Prime Time: Vampire In Brooklyn (1995)

It may have a bad reputation, as far as I'm aware, but Vampire In Brooklyn is one of those films I had been meaning to get around to for a decade or so now. It's one of the few Wes Craven movies I had somehow missed, and a starring vehicle for Eddie Murphy that intrigued me.

Murphy plays Maximillian (although, of course, he also plays some other characters onscreen), a vampire who arrives in Brooklyn in search of the woman he loves, Detective Rita Veder (Angela Bassett). He gets himself an assistant, Julius Jones (Kadeem Hardison), and starts his attempt to get Veder to fall in love with him almost immediately. That's really all there is to it.

I have to say that I expected the worst when I started watching this. I recall this period not giving us anywhere near the best from Murphy, and Craven was a year away from the film that would push him back up the horror strata and cement his reputation as a provider of quality pop culture content (Scream being that big hit).

This isn't all that bad. It's not fantastic, but it's not all that bad. The biggest problem with it, as you might suspect, is the tone. The comedy often works well enough, but only when everyone involved remembers it can be in the mix. Thankfully, Murphy works well enough while playing his character straight to make it worth your time. He's an excellent vampire, even if he's often just playing a more restrained and old-fashioned version of his usual confident persona.

The script, by Michael Lucker, Chris Parker, and Charlie Murphy, works best when twisting the familiar tropes. Highlights include Hardison's character going from zero to maximum Renfield in super-quick time, a sequence in which Murphy plays a preacher and then has to excuse himself from church, and an ending that actually feels like it belongs in a proper vampire movie. If a bit more of this could have been added, although I have gone blank on specifics (it's early, I need coffee), then the end result would have been even more enjoyable.

Having already praised Murphy for his performance as Maximillian, I'll just say that he's also good when portraying both the aforementioned preacher, and also portraying a low-level hood. The makeup works, as does the fact that he plays these characters for a few key scenes, and not throughout the entire movie in a way that indulges his seeming need to sometimes play everybody onscreen. Bassett is great (when is she not?), and Allen Payne does a solid job of being the Detective working alongside her, and also falling in love with her. Hardison is a lot of fun in his role, especially as soon as he starts to lose body parts, while both John Witherspoon and Zakes Mokae are welcome whenever they're onscreen in their supporting roles.

Maybe my low expectations factored in here, but Vampire In Brooklyn is a good attempt to mix the familiar and the new. The 100-minute runtime means it manages to not overstay its welcome, the cast play well together, and it certainly belongs at this part of Craven's career, when he was trying some different approaches to horror material.

6/10

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The HIlls Have Eyes Part II (1984)

Wes Craven gave horror fans two movies in 1984. One was the slasher classic, the birth of a new icon, A Nightmare On Elm Street. The other one was this, a very different kind of slasher, and a film not considered one of his best (to put it mildly).

A group of friends travel across some desert land as they try to get themselves to a bike race. Having got their timing wrong, it soon becomes clear that they need to take a shortcut if they want to get there on time. And that is how they end up in territory being overseen by members of the cannibal family last seen in The Hills Have Eyes. You'd think that the area might be a bit safer now, with most of the family seemingly dealt with by the end of the first movie, but that's not the case. There is still a very real threat there, thanks to Pluto (Michael Berryman) and a character known as The Reaper (John Bloom).

There are two big mistakes made here (not including the infamous moment in which we see the flashback of a dog). The first is deciding to connect this to the first one in ways that were unnecessary. Craven obviously wanted to say something interesting about those who survive such a traumatic experience, but it's a wasted bit of commentary, with the surviving character of Bobby (Robert Houston) simply used as a lead in to the events, and Rachel (Janus Blythe) too easily "tamed" after first being shown as Ruby in the original movie. The second big mistake is taking too long to set everything up in the first half of the movie. This is not a long film, it clocks in under the 90-minute mark, but it feels longer, mainly thanks to the uninspired mix of thin characterisations and flashbacks that make up the opening act.

Berryman and Bloom are both good in their roles, although Berryman isn't as good here as he was the first time around (made slightly less threatening and more pathetic this time), and they certainly fare better than the crowd of young folk who we're supposed to be rooting for, nominally led by Cass (a blind woman played by Tamara Stafford) and Roy (Kevin Spirtas). John Laughlin, Willard E. Pugh, Peter Frechette, Colleen Riley, and Penny Johnson Jerald are given far too little to work with, aside from one or two decent death scenes, and even Blythe suffers at the hands of a poor script that sets her character up to be more interesting than it is allowed to be.

Having said that, the film is not without some charm for fans of simple slasher fare. The larger cast means that you just know there are due to be at least a couple of extra death scenes, there's a score from Harry Manfredini that works well (even if, or because, it feels like it could have been lifted from any Friday The 13th movie), and Craven tries to put all of the pieces in place for a satisfying finale. He doesn't succeed . . . but at least he tries.

Far from essential viewing, this now sits as one of those many films dismissed by horror genre fans that isn't quite as bad as its reputation might suggest, but it's also not one that deserves to be reappraised as any kind of misunderstood classic. It's a weak sequel, mainly due to a weak script from Craven (and the fact that he was only given enough of a budget to film about two thirds of what he actually wanted to film), but those after a bit of dumb fun could do a lot worse.

5/10

You can buy the movie in a super-duper edition here.

The Last House On The Left (1972)

Some films feel like you MUST see them. That's doubly true when you're a horror fan. In fact, it's triple (triply??) true when you're a British horror fan who spent a number of years hearing about infamous titles that were removed from public consumption by an over-zealous BBFC. Yes, I'm on about those video nasties again, but I'm not just on about the situation here in the UK. I'm on about those moments that lead to conversations, that lead to you becoming friends with more and more horror fans, discovering the huge global community of people who have all been given the same funny looks and had the same judgements made about them as they enthusiastically rented some piece of nastiness from their local video store. Those moments lead to you hearing about, or discussing, key films. You get the undisputed classics, you get the enduring favourites, and you get films that wallow in their infamy for a short period of time, often just before their power starts to fade away.

The Last House On The Left is a film in that latter category. It is the kind of film you will most likely have a vivid memory of seeing for the first time, perhaps even something that you can deliver as an anecdote (but a different kind of anecdote from one like being taken as a child to see E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial and remembering how many other children were as wet-eyed and snot-nosed as you were while the parents wondered what they had done to upset Steven Spielberg so).

Having said that, I don't have any anecdote to put here. I saw this film as I was making my way through a lot of the horror movies I had never been able to find in my pre-internet days. This was one of the better video nasties, I knew that much as soon as I'd watched it, but it wasn't up there with the very best. Yet it stays with you. It's a film that feels dangerous in a way a lot of the others don't. It sticks to you. If some movies feel like a cosy blanket, The Last House On The Left is a layer of dust and debris that cakes your skin after a day spent in a harsh environment, the kind of thing that won't wash off without applying the kind of force to your scrubbing that will hurt.

Written and directed by Wes Craven, his feature debut, this is a savage reworking of The Virgin Spring. A young woman (Sandra Peabody) and her friend (Lucy Grantham) head to the city. They meet some bad people. Terrible things happen to them. The bad people end up at the home of the parents of the young woman (ma and pa played by Cynthia Carr and Richard Towers). Those are the plot points that you'll probably already know. I'm not going to say any more.

Craven was an angry young man when he made this film. He wanted to create something brutal and shocking, but also wanted to make it bearable (which he attempts to do with the biggest mis-step of the film, scenes involving a pair of bumbling police officers, one of whom is played by a young Martin Kove). It's a film that he would look over many years later with a critical eye, acknowledging the negative aspects while still admiring what he achieved.

And he's right to feel that way. While not quite as powerful or intense as it may have been when first released, this is a brutal piece of work, open to multiple interpretations by different viewers, from a warning about the dangers of drugs to an exploration of common nightmares to a commentary on the Vietnam War. It's also one hell of a calling card for Craven, putting out there the mastery of horror elements and obsession with the thin line between civility and barbarism that he would display repeatedly over the next few decades.

There have been major essays written about this movie. Much more than I could ever say, and in a clearer and more intelligent way. I'll just say that it's a film that you can never unsee. David Hess gives the most memorable performance of his career, playing the loathsome Krug (a role that would see him typecast that way in a few other movies), he's ably supported by Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, and Fred J. Lincoln, all of them effectively nasty in a way that makes any viewer want to see them get their just desserts by the time the end credits roll.

Craven may now view this as something he would have approached differently, but horror fans can be glad that he rushed headlong into a boundary-pushing slice of exploitation nastiness that easily holds up alongside anything else we've had under that umbrella. You may not enjoy it, you may not rush to rewatch it, but it's an essential horror film, and one of a number of touchstones in the career of someone who gave us such a wide variety of scares.

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Dead By Dawn 2016: The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Like it or not, The Hills Have Eyes is arguably almost single-handedly responsible for the "hillbilly cannibal" subgenre that has given us the Wrong Turn series, Hillside Cannibals, Jug Face and the comedic stylings of Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil. It's also the film that saw writer-director transition from the down 'n' dirty roughness of The Last House On The Left to a more polished approach that we see him stretching his legs in some strange and unique genre fare before becoming the franchise-spawner that he was by the late 20th century (a status I would have to acknowledge here, after his passing).

A family are travelling through a remote area of America when they find themselves targetted by a bunch of savage hill-dwellers. And that's really all you need to know about the film. It's a very pure set-up, allowing Craven to continue his look at the thin boundary between civility and savagery while also providing more than a fair share of shocks and tense moments. The film has dated, that's true, but it retains a rawness and off-kilter aura that makes it easy to hold up as a bit of a classic, albeit one with a few forgivable flaws.

Dee Wallace is one of the familiar faces among the group of potential victims, and she's always good to see onscreen for genre fans. But she's joined here by John Steadman, Russ Grieve, Virginia Vincent, and a few others. It's the villains of the piece, however, who are the real headliners, as evidenced by much of the marketing material. James Whitworth is Jupiter, the head of the violent and deadly family living in the hills. He's memorable, and suitably scary, but it's Michael Berryman who is rightly remembered for his portrayal of Pluto. Berryman mixes his unique appearance with animalistic behaviour that makes him fascinating to watch, even as things start to get worse and worse for the poor family being besieged by savages.

If you consider yourself a horror fan then I consider this essential viewing. Not just because of the influence upon the subgenre already mentioned, but also because of seeing a stepping stone in the career of Craven. It's fascinating to see someone manage to tone down a cinematic primal scream into something more acceptable to mass audiences while somehow not diluting the power of his work. If only more knew how to do it. But, then again, that's why Wes Craven was as revered as he was. And rightfully so.

If you enjoyed this review, and live in the UK, feel free to browse and buy some shit here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/

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9/10

Dead By Dawn 2016: New Nightmare (1994)

AKA Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

The story, in brief: Freddy Krueger is an incarnation of an ancient evil, according to Wes Craven (played in the film by . . . Wes Craven), and the stories/movies were actually keeping him somewhat in control but now that he/it is being left to rot away it is time for fiction to come crashing back into reality. What better way for Freddy to get back into our world than through Heather Langenkamp's young son, Dylan (played by Miko Hughes)? Reality is, after all, simply a cinema-screen's width away. And there's sometimes no better cinema screen than the imagination of a child.

This is an interesting, and sadly overlooked, entry in the franchise, that is of importance to genre fans who want to see the ideas in Scream before they became Scream. Craven uses this movie to explore the boundaries between reality and fiction and to subvert many of the horror clichés while at the same time using them to get classic scares. He also manages, impressively, to get Freddy (Robert Englund again, of course) back to being a genuinely scary figure. This is helped by Freddy receiving a makeover that makes him look even more evil than he ever did before. In fact, this and the "devil" Freddy look from FvJ are probably his scariest incarnations.

Langenkamp does slightly better here, playing a version of herself, but I still wish she'd never burdened the entire series with her presence. She's a great gal, and does well to revisit a character she could have ditched a long time ago, but there are many better actresses out there. It has to be said that everyone (Langenkamp, Englund, Saxon and even Craven, although he's the least of them) does well in bravely portraying versions of themselves. And Lin Shaye is back in a minor role, although she may be the only one returning from the first movie NOT to be playing themselves.

This movie, more than any other in the entire series, has intelligence, a great storyline and moments that offer something to really disturb most viewers (parents may feel especially unnerved with some scenes). It also has a number of great callbacks to the first movie and some nice references to classic "horror" stories, Hansel And Gretel being the most obvious one. The second best entry in the series and well worth giving another chance to if you disliked it the first time because it was "too different".

8/10

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Wes Craven (1939 - 2015)

I cannot just take back everything I've ever said about Wes Craven, so I'm not going to, but his passing made me take a moment to think about his body of work. And, DAYUM, he certainly cast one hell of a huge shadow over the horror genre. Over the years I have joined in conversations about Craven to offset some praise that I may have seen as overly enthusiastic. I referred to the man as a great craftsman, as opposed to a great artist, and I would often mention my annoyance with his obsession over booby traps and how they were so often used in his work to hammer home the point about how thin the veil can be between civility and savagery. And then there was the fact that his name was used, rightly or wrongly, to sell a lot of inferior movies to us horror fans in the past couple of decades. Hey, he's not the first and he won't be the last. It just took the shine off his reputation, and made it even easier to forget about his fantastic legacy.

Let's start at the beginning, and look at a number of his better-known works.

  
The Last House On The Left (1972) may well be a sleazy reworking of The Virgin Spring but it led to numerous horror/exploitation movies that would either wear their influence in the title (The Last House On Dead End Street) or in their obviously similar plotting (Night Train Murders AKA Late Night Trains). And that infamous tagline has also been riffed on by numerous, inferior films. Not only was Craven a startling, daring director, but he also seemed to align himself with great marketing.

And then, after a little-remembered movie entitled The Fireworks Woman (1975), came The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

Craven once again seemed to single-handedly create a new horror genre touchstone with his intense, nasty tale of inbred killers pushing a family well beyond breaking point. And he created, arguably, his second major horror icon with the help of Michael Berryman.

The next few years brought some interesting additions to Craven's filmography, including some TV work, a comic book movie (the enjoyable Swamp Thing - which benefits from a great cast and a scene in which Adrienne Barbeau bathes in jungle waters that would have made the teenage me spontaneously combust if I'd been fortunate enough to see it nearer the time of its initial release), and a much-maligned sequel to The Hills Have Eyes that features one of the most amusingly unfathomable flashback sequences ever, with the notable exception of Freaked.

Thankfully, in the very same year, Craven also served us up a very dark dream. A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984).

"If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming she won't wake up at all." ANOTHER great tagline. I think it would be redundant of me to try digging deeper into this horror classic. Most people know by now that Craven got the idea from a bizarre news story, and New Line Cinema developed in the '80s into "The House That Freddy Built." What I will tell you, that you may not know already, is that I first saw this movie when I was about 10-11 years old. And I loved it. It was the most intense horror I had ever seen at that point in my life (Halloween was already a comfortable old friend by then, and I had yet to really delve further into the genre). It had some fleeting nudity, a cute leading lady, torrents of bloodshed, and unforgettable visual flourishes. And it also had Freddy Krueger. Yes, the first movie may have kept the slasher icon (ANOTHER icon) as a darker, less talkative, character but he was still the main draw. Just waiting to see what he would do next was equally exciting and terrifying. He broke all the rules. As did I, that very night, when I ended up switching on my bedroom lamp for the duration of the night, to ward off the boogeyman (a situation that seriously displeased my mother when she came in the next morning to find that I'd been letting a bulb burn all through the night).

That would have been enough for most directors, but Craven used his success to keep delivering more interesting slices of entertainment for us horror fans. They weren't all good, but how can you not love Deadly Friend (1986) when it gave us all THIS moment? And The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988) became, for many, the only non-Romero "zombie" movie to provide scares without repeating the gore and shocks that we'd already seen so many times before. Shocker (1989) and The People Under The Stairs (1991) may remain more products of their time than actual enduring classics but I can't deny having a lot of fun with them when I first saw them. I don't think many would say the same about Vampire In Brooklyn (1995) - although, in fairness, I haven't even seen this one for myself yet; it's reputation precedes it.

A low point? Perhaps. But not for long. Because along came Scream (1996).

  
Scream took the horror genre conventions and played with them in a perfect way to blend real scares/thrills with major entertainment value in a way that had eluded Craven when he tried to explore thematically similar material (a la meta-layering) in the unjustifiably dismissed New Nightmare (1994), a film which has at least grown in stature in the years since it was first served up to unwitting, and perhaps unprepared, audiences.

Scream has divided horror fans in recent years. While it's hard to deny that it gave the horror genre a much needed shot in the arm it's equally hard to deny that it also led to some major bad habits that don't look likely to be broken any time soon (the floating head poster design being just one minus, with the pop culture riffing also sitting uneasily within scripts that aren't clever or witty enough to carry it off successfully). I've even been sucked in to the recent MTV TV show. Don't judge me.

Some of those bad habits came to the fore when Craven teamed up with screenwriter Kevin Williamson once again to refresh the werewolf movie with Cursed (2005). I am one of the few people who find Cursed to be a lot of fun. It's majorly flawed, with two of the biggest problems being poor CGI and a distinct lack of decent bloodshed (leaving the film, ironically, feeling quite toothless), but the script is fun, the central performances from Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Judy Greer and Milo Ventimiglia are great, and it has a clear love from the cinematic history of lycanthropy that it is springboarding from.

Didn't like Cursed? No problem. Craven showed that he could leave the CGI aside to craft some masterful suspense when he released Red Eye (2005).

Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams helped make Red Eye so enjoyable, but it's clear that the direction from Craven is what enables this particular piece of hokum to flat-out entertain, despite a central premise that is absolutely ludicrous when you give it even a few seconds of actual thought. Thankfully, Craven doesn't let you have any time to figure that out. He's busy letting his cast have fun in a game of cat and mouse that involves wince-inducing use of a pen, bluffery, and the constant threat of escalating violence.

My Soul To Take (2010) may not have been a great swansong for the horror master, which is why we're lucky to have Scream 4 (2011). Some may disagree, but I think it took the franchise to the next logical step, and showed that Craven could easily create new and imaginative ways for teenagers to perceive horror. Which, in a way, is what he did all the way back in that Last House On The Left.

RIP Wes Craven - check out his entire filmography at IMDb here, as I deliberately kept this piece focused on his horrors, and more specifically the horrors that I had seen, and you'll probably be tempted to watch at least one of his movies this week.

Nightmares In Red, White And Blue: The Evolution Of The American Horror Film (2009)

Based on the book by Joseph Maddrey, this documentary may not provide anything new for major horror fans, but it contextualises the genre throughout the 20th century and beyond, and serves as a nice rebuttal to those who roll their eyes and dismiss horror as something not worth their time.

I cover EVERY movie that I can when it comes to writing reviews. That's because it helps with my OCD and allows me to think that my time here, rooted to my sofa for a lot of my time, has some small sense of purpose. I'm fooling myself, of course, but I'm fooling myself while being able to enjoy lots of great movies. Horror movies, however, will always remain my favourite. And I get tired of defending my love for them to people who think "well, isn't it a bit much to watch all of those horror movies?"

No, no it isn't. It's important to remember that a lot of the independent horror movies, as well as the crime flicks and, yes, adult movies released over the years have done more to buoy the fortunes of film studios than most of the tentpole releases that we may have all enjoyed at a local multiplex. There's nothing wrong with enjoying big-budget, mainstream fare. I do it a lot. But there's also nothing wrong with enjoying any film from any genre, especially anything that delivers so many movies that have perhaps reflected, and adapted with, the culture and politics of the where and when of their conception.

Narrated by Lance Henriksen, this documentary reinforces just how horror has allowed for escapism, how it has (directly and indirectly) dealt with important issues over the years, and how it has remained a constant companion to those held in its thrall. It does this with a number of clips, and chat from luminaries such as John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Roger Corman, Mick Garris, Darren Lynn Bousman, Brian Yuzna, Joe Dante, Larry Cohen and many others.

From the world wars, to the development of nuclear power, to the repercussions of 9/11, Nightmares In Red, White And Blue: The Evolution Of The American Horror Film touches on every major event in the past century that has helped to feed into, and create, horrors of all shapes and sizes. And it serves as a great reminder of how important the horror genre is in helping to filter reality and change it into something more tangible, transforming it from an uncomfortable and unnerving mix of paranoia, facts and hypotheticals into a boogeyman that can be held at bay by a strong closet door and a reassuring night light.

7/10

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Going To Pieces: The Rise And Fall Of The Slasher Film (2006)

Far from the definitive overview that the praise claims on the DVD cover, this documentary is still a pretty entertaining primer for a subgenre often frowned upon by movie lovers. If horror is a genre barely tolerated by some who seek to dismiss it whenever possible then the slasher film is the subgenre often most easily held up as an example of all that is wrong with "those types of movies". Of course, the movies that fall under this classification are as varied in quality as movies from any other subgenre and this documentary at least shows off the variety available to audiences.

Based on the book of the same name (which I've heard great things about but, sadly, never read), this is one of many documentary features that seems to be very much "damned if they do, damned if they don't". The subgenres and the springboards for discussion are just too deep and full of potential to be quickly skimmed over. Of course, the usual suspects are here (the tentpole movies from John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham) but there are also a few notable titles missing. Black Christmas was probably the main one that I found conspicuous in its absence. I think that it did appear briefly onscreen but I don't recall too much discussion about it and I felt a bit cheated to be hearing so much about Halloween without the Bob Clark movie being given due respect. Strangely enough, I've never been the biggest fan of Black Christmas while Halloween has long been one of my favourite horror movies of all time so I can only imagine how disappointed real fans of the film will be.

Then we have the fact that everything discussed is discussed in so much detail (in terms of plot points and twists) that you can't help wondering just who would get the most from it. Beginners will have far too many movies ruined for them while fans who have already seen a large portion of the movies mentioned will feel that not enough films are given due attention. Translation = "damned if they do, damned if they don't".

It's a nice collection of clips and reminiscences about the slasher movie subgenre but nothing essential for those who already know their Crystal Lakes from their Elm Streets.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Going-Pieces-DVD-John-Carpenter/dp/B000PMLDPO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339949552&sr=8-1

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010).

For fans of Freddy Krueger, this is the ultimate love letter to the franchise that has provided people with thrills and nightmares for the better part of three decades now.

 

Wisely, and thankfully, leaving the miserable remake to its own devices, this documentary covers everything you could want to know about the eight movies that run from the first Elm Street flick to the Freddy Vs. Jason movie, covering the rise and rise and inevitable fall of New Line Cinema along the way. Almost everyone is here to talk about their part in the franchise and I do mean almost EVERYONE (the only major player missing is Patricia Arquette).

Of course, the majority of the tales come from, or relate to, Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp (who also narrates proceddings), Wes Craven and Robert Shaye but everyone involved has something to contribute to the fond memory bank.

 

The first remains a solid classic but it’s funny now to be reminded of just how unexpected and lucky that was for all involved. With the sequels, however, it’s a complete free for all. Ask 100 different fans to name their favourite Freddy movie and you could probably get at least one person nominating each of the different instalments, a personal taste test shown by the varying opinions given by the talking heads onscreen.

 

There’s the blatant homo-eroticism of the second movie, that you can’t believe so many people were ignorant of while it was being made. The fun premise of the third movie, which also saw Langenkamp return. The fourth movie remains a fan favourite and has the best resurrection of Freddy ever. The fifth film features a twisted look at pro-life. And, of course, the sixth movie told us that Freddy would die. In 3D. Then Craven reinvented the character and took his first steps towards what would become the Scream franchise with the brilliant, sadly underappreciated (at the time, and by the fans, anyway) New Nightmare before we got to the battle we’d been waiting to see for years and years, Freddy Vs. Jason.

 

Of course, people have the fondest memories of the movies that they were personally attached to but the other surprise about watching this documentary is just how much everyone involved can be proud of. Every film may not have been as successfully executed as it could have been but they all try to stay true to the character and the concepts while moving the franchise forward and pleasing fans all at the same time. That’s more than can be said about Freddy’s Nightmares, the TV show also covered here that quickly began a downward spiral after an impressive first episode.Directors Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch deserve a lot of credit for making this four hour documentary a consistently enjoyable, consistently interesting experience and there’s also praise to be heaped upon the editors, the animators who created some great visuals (especially at the start and end of the whole thing) and everyone who agreed to share their memories of a franchise that will stay a firm favourite in the dark hearts of fans for many years to come.
 

9/10. 

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