Short Cut Movie Review: Heathers

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I once saw the near-deification of a teenager who had died in an accident involving tremendous stupidity. It was undeoubtedly tragic for his family and no one should have to go through that, but it was also disconcerting to see the outpouring of grief, memorials, and bad poetry for someone whom most people thought was a real jerk and a bully. I bring this up because I was reminded of it watching Heathers, the 1989 cult classic black comedy about teenage suicide and murder.

Student Bodies Movie Review

This was a seminal and important film for my childhood where the horror genre is concerned. I always remembered most of the movie distinctly. Watching it again I pretty much knew exactly what was coming at every moment even though it had probably been twenty years or more since I'd seen it last. This was a movie that my older sister and brother used to watch on TV and laugh through. I found a lot of it quite funny and I'd like to think that wasn't just because I was laughing along with them. Oddly enough, I probably learned about the conventions of the genre mostly from this film and as a result found scary movies more ridiculous after.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

"You Mrs. Malvert."

Before there was the horror spoof Scary Movie and long before the self-referential and convention-skewering Scream, there was Student Bodies, a little known cult favorite that should have been made on a shoestring budget by amateurs and then wasted away in a dustbin. It would have but for a stroke of luck in the form of a Writer’s Guild strike which meant Paramount was willing to bankroll non-union projects. So a ridiculous satire written and directed by Mickey Rose (a collaborator on some early Woody Allen films) with a cast of nobodies, most of whom were making their first movie and never went on to any kind of film career after, got a sizable budget to work with. It didn’t do very well at the box office, but later built a small following on cable, where I used to encounter it as a child.

Horror Classic Movie Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

I'm not entirely sure this film belongs in this October series because it's not a film that was part of my childhood memories of scary movies. I don't think I saw this until I was in college. But the film was always something I was aware of. Everyone knew about Leatherface and how this was supposed to be one of the scariest movies. It actually scare me quite a lot when I did finally see it.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

A demented family portrait.

The most terrifying movies I’ve seen all come out of the 1970s, the time of the New Hollywood Golden Age, when studios were willing to back risky projects because audiences were willing to lay down money for challenging subject matter. Sometimes they just wanted visceral thrills. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre certainly provided the latter, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a challenging film or that it has anything of real importance to say. Its sole purpose is to scare the shit out of whoever is daring enough to see it. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s story is a depiction of a demented hick family in central Texas, where they prey on helpless victims, offering them a sadistic nightmare of torture.

Horror Classic Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street

A seminal horror film that I probably didn't see in its entirety until sometime after I'd seen the next two or three in the series. It was a little before more time, but I must have seen bits and pieces on TV growing up. Yes, Freddy scared me as a kid and I wasn't so much afraid to go to sleep as I was afraid that I might already be sleeping and he could appear at any time.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

Wes Craven’s knack as a director has always been his ability to get under your skin. His Last House on the Left has faced accusations of being nihilistic and depraved, but there’s no denying that it awakens a primal visceral reaction in people. When A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984, he once again put himself out there as a filmmaker who could grab an audience in a stranglehold and not let go for 90 minutes. In the process he helped usher in a new era of horror filmmaking with the killer as surrogate protagonist. People could connect to Fred Krueger in ways not possible with Jason or Michael Myers or Leatherface. Freddy’s wisecracking and ironic wit was the precursor to films like Child’s Play and even Scream, Wes Craven’s own post-modern homage to slasher films.

Withnail & I Movie Review: 25 Years Ago This Month

In its first 15 minutes I half expected Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical tale of two unemployed actors boozing it up in the English countryside, to become a Beckett-influenced sojourn into existential trappings. While the two titular characters wallow in misery in their wretched London flat it begins to feel like two souls trapped in an endless loop. A little more happens than a bit of Waiting for Godot.

This was Richard E. Grant’s film debut playing Withnail and here he perfected his signature sneer, off-hand sarcastic remarks, and general temperament of displeasure with everything. His friend, flatmate and fellow struggling actor’s name is never spoken, although Marwood can be seen on an envelope. Played by Paul McGann he is no less a brooding personality than Withnail, although he is more replete with angst and a general queasiness about everything.

John Cusack Focus: Better Off Dead Movie Review

Revisiting favorite old films from your childhood can go one of two ways. In most cases you can be fairly certain that it’s not nearly as good, interesting, clever, or funny as you remember. But you can be sure that you’ll either be supremely disappointed to discover there’s little redemption to be found within its frames or that there’s actually a lot more to discover than your innocent and immature brain was capable of comprehending at the time.

Better Off Dead… is one of two bizarre comedies (along with One Crazy Summer) from the mid-80s written and directed by Savage Steve Holland and starring John Cusack. What was Holland thinking? Can you imagine a film being made today whose main character is a depressive teen who tries to kill himself several times over the course of the film’s 90 minutes – and oh yeah, it’s a comedy?

Cult Classic Movie Review: Army of Darkness

This is my BOOMstick!

This review is based on the Director's Cut DVD I own, a disappointingly poor transfer with additional and alternate scenes, most of which don't match film grade, spliced in.


Army of Darkness is the end result of what happens when a group of friends makes a marginally successful cult film and then a major studio gives them a serious budget for a sequel. It is the sequel to Evil Dead II, itself more a remake than a sequel of Evil Dead. It is what happens when a series of sight gags mostly inspired by "The Three Stooges" get stretched too thin until it lies gasping for air on the floor. Okay, I'm exaggerating to an extent, but I found myself a little bit bored through most of the final half hour.

It more or less follows on from where the previous film left off – with Ash (still portrayed by the dashing, self flagellating Bruce Campbell) being thrown back to the Middle Ages where he is prophesied to deliver the kingdom from evil.

Cult Classic Movie Review: Evil Dead II

If you go into watching Evil Dead II with anything other than the desire to laugh, you’re likely to be disappointed. Director Sam Raimi and his collaborators, high school friends Scott Spiegel (who co-wrote the screenplay with Raimi) and Bruce Campbell, who stars in the film, set out specifically to make a horror comedy.

In a nutshell, the story goes something like this: Raimi and Campbell make a low-budget horror film called Evil Dead. It’s a standard group-of-friends-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods, supernatural evil, genre film. It’s by no means an inept film, but the seams are visible, the acting is poor and audiences respond with jeers and laughter. It achieves a bit of cult status. They decide to ‘remake’ the film, but as a comic send up of low-budget horror flicks, and call it a sequel.