Friday the 13th Part VII -- Semi-unfortunate. We've got Kane Hodder doing a great job with Jason. But the "psychic" portion of the story doesn't mesh well with the F13 vibe. As was the problem with VI, the teen characters are bland and flat, not even archetypical. A fairly bloodless endeavor, too, ruining any sense of macabre glee.
4/10
BOOOO!!! Part 7 is fun, and I liked some of the kills. I agree that they needed more psychic teen throwing shit at people action, and hey man you know as well as anyone that the film was butchered by those godless fascist assholes at the MPAA. Because of the stupid Moral Majority the series was negatively impacted.Quoting Spun Lepton (view post)
I rewatched the first film two nights ago, and I still dug it a lot. Tonight I saw Part 2, which is rather underrated and is still quite good/solid, and now I'm finishing up Part 3. Yeah I was wrong about Part 3: a second viewing makes me realize that it sucks. I was nice and gave it a 66, but I'm thinking 50 something or less now. The characters are all terrible, most of the kills are boring, and the final girl is beyond terrible. [] Oh and I tried to watch the 3D version, but 10 minutes in the glasses were giving me a headache. Weak.
PS: Part 3 is so terrible, the box set doesn't even have any extras for it except for the theatrical trailer. Wow even the box set acknowledges that it sucks. My problem though is that the extras contain a "Lost Tales From Camp Blood" short for each movie, or at least most of them, but it jumps from Part 2 to Part 4. Um, okay, but wait its featured in Part 4. They're not too bad as far as shorts go, although the second part was much better and fit in more with the actual film series than the first part did.
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Tonight, while rewatching Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) I spotted with 54:38 minutes left in the movie a kid asleep with a copy of Jean-Paul Satre's "No Exit" on his lamp. Not only is that a really smart kid, but its also rather funny considering that []
Maybe its the booze talking, but I love this movie. The extras for it actually noted that Kevin Williamson admitted that Jason Lives was one of the inspirations for Scream. I believe it, considering the good campy humor and the fact that many of the characters in the film already know about the legend of Jason, among other things. Plus Jason Lives has my favorite kill:
[youtube]DDiyYqQAFcE[/youtube]
Go to 1:50 and enjoy the awesome from there.
Oh and I'll continue to defend A New Beginning. Its got some wonderful dark humor, an excellent and rather disturbed Tommy Jarvis, and the kills are rather brutal. My favorite is when []
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Part five ranks above most of the others in the series for me. Overall it has the best cast of characters from any of the others in the series, which is tough for me to say, considering part 4 has Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. I don't mind the reveal for the same reason I don't hate Halloween 3 for not having Meyers.
And this song destroys Alice Coopers' "He's Back" (though I greatly enjoy both).
[youtube]FpBTSZXKktA&feature=related[/youtube]
Fun Fact: the retarded character in 5 went on to direct Evil Laugh - another precursor to Scream - featuring a horror geek that warns his friends they are living a horror movie.
Rewatched Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness last night for the first time in probably a decade, enjoyed it far more this time around. Very schlocky, but in a charmingly demented, disarmingly old-school kinda way, and it helps that I'm now familiar with the writings of Lovecraft, to which this film is an obvious and affectionate shrine. Also, Carpenter as a filmmaker displays a lot more juice here than I've given him credit for over the years. Between this, my increased appreciation for Vampires upon a revisit last year, and the ever-awesome Escape from LA, perhaps I've shortchanged his '90s body of work. I now have an itch to give Village of the Damned and Memoirs of an Invisible Man second looks, and to finally seek out Body Bags.
Letterboxd rating scale:
The Long Riders (Hill) ***
Furious 7 (Wan) **½
Hard Times (Hill) ****½
Another 48 Hrs. (Hill) ***
/48 Hrs./ (Hill) ***½
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (Besson) ***
/Unknown/ (Collet-Serra) ***½
Animal (Simmons) **
In the Mouth of Madness is my 3rd favorite Carpenter film behind Big Trouble and They Live.
That's a great Top 3.
Part 5 has some really dark humor in it, which the behind the scenes feature on the DVD explained. I caught that finally in a revisiting. Also it has some really awesome kills, and Reggie is one of my favorite characters in the series.
I liked and enjoy both songs, actually. Alice Cooper doing a song for a Jason film just feels right.
Hah, awesome. I'll have to track that one down.
Okay so I finished this boxset:
Which is just basically a cheaper version that I purchased at Best Buy instead of the one that came with the hockey mask, and which is a more updated version of the classic boxset with the first 8 films. This boxset was clearly released before the remake back in 2009. The extras were really fantastic and its a pretty nice addition to my horror collection. Part 6 gets the same rating as it did before-an 85-and its great fun, a really entertaining film that is the best of the series. I still dig The New Blood, even though its lack of good characters really hurts that entry. Oh and once again I refuse to hate Jason Takes Manhattan, although it clearly reflected the series going to shit, which is what it did with Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X, the two worst films in the series.
Plus I recently bought both The Bad Seed and Trick 'r' Treat on DVD along with The Omega Man during Barnes and Nobles' two for one sale. I'm eager to revisit The Bad Seed as I recall it being quite good, and Trick 'r' Treat is easily a new favorite of mine, one that I watched last year. Someone needs to give the director of that one some funding to make a sequel, ASAP.
PS: In The Mouth of Madness is one of John Carpenter's best films. I blind bought my copy from Hollywood Video as it was closing for good, and I was really impressed.
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Carpenter's Village of the Damned still doesn't work exactly, but it's better than I dismissed it as being however many years ago it has been. It still bears Carpenter's trademark style and texture, only diluted and relatively uninspired by his standards. Furthermore, many opportunities for thematic nuance, psychological horror, and updated sociological relevance are either ignored, or intriguingly touched upon only to be left undeveloped or completely squandered. Still, the first act is legitimately solid, and the rest is a frustrating but watchable amalgam of mediocre shlock and unconvincing pretension, with Carpenter's brooding atmosphere and compositional prowess giving the film weight that it otherwise fails to earn, especially once the kids with their silly wigs, uninflected speech, and vacant death stares inspire as much amusement as fright. The climax is ridiculously over-the-top and silly, but it's an entertaining derailment all the same. This is probably for Carpenter completionists only, but at least it's a more respectable effort than its reputation suggests. And hey, Christopher Reeve is good!
Letterboxd rating scale:
The Long Riders (Hill) ***
Furious 7 (Wan) **½
Hard Times (Hill) ****½
Another 48 Hrs. (Hill) ***
/48 Hrs./ (Hill) ***½
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (Besson) ***
/Unknown/ (Collet-Serra) ***½
Animal (Simmons) **
All I remember from Village of the Damned is the horrible, literal use of a brick wall as a visual design for a mental barrier against the children.
Recently Viewed:
Thor: The Dark World (2013) **½
The Counselor (2013) *½
Walden (1969) ***
A Hijacking (2012) ***½
Before Midnight (2013) ***
Films By Year
Surprised that The Thing doesn't show up in Duke's top three.
Losing is like fertilizer: it stinks for a while, then you get used to it. (Tony, Hibbing)
F!
The Thing is so high on my excel list, that when I searched for "Carpenter" it starts searching in the cells below where I placed the cursor. The Thing is my 11th favorite film of all time.
Nice catch Bacon.
My favorite Carpenter films are Big Trouble In Little China, The Thing, and Escape From New York. All which I happen to own, too.
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After years of procrastination and after months of leaving it on my Netflix Instant Viewing queue, I finally watched Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight. I haven't had this much fun viewing a horror movie (although this one is more action than horror) since I first viewed Night of the Creeps. The cast is 90s terrific (William Sadler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gary Farmer, CCH Pounder, plus the always underrated Dick Miller, and with Thomas Haden Church playing the asshole) and it has plenty of gore to spare. Not to mention the high level of entertainment value, which surprised me a bit. I figure I would like this one a lot, but I didn't think I would give it a really high grade, which I did unapologetically.
Too bad there never was a sequel, especially since []
From what I remember Bordello of Blood was kind of awful, so I probably won't bother revisiting that movie even though I recall Dennis Miller being quite good in it. And no I haven't watched much of the Tales From The Crypt show, although I've been meaning to finally dive into it considering the amount of talent involved.
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Ha! Funny. I just watched this the other night, too. Yeah, good fun.
TV show is worth checking out, MadMan, although later episodes start to stink. Bordello of Blood was a POS. Has anybody seen the DTV one that just popped up on Netflix recently?
Demon Knight is hysterical. Billy Zane has never been better. Admittedly, that isn't saying much. But still, he was great.
He needs to be used more. He was also a blast in Titanic and Zoolander.
Zoolander for sure. Titanic, not so much. At least, not intentionally so.
Cool. I just couldn't believe how much of a blast it really is. The film could have been longer and it still would have gone by quickly.
Well I'll have to check out the show. An anthology show like Tales From The Crypt or The Twilight Zone can only last so long before the stories start to get stale, though, so I'm not too surprised. I didn't know there was a recent DTV one on Netflix.
Billy Zane rocked this movie, although some love needs to go out to William Sadler, who played a wary hero pretty well. Its funny considering that his most famous performance is that of a villain in a Die Hard movie, but I like Sadler in this and Trespass far more.
Oh and Zane's cameo in Zoolander is hilarious.
[youtube]gnZEdjxwCew[/youtube]
Plus
[youtube]KeX9BXnD6D4[/youtube]
"Listen to your friend Billy Zane."
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I found the uncut version of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday on YouTube. Now, mind you, I had liked the uncut version for a long time, mainly because, I guess, the same old Friday the 13th formula was feeling stale when I'd seen it. I dunno. I defended it many times.
Having just watched it, I must admit now, it's bad. It's very bad. The core idea is bad. The story is bad and kinda boring. Many of the casting decisions are bad. The tone is all over the map. Some good, some so-so special effects.
The "references" to other horror franchises once seemed novel, now they seem lazy and a little pandering. Ooh, look, it's the actual Necronomicon prop from Evil Dead 2. How clever are we?
We get a little Jason at the beginning and a little Jason at the end. Jason Voorhees kills one person in this whole movie. Kind of defeats the purpose of calling it a Friday the 13th movie, doesn't it? At least Part 5 had Fake Jason and instead of a group of boring shlubs.
It wasn't as gory as I'd remembered it, even. One really gory bit about 1/3 in, one guy "melting" in the cheapest and most unconvincing way, and then some brain-popping near the end. Seriously, big whoop. Part 4 still wins in terms of viciousness.
3/10
Thank you, Spun. Jason Goes To Hell is one of the worst in the series. If it wasn't for Jason X, it would be the worst. Part 3 also sucks. This is why I'm fine with only owning the first 8 films on DVD-they should have just shelved the series until Freddy vs. Jason.
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Yeah, I've been wanting to re-visit this one (haven't seen it since it played in the theater), but then I remember Jason basically isn't even in it. What they tried in part 5 took balls, but this idea is pretty lame. Kinda sucks -- I was hoping I just didn't appreciate it as a teen, but I think I'll continue passing on a rewatch.
Shit. Is that the general consensus about the later episodes? I bought the entire series for dirt cheap on ebay but by the time I got to the last season my interest waned and I never finished it all. The first few episodes from season 7 were pretty boring, and probably half of season 6 sucked too.
But, yeah, there are a ton of killer episodes on the whole. Still one of my favorite tv series of all-time.
I gave Jason Goes to Hell a 45, but it should have been a 35 the more I think about it. Really the best thing about the whole crapfest is one man:
Screw the whole stupid mythology bullshit and everything. They should have just had Jason Goes To Hell be an epic battle between Duke and Jason, with some people in the middle who get killed off. That couldn't have a worse movie than what they actually went with.
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I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
Perhaps, but Cameron is far too serious about that particular narrative to have pushed for that type of performance, and Cameron is such a controlling director, I'm not sure how much credit Zane should be given.
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