Ten Days of Terror!: Happy Birthday to Me

Film: Happy Birthday to Me
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Halloween was probably the first horror movie to be named after a holiday, but it was probably Friday the 13th that really popularized the idea of it. Halloween, after all, is a true classic of the slasher genre because it’s a truly masterful film. As good as it is, it’s one that is difficult to duplicate. Friday the 13th is also a genre classic, but it’s also pretty low rent in a lot of ways, and a lot easier to copy. In the years that followed, pretty much every holiday got its own slasher eventually, which made a film like Happy Birthday to Me an inevitability.

The ground that we are going to cover here is going to feel like it’s old hat if you’re a fan of the genre. For the time, it might have been relatively fresh, but there have been plenty of films that have used insanity or something like it to move the plot along. We’re going to mainly be concerned with Ginny Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson), a member of what is called the “Top Ten,” the most popular students at an elite school, all of whom are dripping with money and social power. Before we get too involved with Ginny, though, we’re going to see one of the Top Ten, Bernadette (Lesleh Donaldson), get offed.

Original vs. Remake

Film: Cape Fear (1962); Cape Fear (1991)
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive (1962), DVD from NetFlix (1991), both on laptop.

When the 1991 version of Cape Fear showed up in the mail from NetFlix, I knew I had the rare opportunity for a perfect double feature. It was only appropriate to begin with the 1962 version of Cape Fear. Sure, it meant that I’d be spending about four hours watching the same basic story twice, but no matter. After all, the NetFlix movie needs to go back, but it only makes sense to see the original before the remake. It would be an interesting opportunity to directly compare and contrast the two films with both fresh in my memory.

The original Cape Fear was evidently a bust in terms of box office, which makes it an interesting choice for a remake. Evidently, it failed so badly that it spelled the end for Gregory Peck’s production company. Since that time, though, it has become something of a classic. It’s an interesting film in the sense that it features the work of high-profile stars Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, but is essentially a B-movie. I guess that makes it a B-movie with A-list aspirations.

Great Guns!

Film: The Guns of Navarone
Format: DVD from Geneseo Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

I’ve said before that I grew up on war movies. That’s true, but somehow I missed seeing The Guns of Navarone until tonight. I’m not sure how that happened, but it happens to be the case. I’m not sure how I haven’t seen this yet because it’s as pure a war movie as I’ve ever encountered and almost just as purely an action movie. Once it gets going, it doesn’t stop, but it’s not the constant combat of Black Hawk Down. In terms of classic war movies, though, it seems almost like the template.

Of course, it’s also just over 2 ½ hours long, which means there’s a hell of a lot to cover. I’m not going to go blow-by-blow, because this would end up being three times the length of my normal review. A little background would help, though. A group of British soldiers are trapped on an island in the Aegean Sea while Germany moves to bring Turkey into the war on the Axis side. Rescue of the men is impossible because a pair of radar-controlled guns present on the nearby island of Navarone. All attempts to knock out the guns have failed because they are located in a cave and protected on all sides. The Allies come up with a desperate plan.