Killjoy Goes to Hell

Director: John Lechago (2012)
Starring: Trent Haaga, Victoria De Mare, Al Burke
Find it: IMDB

Freddy died, Leprechaun river danced himself to da hood (and space), Jason went to Hell; vengeance demon Killjoy follows in the latter's footsteps and heads off to Hell - being on trial there for letting a victim (the previous film's Jessica Whitaker) get away. Well, they couldn't send him off to da hood, since that's where he started out.

As the strongest elements of the first three (!) Killjoy movies were the makeup and nightmare sequences, it makes sense that Killjoy Goes to Hell should make those things its focus. And so a large part of the movie is actually set in Hell (which not even Jason Voorhees could muster), with a bounty of demons like Killjoy and his f(r)iends. Say what you will about the franchise, but it's a bold move to make your fourth entry in the series a courtroom drama, complete with all of the trappings. Not even A Nightmare on Elm Street went there, and Freddy Krueger: Child Murderer on Trial would have made a fantastic prequel to the series.

While the budget doesn't exactly stretch to Dante's Inferno, some adorably cheap CGI and wobbly, fluorescent sets do the job well enough. Even better, Punchy, Freakshow and Batty Boo all return too. This is punctuated with scenes set in the institution where Sandie (Whitaker) is under investigation for Killjoy's crimes. Here we find employed psychiatrists and professional police officers treating her story like a thing that could actually happen and not being fired instantly. It's just a shame that, in a role that doesn't require her to do much more than laugh, the filmmakers couldn't have found an actress capable of laughing even half-convincingly.

The upward trajectory continues. The makeup and special effects are good, Punchy the Hobo Clown gets plenty of screen time (his carny speak is particularly great) and there's a little character work going on in Killjoy and Batty's interactions. Even Haaga is less annoying than usual here, finally settling into the role. If Killjoy 3 was tolerable, his going to Hell is actually, genuinely... well, not good exactly, but it's definitely something. A slasher movie cum courtroom drama set in Hell, it's certainly original, I'll give it that.

Killjoy 3

Director: John Lechago (2010)
Starring: Trent Haaga, Victoria De Mare, Al Burke
Find it: IMDB

It's Killjoy - but with production values! "Here," says producer Charles Band to the franchise, "buy yourself something nice," handing them more than a tenner for this sequel. "You have to put white people in this one, though." And so Killjoy returns, transformed (from whatever it was before) into your more traditional, slick American slasher film. His victims this time are a student house full of kids who look like either Ashton Kutcher or Anna Kendrick, plus obligatory black friend.

This time, however, Killjoy has brought buddies. You get not one but four killer clowns for your buck, in the shape of Batty Boop (De Mare), Punchy the Hobo Clown (Burke) and Freakshow the Mime (Tai Chan Ngo), who look pretty great and have fairly amusing names. Frustrated by not having anyone to kill, the clowns decide to bring the mountain to Mohammed by sending them a magic mirror, kidnapping the kids while they watch a Puppetmaster sequel.

Killjoy has always had more of a Freddy Krueger vibe to him than a Pennywise one, and this three-quel finally goes all the way with its nightmare-like fantasy sequences and wisecracking villain. There's even a sequence in which one of the kids' bodies lies, struggling on the floor while his mind is murdered in a dream world. Unfortunately, Haaga is more Jim Carrey as The Mask than Robert Englund as Krueger, coming across more as annoying than scary. Even Freddy's Dead era Englund knew when to dial it back. Trent Haaga has no such restraint, fart gags and all. His buddies fare better - mostly because two of them know when to keep their mouth shut and Batty Boo isn't in it enough to irritate quite so much. The mime, meanwhile, is legitimately terrifying. If only Killjoy himself had been so silent.

Also silent.

But if you're too dumb to either eat or spit out a literal apple

You deserve to get fuckin' basted.

The increased budget and cleaner visuals make Killjoy 3 the most palatable yet. Visually inventive and fitfully funny (some of the jokes actually hit their target), it makes for quick and easy viewing. It's just a shame that, in this circus, the clown with his name on the poster is the worst one. It's the equivalent of an acquaintance you kind of hate bringing friends to a party who you actually like and get on with. Get Punchy the Hobo Clown and Freakshow the Mime their own spin-off, Band!

Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil

Director: Tammi Sutton (2002)
Starring: Trent Haaga, Charles Austin, Debbie Rochon
Find it: IMDB

The only reason this sequel exists is because people, for some good reason, are scared of clowns. While the clown is a perfectly legitimate horror villain, a lot of shit has been excused in the name of Coulropohobia. Horror's most famous horror clown, for example, is all anyone remembers about the otherwise mediocre IT adaptation, hiding in storm drains, offering out balloons to his victims-to-be. Make no mistake, Pennywise is a fantastic creation, and IT is perfectly servicable in places, but if it weren't for its clown, no-one even would remember its existence. Struggling to get your crummy slasher movie off've the ground? Stick a clown in it.

With that in mind, Killjoy 2 is a thing that actually exists, totally because of artistic merit and not simply because clowns are popular whether they're any good or not (usually the bleeding latter). Trent Haaga takes on the greasepaint and gloves this time, stepping into the mighty big shoes of Angel Vargas. While Haaga has found cult acclaim as the killer klown of the piece, his is a much less entertaining performance than the one Vargas gives. Even worse, there appears to be less of it, with most of our time spent with a gang of cops and their community service detainees (IMDb lists them as 'juvenile delinquents', but they look at least thirty years apiece, so I'm not perpetuating that nonsense) taking off to the county (hence the tenuous 'deliverance' in the title) where they run into killer clown Killjoy.

Just a guess, but this sequel is one you probably won't hear mentioned when Women in Horror Month rolls around. Saddled with a bad cast and incomprehensible story, director Tammi Sutton struggles to elevate the material but winds up producing something even worse than the film which preceded it. Killjoy himself looks horrible, like a really bad Buffy the Vampire Slayer villain (crossed with something Mighty Boosh), remarkable only for a decent face melting scene and a slight increase in the onscreen action. At least it has this though, which almost redeems the whole thing.

With one song, the £6.99 I spent on this box set is justified. The rest of it, I could have done without.

Killjoy

Director: Craig Ross Jr. (2000)
Starring: Angel Vargas, Vera Yell, Lee Marks
Find it: IMDB

After years of seeing Killjoy bothering the shelves of my local Poundland and 99p Store outlets, I finally chanced my arm and picked the bastard up, in the form of HMV's exclusive (although you can less-than-exclusively buy it on Amazon) 4 film set containing the movie and its sequel. With the set costing me £6.99, that equates to roughly £1.75 per film. That's a bargain by anyone's maths, right? Right? Um, guys?

Watching the title credits roll, there's that familiar feeling of watching a no-budget nightmare unfold before your very eyes. There's the dodgy music, the even dodgier, apparently thrown-together credits, and the very dodgiest grime of a camera lens that you could probably buy on eBay these days for less than a tenner. Everything about Killjoy screams 'we have no money'. That said, early episodes of The Wire and Oz also happen to have the same sheen of penniless-ness about them, so you shouldn't disregard these things entirely. I should have guessed from the DVD case that looks like a 90s era video game. And, to be fair to director Craig Ross Jr. and the folks at Full Moon, Killjoy looks pretty great. If the entirety of their budget went on that Killjoy get-up, one has to commend them for being wise with their pennies.

Everything else makes me think I was overcharged for this £6.99 box set. While there's nothing out-and-out terrible here, we do spend the entirety of our time following around a gang of, well, gangbangers who make the criminals of The Wire look like upstanding members of the community by comparison (although one of them was Idris Elba,so maybe that's a tad unfair). When they murder a poor nerd obsessed with a girlfriend, so demon clown Killjoy (a superb Vargas) comes to claim revenge on his behalf. Alas, with all the money spent on the make-up, this vengeance amounts to little more than an ice cream van, warehouse, some cardboard boxes and a bit of green CGI. There's death for everyone, but none that you'll actually remember. Somehow, though, it managed not just one but three sequels. If the law of diminishing returns applies here, poor Killjoy is fucked.

While not as bad as its 99 pence reputation might suggest, it's hard to recommend Killjoy for much beyond an entertaining bad guy performance and its entirely black cast (wasted on such nonsense). If nothing else, it's proof that non-white people can have awful horror movies too.

Next: Killjoy 2.

Preservation

Director: Christopher Denham (2014)
Starring: Wrenn Schmidt, Pablo Schreiber, Aaron Staton
Find it: IMDB

Good, but I preferred it when it was Eden Lake. A couple and their brother (or in-law, depending on whose perspective you go by) and his dog (a dog, by any perspective) take off to the American woodlands to indulge in a little hunting. Squeamish at first, anesthesiologist Wit (Schmidt) is quick to change her tune when they are beset by murderous masked men and their rifles.

The main reason to stick with Preservation is for its performers - a hardy bunch who make it worth bearing with the cliched setup and action. As the wonderful Pollyanna McIntosh made the otherwise fairly forgettable White Prey, so Wrenn Schmidt's lead performance is the film's strongest asset. It's a great transformative role which leaves her almost unrecognisable by the time the end credits start rolling. Talking of unrecognisable: I watched this for over half an hour before I realised where I recognised that Pablo Schreiber fellow from:

As evidenced by my fetish for ex-LOST actors, one of my favourite things is seeing performers from beloved TV shows pop up in genre movies, so I was overjoyed to see Pornstache (sans pornstache) show his distinctively odd mug here. Everything else is by-the-numbers cliche counting and fairly predictable action. I'm willing to bet that the American bear trap industry makes more money from horror movie props than it does helping people actually trap bears. If I were writer/director Christopher Denham, I'd ask for my money back for his bear trap, though; one character emerges with little more than a slightly punctured foot after accidentally stepping on one. I doubt a bear would even notice that shit, let alone be trapped by it.

It perks up a little towards the end, but that's not enough to make Preservation feel anything other than utterly middling to half-decent. The only thing being preserved here (obvious joke) is an abundance of cliches.

Joy Ride 3: Roadkill

Director: Declan O' Brien (2014)
Starring: Ken Kirzinger, Jesse Hutch, Ben Hollingsworth
Find it: IMDB

Fun* fact, fact fans: Joy Ride 3's subtitle, 'Roadkill' was actually the UK title of the first film. I don't know what the second film was called because, frankly, I didn't even know it existed until literally two days ago. Even that was a deductive process, cleverly worked out due to the fact I was holding a film called Joy Ride 3 in my hands.

This will be one of the more flawed reviews I've ever written in that I can remember maybe three or four things about the film, mere hours after watching it. Say what you will about Joy Ride (Roadkill, if you live in early 2000s' England) - at least I remember watching it. This straight to DVD sequel tells a similar story, with angry trucker Rusty Nail (ex-Jason Voorhees Ken Kirzinger) on the trail of a gang of kids who've managed to piss him off somehow. Poor Rusty; dude just can't catch a break, with all three films being predicated on stupid kids somehow fucking with his shit. It's a wonder he ever manages to get any trucking done, with damn kids winding the poor bastard up all the time. Although, just a suggestion: if maybe he stopped using his CB radio as the trucker equivalent to saucydates.com, or whatever the kids these days are using to meet one night stands, maybe he'd get more work done.

The kids in question this time are a gang of pretty young things driving a souped up rally car to their next race. After getting on Rusty's bad side, the vengeful trucker sets about pursuing the lot of them across the desert, occasionally pausing to stop for a spot of torture or nastiness. Way to prove Jeremy Clarkson right about all truckers being assholes, asshole.

That said, what sort of half-arsed serial killer trucker doesn't even keep good gagging tape in his cab?

Image stolen from wherever the watermark says I stole it from.

The specifics, sadly, are beyond me. While Joy Ride 3 is gorier, nastier and more vicious than the first film ever was, it's also completely unmemorable. Kirzinger may have the physical presence, but he lacks the gravitas and intensity of Ted Levine. The rest of the cast, while adequate, are as forgettable as the rest of the movie. It's essentially a low-budget, frequently nasty version of Duel The Hitcher the first movie. Ultimately, Joy Ride 3 is about as fun as that suggests.*

* Not fun

Theatre of Blood

Director: Douglas Hickox (1973)

Starring: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry

Find it: IMDB

Long before I was allowed to watch discovered horror films, there was Shakespeare. Before I even knew Zombie Flesh Eaters existed, I was reading about vile jellies being poked out in King Lear. Well before I'd heard of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there was the accidental cannibalism of Titus Andronicus. It's no understatement to say that I owe my love of horror films to the plays of William Shakespeare.

The twain meet in Theatre of Blood, a gloriously British horror slash(er) comedy starring the combined might of Vincent Price and Diana Rigg, a father/daughter duo who come together to knock off the uppity theatre critics who spurned his genius. Rigg's involvement in the crimes may possibly constitute a spoiler, although you'd have to be very stupid not to see through the 'twist' as soon as she appears onscreen in her 'disguise'.

Taking a series of bad reviews to heart, thespian Edward Lionheart (Price) jumps to his apparent death, quoting Hamlet all the way to his watery grave. Except, no. Rescued by a gang of winoes, Lionheart sets after his critics, bloody vengeance in mind. Taking the works of Shakespeare as inspiration, he sets about murdering those who badmouthed him, assisted by his hobo army and (spoiler) sympathetic daughter. The most reasonable of the critics, Peregrine Devlin (Hendry) assists the incompetent police in catching Lionheart while also attempting to stay alive himself.

Also, there is this.

Viciously funny as well as, well, regular vicious, Theatre of Blood is a charming slasher film which predates most of the classics. The death sequences are inventive, plentiful and surprisingly gory, even if a couple of them are a tad unlikely. The Othello piece is particularly daft. Price gives my favourite Price performance as Lionheart; the actor finally getting a chance to play the Shakespeare he was denied elsewhere in his career. It's essentially his best-of Shakespeare performance. The critics, meanwhile, are easy to hate, with great names such as 'Dickman', 'Larding' and 'Sprout'. To be fair, critics are a pain in the arse. Just ask Uwe Boll or Kevin Smith.

A delicious combination of Shakespeare and seventies horror, Theatre of Blood. As horror goes, this one is positively Shakespearian.

The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

Director: Dwight H. Little (1989)

Starring: Robert Englund, Jill Schoelen, Bill Nighy

Find it: IMDB

Robert Englund is the Phantom of the Opera in this very eighties retelling of the classic horror tale. An often forgotten member of the classic horror icons club, it's surprising that the Phantom isn't a bigger screen presence. While Frankenstein and Dracula have many a movie to their name, the poor Phantom has but a couple of classics and a horrible musical. This gory, garish horror feature attempts to right-side the balance by giving the Phantom his own franchise. And, with Freddy Krueger himself in the title role, it gets off firmly on the right track.

With Freddy at the height of his popularity (this film was released a year after the third Nightmare on Elm Street sequel) the timing should have been spot on for this re-adaptation. Scarred, cackling and wearing a hat, his Phantom isn't even that dissimilar from Freddy as a villain. The plot, as with previous adaptations, sees The Phantom/scarred composer Erik Destler obsess over Opera singer Christine Day (Schoelen) as she appears in a popular new version of Faust. Rival singers, incompetent set designers and snotty critics are all high on The Phantom's hit list. To be fair, I once ripped up an issue of Official Playstation 2 Magazine after they poo-pooed KT Tunstall's singing voice, so I can dig it. Just stick to reviewing Tomb Raider, assholes.        

This is a nastier, more sadistic Phantom than we've seen before, stalking and slicing up his enemies like some sort of slasher villain. The finale, set in his sewers, gives up any pretense of it being anything else, and transforms into full-on slasher film. Englund plays the Phantom as a sadder variation of Krueger, dressed up in his Sunday best. Although that's hardly a bad thing - he's at his most entertaining here, delivering a deliciously camp performance throughout.

Elsewhere, young Bill Nighy pops up in a small role (Bill Nighy, however, young, is always appreciated in any role) while Jill Schoelen is a sweet, likeable heroine. The ending offers promise - in a Darkman kind of way - but, alas, The Phantom's franchise was not to be. This 'all-new nightmare' isn't quite 'new' enough to win its audience, but it is a delightful spin on an old tale.   

How I Live Now

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, George MacKay

Find it: IMDB

An American teenager with a horrible attitude visits her cousins in England just as nuclear war threatens to envelop the world around her. With the adults elsewhere, the kids live an idyllic life of whimsy and swimming holes, kissing cousins and cow whispering. Then, as they so often do, the military turn up, and this (literally nuclear) family is torn apart.

I am reliably informed by someone who actually read the book, that there is actually a reason why Daisy (Ronan) is such a massive arsehole to everyone all the time, why Eddie (MacKay) can talk to cows and an actual sense of character development beyond Daisy suddenly, inexplicably not being such a massive arsehole to everyone. But I haven't read the book, so all I can comment upon is the film's less than impressive handling of such matters.

It starts off just fine, an apparent slow-burn cross between Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games. Daisy, while unlikeable, shows ample room for redemption, and her cousins are enjoyably, well, British (in an Ron Weasley meets Outnumbered sort of way). The first quarter or so of the film is when it is at its best. Then the army arrives,and everything goes to shit.

Character development fluffed and rushed (Daisy's OCD is barely there), it's hard to care about any of the kids or their plight. It gets darker and is surprisingly unpleasant at times, but feels rushed and inconsistent. The cow whispering (think Aquaman, but with cows) comes to naught, and the central love story isn't even developed enough to be considered creepy.

My life continues now much as it did before I watched How I Live Now. An utterly wasted opportunity, it certainly won't change your life anytime soon.

Child's Play 3

Director: Jack Bender (1991)
Starring: Justin Whalin, Perry Reeves, Brad Dourif
Find it: IMDB

Not long ago, I revisited Rob Zombie's Halloween films, and was jolly surprised to find that the opinions of my 21-year-old self weren't quite as reliable as I believed them to be. To be frank, 21-year-old Porkhead was kind of a ballbag. Well, he was the sort of dude who'd call his blog 'Porkhead's Horror Review Hole'. What do you expect? In eager anticipation of the latest Child's Play reboot/sequel, I found myself watching all of the old Chucky films. Which, in turn, led me to revisit Child's Play 3, and my old review thereof.

I'm not the sort to leave things be. I'm too laid-back to be a perfectionist, but I expect I'll always be revising these reviews, fixing grammatical errors, re-evaluating old opinions and adding in a new favourite swear word or two here and there. And, in the case of Child's Play 3, I'll be fucking horrified by what I find. "This reviewer is one hell of a troller," says one commenter, below. He's not wrong, although I was 21, so maybe cut me a little slack. I take umbrage with the word 'butthurt' too. Mostly because it's a stupid word, but also because I've never really given enough of a shit about the Child's Play franchise to get 'butthurt' about it. I'd venture so far as to say that the only 'butthurt' one is the one angry enough to call the reviewer 'butthurt' in the first place. Which, in turn, got me 'butthurt' enough to issue this rebutt(hurt)al. What the fuck does 'butthurt' even mean, anyway?     

Ho, on to the review, and my re-evaluation therein. As with my revisited review of Halloween, only a few sentences of my original text remain. Certainly not that whole paragraph where I repeatedly referred to Justin Whalin as 'Jimmy fucking Olsen', or the bit where I called Chucky's plan 'retarded'. Christ, 21-year-old me was the sort of reviewer who used the word 'retarded' in his writing. I shudder. At least it's not 'shit feast' though. And I did manage to keep the animal ball-sucking references to a minimum.

Anyhow, in Child's Play 3, we find that little Andy Barclay has grown up to be Jimmy Olsen from Lois & Clark, the crap Superman TV series.  Obviously the director decided that he didn’t really care whether we root for poor Andy anymore (not that I ever did), because everyone hates that particular Jimmy Olsen. As such, the biggest problem with Child’s Play 3 is that there aren’t enough scenes with Chucky beating up Jimmy Olsen. Bouncing from foster home to foster home, Andy has been transferred to military school, where they hope to iron out his doll-traumatised tendencies. Apparently he’s become a tearaway now, but it’s hard to buy Jimmy Olsen as anything other than a whiny brat, traumatised by a ginger doll.

Despite a military academy being an awful place for a tiny serial killer to hide, Chucky sets about trying to steal the body of Tyler, another child they just happen to have hanging around the school. And so Chucky kills a few insignificant bit players before trying to carry out his stupid plan and kill Andy, while he's at it. To be fair, Jimmy Olsen does have a face that tends to invite being murdered.

Repetitive and predictable, Child's Play 3 isn't a great sequel. Its setting is uninspired, the story a little dull. However, it does have the Cardassian chap from Deep Space Nine in it, playing a sadistic barber (really) who appears to have nothing better to do than shave children's dolls (also really). Dourif's voice work is as skeezy as ever, and the Chucky animatronics are pretty great, in a creepy, dodgy kind of way. My original review was a lot longer here, with me whining about the child actors (no change there then) and making far more references to Chucky's hair colour than was at all necessary. 

Gingers do have souls, and Chucky wants to put his in your body. 

Ultimately, and despite any whining otherwise, Child's Play 3 is far from the worst instalment of the series. We have Seed of Chucky to thank for that, which is about as enjoyable as, uh, fuck it, I can’t think of anything even nearly as agonising as watching Seed. Except for reading my old reviews.

Child's Play 2

Director: John Lafia (1990)

Starring: Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham

Find it: IMDB

As is bound to happen when you go around telling people that a possessed children's toy tried to kill you, Mother Barclay is immediately committed following the events of Child's Play. Andy (Vincent) is put into care, sent to live with Jenny Agutter and her husband for the duration. You would have thought that ensuring that the kid is sent to a Good Guy free household would be top of the social services' priority, but apparently not: the Simpsons just so happen to have a Good Guy of their very own just chilling in a cupboard. This gives the recently resurrected (again) Chucky the perfect way to infiltrate the house.

Which is a shame, because that spells curtains for Jenny Agutter, and I really like Jenny Agutter. It was her performance in Logan's Run which was instrumental in my first noticing girls (that and Catwoman in Batman Returns and, um, Wendy in Disney's Peter Pan). Jenny Agutter abuse aside, Child's Play 2 is a great slasher sequel. Andy remains the worst thing about the series, but he is sidelined enough by the rebellious Kyle (Christine Elise, looking as though she's escaped from a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel) to be less annoying than he was in the first. While still being quite annoying.

The plan remains much the same as the first - Chucky wants Andy's body, and won't rest until he's taken it. His being constantly distracted by a compulsion to kill everyone around the kid gets in the way though - if he was to just get it over and done with, nice and quickly, the film would be about half as long. Brain of a plastic doll, too.

There's more gore, more swearing and more great voice work from Brad Dourif. It's as good a sequel as A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 2 was to its own predecessor - good, but a tad derivative. Child's Play 2 is less gay than the former (although there is a scene in which kinky Chucky straps little Andy to a bed). Savour it, for Child's Play 2 is the last genuinely good Child's Play film. It's all downhill from here.

Child's Play

Director: Tom Holland (1988)
Starring: Brad Dourif, Catherine Hicks, Alex Vincent
Find it: IMDB

Well, if you will insist upon buying your children birthday presents from a tramp in an alleyway. A hard-up single mother (Hicks) buys her awful son (Vincent) the next big thing - a $100 doll, cutting corners by buying it from a bearded tramp who probably stole it or found it in a pool of blood. Any money Karen might have saved by buying Chucky cheap will ultimately end up going towards the cleaning bill, since the creepy little bastard wastes little time in trashing her house, trying to kill her son and making everyone bleed everywhere. Buying from tramps - it's a false economy. That's why I never buy The Big Issue.*

We all know the plot. After all, Child's Play is a minor classic by now. Still, even today, it's surprisingly effective, and the moment Brad Dourif starts doing his angry Chucky voice is still chilling. There's no hiding the ridiculousness of the premise, but by constantly having Chucky on the move, or stabbing something, the film always manages to stay just on the right side of camp. Chucky still has the power to scare. Well, he doesn't scare me, but I won't exactly laugh in your face if you confess a fear of the little one to me*.

The real villain of the piece is Andy Barclay, a selfish little shit who gets his mother's best friend (and eventually his mother... and everyone else) murdered thanks to his own greed. Child's Play is a great argument for not buying your children what they think they want when they ask for it. You'll get what you're given and like it. Terrible taste in toys, too. What, Batman or Star Wars action figures not good enough for you, asshole? Really, it's like Jingle All the Way, gone terribly wrong. Forget what I just said; you know who the real villain of the piece is? Consumerism. Child's Play is a damning indictment of our consumerist culture.

Child's Play has aged impressively. The numerous sequels and his popularity have dented Chucky's power somewhat, but this remains an admirably shocking, nasty old slasher film. Wanna play? Oh go on then, Chucky, you twisted my arm.

*Not true.

Rob Zombie Revisited: Halloween II (2009)

Director: Rob Zombie (2009)

Starring: Scout Taylor Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif

Find it: IMDB

Revisiting Rob Zombie's Halloween, I was stunned to discover a newfound appreciation for this remake and its director, Mr. Robert Zombie. With his Halloween being much better than I remember it being, imagine my surprise when I found Halloween II to be much worse than I had remembered.

The action picks up immediately where the previous movie left off - Michael Myers is apparently dead, Laurie (Compton) understandably quite traumatised, and Loomis (McDowell) and Annie (Harris) are seriously injured from Michael's vicious attacks upon them. To the hospital, then, where Zombie proceeds to condense the events of the first Halloween II into the space of twenty minutes, sort of. It's a shame that it's all a dream sequence, then, because this is where Halloween II is at its best.

One year later, and Laurie is now living with Sheriff Brackett (Dourif) and fellow survivor Annie. Michael is presumed dead (his body missing in action after the meat wagon hits a cow in the road) and Doctor Loomis has become a media whore celebrity, selling his lurid Michael Myers murder book. Michael's not dead though, and as another Halloween rolls around, he decides to come home. Again. This spells disaster for poor Annie, who, for the second Halloween film in a row, is brutally stabbed full of holes by Mike while stark naked. It's Laurie's story, but Annie and Sheriff Brackett are the only characters you'll actually care about. Certainly more so than Loomis, who spends most of the film acting like an asshole and then being surprised when people call him out on it. It's a real waste of a good character and great actor, especially considering that his eventual redemption ultimately comes to nothing. Compton is good as Laurie, but, like Loomis, not given good enough material. The Bracketts are the only likeable characters in the movie. I found myself genuinely, surprisingly affected by their fates in this film. 

Meanwhile, Rob Zombie has a hot wife and he wants you to know it

Then there's Michael himself, transformed from a silent boogeyman into a bearded, furious (probably quite stinky) tramp. His physicality is still the most impressive thing about this Myers, who might just be the angriest psycho we've ever seen in a slasher movie. That's not always a good thing (his guttural screaming whenever he stabs or stomps a fool to death gets annoying fast) but it does make this iteration of Michael imposing, if not scary.

It's in Halloween II that we also see glimpses of the Rob Zombie who would go on to direct Lords of Salem. Some of the imagery is great. It's a shame that it doesn't actually gel with the film (Sheri Moon Zombie and her white horse never ceases to be ridiculous) since it's a really interesting direction for a sequel to take. Fair play to Zombie for not resting on his laurels and attempting to do something different with the story. It's awful, but a different kind of awful. Like Texas Chainsaw 3D awful.  

Better this than kung-fu Busta Rhymes, or the original Laurie Strode being murdered in an embarrassing, insulting manner in the first twenty minutes. Halloween II may have killed off the franchise again, but at least it did so with style.

Rob Zombie Revisited: Halloween (2007)

Director: Robert Zombie (2007)

Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Sheri Moon Zombie

Find it: IMDB

All the way back in the depths of 2009, I described Rob Zombie's Halloween as a "shit feast". You know how it is, when you first start blogging and reviewing things - you try to be edgy. You read a Charlie Brooker book, and you try to emulate that. Only you're 22, and your idea of being "edgy" is swearing a lot and saying that something sucks the balls of some various animal or other. Bad reviews, they say, are the easiest to write. With that in mind, I found Halloween very easy to review.

It's a bad film - I stand by that much. Is it a shit feast though? Well, while no-one ever needed to see Michael Myers sitting on a kerb crying while his mother pole dances to 'Love Hurts', I can confirm that it is indeed not a 'shit feast'. That whole review was a fuckin' shit feast. What is a shit feast, anyway?

The film kicks off in the depths of the 1980s, where young Michael Myers finds himself in the bosom of a degenerate stepfather, slutty sister and stripper mom (played, obviously, by Sheri Moon Zombie). One Halloween, after murdering a school bully with an exceptionally large stick, Michael gives in to his terrible urges and slaughters his dad, his sister and her boyfriend. The only survivors are his angelic mother (because if you were married to Sheri Moon Zombie, you'd put her in every film you made too) and infant sister. Here's the point where, in my original review, I wrote the phrase "some other stuff happens". Some other stuff does indeed happen, but still, shut up 22-year-old me. You're not nearly as funny as you think you are.

Skip to grown up Michael, now incarcerated in a mental hospital, under the supervision of Doctor Loomis (McDowell) and friendly nurse Danny Trejo. While I would have killed to see a Halloween movie in which Danny Trejo and Michael Myers duke it out for ninety minutes, that's not what we're getting. Instead, Michael breaks free from the asylum and returns to Haddonfield, to find his baby sister. There the story turns into a fairly close adaptation of Carpenter's original movie. In terms of the things Michael Myers does, anyway. Zombie's script turns Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) into a foul-mouthed little goon and her friends into foul-mouthed assholes. Everyone in Halloween is foul-mouthed, except for Michael (who doesn't speak) and Loomis (who is too classy for that sort of thing). While it hurts the film that Laurie isn't introduced until quite late into play, it works better if you view it as a telling of Michael's story and not hers.

Kill it, as they say, with fire.

This new, extremely vicious Michael Myers is an effective boogeyman, whether he's drowning Danny Trejo in a sink or stealing Ken Foree's overalls. I can't say I was pleased to see two of my favourite cult icons murdered in such a manner, but it does set Mikey up as a force to be reckoned with. I'd like to see kung-fu Busta Rhymes try to beat up on this Shape. Maybe get his leg torn off. I had, in my earlier review, called the acting in Halloween "bad, across the board." It isn't. It's fine. Maybe Malcolm McDowell does phone it in a little, but his performance is worthwhile for his 80s hair and trendy sunglasses alone. Sheri Moon is good too, although she does seem a little crowbarred in. Although if my mom was as sexy as Sheri Moon Zombie, sure, I'd have an Oedipus complex too.

Much to my dismay, revisiting Rob Zombie's Halloween (or Zombieween, as I hilariously called it back in the day) , I didn't hate the film at all. In fact, I actually quite like it. It's a crummy Halloween movie, but a decent offbeat slasher film. There's too much swearing, the characters are annoying and the depiction of young Michael is a definite misstep, but I can't bring myself to hate Zombieween as I once did. Who knows, maybe I'm finally becoming soft, in my old age. Well, that sucks. It sucks massive giraffe balls, is what it does.   

Stitches

Director: Conor McMahon (2012)
Starring: Ross Noble, Tommy Knight, Gemma Leah-Devereux
Find it: IMDB

Those who suffer from caulrophobia but love horror movies could do worse than Conor McMahon's Stitches - after all, whoever could be scared of cuddly Ross Noble? The stand-up comedian and serial QI gobshite tries his hand at horror movie villainy in this, an odd Irish cross between A Nightmare on Elm Street, IT and The Inbetweeners.

While attending a friend's birthday party, a gang of bastardly children accidentally murder  sweary clown-for-hire Richard 'Stitches' Grindle (Noble). Years later, at Tom's (Knight) sixteenth birthday party, Stitches is resurrected and out for revenge. Beyond its strange choice in lead actor, Stitches is an old-school slasher movie in the mold of A Nightmare on Elm Street (if you thought Freddy's one-liners were bad, just you wait until you hear one of these beauties) or Maniac Cop. His victims may be younger than we're used to, but Stitches pulls no punches in his bloody vengeance. Heads are kicked off, faces impaled, bollocks pulled off, intestines unravelled and that's not even the half of it. There's a shocking amount of gore in Stitches - very much earning the film its 18 rating.

Unfortunately, like everything else that's not James Bond, Sinister or Paranormal Activity 4, Stitches was utterly shafted upon its UK cinema release. I found myself huddled up in a completely empty screen at a shitty cinema in the middle of nowhere at 9:20 at night, so sparse were showings of the film. That's a shame, because Stitches is one of the few horror movies of 2012 that I wasn't disappointed by. Mind, I am a sucker for seeing horrible children get their deserving heads kicked off by zombie clowns.

This is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Black as the comedy might be, the film is played entirely for laughs. The over the top gore makes it impossible to take seriously. Unless you have, maybe, very severe fear of clowns, Stitches isn't remotely scary. Like Noble's stand-up routines and panel show rants, the film does ramble on a bit towards the end, the youths are exceptionally horrible and the acting a bit duff. Noble is fantastic as Stitches, but alas, the hook-handed shadow of Psychoville's Mister Jelly looms large over the film. Were it not for the existence of Reece Shearsmith's fabulous creation, Stitches would be a great creation. As it is, he's merely very good.

A comedy horror with guts, gusto and plenty of grue, Stitches truly is a noble effort.

The Bunnyman Massacre

Director: Carl Lindbergh (2009)
Starring: Cheryl Texiera, Matthew Albrecht, Alaina Gianci
Find it: IMDB

If I whined at The Bunny Game for being too arty and pretentious (and I did, quite extensively) then The Bunnyman Massacre has the opposite problem - it's completely artless. Artless like me linking two completely unrelated movies together simply because they both have 'bunny' in the title. There's a reason it has the word 'massacre' in the title and a picture of a chainsaw on the poster though - The Bunnyman Massacre is an uncredited remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a man in a bunny costume and no headcheese. It is brainless. 

Dim teenagers drive out to the woods where they are menaced, first by an aggressive truck driver and then by a lunatic dressed in a bunny costume and wielding a chainsaw. I very much wanted to like The Bunnyman Massacre, since it utilises two of my favourite things: a madman dressed in a comically inappropriate costume, and chainsaws. But this is ruined by the fact that it also utilises one of my least favourite things: horrible filmmaking.  

There's a scene in which the youths beg for help from a woodland hillbilly who stands and shouts abuse at them like he's the Frenchman in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The rest of the characters are the sort of relatives that even Leatherface wouldn't bunk with. They make the Firefly family look positively aspirational. There's the requisite hot daughter (who winds up being the most psychopathic of all), the deformed childlike idiot and the scary one who carries the chainsaw (in this case, Bunnyman). There's a scene in which  Bunnyman tortures a poor innocent soul whilst listening to classical music, then a bit in which the heroine is held captive, bound and gagged in the villains' lair.  

"Oh fuck, I'm literally trapped in a cliche!"

It's based on a true story, but only as far as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was based on Ed Gein's crimes and The Bunnyman Massacre is based on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It's like Chinese Whispers but with chainsaws. I spent the whole film wondering what washing powder Bunnyman uses. Considering the amount of blood splattered about the place, that thing scrubs up good.

Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday

Director: Adam Marcus (1993)

Starring: John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Kane Hodder, Steven Williams

Find it: IMDB

Widely regarded to be the worst Friday the 13th movie and suffering from a crippling lack of Jason, Jason Goes to Hell is the strangest of them all. Even more so than that one where he went to space. The plot is like that Denzel Washington bodyswapping movie, except with Jason and not very good. When his body is blown to pieces by the FBI, it looks like Jason Voorhees is finally gone for good.

Except of course not. When a mortuary worker eats Jason's heart (which he does in a manner that makes me feel ill every time) the serial killer takes control of his body and sets about effecting his own rebirth. It's a very misleading title. He spends even less time in Hell than he does Manhattan. The only part of Jason Goes to Hell that anyone remembers is the final shot, in which Freddy Kreuger's disembodied hand appears and grabs Jason's mask. It would take a further ten years for Freddy vs Jason to emerge. Enough time for Jason to go to space and back. In this movie he goes black.

Briefly. Body swap shenanigans abounds as Jason seeks out a family member to possess. Only through a Voorhees can a Voorhees be born or killed. As that synopsis might suggest, Jason Goes to Hell is the stupidest Friday so far. It wastes a great opportunity for a cool not-Jason character with Steven Williams's Creighton Duke. Duke introduces himself as a bounty hunter determined to hunt down and kill Jason. Duke is set up to be like this movie's version of Dennis Hopper in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2. I spent the whole film waiting for Creighton Duke to do something awesome.

Spoiler: he doesn't.

Cretin Duke is a waste of time and money. Until the day comes that someone takes out a bounty on your fingers, Cretin Duke is a shitty bounty hunter. All he does is look weird during a word association game and break some dude's fingers.

Jason Goes to Hell is bad - almost Freddy's Dead bad - but I like it, all the same. The first and last ten minutes provide some reasonably good Jason action, whilst cameos from Kane Hodder, Freddy Kreuger's hand and a certain Necronomicon provide amusement. It's a bizarre entry, but not an entirely uninteresting one. If you want to see naked teenagers die at a campsite, there are eight other films to choose from. Let this one have its moment of semi-interesting madness.

Jason X

Director: James Isaac (2001)

Starring: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder

Find it: IMDB

The first Friday the 13th movie I ever saw*. For a full two years, Jason X was my favourite slasher movie. And then Freddy vs Jason came out. And then I re-watched it and realised that Jason X is kinda crummy. But it is also kinda awesome. Because as we all know, slasher icon in space = movie gold.

In futuristic 2008, Jason Voorhees has been captured and is being held at Crystal Lake Research Facility. Scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Doig) decides to cryogenically freeze the slasher bastard, keeping nubile teens everywhere safe from his seasonal rampages. But Jason escapes and violently kills a team of soldiers. Of this I approve. Watching Jason fight trained soldiers is infinitely more entertaining than watching Jason fight stupid teenagers. Before Jason can kill her, Rowan freezes them both. To the future!

In the year 2455, Rowan and Jason's frozen corpses are discovered by a field trip of intergalactic pupils and their teacher. The Earth has become dangerously polluted and now humanity lives on another planet. The kids and their teacher take the Jasonsicle and the Rowansicle back to their spaceship and set sail for outer space. Both Rowan and Jason make a full recovery. In Rowan's case, this means shivering and pouting a lot. In Jason's case: killing nubile teenagers.

It's not as good as I once thought it was, but Jason X is still a bit of a blast. As an introduction to Friday the 13th, it was a revelation to sixteen-year-old me. Jason hacks and beats his way through a spaceship full of soldiers, teachers, students and androids alike. He even makes to the holodeck and fucks that up too. There's room for a replay of my favourite Friday the 13th kill evarr (that'll be the sleeping bag against the tree, then) and a cameo from David Cronenberg. Yes, that David Cronenberg.

You may be scornful, but this is proof that sometimes the sequel-in-space route does work. The great thing about Jason Voorhees is that his shtick works anywhere. Be it Manhattan, Elm Street, Hell, Texas or space, I'd be quite happy to watch Jason stab the bollocks out of someone wherever, whenever. Jason X is the closest I'll ever get to a Star Trek crossover so shut up and let me have my moment of happiness.

Wherein the tie-in is actually worse than the fan-fiction.

That said, robo-Jason is horrible. Robo-Jason is proof that not everything needs an upgrade. You can keep your 3D, Facebook timeline and your hashtags; I prefer my Jason to be all smelly and raggedy. It's fortunate that his transformation to stupid glittery space robot is only for the last 20 minutes of the film. Although it does allow me to imagine an alternate ending where his remains crash near a small squad of Cybermen and he rises to become king. King robo-Jason of the Cybermen. After lopping Amy and Rory to bits, Jason kills The Doctor with his own bowtie (repeatedly, until he can't regenerate anymore) and steals the TARDIS. He takes it back to the inception of the Earth whereupon he and his Cybermen become overlords of Crystal Lake; always and forever. Just a little idea of mine. Feel free to use that, New Line Cinema and Steven Moffat.

It's no 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Jason X will always hold a dear place in my own heart. As the last proper Friday the 13th movie, it goes out with a damn big bang.

* So much so that I didn't realise that the 'X' stood for '10'. I thought it was just a fancy futuristic way of making Jason sound futuristic.

My Soul to Take

Director: Wes Craven (2010)

Starring: Max Theriot, John Magaro, Denzel Whitaker

Find it: IMDB

Something of a return to form for horror maestro Wes Craven, following the Screaming turd that was Scream 4. I went into My Soul to Take with the lowest of expectations. Best case scenario: a mediocre disappointment ala John Carpenter's The Ward. But please, by Cthulu, don't let it be another Cursed. Thankfully it has more in common with the director's own Red Eye. It's a cruel and surprisingly nasty picture. Best of all, My Soul to Take is kinda good.

Seven children are born as a serial killer goes on the rampage in small town USA. They become known as the Riverton Seven. Sixteen years later and it seems that The Ripper is back, hunting down the unfortunate seven. At the centre of it all is Bug (Theriot) a troubled young individual whose connection with The Ripper goes deeper than even he knows. Myself, I was just amused at the fact that a character called 'Bug' lives with his aunt May. LOL, tenuous links.

I thoroughly expected to hate My Soul to Take. It's (mostly) bloodless horror with a cast of sixteen year olds. I hate (mostly) bloodless horror and sixteen year olds. But the film covers its relative lack of gore by making the kills count - I actually found myself feeling for the kids as they were being knocked off, one by one. Some of them are kinda douchey, but I felt genuinely bad as one of the youths had their throat slashed before me.

Not all of the kids are so likeable (the jock character and Bug's sister are horrible), but it makes a real difference to not be loathing the movie's characters all of the time. Even when they're not being stabbed by The Ripper, they find themselves beaten black and blue by one another and their own family too. A scene in which Bug is set upon by his own sister made me laugh and sob at the same time. Mostly the former.

The ending is convoluted and a bit stupid; the identity of the killer wholly predictable. The script is occasionally bad and Bug's mental issues do get annoying. But My Soul to Take is a slick, tense and grim slasher picture that's probably not as bad as you'd expect it to be. Well okay, it's not quite a return to form, but at least it's not Cursed.