Halloween 2025: September 14th

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

You can debate whether this new decade has produced any horror franchises of its own with real staying power. "M3GAN" seems to have slipped on her second run. Ti West's "X" trilogy was more of a niche thing. While the 2020s struggles to find their own monsters, studios certainly remain determined to resurrect the slasher stars of previous decades. Recent relaunches of "Halloween" and "Scream" have made the "legacy sequel" – a fusion sequel/reboot/remake that brings back old characters, introduce new ones, and tell suspiciously familiar stories – the hot trend in studio horror. That concept might have jumped the shark this past summer when Columbia Studios applied the legacy sequel treatment to "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Ah yes, the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" trilogy with its iconic characters like... The "Party of Five" chick and... That guy. Ya know, the beloved slasher villain. The, uh, Gordon's Fisherman or whatever. Yes, I do believe someone greatly overestimated the public's investment in this particular nostalgia property. I know what I did nearly a decade ago and that was review the previous three films in this crappy series. I might as well give the new crappy one a shot too. 

We return once again to the seaside town of Southport, North Carolina during the 4th of July weekend. Ava and Milo's best friends, Danica and Teddy, are celebrating their engagement. They pick up an old friend, a recovering addict named Stevie, and drive out to a winding mountain road to watch the fireworks. That's when Teddy, fooling around in the road, causes a car to drive off the edge. Rather than go to the police, Danica talks the group into keeping it a secret and Teddy's influential father provides additional cover-up. One year later, Ava returns home to attend a second engagement party Danica is having with her new boyfriend, Wyatt. At the party, Danica receives a letter simply reading “I know what you did last summer.”  That night, Wyatt is murdered by a killer in a fisherman slicker. It becomes quickly apparent that Ava and all her friends are being stalked by the same hook-wielding maniac, eager to deliver vengeance upon them for their misdeeds. The group seek out the help of Julie James and Ray Bronson, survivors of a killing spree with the exact same M.O. from over thirty years ago. 

The script, which director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson co-write with Sam Lansky, makes sure to inform us that Ava is bisexual, that all the characters are into social media or drugs, without making these seem like real defining characteristics. Everyone is hot and toned and unblemished and often swapping romantic partners. These elements exist alongside all of them being rather unlikable people. Danica never once apologizes for being an accessory in the death of a bystander, coming across as largely vapid. Everyone seem entitled to a bright future without once grappling with the consequences of what they've done. At first, I figured the brainless Teddy or the shallow Danica were meant to be the villains of the film, intentionally unlikable rich kids who believe they are always beyond reproach. Instead, by the film's end – when everyone is trading catty dialogue like “Fuck the 4th of July!” –  it's apparent that we are actually suppose to find these traits endearing. Truthfully, the film isn't about guilt or responsibility at all. These events happen to these people and I never once believed they were learning anything.

Something else that is severely lacking is a sense that any of the main characters are in danger. Despite the killer ostensibly being after Ava and her friends, everyone around them seems to be dying instead. The ensemble is fruitlessly chased while a handful of unimportant side players wander in to be speared upon the Fisherman's hook. Danica's pointless second fiance or a random cemetery groundskeeper are two of the bystanders introduced to be fodder. Much like the original film, Robinson's “Last Summer” suggest there truly aren't that many ways to kill someone with a big hook. There's a decent neck impaling but, otherwise, the gore proves totally forgettable. Another example of the sequel's lack of creativity is present in two separate scenes where someone can't hear a victim's cries for help and screams of agony because they are listening to music too loudly. Ya know, a slasher flick can get away with that gag once but twice is simply egregious. 

Occasionally, the film seems like it might possibly be gesturing at some form of social commentary. One of the Fisherman's earliest victims is a true crime podcaster obsessed with the murder spree from the original film. When she's at the end of the killer's hook, she says she's “a fan” of their work. If this is meant to be a commentary on the callousness of the true crime industry or the gross type of celebrity our culture affords to murderers, it never develops into an actual point. (Considering 2018's “Halloween” and “Terrifier 3” also did something like this, it's quickly become an abused trope in modern slashers.) Similarly, Teddy's rich dad is a real estate developer, who bought up Southport property after its value plummeted following the original murders. Despite the obvious crassness of these actions, Ted's dad isn't depicted as especially ruthless. That would require the film actually giving any of its characters' actual defining characteristics at all. The sequel wants to invoke vague notions of relevancy without commenting on these issues in any way. 

The annoyingly trendy characters or bloodless attempts at meaning are, somehow, not the element of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” that bugged me the most. David Gordon Green's “Halloween” trilogy connects to the original via Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. The new “Scream” sequels make sure to introduce the kids and relatives of the established cast members. Ava and her friends have no connection to the 1997 ensemble. They are simply being pursued by a killer with the same costume and gimmick. When the identity of the villain is revealed – in a moment that definitely feels more “Scream” than “Last Summer” – no justification is given for continuing with the fisherman get-up. Julie James is brought back into the story, because the new group seems to think she can help them. Now, why would that be? Having survived an unrelated murderer in the same town thirty years ago does not give her any special insight into this new batch of unconnected killings. A more desperate, less sensible reason is introduced as a cheap twist but it feels like nothing but an excuse to have Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prince Jr. in the movie. Hewitt, for whatever it is worth, is probably the most personable and interesting performer in the film. This is more by a lack of any other options, as the new recruits are completely indistinguishable. 

Robinson claims to be a big fan of the original films. This is apparent in shout-outs to the superiority schlocky “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and two very dumb scenes that bring back additional cast members from the nineties. (The former is a dream sequence and the latter is a post-credit scene, both feeling like last minute additions.) Notably not referenced is “I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer,” the very bad direct-to-video third entry. As lame as that movie was, introducing a supernatural element to the Fisherman at least kept a logical link to the original. This reboot goes through all the legacy sequel steps without finding what was unique or interesting about these characters and their world originally. I mean, that's probably because “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was always lame bullshit but those older movies at least had a little more meat on their bones than this meager stab at a revival. The film technically turned a profit – 64 million at the global box office against a 16 million budget – but the complete lack of enthusiasm it was received with makes further follow-ups unlikely. I guess we won't be getting reboots of “Urban Legend” or “Cherry Falls” then, which is probably no great loss either. [4/10]

The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957)

Cult movie aficionados recall the Italian peplum craze of the late fifties and early sixties with a great deal of fondness. It is one of the defining flavors of cinematic mozzarella, cheap and cheesy flicks churned out by the Italians. Less discussed is a similar but distinctly different sub-genre that occurred around the same time. That would be the viking movie, low budget sword-and-sandal epics set on the other side of the European continent. A handful of these, a lot of which starred Cameron Mitchell or Gordon Mitchell, arrived at the same time gladiators and Hercules were filling drive-ins. Most of these arose in the wake of Kirk Douglas swashbuckler “The Vikings.” Roger Corman, ever the savvy businessman, attempted to beat that movie into theaters by quickly throwing together his own take on the Norse sagas. The result was a motion picture now most recalled for its hilariously long-winded title, “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.” Ol' Rog really wanted this one to get its deserved space on the marquee, didn't he?

Some time ago, the brave Viking men of Stannjold left on a journey across the sea. They have yet to return. The women of the community, with only an errand boy named Ottar to keep them company, are starting to get antsy. They assemble their own longboat and set out on a rescue mission, While crossing the ocean, they are attacked by a great sea serpent and tossed aside by a vortex. The women – leader Desir, the dark-haired and mysterious Enger, the young and naive Asmild – wash up on the beach. They are soon abducted by Stark, the cruel leader of the local Grimaults tribe. Captured and imprisoned, the women eventually discover that their men are being used as workers in a near-by cave. Attempted burnings at the stake, boar hunts, sword fights, ritual funerals, and another appearance from that pesky sea serpent all follow. 

“The Saga of the Viking Women” was born of an ambitious pitch from special effects guys Irving Block and Jack Rabin. We can only speculate on why these two conceived of a story about viking women, rather than viking men. However, one assumes that the commercial potential of a poster filled with gorgeous, Nordic beauties was a factor. Populating an adventure story largely with female characters does, however unintentionally, make “The Great Sea Serpent” a somewhat unusual film for its time period. The story necessitates that women take charge, seeking to rescue their men. They are the ones who fling spears, slay a boar, and sail the boats. One sequence features Desir besting the Grimnaults prince in an arm wrestling contest. Almost as if the writers realized they had accidentally made a feminist motion picture, the film immediately backtracks the minute the viking men are introduced back into the story. At that point, the guys start leading the story, getting to fight the titular sea monster, clang swords with the villain, and rescue the now cowering women.

Up until that second half, I thought for sure that “The Saga of the Viking Women” was some writer allowing his Amazon fantasies out to play. All the statuesque women, while doing acts of strength, spend the early scenes bossing Ottar around. The character is played by Jonathan Haze, “Little Shop of Horror's” Seymour, and he's a hairless little twink here. Exactly the type of slave-boy that would submit to towering women. You can tell the film has lost the thread when Ottar is the one who saves the day during the climax, this slave-boy having become a slave-man. Despite the frantic attempt to undo any feminist reading the material might have had, there is an impossible to ignore queer vibe floating all throughout “Viking Women.” Jay Sayer plays Senya, the Grimnaults prince, as a swishing fairy desperate to prove his clearly lacking manhood to his barbarian father. There is, no doubt, something subversive in the depiction of weak men and powerful women. 

Ultimately, the kinky and gay undercurrents in “Viking Women” are the most interesting things about a film with not a lot else going for it. Obviously, Corman and his crew did not have the budget necessary for a proper fantasy epic. The sea serpent mentioned in the title only appears briefly in two scenes. It appears to be a rather floppy jawed hand puppet in a bathtub somewhere. There's also a moment of someone being struck down when lightning connects with their sword. Otherwise, “Waters of the Great Sea Serpent” is a bit of a nothing movie. The script attempts to mine some tension from Enger's lust for Desir's bare-chested boyfriend but it doesn't amount to much. The boar scene clearly never has the actors interacting with stock footage of a wild pig. There are long sequences of the viking guys breaking rocks in a cave, the women standing around and talking about what they should do, and the bad guys lecturing them about their greatness. Not the most compelling strain of schlock. 

There is, in fact, a good reason why “The Voyage of the Viking Women” turned out the way it did. The writers won Corman over with some gorgeous concept art, claiming they had all the special effects expertise necessary to bring these images to life within. They did not, a difficult situation made far more stressful by a typically tight budget. Production was a disaster, with the boat prop falling apart and some actresses nearly drowning. No wonder Corman decided the rest of the movie would be mostly composed of interior shot, dialogue driven scenes. The result is a fairly tedious B-movie. Corman does keep it fast paced and short, wrapping up the whole thing in a little over an hour, and the cast is lovely. Nevertheless, it's no surprise that the hilarious overwrought title emerges as the most memorable element of this one. I wonder if they could've made the title more of a run-on sentence? “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Wherefore They Braved the Perilous Vortex, Fought the Fearsome Barbarians, Slew the Mighty Boar, and Angered the Gods of Thunder and Lightning” does have a nice ring to it... [5/10]

Thriller (1973): A Coffin for the Bride
 

A full decade after Boris Karloff's “Thriller” came to an end, a program with an identical title began airing on the other side of the ocean. This “Thriller” was produced for British network ITV, created by influential screenwriter Brian Clements, and ran for six seasons. Unlike most other English anthology series of the time, which wouldn't develop fans in America until years later, a select number of “Thriller” episodes aired over here as part of “ABC's Wide World of Mystery” program. One such episode was “A Coffin for the Bride,” supposedly Clements' favorite. It follows Mark Walker, a former merchant marine who suffered psychological damage after falling to a dock. In the years since then, he's developed an eccentric habit. He hangs out in bars and hotel lobbies, looking for women who are perhaps a little older, whose looks have faded it a bit. He seduces them, convinces them to marry him, murders them via drowning, and then compulsively starts the cycle again. He has set his sights on two targets recently: Stella, a costume designer who is significantly younger and prettier than his usual targets, and Angela, a vulgar older broad that is more his style. A detective is on his trail but danger is much closer to Mark than that. 

“A Coffin for the Bride” plays a bit like a made-for-TV version of “Frenzy.” The second scene introduces Michael Gwynn as a detective certain of Walker's guilt but unable to prove anything. We follow him for a little bit as he fruitlessly tries to stop the murderer before another body piles up. He then becomes Max's next victim at the end of the first act. (Or "End of Part One," as a title card informs us.) From that point on, the literal lady killer is the story's protagonist. "A Coffin for the Bride" obviously can't get as perverse or explicit as Hitchcock's last masterpiece but it does take some measures to humanize the psychopath. Mark is clearly driven to kill by an uncontrollable impulse, the result of a traumatic brain injury. He makes plans with Stella for the night but, after meeting a perfect target in the form of Angela, quickly cancels them. As if he can do nothing to stop himself from enacting the cycle again. More than once, he seems to slip into a fugue state of sorts before a kill or while deep in thought. The script never quite goes so far as to make Mark a sympathetic character. Never once does he express a desire to want to stop killing. In the first scene, he makes a misogynistic comment after drowning a portly woman. His obsession with his own fitness, or the ease with which he slips into a manipulative mode the minute he's around a vulnerable lady, all seem to suggest that this guy is a bit like the masculine id run amok. As if "A Coffin for the Bride" is taking the leisure suited, seventies lothario concept to its most extreme conclusion. However, merely suggesting that a serial killer's violent nature could be caused by a medical program or that he is also a victim of his own twisted psychology is a lot more than you'd expect from a seventies TV show. 

Like many episodes of British television from this time, "Thriller" is a bit flat in its presentation. There's little music and the framing can be rather stage-like. A lot of the hour takes place in the same hotel lobby set. The attraction is clearly in the writing and acting. The epilogue reveals a twist that I probably should have seen coming but that genuinely caught me off-guard, a solidly constructed piece of misdirection. As the fuzz starts to close in on Mark, the killer caught in a web of his own making, some tension is engineered. Michael Jayston does a good job of balancing the seemingly contradictory features of the sociopath. That he is both outwardly charming while remaining nothing but cold to his victims, totally self-centered and manipulative as he works towards making his homicidal fantasies a reality. You can actually believe that Stella, played by a young Helen Mirren in all her purring sensuality, could be attracted to this guy and willing to overlook his obvious eccentricities. Mirren is compelling in the role and the mystery over whether Stella knows more than she lets on is part of what makes the episode successful. This "Thriller" isn't as scary as the other British genre anthologies I've seen but it is a well written and composed affair. [7/10]

 

The Addams Family: Portrait of Gomez

While out moon-bathing one night, the Addams family is interrupted by the phone ringing. It turns out to have been a missed call from Strife Magazine. The family immediately assumes that Gomez has been selected to be the publication's Man of the Year. After an extensive look, Morticia uncovers the perfect photograph for the cover... Only for Cleopatra to gulp it down. The couple next head to the storefront of Gomez' favorite photographer, only to see the man has closed up shop. Dismayed, they hire a private detective to locate the guy. Turns out he's now snapping the driver's license photos for the Department of Motor Vehicles! Gomez realizes that learning how to drive a car might be the easiest way to get the photo portrait he so desires. But, ah, what about the magazine that started off this series of events in the first place? 

If the above plot synopsis didn't make it obvious, “Portrait of Gomez” is an especially rambling episode of “The Addams Family.” It feels like the writers wanted to do an episode about Gomez attempting to get his driver's license, resulting in many wacky scenarios. Rather than build the entire teleplay around that incident, they worked backwards from there and constructed a suitably bizarre chain reaction. The incident that lends the episode its title is something of an afterthought, only occurring after the family is done with going through these bizarre hoops. That makes this entire episode a delivery machine for one oddball visual gag after another. Such as Grandmama being buried alive, the reveal of Gomez' baby picture, the happy couple trying to wrestle the photo away from Cleopatra, the Addams father using Fester's head as a brake pad, and the inevitable results of the driving test. Needless to say, it doesn't go well and, as you'd expect, the Addams are as upbeat about the results as they ever are. 

I enjoyed all of these jokes. Especially the bit about Fester attempting to take a photograph, which gets sillier and sillier as it goes on. It also amused me that the driving test instructor at the DMV is more annoyed than freaked out by the Addams' macabre antics. However, what I found interesting about this one was the deep depression Gomez falls into when he can't locate his favorite photographer. His head sinks low, covered by his hat, and he then suspends himself from the chandelier and won't come down for three days. Wow, we don't often see Gomez in that bad of a funk. I sort of wish the episode explored that more before getting right back to the gaggery. (Which includes a good joke upon Gomez realizing he needs to shave.) One can easily predict that the entire situation with the magazine has been a misunderstanding but that's okay. This is an episode where getting to that conclusion is an amusingly silly ride. [7/10]