Taking detours through horror, action, sci-fi, cult, and exploitation films, with pitstops along the way for classics, foreign gems, low budget obscurities, B-movies, and other overlooked and underseen cinematic roadside attractions.
In a bit of shocking news: Wes Craven passed away today after battling brain cancer. He was 76.
The news broke today through various outlets and was confirmed by his family members. Craven was an influential figure in the world of horror, directing classics of the genre like The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. He was a true master.
Craven came from a teaching background and could be described as "professorial" which always seemed to surprise people considering the sometimes transgressive and nightmarish nature of his work.
In addition to directing and writing feature films, Craven also worked in television, wrote novels, and was a committed bird conservationist, serving as a member of the Audubon California Board of Directors. He is survived by his wife Iya Labunka, children Jonathan and Jessica and three grandchildren.
RIP, to one of the greats.
The Last House on the Left (1972) is a brutal horror film, as audacious a debut a filmmaker could make. It's a tough film, but an important one.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is a personal favorite of mine. Craven was inspired by the real life story of the Sawney Bean family when writing this tale of survival against cannibals.
Swamp Thing (1982) was an early attempt at a more adult superhero film but it turned out to be a goofy action adventure movie with a guy in a bad monster suit. Due to repeat airings on local TV and the presence of Adrienne Barbeau I saw this frequently growing up.
The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1984).
In financial trouble, Craven found himself directing this crummy sequel. Say what you will, I have a soft spot for this one as it's a personal favorite bad movie of mine. Dog flashbacks!
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a straight-up horror classic. It gave us Freddy Kruger and Johnny Depp. There is some incredible imagery in this movie and if Craven had done just this one film he would still be a member of the horror hall of fame.
Craven and Kristy Swanson on the set of Deadly Friend (1986). Read my review HERE.
Craven would do some television work, including multiple episode of The Twilight Zone (1985-86). He would give Bruce Willis his first leading role in an episode titled "Shatterday."
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), a movie I recall liking but haven't seen since the mid '90s.
I've been meaning to watch Shocker (1989) and it is now for sure on my October watch list.
The People Under the Stairs (1991) is a memorable film, but also very problematic and not very good.
New Nightmare (1994) was the first Nightmare film to be released after I started getting into horror films so I was real excited and totally into it when it came out. I was a big fan, but haven't seen it in years.
Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) is to Wes Craven as Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) is to John Carpenter: a troubled production with a comedic actor who doesn't want to make a comedy.
Scream (1996) was a full on phenomenon and yet another horror hit for Craven. It started a new franchise with Craven directing all three of the sequels, the last of which, Scream 4 (2011), would be his last directorial effort.
Music of the Heart (1999) was Craven's lone work outside the horror genre. It was nominated for two Oscars, one for star Meryl Streep.
Cursed (2005) is without a doubt one of the worst movie I have ever seen. Production problems plagued the movie, but sheesh, what a stinker.
I saw Red Eye (2005) once back when it came out and I was surprised by how much I liked it. The third act was a bit weak, but I remember really liking the set-up and the actors.
This is a great interview with Wes Craven conducted by Mick Garris. It goes into a lot of Craven's early life and background and into the making of his early films.
In my last post for Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing (1981) I talked about how his career has great peaks followed by recessive periods. Deadly Friend (1986) is the lead off movie of Craven's second low period. It's actually his follow-up film to the wildly successful A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and as a follow-up to Nightmare, Deadly Friend isn't very good. It somehow manages to look cheaper and have a less focused story, bouncing between teen drama, dark romance, revenge thriller, and science fiction horror film.
Deadly Friend qualifies as a crappy movie, without a doubt, but there's some neat things in it and it can be enjoyable on its own terms. Most importantly, and comically, the movie exposes the dangerous potential of basketballs.
Deadly Friend opens with a sneaky car thief busting into a van but getting attacked by an unknown something, a "something" that makes weird noises and has a robot claw. After the opening credits roll, we find out that this "something" is a remote controlled, artificially intelligent robot named BB that was created by and belongs to Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), who is sort of a boy genius. He and his mother Jeannie (Anne Twomey) are moving into a new neighborhood, and at first some people are freaked out by this yellow robot buzzing around and talking and stuff, but they generally seem to accept it and react to it as they might any other new neighbor. That's called tolerance.
Right from the start, you know Deadly Friend is going to be an odd movie, what with this yellow robot rolling around and all. BB is shown to have great strength, but he also mumbles and sputter-talks in a voice (provided by Charles Fleischer, voice of Roger Rabbit) that is like a cross between a Gremlin and R2D2 that comes off more grating than anything. Paul is obviously a genius in the field of robotic technology, but why did he have to make the robot so gawdamned annoying?
Paul and his mother have moved to this new suburb because Paul the genius has a scholarship at the local university (in addition to taking classes, he also has his own laboratory). Paul is still a nerdy teenager though, and that's who he still relates to. Upon moving into the new house, he meets and becomes fast friends with the paperboy, Tommy (Michael Sharrett), who goes by the odd nickname "Slime." Paul also, in classic teen-drama tradition, falls for the girl next door, Samantha Pringle (Kristy Swanson). When Paul first meets Sam (as she likes to be called), he notices that she has a bruise on her arm and she seems to be real careful about not upsetting her father, Harry (Richard Marcus), who, as we find out, is an abusive drunk.
Over the next few weeks, Paul, Tom, Sam, and BB become closer friends, as Paul studies at the university and helps Tom with his paper route during his free time. One day while they're all playing basketball, their ball lands in the heavily fenced off yard of the mean old neighbor lady, Elvira (Anne Ramsey), who comes barging out of her house, threatening the kids with her shotgun, and throwing their basketball inside her place, saying it belongs to her now.
This leads to the group of them attempting to pull a prank on Elvira on Halloween night. The prank of course goes tragically wrong and Elvira (SPOILER) blows BB up with her shotgun, shooting him to pieces. Paul is of course devastated at the loss of his friend (and creation; jeez how much did that thing cost?? Hope he had insurance), as are Sam and Tom, who feels extra guilt, as the prank was his idea.
Time passes, and Sam shares a Thanksgiving dinner with Paul and his mother. Afterwards, Sam and Paul share their first kiss, as it is readily apparent that they have developed feelings for one another. Unfortunately, after returning home, Sam is met by her drunk father as he berates her, slaps her, and pushes her down the stairs, severely damaging her brain. Rushed to the hospital, Sam is put on life support, but the doctors can't help her; she's brain dead. Claiming she tripped and fell down the stairs, her father requests that she be taken off life support.
Devasated at yet another loss, Paul (showing shades of Herbert West) comes up with a scheme to use BB's microchip brain to kickstart Sam's. He and Tom steal Sam's body (pretty elaborate for a couple teen boys) and hide her out in Paul's garage. Sam returns to life, but is basically an animated corpse, slowly remembering how to do things, like walk and move around properly. As could be predicted, the melding of a robot and human brain does not go well. Once Sam relearns basic motor functions, she also gains super robot-level strength and a need for revenge against those that have wronged her and BB. Paul has to deal with the implications of having a murderous, reanimated girlfriend, as well as explain all this to his buddy Tom while trying to hide Sam from his mother and the authorities. Teenager problems are the worst problems...
Like I said, Deadly Friend is kind of a crappy movie. I guess the weird tonal shifts in the film are due to the typical bit of studio interference, who wanted to add more shocks and scares. The original film Craven delivered was more a supernatural science fiction thriller that focused mainly on the dark romance between Paul and Sam and wasn't graphically violent at all. The screenplay was written by Bruce Joel Rubin, who would prove to be versatile with the weepy cry-fest Ghost (1990, for which he won an Oscar) and the mind-fuck freakout Jacob's Ladder (also 1990, criminally not nominated for a single Oscar).
Craven wanted to abandon the project, but was forced to stay on for the reshoots because he was going through a messy divorce at the time and was also facing a lawsuit, so getting paid became the bottom line. To this day, Craven dislikes the final film, effectively disowning it. I can't imagine his original version being much better than the final product, as most of the added scare scenes are some of the best parts of the movie.
Added to the film were some dream sequences, both of them very Freddy Kruger-like in their execution. In one, Sam's father Harry leers over her while she's in bed. He's all sweaty and starts laying hands on her before she stabs him with a broken vase, blood spurting everywhere. Later, Paul has a weird, jolting dream where the burnt-up corpse of Harry pops up out of the middle of his bed.
The Elm St. comparisons don't end there. The basement of Sam's father's house has a creepy, fiery furnace in it that closely resembles the same thing in the basement of Nancy's house in Nightmare. Also, the idyllic suburban setting closely resembles the neighborhoods seen in many 80s horror films, including Fright Night (1985), The Gate (1987), and yes, Elm St. as well.
In addition to the dream sequences, they also added some graphic gore scenes, including a tacked on shock-ending that is even more ridiculously nonsensical than the whack-a-doo ending to Craven's Deadly Blessing. The cheeseball special effects don't help.
The best added scene also happens to be the most memorable scene in the movie. After Sam has been resurrected, she breaks into Elvira's home and attacks her, killing her in the most ludicrous fashion: with a basketball. It's quite the head explosion, really graphic stuff (again, tonally out of place in the film) but then it goes an extra step into goofiness when the body begins to shimmy and shake around with laughable effects. It really is a must see, truly the one great scene in the movie:
I told you basketballs were dangerous.
The technology of the film is, naturally, very 80s. Paul shows off BB's "brain" a couple times and it is twice as big as my smartphone. The special mechanical effects used to make BB happen are decent enough and it's fairly believable that this thing could be moving around and acting on its own. In one scene, BB goes badass and threatens some biker punks, grabbing one by the crotch. When compared to other 1986 robots, BB is definitely less deadly than the killbots in Chopping Mall but quite possibly more annoying than Johnny-5 in Short Circuit, if you can believe it.
The most compelling relationship in the movie, to me, was not the Sam/Paul drama, but the Paul/Tom dynamic. As friends, they're shown to have a true camaraderie, as evidenced in the scene where Paul convinces Tom to help him steal Sam's body from the hospital. Later, when Tom finds out that Sam has started killing people, he's justifiably freaked out and decides to tell the police. This doesn't go over well with Sam, who leaps out of a window and attacks Tom. It's at this moment that Paul first realizes that bringing Sam back from the dead maybe wasn't the best idea (or maybe it's a few seconds later when she's choking him?).
Matthew Laborteaux, who is best known for his role on Little House on the Prairie as Albert Quinn Ingalls, got his start as an actor playing one of Peter Falk and Gena Rowland's children in A Woman Under the Influence (1974). He plays Paul as kind of a know-it-all super genius, not really smug, just a little over-confident for someone so young. Despite being shown to care for his mother and friends, Paul is portrayed as having a singular focus on advancing his work and theories. In this story, he is the Dr. Frankenstein character, obsessed with creating life (first with BB, then Sam).
This was Kristy Swanson's first big role, after smaller parts in Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (both 1986). After Deadly Friend she would land a lead role in Flowers in the Attic (1987) and would go on to star in Hot Shots! (1991) and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1992). She's really stiff in this movie, and that's just not due to her acting like a robot. In general, Swanson's cardboard acting is charming in its own way and she manages to maintain watchability throughout.
Her abusive father Harry was played by Richard Marcus, who I recognized as poor old Nestor from Tremors (1990). Anne Twomey (Paul's mother) would play Rita Kirson on Seinfeld, the president of NBC who passes on Jerry and George's sitcom, Jerry, after Russell Dalrymple disappears.
The shotgun-weilding, mean old lady Elvira was played by professional mean old lady Anne Ramsey, who would have similar roles in Any Which Way You Can (1980), The Goonies (1985), and Throw Mama from the Train (1987). Nobody could yell at kids or Danny DeVito the way she could.
Cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop has an impressive filmography that includes John Boorman's Point Blank (1967), Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and Walter Hill's The Driver (1978). Deadly Friend would be his last theatrical film and evidence that he had bills to pay or owed someone a favor.
Deadly Friend is a big old mishmash of clashing elements, none of it quite gelling. More silly than scary, less sick than it is sweet, Deadly Friend is probably the most oddball film in Wes Craven's filmography. Unfortunately, it isn't his worst film because we live in a world where Scream 3 (2000) and Cursed (2005) still exist.
Craven's post-Nightmare/pre-Scream resume also includes other wildly uneven and questionable product, like Shocker (1989), The People Under the Stairs (1991), New Nightmare (1994), and Vampire in Brooklyn (1995). I've always been partial to New Nightmare, but his best film from this period is probably the voodoo thriller The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), but I've always been lukewarm on that one due to the presence of Bill Pullman and the severe lack of deaths by basketball.
Careful with those basketballs, kids.
Two things about this trailer:
#1- There is a suspicious lack of BB.
#2- at the 51 second mark there is a "hey, girl."
Deadly Blessing (1981) is not a great movie, let me just state that up front. It's not terrible, it just a bit lackluster in areas. Part of director Wes Craven's (first) recessive period (in-between The Hills Have Eyes [1977] and A Nightmare on Elm Street [1984]), Deadly Blessing has a flat-footed premise, some actors that are (mostly) not up to task, a bunch of nonsense, and one of the stupidest/greatest, must-see endings in horror history.
Martha (Maren Jensen) and Jim Schmidt (Douglas Barr) live on their isolated farm (called Our Blessing) in the quiet countryside, neighboring a community of Hitties, members of a strict religious sect that "make the Amish look like swingers." Jim was once a member of this group, but left them years ago when he got married. He was subsequently shunned by his family and community, led by his father, Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine). Isaiah is distrustful of outsiders and refers to "the incubus among us." His son John (Jeff East) is curious and seems even a little envious of his brother Jim's lifestyle, something that doesn't go unnoticed by his strict father. There's also another set of neighbors, Louisa (Lois Nettleton) and her daughter Faith (Lisa Hartman), who seem to have trouble with the Hittites, especially creepy William (Michael Berryman), who harasses Faith.
Late one night, Jim is out in his barn and is murdered, the victim of his own tractor. Marked down as an accident by the local, ineffectual police, Martha continues to stay on the farm in the face of resentment and mild/vague threats from the Hittites. Her city friends Lana (Sharon Stone) and Vicky (Susan Buckner) come to stay with her, which was a good idea, because then a lot of weird shit starts to happen. They're stalked by the mentally deficient William, there's creepy encounters in the barn, nightmare visions of spiders, an attack by a snake, some murders, explosions, and some really, really crazy-weird shit at the end.
Deadly Blessing is quite the mixed bag, which couldn't be any other way when you crunch together a slasher film involving three lovely ladies wearing skimpy clothes with a portrait of religious zealots. The film has definite aspirations, but it never quite reaches them, instead settling for a modest amount of mystery and misdirection with plenty of red herrings and some shocks and scares. The film is rather pedestrian in most ways, until the ending, which throws another wrench into the works.
The finale of Deadly Blessing doesn't come out of left field so much as it comes out of another ballpark entirely. It definitely makes the film memorable, as the last 15 minutes features not one, but two incredibly fucked up things, things that make the middling previous hour+ seem totally worth it. Things go out with a bang, that's for sure.
I'm not going to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, I didn't know about it when I watched it and was pleasantly surprised, so to preserve that for anyone that desires it, I'll speak in the vaguest terms to those that have seen it: Alright, when Martha's getting chased and attacked and then that one thing happens and is revealed, I was all like, "whaaaaaat??," and I thought this movie just went to a weird place, and I kind of liked it, even though it might not make all that much sense, I still respected the movie for going there. After all that though, at the very end of the film, there's some really truly crazy weird shit that goes down and I was all like, "whaaaaaaaat?areyoukiddingmeeee??" What an almost totally random ending, just bonkers! I guess this ending was tacked on (surprise, surprise) after the film was finished and the producers wanted a little more "oomph" to the ending. Craven filmed it, but I guess he regrets it now. The effects were done by an uncredited John Naulin, who would also do effects work on Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986). They wanted "oomph." Mission accomplished.
Deadly Blessing has some elements and themes from Craven's other films, both earlier and later. The film sets up a scenario involving two opposing ideological communities (the Hittites vs. the outsiders) in a battle of survival that plays out through a series of stalk and slash scares, which recalls Craven's previous film, The Hills Have Eyes (which also starred Michael Berryman). The film also has an emphasis on dreams and nightmares, which would be much more prevalent in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven's direction definitely elevates the material beyond its TV-movie trappings, the look of the countryside has a warm haziness, while the scare scenes are suitably dark and foreboding. He was assisted by cinematographer Robert Jessup, who also shot the underseen Race with the Devil (1975) and my favorite Chuck Norris movie, Silent Rage (1982).
One of the more suspenseful scenes in Deadly Blessing is when Lana gets trapped in the barn and is stalked by an unseen foe. The doors get locked, the shutters slammed, she stumbles through cobwebs, and finds a dead body. It's probably the film's best sequence of onscreen terror. Lana also starts having strange dreams, involving somebody whispering her name and containing ominous spider imagery. In one dream scene, a pair of hands hold her head and a big, hairy spider drops into her open mouth (!), something that Sharon Stone actually did (!!). This was an early role for Stone, her first one of significance, and she does a decent job playing confused and troubled Lana. She would uncross her legs to fame in Basic Instinct (1992), a film I find rather overrated (heck, I might even prefer Deadly Blessing).
Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch [1969], Escape from New York [1981]) goes way, way over the top in this, spitting firm and brimstone and chewing the scenery with reckless abandon. He has great lines like, "We are the kindred of God! We have no business with the serpents!" and "You are a stench in the nostril of God! The Devil has you now!" He actually won a Razzie Award for his performance in Deadly Blessing, but I don't think that's quite fair, as his wild-eyed performance is one of the redeeming factors within the film. The movie could honestly use more of his crazy eyebrows.
Also, Borgnine was quite the trooper. He suffered a severe accident while filming Deadly Blessing, when a buggy he was in was flipped after some horses freaked out. Borgnine spent a week in the hospital, healed up, and came back to work, like it was no big deal. Now THAT is professionalism.
Michael Berryman is as unique looking an actor as there has ever been. Born with twenty-three various birth defects, Berryman has made a career out of playing psychos and weirdos. His first role came as a mental patient (another specialty of his) in Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) which was followed by his most iconic and enduring performance, that of the hillside mutant Pluto in The Hills Have Eyes. Berryman followed that up with some memorable roles in Weird Science, My Science Project (both 1985), and The Barbarians (1987). In Deadly Blessing, Berryman doesn't overdue the mentally ill aspects of his character and he manages to make him sympathetic despite his creepiness.
Maren Jensen and Susan Buckner apparently had a terrible time making this movie, as they would both give up acting after Deadly Blessing. Before this Maren Jensen was in the short lived cult TV sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica and Susan Buckner was in the hit musical movie Grease (1978) as Patty Simcox. Buckner seems likable enough, but Jensen doesn't really bring anything to the table, which for the female lead in the film is a slight problem. It's never made clear why her character is so stubborn and insists on staying on this farm after her husbands death, which Jensen doesn't really seem to convey much grief over.
Speaking of poor old Jim, Douglas Barr would co-star with David Rappaport in a short lived TV-series that I seem to be one of the few people to remember, called The Wizard. Lisa Hartman, who played weirdo neighbor Faith, would go on to be a regular cast member of mega-hit nighttime soap-opera Knots Landing.
Jeff East had worked with Wes Craven previously on his TV-movie Stranger in our House (aka: Summer of Fear, 1978). The curly-headed East reminds me of a doofy William Katt-type. He got his start playing Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer (1973) and (duh) Huckleberry Finn (1974) and he also played young Clark Kent in Superman (1978) and was also one of the doomed kids in Pumpkinhead (1988). Just typing that made me remember how much I like Pumpkinhead... raise your hand if you do to.
The movie has a nice score, with a sweeping opening theme, by future Oscar winner James Horner, who got his start on Roger Corman movies like Battle Beyond the Stars and Humanoids from the Deep (both 1980), before eventually landing big Hollywood gigs like Aliens (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). His score for Deadly Blessing is at times reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score for The Omen (1976), with the ominous chanting and choral parts, and is quite effective at setting the tone for the film.
I mentioned this being part of Wes Craven's recessive period. The audacious viscousness of his notorious debut film The Last House on the Left (1972) had a negative effect on his career (although since then it has become a mostly respected classic of the genre) and his name wouldn't be on another film for 5 years (The Hills Have Eyes), which was very successful. He would follow that with Deadly Blessing and the tragedy that is Swamp Thing (1982), which was such a debacle that afterwards he found himself in "I need a paycheck"-mode with the awful (but awfully fun!) The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984). During all this, in his back-pocket he had the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street, which of course was a massive success. Again though, after this, Craven found himself in a rough period, with questionable product that ran from Deadly Friend (1986) to Vampire in Brooklyn (1995). The following year he would have his biggest hit to date with the modern slasher film Scream (1996), which has since led to 3 sequels (all terrible) and yet another recessive period for Craven. I guess what this means is that Craven is due sometime soon (?) to release something that will knock our socks off. Here's to hoping he can make it happen.
Wes Craven would reuse this imagery of bathtub terrors in A Nightmare on Elm Street, replacing the snake with Freddy Kruger's glove.
