Falling firmly within the spy games/Black Ops shenanigans territory, American Assassin and Unlocked were theatrical releases that both were aiming for franchise potential, but which fell considerably short of the goal, meaning that sequels are pretty unlikely. As such, it's probably one-and-done for these two would-be series, but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't watchable.
Indeed, the two films are pretty much what free preview weekends are made for, which is to say, exactly the sort of thing you might find yourself watching if they didn't cost you anything beyond access to a pay cable movie channel. Such was the case for me over this past Thanksgiving weekend, which is why I found myself watching two movies I probably would never have paid to see in theaters, much less would I buy the DVD/Blu-Ray.
What else are pay cable channels good for, beyond the original programming? Especially in this day and age, when you can simply stream whatever you want, more or less, with a few notable, obscure selections that are still elusive here and there, just to keep collectors and avid cult movie fans on their toes.
There was definitely a period in which I had several movie channels, Netflix, bought new and/or used DVDs and Blu-Rays and frequented a local Redbox all at once, before, like many before me, realizing how much overkill that was and finally cutting the cord. I aced all the movie channels, started watching certain shows with friends who still had them and streamed the rest online. I'm a lot happier now, and I'm not spending a ridiculous amount of money on stuff I don't need.
That said, I do have basic cable, but mostly because I have to have it in order to simply watch the main networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW. I suppose I could just watch that stuff online, too (and some of it I still do) but old habits die-hard, and I do like to be able to watch certain things live. Compared the the ludicrous amount of shit I had before, though, it's no contest: online streaming is definitely my preferred method on the whole.
Even so, it's still a kick to check those upper 500 channels and see that, lo and behold, I have certain channels I don't normally have because it's free preview weekend time. Granted, it seems like a lot of them show old-ass shit that most of us have seen a million times, but they also sneak in just enough new stuff in there to make it worthwhile, including some left-of-center indies that I might not have seen or have been aware of otherwise.
Such was the case this Thanksgiving weekend, and I took advantage of it as much as possible, as I wolfed down leftovers and vegged out over the holiday weekend. American Assassin and Unlocked were among said offerings, and even if they were both a bit by-the-numbers, I can't say I regret watching either because I probably wouldn't have seen them at all otherwise.
AA was the one of the two that I was aware of- I remember seeing the trailer and thinking: well, I clearly don't have to see that movie now, as the trailer spoiled it all for me already. Don't you hate that? Fortunately, enough time had passed since I saw it that I had forgotten everything beyond the initial premise: a guy is vacationing with his girlfriend at some exotic locale and he pops the question, only for some terrorist types to randomly attack everyone, killing his newly-minted fiancée in the process. Needless to say, he is not amused.
Cut to the guy seemingly looking to join a terrorist organization online. Just when it seems like he's getting somewhere, the authorities bust in and everyone is either killed or arrested, including our hero, Mitch Rapp, played by Teen Wolf star Dylan O'Brien. Turns out they've been tracking Rapp for some time, and CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan, Alien vs. Predator- also playing this past weekend) offers him a new gig, or else Rapp is going straight to prison, do not pass go.
Rapp takes option A and is dropped off for training with former US Navy Seal and all-around bad-ass and former Batman to boot, Stan Hurley, played by Michael Keaton. Hurley runs a Black Op unit that specializes in taking down terrorists. Naturally, Rapp likes to "play by his own rules" and has a predisposition to go "rogue" when the game-plan doesn't suit him. But he gets things done, so Hurley puts up with it, or at the very least, Kennedy forces him to.
So, it turns out that the terrorist they're hunting this time around is- plot twist! - one of Hurley's former trainees, who goes by the name of Ghost (Taylor Kitsch, in Lone Survivor mode) and is seemingly planning to sell a nuclear weapon to some Middle Eastern baddies. Can Hurley's team stop the deal? Will Rapp go rogue yet again along the way? Will there be more twists? Have you seen one of these movies?
AA gets the job done, just barely. There are some nifty (if admittedly unbelievable) action sequences towards the end, and O'Brien is a sympathetic, if also slightly unbelievable, anti-hero that plays by his own rules. I say the second unbelievable because, for those of us who watched Teen Wolf, it's still a little bit hard to let go of the fact that "Stiles" is being groomed as an action hero type, when he's still a fairly wiry, skinny-looking thing. But that may only be a hang-up for those of us who watched that particular show. Beyond that, though, it's all a bit predictable and that includes the "twists."
Faring slightly better is Unlocked, which, while also predictable in many ways, does have a few somewhat more unpredictable twists going for it than AA. It also has professional bad-ass and former Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, OG edition, Noomi Rapice in the lead, which further sets it apart from most of the typically male-dominated pack. The overall cast is also more impressive than AA.
Rapace plays Alice Racine, an undercover spy who is a social worker keeping an eye out for budding terrorists, particularly of the Islamic Extremist variety. She's still nursing some old wounds from a failed op that cost some 24 people their lives when a group of suicide bombers took them out in Paris- an act she felt she could have stopped if she had moved faster on info she had about the terrorists' plans.
When a CIA officer approaches her about getting back into the game and helping them crack a courier for a radical preacher that is suspected of being in the process of planning a biological attack somewhere in London, she begrudgingly agrees, only for things to go south quickly, ultimately resulting in her having to go on the run for her life.
Helping her out in various ways are: Eric Lasch (Michael Douglas) as her former mentor and employee of the CIA; Emily Knowles (Toni Collette), an MI5 Intelligence Chief; Jack Alcott (Orlando Bloom), a would-be thief and former soldier; and Amjad (Tosin Cole, from the current season of Dr. Who), a taxi driver that's a friend of Racine's.
Hindering her are a variety of people, most of which I can't discuss without spoiling some things, but I can say that Bob Hunter, the European CIA Division Chief, played by John Malkovich, isn't exactly on Team Alice from the get-go. There are admittedly some solid twists in this one, some of which I genuinely didn't see coming, though some are a bit silly in retrospect. In the moment, though, they're reasonably effective.
Overall, I really like this one, much more so than AA. AA may have had the bigger budget and the more wow-inducing special effects and action sequences, but Unlocked has a better script, better cast, and tight, taut direction from pro Michael Apted, of the Bond flick The World is Not Enough fame.
It also has those cool twists going for it, and a strong female heroine, always a plus as far as I'm concerned. It may have been a non-starter at the box office, but it's precisely the kind of late-night movie find pay cable channels are tailor-made for. I suppose both films are worth at least a watch, and which you may prefer might depend on what kind of action movie you like better- or possibly your feelings about the respective casts- but I definitely enjoyed Unlocked more on the whole.
I don't know that I'd recommend buying either one, but a rental might not be a bad bet, especially if you dig this sort of thing. Perhaps needless to say, if you are a subscriber to one of the pay cable channels that is showing either one, then, by all means, check them both out. You might start to forget them as soon as they're over, but you won't hate yourself for watching either one. That may sound like faint praise, but what more do you want for a couple of also-ran flicks that tanked at the box office? At least they didn't suck outright.
So, yeah- check them out, if you like this sort of thing. If not, then I can't imagine you would be interested in the first place, and neither one of them is likely to change your mind if you already feel that way. But points and credit where its due to Unlocked for at least going with a female lead- if it's girl power you're looking for, you could do a lot worse than Rapace- she rocks. 😍
Writer's Note: Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving- and what's the holiday without a few leftovers? Here's the first of two Thanksgiving-adjacent horror films that didn't quite make my main list last week, mostly due to time constraints.
I also had a free preview of various movie channels over the weekend, so I saw four new movies I'd never seen, along with re-watching a few movies I had seen but don't own and binge-watching various new shows. I'll try to do some reviews of those movies as well over the next week or so, and possibly even review some of the shows, too. We'll see.
In the meantime, here's my take on the cult classic monster movie...
Blood Freak doesn't take place on Thanksgiving, per se, but it does revolve around the fowl most associated with the holiday: the turkey. Indeed, you might have heard it referred to as the "killer turkey" movie or the "monster turkey" movie, which isn't entirely accurate- ThanksKilling would fit that description better- but it's close enough for disco, as one character in the movie might say. Either way, it's a turkey, all right.
(SPOILERS ahead, for those who haven't seen the film!)
The movie is about a Vietnam vet biker and recovering drug addict, Herschell (Steve Hawkes), that has the misfortune to help a girl, Angel (Heather Hughes), whose car has broken down, which ultimately gets him into all sorts of trouble. Not because of her directly, mind you, but because it leads him to meet her sister, Anne (Dana Cullivan), who is trouble with a capital "T."
Because Angel lives up to her name, and is a card-carrying religious fanatic, she warns Herschell not to get caught up in Anne's wild ways, which include hanging with swingers, druggies and hippies in general. At first, more interested in Angel, he does, but he makes the mistake of slighting a local drug dealer's girlfriend, who vows to get him back.
Shortly thereafter, Angel introduces her to her father, who owns a turkey farm. As a way of thanking Herchell for helping out his daughter, he offers the man a job and a place to stay for a while, until he gets back on his feet. In the meantime, he has Herschell do some odd jobs around the house, including cleaning the pool.
Unfortunately, Anne comes calling, dressed to kill in a bikini, and armed with a "special" joint that the dealer has given her, promising it won't get him "hooked." As this film is also sort of a throwback to the anti-drug propaganda films of the 30's and 40's like Reefer Madness or The Cocaine Fiends, where a mere hit was enough to turn one into a raving addict, so does Herschell become a slave to the weed here, begging for more almost immediately.
To make matters worse, the next day, Herschell begins working at the turkey farm, where two dubious "scientists" rope him into "testing" out their chemically-modified turkeys for some extra scratch.
Herschell agrees, chows down on some turkey, and once again, disaster strikes, as he goes into convulsions and becomes completely unresponsive. Panicking, the scientists take him to an isolated spot and dump him on the side of the road!
As if poor Herschell hasn't been through enough, he eventually comes out of it to find he now has the head of a turkey! Even worse, he's still addicted to drugs, but now he finds himself craving the blood of fellow addicts- hence the title of the movie. Murder ensues, as Herschell the turkey monster, stalks and kills fellow addicts in the area, following Anne's dealer around on the sly to identify them.
He does try to get help from Anne, who is horrified, but agrees, leading to some choice dialogue, as Anne muses what sorts of kids they might have, what with his current condition. Alas, Anne doesn't do much good, as her dealer won't say what he put in the joint- it's likely heroin, given that the dealer's own dealer is selling it to him on the side- and when she admonishes him, he drugs her and tries to use her as collateral to pay off his dealer for being late with his payments.
Fortunately for Anne, Herschell is still around, and he saves her from being raped and hunts down the dealer's dealer and cuts off his leg with a buzz saw that he conveniently finds in the area! (Fun fact: Herschell is named after none other than the "Godfather of Gore," H.G. Lewis, aka Herschell Gordon Lewis, who was known for making lurid-but-terrible gore-fests like this long before it was a common thing.)
Realizing Herschell is too far gone, Anne asks two of her hippie friends to help stop him, which they do, by hunting him down, decapitating him... and cooking him up for dinner! Lol. Now there's a Thanksgiving meal one won't soon forget!
Fortunately, it turns out to be only a hallucination, brought on by the deadly combo of heroin-laced weed and chemically-treated turkey, and Herschell wakes up soon after, back to normal, albeit still an addict.
When Anne's dad finds out what happened, he hits the roof, and goes to rescue Herschell, later arranging for Angel to pick him up and rehabilitate him at the drug addiction center she works at. Herschell eventually gets it together and he and Anne are reunited, with Anne likewise having gotten herself clean, felling guilty for what she got poor Herschell into, however inadvertently. The End. Don't do drugs, kids!
Throughout the film, in true Ed Wood-ian fashion, the director, Brad F. Grinter, appears on screen, choking down a steady stream of cigarettes- the film literally ends with him going into a coughing fit from all the smoking!- and warning of the dangers of the devil weed and the like.
He looks like one of those actors who got busted drinking and/or driving under the influence and was subsequently forced to do an anti-drug/alcohol commercial as part of their community service to stay out of jail. Which is to say, his heart clearly isn't in it, and he looks like two miles of bad road, rode hard and put away in a cold sweat.
Perhaps needless to say, the film is absolutely terrible. The cinematography violently clashes from light to dark from frame to frame, making Blood Rage look like the work of Dean Cundey in comparison. Ron N. Sill did the dishonors here, in his one and only cinematographer credit, though he went onto work as an electrician and gaffer on some decent stuff, like Iron Eagle, Prey of the Chameleon and the anthology TV show Monsters.
Meanwhile, the editing by Gil Ward- who also did the music, which admittedly isn't half bad (but only half good by definition)- is strictly amateur hour, with one scene after another fading to black, even if the scene isn't over! For instance, someone will walk out of a room, and the screen will fade to black, then it will resume within the same scene, in a different part of the house! This happens a LOT. Clearly, Ward should stick to music.
The film was co-written by Grinter and star Steve Hawkes, who also co-produced together. It was so bad that the financier backed out DURING production, and the two had to complete financing themselves! It's no wonder Hawkes later called it a "sad chapter in my life." He was better known for a series of Spanish-language Tarzan knock-offs, where his character had to go by "Zan" to avoid paying for the rights to the actual character, so that's saying something.
Meanwhile, Grinter cast the rest of the film using actors from the acting class he taught to help save money, and boy, does it show. Indeed, if it hadn't actually played in theaters, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a student film, given how horrifically acted, edited, shot and, oh, just how bad everything is. (Yes, I know there are some good student films out there, but as a former film student, let me tell you, they are far and few in between.)
Somewhat remarkably, Grinter's prior film, Flesh Feast, starred no less an icon than Noir favorite Veronica Lake, who also produced. Sadly, it was her final film- and it's just as terrible as this one, and then some.
His other films include the biker drama Devil Rider and the nudie cutie throwbacks Barely Proper and Never the Twain, the latter of which features the tag line: "He is possessed by the spirit of Mark Twain at the Miss Nude World Pageant," which sounds amaze-balls. Only in the 70's, folks.
So, yeah, Blood Freak is absolutely the worst. But it's also a lot of fun, from the wooden acting across the board- including from the director himself- to the laughable papier-mâché monster turkey head poor Hawkes is forced to wear throughout a good half of the movie. (The mouth doesn't move, so when he "drinks" his victim's blood, he has to scoop it into his cupped hands and drip it into his toothy beak, lol.)
All of this makes Blood Freak primo fodder for a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style roasting, though, to the best of my knowledge, it never cropped up on the show. Maybe it will on a future episode, now that the show's back. Either way, you and your friends can certainly do the job on your own, as it lends itself nicely to non-stop ridicule, to be sure.
Check it out- but only bad movie aficionados need apply! 😵
Writer's Note: The following marks the final installment of my Thanksgiving horror series. I will be taking the rest of the week and the weekend off, but I'll be back on Monday with some post-Thanksgiving-adjacent reviews, because what's that holiday without a few leftovers?
As ever, thanks for reading, have a great Thanksgiving and try not to kill any relatives over the holiday, as tempting as it might be when they come over sporting a MAGA hat and talking about how much they love the real turkey, the (not my) President. Just take comfort in the fact that the next thing they'll be eating is their words when Mueller takes his ass down finally, lol. 😉
Until then, keep on (blood) raging against the machine, everyone! Now, on with the show...
I first saw this one back in the day on cable, under the alternate title, Nightmare at Shadow Woods. As it was heavily edited for television, I wasn't too impressed, but then I rented it on VHS under the title its best known as, Blood Rage, and it was a whole different animal altogether.
Back then, it was common practice for distributors of a film that they knew was a clunker to put it out under multiple titles, in the hopes of duping unsuspecting film-goers, and later on, home video renters, into seeing a film they'd seen before, thus making more money in the process.
Oftentimes, the film would also be re-edited, with different scenes added, and sometimes with certain others cut out or heavily edited. It's less common today, what with all the information about a given film at our fingertips via the internet, making it harder to get away with, but it's been known to still happen on occasion.
Blood Rage was originally shot way back in 1983, but didn't get a proper theatrical release until 1987. A big part of that was that, yes, the filmmakers and distributors knew they had a stinker on their hands, and, as a direct result, several edits of the film were made, including yet another one, under the title of Slasher, which is about as nondescript a title as one could hope to come up with at the time.
Credit then, where its due, to Arrow Video, for putting out a whopping three-disc Blu-Ray/DVD set featuring all three different cuts of the film, including one composite version that combines footage from both the theatrical and home video versions, which, like I mentioned, featured different scenes, and cut out some of the gore and nudity and the like, depending on which version you saw.
Now, do you really need to see three different versions of the same film, especially when it's not that great in the first place? Debatable, but kudos to Arrow for knowing their audience.
Despite the often wildly varying quality of films in the horror genre, fans are as serious about these films as, say, the people that adore Criterion releases are about theirs. (Which is not to say that Criterion hasn't put out some worthy horror sets of their own, notably their releases of various David Cronenberg films.)
Don't get me wrong, though. Blood Rage is a lot of fun, and easily the best of the Thanksgiving-themed slashers made in the sub-genre's Golden Age, which is roughly the late 70's-through-the-mid-80's. That said, like many slashers, it has its problems, and oftentimes, a comprehensive Blu-Ray/DVD release like the one I mentioned for the film can serve to actually highlight those issues, not lessen them.
Of course, it was fairly common knowledge, even before this release back in 2015, that the film was a troubled production. The director infamously quit the production at one point, in large part because he didn't get along with star Louise Lasser; one actor didn't show up when they were supposed to, forcing producer Marianne Kanter to assume the role in her wake, and, though the Arrow version cleans up the picture considerably, sometimes that's not always a good thing.
In this case, it shows how grainy the film is at times, and how bad the cinematography was in others. In one bit early on, the lighting changes throughout the scene, getting lighter and darker from shot-to-shot, making it obvious that the filmmakers didn't get the full coverage they needed. And, as many times as this film was re-edited, you'd think they'd have gotten it right at some point, but it remains pretty choppy and iffy throughout all three versions.
That said, for a director making only his second film, after a ten-year-hiatus from film-making (his first was Scalpel, also available on DVD/Blu-Ray), it's not bad. There's some terrific gore scenes in the unedited versions, aka the ones that aren't Nightmare at Shadow Woods, courtesy of FX guru Ed French, who also plays Bill in the film.
And, as per usual with the films like this at the time, some incredibly gratuitous, but not unwelcome sex and nudity, courtesy of Lisa Randall, who's a real looker. This was sadly her first and final film, but she has a nice verve and sass that might have eventually led to her being a contender as a go-to bad girl type. Alas, it was not to be.
Though her character is underwritten, she's a lot more fun than the designated Final Girl, Karen, played by Julie Gordon, who only had a slightly better acting career, appearing in the likes of Super Fuzz and Deadly Illusion.
I love Randall's line, when the guys are more interested in playing video games than hitting on her, she snarkily says to them when they ask how she is: "Just talking [to Karen] about the bad old days, when guys used to be horny all the time." Lol. (At least it gets one of the boys' attention!)
The film's bigger problem is the dubiousness of the three main leads, one of which treats the whole film as a big joke (that would be Louise Lasser, having a bad acting field day, apparently much to the director's chagrin) and two of which are played by the same actor, which, needless to say, isn't great when that actor isn't very good.
The actor in question is Mark Soper, who does a good job of bringing a distinction to the two opposite-minded brothers, but oddly, makes the brother who was falsely accused of the murder that opens the film creepier than the one who actually does the killing, who comes off more like an entitled jerk than a murderous whack-job. Think a proto-Patrick Bateman (as in American Psycho), only nowhere near that good, or as well-acted as Christian Bale.
That said, Soper did have a decent career, cropping up in such solid flicks as Tempest, The World According to Garp, Phenomenon, Swordfish and White Oleander, as well as a regular role on TV's nighttime soap Knots Landing. Horror fans might also know him from the Stephen King-based creature feature, Graveyard Shift II. He also has a distinguished career writing and acting in stage plays, so maybe this film is not the best thing to judge him by.
To be fair, the writing isn't exactly great, either. Bruce Rubin- perhaps wisely writing under a different name, Richard Lamden (though given that his one big credit is the silly horror spoof Zapped!, I'm not sure why he felt compelled to hide this one)- does get off a few good lines, including the infamous "That's not cranberry sauce," but then has evil twin Terry repeat it several times, lessening the effect, when it wasn't exactly THAT great to begin with.
The matter is not helped by Soper's flat delivery of the line the first time. Throughout the film, he seems to be going for deadpan, but lands somewhere more akin to uninterested and bored. To be fair, he fares better with the line the next time around, but they should have lost the first one, which, in retrospect, now plays like Terry is work-shopping the line for later use!
(There should be a blooper reel for all wise-cracking psychos rehearsing their big lines before they nail it, just for our amusement- I can just see Robert Englund, as Freddy Kruger, saying "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" in different inflections before finally getting it just right. 😃)
But if Soper is a bit flat throughout, no matter which character he's playing, Louise Lasser is completely mental, often seeming like she's starring in her own, completely different movie. Her line-readings are so off-kilter and bizarre, it seems like she's making it all up as she's going along, improv-ing her dialogue instead of delivering pre-written lines.
Interestingly, Lasser has far and away the most impressive pedigree of anyone else associated with the film. Her biggest claims to fame were her titular role in the popular soap satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and being married to Woody Allen and appearing in several of his films, including Bananas and one of the only films of his I really enjoyed, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). She also hosted Saturday Night Live in its first season.
However, cult film fans probably know her best for her more left-of-center work, including roles in the TV-movie horror spoof Isn't it Shocking?, the superhero spoof Mystery Men, Sam Raimi's Crimewave, Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker, Todd Solondz' Happiness and Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, plus a recurring role on HBO's Girls.
Though I'm admittedly unfamiliar with much of her early work, from what I can tell, she's a solid actor when she's engaged with the material. But like a lot of actors that came out of the 70's, after a certain point, she started taking parts for money, and, as such, started coasting a bit on her name. To be sure, her work here wouldn't cut it in a major Hollywood production, but this is a low-budget slasher we're talking about.
As such, I really do think her approach here was intentional, which is to say, she meant it to be over-the-top and funny, not mental, which is how it comes off. I think she found it impossible to take the script seriously, and, as such, decided to do her own thing with it, which isn't necessarily in keeping with the tone of the rest of the film. I can certainly see where that would be a problem to the director, who likely wasn't intending to do a dark comedy or a spoof.
As a direct result, the tone of the film is all over the place. Oddly, though, that's precisely what makes the film somewhat memorable. The film certainly doesn't make much use of the Thanksgiving setting, that's for sure. The only thing keeping it from getting lost in the endless shuffle of the endless stream of slashers from the time is precisely that wacky tone, which doesn't exactly work, but it keeps the film from getting boring.
I mean, you'd think that wouldn't be an issue for a film that only clocks in around eighty minutes- even less in the edited version- but it does come close to being monotonous, thanks to all the back-and-forth within the primary setting, an apartment complex.
Being as how most of the rooms look the same- which is to say, like a trashy Florida hotel room, which is basically what they are (the film was shot in Jacksonville)- you need Lasser's wacky antics to shake things up a bit here and there. I can see where the director would hate it, but it works for what the film is, and actually gives it the extra oomph it needs to go from a run-of-the-mill slasher to one worth revisiting.
Of course, the other crucial element is the gore effects. A slasher film lives and dies by its murders and how graphic they are, and this one, at least in its uncut form, really delivers the gory goods. It may be haphazardly shot at times, but the new transfer goes a long way towards at least making the FX stand out.
The opening kill is suitably gruesome, and somewhat out of nowhere, given that it was committed by a child, who then frames his own brother for the crime, getting him thrown in an institution for ten years, until he escapes in hopes of clearing his name once and for all. That's one hell of an opening- too bad the rest of the film is mostly by-the-numbers.
That said, there's a bravura sequence where Todd's psychiatrist is cut clean in half (!), another effective scene where Terry's mother's fiancée has his hand lopped off (as seen on the poster at the top of the page), then his head split open, as seen later on in the film by a horrified Maddy (Lasser), and an unlucky suitor for a local MILF has his head chopped off and hung from an extension cord, plus a few other good kills where that came from.
The film also has a solid, if VERY 80's, synth-driven score by Richard Einhorn. He should be a fairly familiar name to fans of thrillers and horror movies, with credits that include the slasher classics The Prowler and Don't Go in the House, the Nazi zombies of Shock Waves, Eyes of a Stranger and Sister Sister (both with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh), the underrated Dead of Winter, Dark Tower (not the Stephen King one), Closet Land and A House in the Hills.
Taken as a whole, then, all of this adds up to a worthwhile slasher that might not qualify as a classic, but might just suffice as a Thanksgiving go-to place-holder for horror fans until Eli Roth finally follows through on his intentions to turn his Thanksgiving trailer into a full-length feature.
Maybe buying the three-disc Blu-Ray/DVD combo is a bit much- a 2-disc version is also available- and, for those less determined to see the film in its various other incarnations, it is also available for streaming on various sites, including YouTube.
But if you do dig it, I can't recommend the 3-disc set enough, as it is stuffed to the brim with bonus features that should satiate even the most die-hard fans of the film, although it's a bit on the pricey side. (You can buy it here, but I'd check the likes of eBay for cheaper copies.)
Bonuses include a commentary by the director, outtakes, and interviews with Louise Lasser, Mark Soper, Marianne Kanter, Ed French and Ted Raimi, who has a brief cameo as a condom salesman (!) at the beginning, which marks his film debut. All in all, a handsome set from the always-impressive Arrow Video.
Well, that concludes my Thanksgiving horror series- for now, at least. I might have a few bonus leftovers for you on the other side of the weekend, though, because what's Thanksgiving without a few leftovers? Until then, have a great holiday, and don't forget to make sure that it really is cranberry sauce! 😏
