Obviously, the name infers spiders so, if you have arachnophobia? This film is not for you.
There’s a specific art to creature features that I feel has been neglected over the past decade or so. Fundamentally, they’re ridiculous: overgrown ants, giant iguanas, etc. but while looking absurd, the best ones juggle preying on one’s fears of the incomprehensible state of nature while also instilling a sense of levity. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, if you will.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s my media-induced, paranoid, delusional nightmare.”
EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS nails that precision. It’s exactly what it sounds like: radioactive waste causes a a severe number of spiders to grow to enormous heights and ravage the town that goatee-adorned Chris — played by a surprisingly winsome and knowing and game David Arquette — revisits, partially because he still pines for the current town sheriff, Samantha Parker.
“Lose the face fuzz before you [visit Samantha]. Makes your mouth look like a stripper’s crouch.”
This film could be perfunctory and lazily executed, but instead it’s far more inventive and savvy than it needs to be. One scene, involving a spider and a cat, is particularly impressionable by utilizing dry wall and only showing what it needs to show. It also liberally borrows from Spielberg’s bag of tricks, especially with its usage of a plucky, overly smart youth that helps save the day.
“This is a town hall meeting, not the WWF.”
Additionally, the effects are vividly energetic with all of the spider fur and leaping movements.
It’s well-paced and the flailing town is surprisingly well-developed with a mayor who brought in an ostrich farm and constructed a poorly attended mall. You really can’t ask for much more from 90 minutes of escalating mutations.
To those in the goth community, Elvira — a.k.a. Cassandra Petersen — is a living legend as a not just a TV horror film host, but also as a singular personality. (Unfortunately, her predecessor Maila Nurmi was not a fan.) A lot of folks believe being goth is all doom and gloom and feeling sad for themselves and the world and, while that’s part of the subculture, there’s a lot of whimsy and a fuckton of self-awareness and comfort with one’s body and sexuality.
In other words: Elvira knows who she is, what she wants, she doesn’t feel the need to filter herself and, as a result, she’s completely content with being brazen and someone who unapologetically revels in the darker facets of humanity, while also leaning into her love for vaudeville humor.
“Oh, fragility. Thy name is woman.”
While you might think that ELVIRA’S HAUNTED HILLS is a sequel to her cult film ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK, it most certainly is not. It takes place in 1851 and riffs on a lot of traditional gothic works — there’s a lot of DRACULA here — but more than anything it’s a love letter to Roger Corman’s very loosely adapted films based on Edgar Allen Poe stories.
“That’s really weird. Cross-dressers are usually great dancers.”
(I’ll note that Lord Vladimere Hellsubus is portrayed by the one and only Richard O’Brien, best known for THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW’s Riff Raff.)
During the sixties, Corman warped a number of Poe works into films, including his version of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, THE RAVEN, and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, all of which ELVIRA’S HAUNTED HILLS riffs on, even down to mimicking the production design of Corman’s THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.
While ELVIRA’S HAUNTED HILLS leans quite a bit on Corman’s works, it’s still singularly hers. It’s brazenly cartoonish, and she’s certainly the star. From her making the most of her cleavage to also being the smartest and funniest person in the room, she’s also not even close to shy. This is best exemplified by her repeated attempts to woo Adrian, Gabi Andronache recreating a vapid Fabio, all shoulder-length brunette curls and buff chest.
“Adrian! You came too late! …again.”
Additionally, she gets her own CABARET-esque musical number which ends with her brandishing underwear that literally begs for applause.
Even if you aren’t part of the goth community, this is one hell of a lark, one that is very self-aware and doesn’t take itself seriously but is also very smart and knowing. I do wish she’d been able to turn out yearly films because she’s so fun and charismatic while also being an absolute misfit and we need more of that in the world. However, I’m thankful we can watch the few films that she willed into the world.
If you’ve followed Stephen King’s career, you are probably aware that he had a pretty bad substance abuse problem in the 80s.
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE was his first — and last — effort as a film director, and he was fucking coked-up and shitfaced during the production and it shows. The film is absolutely unhinged to the point of being nearly incompressible.
While I certainly won’t celebrate that sort of self-destructive behavior, his absolutely fucked up mental state resulted in an immensely fun and charming work.
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE sees a world thrown into the tail of a comet — this was right around the time of Halley’s Comet, so comets were on everyone’s mind — and for some inexplicable reason, machines become murderously sentient.
“No machines are to be trusted.”
Emilio Estevez plays ex-criminal Bill Robinson, over-worked at a truck stop that becomes ground zero for a convey of malicious trucks. Matters escalate, which includes a very clumsy sex scene between Bill and an alluring hitchhiker named Brett, played by Laura Harrington.
“I’ll tell you one thing: You sure make love like a hero.”
I won’t mince words here: this is not a good film. It is pure schlock and is often nonsensical, but sometimes that’s exactly what you want, and MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE delivers.
I do admire that this is one of the few King works I’ve dealt with that focuses on the lower class. Everyone involved are the forgotten, those that can only get shit jobs, those who society never respect. It’s a fucking truck stop and while everyone there are the detritus of America, they still stand up and fight for themselves and each other.
“WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU! WE MADE YOU!”
Is MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE a lower class version of THE MIST? Yes, yes it certainly is. However, it has its charms and the iconic — albeit ridiculous — production design of the gremlin truck makes up for many of the coked-up flaws.
I previously posted about EATING RAOUL but do not feel like I did the film justice, so I hope you enjoy this revisitation.
The 80s were an inflection point for deviant indie films, perhaps best encapsulated by John Waters and POLYESTER and HAIRSPRAY, but also surprise hits like EATING RAOUL. These were films that pointed the limelight on the disenfranchised folks living on the sidelines of society, especially those who were more sexually divergent and kinky.
Writer/director/actor Paul Bartlel’s piece is a brilliant work. EATING RAOUL is a perfect encapsulation of what indie films can be: they call out the hypocrisy of heteronormative people, of personal repression, but by having the protagonists — Mary & Paul Blank (yes, not a subtle surname. Also, the protagonist couple are played by mainstays Paul Barlet and Mary Woronov and retain their real first names for this work) — staged as a post-WWII TV version of couples, even down to the single beds.*
“Yet so popular with the broken and destitute.”
To quickly summarize: Paul & Mary are a very straight-laced couple, living in a building mostly inhabited by swingers. They have dreams of ditching their respective jobs as a liquor store employee and nurse in favor of opening their own restaurant. In order to do so, they have to raise $20K (later $25K) to buy the Victorian abode they want to house it.
Given their current jobs, they realize that’s not feasible. So, Mary posits herself as a dominatrix and they start murdering her clients and stealing their wallets to help fund their restaurant.
“And whatever they want to do? Stop if it draws blood.”
They start fretting about the security of their apartment and enlist the help of a security specialist, Raoul, who eventually shows his true colors as a thief. Mary becomes entwined with him, and matters escalate.
“I don’t mind paying cash for gash as long as it’s class.”
It is worth noting that EATING RAOUL did become somewhat of a mainstream hit, partially because of its sensationalism, but I like to think it’s mostly because of its wit and performances.
“We like B&D but we don’t like S&M. We met at the A&P but we don’t like labels.”
I cannot overstate what films like EATING RAOUL did for the youths of the 80s and 90s. These were eye-opening films that presented a completely different world, films that eschewed heteronormativity, films that allowed misfits like myself to feel seen and accepted, all while being enthralled and laughing the entire time and never shamed anyone, even the norms. Sadly, that era seems to be over, but like with everything, the pendulum will inevitably swing back.
“Mary, I just killed a man.”
“He was a man, honey. Now he’s just a bag of garbage.”
As someone who is 1) an extremely light sleeper and 2) as someone who has dealt with abuse so I’m always on high alert, I don’t love the visual shorthand of two beds as sexual repression, because sleeping in separate beds can actually be a great thing for all parties involved, however: the message here is succinctly conveyed.
PROM NIGHT is one of those franchises where several of the sequels are better — or at least more interesting — than the original. The first PROM NIGHT is a rather by-the-numbers slasher centered around, naturally, prom night. It’s perhaps best known for a barely post-HALLOWEEN Jamie Lee Curtis as final girl Kim Hammond who has a rare nude scene, as well as Leslie Nielsen as Kim’s father. That said, it’s visually more striking than most slashers of its time.
HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT 2 is probably regarded as the best in the series, as it is far more inventive while having a sense of humor about itself. It has some fantastic set-pieces and stellar performances from Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou and Michael Ironsides as the cop investigating a series of murders.
However, I believe PROM NIGHT III: THE LAST KISS (PROM NIGHT 3 going forward) is woefully underrated. It goes full horror-comedy while managing to straddle both expertly. PROM NIGHT 3 continues the murderous, wanton adventures of one Mary Lou Maloney (Courtney Taylor) haunting the same high school, and she finds herself obsessed with Alex, an attractive school bum who has aspirations to become a doctor and marry Sarah (Cynthia Preston), his high school sweetheart.
Mary Lou has a sort of succubus quality to her, and Alex finds her irresistible, and the two fuck almost immediately. (Yes, this is a very horny film, even for a high school slasher.) Mary Lou becomes extremely possessive, using her somewhat vague supernatural powers to elevate Alex’s school standing while killing off anyone in the way of his dreams, or her obsession. Matters escalate, becoming more and more outlandish, culminating in what can only be described as a Ripley-esque confrontation.
The gory set-pieces are in the vein of Sam Raimi — there are a number of shots that ape the first-person racing camera perspective he leans on so much, although there’s one scene where Mary Lou is absolutely crashing through doors; windows shatter, and it’s incredibly effective.
The film still makes time to pepper in dialogue that you’d expect to hear in a dark comedy like JAWBREAKER:
“Alex, she wasn’t a person. She was a guidance counselor.”
They also utilize the high school’s PA system to intersperse quite a bit of irreverent, silly but pointed announcements.
Granted, despite receiving a theatrical release in the production’s home country of Canada, it does have that cheap video sheen to it. Nonetheless, the makeup is great, the effects above-average, and it’s a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, finding a copy of the original version of PROM NIGHT 3 can prove to be difficult. While the VHS version was the same theatrical edition Canadians watched, the U.S. DVD release was heavily edited. There’s a copy of the uncut version on YouTube that you can seek out, as this is not the kind of film that benefits from an ‘edited for content’ version.
The first GREMLINS takes place in the sleepy town of Kingston Falls, home to young bank employee Billy Peltzer and his girlfriend and waitress Kate Beringer. Billy receives a cuddly creature named a mogwai as a Christmas present and he names it Gizmo. He is then given the following care instructions:
1) Keep the mogwai away from sunlight.
2) Don’t allow the mogwai to get wet.
3) Never feed it after midnight.
Predictably, almost immediately, both the second and third rules are broken, and which result in Gizmo quickly reproducing a number of twisted creatures that are the opposite of Gizmo’s cute and friendly demeanor. They quickly take over the town and matters escalate.
For years, film studio Warner Bros. wanted a sequel, as the first film was rightly a huge success, but Dante waited six years to make it, requesting and receiving full creative control, and he made the most of it.
GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH sees Billy and Kate in New York City, both working for billionaire Daniel Clamp who is the CEO of a wide-ranging company named CLAMP. Billy is a commercial illustrator while Kate has the far less glamorous job as a CLAMP tour guide.
Gizmo is brought into the CLAMP building by one of two twin CLAMP scientists. Billy discovers Gizmo thanks to hearing someone whistling Gizmo’s unique tune and he reclaims the mogwai. As you might suspect, Gizmo immediately gets wet and chaos ensues. Unlike the first film, apart from one scene, the gremlin antics take place solely in the CLAMP building. Also unlike the first film, Dante completely leans into his love of cartoons and slapstick and self-indulgent silliness — the film even opens with the classic Looney Tunes opening, complete with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
The ‘new batch’ of gremlins are absolutely bonkers and not nearly as cooke-cutter as the first time. The gremlin designs are absolutely wild and even include an ‘electricity gremlin’. There’s an entire KEY & PEELE skit about how the ‘Hollywood Sequel Doctor’ helps shepherd the unhinged the gremlins to life. You may want to wait to watch until the GREMLINS 2 credits roll, but it is classic KEY & PEELE.
“Okay, you guys know that none of that is going to be in the actual movie.”
All of that is in the actual movie.
GREMLINS 2 is certainly unbridled Joe Dante at the height of his powers and laser-focused on everything he loves. He even weaves in Christopher Lee and character actor and creative Paul Bartel (who will pop up again in a future Horrorclature post)! The creature effects by Rick Baker’s Cinovation Studio are absolutely mesmerizing, and feature a number of scenes that are as visually packed as a MAD MAGAZINE illustration!
Sadly the film flopped, which is a shame, but as demonstrated by the KEY & PEELE sketch it has found a cult audience, of which you can watch it and join the GREMLINS 2 admiration club.
It’s hard to imagine now, but back in the day Roseanne Barr was considered a progressive blue-collar feminist, first through her brusque stand-up, then with her heralded sitcom ROSEANNE (who had now-disgraced self-proclaimed feminist Joss Whedon in the writer’s room).
Despite being a pre-teen, I absolutely loved ROSEANNE. Barr encapsulated the type of outspoken, driven woman that reminded me of my own mother, who willfully worked whichever job she could get because she wanted to give back and keep her hands busy. She was restless and smart and witty and the Barr in ROSEANNE mirrored that same sort of mentality and cultural ethic.
So, it wasn’t terribly surprising that she was cast as Ruth, the unruly protagonist of the film adaptation of THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A SHE-DEVIL. It was not hard to imagine Barr inhabiting the role of a scorned woman, a woman who undermines positions of authority with the intent to shoehorn her way into a patriarchal society because, well, she did all of that.
However, there’s one major flaw with this adaptation, and that is: Barr is not tall.
As noted in my prior write-up, Ruth’s height is the predominant facet to her being an unwelcome woman in society. To the extent that she goes through major elective surgery to change from being 6’ 2” to around 5’ 8”, which takes the work from being a piece about a scorned and envious woman to outright body horror due to what she is willing to endure to mould herself.
At this point in time in Barr’s career, she was very well-known for being short and stout. The stout fits the Ruth character. Short? No, not at all.
I’m getting ahead of myself, especially if you haven’t read my prior write-up about the source material.
SHE-DEVIL comes across as a simple vengeance tale: Ruth, a plain woman, discovers that her accountant husband — and parent to her son and daughter — is cheating on her with Anne, his romance author client. Ruth decides to burn her life, and their lives, to the very ground.
For the most part, SHE-DEVIL is yet another film that: if you watch it before consuming the source material, it comes across as brilliant. Yes, it casts aside the most extreme acts of the novel, but otherwise its fidelity to Weldon’s book is quite astounding. They could have just lifted the concept — scorned, vengeful woman wrecking the lives of those she feels have wronged her — and ran with it, but instead they recreate most of the non-body horror scenes, almost word-for-word, and it plays! It works!
Part of that is simply because of the cast. I previously harped on Roseanne Barr’s involvement, but motherfucking Meryl Streep plays Anne, the romance author, during Streep’s astounding run of playing absolutely independent but also unwelcome women. Ed Begley Jr. is Bob, Ruth’s accountant husband and, while on paper you wouldn’t think that Begley Jr. could pull off being a philandering, sexy debonair — he usually just plays a mostly innocuous schmuck — it actually works here. A lot of it has to do with his robust and glorious hair styling, but he also conveys a charismatic and alluring type of sleaze.
I honestly didn’t know he had it in him.
Cinematically, it’s rather straight-forward and not handled with much grace, but the main attraction here is the script — mostly cribbed from the novel — and the performances. If nothing else, it feels like it was greenlit to capitalize on the sensation of recent accessible-but-camp films, such as John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY, films that portray women taking charge of their lives through any means possible, but in a darkly comic way.
That means circling back to what isn’t in the film: the body horror. A keen eye will notice that Barr’s Ruth does take advantage of some physical alterations, but nothing so severe as in the novel. Essentially, all of that is dropped, which severely neuters the work.
However, even without that facet, it’s still a powerful feminist film. If you don’t believe me, believe the illustrious and erudite Criterion Channel, which routinely plays it. It is a smart film, however, if you know what it could have been, you might be slightly disappointed.
I avoided METROPOLITAN for quite some time. I watched writer/director Whit Stillman’s follow-up THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO shortly after it was released on DVD and thought: his candor and approach is simply not for me.
I eventually got around to METROPOLITAN more than a handful of years later — before he completed LOVE & FRIENDSHIP, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s posthumous novel PERSUASION — and did appreciate it but didn’t fall in love with it the way others had. I could feel the Woody Allen influence and had a hard time reckoning with that. (I admit, ANNIE HALL still impresses and MANHATTAN looks gorgeous.)
However, the other night I fell asleep watching Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which happens more often than I’d like to admit, and woke up about twenty minutes into METROPOLITAN and it suddenly snapped into focus for me: yes, the Allen influence is there, as it is a film composed of vignettes about upper-class wanna-be Manhattan intellectuals who spend most of their time talking instead of taking action, but the real influence is Jane Austen and I just never realized it, despite the fact that Austen is referenced more than a few times in the film, especially PERSUASION.
An aside: I came along to Austen late in life, after I had first watched METROPOLITAN. While I wish it had been sooner, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed her novels as much as I did when I first read them as someone older. I haven’t read everything by her; I have a copy of LADY SUSAN and PERSUASION in my daunting to-read stack. I was at a wedding last year and lit up when someone at our table started talking about Austen and — to the visible frustration of her date — peppered her with Austen questions, including whether I should read PERSUASION first or watch LOVE & FRIENDSHIP. (She essentially responded: “They’re both great! There’s no wrong way to enjoy them!”)
METROPOLITAN is comprised of a number of chapters in rich socialites lives, mostly viewed from the point-of-view of lower-middle class nerd Tom Townsend (Edward Clements). Well-to-do Nick Smith (Chris Eigeman, who you may recognize from GILMORE GIRLS) takes a shining to him and guides him into his inner social circle, teaching him how to present as one of them. One of the women in the group, Audrey (Carolyn Farina), develops a crush on him but is too meek to do anything about it and watches as Tom pines for Serena (Ellia Thompson) while Serena is involved with an overly-confident, pony-tailed man named Rick (Will Kempe).
In other words: it’s all about repressed emotions and manners and presentation and social navigation, which Austen is very well-known for.
The primary allure here is the dialogue and interplay of characters, and the performers step up perfectly. There’s a rapport and tension between all of them that feels absolutely engaging. I’ll note that it’s shame that, apart from Eigeman, few of them have appeared in many other works.
For Stillman’s first film, he has a remarkable command over pacing and editing. While scenes often end abruptly via a fade-out, it manages to feel naturalistic. Additionally, the blocking is exceptionally handled, as well as John Thomas’s framing. Everyone is exquisitely laid out in ways that speak magnitudes of their character and conflicts, and Mary Jane Fort’s costume design fits perfectly for this world. (I’ll note that it was her first endeavor, but unlike most of the actors, she’s had a long career fashioning for film and TV.)
I will admit that the score is often overly-repetitive, but suits the film.
This is one of the fantastic facets for me as to having TCM constantly running in the background: it’s consistently about revisiting films, sometimes as comfort, but also often for re-evaluation, and I’m glad I did so for METROPOLITAN when it’s doubtful I would have otherwise.
“They’re doomed; they’re bourgeois; and in love. They’re all so … Metropolitan.”
(Netflix) Back when I was a pre-teen, I had a casual friend who absolutely knew how to make me laugh. The jokes were puerile — again, I was a youth and he was slightly older — but he told them in such a rapid-fire way that within a few minutes I was doubled-over in laughter, absolutely rolling on the ground, covered in dirt.
Again, they weren’t good jokes, but they endlessly built up, which actually served to be more memorable in the long run. (One tries to forget that too much laughter literally inflicts pain — which causes a perverse feedback loop for me — but you don’t. Not really.)
Over the years, I’ve found that sort of comedy to be more of an enigma than anything else. THE JERK accomplished it, for sure — one of the greatest times of my life was seeing it at Los Angeles’ TCL and being tongue-tied meeting Carl Reiner. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, well, the first two seasons at least. It’s more of a vaudevillian sense of humor — make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh! (to quote SINGING IN THE RAIN) — but when that work is firing on all cylinders, it’s like nothing else. To be crass: it culminates to a mind-blowing comedic orgasm that you shakily walk away from.
And now we have CUNK ON EARTH, the latest from Charlie Brooker (BRASS EYE, and oh, a little dystopian show named BLACK MIRROR you may have heard of.) It’s basically ‘What if we had an insta-dumb Lucy Worsley navigating us through history?’ While the character has been around in Brooker’s WEEKLY WIPE and also featured in CUNK ON BRITAIN, this was my first exposure to her.
I’ll note: this is a very specific show. If you love the humor of Kate Beaton, if you love nerdy historical and literary comedy, if you’ve even entertained the idea of watching BLACKADDER, this show will come close to pleasurely killing you. The joke ratio is off of the fucking charts. Not a single word or glance or motion is wasted and, even better, it all builds up to character lore. It’s amazing — if you’re a nerd.
I had to cut myself off after three episodes, at least for the time being. I love to laugh, but I was laughing far too much. That said, I can’t think of a better way to endorse a series than ‘I watched it until it made my sides ache and then bleed.’ It’s a brilliant work, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Also, as someone with several prominent moles, I love how she rocks hers.
GRAND CREW is a Black ensemble hangout show that delightfully evokes HAPPY ENDINGS about a group of drinking buddies that is also an absolute joke-machine that also emotionally hits hard! The performers are perfect, the cinematography is immaculate, and it’s amazingly timed. It is absolutely delightful but I was honestly shocked that it received a second season because, apart from myself, I know of no one who watched the first season and heard absolutelyno one talk about it. Please, if you know me: remedy that. It’s a lot of fun! It has escalated to the phase where I am knee-slapping and have to muffle my laughter to keep from waking up those around me.
A few choice quotes:
“Woo, that text got ass!”
“Stupid face, always snitching on me.”
“I just don’t think she’s as young as she says she is! Why does she drink so much Ovaltine?!”
