Halloween 2022: October 3rd

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

"The Blair Witch Project" was a true pop culture phenomenon back in 1999. It was followed by a sequel that was utterly loathed and put the franchise on pause for twenty years. The main difference between those two films, aside from the obvious gulf in quality, is that "Blair Witch 2" discarded the original's found footage style. Paramount and Blumhouse – a fledging production company at the time, only producing their ninth movie – weren't going to make that same mistake. "Paranormal Activity" became the most successful movie of all time, based on budget versus profit, on the back of its found footage gimmick. A sequel wasn't going to turn away from that. "Paranormal Activity 2" would haunt theaters a year after the first film's wide release and it sure-as-fuck gave people more of the same. 

"Paranormal Activity 2" is actually a prequel, taking place two months before the events of the first film. It follows the family of Kristi, Katie's older sister. Kristi and husband Daniel recently welcomed a baby, Hunter, into their lives. Following an apparent break-in into the house, Daniel installs security cameras around the home. The cameras document all the strange events that follow, which seem to center around Kristi and Hunter. Daniel's teenage daughter, Ali, investigates the weirdness herself, soon uncovering a demonic link to the poltergeist activity... And a connection with Kristi and Katie's childhood. 

Probably owing to the increase in shooting budget from 15,000 dollars to three million dollars, "Paranormal Activity 2" is an altogether sturdier production than the first. Predominately featuring security camera footage, over handheld footage, removes the question that pesters the entire found footage genre, of "why is this person recording everything?" It also allows the sequel an easier path to establish the normalcy of this situation. Every night, we see footage of the pool cleaner hovering over the water outside, of the kitchen and nursery. It feels like we spend more time with the characters here, before the supernatural incidents take precedence. The escalation of the activity feels a little less tedious and more deliberate. Daniel burns his balls on scalding Jacuzzi water. Doors slam mysteriously. German Shepherd Abby barks at unseen forces. By the time baby Hunter is slowly sliding across the surface of his crib, we're totally sucked into this story. 

The wider range in camera angles and a more natural build in the story means "Paranormal Activity 2" is scarier than the original too. The sequel utilizes the original's main conceit – watching the nighttime activity of a home carefully, trying to spy creepy or unnatural things happening – to better effect. The scene of the aforementioned pool cleaner slowly creeping up onto dry land or a pan falling off a hook are effectively chilling. This escalates to some fine jump scares too. Such as when the youngest daughter is locked out of the house by a slamming door. Or, in probably the movie's best jolt, when all the cabinets swing open suddenly inside the kitchen. In fact, "Paranormal Activity 2" is a damn fine boo show up until the last act kicks in. What should've been the climax of the movie, its most blatant sequence of supernatural terror, is when Kristi is dragged up the stairs by an unseen force. Instead, the story keeps going, towards a largely ridiculous finale about demonic possession. It was goofy when the last movie swerved from spooky nocturnal poltergeists to full-on "Exorcist" shenanigans. That divide is felt even more keenly here. 

While "Paranormal Activity 2" makes the mistake of overestimating how much the audience cares about the hopelessly thrown-together demonic lore, it is smart enough to keep one element from the original. Daniel doesn't take Kristi's stories of paranormal disturbance any more seriously than Micah did Katie's. He's very certain there's nothing too unusual happening at first. The second film extends this even further, in an interesting way. The family here has a Latinx maid. After the first few incidents, she begins burning sage and warding off the unclean spirit. Daniel is dismissive of this practice, even eventually firing her for continuing to do it. While this brings potentially questionable stereotypes about Magical Ethnics to mind, it also show the arrogance of white, suburban, and especially male society. Daniel is so certain he understands what's going on and his family pays for that hubris. If he had listened to his wife and the brown woman, maybe the horror could've been avoided. 

Ultimately, "Paranormal Activity 2" fine-tunes what the first movie did. It's scarier and better built. I'd even say the characters are more likable this time, with Molly Ephiram's Ali being a compelling little heroine. While its last act shift into full-on demonic horror is misplaced, and the downbeat final scene isn't very satisfying, I enjoyed this one more than the first. Naturally, the low budget led to a huge return at the box office, insuring that the activity would continue. This one seems to be a fan favorite among aficionados of the series too. [7/10]

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)

Shelley Winters and Curtis Harrington must have had a fun time making “What's the Matter with Helen?” A year later, Winters would get offered another hagsploitation project, this one entitled “Gingerbread House.” She would only do the project if Harrington would return to direct, making this either his second or third stab at the psycho-biddy genre, depending on how you feel about “How Awful About Allan.” And is standard for this particular type of horror, it had to have a salacious and slightly ridiculous title upgrade. It's hard to imagine “Gingerbread House” filling out half of a grindhouse double bill. But “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” Yeah, that'll work. Many years later, the two films Harrington made with Winters would be released on a DVD together as part M-G-M's Midnite Movies collection, which I picked up for two bucks at a yard sale recently.

Brother and sister Daniel and Katy have recently come to live at a local orphanage. The headmistresses dislikes them because of their refusal to talk to her. The best behaved children get to spend the Christmas holiday with Auntie Roo, an eccentric woman who owns a lavish mansion. Katy and Daniel sneak away to the party. The girl immediately reminds Auntie Roo of her dead daughter, whose mummified remains she keeps in a secret room. She offers to adopt Katy, as long as the girl promises to never leave her. Daniel, who is slowly discovering how unhinged the woman is, becomes concerned Auntie Roo is an old witch like out of “Hansel and Gretel.” He's not far off.

Much like “What's the Matter with Helen?,” “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” is another dose of twisted psychology wrapped up in a campy atmosphere. As in that film, Winters is playing a deeply disturbed woman. Roo's daughter died in an accident on a stair railing. She never recovered from the shock and copes with the pain – when she's not paying for a medium's services – by locking herself in a childish world. She does her dancing girl routine for the kids, still acting like she's young. She's obsessed with childish distractions like toys, Christmas, and songs. Try as Auntie Roo might to live in a rose-colored past, the miserable present keeps knocking at her door. Such as when an employee attempts to blackmail her, seemingly referencing a dark past as a brothel madam. When Katy won't conform to her perfect vision of childhood, via rejecting the teddy bear she gifts her, Roo is incensed. “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” presents a compelling vision of a traumatized woman-child desperate to hold onto a past that no longer exists and willing to do anything to maintain that dream world.

Auntie Roo treasures children, at lest when they fit into her ideas of what childhood should be. Yet the world around her seems to treasure children a lot less. The orphanage where the siblings live is unwelcoming. The headmistresses is unnecessarily cruel. The idea that only the best behaved children get to visit Auntie Roo seems deeply unfair to the other kids. Considering this is the type of horror film that features imperiled kid, there's a lot of suggestion that the world-at-large has no use for the sanctity of childhood. But the world of children isn't as rosy and innocent as Auntie Roo would like it to be either. Daniel and Katy are smart kids, smarter than they get credit for. Roo is definitely off-her-rocker but the boy takes a little too much delight in outsmarting her. The final scene, where the “Hansel and Gretel” metaphor comes full circle, suggests the children might be just as dangerous as the woman who wishes to keep them. 

Once again, Herrington engineers a world of heightened hysterics to tell this story in. Shelley Winters' performance is, once again, hammy as possible. She both begins and ends the movie screaming her lungs out. It's not polite or controlled but you can't say Winters didn't give the producers their money's worth. As in “Helen,” Herrington includes a random song-and-dance sequence. There's also some melodramatic slow-motion in another scene, no doubt an additional touch of ridiculousness. How you feel about such a knowingly campy approach is a matter of taste. Yet the movie does strike a disquieting balance from time to time. A scene of Daniel crawling into a dumbwaiter and pulling himself up into Auntie Roo's secret room is nicely creepy, with lots of good cobweb photography. The sequence devoted to the kids looking at the late magician husband's props gets more tense as it goes on, concluding in a suitably creepy fashion. 

I can't help but feel that Herrington's camp horror flicks work against themselves sometimes. If “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” dug more into the disquieting psychology of its titular character, or leaned harder into the Hansel and Gretel parallels, it would've been an all-time classic. Instead, the movie has a knowingly jokey approach, a layer of campy detachment that keeps the audience from being fully immersed in its disturbing world. Either way, it's clearly a space Herrington enjoyed. He made two more trashy exploitation films starring aging Hollywood icons. I can't speak to their quality but “Auntie Roo” strikes me as a film that's pretty good but might've been much better with a few minor changes. A good candidate for a remake. [7/10]

Ghost Story: Time of Terror

Once again, it's time to return to William Castle and Richard Matheson's underrated and short-lived horror anthology, “Ghost Story.” As always, Sebastian Cabot's Winston Essex introduces another tale of the macabre from the Mansfield Home. “Time of Terror” follows Ellen, a woman who awakens in a mysterious hotel with no memory of how she got there. All she can recall is that her husband was with her yesterday and is now missing. The only attraction at the hotel seems to be a bingo game. When people get their numbers called, they are escorted off to an unseen room. This causes their partners great distress. As Ellen digs more into the unusual events at the hotel, she comes closer to uncovering where her husband is and how she arrived to be in this strange place.

It's obvious what's happening in “Time of Terror” fairly quickly. After a few minutes, Patricia Neal is in the bingo area. She meets a married couple who are separated after the man's number comes up, much to the wife's chagrin. That's as sure a sign as any that this episode is set in some sort of purgatory and Ellen hasn't realized she's dead yet. This makes her repeated visions of a car careening down a desert road more meaningful. I think “Time of Terror” is designed for the audience to figure this out long before the protagonist does. The majority of the conversations Ellen has, with the other hotel “guests” and staff, will be meaningless unless you realize she's dead. 

“Time of Terror” proves no less effective just because you decipher its twist early on. Patricia Neal gives a nicely frenzied performance as the woman locked in a state of panic. She has no idea what is happening but innately feels something is wrong. The script nicely creates an unnerving atmosphere as she draws closer to discover the nature of her situation. The final scene, where all is revealed, successfully captures a melancholy feeling. This is a solid hour of afterlife chills. I'd say it could've had a better title though. “Your Number Came Up” is a phrase even said in dialogue a few times! Maybe that would've given things away too quickly. [7/10]

The Munsters: The Midnight Ride of Herman Munster / The Sleeping Cutie

The verbosely entitled “The Midnight Ride of Herman Munster” begins with Herman and Lily returning home from a date at a drive-in theater. She asks him to retrieve her coat from the backseat of the car but he's exhausted, curling up for a nap in the car. That's when some thugs, on their way to a bank job, steal the car with Herman still inside. The Frankensteinian dad ends up being the getaway driver, quite against his will. “The Sleeping Cutie” starts with Grandpa inventing a pill that will turn water into gasoline. He soon reaches out to the oil company. At the same time, he concocts a sleeping potion for Marilyn, who is experiencing insomnia. He gets mixed up and gives her a Sleeping Beauty potion, driving Marilyn into a deep slumber that can only be reversed by a handsome prince's kiss.

“The Midnight Ride of Herman Munster” is an ideal slice of “Munsters” silliness. Sticking the good-natured Herman in a car full of gangster leads to some great gags. The gangsters mistake Herman for their getaway driver and he has no idea why they keep calling him “Louie.” This escalates to a wonderfully goofy car chase with the cops. The episode takes this premise of mistaken identity even further. Lily calls in a missing person report and the cops mistake the real getaway driver for Herman, as both are tall, confused, distinctive looking fellows. That leads to an amusingly ridiculous conclusion, when the Munsters figure out what's happened. This episode also features some of the monster movie puns filled dialogue I love this show for. Lily's attempt to describe to the cops what her husband looks like, alongside Grandpa attempting to explain Herman's origins, is A+ stuff. 

After such a strong episode, “The Sleeping Cutie” pales a bit in comparison. The episode revolves around similar gags of people getting mixed up, this time Grandpa mixing his potions up. Yet there's still some really solid gags here. Such as Grandpa's open call for princes to kiss Marilyn attracting two pretentious actor types. Or the agent from the oil company – whose last name is Prince, it turns out – reacting when asked to kiss Marilyn. That subplot leads to a surprisingly cute ending. I also like the reoccurring gags about the unseen Spot. His dog food can puts in a memorable appearance here. [The Midnight Ride of Herman Munster: 8/10 / The Sleeping Cutie: 7/10]