After the box office success of “Friday the 13th Part 2” – 21 million dollars against a 1 million dollar budget – it was decided that the franchise must continue. Initial ideas revolved around Amy Steel's Ginny returning, recovering from her trauma in a mental hospital when the killing starts again. This was abandoned quickly enough, as Steel couldn't return and producers were afraid of shaking up the formula anyway. Something the producers were adamant about was that “Friday the 13th Part III” would be filmed in 3-D. “Comin' at Ya!,” a low-budget spaghetti western riff from the previous year, had made surprising amounts of money on the back of its 3-D gimmick. Someone at Paramount realized the same gimmick would work great for “Friday the 13th” and they were right. “Part 3-D” would be the most successful entry in the series from its original eighties run.
The visual gimmick was important to distinguish the third film in other ways too, as the plot was essentially unchanged from the previous two: Bunch of horny teens go into the woods around Crystal Lake – this time at a private farm retreat called Higgins' Haven – and get killed by Jason. (Though, since the sequel is set the day after the previous film's events, it technically takes place on Saturday the 14th.) Yet the decision to shoot “Friday the 13th Part III” in 3-D really does change the tone of the film. By constantly finding excuses to push shit into the camera, the movie quickly moves towards full-blown camp. It's hard to take the slaughter too seriously when a wooden pole, a yo-yo, a wallet, steel chains, a rubber snake, and even a joint are extended out to the audience. All of that is before the killing really starts. By mixing gore effects and 3-D effects, “Friday the 13th” went from trying to scare us with its violence to trying to entertain us with it. How else are we suppose to react to Jason shooting a spear gun at us, sending an eye sailing over our heads, and bisecting a hand-standing dude than with cheers or laughter? The movie is well aware of this tonal shift as well, as it begins with a ridiculous(ly catchy) disco remix of Henry Manfredini's theme music.
Being the kind of stories they are, the last two “Friday the 13th” movies haven't really had time to explore its characters' back stories. Even if Alice and Ginny were our heroines, we still know nothing about their lives outside these events. Chris, part three's survivor girl, has a history though. She's returning to Higgin's Haven for the first time in several years, following a traumatic experience where she went into the woods and was attacked by Jason. It seems to be implied – and the screenwriters would confirm it in “Crystal Lake Memories” – that this attack was sexual in nature. Whether you believe this is in character for Jason Voorhees is another question. (There's certainly nothing in the rest of the series to imply he has a sex drive.) What this does do is give Chris an honest-to-God character arc. By confronting Jason again, she's confronting the trauma of that memory and overcoming it.
Somehow, “Friday the 13th Part III” fuses the camp obvious in its silly characters and ridiculous kill scenes with the seriousness of a young woman confronting her (ambiguous) sexual assaulter. The last act of “Part III,” when its just Jason and Chris, keeps escalating the tension. Jason chases her through the house, tearing it apart in the process. She jumps into a van, which gets stuck on a rickety bridge. Then she sees it's out of gas, before slamming on the reserve button. The final fight in the farm has her utilizing a rope and a pulley as a weapon against him. (The script makes sure to set all this shit up in the first half too.) When Chris gets the drop on Jason, it makes her seem resourceful, instead of making Jason look like a dumb-ass. It all builds up towards a surprisingly creepy nightmare jump scare at the end. A lot of this is because Steve Miner, back in the director's chair after part two, knows his shit. He manages to generate a sort of eeriness out of images like Jason lurking behind billowing laundry, peering out a window, or the stillness of Crystal Lake after a night of mayhem.
Throughout his career, Peter Cushing would appear in over a hundred films and television shows. While he showed up in many different types of films over his life, he's naturally most beloved for his horror movies. No matter how lurid the material might be, Cushing always brought a level of gentility to his horror pictures... Except, seemingly, for once. One of the few films of his that Cushing expressed actual disdain for was “Corruption.” The modern day set film was considered grislier and more exploitative than the classier, period-set monster movies Cushing made for Hammer and its rival studios. Or, at least, that was the perception in 1968. How does “Corruption” hold up in 2021?
Sir John Rowan is an intentionally known surgeon, beloved by his patients and respected by his colleagues. He's also engaged to Lynn, a beautiful model and significantly younger woman. At a party at a swinging London pad, a former photographer friend of Lynn tries to take nude photographs of her. John intervenes, gets into a fight with a man, and knocks over a hot lamp... Directly onto Lynn's face, who is left badly scarred. His wife-to-be left suicidal, John tests his theory transplanting a new pituitary gland into her brain can speed up the healing process. The results are successful but only temporarily, as Lynn's face reverts to its deformed state after a few weeks. This forces Sir John to seek out fresher pituitary glands from living victims.
“Corruption's” lurid advertising campaign clarified that it was not “a woman's picture.” This did little to dissuade the film's image as blatantly sexist trash. Also not helping this perception: The film's bloodshed being motivated primarily by Lynn's vanity and ego, as she urges her husband-to-be to brutally kill like a modern day Lady MacBeth. This means John's victims are almost entirely women. This includes a prostitute – who is topless in alternate, international cuts of the movie – and a comely hippy hitchhiker that's picked up, whose death scene is proceeded by numerous upskirt shots. If you want to accuse “Corruption” of being a nasty work of misogyny, you wouldn't have to search deep for evidence.
Yet, even if “Corruption” is certainly seedier than most of Peter Cushing's starring roles, the thespian still maintains his dignity. In fact, Cushing's performance goes a long way towards elevating the entire movie. He plays Sir John as a clearly sensible man who is pushed to extreme measures by circumstance. His wife's injury and her mental state weighs heavily on him. This is most notable in a scene where he angrily throws some books around his office, after Lynn's sister informs him how bad her sister's state-of-mind is. As he's driven to kill for the first time, Cushing's eyes go wide. He hears screams and Lynn's voice in his head. It's actually a fantastic bit of acting from Cushing, showing his clear reluctance to commit these horrid acts. That manic desperation only grows as the film goes on, Cushing making sure the audience picks up on that panic.
“Corruption” does some interesting things, for sure. Ultimately, however, it's undeniably an artifact of late sixties camp. The pivotal party scene, where Sir John is totally out-of-place among the young people in colorful clothes, is obviously a commentary on the youth-establishment divide in sixties England... But it's also pretty funny. Later, a gang of predatory hippies march into John and Lynn's cabin. They are exaggerated caricatures, one munching an apple in a gross way. The aforementioned beach chase scene is also kind of funny, as the hippy chick gingerly runs through the sand dunes in her high heels, waving her arms about in a goofy fashion.
For its season two finale, “Creepshow” decides to devote an entire episode to one story. In “Night of the Living Late Show,” Simon is a brilliant inventor whose wife, Renee, is starting to suspect he only married her because she's rich. His newest creation is an entirely immersive V.R. Machine that can seamlessly insert someone into any movie or TV show they want. Simon's favorite movie is the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing classic “Horror Express.” In particular, he's obsessed with the character Countess Irina Petrovska. (Played by Silvia Tortosa in the original movie and convincing lookalike Hannah Fierman here.) He enters into the movie primarily to romance her. When his wife finds out about this, she's pretty upset.
“Night of the Living Late Show” revolves around a pretty clever EFX gimmick. That would be digitally inserting modern actors, “Forrest Gump”-style, into older footage. There's definitely some amusing novelty in seeing Justin Long interacting with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. However, I wish the episode focused more on exploring why people latch onto certain movies. “Horror Express” was chosen presumably because it's in the public domain. (And “Night of the Living Dead” – which is also referenced throughout, via the ugly Creep framing device and the ending – was too obvious a choice.) The original film's premise, of a body-swapping demonic sasquatch, isn't even utilized that much here. Aside from thinking the lead actress is pretty, and a brief anecdote about it being the first grown-up movie his dad took him to, no deeper reason is provided for why Simon latched onto this particular film. We also never get much insight into Simon and Renee's relationship, meaning his betrayal and the inevitable ironic revenge doesn't have much meaning. There's a cool premise inside “Night of the Living Late Show” but it doesn't do enough with it. [6/10]
The fifth episode of “Godzilla Singular Point” both does and doesn't address some of the issues I've had with the show up to this point. In the mountains, Yun, Kato, and Goro attempt to flush out the mysterious new kaiju they spotted last episode, which the media has quickly dubbed “Anguirus.” The best displays strange powers and is growing at a startling rate. Deep within the Shiva Consortium – the corporation studying the effects of the Archetype molecule and the red dust – another new beast emerges. A third new kaiju, an enormous sea serpent named Manda, also appears in Tokyo Bay. While the giant monsters start to attack, more research and science is passed around.
“Theorist” is an episode that, on paper, sounds like its full of kaiju chaos. Anguirus kicks up some dirt in the mountains and is given a formidable superpower, in the ability to bend time around the spines of his shell. The new monster that emerges underground is an oni looking beast named Saluga, who is pretty obviously inspired by goofy Showa monster Gabara. One of my favorite moments from this episode once again focuses on how the media responses to the kaiju crisis. Manda's appearance immediately prompts people to ask whether keeping people safe by closing off the bay is more important than the economic effects such actions would have. (This, sadly, reminds me of our on-going COVID clusterfuckery.) While the CGI animation for the kaiju continues to be a questionable choice, I at least think the monsters look pretty cool here.
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