Movie Review: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

It seems like only last week that I was doing posts on Halloween, and yet here comes Christmas already. I'm still kind of in 'horror movie mode' and so what better way to make the transition than with Silent Night, Deadly Night?

Released the same month as A Nightmare on Elm Street, this less influential slasher flick was understandably overshadowed by Wes Craven's more inventive project. But Silent Night, Deadly Night outdid Freddie Kruger in one respect - parents and religious organisations really hated it! The idea of Santa Claus going on a killing spree was not one relished by many and the film was banned for a good while.

The story revolves around a youngster called Billy who, after a Christmas visit to his senile old grandpa (who warns him that Santa punishes naughty children) sees the murder of his parents by a felon dressed as the jolly man in red. Understandably this traumatises him no end, a fact that has little effect on the iron-handed Mother Superior of the orphanage he winds up in - a woman whose method of raising kids is thrashing the living daylights out of them with a leather belt.

Flash forward a few years and Billy is all grown up and working in a toy store. Things are going well for him until Christmas time comes around and he is asked to suit up in the dreaded red costume and be nice to kids. At an after hours party in the store, Billy (still in his Santa suit) sees the female co-worker he has a crush on getting manhandled by a fellow employee. This pushes him over the edge and he kills them both before embarking on a rampage across town that will eventually lead him back to the orphanage for a confrontation with the old Mother Superior.

I can't not mention the toy store in this movie which is a great snapshot of 1980s childhood. Many people have spotted treasured items from their own past on the shelves in the background and I'm no different. Jabba the Hutt action figures! He-Man and Battle-cat (on some sort of kite)!

Anyway, back to the movie. What makes this one different from most other slashers is that it is played out from the point of view of the killer. Most entries in this genre begin by establishing a group of teenagers who will eventually be picked off, one by one by a masked killer as the film progresses. Silent Night, Deadly Night spends the first half of its running time establishing the killer! In fact, I can't really remember any of the victims, except the ways in which they are killed. And there are some great ways including impalement by deer's antlers, strangulation by fairy lights and my personal favorite - a swinging chop of an axe that decapitates some young miscreant as he hurtles down a slope in his sleigh (incidentally the film's working title was 'Slay Ride').

But the 45 minutes spent setting up the killer's motive still doesn't quite warrant his sudden turn into a zombie-like killer of all 'naughty children'. Sure, he's got more motive than the likes of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, but the film still falls into the trap of almost every slasher - there is never enough credibility to make us believe that somebody would really go out and do this stuff. But never mind. A noble and entertaining entry in the genre nevertheless.

Movie Review: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

As much as I love the original Halloween (1978), it's been a relatively recent infatuation. The late 70s was a bit before my time. My time was the 90s when Wes Craven's self-referential Scream (1996) had turned the slasher genre on its head after many years of stale sequels and had inspired a new boom in the field of masked killers stalking teenagers. This, the seventh entry in the Halloween series, was the first Halloween movie I saw in the cinema and I can remember thoroughly enjoying it. But like most movies of the 90s, I haven't paid it so much as a second thought since seeing it back in '98. Deciding to watch it again, more than 10 years since its release, I discovered not just another generic Halloween sequel, but a thoroughly well made entry in the franchise and a damn good update on the original.

Largely ignoring the three sequels that dealt with Laurie Strode's daughter and her own encounters with her uncle Mike, H20 returns to Jamie Lee Curtis' character, who is now the headmistress of a fancy private school in California where her 17-year old son (Josh Hartnett) attends. Having faked her death and changed her name to 'Keri Tate' in an effort to throw her murderous brother off the scent should he still, by some miracle, be alive, Strode suffers from recurring nightmares and is pretty heavy handed with the old liquor bottle. During a very well done opening sequence, the home of a nurse who used to work with the now deceased Dr. Loomis is robbed and the file on Laurie Strode (presumably containing details on her new alias and current whereabouts) is stolen. Soon Myers is doing what he does best in an effort to kill his nephew who is now 17 (the same age Strode was when Myers resurfaced the first time).

Apart from the awesomeness of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis return to the role that she did so well twenty years previously, The film contains a large number of 'in joke' type stuff that us nerds love. From Joseph Gordon-Levitt's sudden appearance wearing a hockey mask often sported by another psycho-killer from a different franchise to the cameo of Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee Curtis' mother) who was the star/victim of Psycho (1960) alongside the very car she drove in said classic, H20 is just as self-referential as Scream. And, unlike most entries in the genre, H20 actually takes its time with characterisation and exposition. In fact it's nearly an hour into the movie before Michael Myers makes his appearance at the California school to begin his one-night rampage. Curtis is just as great to watch as she was in the original and her quick-thinking and motherly toughness is a breath of fresh air from all the running, screaming teenagers we've seen in pretty much every slasher movie since 1978. In fact the movie spends a surprisingly little amount of time on the teenage victims, instead focusing on the more mature storyline of a mother's over-protective tendencies and psychological trauma of her past. One other plus is the film's musical score. Using John Carpenter's iconic theme tune, the tinkling piano notes of the original are replaced by sweeping brass and strings, making the eternally creepy theme a much grander and more epic affair.

My only real complaints with the movie lie with the character of Michael Myers himself. I don't know what it is but he just doesn't seem as menacing as he was in the original. Despite some shots that bear striking similarity to ones in the original (reflections in glass, appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye etc) there still seems to be something missing. Also, with all the time taken explaining Laurie Strode's reappearance after her supposed death (mentioned in one of the sequels), you would have thought that a bit of attention would have been directed towards the killer himself. What exactly has he been doing for the last 20 years (assuming that the sequels are now non-canon), and how did he survive the blazing inferno that concluded part 2?

All in all, a great conclusion to the series. Too bad it was all spoiled by the awful Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and the recent remakes. But nevermind Rob Zombie, H20 remains the true successor to the 1978 original.

Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part II (1981)

With Halloween just around the corner, I've been watching a few classic horror films. While the second entry in the infamous 'Friday' series can hardly be considered a 'classic', it's actually pretty good considering how awful the series eventually became. The franchise is also called the 'Jason' series, but strictly speaking, such a series would have to begin with this entry as it is the first appearance of Jason Voorhees who, despite wearing a pillow case throughout the movie instead of his trademark hockey mask, would go on to become a horror icon as famous as Michael Myers or Freddie Kruger.

Good a sequel though this movie is, I can't help but feel a sense of missed opportunity considering how the creators of the first installment originally envisioned a long running 'Friday' series that would focus on a different story with each entry. After all, Jason Voorhees was supposedly dead at the bottom of Crystal Lake, with his appearance in the original movie only a nightmare vision and the real killer being his mother. But various big shots in control of the money side of things demanded that the killer in part 2 be an adult Jason who had somehow survived his childhood drowning incident and spent the rest of his youth living as a hermit in the nearby woods until witnessing the decapitation of his mad mother. Taking her severed head, he builds a shrine to her and starts his own killing spree supposedly on her whim.

That's the more than slightly preposterous set up for the second Friday movie. After the credits we are re-introduced to Alice Hardy, the surviving heroine of the first installment. It has been two months since all her friends were massacred at Camp Crystal Lake and she is now trying to get on with her life and forget all about it. But somebody is not about to let her get off the hook so easily and she soon departs this world via a screwdriver in the temple. I hate it when this happens in sequels. Killing off the protagonist in a post credits sequence really undermines everything they achieved in the previous movie. I felt the same way about Alien 3 (1992) when Hicks and Newt are revealed to have been killed before the credits even started! What a downer!

But I digress. Not long after this gruesome affair, a group of teens are Crystal Lake bound once more. A new training camp for camp counsellors has been set up and soon we are subjected to watching these hopefuls perform various wholesome activities like forest runs, carpentry and cook-outs (all done whilst wearing obscenely small shorts, I might add). Crazy Ralph turns up to do his doomsaying bit and 'heed my warning' speech just as he did in the first film, and of course he goes ignored by the gleeful youngsters. There is also a spooky campfire story which serves to inform us that there are folks about who believe that little Jason Voorhees didn't drown all those years ago and is in fact living in the woods like a savage.

With all that exposition out of the way, the film is free to get on with its killings. First up is poor old Crazy Ralph who is garroted while spying on a couple of teens making out. Don't know why he was still lurking around, but that'll learn him! The following day another couple, inspired by the local tales, decide to check out the abandoned (and strictly off limits) Camp Crystal Lake. All they find is a dead dog belonging to one of the other camp counsellors. A cop catches them snooping around and hauls them back to the training camp for a stern ticking off before getting a claw hammer in the skull whilst chasing a mysterious stranger into the woods on his way back to the station.

Things really get moving when most of the counsellors head out for a night on the town, leaving just six remaining for an evening of arm wrestling, making out and playing video games on some antiquated handheld device that even I don't recognise. Needless to say, they don't quite get the quiet night in they were hoping for.

One of the best things about the movie is it's protagonist. Amy Steel plays 'Ginny' the girlfriend of the camp leader. She proves to be the epitome of the 'Final Girl' archetype - brave, resourceful and smart. Despite a scene where she is hiding under a bed, literally urinating with terror (what the hell was that all about anyway?), Ginny uses her smarts to outwit the killer in the film's conclusion - donning Mrs Voorhees's old sweater and playing mind games with Jason.

Oh, and then there is that final scare which is a retread of the most popcorn-tossing moment in the first movie - Jason's sudden appearence just when we think it's all over. Turns out to be a dream of course, but we at least get to see what he looks like under that pillow case and it ain't pretty.