HELL NIGHT (1981)

 

 (Director: Tom DeSimone, billed as Tom De Simone. Screenwriter: Randy Feldman, billed as Randolph Feldman.)

Review

When four costumed Alpha Sigma Rho sorority pledges are compelled to spend the night in Garth Manor, an imposing, abandoned manse where a family massacre took place twelve years prior, they encounter a big, malformed, and tunnel-dwelling survivor (Andy Garth)─a hermit who hunts those who trespass on his property, including the Alpha Sigma Rho members pulling cheesy terror pranks on the pledges.

The pledges: quiet, smart Marti (Linda Blair, THE EXORCIST, 1973); nice guy Jeff (Peter Barton, FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER, 1984); funny, smart May (Jenny Neumann); responsible, heroic surfer Seth (Vincent Van Patten).

HELL, despite its solid budget and talent (in front of and behind the screen) is a generic, occasionally suspenseful film─scenes that should be suspenseful, given its production value, come off as tired and thrill-less in the second half of HELL. The actors, whose characters are given a few defining character traits and backgrounds, are largely wasted in their briefly promising, SCOOBY-DOO gang roles (they spend most of the film running around the manor and its grounds, lacking the imagination to stick together and figure out how to escape the grounds). That said, Seth, an action-oriented surfer, has a short, well-written third-act section where he’s a surprisingly effective character. Unfortunately, this is a brief segment, and the film quickly resumes its run-round-in-circles silliness.

The ending is solid, several of its end-shots memorable (Marti, leaning by the broken gate). If this no-explicit nudity, hour-and-forty-minute flick had been twenty-to-thirty minutes shorter and had a little more character development, it would have been a less generic work. (On the plus side, the production employed future screenwriter and director Frank Darabont as a production assistant.)

Unless you’re a fan of any of the actors or looking to watch something to fall asleep to, you can skip HELL.

THE RAVEN (1963)

 

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriter: Richard Matheson.)

Storyline

A malevolent sorcerer targets two fellow magicians, one of whom he has turned into a raven.

 

Review

This Richard Matheson-scripted (and family friendly) comedy horror film, set in 1506 and not-really-based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem, is one of my favorite entries in Corman’s Poe-cinematic hexad. Everything about RAVEN, shot in fifteen days, works: the physical comedy and adroit wordplay; the top-notch acting of its masters-of-horror co-leads (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff) and other actors (e.g., Hazel Court, who acted opposite Price in 1964’s THE MASQUE OF RED DEATH, and Jack Nicholson, who worked with Boris Karloff in the 1963 movie THE TERROR, shot immediately after RAVEN on the same set); its good-for-its-time FX (Price’s spellcasting is shown as bright green laser beam-like rays); its era-evocative, color-rich sets; and its often playful, mood-varied soundtrack. . .  like I said, everything.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

 

(Director: Don Siegel. Screenwriter: Daniel Mainwaring and an uncredited Richard Collins, based on Jack Finney’s Collier’s magazine serial.)

Review

INVASION opens with Dr. Hill (an uncredited Whit Bissell, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, 1954), called by a fellow City Emergency Hospital practitioner (an uncredited Dr. Harvey Bassett, played by Richard Deacon, PIRANHA, 1978) to deal with a shouting, panicked Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy, PIRANHA, 1978). Bennell is from the nearby town of Santa Mira. (The fictional Santa Mira would later, not coincidentally, be the site of horror in Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1982 film HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH.)

Once Dr. Hill gets Bennell to sit down and talk with him, the present-day “Framing Sequence” ends, INVASION’s images segue (with Bennell’s voiceover) into the frantic doctor’s tale. It begins “last Thursday” when Bennell’s receptionist/nurse (Sally Withers, played by Jean Willes) called him back from an out-of-town medical convention. The reason: a flood of panicked appointment-seekers at his office. Some of Bennell’s patients are claiming that their loved ones, although they appear and act normal, are not their loved ones─their family members have become something else, something unsettling. . . with an underlying coldness in their manners.

At first, Bennell thinks it’s a psychiatric matter. He’s also pleasantly distracted by the presence of his recently returned lost love (Becky Driscoll). They’re about to sit down for dinner at their oddly empty favorite restaurant (Sky Terrace Playroom), when Bennell gets a message that married friends, Jack and Thedora “Teddy” Belicec, need his help right away. He and Becky rush over to the Belicecs’, and what they see there makes it evident that something disturbing and cold has Santa Mira in its grip (mind those cuckoo clocks!). . .

Filmed in three or four weeks, this tightly written and shot gem with its frenetic, paranoid 1950s chiaroscuro and a few small twists is a fleet hour-and-twenty-minute work, one that builds steadily in its first quarter and goes full-tilt-racer after that. (McCarthy, whose Bennell runs a lot, later said he was exhausted during filming, especially in his iconic highway scene.)

Don Siegel (DIRTY HARRY, 1971) works his usual practical, shot-economical charm in INVASION, aided by screenwriters Daniel Mainwaring (OUT OF THE PAST, 1947) and Richard Collins (CULT OF THE COBRA, 1955). Giving INVASION its terrifying visual feel, cinematographer Elsworth Fredericks (WORLD WITHOUT END, 1956) and editor Robert S. Eisen provide stark contrasts between comforting, daylit Santa Mira and its nighttime terrors, before mixing the elements of both to terrific effect─their work is heightened by Carmen Dragon’s melodramatic score, and the efforts of the rest of the behind-the-scenes crew.

The onscreen talent is also impressive.

Kevin McCarthy is good as the easy-going-now-ranting Dr. Miles J. Bennell. Dana Wynter is equally worthwhile as his lost love, Becky. Carolyn Jones (THE ADDAMS FAMILY, 1964-6), blond with short, curly hair, is believable as Theodora “Teddy” Belicec, as is King Donovan (who plays her husband, Jack).

Other notable players include: Virginia Christine (THE MUMMY’S CURSE, 1944) as Wilma Lentz, who thinks her uncle is not her uncle; Tom Fadden (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, 1977) as Uncle Ira Lentz; Sam Peckinpah (later an iconic director) as Charlie, the gas man in Bennell’s basement; and an uncredited Robert Osterloh (GUN CRAZY, 1950) as “Ambulance Driver in Framing Sequences.”

This version of INVASION is one of my all-time favorite alien irruption movies─it’s short, sharp (even with its early-on white picket fence pleasantness) and all-around well-made, with no wasted scenes or lines. 

HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019)

 

(Director/screenwriter: Christopher Landon, based on Scott Lobdell’s characters)

Review

Tuesday the 19^th. The day after the serial-killer loop-day of HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017), Ryan Phan─science-nerd roommate briefly seen in the first HAPPY─wakes up in his hot afternoon car. . . and starts reliving the same day again and again. He tells his roommate (Carter Davis) and Carter’s new girlfriend, Tree Gelbhorn, about it when Tree, who experienced the phenomenon in a longer, more violent way in the first HAPPY, tells Ryan about her time recycle where she tried to not only escape the fatal replays but figure out who her baby face-masked killer was.

Phan, Carter and Tree realize that they and those around them are in evolving, spiraling  quantum loop, created by Phan and his friends’ lab experiment (SISSY). They try to send Tree back to her normal loop while she, again, deals with her serial killer (who is not who it was last time), her grief issues about her mom’s death, and her inevitable, painful final death if she does not stop the killer and get back to her home timeline. But, of course, there are plenty of complications and character-based twists to navigate through before she can get there.

Like the first HAPPY, 2U is PG-13, gore-free, fleet, science fiction- and action-oriented, and humorous. Unlike the first HAPPY, 2U has less serial killer terror scenes (though the few there are nail the suspense vibe). 2U also reveals the why of Tree’s first-film quantum loops, something HAPPY neglected to do (not a criticism). Horror fans may grumble that 2U’s relative lack of scare scenes makes it a lightweight science fiction and action film for teens, but for this viewer it is a welcome and logical evolution of the possible HAPPY trilogy (the mid-end-credits scenes indicate this is a possibility).

HAPPY’s key cast members, good in their parts, return in 2U, some of them with expanded roles (e.g., Phan). They include: Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbhorn, the perpetually stalked student dealing with other personal issues; Israel Broussard as Carter Davis, her romantic interest (and whose room she keeps waking up in); Ruby Modine (SATANIC PANIC, 2019), as Lori Spengler, Tree’s roommate, whose intentions are different this time around; Phi Vu as Ryan Phan, Carter’s sometimes crass but nice scientist roommate; Rachel Matthews as Danielle Bouseman, still vacuous but less bitchy in 2U; Charles Aitken as Gregory Butler, Tree’s married lover in HAPPY, with whom her relationship is different this time around; and Rob Mello (FRIDAY THE 13th, VENGEANCE 2—BLOODLINES, 2021) as John Tombs, as vicious and violent as he was in the first film.

Two new players add to the fun: Sara Yarkin as Andrea “Dre” Morgan, one of Ryan’s fellow science nerds; and Saraj Sharma as Samar Ghosh, another science nerd.

2U is a solid, entertaining sequel that fills the why-related plot holes of the first film, with its tonal remix willingness to focus on story and characters without catering to narrow terror-genre expectations. Does 2U require a follow-up flick? No, but if it’s as entertaining and well-written (with a few convenient-to-plot situations) as 2U, another entry in HAPPY franchise may not be a bad thing.

HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017)

 

(Director/screenwriter: Christopher Landon. Screenwriter: Scott Lobdell.)

Review

Monday the 18^th. Tree Gelbhorn (Jessica Rothe), a hungover college student, wakes in another student’s dorm bed. How did she get here? Who is this seemingly nice guy (Carter Davis), whose bed she’s in? Did she sleep with him─they’re both clothed, and he’s rummaging around his room─and how fast can she get out of there?

A few minutes later, Tree walks through the daylit, busy campus, shaking off her alcohol-induced aches and pains, and gets on with her day. Later, that night, a silent, hoodie- and baby mask-wearing psycho stabs and kills her. Screen goes to black.

She wakes up in Carter’s bed again, beginning back-to-back re-loops of this day, with variable situations, all of them ending in her violent death. Can she figure out who’s trying to kill her and end this twenty-four-hour-replay nightmare before Baby Face ends her for good?

This PG-13-rated, hybrid horror comedy is a delight to watch. Light on gore (there’s a suggestive scene or two), it’s a fast-moving, funny and often suspenseful take on the serial killer genre, a butt-kick to its kill-by-numbers template. Scott Lobdell’s action-oriented screenplay is light on time-loop explanations, but to dwell on that is to nitpick (for this viewer, anyway), ignoring HAPPY’s other effective elements, including its solid mystery, organic humor and storytelling, and well-written lead characters.

Rothe is convincing as the flighty, resourceful, and defensive Tree.

Her fellow players are good as well. Standouts include: Ruby Modine (SATANIC PANIC, 2019) as Lori Spengler, Tree’s supportive and frustrated roommate; Rob Mello (FRIDAY THE 13th: VENGEANCE 2—BLOODLINES, 2021) as John Tombs, an escaped maniac who killed six women; and Rachel Matthews, whose bitchy, vacuous Danielle Bouseman─queen bee of Kappa house─infuses HAPPY with further levity.

Fans of 1980s teen comedies may delight in HAPPY’s homage to John Hughes’s 1984 film SIXTEEN CANDLES, which adds further heart and charm to this suspenseful, inventive, funny and good-for-a-PG-13 flick.

NOBODY SLEEPS IN THE WOODS TONIGHT (2020)

(Director/co-screenwriter: Bartosz M. Kowalski. . Co-screenwriters: Jan Kwiecinski and Mirella Zaradkiewicz.)

Storyline

Adolescents, assigned to a survival camp, try to fend off two hideous cannibals.

Review

This Polish slasher flick, a Netflix Original film, is paced like a drama with some stalk-and-slay scenes (one of them referencing an iconic kill scene from FRIDAY THE 13^TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD, 1988). There is little suspense in NOBODY, the killers are shown early and often. The production value of the movie is good, considering its low budget, but─viewed as a horror film─it’s a “meh” effort, best watched (if it must be watched) as one is drifting off to sleep—that way, you won’t miss anything memorable.