Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter - 1984

I'm doing this for my own sake, a little bit.  Much like the entire reason this blog exists in the first place, I'm doing this so that I can for once and for all have all these ridiculous horror sequels down, on paper, and laid out with plotlines so that I can remember "Oh that's the one where that happened!"  This is so that when I try to think Tommy Jarvis, for example, I can then say, okay, that was Friday part 4!

This is also an easy early on fun pick to the franchise.  Part 3 was pretty good, for sure, and this one feels perhaps like a bit more of a slower development, focused more on character than that one was.  What we have is a family living by the lake, with Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, living with his mom and older sister.  They have an empty house next to theirs, which a group of teens rent out, coming to the lake on vacation just like they always do.

Jason had been killed off in Friday 3, getting a machete to the head and then hung.  Well, he hops right out of his bed in the hospital and kills a bunch of the hospital staff, then heads out to the lake.  A thought that occurred to me then and now is, could this possibly not be Crystal Lake?  Obviously all the bodies were taken by ambulance to the hospital, and maybe therefore Jason just went to the closest body of water he could find, and this isn't Crystal Lake?  I think it's likely.

The body count is a lot higher as well.  Just the fact we have a beginning at the hospital where he starts killing gives Jason automatically another like 5-6 bodies.  Then he randomly kills a few people on the way to the lake, then he gets to the lake and the bodies start piling up.  It's got a fair bit of good deaths, and I was interested in how much more aggressive and angry this Jason seems, he runs quite a bit, unusual for a horror film, and he seems very angry at times.  Pretty nifty.

Of course, they wanted to kill of Jason.  They called it the Final Chapter, and they were going to kill off Jason.  Spoilers.  They decided to do it, though, in an odd way.  They have Tommy Jarvis and his older sister fighting against Jason, trying to escape him.  Tommy gets inspired by a picture of child Jason and shaves his head to look like kid Jason, pretends to be kid Jason, and dupes real Jason into getting confused.  Then they attack Jason with the machete.  Jason's head gets impaled eventually by Tommy.  Jason's finger twitches and Tommy chops at Jason mercilessly, much to his sister's horror.  It's heavily implied Tommy will become a killer as the movie ends and he gives us an odd look. So, they decided to end Friday the 13th by having a new killer?  Seems a bit weird.

Another thing to mention is that Crispin Glover stars as Jimmy Mortimer, one of the teens at the house across from Tommy.  It's like 8 people, a bunch of sexually active pot smoking idiots, but then there's Jimmy, who almost single-handedly gives the movie an entire different spin.  His character is a delightfully weird, wonky outsider, attractive and nice, but super socially awkward, and makes one wonder, if they can write a character like this so perfectly, why can't movies do that now?  Part of the answer is the actor.  Crispin Glover helped to grow his character, came up with Jimmy's trademark dance, and sewed a whole new life into the character.  Jimmy is awesome.

This one is good.  Effects are great, and there's some genuinely cringing death scenes that are awesome, such as the final death scene of Jason, and some of the teens deaths.  Also, this one takes some turns.  It kills off a virgin girl character, it kills off a major character off-screen, has some interesting play with challenging the "slasher norms" in these ways.  So, I give it a 4.5 on the 80's slasher scale.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - 1991

Alright.  I went from about 2 purchases on my Amazon account, ever, to fucking 4 more with this series.  But they were $1 each, so it's pretty well worth it.  I mean, come on.  And thus I finish the Nightmare on Elm Street entire series of films.

Freddy's Dead.  Are they giving you a spoiler?  Or is it not a spoiler because Freddy has been "dead" for the entire series, hence why he is coming in people's dreams?  I'm not sure about the idea here, but I'm taking it as a spoiler and spoiler warning, Freddy dies in this movie.  Supposedly, forever.  And if we think about it, the next film New Nightmare didn't exactly bring him back in a traditional way.  It was kind of an "idea" of Freddy.  Is Freddy vs Jason canon?  Ah, fuck this argument.  You get it.

Wikipedia tells me " Peter Jackson also wrote a screenplay, but it was not used; his screenplay was about how Freddy had become seen as such of a low threat that teenagers were now taking sleeping pills just so they could mess with him."  Holy shit this is a great idea!  It's meta, it's brilliant.  I'm sure they didn't use it cause it's "making fun of / laughing at" the franchise.  But come ON!

This movie was not a good entry to the series.  What you have is a extremely bland 90's horror comedy, but with neither horror or comedy that is fun.  It's all extremely low brow, it feels been there done that, and the worst thing is that it feels like it's not even trying.  First of all, there's not a lot of deaths in the film.  The deaths are also sort of dumb, the first one is this incredibly long thing with a deaf kid that Freddy tortures with extreme sound.  Neat idea, but way too long, and in the end it goes for comedy?  With having the guys head explode?  WHAT?

Basically there's a group of kids who go to this small town of Springwood.  There are no kids there, the last one having escaped.  The last kid gets mixed up with some kids...ugh I don't remember.  They all go back to fucking Springwood, where overacting and pathetic comedy runs rampant.  Meanwhile, this girl Maggie discovers she is actually the daughter of Freddy, and he won't kill her.  So they try to use this to their advantage.

At one point, some doctor played by Yaphet Kotto casually says, "I can control my dreams."  At another Breckin Meyer randomly says "I can pull you into my dream" and I'm just like WHAT?  These are powers that earlier in the franchise are made entire movies out of.  You can't just randomly have your no one characters have huge franchise-defining powers at the drop of a hat.  And they just randomly know they have those powers as well?!  Ugh.

Even the makeup sucked.  They went from gruesome and disgusting in 3-4 to like just-sort-of weird red in this one.  I mean at some point the franchise had to take a down turn I guess, and I suppose by entry 6 we were overdue.  So this leads to my series overall view which is:  pretty great! Honestly:
1. Classic movie, great scares, great effects, great actors, hugely entertaining.
2. Good follow up, solid, some classic scenes, and established a bit of a lore.
3. Solid film, felt like they actually cared, good effects, kills, and a good idea.
4. They were starting to really have good ideas about how to "fight" Freddy, a truly brilliant way to turn the franchise.  A bit of the "beginning of the end" here as it gets a bit more cheesy and 80's feel.
5. Still good, but a bit more fluff and feels like they aren't sure what to do next in the story.
6. Just pure shit.
7.  Interesting, witty, clever commentary, but yeah not like a true Freddy movie per-say.
Freddy vs. Jason:  again, interesting, but is this even canon?  Or was it just a random (albeit well done) cash grab and fan service?
The series overall can have 4 stars.  This entry can have 1.5.

Fair Play - 1972

Wow, christ did this one suck.  I mean really.  However, this is some interesting stuff and perhaps lends clarity to why it was bad.  This was directed by the guy who turned in the nearly incomprehensible Night Fright, James Sullivan.  James Sullivan was also involved in Larry Buchanan's budgetless flick Curse of the Swamp Creature AND Sullivan was the editor on the MST3K favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate!  This guy worked on some total SHIT films!

Fair Play is long, stuffy, boring, and completely worthless.  I am willing to give basically anything about 45 minutes to an hour to get started with it's plot.  I'm willing to sit and be patient, to wait and let the film happen.  I've sat through some movies with barely there plots, with nothing that "happens" or that have a glacial plot movement.  This one, I couldn't.  This one, I tried to fight it, but I ended up fast forwarding a few times.

This movie completely has not entertainment value!  NOTHING fucking happens!  IMDb claims "A young man heads west to visit his uncle F.O. in a town named Fairplay. There a bit of friction between town locals."And I suppose that's true, but that's the thinnest outline of all time first off, and second off this movie is an hour and a half!  More needs to happen.

I was trying to stay awake and I opened my discount store "Emoji Movie Themed" pretzels:

 

This is the sort of shit you find at Grocery Outlet.  I mean, they're still pretzels.  They taste the same.  $1 for the whole big bag, it's a good deal, bruh.

Using my Emoji pretzels, I give this a unique rating of:

That's the frowning Emoji in case you can't tell.  Yeah, these look terrible.

War of the Robots - 1978

First of all, this is the first time I've ever had two entries on the blog about the same movie.  Rewatching doesn't count of course.  Here is the link to my previous review, done in the infancy of this blog, and before I was giving ratings to the movie.  Side note, what the fuck was the point of reviewing it if I didn't give it a rating???!

In case you're too lazy to click that or something, and because I think it's pretty genius, I'm going to copy my idea of Star Wars to here.  Basically, right here I'm saying how Star Wars would look to someone who didn't know what was going on and only described by some memorable characters and effects:

"So you got this dude and he has these weird metal robots that speak all weird, and he's in this desert but then these white suited guys come after him and he finds this old guy who decides to take him to some planet, and there's this pilot guy with a giant furry ape-type-thing as a friend that only he can understand and they fly away and barely escape. Then there's this huge spaceship and there's this girl on it, and she's good and the bad guys are trying to get information out of her. One of the bad guys is dressed all in black and has some bizarre breathing apparatus on, and he can hurt people without touching them, and eventually the good guys get to the ship and there's fights with these glowing swords and the hero old guy dies...except he actually only sort of disappeared. And they rescue the girl, and fight these huge monsters, and eventually escape and then they come back, in spaceships, and they blow up the huge spaceship."

Genius.  On my first review I saw this as a Star Wars clone/ripoff, and it makes me wonder if I paid attention at ALL, and also if I saw perhaps a different movie.  Sure, this has a lot of blatant rip off things present in it and it 100% stole them from Star Wars.  However, this one is different in many ways as well.

The beginning is completely original-ish.  Captain John Boyd is kidnapped by a bald golden-colored alien.  Alien (who's name I forget) wants John to help him, and at first there's some conflict.  There's a ton of posh looking robot men that the gold bald alien are fighting, and John Boyd is gonna help the aliens fight the robots.  Of course it takes about 45-55 minutes for all this to happen, and in the meantime it's all really boring dialogue and nothing much happening.  

This is one of those movies where you watch it and it has the effect of feeling like the wheels are just spinning.  You're simply watching things happen, with no idea what's really going on, who is who, and why things are happening.  It all looks great, it is fun to see the visuals and stuff, but honestly, no fucking clue.  Clueless.  Towards the end, robots and John Boyd are fighting with ripoff lightsabers, and laser guns are firing left and right, and things are happening, and then all is fine and the movie ends and you turn it off, remarking, "Okay, well that happened."

I had a choice with this one.  Should I skip it and decide that I'd already reviewed it in the blog, and thus keep going with the set, or should I rewatch and review it?  I'm not going to rewatch the other films that are repeat on this set, I believe there is 2 or so.  But, this one was fun to rewatch, and does have a bizarre entertainment quality to it.  Nothing that is worth more than 2.5 stars though.

Concrete Cowboys - 1975

I'm just fucking plunging through these movies right now aren't I?  This month may have the most reviews of any month since the first couple years of this blog!  I should really be capitalizing on this feeling of inspiration by writing something that actually means something...

Concrete Cowboys starts off as a bad western, but I see Tom Selleck there and he's attractive and charming, and I gave it a chance, and soon I got to like this movie.  Tom Selleck plays Will, and he and his friend JD get caught in a bad card game.  They run away, hop a train and head out, unsure of where they're going, seeing where life takes them.

This was the pilot to a TV show that didn't get picked up.  Conceivably, Will and JD would go from place to place, becoming entangled in some story line, fixing it, then getting on their merry little way to whatever was next.  This installment goes exactly in this way, but that's not to say it's unenjoyable or predictable.  Okay, I take that back.  It is a bit predictable.

Will and JD end up staying at a friends apartment when they stop off in Nashville TN. Their friend is a private investigator, and he has them pick up a package for him while he's out of town.  The package gets some baddies on their tail, and also since they're at a private investigators home, some lady comes by looking to hire the investigator.  They're about to turn her away when she gives them a $1000 deposit to locate a missing singer.

The first half of this movie is pretty quick with all the setup.  There's some light comedy, there's some decent acting, they try real hard to keep that primetime audience that might watch the show.  But, it does fall victim to a bit of the "too much" of everything.  Too much twisted plots, too many characters to keep track of, and too much of a complicated idea.

I did like this though, and in the end it's innocent enough.  I could see a show like this being popular in the 70's.  It's pretty much fine as it is now, except that it didn't work out, and instead got adapted to this TV movie.  It's fine.  Meh.

I give this a 2.5

Congratulations, It's a Boy! - 1971

"The Los Angeles Times called it 'forgettable'."  - Wikipedia

Okay, yes, this movie is forgettable. I just thought that was a hilarious one line review of the movie, on Wikipedia.  But this isn't all that bad.  In fact I had a horrid thought after finishing this and starting the next one, Concrete Cowboys.  My thought was:  "Is the 70s boxset growing on me?"  Cause I liked both of these movies!

Did movies used to have more punctuation in the title?  I can't think of any movies that have been coming out recently with as much punctuation as some of these movies.  Christie Love had an exclamation mark.  Help Me had the ellipses. Belles sort of counts as well.  This one doubled up with the comma and the exclamation point.  Wow.  I'm really reaching for things to say here.

Congratulations is the classic story of the rich playboy single man who finds out he has a son he's never known about.  Bill Bixby stars as the charismatic Johnny Gaines, the late 30's single child of a successful business owner.  He's in line to inherit the company, and as for right now he's doing just what he wants- dating aplenty, breaking the hearts of women everywhere, and staying a free bachelor.  His parents are trying to hook him up with his receptionist, but he's having none of that.  That's when kid BJ shows up, claiming he's Johnny's son.

What follows is an interesting enough movie.  In my opinion there was not quite enough proof about the father-ship of BJ, and it's a bit unclear what BJ wants and why he's there.  BJ is 16, owns a gas station, and appears to leave all that to live with his father?  His father doesn't know about BJ's station, and I think rightfully assumes the kid is looking for a handout.  Well, maybe if you told the father the whole story?

The best part of the movie is when Johnny's parents are beginning to wonder what could be wrong with their son.  The father of one of Johnny's dates remarks "maybe he doesn't like girls."  They brush this off, but then later when Johnny is coming towards his parents to introduce BJ, they mistakenly think BJ is Johnny's gay lover.  The comments the father says are fucking hilarious, and I mean that I actually laughed!  

There were a few laughs, and what's more I actually cared about the characters.  They're thin, yes.  But we're seeing perhaps 2-3 days in the initial meet and greet, and even in that time we see a dynamic, natural, and realistic change in both the characters.  Again, minor complaint, the son figure is a bit too straight line, the father a bit too outrageous, but then later they seemingly drop their old selves to adapt without any complication whatsoever.  Eh.  Minor.  What can I say?  It felt pretty genuine and friendly, and at only 75 minutes, concise.  I'll give it...3.5

Las Vegas Lady - 1975

Sigh....  Yup.  This one's gonna be short.

Las Vegas Lady is a 70s boxset entry, one that I'm struggling to remember what the fuck happened, and was surely not a good movie.  This was a crime/comedy/heist film that succeeded only in being none of those three genres really.

The main girl is named Lucky.  Wow guys.  You're really original there!  Lucky and her two friends team up to steal half a million dollars from the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas, and there ends up being more complication than they expected, and it goes about how you expect from there.

It's a standard entry in the genre, and it did have a few nifty scenes, such as when Lucky is hanging on a rope outside the Circus Circus.  But the acting wasn't great, the movie wasn't great, and I am pretty sure I'm still gonna give it 1.5 stars.

Definitely could've been my mood then or my mood now, but not feeling this one.  I just counted, and this entry brings me halfway through the Swinging 70's boxset!  Nice!  However, what a shitty midway point.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - 1988

I was gonna skip this review two days in a row, but I did promise it in last my review of Nightmare 3.  So I will compromise and do a short review.

Nightmare 4 took the crown of "most successful" of the Nightmare franchise, but also for me wins the prize of "worst one so far" which would explain why Nightmare 5 was hugely reduced in profits at the box office.

Nightmare 4 has Lisa Wilcox emerging as a girl with ambiguous dream powers.  She meets up with Kristen Parker, who is the character from Nightmare 3, except it's not Patricia Arquette playing her anymore.  Also returning from Nightmare 3 is Kincaid and Joey, who are pretty quickly killed off in this one.  Anyways, Lisa Wilcox and Kristen are going to try to use Lisa's powers to perhaps beat Freddy in the dream realm, and that's pretty much the plot.

I'm not going to have the easiest time trying to describe why this one wasn't as good in my book.  Perhaps it's number one because of the beginning:  different actress playing a part, and quickly killing off the other characters in, quite literally, a shared death!  Then the ambiguity of the powers, and the fact that it takes up until the very final showdown for her powers to truly emerge.  Then the death of Freddy is....well, lame really.

I don't particularly remember much about this installment, even though I watched it right after Nightmare 3.  I'm gonna watch Freddy's Dead:  The Final Nightmare soon, and call it a day.  I have of course seen 1 and 2, I've seen Freddy Versus Jason, and I have no intention of seeing the recent remake.  That just about rounds up this series!  Pretty good, I'd say.  I'll recap it more in Nightmare 6.  This one, hm.  2.5 stars I guess.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - 1987

In addition to my 70s boxset marathon, I also had a Nightmare marathon.  Look for my upcoming review of Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.  Also, here is my review for Nightmare 5.

I have to say first off, this was going against Nightmare 5 in my head.  Perhaps because they are sequels and naturally as a movie series they're all going to be judged against one another.  But, I have also always heard that Nightmare 1 and 3 are the "good ones" and that the others aren't as good.  Then, I enjoyed Nightmare 5.  Hence the fucking whatever bullshit, you get what I mean.

Nightmare 3 brings back Heather Langenkamp from the first film, returning as Nancy.  However first we follow Kristen, played by Patricia Arquette.  Kristen is being haunted by Freddy in her dreams, and gets sent off to a psyche ward for a small group of people who are all insomniacs complaining of horrible nightmares when they do sleep.  Nancy is interning at the psyche ward, and eventually they discover the source of all their nightmares is Freddy, who is coming back to claim more souls.  Kristen has the power to pull people into her dreams, and they think they can use this power to team up and beat Freddy at his own game.

The movie is a bit of a slower ride in the beginning, I'll say.  There's a lot of plot and not as much immediate horror thrills, although they are certainly there.  There's a great sequence where they use a claymation Freddy, I liked that a lot.  The little group of insomniacs are a rat pack of fun characters, each one likable and with their own "gimmick" thingy.  They have individual dream strengths they can use against Freddy, which although arguably stupid, are still fun to see.

The deaths are really good too.  There's a genuinely cringe-worthy scene where Freddy pulls out a dude's veins and controls him like a puppet with them.  That one was fucking awesome.  I have to say, at this point (and I noticed this in 5 as well) they sort of stopped following that rule of "what Freddy does to you in the dream happens to you in real life".  It happens sometimes.  But clearly at some points people are being injured or whatever, then they wake up and they're fine.

I didn't like this as much as 5 though.  It was simply a pacing thing.  5 is wall to wall horror violence and insanity.  This is perhaps more of a "movie"  in the development feel, and I'd only say it's a very small point, but I just have that preference I guess.  There is however another cool sequence in a car graveyard that has a claymation Harryhauser-esque skeleton...  Hm.  Maybe I did like this as much as 5.  I can't bring myself to rate this lower that 5.  Fine.  Here, another 4 star Nightmare entry.

The Young Graduates - 1971

Here's a movie that in some ways reminds me of Katherine.  Basically this is Katherine-lite, it's not as interesting, well shot, and it's definitely a lot more of a mess.  Although, this did come before Katherine, so ehh?  I had a bit of a 70's boxset marathon!  Fucking finally.  The Young Graduates rounds it out.

Mindy is a pretty normal 70's high school girl.  She lives with her parents, she's casually dating her guy Bill, and she's got a thing for her teacher Mr. Thompson.  She's 17, and waiting until her 18th birthday to have sex, much to the dismay of Bill.  However on her birthday night, she invites Mr. Thompson out, and the two of them end up having sex at a party.  Thompson becomes infatuated with her, Bill feels cut out, and this prompts Mindy to want to escape from it all, which she does with her friend Gretchen.

The rest of the film, we follow the two girls as they have various travels, problematic or not, on the road.  They don't have much money, but they meet up with people who are sometimes helpful, sometimes out for themselves.  Mindy and Gretchen are trying to get to Big Sur, CA.  Eventually Thompson and Bill and another dude unite and begin to track the girls, following the clues they leave.

Spoilers for the rest of this review.  Beware.  The girls are heading to Big Sur with their hippie friend Pan.  They get a ride with some bikers eventually, and bikers decide to try and rape the girls.  They beat up Pan, and the girls are drugged, but manage to escape.  They ride the bikes to Big Sur, where they find some hippie hangout, but then the cops bust it and arrest the leader, and the girls adventure is then just sort of over?  Huh?!

This movie felt like a big cop out, because like I said, in the end, nothing fucking happens?  This whole thing leads to NOWHERE.  Also, they almost get raped, they get drugged, they get abused, they get their friend beat up, they experiment, and I guess the whole point is to watch the journey and not where the journey goes, but NONE of this effects them at all.  They have a "whatever" disposition that never fades, and even after almost getting raped, they just shrug it off and keep going.

This movie is not trying to say anything bad, or good, it seems about the 70's culture.  For a movie that has a tagline "A report card on the Love Generation," what is the message?  What does the fucking report card say??  Everything is fine, nothing matters, go ahead, but also it's kinda pointless and fruitless?  So what is that like a straight C?  Maybe a C-?

There is some nudity, there is some okay music.  There are plenty of things that are bland and boring, shots of inane things taking place that will make you yell at the stupidity of them, if you're anything like me.  I didn't hate this when I watched it, but my hatred for this has since grown.  It's completely POINTLESS to watch this movie.  Literally nothing happens.

I do want to mention, Mindy bangs her teacher Thompson.  Then later they're watching a sex ed video in class and I said aloud "if this movie is about her getting pregnant, I'm going to be really mad".  Later she says to Thompson "I might be pregnant" and that plotline is dangled... But then, it's completely dropped and never mentioned again.  So...  Was she pregnant?  Does it matter?  Does ANYTHING in this fucking movie matter?!  The answer: NO.

Side note, I did the standard amount of research on the director, and I found another one of his movies.  I love the IMDb keywords list here, it's just hilarious:

The Borrowers - 1973

The Borrowers is a franchise much like Heidi, another film on the treasured 70's boxset.  Heidi, it turns out, has more adaptations of it and shit, but this is a somewhat well known of idea here, the little people living underneath the floorboards in a house.

This boxset has taken me all over the fucking place, and here's yet another random thing I'd never volunteer to see but I'm watching anyways, as the completionist I'm trying to be.  This film does have the "originality" thing going for it, as it was the first adaptation of the novel, and even won an Emmy for outstanding achievement of a kid's movie.

Ma and Pa and daughter Arrietty are about 5 inches tall, and live under the floorboards of a house out in the middle of nowhere.  Their existence is a simple one, they "borrow" whatever they need from the residence they live under, and pretty much chill, raising their daughter.  In the house they live in is an old woman, Sophie.  One day her nephew comes to visit, a young boy.  The boy eventually spots Arrietty, and that could mean trouble for their peaceful existence.

Obviously, this is going for the effects. The whole film has a lot of the older style effect to make people look small.  Using rear and front projection, as well as occasional cutting out of one piece of film and putting over another, they manage to make it look passable.  The whole thing features quite a bit of effect, and it would be fair to say it looks decent.  It had to, I mean it's the one thing they had to make look good in the movie.

I won't say I loved this.  It's not really my speed.  Despite the fact it's technically "done well" and nothing is "wrong" with it, it's just sort of there for the most part, and it's not particularly engaging.  A cool idea.  I'd still see the Japanese anime Arrietty, if I ever get around to it.  I guess I'll give it a 2.