Halloween 2019: October 26th

As we head into the final week of October, Halloween being neigh, I still have a few spooky activities to squeeze in. A friend and I visited a local pumpkin patch and corn maze this past weekend. While the pumpkin patch we usually visit has a haunted attraction on the grounds, the one we visited this year skewed much younger. It had all sorts of activities for the little kids. Carnival games, a jungle jim made from haystacks, a petting zoo, a bouncy castle, bean bag toss and lots of other stuff. The main attraction for me was the absolutely massive pumpkin patch and a corn maze that was also huge. We were in there for well over an hour, it seemed. Not as much fun as a haunted house but we had a good time anyway.

Idle Hands (1999)

I've already talked in the past about what an odd reoccurring horror premise the crawling hand is. Even if Thing from “The Addams Family” is the most prominent example, it's still an image that gives some people the creeps. In the late nineties, horror was suddenly really popular again. During this time, someone sought to resurrect the disembodied hand concept as a comedy. “Idle Hands” would be marketed aggressively at the youth audience, with an MTV-ready soundtrack and a hip young cast. It wouldn't work, as the film was a box office failure. However, horror fans would embrace the movie on home video and cable. It also happens to be set on Halloween, making it a strong choice for the last week of the Blog-a-thon.

Anton is a lazy stoner teenager, who can hardly be bothered to get off the couch most nights. He's so constantly blitzed, that he doesn't even notice a serial killer is murdering people around his small Utah town. Or that his own parents have mysteriously vanished recently. When he discovers his parent's bodies, disguised as Halloween decorations, he realizes he's the killer. That the devil has taken possession of his left hand, which Anton can no longer control. He kills his best friends, the equally stoned Mark and Pnub, who return as zombies. The hand begins to target his crush, the sexy girl next door. Realizing there's nothing else he can do to stop it, Anton chops off the demonic hand... Only for it to go on a rampage all by itself at the school Halloween party.

“Idle Hands” mashes up the niche genre of the stoner movie with the even-more-niche crawling hand genre, resulting in a premise that isn't exactly laugh-worthy. Now, don't get me wrong. “Idle Hands” has some amusing gags. The best of which is Anton's best buds returning as zombies. Not because of some curse or anything but simply because they are too apathetic to go into the afterlife. The undead corpses get some of the best laughs, such as the way the decapitated one has his head crudely reattached. Or Seth Green's way with a one-liner. These moments of gentle absurdity certainly work better than some of the more aggressively wacky moments. Most of the slapstick the evil hand creates isn't especially amusing, though an aggressively wacky bit involving a cat did make me laugh. 

The reason “Idle Hands” became a minor cult classic among horror fans is, I think, its surprisingly good special effects. The crawling hand is brought to life in a shockingly seamless fashion, never looking like an artificial special effect. (Magician Christopher Hart, whose screen work is almost exclusively devoted to hand movies, plays the titular villain.) For such a goofy movie, there's some rather elaborate gore. A stand-out scene involves two cops being taken out with a knitting needle and a taser. Later, a sexy girl gets yanked violently into an industrial fan. After the Hand sharpens his fingers into points via pencil sharpener – a good gag – he de-scalps the lead singer of the Offspring. You can imagine these same murder scenes playing out in a more serious horror movie.

I think a big reason “Idle Hands” doesn't work better for me is its lead actor. Devon Sawa, teenage sex symbol to a million young girls at the time, is never especially appealing as Anton. He's goofy but kind of obnoxious, leaning into the role of a lazy stoner a little too hard. Moreover, his skills as a physical comedian are woefully unprepared for this kind of part. Peter Sellers, this guy ain't. Luckily, the supporting cast picks up some slack. As I said earlier, Seth Green steals the show as the sarcastic zombie. Vivica A. Fox gets one or two funny moments as the demon hunter, whose character exists just to justify why these wacky things are happening. Jessica Alba plays the most facile type of wish fulfillment, dream girl and the film puts her in a number of revealing outfits. But, it must be said, she does that kind of thing well.

By the way, “Idle Hands'” Halloween content is relatively strong. The film begins with a lingering shot of a Jack O'Lantern and ends at a wild Halloween party, so it certainly earns points for that. The film is also highly indicative of its time and place, with Sublime and "Dragula" featuring prominently on the soundtrack, and featuring some crude dialogue. Director Rodman Flender – previously of “Leprechaun 2" – even throws in some loud jump scares. The film is hardly worth much attention but, by some chance, if you're looking for a gory horror/comedy about a crawling hand, this is your best bet. [6/10]

The Monster (1925)

We are late into October, Halloween is nearly here, and I am craving an old dark house movie. The subgenre was basically extinct by the sixties and, save the odd parody or two, no attempts have been made to revive it. (Though some of the cliches first explored in old dark house movies would be absorbed by slasher films.) The concept – a combination of horror, comedy, and mystery revolving around an isolated group of people in an old building – was extremely popular from the late 1900s up through the forties, beginning on the stage and soon leaping to cinema. Literally hundreds of these things were made. “The Monster,” from 1925, wouldn't be an especially notable example of the genre if it didn't happen to star Lon Chaney, one of the most iconic actors of the silent era and Hollywood's first horror star.

A rich farmer disappears while driving his car near an old, abandoned sanitarium. All the town is abuzz with this news and rumors swirl wildly. Grocery store employee Johnny Goodlittle decides to become an amateur detective to uncover the truth. He mostly does this to impress Betty, the daughter of the store owner, and to beat out his rich friend Amos, who also has eyes on Betty. Through a convoluted series of events, all three end up at the abandoned sanitarium, which is now being run by the sinister Dr. Ziska and his three servants. Soon, more secrets are revealed.

“The Monster” came early in the old dark house cycle, even predating “The Cat and the Canary,” but all the cliches of the genre are present and accounted for. The film is indeed set in a spooky old building, though a sanitarium is not a house exactly. The hospital includes a number of secret tunnels, underground chambers, trap doors, and boobie traps. The film is quite sincerely set on a dark and stormy night. The only thing missing is the shadowy villain in a fedora and cape. The film makes up for that with Ziska's henchmen, which include a towering mute and a nutcase in a cloak. Even though there's really nothing in the movie that qualifies as a “monster,” you put all these classic tropes together and you still have something resembling a horror movie.

Yet as many foundational horror elements are present in “The Monster,” long stretches of the film are directed by other impulses. Slapstick comedy is present in almost every old dark house movie, usually in the form of a comic relief side character. In “The Monster,” that character is the main protagonist. Johnny Goodlittle is played by Johnny Arthur, an actor who would later become famous for playing camp gay characters in early sound movies. Arthur's comedic shtick is broad. He prances through many scenes, with a very hammy style of acting. An especially extended sequence has his character getting drunk during an otherwise very serious situation. There's also, of course, a love triangle which seems to take up quite a lot of the film's run time. We spend a very long time at a dance with Johnny, Amos, and Betty. It takes about a half-hour to get to the abandoned sanitarium and, keep in mind, this movie is only 86 minutes long.

Despite getting top-billing, Lon Chaney is underutilized. Dr. Ziska doesn't appear until the thirty minute mark and doesn't actually do anything until the very end. However, Chaney was effective even when asked to just stand around and vamp ominously. He does quite a lot of that here, playing a prototypical mad scientist with sinister glee. His henchman are quite memorable as well, with the strong, silent Caliban – played by the intimidating Walter James – and the snake-like Rigo making for amusingly daunting adversaries. The rest of the cast is fairly hammy. Aside from the comically flailing Arthur, Hallam Cooley does a lot of overacting with his face as Amos.

If not for the presence of Chaney, “The Monster” almost certainly would've been consigned to the dust bin of cinematic history. The only reason I've heard of the movie is that they use to show it on Turner Classic Movies a lot. Perhaps the film's only lasting contribution to pop history is several images from it would be used in the original MonsterVision intro. This is surely one of the first films to feature a shot of a deranged mad s                                                                                                               cientist lording over a pretty maiden strapped to an operating table. But being first doesn't correlate with quality. “The Monster” scratched my itch for an old dark house movie but, save for its iconic star and some spooky atmosphere, isn't especially good. [5/10]

Nightmares and Dreamscapes: Battleground

Considering the enduring popularity of his work and the wealth of material he's published over the years, I'm surprised nobody tried to make a Stephen King anthology series sooner. While there have been dozens of movies, and even a few serialized TV shows, inspired by America's most popular horror author, “Nightmares and Dreamscapes” would be the first anthology show drawing exclusively from King's writing. The series aired on TNT in summer of 2006, where it drew little attention. (Probably because TNT is not the first channel you associate with horror.) Eight episodes were produced, eight episodes were aired, and that was that. Among these, only the series debut – “Battleground,” from a short story found not in the titular collection but in “Night Shift” –  was written about much.

That's probably because of the episode's primary gimmick. “Battleground” is presented entirely without dialogue. Music, sound effects, and the occasional anguished yelp is the only audio. Renshaw is a professional assassin and has been hired to eliminate the head of the Morris Toys corporation. He completes the job, killing the man in cold blood, and thinks nothing of it. Upon returning to his penthouse apartment, Renshaw receives a strange package in the mail. It's a tin of green army men toys. Things get much stranger when the army men spring to life, armed with actual weapons of war, and begin to attack the hitman.

“Battleground” does have an admittedly cool concept. The episode is essentially a kaiju movie in reverse, in which the military is tiny compared to the normal sized human. Watching William Hurt, indomitably nasty as Renshaw despite never saying a word, get slowly torn up by tiny machine gun rounds or miniature bazookas is entertaining. Renshaw's initial counterattack against the army men is fierce in its effectiveness. However, “Battleground” quickly becomes repetitive, the hitman thinking he's defeated the toys only for them to return again. This is an almost-good hour of television that probably would've made an excellent half-hour episode of television.

Still, there are some stand-out moments. Such as the toys offering the adult man a chance to surrender or the final, explosive twist. There's certainly no reason for the episode to be dialogue-free but it does turn the focus towards action, a good idea. By the way, Richard Christian Matheson wrote the teleplay and includes a homage to his dad's “Trilogy of Terror.” Another famous son, Brian Henson, directed. [6/10]

Within the Woods (1978)

This past summer, I reviewed all of Sam Raimi's movies, which naturally included all the “Evil Dead” movies. So I thought it would be fitting to watch “Within the Woods” this Halloween. In case you don't know, “Within the Woods” is a half-hour long prototype for “The Evil Dead,” made to convince financial backers to invest in the feature length version. Made for all of a 1000 dollars, the short has never been officially released on home media. (You'd think one of the countless “Evil Dead” home releases would've included it as a special feature.) This hasn't stopped increasingly blurry bootlegs from circulating around horror conventions and, now, on the internet. The version on Youtube is a fourth generation copy with deeply washed-out colors, distorted sound, too much darkness, and frequent tracking errors.

Despite the almost unwatchable condition it currently survives in, “Within the Woods” is still interesting. Raimi and co. test-drove a lot of the tricks they would utilize on “Evil Dead” here. The chaotic P.O.V. shots are present, though not as smooth as they are in the final film. A number of moments here would re-appear in the feature film or its sequel. Such as the mysteriously swaying porch swing, a descent down the stairs into the cellar, a hero accidentally stabbing a friend and his body getting stuck in the door, a deadite leaping into frame through a window, or the possessed chanting “Join us!”

And, of course, the premises are nearly identical, following a group of college students isolated in a cabin, where they accidentally awake an ancient evil and are consumed by it. The differences stand out more. There's no Necronomicon, an Indian burial ground being the source of the demonic possession. This leaves the film without any deeper lore and without an easy way to destroy the monsters. Bruce Campbell's character becomes the sole homicidal zombie, while Ellen Sandweiss is our heroine.

While “Evil Dead” can only be seen as an upgrade,  “Within the Woods” is effecting in its own way. The gore effects, though hard to make out, are still clearly impressive. A shot of Bruce chewing through his own hand is amusingly nasty. A shot of the then-disembodied fist falling onto a Monopoly board is cool. Even the prototype deadite is scary, for his pure unwillingness to die. Early scenes of Bruce Campbell explaining the local legends to his girlfriend made me chuckle. “Within the Woods” will likely only be of interest to “Evil Dead” fans, and primarily for its historical values, but I think it's a pretty bitchin' short all right. [7/10]