In this day and age, it has become increasingly difficult for a cult classic to emerge organically. So many films are pre-packaged as “cult movies,” with the kind of content designed to appeal to weirdo movie fans. Few of these end up breaking through, quickly being forgotten. In this respect, “Terrifier” isn't that different from a hundred other indie horror movies that come out every year. It's a slasher throwback with a retro synth score and over-the-top gore. Yet, somehow, “Terrifier” really did start to grow a cult following totally on its own. Slowly, I started to see fan art and bootleg merchandise of Art the Clown pop up over the course of several years. Now it's at the point where Art is already being accepted into the pantheon of modern horror icons. In spite of its passionate following, I was reluctant to watch “Terrifier,” owing to a lot of negative press I had read about it. Well, the time has now come for me to judge on this one for myself.
Tara and Dawn are winding down their Halloween night, stopping into a pizza place for a late night bite to eat. They are harassed by a silent man, dressed as a clown and carrying a garbage bag. After the clown is kicked out of the restaurant – for shitting all over the bathroom walls – Tara and Dawn return to their car... To find the tires slashed. As they wait for Tara's sister, Victoria, to pick them up, Tara walks over to a near-by derelict apartment building to use the restroom. Art the Clown returns, abducting Dawn and pursuing Tara through the dingy apartment. And so begins a night of terror, Art relentlessly chasing Tara and then Victoria, brutally murdering everyone who gets in his way and taking sadistic glee in their suffering.
In this sense, “Terrifier” is not really a homage to the eighties heyday of the slasher film. Leone keeps the pulsating synth score from the short film but ditches the VHS scan lines. The interest is not in going over the clichés and aesthetics of the subgenre again. By prioritizing raw terror and savage gore over everything else, “Terrifier” creates a distinctly mean-spirited atmosphere. Art's victims suffer. They scream in agony as he rips them apart, human bodies rendered in many different ways over the short run time. While most slasher movies set out to provide comfy, campy cheap thrills, “Terrifier” is clearly going for something with a harder edge. Art skins his victims, bashes heads in, eats their skin, and – in the film's most notorious moment – saws a woman from her groin and straight through her skull. This is a movie that brutalizes the audience more than it entertains.
Cause, here's the thing with “Terrifier:” Art the Clown is an asshole. He's not a menacing brute with a tragic backstory, like Jason or Leatherface. We learn nothing about Art throughout the film. He's not a lovable smart-ass, like Chucky. Art does comical japes – like honking a bike horn or riding a little tricycle around – but it's just to amuse himself. David Howard Thornton's performance vacillates between fittingly exaggerated miming and grim, psychopathic stares. Yet Art's antics seem designed to intentionally frustrate slasher movie conventions. When a final girl seems to best him, he pulls out a gun and shoots her. There's no ironic punishment, campy glee, or even twisted moral justification for his killing spree. Even his final act is seemingly done to rob the audience of a cathartic vanishing of evil.
Like I said, the care Damien Leone takes with creating “Terrifier's” world and characters shows he's not dumb. Which is why I don't believe him when he dismisses the claims of misogyny against the film. Art carved sexist slogans into a woman's skin in the short film. The film's full circle ending makes it clear that its heroine is left in a hopeless situation. And the infamous bone-saw to the pussy scene speaks for itself. Leone and his film knew what they were doing. These scenes are meant to provoke people, women especially. Art is a misogynist who reserves his most agonizing tortures for females. “Terrifier,” whose outlook seemingly reflects the brutalist and heartless outlook of its villain, kind of seems like it wants us to treat Art like he's Freddy or the Leprechaun. A goofy prankster, enacting far-out vengeance in a cartoonish world. When he's actually closer to Richard Speck or Paul Bernardo, a sexual-sadist who only takes joy in other people's suffering.
La Noche de Walpugis
Throughout these various Halloween marathons I've done, I've watched only two Paul Naschy movies. The multi-hyphenated talent more-or-less got Spain's horror industry going again in the seventies. Over the course of a career that stretched on for over one hundred credits, Naschy played just about all the classic monster movie characters. Yet his trademark role would be Waldemar Daninsky, a count cursed to become a werewolf and always return to life. Naschy played this Wolfman throughout twelve movies. The most successful, and still the most critically acclaimed, of the long-running series was 1970's “La Noche de Walpurgis.” Presumably because us dumb-ass Americans don't know what Walpurgis Night is, it was released over here under the far more salacious title of “The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman.”
Coroners dig two silver bullets out of Waldemar Daminsky's corpse, reviving him and beginning his lycanthropic rampage again. He moves into an isolated chateau in the Spanish countryside with his insane sister, searching for a legendary silver cross that can supposedly end his suffering. Simultaneously, college student Elvira and her friend Genevieve are in the same area. They are searching for the tomb of Wandesa Nadasdy, a medieval countess said to be involved in witchcraft and vampirism. They encounter and befriend Waldemar, finding the tomb soon afterwards. Removing the cross, the countess is revived. She begins a rampage across the countryside, turning Genevieve into a bloodsucker. As the titular witches' sabbath approaches, her power grows and Waldemar wolfs out more often, leading to a confrontation.
While the film does occasionally reach the heightened levels of uncanny dreaminess it clearly strives for, more often, “Walpurgis Night” is the campy exploitation flick its American title suggests. Shortly after coming back to life, Waldemar turns into a werewolf and kills a random woman. This leads to a shot of blood running down her naked breasts. That's just the most prominent example of the movie's trashy monster theatrics. A random zombified monk shows up, a full year before “Tomb of the Blind Dead” would make such revenants a common feature of Spanish horror. There's a cheesy decapitation, a dungeon full of chains, and several Satanic rituals. For what it's worth, Paul Naschy is quite good at howling and prowling. The Wolfman make-up isn't bad either, a shaggy update of Lon Chaney's look. That he drools so much is a nice touch.
Despite its obvious flaws, I did enjoy “Walpurgis Night.” There's a certain charm to the schlockiness here, a clear respect and love for classic horror tropes, that I don't detect in, say, “Vampyros Lesbos.” You get the impression that Naschy loved doing this stuff. By the way, it seems the dubbed “Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman” cut of the movie is in the public domain. However, before you watch the copies streaming on Tubi and other places, know that they are missing ten minutes and feature prints so dark and grainy they are almost indecipherable. Pick up the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-Ray instead, if you inclined to give this cheesy bit of monster-filled nonsense a look. [7/10]
The second of the 21st episode of “Night Gallery's” second season imagines a future very similar to the mid-seventies. With one differences: Highly advance robots, that look perfectly human, can be purchased to fill the roles of maids, cooks, and other laborers. “You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore” begins with such a model being returned to the manufacturers, extensively damaged. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Fulton, demand a refund. Yet it's clear to the engineer that built the machine that the maid robot was brutalized and beaten. We are then shown the aftermath of a party that resulted in these injuries, which suggest the maid robot might be more than it was programmed to be.
“You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore” is one of “Night Gallery” episodes that Rod Serling wrote himself. You can see the writer's penchant for social commentary clearly in the episode. The help in this story might be a literal object but, one imagines, the Fultons would treat her as such even if she was flesh and blood. When the robotic maid resists Mr. Fulton's sexual advances, Mrs. Fulton blames her. Even though she's a literal robot. When the machine dare defend itself with sharp, verbal barbs, it enrages both of the rich owners. The parallels are clear: The dehumanizing effect of toiling under spoiled, cruel upper-class makes robots of all of us. Those in power will always abuse those under them and bristled at any attempt to establish their god-given humanity.
“Underground Munster” begins with Herman scolding Spot. The dragon runs away from home and sneaks into the sewer system under Mockingbird Heights. This leads to reports of a monster underground, causing Herman to go into the sewer himself to retrieve the pet. That just leads to more supposed monster sightings, forcing the local mayor to take extreme actions. In “The Treasure of Mockingbird Heights,” Herman and Grandpa stumble upon a secret room in the basement while looking for a fuse box. What they find is an inscription, promising that a pirate's treasure is buried somewhere near-by. Shenanigans ensue.
“Underground Munster” has a funny premise, contrasting a typical family problem – a pet runs away – with the Munsters' macabre appearances and habits. When Marilyn shows up at the county office with Spot's over-sized collar, or Herman attempts to discipline the dragon, that got good chuckles out of me. The episode takes this idea to even wackier places as it goes on. Some of these bits are definitely a little shrill. Such as Grandpa and Lily speeding through the streets to rescue Herman or, of course, the exaggerated reactions of fright to the Munsters. I did like the bit about Eddie “chewing his nails.” The episode also includes an odd political subplot, of Grandpa attempting to highjack the local election with a machine. That's best utilized in the misleading opening but comes back again at the end, with uninspired results.
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