Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy
I'm not going to "review" the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET uber-doc NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY so much as just shovel heaps and heaps of gushy praise upon it. I don't think there's any way a better, more in depth investigation of the franchise is ever going to exist. In other words, if you are an ELM STREET fan and you are sitting on the fence about whether to purchase this DVD or not, allow me to push you off of that fence via wrecking ball. I had penciled myself in for the usual and what I got was so much more.
NEVER SLEEP AGAIN amazingly gathers nearly everybody ever involved in the series (most importantly JENNIFER RUBIN) and all the no-shows have been added to my shit-list. (Careful JOHNNY DEPP, counting ALICE IN WONDERLAND, that's two strikes against you this year. You are inching ever closer to the dartboard zone!) This fat blunt is four hours long but it never wears out its welcome. A second disc of equal length is included with outtakes and a smorgasbord of extras and mini-docs. There's sure to be some stuff you've heard before but there's plenty of eye opening new info too (Did you know that Kristen's mom in ELM STREET 3 is the real life mother of that hand jiving punkette from FRIDAY 5? I live for such info!) I have to hand it to directors DANIEL FARRANDS and ANDREW KASCH for not being afraid to steer their ship into atypical areas. Finally the nonstop gayness that is ELM STREET 2 has been officially recognized by its creators. I could have spent four hours hearing stories about that sequel alone.
Outside of the dream universe, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN stands as an interesting portrait/eulogy to NEW LINE CINEMA itself. You might even give the later installments of the franchise a bit more slack when you learn about their intense scattershot histories. It's all around handsomely put together with stop-motion animated inserts and title screens and you even get a peek at some special effects and gore left on the cutting room floor. If you're a horrible, superficial person like me you'll also get the chance to evaluate how well or poorly all the actors have aged. There are some real jaw droppers in both the yowza and yikes categories. The end credits, which spotlight the performers delivering their character's most famous lines is pure nostalgic gold.
Cliché as it may sound, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN is a dream come true for NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET fans, so much so that even talking about it makes me wish I had the time to watch it again. Good golly, it turns out 2010 is not such a bad year for Freddy fanatics after all!
Name That Trauma :: Reader J.A.H., Jr. on an Invisible Woman & a Head in a Box
O.K., the first one may be easy. When I was about five, I was at my grandparent's house and saw a black and white movie where a tights and leotard wearing invisible woman was walking up a staircase. Then the tights I think fell away and it was just a leotard walking up the steps. It freaked me out so bad. I "think" it may have been an ABBOTT & COSTELLO movie but am not sure.
The second one is very vague and I don't expect an answer but I vaguely recall some kids had a box and in the box was a face or a head that could talk and I think its name was Chico. I could have that all wrong but that's what I seem to recall. Wondering if it was the INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS from the ‘70s… The Chico name really seems to stick with me though.
Any help???
The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
"Run, human centipede run!!!" Who knew I'd find myself yelling that sentence at my television screen? So I finally broke down and watched that movie about the not exceptionally sane surgeon who sews folks together in the worst way you can think of. I'm probably not the best audience for this type of thing because as much as I love lots of blood and gore, I like pretending that people don't poop even more. Being reminded that they do indeed do such a regrettable, albeit (allegedly) natural, thing is not my idea of a good time. I admit it, I was prepared to hate this one, but thankfully the crazy doctor keeps his modern home so immaculate that I wasn't as nauseated as I thought I'd be. If you had to be a human centipede, you really couldn't ask for better digs.
I can't think of any movie that swings from downright silly to "oh, the humanity!" depressing as often as this kooky contraption does. Even more startling is the fact that it serves up a few scenes of genuine suspense. No, I'm not talking about expertly orchestrated HITCHCOCK-ian suspense; I mean that frustrating kind where you find yourself trying to mentally will the characters not do the stupidest things you've ever witnessed while they're trying to escape. Take note, I don't care who the hell you are, I‘m not going back to save you if we're ever found in this situation and I alone break free. In fact, I expect there will be a perfect cut-out Unkle Lancifer silhouette in the wall that I've crashed through while exiting the premises. If THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE's main priority is to invent and subject the viewer to the worst possible way to meet their maker, I begrudgingly have to admit it has earned the coveted slow clap.
You're never going to get me to say that this logic mocking movie is good but I think it might be anyway. If nothing else it is a perfect "dare" watch to subject sleepover guests to. This is the type of cult atrocity that makes me wish I still worked at a video store so that I could switch its case with that of MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY. Truth told, the movie balances the line of being truly disturbing but it never really crosses it fully. As in your face as the premise may be, your imagination will really determine just how much it crawls into your psyche. In the end I felt that the constant sound of (muffled) whimpering from the centipede creation was far more upsetting (and annoying) than anything I actually saw. Maybe I'm downplaying the anguish a bit here as I do remember there were several times that I just wanted to turn the thing off and reclaim my semi-cloudy disposition. (Tellingly, 1990s SKI SCHOOL was watched as a chaser.)
I guess you can blame DIETER LASER for my not bailing before the film ended. He is so over the top and intense as the mad doctor that I couldn't look away. The guy doesn't even look real. There were a couple times when I thought I was being presented with a latex model only to find out a moment later that what I was seeing was his actual head. He's really so extreme and cartoon broad that he's able to keep things from teetering too far into the grim. There are surely moments when you're liable to find yourself sliding into the overall awfulness of the situation but his energy and bizarreness pulls you out. Ultimately, HUMAN CENTIPEDE's well earned, sick reputation can't hide the fact that unlike a lot of big budget horror we've recently endured, there is a positively retro joy of the genre's grotesqueries stitching this freak show together. It's really up to the viewer to decide, you can take it in as either a hilarious, obscene joke or a soul wrenching mediation on man's inhumanity to human centipedes (and Rottweilers.) Either way I'd say considering its mostly rubber vomit aspirations, the operation is somewhat of a shocking success.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Erczilla on Savage Seniors
I love the site and still love that you printed my FRIDAY THE 13TH trauma long ago. I have to ask if anyone can name the movie where the elderly tenants of an urban apartment complex kill their land lords, and anyone else who gets in the way of their routine lives, and bury them in cement.
I always remember the final shot of a person's foot sticking out of the still setting fresh cement. I know that it was shown on Showtime in the early eighties because I was traumatized and aroused by the "Aerobics" program they showed between movies. Keep up the great work!
Erczilla
UNK SEZ:: Erczilla, I know this one! That has got to be 1974's HOMEBODIES, a crafty little sleeper that enjoyed an extended lifespan thanks to frequent cable showings! As you said, HOMEBODIES is about a group of elderly folks who protect their home by murdering the developers that threaten it and it's a bit more grisly than one would expect. This is yet another film that needs to be rescued from obscurity as soon as possible. I think a remake starring the red hot BETTY WHITE is in order!
Traumafessions :: Reader George N. on Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Judge Doom
Hi,
When someone mentions childhood trauma I immediately think of E.T. That film terrified me and shaped me in ways I can't describe. Thanks to the Internet however, I now know there are countless others who feel the same and so writing about it would be kind of pointless, because now it is acknowledged as a scary film by thousands.
So instead I will write about what is perhaps a more obscure fear, and one that remains creepy even to type about to this day.
I speak of course of Judge Doom from WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT.
After BACK TO THE FUTURE, I loved CHRISTOPHER LLOYD. As Doc Brown he was hilarious, crazy and exactly the kind of guy you'd want as a 'fun uncle' type relative. Not responsible enough for kids, but manic and exciting enough to spend a summer on holiday with him (the metaphor is weak but you get my drift). So you can imagine how fricking horrible it was to see an actor who'd been entertaining and lovable in one of my favourite films to appear as THIS:
Christ, look at him.
The whole movie, Judge Doom is little more than a menacing, icy presence. Dressed in all in black with those dark, emotionless glasses, he was indeed scary, but nothing more than a relatively basic villain.
Then, as we approach the end of the film and he gets flattened by a steamroller, his true colours show. In classic Michael Myers style, his flattened, paper-thin body gets up from the ground with a new, high-pitched voice and he's revealed to be a ‘Toon. He re-inflates himself and it's all pretty intense, but not all that scary. The he turns around with those big, popping red eyes and screams and half the world's children (including me) piss themselves.
The next scene is him using his ‘Toon powers to attempt to brutally slaughter Eddie, and eventually he is killed by the Dip and melts, screaming all the while.
It's not just the eyes and the voice. It's the face. And the laughter. And the idea that a cartoon, something that's meant to be funny and entertaining could be so evil and murderous. And it's the fact that there is no explanation given as to why he killed Eddie's brother, you just get the idea he's a batshit insane killer. It's also the idea of an authority figure (he's the Judge of Toontown or something) going rogue, which is still a fairly common horror device.
Overall, that reveal traumatised me to no end, so I felt I should share it with your site.
Honourable mentions also to WATERSHIP DOWN, PLAGUE DOGS, WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. Also the scene in THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER when the NICHOLSON-esque Air Conditioner goes crazy and just explodes. Its little burnt face at the end is almost sympathetic.
So yeah. I had a fun childhood.
George N.
Traumafessions :: Reader Harley A. on G.L.O.W. & the Skeleton Dance
I love the site and it's become one of my favorite spots to pop in every few weeks during a lull at work. I always get hours of enjoyment reading about everyone's creepy childhood scares and thought I would share my own vivid memory. I almost sent this in as a "Name That Trauma" but after 25 years of wondering I was able to figure it out a few months back.
My twin brother and I were fairly insulated as children and didn't interact much with anyone other than our parents. Mom and Dad only had one or two "date nights" for the entirety of my childhood, so the simple fact of being left home alone with a babysitter I didn't know was traumatic enough. I vividly remember that my parents went to see KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN during their night out, so that places the event squarely in 1985 when I was four years old (the film always sounded scary and became amalgamated with my trauma and stuck in my memory.)
The babysitter, as they often do, plopped my brother and I down in front of the T.V. but didn't turn on any lights in the house once it got dark. This created a very weird, alien atmosphere in my house that was entirely different than the way my parents kept things. Then it happened, the babysitter changed the channel to G.L.O.W… THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING and I saw something that absolutely scared the hell out of me.
It was a ladies tag team match and one of the women proceeded to hypnotize a member of the other team and force her to attack her own partner. She had some sort of black magic gimmick, and I was positive someone was going to do the same thing to my parents and make them violently beat me when they came home. To a four year old, this scene, both the wrestling and the hypnotism, were unquestioningly real.
Thanks to the powers of the internet, I was able to find out recently that the woman in question was a masked wrestler known as "The Princess of Darkness." Not only that, but I found the actual match (The Princess of Darkness and Palistina versus Olympia and California Doll, obviously not dubbed into Spanish when I saw it). It's strange to revisit it now, and I can see how it could be pretty unsettling to a four year old.
Another very vivid memory from around the same time period was that during Halloween my teachers would inevitably pop in the THE SKELETON DANCE video from Disney, you guys know the one right? The old black and white cartoon from 1929… I'm sure a lot of kids have been horrified by this thing over the decades.
-Harley A.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Rachael on a Backwards Beheading
Hi guys,
I absolutely love your site, and it brought to mind a childhood trauma I'd finally managed to forget (thanks!) I must have been around 5 years old at the time, so this happened somewhere around 1994, but I get the feeling the movie was maybe a good deal older than that. I also don't think we had a VCR at the time, meaning this was a T.V. broadcast.
So, on to the trauma! My parents were watching a film, and all I remember about it is this particular scene that scared the living hell out of me at the time and for many years later. I have a pretty spotty memory but even now I can vividly recall the scene – this woman is strapped into a guillotine, but she's put into it the wrong way around – she's laying on her back instead of her stomach so she can see the blade about to descend.
There's this terrible tension as she's looking up at the blade, then suddenly it drops and decapitates her. I can't remember a single other thing about the movie, though I get the idea that it was definitely a modern setting despite the guillotine, and it may have had some weird religious theme.
My parents have denied ever watching such a thing when I've asked them recently, and no one else ever seems to know what I'm talking about.
Help me kindertrauma, you're my only hope!
-Rachael
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Tip of the hat to kinderpal Taylor who knew that the beheading in question came from A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Magired on a Slashed Stuffed Animal
I really hope someone can solve this for me. It's a made-for-T.V. movie from either the late eighties or early nineties. All I remember is that it's about a boy with a stuffed dinosaur toy that comes to life. I think there is some sort of monster under the boy's bed. If I remember right, the dinosaur toy is attacked and has claw marks across its chest. Towards the end the boy hides under the covers and finds a tunnel that leads to a cave where the monster awaits.
It sounds a lot like NEW NIGHTMARE but this was definitely a made-for-T.V. and was family friendly.
Any ideas?
magired
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Kudos to Unk for coming forward with LIVING WITH DINOSAURS!
