm not anticipating the Sharon Tate and Nicole Brown Simpson movies by any measure, but I am thankful he didn't make such a travesty to compare with Amityville II: The Possession. His touch, however, is heavy-handed when compared to a movie like The Id, and more rigid in structure. It's not the CG phenomena or the rampant tackiness of its DTV-level period recreations that strains my critical eye. It's the poor form.

And thus I end up looking forward to Diane Franklin in the future once again. Given all that has gone wrong, chances are it'll be I stumble upon her next movie by serendipity, or at least I hope to given I disconnected from so many circles, hers included. I keep yearning for some kind of happy return, but the last time I tried, it was the bane of my battered soul. And it still haunts me. But Diane Franklin was never the problem, because her support has kept me going for the longest time. If this is to be my birthday present to a woman who values my friendship, I have to end it by wishing her a great 58 and to make one more wish for myself on April 3.

Diane Franklin, I hope to rediscover you through all this masquerade and somehow stay in a state of grace with you. I believe there's a ghost of a chance. R.I.P. Neil Peart, and Happy Birthday, Dear Diane.

(P.S. I hope those who get those that particular Rush reference will make the connection to Better Off Dead.)

Hellmaster (Them)

HELLMASTER (aka THEM)
(R, Dolphin Entertainment Group, 92 mins., release date: September 16, 1992)

"God Is Dead," sayeth Friedrich Nietzsche at the start of multi-hyphenate Douglas Schulze's HELLMASTER. If the movie's title hasn't made clear, we are far from Pure Flix territory, so there's no Kevin Sorbo to be found (consider yourself safe). No, Schulze opens with that quote because we're dealing with a more traditional mad professor, the kind who wants the Almighty's position all for himself and proclaims that he has, indeed, murdered God in his maniacal labors. The kind who believes in survival of the fittest, making him a touch Darwinian in the bargain, and whose drug-induced method of creating supreme beings also has "pusherman" baked into his philosophy. Punishment and reward.

Our esteemed scag-shooter is Professor Jones (the great John Saxon), and once again, credit Schulze for going with the most obviously evocative surname imaginable. Exiled from the Kant Institute (hot damn, Philosophy 101 is written all over the architecture, too) for the habit of using students as lab rats, he managed to rebuild Jonestown in the nearby crackhouse to the shock of a reporter named Robert (David "Flyboy" Emge in a rare screen appearance), whose exposé was mutually sabotaged by the Dean/Professor Damon (Robert Dole) as well as Herr Jones. The disgraced Robert is now a hermit who lives in the abandoned chapel where Jones' experiments were once conducted, and where gallons of the experimental narcotic have been stashed in the steam tunnels. It's been 20 years since his fiery expulsion, but the presumed-dead professor has returned to the university with his small army of mutant derelicts to pick up where he left off.

Filmed in Pontiac, MI, over five weeks during the winter of 1989, with the Clinton Valley Center (or the Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane) doubling for the campus, Douglas Schulze's feature debut can be charitably termed the "old college try." Aside from writing, producing and directing, then-twentysomething Schulze also edited, served as art director and had a hand in set design. It's the ultimate independent movie juggling act, but Schulze ends up with many of the balls left in pieces on the ground.

Cinematographer Michael Goi has taken some phantasmagorical lighting cues from Dario Argento's Suspiria, and Schulze brings to mind the same stylish proficiency as Don Coscarelli and Sam Raimi. There are some unique touches such as the J emblem favored by the chief villain, a fascistic perversion of the sign of the cross, as well as the three-pronged syringe/claw and self-dosing catheter which are strapped to his arms. Professor Jones' megalomania opens doors for potential intrigue, as he is motivated to convert the Kant Institute's current student body over to his race of genetically-altered junkie killers. He also holds psychological dominion over the living, as he mocks one victim's fear of pregnancy as well as convinces an insecure, crippled boy to accept his miracle cure.

Unfortunately, said ideas tend to either get steamrolled by conventions or are undercut by terrible decisions in writing/editing. The aforementioned handicapped boy, Joel (Sean Sweeney), is introduced bemoaning his lot to his best friend and the movie's heroine, Shelly (Amy Raasch). He wants blond Barb (Lisa Sheldon) to notice him, but the object of his affection has not even been properly introduced in the film and we don't even know who he's referring to until twenty or so minutes later. The result is a shallow character whose disillusionment rings hollow even before he shuns his friends ("My handicap was born, yours was chosen") and stumbles into the sway of Professor Jones. There is no pay-off to Joel's ill-fated cross to the dark side; he's merely beaten to death with his own crutch and the result lacks any pathos (cf: the fate of Stephen Geoffreys' Evil Ed from the original Fright Night).

It's not just Joel who is shafted by Schulze's ineffective handling of his young characters, who seem to flit in and out at random and lack even a modicum of discernible personality compared to the usual dead teenagers. A similar lack of understanding ruins what should be a traumatic experience for heroine Shelly, whose brother Adam (Todd Tesen) works for campus security and is not only attacked by Jones' minions, but tied to the back of the patrol car and drug across the gravel until he manages to get himself free and crawl away to a future death. Only one of the victims leaves any concrete impression, and that's the determinedly unsympathetic Jesse (Jeff Rector), who we actually see as a bully and a sleaze. His opposite number, Drake (Edward Stevens), survives the film the same way he enters: blandly.

One would assume that the baddies make up for the loss of presence evident in the youths, but they look more interesting than they behave. Jones' ranks include a mutant boy (who we get a good look at before his transformation, sitting criss-cross in Jones' slum lab), a limping nun (played by Ron Asheton, the guitarist who egged on Iggy Pop in The Stooges) and one "Bobby Razorface" (Eric Kingston), whose similarities to Pinhead were not merely compounded by the Hellmaster title and marketing, but also by a scene in the actual film where, just like in Hellbound: Hellraiser II, he is confronted by an image of the human being he once was. But Schulze fails to deliver the new Cenobites in these junkie monstrosities, who aren't given any thing interesting to say and are allotted little imagination in their homicidal spree. Too often they'll stumble on a character, particularly Barb, and decide they're no fun to torture. Wasn't Jones supposed to be experimenting on these ciphers to begin with?

Even in the most undemanding mood, Hellmaster is confusingly tepid schlock. I've read reviews beforehand that mention a joke involving Shelly, who is the only actual gifted person in the entire student body, using her mind-reading powers to deduce that Jesse's douchebag behavior stems from growing up a bedwetter. If I had not bothered to seek out the Vinegar Syndrome release of Hellmaster, I'd wonder what the hell these writers were talking about because this very scene appears in an alternate cut of the film that is not called Hellmaster. Yes, there are two versions of this movie on the BD/DVD combo pack, and the one scanned in 2k (or in 4k, the box lists  both) from the elements is the "original theatrical version" titled THEM.

Having watched both Them and Hellmaster for this review, it's obvious that Douglas Schulze re-edited the movie directly for the home video market. This makes Hellmaster not simply a hack job, but a hash job. In the Them cut, we get a real introduction to Barb during the opening lecture instead of waiting a half-hour to find out whom Joel was referring to. We even get to see her walking past a throng of judgmental students who christen her the campus "slut." And her killing of the chemically-altered Joel at least puts Barb in a sympathetic state of shock, and allows for Shelly to grieve somewhat over what Jones did to her supposed best friend. Professor Damon is also more culpable for Jones' nefarious research as demonstrated in a flashback, and unlike in Hellmaster, which is rife with exposition dumps, this device doesn't come across as tedious.

It would be tempting to run through all the myriad changes between the two cuts, since Schulze's audio commentary on the Them version doesn't elaborate too much on the looped lines and increased attention to character. His yakker is actually a pretty dry affair, hobbled by the fact that he's watching this particular edit for the first time in decades. He tends to repeat the same anecdotes about the sets and pay the same compliments when he's not doing play-by-play after a spell of silence. But we do get some fun notes on how the padded cells of the Clinton Valley Center, which was still active, were used as production offices and rooms for the actors. And a few specific woes involving stolen generators and financial backing are compelling. Schulze and producer Kurt Mayry's mid-2000s commentary for the Hellmaster version is the more lively track based on Mayry's observation at the start: "This is version 200, I believe."

In both commentaries, Schulze is at least upfront about his deficiencies as a first-time filmmaker. Focusing too much on the technical aspects of production, he admits not giving his actors enough attention and is quick to point out how the proceedings devolve into camp. He wasn't particularly adept with writing dialogue and had to draft his brother into aiding the script. He was constantly incorporating new ideas into the project instead of developing them into separate entities. And he regrets not getting a "seasoned" editor to whip his film into shape, although his preferred Hellmaster edit is more the "glorified student film" compared to Them (Schulze claims it hews closer to the original screenplay). In the theatrical version, two separate monster attacks are crosscut and demonstrate some form of momentum; in Hellmaster, they play out separately and in linear fashion, but because one of them involves characters who were not formally introduced, the result solicits a shrug.

When you get right down to it, the Them cut is the far superior viewing option in terms of structure, pacing (though it runs a whopping four minutes longer than the director's cut) and simple visual quality. Schulze and Mayry point out that the Hellmaster cut, ported over in SD from the 2006 Mackinac Media release (as is their commentary), was composited from an early ‘90s answer print as well as the original negative. The 1.33:1 image looks like it came from a deteriorating VHS copy, full of snow and murkiness and faded colors. Vinegar Syndrome's treatment of the theatrical print is the undisputed keeper, presented in 1.85:1 widescreen and with far more loving care tended to Michael Goi's cinematography, where primary colors are lit up so bright as to distract from the decrepit buildings where Schulze was filming. Despite some noticeable negative damage, the image is natural 35mm goodness, with tighter black levels and more radiant reds and blues.

The DTS-HD MA track is in 2.0 stereo and while some of the dialogue suffers a lack of real fidelity (John Saxon's introduction, in particular), there is a more-than-sufficient punch to Diana Croll & John Traynor's synth-gothic score. Optional English SDH subtitles are available on the Blu-Ray copy. Beyond the feature(s) and their respective commentaries, the newest and best extra is a new 26-minute video interview with Michael Goi called "Creating Reality," in which Goi admits that they were aiming for something opposite what the subtitle implies. He also recalls turning Schulze onto Suspiria for the first time and the director's immediate reaction to it when Mayry walked in on the screening, and Goi also credits Mario Bava's Black Sabbath as an influence. Goi is eloquently realistic about the process of filming on a tight budget in terms of conception vs. execution (his career is to make compromise seem intentional) whilst recalling certain issues with lighting, shooting around John Saxon's limited schedule and working in the dead of winter.

The AIP Video trailer for Hellmaster, a brief gallery of conceptual art (including posters for Them as well as one for the alternate title of "Soulstealer"), a second short gallery of behind-the-scenes stills, and a four-minute location scouting video showcasing the Clinton Valley Center (and scored to backmasked, industrial-sounding Muzak) round out the bonuses. The die-cut slipcover designed by Chris Garofalo for the limited edition release offers a nice fiery orange in the shape of the J-symbol and there is the reversible cover art that includes the Razorface close-up which got the film its minor notoriety on videocassette. In lieu of a trailer, I close with some behind-the-scenes footage not available on the Vinegar Syndrome release but is on YouTube for the curious.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre

MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE
(R, New World Pictures, 95 mins., theatrical release date: March 14, 1986)

In one of his earliest stand-up routines, Patton Oswalt revealed what he considers the greatest movie title ever: "Texas. Chainsaw. Massacre." The beauty of it, as opposed to the mealy-mouthed romantic comedies in the mainstream, was how you envisioned a free movie playing in your own head based on those three words. But the most substantial element for me is the word "massacre" alone, because it has been the perfect hook for B-movie entrepreneurs, especially thanks to Tobe Hooper's film: Massacre at Central High, Drive In Massacre, Mardi Gras Massacre, The Slumber Party Massacre, Microwave Massacre, Women's Prison Massacre, etc. etc. Just affixing "massacre" to any object or setting fires up the projector in the mind, which is great for the imagination but also troublesome knowing the concept has already been made tangible. This is where the burden of expectations comes in.

Hooper's film worked far beyond most people's mental image of a Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and a few of the mercenary examples listed above were pretty much as straightforward. Yet in the summer of 1986, the novelty of "[fill in the blank] Massacre" wore off thanks to Hooper's official sequel to his decade-old trendsetter. But there was another pretender from earlier that year thanks to New World Pictures, who picked up a regional horror film from Louisiana (premiere date: July 15, 1983), commissioned a new finale and shipped it out for wide release with "massacre" tacked onto its original title.

The result was MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE, and it's not just the title which tipped me off to the debt that all movies with "Massacre" at the end owe to Tobe Hooper. The film itself strikes me as the type of movie Hooper could've made near the mid-80s were he not spending Golan-Globus' money, with mundane characters in foreboding rural environs getting picked off by a deranged loner. His 1976 follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive, itself took place at a bayou lodge and featured a scythe as a notable murder weapon.

Jim McCullough Sr. was the director, instead, his second feature effort following Charge of the Model T's and once again working from a script by his boy Jim Jr. These were filmmakers more of the Charles B. Pierce mould, as Jim Sr. produced (and Jim Jr. wrote) the Boggy Creek-style Creature from the Black Lake around the time Hooper was making Eaten Alive. But compared to not only Pierce, who kept a more active resume and worked with recognizable actors (Ben Johnson, Michael Parks, Jessica Harper), but even Don (Nightbeast) Dohler, the McCulloughs never amassed much of a wide-reaching legacy, although Vinegar Syndrome are seeking to at least give Mountaintop Motel Massacre a new lease on life.

A lack of ambition is likely more of a nuisance than the slasher they have concocted for this particular massacre movie. She is Evelyn Chambers (Anna Chappell), a former inmate of the Arkansas State Mental Hospital from July 1978 to January 1981, and one who obviously didn't receive the best possible rehabilitation as Evelyn carves up both her daughter and a baby rabbit in a fit of madness. With her husband unexplainably dead and her daughter's murder (she was caught holding a séance to communicate with daddy) written off as a gardening accident, Evelyn tends desk at the Mountaintop Motel on a convenient dark, stormy night that brings in all manner of customers/victims.

Aside from the typical young couple looking for a honeymoon suite and the reliable preacher and carpenter types, one of the waylaid travelers is an advertising exec from Memphis named Al (Will Mitchell) who turns out to be the hero. But in the grand tradition of Tom Atkins, horny ole Al picks up two nubile coeds, cousins Tanya and Prissy (Virginia Loridans, Amy Hill), and deceives them into believing he's really the owner of Columbia Records. Tanya is more gullible than Prissy, natch, but they perform a meek rendition of Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" regardless until Prissy catches on for good and is hacked up in the bathroom by Evelyn.

This murder doesn't occur until nearly an hour into the film, as the McCulloughs do the slow burn shuffle by having Evelyn attempt to disorient her tenants with roaches, rats and even a rattler for the newlyweds. It's only after the occupants refuse to go back into the rain that the deranged Evelyn, who is scurrying about in the basement and popping up from beneath trap doors, starts screeching "Away, Satan!" and planting her scythe into the bodies of her guests.

When New World Pictures distributed Mountaintop Motel Massacre at the end of the slasher boom, they hedged their bets fabulously with the very one-sheet pictured atop this review. Dig that tagline, in particular. Sadly, the actual film is less the campy hoot the studio promises and more, all-too-fittingly, garden variety. Joseph Wilcots (Roots) provides slicker cinematography than one would expect from a film that cries out for a grungy treatment, but otherwise he's one of the few people in the crew who distinguishes himself in any regards. The atmosphere is willing, but the plot is weak even by the standards of the genre.

I wish I could give Evelyn the benefit of the doubt as a villain, and to credit Anna Chappell for a committed performance. Her only other film role, surprisingly, was in Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon (1991), famous for introducing a 14-year-old Reese Witherspoon. But there is nothing in the script to give Chappell any depth of character beyond the type of role already owned by Nancy Parsons. It's the usual trite motivations, from voices in the head to religious fanaticism, and they don't add up to a fearsome, let alone pitiable, personality. You never really worry for any of her victims, either, with the possible exception of the black carpenter, Crenshaw (Major Brock), and that's because his dialogue is ripe with jive, especially when he monologues his uneventful escape from the premises. This is the closest the McCulloughs come to humor.

At some point, you'd figure the characters would learn the value of safety in numbers, especially since their antagonist is hardly Pamela let alone Jason Voorhees. But they tend to split up and wander off half-cocked into Evelyn's lair all too predictably, and the reason for their isolation is nothing more than feeble. You also got to hand it to our nominal hero, Al: he's so lasciviously committed to duping the girls that he ignores the value of the working car phone in sending out for and responding to any help in dealing with the mentally ill mass murderer, the fallen tree blocking the road or the snake-bitten honeymooner.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre continues Vinegar Syndrome's tradition of reviving regional horror titles people would have otherwise missed, such as Disconnected or Horror House on Highway 5. I can't recommend it as much as I do either of those other, stranger obscurities, both of which have gone out-of-print following the same Halfway to Black Friday 2019 sale which offered Mountaintop Motel Massacre as an exclusive release. Without the creeping dread and sordid abandon of Tobe Hooper (or even the cornpone playfulness of Motel Hell), this family affair is just another dull saw sans teeth.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre isn't so much raw as it is perpetually dark, a point driven home by Vinegar Syndrome's spanking new 2k transfer from the original 35mm elements. The tacked-on ending sticks out even more after watching this top-notch visual presentation, which brings out the best in its source negative and presents consistent accuracy in terms of color saturation, facial/clothing details and those ever-important black levels. Looking back further in my evaluation, I do also have to credit Drew Edward Hunter's production design for the underground passageways of the motel; like the film, it's nothing original or particularly engaging, but it looks spooky enough to deserve a better film. Wish the DTS-HD MA 2.0 track made me feel more affection for Ron Di Iulio's score, but the best I can say is that the musical-box keyboard tones are as crystal as the dialogue.

Two still galleries, one devoted to behind-the-scenes photos and the other a short gathering of news articles (less extensive than Lust in the Dust, to be true), and the original theatrical trailer are included alongside the usual packaging perks (slipcover, reversible artwork). Other than that, extras are limited to two appealing interviews with Mr. Hunter and assistant cameraman David Akin. Hunter's recollections are carried over from the UK BD release by 88 Films, and it covers childhood influences, getting discovered at a haunted house exhibit, various props and drawings he fashioned from the script, and the eventual reshoot. Akin recalls being plucked from Texas video school by McCullough Sr. and discusses his working relationship with Joe Wilcots and is more candid about the distribution demands of New World. We still don't get to see the original cut of Mountaintop Motel which debuted that night in July 1983 in Opelousas and played the next year in Jackson, Mississippi, which would've certainly boosted my recommendation of this combo-pack release if not the film.

Nightbeast

NIGHTBEAST
(NR, Amazing Film Productions, 81 mins., release date: November 1982)

Don Dohler reluctantly if energetically recreates his decade-old The Alien Factor for the early 1980s exploitation scene with NIGHTBEAST, the most notorious of Vinegar Syndrome's 2019 Halfway to Black Friday home video releases. Distributed through VIPCO in the UK, the cassette release was classified a "Section 3" Video Nasty, which meant that, though not prosecuted on obscenity charges, VHS merchants were bound by law to turn over their copies for immediate expulsion/destruction. Nightbeast enjoyed a smoother reputation in America; after a spell on the Las Vegas-based Paragon Video, it was snatched up by Troma in the early 1990s and became ubiquitous enough to merit an appearance in Panos Cosmatos' Mandy. And a 15-year-old composer named Jeffrey Abrams, who was a disciple of Dohler's from the days of his self-published Cinemagic magazine, made good in his thirties by creating the likes of Alias and Lost for ABC under the name J.J.

At this point in time, close to 1978 (the year when The Alien Factor was distributed through Cinemagic six years after completion), Dohler was still reticent about filmmaking, having agreed to turn over directorial reins for Nightbeast to Alien Factor star Dave Geatty, who found himself in over his head. Geatty's inability to function on a micro-budget left him behind schedule and over budget (he spent a day trying to perfect a single tracking shot and with nothing to show), and at least 15 people on the cast & crew turned up at Dohler's doorstep issuing a joint ultimatum. The project fizzled enough so that Dohler could scale back and direct his sophomore effort, 1980's Fiend, in comparable peace. But the siren's call of Nightbeast proved irresistible, and new director Dohler started it back up shortly after the release of Fiend.

The year now being 1982, Don Dohler could no longer attract attention just by blundering his way through an old-fashioned monster mash, as the post-slasher vogue for instant sensationalism was in full swing. Splatter and sex were in, handmade yet hokey visual effects were not. This tendency towards luridness is on full display through Nightbeast. Not only is the gore quota high enough that it would have undoubtedly warranted an X rating, but there are also two instances of violence towards women which would've sent Siskel & Ebert leaping off the balcony. And they involve the two "actresses" who were successfully coaxed into providing top-to-bottom nudity. There is also a more liberal use of profanity compared to The Alien Factor.

It's not even the sordid accoutrements of the modern horror trend that shows up Dohler's need to adapt. The titular space invader no sooner claims his first few victims than he is engaged in back-to-back shootouts with the Perry Hall PD, firing his trusty laser disintegration pistol at the hapless expendables doing no damage with shotguns and six-shooters. Though one elderly marksman pries the advanced weapon from the alien's grip, it comes at the expense of his son's life, leaving Sheriff Jack Cinder (Tom Griffith) to butt heads with Mayor Bert Wicker (Richard Dyszel) over evacuation protocol and the very real need for outside help. That election-minded Wicker blows off the warnings to carry on a pool party meant to schmooze up to Governor Embry (Richard Ruxton) is typical; when townie Jamie Lambert (Jamie Zemarel) embarrasses him by dispersing the party with warnings of a "poison gas leak," it reduces the Mayor and his ditzy secretary Mary Jane Carter (Eleanor Herman) to alcoholic wrecks awaiting their most gruesome comeuppance.

Not that Sheriff Cinder and his aides aren't oblivious to the danger from within. Blindsided by the arrival of an intergalactic mutilator, they fail to properly deal with psychotic biker Drago (Don Leifert), who is shaping up for notoriety as the Perry Hall Strangler. First, Drago murders his girlfriend Suzie (Monica Neff) in a jealous rage, and after getting beaten by the avenging Jamie in a fistfight, he takes out his aggression on Deputy Lisa Kent (Karin Kardian) until Jamie finally finishes him off by blasting a hole through Drago's chest. All the while, the three law enforcers and their scientific allies (George Stover and Anne Frith as Steven Price and Ruth Sherman, respectively) scramble for a solution to besting the indestructible alien.

Give Don Dohler this much credit: the nastier elements of Nightbeast impose a slickness which provides more novelty than the aimlessness of The Alien Factor. And want as I am to turn the other way at the predominantly cheesy acting talents on display, quite a few in the cast display greater gusto just as well. Although Dyszel and Herman are all too believably insufferable in their comic banter ("Stop calling me Bertie!"), Jamie Zemarel makes a strapping second banana and his longtime friend Don Leifert, doing a 180 from the mild-mannered astronomer who saved the day thrice in the last half of The Alien Factor, is gleefully demented as the brutish Drago. And George Stover, whose propensity for camp was nurtured as much by John Waters as by Dohler, blends in just fine as the concerned doctor. Equally reliable is the input of creature effects artist John (The Deadly Spawn) Dods, who understands that while sympathetic aliens are defined by their eyes, the least friendly of them squeak by on their instruments of chomp.

Nightbeast is a tighter, more efficient, certainly more outrageous retread of The Alien Factor by any metric, but one can still sense Dohler bucking under the strain of newfound expectations. The love scene between Sheriff Cinder, all gray perm and handlebar mustache, and his blonde deputy comes right out of nowhere and is inconsequential to a fault. A gut-ripping attack sequence early in the film is edited like the Tasmanian Devil yet still ridiculous protracted. The film ticks off nearly all the same boxes as The Alien Factor, and is shameless enough to refer to characters by the exact same names as in Dohler's earlier effort, which hinders the amount of genuine surprises to the more sordid supplements. And the limited resources may be admirable when it comes to optical effects and cinematography, but they're taxing for some of the performers; Karin Kardian was the hairdresser to Dohler's aunt, and you can tell by the thinness of her role and the abilities she brings to it.

But damned if Dohler's scrappiness doesn't have its charms, and being issued on Blu-Ray by Vinegar Syndrome does wonders for the first few minutes alone. The Nightbeast's entrance makes it clear that there is nowhere to go but down, thus ensuring the R-rated material its own undemanding appeal. And if, say, the creature from It Came Without Warning tended to be less hands-on in his approach to murder, preferring to launch bloodsucking Frisbees at his quarry, then the Nightbeast's grisly rampage is chock full of claw-sullying horror. I can see why this would appeal to a Stephen Thrower (the Nightmare USA author who extolled the movie's virtues on the second Video Nasties trailer compilation) or a Mike Vanderbilt (the Daily Grindhouse drifter who spilled ink on this back in 2015 for the AV Club). It was made for a Troma or a Vinegar Syndrome to revive, and may well live up to its reputation as Don Dohler's most accessible film, make of that what you will.

What's indisputable is the uptake in video quality, with Nightbeast presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio in a 2k scan from the 16mm negative. No hi-def presentation will ever relieve Nightbeast of its gaudy, grainy source flaws, but it sure looks well-calibrated in all of its colors, although reds and blacks tend to fare best. Nighttime sequences will no longer strain anybody's eyes, although the detail of the lasers burn straight into your retinas. Flesh tones are believably natural and the monster mask holds up well under closer, clearer inspection. Nothing distracting in the way of compression artifacts or haloing, and print damage is minimal. The monaural DTS-HD track brings out J.J. Abrams' keyboard/piano score nicely; his contributions were mostly chase sequences as well as the requisite tender love theme. Rob Walsh's compositions as well as library music gets an equal boost in clarity, and dialogue remains understandable despite the mix's limitations. The sound effects may lack directionality, but retain their punch.

Extras start with the theatrical trailer ("This is the story of how the little people answer the big questions!") and a four-minute visual FX gallery, plus the same outtake reel which appeared on the Troma DVD release. Also recycled is the feature commentary track with Don Dohler and George Stover, which the latter dominates with his recollections of special effects challenges and friends/family in walk-on roles. They touch on some various homages (including Vincent Price and The Thing from Another World) and provide ample detail about locations, which isn't surprising given Dohler himself remained in Perry Hall until his passing at age 60 on Dec. 2, 2006.

Dohler documentarian John Kinhart locked down interviews with Dohler and the also-departed Don Leifert, as well as comments from Stover, Greg & Kim Dohler and J.J. Abrams, himself, all of whom are heard on the 25-minute "Nightbeast Returns." There's more detail on the project's doomed genesis as well as an anecdote about how Abrams, at 16, enlisted his grandfather to drive him to a video story so he could buy a VHS copy of Nightbeast for posterity. Three fresh interviews shot specifically for the VinSyn edition include actor Jamie Zemarel, cinematographer/actor Richard Geiwitz (who also shared associate producer credit with Stover and Tom Griffith) and visual FX artist John Ellis (no relation to Alien Factor alumni Dave Ellis), each lasting 15-19 minutes. Zemarel, who won a contest to be an extra in the blockbuster Grease, didn't realize how big his role in Nightbeast was until he was handed the script and is refreshingly self-critical. Geiwitz does a nice job breaking down his own beginnings and visual quirks, while Ellis is upfront about his working relationship with Dohler and the literal pennies used in presenting a cinematic version of outer space.