TALES FROM THE HOOD 3 (2020)

 

(Directors/screenwriters: Rusty Condieff and Darin Scott)

Storyline

A middle aged man with young girl tries to escape an unseen evil presence, while the girl (Brooklyn) tells him four terror tales, shown onscreen.

 

Review

In the wraparound tale, William (played by Tony Todd) hides in a cemetery while a six-year-old girl (Brooklyn) tells him four horror stories. I like the twist on this, it’s well done.

Brooklyn’s first tale involves a slumlord who seeks to evict a hold-out tenant family so a lucrative business deal can go through. He hires a nutcase arsonist to scare them out. When they’re killed in the resulting fire, he is relentlessly haunted by them.

This by-the-numbers-drawn-out story is well-shot and well-acted, but little else about it is worthwhile.

Brooklyn’s second story focuses on a white power survivalist living in a bunker who rails against those who don’t share his views, while mixed-race civilians outside his property observe. Fans of the original TWILIGHT ZONE series (1959-64) may recognize it as an updated remake of its “PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER” episode (air date: 3/25/60). Even if you haven’t seen “PEOPLE” episode, the filmmakers tip their hand early on, making this another well-shot, “meh” vignette.

Brooklyn’s third tale involves an aspiring pop singer (Chela Simpson) who befriends a wealthy, old ex-opera singer (Marie Benoit) who holes up in a study and loop-watches a film of her younger self singing. That the opera singer gets transfusions of blood is not the only odd thing going on.

I like that this was different, in a could’ve-gone-multiple-ways storyline. While its ending was less than thrilling, it had some interesting aspects to it. One review I read said it rips off the plot of THE SKELETON KEY (2005), but I have not seen SKELETON in a long time, so I can’t knowledgeably speak about that.

Brooklyn’s fourth and final story revolves around a punch-and-run bandit whose victims include a relative of a voodooiene. Of course she places a curse on him.

This HOOD 3 entry is laugh-out-loud entertaining, horrifying (especially its use-your-imagination ending) and worthwhile.

HOOD 3, like previous HOOD films, makes for a decent viewing experience even with HOOD 3’s lackluster entries (the first two tales Brooklyn tells). I like how the filmmakers blended their BLM mindset into a non-preachy, well-shot and all-around well-acted horror flick.

BLOODY BIRTHDAY (1981)

(Director/co-screenwriter: Ed Hunt. Co-screenwriter: Barry Pearson.)

Storyline

Three children born during a solar eclipse start killing everyone around them just as they’re about to turn ten years old.

 

Review

June 9, 1970. Meadowvale General Hospital. During a solar eclipse, three children are simultaneously born to their respective mothers. The doctor who delivered them, billed as Doctor (José Ferrer, THE SENTINEL, 1977), is briefly shown conversing with a nurse about the triple-birth/solar event.

June 1, 1980. A young adult couple in a graveyard get into an empty grave to have sex. They don’t know they’re being watched by someone─it’s killer-POV camera time. While they’re doing hetero sex stuff, dirt is flung on them. When the guy gets up to investigate, he’s beaned with a shovel. His girlfriend is strangled with a jump rope. Something light-colored and light falls onto the dead woman’s corpse. All the while FRIDAY THE 13^th-style rip-off music plays.

The next morning, in a bright afternoon elementary school classroom, Sheriff James Brady (Bert Kramer) stands in front of students and asks them if any of them are missing their jump ropes─a plastic jump rope handle was found at the scene of a crime (read: previously mentioned murders), and it’s a clue. None of them are missing their ropes, the kids say. One of the girls, Debby Brody (the sheriff’s daughter) says goodbye to her dad when he leaves─it’s quickly established that she’s one of the three children born during that solar eclipse, and she’s a cruel, sly partner in crime with the other two, Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne, billed as Billy Jacoby, CUJO, 1983) and Steven Seton (Andrew Freeman, billed as Andy Freeman). When Miss Viola Davis (Susan Strasberg, THE MANITOU, 1978), their teacher, checks one of Debby’s outbursts and irritates the girl, it’s clear that this situation is far from resolved in Debby’s (Elizabeth Hoy) mind.

Later that day, Debby charges her fellow solar-born friends to watch her sister, adolescent Beverly (Julie Brown, EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, 1988) strip, try on date clothes whilst dancing around her room. Debby charges the hot-for-Beverly boys a quarter each, more if Beverly shows more skin. A few minutes after that, Joyce Russel (Lori Lethin, THE PREY, 1983), Beverly’s less outgoing classmate, visits and she and Joyce leave the Brody residence.

The scenes that follow are lifted straight from HALLOWEEN (1978). Initially it’s a wide-angle, late-afternoon shot of the young women strolling down a suburban, tree-lined street. A few minutes later, Sheriff Brody, accidentally driving by them, pulls over in his squad car to say hi to his eldest daughter and her friend. (Joyce essentially equals HALLOWEEN’s Lori Strode [Jamie Lee Curtis], Beverly equals Annie Brackett [Nancy Kyes], and Sheriff Brody equals Sheriff Brackett [Charles Cyphers].)

A few minutes after that, the little psychos─who seem sweet when they want to be─resume killing. One of their classmates (Timmy Russel, little brother of Joyce) witnesses one of their early murders, and they torture him with cruel children’s games (locking him up in a junkyard refrigerator while playing hide-and-seek, then trying to kill Joyce when she goes looking for him, one of the maniacs wearing a white sack cloth with eye holes over his head─which seems like an homage to FRIDAY THE 13^th PART 2, except FRIDAY came out on April 30^th, 1981, two days after BLOODY’s stateside release.

Joyce and Timmy warn their friends and neighbors about the three psychos. Nobody believes them. Meanwhile, more corpses pop up around town, some obviously indicating who did them in and dumped them. It all comes to a head when Debby, Steven and Curtis attack the Russels in their home. A vicious battle between the solar-born murderers and the siblings ensues, matching the ferocity of the brief, sometimes playful violence that preceded it (leading to another succession of HALLOWEEN-homage scenes). The character-true ending is sequel-bait but not egregious.

BLOODY is a good, entertaining, and sometimes gory flick. Its story is solid (considering its conceit), and it’s tightly scripted and shot (aside from its gratuitous Beverly-dancing-topless-in-her-room scene). Its actors and its characters’ backstories are sufficiently developed for the genre (although Ferrer, only in a few scenes, is wasted here; anybody could’ve played his part, given its brevity). If you can get past its blatant thieving of certain HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13^th scenes, you might enjoy this slyly cruel flick.

THE WEREWOLF (1956)

 

(Director: Fred F. Sears. Screenwriters: Robert E. Kent and James B. Gordon.)

Storyline

An amnesiac stranger shows up in Mountaincrest, a small town. Not long after his arrival, a notorious thug is killed, seemingly by a wild animal. While the townsfolk put together a search party for the creature, the doctors whose experiments created the beast head to Mountaincrest.

 

Review

WEREWOLF is an entertaining, straightforward lycanthropic work, typically Fifties in what it shows (e.g., no gore; the violence is PG-rated by today’s standards). The hour-and-nineteen-minute film wastes no time in setting up and delivering its monster-on-the-loose goods, with taut dialogue, cut-to-it scenes, solid acting, and well-written characters who are sympathetic to Duncan Marsh, a stranger saddled with amnesia and synthetic shapeshifting.

Adding to the fun of this flick is its convincing lycanthropic makeup, created by Clay Campbell, who originally used it in THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1943; director: Lew Landers)─Campbell was not credited for his work on RETURN and WEREWOLF, and used the same (or similar) makeup in other films.

Good film, WEREWOLF─worth watching, possibly worth owning if you’re into well-made Fifties monster movies.

BLACK SABBATH (1963)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Marcello Fondato and Alberto Bevilacqua).

Storyline

Boris Karloff hosts three terror tales revolving around a stalked call girl, a thieving nurse and a familial vampire.

Review

BLACK, a visually lush trilogy-tale film, is mostly excellent, an effectively spooky, giallo- and tradition-influenced hybrid flick that remains a high mark work in the genre.

The first segment, “A Drop of Water,” is set in London, England in 1910. It is loosely adapted from an Anton Chekhov story (billed here as Checov). In “Drop,” a thieving nurse steals her recently deceased employer’s ring, only to be haunted by the old woman’s yowling black cat, a pestiferous fly, and the eerie sound of dripping water. This segment is creepy and unsettling─excellent.

In “The Telephone,” possibly loosely based on Franco Luncentini’s story “Three and Thirty-three,” a beautiful French call girl (Rosy, played by Michèle Mercier) is stalked by an unseen man who seems to know her every move as she gets ready for bed. Initially a ghost-story giallo segment, it becomes a straight-up thriller in its twisty second half. Like “Drop” before it, the color-rich cinematography (provided by Ubaldo Terzano and an uncredited Bava) is wow-worthy. It doesn’t hurt that Mercier is gorgeous, like many of Bava’s actresses in this period of his career.

Screen credit for “Telephone” is given to F.G. Snyder. According to Wikipedia, Bava claimed he was “Telephone”’s original writer─two film critics later (supposedly) tracked down Luncentini as its source author.

When AIP (American International Pictures) and Titra Sound Corporation bought the US rights for the film and edited BLACK for its stateside audience, they trimmed scenes in “Telephone” that showed graphic violence and non-explicit lesbianism and prostitution. A supernatural element was also inserted in the US version of BLACK. Not only that, AIP also replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s score with Les Baxter’s.

The third and final entry in this atmospheric tryptich is “The Wurdulak,” loosely based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak.”  (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi.) According to Wikipedia, “other parts of the story were inspired by the Guy de Maupassant story ‘Fear’ and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.” (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi and Maupassant is billed as his last name only.)

“Wurdulak” takes place in nineteenth-century Russian forest. A traveling nobleman (played by Mark Damon) finds a headless bandit’s corpse with a dagger stuck in his breast and takes the dagger with him. Taking shelter in a nearby house where a large family lives, he is informed that the blade belonged to their father (Gorca, played by Boris Karloff). Seems Gorca disappeared five days before─and, before leaving, told his family that if he disappeared and returned not to let him in. The father returns, and they don’t heed his earlier warning. . .

Karloff is ghoulishly delightful in this film, both as the tale-telling host (playing himself) and Gorca. The rest of the film’s cast is excellent as well. Unfortunately, “Wurdulak” runs long with a meh finish─it does not help that the women in “Wurdulak” choose to cower when they should be staking and beheading.

Despite “Wurdulak”’s excessive length and helpless women (like many in films of this era), BLACK is a superb, sumptuous stylistic and hybrid genre work, one that beguiles.

Beyond the film. . . according to Wikipedia, the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath liked the film and its name so much they changed their band name to it. Originally, they were called Earth, and wanted to avoid being confused with another band, also called Earth.

Quentin Tarantino and fellow filmmaker Roger Avary were also influenced by BLACK. Tarantino has been quoted as saying, “What Mario Bava did for the horror film in BLACK SABBATH, I was going to do with the crime film [PULP FICTION, 1994].”

MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)

 

(Director: George Mihalka. Screenwriter: John Beaird.)

Storyline

A town haunted by a Valentine’s Day murder-curse holds its first V-Day Dance in decades and a new spate of violent deaths occur.

Review

This hack‘n’ stab flick about a small mining town haunted by a decades-old murder is a solid, entertaining, and waste-no-time flick. The murder was committed by a miner (Harry Warden) who turned to cannibalism while being trapped in the Hanniger Mine─the town’s main source of employment─during the town’s Valentine’s Day dance. Before he was sent to a mental hospital, Warden vowed more deaths if another celebration was held on February 14^th. Because of this, the town hasn’t held a dance in decades. This year, things are different.

Two days before the dance (Thursday the 12^th), one of the townsfolk receives a human heart in a candy box (echoing Warden’s gory heart-in-a-box style). Chief Newby (Don Francks) calls the out-of-town hospital where Warden was interned. Seems nobody can find any information about Warden, nor where he’s located. That night, a woman (Mabel) is killed in a laundromat after reading a heart-shaped card reading “Roses are red, violets are blue, one is dead, so are you.” Her killer, like Harry Warden, is clad in a dark miner’s outfit, complete with helmet and mask.

Newby hides the circumstances of Mabel’s demise, publicly ascribing her death to a heart attack─he also cancels the dance. The miners, young, horny, and derisive of the Warden legend, party at the mine. Hijinks, romantic rivalry, heavy flirting, and bad decision-making ensues. Meanwhile, another townsperson is killed by the pickaxe-wielding miner. It’s not long before the partygoers realize something’s amiss.

The setting is real and gritty, a small town that’s in the throes of a severe economic downturn (its locale, Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, was also going through hard times during the shoot). This grimy realism lends an underlying desperation to the film, though its action is standard stalk-and-kill fare, with a few effective suspense scenes in the mix (especially TJ’s fight scene with the killer). Rodney Gibbon’s cinematography adds to BLOODY’s increasingly dirty, harsh tone, especially as the killings─striking and rapid in their execution─get more brutal, and Paul Zaza’s spare, simple and well-timed score furthers the film’s effectiveness.

BLOODY won’t win any awards, but for what it is─an Old School, solid, occasionally suspenseful B-level slasher flick with inherent atmosphere, little gore, and no explicit nudity─it’s a worthwhile watch, if you keep your expectations realistic and modest.

Deep(er) filmic dive:

Helene Uddy, who played Sylvia, also appeared in THE DEAD ZONE (1983), MRS. CLAUS (2018) and other sometimes-notable films.

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1964)

 

(Director: Anton Leader, billed as Anton M. Leader. Screenwriter: John Briley.)

Storyline

Six ultra-intelligent children with a disturbing psychic bond and powers are experimented upon by the British military. This drives the dangerously powerful sextet to flee to a church and warn the military to leave them be, lest they unleash their wrath on the world.

Review

CHILDREN is a sequel to VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) in name only─it’s more of an alternate-take/not-quite-remake work that eschews VILLAGE’s village/mass passing-out/pregnancy set-up and cuts straight to the already-born children with unsettling (at best), terrifying (at worst) powers. The setting has been changed as well, most of CHILDREN’s action happening in dark-and-grimy London, England.

There is a lot to like about CHILDREN: its waste-no-time set-up scenes and tight writing; its well-sketched, well-acted characters, including actor Clive Powell, who appeared in VILLAGE and again plays a differently named boy-leader of the alien children; its evocative score (composed by Ron Goodwin, who also worked on VILLAGE) and its dark, atmospheric setting. Other notable names attached to this film are Ian Hendry (DAMIEN: OMEN II, 1978), who played Dr. Tom Llewellyn, and an uncredited Leo McKern, who played "Inspector" (an uncredited McKern also played Carl Bugenhagen in THE OMEN, 1976, and DAMIEN: OMEN II).

CHILDREN does not cover any new ground story-wise, and if it were a sequel to VILLAGE, it would be a good but unnecessary one. And its church-siege scenes with the six kids─who want to be left alone─run long, ending the film on a familiar and almost whew-the-film’s-finally-over note.

Overall, this is a good movie. Just don’t confuse it for a VILLAGE sequel. CHILDREN inspired heavy metal band Iron Maiden to write the song "Children of the Damned" for its 1982 album THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.

AMERICAN PSYCHO II: ALL AMERICAN GIRL (2002)

 

(a.k.a. AMERICAN PSYCHO 2: ALL AMERICAN GIRL; director: Morgan J. Freeman. Screenwriters: Alex Sanger and Karen Craig.)

Storyline

A college freshman kills to become a teacher’s assistant to an influential FBI profiler and professor.

Review

One of Patrick Bateman’s surviving victims and his murderer (Rachel Newman)─then a pre-teen girl─is now a smart, hyper-focused freshman college student (played by Mila Kunis), vying for the teaching assistant position for a famous FBI profiler-turned-Behavioral Sciences professor (Robert Starkman). Competition is stiff, from spoiled-rich frat boy (Brian) to the intense and studious Keith (Charles Officer). Things go awry for the delusional Rachel when Starkman (William Shatner), known for his dalliances with female TAs, takes a sudden leave of absence─thus negating his teaching-assistant position.

There is no suspense and little─if any─blood in ALL AMERICAN, a direct-to-video, lightweight and ill-received sort-of sequel to the excellent, Patrick Bateman-centric AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000). When filming on ALL AMERICAN began, it had no connection to the original 2000 movie. Shortly into the shoot, the ALL AMERICAN filmmakers realized they had an easy, if accidental, thematic connection to AMERICAN and retooled ALL AMERICAN to become a filmic off-shoot of AMERICAN (Brett Easton Ellis, who wrote the 1991 novel on which AMERICAN is based, denounced the accidental sequel, calling it “non-canon.”)

The fact that ALL AMERICAN lacks tension and gore is not necessarily a condemnation, as it was made as a dark comedy with a high body count. Aside from one scene involving a cat and a microwave (it ends well for the feline, fear not animal lovers), there’s little to disturb viewers─the kill scenes, like the rest of the film, made me think of the better 1988 flick SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS (albeit with less blood and a few off-camera deaths), with their over-the-top acting, tight editing, abbreviated running time (an hour and half or less) and situation-appropriate quips. That said, ALL AMERICAN has its own vibe, with its late Nineties/early Aughts girl-centric pop soundtrack (recalling its masculine-counterpart soundtrack in AMERICAN) and a few scattered, beyond-the-opening-scenes links to AMERICAN (e.g., Professor Starkman mentions Ed Gein and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, 1974, things Patrick Bateman mentioned in the first film).

Okay, (possibly) interesting, but is it a good movie?

The bad (which may be good for some): the delivery timing of the some of the actors feels “off”─I’m not sure if these artificial affectations are to put viewers on edge, but it just feels weird, as if the film is perhaps too tightly edited in some scenes. As a comedy with real laughs, ALL AMERICAN doesn’t work; conversely, if you’re a viewer who appreciates “golden turkeys” (so-bad-they’re-almost-good flicks), this might be your jam. The film’s big flaw is its too-quick, anticlimactic finish which, while it keeps with the rest of ALL AMERICAN’s tightly edited pacing, is thrill-less, uninspired, and predictable.

The good: there’s a lot of big talent in front of and behind the camera in ALL AMERICAN. Also, the film sports effective, character-based twists, and wastes no time─again, this is a double-edged element─in its pacing, character setup and denouement. The kills and their setups are creative as well (if sometimes unlikely, e.g. garroting someone with a condom?).

ALL AMERICAN’s cast is worth watching. Mila Kunis is good as the chirpily annoying, no-nonsense Rachel Newman. William Shatner, his overacting toned down a notch, is fun as the amiable, clueless, and philandering Robert Starkman. Geraint Wyn Davies, billed as Geraint Wyn-Davies, is solid as Dr. Eric Daniels, the psychiatrist who gleans Rachel’s psychopathy early on and tries to warn Starkman. Robin Dunne (SyFy Channel's SANCTUARY, 2007-11) is convincing as Brian, a spoiled-rich student.

Three of ALL AMERICAN’s co-stars later appeared in Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake DAWN OF THE DEAD. In ALL AMERICAN, Lindy Booth played Cassandra, Rachel’s roommate and Starkman’s mistress. Boyd Banks played Jim. Kim Poirier played Barbara, Starkman’s TA.

ALL AMERICAN is a quirky, dark, situationally comedic and smart-minded flick that doesn’t always work but has enough entertainment value to be interesting and worthwhile─as long as you don’t view it as an official AMERICAN sequel or a laugh-out-loud comedy, and don’t mind its rushed ending.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Wolf Rilla. Co-screenwriters: Stirling Silliphant, Ronald Kinnoch.)

Storyline:

Blond children with glowing eyes appear in Midwich, an English village, after a freak incident causes its adult inhabitants to briefly pass out and its women to wake up pregnant.

 

Review

Based on John Wyndam’s 1957 science fiction novel THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, VILLAGE may be one of something rare: a perfect film, one that ably mixes horror and science fiction, like John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, THE THING. Like THING, VILLAGE is tightly shot, visually exciting, every line of dialogue matters, its pacing never lags (while allowing its excellent actors, among them George Sanders and Michael Gwynn, to give their roles story-enhancing quirks), its score (courtesy of Ron Goodwin) is striking as is its ending─as striking as the iconic, eerie image of the children’s glowing eyes (brought about by superimposing a negative image of their eyes on their pupils when their powers were used). Unlike THING, there is no gore, making this a great introducing-the-kids-to-science-fiction-horror movie. Followed by the good but unnecessary non-sequel CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1964, also featuring Clive Powell as a spooky child) and a John Carpenter-helmed 1995 remake of VILLAGE.