This Week: Special Post-Hallowe'en

e e e

Movie Edition

keletons walk. The Dead rise. Vampires

S wake to feed. Werewolves arch their

backs and howl. Mad scientists cackle over slowly-moving hunks of dead flesh sewed into human form. Movie reviewers start talking in short, horror-ific sentences that drip with cinematic cliche. Hallowe’en is come and gone, but it’s still a good time to review a few horror flicks of the B-movie persuasion.

First in line is a choice little film about a little kid who thinks that maybe... just maybe... his parents are cannibals. Parents is a delight- fully sick movie, full of classy one-liners and high-brow gross-outs.

See, there’s this kid. He’s very smart, and very imaginative, but he’s just a tad morbid. For example, when asked to tell the class about himself, he gives them the recipe for a spell. Part of the instructions, if I recall correctly, call for the mutilation of a cat.

This vivid-but-eww-gross bend in his im- agination also causes him to suspect that his dad brings home more than just bacon. His reason- ing: My father hates me. My mother is a ditz. We never eat anything but leftovers. The fact the neither Pater nor Mater will tell him just what supper is left over from merely adds weight to the theory.

You have to be careful who you watch this movie with. The script and acting are great, full of the dual-meaning lines and body language that great horror movies rely on. All the charac- ters seem like perfectly normal people, yet they manage somehow to seem perfectly monstrous. The camera work isso great that everything also looks creepy. Everyday objects and people ap- pear to be sick parodies of themselves. So why do you have to be so careful about the audience?

Because Parents is almost too good at mak-

24/X-Press/November 4, 1993

ing parents seem like monsters. It’s a no-holds- ~

barred attack on the everyday hypocrisy of ‘‘family life’’. Everyone looks and acts normal, and you’re never really sure if the parents are really that bad or if the kid has watched J-F.K. one too many times. And frankly, nobody wants see the oldest cornerstone of our society at- tacked this effec-

hawk Chop.

The sequence is funny for two major rea- sons. One: Old Woodenhead moves veeeeery slooooow, and all his motions are accompanied by loud, woody creaks. Two: The thugs are so stupid that they not only don’t hear him, but never think to run away. At a fast walk, they’d leave Old Chief way back in the dust.

The Raft (based on the short story): A bunch of remarkably dense college kids go out for a swim in the middle of September in a deserted lake. As a punishment for their stupidity they are eaten, one by one, by a living oil slick. The survivors of the first attack are trapped on a diving raft, hence the name of the segment. This isascary segment, actualy managing to frighten inacouple of places. Italso manages to improve on the original short story by adding not one, but two twist endings and a couple of world class gross-outs (the scene where one unfortunate is sucked into the narrow space betwween two boards is very nice), Worth the price of the rental.

The Hitch-hiker: A lady is having an affair and, naturally enough, doesn’t want her hubby to find out. In her haste to beat him home, she accidently runs over a hitch-hiker. That’s bad enough, but she doesn’t hang around to take

tively. In short, if Dan Quayle had seen this

"a delightfully sick

responsibility for either of her mistakes. The hitch-hiker is under-

movie he’ dnever have standably miffed by this gone after Murphy e i i sm The Wonder MOVIE, full.Of CLASSY Goats, end comes ack Years, on the other ‘ e from the dead to give hand... one-liners and high- ouraduneress a titch-

Judgement: Great ” Hiker’s Guide to the Hallowe’en fare. brow £ross-ou ts. Other Side. As she con- You’ll feel like laugh- zs tinues on her way, she ing and screaming at runs over him over and the same time. If over again.

you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to see Clive Barker write Family Ties, rent this tape. I’d gush about it more, but I’ve got other movies to get to.

Stephen King movies get no respect. I’ve watched quite a few, and now I know why: they’re too funny. Maximum Overdrive is a good example: how can you be scared when a teller machine tells Stephen King he’s anasshole, or when watermelons take out AC\DC’s tour van? C’mon, guys, you watch Steve for fun, not knuckle-gnawing terror!

In this light, I’d like to review the sequel to a movie I reviewed last year. Creepshow 2 is, like all sequels, not as much fun as the original. But like most of Steve’s films, it’s a laugh riot. So let’s spoil the thrill of discovery and summa- rize:

Old Chief Woodenhead: A small town hard- ware store owner and his wife are brutally murdered by a gang of local juvenile delin- quents. Unfortunately for the thugs, they killed the old guy before he could finish putting the warpaint on the wooden Indian on the porch. The Indian comes to life and kills the thugs by giving them his special version of the Toma-

This whole segment is hysterical and terrify- ing, which makes it the most fun of the three. Every time he ends up plastered across her hood, he mutters, ‘‘Thanks for the ride, Lady”’ in a voice that starts out husky and gets mushier with each successive squishing he receives. By the end of the story, he looks like Hamburger Helper and sounds like Homer Simpson with a mouth full of wet cotton balls and a slit throat.

Judgement: It’s fun! Watch it with Creepshow and you’ve got a real romantic evening in the works.

Lastly, I’d like to return to werewolves. They don’t get much respect in the movies, or anywhere else. Even I, a confirmed Lycanthropist, had to pan The Howling: Part I in last year’s column. In fact, I recently saw Howling IV: the Original Nightmare and very nearly wept at how awful and boring it was. | even read the book, The Howling, ina desperate attempt to find something good about the series. No such luck.

So finally, I broke down and rented The Howling.

I got a nasty shock: It was good! Praise Lon