Spooky Spookfest Week 4: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Full disclosure, I don’t know how to properly read a calendar. For some reason, I thought that there were five Thursdays in October. As such, I was going to review A Nightmare on Elm Street. Don’t get me wrong, I love that  movie, but what could I possibly have added that hasn’t already been said before? We’ll just file that one under the “maybe later” category. But! Since this is in fact the last Thursday in October, we get to take a look at one of my favorite childhood TV shows! We’re going to take a look at the teen horror classic Are You Afraid of the Dark?!

Pictured Above: Evidence that I can’t read a calendar.

The show ran originally from 1990 to 1995, and then there was a short revival series that ran in 1999 and 2000 for a couple of seasons. I can’t say that the show did anything particularly groundbreaking when it came out as anthology horror series had been around for quite some time, but it was the first that I can remember that specifically targeted towards a younger audience. Shows like Tales from the Crypt, and The Outer Limits revival series were definitely targeted toward an adult audience, and even aired on premium cable channels. As a person who learned to appreciate the disturbing and macabre at a pretty young age, I remember being really excited to have a show that managed to be genuinely scary without some of the R-rated elements that you got from the other shows, and movies of the time.

AYAOTD centered on a close knit group of friends who gathered, presumably every Friday, to sit around the campfire and attempt to give each other a good scare. I watched a few choice episodes in preparation for this article, including the pilot,or The Tale of the Phantom Cab, and i was surprised at some of the details that I had forgotten. I remembered easily that the ringleader of the group was a boy named Gary, but the show went out of its way to mention that the members of the group came from everywhere, that not all of them went to the same school, and that they all had their own personalities. That last point should seem like a given, but due to the format of the show, you didn’t actually get much time with the core characters. This is because as a story was told, the show would dramatize the action of the story. Let’s face it, half an hour of kids sitting around a campfire talking would have been really boring.

The stories that were told were all over the map, but in a great way. They were told by a number of different characters, and as such, covered a lot of different subjects. Some characters had a theme to the stories that they told, and others would weave the things that they were dealing with in real life into their stories. However, without fail, each story would be titled The Tale of… with the rest of the title being unique to the actual story. This maintained a certain consistency to the show that I really appreciate because it solidified the feel of the show. The other thing that helped to cement the feel of the show over time was the way in which they introduced new characters. See, in order to become a member of the group, called The Midnight Society (How cool is that?!), a prospective member had to tell a story that sufficiently impressed the existing group. The group would vote, and if the vote was unanimous, then the new person would become a permanent member. The prospective members also had to wear a blindfold so that they wouldn’t know where the group met because keeping that a secret was really important. Anyway, a couple of seasons into the show, the character Tucker was introduced. Tucker was Gary’s younger brother. This is a really important point because when the show went into revival, Tucker was made the ringleader of The Midnight Society. Once again, this really helped to cement the consistency of the universe, and it was a great nod to the previous seasons. Also lending themselves to the consistency behind the show were how the stories were opened and closed each episode. There was usually a little banter between characters at the beginning, but once it was time to start the story, the teller would announce, “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story,[insert episode title here].” The character would then throw powdered coffee creamer on the fire to flare it up for dramatic effect. Every time I heard those words, I knew I was in for a treat, much like hearing the Fox fanfare before a Star Wars movie, it just doesn’t feel right without it. Then depending on the season, Gary, or Tucker would adjourn the meeting and put out the fire. These were all really simple touches that as I said before, made for a really solid and consistent show.

I mentioned that some of the characters ran a theme throughout their story archetype, and that wasn’t more evident than with Gary. While he did vary sometimes, a good bulk of his stories were about magic because he was super into magic in real life. This and a few other characters’ interests led to some great recurring characters within the stories. Specifically, Gary would often use a character named Sardo, emphasis on the “doh”, in his stories. Sardo owns a magic store called Sardo’s Magic Mansion. Sardo always ends up seeming like a villain, but that’s only because some of the items in his shop actually are magical, and he just doesn’t know it. Usually these unknown magic items are the catalysts that get the stories going. Similarly, a character named Frank, who told the first story of the entire show as an initiation attempt, introduced another recurring character named Dr. Vink, with a va, va, vaaaa. Dr. Vink was definitely an evil character who usually tried to trick the protagonists of the stories into doing things that will enslave them under Dr.Vink’s control. As a demonstration of how much fun the show liked to have, Gary and Frank teamed up to tell a super tale that involved the protagonists battling both Sardo and Dr. Vink.

As a young adult, one thing that I really enjoyed and appreciated about the show is that the core cast of characters were around my own age, and were dealing with a lot of the same things that I was at the time. As the characters would use their stories to work through some of their troubles, I would get insights, and new perspectives on my own troubles. I think that’s one of the reasons that the show was so popular and successful; that and it was just telling some great stories. For example, The Tale of the Dream Girl is about a young man who starts seeing a beautiful young woman everywhere. He shares this with his sister, who encourages him to pursue meeting her. By the end, we find out that the young man is a ghost who hasn’t moved on and that his sister is the only person that can see him. This episode is famously where M. Night Shyamalan got his “inspiration” for The Sixth Sense (We all know he just ripped it off, but whatever.).  And since we’re on positives, take a look at this list of guest appearances over the years: Mia Kirshner, Bobcat Goldthwait, Charles S. Dutton, Ryan Gosling, Neve Campbell, Will Friedle, Melissa Joan Hart, Kim Schraner, Frank Gorshin, Hayden Christensen, Daniel Clark, Ryan Cooley, Tia Mowry, Tamera Mowry, Laura Vandervoort, Danny Cooksey, Tara Lipinski, Jay Baruchel, Jewel Staite, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gilbert Gottfried, Jennifer Finnigan, Tatyana Ali, Jennifer Irwin, Aaron Ashmore, Christopher Castile, Christian Tessier, Colin Ferguson, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Gregory Smith, Emily VanCamp, Harold Howard, Jason Tremblay and Asia Vieira. That’s from the Wikipedia page, by the way. But there are a number of really big names on that list, and many of them appeared on this show before they’d made it big in the industry. For some, that’s awesome, but in Hayden Christensen’s case, you just get to see that he wasn’t a very good actor even when he was younger.

My final positive for this show is how the writers didn’t feel a need to always work to a happy ending for the stories. While most went the happy ending direction, there are a few notable episodes that either ended ambiguously, or just badly. For instance, in the episode, The Tale of Vampire Town, the lead character, who is a goth, sheds his goth ways, but in the end he gets turned into a vampire anyway. But maybe the most notable is The Tale of the Pinball Wizard (not that pinball wizard). In the episode, the main character has to play through a deadly giant pinball game. He nearly gets severely injured on a number of occasions. The expectation is that once he finishes the game, he’ll be able to escape, but at the end, he finishes, and the game simply resets as he comes to realization that he’s just going to have to repeat the process ad infinitum. As with some of the Star Trek episodes that I’ve discussed before, these episodes were able to teach a young audience that things don’t always end well as in movies. It’s an important, but touchy lesson that younger kids need to learn, but that can be hard to teach in a way that won’t traumatize them.

While I’ve been able to sing many praises for this gem of a show, it isn’t without its flaws. It’s number one flaw, in my opinion, is that it’s a product of its time. That’s to say that the fashions, and technology featured seem really dated by today’s standards. I know that there’s no way to fix this, but just be warned if you’re looking to try it out that things are going to seem pretty silly. My other negative for this show is that since it was aimed at a younger audience, sometimes the acting can be a bit outrageous, and over-the-top. I’m not sure the show would have worked for its intended audience as well as it did had it been more serious so I can’t really fault it, but again, be warned that watching as an adult can feel just the tiniest bit painful at times. That being said, if you watch the show, stick through until the end because the last season is such a mix of excellence and let down. The writers decided to do an unprecedented three part episode called The Tale of the Silver Sight. This episode is brilliant! The thing that sets this episode apart from any of the others is that pretty much the entire story takes place in the real world with the members of the Midnight Society serving as the protagonists of the story. We see the return of Gary to the group for one last hurrah around the fire, and the group has to track down the remaining founding members of the original Midnight Society that was formed by Gary and Tucker’s grandfather back in 1937. This is so that they can finish the story that he had started writing just before he passed away unexpectedly. Without giving too much away, the episode is a real nail biter of suspense and excitement. There are great twists in the story as we learn about the original MS, and their various members, and the payoff is perfect. The only real problem that I have with the episode is that it was originally aired as the season premiere, and I really feel like such an event should have been held aside as a series finale. Other than that, it’s a fantastic watch.

I feel like this article maybe a bit disjointed, but it says all that I need it to so hopefully it’s not too disjointed. There are seven seasons of this brilliant and imaginative show. That’s a lot to cover in just a few pages, I know, but it’s a phenomenon worth remembering. It definitely helped me develop many of my own interests. It’s one of the reasons you’re even reading this blog, and I can remember always wanting my own Midnight Society to gather with to tell stories. And seriously, if anyone with influence reads this thing, we need another revival of the show! Bring back the original cast and tell us some grown up stories! Or bring in the children of the original cast to treat us to some scary stories! Until the time comes that my fondest dreams become reality, enjoy what we do have of this wonderful show because what we do have is awesome! And stick around for more Critical Mass because I’ve got plenty more treats in store!

Spooky Spookfest Week 3: John Carpenter's The Thing

Continuing on with our Halloween celebration, I’m pleased to be doing my first ever reader request article! I’m happy to say that this movie was pretty much up my alley in terms of the types of horror movies that I towards which I tend to gravitate. John Carpenter’s The Thing is an old and crusty classic that’s been capturing the imaginations of and creeping out film goers for over three decades. It’s considered a benchmark for creature effects and makeup special effects even to this day, and in most regards, it’s earned every accolade that it’s been given. Let’s take a closer look at this cinematic classic.

This movie starts with some highly enjoyable stereotype 80s horror music, composed by Ennio Morricone. I’m not pointing out the stereotype as a bad thing in this case. It actually sets the tone extremely well, and it really helped to get me into the mindset that I’m watching an 80s film, which I enjoy. And Morricone is a musical giant. Look him up. He’s done some amazing things during his career. Anyway, during the title sequence, we see a spaceship crash to Earth. I’m told that this sequence actually tries to mimic the sequence from The Thing from Another World as closely as it could, the latter being the film that originally adapted the novel upon which both movies are based first. I think that’s a nice little nod, and it makes me curious to watch the other film to see how they both stack up to one another. But I digress. After the title, we’re shown that it’s 1982, and we’re in Antarctica. Then we see a wolf running across the snowy scenery. That’s about when my brain left the building. I couldn’t help getting stuck on the fact that wolves are not indigenous to Antarctica and so I shouldn’t be seeing the thing in front of me. Then we see a helicopter following the wolf and a person trying to shoot the wolf from the helicopter. This was also really off putting because the person shooting the rifle was such a terrible shot. Not to spoil too much, but that Norwegian was the worst plot device ever. In the first five minutes, we see him fail to shoot a wolf with a high power rifle that has a scope, drop a grenade next to his helicopter, which gets destroyed, and fail to shoot the wolf with that rifle from ten feet away. Luckily, he’s put out of his misery by an American with a six shooter.Dude was beyond inept.

The American doctor guy and MacReady, played by Kurt Russell, and his epic eye liner decide to go to the Norwegian camp to investigate. They find the camp destroyed, and salvage a few things that weren’t destroyed, which is how we learn that the Norwegians found something not of this world earlier in the season that they tried to destroy. There’s a lot of bickering, and shouting, and people die gruesomely as the Americans try to figure out just exactly what they’re dealing with. Eventually, they learn that the Norwegians uncovered an extraterrestrial being that mimics the form of creatures with which it comes in contact. It does this at the cellular level by assimilating the cells of the host and copying their cells. This led me to ask in a very serious and not demeaning tone, “Is this an AIDS metaphor?” Please feel free to discuss. I know that had just become a fairly big thing at the time, and so it’s possible. Eventually, the last men standing are able to figure out who the last ‘things’ are, or so they think, there’s a final confrontation, and Kurt Russell uses his spic eye liner to blow up the whole camp. If this synopsis seems brief, it’s not due to lack of interest, it’s because I’m not entirely certain just how to explain everything.

The movie is really good. Let’s get that out of the way right now. It’s just very… hard to explain… At least in terms of the story details. In broader strokes, it may not be quite as hard so let’s pull back a bit. The whole movie is a science fiction, horror, mystery. We’re given just enough information at a time to keep us engaged without giving too much away. There’s a lot that happens off screen that adds to the suspense, but that has to happen off screen in order to maintain that effect. That could be considered a small mark against the film. However, it’s that not knowing everything as a viewer that keeps you wanting to know more so it could also be a small mark for the movie as well. There are some really amazing things going on in this movie that are worth mentioning. First, there’s a lot of ambiguity to the story. Things are not always presented as absolutes, and things that could be taken for granted can’t be because things aren’t as they seem to be. Second, there’s some really clever mechanisms being used where dialog will be used to describe something that may be is a little too gruesome to show in a scene, but then it’s shown anyway, and the effect is that the impact is actually increased because the dialog just didn’t do enough justice to whatever was being described. Third, the tone is super bleak, and the color palette as well as the use of shadow lend themselves to that feel extremely well.

Now let’s talk about what everyone has been talking about for the last thirty years because I really wouldn’t be doing this movie any justice if I didn’t. The special effects in this movie are gorgeous. If you’ve read some of my earlier stuff, you know that I’m not a huge fan of movies using special effects to cover for deficiencies in other areas, but in this movie, the special effects absolutely sell the film. We first see the titular thing as it’s trying to turn itself into another wolf, presumably into an entire group of wolves. When I got my first look at it, my initial thought was, “That’s it. That’s what we’re supposed to be afraid of?” Then there’s a cut, and then it cuts back, and holy crap! When it cuts back the second time to the creature, I knew that I was in for a treat. The gore, and the copious usage of KY are just astonishing. It’s no wonder that people still buzz about this to this day. The level of detail used in representing partially assimilated people, and the amount of realism in the gore really sets a high mark. And the most amazing part is that the movie manages to up the ante at every opportunity, but it never goes so far as to cheapen the effect that it has on the viewer. Every time that there’s a scene with an alien, you feel just as disturbed and grossed out as the first time. It truly is a thing to behold.

It’s a good thing that those special effects were as amazing as they were because I still found a couple of rough spots with the film. I didn’t feel like the tension carried very well throughout. The movie definitely has its tense moments, but I didn’t feel like it was built up exceptionally well, especially in context of the physical feats being pulled off. The pacing was just a little weird for me. It started out slow as the mystery was presented and clues were given, but it never really picked up as much as I thought it should, again in order to build that tension. While the color palette works well with the tone, there was too much use of that blue/orange contrast that’s become such a joke in recent years. I noticed the reuse of the helicopter. I know it was just to keep the budget down, but at least change the numbers on the thing! I think that about covers the rough stuff, and I wouldn’t want to dwell on those for too long anyway because the movie gets a lot of things right too.

In the positive column, I seriously enjoyed the score. Ennio Morricone is already a favorite of mine, but I felt like the score for this movie was really dynamic and that it did a lot to solidify the movie’s hold on me as a viewer. The dialog was, for the most part, well written and well delivered. There may have been a little bit more shouting than I felt was necessary, but the dialog was often witty when I needed a laugh, and as I already said, the movie gave me just barely what I needed in order to keep up. The set design was awesome. I don’t usually mention this sort of thing because, honestly, you don’t see a lot of movies these days taking special care to do anything amazing with set design, but I really enjoyed the feeling of claustrophobia that the movie tries to impart. It has the effect of amplifying suspense to me, and it makes things creepier when one doesn’t know everything about their surroundings. I loved that Wilford Brimley was in this movie! And he was a doctor no less! When he was doing the autopsy  and talking about healthy kidneys, I was just like, “Yeah Wilford Brimley would know all about healthy kidneys and diabeetus!” If anything, this movie could have used a little more of him. I also loved the one liners that Kurt Russell got in this film. When he’s playing chess at the beginning and he calls the computer a b*tch. Who even does that? Kurt Russell does, that’s who! Then when he beats up the monster at the end and he’s all “Well F you too!” He really plays the badass well, despite the overuse of eye liner. In all, I would really recommend that you watch this movie. It has so much to offer, and it’s a really enjoyable ride throughout. And stay tuned next week because we’re going to be looking at another classic horror movie from days gone by!

Spooky Spookfest Week 2: The Ring vs. Ringu

                            

Way back in the olden days of the early 2000s, an interesting trend emerged. American studios started making Americanized versions of Japanese horror movies. They were simpler times. Most famous of these films were The Ring and The Grudge. But there were a couple of lesser known films that fit this mold as well like One Missed Call, and Dark Water. This week we’re looking at The Ring and it's Japanese counterpart Ringu. I find this exercise fascinating because as separate societies, Japanese people and American people tend to consume media in much different ways. Obviously there’s overlap, but in general, there are going to be some pretty remarkable differences between a Japanese film and an American film. With the Ring film in particular, the ante is upped by the fact that technically they’re based off of a Japanese novel. With shared inspiration, and wildly different approaches to that inspiration, let’s look at the Ring movies!

Summarizing both movies would take quite a lot of space for the article, and I’m more of a quality of content versus quantity of content so I’ll summarize the similar points simultaneously and point out the major differences a little later. The basic gist of the story is that our main character’s niece dies suddenly, and mysteriously while having a sleepover with a friend from school. In both cases, the main character is a woman and a news reporter. After poking around, a connection is made between the death of the niece and the death of several of the niece’s school mates. This leads to further digging, which uncovers that the teens went to a cabin for a weekend excursion and dies one week after returning. As the investigation unfolds, we start to get into our supernatural stuff. Rumors start to surface about a cursed videotape that kills those who watch it after one week. Further investigation into this supposed cursed tape lead the protagonist to find a copy and watch the tape while at the cabin. She takes it home with her to show to her ex-husband, who is a photographer in the American version, and we’ll get to the Japanese version in a minute. They analyze the video in an attempt to unlock its secrets, and uncover a sordid history surrounding the tape. In both versions, there’s scandal, coverup, and abuse, however, each version handles all of these elements just a little bit differently according to the storytelling sensibilities of their respective cultures. In the US version of the film, our heroine, Rachel Keller spends the third act of the film trying to understand the ghoulish entity that strikes from your TV. She uncovers a somewhat disturbing and tragic story of a little girl abused at the hands of her mother, a little girl desperately in need of some maternal love in her life, a somewhat sympathetic character. In the end, Rachel tracks down a well where the ghoulish girl was ‘buried’ and left to die. She has a moment with the corpse of said girl, and makes sure that her son makes a copy of the tape to show to someone else, and that’s pretty much the end of the film.

The Japanese version is extremely similar in many ways. The supernatural elements are all there, the basic premise of the story is the same, and the characters are utilized in mostly the same ways. However, this film is about as Japanese as they can get when it comes to having a US counterpart. Instead of the girl being abused at the hands of the mother, the girl is abused at the hands of her illegitimate father. Instead of the video representing the full extent of the supernatural elements in this film, we have the girl’s mom, who is psychic, our main character’s ex-husband, who is also psychic, and the video, which is a psionically culminated rage of the little girl that she imprinted on the tape at the time of her death. By the end of their investigation, the two main characters track down the well where the girl was ‘buried’, and as it turns out, it’s under a building at the campgrounds where the teens originally watched the tape. The two syphon all of the water out of the well, for some reason, there’s a moment with the corpse of the girl, and the movie more or less ends there. Of course, she has her son make a copy of the tape, and then there’s the biting moral question of, “If your life depended on screwing someone else in order to live, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Maybe not in those words, but the idea is the same.

Okay, so obviously these two movies were made for totally different audiences, and the fact that they were released four years apart, I feel, is actually kind of important here too. It’s not necessarily the period of time between films, but the time period during which that time elapsed that important. Film has always been evolving, and feel like the early 2000s were a pivotal time for movies in America. US films started to seek different qualities that they had only slightly earlier, especially in horror. As much as I hate to admit it, a lot of this had to do with The Sixth Sense. After that film, a lot of suspense/thriller/horror films looked to recreate that twist ending that any avid Are You Afraid of the Dark? fan saw coming a mile away. The line between mere suspense and horror started to be a little less defined as both started leaning on disturbing imagery more and more to unsettle the viewer in new ways. Contrast that with the Japanese version, which just takes all of the same elements to an over-the-top-ridiculous level. That’s just what the audience expects out their style of film. As a casual partaker of Japanese culture, I’ve noticed that that sort of hyperbolic presentation is pretty standard across the board. Things tend to be a bit wackier, and campier, and less serious. This is neither better, or worse, it just is. As a born and bred American, I tend to sway a little more towards the more serious take on the story that the US version gives, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t find the Japanese version thoroughly fascinating, and enjoyable. I will say that the US version at least gave us a visual representation of why the movie is called The Ring. I did notice that particularly important element missing from the Japanese version, but it was a nice attempt anyway. Give both of these movies a watch given the chance. Each manages to take a basic premise and use all of those elements in unique and entertaining ways. Stay tuned for next week! I’ll be doing my first ever fan request!

Spooky Spookfest Week 1: Poltergeist

Okay, so I’m not really a fall/winter kind of guy, and if you’ve read some of the recent articles, you can probably guess why. I get a little down during the months when the sun seems to go into perpetual hiding. However, I. LOVE. HALLOWEEN!!! There, it’s out. I’ve tried to stem that relationship for my wife’s sake for some time, but I love watching classic scary movies, eating way more candy than my cholesterol suggests I should,and most of all, I love that the entire holiday revolves around temporarily becoming something we’re not. What’s not to love? I’m so super excited that I get to review some sweet scary films for the next few weeks because I love scary movies.

Now I have another confession to make, I haven’t found a lot of horror films that I can really enjoy. You’ve got to give me the best, the best, the best, the best, the best films or else I just snooze through them (sorry, couldn’t help it). My love for horror movies runs so deep that I spent the majority of my youth dissecting them, and learning what goes into making them. Eventually, it got to the point where I unlocked the underlying formula, and after that happened, it was like playing DOOM on god mode. I could accurately predict plot developments, character archetypes, and jump moments well in advance. They just weren’t scary anymore. It’s gotten especially bad more recently with the discovery and advent of infrasound. For those who don’t have a degree in audio engineering, infrasound is any frequency that the human ear is physiologically incapable of hearing audibly. This can be either above our range, or below Typically when it comes up in conversation,people are referring to those sounds below the 20 hertz range, which, while inaudible to the human ear, can actually do some pretty wacky things to our bodies anyway. First, and most disturbing, those subsonic frequencies can make our internal organs vibrate. However, psychologically, they can make us agitated, fill us with dread, and creep us the crap out. Once movie directors caught on to this, they started using it as a prominent element in horror films.That’s a STUPID idea. Sure it makes the theater experience more terrifying, but once I’m at home, your movie just vomited out all it’s teeth and I’m left with a crappy movie with no plot, bad acting, and zero horror. It’s a blight to all horror films everywhere. *Whew!*

That’s my really round about way of saying, if I’m praising a horror film, it’s probably not a very recent film. I trend towards the classics. I love the films that have to stand on their own merits because things like CGI and infrasound hadn’t been developed. I really appreciate when a director takes time to get me absorbed in the story and the characters as well as the action because I feel like then I’m having an all around experience, and that the movie isn’t just relying on one gimmicky thing. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen some really good horror movies that have come out in recent years, it’s just that finding the good ones is like wading through the house of a thousand corpses. Most of them stink. Let me also note that I have a rather long list of scary movies that I really enjoy so narrowing all of them down to a handful that I could cover throughout the month was really hard. But, that just means that there will be more to review next year! With all of that out of the way, let’s jump in and look at a spooooky movie!

Poltergeist is by far, one of my favorite horror films of all time. It was released in 1982, but it still holds up even today. For those who’ve never seen it, the movie revolves around the Freeling family. They live, presumably, somewhere in southern California in a new fangled subdivision that Steve Freeling’s, the dad’s, construction company has been building for a few years. Pretty early on, we find out that the Freelings are putting in a swimming pool, and it’s not very long after that that creepy things start happening around the homestead. The youngest daughter, Carol Anne, starts having conversations with an unseen gaggle of entities via the TV. Furniture starts inexplicably moving, things start going bump in the night, and the family up to this point is able to just shrug it off. However, it doesn’t take very long for stuff to get real. There’s a mysterious storm, a tree tries to eat Robbie, the son and middle child, and Carol Anne gets sucked into purgatory through the closet. There’s a joke there somewhere, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to put my finger on one.

Anyway, presumably, a short time after all of this happens, Steve contacts some paranormal investigators. They come in like 80s Ghosthunters and set up to make observations overnight. They attempt to contact Carol Anne on the ‘other side’ and tell her that she should, in fact, not enter the light that leads into the afterlife. One of the guys gets bitten on the stomach, and the same guy seems a steak inch across a countertop. Then while he’s washing his hands, he’s given a hallucination where he sees his skin rip from his skull. Seriously guys, this guy gets dumped on This movie takes quite a bit of time to show how the supernatural things are affecting the family and their lives. The oldest daughter goes to live with her boyfriend’s family. This isn’t explicitly stated, but based on the size of the hickey on her neck when she returns, it’s a pretty safe bet. The son is sent.... Somewhere. I’m not sure it’s ever actually mentioned. And Steve ends up looking like rotten crap warmed over. In the meantime, the paranormal investigator guy that gets dumped on leaves the investigation for reasons. This prompts the group to bring in a new person, the most memorable character of the entire film, Tangina. I’m sure you know her even if you don’t recognize the name. She’s the short woman with the huge glasses. Anyway, she saunters on the scene like she thinks that she’s some kind of bad ass, and she takes over the operation.

Through her, we learn that there are a whole ton of restless spirits just chilling in purgatory around the house, and they’ve been feeding off of Carol Anne’s life force. So they concoct a plan to get Carol Anne back, and trick the restless spirits into crossing over. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that the reason all of this is happening, as we find out, is that the contracting company that’s been building the subdivision built that particular portion of the thing on an ancient Native American burial ground. They moved all of the head stones, but the left all of the bodies. Oops… So where were we? Oh yeah, Carol Anne’s mom, Diane, ties a rope around her waist, enters the purgatory thing thing through the closet, (Insert joke here.) and saves Carol Anne, but only after we get a fabulous sequence of a creepy giant skull trying to eat Steve. The day appears to be saved! YAY! But then they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince us that everything is as it used to be, which of course just means that it’s not. The night that they’re supposed to leave, the closet tries to eat the whole family. Steve is off getting things squared away so that he can tell his bosses to suck it, Diane is taking a bath, and then the kids start wailing. Steve gets home just in time to see strobe lights going off in all of the windows and he rushes in to save everyone, barely because it’s supposed to be suspenseful. They pile in the car and pull out of the garage just in time for the oldest daughter, Diana to return with her ginormous hickey. She piles in and they start to peel rubber just as the whatever that was terrorizing the house sucks the whole structure into a supernatural void! The whole house just implodes on itself! It’s pretty spectacular. But they peel off, and check into a Holiday Inn, and that’s it. Oh, there’s one last gag where Steve puts the TV outside the room, and that’s it.

Sarcasm aside, this is a really fantastic movie. It’s a part of a trilogy and I personally think they’re all pretty good. They do reuse a lot of the same type of material, but to me, it never gets old. What’s kept this franchise popular is the supposed curse. This movie was released in June 1982. In November 1982, the woman who played Diana, the daughter, was strangled to death by her boyfriend. She was 22. Two actors from the second movie passed away shortly after it was released. But the creepiest associated death is that of Heather O’Rorke, who played Carol Anne. She died a week before filming was supposed to wrap due to an undiagnosed bowel obstruction. She was 12. There’s really no correlation to speak of there, but a good urban legend has a way of staying alive, and this one is no different.

From a technical perspective, this is a really great movie. The special effects still hold up well despite their age. The ambience that makes the movie unsettling still works. The acting is great, the dialog is good, and the story is tight. As I said before, I love these older horror movies because they had to rely on solid storytelling and this one is no different. It delivers in all the right ways! It’s truly a treat to watch start to finish, and it’s got one of the best dialog exchanges ever. At the point that Diane goes into purgatory, she and Tangina have a disagreement as to who should go. Tangina makes the argument that Diane has never done anything like what’s about to be done. Diane retorts that neither had Tangina. Tangina pauses for a moment and says something to the effect of, “You’re right. You go!” It’s great! Watch it for that line alone! Also, the theme of this movie is particularly awesome. Where most horror films solve problems via violence of some sort, this movie ultimately solves it's main problems via the strength of the family. It's a rare message coming from Hollywood, and especially from a horror movie. Stay tuned for next week as we continue our Spooky Spookfest!