...:::Tykes in Trouble:::...

Approximately a trillion years ago, I came across a picture in a magazine (either Fangoria or Famous Monsters) of a weird priest with gross bubbly skin. It was for an upcoming horror film called THE COMING, which to my knowledge, ironically, never came out. The image made a strong impression on me, either due to my psychotic fear of acne or, simply because anything related to religion can’t help being creepy. That dusty memory sat in a shoebox at the very back of my mothball-riddled brain until the other day when I finally came across THE COMING on YouTube, hiding under the alias of BURNED AT THE STAKE! (sticklers who point out that nobody was ever burned at the stake in Salem as the film suggests should be burned at the stake themselves for bumming me out.) Lo and behold, it’s directed by the nice man (BERT I. GORDON) who gifted the world with ant-o-vision in EMPIRE OF THE ANTS and brought to life H.G. WELLs spectacular vision of a world gone mad thanks to giant chickens in FOOD OF THE GODS! This was too good to be true and so I pinched myself and, by pinched myself, I mean did a jig.

What a pleasant surprise this movie is! Maybe it’s not good in that useless, “It’s made well” sense but it’s certainly good in the more important, “I cannot wait to see what happens next” sense! How has this movie remained so far under the carpet for so long? I see that it involves a time traveling pilgrim so I’m going to blame him. It’s very difficult to pull off a time traveling pilgrim. BURNED AT THE STAKE stars the incomparable SUSAN SWIFT of AUDREY ROSE fame, who apparently was working on being type cast as a reincarnate. She plays a nice girl named Loreen, who was not such a nice girl a couple hundred years ago when she was known as Ann Putman and her hobbies included screaming her head off and randomly accusing people of being witches. Loreen is having flashbacks of her previous horrible self and to make matters worse, she’s being stalked by an adorable/scary black dog, the pizza-faced priest and the aforementioned time traveling pilgrim who is rightfully amazed by airplanes. Luckily there is a helpful witch on hand to explain the fuzzier parts of the plot when she’s not too busy having telepathic conversations with the dog. There’s a sweet redemption bit near the end that reminded me of THE SEVENTH SIGN (1988) and more than a few absolutely horrifying wax historical reenactment figures one of whom may or may not spring to life. Also, I dig this witch mobile…

OK, this movie is patently ridiculous but it’s way better than I ever dared hope. Plus, it’s all autumnal and takes place in beautiful Salem, Massachusetts! Fortuitously, I found it mere hours after having seen ROB ZOMBIE’S LORDS OF SALEM (review pending) and I decree that the two movies make an excellent wonder twin double feature! I think they might have even used the same graveyard! It’s probable! Kooky though it may be, BURNED has a semi-cruel dark streak as only a film that concerns itself with a five-year-old being burned alive can. SUSAN SWIFT‘s performance is seriously solid, regardless of the heaps of hokum thrown at her and frankly, I’d take this cockeyed lunacy over drippy AUDREY ROSE any day of the week! Somebody who cares about humankind should put this unfairly forgotten flick out on DVD and they should do it quickly! They should also put a blurb by me on the back that says, “ So bewitching, you won’t even care that it doesn’t involve giant chickens!”

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For the last five or six years, on a roughly monthly basis, I’ve been checking YouTube for the appearance of the elusive 1983 TV movie SUMMER GIRL. My sad, faithful diligence has finally paid off! To the best of my memory, I haven’t laid eyes on this chestnut since the original night it aired. Not that my powers of recall can be trusted. My strongest recollection of SUMMER GIRL has always been of its startling final image, a dark silhouette standing on a cliff in some kind of ominous victorious pose. It stayed sharp in my mind even while the rest of the flick blurred…

…only I totally got that wrong. That scene happens in the middle of the movie with plenty of stuff still waiting to happen. It’s still awesome though! It’s not necessary to go into much detail about SUMMER GIRL’s plot. You are familiar with this tale in one form or another. It’s the same as THE BABYSITTER (1980) which came before it, and the same as any number of HAND THAT ROCKED THE CRADLE-molded films that came after it too. Take a happy family with an insecure wife (in this case our old pal KIM DARBY) and a husband with a roving eye (MEGAFORCE-of nature BARRY BOSTWICK) and then add a seemingly helpful innocent who is in actuality a cunning sociopath and stir. What makes this routine outing momentous is that the one and only DIANE FRANKLIN plays the requisite interloping usurper.

If MOLLY RINGWALD is the peachy pastel face of the eighties we choose to remember, DIANE FRANKLIN is like the darker, deeper, more complicated truth hiding behind that candy coated mask. Not to take anything away from the RINGWALD but while she was constructing happy endings reliant on the acceptance of others (see the classic JOHN HUGHES triptych), FRANKLIN was forging a fickle opportunist heartbreaker (THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN), a tragic incestuous victim of demonic sororicide (THE AMITYVILLE HORROR 2: THE POSSESSION), a fish out of water French exchange student in a suicide comedy (BETTER OFF DEAD) and a vapid video vixen who unsuccessfully battles a mutant from space (TERRORVISION). In her made for television efforts she has the rare distinction of playing both the honorable final girl (DEADLY LESSONS) and the evil menace that must be destroyed (SUMMER GIRL).

I can’t say SUMMER GIRL’s “Cinni” is my favorite FRANKLIN creation (that honor belongs to AMITYVILLE’s Patricia Montelli) but the mesmeric psycho with delusions of grandeur surely adds gravitas to FRANKLIN’s oeuvre and mystique. As it turns out, I’m not all that happy with my newfound knowledge that Cinni is ultimately foiled by party-pooping nonbelievers so I have decided to revert back to my false recollection and continue to see her as that dark goddess on a cliff looking down at us mere mortals triumphantly.

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When pal Amanda by Night (of Made For TV Mayhem) invited Kindertrauma to join in on the VALERIE HARPER BLOGATHON she was orchestrating, we could not possibly refuse. Fact is, although she is better known for many other gigs, HARPER starred in what is simply the best (and most kindertraumatic!) made-for-television horror flick of the slash-happy eighties. Yes, once again I am talking about DON’T GO TO SLEEP! If you’re not familiar with that title then I beg you to yank your horror-head out of the zombie sand and give it a look-see. You will not be sorry. Having covered this one before you may think I have nothing more to say, but you’d be wrong because I have yet to give this gem the “five favorite things” treatment. Here are my five favorite things about DON’T GO TO SLEEP…

THE OPENING CREDITS! Right out the starting gate DON’T GO TO SLEEP is humming it’s own quirky tune. Black and white title cards flash and they’re so low-tech shaky you might think you’ve stumbled upon a home movie of a camping trip. Lullaby music box chirpings blast and then are cut off indiscriminately by the sound of whooshing traffic. This happens again and again throughout the prelude. I’m sure that somebody missed the effect that they were going for by a couple of miles but the resulting awkwardness of the overreach must be superior to what they were aiming for anyway. It’s slapdash, makeshift and yet still sets an appropriate mood. This movie is all about the treacly chimes of childhood being upset by jagged blasts of harsh, startling reality.

THE DIRECTION! Made for TV movies have their own set of advantages and disadvantages compared to their theatrical counterparts. Sometimes the unavoidable restraints can result in a static affair or the director not having as much leeway to express himself visually. This is not the case here. RICHARD LANK (who also steered 1978′s effectively eerie NIGHT CRIES) has a field day playing with bizarre angles, distorted perspectives and unusual POV shots. I think he may even have invented the flying lizard cam and the rolling pizza cutter cam. Prime time doesn’t allow for much gore but LANK moves ahead undaunted. Rather than show a head smashing into the driveway, he quickly cuts to a watermelon being dropped and bursting apart upon the kitchen floor. Message received loud and clear!

THE CLOSING! What better gift to leave your audience than a final image branded into their horrified brains for all eternity? DON’T GO TO SLEEP does just that in a seemingly effortless way without resorting to bells and whistles and elaborate effects. Much like SATAN’S TRIANGLE (in my mind, the greatest made for TV movie of the supernatural seventies), DON’T places its final winning card on the preternatural power of one enigmatic Cheshire smile. The maniacal faux-sweet image actually appears several times throughout the film but its final presentation is so gruesomely uncanny that it’s difficult to shake or even interpret why it’s so effective. I seriously believed for years that a skull was superimposed upon the image a’la Norman Bates in PSYCHO, but I guess that was my imagination! True cinematic alchemy!

THE STRAIGHTJACKET! I’m sorry but it’s satisfying to see anybody who was in the movie ANNIE wind up in a straight jacket!

THE CAST! Are you kidding me? DUEL’s DENNIS WEAVER, ROSEMARY’S BABY’s RUTH GORDON and POLTERGEIST’S OLIVER ROBINS! It’s a horror fan’s dream team! Both ROBIN IGNICO as Mary and KRISTIN CUMMING as Jennifer excel where most child actors would have failed. And then there’s VALARIE HARPER who we are specifically honoring today. I’m thinking DON’T GO TO SLEEP may not exactly be the highlight of her long career but yes, of course, she brings everything she’s got regardless. I love her and WEAVER together tackling screaming matches like they’re in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and ad-libbing under their breath whenever they damn well feel like it. I’m sure some folks have a hard time seeing past the campy surface but to me, that’s just one layer out of zillions. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore and what a shame.

DON’T GO TO SLEEP is a lively watch but it never shirks from the subject of death and grieving, topics that the horror genre is especially fit to explore. It’s easy to forget that as modern horror continues to be corralled toward action/comic book power fantasies instead. I say don’t feel bad for VALERIE HARPER; she’s not going anyplace you’re not going too. As she faces whatever is next (total recovery says me), I stand more impressed with her wisdom than her bravery. She knows its not how you die but how you live that matters. “We’re all terminal” she says and there’s nothing truer than that. I think I’ll save my sorrow for someone less vividly alive, less admirably “awake”.

Dash O’ Trivia: Guess what VAL‘s last name is in DON”T GO TO SLEEP! Answer: Hogan! Wha-wha-what? This calls for some back up from Turnidoff!

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Home movies are naturally creepy. There is something depressing about folks hamming it up while forever trapped in a grainy, bleached-out world that no longer exists. SINISTER opens with a super-8 flick that brings the medium’s innate moroseness to grotesque heights, as it happens to feature a family with sacks on their heads being hung from a tree. Some sort of makeshift execution device has been crafted where, as the tree’s branch is sawed off, the weight of the branch dropping raises the squirming family off the ground and to their final Kodak moment. It’s a grisly way for a movie to introduce itself and an early indicator that SINISTER aims to live up to its name. What could be more disturbing than witnessing an entire family killed together? Later in the film we’ll find out; witnessing an entire family killed together in front of their Chihuahua!

ETHAN HAWKE plays dishonorable dad Ellison Oswalt who moves his unsuspecting family into the house where the murders took place. We’re clear on his motivation (Ellison was a once celebrated true crime writer who has fallen out of favor and is looking for his next inspiration) but his reasoning is foggy. The killer of the family was never caught and one child was never found so the house’s heinous history is still an open wound. Who would bring their kids into a place like that? Can’t Ellis’ research be done anywhere considering it mostly consists of pinning string to a map and writing questions on Post-it notes? Ellison knows his family is bound to find out but he lies to them just the same and it’s suggested this is not the first time he has put work ahead of them. Hey, I’m down with an unlikable protagonist, I’m just not sure I’m down with his wife being presented as a wet blanket nag when she has every reason to be pissed off. Moving sucks.

Ellison’s theory that living in the crime scene might offer him insight pays off in spades when he finds a box full of snuff flicks in the attic made by the killer! What a break! Sure, this is clearly invaluable evidence to the murders of dozens of innocent people but by sharing it with the authorities, he’s jeopardizing his book so he keeps it to himself. He’s obsessed, not obsessed enough to watch all the movies in one sitting, which by the looks of it he could, but obsessed just the same. The more he watches the more his life crumbles and the more he has to deal with scorpions, snakes, invisible dancing children with circles under their eyes, stay-at-home actor VINCENT D’ONOFRIO and his daughter painting on walls other than those she has been given permission to paint on.

SINISTER contains brief moments that are sublimely scary. When we first catch a glimpse of what’s breeding the horror, it’s a vague, bone chilling image. But the more things come into focus the harder I found it to swallow (which is strange because my gullibility is of legend.) HAWKE is great but his earnestness tends to highlight the multitude of shortcuts and contrivances. (How convenient that an ancient deity just happens to resemble a modern metal-head’s SAW-friendly wet dream.) The wrestling flavors of deadpan gritty thriller and broad horror fantasy don’t so much clash as beg to be better stirred.

Can I get nit-picky? When Ellison’s family moves into the house months after a notorious slaughter has taken place, I get that the tree remains in the back yard to inform us of where we are, but why the hell is the branch that was sawed down still hanging off of it? I’ve learned to let bigger issues than that pass in order to get my scares on but I’d be lying if I said that dead branch didn’t get stuck in my craw. It drove me nuts. In fact, I still want to jump into the movie and drag it off myself. Maybe it’s me. I have been on organizing tear lately but still…even if a family was not hanged on that tree, human behavior dictates that somebody would do something about that branch! It’s dead! I should concentrate on the score. The score is cool.

If you are a fan of supernatural flicks this is worthwhile for the handful of times it hits the nail on the head but honestly I could never completely fall under its spell. For me it was like the devil laughing in my face but with spinach in his teeth.

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UNK SEZ: Sorry for the filler-post but I’m working on something unwieldy that is taking up all my limited brain space. It gives me tummy-rumblings to neglect you fine folks though so I thought I’d scrap this together. The other night I came across LADY IN WHITE (1988) playing on the MGM HD channel and it seriously made my eyes pop out of my head. Well, that’s not exactly true but it made me want to pull my eyes out and squash them against the TV in approval. I’m already a fan of the movie but I could not believe how gorgeous it looked with all of its colors behaving all concentrated, bright and insane.

LADY IN WHITE does for Halloween what A CHRISTMAS STORY does for Christmas, so why is it not the equal perennial must-see? It’s so good. It’s spooky, nostalgic, moving, creepy, it reminds you that racists and child murders are scum and visually it’s got some NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, dark fairy tale thing going on. What’s not to love? Jo Polniaczek’s Dad is in it for chrissake. If you haven’t seen it you just have to, that’s all I’m saying. Here are some images from my sorry DVD to back me up further but this movie needs a special edition HD upgrade pronto. Alright, I have to go back and tame the giant mess I’ll dump on these pages in the near future. Hope everyone is starting to feel the Halloween!

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I can tell you right now that not everybody is going to like THE TALL MAN. I can say that confidently because I watched it with two other people who were as unimpressed with it as I was intrigued. According to my not very scientific experiment, exactly one third of all people will enjoy this movie and approximately two thirds would prefer to play with their cell phones. On the other hand, perhaps I should disregard my findings as I may have inadvertently raised expectations to an impossible level when I incorrectly informed the participants in my survey that the movie starred JENNIFER BEALS rather than JESSICA BIEL. Once the sad reality that the film we were watching featured not the star of FLASHDANCE but the star of SEVENTH HEAVEN sunk in, a profound malaise infiltrated the room like a radioactive fog that apparently only I was immune to. I admit that BIEL is no BEALS, but that doesn’t make it O.K. to treat her like she’s JENNA ELFMAN. She was a trooper in the TCM remake and she’s surprisingly good in THE TALL MAN playing a complicated role. In fact, the more I think about it the more I realize what a divertingly clever addition BIEL’s presence is to this movie that gets off on using the audience’s presumptions against them whenever possible.

I think director/writer PASCAL LAUGIER (HOUSE OF VOICES, MARTYRS) is brilliant and I’m not just saying that because he’s French. I found myself in the middle of this movie with exactly zero idea where it was going to head next and that’s my favorite place to be in the world. Anyone can throw a twist onto the end of a movie and exit stage left without facing the consequences, but LAUGIER flips things on their head consistently throughout and bravely holds himself and his film accountable for every rug-pull. The startup premise involves a languishing mining town that’s dealing with a rash of missing children. The locals have pinned their fears upon an enigmatic figure known only as “The Tall Man.” BIEL plays Julia Denning, an outsider who has no reason to take the whispered about legend seriously until her own child is snatched away. Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be excited or heartbroken that LAUGIER was taking on such seemingly straightforward material but as it turns out, that is just the first layer of many that he digs through. When the end credits roll, it’s difficult to believe we’re watching the same movie we started out with. The audience is dumped on shaky moral ground far closer to the art house than the slaughterhouse without even a courtesy jump scare security blanket to cling to.

So hurray for this movie for being challenging and making me feel like a gullible fool multiple times, but is it scary? My viewing partners certainly didn’t think so, but I found the dread factor sharp on multiple occasions. Don’t expect the soul curdling power of MARTYRS though; even with all the mind games at play, this is more of an earthy white trash fairy tale than a KUBRICK-ian dive into the abyss. For me, it’s unique and inventive enough to warrant acclamation and how can anyone be anything but extremely grateful after being so expertly kept on their toes? You’ll find a few really good performances too; it’s always good to see pocket scream queen JODELLE FERLAND (SILENT HILL, TIDELAND) and PONTYPOOL’s STEPHEN McHATTIE is a welcome face too. My favorite turn belongs to the effortlessly tenacious SAMANTHA FERRIS who should be instantly recognized by any SUPERNATURAL fans out there. I guess the sad truth is that if you want to do something original and different, you should expect that not everybody is going to follow. As far as I’m concerned, LAUGIER has yet to let me down and I’ll be excited to see what he does next. I’d stay clear of a FLASDANCE remake if I were him though; JENNIFER BEALS’ fans are a hard crowd to please.

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I often tell people that I’m lucky. I grew up in a time when children’s entertainment was at its best. These were before the days of BLUE’S CLUES and TELETUBBIES giving kids everywhere ADD (you know it’s true, people!) Back in my day (why hello, Grandpa), family entertainment was wholesome, but not completely braindead like a lot of it is now. The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon had only recently hit the airwaves and they weren’t afraid to take chances. In many ways, The Disney Channel was sort of like the TCM of its day. It was there that I’d end up seeing a good majority of all the old MGM musicals, the delicious TEEN WITCH, and the goofy ROGER CORMAN produced STEPMONSTER (yes, Disney used to show CORMAN movies.) Hell, even Nickelodeon used to air the slightly subversive and spooky ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

Out of all the great kid friendly things to come out of the ‘80s and ‘90s (of which there are many), the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel MATILDA goes straight to the top of my list. I first saw it in theaters back in ’96. Two twins in my 1st grade class decided to have their birthday party at the movies and they picked this one to go see. Pretty much the entire class showed up, not knowing that we were about to have our minds blown.

The story centers around young Matilda Wormword. Matilda’s white trash parents hardly even know she exists and spend their days selling used cars for unfair prices, getting their hair dyed, and playing bingo. Little do they know that, even from an extremely young age, their daughter has had an abnormally large IQ. Since she’s so neglected at home, she becomes self-sufficient and even braves the big city to seek out a library so that she can quench her thirst for knowledge.

When she finally asks to go to school at age 6, her parents send her to Crunchem Hall, a school that looks more like a correctional facility than a place of higher learning. There, she comes face to face with the butch Agatha Trunchbull, the school’s stern headmistress, who has a thing for tossing disobedient children out windows, over fences by their pigtails, and into the Chokey, an iron maiden-esque contraption filled with nails and broken glass. Thankfully, Matilda ends up in the classroom of Miss Honey, a kindly teacher who appreciates the quirks of every student she teaches and starts to believe that Matilda might be exceptionally gifted. Did I also mention that Matilda has psychokinetic powers? Oopsy! The story is like PRECIOUS meets some sort of bizarre JOHN WATERS movie meets CARRIE…but for kids.

What stands out most is how the story never speaks down to children. It’s that special something that Roald Dahl had. If you look at his other works such as THE WITCHES and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, you’ll see what I mean. His stories are never inappropriate, but they also never gloss over some of the darker themes that most children’s writers would. They’re sort of like the Grimm’s Fairy Tales of our time. As a kid, I respected that. I looked up to the storytellers who knew we were brave enough to handle the injustices that life might throw at us. Plus, Dahl always delivered his stories with a playful wink in his eye and his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.

MARA WILSON (who I loved in MRS. DOUBTFIRE, too!) plays Matilda and is super adorable. Real life couple DANNY DeVITO (who also directed the film) and RHEA PERLMAN as Matilda’s trashy, inept parents threaten to steal the show at any moment. They’re hysterical! EMBETH DAVIDTZ radiates a genuine warmth as Miss Honey. She’s the teacher we all wanted as kids. You just want to give her a hug and let her adopt you. PAM FERRIS should probably join the ranks of Kindertrauma Traumatizers for her portrayal of The Trunchbull. She commits to the role in such a way that leaves your jaw on the floor. There’s not one bit of vanity in her performance. She just looks like she’d smell really bad. I actually just recently looked up a recent picture of her and was shocked that she was such a beautiful lady in real life. This is real acting, folks!

A few traumatizing moments include:

Matilda still holds up as a surprisingly fun and refreshing viewing experience. I’ve probably seen it over a hundred times since its first release and I still never tire of it. It’s just as warm, touching, funny, and poignant as the first time. In fact, Dahl has gotten surprisingly lucky in terms of film adaptations. Both THE WITCHES and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (I’m talking about the one with Gene Wilder, not Johnny Depp!) were also adapted into stellar films worthy of coverage on Kindertrauma. God knows I have my own horror stories about watching those two. As a matter of fact, those films still make me a little uneasy when I watch them. There’s something about them that gets under my skin.

Special kudos go out to the film’s composer, DAVID NEWMAN, who also composed HEATHERS, which is another one of my favorite film scores. His music is at times quirky, scary, suspenseful, and often heartbreaking. Take a listen to this suite (HERE). Also, what kid of the ‘90s doesn’t immediately think of this song when this movie is brought up?

UNK SEZ:: Thanks for covering this fondly remembered movie Chris! I’m a fan myself. Folks, don’t forget Chris’movie PERVERSION is available HERE!

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ONCE
I wasn’t sure I wanted to catch DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE. When I was around 13, my best friend was taken to see it by his father and the tale he returned with rattled me. I was immersed in horror films at the time but DON’T, at least as my friend described it, sounded like it was on the deeper end of the pool than I was familiar with. It was about a guy who lived in a house (that you’d better not go into), who captured women, tied them up in a metal room and then burned them alive with a flamethrower. What?! Why would anyone want to do that?! Listening to my pal’s war story was thrilling but worrisome. He talked as if he was lucky to make it out of the theater alive himself. The movie he made in my head was close enough. DON’T didn’t sound like much fun and being tied up and burned alive sounded way crueler than a nice quick axe to the head. I wasn’t ready to go into this particular house. I wasn’t even all that tempted…yet.

THEN
A bunch of years passed and I (wrongly) believed I had exhausted every 1980s horror flick I could. Obviously it was high time I took the plunge and went inside that darned house my friend had told me about. Even if the film did not live up to my nervous expectations, I’d have a decent time visiting the dark shadow it once cast in my head. I ended up appreciating the movie a lot more than I expected. I found the depravity I bargained for and the lead actor was sympathetic enough to carry me through. I suppose there is a misogynistic element skulking about but such is the price you pay for free range horror. I missed DON’T in its heyday and I missed it in its awkward years too. By this point it captured a specific valued bubble of time. Friendly disco music and a weirdly effective undercurrent of melancholy balanced out whatever sleazy behavior it indulged in. The house itself is my favorite type of authentic location you only seem to find in low budget films. The awesome icing on the cake is DGITH’s awkward dubbing. The original soundtrack was unusable so everything had to be re-dubbed later which adds something as off-putting as it is endearing. Background characters jabber hilariously and incidental dialogue jumps to the forefront. It’s wrong but I love it.

NOW
Watching the film a second time I find myself even more taken. The psycho killer with mommy issues routine is nothing rare but the unscalable wall of alienation maniac Donny Kohler bangs up against is not limited to his history or home. He’s harangued at work, his competency is perpetually up for debate and every time he tries to connect with a lone ally, some snide comment questioning his sexuality is made. Donny’s abusive past (his mother tried to burn the sin out of him) would be enough to unhinge anyone but the consistent debasement he receives in the ugly universe he inhabits is just as destructive. (Okay maybe he shouldn’t have thrown that lit candle holder at that pushy girl’s head at the disco but it’s not as if he wasn’t perfectly clear about not wanting to dance.) In the end Donny’s last victim is not a woman but a priest who has failed him and there’s an epilogue that suggests that the evil we’ve witnessed is not limited to Donny’s twisted mind. In the messed up world of DGOTH it seems every kid we encounter from extras on the street to the children of Donny’s friend are victims of hostility and the voices that haunted Donny are ready to “help” them (“the weak and the wounded” to borrow from SESSION 9) too. Sure, the “evil finds a new host” epilogue may be cliché but it strikes a truth about the fallout of abuse.

DON’T ends up being my favorite type of movie. It can be seen as crude and humorous on one level but on the other hand there’s something hard to shake creepy about it too. The old house, with its bizarre angles and funky furniture and the sudden flashes of Donny’s white-haired, blue-skinned, scarecrow of a dead mother give it some timeless gothic flavor while the music, fashion and unrepentant violence speak specifically of its own era. I also really like the performance of the main actor DAN GRIMALDI. I think he’s really interesting in this and I’m not surprised he went on to other things including playing twins on THE SOPRANOS. I can’t really say this movie ends up being as scary and as effective as the movie that my pal constructed in my head long ago but it does have a better soundtrack and I have a feeling it’s only just begun to speak to me.

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I was going to kick myself for not watching WILLIAM (MANIAC) LUSTIG’s VIGILANTE (1983) sooner but I decided to thank the universe for waiting for the exact perfect circumstances to lift the curtain on this prize instead. Don’t sweat the plot- it’s about a guy who believes in the law until justice flips him the bird after his life is demolished, who then decides to take matters into his own hands. Things explode and bad, bad people die in ways they really deserve. See, this is why I can’t get worked up about remakes and sequels; multiple interpretations of the same potent theme are the lifeblood of genre filmmaking. You know this place even if you haven’t been here before.

Two major factors catapult VIGILANTE over its peers. It’s got a fantastic cast, ROBERT FORSTER, CAROL LYNLEY, FRED WILLIAMSON, JOE SPINELL and RUTANYA ALDA (she of AMITYVILLE II and no relation to ALAN-drats!) and a super talented sinfully underrated director. LUSTIG may have a habit of delivering semi-unsatisfactory climaxes but the road to that minor disappointment is paved with major brilliance. He certainly knows how to engage the audience with his characters and he excels at keeping you on edge worried about how far he’ll go next. What’s more, I have to hand it to LUSTIG for his striking and yet never overpowering visual sense. Is it just me? I love his use of color and his penchant for finding strange fluorescent beauty in the blandest of areas. It can’t be accidental, amidst jaw-dropping violence there’s something about VIGILANTE (and MANIAC) that feels like unearthing stray blazing rubies in piles of grey gravel. I’ll throw down some images below but I think that analogy applies to how LUSTIG’s films operate as a whole too. The world may be hopeless, grim and falling apart but if you look close there’s always something shining in the wreckage.

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A bunch of years ago I remember having a used DVD copy of FRIGHT in my hands all ready to buy when a friend I was with pulled one of those, “Oh, I’ve seen that” sourpuss, “Meh” routines. Dummy me dropped it from my purchase pile. I suppose my pal had a point; FRIGHT is nothing extraordinary but certainly this person should have known me well enough to realize that a babysitter, an old dark house and an escaped maniac would be more than enough to warrant a viewing. So what if I’d seen this song and dance before? Familiarity may breed contempt for others but for me, it breeds contentment. Plus, I now realize that FRIGHT predates the films that drove the concept into the ground. That’s gotta count for something. If that friend knew me at all they would have said, “It’s from the early seventies-you’ll love it!” but looking back I believe the only real information I was meant to take away was that so-and-so had seen this film before me. Big whoop. Here’s an oversized stuff animal prize.

FRIGHT is of its time and may frustrate modern viewers especially those who expect characters to act as they (theoretically) would and get incensed when they don’t do the exact smartest thing in every possible situation. Our babysitter Amanda (SUSAN GEORGE) does some seriously boneheaded things in FRIGHT and she cries and screeches a lot too. If the film was made today, I’m sure she’d be depicted in a much stronger, more valiant way but I’m going to give her some leeway as she’s just a kid and a maniac is trying to kill her. Why not scream and cry? Is there a better time for such a response? Oh yeah and her boyfriend kicks the bucket right in front of her face! That might upset a person.

I know I’m an apologist but critiquing a character’s response to a violent situation, to me, is sort of like a friend telling you they’ve been mugged and you’re like, “Did you punch them in the face? Did you grab the gun away? Why not, what’s wrong with you?” Everything is easy from the sidelines and everybody thinks they’re boss until they’re not. Truth is, you really don’t know until it happens to you. When real fear comes a knocking all bets are off, the world is upside down and a truckload of kooky chemicals are poured into your brain. You might have a hard time remembering your own name let alone be expected to suddenly morph into an expert at guerilla warfare. Amanda’s not alone in the questionable decision making department either. Nearly every character here, including the police, reacts in ways that are unbelievable by today’s standards. In the end though, all the reactions present are more likely then say, Bigfoot so if I can believe in Bigfoot, I can believe in this. He’s out there!

All in all, I’d say FRIGHT is very much worth hurdling over its hokey chasms. If you blur your eyes to a few glitches it’s a beautifully shot, cleverly edited, atmospheric suspense film that must have had some kind of influence on HALLOWEEN. Whether the resemblance is coincidental or not, I’d say it plays like a precursor to that film even more so than the often-sited BLACK CHRISTMAS does. Although not gory or gruesome, the potential for something truly horrific to occur is intensely strong in certain scenes. The child in peril business is particularly off-putting and something I’m sure you’d be unlikely to see attempted today. The little tyke in this, TARA COLLINSON, is actually the director’s son, which makes the situations he’s thrown into a little bit easier to condone. There’s a bushel of hammy dialogue on hand but the performances are uniformly above par. IAN BANNON as the escaped lunatic nearly goes over the top but there’s something convincing about his wild scattered energy too.

I should have bought this movie way back when, as now the price seems to have jumped. Sheez, you’d think that getting to see HONOR (Pussy Galore) BLACKMAN who plays the mom getting her groove on at the local restaurant would be enough for some people! Yep, it could have been better but it deserves more than a shrug too. That, or I just love babysitter vs. maniac movies. In any case, there are worse things in life than hanging with SUSAN GEORGE in a dark mansion for an hour and a half, even if she is a little screechy.

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