Shudder Saturday: Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)

A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is undoubtedly one of the strangest, perhaps THE strangest, second instalment in any slasher movie franchise. It's certainly the most bizarre instalment to follow on from an original film featuring one of the major slasher icons (e.g. Freddy, Michael, Jason, Leatherface, Pinhead, Chucky, and co.) and everyone who caught it when it was first released was a bit taken aback by it, I think it's fair to say.

The thing that made it so unusual is just how gay it all is. No, I don't mean that in a derisory and insulting way, although I am sure some have that attitude to it. It's just that the film has a homo-eroticism to it that, although interesting and unique (certainly for the time it was made), unbalances the whole thing. People wanted more Freddy. This didn't really give them as much screentime for him as they hoped, focusing instead on the young man who was going through a variety of disturbing changes while he felt another man growing inside him. Yes, I phrased the plot that way deliberately.

That young man was played by Mark Patton, and Patton got a lot of grief when the movie was released. He was blamed for turning the subtext into text, he was tagged as an openly out gay actor not right for the role (Patton was not out at the time), and the experience really soured him on the showbusiness life.

This documentary, directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, shows the long and hard journey that Patton went on, and gives him a chance to seek some answers, and some closure, about his experience in the Elm Street series. It's worth your time if you have even the slightest bit of interest in Patton's story, and the story of Freddy's Revenge, and it's amazing to hear from people who still seem oblivious to what they were making back then. It's also amazing to hear just how quickly both Roberts (Englund and Rusler), as well as Clu Gulager, acknowledge that they knew exactly how the material was intended to play out, while some people, like director Jack Sholder and writer David Chaskin, continue to push back against the idea.

It's a strange experience though. I wanted more of this documentary to focus on the making of the film itself, and perhaps a bit less time finding out about the like of Patton, but it's hard to watch this and not accept the fact that the two are inextricably intertwined, that Patton's life was irrevocably changed by his experience with the movie, so the two seemingly separate journeys are really just the one journey. The film is a weight, baggage, that Patton has carried with him for the past few decades, and here he finally gets to make some other people realise what was put on him, that shouldn't have been. People washed their hands of the film, only starting to return to embrace it when it because an enduring cult hit (especially among the gay horror community).

SPOILER WARNING - the biggest problem, and one that drops this down a notch or two, is Patton seeking some kind of catharsis that he ends up having to give to himself. He FINALLY receives an apology from someone he thought would never provide one, but it's an absolutely infuriating "non-apology". It's not an "I'm sorry I did this" kind of thing, but rather an "I'm sorry you felt that way" statement. And Patton, as well as everyone watching, deserves better.

Not a bad little doc to spend some time with, but it ultimately feels more like something made for the benefit of the central figure than any viewers. Having said that, nobody should begrudge him that time, not after everything that he's wrestled with over the years. It's a great shame that it essentially ends at the same place it begins, and I think people have just spent too long already being obstinate about their view of the film.

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Shudder Saturday: Arachnid (2001)

Note: I watched Arcahnid on Wednesday evening. I went to check a couple of scenes from it on the Thursday. It had been removed from Shudder, dammit. But I watched it. It WAS on Shudder. I own it, so could revisit those scenes I wanted to see. And this review stands (apologies, however, that Arachnid isn't on Shudder at this time, but perhaps it will come back).

I hate spiders. Hate them. Or, to put it more accurately, I am terrifed of them. Yep, a big arachnophobe, that's me. I know all of the arguments against my irrational fear, especially considering the relatively small varieties that we have here in the UK, but I can't help it. That's why it's an irrational fear. As much as I am afraid of spiders, I am also drawn to horror films that feature the eight-legged horrors. And I thought that Arachnid was going to be a decent, low-budget, killer spider movie. I was wrong.

Things start with a pilot who goes down with his plane. He wanders around an island, sees a weird alien creature, and then he's killed. Time passes. A group head out to the same island, including a woman (Loren Mercer, played by Alex Reid) who is the sister of the missing pilot. They wander about the foliage for a while. Someone gets internal problems from nasty ticks, there are various arguments between members of the group, and then the third act is time for the main creature to be showcased, a giant spider out to kill them all.

The fact that Brian Yuzna was attached as a producer got my hopes up. He's given me a number of very enjoyable horror movies over the years. Unfortunately, his name attached to this as producer doesn't mean that the end product is anything like his directorial outings. Arachnid is bad. The script by Mark Sevi is poor, full of slapdash plotting and horribly cliched dialoge, and the direction from Jack Sholder doesn't help any. The whole thing feels cheap and rushed, although it's saved from being a complete waste of your time by a couple of decent gore gags and the main creature.

Reid isn't a good enough female lead to hold viewer interest, and neither is Chris Potter (her male co-star). But it's easy to see why they bagged the lead roles, certainly in comparison to the selection of fairly dire people supporting them. Rocqueford Allen is okay, the rest are almost unbearable for the entire duration of their time onscreen.

It's not hard to make a spider-centric horror movie that I will enjoy. Whether they're of normal size of turned into giant monstrosities. Hell, I have fond memories of The Giant Spider Invasion. So I struggled with my low rating of this one. But there's just not enough here to make it even passable. Which is a shame. If they had taken away the sci-fi moments, focused more on the simple fun of people being chased by a giant spider, and thrown around some more bloodshed and nastiness, this could have been an amusing way to waste 90 minutes.

3/10

There's a cheap DVD available here.
Americans can buy it here.
Or just click on those links and go shopping for better movies.

Sci-Fi September: 12:01 (1993)

Lazy movie reviewing 101 (not for the first time either) - 12:01 is, essentially, Groundhog Day given a thriller makeover. It also adds an actual explanation for the time loop that the lead character finds himself in, which is one of the plus points in a movie that has a lot of good and bad elements for viewers to deal with.

Jonathan Silverman is Barry Thomas, a fairly insignificant young man who works in an office. He admires the beautiful Lisa Fredericks (Helen Slater) from afar, and does his best to get closer to her throughout the course of one fateful day. That day doesn't end well for Lisa. In fact, it ends really, REALLY badly. Which isn't actually too bad because it turns out that Barry will wake up the next morning and find that it's the previous day all over again. That gives him a chance to get close to Lisa again, figure out what's going on, and stop her day ending so badly. IF he can convince anyone that he's not going completely mad.

Directed by Jack Sholder (you may not recognise his name, but if you're a genre fan then you've probably seen at least one of his movies), this is a potential gem of a movie dragged down by a mixed cast and the fact that it was made for TV. I'm not being unfairly down on TV movies, don't misunderstand me. I'm just pointing out that some TV movies FEEL like TV movies, and this is one of those.

Based on a short story by Richard Lupoff, the script was crafted into its final form by Jonathan Heap and Philip Morton, and it does a decent enough job of quickly setting up the many touchstones that Barry will use to keep track of his time loop. It's just a shame that a number of moments feel, necessarily, a bit rushed and hard to believe. I'm not on about the general premise, but more the way in which Barry engineers his day to get closer to Lisa on a number of occasions.

It doesn't help that Silverman just isn't all that good in the lead role. He's not exactly useless, it's just that he's not that special. His attempts at charm and humour never feel all that charming or amusing, leading to that disbelief I mentioned whenever he gets closer to the woman he's taken such a shine to. Slater has never been that great an actress, from my limited exposure to her work, and continues to stay at a level of decidedly average here. Martin Landau and Jeremy Piven, however, are both on hand to help save the day. They may be playing vastly different characters, but both men help lift up the movie whenever they're onscreen. Nicolas Surovy, Robin Bartlett and Glenn Morshower also do pretty well, although they have much less screentime.

While the film is full of little touches that drag it down, the central premise is enough to keep it above-average. The science, despite being pure hokum (from what I can tell), is sketched out well enough, the pacing is brisk enough, and the third act should please all but the grouchiest of viewers.

6/10

Ouch, a bit pricey but here it is - http://www.amazon.com/12-01-Helen-Slater/dp/B000BZN1NM/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1411246772&sr=1-1&keywords=12+01