Shudder Saturday: Little Bites (2024)

This isn't the first feature film from writer-director Spider One (aka Michael David Cummings, brother of Robert Bartleh Cummings, who you may know best as Rob Zombie), but it's the first feature from him that I've managed to see. That's no comment on the quality of his work. It's just my busy schedule. And, after this, I'm keen to check out his previous films, Allegoria and Bury The Bride (both also featuring his partner, Krsy Fox, in a lead role, as is the case here).

There's quite a simple plot here, but it's one loaded with plenty to dig into. Fox plays Mindy Vogel, a woman who appears to be in the middle of a bit of a crisis. Her young daughter, Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro), has been living with Mindy's mother (Bonnie Aarons), but it's clear that Mindy wants to be capable enough in the role of mother to have her daughter back home with her. That's made difficult, however, by a monster that also resides with Mindy, and the monster uses Mindy as his main food supply. 

Small in scale but pleasantly full of ambition, Little Bites is another fine genre film that makes use of the tropes to examine and subvert something much more grounded. This time around it's what mothers will do to keep their children safe, but there's also some intriguing hints at how easy it is to stretch out holes in the safety nets of society, and how much more difficult things can be when you don't have the full, or any, support of close family members.

Fox is excellent in the main role, managing to be both weak and strong, held captive by a beast she chooses to placate in an ongoing attempt to keep her daughter as safe as possible. Jon Sklaroff cuts an impressive figure as that monster, helped by some excellent makeup work and an audio mix that allows his voice to cut through almost everything else onscreen. Despite not having too much screentime, both Caro and Aarons do well, and there's room for a couple of cameos from horror legends Barbara Crampton and Heather Langenkamp, who are both used brilliantly instead of, as can sometimes occur, just being asked to show their faces so that their names can be added to the cast list and used in the marketing.

This really surprised me with how much it seemed to layer throughout it. I had an idea of what I was getting into from seeing a very brief plot summary, but the monster at the heart of it is only really half of the equation. The other half, arguably the more interesting half, is the responsibility of parenthood. It's about the sacrifices made to keep children safe, it's about the toll that can be taken on your mental health as you keep gritting your teeth and doing what simply has to be done, and it's about knowing the right time to allow youngsters to be informed and see the full picture.

The ending is a slight disappointment, enough to knock a point or two off my final rating of the film, but I certainly recommend Little Bites to horror movie fans who don't mind a slow burn.

7/10

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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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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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