Octoberfest: Double Feature - HalloweeNight (2009) / Return of the Scarecrow (2017)

 

Clearly, I'm a glutton for punishment, as I watched not one, but two more killer scarecrow movies over the last few days, knowing good and well that they weren't likely to hold a candle to the all-time classic Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and that, mind you, was a made-for-TV movie from the 80's, which some of my younger readers may not even be aware of. Granted, the whole "made-for-TV" thing doesn't have the stigma it used to, but back in the 80's, it could easily mean cheese of the highest order. In that case, however, it wasn't. 

You'd think with the freedom to do whatever, more or less, in an R-rated movie that a TV-movie would be easy to top, but you'd be wrong. That said, if there was one format that was even more derided than a TV-movie back then, it was the dreaded "made for home video" flick. We're talking no-budget, oft-shot-on-videotape travesties that look cheap and are almost-always painfully inept, such as Houseboat Horror, Blood Lake, Video Dead, Blood Cult, Boardinghouse, Sledgehammer and plenty more where that came from. (Here's a handy list of some of them, for those who dare to fall down this particular rabbit hole.)

The trend started in the early 80's, when VHS was all the rage, and one could make a fast buck in quick order by shooting one of these microbudget travesties. The approach was dead in the water by the early 2000's, as DVD put VHS out of business, but filmmakers still do it, albeit with way better quality, thanks to digital video. Back in the day, you could usually pick these sorts of films out from the pack from a mile away, just by looking at the cover or the film stills on the back or what have you, but it's a bit harder to tell nowadays, where even the worst of the bunch looks better than a lot of the direct-to-VHS stuff back then, and you can only see the poster art to help you choose, which can often be deceptively cool. (That much, at least, hasn't changed.)

Two such films are the ones I have for you today. Though made in 2009, well after the direct-to-VHS rush, HalloweeNight - their spelling, not mine- does indeed look like one of those gloriously cheesy, shot-on-videotape pseudo-treasures. BTW, that curious spelling made it a bitch to find info about online, as there's an Asylum movie by the same name- only with the extra, completely valid "N"- released the following year. I had to look up the actors just to find this one and there wasn't much in the way of info about it, so yeah, not much I can tell you about its origins.

About all I do know is that that missing "N" was, of course, intentional, as apparently, even then there were several other movies with the title Halloween Night, so they adopted the wacky spelling in order to stand out from the pack; which, of course, didn't help matters for me when I was trying to find more info on this one. It doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, so yeah, not much to say on the background. Sorry. 😒 

The film was written and directed by Pennsylvania-based filmmaker Mark Polonia, and based on a story by his late twin brother John, who sadly died the year before the film was released. John actually came up with the idea way back in 1984, and Mark completed it for him and dedicated the film to his memory. The two wrote, directed, edited, produced and often acted in over 20 horror movies together, with titles such as Splatter Farm, Hellspawn, Feeders and its sequel, Slay Bells; The House That Screamed and its sequel, Hellgate; Peter Rottentail, Splatter Beach and my favorite title of the bunch, Gorilla Warfare: Battle of the Apes. 

And speaking of The Asylum, Mark Polonia has done his fair share of rip-off titles looking to hook fans of a certain franchise, including no less than three (!) Amityville-inspired horror flicks: Amityville Death House, Amityville Exorcism and Amityville Island- that are in no way, shape or form part of the better-known franchise in question, aside from tangential relations to the town and their revolving around spooky stuff. One of them (Island) even features a possessed shark, making for a bit of a Amityville/Jaws combo! Hey, lest we forget, Jaws was set in Amity.

Other also-rans include Chainsaw Killer, Empire of the Apes and Revolt of the Empire of the Apes; Jurassic Prey, Camp Blood- First Slaughter and Ghost of Camp Blood; Sharkenstein, Bigfoot vs. Zombies, Bride of the Werewolf and my fave title, Shark Encounters of the Third Kind. All of 'em sound like the kind of thing I would have rented back in the day before I was too young to know better, but I would soon learn the hard way to be more discerning about such things on down the line. Kind of. 

I'm sure Polonia is a lovely guy, though, and probably a lot of fun to be around, in a sort of pseudo Ed Wood sort of way, in spite of the overall silliness of his films. Believe you me, if I could make a living wage making cut-rate horror films with microbudgets, I would be doing that now, grumpy critics be damned.  After all, just as they say those who can't do, teach; so it is true that those who can't make films, often end up critiquing them. Case in point: 👉 this guy. 👈

Anywho, HalloweeNight (that title just doesn't get any easier to type) revolves around a put-upon janitor at a local college, "Creepy" Harold (Polonia regular Todd Carpenter), who has just finished putting up his Halloween decorations when some "young"- and I use that term WAAAAY loosely- hooligans come by and trash his yard and beat him up. One of the morons leaves his wallet behind, thus making it that much easier for Harold to track him down, though he needn't have worried, as one of the more sympathetic local college girls, Trixie (Cindy Wheeler, also of Camp Blood- First Slaughter), invites him to the party that the same thugs are throwing, or at the very least, attending. 

Harold works his magical mojo on the scarecrow in his yard, after reassembling it, of course, and by Halloween night- I'm sorry, by HalloweeNight 😆- Mr. Scarecrow is good to go and ready to slice up some, ahem, college students. Things progress accordingly, with Trix, as she's better known- see what they did there? - ultimately the last one standing, in spite of Harold's warnings for her to get the F out of Dodge before it's too late. She does not, and pays the price, via an amusing confrontation with a stop-motion-style Pumpkinhead-esque critter (only WAAAAY more low-rent) that emerges just when she thinks she's safe. Will anyone be left standing in the end, including Creepy Harold himself? You'll just have to see for yourself... if you dare! 🎃

So, yeah, HalloweeNight is way too silly to take the least bit seriously, but I had fun with it, and probably would have had that much more fun with it in my pot smoking days. (Really, the only thing standing between my pot smoking days and now is lack of knowledge on where to get it, now that I've moved back home, lol. 😜) As much as I thought DTV movies were terrible back in the day, I must admit, seeing one now brought back some warm and fuzzy memories that made this one go down a lot easier. 

Also, speaking of going down easier, resident bad girl type Danielle Donahue is a cutie. She's mostly just done movies like this- including the aforementioned Amityville Death House, Jurassic Prey, the Empire of the Apes movies and Amityville Island, but I was pleased to see that she was about to make her directorial debut with Snowfall, a film she also is producing and doing the cinematography on herself, in addition to starring in. Aside from the bad timing of the pandemic, I wish her well, and I look forward to seeing how she fares on the other side of the camera. 

Yes, most of the acting in HalloweeNight is terrible, with Carpenter particularly wooden and laughable, but really, that just adds to the fun. I mean, someone basically dies on the toilet at one point, so yeah, this movie is absolutely self-aware about how silly it is. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it for what it was. It's worth mentioning that the practical effects aren't bad, which is more than I can say for the CGI nonsense in the Halloween Jack movies, so there's that.

Your own mileage may vary, according to how much tolerance you have for Direct-to-Video style movies.  For what it's worth, I hated them myself, back in the day, but apparently, I had a softer spot for them than I remembered. Go figure. It's probably nostalgia, but whatever. Check it out, and pour one out for the late John Polonia. 😔

Next up, is another straight-to-home video/streaming effort, this one much more recent, 2017's Return of the Scarecrow. Honestly, this was about this point where I started to reach my killer scarecrow movie quota, and I very nearly abandoned ship after about the first 10-15 minutes of this one. As I knew I was likely to only be able to do this one review this week- it was a busier week than I expected- I decided to give it another 10 minutes of so, if only for the thematically-relatedness of it all and the fact that I could review both movies in one fell swoop. I'm actually glad I did, because it got significantly better as it went along.  

Basically, it starts out in a similar way to a lot of these movies- people messing around where they shouldn't be, resulting in the evil scarecrow being resurrected to wreak havoc. But then things take an unexpected turn. We begin with some grave robbers trying to dig up what is alleged to be the location of some buried treasure, only to find that the land really is cursed, which, in turn brings back said scarecrow, who kills them both. Then, sometime in the past, a group of campers, against the warnings of a local bartender, spend the night in the same location, only to be picked off one by one by- you guessed it- the scarecrow. 

However, this time around, there is one survivor who lives to tell the tale, with rumors being that she is a witch and that's why she survived. Whether or not that is true, she ends up working at the very same bar alongside the local legend teller, who, years later, is still telling the same old story to tourists, albeit with added deaths, thanks to the aforementioned campers. 

This is where things take a welcome turn, as, when he tells the tale, we get a sort of shadow puppet show which is admittedly low-rent, but pretty nifty. We get the full story of the township, which involves, yes, witches and child sacrifices and escaped mental patients and angry mobs and so forth. It's way more back-story than we really need, but I really appreciate the effort, and I dug the sort of pseudo stop-motion animation attempt, which at least shows that the filmmakers have ingenuity and weren't about to let budget trump ambition, which is a good quality for an aspiring filmmakers to have. 

Even better, shortly thereafter, we meet the real stars of the movie, Virgil (Jay J. Bidwell, Moving Parts) and Wyatt (Pete Houlihan). These two seem at first blush to be typical redneck types, but writer/director Walter Lodes III (the cleverly-titled Too Dead To Die and the forthcoming Sticky Fingers - The Movie!) amusingly makes them unusually verbose and given to waxing philosophical, while keeping them firmly in the tradition of, say, a Laurel & Hardy type, with one, Wyatt, the clear brains of the group- sort of- and the other a sort of left-of-center doofus. 

After overhearing the bartender tell his tale yet again and seeing the effect it has on the latest group of tourists, the two decide to head out to the woods and scare the bejesus out of the bunch. Only they end up getting more than they bargained for- and not just from the scarecrow, mind you. Basically, one of them, Wyatt, ends up repeatedly getting the crap kicked out of him by the tougher half of the camping contingent- which, this being the modern age, are, in fact, two of the women of the group- along with some disgruntled townies, who get wind of a wise-ass dressed as a scarecrow terrorizing everyone and eventually form the aforementioned angry mob to track him down. 

Meanwhile, the other, stupider one, Virgil, who gets separated from Wyatt in the initial attack by the women on Wyatt, accidentally ends up with the actual evil scarecrow and, unbeknownst to him, the two go about trying to freak out everyone they come across, which they succeed in doing because one of them isn't faking it. All of which ends up getting blamed on Wyatt, of course, who bears the brunt of the retaliation of the townspeople. 

Now, of course, you could ask: why doesn't Wyatt simply take off his scarecrow costume when things start to get hinky for him? Or, for that matter, why doesn't the real evil scarecrow immediately kill Virgil? Well, things do eventually go in that direction, but until then, you just kind of have to go along with it. Which, of course, you can either choose to do or not. 

Basically, the whole thing plays like a sort of live action old-school cartoon, down to the whole Scooby Doo-or-Looney Tunes-style gambit of characters who don't know a monster is a monster while we, the audience, do know it- and consequently, know that, eventually, so will said characters - at which point, all hell will break loose. And it does, naturally. I loved that the movie had a sense of humor about itself and that some of the characters were self-aware and the actors playing them were clearly in on the joke. 

Oftentimes, when someone is going for camp, it can go disastrously wrong, but, in this case, since the filmmakers are going more for a live-action cartoon, rather than aiming for Ed Wood territory, it actually works more often than not, even if things get off to a rough start. I liked the way Virgil took command when Wyatt was replaced by the evil scarecrow, who only replied by grunts and grrrs and Virgil just took that to be Wyatt "getting into character" like a method actor or what have you. That's pretty clever, even if, IRL, the evil scarecrow would have killed Virgil outright. Of course, IRL, there wouldn't be a killer evil scarecrow in the first place, and the movie gets that, so it has fun with it, accordingly, and treats it like the joke it is.

Granted, we're not talking high end comedy here- this is strictly humor of the low-brow variety. But, for what it is, it works, at least for this viewer. I'd definitely say this one qualifies as the type of movie you watch with a group of drunken friends and make fun of, and I genuinely think it was meant as such. If anything, it seems like the cast and crew themselves were also goofing around and having fun, and you can usually sense that sort of thing while watching. It doesn't always translate to a good movie, and I wouldn't call this good, per se, by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed it for what it was. If you're in the right frame of mind, you probably will, too. 

That about does it for now. Join me next week for a look at the Night of the Demon franchise- though, if I can sneak in another Halloween-themed review over the weekend, I will. In the meantime, stay away from those evil scarecrows! 😈

Octoberfest: Double Feature - The Legend of Halloween Jack (2018) / The Curse of Halloween Jack (2019)

 

There are an awful lot of obscure Halloween horror movies out there, and I couldn't help but notice that a lot of them were made just over the last few years when I was assembling this year's list of potential films to watch. It's as if the filmmaking world collectively realized my observation that Christmas horror films far outweighed what should be the easy number one holiday for such things and decided to do something about it en masse. 

On the streaming channel Tubi, just for one example, I simply did a search for the word "Halloween" and, not counting family fare, got at least 50 movies to choose from. To be fair, I think some of them eluded me last year on simple account of not actually having the word itself, Halloween, in their titles. (The Tubi list also included any films that featured "Halloween" in their summary descriptions, not just in their titles.) 

But I did have various lists culled from online sites that included such titles, which is to say horror movies set on or around Halloween, but didn't necessarily feature the word in their titles, so it's not like I missed that many from the past- as a closer look proved, an inordinate amount of them were from the last few years. Of course, that still begs the question: are any of them any good?

Last year, which is when I began my annual Octoberfest, the answer appeared to be a pretty resounding no, for the most part. For every solid one I watched, there were multiple ones that were pretty terrible, straight-to-video type fare. Sure, some of those films have their charms, but typically, the lower the budget, the more incompetent they are. 

As someone who's worked on both sides of the camera, I know how hard making a film can be, so I hate to bash aspiring filmmakers. No matter how terrible their end product may be, I try to find something positive to say. But, at the same time, I'm not going to just actively torture myself with awful films, either. As such, before making my choices, I tried to get a general sense of which movies might be worthy and those that were probably not, so as to not waste my time- or yours.

I say all this just as a preface to the fact that I admittedly was inclined to do so after watching these two films. Not that I haven't seen worse- believe me, as a near lifelong horror fan, I have- but because I didn't want to go through the same thing as last year. Especially since I knew in advance I wasn't going to be reviewing as many films this year as I did last year. As such, from here on out, if I come across really terrible movies, I'm just going to wait and review them all at once, a la my Movie Round-ups. That way, we both save time. 😉 

First up, we have The Legend of Halloween Jack. I don't see that many British horror films these days, so it's always nice to stumble across one here and there, especially this far away from the Golden era of Brit Horror, aka the Hammer and Amicus era of the 60's and 70's. At the very least, they do seem to be slightly more competent at their worst than some of the American ones at their worst, so there's that. 

To a certain extent, Halloween Jack is no exception. The cinematography, by Jonathan McLaughlin, is crisp and clear, if obviously digital, and is aided and abetted by some pretty solid location shooting in various parts of Wales. All of the actors are likewise from Wales or nearby England. I don't know about you, but somehow, even bad actors from the UK come off as better than they are by virtue of their accents alone- to me, at least, lol. 

The film is also one of those horror films filled with copious references to the genre, albeit even here, they are slightly classier or sometimes more subtle than their American counterparts. For instance, one character has the last name of Crowley, an obvious reference to occultist Aleister Crowley, which may be lost on some younger viewers. The film is set in Dunwich, which is a town name that should be familiar to horror fans, particularly H.P. Lovecraft ones. Several characters have the surname of "Tramer," a reference to Ben Tramer, the guy that Jamie Lee Curtis' character had a crush on in the original Halloween. The most blatant reference is probably a nod to Haddonfield, which is, of course, where Halloween takes place. 

As such, it's clear that Halloween Jack is aiming for John Carpenter territory, but with a more British flair. Sad to say, it doesn't even come close, but that has more to do with the shoddy special effects and inept staging of the kills than anything else. There's something to be said for going for a more subdued approach, a la John Carpenter's masterpiece, but here, the badness of the execution nips all of that potential in the bud. 

The plot is actually a variation on another old Halloween favorite, The Dark Night of the Scarecrow. When some locals are murdered, the powers that be are convinced that a man who is known to have been involved in occult practices, Jack Cain (William Wolfe Hogan, Fedz), is to blame. When he is let go on a technicality, the Mayor (Doug Cooper, The Jonestown Haunting), along with the relatives of those killed and the cop who botched the arrest, Frank Hollister (Colin Holt, The Killers), band together to kidnap and kill Cain as a sort of small vigilante mob. 

One problem: Cain didn't do it, and warns the group that he will have his revenge. One year later, the youngest of the group, Johnny Tramer (Aaron Jeffcoate, AMC's The Terror) is still feeling guilty for his actions and kills himself at the site of the murder, hoping to alert the authorities to what happened. Of course, one of the cops is in on it, so that's a pretty flawed plan. 

Instead, the unintended result is that Tramer's blood seeps into the ground where Cain lay and it revives him to get his revenge at long last on everyone involved in his death, their relatives and anyone else who gets in his way. Can anyone stop him? It's up to the aforementioned cop, Hollister, to finish the job and protect his family in the process- if he can. 

The set up is perfectly fine, but as I inferred, it's the execution that gets the best of this one, and unfortunately, that probably lies at the feet of the director, Andrew Jones, who also wrote the script, and edited and produced the film. Jones is probably best-known for a series of films that, like America's The Asylum, run right up to the line of rip-off territory, if not leap right over it. 

His credits include the likes of Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection - an unofficial remake of you know what- The Amityville Asylum, one of many unofficial Amityville pseudo-sequels; Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming, an unofficial remake of SNBN; and lots of other "sounds legit but aren't" movies like The Last House on Cemetery Lane, Poltergeist Activity, The Exorcism Of Anna Ecklund, Jurassic Predator, The Manson Family Massacre, Bundy and the Green River Killer and the Robert the Doll series. Basically, the kind of movies you might rent or stream by mistake if you weren't paying close enough attention- which, of course, is exactly what the production companies are hoping people will do.

What sinks a lot of these sorts of movies is exactly what sinks this one: the positively awful special effects. You know you're in trouble right off the bat when, in the scene in which the angry mob executes Jack, they use outright terrible CGI gunshot wounds instead of squibs, like most filmmakers would, that almost immediately disappear, as if Jack had sucked up the blood into his body internally. (To say nothing of the fact that they inexplicably dress Jack like a scarecrow, which probably has more to do with the director wanting to hammer home the whole Dark Night of the Scarecrow reference.)

Remember how I said I had been on both sides of the camera? Well, in one short I did, I played a man who was shot at point blank range in his backyard. This was a low-budget student film type endeavor, and even we used squibs, and this wasn't that long ago, so I know for a fact that such things aren't that expensive because none of us had much in the way of money. They were cheap, and they looked great- it's not that much of an investment for realism, and I'll just bet the filmmakers here spent a hell of a lot more on something that looks just terrible on screen. So, there's no excuse for this type of ineptitude, trust me. If we could do practical effects on a no-budget film, so can these guys.  

Trust me, things do not get better from there. On the rare occasions that you do see something, it's likewise bad CGI, but, more often than not, the director simply has stuff happen offscreen, and if you're lucky- or not, as the case usually is- you might get a glimpse  of something after the fact. It's bad, believe you me, and it basically single-handedly tanks the movie, which is too bad, because there is a decent little movie to have been made here.

The quality of the acting varies, but when it's good, it's pretty decent, and only a few of the performances are truly dreadful. Most of them aren't bad, though, and the film has a decent sense of humor. I also liked some of the ideas in the script, particularly the fact that the Mayor himself is pretty evil, and actually kills someone in cold blood, in an effort to keep his secret. But yeah, the execution of the murder sequences is pretty deadly bad, I'm afraid.

Interestingly, the film was just successful enough to warrant a sequel, The Curse of Halloween Jack. Jones once again does the writing, directing, editing and producing honors, with McLaughlin back on board as cinematographer. Interestingly, though, the film has an altogether different vibe than the last one. This time around, it has more of a shot-on-film look and even more location shooting in Wales that gives it a slightly more Gothic feel.

However, overall, this is much more of a slasher movie than the last one, though both certainly qualify. This one plays more like one of the many Halloween rip-offs that followed in the wake of that film's enormous success. In a weird way, it's an improvement, although much more on the nose than the first film in every way. Here, the references are blatant: the killer cocks his head, just like Michael Myers after every kill, one character quotes Halloween directly, one character's surname is Thorn, and there's a character named Tommy, with others named Boyle, which may be a misheard reference to "Doyle" from the original Halloween- there's also a mention of Antonio Bay, where Carpenter's The Fog is set, and another character is named Coscarelli, presumably after the director of Phantasm. 

And yet, the film is just plain more fun than the first one. The kills are much more suspenseful and executed much better, and though that pesky low-budget still gets in the way, there are at least more attempts at practical effects this time around, which is a definite improvement. There's even a halfway decent police-vs-occultist shoot-out at the beginning, which is entertaining enough, even if those wonky CGI gunshots get in the way here and there. 

The film also features an amusing "Crazy Ralph"-type character named Duke Tanner, played by an amusingly game Peter Cosgrove (also of the similar Scarecrow's Revenge), that is clearly modeled after a mixture of Snake Plissken (from Escape from New York) and MacCready from The Thing, both from director John Carpenter. It's almost as if, with all these references, director Jones is aiming for a film set in the Carpenter-verse, as it were. That stuff I really enjoyed. 

Pity then, that the leading lady, Charlotte Mounter, is just plain terrible. As Annie- yet another Halloween reference- she's meant to be a take-charge heroine, somewhat in the Tarantino mode. And yet, she sports a blank stare throughout the film, even when confronted with Halloween Jack himself at a party. No scream, no look of fright, nothing. It's bad, so bad it nearly single-handedly sinks this film, too. If it weren't for the counterbalance of Duke Tanner, it would have. She's a pretty girl, but boy, she needs some acting lessons, stat. 

Actually, I am glad I brought up the party scene, as it shouldn't go without mentioning that these films blow not one, but two opportunities to feature a scenario I've long wanted to see in a horror movie, but never quite have- the killer attacking a roomful of people. They came close in Freddy Vs. Jason, where Jason attacked an outdoor festival, but his kill count was surprisingly low, given all the potential victims running around, so that was a disappointment. Ditto a scene in Scream 3, where the killer attacked a roomful of people and managed to kill no one. 

In both of these films, the killer shows up at a party- a Halloween dance in the first, and a house party in the second, but the whole thing is so badly staged, it robs both scenes of any potential fun they might have been. Hell, the director even botches a bit where the killer rips out someone's heart. Oh, boy, is it bad all around. In Curse, I halfway expected that bit from Airplane to happen where everyone's running around like crazy people and start fighting each other! It literally looks like the same people are running in and out of the room instead of out the door. It's kind of hilarious, and clearly unintentionally so.

Oh well, they tried. Eventually, someone will get it right. Maybe. Until then, we can only lament what could have been. The same could be said for both of these films. All of the elements are in place, and the films have a lot going for them, but they ultimately just can't quite pull it off. 

But, I suppose, if you're looking for something of the so-bad-it's-good variety, these two films certainly qualify. They could have been contenders and the director isn't without some talent, but yeah, these two films are definitely not must-see movies for your Halloween viewing pleasure, but rather, bordering on bottom of the barrel would-be entertainment. As such, I say proceed with caution- you have been warned. 😜 

Octoberfest: Doctor Sleep (Director's Cut)

Author's Note: Hey, all. Sorry for the brief time away, but I had a paying gig out of town house-sitting, and the owner was a luddite, which is a fancy way of saying, they don't do computers. As such, I didn't have access to the internet for a hot minute there. There was an internet cafe fairly nearby, but I'm not trying to get Corona by going into small spaces with a lot of people, sorry. But I did need the money, so it was worth it. 

Anyway, as you know, it's that time of year again, though Lord knows it's seemed like a lifetime since last Halloween. As my loyal readers know, I've already covered the Halloween series in full- you can get a complete list of links to those articles here- and last year, I simply covered as many horror movies set on or around Halloween as I could, which is basically what I'm going to be doing this year.

However, there is one caveat: I'm also going to be doing a few reviews of films and shows that aren't set on or around Halloween, starting with this one. The reason being that, as some of you might recall, I watched a lot of stinkers last year while I was searching for that elusive diamond in the rough. Ultimately, I did find a few- notably Hellions, Mischief Night, The American Scream and the Houses That October Built series- but I had to wade through a whole lot of crap to get there. Turns out there's a good reason some of these movies are obscure, lol. 😜

To that end, I'm going to review a few ringers here and there- movies I already know are going to be good, or have good reason to think they might be, if only to keep myself from going crazy. I'm also going to be doing a franchise review that isn't the one I had initially planned to do- I'll postpone that latter one until November, which actually seems more appropriate, in light of recent events. (You'll see why when we get there.) 

Instead, I'm going to review the cult classic favorite Night of the Demons and its various sequels and offshoots, like the pseudo-remake from 2009- four movies in all, for those keeping score at home, so it's a relatively minor investment of my time, compared to what I'll be doing next. 

I will probably also do a Movie Round-Up soon, just to recap the films I watched while out of town. Those won't be horror-oriented at all, unless you want to count Maleficent: Queen of Evil, which I'd call more of a dark fantasy at best.

Last but not least, I may or may not do a Cronenberg Chronicles installment here and there. It all depends on how much I can get done. It's not that I don't have spare time on my hands, it's that it's hard to get myself to write at all these days, with all that's going on, what with the world being a dumpster fire right about now. But I promise to try a bit harder than I have as of late. 🙏 

After all, all play and no work make Mark a dull boy...or is it the other way around? 😉

Now on with the show, with a look at the Director's Cut of...

I've probably told this story before, so I'll try to keep it short. When I was a kid, my parents got a divorce and my mom used what she'd call her "fuck you" money to take me to California, where I went to Disneyland for the first time, and fell in love with the Haunted Mansion dark ride. That proved to be my "gateway drug" into the horror genre, as I then proceeded to read everything I could get my hands on about ghosts and haunted houses. 

One day, I saw a piece on an old In Search Of... re-run about the Amityville murders and subsequent hauntings, and that led me to my first "adult" horror novel, The Amityville Horror. Shortly thereafter, I saw an ad on either HBO or Cinemax- probably the former- for The Shining and was immediately taken with it. It was the notorious one with the elevator filled with blood that opens and spills it out on the floor towards the viewer, which is as effective a bit of advertising as I've ever seen for a horror movie.

I immediately marked the date to watch the movie (HBO had guides that showed what was on all month back then), and asked around about it, finding out it was based on a book by Stephen King, who I was just starting to become aware of, but hadn't read anything by as of yet. 

I believe this was around the late 80's or early 90's at the latest. I was certainly in my single digits, probably around 8 or 9. I asked my mom to pick up the paperback of the book, which she subsequently did, and I devoured it in a couple of sittings. To this day, it's one of my all-time faves, and I've read it who knows how many times. 

My fellow readers probably know what's coming next. Though I didn't hate the film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick, it did feel a lot like he read the synopsis on the back, tossed the book in the trash and basically just did whatever he wanted to do with the material. Perhaps needless to say, I was a bit disappointed with the end result. But there was something about it that stuck with me, and I eventually became a big fan. As with the book, it went on to become one of my all-time favorites. 

Interestingly, contrary to what you've heard about King's dislike of the film, I recently saw an interview with him, then-future collaborators Peter Straub and George Romero, and the excellent horror author Ira Levin, of Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives fame on the old Dick Cavett Show from the 80's, where he espoused a decidedly different opinion. I had seen Cavett on Seth Meyers' show and found him interesting, so when I went scrolling through the Tubi channel on my Roku and saw Cavett's show pop up, I took a closer look (see what I did there?) and spotted that legendary line-up and couldn't resist taking a peek. 

Lo and behold, King had nothing but good things to say about the film back then. Go figure. (You can see part one of the interview here.) Of course, the interview was from 1980, so it was still pretty newly in theatres, so you can see where he'd want to tow the party line at the time, if only for the success of the film, but he genuinely seems okay with it. I guess over time he learned to hate it, just as, over time, I learned to love it. 

Kubrick may have jettisoned a lot of what was great about the book, but, at the very least, he nailed the tone. The film is a virtual masterclass in how to sustain an uneasy mood for well over two hours, by virtue of putting the viewer off his guard and keeping them there, using shrewd planning, pioneering use of the then-new Steadicam technology, cleverly executed settings that were illogical in retrospect, but decidedly on purpose; and an overall sense of impending doom and incredibly sustained dread. It's a bona fide classic. 

However, King wasn't the only one with issues with the film, which was borderline pilloried by the critics at the time of its release and underperformed at the box office. (Though, to be fair, it did open the same week as a little movie called The Empire Strikes Back.)Gene Siskel, of Siskel & Ebert fame, called it a "crushing disappointment," for instance, and Variety said that it "destroy(ed) all that was so terrifying about King's bestseller." King himself found the movie "cold" and "lacking in heart." So, it's safe to say the film was a grower, not a shower, and one that only gained its reputation as one of the scariest movies ever made over time.  

As such, it also took a long time to get a sequel in the works. King himself oversaw a TV miniseries adaptation that was far more faithful to the book, particularly in the characterization department- in Kubrick's film, Nicholson goes from zero to crazy in record time, whereas it's more of a slow burn in the book, and Wendy is much more of an active presence, rather than a passive one; qualities that are both restored in the miniseries- but it lacked the atmosphere and genuine chills of the original film. There was also a promising idea for a TV series or movie prequel called Overlook, which may still come to fruition in time. 

However, King ultimately beat everyone to the punch with Doctor Sleep, the first direct sequel to anything he's ever done, the epic, ongoing saga of The Dark Tower notwithstanding, which is more of a series than something King sequel-ized. Granted, as fans know, there is a throughline going through a lot of his books- for instance, the Castle Rock stories, which all have the connective tissue of the town holding them together, but that's not quite the same thing as a direct sequel, either. 

I devoured the book version upon its release, and was very taken with it. It's a different kind of book, to be sure. As King puts it in the various bonus documentaries included with the Blu-Ray of Doctor Sleep, if The Shining was about someone in the throes of alcoholism, then the follow-up is about someone's path to recovery, in this case, an all-grown-up Danny, played by an excellent Ewan McGregor.

The story is basically this: many years after the events of The Shining, Danny is a struggling addict that has turned to booze and drugs to deaden the pain he still feels after his experiences at the Overlook and the loss of his father, and later, his mother. To that end, he has also learned, with a little help from Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly, Alias, Supergirl), to put his Overlook memories and the ghosts themselves into a sort of mental "lockbox" to keep them from haunting him, as the spirits continued to pursue him even after leaving the hotel. 

So, the booze and drugs keep the pain at bay, while the lockboxes keep the ghosts from bothering him, either. Unfortunately, after a particularly unpleasant one-night stand finds Danny hitting rock-bottom in a major way, he decides to flee to another part of the country, specifically a small town in New Hampshire. There, he gets clean and starts leading a more admirable life, first working at the local park, then eventually as an orderly at a hospice, where he finds he has an affinity for helping ease his elderly patients whose time has come into death, which earns him the nickname "Doctor Sleep," hence the title. 

Years go by without incident until he wakes up one day and finds a message on the chalkboard in his room. It turns out that a little girl who lives nearby, Abra (an excellent newcomer, Kyliegh Curran) also has the "Shining," which is to say, she can read minds and has the ability to communicate telepathically with her own kind. Now that Danny is sober, he can hear her. It's all fun and games until someone like her gets hurt, which Abra alerts Danny to.

Danny at first tells her to stay out of it, noting that, if these people are actively seeking out people like them, which is to say, people with the Shining, then they are highly dangerous, and they need to keep their heads down, lest they end up on their radar, too. Naturally, the headstrong Abra can't leave well enough alone, and decides to investigate. She discovers a group called the "True Knot," led by the evil-but-beautiful Rose "The Hat" (Rebecca Ferguson, the Mission Impossible films, The Girl on the Train), who "feed" on the "steam" that is released from someone with the Shining when they are tortured and/or killed. 

Unfortunately, Rose also discovers her discovering them and decides that someone that powerful is someone worth pursuing, opining that, if she was as powerful as Rose thinks, they could, instead of killing her outright, hold her captive and simply torture her and drain her over a period of time. That's not creepy. So, a cat and mouse game begins, with Danny reluctantly joining the team, with a little help from a friend that helped him get sober, Billy (Cliff Curtis, Fear the Walking Dead). 

King fans will notice decided similarities between this and, in particular, his recent novel, The Outsider, which itself was adapted for a TV miniseries for HBO earlier this year. As such, I wouldn't recommend either reading that book or watching that miniseries in the general vicinity of reading or watching Doctor Sleep. I should also mention that, as I said, both revolve around someone hunting and killing and often torturing children, so if that doesn't sound like your cup of horror, you might want to skip both. 

Also, whereas The Outsider takes place after a murder of that sort, which means that it is more discussed and described than shown, Doctor Sleep shows said torture and murder in graphic detail, so fair warning there. It ain't pretty. The Director's Cut version is more graphic than the theatrical version as well, so there's that, even if you saw the original version. A list of the differences between the two versions can be found here, but I wouldn't advise reading it until after you've seen the films, as there are a lot of spoilers.

Of course, the biggest difference is the length overall. The Director's Cut runs a good thirty minutes longer than the theatrical cut, which is already a good two-and-a-half hours, just like the original. As my loyal readers know, I'm not too fond of overlong horror movies, considering 90 minutes to be the ideal length for any horror film. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and The Shining would certainly qualify as one of them. Doctor Sleep is a tougher call, clocking in as it does at three hours.

On the one hand, most of the interjected material is character-oriented, which means that it helps to flesh out the characters better. One of King's biggest complaints about Kubrick's version of his novel was that it casts a lot of that sort of thing almost entirely by the wayside- we barely get to know what Jack is like under normal circumstances before he goes off the deep end, for instance. Doctor Sleep, on the other hand, tremendously values such character development, which is one way in which it actually surpasses its predecessor. That is even more present in the Director's Cut. 

But, that said, I can see where some people would get antsy during some of the slow spots. It's not as bad as one might think, though, especially since, at home, one can take all the breaks one wants, or even split the film up over the course of two nights if they wanted, making it more like an ongoing binge watch than an overwhelming endeavor that has to be taken in one fell swoop. To the film's credit, I felt compelled to watch the whole thing in one sitting, albeit with copious breaks here and there, and I was never quite bored. It does help if you read the book, however. 

To that end, director Mike Flanagan- perhaps best known for Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil; his previous King adaptation, Gerald's Game and the stellar Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House- seeks to achieve a neat trick: to reconcile the book version of The Shining with the movie version, which the book version of Doctor Sleep steadfastly avoids, picking up where the original left off and sticking with King's original source material. I'm going to try and avoid spoiler material, but suffice it to say, I'll be damned if Flanagan doesn't basically pull it off. 

It takes serious cajones to re-stage key scenes from Kubrick's original, much less with different actors, but Flanagan manages to make it work, mostly through clever recasting. I didn't even recognize Henry Thomas, of E.T. and Hill House fame, as Jack, for instance, thinking they'd done some CGI shenanigans, a la the Marvel-verse with Michael Douglas and Kurt Russell, at least until there was more of a close-up shot. And if you close your eyes and just listen to actress Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes, Midnighters), damned if she isn't a dead ringer, vocally, for Shelley Duvall.  

But, of course, the real head-spinner, is the meticulous way the set design team has recreated the Overlook set of Kubrick's original film. It's uncanny how close they come. I'd be harder pressed to tell you what was different than what was the same. Flanagan and his team certainly come within spitting distance of perfectly recreating the legendary film's massive, enveloping sets to a "T." I actually got chills in some places, such as seeing the trademark hallways with those hypnotizing patterns (as seen above), the bathroom of Room 237, and they completely nailed the Gold Room and its red-tinged bathroom. 

Overall, this is a pretty superior adaptation that even King signed off on, in spite of the various differences between his book and this movie- and believe me, there are a fair amount of things Flanagan has changed between his version and King's effort, with the ending notably being a major one. But King seems okay with it this time around. (Or maybe he's just towing that company line again...) 

However, if you're a fan of the original book and preferred King's ending to Kubrick's, get ready to have your cake and eat it, too, as there are nods to both here. Ultimately, it's done in a way that should satisfy fans of both, remarkably enough- including King himself, who even went as far as to say that Flanagan's version managed to not only reconcile his own misgivings about Kubrick's film, but to wholly redeem it in his eyes. That's not faint praise, given all the bitching King's done over the years about it.

Don't get me wrong, the film isn't without its flaws. It is long, and it certainly feels that way at times, especially in the Director's Cut version. Also, I can see where certain elements of the plot would be confusing or not make sense at all to people who haven't read the book. I think Flanagan went into it assuming that people had done just that, but that's never a safe assumption these days, especially in a world in which a certain contingent of people think that reading is for, ahem, "losers and suckers," as it were.

 

It isn't, of course, but that doesn't mean that even faithful readers have read the book, or, at the very least, that they've read it recently, as the book came out in 2013. As such, I can see where some people would be lost at times, which can lead to boredom, and, at two-and-a-half hours at best and three at worst, it might be a bit too much of an undertaking for some that are used to their horror movies with copious jump scares and constant kills or the like. This isn't that movie. At all. It's much more of a slow burn, to say the least.

Basically, it's a character study, with some horror around the fringes. But what horror there is, is genuinely unsettling, and, in a way, more terrifying than what was in the original film- after all, in the original, the ghosts were after one kid and didn't succeed; here, the bad guys do succeed in taking out one, with an implication that there were way more in the past, making the potential for them succeeding far more plausible this time around- and there are indeed some major casualties.

That said, in spite of all his considerable effort and getting so much right, Flanagan can't hope to approach the inherent and methodical genius of a Stanley Kubrick. For one thing, Warner Brothers probably wouldn't have had the patience to let him take his time like Kubrick did, although they did let him spend more money: roughly $45-55 million, versus Kubrick's $19- though, to be fair, there is inflation to think of, so nearly $20 million for a horror film isn't too shabby for that time.

What Flanagan does achieve is a sort of symbiotic synthesis with both King and Kubrick. But by attempting to reconcile both with one another, Flanagan's own unique voice gets buried in the process, and both King and Kubrick alike end up somewhat diluted. So, you end up with imitation King and Kubrick and a lack of a grounded voice for the director himself, who has proved time and again to have a solid approach of his own. 

For instance, compare and contrast the original Ouija movie with Flanagan's prequel/sequel, Ouija: Origin of Evil. The first one is strictly assembly-line entertainment, as manufactured as the board game that inspired it. The sequel is something else altogether and a genuinely solid flick that's original and fun. Flanagan also greatly improved on the godawful remake of The Haunting from the 90's with his take on it with The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix, even though, it, too, took considerable liberties with the source material.  

Here, dealing with two separate, disparate and distinctly different variations of the same source material, both of which he obviously has great love for, he ends up diminishing his own voice in the process, which is too bad. Especially if you consider the bang-up job he did with King's Gerald's Game. But, of course, he didn't have two distinct adaptations to contend with there. In the end, tackling the two proves a bit overwhelming for the director, but, at the same time, it's not like he fails miserably at it, either. In fact, I'd argue that, given the massive endeavor at hand, he did pretty darn good. The film just lacks a grounded center, as it were.

But there's certainly a lot to recommend here, especially for fans of both King and Kubrick. It's fun to see certain things restaged and expanded upon from Kubrick, and it's highly gratifying for longtime King fans to see Flanagan tip his hat to the book's original ending in a clever way. The cast is impeccable, also including cult TV/movie favorites like Carel Struycken (The Addams Family, Twin Peaks), Jocelin Donahue (House of the Devil, Insidious: Chapter 2), Zahn McClarnon (Fargo, Westworld) and Emily Alyn Lind (the Babysitter series, Lights Out).

And, like I've said many times before, it takes a lot for me to recommend a three-hour horror movie, but I'm essentially doing just that here, as the good definitely outweighs the good for me here, in spite of- and maybe even a little bit because of- that daunting length. Regardless of whether you're a fan of the books, or even Kubrick's film, I think you might just dig this one, which is also saying something. It has a different vibe from all of those sources and a different approach overall. It may not entirely feel like a Flanagan film, and it's no Haunting of Hill House, but it's definitely worth checking out. 😈