Hello and welcome to another edition of Five Cool Things, the bi-weekly article where I talk about all the fun, interesting, cool, and sometimes spooky things I’ve discovered since the last time. It is the week of Halloween, and I am a big fan of horror, so I thought it would be fun to dedicate this week’s post to all things frightening. Let’s get to it.
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Several years ago, I picked up a very nice boxed set of all the classic Universal horror monster films (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon). I loved it. My wife and would usually watch at least a couple of those films every Halloween season; I’ve apparently lost the darn thing. Well, except for the Wolfman films; those I still have. I’m sure they are lying around somewhere; I just don’t know where. I recently did a huge overhaul of my DVD collection, and I probably took that box and put it somewhere.
Buy Creature from the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy CollectionLuckily, most of those films are easily found on streaming services right now, so my wife and I decided to watch Creature from the Black Lagoon. It is a bit of a curiosity. The original cycle of monster films ran from the early 1930s through the 1940s, but by the 1950s tastes were changing, and those films were starting to feel dated. The last straight-up Universal horror film before this was She-Wolf of London, and that was released nearly a decade earlier. Between that and this were several films where comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello met the various monsters.
Creature definitely has more of a 1950s sci-fi feel to it than the typical monster movies. The plot is actually quite thin. A geological expedition in the Amazonian jungle discovers a fossilized hand of a creature heretofore unknown to man. Some digging around that hand reveals nothing more. It is presumed heavy rains washed the rest of it downstream into the Black Lagoon. There they discover the creature. At first, they try to just photograph it, then they want to capture it, and ultimately, they have to kill it, for it is attacking them.
It is all a bit silly, but the creature is iconic, and there is some nice underwater photography. They were clearly very satisfied with their underwater camera because a good chunk of the film is inside the lagoon. Seriously, there is so much footage of people swimming around for no other purpose than because it was cool to use that camera. But some of it really does look great. There is one scene where Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams, well, probably Ginger Stanley, as she did Ms. Adams’ underwater work) is swimming, and the creature is swimming just below her, mimicking her movements, and it’s just gorgeous.
Julie Adams is quite stunning in this; it’s no wonder that two of the male characters fight over her. The action is pretty tame, and they don’t do much with it thematically, but with a runtime of just over one hour, it’s a breeze to watch, and really quite fun.
Carrie: Season One
In 1974, Stephen King published his first novel, Carrie. It sold fairly well. Then Brian De Palma made a movie out of it starring Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, and Piper Laurie. The movie was a hit, and it pushed paperback sales into the millions. There have been a few cinematic adaptations of the story and even a Broadway musical. Now, Mike Flanagan has adapted it into a TV series for Amazon Prime.
Buy Carrie paperbackFlanagan has previously adapted three Stephen King stories – Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck – so he’s very familiar with the author’s work. It has been interesting to see the reactions from fans. The negative reactions stem from the changes he made to the source material. This is not a straight adaptation of the book, but more of a reworking or reimagining. But lots of other folks seem to love it.
I fall into the latter camp. I have not read the book, but I’m generally fine with major changes to source material. I don’t think any text is sacred, and changes are necessary when adapting a story to a different medium. I’ve only seen the De Palma film, which I love (and I do believe is more faithful to the book).
In this version, Carrie (Summer H. Howell) has been completely isolated from the outside world. Her parents have never let her out of the house. The only contact she has besides her mom and dad is a neighbor who secretly gives her novels to read. When her father dies in an accident, social workers visit the home for a welfare check. There, they find Carrie’s mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan), and Carrie hiding in a closet. Nobody even knew Carrie existed. She doesn’t have a birth certificate. As a condition for Margaret to retain custody of Carrie, she must start attending public school where she is bullied by her classmates, leading to a horrible incident at the school Prom.
In the De Palma film (and presumably the novel), Carrie is a shy, awkward, mousy girl. She’s afraid of her own shadow and confused by the reactions she gets from her classmates. But here she is a smart, curious, inquisitive girl who is excited to be outside her own house, meeting new people and going to school. Likewise, her mother isn’t the horrible religious monster from the story, but more of a right-wing nutjob, full of conspiracy theories and a belief that the outside world is full of sin and corruption. Because this is an eight-part series, the story gets expanded in interesting ways. We get to know Carrie, her mom, and some of the teachers and students quite well. It is also quite clear they are planning on expanding this into a much larger Stephen King universe. They bring in some other characters who have powers (oh, I didn’t even mention Carrie has telekinesis – but you probably already knew that if you are interested in this series) and mention things like “shining” from a different Stephen King novel. This is going to be a franchise.
I thought it was all well done. This is a story I enjoyed living in. I’m not sure that it’s a great adaptation of King’s novel, but I don’t care. I enjoyed it.
Crystal Lake
Anyone who has watched the original Friday the 13th film or even the original Scream knows that it was not Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding psychopath who was the original killer of that franchise, but rather Mrs. Voorhees, Jason’s mother. She’s barely in the movie, and she gets beheaded by the end of it, so it is easy to forget she even exists. This new series from Peacock aims to make you remember.
Buy Friday the 13th steelbookSet several years before the events of Friday the 13th, Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees, whose son, Jason, suffers from some unknown ailment that has caused his head to be a rather unusual size and plagues him with headaches and the occasional seizure. She’s the cook at Camp Crystal Lake, and Jason is a camper. One day, while the lifeguard is off getting sexy with her boyfriend, Jason swims past the shallow guardrails and drowns.
That’s basically the original story we already knew from the film, but this series makes it real and expands upon it. We see Jason as a young boy, smart and interesting. We see the events that lead to his death. Cardellini makes us feel the utter grief of a mother who has lost her son. We spend more time with the campers and townies, both those we met in the films and completely new characters.
In some ways, this series is what they call elevated horror with a tremendous central performance by Carellini and deep dives into themes about loss and community. In other ways, this is a Friday the 13th series with a lot of delicious gore. One scene has a character smashing the face off a woman with a meat tenderizer. It is prestige TV for a film series that probably doesn’t deserve it.
It tries to make sense of and streamline the lore for a series of films that never really cared much for that sort of thing. We learn why Jason became a killer and why he seems so indestructible as he does in later sequels. It brings in a fairly ridiculous backstory for all of this, but one that feels fitting for the series.
That mix of arthouse and grindhouse probably isn’t for everyone, but I rather loved it.
Resident Evil
I went to see this film on opening weekend. I like to get to the theater early, which is ridiculous considering everybody now has reserved seats and you have to sit through a ton of commercials followed by a ton of trailers before the movie actually starts, but old habits die hard. On this particular day, something was off. The commercials were running, but the sound was off. Nobody minds not listening to commercials, but it does make you wonder if something is wrong with the sound system. Luckily, I was in a theater full of dudes who weren’t afraid to get up and say something. I have sat in theaters before when something went wrong, and everybody just sat there and hoped the employees would just do something without being told. Once the trailers started, we had sounds, but it was still off. You could hear all the music, but none of the dialogue was audible. The dudes got up again, and this time you could hear some folks at the back discussing the issue.
Buy WeaponsMore adjustments were made. The movie started, and we had sound and dialogue. But the talking was really soft. You had to strain to hear it. More complaints and…nothing. Slowly, more and more people got up and left. After several minutes, I did the same. The theater was apologetic, and we all got refunds. They even refunded our refreshments. They asked if I wanted to stay for the next showing, but by that point I was too irritated to care.
Flash forward several weeks, and my teenage daughter mentions she wants to watch the movie. It was no longer showing at my local theater, but we found that it was playing at a theater about 45 minutes away and decided to make a little road trip. I’m not a gamer. I think I did play the original game once or twice, but I never completed it. I have seen the rather terrible movies starring Milla Jovovich. The reason I was interested in this film is solely based on its director – Zach Cregger. I really liked his last two films, Weapons and Barbarian.
I really loved this movie. The plot is quite simple. A medical courier, Bryan (Austin Abrams) is tasked with taking a priority package to the mountainside town of Racoon City. On his way up the snowy roads, he accidentally runs into a woman who jumps in front of his car. But something is wrong with her. Something is wrong with this town. It has been overrun by monsters – a virus is turning humans into terrible creatures. Turns out that package is the cure.
Though I am not a gamer, I understand most of the mechanics of them. Cregger does too. Bryan must move further and further into the town, ultimately climbing to the top floor of the medical center. Along the way, he will encounter scarier and more dangerous monsters. He’ll find and use bigger and better weapons. He’ll have to search for ammo. Cregger uses a lot of the visual language of a video game. Sometimes we’ll get first-person shots with just a shotgun sticking out of the frame. The camera will move in on a closed door. Then it will open, and we’ll view the darkness within just like you would in a game. But it is also cinematic. If the film’s visual style were exactly like a game, it would grow tedious. This is just the right mix.
I’m sure there are tons of Easter Eggs and references to the games that I missed, but I didn’t care. This is a great mix of action, gore, and humor.
I, Madman
Virginia Clayton (Jenny Wright) is a wannabe actress who works in a used bookstore. One day, a horror novel by an obscure author shows up at her doorstep. It’s about a lunatic who tries to demonstrate his love to a woman by cutting off his lips, his ears, and his nose. When she doesn’t return his love, he goes crazy and starts killing people – taking off their body parts and sewing them onto his face.
Back in reality, one of Virginia’s drama school classmates is murdered. And then there is another murder. Then she starts seeing the madman from her story in real life. He seems to think she’s the girl from the book. Or maybe she’s just going crazy herself. The film has a lot of fun playing with that. Also, the madman does keep stealing body parts from his victims, and the makeup department did a great job Frankenstein-ing that to his face.
This is one of those films I’d never heard of before I came across it on some streaming platform. I rolled the dice and took my chances and came away really enjoying it. I love it when that happens.
Slayground
Jeremy Saulnier is one of my favorite modern directors. One of the many things I love about him is that he seems perfectly content making genre film. He reminds me of John Carpenter in that way. Slayground is him making a horror/action film. There isn’t much information out yet on it, but the trailer looks great.
