TYTD Reviews

A Clint Howard special here make no mistake, ‘Evilspeak’ is a solid Video Nasty that I didn’t really like the first time I saw it, but really quite enjoyed this time around.

The plot, a military school student (and orphan) Stanley Coopersmith is hated by almost everyone at the academy from the students to the teachers. He’s at an all time low, when he discovers a hidden room in the basement of the Catholic Church based inside the academy that houses a large number of satanic texts scribed in Latin.

Stanley translates one of the books and discovers that he can have immense power if he performs a black mass. As Stanley begins to explore satanism and its power, his bullying on all fronts grows and grows, until he finally snaps, with terrifying results.

The script isn’t the sharpest in the world, I felt it was a little too slowboil and the demonic element of the film is heavily underplayed. Which is a shame, but contrasting that the characters are complex and well written, with solid dialogue, the tone is near perfect for this and its ultimately a quite satisfying film, even if its a bit slower than I would have liked.

The directions pretty solid, it’s a Warner production, so it’s of quality, I don’t feel it quite exceeds *the standard* though.

The cine is a little bland on the colour front, but is creative and has some pretty solid sequence building. There are some ropey effects though that do downgrade things somewhat.

Performances are great, they’re no believable at all, but Clint Howard’s good fun and overall I enjoyed what I saw.

And the scores solid.

Its a bit slower than I’d have liked, a bit dry on the cine and he performances are a bit of a mixed ability room. But overall I thought Evilspeak was one of the better Nasties of the time. Easily in the upper half quality wise. And it’s one that, while I didn’t out and out love it. I could recommend it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evilspeak/

And so, we arrive at the final FINAL chapter in the original ‘Friday the 13th’ series. ‘Jason X’ an entry that is to the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, what ‘Halloween Ressurection’ is to the ‘Halloween’ franchise.

The plot? Its a non descript point in the near present, logically this takes place after ‘Freddy Vs Jason’ that would mean these events were happening in 2004. But this came out before FvJ and the last time we saw Jason was in 1993 (or 1995 ‘in film’ timelines) being dragged to hell by Freddy. So god knows when this is happening. A five year window between 2000 and 2005.

Jasons been captured after killing over 200 victims. he’s restrained in a military facility awaiting cryogenic freezing. The idea being that, due to his (seeminlgy new found) ability to regenerate his cells. he’s basically unkillable, and as the military cant find a way currently to finish him off, they’re just gonna pop him in the freezer till they CAN find a way to kill him in the future.

However, a rogue faction of the army has other ideas and want to try and weaponize Jason, so they bust him out. Theres a fight and both him and a female agent end up locked into a cryo tank and frozen. They’re found several hundreds of years into the future, by an expedition exploring a now totally ravaged planet earth. they’re bought onto their spaceship, thawed out and almost immediately Jason starts murdering again.

With the ship returning to ‘Earth2’, it becomes a race against time to stop Jason, before theres noone left to return home. Oh! and in the last 25 minutes he gets ‘upgraded’ into a solid metal demon murderer (If the poster didnt spoil that enough).

I really dont know how to feel about this one honestly, while im glad they’ve put the whole ‘supernatural’ aspect of the series on ice as things were getting a bit silly. There isnt really a whole lot going on here and some of the decisions that have been made havent aged all that well.

For a starters, this films tone is now way more in line with a campy horror comedy than a horror film with light comedy elements (as has been the case since ‘Part 6’) Where it works, its actually quite good fun. But the humour in this thing is incredibly cringy at times and it never quite seems to really settle on how far to go into the comedy aspects. A silly recreation of the sleeping bag kill from part 7 is fun. a weird psudosexual skit about magnetic nipples…less so.

Its absolutely a product of it’s time. Painfully early 2000’s in fashion, style and tone. I can appreciate that, but it makes the future scenes feel very dated at this point and where this thing creaks…it cant be unseen.

The script itself is actually kind of drab, barring a few funny cameos and a handful of jokey moments, this is really quite a flat script, the characters all feel mismatched given they’re supposed to be a professional expedition. The ship offered a great opportunity for some close quaters, suspensful thriller elements to help tie this slasher back to it’s origins of parts 1-3. But it’s all by the numbers. Jason wanders around the ship, slowly picking people off with little in the way of interesting kills or dialogue to help break the flow (with the obvious exception being the ‘deep freeze’ kill near the beginning.

I think my biggest problem with this is, just as it seems to be working up some steam to really get the thing going. It ends. Not a lot of interest really happens until we’re past the hour mark and the films act structuring is really uneven. With an opening act that lasts about 10 minutes, that gives way to a 2nd act that runs right up to the 70-80 minute mark and just idles into repetative and not particularly interesting kills. the third act DOES change things up a bit, but it mainly just gets incredibly dumb (in the best possible way I should add) leading to an ending thats kind of shrugworthy (I should also say, this film possibly has the worst ‘end credits’ for a horror film i’ve ever seen. No style, just ‘times new roman’ in white, on black with a overly quiet rock track. DULL.

The characters arnt that interesting, dont get developed very much and dont feel like they really exist in this space, and barring the comedy (my personal favourite being ‘Hocky was outlawed in 2024…’ I look forward to next year…) there just isnt a lot here.

The direction is PAINFULLY 2000’s in all the worst excesses. Im kind of glad we’ve moved on from this feeling like a generic ‘Made for TV movie’ as was the case with ‘Jason goes to hell’, but in it’s place we now have a film that feels like a ‘Sci-fi channel movie’. with really cheap and nasty looking CG effects, tiny poorly dressed sets, everything having a cheap plasticky looking feel to it and the ‘styalization’ basically just being ‘tint it blue…nice.’

I mean, the cast and crew do seem to work well together and whats delivered is absolutely of a ‘passable’ quality. But I just feel like so much more could have been done to really help give this thing polish.

On the cine front, decently composed shots are often hindered by the colour correction or CG, but theres some really cool ideas present here and the sequences are well edited, well structured and tell the story cleanly…well…up until the 3rd act where it feels like large chunks of the movie have gone missing (an example being the scene where Jason is ‘upgraded’, they show a shot of the computers running the upgrade ‘erroring’ and saying it needs to find ‘supplamentary materials’ to do the upgrade, the next scene; without explanation, Jasons got metal armour and is up and running with no issue…its odd.)

It has atmosphere, but the overreliance on digital effects has caused this film a lot of issues…Also; I have to say that ‘normal’ Jason in this film, is absolutely one of the worst looking designs of the entire franchise. It looks like a dollar store approximation of an ‘official’ Jason costume…and had it not been for ‘Exploded sausage’ Jason from ‘Jason goes to hell’ it would in fact be THE worst look that Jasons had in the series to date. ‘Uber Jason’ looks pretty cool though.

The performances are kind of middle of the road, not the worst the franchise has seen, but far from the best. I feel they lack a level of depth that really would have helped me get on with them better. And by the time Jasons up and running, i’ve already kind of gone off the main cast, which means I was less invested when they started to get picked off. They do okay, they have a good level of physicality, they use props and set space very well…I just feel like they didnt bring the A-game to this one.

And the scorings awful. It sounds like an ‘Asylum’ films take on star trek. dire.

I think, at the time, had the team behind this film realised that it would be the last ‘Proper’ Friday the 13th film in the original series…and the last Friday film till the 2009 reboot, they’d have maybe done things a little bit differently. As it stands ‘Jason X’ is a film that showcases some of the worst excesses of 2000’s studio film making, and while I will admit It absolutely has entertaining moments. I dont think this would be one i’d immediately grab if I wanted to catch a ‘Friday’ movie.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jason-x/

A short but sweet one from me! ‘Savage Harvest’ is a 70(ish) minute long SOV supernatural horror film that basically feels like what would happen if you put ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Scalps’ in a blender.

The plot? a group of teens (20 somethings) head into the woods for a weekend of fun at a cabin, at which point one of the gang explains that many years ago the land they stood on was host to a group of native americans who split off from their main group to hide from colonists, they went deep into the mountains, and after some time accidentally stumbled on black magic teachings, slowly the tribe learnt the ways of Black magic and it consumed them, turning them into demons who are survived by magic stones.

Anyway; as you can imagine the gang find the magic stones and what follows is the ‘Evil Dead’ style ‘base under seige’ narrative, as everyone in the woods turns into possessed demons with ‘scalping’ on their minds, while whats left of the gang desperately try to figure out a way to break the curse.

And honestly? theres not much more to it than that, the scripts rather unoriginal in it’s plot, but it handles what it does pretty well, at 70 minutes I really cant grumble about the pacing and the tones pretty consistent throughout as well. The characters get a bit of development, but dont get bogged down in complexities…realistically because most of them dont make it to the end credits. Its a solid enough script, it just doenst really do anything to really truely break the mold.

The direction and cine are VERY heavily influenced by music videos (no surprise as the director primarily worked in music videos around this time) because of this, a lot of the movie does look quite a bit more stylish and coherent than a majority of other SOV movies floating around at this time.

However; this is a double edged sword as while having a style is nice, at times this film MASSIVELY overdoes it on trying to styalize the thing, at the cost of coherency to the script. it tries to make the visuals SO out there, there there are scenes where I did wonder if there was a point to it, or if the director just wanted to flex for a bit.

Compositions solid for SOV, I’d put this in the upper half quality wise for the genre, and the edit is a bit heavy handed, but ultimately tight enough to keep the show running, while breathable enough to allow the scenes to not lose focus.

the performances are pretty poor, even for SOV standards, but there are some glimmers of good moments here where we get to see some okay performances and some quite lively animation. The gore shots in particular are handled extremely well (if nothing else, this film looks nice and has VERY over the top and entertaining kill sequences).

The soundtracks pretty solid too, I believe it was done by some bands the director was working with at the time, and its suitably rocky for the over the top-ness this film presents.

All in all; I cant say this is an essential watch, nor can I say its an essential SOV flick. But it does what it sets out to do, which is worthy of praise…admittedly it is a little short on originality and it really doesnt push the boundaries of what its trying to do, but I could see this pairing up well with one of J.R bookwalter or maybe a Ron Ford flick.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/savage-harvest-1994/

Nostradamus has got NOTHING on Mike Judge. NOTHING.

Idiocracy is a *supposed* work of fiction by Judge depicting a scenario whereby, due to smart people overthinking there issues, and idiots breeding like rabbits; all smart people die off, leaving only the bottom of the barrel. The film follows Joe and Rita, Joe is in the military and has been selected to undergo a top secret scientific experiment to freeze soldiers in the prime to be used in times of emergency. Joe was specifically chosen due to his total averageness across the board. in every single field from intelligence to physical fitness, he’s average. he’s also a total loner, so noone would care if he dissapeared.

Rita by contrast is a sex worker, who’s been hired in by the army due to a lack of willing female cadets. The pair get frozen only to find that in the interim a mass scandle relating to the lead scientist on the project is uncovered and the experiment gets abandoned…only they forget about Joe and Rita. Who wake up 500 years into the future to a society thats entirely run by the bottom of the barrel, and where intelligence is basically seen as snobby.

And man oh man, if this thing wasnt the canary in the coalmine. I’ve known people cite ‘Idiocracy was supposed to be a warning, not a documentary’ since the early 2010’s at least, but it IS genuinely surprising to see just HOW FAR we as a species have fallen in as little as 20 years.

Indeed, at times, scenes that would have been pure comedy back in 2006, are now eerily honest recreations today. And I find it fascinating.

To keep it brief, I enjoy the work of Mike Judge, this thing has a force of a script behind it, with razor sharp pacing, wickedly dark comedy tones and a deafly dryness to it that’s acidic as it is hilarious. Its playing as a kind of hybrid ‘Beavis and Butthead’/’King of the Hill’ stupid comdey to dry comedy and the contrast is wonderful.

The film still holds up on the direction and cine front, with some wonderfully daft ideas and design choices, this thing has a great styalization that is only now beginning to look a little creaky as CGI advances drastically.

The cast are, PERFECT. PERFECTLY timed, PERFECTLY animated and PERFECTLY in control of the scenes and how to time the punchlines, I honestly dont think it could have been cast better.

‘Idiocracy’ was and continues to be an astounding piece of cinema, a truely scary look into exactly where we’re heading if we continue the backslide down the toilet we’ve been drifting into for the past 30 years.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/idiocracy/

After a HELL of a consistent run in stories between 1980 and 1989, I find it somewhat disheartening that the first studio outside of Paramount to touch the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, not only managed to completely misunderstand the brief, but veer so wildly against what the franchise is actually about that its actually kind of impressive that it managed to fail *quite* so spectacularly for me.

The 9th entry in the ‘Friday the 13th’ series, ‘Jason goes to hell is detached from the rest of the series. Is seemingly set in 1993 (despite the last entry having taken place in 1994) and is effectively an attempt at kinda sorta half heartedly rebooting the franchise.

The…frankly bizarre plot is thus, it’s 1993, the legend of Jason Vorhees has plagued the residents of the nearby town surrounding Crystal lake for over 10 years at this point. So…in order to put this thing to bed once and for all, the FBI organise a mass SWAT intervention at Crystal lake, they send a woman up there to get naked (thats…literally all she does) which instantly summons Jason (who here looks like a badly packed sausage…for some reason…) The woman lures him out into an open field, where it’s revealed its all a trap and swarms of FBI agents open fire on Jason, LITERALLY blowing him up into tiny pieces.

They all celebrate a job well done, but obviously this movie isnt 10 minutes long (god I wish it was) and so instead, Jasons remains are scooped up and bagged…including his heart, which is still weirdly beating, and continues to do so all the way to the morgue. Once at the morgue the resident patholgist documents Jasons body, but Jasons still beating heart somehow mezmorises and hypnotises the pathologist who, without warning, picks the heart up and eats it…thus becoming possessed by the spirit of Jason Vorhees.

We then cut to the town outside of Crystal lake where a bounty hunter by the name of Duke is on the hunt for Jason, convinced he isnt dead and looking to finish the job. At the same time a local by the name of Steve freeman is driving the highways outside of crystal lake when he picks up some partying teens who are planning to head to the lake to do LOTS of naughty things now that Jason cant get them.

While dropping them off at the lake however, the possessed pathologist turns up, butchers them and starts heading back into town. Steven and Duke wind up in jail accused of the teens murders where its revealed that Duke knows whats going on, and informs Steve that Jason has living relatives, and that those relatives are the only ones who can put an end to him once and for all.

Theres certain things I come to a ‘Friday the 13th’ movie for, and I should clarify at this point that im not a stickler for ‘sticking to the formula’ dont get me wrong, im HAPPY for some new ideas to be injected into franchises as I feel it gives them new lifeblood.

But the choices made in ‘The Final Friday’ to me at least, show a fundamental misunderstanding of Jason as a character. In essence the films 1 part ‘Childs Play’ to 1 part ‘Evil Dead’ to 1 part ‘Halloween 2’ with a smidge of the old ‘Demon possession’ genre sprinkled in for good mix.

We dramatically shift from a series that has THE most simple plot point in horror movie history (invincible killer takes vengence on improper teens because as a child, teens behaving badly led to his death.) to a total abandonment of that, and embracing of the supernatural and very little else. This is literally just 90 minutes of people pretending to be Jason, with some bollocks about ‘half sisters’ and ‘previously unknown babies’ thrown into the mix. NON of this has EVER even BEGUN to be hinted at in the previous 8 installments. and the fact that the film ITSELF doesnt seem to know exactly what it’s main characters history is, nor does it solidly want to commit to anything, is concerning.

The thing reeks of ‘TV Movie’ vibes, with large gulfs of nothingness being punctuated by totally meaningless gore (apparently theres an extended cut that doesnt nothing else but put MORE meaningless gore in…yay…) the plot is just silly by this point. It seems they only put the ‘teens partying at crystal lake’ angle in because all they knew was they had to have teens attacked at crystal lake or the fandom might complain.

The pacing is a turtles crawl, the tone is all OVER the place and equally confusing. Theres no clean act structures here everything is just seemingly happening all at once with no rhyme or reason. the characters are all unlikable mostly and feel undercooked.

Honestly? if I were to speculate. This feels like a rejected ‘Halloween’ script (Michael gets killed, ressurects in random bodies and Laurie has to protect her daughter and grandchild from him) that, once it got rejected was reworked into a ‘Jason vs Tommy Jarvis’ script…which also got rejected before finally being settled in as a retooled version that crams ‘Childs Play’, ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘hellraiser’ easter eggs in to try and keep the audience on side. I mean…this is the entry that tries to insinuate that Jason is some kind of ‘Deadite’…if you need any more evidence for how little the scriptwriters understood the source material…there you go.

the direction and cine are of studio standard. but poor, it’s heavily styalized, but everything so darkly lit and shot its hard to figure out exactly whats going on on screen. the sequence building is messy and unconventional, it feels like entire scenes of explanation have been left on the cutting room floor, ‘Exploded sausage’ Jason is EASILY the worst design the series has ever had. he looks like someone put a slab of spam in a boiler suit.

Everything just has this overhanging ‘made for tv’ vibe to it, and I cant shake it, the quality has downgraded SO MUCH in 4 years. It really feels like this was just shot on a backlot somewhere using whatever tools the director could get his hands on.

The cine is poorly composed, badly edited together with an overeliance on cutaway footage to try and make this nonsensical shoot make sense. Theres little in the way of iconography, though the film does introduce Jasons fathers name into the franchise…though…it doesnt do anything with that information sooo….

Outside of Duke (whos basically just a sociopath) I couldnt tell you a single thing about the performances here, SO unmemorable they are that as soon as the credits rolled, i’d already forgotten half the character names. They’re stiff, with awkwardly delivered dialogue, they dont animate facially and it’s really hard to even begin to care for them. Performances in the ‘Friday the 13th’ films have always struggled to really deliver on character…but this is WELL beyond poor, even when compared to the poorer offerings in previous entries.

Even the soundtrack takes a hit, with cheap and nasty synthy sounding 90’s-ified takes on that lovely 80’s orchestral style that the original films had. its awful.

I always try to praise a film that tries something thats different from whats been established before it. But at the same time, certain acknowledgements DO have to be made when dealing with a franchise, and here? It feels like the producers just had a load of scripts and pitch ideas floating about, got he F13 license and decided to rush something out ASAP by blending all their pitches into a slurry of a story.

Surprisingly I actually tolerated this film better this time around than the first time I saw it, the first time I saw it my DVD copy of the movie made a direct beeline out of my dvd player and into my bin in one smooth glided motion before the credits had even begun to run.

Easily the worst ‘Friday the 13th’ movie i’ve seen to date, ‘Jason goes to hell’ deserves to be dropped in your nearest well…preferrably as soon as possible.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jason-goes-to-hell-the-final-friday/

After ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ helped put ‘Hammers’ horror wing on the map, it was all but inevitable that a sequel would be forthcoming. And lo, 12 months after the original, we have ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ a MORE than worthy sequel to the original that manages to quite literally ressurect the franchise from the dead!

The film opens where the first film immediatley left off, with Frankenstein heading to the guillotine for his crimes in messing with human nature (and all them murders wot he done.) But just before the Guillotines blade gets in his way…By some…mad antics. He’s managed to swap himself with the priest who was in his cells.

Yes! Frankenstein lives! and having moved to a small village in another part of the country and adopting a psudonym. He’s continuing his experiements into ressurecting the dead, and building the perfect living creature. He’s managed to set himself up as a new town doctor, and his efficiency in treating patients is the talk of the town (and a great scourge to the towns medical council who dislike how private he is)

It attracts the attention of recently graduated student Dr. Kleve who immediately puts 2 and 2 together and realises that the new doctor in town IS Frankenstein…and after some very mild blackmail, the pair form an alliance. With Kleve assisting Frankenstein in his latest experiment (building the perfect body for a heavily disabled work assistant) and in return Kleve learning all about Frankensteins work and NOT turning him into the authorities.

The rest? well…im sure you can figure out what happens if you put Dr. Frankenstein in charge of a major hospital of sick patients while he works on rebuilding his lifes work. Chaos, carnage and good times for all!

And I honestly really quite enjoyed this one. The script feels ‘Of’ the originals universe without it feeling like a retread of the original. Its main plot line basically answering the question ‘What if Frankensteins work HADNT been interrupted by Paul in the original?’ and I found it fascinating to see how things might have played out differently.

The script does seem tonally a little lighter than the first entry, the more horror driven moments do still have a distinct Macarbre touch to them, but there is a slightly heavier campy aspect to this one that I think nicely contrasts the events of the film.

Theres a bit more of a shift away from the stuffier aspects of victoriana dialogue and more emphasis on the actual characters this time around. Theres also at least a couple of characters brought in almost solely for comedic effect. Im still on the fence about those moments…

Outside of that however, pacings as rock solid as ever, the film once again has a clean 3 act structure that transitions effortlessly across its acts, and it manages to keep the 3 acts fairly equal too. the tone feels a little more footloose than the last entry, but that isnt strictly a problem. I quite like that they expand on and develop the character a bit more here than in the original. Its honestly just a really great and fun little work, that I dont think *quite* matches the original quality wise…But comes pretty bloody close!

One thing of note, that I did find a bit weird…is just HOW many times the script mentions how dirty the people in the movie are. A HUGE chunk of the runtime is given up to talking about dirty patients, dirty locations, digging in literal dirt, jokes about dirty members of the public. its pretty relentless, and I can only assume that, because the first film didnt really mention Hygeine at all, this films had to cram 2 movies worth of ‘dirty peasent’ talk into one movies runtime.

Direction wise there has been a bit more of a shift into the gothic, the first entry was a fairly well lit affair that felt more like a period piece in tone rather than a horror film. This film transitions us nicely into a heavy horror styalization. The gothic horror vibes are out in full force as we enter a chronically night time based picture, with grubby locations, dark and macarbre set spaces, with only the flourescent beakers of mysterious bubbling fluid offering any vibrant colours from this picture thats awash in midnight blues, mouldy greens and dingey yellows.

The cast and crew work in near lock step here, delivering an end product that I think actually surpassses ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ on a technical level. it shows the team learnt a lot in there first couple of the ‘Universal’ adaptations and now they’re able to hit the ground running. it looks superb.

Same goes for the cine, which is a LOT tighter than the original, shots are incredibly well composed, with decent uses of the rule of thirds and blocking. they really set the shots up to make the colours pop and the attention to detail and creative experimentation present is an absolute delight.

All of this of course is wrapped up in an edit that perfectly paced, has the exact amount of breathing space to let the edit do the heavy lifting it needs to and is open to creative experimentation. It keeps a perfect sense of timing and ends EXACTLY as I feel it needed ot.

Performance wise, we have another fantastic turn from Peter Cushing, who’s take on the Baron here is one thats now a much more calculating and considered person than his first outing. he doesnt quite get the range work that the original allowed him, but what he delivers here are easily some of his finest moments.

Credit also has to go to Michael Gwynn as the assitant turned creature Karl Immelmann. This creature gets to talk and we get to explore what he makes of his new ‘humanity’ in all its horrible, real and complex detail. He DOES get a good range to work with in this one and he absolutely delivers on the brief, a stunning performance and easily one of the biggest reasons to check this movie out.

The rest of the cast are all equally fantastic too, I think they’re even a bit of an upgrade over the previous film, where there was a certain degree of stiffness. Here? they’re all perfeclty animate, use the set space really well, and it’s nice to see the camera work match pace to such an animated cavelcade of talent.

While ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ doesnt *quite* line up to the greatness of the original. the gap of difference between them is eyewateringly close. had it not been for a couple of strange script choices and a toning down overall of the ‘Hammer blood’ and colour I think this could have easily been the better of the two.

Absolutely worth checking out. Highly recommended. I loved this one, and I regret not having seen it sooner quite honestly.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-revenge-of-frankenstein/

Acting almost like an alternate universe take on ‘Children of the corn’ that answers the question ‘What if the grownups just…didnt give in to the weird childrens bullcrap?’ ‘Beware: Children at play’ feels all too familiar in the ground its treading and the genres its working with. But that doesnt stop it from occasionally striking out on its own.

This is a horror film with a streak of jet black comedy running right through it, and honestly having seen that this is generally distributed by Troma films…A lot of this movies style quickly made sense.

The plot? a perfectly normal family are heading to a small town out in the backwaters to hang out with friends, on the way they stop to help an aging religious fellow who’s heading in the other direction who basically insults most of the townsfolk our leads are heading towards, calling the religious yokels who’ll easily part with their cash the second ‘God’ comes into the equation.

They help him on his way, but on arriving in the town they find out pretty quickly that things arnt right. A large number of children have dissapeared over the past few months/years and a series of bizarre murders have been taking place. It doesnt take long for the film to reveal that the missing children are in fact the ones doing the murdering, and they’re doing so, so that they can feast on the flesh of their victims and use the corpses in satanic rituals.

Its implied heavily that their may be some kind of demonic force at play, and when our ‘normal families’ daughter ends up being abducted by the cannibal murderous children. It sends the father down a rabbit hole of detective work alongside the police to find out where the missing children have gone to, what their end goal is and how further dissapearences and murders can be stopped. All leading to probably this films most infamous sequence, a GRAND finale that even today could be seen as quite shocking and surprising.

I think one of the biggest problems this film has really is its script. This really REALLY feels like it cribbed 90% of its plot from ‘Children of the Corn’ (its basically the core plot, but with the religious overtones tuned down to a more neutral position…and of course, the adults are still alive at this point, whereas the original kills all the grown ups off pretty quickly) It’s lack of originality on that front is actually kind of astounding, im surprised Stephen Kings lawyers didnt step in honestly.

But even overlooking that fact, the first hour or so of this hour and 40 movie is just really kind of slow and dull, it’s largely exposition dumping from our main characters who take WAY too long to cotten onto the fact that it’s the missing kids doing the killing, and a large chunk of the runtimes dedicated to wandering around in the woods or scenic shoots, and not much else. By the time the film DOES finally fully get into gear, theres about half an hour left, and while that closing half hour IS really REALLY good fun. It just kind of left me wondering why the rest of the film WASNT.

Pacing is fairly pedestrian for the first two acts of this thing, it crawls from location to location with only the occasional garish gory kill to help keep this thing from becoming a sedative. the kills themselves are cheap and cheerful (they reminded me a lot of SOV style effects) but they’re fun enough and do help drive up the campiness of the whole thing. the tone is very paletable, balancing VERY bleak horror elements to quite wonderfully self aware and tongue in cheek black comedy. This is a movie that isnt afraid to be a bit silly in places and his happy to push the envelope, and its no surprise to me at all that the UK seemingly never got this movie.

The act structuring is clean, if not a little slow, transitions are a little heavy handed, but they work fine enough. I just…really wish they’d tried to make this film a bit more unique. Had the tone and pacing of the last act been replicated for the first two, this would have been much MUCH higher rated for me. As it stands, it’s never a good look when I have to ask the person im recommending this film to, to ‘Stick with it for the first 50 minutes, because after that, it gets SO much better!’

Direction and cine are pretty solid, Its nothing massively groundbreaking, but for the lower budgeted side of movie making, theres a fairly subtle style here that helps tie the whole movie together, the kills are cheap, but help carry the vibe, the teams all seem to be working in relative harmony together, the cast are all seemingly pretty well involved with the director, who seems to have helped guide them through each scene. The child actors here do seem to struggle a bit more with the exact direction, but given the adult themes present (I.E trying to articulate to a 5 year old how to die on screen and make it look real) Im not too surprised that its a bit of a mixed ability room.

The cine again is to standard, shots with okay composition, theres a little bit of experimentation thrown into the mix. Honestly, i’d like to have seen WAY more here to really help boost its identity, but it’s ‘To standard’ which, while better than nothing, is still a little dissapointing.

The edits slow, has plenty of breathing space and honestly could have lost 15-20 with no issues at all. B-roll seems to be a little thin on the ground as, while the effort was made to capture close ups and some scenes have coverage for alternate angles, a lot of scenes have been left high and dry, with minimal cutaway footage and not a whole lot available to help keep the momentum of the film going. It really could have done with another couple of passes to help get it optimally timed.

Ultimately?; While this one DOES have its fun moments here and there, and that ending is still quite unbelievable (im VERY surprised the MPAA passed it) there just isnt really a whole lot here to warrent it being recommended. it feels very heavily influenced by quite a few movies that were out at the time and that lack of originality, married up to some fairly generic direction, cine and performances just makes a film that left me quite literally thinking ‘welp…that was a movie’ by the time of the end credits.

Not an essential watch, i’d say if you DID like the ‘Children of the corn’ movies and just basically want more of that. Here you go. if your looking for something that feels very different to the usual mid tier horror offerings, this wont scratch that itch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/beware-children-at-play/

And so, we reach the end of ‘The Paramount Years’ for the ‘Friday the 13th Franchise. and what better way to send the franchise off with a bang than by setting the film the furthest you could possibly get from Jasons natural habitat and then grossly misleading the audience in the marketing!

Because ‘Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan’ Should really be called ‘Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason takes over a small cruiser and then bumbles about Manhatten for 35 minutes’ Because thats basically what this movie is.

The film opens with a quick recap of the history of the series up to this point, as we join a young couple enjoying each others company on a boat on Crystal Lake, they accidentally run over a power cable which Jason is conveniently lying dead on. which ressurects him. He kills the couple on the boat and then…for some reason just…stays on the boat as it drifts out of Camp Crystal Lake and into what is clearly one of Camp Crystal Lakes MANY peninsula’s.

Its here we join a cruise liner heading out to Manhatten with a graduating class of ’89, chaperoned by a couple of teachers. Jason NOW decides to hop off the boat and hitches a ride on the side of the cruise liner…aaaand basically the rest of the plot is a mixture of ‘teen drama’ and Jason slowly picking off the grad’s for an hour…five minutes of the survivors bobbing along in the ocean, and 35 minutes of Jason literally getting into comedy hyjinks across Manhatten culminating in a very strange, campy but entertaining finale.

And while I think this is absolutely the worst way to end your 8 part long franchise, I cant deny that I find this thing SO enjoyable. Its campy, hammy. it gets pretty nasty in places and I really quite liked that they kept that supernatural element that began in part 6, but morphed it again into something a bit different, with Phantoms of Jason as a child appearing to try and warn the graduates that the real Jason was coming to cause trouble.

The script is of course terribly misleading, calling you film ‘Jason Takes Manhatten’ and then setting two of your three acts on a boat *HEADING* to Manhattan is a rather dirty trick on the part of the production. And it’s kind of a shame too because, while the boat stuff is fine…its ultimately a bit flat narrative wise, largely relying on the teen drama stuff to help carry the film for a big chunk of the runtime. Whereas, the second the action shifts to dry land in Manhatten, all this wonderful, colourful and eccentric character types come crawling out of the woodwork.

I almost wish they’d started the film with this kind of over the top tone and built from there, because what we’re left with is 2 acts that are just kind of ‘Okay’ in terms of their execution (FAR from the franchises best kills or plot developments) and an act thats total nonsensical fun.

The acts are a bit clunky with hard signalling for the changes which is a bit of a shame, the pacing is fairly pedestrian on the boat sections and then it suddenly gets 50k volts jolted up it for the Manhattan sequences. The films very self aware, which is a quality I actually really quite like about this entry in particular. It doesnt really care to try and play it cool. Its happy acknowledging that, by this point in the series Jasons been murdered 7 times over, turned into a zombie, drowned, electrocuted twice, hit in the head with an axe. It knows it’s ludicrous at this point, and it leans into it…to pretty solid effect i’d say.

The characters are a bit of a mixed bag, some of INCREDIBLY one note and dull, but these are also the characters most likely to be picked off, with the rest being actually kind of nuanced and subtle in giving them some complexities to work with.

I cant say I love the script for this one, but I can appreciate it as ‘a bit of a lark’ like I say, TERRIBLE ending to a franchise as successful as this, but as its own standalone entry (as it would go on to become) I think this is pretty much just the producers and paramount doing a bit of a goofy, self aware victory lap to celebrate 10 years of Jason.

The directions pretty solid. But it is a game of two halves, the boat sequences do feel a little on the drab side, Its aiming for low light mystery, especially on the segments below deck. but instead it just comes across as all very ‘one colour’, dark and uninteresting…I think they were trying to give ‘Freddys Boiler room’ vibes…but instead it just ends up looking like they didnt have enough lights to achieve what they wanted. I think they were aware that the boat scenes looked a little dull, because part way into the film, some scenes suddenly get ‘Suspiria’ style coloured lighting for NO reason at all!

By contrast, all the sequences in Manhattan are GORGEOUS. they’re grimey, dirty, nasty smokey neon lit goodness, they really capture a heavily styalized vibe and feel here thats PERFECT for this era of film making, They make the city look both beutiful and hideous in equal mesure and they they really work with colour (particularly around Jason) to help create something that hadnt been seen in any of the ‘Friday the 13th’ movies up to this point, it looks and feels distinct and it clearly had a very focussed vision in mind, which between the cast and crew, is realised pretty effectively.

The cine shines through too, as mentioned the use of coloured gels really helps give this thing a neon pop, but its the use of darkness contrasting these lighting choices that really helps give this film the stylistic contrast it needs to solidly define itself against the other entries. In a sea of entries consisting of. ‘greens, browns and beige’ this film is a neon soaked toxic green delight. Composition for the boat scenes are a little lacklustre, but they do have their moments, they do try to be creative on shot setups (with mixed results) and they do put the effort in.

But again, its the manhattan sequences that shine the brightest here, with several scenes getting very creative, experimentting with tracking shots, pans and angling to get the best they can out of making jason look menacing. They shot plenty of B-roll and it feels like all of it was VERY heavily considered, because the end result is an edit that moves along with a clip, but doesnt feel TOO snappy, and doesnt overstay its welcome.

If I was nitpicking? I’d maybe say at least 10-15 minutes of the boat footage could have been cut and that probably would have bumped this up another half star for me. It would address some of the pacing issues the boat sequences have, while also balancing the ‘Boat to Manhatten’ ratio out a little better AND it would help tighten up those first 2 acts, which do get a little bogged down in the ‘Teen Drama’ side of things.

Performance wise, I kinda got nothing, Peter Mark Richman as Charles is probably the strongest performer here, playing a somewhat malicious uncle to one of the graduates, he has a slimey quality that I feel oozes out wonderfully from him. But outside of him and Kane Hodder playing a blinder as Jason. There just…isnt much to say about the remaining cast members. Its one of the biggest porblems this franchise has, but it’s teen protagonists are often just…very one note and dull. They usually have some kind of gimmic (a fighter, a practical joker, a drug addict) and thats all there is. Im not saying they perform their roles badly, im just saying there isnt really all that much for them to do, but read their lines in a way that isnt dreadful, and pretty much kill time till they’re killed. its a shame really.

And the soundtrack! I think this is my favourite one of the whole series. If I had to pick one it’d certainly be a tossup between this and ‘Part 3’ thats for sure. it’s got that F13 quality, mashed up with some of THE hairiest Hair metal ballad and rock tracks i’ve ever heard. Cheesy as sin, its SUCH a fun little score an it INSTANTLY sets the tone and time this takes place (which is supposedly 1994 if you follow the timeline of the previous movies…ah well.)

I have a real soft spot for ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ Its a film that doesnt take itself seriously, and while it does have MAJOR flaws…especially for a closing chapter. Its imperfections are kind of what draws me to it. It stands out, it looks and sounds great and it does something kind of interesting with its runtime, which other entries have only really flirted with.

I’d recommend ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ But only after you’ve seen a couple of F13 movies and you know how the standards for these movies work. This is a subversive picture, and I think if you dont know how the F13 movies from 2-7 work…even in a vague sense…then a lot of what makes this one so fun will be lost in translation.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-viii-jason-takes-manhattan/

I was really hoping that with a rewatch of 1972’s ‘Night of the Strangler’ that I might have been able to enjoy it a little more than the first time around. The first time I watched it I was completley nonplussed by it honestly, I found it overly slow with only a few moments really of any interest and it was kind of dissatisfying…With only Micky Dolenz cheeky ‘special guest’ appearence being the reason to check this out. Having now rewatched it…I cant say my thoughts on it have changed all that much.

The plots a kind of ‘proto slasher’ but it’s a ‘Whodunnit’ with ‘Blaxploitation’ elements at it’s core. As we’re introduced to Vance, Dan and Denise. the group have been brought together after the untimely death of their father and while catching up Denise reveals that she’s going to be dropping out of school, effectively throwing away her rather expensive scholarship and education, because she wants to get married…and she pregnant. and her partners a black guy.

Vance is incredibly supportive of Denise though, a little less than happy shes throwing away her education. But Dan, the eldest brother (and also a MASSIVE racist) is apoplectic. Accusing Denise of throwing away her life and her lineage, before beating the everloving crap out of her, swearing vengence against her and disowning her.

Denise heads back to the city to be with her partner, where its revealed that Dan’s put a hit on Denises partner, who gets blown away while the pair are enjoying a picnic in the park.

A short while later, while Denise is taking a bath, an unseen killer enters her apartment and drowns her. causing tremendous distress to Vance and mild disruption to Dan.

But things start to get a bit interesting when the killings dont stop there. Dans bride to be is killed which sends him into an alcoholic stupor and the bodies continue to pile up from there. Eventually a friend of Vance’s, a black priest on vacation drops in to hang with the family and catch up on whats been happening…Only to run acropper with Dan and for things to get rather frosty.

As the cope begin to piece together the murders and gather evidence, ANYONE could be the killer. with a final act and reveal that quite literallly had me on the edge of my seat…because I couldnt see my clock…I wanted to know when this movie was going to end.

The scripts kind of nebulous honestly, the plots not a bad idea, but the actual way its written feels incredibly loose, badly structured and more like a series of happenings than an actual coherent movie. The main plot of this film with the cops, Vance and his priest friend and the killer feel like islands lost in a sea of random uninteresting exposition and padding. this things 90 minutes on the nose and you could easily lose 30 minutes of it and STILL have room to cut. Its a short film, something that feels like it wasnt developed past the ‘Pitch’ stage, dragged out WAY beyond its normal runtime. and it’s painful to sit through for the most part…

Dont get me wrong, when the film remembers its main plot and gets back on track, it can be really quite good fun! but those moments are very few and far between and long sequences of ‘negotiations’ are about as well recieved here as frying pan to the head.

The tone is kind of difficult to read too, on the one hand, it feels like it wants to explore darker terratory like ‘The New York Ripper’ or ‘Black Christmas’, but then; at the same time it doesnt really commit to it, preferring instead to go for ‘somewhat gritty’ over something that feels altogether more real. This is a movie that prefers to shout racist rhetoric for 20 minutes, than actually SHOW or DEAL with any kind of gore or kill scene…and I find that wild.

The characters are super one dimensional, and when your ‘Whodunnit’ relies on well written and well rounded characters to help add a bit more complexity and nuance to proceedings. NOT having that there is a disaster waiting to happen. As such we’re stuck in a movie of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ where the film isnt even ballsy enough to BOTHER doing anything like a plot twist of a good guy turning out to be a bad guy, or anything of that ilk.

The ending is kind of dissatisfying, you’ll either guess who the killer is within 20 minutes of the film playing, or you wont guess and when it’s revealed will call shenanigans on it because its a reach.

All in all, its a mess of a script with poor to no act structuring, badly written characters a predictable plotting, bad pacing, barely any twists or turns and not even any good kills to help carry the thing. its just a series of islands floating in padding.

The direction and cine dont fair much better either, the direction is chronically dull, all locked off shots, all flood lit, no styalization, no creative zeal, this thing was shot for basic function and nothing else. the cast all seem fairly confused on where to be or what to do, theres no sense of them having any creative say in how to do the scenes and it really feels like the crew, for the most part, were working entirely independently of each other.

The cines worse still, ignoring the heavy print damage and overly grainy footage for the time being. composition is badly formed with no attention to detail, the film doesnt care about crossing the line, at least a third of this thing isnt focussed correctly and looks soft. b-roll was thin on the ground, resulting in long running sequences that make the padding even more insufferable. And it really does come to something when my immediate thoughts on the credits rolling were ‘Wow…the titles and credits were the nicest looking part of this thing!’

its a poor show, a really loose edit containing badly shot footage with no sense of style or direction in sight.

The performances arguably are the best part of this thing, With Dolenz playing anxiety ridden and panicked for half the movie and totally wasted off booze for the other half. He does a decent enough job, he’s no oscar player, but I enjoyed seeing him on screen and I thought he approached the role with relish.

James Ralston as Dan is probably the show stealer. He’s basically been asked to play the meanest nastiest racist he possibly can, and again. he REALLY gets into the role, more than meets the brief and when he isnt just sitting around, he’s easily the most watchable character in this thing.

The other cast members are solid too, though the further removed from the main action to you the quality of their performances sharply drop off too. It sounds stupid to say, but its almost like the less important the character was to the scene, the less effort the director took with them, to the point that…once they passed a certain level of unimportant…they were on their own. Again, that sounds like standard practice. But a good director treats even his least important speaking character with the same quality as he would his star. because a poor performance from ANYONE instantly will pull people out of the moment, and good directors acknowledge that.

The soundtracks alright, its got a couple of actually pretty solid tracks in here, but im pretty sure these are all library sourced. Ultimatley; this one wasnt for me, one or two twists and a couple of good performances couldnt save a DAMN slow and uninteresting script, bad direction, poor visuals a bloated edit and stocky sounding scoring.

Its just dull, I can only really recommend it to folks who want to see someone from ‘The Monkees’ act like an alcoholic on the verge of a total mental breakdown. Otherwise…Pass.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/night-of-the-strangler/

With the ‘Tommy Jarvis’ arc firmly put to bed, Part 7 seemingly was somewhat floundering with what to do with the franchise now that they’d pretty much exhausted the ‘Hocky Mask killer stalks teens in the woods’ genre of film making…I can only assume that Jason being ressurected as a Zombie in ‘Part 6’ gave the producers enough dutch courage to eek into the supernatural a bit more by asking the question: ‘What If Jason fought Carrie?’

Because thats kind of what this movie is, as we follow telekenetik teen ‘Tina’ who, after having had her powers commence at an awkward moment that unfortunately resulted in her fathers untimely death, is riddled with trauma and isnt exactly sure how to control her powers now shes in adolesence.

Her mother, sends her out to a facility near Camp Crystal Lake, where the on site doctor is promising to study and treat these psychic abilities with care and compassion. Unfortunately the doctors there seem more intent in antagonizing Tina into using her powers, than helping her control them. After one outburst too many her abilities run amock and in the process the chains that have bound Jason to the bottom of Crystal Lake are broken and he’s able to rise to the surface and continue his chaos.

…Oh! and next door to the psychic doctors office, theres a group of teens setting up for a birthday party for one of their friends. You can guess what happens next…

And its at this point in the Friday the 13th franchise that I start to go crosseyed in trying to figure out exactly when the HELL any of this is supposed to ACTUALLY be taking place. With the first film having happened in June 1979, the second taking place not long after in the summer of 1980, part 3 takes place (possibly) in the summer of 1981. Then part 4 happens IMMEDIATELY after part 3, so still summer ’81, Part 5 jumps 5 years into the future to bring us in line with the year that film came out (1985), Part 6 takes place a year after that in ’86…And this film opens 3 months after the events of Part 6 (so Fall ’86) with a Young Tina, before then jumping forward in time 7 and a half years to what is presumably Summer 1993…This film came out in 1988…and Part 8 happens 1 year after this one which means its 1994 in 1989 aaaaaand there goes those crosseyes…

While there isnt all that much in originality in ‘Part 7’. The best way I can describe it is ‘It looks back at the previous films, pinches the best bits and just makes something fairly solid’ and thats basically what this is.

You have a script thats…Not the strongest work in the world and very derivitive, but it IS entertaining, it has its moments and I think its better than AT LEAST half of the films in this franchise on this level alone. The pacings a little slower than previous entries, but what it lacks in build up, it more than makes up for in the 3rd act finale.

Tonally, its a bit more subdued than parts 5 and 6, but we do have some interesting and animated characters, this film isnt afraid to use a little bit of humour here and there and the kills are pretty good fun.

It has a clean 3 act structure with decent transitions between the acts, it takes its time in getting you from scene to scene, which I could see how it would annoy some people, but I was okay with that.

The direction isnt as sharp as ‘Jason Lives’. Because the scripts a bit thinner on the ground than previous entries it kind of lacks a strong vision on that front, which then has a knock on in being able to generate a strong vision within the visuals. That being said, the kills and the final showdown sequence are absolute highlights of this entry and easily some of the series high points.

Direction of the cast is a bit flat, it seems the only directions were where the edge of the frames were, because cast members dont really interact with their surroundings very much, DO seem a little bit lost and it really takes time for these characters to warm up when compared to previous entried.

The cine is actually kind of solid, again; its not *quite* as creatively charged as parts 5 and 6, but it DOES have a destinct stylization in mind and there are a lot of shots here that are visually very interesting and compositionally sound.

Sequences seem fairly well constructed with plenty of B-roll, its nice to see this entry doesnt shy away from using a bit of colour here and there rather than the washed out offerings from earlier entries. and the kill scenes are well choreographed and quite interesting too. Though, I do also have to add that the ‘telekenesis’ used in this did raise a chuckle as I couldnt stop thinking of the ‘Garth Marenghis: Darkplace’ episode ‘Hell Hath Fury’ with some items clearly flying on fishing wire. Its so corny.

The performances are a bit of a mixed bag, a lot of the cast dont really seem to know what tone to go for (I.E: whether this should be a ‘Part 4’ style of performance, or a ‘Part 5’ style of performance) Lara Park Lincoln is probably the best of the bunch here as Tina, she works a decent enough range…But even then shes not the strongest lead this series has ever had.

Throw in some fairly unmemorable scoring which, to my ears, didnt sound THAT much different from the score used for the first 3 movies and you ultimatley end up with a film that is inoffensive. The scripts not bad, but it doesnt break new ground, the direction and cine have their moments, but theres nothing jaw dropping and the cast do what they can…but what they can do is just kind of acceptable.

If Inoffensive is the worst this film gets, then I WILL take it as a win…But at the same time, an ‘inoffensive’ ‘Friday the 13th’ movie is a bit like a chocolate teapot…nice…but ultimately kinda pointless.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-vii-the-new-blood/