Friday the 13th (1980)

"Friday the 13th" is one of the major influences for the sub-genre of slasher/stalker movies of the 1980's. It set the standard for killing people in unique ways, included plenty of sex and drugs, and had a twist ending. It wasn't the first to do any of these but it solidified the chemistry of these elements and applied it to each sequel that followed . As a horror film, it is inferior to "Halloween" with it's cast of actors and general sense of suspense. Where "Friday the 13th" really delivers is with the twist that it's Jason's mother that is the killer at the end. This was a surprising twist at the time and became the basis for an interesting mythos in the "13th" series.

Favorite death scene - Of course the best is the showdown between Alice and Jason's crazy mother. Why? Because this is really the only characters you care about in this movie.

Author's Note - Stalkers

Slasher movies were a mainstay of the horror world throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. Since then, the standard formula has been adjusted slightly to add new life to a dying, tired theme. Because of this, I prefer to use the term STALKER and the place of SLASHER; the one trait that really hasn’t changed is the fact that the victims tend to go to where the killer is, into their lair or territory. The killer is akin to a poisonous spider or snake and their victims are cute little mice. I still might refer to a film as a SLASHER just because it it came out in the glory days of this expansive sub-genre of horror.

In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

Another one of all-time favorite movies, “In the Mouth of Madness” is a wonderful tribute to horror great H.P. Lovecraft by John Carpenter. While it doesn’t play on any particular Lovecraft story, the feeling of the film and the themes it explores are mistakenly Lovecraft in nature and style. It is also without a doubt a John Carpenter movie and is currently his last great film as a director.

Sutter Cane is missing and John Trent is hired to figure out where he is. Cane is a huge writer, more popular that Stephen King, and his publishers are waiting anxiously for his newest book, “In the Mouth of Madness”. Trent isn’t a big fan of horror, but as he begins to read Kane’s previous works, Trent starts to have dreams within dreams about the type of characters found in the stories. By luck, Trent discovers that the book covers are pieces of a map and when they are carefully pieced together, it shows where the fictional town of Hobb’s End is, the town that is in all of Cane’s stories. Trent and Cane’s editor, Linda Styles, go for a road trip to see if Hobb’s End exists, at least under a different name. They find the town and realize that they know all of the little details about it from the stories that Cane has written. Trent is under the impression that this is all a huge publicity stunt even though Styles swears that it isn’t. But the longer that they stay in Hobb’s End, the more reality seems to be bending at the seams and everyone in town, including Styles, begin to fall under the influence of Sutter Cane. Eventually Trent admits that something is wrong and that he is playing a part in the apocalypse of the world as we know it.

Favorite moment – It’s impossible to pick one moment in this film that is my favorite. Nothing stands out more than the rest because the film, in my opinion, is running on all cylinders the entire time.

Perhaps John Trent is beginning to believe? Or not.

 John Trent missed the apocalypse!

 Sutter Cane's agent wants lunch too!

.

The Ward (2010)

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining "The Ward" was. It's not a great film by any means and I was completely uninterested in it for the first 20 minutes or so but luckily it picks up and kept me curious until the end. The cast includes Jared Harris (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th, The Crazies).

Kristen is taken to a mental ward after she is caught burning down a barn. She doesn't remember why or even doing it. At the ward she meets for other girls who really don't seem like they belong in a mental institution. Kristen also begins to see a ghost. No one believes her until this ghost begins to kill of the other girls one by one. Will Kristen be able to save any of them...or herself?

SPOILERS AHEAD

Favorite moment - I really enjoyed the reveal at the end if the movie. It explains why the girls acted like they did, meaning that they didn't have to necessarily be crazy or seem that way. The movie feels a lot a like "Identity" because it used the multiple personality twist. 

Village of the Damned (1995)

In 1995 John Carpenter filmed his version of the 1960 horror movie “The Village of the Damned”, starring Christopher Reeve (in one of his last roles before his accident), Kirstie Alley, and Mark Hamill (who seemed oddly out of place and miscast). This version didn’t vary too much from the original beyond changing the location and giving the women characters more screen time and larger, more important roles. This is the film where I think Carpenter was being lazy and was just going through the process just to collect a check. He had written or came up with the concept for most of his other films or if he hadn’t, he made them feel like they were his. Nothing in this film feels like it’s his movie; he didn’t leave any of his personal trademarks anywhere. Overall, it’s a decent movie but it lacks anything new or creative that the original didn’t already offer.

The movie begins but quickly introducing all of the key characters who live in the small town of Midwich. While everyone is enjoying their daily activity, an odd phenomenon occurs in which all of the townspeople faint and stay unconscious. They soon all awake and think nothing of it until it’s discovered that ten women in town are now suddenly pregnant. Nine months later on the same night, nine of the babies are born; the tenth was stillborn. Over the next few years, the parents realize that something is wrong (as if fainting and waking up pregnant was not enough of a sign) with their children. They all look the same, behave years beyond their age, and have paired up with each other except for the 5^th boy, David. David is the only one who doesn’t act like the others and is the only one that shows any sign of emotions.

While this is all going on, the government has become involved and is monitoring the situation. This is not the first time a group of physic children have shown up but in those others instances, the parents killed off their children knowing that they were evil. All Hell breaks loose when the lead of the research team, Dr. Susan Verner, is killed by the children after they find out that she has David’s stillborn partner preserved for study. The town turns into a furious mob (ok, a sign of Carpenter at last!), and is quickly dispersed after the children kill their leader. Local, state, and federal agencies become involved which leads to a standoff of epic proportions (epic for a small coastal town at least). It’s up to Alan, the town’s physician and father of the leader of the evil children, to devise and carry out a plan to destroy the children once and for all.

They Live (1988)

In 1988 John Carpenter teamed up with former wrestler Roddy Piper to create a very manly, macho movie about aliens that are taking over the world but can only be identified by wearing special goggles. The aliens look like zombies and the overall story arch feels like a variation concept of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. The movie is best known for a particular scene which I will talk about later. Carpenter wrote and directed the film which turned out to perhaps be the high mark for Roddy Piper’s acting career.

Nada (Roddy Piper) is a drifter who finds work at a construction site, due to the fact that he had his own tools. He impresses some of the other crew members, one being Frank (Keith David from “The Thing”) who takes him to a homeless camp that is serviced by a soup kitchen. During the night Nada is woken up by a blind preacher yelling for people to wake up. Nada decides to check out the church and finds that it’s empty but has a recording of a choir playing loudly. He also finds boxes filled with dozens of sunglasses. He discovers that the sunglasses reveal that posters are covered with commands to obey and conform. He also sees the aliens, who are in positions of power and authority. It doesn’t take the aliens long to realize that he can see them and thus the bloodshed begins, with Nada killing two cops sent to arrest him. Eventually Nada finds Frank and attempts to make him try on the glasses, which Frank refuses. And thus begins one of the best, longest fight scenes in a movie. Ever. When Nada finally wins, Frank realizes that his friend wasn’t crazy. Now the two go forth and try to find a way to disrupt the radio signal that is blinding humanity from the truth….

Favorite moment – The fight scene! It even inspired on of the best episodes of South Park, (Cripple Fight)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFvq2ycilg

Prince of Darkness (1987)

There’s no denying that “Prince of Darkness” is a film where you go” huh” several times while watching the movie and several more times afterwards. It’s an odd, twisted mess of a movie that has too many themes and elements being thrown against a wall just to see what sticks. There are physic dream messages from the future, there is Satan-in-a-can, there are the classic John Carpenter zombie mobs, and several actors who had worked with Carpenter on previous films who should have known better about being in this movie after reading the script. But I still enjoyed it, somewhat. 

Donald Pleasence (Halloween) is a priest who asks his professor friend Victor Wong (Big Trouble in Little China) to help figure out what is in the basement of an old rundown church. Victor takes his class, which includes Dennis Dun (Big Trouble in Little China) on a field trip to examine a canister filled with swirling green liquid. Using high tech gadgets from the 1980’s and a book sitting next to the canister, they figure out that it’s the son of the Anti-god who just happens to be trapped in the realm of anti-matter. That’s good right? No! Because the green liquid gets angry and possess people, turns the local homeless population into a shuffling zombie-like mob that kills, and  creeps everybody out. Soon the classmates begin to have dreams from the future, each new dream slightly adjusted according to what happens to them while they are awake.  Mirrors are found and broken so the Anti-god can’t cross over and people die. The end?

The Instruction Book of Evil!

 The Son of the Anti-God, Green Liquid!

"What's going on? Are we really filming this?"