A few reviews

[TM2YC]

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
The opening gothic Jason resurrection scene rivals Hammer's many attempts to bring back Dracula. It signals that this franchise has taken a turn from gritty somewhat-down-to-earth slasher, into fantasy horror. 'Jason Lives' is a noticeably slicker production but it loses some of that early edge. There is some wonderful visual humour like the shot of an "American Excess" card floating in a muddy puddle but it goes too far in a couple of places with overly wacky comedy side characters. The female lead was a lot of fun, sassy, fast talking and unpredictable enough that sometimes it looked like Tommy was more scared of what she might do, than Jason. This is the first film in the series that looked like it was made in my era, with jean jackets, ripped-at-the-knees trousers and Walkman cassette players.

 

[TM2YC]

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
In a misguided effort to give this series some depth it never needed, an inordinate amount of screen time is devoted to some rubbish about a traumatised girl with telekinetic powers and her discovering her obviously evil psychiatrist is in fact evil. Bringing Jason back to life in the last movie was maybe the "jump the shark" moment in this franchise because it gives the writers an excuse to use any lazy nonsense from now on. The only character I actually liked was Melissa, because she had some character, even if it was to be bitchy. Not as boring as the first movie but it comes close despite it's increased budget and technical resources. Rotting zombie Jason with his exposed bones looks wonderfully icky and the end has one of the more inventive stagings of a psychic battle that I've seen in a movie.

 

[TM2YC]

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)
I watched this in a different context to a lot of people who loved it, for them it was an unexpected surprise present that turned up on Disney+ in the lead up to Christmas 2022, for me it was this 40-minute chore that I was forced to watch in August 2023 because the start of 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' made no sense otherwise. So I wasn't in the Xmas spirit and didn't laugh once. I'm sure the repetitive joke about actors being awful was very funny to the cast of actors but not for anybody else. I remember liking Mantis in Vol.2, she was cute and gentle, making her a nice foil for the blunt Drax but Pom Klementieff constantly screaming was just irritating in this. On the plus side, Maria Bakalova from Borat 2 was great as the Laika dog. I appreciated the 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' font homage too.

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Annoyingly I had to stop watching this about 7-minutes in as it had become clear that this third adventure thought it was my fault for being confused because I hadn't dutifully watched 'The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special' beforehand. After viewing the Holiday Special I resumed the actual movie but initially thought "Oh no is this also going to all take place on the one boring Knowhere street set and have the same "shouting = comedy" approach". But no, once it gets out of that set, it goes to some delightfully inventive, colourful and weird alien places and the character stuff and quite a bit of the comedy lands. Quill's "The trap isn't a trap if you know the trap is trying to trap you" line made me laugh really hard because it's about his character. Chukwudi Iwuji made an excellent villain, he played it like he was genuinely insane and coldly amoral and so capable of anything. I could see this being improved by shifting all, or most of, the Rocket flashbacks to the start (to form a prologue), then editing out anything that didn't stay focused on Starlord and Rocket. The Rocket flashback scenes were strong but they felt cut into the main narrative completely at random. Vol.3 is nowhere near as good as the first movie but it was overall better than Vol.2 and the best MCU movie in what feels like a long time.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Refresh my memory: what was it that the Holiday Special set up that made you need to see it before GotG V3? So many of these MCU films have had massive character developments happen off-screen between projects that I have kind of gotten used to just accepting whatever the new status quo is at the start of whatever the new film is.

In this case, I skipped over Thor: Love & Thunder because I was clear it was going to be a trainwreck from the start. I assume they may (or may not) have addressed in that the Guardians going from the end of Endgame going off to find Gamora with Thor to them somehow being owners of Knowhere and neither interested in Gamora nor Thor. The Holiday Special certainly doesn't explain any of that, so you're just as lost at the start of GotG V3 regardless.

The more important thing is to have seen the post-credit scene from GotG V2, and maybe the deleted scenes from that (the first time Mantis tells about her brother). But Marvel has in general become pretty bad at continuity, so each movie or at least series tends to be kind of its own thing at this point. The Scarlet Witch from Multiverse of Madness for example has next to nothing in common with her character in Wandavision.

 

[TM2YC]

^ Yes, seeing the Holiday Special definitely doesn't solve all those problems but it helps. I'm pretty sure it sets up the Mantis sister thing. Where as the film proper just has a line in the first two minutes from Mantis to somebody else referring to herself as his sister. Which I was obviously "What?!?". I'm still confused by the Gamora thing.

The more important thing is to have seen the post-credit scene from GotG V2, and maybe the deleted scenes from that

That must be a different definition of the word "important" than I'm used to . I've no interest in any Marvel TV stuff, deleted scenes, comics, spinoff etc. The movies are usually a good couple of hours of entertainment. I don't expect to get every reference as a consequence but equally I don't feel I should need to get every reference to watch these films.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^That's what I mean actually, that the 2 lines from Mantis saying "I still haven't told Peter that I'm his sister" is the setup, the only setup you need. There's so much stuff happening in the MCU that 2 lines is about all you usually get for a catchup on something. You could watch the Holiday Special and that's gone into more, sure, but you don't need more than those two lines, really. I'd have loved more lines explaining why they stopped being galivanting Guardians and instead got into the shipping/docking business? Or more than a line from Nebula about "yeah, I contacted my sister" when nobody else knew where she was. Or any acknowledgement really of their time with Thor. I mean just... so many things. The MCU is a sprawling mess at this point, and anybody saying "Kevin Feige has a master plan!" clearly has not been paying attention the past couple years.

That said, both Guardians pieces executed what they were going for pretty well I think. It's hard to complain when most Marvel projects have been balefully disappointing these days.

Vol.3 is nowhere near as good as the first movie but it was overall better than Vol.2 and the best MCU movie in what feels like a long time.

That's spot-on.

 

[TM2YC]

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
I'd heard the title was misleading but wow it's 64-minutes before the (dis)pleasure cruise docks in NY. I'm not sure if it was an intentional joke that one character checks his watch with relief when they finally get there. The teacher actor is terribly aggressive and aggressively terrible. It was only after the deckhand had been killed that I realised he was supposed to be a red herring. Taking Jason out of Crystal Lake makes this feel like just another generic 80s horror movie, or like one of the many lame Halloween sequels. The plot verges on nonsensical. I didn't care for Jason now having literal teleportation powers. Plus him being immortal and indestructible is such a drag on any scenes where the characters waste our time by fighting back. Despite all the gore and dismembered girls across parts 1-7, 'Jason Takes Manhattan's heroin-injection rape scene is the first time in 8-movies where I thought "Ewwww, this is quite unpleasant". It had me thinking back to how many strong female characters this series had, sure the ladies were often contractually bound to get their boobs out but they had attitude and the sex was fun, frivolous and consensual, never sadistic. By the way, like with 1988's 'Maniac Cop', this is a horror movie whose advertisements in magazines I vividly remember seeing and thinking they looked freakin' awesome but I was far to young to see either film at the time. Neither movie lived up to the imagined hype.

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

^ Yes, seeing the Holiday Special definitely doesn't solve all those problems but it helps. I'm pretty sure it sets up the Mantis sister thing. Where as the film proper just has a line in the first two minutes from Mantis to somebody else referring to herself as his sister. Which I was obviously "What?!?". I'm still confused by the Gamora thing.



That must be a different definition of the word "important" than I'm used to . I've no interest in any Marvel TV stuff, deleted scenes, comics, spinoff etc. The movies are usually a good couple of hours of entertainment. I don't expect to get every reference as a consequence but equally I don't feel I should need to get every reference to watch these films.

I started watching Vol. 3 last night. I still have an hour to go (it’s definitely too long). But I just kind of gloss over these things in the MCU. As you say the movies are usually passable time killers, but I’m not invested in the MCU at all. So any references are generally lost on me and I just kind of accept that.

Edit: having finished the movie, it’s too long by an hour. All the meaningful storylines were or should’ve been wrapped up at that point. The only one that wasn’t was whistle arrow dude and his dog.
But it’s the MCU so they’ve gotta have one more giant CGI brawl. It is better than many recent comic book efforts, but the thing I liked about the first GotG was Pratt, but he’s either less prominent or less charming or both here as he just didn’t stand out to me in this one.

 

[TM2YC]

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
This is the first film in the Friday the 13th series that outright drops the continuity from the last one. Last time we saw Jason he was melted by toxic waste in a New York sewer but he has just appeared back in Crystal Lake at the start of 'Jason Goes To Hell'. Then the mythology is junked so Jason is now some kind of black bile worm creature who can jump into different bodies. The later 2009 film gets called the "reboot" but this one is so divorced from what went before that it's practically a clean slate. I later read that the writers had intended make out that Jason had been a "deadite" all along because Mrs Voorhees had originally resurrected him after his drowning using the "Necronomicon" from 'The Evil Dead' (which is glimpsed in the film). Trouble is, none of that explanation is in the movie, just the nonsense left over from that concept. Viewed as generic splatter action horror it's not terrible but as a Friday film it sucks.

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Jason X (2001)
Going in, I knew the laughable "Jason in space!!!" reputation that this futuristic nail-in-the-coffin of the franchise had. So with expectations at rock bottom, I had a lot of fun with it. 'Jason X' is like 'Alien Resurrection' but it isn't trying to be anything more than a bit of fun, it knows what it is. With the daft premise accepted it's quite well executed in a Roger Corman level way. The CGI is better than some other films from this year/era. The first liquid-nitrogen kill is one of the best in the whole series and the corkscrew kill is highly amusing and technically impressive. Jason is thankfully back to being just a simple-minded, non-stop, irrational, killing-machine, after getting obsessed with revenge in parts 8 and 9. The sex-robot faulty-nipples visual gag was so funny that I was impressed the two actors could do a take without corpsing. The obvious "we've just seen The Matrix!" bit is deeply cringey but the dated "virtual reality" and "nanobots" plot elements were used in inventive ways. Plus hey David Cronenberg is in this!

 

[TM2YC]

Friday the 13th (2009)
I don't know who gets more blame for this reboot, Director Marcus Nispel who has a track record for making drab remakes (see his 2011 'Conan the Barbarian'), or producer Michael Bay. It's certainly got the latter's grubby, tasteless, almost pornographic style and hateful characters. It does serve as a stark retrospective illustration of what is good about the original series, in comparison it had an innocent charm to it, despite the revulsion it engendered in highbrow critics of the 80s. It had likeable characters, kids who were just out for some carefree fun, who didn't deserve to die. The characters in this are mostly nasty, brash and self-centred, people who are begging to die. The kills here are sadistic and drawn out, where as they used to be fun and technically inventive. Case in point, in 'Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood' it features Jason bashing a girl in a sleeping bag against a tree, it's blackly comic and goofy looking, in this remake Jason hangs a girl in a similar sleeping bag above a fire and slowly roasts her death as she screams, before her charred corpse falls out in front of her boyfriend. I guess this is the post 'Saw'/'Hostel' "torture porn" influence, something I really dislike. Predictably the last kill by Jason is the only one that has any impact, because it's to one of the few nice characters. Part of what made Jason scary was that he kills with no purpose, early into the original series I found myself thinking "well this character can't die because they didn't deserve it" but he kills them anyway with no more or less gusto. The remake seems to want to make us hate the characters and so revel in their deaths, which eliminates that tension. The editing and shaky cam is chaotic, making it sometimes hard to understand what's going on. I've been making myself laugh since the original 'Friday the 13th' with thoughts like "Chekhov's archery range", in this otherwise mirthless remake, I still had a chuckle at "Chekhov's wood chipper" .

 

[mnkykungfu]

I later read that the writers had intended make out that Jason had been a "deadite" all along because Mrs Voorhees had originally resurrected him after his drowning using the "Necronomicon" from 'The Evil Dead' (which is glimpsed in the film). Trouble is, none of that explanation is in the movie

I heard about this proposed crossover long ago and I think it's been fully embraced in comics and other media. It always struck me as a cool way to validate the scattershot plotting and silliness of this series. Do you think it'd be possible to make a fanedit that realizes this? Maybe take half of this film and mash it with scenes from the Evil Dead films, or (more likely) the Ash Vs Evil Dead Series?

I was impressed the two actors could do a take without corpsing

I'm going to start using "corpsing" to describe when people fall down dying with laughter. "Oh man, it was hysterical when Todd walked into that sliding glass door and then fell down and peed his pants. I corpsed!"

 

[TM2YC]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
I'm almost sure my parents took me to see this and at least one of the sequels at the cinema.... what a treat that must have been for them! For some reason the sequence at the farm house was what stuck most in my mind, maybe it's that I liked Casey Jones more than the turtles and he's in that bit a lot. Elias Koteas is immensely charming in the role. I never knew Corey Feldman did the voice for Donatello. I remember at the time there was a big deal made of the Jim Henson animatronics and they still hold up. The Turtles look great, they're really expressive and it's amazing how good the fight scenes are considering what the actors are having to move in. There are a couple of bits that don't scream "teenage", they sound more like elderly filmmaker's up-to-date pop-culture references to 30/40s movies staring Jimmy Cagey and Henry Fonda. As well as featuring videogames, rap and punk music in the Shredder's lair depiction of all things "bad". The visual joke using a Sid Vicious t-shirt was brilliant. I didn't love this as much today, as the kid who was into the cartoon and had the toys but it held up respectably.

 

[TM2YC]

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013)
This documentary's good reputation is well deserved. Watching through the 'Friday the 13th' series would be a good investment of time, simply to enjoy this 6.5-hour retrospective at the end. Although it's so rich with behind the scenes magic you'd love it even if you'd never seen a Friday film and just enjoyed watching movies about film-making craft. The films are analysed with real affection and respect for the people who made them, with a focus on finding the positives in all the films. It's testament to their dedication that each film has the same story of the FX people spending weeks/months creating elaborate and inventive practical gore make-ups, which were cut down to a few frames by the MPAA every single time... or removed entirely and the footage later junked by the studio. It's annoying when film people have all the money and all the critical acclaim and yet you can tell they don't care, where as the Friday crews had no money and critical revulsion but they were still doing art for art's sake.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
I'm almost sure my parents took me to see this and at least one of the sequels at the cinema.... what a treat that must have been for them! For some reason the sequence at the farm house was what stuck most in my mind, maybe it's that I liked Casey Jones more than the turtles and he's in that bit a lot. Elias Koteas is immensely charming in the role. I never knew Corey Feldman did the voice for Donatello. I remember at the time there was a big deal made of the Jim Henson animatronics and they still hold up. The Turtles look great, they're really expressive and it's amazing how good the fight scenes are considering what the actors are having to move in. There are a couple of bits that don't scream "teenage", they sound more like elderly filmmaker's up-to-date pop-culture references to 30/40s movies staring Jimmy Cagey and Henry Fonda. As well as featuring videogames, rap and punk music in the Shredder's lair depiction of all things "bad". The visual joke using a Sid Vicious t-shirt was brilliant. I didn't love this as much today, as the kid who was into the cartoon and had the toys but it held up respectably.

I watched a great mini-doc on this (several on various Turtles projects, actually) and it was crazy to hear about all the concessions they had to make to get this film made. The comic creators thought they were getting a real adaptation, but they started seeing the script step by step have these elements you were mentioning Frankensteined in, and when the director got the word from producers that the Turtles couldn't actually use their weapons on anyone, they just threw their hands up and said 'fine, give us the money and we don't care anymore'. They just gave up and let all the future Turtles stuff be its own thing without their input. I think you're right though and this original one does still retain something of the concept's magic.

they were still doing art for art's sake.

"art" ha!
Seriously though, if I were to take a chance on one more really representative Jason film (that's GOOD, or well, approximately good), which one would you recommend?

 

[TM2YC]

if I were to take a chance on one more really representative Jason film (that's GOOD, or well, approximately good), which one would you recommend?

Difficult because I'd say the non-representative 5th one is the best (I think I'm in the minority on that one), plus a large part of the fun I had was watching them in order. There is a soap-opera quality to them, a fairly coherent continuity across the first eight and they chart changing US culture across the 1980s. Definitely don't start with the first one. General consensus is that part 4 and part 6 are the best the series has to offer and I'd subscribe to that. Part 4 if you want a straight-ahead slasher, part 6 if you want some supernatural horror.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Difficult because I'd say the non-representative 5th one is the best (I think I'm in the minority on that one), plus a large part of the fun I had was watching them in order. There is a soap-opera quality to them, a fairly coherent continuity across the first eight and they chart changing US culture across the 1980s. Definitely don't start with the first one. General consensus is that part 4 and part 6 are the best the series has to offer and I'd subscribe to that. Part 4 if you want a straight-ahead slasher, part 6 if you want some supernatural horror.

Sounds like maybe I should take a shot with 4, if I like it enough, go on to 5, and so on!

 

[TM2YC]

Jerry Springer: The Opera (2005)
A new episode of BBC Radio4's fantastic 'The Reunion' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001pm7b) discussion programme (in which all the key players are brought in decades later to discuss a tumultuous event) about the controversial 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' prompted me to have another watch of the DVD recording of the musical starring David Soul. 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' was created by comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas who I loved from having watched them as a teenager on the legendary Sunday morning comedy show 'This Morning with Richard Not Judy' (itself generating complaints due to being adult-ish but on at a time when kids like me were watching and because it had a couple of sketches gently mocking religion... on the sabbath). Their musical won all the theatre awards and played to packed houses for a few years, until the BBC broadcast it, after which all hell broke loose. Christian groups picketed the shows, threatened it with a blasphemy prosecution (which never happened) made up lies about the shows content, instigated death threats against the creators, had questions asked in parliament, got funding for the show's national tour withdrawn, and so commercially destroyed it. The DVD was being put together at the height of the controversy, so on the bonus features and commentary, Stew and Richard are trying to laugh their way through the depressing destruction of this piece of popular art, which they'd spent 4-years working on e.g. "The costume designer did a brilliant job... all her work is rotting in a warehouse now". They didn't know that this DVD itself would also be withdrawn from sale from two major retailers due to threats from pressure groups. I was delighted to hear on 'The Reunion' show that Stew had managed to buy up 500 unsold copies of the DVD from a charity shop for 50p and then sell them full-price at his comedy shows. A small piece of ironic revenge. You can't help but think of the global success of the similar 'The Book of Mormon' and think the makers of 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' got very unlucky to have been chosen as a target.

The musical itself is damned catchy. The next day after this re-watch, I had to stop myself walking around singing the choruses "This Is My Jerry Springer Moment", "Mama gimmee smack on the a**hole" and "I just want to sh*t my pants" . The first hour is perhaps in danger of being a one-joke "Opera but with swearing" trick but it's a very funny joke, with beautifully written music. The second "Jerry Springer in Hell" half taking place on another plain of reality is the most interesting bit. The show certainly isn't for the easily offended but it's not going to bring about the downfall of civilisation or anything.

The DVD...

...and the commentary track are on YouTube...

How To Write an Opera about Jerry Springer (2005)
Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas' amazing meta deconstruction/discussion of the genesis of their 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' show. Thomas' specially written song "DVD... this an extra for the DVD" is a total ear worm.

Stewart Lee: What's Wrong with Blasphemy? (2006)
I had to re-watch Stewart Lee's interesting comedic documentary after 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. The main focus is the hysterical scandal around the musical but it's investigating the larger cultural and political context in an amusing yet thoughtful way. My favourite line from Lee (as he stands in front of protestors) is "Wether you think of the people behind me as hysterical bigots, or well intentioned fools, they are nonetheless divs". Lee often manages to get the brilliant Alan Moore involved in his projects and Moore's interview here is a real treat.

 

[TM2YC]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
After completing a marathon of the 'Friday the 13th' movies, I had to tick off all the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' films that I'd not yet seen too. I watched the first one a couple of years ago, so I skipped onto the sequels. I knew 'Freddy's Revenge' was supposed to have a gay "subtext" but there is nothing "sub" about it . The film is initially fascinating because you're wondering how and why they'd make a gay horror movie in 1985. It would be pretty standard now but in the mid 80s, a Hollywood studio was never going to make that particular creative decision on purpose, with their biggest box-office franchise. There seems to still be some debate between the star, the writer and director as to how much of that was deliberate, or purely by accident. For example, at one point a mother calls to her daughter "There's a Jesse on the phone!". Meaning the main character "Jesse" but "Jessie" is also Scottish/Northern English slang for a gay man. Which must be 100% coincidence, as nobody involved with making the film is from the UK as far as I know. Being from the UK, I nearly did a spit take on that line. By the middle act, that fascination starts to wear off and you're just left watching a fairly average horror movie, but thankfully in the last act it's got a glorious 30-minutes of sustained inventive FX and imaginative visuals that make everything worth it!

 

[TM2YC]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
'Dream Warriors' doesn't contradict part 2, but it picks up the dangling strands from part 1 and just skips right over it. I first watched 'Dream Warriors' when I was about 8 years old. My decade-older brother had rented the VHS, I obviously wasn't allowed to see it, so I crept down at night and watched it anyway. Apparently I didn't sleep for a week and my poor brother got a load of grief as a result. There are certain images that were seared onto my brain, most distinctly the bit where Freddy's fingers become blue syringes and the girl's needle marks in her arms turn into pulsating sores. Other bits like the kid dangling from puppet strings, the girl getting her head mashed into a TV and Freddy revealing the souls trapped in the flesh of his chest. I knew this obviously wasn't going to have the same sort of impact three decades later to adult me but I hoped it wouldn't disappoint and it really didn't!

'Dream Warriors' is good enough to stand on it's own as a total classic of 80s horror, you barely need to have seen the 1st film and it wraps up with a finality that needed no more films (although inevitably this undercut with a quick bit of money induced sequel bait). The cinematography and Giallo style lighting are gorgeous. It boasts a score by the late 'Twin Peaks' maestro Angelo Badalamenti. There are 'Wizard of Oz' undercurrents to intrigue the brain. The best element is the premise, a claustrophobic gothic hospital ward of sleep disturbed misfit teenagers, ineffectually being treated by rational psychiatrists, fits the Freddy idea like a glove, it's a far more intellectually stimulating and thematically appropriate setting, than a line-up of expendable suburban kids. The dazzling visual FX are taken to new heights, both technically and artistically. The cast is top notch, with the exception of the returning Heather Langenkamp. She got away with playing more-or-less her own age in the first movie but she's not convincing at all as an older psychiatrist, putting a streak of grey in her hair isn't going to fool anybody. But that's my only nitpick in this masterpiece.

 

[TM2YC]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
I know this isn't a terrible film but because I watched it right after the sensational 'Dream Warriors', this is such a step down in quality that it feels worse than it is. I wasn't a bit surprised to read this was made during a writer's strike and that the producers started filming without a director, or finished script, it all feels pretty random because it was partly improvised on set. The fact that a dog p*ssing fire onto Freddy's grave was the best they could come up with for his resurrection scene speaks volumes. About 50% of the dialogue is very noticeably and poorly dubbed, so I'm not sure what went wrong with the original audio recordings? This wants to be a continuation of the popular 'Dream Warriors' but Patricia Arquette's main character being recast and then killing off the characters from the previous film in the first act renders that idea pointless. It was screen time that could've been better used to establish the new characters, some of which die just as I was starting to get to know them. The dream FX don't disappoint though, except the scene where a Karate trained kid fights an invisible Freddy, saving a lot of time, effort and budget I'm sure.