The 31 Days of Halloween (2017): 10/29-10/31

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31 Days of Halloween, A Dark Song, An American Werewolf in London, anthology films, cinema, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween traditions, horror, horror films, horror movies, Movies, Tales of Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

With no further ado: the films screened during the final three days of the annual 31 Days of Halloween. These final films tended towards the “old favorites” variety but we still managed to sneak in a new, previously unseen film from this year, just to spice it up.

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Tales of Halloween

My very favorite seasonal anthology film will always and forever be Michael Dougherty’s Trick r Treat: he just nails the Halloween vibe so completely and authentically that there’s really no need to look further. That being said, you can only screen the film over so many consecutive All Hallows’ Eves before it begins to lose a smidgen of its precious luster.

That’s where the multi-director/writer effort Tales of Halloween comes in: it may not be the best Halloween-oriented anthology film out there but it’s a pretty damn close runner-up. Although this isn’t quite as unified as Dougherty’s classic, the shorts all take place in the same small town, on Halloween eve, so there’s definitely a little crossover/bleed-over between segments, leading to a nice sense of small-scale world-building. The segments also share the same rich production values and sense of style, so they all fit together visually, as well as thematically.

As with all anthology projects, not all of the shorts are winners but the scale is definitely tipped more towards the successful end of things than in something like The ABCs of Death or V/H/S: in particular, Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider, Don’t Kill It) and Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2-4, Repo: The Genetic Opera) come up with impossibly fun segments that serve as highlights of both their respective careers. Tales of Halloween might not be quite as perfect as Trick r Treat but that’s no reason not to give it a turn in your seasonal programming.

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A Dark Song

Irish writer/director Liam Gavin’s debut, A Dark Song, is an often fascinating (if equally frustrating) treatise on love, loss, vengeance and forgiveness, set within the creepy confines of an isolated Welsh manor house. Grief-stricken Sophia (Catherine Walker) hires prickly occultist Solomon (the always prickly Steve Oram) to help her perform a long, arduous ritual that will (hopefully) allow her to communicate with her murdered son. As the days stretch into months, however, Sophia will come to question not only Solomon’s abilities but her own notions of reality.

Brooding, grim, leisurely paced and bolstered by a truly ominous, portentous score (courtesy of Ray Harman), Gavin’s debut layers on the atmosphere, to mostly good effect. The interplay between Walker and Oram is the real meat of the film and they play off each other pretty spectacularly: if nothing else, A Dark Song features two of the year’s sturdiest performances, hands down. The film also looks consistently great, thanks to Cathal Watters’ truly gorgeous cinematography: full of luxurious wide shots of the stunning countryside but equally comfortable with the dark, claustrophobic interiors of the main house setting, the camerawork is a key aspect of what makes A Dark Song work so well.

Despite all of the above, however, I’ll freely admit that the film’s finale thoroughly mystified me, leaving me with a distinctly unsatisfied feeling as the final credits rolled. While I think I know what happened, I’m really not sure, leaving me feeling as if I missed out on some important detail. To put it in gymnastic terms: Gavin’s A Dark Song nailed the performance but didn’t quite stick that all-important landing.

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An American Werewolf in London

Nearly forty years after it first debuted, John Landis’ landmark An American Werewolf in London (1981) still stands as one of the best werewolf films of all time, with precious few legitimate challengers since. The film is a perfect synthesis of real horror, tension, pitch-black humor, award-winning practical effects and genuinely likable characters: there are no shortage of truly horrifying moments and images in the film but the focus, first and foremost, is always on character and mood over gross-out gags.

Best buddies David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are backpacking through the misty British isles when they find themselves at the suitably unwelcoming Slaughtered Lamb Inn. After foolishly ignoring the superstitious locals advice to stay on the road, the dynamic duo stride into the wilds and are attacked by some sort of vicious animal. Jack is torn to pieces and David wakes up in the hospital, full of strange urges and haunted by terrible nightmares. When Jack comes back as a rapidly decomposing body and urges David to kill himself before the next full moon, the fun really begins.

An American Werewolf in London is that rarest of horror-comedies that actually does justice to both sides of the coin without tipping the balance into the silly or slight. There is genuine menace to be found here (the scenes on the moors are just about as good as it gets, as are those truly horrifying nightmares), along with plenty of well-executed action sequences (the Piccadilly Circus setpiece is just perfect) but Landis is, as always, a deft hand with the comedy elements. Dunne gets most of the film’s best lines as the ever charismatic, if increasingly repulsive, Jack but his comic interplay with Naughton forms the backbone of the film. There’s a good reason why this movie is considered a classic: it’s that damn good.

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

What is the quintessential ’80s horror movie? While there really is no right answer (the discussion would be longer than every 31 Days of Halloween post, combined), there is one film that pretty much sums up the ’80s, for me, and will always stand as one of my very favorite films from that illustrious decade. When I think of ’80s horror, the first thing I think about is always the late Tobe Hooper’s brilliant The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986).

Loud, garish, over-the-top and gleefully demented, TCM 2 may seem like an ill-fit to its more low-budget, gritty older sibling but I’ve always seen them as two sides of the same coin. In fact, had the franchise ended with Hooper’s contributions, I daresay it might have been one of the most perfect, singular one-two punches in cinematic history. All of the societal themes that were simmering in TCM’s ’70s have come to a full boil in Part 2’s ’80s, allowing Hooper to poke bloody holes in the dead-eyed capitalism that Gordon Gekko held so sacred. After all, this is a film that sees grubby, gas-station cannibal Drayton Sawyer transformed into an uber-slick, ultra-popular civic leader: all hail the mighty dollar!

There’s so much good stuff here that pulling out highlights is both reductive and nearly impossible. TCM 2 is a virtual catalog of memorable setpieces, locations, characters and insanity: Dennis Hopper bringin’ down the temple via chainsaw…every single scene involving Bill Moseley’s iconic Chop Top…Leatherface “impersonating” L.G…that awesome freeway chase where the family makes frat-boy hash…the Sawyers’ impossibly cool, Christmas light-bedecked underground lair…the list could go on and on.

It’s always mystified me that fans and critics, alike, have savaged The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It may be a very different film from Hooper’s original but it’s an equally masterful piece of filmcraft and deserving of just as many accolades. The saw will always be family, to me, and TCM 2 is an important member of that family.

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And there you have it, folks: the 31 Days of Halloween, 2017 edition. With October now officially in the rear-view mirror, join us as we begin to take a look back at the year, highlighting some of the very best (and worst) that the genre had to offer. Until then, keep it spooky, boos and ghouls.

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The 31 Days of Halloween (2017): 10/22-10/28

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1922, 31 Days of Halloween, cinema, Creep, Creep 2, film reviews, films, Halloween, horror, horror films, literary adaptation, Mark Duplass, Movies, New Nightmare, October, Patrick Brice, Stephen King, Wes Craven, Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Better late than never, The VHS Graveyard now presents the four films screened during the fourth week of the recent 31 Days of Halloween. While there might not be many films here, we managed to screen a pretty diverse array, including a couple of brand-new (as of last month, at least) ones. Let the haunting begin!

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1922

In a year stacked to the brim with cinematic adaptations of Stephen King stories, Zak Hilditch’s note-perfect 1922 is easily one of the very best. From the ominous opening image straight through to the fantastic final moment, everything about this exquisite period-piece is top-notch, leading me to one conclusion: this, friends and neighbors, is how you adapt Stephen King to the silver screen.

Beginning in the titular year, in Nebraska, we’re introduced to farmer Wilfred James (Thomas Jane), his long-suffering wife, Arlette (Molly Parker) and teenage son, Henry (Dylan Schmid). When Arlette decides to sell the lions’ share of their 100-acre-property and move to the big city, Wilf decides to kill her and keep the property: after all, in 1922, who’s going to come looking for a missing wife? While the murder, itself, proceeds without a hitch, Wilf must now deal with his son’s guilt over his complicity in the murder of his own mother, as well as the suspicion of those who Arlette planned to sell the property to. There’s also, of course, the little matter of Arlette’s decomposed, yet surprisingly ambulatory body, and the horde of voracious rats that follow it wherever it goes.

In every way, Hilditch’s adaptation of 1922 is the epitome of “the right way” to bring King to the big screen: this lean, mean, no-frills chiller doubles down on craft (the acting, cinematography, score, editing and pace are all flawless) while resisting the need to add unnecessary subplots and bric-a-brac to clutter the narrative. From Jane’s sturdy voice-over narration to the razor-sharp line of pitch-black humor that subtly underscores everything (the bit with the cow and the well might be one of the best, nastiest moments of the entire year), this twist on Poe’s classic The Telltale Heart is easily one of the year’s best horror films, provided you like them smart, bleak and stylish. My advice? Hand Zak Hilditch the rest of King’s short story collections and let him get to work: the dude knows what he’s doing.

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Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

In many ways, the late Wes Craven’s return to the Elm Street that he created can be seen as a dry-run for mega-hit Scream, which would follow two years later. Self-referential, ultra-meta, glossy, bloody and lined with a dry sense of humor, the origins of Scream’s hip revival of the slasher genre are easy to read all over New Nightmare.

For his second foray into the Elm Street franchise after the 1984 original, Craven posits a scenario where the principal actors from the first film (Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund and John Saxon), along with himself, find themselves smack dab in the middle of their own nightmarish run-in with the real Freddy Krueger (also played by Englund, natch). The whole thing might play as a bit too goofy if New Nightmare wasn’t also the most serious Elm Street film after the original: Craven plays it all fairly lean and mean, keeps the wise-cracking to a minimum and manages to bring much of the menace back to horror’s favorite subdivision.

While I’ll always cherish Dream Warriors and hold it as the pinnacle of the entire series, New Nightmare ended up being a respectable way for Craven to both return to the franchise and put it to an end (for the most part). It’s a smart trick from a filmmaker who had more than his fair share of smart tricks up his sleeve: Craven will be missed.

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Creep

Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’ Creep impressed the hell out of me when I first saw it, more than living up to the title. This twisted tale of a videographer (Brice) who answers the wrong Craigslist ad and runs afoul of Duplass’ Josef is a claustrophobic bit of insanity that starts odd and ends nightmarishly. The whole film is so simple that it almost sounds like a style exercise: two actors, first-person/found-footage style, no effects, one location (for the most part).

In reality, Creep is a thoroughly unnerving tale of madness that works its way under your skin and refuses to let go. There’s something about Duplass’ performance that transcends acting and becomes something entirely, uncomfortably, different. For much of the film, Duplass plays Josef like the kind of high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass that most of us would relish booting through the ceiling. By the time you begin to notice how truly deranged he is, however, it’s too late for everyone involved, audience included. It’s a film that’s entirely dependent on its performances and Duplass and Brice don’t let down in the slightest.

Creep would be good just based on the performances but the filmcraft is pretty damn seamless, to boot. It’s actually one of the best found-footage films out there, finding some truly surprising ways to mess with perspective and play with the established rules of the sub-genre. The pacing is exquisite and the script (which often seems improvised) is incredibly smart and barbed. In every way, Creep is the epitome of a great film, horror or otherwise.

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Creep 2

Perhaps it was the heavy weight of expectations, considering how much I enjoyed the first film, but I couldn’t help but feel more than a little let down after screening Brice and Duplass’ recently released sequel, Creep 2. Here, unfortunately, is a prime example of how truly difficult it is to replicate what makes a sleeper so special.

We’re reintroduced to good, ol’ insane Josef (Duplass, still great), now going by Aaron but still up to his old tricks. This time around, Aaron is going through a bit of a midlife crisis and has all but lost his former spark for murdering innocent people. “Salvation” comes in the form of Sara (the absolutely fearless Desiree Akhavan), host of a web-series about meeting strange men through Craigslist personal ads. Sara is going through her own existential crisis, as luck would have it, and eagerly jumps into the deep end of Aaron’s psychosis, encouraging him to open up for her ever-present video camera. Who’s playing who, however, and to what end? Has Aaron actually found love? Does Sara actually believe what Aaron tells her? And what about Peachfuzz?

Despite being a solid step-down from the first film, Duplass and Brice still pack plenty of good stuff into the sequel. As before, Duplass’ performance is pitch-perfect and it’s a genuine pleasure to watch him continue to develop and refine his character. Akhavan provides a more than capable foil: Sara isn’t a helpless waif…quite the opposite. She’s actually a crafty, calculating manipulator who may be as fundamentally “damaged” as Aaron, if in slightly more socially acceptable ways. There are plenty of powerhouse scenes to be found (the one where Aaron and Sara doff their clothes in order to be totally open and honest with each other is a real corker) but the climax comes across as silly and unbelievable, while the final coda feels unnecessary and forced.

That being said, I’ll still be first in line for Creep 3 (this was originally announced as a trilogy). Missteps notwithstanding, Creep 2 was odd, uncomfortable, unsettling and more than a little thought-provoking: here’s to hoping that Brice and Duplass can give this modest little franchise the send-off that it truly deserves. Creep 2 is good but they can do much better.

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Stay tuned for the final week of The 31 Days of Halloween, including the day of honor, itself.