Firehouse - 1973

There seems to be a lot of these TV pilots turned into movies on these boxsets, both the Sci Fi Invasion set and this 70's boxset.  I bet I run into more on the 80's set as well.  I wonder if they still would ever do this with a pilot?  I mean if you film a hour long pilot to a show, and then decide not to make the show, you still have a supposedly interesting idea which is half done.  Could just sorta, I dunno, finish it and slam it into theaters, onto TV, or Amazon or whatever?

Firehouse was going to be a TV show about a black firefighter who comes to work in a all white firehouse in New York.  The tensions there would be palpable, as the firefighters put him through a normal hazing ritual made worse by racial tension.  Additionally, the black firefighter would have inner conflict due to his supposedly "white" job and leanings, thus separating him from other black men.  Throw in the general racial stuff in the 70's and you're gold.

It succeeded, I'd say.  I put this on because I started a new Swinging 70's movie disc last night, and reading the descriptions I knew this would be the shortest movie.  This thing is like an hour and ten minutes long, so I was for sure right on there.  And it played out about as decently as one might expect.

Richard Roundtree plays Shelly.  He's a former criminal, but somehow became a firefighter after.  He's married to a loving wife, and he gets on at a local NY firehouse after one of them dies in a fire that's later ruled an arson.  The tension in NY is high, as the black people in the ghetto fight against the oppression they're facing.  In the firehouse, the other firefighters range from uncaring to outright racist.  When it's discovered the arson was started by a black man, and later when Shelly lets a young black man go because he swears he didn't start another fire, the tension in the firehouse builds.

Fill in some interesting comedic and character moments, and we eventually see Shelly begin to make a place for himself in the house.  The main guy against him, Billy, is a hard working 3rd generation Italian firefighter, who is mainly angry at the newborn hatred all of society has for the government.  A lot of black men are against the government, and given that the government signs his paycheck, he is understandably mad at the situation.  The movie does do a good job of giving the characters enough relate-able moments each.

I feel like the effects, all real fire and stuff, were pretty awesome.  The realism of the movie helps.  It's about 60% dialogue and tension, 30% fire, 10% nothing.  The nothing flies by though, since the movie is so short.  I did wonder who the target audience would be, though.  It's not blaxploitation enough for that fan base, and its both a bit depressing and very progressive.  So I guess that's maybe why it didn't become a show.

Either way, it's entertaining and well acted.  The relationship between Roundtree and his wife was really well done.   The Firehouse idea would later spawn a TV show, although with the race angle dropped.  It ran for one season, obviously not making a huge impact on the TV world.  I can't really love this or hate it, but I feel like it lands on the "like" side of the coin.  So, three stars.

The Klansman - 1974

Who would have every thought that I'd end up reviewing many films by a well known James Bond director, and the dude that started the franchise, Terence Young?  I previously watched the Charles Bronson vehicle Cold Sweat which would've been a few years before this film.  I guess since this has a budget and actors, Young still had some pulling power?

I don't know dude.  I watched this, in small parts over the course of many days.  That is not my norm btw.  I will be writing two reviews today, as after this I watched another racially charged flick, and I handled that one in one sitting.  But this one, I just couldn't do it.

The Klansman has an all star cast.  Lee Marvin plays Sheriff Bascomb, Richard Burton as Breck, Cameron Mitchell, OJ Simpson, David Huddleston, Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi, and more star in this racial entry.  Early in, it's apparent there's a lot of racial tension in the town in Alabama where this takes place.  There's a big fight the sheriff breaks up, then a white woman gets raped by a black man.  She is ousted from the community, and the Klan members are out for revenge.  Sheriff has to protect every black person in town, and in the meantime he clashes with the local community and political forces, members of both are racist, and it all comes down to a big shootout in the end.

This one was not especially great.  From minute one, there is no lesson, there is no moral, there is no real comeuppance for the klansmen in the film, and in fact there's times where I'd say they're cast in a sympathetic light.  It's not really an effective tool for tension building even!  Much like Cold Sweat, it feels formulaic and sluggish from a viewing standpoint.  Not only is it despicable, it's boring!  The acting is good, and you almost want to give it points for that, and given the amount of drama that went on behind the scenes, basically none of this shows.

All in all, I guess it is self aware in it's approach, and deserves a bit of points for that.  It wallows in it's own grotesque horridness, and 100% if it was made today it'd be going for the culty grindhouse audience.  I found a really well written review that states it better than I can.  But I don't know.  I really find racism to be offensive, and when they drop "nigger" every 4 seconds in this, and when the sheriff literally makes a black woman lie about the white man that raped her, and every other thing that's awful that happens, it made me sick.

I supposed it can have 1 star.  For the cast.

Amityville 1992: It's About Time - 1992

This isn't quite the same deal as what I'm doing right now with Friday the 13th.  I'm not, and I repeat NOT going to go through the entire 8 film original series, as well as the couple new reboots.  Fuck, Amityville, you're pulling your own weight at 10 fucking movies.  You're cropping out entire other real horror series!  How dare you.

This is the direct sequel to the other Amityville film I reviewed here, Amityville The Evil Escapes.  I didn't really know the franchise then, and I still don't, but these movies do feel like true sequels.  It's the story idea versus characters or a true connection, so this this not a series that's going to have recurring characters or a "survivor" lady or anything.  It's all over the map.

In The Evil Escapes, a generic movie family inherited a lamp which was evil and brought misfortune to everyone.  In this one, a generic movie family dad buys a clock, and it begins to bring similar evil as the lamp brought.  The clock I would say is better than the lamp, and thus this one is a little better from the get go.  The thing is still a little dumb, sure, but one thing I thought was cool was that as the clock's evil spreads, it begins to build itself into the walls, having moving clock parts and pendulums and such going on everywhere.  Also, just the fact the clock can symbolize our own mortality and the short amount of time we have to live, I'll give this more points.

Stephen Macht plays Jacob, and along with his wife and two kids, they live in some new house.  Jacob comes home with the clock, things start to go evil, and problems begin to arise.  I won't lie that this movie is extremely boring, and not very well done.  It's got plot lines that are not given enough time, it's got a lot of time where seemingly nothing happens, too long is spent on dumb sideplots that go nowhere, and shit's not great.  Jacob gets attacked by a dog early on, and is in his room recovering most the movie, while in the meantime we see most events from the lens of his wife.

The lamp has undefined powers from the get go.  Seemingly it can manifest visions that actually hurt people, much like Freddy Kruger.  It can also exert a sort of influence over people, as it does to Jacob's daughter Lisa.  It can also create boiling acid just about anywhere, as used by Lisa, and it makes you wonder, if it can do that then why bother with any of these other things?

Spoiler warning, cause the end made me mad.  In the end, it's revealed the whole movie was a dream from Jacob's wife.  Then the events of the dream start to happen in real life, Jacob comes home with the same clock.  The wife smashes it and leaves, and thus this whole movie didn't happen?  Then Jacob's son smiles at a character, hinting it did happen. It's a fucking stupid ending which only cements the fact this movie wasn't good.

Also, the title?  I mean come on.  It's About Time?  No, cause literally, it's about a clock?!  So literally it's telling you sort of what the movie is about!!  At first I hated it, now I just think it's insane.  I can imagine it now.
"What do we call this Amityville entry, Bob?"
"I dunno John.  What's this one about?"
"It's got an evil clock in it."
"So it's about time?"
"Well, not really, but sort of I guess."
"Alright.  Just put that on it.  No one's going to watch this movie anyways."

I can't rate it much higher than the last one reviewed.  In fact, I think it gets the same rating.  Certainly boring, I remember checking at least ten times to see how much of the movie was left.

The Mutilator - 1984

Yup, I'm officially off the deep end.  And on a long, long streak break from the 70's boxset.  It originated, I think, with Jofer Jeff a while back, and I liked it of course, as one is apt to do.  I just sort of kept it going, encouraged by your deafening roars for more...  And by that I mean, encouraged by nothing.

For every average slasher flick, for every bad one, for every good one, there's always more out there.  For every bad one there's a good one, for every middling one, well there's pretty much guaranteed another middling one.  This one, The Mutilator, is extremely middling.  Also, when I started this flick the title on the screen was not The Mutilator, it was titled Fall Break.

This is the only film made by writer/director Buddy Cooper.  It's not bad, considering that.  It's not original, obviously, but it's fine enough I guess, and it at least had loads of blood versus some of those others.  It's weird that this was very graphic, and yet the stuff they cut out of other films seems less crazy than this by comparison.  After all, this is the film that has a meat hook taken to a vagina.

In the very beginning, a kid playing with a gun accidentally shoots his mother.  Fast forward to when he's grown up and his dad has gone crazy and begins killing people.  The kid and his friends take a vacation to the beach, are followed by the dad, and are picked off one by one.  It's weird that the dad would wait all those years huh?  Why not kill the kid sooner?  Why wait til he's in his late teens and then do this?  If only that were the only plot hole.

This has the same thing as Slumber Party Massacre, wherein you see the killer more and he wears no mask.  He has no lines thankfully, but the fact that this had no sequels again makes me wonder why some films get them and others don't.  They do again definitively kill the killer, literally chopping him in half, but shit, others have come back from worse.  I sort of wonder why these things happen, and I always enjoy seeking out random obscure sequels that exist out there.  Despite the lack of reviews for movies of that nature on this blog.

There's kills, there's nudity, there's some originality, there's a lot of decent things here.  It's all been done, but it's here again, and pretty soon the over-saturation of the market might begin and I'll switch back to the 70's boxset, and somehow life will go on.  But for now, 3 stars.

The Manitou - 1978

For a really long time, The Manitou was sort of my Moby Dick in horror movies.  Well, that or my Doctor Frankenstein.  The Manitou may conceivably be my superhero origin story, the radioactive spider that bit me and turned me into the type of bro that buys and marathons 70's films.  How relevant that it was a 1978 film, a film that was shot in a city where I live near and work, and the last film of a director who died at 30, an age where my own life changed significantly, with me and my wife separating.

I had a pretty fucking cool night last night.  I went out to a kink singles mixer, I kissed some hot older woman, I went to the Alamo Drafthouse and saw this movie, and what the fuck?!  Did this movie get BETTER when I was asleep or something?  I know that my excitement is temporary and all, I know I'm riding one fuck of a high right now, but shit!  Some days are just perfect.

The Manitou, being my Frankenstein, was a movie I saw when I was probably 8-9 years old.  I was already a huge horror movie fan, cause I know I had already seen and loved The Howling by that point.  I know this because of something I always loved, the art of people copying tapes from the video rental stores.  My grandmother was a master of this, and would copy multiple movies onto one of those 6 hour tapes.  One of the tapes contained The Howling first, and then The Manitou.  What a fucking double feature!  I remember watching it when I was really young, and I remember only "something about an Indian growing out of a woman's neck" and that it was scary.

I did revisit this, even in the context of this blog, but I didn't review it.  And honestly, I am convinced I was either super drunk, fell asleep, or watched the wrong movie.  Cause this movie is FUCKING awesome, and I would've remembered it.  And again, this is not just the crazy excitement talking.

First of all, the cast is great.  Tony Curtis plays Harry, a sort of hack psychic who preys on the good natured old women that hit him up for fake fortunes. Just that is pretty hilarious.  His ex Karen comes to town one day, telling him she'd worried because a weird bump on her neck has appeared in the last few days, and she wants him to comfort her and to use his psychic abilities to see into her future.  He draws a death card, and pretty soon the bump is getting worse.  Doctors see into it, and are confused cause it sort of looks like a fetus.  They figure out it's got something to do with Indian folklore from a book, written by Burgess Meredith in a small comedic role, and eventually they get Michael Ansara as a Indian medicine man to help them out.

The effects come often and come awesome.  This is way more effect filled than I remembered it being, with something coming at you constantly.  It doesn't ever feel stupid or hard to keep track of though, because with such a minimal cast, pretty low on the locations, it's all easy to keep track of.  Once the Indian itself comes out, it's a nonstop fucking effects party, and the shit it awesome!  Honestly, I had the thought many times while I watched it, but shit this movie is AWESOME, and the hour 45 minutes just flew by for me.  There's only one real slowdown, near the beginning, but even that has some nice character building moments, and a death of an old lady to help it out.

This is 100% the type of film I wanted it to be.  I remembered it being slower, I remembered it being a bit harder to follow.  But seeing it, on the big screen, in a vintage 1978 film print, with a fucking Alamo Drafthouse burger at my side, it rocked my world.  Five stars, hands down.

The Slumber Party Massacre / Slumber Party Massacre II - 1982 / 1987

I don't do a lot of doubling up on this site.  There's usually no reason for them.  I have only really doubled up when it comes to sequels or related films.  I wasn't going to do a double review of these movies, but hehe, I'm feeling like I want to save myself the time it takes to write reviews.  Home slice. Dig it?

We have had a long succession of good horror movies, or at least decent, on this blog.  We've had a lot of recent reviews of the Friday the 13th series, the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  Elsewhere in the blog I have Chucky and Children of the Corn and fucking.... The Howling and Witchcraft and the point is, I've reviewed a fuckton of horror movie sequels. If you think I'm going to link to all my reviews, you are dead wrong, you find that shit for yourself.  So why is it that despite my numerous horror movie sequel write-ups, most of the movies have been okay?  Make way for a real shitty one.

The Slumber Party Massacre is a very decidedly decent horror movie with a lot of tits, blood and thrills.  It breaks some norms by having the killer not wear a mask, speak a few lines of dialogue near the end, and then surely die in the end, where it would be pretty hard to bring him back to life.  It follows most of the slasher rules, and I'd say it's not necessary nor is it one to avoid.  For completion or even just casual slasher fans, I'd say sure, take a looksie.

Slumber Party Massacre II, uh what the fuck happened here?  My first guess was that the director simply had a background in MTV or filming music videos and decided to bring her scope of that to a horror movie...  My second guess was that maybe they saw the popularity of music videos and MTV and decided to up the appeal factor by having their horror movie chock full of similar nonsense?  I mean, I could guess about this forever.  IMDb gives no information on wtf happened.

You'd think this would be a situation where it's like 'how can you go wrong?'  It's a fucking movie called slumber party massacre!  Like the first one, you make a movie where a bunch of dumbass teens are spending the night in a house, some killer gets loose, and he comes after them, perhaps drawn to their nudity like an bee is to flowers.  But I knew I was in for trouble when, 40 minutes in, no killer had even appeared yet, and I was legitimately just watching teen girls talking and joking about their classes and boys.

I realize there's going to be people out there who liked the sequel.  It takes an almost version of Nightmare on Elm Street, where the main girl Courtney (who was in the first movie, but here is a different actress) is seeing visions of the driller killer from the first movie, and no I'm not referring to the 1979 film The Driller Killer.  Intercut with the killer is this random music video-esque footage of a leather clad rockstar who has a guitar with a drill on it.  There's music and smoke and lighting and I begin to think, are we going to have a fucking SONG here?  And sure enough, if you actually sit through this steaming shitpile of a movie, there is eventually a musical.  In a horror movie.

And I'm sure that others, who like the camp, who are not looking for a horror movie, who are looking for something else, maybe this is their speed.  It is certainly different, it's a different side of the 80's coin than the one I've been looking at in this blog as of late.  But christ, I just was not in the mood for this, as I was trying to have a 80's slasher marathon last night!  If it was still entertaining, if it had fun jokes and stuff, I'd be all for it.  But the comedy is bad and the movie is SLOW as fuck.  Nothing happened for a long time, and then the end is jam-packed like crazy.  Yo, spread that shit the fuck out.  Also, what's with all the straight-down-the-barrel camera shots, people looking directly at the camera as they talk?!  Get a real fucking cinematographer!!!

I'll give Slumber Party Massacre a 3.5.  As I think about it, the only issues it had were maybe, too much screen time for the villain, and it felt for sure exploitative.  But it was fun.

  I give Massacre II...either zero or half or one.  It's a real tough choice.  I do think others would 'get it' and enjoy it.  But for me, I think one star is more than enough.

Funland - 1987

C'mon dude.  For real?  Okay fine.

There's a bunch of smoke hanging over the Bay Area.  It takes a lot for pollution and smoke to stay in our air, given the high amount of wind and moisture.  In the 10 years I've lived here I've seen the air get steadily worse, the traffic get worse, the people get more douchy.  So now there's this fire in Paradise.  And we get the smoke.  They say I shouldn't stay outside.  So I sort of had a movie marathon today.

I get a bit high, a bit drunk, and I turn on Funland.  And who would think that later I...turn it off?  Yes, I fucking turned this shit off, even being high and drunk and willing to watch whatever.  But I still will not watch a bad comedy.  I will not abide a bad comedy that's not on my current boxset.  I have some fucking standards, yo.

I thought this was a horror. It's described as:  "When a mob family takes over an amusement park after the owner dies under mysterious circumstances, the recently-fired clown mascot seeks vengeance for the loss of his job."  I thought it would be a killer clown film, and I was willing to give that a chance.  Sounds fine, right?  Well, it was NOT.

This shit was not funny, interesting, definitely not a horror, and 1000% just a amateur piece of shit that even had bad acting.  The clown is on screen a lot, and he's not good.  The villains suck.  The plot is stupid and still hard to follow.  Some movies just suck.  This one, perfect example.

I give it a zero.

City of the Living Dead - 1980

Well now.  I recently reviewed Rats: Night of Terror.  And revisited the classic Italian horror film idea.  And now, fuck it.  I watched Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead.  This movie, now wtf how have I not seen this before?  This is first class classic Italian horror, all pumped up and exciting as it can be!

Lucio Fulci is very well known on the cult movie scene, and it's pretty obvious as to why.  This movie is really badass and fun.  I'm cutting to the chase here I guess.

A priest hangs himself early on in the beginning of this classic flick.  It's a bit odd, and maybe there is some hidden thing surrounding this death.  Either way, pretty soon there's a bunch of random demons around the town killing people.  They have a multitude of powers, including the ability to kill people just by looking at them.  There's a bit of investigation going on, people trying to find out what's up with the bodies piling up, as well as why this town has so much other shit going on.

This being a awesome Italian 80's film, all the effects are real and high detailed.  The effects here come often and extreme.  Honestly there's hardly a few minutes that go by without some sort of random thing happening that calls for effect.  This might sound disjointing, something like War of the Robots, where you lose track of what's going on.  Somehow though, this remains focused despite having constant shit going on and randomness on screen.

The effects range from amazing to simple, simple still being good though. Goddamn did I love this.  I popped open a nice To Øl beer while I watched this.  I hesitantly gave the beer 5 out of 5 on my review site, and similar to that, I hesitantly give this 5 stars.  I need to see it again, 100%, but yeah this shit is a 5 star film no matter what.

Night of the Sharks - 1988

Night of the Sharks will join the elite group of films I have watched with people.  Also, this is my bouncing ball trick established with Hunk, where I give the 70's boxset a break and I watch something from the 80's boxset.

I had my ex-wife over, and I asked her to choose between this movie and a few others.  She chose this one, cause it was action sounding, had Treat Williams, and was generally not bad sounding.  What she didn't know?  It was filmed by some low rate Italian guy, had a fantastic 80's synthpop soundtrack, but overall was pretty lame and at 90 minutes, still way too long.

Night of the Sharks was entertaining at times, and I can't say it was all bad.  It was, however, still bad, and it was pretty dull.  The acting and the sharks are fine, but the plot and the pacing leave something to be desired.  What do they leave you desiring?  How about...uh...more?!

Treat Williams is David, who inherits a disc when his brother dies.  What he doesn't know is that on the disc is proof of an illegal gangs activities, and soon they show up to collect on it.  David also, in his profession, happens to be a shark hunter?  He chills out in his decidedly beautiful island (Dominican Republic filling in for Florida) and evades both the sharks and the gangsters.

And, it's what you expect.  The sharks are real, and well shot, but the action is not real nor well shot. I mean, it's gonna get like a 2 or a 2.5 in the end, but this isn't a fun one.  If you put this on, like I did, expecting a fun 80's movie to riff on, you may be disappointed.  I give it the lower half of those two ratings, the 2 stars.

Warhead - 1977

Warhead starring David Janssen is just the sort of mildly entertaining film one might expect from a mixed bag 1970's themed movies boxset such as the one I have.  It should surprise no one that this film is in the public domain, just as it should be extremely easy to see what I'll end up thinking of this remarkably unremarkable would-be thriller.

After all, what sort of movie is Warhead starring David Janssen?  Warhead starring David Janssen is a movie that was made for TV, and looks precisely like the sort you would see on TV.  When I go into the trivia section in IMDb, it says it was filmed in 1974 as a TV flick, and that couldn't be any more true.  It does beg the question as to which year is correct, and why it's 1977 on everything I see, but I'm willing to assume that Warhead starring David Janssen is so completely under the radar that no one gives a flying fuck.

Warhead starring David Janssen has main character Tony Stevens (that's Janssen) as a nuclear arms specialist.  He's called in to defuse a nuclear bomb that's been accidentally dropped, un-detonated, in the middle east.  The problem is that there is also a terrorist group led by Meshugi who are after the bomb, and they've got wildly evil plans to match their wild mustaches.  After they kill a bunch of soldiers, it's a regular ol' race to the bomb.

This is a supposed action movie, and what can I say, it is.  I'm not gonna call it a lie.  It's an action thriller, 70's style, and it does exactly what one might expect.  It has some pacing to it, takes the time to explore David Janssen's character a bit, hell even throw him a lady interest in there and have a brief philosophical dialogue about seeing people die.  In the end, as he witnesses the bloodbath caused by the bomb, you bet those words will come back to haunt him.  In this way, it's good, it's not just guns firing and shit blowing up.

However, Warhead starring David Janssen has also got some slow movement, certainly a lot of unnecessary over the top villain acting, and a plot that's so simple you might as well just have the only dialogue be the word "bomb" spoken in different inflections.  In other words, it's got some goods and some bads, it's completely middle of the road.  It's this sort of thing you could equally pay attention to, or just sort of put on.  You could equally hate it or love it.  You could certainly focus on the flaws, or focus on the unexpected charms.  I choose the standard middling approach again, 2.5 stars.

How Awful About Allan - 1970

Here's a fact about How Awful About Allan:  I legitimately watched this no less than three times.  I watched this movie, while sort of distracted, and I thought I missed something and wasn't paying enough attention, so I decided to see it again.  Second time, I did the exact same thing.  I was drunk, I wasn't paying attention, thought I missed something, decided to watch it again.

Third time was the charm, and I put it on, actually paid attention, didn't drink!  And...  um, did I miss something?  Should I see this a fourth time?!  No.  At this point, this movie is cut off, I'm not giving it another chance, and I'm officially just calling it good and writing in what I do know about this movie, which is honestly not that much.

At only 75 minutes, this should have been a breeze.  Scratch that.  This movie is barely 73 minutes, the credits are rollin up at 72:50-something, and I'm sitting there thinking, what the fuck?  This movie was incredibly badly done, and I didn't know what the fuck actually ended up happening in the flick.  Let's break it down in a rare, by the minutes look.  Spoilers.

Minute 1-2:  Allan accidentally catches his house on fire, with sister and father inside.  Allan saves sister, father dies, and Allan's eyes are hurt and now he's partially blind.  Allan's not physically blind though, it's psychosomatic and it's his "guilt" that makes him blind.
Minute 2-25: Allan walks around, talks, he lives with his sister, and nothing happens.
Minute 23-45:  Allan and sister get a roommate, who Allan distrusts for no reason, and thinks the roommate is maybe fucking with him, cause Allan begins to hear weird noises and see odd shapes.
Minute 46-55: A couple more odd shapes and noises, Allan's trying to get himself back into the hospital, roommate sort of stops coming around as much, nothing much happens.
Minute 55-71: Allan, in the climax, tries to leave the house, slips on some ice.  Nothing happens. It's revealed the roommate was only there for one day, Allan begins to hunt the figure that he sees.
Minute 72-73:  It's revealed it was his sister, fast forward to Allan living and now his vision is cured.  Allan gets a call from his sister and randomly goes blind again.

I mean, I knew I was in for a shitfest when literally from minute 2 or so through 20, pretty much nothing happened except walking around talking.  I didn't realize this movie was as old as it was, I thought it was mid-70's, but still!  Fuck, this was so slow!  I practically went insane watching this.

The movie has very little tension, very little in terms of "things happening" and it's riding that line of sanity/insanity too much.  Allan is made to be sympathetic, but he's not likable, and nothing about his blindness is ever really explored.  The shapes and the noises are fine and all, but what is his sister's plan exactly?  To send him back to the psyche ward?  To kill him?  Nothing is ever revealed, and if she wanted to kill him, could've easily done it.  I hate it when the villain's goal is to "drive them insane".  It's a really antiquated notion.  This notion that you just snap a person and then they could never get better.  Ugh.

I give it....  Ummmm.  Is half a star too low?  No?  Okay, sweet.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning - 1985

I'm just going for it.  Fuck it.  Also, had I seen this movie before? I have no idea what I've seen.  My memory is not the best, my ex-wife used to always say that my memory couldn't be counted on a lot of the time.  I could've sworn I'd seen all the Friday movies a few years ago (2012 or so) when they were on Netflix.  However, what if one was unavailable?  Would I have remembered specifically, now almost 7 years later, that I didn't see part 5?  No!

Friday the 13th Part 4 tried to change the formula by having Tommy kill Jason and then having weird hints at the end that maybe this act fucked up Tommy and maybe something weird would happen with him.  It was The Final Chapter, and thus you can close the book on the series and all is fine.  Right?  Well, it succeeded at the box office, and some bureaucrat looked at the bottom line and said, "Well shit, let's have another one come out!"  (actual quote)

How to do this...how to do it.  Well the clear answer would seem to me, the pedestrian, fast forward 6-10 years, have Tommy Jarvis in a psyche ward, mentally unstable since the Jason incident, plagued by visions of Jason.  Have Jason start killing people in the psyche ward, eventually reveal it is Tommy who's actually been doing the killings because he is either 1) completely insane with dual personality whatever or 2) being infested by Jason's ghost which he eventually casts out of himself to face off in the last few moments of the film.  But the actual movie we get?  I never saw this coming.

Tommy is a slightly shifty 20's guy now, living with some other disturbed individuals in some sort of forest hangout where they are supposedly being treated.  In the meantime, somewhere random nearby (honestly, where the fuck is any of this in relation to other things?) a guy goes nuts and hacks a fat obnoxious dude to death with an ax.  Pretty soon Jason is on the loose, killing some random people that are around.

One notices a few differences in this movie right away.  First of all, nothing is fully explained, to the point of wondering, like I said earlier, where the hell is all this taking place, where is everything in relation to other locations, etc.  Tommy and company are in some commune home, and obnoxious fat guy dies in some other home, are they the same?  Certainly doesn't seem like it.  When Jason begins his kills, sometimes it's just people he happens upon, such as two guys fixing an engine, or a black guy and his girlfriend hanging out in a van.  Also, the nudity is amped way up.  Another thing I noticed, we as the audience hardly ever see Jason for the first hour or so unless it's in a dream.

Well, spoilers I guess.  They were trying to change the franchise much like last time, and they decided to do it by having the main villain NOT be Jason.  He wears a hockey mask, and kills people, but that's the only similarity.  Once we see Jason, it's pretty clear that he looks different.  It's a different mask, it doesn't have the trademark "machete notch" in it.  Maybe a picture would explain:

To the right here is Jason from Friday part 4, with the red triangle on the mask, and the huge cut in the top of the mask.  Above is Jason from part 5, with blue triangles on the mask and no machete blade mark on the mask.  I notice these things, home boy.

Anyways, Jason clearly looks different.  He acts about the same though, except towards the end when he is chasing people, it seems he takes a little bit more pain and notice as he gets injured by the would be victims.  In the end, it shows Jason was in fact the father of the fat kid that died randomly in the beginning, and I guess he adopted the mask to exact revenge?

This one was the first to feel like not a great slasher.  It felt formulaic, it felt like the tone was off.  It didn't have a lot of great kills, and it for sure felt exploitative with the amount of unnecessary nudity.  I didn't mind those things, but then in the end to find out it's not Jason as well?  I felt vaguely cheated!  It begs the question:  Why not call it something else?  Why did they call Halloween 3 Season of the Witch the same name, pretend it had anything to do with Halloween?  It's a different story!  I mean, I know realistically why they did these things, but it seems like such a weird idea.  Were they actually hurt by the bad reviews or by the idea they weren't making a "good" movie?  I mean, any franchise nowadays that achieves even a modicum of success hops on that sweet gravy train as fast as possible.

It's not the worst movie ever, certainly still an 80's slasher of the kind one would expect.  I can't give it much less than a 2, but I'm only gonna give it a 2.5 I think.  It felt very "by the numbers".  Also, completely can be ignored within the series as it has nothing to do with the others.  I also just noticed that this is directed by the same guy that did The Unseen.  Weird.  It makes sense, they both feel oddly disjointed and have issues.