Halloween 2021: October 23rd

The Empty Man (2020)

“The Empty Man” is the fastest I've ever seen a movie become a cult classic. Produced shortly before 20th Century Fox's buy-out by Disney the studio had no idea what to do with the movie. Director David Prior had to assemble a test screening cut days after production ended. Test audiences were baffled. The studio recut the movie and only got worst reactions. Disney inherited the film, with no interest in releasing it. “The Empty Man” had its release date shuffled and was dumped into theaters in the middle of a pandemic. The studio gave so few shits about that they stuck the 20th Century Fox logo on it, even though Fox had been dropped from the company name by that point. Months after it disappeared from theaters just as quickly as it arrived, I started to hear rave reviews for “The Empty Man.” It seems this movie, that got buried by the studio, is actually pretty good! I'll be the judge of that!

Amanda, the teenage daughter of Nora, has disappeared. She left the message “The Empty Man made me do it” on her bedroom mirror. Nora reaches out to family friend James Lasombra, a former detective, to locate her. James learns that, days before her disappearance, Amanda and her friends partook in an urban legend ritual to summon an entity called the Empty Man. Supposedly three days after invoking him, the Empty Man appears to take you. James' investigation leads him to uncover more dead teens as well as a new age cult called the Pontifex Institute. Soon, James has gotten in over his head with forces he can't even imagine. It becomes apparent that the Empty Man is coming after him too. 

“The Empty Man” was sold as if it was another creepypasta-inspired feature, its trailer drawing immediate comparisons to “The Bye-Bye Man” and “Slender Man.” Elements of the film certainly recall the modern urban legend formula. The teenagers have to perform a specific series of actions to bring the Empty Man's curse upon themselves. This one involves going to an unoccupied bridge, blowing into an empty bottle, and invoking the spirit's name. That's a lot of steps! Yet “The Empty Man” uses this set-up to explore bigger, crazier ideas. The legend is just a way to indoctrinate people into a cult. Said cult is receiving messages from an otherworldly entity, which is eager to exert its eldritch influence on the human world. By the end, a slimy-faced Cthulhuloid even puts in an appearance. The way the film links modern creepypasta lore with Lovecraftian concepts is pretty clever.

Director Prior, who has mostly worked on DVD special features, does everything he can to make the movie scary. Lots of ominous whispers and distortions are included on the soundtrack. On his quest to uncover the truth, James runs into all sorts of creepy business. Such as a VHS tape of bizarre experiments. And ominous cult activities, outside a high school and deep inside the bowels of an institute. The Empty Man himself advances through the darkness, the sound design working to make his appearance as unsettling as possible. The film even throws in some graphic gore, via an intense stabbing to the face. Definitely the scariest sequence in the film has James discovering a profane ritual deep in the woods. As he stands in the dark, he realizes the worshipers have spotted him and they slowly advance towards him. It's all arguably overproduced but is also pretty effective and well-done.

“The Empty Man” has an excess of imagination. The film's mixture of folklore with cosmic horror, cult activity with hallucinatory incidents, only comprises some of its ideas. Tulpas and thought forms are an important plot point. As I mention above, there's at least one slasher style murder sequence. The film somehow squeezes its complex story within three days. Visuals and narrative references are made to bridges and abysses, obviously feeding into the story's themes. The story begins with a lengthy prologue set in 1995, in the mountains of Bhutan. The film has a lengthy 137 minute run time, which still isn't enough to fully explore all the concepts on display here. What of Stephen Root's creepy cult leader? What of the implications of loss connecting the various characters? “The Empty Man” throws a lot of balls up into the air and is only able to catch a few of them.

The film is loosely based on a comic series, which probably had more room to explore a lot of these far-out premises. Considering the movie was sold as an unambitious monster movie, that it contains so many big concepts is certainly surprising. (Which also explains why a big studio had no idea how to sell it.) This is probably why “The Empty Man” received so many enthusiastic recommendations after it cropped up on VOD, where people were actually able to see it. I've got to say, the movie is effectively creepy and features enough interesting story turns to keep me guessing and surprised. It's also way too long and has a convoluted plot that gets in its own way multiple times. Still, I gotta admire a genre effort that appears to have humble goals before shooting for the moon. Or, rather, the vast abyss beyond the veil of human perception. I'm glad that Prior already has another project lined up and that this one's non-performance in theaters didn't end his career. [7/10]

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)

Last October, I watched and reviewed “The Toxic Avenger.” That is certainly the most popular and beloved film to emerge from the lunatic asylum that is Troma Entertainment. At the time, I expressed a mixture of ambivalence and endearment towards the studio's aggressively crude and rude style of filmmaking. Even if I like their movies more in concept than in execution, there's no denying that the weird and wild world of Troma was a pivotal part of my cult movie education. Two years after Toxie would be unleashed, Lloyd Kaufman would return with another utterly deranged and totally outrageous exploitation experience. “Class of Nuke 'Em High” would escape New Jersey in December of 1986, attracting a similar audience of teenage boys hungry for the most outrageous cinematic stimulation possible. 

Tromaville High School is right next door to a nuclear power plant. Matching what we know about Tromaville, New Jersey from “The Toxic Avenger,” the plant is poorly maintained and run by the shadiest, sketchiest officials possible. Unsurprisingly, radioactive waste has leaked into school. It's starting to affect the students. The honor's club has morphed into depraved, insane punks, criminals, and drug dealers. Relative normal teenagers Chrissy and Warren are just trying to survive this crazy environment and make it to college. After smoking a pair of radioactive joints, the two loose their virginity to each other. Both undergo strange side effects, with Chrissy giving birth to a mutated tadpole creature. As the punks become more destructive, eventually plotting to destroy the school itself, Chrissy and Warren's mutated offspring grows in the school's basement. 

He co-directs with Richard W. Haines, and is credited under the synonym of “Samuel Weil,” but “Class of Nuke 'Em High” is undeniably a product of the imagination of Lloyd Kaufman. The Troma formula is perfectly represented. The movie mixes slimy gore effects with incredibly crude humor, lots of sex and nudity, and vague stabs at social commentaries. In fact, this one resembles “The Toxic Avenger” quite a lot. Both movies feature utterly ridiculous gangs of sociopathic youths wrecking havoc. Both have a repetitive soundtrack composed of extremely corny pop-rock. Both have scenes of an old woman being beaten. When Warren confronts Spike's gang in a back alley, while the radioactive pot gives him super-strength and pulsating head-tumors, it really feels like a deleted Toxie sequence. R.L. Ryan, who played the cartoonishly corrupt mayor in “Toxic Avenger,” reappears here as the cartoonishly corrupt owner of the nuclear power plant. 

Despite the similarities – and I can't believe I'm saying this but – “Class of Nuke 'Em High” is a bit more polished than the original “Toxic Avenger.” This film lacks a lot of the mean-spirited edge that made Kaufman's earlier horror/comedy hybrid harder to swallow. Oh, there are still lots of scenes devoted to humiliating nerds and dehumanizing women. Yet the good guys in this one are mostly pretty good and the bad guys are totally absurd, comic grotesque. Among Spike's gang of mutated freaks is a guy with giant facial piercings and a mouth-guard he frequently spits out, who constantly wields a bone as a weapon. His dialogue swerves wildly between incoherent grunting and surprisingly eloquent moments of humanity. All of the gang members accessorizes with bizarre hairdos, strange fashion statements, and various body modifications. Considering these are suppose to be high school students – a burly, mustachioed biker is among them – it all comes off as amusingly over-the-top in its ridiculousness. 

While “The Toxic Avenger's” horror content arose from Toxie reducing the villains to gloopy, rubbery gore, “Class of Nuke “Em High” is a little more sophisticated in this regard. After having radiation-influenced sex, Chrissie and Warren experienced all sorts of bizarre side effects. Warren gets splotchy skin before sprouting a literal monster-sized erection. Chrissie's belly swells, in a crude simulation of pregnancy, before a squirming tail burst from her belly button. She eventually coughs up a mutant tadpole which, in the last act, grows into a spiny, nine-foot tall beast. The resulting rampage features lots of graphic radiation burns, a fist shoved down a throat, and a pretty cool stunt involving a motorcycle. As with everything Troma, there's a lot of bizarre touches here. Such as the noise the monster makes in its embryo form being incessantly repeated. Or swirling inverted colors being used more than once. But it's still pretty cool.

As always, Troma's extremely dumb and intentionally offensive shenanigans is not for everyone. “Class of Nuke 'Em High” is cheap, stupid, sleazy, and crude in every meaning of the world. Yet, when in the mood for this kind of nonsense, I can roll with it. On this particular occasion, I watched “Class of Nuke 'Em High” around two in the morning while on a pretty strong sugar high. This might be the ideal way to consume Troma Entertainment: Late at night, while under the effect of some sort of mind-altering substances. While never quite as beloved or popular as “The Toxic Avenger” movies, “Nuke 'Em High” has actually spawned more sequels, thanks to a more recent two-part installment. Though not a big budget Hollywood remake or a Saturday morning cartoon show. Not yet anyway! [7/10]

The Twilight Zone (2019): Replay

Though it debuted among much hype, being one of the launch programs of the streaming services formally known as CBS All Access, the Jordan Peele hosted revival of “The Twilight Zone” was quickly disregarded as an underwhelming effort. One of the few episodes to gain much critical acclaim was “Replay.” Nina is preparing to take her son, Dorian, off to film school. To commemorate this moment, she's brought along an old VHS camcorder. A slip of the finger reveals that the rewind button on the camera can rewind time as well. Along their journey, they are hassled by a white police officer. Nora takes her and her son back-and-forth through the day, in an attempt to avoid the man. Yet each time, they encounter the face of belligerent racist authority. 

As with this year's Oscar-winning live action short film, “Replay” grapples with the grim reality: The threat of police brutality is an unavoidable fact of daily life for black Americans. The episode handles this topic with a lot more sensitivity and subtly than “Two Distant Strangers.” The sequence here, where Nora attempting to befriend the cop still does nothing to tide his profiling and violent reactions, is especially effective. Sanaa Lathan's heart-felt performance goes a long way towards making the episode work. Her heartbreak at loosing her son, the future he represents, and then her tearful joy at regaining him is definitely felt by the viewer. 

Unfortunately, “Replay” still gets pretty preachy and maudlin by the end.  The climatic episode has Nina and Dorian making it to his college and still being confronted by the cop. Seemingly the only way to defeat him is to face him head-on, recording his actions, and speaking truth to power. Which, as the future set denouncement makes clear, still doesn't remove the ever-present spectre of violence from their lives. This is all well and good and certainly a message worth sending. Yet I still feel like it could've been done in a less melodramatic way, without the swelling music and tearful shouts we see here. I feel out of my element when speaking about this stuff but I think “Replay” gets too invested in trying to make a point, that it looses sight of working as a narrative. Yet at least it never feels exploitative or offensive, so it earns points there. [6/10]

Clockwork (1978)

Like a lot of young horror nerds who are aspiring filmmakers, reading “If Chins Could Kill,” and learning how Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi forged their own paths towards Hollywood, was very inspiring. It also detailed the creation of a lot of early Raimi shorts, which were hard to see in the days before Youtube. Now a days, this stuff is widely bootlegged all over the place, no matter how many times it gets taken down. Which brings me to “Clockwork,” a seven minute Super-8 short that Raimi and co. conceived of after realizing horror movies got a big reaction out of audiences. It has the most simple of premises: A woman is stalked through her house by a deranged man. She is unaware of his presence until he attacks her with a knife, prompting her to fight back. 

 “Clockwork” is essentially the prototype for “Within the Woods,” which was itself the prototype for “The Evil Dead.” You can see a lot of the visual techniques that would become Raimi's trademarks already established here. The killer's voyeuristic tendencies are suggested by a constantly moving camera, always looking in at the woman. This is most blatant in a scene where we, the audience, watches from under the bed as she slips into her nightgown. I like how the film establishes things quickly. We see the house immediately, establishing our setting. We know the man is obsessed because he's lurking outside the window. We know he's crazy because he chuckles like a loon while pushing food off the kitchen counter. The madman, played by frequent Raimi collaborator Scott Spiegel, is mostly kept off-screen. This helps builds suspense, as the constantly building feeling of suspense – supported by the queasy electronic score – makes us wonder when he will strike. When the violent act comes, it should be familiar to “Evil Dead” fanatics. The image of hands bursting through a door to grab someone is obviously a trick Raimi reused for his feature debut.

Of course, “Clockwork” does not survive in very good quality. The version streaming on the Internet Archives is a bootleg of an umpteenth bootleg. It's blurry, washed out, full of tracking errors, and features the kind of quivering video distortion that can give you sea sickness. The audio is equally bad, though that doesn't matter as much since there's almost no dialogue. Despite the atrocious condition it survives in, “Clockwork” is still effective enough. It keeps the suspense building towards the bloody climax. Made the same year “Halloween” was released, it's easy to imagine this becoming the blueprint for Raimi's future work and him disappearing after directing just another slasher flick. Luckily, the films had more planned for him. [7/10]