I recently read an article about how America's current true crime obsession is “rotting our brains.” While you can debate the ethics and reasoning behind the modern true crime industry, it's really nothing new. From 1962 to 1964, the city of Boston, Massachusetts was in the grips of a serial killer the press dubbed “The Boston Strangler.” The lurid crimes were widely publicized, as was the police's man-hunt for the perpetrator. Less than two years after a man named Albert DeSalvo was arrested for the crimes, Gerold Frank had written a salacious book about the murders. And less than two years after that, a highly fictionalized movie based on that book opened to commercial and critical success. Not only has America always had an unhealthy fascination with killers and crime, it clearly produces valuable art from time to time as well.
In June of 1962, a 56 year old woman is sexually assaulted and strangled inside her Boston apartment. Four more elderly women are killed in similar fashions over the next few weeks. Soon, other women of different ages and racial backgrounds join the growing list of victims. The Attorney General of Massachusetts assembles a special bureau designed to catch the man dubbed the Boston Strangler. Bureau head John S. Bottomly and a team of detectives, led by Phil DiNatale, investigate a number of false leads. After two years, a handyman named Albert DeSalvo is caught fleeing a woman's apartment after raping and attempting to strangle her. Evidence suggests he may be the Strangler. A criminal psychologist goes about attempting to uncover why DeSalvo, seemingly a normal family man, could do such heinous things.
The second thing that sticks out about “The Boston Strangler” is that cops have always been fucking incompetent. The police desperately pursue a number of dead leads. They confront a gay man, who is accused of the crimes because he reads macabre books and has a painting of a woman in his apartment. They bother a sex addict, just because he's a creep. A mentally ill man, played by a perfectly unhinged William Hickey, emerges as the prime suspect. It's obvious within minutes of meeting this pathetic man that he's no killer. And why do the cops hassle someone so sick? Because a psychic told them he was the guy. None of these events bring them any closer to finding the Strangler, who continues to kill. I guess it's just always been like this.
“The Boston Strangler” also has an interesting narrative construction. The first hour is devoted entirely to the manhunt for the killer. In the second half, we are introduced to Albert DeSalvo and shown the events that led to his capture. At this point, the movie shifts direction entirely. The film becomes a psycho-drama devoted to probing DeSalvo's disturbed mind. The film presents the Strangler as someone with a split personality, who isn't even aware of when he's killing. Flesicher's direction remains stylish. A ripped dress, a nude body in a doll house, or shots of DeSalvo in a sterile white room are all striking. Tony Curtis is fantastic as the conflicted killer, driven into panic attacks as he realizes what he's done. The climax of the film, where DeSalvo's murdererous personality emerges around his wife, is impressive. Yet it is true that the manhunt portion of the film is a little more compelling.
Back in 2016, I reviewed “Wrong Turn,” as part of a wave of reviews I did about horror movies set in the American south. The film grossed 28 million against a 12 million dollar budget, making it the most modest type of box office success. Yet the movie must've been popular on home video. Four years after the original's theatrical release, “Wrong Turn 2: Dead End” would be released direct-to-DVD. This would kick off a surprisingly long-running line of sequels and reboots, which extended to this very year. As a native West Virginian, I've always been amused by the idea that my home state had its own long-running slasher series. This October, after putting it off for years, I've decided to finally sit down and review the rest of the “Wrong Turn” series.
A group of divergent individuals gather in the West Virginian backwoods to film a pilot for a reality show. The show, hosted by gruff former marine colonel named Dale Murphy, has its contestants trying to survive in a faux-apocalyptic landscape. The contestants include a former football player, a skateboarder, a lingerie model, a vegan artist, a lesbian soldier, and the director's girlfriend. The crew includes a horny director and a batch of hapless production assistants. Little do they all know, a clan of cannibalistic hillbillies call these woods their home. It's not long before the two equally isolated parties cross paths, with unexpected results.
In my review of the first “Wrong Turn,” I noted that there wasn't much in the way of familial interaction among the deformed hillbillies. The sequel develops its inbred killers more. First off, they get a definitive backstory. Chemical spills from the near-by paper mill mutated the locals and killed off the surrounding animal life, which is why they have to resort to cannibalism. (The incest is something they presumably do for fun.) More importantly, the monstrous rednecks are given more personality. They are truly a family. The father allows his son to shoot an arrow at some bound victims, showing pride in his boy. Ma cooks and the little sister gets her hard-working dad a beer. They say grace around their dinner of human stew. When the kids are killed, the parents are enraged and heartbreaking. Even unhinged Three-Finger, the sole returning mutant from the first “Wrong Turn,” displays his personality by wearing his victim's toupee as a trophy. These may be flesh-eating lunatics but they're people too. I appreciate a cheap horror investing its villains with a degree of depth like this.
Yet what I really like about “Wrong Turn 2” is that it, completely unexpected, becomes an action movie at times. As another willful defiance of slasher convention, the tough guy marine doesn't get killed after being captured. Instead, he survives and proceeds to kick ass all throughout the second half of the movie. An ideal role for Henry Rollins, Col. Murphy blasts mutants with a shotgun, improvises an exploding arrow clip, and even blows a guy right the fuck up with some dynamite. Rollins is so convincingly tough in the part that you really don't buy it when he eventually meets his fate. The only thing wrong with the sequel's action movie theatrics is that Joe Lynch's direction is a bit too shaky at times. He attempts some Edgar Wright-inspired snap-zooms but the actual fights are a little over-edited.
While I'm touch-and-go on “Tales from the Darkside,” I've really enjoyed every episode of its spiritual successor series, “Monsters,” that I've seen. “The Hole” is set in the middle of the Vietnam War. Sgt. Kenner and Corporal Torres, along with their South Vietnamese translator, climb down into a hole dug by the Viet Cong. They find the tunnel system strangely empty. Eventually, they come across a sickly female soldier. She says that the dead, buried in the walls of the tunnel, came to life and attacked. As if the Earth itself was revolting against them. Torres is freaked-out but Kenner dismisses the claims. Soon enough, the soldiers discover this is no legend.
“The Hole” puts a creepy and clever spin on the zombie idea. Vietnam stories always touch upon the idea of cocky American soldiers being caught off-guard by the guerilla tactics of the Viet Cong. This episode takes that idea one step further, with the Viet Cong returning from the dead to continue their fight against the invader forces. There's also the suggestion that the foreign soil, disturbed by the Americans fighting and killing on it, is striking back. The men have trouble finding their way back out of the tunnel, the earth seemingly shifting around them. “The Hole” is all about the idea that the American military has no business being in Vietnam, that everything that happens to them is the result of an unnatural intrusion.
At one point in time, people coming together to make a parody of a movie or series they love was considered the height of fandom devotion. “Hardware Wars,” after all, was one of the earliest fan films ever made. Horror nerds got their own version of this phenomenon in 1990 when someone named Kevin S. O'Brien created “Night of the Living Bread.” The eight minute parody follows many of the same beats as Romero's “Night of the Living Dead.” A woman and her brother visit a cemetery and are attacked marauding slices of white bread. She flees to a farm house, meeting up with a truck driver and the family hiding in the basement. Attempts are made through the night to fend off the glutenny attackers but, soon, the humans are overwhelmed when the bread rises to the occasion.
“Night of the Living Bread” goes out of its way to replicated “Night of the Living Dead's” various events. It opens with a perfectly re-created shot of a car coming around a winding road. O'Brien and his team even went to the effort to use the same title font. Similarly, the corpse Barbara finds at the top of the stairs is faithfully replicated. The sickly little girl in the basement is replaced with a bagel in a lunch bag, waiting to strike. News reporters on the television in both films provide an origin for the events. (In this case, an explosion at a Wonder Bread factory is blamed.) The infamously grim ending of Romero's picture is recreated here as a goofy visual gag. You can tell the people who made this were devoted fans of the original.
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