Halloween 2024: September 15th

J.D.'s Revenge (1976)

Back in March, we lost prolific character actor Louis Gossett Jr. Gossett, of course, was best known for being the first black man to win an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category. However, Gossett was also the kind of actor who was clearly happy to be working, appearing in projects of wildly varying levels of prestige over his long career. Sometimes, this meant roles in critically acclaimed projects like "An Officer and a Gentleman" or "Roots." More often, it meant undistinguished schlock like "Bram Stoker's The Mummy," "Firewalker," "Delgo," and a string of "Iron Eagle" sequels. Despite that, and probably because the height of his fame came after the seventies ended, Gossett only appeared in one proper blaxploitation movie. Luckily for the purpose of this marathon, it happens to be part of the short-lived trend of blaxploitation horror. In fact, I'd say 1976's "J.D.'s Revenge" is among the most underrated of this particular niche. 

Ike is a modern black man in 1970s New Orleans, studying to become a lawyer while working a day job as a cab driver. He shares a loving relationship with his wife, Christella. While out on the town with some friends, Ike is hypnotized as part of a nightclub act. Afterwards, something strange happens. Ike suffers from headaches and wild personality shifts, performing violent acts he has no memory of. He assumes the persona of J.D. Walker, a small time gangster who died under mysterious circumstances in the forties. Walker's unhinged spirit has possessed Ike's body, determined to take revenge on the men who seemingly murdered him: Elijah Bliss, a boxer turned gospel preacher, and his shady brother, Theotis. Can Christella unravel this mystery before her man is forced to do something terrible? 

Like all blaxploitation films, "J.D.'s Revenge" is beholden to the social ills of the decade in which it was made. Instead of concerning a black hero rebelling against white authority, it grapples with what it meant to be a black man in the seventies. Ike plays football, has a ridiculously deep voice, and wears disco suits in the evenings. He's also a sensitive intellectual, more thoughtful than his crass friends. He also turns down sex from his wife, something you can't imagine Shaft or Slaughter ever doing. J.D. Walker, meanwhile, was a violent sociopath. While under control of J.D., Ike terrorizes a rich white woman in his cab and has rough sex with Christella that borders on assault. It's hard to say if "J.D.'s Revenge" is merely doing a riff on a split personality story, Ike's braininess simply meant to contrast with J.D.'s brutal nature, or if it's actually commenting on the perspective of black masculinity at the time. 

Ike's possession is obviously a bad thing. There's also an uncomfortable sense that J.D.'s violent actions and forceful sexuality makes him more of a "man" than his calmer host. Like most blaxploitation movies, "J.D.'s Revenge" doesn't treat women the best. Christella's ambiguous assault is simply something that happens. The racist stereotype of black men hitting their wives is also invoked. This was the penultimate blaxploitation flick for director Arthur Marks. As in Marks' previous entries in the genre, "Friday Foster" and "Bucktown," the film flirts with a deeper social commentary without committing to it. Whether "J.D.'s Revenge" is concluding that it's good that black men are no longer defined by violence, greed, and sexual exploitation or if it's merely a half-assed, funk-infused version of "Straw Dogs," is hard to say. The subplot of a boxer leaving his bloody past behind to become a preacher at least suggests the former, even if the film is treating gospel ministry as a somewhat insincere act.

Despite its shaky attempts at serious themes, "J.D.'s Revenge" is still an effective horror movie. It helps that the film is not merely an urban update on a familiar monster story. It's not about a black Dracula, a black Frankenstein, a black Dr. Jekyll, or a black Linda Blair. Its ideas of loss of identity to a violent, spectral intruder are more unsettling. The film makes us familiar enough with Ike that whenever J.D. assumes control, the shift is sudden. The violence is intense and frenzied. The scene of Ike terrorizing the woman in the cab is especially unhinged. The sexual violence is depicted in an disturbing fashion, focused on the performers' faces as Christella's mixture of terror and arousal grows and Ike/J.D.'s lust reaches beastly levels. Disturbing moments like these are accentuated by aggressive, almost dream-like editing choices. There are frequent cuts away to a butcher shop, animal flesh chopped up and bled. Flashbacks to J.D.'s final moments are also common, a slashed throat repeatedly playing out in slow motion. By the time J.D.'s laughing, wicked face is staring at Ike from a mirror, the film has successfully captured a feverish tone. 

The movie's violence and twisted editing collide with another unavoidable factor in these movies: Unintentional camp. Like most blaxploitation films, "J.D.'s Revenge" was made by white filmmakers, resulting in a warped perspective of black culture. The script is rich with amusingly goofy "street" slang. It goes without saying that the film is absolutely filled with dated fashion,  with enough polyester to fill a warehouse. This is meant to contrast against the zoot suits, wide brimmed hats, and greased hair of J.D.'s era. In effect, both seem like relics of equally bygone decades. The performances are silly and overheated. Glynn Turman never seems entirely comfortable as Ike. His reverberating voice is especially at odds with what is supposed to be a nerdy character. David McKnight goes wildly over-the-top as J.D. This results in Turman playing the possessed state in a totally overheated fashion. Gossett adapts the exaggerated swagger you associate with a preacher of this type, making those scenes hilarious too. Nestled in-between all this sweaty overacting are moments of nuance. Gossett is actually really good in the quieter scenes with his brother, suggesting the pastor act is a put-on. Joan Pringle is similarly sincere, playing a devoted woman who doesn't understand what's happening to the man she loves. 

There's also a love triangle, with Christella's ex-husband still holding a torch for her. This seems to parallel the pregnancies, betrayals, and long lost offspring that are revealed in J.D.'s past. All together, it's a fascinatingly uneven blend of creepy horror and retro camp, of ideas high-minded and lusty. Blaxploitation's mainstream popularity was fast fading by 1976, which might explain why nuttier movies like this were starting to pop up. (Marks did make one final crack at it, with "The Monkey Hustle.") I don't know if "J.D.'s Revenge" comes together into a coherent whole but I sure had fun watching it. It's not as sturdy as "Blacula" or as experimental as "Ganja & Hess" but remains an intriguing fusion nevertheless. By the way, for those that remember the entire month I did devoted to blaxploitation movies and the accompanying checklist of tropes, "J.D.'s Revenge" features all of them except a homophobic caricature and a racist authority figure. We were so close! [8/10] 

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)

While the production company behind "Hellraiser III" and "Children of the Corn II"  rose from the ashes of New World Pictures, both films were distributed by a name that would largely define horror going forward into the nineties: Dimension Films. In fact, the aforementioned titles were the first and third projects Dimension released. And the Weinstein's genre label was very savvy about capitalizing on any hits they had, especially on the then thriving VHS market. "Children of the Corn II" made seven million in theaters, against a 1.3 million budget. Not the worst of returns but it must've done better in video stores. That's where the third entry in this suddenly on-going series, "Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest," would debut in 1995. James D.B. Hickox – brother of Anthony – was brought in to direct, with effects from monster experts Screaming Mad George and Kevin Yagher. A good pedigree for a direct-to-video horror sequel from the middle nineties but does the film live up to it?

After their father disappears mysteriously, Joshua and his younger brother Eli are adopted by William and Amanda Porter. This moves the boys from Nebraska's corn country to the mean streets of Chicago. Joshua makes friends at school quickly, as well as getting the attention of a girl named Maria. Eli, meanwhile, spends a lot of time in the abandoned warehouse next door, cultivating a strain of hyper-resistant corn. At school, he begins to preach about the immortality of adults and the virtues of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. The boy gathers an entranced following of fellow students, while his strange behavior disturbs Amanda and his teachers. (William, a commodities trader specializing in – you guessed it – corn, is more interested in the hearty maize Eli is growing.) It's not long before the people who challenge Eli start to gruesomely die. After their foster mom perishes in a horrible accident, Joshua starts to realize how dangerous his little brother is.

"Urban Harvest" takes "The Omen" influence shown in the second film further. A spell book from He Who Walks Behind the Rows grants Eli magical powers, which he uses to engineer elaborate deaths for anyone who displeases him. He sometimes speaks with a demonic, reverbed voice. While he maintains the trademarks of this series' villains – preacher clothes, a wide brim hat, an Abrahamic name – the script clearly paints him as an Antichrist-like figure, with the way he antagonizes a priest and subverts Christian imagery. The Satanic chanting on the score is ramped up too. The sequel goes out of its way to make this kid seem as sinister and wicked as possible. In other words, "Children of the Corn III" continues to move away from the roving band of killer kids that defined the original, in favor of a centralized villain with magical powers and devilish vibes. Subsequently, the cult element is lessened, with Eli's followers being more brainwashed thralls than willing participants in organized bloodshed.

You can argue about how "Children of the Corn III" strays from the purity of Stephen King's original premise. At least it has fun doing so. Once you see Screaming Mad George's name in the credits, you know you're in for some wild shit. The film quickly delivers. Within minutes of the opening credits, a man's eyes and mouth are sewn shut by magical forces as he's transformed into a human scarecrow. The cornstalks become deadly tentacles, driving into a homeless man's eyes. Eli enchants a woman's lighter, so she inhales the flame and her face melts like a bloody candle. A head cracks open like an eggshell, cockroaches rushing out. A stalking through the corn rows ends with a surprisingly graphic impaling. Joji Tani's unique talent for gooey, rubbery sequences of body horror is really shown during the movie's best scene: Those pesky cornrows grip a guy's head and pull it off his body, his spinal cord still attached and seemingly stretching to an impossible length. It's creative, surreal bloodshed for sure, appealing to fans of rubber and latex mayhem.

Truthfully, it's Tani's demented monster kid aesthetic that drives the film more than anything else. Not to say that Hickox does a bad job directing the movie. Those shots from the preacher's pulpit are nicely lit. (Though James Hickox is as easily distracted as his brother, the film leaping across multiple subplots.) However, the sequel leans towards the kind of surreal, special effects driven set pieces that reflect Tani's punk rock music video style. Such as a nightmare sequence Amanda has, which features green slime gushing from people's mouth and ends with her being swallowed up by the earth. Or when the movie throws in a homicidal scarecrow. This becomes truly apparent in the last act. After two movies of being portrayed as an ominous cloud or crackling flashes of light, He Who Walks Behind the Rows properly appears on-screen at the film climax... As a giant, multi-tentacled worm monster. The movie descends into total chaos at that point, the eldritch abomination turning on its own followers and rampaging through the single, dark set. When the monster starts swallowing people – the effect looking a lot like Barbie dolls being scooped up by a hand puppet – I knew the sequel had fully committed to its wacky tone of gooey excess. The kind of shitty digital fireballs fit this mood too, more like something that would play on-stage behind a hardcore band than a narrative film.

That's a weakness too though. I honestly admired "Children of the Corn II" taking its story in as many directions as possible. Part three isn't that versatile. The first half mostly draws on standard devil child tropes, of Amanda being freaked out by her new kid's creepy behavior and her husband being clueless. I suppose the main story thread is Joshua and Eli, inseparable at first, growing apart. There's certainly a deeper resonance here, in an older brother drifting away from the younger one as he discovers girls. Ya know, if Eli doubled down on the corn cult shit as a reaction to Joshua ignoring him, that would've been interesting. (Missed opportunity not to name the boys Cain and Abel.) However, Eli is so obviously evil from the beginning that it never works. Moving the story from a rural to an urban setting is certainly an idea. There are some embarrassing black youth stereotypes here, though the film falls short of being "Children of the Corn in Tha Hood." Though the realization that, ya know, there aren't cornfields in Chicago leads to the rather hilarious narrative leap of Eli growing super strong corn in the abandoned warehouse coincidentally next door.

The sequel was actually filmed in 1993, directly after the second one, and sat on a shelf for two years. This suggests that a producer somewhere wasn't happy with the finished product. Maybe releasing the movie direct-to-video was more about burying it than taking advantage of the profitable rental market. However, for the third entry in a series of corn-based horror films, "Urban Harvest" is still probably better than it has to be. Aiming directly for the Fangoria market, those hungry for gory spectacle and campy writing, was likely the best approach. By the way, supposedly among Eli's followers here is a young Charlize Theron in her debut role, though I didn't spot her. I'll live it up to sharper-eyed corn heads than me to find her. [7/10]

Tales to Keep You Awake: The Birthday

Historias para no dormir: El cumpleaños

Obviously, there are lots of horror/thriller anthology shows from English speaking countries. It stands to reason that programs like these exist in other parts of the globe. Humans everywhere like scary stories in bite-sized packages. However, foreign language television isn't often exported. With horror and suspense being niche categories, the "Twilight Zones" of other countries rarely make it over here... There are exceptions though. Before directing cult classics "The House That Screamed" and "Who Can Kill a Child?," Narciso Ibáñez Serrador would create and host the series "Historias para no dormir" – "Tales to Keep You Awake" – for Spanish network Primera Cadena in 1966. The series helped popularize horror in Spain, making Serrador something of a Rod Serling or Hitchcock figure in his home land. The show never made many international waves though. At least not until Severin released it on disc in 2022, finally giving American fans a chance to see these "Tales."

Like many anthologies, "Historias para no dormir" installments were based off stories by well-known authors. Debut episode "El cumpleaños" – "The Birthday" – is from a story by Fredric Brown. It concerns Roberto, a bank teller about to turn fifty years old. He plots to murder his wife of eleven years, for the crimes of being "vulgar" and too organized. After stuffing her body into a wardrobe, he intends to empty a vault at work into a suitcase and flee to South America. As their apartment building will be empty that night, he plans to stab her to death as she stoops over to unlock their door after returning home from dinner. However, there's one thing Roberto's meticulous scheme didn't consider... 

There's almost no dialogue in "The Birthday." Instead, the brief, 18 minute long episode is devoted largely to the protagonist narrating his thoughts. We hear the man consider every aspect of his murderous scheme as he goes about his mundane day. This imbues ordinary objects – a bread knife, a wardrobe, a front door – with sinister connotations. Rafael Navarro's cold, calculating voiceover sees him mocking his coworkers as he waves hello to them or describes the contempt he has for his doting, loving wife. No good reason for his crime is revealed, Roberto planning to kill his wife for the pettiest of motives. It seems murdering his spouse, stealing from his job, and running away to a foreign country is his version of a mid-life crisis. This reveals a frightening truth: We can never know what other people are thinking. Smiling faces can conceal homicidal thoughts. A person who seems friendly and good-natured could be a cold-blooded murderer. We can't truly know, can we?

Navarro is unnerving in the role, his words clearly depicting the character's conceited nature and psychopathic intentions. Alfonso Nieva's cinematography takes us inside the man's head, beginning with a close-up of his opening eye and often centering on the commonplace objects that figure into the plot. Serrador's direction slowly turns the screws, building suspense as we draw closer to the act of violence. When the stabbing arrives, the camera cuts abruptly to the inside of the door, as we watch the man's bloody hand reach for the light switch. This builds and builds towards a twist ending that is so good, I wouldn't dare spoil it. Serrador's lengthy, light-hearted introduction promises to bring the Gothic horror genre into the modern age with this program. "The Birthday" does exactly that, with shadowy photography, a pitch black sense of irony, and a chilling depiction of a modern day sociopath. [8/10]

The Addams Family: Morticia Joins the Ladies League

“Morticia Joins the Ladies League” is one of those episodes with a somewhat misleading title. Yes, the episode does involve the matriarch of the Addams clan attempting to join the local society for women. However, most of this half-hour’s plot is focused on something else entirely. Gomez takes Pugsley to visit an old friend, Oscar Webber. Webber runs a circus that is currently experiencing some troubles, as his star attractions keep changing. While there, Pugsley immediately bonds with Gorgo the Gorilla. In fact, Gorgo becomes so attached to the kid that he follows home. The Addams are happy to take care of Gorgo until Oscar gets back in town, the ape taking on some housekeeping duties. That’s when the B-plot, of Morticia inviting her new Ladies League friends over, circles back around.

“Morticia Joins the Ladies League” is an episode jammed back full of gags. There’s a quick conversation between Gomez and Oscar about the state of his sideshow freaks, fat ladies loosing weight and dwarfs taking height increasing pills. Once Gorgo establishes himself at the Addams home, the episode surprisingly becomes a display for Lurch. See, he quickly gets jealous of the gorilla doing his job for him. Ted Cassidy’s undead grumbles of disapproval or bemused glares are fantastically utilized in these moments. Naturally, these jokes occur alongside the typical “Addams Family” humor, of the family doing torturous things to relax, normies responding in horror to their habits, or Gomez and Morticia spontaneously tangoing. The reveal of Uncle Fester sleeping on a bed of nails still made me chuckle. It must be said that the episode milks the premise of a gorilla waiter for as long as it can.

For fans of classic horror cinema, “Morticia Joins the Ladies League” is notable for another reason. Gorgo is played by George Barrows, an experienced Hollywood stuntman and bit player who donned a gorilla costume across many B-movies and episodes of television. Basically, any time an old TV show needed a gorilla, Barrows was probably in the suit. He played the title role in “Gorilla at Large,” while also getting hairy in titles like “Tarzan and His Mate,” “Black Zoo,” “Hillbillys in a Haunted House,” and “The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.” Of course, his most iconic role was Ro-Man in “Robot Monster.” Truly, Garrows was a versatile performer. Anyway, “Morticia Joins the Ladies League” is a classic “Addams Family” installment. However, I will criticize the show reusing a joke about Pugsley’s piggy bank from episode two. [7/10]