Ten Days of Terror!: Day of the Dead (2008)

Film: Day of the Dead (2008)
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!

I suppose a remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead was inevitable. We got a 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, which turned out pretty good. The 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead had some issues, but it made up for them with buckets of blood. The 2008 remake of Day of the Dead is more a spiritual remake in that there are similarities to the original, but these are surface similarities only. This feels like more of an attempt to capitalize on the name more than anything else. It’s a zombie movie, but it’s one that doesn’t seem like it exists in the same universe.

The biggest issue with Day of the Dead is that it is staggeringly inconsistent with its own rules. This is a movie that sets up the parameters of the zombie plague and how it works and then routinely alters those rules if the plot demands it or there’s some scare to be had from breaking its own rules. It’s a cardinal sin of movie making in my opinion. Worse than being a bad movie is being a lazy one, and not much is lazier than breaking your own rules because you haven’t found an in-world way to work out what you want to have happen.

Chekhov's Syringe

Films: Warlock
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There are times when I think I’ve seen something before, but I’m not sure until a particular point in the movie. That was definitely the case with Warlock. I was almost certain that I had seen it before, but I didn’t have any real solid memory of it until about halfway through it. There are a couple of moments are surprisingly memorable. A couple for good reasons and one or two because Warlock has some effects that are almost embarrassing, even for 1989.

Warlock is a hard movie to place in terms of its target audience. There are some odd similarities to movies like The Terminator and Time After Time. Essentially, we have a, well, warlock (Julian Sands) several centuries past who is looking to complete a tome of power called the Grand Grimoire. The book has the power to, in the parlance of the time, unmake the world. But the warlock is foiled by Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant). Still, being a warlock means having some powerful allies. He manages to free himself with the assistance of Satan himself, who whisks him a few centuries into the future to the film’s present. Redferne manages to follow and shows up in the present as well.

Hugh Laurie Not Included

Film: House (1986)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

People’s careers are funny things. In 1985 or 1986 (depending on the website you check), the movie House was released. This is not the bizarre Japanese movie Hausu nor the television show starring Hugh Laurie. This is more or less a straight horror movie, although there’s a great deal of comedy here. It’s also a movie that has a rather surprising television pedigree. It stars William Katt, who a few years previously had starred in “The Greatest American Hero.” In smaller roles, it has Richard Moll from “Night Court” and George Wendt from Cheers.

There’s a lot here that isn’t really explained that well. The basic story is that horror author Roger Cobb (Katt) has retreated to the house of his aunt where he grew up. His aunt hanged herself in the house previously and while Cobb was expected to sell the house, he’s decided instead to use the house as a base of operations for his next book. That book is planned to be not another horror novel, but the story of his experiences in Vietnam. Not only is he having difficulty with getting anything started on the book, but he’s also having some odd experiences in the house itself.

Finally, the Hockey Mask

Films: Friday the 13th Part 3
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.

I genuinely have to wonder how the Friday the 13th series of movies happened based on those that I’ve seen so far. The first one is certainly iconic, and I’ll admit that the second one at least builds on the mythology of the first one. But the third one, Friday the 13th Part 3 (or Part III if you prefer) is essentially a remake of the previous film with slightly different characters.

I mean this literally. The only “innovation” when it comes to this movie is that, like many a film series from this era, they opted to make the third episode in the series in 3D. It went about as well as it did for most of the movies of the era, in that it’s clearly made in ways to exploit things popping out of the screen rather that adding some sort of depth to the field. Since this is a slasher movie, a lot of what is going to be popping out at us is weapons and body parts.

Off Script: Friday the 13th Part 2

Films: Friday the 13th Part 2
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the slasher subgenre. There’s simply not enough to the films (my opinion) to warrant a lot of excitement about them. More or less they are just an excuse for a bunch of different extreme death scenes, and while I freely admit that some of them get pretty inventive, most of them aren’t. That being the case, I’ve never been a massive fan of the Friday the 13th series, because these are in many ways the quintessential slasher films. It’s easy to forget that they start slow. Jason isn’t the killer in the first movie. In that respect, Jason’s debut as the movie monster he would eventually become starts with Friday the 13th Part 2.

Because there isn’t a great deal of plot here, there’s a particular freedom that the movie has to tie up old business. To that end, about 1/7th of the running time is taking up by a preamble that concerns Alice (Adrienne King), the final girl from the first movie. Once she is taken care of, we’re going to get a great deal of set up for the new collection of victims. The story is that it’s taking place five years after the original story despite this movie coming out the next year. There’s a new camp opening up just down the road from where Camp Crystal Lake was located. Sure, the new group of camp counsellors knows all about “Camp Blood,” but no one cares. After all, the new camp is far enough away from the old one, right?

Ten Days of Terror!: Lake Placid

Films: Lake Placid
Format: Syfy on rockin’ flatscreen.

Oh, I really wanted to like Lake Placid. I wanted to like it when I saw it in the theater in 1999 and I wanted to like it when I rewatched it. It’s rare that an exploitative horror movie sports a cast as impressive as this one—Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Betty White, Brendan Gleeson, and Oliver Platt. Plenty of horror movies attempt comedy with physical gags and don’t pay as much attention to a solidly funny script. Lake Placid is so close to being everything a good horror/action/comedy film can be and it comes up short over and over. It’s disappointing because it could have been a classic instead of a disappointment.

Lake Placid is a high concept film in the sense that the entire plot can be related in a single sentence: a 30-foot crocodile turns up in a lake in Maine and terrorizes the area. If you prefer, “crocodile Jaws in Maine.” That’s seriously it.