Final Girl Film Club: Hell Night

Before I get to the glory that is Hell Night, I'd like to take a moment to thank our hostess, the talented Ms. Stacie Ponder, not only for giving us lesser bloggers a bit of free publicity, but also for this kick-ass stick figure rendering of Chromeskull stabbing Lena Headey in the head:

I see you are jealous, as well you should be. This is the custom artwork drawn directly on the back cover of my deluxe edition of Stacie's Slashers 101 mini-comic. The good news is, you don't have to spend the remainder of your days wallowing in envy--you can totally order your own over at Final Girl. I suggest you take a moment and do that right now. I can wait...

Done? Which slasher did you order? Dr. Decker from Nightbreed? Gahh! Why didn't I think of that? Now I'm freakin' jealous.

Anyhow, on with the review!

 Hell Night (1981, dir. Tom DiSimone)

The Verdict: Hell Night is a fun, but uneven, foray into cheesy 80s horror that works best when it (however lamely) attempts humor rather than horror.

Hell Night pours on the awesome so thick that within the first five minutes you will be convinced that it is the end-all be-all of 80s horror. Unfortunately, the film cannot keep this pace up for long. In fact, the film is at its best before any of the horror elements come into play. The movie begins with one of those mythical, end-of-the-world-blowout, 20-keg frat parties that you could only believe were real back in the 80s. Girls flash their cleavage while bringing drinks and smokes to drunken jocks who puke on trophy cases and throw kegs through the picture windows. Motion pictures exist precisely because parties like this do not.

Awesomely overblown period setting, check. But what about the characters? We've got Surfer Dude who comes dressed as Robin Hood and wise-cracks his way through the party while ogling Party Girl, who is dressed as a flapper and dancing provocatively, and who is perpetually carrying a small pharmacy somewhere on her person, despite the smallness of her outfit. There's also Frat President, who is a pig, but a charming, affable pig who gets points simply for the time, effort, and obvious passion he puts into scaring pledges shitless on the big night. Next there's Sensitive Guy, who is the more serious-minded type. You know, the guy who is in a frat but isn't really a "frat guy." Sensitive Guy is clearly set up to be the love interest for our Final Girl, Linda Blair.

Ah Linda Blair, I finally understand my friend Shannon's obsession with you. When we meet Linda's character, she is observing the party in a knowing, above-it-all manner that shows she's the smartest, most confident, flat-out coolest girl in the room. Her baby-fat cherubic face is the perfect counterpoint to her sultry baritone voice and wise-beyond-her-years demeanor... can you tell I was crushing on her something fierce?  The funny thing about Linda Blair is this movie is that in the beginning, she doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the cast. She's just a little bit too good as an actress, and she's clearly slumming. In the early scenes, Hell Night shows you tantalizing glimpses of the actress Linda Blair might have become had her career not been derailed by drug convictions (how quaint it seems that in the 80s a drug problem could turn public sentiment against an actor). Alas, as the film goes on, her performance deteriorates, mostly because the filmmakers don't give her anything compelling to do or even remain true to the character they've set up, More on that later.

Hell Night's greatest strength is its humor, although I was never quite sure if it was legitimitely funny, or so bad that it was funny. If you're being generous, you might consider the script a clever send-up of the frat-boy mentality. Or you could argue that the filmmakers possess a frat-boy mentality and any laughter is at their expense. Ultimately though, it doesn't matter. With it or at it, I laughed a lot.

Take for example, this bit of dialogue:

Lackey Nerd: "What a twat. We should have left her behind."

Frat Prez: "What for? Her behind's her best part. We should have keep her behind and left the rest of her."

Tell me, if you can, whether or not this is genuinely funny, or so lame it's hilarious? I'd say it's a bit of both. Imagine this joke as delivered by me and Jack Nicholson:

It could totally work, but the ham-fisted set-up and delivery take it over the edge into lamedom. The cumulative effect, however, is a joke that works on multiple levels, and is perfctly suited to the aesthetic of Hell Night.

Where Hell Night falters is whenever it attempts to build tension. When the pledges finally get locked in the murder/suicide house, the audience gets all these agonizingly slow scenes where people are creeping carefully along corridors, and you can tell by the way the shots are framed that nothing is going to happen. Rather than perched on the edge of your seat, you're sitting back waiting for the scene to end so you can get to the kills.

Speaking of which, the kills are pretty damned cool in that low-budget, infinitely inventive kind of way. At one point, a mongoloid twists Lackey Nerd's head around backwards. Within seconds, you realize the inherent cheapnesss of the effect. All they did was begin the head twist, cut, put the Lackey Nerd's jacket on backwards, then continue the twist. Such a simple effect, but in the seconds it takes to realize how it was done, you've already gasped and cringed at the brutality you thought you saw.

Alright, here's my biggest gripe of the movie. When we're introduced to Linda Blair's character, she comes off as this super-cool above-it-all outsider girl who isn't quite sold on the sorority life, yet is gaming the system for its potential benefits. During her conversation with Sensitive Guy, she shows herself to be highly intelligent, independent, and possessed of those masculine traits (being an auto-mechanic) that make her every guy's dream girl. I was sold. My firm expectation was that she would be one of the most kick-ass final girls of all time.

And then...

She spends the rest of the goddamned movie being a goddamned damsel in goddamn distress. I mean, goddamn! Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration. She has her moments, particularly near the end of the film, but for the most part she gets frightened, yells for help, seeks comfort from Sensitive Guy, rinse, repeat. The only time she shows a spark of her potential inner bad-ass is when Surfer Dude's shotgun clatters to the floor with the Dude himself nowhere in sight. Sensitive Guy cowers near the staircase while Linda insists she's going to get that gun. Coincidentally, this is the only scene in the film that even hints at tension, and gave me a pretty good jump scare (belated spolier alert).

I can't end this review without a huge shout-out to the best thing about Hell Night, Linda Blair included: Surfer Dude. This man deserves a standing ovation for perfectly capturing the gleeful cheese that Hell Night represents (go ahead, stand up and applaud, I'll wait). Every moment you watch him on the screen is a moment that God subtracts from the span of your days. Every lame joke that spews forth from his pseudo-mustachioed lips utterly kills. And it's not that he's partiularly good, it's just that his enthusiasm is infectious. When he excitedly describes what it's like to surf to Meg, well, a less-luminous being would have ground the movie to a halt, but between he and Meg (her naughty interludes are half the fun), the screen lights up. Am I over-selling this? Anyway, he's really fun to watch, especially when they give him lines like, "The world's gone crazy!" in earnest.

So, for all it's faults, I've got to give Hell Night 2 enthusiastic thumbs up, with one caveat: This is a film best enjoyed with a roomful of rowdy, drunken friends to carry you through the slow parts.

What's So Scary About Chromeskull? Socioeconomic Horror

Regular readers may know that I'm a huge fan of the original Laid to Rest, which I gave a huge, slobbery anus-kiss of a review that you can read here. I was so excited about this franchise that I decided to buy the sequel brand new, sight-unseen, for full price. Coming from someone who almost never pays more than $3 for a DVD, this is no small thing. Thing is, I buy virtually all of my movies used, so when I come across a really good indie horror film, I get somewhat guilty that the creators never saw a dime of my money. To show my support for Robert Hall, I paid ten times what I did for the original Laid to Rest.  As you can see, going into Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2, I was doubly invested: emotionally and financially. This is a recipe for sky-high expectations of the sort that can lead to the most seething hatred. So here's my review: I didn't hate it.

As you've probably guessed, I didn't love it either. In fact, I've spent the last several weeks trying to sort out exactly how I feel about the film. It seems to be a series of contradictions. For instance, the story is much more complex than the original, but the movie still seems little more than a showcase for brutal kills. There's more characterization than in the original, yet by and large, the characters were less interesting. It is a much bigger movie than the first Laid to Rest, with a huge body count and spectacular kill sequences, yet the movie seems cramped compared to the original, most of it taking place in Chromeskull’s customized “playspace.” And those spectacular kills seem both more and less brutal than those of the original, going too far over the top and making them cringe-worthy for all the wrong reasons.

The beauty of the original Laid to Rest was its simplicity. It was a pretty straightforward chase movie with a masked slasher pursuing a beautiful girl. There were hints that much more was going on behind the scenes, but it never got in the way of the pure adrenaline rush of the pursuit. It's scariness came from the unknown quality of the killer. In that way, it is more like John Carpenter's Halloween, while Chromeskull L2R2 is like Rob Zombie's.

Chromeskull is scary for an entirely different reason, and one that is much less immediate than it's predecessor. While the original taps into our most primal fears of pain and death at the hands of a predator, the sequel taps into our growing collective fear of the power of the elite few. It can be read as the reflection of our anxieties in the Occupy Wall Street era.

No, I'm serious.

In this installment, we find that Chromeskull is far from a solitary madman with a couple of shiny hunting knives. He is, in fact, backed by an army of assistants who clean up after him, make sure he never gets caught, and even bring him back from the brink of death with a team of top-notch physicians. Talk about health insurance. He also has craftsmen who design him custom weapons and "playspaces" in which to hunt. In the original, there was a glimmer of hope. If you can just survive long enough to make him melt his own face off, you can beat Mr. Shiny-Noggin. In the sequel, there's no escape. You elude Chromeskull, his people will find you eventually. That's the kind of power only money can buy.

All this behind-the-scenes stuff undermines the immediate terror by giving you too much information about Chromeskull and essentially killing the unknown aspect of the character. But isn't this always the case with horror sequels? Thankfully, Robert Hall knows not to give everything away and doesn't offer up much in the way of a backstory. In the most effective scene of the movie, Chromeskull's assistant (Brian Austin Green) taunts his boss's latest victim by saying, "You know what kind of sick shit he's going to do to you?" Then he leans in close and whispers the answer in her ear, leaving it to our imagination. Robert Hall knows what a fine line he's walking with this one, and thankfully, he understands the importance of the unknown.

Did I mention that Brian Austin Green is awesome in this movie?
Don't let the goofy animated gif fool you.

Laid to Rest: A New Slasher Classic?

When you think about the big horror franchises of the 80's (which, I think we can all agree was the golden age of slashers), what did they all have in common? An iconic killer, of course. The big four: Freddy, Jason, Michael, and Leatherface all had either a trademark mask, weapon, or both. Who today can look at a goalie mask without immediately thinking of the illustrious Mr. Voorhees?  When you think of a chainsaw, does your brain say, "power tool" or "murder weapon?" Mine too. I may be jumping the gun on this one, but it seems to me that Laid to Rest has what it takes to stand up alongside the greats, and Cthulu-willing, Chromeskull will take his rightful place in the horror hall of fame.

When it comes to masks, the simpler, the more iconic. This is why Michaels Myers's featureless white mask is so effective. And Jason's is simpler still.  Chromeskull's mask is flashier and more elaborate, but the design is straightforward: a skull-the universal symbol of death, polished to a high shine so his victims can see their own reflections as they die.

Chromeskull's weapons are two huge, vicious-looking knives with fingerguards and wicked serrated teeth. They too are polished and shiny, glinting in the dark against the backdrop of Mr. Skull's classy black suit. Chromeskull gets more than a few creative kills out of those versatile knives, and the violence is way more intense and graphic than practically any 80's slasher. The special effects are top-notch and the gore is copious. Nearly every kill had me shouting, "That was so cool," at the screen.

Glorious kills aside, where Laid to Rest really shines is in its simultaneous adherence to and departure from slasher film conventions. Robert Hall takes a page out of John Carpenter's book and reveals no motive for the murders, keeping his killer silent and mysterious. There's a sort of "slasher purity" to the film that makes it work so well. There's no real plot to speak of, and it starts off scary and rarely lets up.

Where it departs from convention is in the characters. Rather than an obnoxious group of partying teenagers, Laid to Rest begins with a single woman trapped in a coffin who has amnesia and possibly brain damage. After her initial escape from Chromeskull, she hitches a ride with a big, tough-looking, bald dude who turns out to be the nicest, most endearing character in the film. He takes on the role of her protector and brings her home to his wife, played by the always fantastic Lena Heady, who comes off as gruff and abrasive, but quickly shows her kinder side. The couple are hicks, but Hall doesn't turn them into stereotypes who exist only to be mocked. Because they care about this mysterious young woman, you care about them, which always makes the violence so much more crushing.

While not a perfect film, I was still blown away by it and beyond happy to learn a Robert Hall-helmed sequel is in the works. This is one franchise I'd like to see get huge.

But I do wonder how much of my excitement was due to having "discovered" the film on my own. I had never heard of it-just picked it up on a whim at the pawn shop because Lena Heady was listed in the credits. I'd like to know what you think-am I overblowing this thing, or is it really as good as I thought. Seriously y'all, blow up the comments section on this one.