New Line Cinema was no stranger to long-running horror series by the time “Final Destination” became a hit in 2000. Considering the studio's history with Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, and the Crites, one imagines talk about Death itself being their next star monster began early. Ultimately, an entire new crew was assembled for “Final Destination 2,” James Wong and Glen Howard committed to other projects. J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress were recruited to write the script based on the strength of their then-unfilmed spec script, “The Butterfly Effect.” Veteran stunt coordinator and second unit guy David R. Ellis stepped into the director's chair, despite his only previous directional credit being kiddie sequel “Homeward Bound 2.” That pedigree – a pair of largely unproven writers, a director better known in other fields – suggest the sequel was strictly a mercenary effort. And perhaps it was intended to be. However, Ellis and his team turned out to be exactly the right people for the job. “Final Destination 2” successfully turned one clever fright flick into an on-going series.
College student Kimberly and her friends are expecting to have a fun, debauched spring break in Daytona Beach. Instead, truck hulling logs comes loose, resulting in a ghastly freeway pile-up that takes the lives of Kim, all her friends, and countless other people. This is, in fact, only a premonition of future events. Kimberly freaks out and attracts the attention of state trooper Thomas Burke. Along with several other drivers, they managed to just avoid the resulting crash that claims Kimberly's friends. The group quickly draw comparison to the explosion of Flight 180 and the bizarre fate that befell the survivors the year before. After two of the people on the freeway that day die in freakish accidents, Kimberly seeks out the help of Clear River, the sole survivor of the first film. The rest of the group – a single mom, a teacher, a coke head, a high-strung professional young woman – all realize they have some connection to Flight 180. That they are all trapped in Death's latest design. They struggle to find an escape, in the form of a pregnant woman delivering her baby and bringing new life into the equation, before all of them are claimed in gruesome accidents.
The plane accident that kicked off the original “Final Destination” was well-executed. As far as on-screen carnage goes, it was good. One also gets the impression that James Wong worked carefully to make sure it didn't overshadow the stunts to come later in the film. David R. Ellis wasn't worried about that. Putting his stunt work experience to good use, the freeway pile-up in “Final Destination 2” is the kind of legendary horror film making that makes people fans for life. You might have seen the memes about how this movie has made an entire generation paranoid every time they pass a truck hulling logs. That's a good example of how the sequence taps into every day fears. Mostly though, the sequence is a furiously directed and edited escalation of violence. The gore is surprisingly brutal, people pulverized by a sailing log, crushed by a sliding motorcycle, and left to burn. Ellis throws in multiple explosions, each one hitting harder than the one before. It feels like a roller coaster ride, strapped into a nightmare scenario that only gets worst before the truck careens right at the camera, seemingly coming for us viewer too. Good shit, in other words.
College student Kimberly and her friends are expecting to have a fun, debauched spring break in Daytona Beach. Instead, truck hulling logs comes loose, resulting in a ghastly freeway pile-up that takes the lives of Kim, all her friends, and countless other people. This is, in fact, only a premonition of future events. Kimberly freaks out and attracts the attention of state trooper Thomas Burke. Along with several other drivers, they managed to just avoid the resulting crash that claims Kimberly's friends. The group quickly draw comparison to the explosion of Flight 180 and the bizarre fate that befell the survivors the year before. After two of the people on the freeway that day die in freakish accidents, Kimberly seeks out the help of Clear River, the sole survivor of the first film. The rest of the group – a single mom, a teacher, a coke head, a high-strung professional young woman – all realize they have some connection to Flight 180. That they are all trapped in Death's latest design. They struggle to find an escape, in the form of a pregnant woman delivering her baby and bringing new life into the equation, before all of them are claimed in gruesome accidents.
That might have resulted in “Final Destination 2” peaking early. Indeed, the sequel is never as intense or scary again as it is in this moment. That doesn't stop the movie from engineering further moments of gloriously fucked-up violence. David R. Ellis goes for bombast, taking the first's formula of chain reactions of small events leading to grisly death and ramping it way up. Fiery explosions reoccur throughout the film, a car going up in flames and an apartment being consumed. The executions are much messier than before. A fire escape ladder smashing into a face, an elevator decapitation, or a barb wire fence flying through the air to slice someone into thirds have a bloody viciousness to them that were largely missing in studio horror movies in 2003. This is clearest during a spectacularly messed up moment when a young kid is totally creamed by a falling plate of glass, reduced to liquid by the weight.
The somewhat flippant tone “Final Destination 2” carries, right through to the clearly farcical pre-credit gag, would suggest that we shouldn't get that invested in any of its characters. Some of the cast members, such as the shirtless lottery winner in a muscle car played by David Paetkau, are cartoonish assholes. However, the sequel does a shockingly good job of making its meat-bags unexpectedly human. Compared to the pretty but indistinct teenagers of the first movie, the cast here is a lot more diverse in demographics. T.C. Carson is a high-strung black man, Keegan Connor Tracy is a single female lawyer, Lynda Boyd is a middle-aged widower. When Carson attempts suicide, to take control over his life back, it is an unexpectedly vulnerable moment. Similarly, the drug addict played by Rory Peters is a fairly one-note character throughout the film. However, a brief moment where he asks someone to protect his mother from his partying life style in the event of his death is unexpectedly meaningful. The sequel is shockingly good at sneaking in little moments of texture like that, going a long ways to making its characters more than merely bodies awaiting execution.
Un angelo per Satana
My buddies over at All Outta Bubblegum used to have a reoccurring feature any time they reviewed a movie starring an especially distinguished action star. Certain iconic performers had a checklist of trademarks they often performed. If you wanted to know how many of Chuck Norris' movies feature him performing a roundhouse kick or how often Steven Seagal snaps a limb in one of his features, that would be the best way to learn. I am so fond of this metric that I've used it myself multiple times. While the action genre is especially good for this, you can cook up checklist for about any star who made lots of the same kind of stuff. For example! The string of gothic horror flicks Barbara Steele made in Italy in the late sixties were all highly imitative of Mario Bava's “Black Sunday,” the film that made Steele a scream queen and kicked off this wave. So much so that you could easily track how often the same tropes appear across these films. If one were to assemble a Scenarios of Steele checklist, it would contain descriptions such as “plays a dual role,” “revenge from beyond the grave,” “plot involving witchcraft or gaslighting,” and “period setting or gothic trappings.” You'll find all of the movies Steele starred in during this time feature one or all of these devices. A very typical example is 1968's “An Angel for Satan,” which is said to be the last film of this exact type Dame Steele would make.
An artist named Roberto Merigi arrives at the villa of Count Montebruno, a stately manor surrounded by a lake. Roberto has been hired to restore an ancient statue recently recovered from the watery depths. It depicts Belinda, an ancestor of Montebruno that was said to be a beautiful but infinitely cruel witch. A curse is said to surround the statue and its unearthing has the villagers spooked. At the same time, the count's niece, Harriet, returns home from college. Roberto notices a striking resemblance between Harriet and the statue of Belinda, asking her to pose as the model for the restoration. The two quickly fall in love but Harriet begins to act strangely. Her kind personality will randomly be replaced with a sadistic, manipulative one and she begins to play deadly mind games with the people around town. Moreover, during these episodes, she claims her name is Belinda. Has she been possessed by the spirit carried within the cursed statue or is something else afoot?
Unfortunately, not all of "An Angel for Satan" is devoted to Steele being a devious, mildly gay, dommy queen. Spaghetti western regular Anthony Steffen plays Roberto, a perfectly cromulent lead who is otherwise lacking in charm or depth. The romance between him and Harriet exists as a plot device more than anything else, despite a few steamy scenes of them making out. This is not the only inessential subplot in the film. Truthfully, a lot of "An Angel for Satan" is devoted to setting up the petty melodramas of the various characters around the village. There's a virtuous school teacher courting Harriet's chamber maid, a brutish drunk who hangs out at the bar, his wife and daughter, and several other dangling plot points that entirely too much screen time is devoted to. It takes more brain power to track who everyone is and what their relations are to each other, what particular cliched conflicts are playing out between them, than the film ever pays back. That makes for a slow paced and largely unengaging viewing experience.
The final sin "An Angel for Satan" commits occurs mere minutes before the end titles. That would be a twist ending that undermines the most interesting elements of the story in a way that struck this viewer as especially contrived. It happens so soon before the end credits role that the revelation feels shoved in as a last minute addition. The Italian appetite for tales of curses, witches, old castles, and persecuted maidens in lovely gowns was about worn out by this point. Steele would lend her unique talents to one more horror film before the sixties ended before taking a five year hiatus from the genre, by which point horror had transformed into a different animal. "An Angel for Satan" definitely represents this particular wave of films in an exhausted state, the cliches run through and writers and directors fresh out of ideas to revitalize them. But that horse whipping scene is pretty great. They can't take that away from us. [6/10]
I was quite impressed with the episode of “'Way Out” – the obscure, partially lost horror anthology that Roald Dahl hosted for thirteen episodes in 1961 – I watched last year, so here's another one. “Side Show” stars future Amity Island mayor Murray Hamilton as Harold, a forty year old man with a crabby wife and a job he hates. On a whim one night, he visits a carnival. He's drawn to the side show. Most of the sights within do not live up to the barker's over-excited sales pitch. However, Harold is drawn to the Electric Woman, a seemingly headless woman in a gown strapped to an electric chair. He hears the apparently decapitated woman speaking to him and feels a connection. He returns every night to the carnival, much to his wife's annoyance, and learns that the Electric Woman is held against her will by the barker. Harold hatches a plot to free his headless object of affection but it doesn't end great for him.
“Side Show” doesn't have the tension nor the ironic pay-off of “I Heard You Calling Me.” In fact, the episode's twisted ending raised more questions than it answers. From the first scene, it is obvious that there's something sinister about the side show attraction Harold becomes enamored of. That he's being led to his doom by some sort of otherworldly siren is foreshadowed by the eerie music that plays whenever she talks. However, the exact nature of what is happening here is left vague. Whether the barker genuinely is a sinister figure or unaware of what is happening is not elaborated upon. The final reveal makes for a decent shock but I don't think it makes much sense. The moral here seems to boil down to simply “don't trust strange women” but there's not much in the way of interior logic.
Filmways or whoever didn't spend all that money creating furry suits for Felix Silla to sweat in and a miniature set for him to wobble around not to use them. Which means we got another Cousin Itt centric episode. This one sees the fuzzy relative visiting 0001 Cemetery Lane following an adventure in the far east. Gomez gifts him a big dog, that looks like some sort of wolfhound in a Beatles wig. While chopping up his birthday cake with an executioner's axe, the family starts to notice that it appears ol' Itt is going bald. Concerned for their hairy pal, Uncle Fester goes about creating a cure for male pattern baldness in his laboratory. The chemical solution works too well, various objects around the Addams' home starting to sprout full, luxurious manes.
I guess just about every man has dealt with some anxiety over losing his hair at one point or another. It is a part of the masculine condition, I suppose. Giving that particular anxiety to the most hirsute member of the Addams Family is an amusing joke. This leads to some amusingly silly lines from Gomez and Morticia, gasping in mock horror about Itt's apparent hair loss. This is another joke that clearly doesn't have long enough legs to support a whole half-hour. After Fester's formula works, and he grows a gorgeous mop, he starts to court female attention. This subplot never really goes anywhere and isn't as funny as the Itt related problems. Though Fester's reaction to a phone call at the end did get a chuckle out of me.
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