Reviews

Stars: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowell, William Ragsdale 

Director: Tom Holland 

A teenager learns what happens when you peek into the wrong neighbor’s window… 

Brief synopsis: 

Charlie Brewster is a regular teen boy. He has a steady girlfriend, Amy, but she refuses to go beyond heavy petting, a situation that is a cause of frustration for him. His best friend is Evil Ed, a horror movie geek, and his mom is single and working a job that changes shifts on a regular basis. He is also a regular viewer of the Peter Vincent show “Fright Night” and has a great affection for his films. But one day he gets a new neighbor named Jerry Dandridge who soon begins to take a bite out of their little town… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Charlie watches Jerry and his roommate, Billy, move in with what looks like a coffin among other relics. Several nights later, a sex worker shows up at the house and Charlie hears a bloodcurdling scream later while he is studying.  Amy comes to talk to him at a diner later but he is distracted by a news report about the same woman having been found murdered. Amy smashes a sloppy joe into his face and leaves him behind with a laughing Ed. Charlie tries to investigate the house but is stopped by Billy. 

Later that night, Charlie is doing surveillance on Jerry’s house and sees him with another woman. Suddenly Jerry reveals sharp fangs and is about to bite the woman when he notices Charlie watching them. Jerry draws the shade while Charlie runs to tell his mom what is happening but she just thinks it is a dream. Charlie runs out to see what is going on at the neighbors and sees a shadow fly down and land in the trees, turning into Jerry. Jerry hands the woman’s purse to Billy who is putting the body into a truck. Charlie’s mom comes out yelling for her son blowing his cover. Charlie grabs his mom and drags her into their house. He tries to tell his mom what happened but she doesn’t believe him. He next tries Amy and gets the same result. Frustrated, he goes to the police and tells them about the two women who entered the house and ended up dead. It does not go well and the officer leaves once Charlie brings up vampires. 

Charlie then goes to visit Ed and is reminded that Jerry cannot enter his house without an invitation from the owner. Unfortunately, Charlie’s single mom thinks Jerry is attractive (she is not wrong) and invites him over for drinks. Jerry smiles at Charlie as he remarks that now he may stop over anytime, a threat that he follows through on that night. Jerry threatens Charlie, telling him that he is giving Charlie the choice of forgetting that he is a vampire. Charlie manages to stab Jerry in the hand with a pencil, stopping the attack. Jerry flees but warns Charlie he will be back tomorrow night. 

Charlie finally reaches out to a newly fired Peter Vincent but he thinks the boy is insane and quickly brushes him off. Out of options, he goes home and protects himself as best he can, surrounding himself with cloves of garlic, crucifixes, and begins making wooden stakes. Amy and Ed, who think Charlie is totally crazy, convince Charlie to stay in his fortified room while they talk to Peter Vincent themselves. The two teenagers manage to bribe the old actor into agreeing to a “vampire test” and work with Jerry to set everything up. Satisfied that Charlie will soon be out of their hair without having to resort to violence, Jerry and Billy decide to stay in and leave Charlie alone for the night. 

The next night, Peter comes in with holy water but it is just regular tap water. They perform the test and Charlie tries to deny it was real. While the teenagers talk to Jerry, Peter pulls out an old prop from one of his movies, a cigarette case with a mirror. To his shock, Jerry does not cast a reflection and Peter drops the case, breaking the mirror. At the same time, Charlie sees a painting that looks like a blonde Amy. Both Charlie and Peter leave in a hurry, dragging Ed and Amy with them. Charlie confronts Peter who admits that Jerry did not have a reflection in the mirror before driving off. Charlie, more certain than ever that Jerry is a vampire, insists Ed comes with him to take Amy home. Back in the house, Jerry steps on a piece of mirror that came from the cigarette case and realizes that Peter knows truth. 

Ed continues to mock the idea that Jerry is a vampire and decides to take a short cut down a dark alley. Jerry commiserates with the outsider and turns him into a vampire. Amy and Charlie hear the scream and assume Ed is just messing around until Jerry appears on the sidewalk following them. They make their way to a club and attempt to get in touch with Peter, even though Amy confesses that she paid Peter to fake the test. As Charlie makes the call, Jerry appears and dances with the virginal girl, bringing her under his thrall. After killing the bouncers, Jerry takes advantage of the chaos to kidnap Amy. Ed makes his way to Peter Vincent’s apartment. Peter makes the mistake of inviting the young man in only to discover he is a vampire. He uses a prop crucifix to burn the sign of the cross into the new vampire’s head. Ed runs off swearing that Jerry will make him pay. 

Charlie makes his way to Peter’s and, after proving he is not a vampire, begs him to come to Jerry’s house and kill the vampire. He refuses at first but eventually meets up with Charlie at Jerry’s house to end the vampire menace. While all this is going on, Jerry completes his seduction of Amy. He bites her and then takes her virginity. The two vampire hunters enter the house and begin to climb up the stairs. Jerry appears and Peter brandishes his crucifix. At first Jerry is scared but then he just laughs, telling Peter that without faith, it will not work on him. Charlie jumps in and successfully uses the weapon however he is quickly thrown over the stairs by Billy who is not a vampire but an assistant of some sort – think Renfield. Scared, Peter runs next door to try and get help from Charlie’s mom, not aware that she is working the night shift and not home. Instead, Ed is waiting for him and they fight. Ed turns into a wolf and Peter stabs him through the heart, seemingly killing him. Peter removes the stake from Ed and heads back over to Jerry’s house, his faith and courage restored. He finds Charlie with Amy, who is slowly turning into a vampire and changing into a version of Jerry’s lost love. 

Eventually they kill Billy and chase Jerry into the basement where his coffin is. Peter closes the coffin, stopping Jerry from reaching his hiding spot, while Charlie deals with a now monstrous Amy. They accidentally break one of the blacked-out windows and realize that the sun is up. Charlie and Peter break all of the windows and the room fills with sunlight, killing Jerry. No longer under Jerry’s influence, Amy returns to normal. 

A few nights later, Charlie and Amy are making out in his bed while Fright Night comes on, once again hosted by Peter Vincent. He throws on an old schlocky movie instead of a vampire film. Charlie is making his way to his bed when he thinks he sees a pair of glowing eyes in Jerry’s house but they quickly disappear. Charlie jumps on the bed to sleep with Amy while we hear in Ed in the background tell Charlie “(y)ou’re so cool Brewster.” 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

The summer of 1985 was a rough one for me. I started out the summer falling off my bike and getting stitches in my right arm. Two months later I was visiting my maternal Grandma and fell, breaking the same arm. Yeah, not fun. But I also got to see my first rated “R” film in the theater, Fright Night. We went the day I got my cast off and, given that the cast had gone above my elbow, the muscles were all tight and still needed to loosen up. That meant I spent the entire film trying to cover my eyes and couldn’t, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because if I had, I would have missed so much of a great film.

 Vampires were passe in the 1980’s, with very few films being produced and even fewer of those films being any good. Fright Night is an example of how to do the genre right. The premise is basically Rear Window with vampires. Charlie sees a murder and then spends the rest of the film trying to convince everyone, including his girlfriend, that he is not crazy. In the end he saves the girl and is the hero but the journey is what is important and what a journey it is. 

I will say that Holland's script is mostly great but it does play fast and loose with the vampire rules. The big ones are there: wooden stakes or sunlight being the best ways to kill them, the use of the vampire’s charisma to hold someone in thrall, and the fear of crucifixes. However, they play fast and loose with how someone becomes a vampire. For instance, Ed is immediately turned into a vampire after being bitten but Amy slowly transitions. And if Peter hadn’t staked Ed, would he have turned human again with Jerry’s death? What is the rule for that? Let’s not even get into Billy because there does not seem to be a consensus on what he is. He walks around in sunlight and turns into green goo and sand as he dies so I always assumed he was a zombie but I have read that writer/director Holland intended him to be another vampire in transition so who knows? 

The acting is great all around. Chris Sarandon is charming and charismatic as the vampire Jerry. You can see why all the women have no issue being bitten by him. Sarandon is often eating fruit, a little quirk he added to show he was descended from a fruit bat. It is a small detail but shows how committed he was to the character. William Ragsdale has not done much notable work since this film but he is a great everyman, a kid who loves horror films but not as much as the thought of having sex with Amy. He isn’t the most popular guy but he tries his best to do the right thing and stop Jerry. Amy is nice but not a pushover. She loves Charlie and is torn between wanting to believe him and wanting to get him the help she thinks he needs. Amanda Bearse has a nice girl-next-door quality and you can believe that her and Charlie are a real high school couple. Stephen Geoffreys plays Evil Ed with an underlying sense of sadness and longing for a place in this world. We get why he agrees to be turned by Jerry; he feels alone even when he is with his friend. 

And Roddy McDowell is pitch perfect as horror film host Peter Vincent. A combination of Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, with a little Christopher Lee thrown in, he is a relic trying to survive in the modern age. His movies, homages to the classic Hammer Films, were over the top and contained enough fake blood to be considered shocking in their day. However, the newer generation wants slashers and blood, something he cannot comprehend or understand. Peter eventually learns to let the past sleep after defeating Jerry, earning a new perspective and his job back. 

In many ways, Fright Night is like Peter, an old voice struggling to be heard in a new age. Jason, Freddy, and Michael were the new boogeymen, replacing Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man. Special effects, blood, and gore were on the rise, as well as sex scenes instead of innuendo. Fright Night manages to fit in by embracing some of these new components of a horror film and mixing them with the old school charm. When Jerry takes Amy’s virginity, we do not see them have sex after he bites her, it is implied through her sounds as the scene fades out. There is very little in terms of nudity or sex in the film period. However, the special effects are quite good. We get a good amount of blood through the nightclub scene and the transformations of Jerry, Ed, and Amy are quite good. Compared to the Terrifiers and Saw films of today, the effects are quite tame, but they were shocking in the 1980’s. 

One final thing to note is the score of the film. Soundtracks really found their groove in the 80’s, going from a thing only true fans buy to selling millions of copies. Think of Footloose, Purple Rain, Flashdance, Top Gun, and Caddyshack, films that made a nice profit on their soundtracks along with the films themselves. Not only that but, thanks to composers like John Williams and John Carpenter, movie scores had also become popular. Star Wars, E.T., Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and Jaws all had memorable scores that not only heightened the mood of the film but also the tension. These composers used their skill to work with the director and improve on the film. The standout track on Brad Fiedel’s score is “Come to Me”, which is basically Jerry’s seduction theme. Smooth and sexy with an ethereal feel, it conveys Jerry’s seduction perfectly. Fiedel has some great scores including Terminator 2: Judgement Day and True Lies so it is a shame he is not a more well-known name. 

Fright Night is a great update on the classic vampire film. It is scary without being too gory and has a wry sense of humor. Definitely one to add to your yearly Halloween rotation. 

More films from 1985 to check out: 

The Goonies – Adventure film about a group of kids who are trying to save their parents home by going on a treasure hunt. Along the way, they cross paths with a trio of bungling criminals. Includes future stars Sean Astin, Josh Broland, Ke Huy Quan, and Martha Plimpton. Still a favorite and loved by my kids and grandkids.   

Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cheesy dance movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Shannon Doherty, and Jonathan Silverman. SJP is Janey an Army brat and Catholic school girl who just loves to dance and makes friends with eccentric Hunt. Hijinks ensue as Janey tries to land a spot as a regular dancer on Dance TV. The soundtrack is amazing. 

Back to the Future – The film that put Michael J. Fox on the map and is still a great time. Teenager with a nuclear scientist friend, which is a totally normal thing for a teenager to have, gets sent back in time and accidentally stops his parents from meeting. A classic and the inspiration for a great John Mulaney bit.

Stars: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran 

Director: Thom Eberhardt 

What do you get when you throw a couple of teen girls into an apocalypse? An underappreciated horror/sci-fi/comedy cult classic… 

Brief synopsis: 

65 million years ago, a comet passed by Earth, coinciding with the extinction of the dinosaurs. That same comet is making a return tonight and the whole world is out and celebrating except for teenager sisters Sam and Reggie in Los Angeles. Sam had gotten into a fight with their stepmother Doris and ran away, spending the night in a steel shed. Reggie spent the night in a steel lined projection booth with her boyfriend Larry. When they wake up the next morning, their entire lives are changed… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Larry goes out in the morning to find a friend who never came by and is killed by a zombie-like man. Reggie gets accidentally locked out of the movie theater and encounters the same creature. She manages to fight him off and escapes across a now empty Los Angeles. She finds Sam at home and tries to convince her something is wrong, pointing out that the streets are now covered in clothes and red dust. Everyone is gone, turned into dust, and they are alone. At least they think they are alone until they hear the DJ on the radio from a local station. 

The girls head to the station and discover that what they were hearing was prerecorded but they do run into a trucker named Hector. He tells them that he and a girl he picked up slept in the back of his truck that night. When they woke up in the morning, she freaked out and ran off. He tried to find her but she was being eaten by some zombies and he couldn’t save her. Reggie becomes upset as she realizes that must be what happened to her boyfriend but eventually recovers, realizing that they have bigger issues to deal with. She explains that Sam still believes that their father, a military man, will come save them but Reggie knows that this happened all over the world and the reality is that their father is probably gone. Hector and Reggie spend a few cute moments together while Sam watches jealously. Sam decides to kill time by playing DJ and receives a phone call. She grabs her sister and Hector and says that the call came from scientists who said that the comet killed everyone who were outside but some people were only partially exposed and are dying. These people are the zombies the trio had recently encountered. Hector decides to go and see his mother, futilely hoping she survived the comet. He leaves the sisters but promises to return. 

Reggie and Sam practice shooting guns to defend themselves against the zombies. After a brief fight over Reggie claiming a man who could possibly be the last man on Earth, they do what teenage girls in the 80’s did to unwind – they head to the mall. After all, the stores are open and free of charge now. They have a fun musical montage before a group of zombified stock room boys attack, taking the two young girls hostage. The leader of the zombies plays Russian Roulette with them until the scientists come to the rescue. Reggie goes with the group to the base while Sam stays behind at the radio station with two scientists to wait for Hector. Scientist Audrey White gives Sam a shot to deal with a nasty rash she has developed. Sam claims that she gets nervous rashes before she seemingly dies. Audrey then turns and shoots the other scientist dead. 

Reggie is answering questions at the base and getting increasingly unnerved by the scientist’s questions. After being told that Sam is dead, she tries to escape. As she makes her way through the base, she finds a room with numerous brain dead people who seem to kept alive as blood donors. She manages to grab a gun and stumbles upon two children who were being told to take a gas sedative so they can go to the North Pole and see Santa Clause. The attendants also show signs of memory loss as they cannot remember the specific details of their job. Meanwhile, Hector arrives at the radio station to find Audrey waiting for him. She explains that their group left the vents open at the base to expose themselves minimally to the comet. They were hoping to create a cure through the survivors blood but they had not had any luck yet and they were slowly dying. Audrey then kills herself. 

Reggie continues trying to escape the base with the kids. Hector arrives at the base in a convertible and calls over a guard. He then shows the guard Sam in the trunk and explains that she isn’t dead, just sedated. Sam then grabs the guard and they knock him out. They meet up with Reggie and the kids and escape, blowing up the base in the process. The new family then drives away, back to Los Angeles. Rain comes and washes away all the red dust, cleaning up the town. Reggie and Hector become a couple, raising the children they found at the base. Sam meets up with a fellow survivor and drives off with him but not before promising to be home early because “the whole burden of civilization is on us.” 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

An underrated film that did okay at the box office but became a cult classic on video, Night of the Comet is witty, fun, and a wild ride. The acting is excellent and the script is sharp and funny. For example, when Reggie is trying to explain to Sam what is going on, Sam’s response is complete disbelief. Recognizing that her sister is in denial, Reggie gives her a reality check and drags her out of the house to see the emptiness outside. She screams at her sister “It’s Saturday morning Sam, where are the goddamn kids?”. It may not be true now but on Saturdays as a kid, I was outside right after breakfast and did not come back in until the street lights came on. The fact that there were no kids out at all really points to the emptiness of this new world. Reggie then picks up a shoe and dumps out a bunch of red dust. “Here’s Chuck.” Boom – no need for any other explanation, just a two words and a simple visual. Our characters are now caught up on their new reality. 

The sister’s chemistry is great. You believe that Catherine Mary Stewart (Reggie) and Kelli Maroney (Sam) are sisters who bicker and fight but still love each other at the end of the day. Sam complains that Reggie has stolen every boy she ever liked and how she has stolen Hector but you can see in her eyes she doesn’t mean it. This is a 16-year old who probably had a crush on her sister’s boyfriends and she could see Hector as maybe a chance to be more grown up. It quickly becomes clear that she doesn’t really feel that way as Sam was actually missing a young boy her age who she liked and lashing out to deal with it. It is relatable and understandable given the situation. Sam also gets the best line in the film. While the girls are practicing shooting at a car, the gun continuously jams. Frustrated, she hands the gun back to Reggie and says “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” Reggie gets a great comeback, noting that the now decimated car didn’t know the difference. 

Thom Eberhardt’s direction is great. This was a low budget film, only $700,000, and every penny is well-spent. He brings some interesting camera angles to different shots and manages to create a feeling that Los Angeles is completely empty. The film company shot at odd hours to get the best shots of empty streets and you really feel that these girls are alone in the world. The cast, even minor roles, is filled with recognizable actors. The special effects and make up are very good, not John Carpenter’s The Thing good, but well done given the budget. The filter used to give Los Angeles the red sky from the dust is used sparingly and every permit they got to shoot on the streets were well utilized. Those permits weren’t cheap but those shots were used in at least 25% of the film and make all the difference.

Night of the Comet is hidden gem that needs more exposure. In the year of Gremlins and Ghostbusters, this little film still managed to make over $14,000,000,000 at the box office – a huge return on the initial investment and that is not even including home video revenue. Seek it out and have a fun night with these Valley girls. 

More films from 1984 to check out: 

Beverly Hills Cop – Star making vehicle for Eddie Murphy. When his friend in murdered at his apartment in Detroit, Axel Foley heads to Bevely Hills to investigate.   

Firestarter – Okay Stephen King adaptation that was taken away from John Carpenter after The Thing flopped. Drew Barrymore does what she can with the material but I wonder how much better a Carpenter version of this film could have been. 

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom – Second outing of the hero and definitely in the middle of my rankings. Went gross-out instead of focusing on the story and I usually love Kate Capshaw but I detested Willie.   

Stars: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon 

Director: Wes Craven 

While Jason was dying in Crystal Lake, a new horror icon was being born on Elm Street… 

Brief synopsis: 

15-year-old Tina Gray is having a tough time. During the day she is stuck in a toxic relationship with her boyfriend Rod while her single mother seems more interested in her boyfriend than her daughter. She gets no relief at night as she is stalked by a badly burned man with knives on his fingers in her nightmares. Wanting a little support while her mom goes out of town, Tina invites her best friend Nancy and her boyfriend Glenn over for the night to keep her company. Nancy mentions she has also been nightmares of the same man. Rod crashes the party and, after sleeping with Tina, mentions that he has also been having nightmares. 

Sadly, Tina’s fears are proven well-founded. She falls asleep and is stalked by the nightmare man again but this time he succeeds in his attack and kills her. Rod is woken up by his sleeping girlfriend thrashing around on the bed and then suddenly getting cut from out of nowhere. As she magically crawls around the walls and ceiling, the blood continues to pour out as she dies. Rod, knowing he will be blamed for the death, jumps out the window while Nancy and Glenn discover Tina’s body. After calling the authorities, Nancy is questioned by Lieutenant Thompson who also happens to be her father and her mom’s, Marge, ex-husband. Nancy tells her father that Tina dreamed this was going to happen to her. 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Nancy understandably does not get any sleep and, against her mother’s advice, decides to go to school to keep her mind busy. Her father uses her as bait to draw Rod out. Before he gets arrested, Rod tells Nancy that he thought he was having another nightmare. Nancy goes to school and falls asleep in class. She ends up in a boiler room with a badly burned man in a dirty red and green sweater who has finger knives. She wakes herself up by purposely burning her arm on one of the steam pipes. As she leaves school, she notices that her burn came with her from the nightmare. She talks to Rod in jail who describes the same man as the person haunting his nightmares. 

Nancy attempts to take a bath but falls asleep and the nightmare man attempts to drown her. She escapes and, realizing he is stalking her in her dreams, starts to take No-Doz pills to stay awake. Glenn breaks into her bedroom later that night and she asks him to watch her while she sleeps so she can attempt to see if the nightmare man is real. She falls asleep and finds the man attacking Rod in the jail. Nancy grabs a sleeping Glenn and runs to the jail but they are too late as Rod is found hung in his cell. Although his death is ruled a suicide, Nancy is convinced that he was murdered and refuses to sleep. Her mother Marge, who is using alcohol to cope with the whole situation, takes Nancy to a sleep clinic to try and help her sleep. 

At the clinic, Nancy is hooked up to multiple machines and falls asleep. While sitting with the technician, Marge asks him what dreams are and he admits no one really knows. Nancy slips into REM and the machines start going nuts as she is attacked by her nightmare. As she fights an unknown figure, she appears to convulse on the bed. Her mom and the workers at the clinic run in to wake her up and find that she has three slashes on her arm and a small section of her hair has turned gray from fright. Nancy also finds a dirty brown hat in the bed, grabbed off the head of her attacker. Marge takes Nancy home and calls her ex-husband to tell him of the existence of the hat while drinking her morning vodka. She then tries to hide it from her daughter but Nancy isn’t letting it go. She grabs the hat from the drawer and points out that the man’s name is in it – Fred Krueger. Nancy wants to know who Fred is but Marge insists that Nancy just needs to get some sleep. Nancy’s response is to grab her mom’s vodka bottle and smash it while yelling “screw sleep.” 

Nancy meets up with Glenn and they discuss dreams. Glenn mentions that the Malaysians and that, if they came across something evil in their dreams, they take away its power. He notices the book Nancy is carrying is called “Booby Traps and Other Anti-Personal Devices” and she explains that she is into survival. She leaves him and arrives home to find that her mother has barred all the windows on the house, making escape impossible. She confronts her mother who then takes her daughter to the basement and pulls a sack out of the furnace. In the sack is Freddy Krueger’s finger knives. Marge then explains that Freddy Krueger was a child murderer who was killed a dozen kids in the neighborhood. He was arrested but, due to legal snafu, the police were forced to let him go. The parents decided to take the law into their own hands and burned him to death in his house. Marge attempts to reassure her daughter that she can sleep now because “he's dead because Mommy killed him”. This is not the reassurance to Nancy the drunk Marge thought it was. 

Nancy talks to Glenn and they arrange to meet up later to try and catch Freddy by bringing him out of her dream. She also warns him that “whatever you do, don’t fall asleep”. Glenn does not listen and ends up pulled into his bed and turned into a geyser of blood shooting up out of the bed onto the ceiling. Nancy tries to get to him but Marge has locked the doors and hid the keys. Nancy calls her dad to verify that Glenn is dead and tells him that she is going to go to sleep and bring Freddy out into the real world. Lt. Thompson encourages his daughter to sleep and assigns an officer to watch the house. Nancy then puts her drunk mother to bed and goes to work booby trapping the house. She falls asleep and, when the alarm goes off, drags Freddy into the real world. They fight all over her house, ending in the basement where she douses him in gasoline, sets him on fire, and locks the door. She finally gets her father’s attention and his men break down the front door to help her. The group head to the basement but find Freddy has escaped. Nancy and her father follow the fiery footprints to her mother’s bedroom where they find the two in a tussle. They attempt to save Marge but are too late and the woman and Freddy both disappear into the bed. 

Nancy stays in the room alone and waits for Freddy to reappear. She tells him that she has figured out the secret and that everything she has experienced is one nightmare, none of it is real, and she wants her mother and friends back. Remembering what Glenn had told her previously, she tells him that she is taking away all his power. Freddy attempts to attack her but disappears into dust. Nancy opens the bedroom door and finds herself outside on a bright and sunny day. Glenn pulls up with Rod and Tina in his convertible to drive them to school while Marge tells her daughter that she is done with drinking. Nancy gets into the car and the red and green convertible top suddenly pops on, the doors lock, and the windows roll up without anyone doing anything. Trapped in the car, begs her mother for help but the woman just smiles and waves as the car pulls away. They last thing we see is Marge being pulled through the window on the front door by Freddy as little girls in white dresses jump rope and sing the iconic “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” nursery rhyme. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

This was one of my longer plot summaries and that is because this is one of the more complex horror movies of the 1980’s. Based on stories the late Wes Craven read about Hmong refugees who were tormented by nightmares and scared they would die in their sleep. They would drink coffee and take caffeine pills to stay awake but eventually sleep would win and they would die in their sleep. These stories would lead to one of the most successful horror film series of the 1980’s. Let’s face it, you have a chance of escaping from Michael or Jason if you can get away from Haddonfield or Crystal Lake but everyone has to sleep. No matter how hard you try, your body will force you to fall asleep. 

A little back story on me here – I lost my husband at a young age and had some problems with insomnia following his death. One day I was in the middle of a store when I suffered a grand mal seizure. I was told that basically my brain was sick of my not sleeping and decided if I wasn’t going to sleep willingly, it was going to make me. I learned my lesson and make sure I get at least some sleep at night and haven’t had a seizure since. You can try and fight sleep but, eventually, your body will always win that fight. And that is Freddy’s biggest advantage in the horror icons game – everyone has to sleep. 

Freddy was a departure from previous our previous horror madmen. Unlike Jason and Michael, Freddy was not content to just stalk you, he loved to play with his prey before he kills them. He enjoys the hunt, taunting the teens he will be attacking, scraping his weapon against anything that will give out that horrible screeching sound. He was a predator in life and his death only gave him more room to play and ways to play with the victims. Sure, he loves his boiler room but he also loves to get into your bedroom with you. In Craven’s original script, Freddy was a child molester and even if they officially dropped it from the backstory, it is still there in spirit. 

But Freddy would not work without the right man behind the makeup and Robert Englund earned his horror icon status with this character. The only horror movie monster to be played by the same actor throughout the original run of films, Englund created Freddy onscreen, adding playful little touches here and there. He has stated that the make up process for the burned face was so long and difficult it didn’t take him much to get to the place where he wanted to kill people. Whatever his motivation, the film would not work without Englund, plain and simple. 

But a movie monster does not work without good prey and Freddy has some good prey in this film. Craven pulls the Psycho twist of having us introduced to Tina and assume she is the lead character until she is killed off at the end of the first act. I know Heather Langenkamp has taken a lot of knocks for her acting but I think she works the material as well as anyone. Nancy is a survivor and the first horror heroine I had seen actively gear up for battle and take the fight to the bad guy. She probably will never win an Oscar, but I believe her character and feel bad for her that no one, not even her boyfriend (played by a young Johnny Depp in his first film role) or her parents believe her. 

Craven also uses the dream imagery to its fullest low-budget best. The line between dream and reality is never clear. There is no sudden change of scenery or weird transition sequences. The character is simply doing something as simple as sitting in class and then sees a body bag in the hallway. These seamless transitions make sense because, as we realize at the end of the film, everything that has happened has been part of one long nightmare. The film is not called Nightmare on Elm Street, it is A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven never envisioned this as a series of films, it was always meant to be a one off. The only reason that there was an open ending was because the producer, Bob Shaye, insisted on it. He saw the potential for a franchise and, for better or worse, that is what we got. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a genre classic and one of the late Wes Craven’s best films. A must watch for any horror fan. 

More films from 1984 to check out: 

Johnny Dangerously – Underappreciated Michael Douglas parody of the gangster film, ably supported by Marilu Henner, Griffin Dunne, and Joe Piscopo. 

Starman – John Carpenter film about an alien who takes the form of a woman’s late husband after he crash lands on Earth. She joins him as he runs to meet a rescue ship. Surprisingly sweet and a little sad, Jeff Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor for this film.   

The Terminator – Arnold Schwazenegger became a star for his portrayal of lead role, a robot covered in human skin, sent to kill a woman named Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton is the correct Sarah Connor, future mother of the leader of the human rebellion John Connor, and Michael Biehn is the man sent back in time to protect her. I consider this more science fiction action than horror based on the way James Cameron directs it.

Stars: Kimberly Beck, Corey Feldman, Peter Barton 

Director: Joseph Zito 

Jason comes back for one more adventure at Crystal Lake… 

Brief synopsis: 

We start the film with the aftermath of Friday the 13^th Part 3 being cleaned up by the police. Jason is placed in an ambulance and taken to the morgue as everyone thinks he is dead. They are wrong. Jason wakes up, kills the morgue attendant and a nurse, and then heads home. 

The next morning, we meet the Jarvis family consisting of mom Tracy, late teen daughter Trish, dog Gordon, and young horror buff and mask maker supreme Tommy (played by Feldman). Tracy is recently separated from her husband and a little concerned about the group of post-high school teenagers renting the cabin next door. This group of barely legal teens includes a pre-fame Crispin Glover (working on his George McFly role) as Jimmy. He is there with his friends Ted, long-time couple Paul and Sam, and new couple Sara and Doug. The group also meets a pair of twins, Tina and Terri, who are more than happy to skinny dip with people they have never met before. 

Trish and Tommy meet the final member of the cast, Rob, when he helps them fix their car and they bring the stranger carrying a knife and gun into their home minutes later without any worries. Man, the 80’s really were a different time… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

The teens throw a party. All the boys except Doug flirt with the twins, pissing Paul’s girlfriend Sam off. She decides to go for a swim to cool off and gets killed by Jason. Paul finally realizes that he is being a jerk and goes off after his rightfully pissed off girlfriend only to find her dead in a raft and get killed immediately afterwards. Twin Tina decides if she can’t have Paul, she will settle for Jimmy and they go upstairs and have sex. Sara and Doug also head upstairs and Sara loses her virginity to Doug, a bad move in a Friday the 13^th film. They are dispatched in the shower, quickly followed by the remainder of their friends in the cabin. 

Meanwhile, it is revealed that Rob is there to hunt and kill Jason. After killing the power, the mom, and the dog at the Jarvis house, Jason then goes after Tommy and Trish. Rob gets there and is quickly dispatched by the killer. Tommy finds Rob’s scrapbook which includes a drawing of young Jason. Tommy then shaves his head and takes a machete to the madman’s head, finally killing him. Later at the hospital, the siblings embrace before Tommy looks into the camera was a crazed look in his eyes. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

Widely considered one of the better films in a so-so franchise, Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter was supposed to be just that. Tom Savini came back to kill his creation and there were absolutely no plans to have another film in this series. But money usually changes people’s minds and this film was extremely successful, grossing $33.3 million on a $2.2 million budget. Even with marketing costs, that is still a huge net profit. To put it in modern figures, that would be the same as making almost $105 million against a $7 million budget. With that result, of course there were going to be more films. 

So why did The Final Chapter get a review from me and Friday the 13^th Part 3 did not? Quite frankly, I do not like Part 3. The final girl is annoying beyond belief and there is even an implication that Jason, with the mind of a child, might have been inappropriate with her. The bikers make no sense, the 3D is horrible with or without the blue and red glasses, and Shelly may be the worst character in a Friday the 13^th film and that is saying a lot. Other than the hockey mask, there is really no reason to watch it. 

Not that this one is a lot better but at least I am not rooting for the killer. I like the characters here, however thinly drawn they are. Sam is in a long term relationship with Paul and gets rightfully pissed off when he not only flirts with another girl but begins slow dancing with Tina right in front of her. To her credit, Sam does not start a fight but instead removes herself from the situation. Paul also makes a decision to stop himself from going any further with Tina, going after his girlfriend instead. In a better written film, they could actually be our final couple, overcoming obstacles to be stronger in the end. Alas, this is a Friday the 13^th film and they have already had sex so they die. 

All in all, the characters and actors are all good in their weakly written roles. Sara and Doug are sweet as a new couple, Jimmy is a little off and crazy but in a mostly good way, Rob is an idiot but well-meaning, and the Jarvis family actually seems like a family unit. We believe that Tommy and Trish are siblings and that Tracy is their mom. Justice for Tracy and Gordon, both of whom did nothing to get Jason’s ire up except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only character who truly annoys is Ted but he is supposed to be annoying. Lawrence Monoson (the title character in the criminally underrated The Last American Virgin) had a range that was not ever put to good use. He was wonderfully sweet and loving in American Virgin but here he is annoying and rude and he plays them both perfectly. He deserved a better career. 

The film moves at a good pace, has some good kills, and ends well. What else can I say, it is a Friday the 13^th film, you know what you’re getting. I recommend watching this one at least once. 

More films from 1984 to check out: 

Police Academy – Stupid fun with Steve Guttenberg and a young Kim Cattrall. How this became a long-running series is still a mystery to me. The Friday the 13^th of comedy films. 

Sixteen Candles – John Hughes classic about a woman who is so self-centered that she schedules her wedding for the same weekend as her sister’s 16^th birthday. Or a coming-of-age film about high school and teenage romance, you pick. 

The Karate Kid – Daniel LaRusso moves to California and immediately gets on the wrong side of the local karate gang. Luckily, mentor Mr. Miyagi helps teach the teenager karate and life lessons. Ralph Macchio and Elisabeth Shue are a cute couple and William Zabka plays a great villain but Pat Morita steals the show as the calm and wise sensei.

Stars: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver 

Director: Ivan Reitman 

Who you gonna call? The movie that debuted the same day as Gremlins and narrowly beat it at the box office - Ghostbusters 

Brief synopsis: 

Peter Venkman (Murray), Ray Stanz (Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Ramis) are failed academics trying to prove supernatural phenomena. They have some luck in the New York City Library, getting ectoplasm and attempting to catch a ghost, but return to their offices at Columbia University to find they are being kicked out. Venkman, ever the con man, manages to convince Ray to take a 3^rd mortgage on his house to buy an abandoned fire house and set up their business – Ghostbusters. They even find enough money to hire a secretary, Janine (national treasure Annie Potts). 

At first, they receive only a few calls. First, a local hotel calls regarding a specter that has been there for years. The boys may destroy a ballroom and a laundry cart with their proton packs, but they do eventually manage to capture the green ghost, lovingly nicknamed Slimer. Egon also chooses this job to mention that the proton packs are basically unlicensed nuclear reactors and to never cross the streams of power coming from them. Then cellist Dana Barrett (Weaver) sees some weird things in her apartment, including eggs cooking by themselves on the counter and another dimension in her refrigerator. She goes to them for assistance and is instantly put off by the lecherous Venkman. The group promise to look into her problems and get back to her. 

But suddenly, it seems like New York City is overrun with ghosts and the ghostbusters find themselves overwhelmed with work. They soon hire another ghostbuster, Winston Zeddimore (the fabulous Ernie Hudson) and are embroiled in a fight with Walter Peck from the EPA… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

It turns out that Dana’s apartment building is actually the epicenter of the crisis. The building was built by a Gozer-worshipping architect to attract and mask ghostly energy. Peter finally gets a date with Dana but she is possessed by the demon Zuul while her neighbor, Louis Tully (a hilarious Rick Moranis), is possessed by another entity, Vinz. They are eventually turned into demon dogs by the demon Gozer to be her pets. Meanwhile, Peck gets a court order to shut down the containment unit, resulting in all the ghosts who had been caught being released. The mayor sides with the ghostbusters and sets them free. 

They then make their way to Dana’s apartment, confronting Gozer. Gozer gives them the chance to choose the way they will die and Ray ends up accidentally thinking of the Stay Puft marshmallow man. The marshmallow man is brought to life, over 50 feet, and makes his way towards the group. Egon encourages them to cross the streams of their Proton Packs, eventually destroying Gozer and the marshmallow man. Dana and Louis return to their human forms and Dana kisses Peter. The Ghostbusters emerge from the building as the heroes of New York City. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

There are certain reviews that have been very easy for me to write. The Thing, which I actively watch multiple times a year, felt like it had been in my head the whole time and I just needed to get the words down on my computer. I had honestly thought that Ghostbusters would be the same way but I was wrong. This is a film that I have grown up with, that I have shared with my kids and grandkids, that has been background noise while I was writing, and that I have quoted in real life. No kidding, one day my supervisor called me to her desk by my name and I said, out loud, “There is no Cristina, only Zuul.” My supervisor didn’t seem to get it but her supervisor laughed out loud in her office and asked me if I just quoted Ghostbusters. Got to have some fun in those cubicles. 

So why has this been so hard? Because as I sat down to actively watch it for the first time in years, I found one element taking away from my enjoyment and, surprisingly, that was Bill Murray as Peter Venkman. While his delivery is impeccable and he plays the character perfectly, Venkman is a sleaze beyond measure and he kept giving me the ick. He also does not really have any kind of character arc. He doesn’t do anything to earn Dana’s trust or a date. I wanted her to keep turning him down but it seems like the only reason she says yes is so that we can have a climax to the film. Their so-called romance rings false and I really wanted her to stay as far away from him as possible. 

Other than that, this is a great film. The visual effects are amazing and Slimer is a fun little homage to the late John Belushi. The chemistry between the cast is incredible and I will always be a Janine/Egon stan. They should have been together in the second film and I truly believe that the only reason they weren’t was because they needed a storyline for Rick Moranis beyond being their lawyer. In addition, it would have solved many of the issues I have regarding the films that have come out recently in this franchise. There is no explanation for where Egon has been other than out in the middle of nowhere and having abandoned his daughter. Making Janine his wife and the mother of his daughter would have fixed not only the timeline but also allowed a story where Janine, aware of what her husband is doing and supporting him, raises their daughter away from the ghostbusting life to keep her protected. Boom – Egon isn’t a deadbeat dad, we have more of a connection to the first film, and Annie Potts gets the screentime she deserves. 

The script is tight and there is not a wasted moment. Comedy is interspersed to break up the tension and give the audience a release, as all good horror films should do. The dialogue is quick and snippy, like a 1930’s screwball comedy. The actors are all game and even the smallest part is perfectly cast. All of them came back together for the lesser sequel which, while still good, is just not up to par with the original. I would actually put the all-female Ghostbusters second in the series as it was funnier to me and honored the original without copying it. Sacrilege I know but this is my personal opinion and I stand by it. I am not a fan of the last two sequels at all, despite containing many of my favorite actors. 

Ghostbusters is a classic. It showed be seen at least once by everyone. It will be good for anyone over the age of 10 as it is not too scary. The ghosts are creepy without being gross-out and Slimer even became the lead of the later cartoon series. There is humor for both children and adults so no one feels left out. I know if you are reading this review, you have probably already seen this film at least once but a rewatch is always a good idea.

Other films from 1984 to check out: 

Footloose – Friday the 13^th victim Kevin Bacon finally gets the lead role he deserves in this classic dance film. A town has banned dancing and this upstart makes it his mission to bring dancing back. Great soundtrack (Heaven Helps the Man is underrated classic) and a fun time. Based on a real town that banned dancing. 

Splash – Ron Howard directs this story of a man, a young Tom Hanks, who falls in love with mermaid Daryl Hannah. A stellar supporting cast includes the late John Candy and Eugene Levy. Fun fact: the name Madison was supposed to be joke about commercialism. Instead, it started a trend and is now one of the most popular names for girls. 

V: The Final Battle – The better half of the miniseries duo, although I still watch both every few years, this allegory of World War II deals with alien invaders who look like humans but that is just cover for the monsters who lie beneath. The birth scene of a human/alien hybrid is unforgettable and a rare chance to see Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger) as a good guy.

Stars: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates 

Director: Joe Dante 

Oh 1984, the first year I can remember really going to the movies on a constant basis. Up until then, it had been an occasional thing but the summer of ’84 found me in the theater constantly with films I still watch and have shown to my kids and grandkids. Let’s start with a classic – Gremlins. 

Brief synopsis: 

Failed inventor Rand Peltzer is looking for the perfect gift for his son Billy in a Chinatown curio shop. He finds it with the cute little creature called a Mogwai. The old man who runs the shop refuses to sell it to Rand, telling him that with the Mogwai comes great responsibility. His grandson, well aware that the shop needs the money, sells it to Rand anyway. That is where the three rules are spelled out to Ram. Rule number 1 – don’t get him wet. Rule number 2 – never feed him after midnight. Rule number 3 – the most important rule of them all, keep him away from bright lights, especially sunlight because that will kill him. 

Meanwhile, his son Billy is living a depressing life in a depressing town. The local town mogul, Mrs. Deagle, delights in keeping everyone else in the town down, throwing out people who cannot pay their rent with a gleeful look in her eyes. She hates Billy and threatens his dog Barney after the pup accidentally breaks her snowman. He works as a teller at the bank, trying to save up money to go to art school while also supporting his parents and flirting with fellow teller Kate. His VW bug barely runs and his neighbor Mr. Futterman encourages him to buy American. A World War II vet, Futterman is convinced that the Germans put gremlins in their machinery. Futterman himself drives an American Harvester tractor everywhere. 

Rand proudly gives his son the pet who he has named Gizmo. Billy is given the three rules but, unfortunately, a clumsy Corey Feldman sets a night of terror into motion when he accidentally spills water on Gizmo… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

It turns out that spilling water on the Mogwai causes them to multiply. Gizmo spits out five new Mogwai from his body and is not happy about it in the least. We soon discover that these new creatures are devious and mean, especially the leader with a little furry Mohawk, Stripe. Billy takes one of the creatures to his high school science teacher to get his opinion, even creating another creature as a demonstration of what happens when water touches them. That night, all the creatures except Gizmo beg to eat and Billy feeds them based on his clock saying it is before midnight. His science teacher leaves a sandwich by the new creature’s cage and the animal eats it. 

All of the creatures go into cocoons and soon emerge as green, slimy creatures, our gremlins. The one at the high school kills the teacher while the ones at home go after Billy’s mom. In an amazing scene, she goes to town on them, quickly dispatching several of them by using her blender, a knife, and a microwave. Billy comes in to find one of the gremlins attacking him mom and throws in to its death in a fire. He chases Stripe but is too late to stop the gremlin from jumping into a pool, multiplying like crazy and the new batch of creatures attacking the town. 

Mrs. Deagle is killed when they rewire her stair chair and send her hurtling out a second story window. They take Mr. Futterman’s tractor and ram it into his house. The havoc reaches a local bar where Kate works and she is forced to serve them as they all demonstrate different personalities. Billy eventually rescues Kate and they hide out at the bank where Kate reveals that she has a very good reason to hate Christmas. Her Dad was trying to impersonate Santa Claus and broke his neck going down the chimney. Young Kate saw her dead father being brought out of the chimney in the red suit and that was how she learned there was no Santa Claus. 

Eventually, our heroes find the gremlins in a movie theater watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The couple and Gizmo blow up the theater killing all of the gremlins except Stripe, who snuck out to get more candy at the store across the street. The trio make it into the store and Kate works on turning on the lights, accidentally turning on a fountain in the garden department. Stripe attacks Billy but Gizmo rescues him by driving a Barbie car into a window shade and melting Stripe in the sunlight. The group goes home to recover but the old Chinese man shows up to reclaim his pet. He explains that Billy may someday be ready to care for Gizmo but he is not ready yet. Gizmo speaks for the first time, saying Bye Billy before they leave to go back home. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

One of my favorite films of all time, Gremlins is a classic. Gizmo is the cutest thing going and I will someday have him on my stuffed animal shelf next to Wicket the Ewok, Stitch, Eeyore, E.T., and Sharktopus. This film is a quirky mix of fun and scary, giving you enough horror to haunt your dreams. After this film and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Stephen Speilberg convinced the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating as these films were too intense for PG but not scary enough for R. 

The rules, admittedly, are silly but you sometimes have to give a film a mulligan to enjoy it. I love the fact that the sequel, which there will be a review for later on this site, also discusses the various issues with the rules that were set out for our heroes. Chris Columbus wrote this film and if that name sounds familiar it would be because he is responsible for multiple generations of children’s film memories. In addition to Gremlins, he also wrote The Goonies before moving on to directing some small films like Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The director, Joe Dante, also had a successful career including Piranha, The Howling, Innerspace, and The Burbs. 

The setup is simple but effective. We have a father who wants to get his son a special gift and, once he finds it, stops at nothing to get it. The problem is that he and Billy truly do not understand that sometimes the most dangerous things come in the most adorable packages. Through carelessness, they break the rules, not understanding the gift they had been given. As the original owner explains at the end of the film, “You do with mogwai what your society... has done with all of nature's gifts. You do not understand. You are not ready.” This statement is, sadly, still true today. Despite valid proof of the dangers of global warning, there are still many who refuse to listen and continue to destroy nature’s many gifts and future generations will pay the price for this willful ignorance much the same way as Kingston Falls is destroyed through Billy’s carelessness. When Gizmo is hit with water and multiplies, Rand’s first thought isn’t about the implications of this form of reproduction, it is how to monetize it. 

The actors are good but they are secondary to the gremlins and Gizmo. We instantly fall in love with the quirky little furball who bears who looks almost like a mix between Yoda and the Ewoks from the Star Wars franchise. He is sweet, small, and fluffy. The difference between him and his offspring is immediately obvious with Stripe trying to bite Billy’s friend Pete (Corey Feldman) right after he is born. Gizmo is pure and his copies are corrupt. The expressions on Gizmo are wonderful, especially during the only real scene of acting during the film, Kate’s monologue about why she hates Christmas. This is an especially dark story to put in a film and the cuts to Gizmo as he listens to her show true empathy and sadness. Let’s face it, if you are reading this site, you have seen Gremlins but there is always a reason to watch it again. 

Funny, scary, and with a distinctive soundtrack, this is a classic for a reason. Funnily enough, it was released on the same day as another classic film that just beat it out at the box office but we will get to that one next time… 

More films from 1984 to check out: 

Top Secret – Film debut for late Val Kilmer is hilarious in this slapstick parody film from the guys who gave us Airplane. This film opened on the same day as Gremlins and got lost in the glut of great films released that summer. Val Kilmer is a famous singer who gets drawn into a rebel alliance during World War II. Sight gags galore and a fun soundtrack with a highlight being “Skeet Surfing” which I will bet was the inspiration for Weird Al’s later song “Trigger Happy”. 

Romancing the Stone – First collaboration between Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito and it is great. A sheltered romance novelist goes to Columbia to save her sister’s life and meets renegade Michael Douglas. Great action set pieces, comedy, and romance in the perfect balance. 

This is Spinal Tap – The late Rob Reiner’s directing film debut about an aging rock band’s attempt to make a comeback. Michael McKean, Christophen Guest, and Harry Shearer are the band and Guest would take the mockumentary format and turn it into an art form in later years. This film goes to 11.

Stars: Emilio Estevez, Lance Henriksen 

Director: Joseph Sargent 

Some anthology films attempt to tie their segments together with a wraparound story while others are more of a short story collection with similar themes. The little-known Nightmares fits into the latter category. 

Brief synopsis: 

Four stories to give you nightmares… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Story 1 – Terror in Topanga 

Escaped mental patient and serial killer William Henry Glazier is on the attack in Topanga. A highway officer is his latest victim but nicotine addicted Lisa doesn’t care. She is out of cigarettes and, despite her husband Henry’s warnings, goes out into the night for another pack. She gets her cigarettes and then stops for gas. As the attendant gases up her vehicle, he seems to be very interested in what is going on in the car. Suddenly he breaks open the window of Lisa’s car with the gas nozzle, drags her out of the car, and shoots the escaped madman in the back of her car. Unknown to Lisa, Glazier had gotten into the car while she got her cigarettes. The police bring her home and she throws away her cigarettes. 

Story 2 – The Bishop of Battle 

J.J. Cooney (Estevez) is an expert at video games but has yet to master the Bishop of Battle, a shooter game. His friend Zock points out that there is supposedly a 13^th level to the game that no one has ever reached. The friend does not think the level exists but J.J. does and is determined to beat it. Becoming obsessed, he even breaks into the arcade at night to continue to try and beat the 12^th level. He finally succeeds and is shocked to find the game coming to life around him. He uses the gun from the game to shoot the objects flying at him and escapes the arcade. However, he drops the gun in the process and is soon confronted by The Bishop from the game. The next morning his friends come to the arcade only to see J.J. trapped in the game before finally turning into a character in the game. 

Story 3 – The Benediction 

Father Frank McLeod (Henriksen) has lost his faith. After witnessing the murder of a young boy and then officiating his funeral, Father McLeod confesses his loss of faith to his Bishop. He resigns from the church and leaves with only some holy water as a reminder of his days in the priesthood. As he drives down the road, a black truck suddenly attacks him. It is eventually revealed that this truck is Satan and he is trying to kill the priest. After some cat and mouse, Frank’s car is destroyed and he throws the holy water on the vehicle in a last attempt to stop it. The vehicle disappears and Frank, his faith restored, asked to be taken to his parish hospital. 

Story 4 - Night of the Rat

A family is terrorized by rats in their home. They manage to kill one but soon find that the remaining one is large and dangerous, destroying pipes and electrical outlets. An exterminator is brought in by the wife however her husband, convinced he knows better, fires the man. The exterminator was so disturbed by the damage he saw that he researched similar occurrences and discovers the existence of a “Devil Rat”. He phones the wife to warn her. The wife tries to warn her husband but he does not listen, destroying their home as he tries to kill the rat. Eventually the family is cornered in the master bedroom and the rat telekinetically begins to communicate with the daughter, explaining all they want is their child. The father retrieves the dead rat and gives it to the “Devil Rat” who then takes her child and leaves. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

I have told you before that I love anthology films and this one is a relic from my many nights roaming the video store. These stories are morality tales and there are lessons to be learned in them all. The first one deals with addiction and letting it control you to the point that you put your life in danger. Lisa knows that there is a killer on the loose and chooses her addiction over safety. Her need for nicotine almost gets her killed and this brush with death gets her to quit. I used Chantix but whatever works for you… 

In the second story, J.J.’s obsession with the video game leads him to break into the arcade at night. He commits a crime just to beat the game and prove he is the best. The pride and obsessive behavior leads to his downfall as he is sucked into the video game to live the rest of his life. He may have beat the game but it cost him his life. Estevez is just starting out his career in this film and his talent is evident. It is a shame that he really doesn’t act anymore. 

The third story is about the loss of faith and rediscovering it. Lance Henriksen is wonderful as a priest who sees senseless loss and can no longer believe in a God who would let that happen. This is relatable to me as a former Catholic who wonders every day why there is so much suffering in the world and why God allows it. In real life, there are no easy answers but this one ends a little too easily with the truck literally being Satan and using holy water to vanquish it. Yes, faith is restored but as far as miracles go, this is a weak one at best. 

The rat story is actually got two tellings in 1983 – this short story and a full-length film called Of Unknown Origin. Honestly, the short story route is probably the best way to go. This story has little meat on the bones and at least this telling adds in a little fun with the telekinesis arc and some pathos with the rat just wanting her dead child back. The acting is fine but this is the weakest story of the bunch. It is the father’s obsession with killing the rat himself that leads to the destruction of his home and it is only when he cedes to the rat that he gets some semblance of peace back. His pride is his downfall. 

All in all, this is one of the better horror anthologies to come from the 1980’s and worth tracking down for a watch. 

More films from 1983 to check out: 

Jaws 3 – Sue me – I enjoy this one and came very close to doing a review on it. Is it a good movie, no, but it is fun in its own way and gives us some decent character work between the Brody brothers and the women in their lives. Dennis Quaid swears he was on cocaine for the whole filming and cannot remember any of it but it doesn’t show. Bess Armstrong deserved a better career than the one she got but at least she got to interact with the sea animals. 

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Disney adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story about a mysterious carnival that gives people what they want at a price. First time I saw Jonathan Pryce in a film and he wowed me with his portrayal of Mr. Dark. 

Valley Girl – Classic comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman as star-crossed lovers in Los Angeles. She is a rich girl from the Valley and he is a punk from Hollywood who fall in love against their friends wishes. Sweet with an amazing soundtrack.

Stars: Keith Gordon, Alexandra Paul, John Stockwell 

Director: John Carpenter 

Stephen King adaptations are a mixed bag at best. Films like The Mist and The Shining miss the whole point of the book and create films that might be technically good but are missing the heart of what I loved about the prose. The Mist makes me mad because the last word of the short story is literally hope. Show me hope in that film and especially that ending. Don’t bother trying - you can’t. 

Next, there are the films like The Lawnmower Man or the sequels to Children of the Corn. These films are so different from King’s prose that they don’t even deserve a based on concept by credit. Lastly there are the adaptations that stick very close to King’s words and heart. In 1983, there were three Stephen King films I would argue meet that criteria. Christine is my favorite of the three. 

Brief synopsis: 

Arnie Cunningham is your typical nerd in high school, just trying to survive. Luckily, his best friend Dennis is the high school quarterback and he protects Arnie whenever he can. Both of them are interested in new girl Leigh, a pretty transfer student, and have an accidental hand in the expelling of bully Buddy Repperton from school after he goes after Arnie with a switchblade. 

Arnie loves cars and finds a broken down 1958 Plymouth Fury for sale that the owner says is named Christine. He instantly falls in love with the car and buys it against everyone’s wishes. Arnie spends weeks meticulously rebuilding the car at a local garage, returning her to her former glory. But while Christine is getting better, Arnie is changing and not necessarily for the better. Sure, he ditches the glasses and gets the nerve up to ask out Leigh, but he also gets a bad attitude. After Dennis breaks his leg playing football, Arnie begins spending more time with the car… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Leigh almost chokes to death in the car after complaining about Christine and refuses to ever get into it again. Buddy and his friends attack the car and tear it apart. Dennis tries to get Arnie to scrap her but this only puts further distance between the friends. Alone with his car, Arnie smiles and says “show me”. Christine then repairs herself, becoming pristine once again. The car then goes on a revenge tour and kills the gang members. 

Dennis confronts the man who sold Arnie the car, George LeBay, about his friends' obsession with the car. LeBay admits that his brother was the original owner and shared the same obsession, even after his little daughter died in the car. Eventually his brother and wife both died in the car and both were ruled suicides. Realizing that his friend is in danger of ending up the same way, Dennis teams up with Leigh to destroy the car. Unfortunately, they are too late to save Arnie. He gets behind Christine’s wheel and tries to run Leigh down. Leigh gets out of the way and Arnie crashes, being thrown through the windshield and killed. The chase continues through a junk yard until Dennis is finally able to crush the car, turning Christine into a square hunk of metal. However, as the hunk of metal lays in the scrap heap, the fender begins to repair itself. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

Meet Christine who definitely puts the Fury into Plymouth Fury. She takes her first victim on the assembly line, killing a worker and getting a taste for blood. And who better to bring her to life than legendary director John Carpenter. Carpenter brings the right tone to this film, amping up the terror and using every trick in his book to make you feel Christine’s wrath. A killer car movie could be just silly if done wrong but Carpenter gets it right. It is strange to think that he was not even supposed to direct this film, he was scheduled for Firestarter, but he lost that directing job because of the financial failure of The Thing. It was all for the best because while I will always have a soft spot for Firestarter, the material is just not as good as Christine. 

Carpenter’s visuals are simply amazing. A stunning set piece is the death of one of the bullies. A driverless Christine chases him through a gas station which explodes and sets the car on fire. At this point, the car could simply speed up and run the guy down but the flaming car plays with his victim, following just closely enough to build the tension before finally running the bully down. Another great scene is when Christine rebuilds herself in front of Arnie. The joy in Arnie’s eyes as his true love rebuilds herself and the malicious smile that forms on his face says it all. Arnie is lost but he doesn’t care. Leigh’s near death scene also stands out as the music starts up and the dashboard turns a glowing bright. The camera angles keep changing and all are off kilter, putting us on edge. We are not sure if Leigh will make through the attack and are praying for someone to step in and help her. Thankfully, a bystander does just that. This moment also ends Leigh and Arnie’s relationship as she makes him choose between her and Christine and he chooses Christine. 

I have actually met all three main actors of this film and am happy to say that they are all delightful to talk to and really appreciate the film and their experience on it. Keith Gordon, who is more well known as a director now, was in several horror films in the 1980’s, most notably Jaws 2 and this film. The role most kids from the 1980’s would probably recognize him from is as Rodney Dangerfield’s son in Back to School. Of all his acting roles, I would say this film really allows him to shine. Arnie goes from shy nerd to confident and mean bully over the course of 110 minutes and you believe it. He is the heart of the film and the turn would not work with a lesser actor. 

Alexandra Paul and John Stockwell play the roles of girlfriend and best friend and they are fine in their roles. Both roles are a little underwritten, especially Leigh, but they hit the right notes. The gang members are over-the-top in that traditional Stephen King way. Played as greasers, even though this film takes place in the 1978, you are rooting for Christine to take them out. Harry Dean Stanton takes his little role as the detective investigating the deaths and plays it for all it is worth. He is certain that Arnie is responsible for the deaths but is never quite able to prove it. In the end, he has to settle for the deaths of Arnie and Christine as the end of his case. While he accepts Leigh and Dennis’s explanation, you can tell he does not quite believe it. 

John Carpenter also creates another great score for this film. I have his greatest hits and Christine is up there with Halloween as one of his best scores. Moody and brooding, it fits the scenes perfectly. Christine also has a love for classic tunes from when she was born and they kick in at just the right time to convey her mood. It is a smart use of music and gives an inanimate object a voice to express their feelings. 

Christine is an underrated classic that deserves more love. Spend a night with her and let her take you on a fun ride. 

More films from 1983 to check out: 

Cujo – Another King adaptation with Dee Wallace as a mother trying to get her son to safety after they are trapped in their car by a rabid dog. Good tension and atmosphere but gets dragged down by some silly side plots. 

Dead Zone – The third of the King adaptations this year, this one directed by David Cronenberg and starring Christopher Walken. Interesting film about a man who is able to tell the future following a long coma. A little slow moving for my tastes but has a great ending. 

Trading Places – Classic comedy with Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Trying to prove nature versus nurture, the Duke Brothers take all of Ackroyd’s wealth and status away and gives it to Murphy. Murphy and Ackroyd play great together and Curtis successfully shed her scream queen title as a prostitute who wants to make enough money to retire early and enjoy life.

Stars: Anthony Perkins, Meg Tilly, Vera Miles 

Director: Richard Franklin 

1983 is another year of great films, including several classics of the horror genre. I would argue that this film deserves a spot on that list. 

This sequel may have seemed like a bad idea at the time but it turns out that Norman Bates story was not over quite yet. 

Brief synopsis: 

It has been 22 years since Norman Bates was committed to a psychiatric facility for the murders he committed as “Mother”. Having been under the care of a psychiatrist during this entire time, he is now deemed no longer a danger to society and released. One person not happy about Norman’s release is Lila Loomis, Marion Crane’s sister, who insists Norman will kill again. 

Against his psychiatrist’s advice, Norman returns to the Bates Motel. While get the hotel up and running, he also begins working at diner with waitress Mary and the elderly Ms. Spool. When she gets thrown out by her boyfriend, Norman offers Mary a place to stay. It all starts out fine but soon Norman begins getting messages from “Mother”… 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

People who upset Norman begin disappearing. Norman slowly starts to lose his grip on sanity as he sees and hears Mother everywhere. Mary is by his side the whole time, seemingly helping him deal with his hallucinations. A couple of teenagers sneak into the basement of the house and the boy is murdered by Mother. Norman is apparently locked into the attic at the time however Mary later claims that the door was open. The girl escapes and goes to the police. However, when they come to investigate the house and basement, there is no sign of a murder and Mary even defends Norman and provides him with an alibi.

There is a good reason for her doing that – Mary was the one who locked Norman in the attic and knows he could not have killed anyone during that time. Not only that, she is actually the daughter of Sam and Lila Loomis and is working with Lila to drive Norman crazy and back to the sanitarium. Mary decides that Norman has paid his debt and doesn’t deserve the gaslighting they were doing and quits the plan. By this time, it is too late and Norman truly believes Mother is back. Meanwhile, Norman’s psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond, discovers the link between Lila and Mary and tells Norman. While he is telling Norman, the local sheriff, also wise to their connection, tells Mary to get Lila and leave town. Lila and Mary fight in the lobby of Lila’s hotel and Mary chooses Norman over her mom. 

Based on Lila’s suggestion, the police find the bodies of the missing in the swamp. Lila sneaks into the house to scare him one last time and is killed. Mother calls Norman again, telling him to kill Mary. Mary dresses up as Mother to try and prove to Norman that his mother isn’t on the phone. When that doesn’t work, she goes to another phone and tries to convince him. Caught in the Mother outfit by Dr. Raymond, Mary panics and accidentally kills him. Now broken, Norman sees Mary as Mother and attempts to help her escape. She stabs him multiple times until they end up in the basement. Mary finds Lila’s dead body as Norman falls to the floor. Loosing control, Mary is caught attempting to kill him. The police shoot her dead. Mary and Lila are blamed for the murders and the case is closed. 

Norman is released to go back to the house and live his life. As he is making tea, Ms. Spool from the diner shows up and claims to be his birth mother. She was sent away due to mental issues and her sister, Norma, raised Spool’s son. She was the one who killed the people who were messing with Norman, including Lila. She wanted to finally protect him. A mentally destroyed Norman kills her with a shovel and then carries her upstairs to take Norma’s place as Mother. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

A sequel twenty-two years after the classic Psycho should not have worked. It could have gone off the rails in so many ways and yet this film is great. Instead of going the traditional slasher route of killer attacks teenagers, this film creates a mystery and has us trying to figure out if Norman really is cured of his demons or if returning home, honestly not the smartest move, has him slip back into his old ways. 

The script from Tom Holland is smart and never speaks down to the audience. Holland would go on to write and direct one of the premiere vampire films of the 1980’s, Fright Night, as well as direct the first Child’s Play film. While his filmography is not vast, it does contain at least two classics which is more than a lot of writers or directors can say. Richard Franklin’s direction compliments the script, using dutch angles and other tricks of the camera to assist in keeping the audience off guard. 

But all this would be for nothing if the acting was not on point. Anthony Perkins has a way of creating a truly sympathetic character. As much as you understand about the horror he created over twenty years ago, you also can understand that he was a victim of a manipulative woman. Twenty-two years, he is back in the same place and being the victim of another set of manipulative women. Feeling sympathy for a murderer is not an easy thing but Perkins does it with ease. Every time I watch this film, I just want him to get lucky and find happiness. But Norman was born under a cursed star and that peace will always elude him. 

Vera Miles gives her all to Lila, a woman truly consumed by hate and anger. A part of this may be that the life she has is borrowed from her sister. Had Marion not died, maybe Sam would have married someone else and she would not have had Mary. Whatever the reason, it pushes her into the villain role, a person who needed therapy as much as Norma and probably never got it. 

Meg Tilly is also great as Mary Samuels and it only gets better once you know the twist. First off, the name is an homage to the first film – Mary for Marion and Samuels for Sam Loomis. But then you notice little things that Tilly throws into her performance, little looks and ways of phrasing things, that tell us that she knows exactly what she is doing. An example of this would be when she tries to hand Norman a butcher knife and asks him to cut her sandwich for him. When Norman refuses, she drops the knife and then claims she is no longer hungry. She was baiting him and dropped it when he didn’t take the bait. It is a small scene but very telling upon rewatch. 

All in all, this is probably one of the best sequels to a horror film out there. Misunderstood at the time, it has become something of a cult classic with many considering it better than the original. While I would not go that far, it is definitely a great horror film and worthy of standing up next to Hitchcock’s Psycho. 

More films from 1983 to check out: 

Return of the Jedi – I love the Ewoks and have no problem admitting it. There were vicious and cute little cannibals which, for me, are a perfect match. The first Star Wars film I remember seeing in the theater and still a great film.    

Mr. Mom – A dream team of Michael Keaton and Teri Garr star as a married couple who has to get used to a new dynamic after he is laid off and she goes back to work. Funny and a film I watch at least once a year. 

WarGames – A film that may be more relevant today than it was in the 1980’s with the rise of AI, Matthew Broderick is a computer nerd who accidentally hacks into a government computer named WOPR. The final scene with the computer simulating multiple nuclear war scenarios still gives me chills.

Stars: Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Stephen King 

Director: George Romero 

My first review of a film type I love – the anthology film. I love getting a short and concise story, whether as a book or in a film. The heyday of these films was in the 1960’s and 1970’s with the Amicus productions but we still get a good one once in a while. Who better, than the master of the short story Stephen King, to bring us these goodies. 

Brief synopsis: 

A little boy named Billy gets his horror comic book taken away from him by his mean dad. The Creeper, the mascot of the comic book, comes to Billy and shows him the stories from the book. 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

Story 1 – Father’s Day 

A rich and mean family gathers to celebrate Father's Day and the anniversary of the death of the family patriarch. A mean and bitter old man, he drove his daughter Bedelia to murder him after years of mental abuse and badgering her for his Father’s Day cake. After realizing that her father had her fiancée murdered, she returns the favor and bashes the old man’s head in with an ashtray. The rich family then covered up the murder. 

The old man rises from the grave for revenge. He kills Bedelia first and then takes out his niece Sylvia and her nephew-in-law Hank. Siblings Cass and Richard go looking for everyone and are shocked to find the zombie in the kitchen with Sylvia’s head on a platter with frosting and a candle. He finally got his cake. 

Story 2 – The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill 

Stephen King plays a hick who messes with a meteorite. After it breaks open and gets on his hand, he ends up being slowly turned into a green plant. He eventually is completely consumed and, in his final moments of clarity, commits suicide. We then see that the greenery is slowly spreading out from Jordy’s house to the rest of the world. 

Story 3 – Something to Tide You Over 

An against type Leslie Nielsen plays Richard, a jealous and wealthy man. Richard is meeting his wife Becky’s lover, Harry, played by Ted Danson. The lovers want to run away together but Richard is not about to let that happen. Playing a recording of Becky’s voice begging for help, Richard emotionally blackmails Harry to follow him to the beach on his secluded beach house. After burying Harry up to his neck on the beach, Richard then sets up a TV and shows video of Becky also buried up to her neck and starting to drown. Richard says both of them can survive if they manage to hold their breaths after the tide rolls in and loosens the sand. Richard then watches the lovers drown but not before Harry vows revenge with one of his last breaths. 

Richard goes back to the beach after tide goes back out to collect the recording of Harry’s death. What he doesn’t see is Harry’s body. Unconcerned, he heads home but slowly begins to hear voices calling his name. His security system does not pick up anything but he is confronted by the seaweed covered zombies of his dead wife and her lover. Richard attempts to shoot them but bullets don’t work on the couple. They continue to pursue Richard and he finally collapses into insane laughter. The next time we see Richard, he is buried up to his neck in the sand, defiantly shouting that he can hold his breath for a long time as the tide rolls in. 

Story 4 – The Crate 

A janitor finds an unopened crate hidden in a stairwell at Horlicks University dating back to 1834. He calls on Professor Stanley to help him investigate. Unfortunately, the janitor gets too close and a monster in the crate eats him. Professor Stanley gets a grad student to assist him and he also gets eaten. Terrified and unsure of what to do, he goes to see his friend Professor Northrup. This turns out to be a bad idea as Professor Northrup is in a horrible marriage with the obnoxious Billie and wants nothing more than to get rid of her. Upon hearing about the monster’s existence, Professor Northrup drugs his friend and then lures Billie to the crate containing the creature. His plan works and Billie is quickly eaten as well. Professor Northrup then chains up the crate and dumps it in a local quarry. After Professor Stanley wakes up, his friend assures him that the creature is drowned. However, the last frame shows the creature tearing apart the box under water, ready to re-emerge and attack again. 

Story 5 – They’re Creeping Up on You 

Upson Pratt is a ruthless businessman germaphobe with an intense fear of insects. He lives in a white, state of the art, sealed apartment. After he takes over a business leading to the suicide of the former owner, he finds his apartment inexplicably infested with cockroaches. He fights them until he finally dies with the insects bursting from his dead body. 

Wrap-around story 

Garbagemen find Billy’s comic in the trash and read through it, noting that the ad for the voodoo doll has been cut out. Meanwhile, Billy pulls out the doll and uses it to torture his father. We then pull out to see Billy and the doll on the front cover of the next issue of Creepshow. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

To me, a successful anthology film means that more than half the stories hit their mark. Creepshow hits the mark with an 80% success rate. I still cannot watch the last story involving the bugs, it feels over the top and unnecessary to me, but the other four and the wraparound stories all work well. The wraparound story with genre legend Tom Atkins, who we will definitely be talking about in later reviews, as a mean dad who does not want his son reading horror comics. The young man, played by Stephen King’s son and future author Joe (King) Hill, is naturally defiant and mad. Joe may not be a great actor but he has fun with the role. Atkins can play mean with the best of them and gets the audience on the kids side. Stephen King is also competent in his short solo segment. He plays dumb well and we get the right emotion from him. Will he ever be Oscar worthy? Hell no, but it is still a lot of fun. 

Father’s Day is the proper way to start off this film. Creepy but with a sense of irony to it. All the old man wanted was his cake and he finally got it. The biggest issue with this segment is I feel there is something off about the story itself, mainly that the villain wins in this segment. Normally, the bad guy gets his comeuppance but not here. Bedelia was driven mad by her murderous and abusive father and finally snapped. To be honest, the old man had it coming. But in the end, he ends up victorious. Bedelia and the rest of the family is dead and the old man wins. While I still like it, I just don’t feel like it fits with the other stories. 

The best of these stories is the middle one with Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen was not stuck in his Airplane/Naked Gun typecasting yet and brings quite a bit of menace to his role of the cuckold who will not let his wife go. This is a man with money and means and not afraid to use them to eliminate his enemies. His choice of not only forcing the lovers to dig their own graves but also allow them to slowly drown is horrific. The lovers revenge on him is perfect and his punishment definitely fits the crime. 

The Crate is an interesting little creature story and adds in the blood that has been missing throughout the film. The creature is hungry after years of not being fed and goes after whatever comes close to its cage. While it seems that the professor might be getting away with murder, after tricking his obnoxious wife to her death, the final frames make it clear that it not the case. The monster is escaping and will probably be back to get the man who threw him in the water to die. 

Creepshow is a fun horror anthology from the great team of George Romero and Stephen King. While the stories may be a little uneven, they are still good and there is a sense of fun to them. There is even a comic book companion to the film that is worth checking out if you can find it. Worse comes to worse, maybe I will let you borrow my copy. 

More films from 1982 to check out: 

Pandemonium – Completely silly horror comedy starring Carole Kane and Tom Smothers. Not really good but silly and makes laugh. 

The Secret of NIMH – Man, we had some creepy cartoons in the 1980’s and Secret of NIMH is one of them. Widowed Mrs. Brisby is trying to get medicine for her son and help moving their home so it doesn’t get buried during plow time. Some very frightening images and maybe a little too intense for the youngest viewers. 

The Last Unicorn – Another animated film, this one about a unicorn who gets hidden in a human body to avoid a cruel king. She has adventures and finds love, leading her to question whether or not to return to being a unicorn. Beautifully animated and underrated film.

Stars: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson 

Director: Tobe Hooper 

Sorry for the delay, I started working on this review Friday and then learned that the hilarious Catherine O’Hara had passed away, another huge loss for the entertainment world. Instead of working on horror films, I spent some time reliving her comic genius in films like Best in Show and The Mighty Wind. I’m sure she and John Candy are having a hell of a reunion up there. 

Back to horror and a classic ghost story – Poltergeist. 

Brief synopsis: 

Welcome to Cueste Verde – a planned community in California. The homes look the same but the neighbors seem friendly, especially the Freeling family. Chances are that if you bought a home there, the father Stephen, sold it to you. Stephen is the top realtor for the community after all. Your kids go to school with the children Dana, Robbie, and Carol Anne and your wife probably hangs out with cute housewife Diane. They even have a dog and are having a pool installed. 

It is during the digging of that very pool that strange things begin to happen to this all American family. Carol Anne keeps talking to the static on the TV while Robbie grows increasingly fearful of the old tree outside the house and thunderstorms. Soon, the chairs in the kitchen begin moving by themselves and Diane discovers a spot that will drag a person across the kitchen floor. It is all wonderful, mysterious and fun, until the night a huge thunderstorm hits and the real terror begins. 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

The tree Robbie has been scared of suddenly comes to life during the storm and attempts to eat him. While the family is saving him from the tree, the closet eats Carol Anne. The five-year old is trapped in the space between life and death with a group of poltergeists. A group of paranormal investigators come in to help the family and bring in a clairvoyant named Tangina to assist them in their attempts to save Carol Anne from the poltergeists holding her hostage. 

Stephen’s boss comes to check on the family and convinces Stephen to take a field trip with him. The boss takes Stephen to a cemetery on a hill overlooking Cueste Verde and reveals that this is the site of the next phase of the project. When Stephen asks about the graves, the boss says that they will just move them again. Cueste Verde is the previous home of the graveyard and the company relocated the graves before starting construction. 

Tangina assists the family in getting Carol Anne back and declares the house clean. However, she must not have checked under the beds because apparently there was a little spirit still left in the house and they attack the family as they prepare to move out. As Diane, Carol Anne, and Robbie try to escape, coffins and bodies began bursting out of the ground. A horrified Stephen realizes that his boss only took the headstones and left the bodies in the ground. He manages to get his family away from the house before it implodes and disappears. The last we see of the Freelings, they are at a Holiday Inn and shove the TV out onto the walkway.   

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

“They’re here!” These two words, spoken by the late Heather O’Rourke, still sends a chill down my spine. There is a lot of debate whether or not Tobe Hooper directed this film on his own or got some help from Steven Spielberg. Having watched this film many times, I can certainly see the Spielberg touches on it. Maybe Hooper was a director-for-hire and followed Spielberg’s story boards and shot set-ups? Could Spielberg have even directed it considering E.T. was filmed roughly during the same time? Absolutely. Ten years later, Spielberg would put out two different but still great films in the same year: Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. Did he direct both E.T. and Poltergeist? Honestly, I don’t think we will ever know. Hooper sadly passed away in 2017 and Spielberg would never tell. I will say, I see more of E.T. in this film than Texas Chainsaw Massacre… 

Whoever directed this, it is a hell of a film. The effects, while not quite The Thing worthy, are still great. The spectral images of the different ghosts are spooky and the ending monsters are decently scary. There is great use of the revolving room two years before Nightmare on Elm Street and the static on the screen, especially for those of us who grew up in the 80’s and fell asleep in front of TV too many times to count, is played for maximum creepiness. You can barely hear the voices through the screen but, when they do come through, they are stretched out and higher pitched, almost inhuman. When Carol Anne finally gets to speak, her fear comes through the static loud and clear. This film is proof that you do not need blood and guts to ratchet up the terror, mood and sound can get you there too. 

The acting is great across the board. You believe that this is a happy family and that Steve and Diane have been together for years. There is a comfortableness and ease to their interactions that feels real. The kids work well together and you understand the silly fights underlined with love. The two sisters both died tragically early. Dominique Dunne was murdered shortly after this film by her boyfriend who managed to get away with barely a slap on the wrist for the crime and Heather O’Rourke died due an illness right after filming Poltergeist III. The paranormal investigators, including Beatrice Strait as Dr. Lesh and Zelda Rubinstein at Tangina, are well-written and performed. Tangina is a hoot, clearly in her element as the star of the final act and gets in several zingers that help relieve a little of the tension you are feeling. 

It should also be noted that the Freelings are the only family attacked by the ghosts. The film offers a couple explanations as to why that may be. Carol Anne was born in the house, a new spirit entering a home that is already filled with old spirits. Also, Steven is the top realtor for the community, the person who has helped desecrate the ground. He may not have known about the graveyard but ignorance is not an excuse. He didn’t care about what was on that ground before, he just wanted to sell houses and make money. This may be why he and his family is targeted too.

One last note, this is a film that still works. I have been showing my teenage granddaughter some of these older films and she screamed out loud when the clown doll grabbed Robbie. After the movie was over, I told her that this was my PG film, as opposed to the films that are PG nowadays like the Trolls movie. Not only that, but I was dropped off to see this film by myself when I was 8 years old. She looked at me in horror and asked “Why would they do that to you?” I just laughed and said “It was the 80’s – that’s what parents did.” 

More films from 1982 to check out: 

Annie – Musical adaptation of the Broadway play. Not a great film but many great performances including Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, and the wonderful Carol Burnett. 

Grease 2 – Michelle Pfieffer and Maxwell Caulfield star in a so bad it’s good sequel to the 70’s classic. Do I own the soundtrack on CD? Yes, yes I do because sometimes you just need to sing Cool Rider. 

Tron – Jeff Bridges stars as a computer programmer who gets sucked into the computer world. Ahead of its time in many ways, this is still a fun watch and I spent hours playing the video game in arcades and at home.

Stars: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley 

Director: John Carpenter 

We are now moving on to 1982, one of the greatest years of film with multiple classics being sent out to theaters. The same weekend that The Thing dropped in theaters, Blade Runner was released, E.T. was number one in the box office, and Poltergeist and Star Trek II were both still enjoying strong runs. As a kid, I saw all but two of these in the theater. I’ll let you guess which two and the answer will be below. 

Brief synopsis: Workers at an American research station in Antarctica are shocked when two men from a nearby Norwegian camp appear in a helicopter shooting at a dog. Eventually both men are killed and the dog is taken in by the American crew. MacReady, the helicopter pilot, takes Dr. Copper to the Norway base camp to try and get answers. Once there they discover that the base is destroyed. They find a man who has slit his own throat and wrists, burned remains, a creature that looks like two humans fused together, and a melted block of ice that obviously had something in it that was released. Mac and Doc take the creature back to base to examine. Another scientist, Blair, examines the creature and discovers that it is appears to be human, with normal organs. Meanwhile, the dog that was being chased is finally put into the pen with the rest of the dogs and all hell breaks loose. 

Spoilers below (you have been warned): 

The dog turns into a dog thing, sprouting other-worldly appendages and almost a flower-like appearance in places. It attacks the other dogs and the men respond to the ruckus. Mac orders the men to get a flamethrower and they burn the dog thing up. Slowly, paranoia begins to circle through the camp as they realize that they are dealing with an alien that can imitate life and imitate it perfectly. Blair is isolated after going crazy and assimilated by the creature. 

Through many spectacular effects show pieces, the crew is slowly whittled down to Mac, the base captain Gary, cook Nauls, and mechanic Childs working together to stop Blair-thing from taking off in the ship he has built. Childs disappears and Blair-thing dispatches of Nauls and Gary, leaving Mac. Mac blows up the base, setting the camp on fire. As he sits drinking, Childs come back. Neither man trusts the other at this point but, as Mac points out, neither is in any position to do anything about it. The base fire will burn out soon and they will die of hyperthermia. With one of the most famous last lines in a film, Mac hands Childs a bottle of whiskey and says “Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?”. 

My thoughts (with spoilers): 

Confession time – this is one of my favorite films of all time and I hope to one day see it on the big screen. In 1982, my parents were not dropping me off to see The Thing. First off, I was 8 when this came out so I couldn’t go to a rated “R” movie by myself at that time. Secondly, I don’t think my parents really knew what this film was. We had watched The Thing from Another Planet, probably on Svengoolie, but we did not make the connection to this film. There is a good reason for that. The 1950’s film is about a giant carrot alien who attacks a base in Alaska. It is silly and really has no resemblance to the original short story, Who Goes There? The screenwriter of The Thing from 1982, Bill Lancaster, went back to the source material and an alien that takes over and replicates whatever it is taking over. 

This film, in my humble opinion, is Carpenter’s masterpiece. There is only one shot that I think should have been eliminated and that is the opening shot with the spaceship crash landing on Earth. It is not necessary and takes away a little bit of the mystery of what is happening. I wish the film had just started with the opening titles and then the stark shot of the Antarctic mountains, emphasizing the isolation these men feel, but that is a minor quibble. Other than that, this is a well-shot film with cinematography by the amazing Dean Cundey. We are kept in a constant state of confusion and paranoia along with the men. We do not know who to trust or who is a thing. Each shot, including close-ups on needles going into arms and the creature bursting out of its host bodies, is directed to wring the maximum amount of terror and horror out of it. I still love Halloween but this will always be my favorite of his films. 

The acting is great across the board. Most of these men are from the 1980’s slate of character actors so they have faces that you recognize but you may not know the names. This adds to the tension as you do not know who to trust as the paranoia mounts. There are really only two recognizable actors in this film: Kurt Russell and Wilford Brimley. I say recognizable as in both had been in films for years and their faces, even behind beards, are quite recognizable. Keith David would end up becoming a staple in films but his Childs is the first major role he would have in a career that is still going strong today. Because the acting is so good, we empathize with these men as they try to make the right decisions and do not dislike anyone until they turn out to a thing. We will get to what I consider the female version of this film, The Descent, in the 2000’s and that film has a definite villain and her name is Juno. Not here, here they are just a group of people trying to survive an impossible situation. 

The great acting includes the dogs in the film, specifically the main dog-thing, played by Jed. Animal actors often have trouble conveying the right mood in a scene but there is always something just a bit off about him. Whether he is standing at a window, staring out at the men as they head to his old base, or stalking his way down a hall to claim his first victim, the dog is never quite right. Carpenter said in his commentary track that the dog just did the scenes perfectly, without needing much guidance. By the way, get the DVD and listen to the commentary track with Russell and Carpenter. These longtime friends have a blast revisiting their box office failure together.   

None of this would have worked if the special effects were shoddy but the effects created by Rob Bottin are nothing short of incredible. Only one special effect, the dog-thing turning in the dog kennel, was done by the legendary Stan Winston based on Bottin’s sketches. Every other effect in this movie was done by Bottin. He spent so much time working on the movie that he ended up in the hospital being treated for exhaustion. The creativity of the creatures, the mad genius behind the idea that a creature that can mimic anything and has probably been to multiple planets can look like anything, is what holds the film together. The fact that the creature also is basically a simple cell that overtakes, that it really isn’t a whole being is also fascinating. Each cell protects itself, only concerns itself with its own survival. The blood test scene proves this out and is tense with a comedic line at the end to release the tension held in your body. The way the contaminated blood jumps out of the petri dish after being burned still gets me no matter how many times I have seen it. 

The Thing is a tense paranoic masterpiece. Misunderstood at the time it was released, people said it was too gory and nasty to watch. Compared to the torture porn era, this is nothing. Also, unlike films that seem to just be gore for gore’s sake, this film has a reason for the gore. We need to see the organs to understand that they are the same are ours. We need to see the thing change to understand the danger our protagonists are in. We need to understand that not only is the danger real, chances are that none of these men are surviving the attack and that they really should not if humanity wants to survive. The Thing is a must watch for any horror film fan. 

More films from 1982 to check out: 

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – First film I saw multiple times in the theater, including once with my maternal grandma. A young widow (like myself) and a product of the depression era, she was tough as nails couldn’t believe it when my mom and I started crying when E.T. died. Her words, “What are you crying for, you know he is going to live.” Still a classic and I still cry every time. 

Blade Runner – The other sci-fi classic that I did not see in the theaters. I have watched multiple versions of the film and am still not sure which one I prefer but Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer are both excellent. 

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – My second favorite of the series (still love Star Trek IV more, sue me) with Shatner overacting to a positive effect, great battle scenes, and a stunner of ending that was undone in the next film.