Y'know the quickest way to kill a horror franchise? Well, okay, you set it in space, yeah. But the second-quickest way to kill a franchise is to make it 3-D. Think about the number of GOOD horror film sequels you've seen in 3-D. See what I mean? And that brings us to Friday the 13th 3.
This movie should be a train wreck. It should be the worst in the franchise. And yet, it has a lot going for it, including likable characters and some pretty good suspense. And, continuing the tradition of the second film, it recaps the action of the previous movie. As always, it's SPOILER time!
The movie begins, as I said, with a recap of the ending of Part Two. Ginny is running through the woods, and finds her way to Jason's cabin. She finds the bodies of her friends(and the body of the first movie's heroine), as well as a shrine featuring the severed head of Jason's mother and her ratty old sweater. Desperate, Ginny puts on the sweater, just before Jason bursts into the shack.
Ginny speaks to Jason in calm, soothing tones. He sees the sweater and his confused mind sees Ginny as his mother. She's holding a machete behind her back, and as he lets her get closer, she plans to kill him. Unfortunately, Jason glances at the severed head behind Ginny, and the illusion is dispelled. He stabs her in the leg at the same time that she brings the machete up. Lucky for her, the male lead rescues her and together, they seem to kill Jason. Ginny's final act is to unmask him, then they leave his body in there and wait for the police.
We see Jason's hand grab his machete and he starts to crawl away. Then, as the camera slowly gives us a closeup of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head, the credits swoooop out in EYE-BULGING 3-D(or, in this case, EYE-INDIFFERENT 2-D.), to the cheesiest disco music in the history of everything. Why did they abandon the iconic theme music for DISCO??? Anyway, since this was originally 3-D, expect a shitload of scenes where objects are pushed toward the camera for no reason.
So the credits finally end(as does the crappy disco THANK GOD!!!!), and we meet the redneck proprietors of Crystal Lake's own general store, Harold and Edna. They seem remarkably similar to the redneck mother and son in the second film, as Edna's favorite pastime is screaming out orders at Harold while she watches game television. Harold himself prefers his various pets to his nagging wife, and is seen walking through their store eating various goods while petting a large rabbit.
Edna is busy getting freaked out. She's been hearing news reports about Jason's latest killing spree in the area(we see Ginny being lifted into an ambulance, so this one takes place IMMEDIATELY after the events in Part Two) and she's spotted Jason out in her backyard stealing Harold's laundry, and she just naturally assumed he was Harold. Yeah, because Harold looks JUST LIKE a hulking, bald man-child with severe facial deformities. Anyway, when she goes outside to check the laundry, she starts yelling about how he only took in his clothes and not hers. Jason lurks nearby, and stays just out of view whenever she notices his presence.
We know, of course, that it wasn't Harold. When Edna goes to the store to bitch him out, the poor guy looks completely baffled. Of course it's pretty difficult to defend yourself with a mouthful of chocolate doughnuts, so I guess silence was probably a good idea on his part. Harold brings his bunny out to the barn, and finds another pet mutilated. When he tries to get a closer look, a snake nearly gets its fangs into him!
Frightened, Harold jogs back to the house, and nearly gives his wife a heart attack as he lurches into the bathroom. Apparently he crapped himself when he saw the snake. Lovely. We get treated to the sight of Harold on the toilet, which is probably going to be the scariest scene in the movie. While drinking a bottle of liquor he had stashed nearby, Harold hears a sound. Across from the toilet are a series of oily, ragged curtains. One by one, Harold begins to yank them open...and finds nothing. Then, as he decides it was his imagination, he leaves the bathroom and gets an axe to the chest.
Edna sort of hears him fall to the ground, and decides to go looking for him. She does the same slow, ponderous exploration Harold just did, and comes face to face with a white mouse. Grossed out, Edna backs against the wall, and right into Jason's grasp. He covers her mouth with one hand, and uses the other to shove one of her knitting needles through the back of her neck. This kind death gets repeated later in the film, so I hope you enjoy deja vu.
As the scene fades to white, we say goodbye to poor Edna and Harold, we meet our next batch of victims: There's Andy, a jock with a sense of humor; Shelly, who is Andy's roommate, a big doofus with a fixation on gory practical jokes; Vera, who's been set-up as Shel's date; Chrissy, who's driving the van and was a camp counselor a few years earlier; Chuck and his main squeeze Chili, the pothead hippies of the film; and Debbie, who is Chrissy's best friend.
As everyone's getting to know each other, 2 cops show up behind the van, both with sirens and lights going. Everyone races to ingest all of Chili and Chuck's drugs, until the cops both go speeding past them. Turns out they were called in to investigate the murders from the previous night at the local general store. The van slows down to watch the body bags being loaded into an ambulance, then resume their trip.
Another body is soon found by the group, this time on the road. They get out of the van to get a closer look at the guy, who seems to be dressed like a homeless cowboy. They remove the cowboy hat from his face, and the old geezer wakes up. He thanks them for helping him, and returns the favor by trying to give them an eyeball he found. Hope he kept the receipt.
They all quickly pile back into the van, leaving Crazy Ralph II waving the eyeball at the camera in SEXY, MIGRAINE-INDUCING 2-D!! Back on the road, the group finally get to the site of the new camp, Higgins Haven. The van crosses a rickety bridge, and drives right into the middle of the new campsite, observed by an unknown figure in one of the cabins. The only thing we know about this observer is that they are wearing a plaid shirt. Maybe it's Kurt Cobain?
Nope. It's Rick, Chrissy's summer romantic partner from 2 years ago. As they start unpacking the van, Chris realizes that one of the doors on the van was previously open, and now it's closed. She cautiously opens it again, only to be scared by Shelly, who's hiding in the van. He tells her that the others went skinny-dipping, and he felt too self-conscious to join them.
Next, Chrissy shows Debbie where her bedroom is, because it was Chrissy's 2 years earlier. Instead of a bed, she has a hammock. And instead of a horror film, I have a sleeping aid. Oh, and as Chris looks out the window, we get to see an ominous-looking barn. Gee, I wonder if anyone's hiding out in there???
Speaking of the barn, the following scene features Rick and Chris, having an in-depth discussion about hay. As Rick is lifting the bales up to the loft, he notices they seem to be getting heavier. That's because Chrissy is riding the last one as he's pulling it up. It'll be her fault when he has to file for worker's comp...
Suddenly, there's a horrendous scream! Chrissy and the Rickmeister run back to the cabin, and he checks the ground level as she investigates upstairs. she hears a muffled thumping noise and approaches a wardrobe, giving me terrifying flashbacks of Morty from the 2 Fear movies I had just watched. Nope, it's actually Shelly, with an axe embedded in his forehead. Andy and the others run in, and Andy rushes over to check for a pulse.
Well, it's another prank. Shelly starts giggling, and gets up. When he sees that he upset Chris, he tries to apologize, but no one wants to hear it. Vera asks Rick for the car keys, so she can make a quick run to the store for some kitchen supplies and other things they need. Shel begs her to let him tag along, and she gives in.
Deb catches up with Chris in a field, where Chris reveals that she was the survivor of something traumatic. The memories still haunt her, and she's having serious difficulty deciding whether she should stay or go. Awwwww...
At the store, Vera doesn't have the money to cover the groceries, so Shel tosses her(and us) his wallet, in GLORIOUS, MAGNIFICENT 2-D!! A biker chick gets the wallet first, and she and her friends enjoy terrorizing the 2 teens...or the 2 20-somethings PLAYING teens. Anyway, Vera doesn't back down, so she gets the wallet back, pays for the food, and she and Shelly run to the car. Vera gives Shelly the keys, and he backs into the gang's motorcycles.
That doesn't go over too well with the bikers, and one smashes the car's windows and one side of the vehicle with a heavy chain. Well that just makes Shelly mad, and he drives over the pile of motorcycles on his way back to the road. Elated that he stood up to the biker, Shel is happier than a pig in mud.
The next bit of MESMERIZING, BONE-CHILLING 2-D!!! is a yo-yo being used by Andy. The group of counselors are sitting around doing jackshit when Shelly drives up in the wrecked VW. Even Jason emerges from the barn to check out the damage! Rick sees what happened to his car and blows his top. He plans to abandon the camp, until Chris convinces him to change his mind, but they still take off for a little while. They drive right past Jason and never notice him.
As the happy couple drive away, the bikers sneak onto the property for a little revenge. Ali, the one whose bike they ran over earlier, is siphoning the gas from the other camp vehicle with a sidekick named Snake. While they work on stranding the campers, Ali's girlfriend, Fox, decides to check out the barn.
Wanna guess what happens next? After Fox enters the barn, she acts like she arrived at Buckingham Palace. I've never seen anyone look so enraptured by dust 'n' rust. As expected, Jason reveals sneaks up behind her while she plays with saddles and cowbells and shit. At one point, she even senses his presence, but still sticks around to fondle saddles and canteens. She trips at one point, and nearly gets a pitchfork through her face, which would've been kind of funny: Imagine watching a Friday the 13th sequel where every death was accidental. At one point, Jason could even look at the camera, wave by-bye, shrug and go take a nap or something.
Anyway, after nearly frenching a pitchfork, Fox decides to climb up into the hayloft. As her feet hit the first rung of the ladder, a clump of loose hay comes at her in ELBOW-SCRATCHING EARTH-SHATTERING 2-D!!!! While Fox is making the slowest ladder-climb in history, Ali and Snake are finishing up the gas theft. Ali tells Snake To find Ali, and Snake runs off toward the barn, armed with a full canister of gas and a cigarette between his lips. Einstein.
It doesn't take Snake long to find Fox...she's swinging on a rope in the hayloft, hooting and hollering. Snake scolds her about keeping their presence unknown to the campers, but when he looks up at the hayloft again, she's gone. Snake enters the barn, demanding that she show herself and stop screwing around. When he gets no response, he decides to climb up into the hayloft to find her. Once there, he fails to see her corpse pinned to wall by the pitchfork, whose handle is pointing at the camera in UTTERLY KNEE-SKINNING 2-D!!! When he does turn around and finally spots her, Jason attacks Snake with a different pitchfork, sticking it through the bikers stomach in PANTS-WETTING, BRAIN-FREEZING 2-D!!!
Standing outside the barn holding 2 heavy-looking containers of gas, Ali kicks the barn door a few times before putting down the gas and simply opening the door the, you know, SMART way. Incidentally, wasn't the guy playing Ali also one of the nightclub bouncers in Fright Night? I KNOW I've seen him in some other movie before this one. Eh, whatever...Ali hears something up in the loft, and gets pissed. When he demands that they come down, Jason throws Snake's corpse at him. Ali grabs a nearby machete and runs after Jason, who has jumped down from the loft to fight the biker. It doesn't last long: Jason throws Ali across the room, then uses the machete Ali found to stab him several times before leaving.
The cameraman decides to wander off to see whatever happened to Chris and Rick. They wound up in some clearing next to a drainage pipe. Rick pointedly asks Chris why she decided to come back to the camp after surviving whatever the hell she survived, and she tells him that she felt she needed to prove something by returning. While they act out a scene out of "General Hospital", Shelly and Andy are having a juggling contest in STUPEFYING, ROCKET-LAUNCHING 2-D!!, and the 2 potheads are zoning out.
Andy loses the contest when his girlfriend tempts him away for sex, and that leaves Shelly with Vera. Vera gets up to poke at the logs in the fireplace, giving Shelly(and US) a great view of her ass. He tries to ask her out, but Vera doesn't even let him finish the sentence. She tells him that she needs some fresh air, and that they should talk after she gets back, then she quickly heads outside. Shelly watches her a bit from the window, then turns his attention back to the roaring fire--just as Jason strolls past the very same window.
Upstairs, we get an all-too-brief look at Deb's breasts, as she and Andy climb into the hammock for some swinging-rope sex. Kinky! I approve. Too bad the director didn't--we get pushed outside for more melodrama with Chris and Rick. She reveals to him that the last time they went out together, her mother threw her out of the house the same night. Chrissy eventually got lost walking in the woods, and fell asleep under a big tree. When she woke up, she heard what she thought was her father coming to look for her. It wasn't....instead, she came face-to-half-face with Jason. He had chased her around for a bit, before dragging her away.
She passed out, and when she came to, Jason was gone. She has no other memories of that night, so she decided to try to jog her memory by returning. At this point, Rick's car dies. They decide to walk back to camp, and Rick mumbles something about a shortcut.
At the cabin, Chuck wakes up from his drug binge. He goes outside to use the outhouse(what is it with outhouses in this franchise?), and gets spooked by something. The call of nature overcomes his survival instinct however, and Chuck decides to use the toilet anyway. So far, this outhouse is the scariest image in the film.
Chili wakes up alone, but apparently the movie could care less, because we return to Chuck on the toilet smoking a joint. The outhouse starts rocking, and the dimwit fails to notice at first. He pulls up his pants to go confront the guy, but instead bumps into Chili, who came outside to find him. They decide to check out the barn, because Chuck thought he saw Shelly go in, but WE know it was actually Jason.
Vera is seen next, sitting on the dock by Crystal Lake. A hand grabs her by the ankle, and it's attached to someone wearing a hockey mask and holding a spear gun. It turns out to be Shelly. He tries to apologize yet AGAIN for his dumb practical jokes, but Vera gets upset. Shelly calls himself a jerk and leaves Vera there feeling bad for him. He waddles onto the porch at the cabin and watches Vera from a distance before deciding to go out to the barn. Uh oh.
At the barn, Shel starts knocking on windows and calling out Chuck and Chili's names. When that doesn't get a response, he enters the barn and nearly wets himself when a dusty-looking cow-skull nearly hits him. At the same time, Vera finds and goes through Shelly's wallet. A noise startles her, and she drops the wallet into the lake. Vera removes her shoes and wades in to get the wallet, just as someone wearing the hockey mask and holding a spear gun approaches the lake. She explains to him that she dropped the wallet and managed to retrieve it, and she gets a spear shot into her right eye....in LOW-DEFINITION, LACTOSE INTOLERANT 2-D!!! Jason then sees the bedroom light on and goes after Andy and Deb.
The happy couple are just finishing up their snuggle in the hammock. While Deb takes a shower, Andy announces that he's going downstairs to grab a beer. Someone enters the bathroom while Deb is showering and creeps up on her. When Deb pulls back the curtain, it turns out to be Andy, walking on his hands. He asks her if she wants a beer too, then resumes his hand-walk out into the hallway. As he rounds a corner, Jason blocks his path and brings the machete down hard on the poor idiot's crotch. I think I speak for every guy in the world when I say, "OWWWWWWWW!!"
Deb climbs back into the hammock, oblivious to Andy's demise or the danger she's in. She picks up a copy of Fangoria magazine and starts thumbing through it. Blood drips onto the page she's reading, and Deb looks up to see Andy's corpse hanging like a pinata. Before she can do anything beyond a scream, Jason grabs Deb's forehead to pin her down, and plunges his blade into her back and up through her chest. (see what I meant earlier about the similarity???)
Chrissy and Rick get closer to the camp, but apparently the film crew couldn't care less because the movie switches back to Chuck, who has decided to make popcorn on a stove top in CHOLESTEROL-INDUCING, HEART-EXPLODING 2-D!!! Chuck, being the dumb ass that he is, lifts the lid over the popcorn, has it fly up at his(and ours) face, and actually tries to catch it in his mouth. Chili walks in just as the dingle berry puts the lid back. Good save, bro.
Chuck and Chili exchange some banter about orgasms, and the lights all go out. Chili asks Chuck to go out to the shack to check the fuses, and he does so after some grumbling. While he's out there stumbling around in the dark, Chili hears a sound at the door. She finds Shelly there, with his throat badly slashed, but assumes it's another practical joke. He basically dies in front of her, and she never realizes it.
Chuck, meanwhile, has been unwittingly walking barefoot in blood. He uncovers more weird dusty shit in the shack, like dead bats and rusty waffle irons, before getting the lights working again. Bad news for him: Jason is behind him when the lights come back on. Jason throws him at the generator, and poor chuck becomes a chuck roast.
As the lights begin flickering, Chili finally comprehends that something weird is happening. She approaches Shel's corpse to get him up, and discovers that the blood on him is real. Next, Chili goes upstairs to tell Deb and Andy that Shelly died, and Jason uses the distraction to grab a hot fireplace poker to kill her with. She finds the corpses upstairs, rushes to the front door, but the wind blows it open and she freaks out. Chili hurries the other way, and Jason thrusts the poker through her stomach and out of her back. He then picks her body up, Bride of Frankenstein-style, and decides to decorate the cabin for Rick and Chris.
Right on cue, Chris and Rick come back, and they both smell smoke. They try to get the front door open, but something is blocking it. A corpse? Nope, just a chair. The burning smell turns out to be the popcorn. As Chrissy cleans up the kitchen, Rick goes to explore the rest of the house. When he finds the place empty, he and Chris decide to go check out the barn.
Rick goes out first, and Jason grabs him. As they lurk around the corner, Chris exits the cabin, and calls Rick's name several times. When Chris decides to go back inside, Jason squeezes Rick's head until one of his eyeballs pops out in COTTON-PICKIN', FINGER-LICKIN' 2-D!!
We then get treated to the "final character discovers the bodies" segment. Chris heads upstairs, finds the bathroom flooded, and Snake's body nearly hits her while falling out of a tree. Chris runs back to the cabin and we get a funny scene where every door and window keeps flying open because of the windstorm outside. While she's scurrying around trying to close everything, Rick's body gets thrown through one of the windows. While Chris tries to examine Rick's wounds, Jason climbs in through the broken window to come after her.
Chris runs upstairs and topples a bookcase, sending a ton of books raining down on Jason. While he recovers from the awesome power of literature, Chris tries to find a good place to hide. She gets into a closet and finds a dead body to keep her company. Her scream alerts Jason, and he begins trying to break the door down, first with his fists and then with an axe.
Chris stops hyperventilating long enough to grab the knife out of the corpse at her feet. Jason creates a hole in the door large enough to fit his hand through, and Chris stabs it before he can reach the doorknob. That seems to give her more confidence, and she proceeds to go on the offensive, swinging the knife in wide arcs in front of her while Jason is forced to back up. Eventually, one of her slices lands a hit in his leg near the knee, and she uses the moment to try to escape. She breaks a window, but Jason grabs her coat before she can get all the way out, and she hits him with her hands until the coat rips. Jason has no choice... he lets her drop to the ground below.
Outside, Chris watches Jason descend the stairs and make his way to one of the doors to follow her. She runs around the side of the cabin, grabs a massive log, and waits for him to open the door.When he comes out, she delivers a hit with the firewood that sends Jason flying into the porch railing.
While Jason struggles to get up again, Chris jogs to the van. She gets it started, and nearly runs over Jason as he stands in the road trying to stop her. Unfortunately for her, the van runs out of gas on the rickety bridge. Thanks, bikers! Jason is seen limping rapidly toward the van, and it doesn't take long for the killer to catch up and grab Chrissy by the throat through her open window. She struggles to get free, and finally decides to roll up the window, effectively pinning his arms in place. It isn't much, but it gives her the time she needs to exit through the passenger door.
As Chrissy takes off towards the woods again, Jason gets his arms free by head-butting the window. She returns to the barn and uses a spade to keep the double-doors shut. That doesn't give her much time: Jason merely reaches through a crack in the doors and lifts the spade up enough to get the entrance open again. Once inside, he uses the wooden plank that serves as the real barricade to close her in the barn with him. Then he starts hunting her down.
Jason goes through piles of old debris, throwing objects everywhere. He then moves to the stables. When that still doesn't get him anywhere, the camera pans up to show us that Chris is hiding in the rafters, clinging desperately to a narrow beam above Jason's head. As he starts getting royally pissed and tearing the barn apart, Chris swings herself upside down on the beam, and drops down on top of him. Chris runs to the door, but can't lift the beam Jason used to close it quick enough. He grabs his machete and sprints after her. As he swings it, Chris ducks and the machete gets imbedded in the door.
She climbs up to the hayloft and uses a large bale of hay to block the narrow entryway and buy herself some time to come up with a plan. Said plan consists of weilding a shovel and hiding behind more bales of hay. As expected, Jason pushes his way up into the hayloft, and Chris whacks him in the noggin with the shovel. While Jason is unconscious, she wraps a length of rope around his neck and manages to push him out of the hayloft while he starts to wake up.
Poor Jason...His body swings down, and his neck appears to snap. Chris starts to leave the barn, and uses a metal wheel to dislodge the plank of wood enough to get the doors open again. She then comes face-to-hockey mask with Jason, who hoists himself up enough on the rope to give him some slack. Then he lifts the hockey mask to confirm to Chris that it was him that chased her that night she got lost in the woods.(The make-up of his face is never consistent in these things...in most of them, one eye is deformed, but in this one it's his teeth that are the most grotesque feature, along with a pig-like nose. Whatever.)
He jumps down to the ground and snatches up his machete. Prepared to finish killing Chris, Jason raises the weapon over his head, only to be foiled by a still-alive Ali! Jason turns and hacks off Ali's hand at the wrist, then bends over him to continue slashing away. Chris spots an axe nearby and plants it in Jason's forehead when he turns back to her.
Jason reacts to this new development by thrusting his arms out in TWISTED, GOOSE-BUMPING 2-D!! He staggers forward a few steps, before finally falling at her feet. Chris then does the dumbest thing ever(until I watch the next one, anyway), and gets into the cursed canoe that provided the jump-scare in the first movie. Chris kneels by the water to wash some of the blood and dirt off her face, then pushes the canoe into the lake.
The next scene shows her waking up in the canoe. The police have arrived, and Chris relaxes...until she sees Jason in an upstairs window of the house, preparing to come down. She desperately starts to row away, but the undead corpse of Mrs. Voorhees this time appears(head intact, no less...nice lack of continuity!!) and drags her into the water.
We then see a cop who looks kind of like B-movie actor Tim Thomerson arrive on the scene. It's revealed that the previous segment was a dream(DUH!), and the cop escorts her away from the house. The closer they get to his car, the crazier she gets, until his partner has to restrain her in the backseat. The camera creeps over the campsite until it shows Jason's body in the barn with the hatchet still intact. There is a brief shot of the lake, where we see a ripple in the water, then it fades to black. THE END.
Well, that was a pretty involved storyline for a sequel! I liked that it kept me guessing(at one point, I figured maybe Shelly was the killer, given his demented and awkward pranks), and the 3-D was funny as hell in 2-D. But the film kept up the tradition of having a cute female lead, the story added some new twists to Jason's story, and there were some honest-to-goodness surprises along the way. I'd give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5, only because the gimmicky 3-D and slow start prevented it from being rated higher in my view.
So, what did Friday the 13th III teach me?
-A heck of a lot of cute actresses made their way into this franchise!
-The gimmick of 3-D adds NOTHING to a movie (unless piranhas are involved...). Hollywood, take notes!
-Some hockey masks have the magical ability to transform the face of their wearer every time they put them on!
Next week: We bid a fond farewell to Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th IV: The Final Chapter. I'm positive that this movie ends the Jason franchise...I mean, Hollywood wouldn't lie to us, would they?
Friday, October 22, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Fear: Halloween Night
The Fear was a surprisingly watchable film: The antagonist was creepy; the characters were mostly likable; and the women were all pretty hot, which is always a plus. So, hoping for a good sequel, I moved The Fear: Halloween Night to the top of my rental queue. Was Morty just as scary the second time around? Read on to find out! (As always, MAJOR SPOILERS, as I ruin the whole movie for ya!)
In terms of plot, there's a lot of deja vu here. Both films deal with facing fears, and both have a protagonist who has a traumatic event in their past that bites them in the ass during the present. Also, both movies feature a creepy wooden statue-puppet, named Morty. But there are also differences.
As I mentioned, the story begins with a flashback: The main character, as a young boy, was travelling with his mother to a costume party on Halloween Night--he as a skeleton, and she as a witch--when she spots what appears to be a car accident. She pulls over to offer assistance, and sees a man murdering a woman with an axe. He chases our unlucky witch and proceeds to kill her in front of her son. As he turns the corpse over, he realizes that he just killed his own wife.
Distraught, the killer grabs his son, Michael, out of the car and shoves him in the trunk of his own vehicle. He then uses his wife's corpse as a speed bump and flees the scene. As the car speeds away, Michael grabs a glow-stick and uses it to see his surroundings, bringing him face-to-face with our favorite Indian mannequin, Morty. Sort of.
Okay, so I'm going to pause the movie here to vent a little. We're about 5 and a half minutes into the movie, and there's already a problem. The dummy is NOT Morty...or, at least, not the SAME Morty. He's played by a different actor in this one, and the 2 look nothing alike. Now, I have no problem with another actor assuming a role played originally by another person, but why not hire someone who at least RESEMBLES the first guy? Is this supposed to be a different Morty? How many ancient Indian puppet-statues named Morty could there be in the world???
So since the characters are all different, as is the house they keep Morty in, I'm just going to assume that there ARE 2 entirely different possessed Indian puppet-thingies named Morty. As Jamie Kennedy and David Arquette said in Scream 2, let's move on....
Well, apparently my rant took awhile, because it's now "20 Years Later", according to the movie. Michael is bringing his friends up to the family's house for a fear-themed Halloween party: Everybody invited has to wear a costume that represents their greatest fear. Guests in attendance include Chris, a horny Dane Cook wanna-be; Peg, Michael's girlfriend and Chris's sister, who resembles Anne Hathaway; Lisa Ann, a girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously; Jennifer, the "Velma" of the group; Ned, who looks like Harry Potter; Mams, Michael's grandmother played by Pamela Voorhees herself, Betsy Palmer; Crow, an American Indian friend of the family; Gramps, who is Michael's grandfather(lucky guess, huh?); oh, and Mitch and Trish, who arrive late.
Before they arrive at the home of Michael's grandparents, there's some small talk about the origins of Halloween, and a brief discussion about a local legend in Michael's hometown, Hackett...seems that several years earlier, there was a gruesome serial killer on the loose in the town, The Highwayman. Gee, I wonder if Michael knew him?
As introductions are being made, Mams decides to make Chris wet his pants by giving him the wrong directions to the john. I hope he poops in your kitchen sink, you bat! When Michael hangs up his jacket, he has a brief flashback of his mother getting struck in the face with the axe again. Oh, and as he reunites with grumpy Gramps, Michael spots a hilarious family photo of his father wielding his axe in mid-kill. Nice!
Up in the attic, Michael meets up with his childhood friend Crow, and the new Morty. At this point, we learn the reason for the party and its' theme: Crow is performing an ancient, sacred ritual designed to cast away everyone's fears and bring them cleansed souls. Morty will absorb their fears and then be set on fire, to symbolically eradicate evil, or something. Oh, and since Michael is "leading the ceremony", he has a Morty-mask he must wear. And Morty has a flask of raven's blood around his neck...as long as he wears it, the "evil's held". Whatever. Just get started already...Why is everyone still alive?!?
Chris and Peg come up to the attic to see what's keeping Michael so busy, and he introduces them both to Crow...and Morty. Chris behaves like an ass by mocking Crow's heritage and saying "Morty" about 300 times in a row. Oh, and as the rest become distracted by the arrival of the 2 late guests, Chris steals the flask-necklace from around Morty's neck. Good thing this isn't a horror film, or that might be a bad idea...oh yeah, this IS a horror flick! Guess they're boned, huh?
So at dinner Michael finally gets the ball rolling. He tells his friends about the ancient ritual...they, as a group must form a "fear circle", and dress as the fears to symbolically cast them off, or something. Blah blah blah. When they seem into it, Grumpaw storms out of the room to angrily clean the dishes. I swear, this guy was the ORIGINAL "Grumpy Old Man". After some horsing around and my impending coma from the lack of ANYTHING going on, Grumps drops some plates at the mention of The Highwayman. He cuts his hand, causing Lisa Ann to go into what a high school Drama Club student might do to show a fear of blood. She ain't no Meryl Streep.
As the others crack jokes, Michael admonishes the group for not taking the whole thing seriously, and takes a walk outside, clutching the Morty-mask the entire time. He comes to a clearing and staggers as more memories assault him. These traumatic memories eventually cause him to pass out. While he's out playing with his inner Morty, Trish decides to have a heart-to-heart with Peg about the tension she senses between her and Michael. See, Peg doesn't know that The Highwayman was also his dad, so she thinks Michael's fear about becoming his dad is a fear of commitment. Deep, huh?
Anyway, after Trish plays amateur shrink with Peg, Peg decides to go find Michael. She does eventually, crouched next to the grave of his father with his face in his hands. She begs him to talk about things with her, and he stands up, revealing that he's wearing the wooden mask. YIKES! Startled, Peg tells him it's not funny, and he responds that it wasn't meant to be.
In the most surprising twist so far(*YAWN*), Michael tells Peg almost everything about his troubled past: How he saw his dad kill his mom; watching his father become an alcoholic; and eventually how his dad committed suicide. He also reveals to her that he's been having night terrors, hallucinations, etc. Wake me up when something scary happens.
When Peg tries to show him compassion, he reacts badly. Michael tells her that no one can empathize with him if they haven't been through that kind of trauma themselves. He attacks his father's gravestone with a stick, and Peg leaves. As he follows her, blood starts pouring out of the gravestone. As we watch, Morty starts rocking in a chair on the porch, mostly due to the wind picking up. When more blood streams out of the grave, one of Morty's arms moves. Hmmmm....
Michael walks into the house just in time to referee a fight over pumpkin-carving. As pumpkin-guts go flying, he goes upstairs to speak to Peg about what happened between them by the grave. Instead of speaking, they begin a bout of passionate lovemaking. Ned passes by the door, hears them makin' whoopie, and runs downstairs to tell the others. Geez, it's like this script was written by 12-year-olds on Ritalin or something.
A loud crash makes the group rush upstairs again. They find Chris on the floor, mouth full of blood, with Morty on top of him. Even Michael and Peg rush out, still fully dressed. Dammit. As expected, Chris jumps up to scare the group. Crow examines Morty, and discovers that his arm is damaged, leading to an insincere apology from Chris. Crow and he exchange a few insults.
As Crow carries Morty away to repair the damage Chris caused, Michael and Peg start arguing about her brother and his lack of maturity. Chris decides to get involved in the discussion. A short scuffle ensues, followed by Peg accidentally being pushed down a staircase. Chris panics and rushes to her slumped body, only to have her sit up and mock him. Psyche! She even takes a bow, reveals that the whole argument was a ruse designed to prank Chris, and everyone claps. Well, almost everyone. Reminded of his mom's death yet again, Michael decides to go to the porch and sit in the same rocking chair Morty was in about 5 minutes earlier. When Peg joins him, he reveals that the whole scenario was a little too close to what happened to his mother. Still upset, he seeks out Crow.
Crow is repairing Morty. I love how, in these scenes, not one person, Crow included, has noticed that the sack of blood is no longer around Morty's neck. Anyway, Michael goes to the stables, and apologizes to Crow for fooling around, then tries to back out of the ceremony. Crow responds by showing Michael the mask he found in the cemetery. He also tells Michael that his father was both a good man, and a bad man, as all of us are. Deep, dude.
Crow assures him that he's as ready as he can be, before revealing his own greatest fear: horses. I sure hope he doesn't get killed in the stable while repairing Morty...Grumpy Grampy shows up to threaten Crow. I guess the ol' geezer just LIKES being a grouchy douche bag.
Mike's Mams tells him to fetch Grumplestiltskin for lunch. On the way to the barn, he hears the voice of his father calling out to him. The voice tells him that something's coming for him. As Mike has a fleeting vision of Crow being attacked, he faints again.
Crow FINALLY realizes something we knew ages ago...the blood-pouch is no longer around Morty's neck. He looks for it and finds some feathers on the floor. As he examines these feathers, a bale of hay swings toward him, knocking him through a stable door. Crow tries to get to his feet, but a horse traps him, while another horse uses a hoof to kill him..
Mikey wakes up in the hay. He finds blood on his hands and washes them off, right before Mams scares him half to death. She tells him to go back to his friends. Oh, and she's holding a broken plank of wood. hmmmm...
Trish finds Ned being a voyeur and flirts with him. She hints that she could go for a nice dip in the pool, and he reveals that water happens to be his phobia. They are briefly distracted by Peg, who is hauling a bag of trash around or something. She tells them that Mike is getting ready for the ritual. We then get treated to a scene involving Jennifer and I don't know, Chris(?) maybe, walking in the forest. They see a large white wolf, causing Jen to dart the other way, toot-sweet! Chris gets nervous about being lost in the woods and tries to take off after her.
Michael, meanwhile, is setting up a place for Morty to sit in the attic. After seating the mannequin, he puts on the Morty-mask again, and checks himself out in the mirror. To his shock and horror, he sees the mask transform him into Dear Ol' Dad. He pulls off the mask and smashes the mirror, then turns around and takes a swing at Morty too. He's like the George Foreman of fighting inanimate objects. Geez, the only skill less useful than that would be watching and spoiling cheesy horror flicks once or twice a week...
So now we switch over to Lisa Ann, the girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously. She's walking with some British guy whose name escapes me, and she reveals that her two biggest passions in life are religion and politics. Yeesh! The British guy goes along with it, and it's getting annoying not remembering his name yet.. Sure, I could look it up or something, but do I even care at this point? Nope. Unless someone says his name, I'll just call him Hugh Jazz. Anyway, Hugh tells Lisa that she has inner beauty as well as the only kind of beauty guys really care about, outer. Oh, and she asks him about his relationship with Trish, so I guess that makes him Mitch. THANK YOU, stupid movie.
Mitch and Lisa meet up with Jennifer and Chris at the edge of the woods, just in time to hear someone shrieking. They find Ned and Peg cornered by a huge, mutant snake. Ned cuts off Snakezilla's head, and it twitches for awhile, probably a happy-dance that it gets to exit this boring-as-hell movie. Somehow, during the scene, Trish showed up and managed to climb up a tree without anyone noticing. She begs Mitch to help her down, and his "help" consists of telling her to jump. He's afraid of heights, so he makes a dorky attempt to climb up one branch, then falls so he doesn't have to keep climbing. Trish gets down (rather easily, for someone who just 2seconds ago couldn't do it), and Peg announces that they should begin putting on their costumes for the ceremony.
After the "rescue", we see Mams in the kitchen, most likely making a stew out of all the camp counselors she killed in Friday the 13th. YUM! Peg rushes into the kitchen dressed as a clown, and practically gives her a heart attack. She tells Peg that she has a costume on as well, even though it looks like any normal black outfit. When Peg guesses it's a witch dress, Mams tells her that it represents "darkness", her greatest fear. As Peg sets the table for dinner, Jennifer comes downstairs wearing a box. She admits that her greatest fear is claustrophobia. The girls share a laugh over the costumes and find Ned in the kitchen with Mams, wearing a shark costume. He tells them that the movie Jaws traumatized him as a young child, and the fear stuck with him through the years. Chris walks in dressed in a sheet covered with words and question marks. His fear? Making decisions.
Ugh. This movie's giving me a headache. Can we just skip it this week? Whattaya mean, "NO"??? Okay, fine, but one of YOU readers are paying for the asylum I wind up in after I finish watching this thing.
Next, Lisa Ann and Trish enter. I have no friggin' clue what Trish is supposed to be representing(unless her blazer is made out of snakeskin, looks like a normal jacket to me), but Lisa Ann is dressed in a slinky red dress, representing her fear of blood. Mitch comes in screaming, to make everyone jump, but is not wearing a costume. He tells the group that he isn't afraid of anything, but they point out to him that he reacted badly to climbing the tree. I guess a costume representing acrophobia would've been pretty tough to convey. Jazzed for a party, they all get seated in the dining room and wait for Michael and Gramps-zilla to appear. Oh, and Morty is seated as well, at the head of the table.
The lights suddenly go out! Aww, it's just Mikey being a melodramatic a-hole as usual. Nice way to scare your grandmother, you douche. When he turns them on again, everyone can see that he is dressed in a tuxedo. Great, his greatest fear is waiters? Nope. He gets down on one knee and proposes to Peg. Before she can say yes or no, the lights go out after a fuse blows. Mams lights a few candles before recruiting Mikey to go to the basement with her to check the fuse box. Everyone else gets up from the table, except Jennifer who is trapped by her bulky box costume. Comedy gold. These guys must've written for Henny Youngman too.
Mike and Mams make their way to the fuse box, and find Crow's corpse on the floor. While Michael is reeling from the discovery of his friend's body, Mams reveals that she found him in the barn and "took care of it", implying that she did the same on the day Michael's dad died. Wait, what was that last part? Michael tries to run away, but flashbacks and another headache make him stumble, and he passes out.
When Mike wakes up, he is back in the dining room. Peg and the others find him, and help him to get up. They begin talking and realize that Jen is gone. Uh oh. Even worse, her box is in the corner, dripping with mysterious red stains....
They open the box, revealing Jennifer, wrapped up in her own intestines. Well, at least she doesn't seem to be claustrophobic anymore! Michael does the most rational thing he can think of: he tells the group that Morty has been possessed by the ghost of his dad, and is killing people. Sounds rational to me!
From here on in, the accusations begin flying! Crow is blamed, until Mike and Mams(wasn't that a talk show in the '90's?) admit that they found his body. Then everyone speculates that Grumpy-Gramps must be the killer(he has my vote, too; wasn't Crow killed IMMEDIATELY after Gramps argued with him???), which Mams scoffs at. Michael suggests that it is Morty, who has come to life to kill them all. That leads the others to the conclusion that it's Mike himself doing the killings, seeing how weird the place makes him and all.
Mike insists that the killer IS Morty. Peg stands by him, and, after a brief discussion, the others agree to help search the house. Lisa Ann and Mitch go to their bedroom. While Mitch is trying to calm her down, Lisa Ann opens a closet and comes face-to-face with Morty. She screams like a howler monkey on acid. Then she faints.
Off by themselves, Michael and Peg find the blood-pouch that Morty was wearing before the ritual. That seals the deal for Mike: he fully believes now that Morty is the one killing everybody. He tells Peg that finding Morty will prove it, and she placates him by agreeing to continue the search.
Lisa Ann wakes up. She stares right into Morty's eyes and screams again. Mitch pops up and reassures her that Morty is quite harmless. Lisa Ann gets turned on by the adrenaline rush that all of these frights are giving her, and she seduces Mitch. Morty continues to stare at the couple as they make out. He looks bored. Hey Morty, welcome to MY world.
We switch back to Mike and Peg. Feeling insecure, Peg tests Mike's love by asking him a "relationship" question...you know, like, if you were stranded on a desert island, who's the one person you'd want with you? Well, Mike fails the test. When he finally gets the point of the question, he answers it the "right" way. She hugs him. Geez, your boyfriend just failed to name you as the first person he'd want with him in a crisis, and you're HAPPY??? These 2 idiots deserve each other.
Anyway, she kisses the big dumb galoot, and as he resumes the search down the hall, we see a hand grab her. Mike realizes after a few steps that she vanished, and as he's calling her name, a montage of death scenes starts up: We see his mom getting killed by his dad; we see Lisa Ann drowning; Mitch falls to the floor somewhere, with blood coming out of his mouth...Mike gets overwhelmed by the onslaught of visions and falls over again.
It turns out that Peg was snatched by Chris and Ned. They try to convince her that Mike's a killer, but she won't buy it. They give up reasoning with her, and simply drag her away. Nice friends.
While Mike's eating floorboards, Lisa Ann and Mitch are bumpin' and grindin' like there's no tomorrow. As they frolic, Morty FINALLY decides to come to life. He slooooowly begins shambling toward the bed, and Lisa Ann freaks out when she sees him. Mitch turns and thinks it's Mike in a costume, and Morty gives him a good whack with his wooden arm. While Mitch is struggling to get up, Morty even pulls a "Freddy", and quips, "Going down!" as he throws Mitch out of a nearby window.
Lisa Ann screams and runs into the bathroom as Morty chases her. She locks the door, but he breaks it easily, and catches her. To quiet her down, Morty bashes her forehead into the side of the toilet, then he drowns her. Yuck.
Ned takes Mitch's pulse, but of course he's dead. They all move away from the body, but the action cuts abruptly to Mams and Trish walking into Lisa Ann and Mitch's room. They find Michael there on the floor, wearing the Morty-mask. Trish sees the others outside and tells them that Lisa Ann is dead, and Michael is with them. The trio head back inside just as Michael wakes up.
Michael sees the carnage and blames it all on Morty. He runs out of the room to find the wooden statue, and Trish follows, convinced that Michael is on a killing spree. Personally, by this point in the movie, my bet is on Mams. She DID kill all those counselors at Crystal Lake, after all!
Michael makes his way down the hallway, and a sudden noise convinces him to go up to the attic. As he heads in that direction, Peg pursues him. She calls out his name, and he passes out before he can respond.
When Mikey wakes up, his tuxedo has more blood on it, and there's a trail of blood leading to a dark corner of the attic, hidden by a curtain. He approaches the curtain, only to find Peg hanging by a noose. He gets her body down, but before he can do anything, a locked wardrobe begins shaking. Maybe he's got a lion and a witch in there!
Nope. It's the Talented Mr. Grump-Paw. Michael tries to confess to the murders, but Grumps won't let him. He claims that he saw Morty moving himself, and that the wooden statue also locked him up in the wardrobe. He tells Michael that he must go through with the ceremony. If he can overcome his fear, he can defeat Morty. They cover Peg up with a dirty sheet, then go off to begin the ritual.
In the front yard, Ned, Chris and Trish decide to try to stop Michael before he can kill anyone else. As they debate whether to try to rescue Peg first or stop Mike, Morty shows up in Peg's clown costume. Once again, Morty speaks, telling the others that they're not all right. He then proceeds to knock the trio around like rag dolls, before he tears off the clown suit.
Mike and Grumps find themselves trapped in the attic. Morty either nailed the trapdoor shut, or locked it. Either way, they're going nowhere fast. Gramps reveals to Michael that one of the reasons his dad was a killer was because he tried to face his own fear as well, but failed to conquer it. Grampy's words help Michael, and together, they decide to work at getting the trap door open.
Morty, in the meantime, is still doing Freddy-isms. Y'know, one of the great things about the first movie was the fact that Morty was a bit of a mystery: a silent, ambiguously menacing figure. The keyword in that sentence: SILENT. Here, he's like a cartoon character. Anyway, as Gramps and Michael start to bash open the trap door, Morty stops hitting Chris and vanishes. He magically teleports inside the house and bursts into the attic.
Gramps and Mike start to defend themselves, but Morty pulls a devious trick on Michael: he transforms himself into Mike's dad. As expected, Michael falls for the ruse. When Grumppaw tries to warn Mike that it's a trick, Morty tells him to stay out of it. Morty offers his hand, and Michael takes it. Grumps, afraid for Mike's soul, decides to break them apart. Using an AXE.
Too bad Morty wasn't born yesterday. He anticipates the attack and goes after the old man. During the scuffle, the 2 men bump into Michael, and he gets thrown downstairs. Gramps hurries over to the trap door to see if Mikey's okay, and Michael sees that Morty has dropped the illusion and looks like himself again. Mike tries to help his grandfather, but the trap door gets slammed in his face before he can climb up again.
Gramps and Morty struggle over the axe. Morty finally remembers that he's made of wood, and starts pounding the old man with his wooden fists and a wooden knee to the face. While Grumpy is laid out, Morty summons a pile of rats that climb onto and attack the old man. As Michael peers through a crack in the trap door, it appears that the old man has a heart attack and dies.
Frantic now, Mike rushes through the house. To his surprise, he sees what appears to be Peg with her back to him, staring out a window. She sees him and he suspects that she might really be Morty. Peg tells him that she woke up and searched through the house for him, but avoided the attic. Mikey ain't convinced. He picks up a chair and holds it out like a lion-tamer. Peg asks him to let her prove who she is, so Mike asks her the "relationship test" question she posed to him earlier. She gives him the same silly answer he gave earlier.
Mike removes the blood-pouch from around his neck, puts it around hers, and they embrace. They leave through the front door, and Morty decides to chase them. Somehow, Morty found a way to grow teeth, which are pearl-white and visible as he sneers at the couiple. Mike and Peg get into the car, where Chris is behind the wheel, and they urge him to run Morty over.
Bad plan. Morty morphs into a tree, and they crash into it. Morty becomes himself again and strolls over to the wrecked car, where everyone is knocked out. He plucks Ned out of his seat(still in his shark costume), and throws him into the swimming pool. Then he attacks Chris, and preys on his indecisiveness: Morty handcuffs him to the car's rear bumper, lights a trail of gasoline on fire, then gives him the axe. I think Morty's been moonlighting as Jigsaw! (and by the way, does this mean the Saw movies ripped off dreck like The Fear???)
Anyway, Michael wakes up while Morty is handcuffing and taunting Chris. He gets Peg out of the car and carries her away. Unfortunately, Morty sees them and decides not to watch Chris die. Mike tries to club Morty in the head, but Morty grabs his weapon and sends him flying. As Mike tries to recover, Peg attacks Morty as well, but a smack across the face with a heavy wooden hand knocks her out.
Morty morphs into Mike's dad yet again, and tries to kill Michael with a knife. But, as it turns out, he just wants Mike to become his worst fear: a killer, like dear ol' dad. He tries to force Michael to stab Peg, and his strength seems to make it inevitable. With a quick plunge of the blade--
--Michael stabs the ground next to Peg's head. But he PRETENDS he stabbed her, long enough to trick Morty. Peg wakes up, and they start running away again. In one of the funniest scenes in the movie, Michael finds Chris. He begs Mike to chop his hand off to free him, because he can't bring himself to do the deed. Mike quickly grabs the axe, Chris screams like Dakota Fanning....and Mike simply cuts the chain linking the handcuffs together. Nice, lol. They run away in slo-mo as the car explodes.
At this point, Mams and Peg show up in another car. The survivors all share a Hallmark moment, until Morty leaps between Peg and Mike. Morty tells Mike that he still has plenty of fear for Morty to exploit, which gives Mike an idea. He grabs a thick stick and lights it on fire. Turning around, he tells Morty that he knows the mannequin's greatest fear. As Peg douses Morty with kerosene from a torch, Michael throws the flaming stick, and makes good on his threat. Morty staggers around, giving new meaning to "Burning Man".
As the group watches Morty burn, they all do a symbolic forehead slap when they realize they left Ned in the pool. D'oh! They rush to the pool, only to find Ned calmly wading in the shallow end, still in his shark outfit. He is very calm...apparently, being thrown into a pool by an Indian statue is very cathartic.
As a group, they all agree to stick to a story: a maniac broke in and started attacking the party. As they all file out of the house, Michael stops and stares for some time at the picture of his father. He takes the blood-pouch necklace back, and places it on his dad's picture. As they walk out together, the photo gets a closeup, and we see the dorkiest special effect of the film, as Michael's face slowly replaces his dad's. THE END
Wow, what a wasted opportunity this was! You have a relatively low body count, a ton of red herrings(like: making Gramps look like the killer, or dressing Peg up min the clown suit again after Morty tore it up), a killer who manages to make Freddy Krueger seem "deep", and an ending with no real surprises or scares. But the biggest disappointment was Morty himself. I can understand having another actor in the suit, but why change the look of the character? Seriously, my guesses about the grandparents or Mike being the killer were better than what actually happened in this mess. 2 out of 5 trees, just for wasting my time.
What did I learn from The Fear: Halloween Night?
-If you can't swim, dress like a shark. It allows you to float and be rescued just in time.
-Ancient Indian monsters love wisecracks.
-Don't always assume that having Jason's Mom in a horror movie makes it a scary movie.
Next up: Friday the 13th Part III: The Saga of Shelley!!(okay, that's not a real subtitle, but I liked Shelley, he was a fun dude.) Have a scary weekend!
In terms of plot, there's a lot of deja vu here. Both films deal with facing fears, and both have a protagonist who has a traumatic event in their past that bites them in the ass during the present. Also, both movies feature a creepy wooden statue-puppet, named Morty. But there are also differences.
As I mentioned, the story begins with a flashback: The main character, as a young boy, was travelling with his mother to a costume party on Halloween Night--he as a skeleton, and she as a witch--when she spots what appears to be a car accident. She pulls over to offer assistance, and sees a man murdering a woman with an axe. He chases our unlucky witch and proceeds to kill her in front of her son. As he turns the corpse over, he realizes that he just killed his own wife.
Distraught, the killer grabs his son, Michael, out of the car and shoves him in the trunk of his own vehicle. He then uses his wife's corpse as a speed bump and flees the scene. As the car speeds away, Michael grabs a glow-stick and uses it to see his surroundings, bringing him face-to-face with our favorite Indian mannequin, Morty. Sort of.
Okay, so I'm going to pause the movie here to vent a little. We're about 5 and a half minutes into the movie, and there's already a problem. The dummy is NOT Morty...or, at least, not the SAME Morty. He's played by a different actor in this one, and the 2 look nothing alike. Now, I have no problem with another actor assuming a role played originally by another person, but why not hire someone who at least RESEMBLES the first guy? Is this supposed to be a different Morty? How many ancient Indian puppet-statues named Morty could there be in the world???
So since the characters are all different, as is the house they keep Morty in, I'm just going to assume that there ARE 2 entirely different possessed Indian puppet-thingies named Morty. As Jamie Kennedy and David Arquette said in Scream 2, let's move on....
Well, apparently my rant took awhile, because it's now "20 Years Later", according to the movie. Michael is bringing his friends up to the family's house for a fear-themed Halloween party: Everybody invited has to wear a costume that represents their greatest fear. Guests in attendance include Chris, a horny Dane Cook wanna-be; Peg, Michael's girlfriend and Chris's sister, who resembles Anne Hathaway; Lisa Ann, a girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously; Jennifer, the "Velma" of the group; Ned, who looks like Harry Potter; Mams, Michael's grandmother played by Pamela Voorhees herself, Betsy Palmer; Crow, an American Indian friend of the family; Gramps, who is Michael's grandfather(lucky guess, huh?); oh, and Mitch and Trish, who arrive late.
Before they arrive at the home of Michael's grandparents, there's some small talk about the origins of Halloween, and a brief discussion about a local legend in Michael's hometown, Hackett...seems that several years earlier, there was a gruesome serial killer on the loose in the town, The Highwayman. Gee, I wonder if Michael knew him?
As introductions are being made, Mams decides to make Chris wet his pants by giving him the wrong directions to the john. I hope he poops in your kitchen sink, you bat! When Michael hangs up his jacket, he has a brief flashback of his mother getting struck in the face with the axe again. Oh, and as he reunites with grumpy Gramps, Michael spots a hilarious family photo of his father wielding his axe in mid-kill. Nice!
Up in the attic, Michael meets up with his childhood friend Crow, and the new Morty. At this point, we learn the reason for the party and its' theme: Crow is performing an ancient, sacred ritual designed to cast away everyone's fears and bring them cleansed souls. Morty will absorb their fears and then be set on fire, to symbolically eradicate evil, or something. Oh, and since Michael is "leading the ceremony", he has a Morty-mask he must wear. And Morty has a flask of raven's blood around his neck...as long as he wears it, the "evil's held". Whatever. Just get started already...Why is everyone still alive?!?
Chris and Peg come up to the attic to see what's keeping Michael so busy, and he introduces them both to Crow...and Morty. Chris behaves like an ass by mocking Crow's heritage and saying "Morty" about 300 times in a row. Oh, and as the rest become distracted by the arrival of the 2 late guests, Chris steals the flask-necklace from around Morty's neck. Good thing this isn't a horror film, or that might be a bad idea...oh yeah, this IS a horror flick! Guess they're boned, huh?
So at dinner Michael finally gets the ball rolling. He tells his friends about the ancient ritual...they, as a group must form a "fear circle", and dress as the fears to symbolically cast them off, or something. Blah blah blah. When they seem into it, Grumpaw storms out of the room to angrily clean the dishes. I swear, this guy was the ORIGINAL "Grumpy Old Man". After some horsing around and my impending coma from the lack of ANYTHING going on, Grumps drops some plates at the mention of The Highwayman. He cuts his hand, causing Lisa Ann to go into what a high school Drama Club student might do to show a fear of blood. She ain't no Meryl Streep.
As the others crack jokes, Michael admonishes the group for not taking the whole thing seriously, and takes a walk outside, clutching the Morty-mask the entire time. He comes to a clearing and staggers as more memories assault him. These traumatic memories eventually cause him to pass out. While he's out playing with his inner Morty, Trish decides to have a heart-to-heart with Peg about the tension she senses between her and Michael. See, Peg doesn't know that The Highwayman was also his dad, so she thinks Michael's fear about becoming his dad is a fear of commitment. Deep, huh?
Anyway, after Trish plays amateur shrink with Peg, Peg decides to go find Michael. She does eventually, crouched next to the grave of his father with his face in his hands. She begs him to talk about things with her, and he stands up, revealing that he's wearing the wooden mask. YIKES! Startled, Peg tells him it's not funny, and he responds that it wasn't meant to be.
In the most surprising twist so far(*YAWN*), Michael tells Peg almost everything about his troubled past: How he saw his dad kill his mom; watching his father become an alcoholic; and eventually how his dad committed suicide. He also reveals to her that he's been having night terrors, hallucinations, etc. Wake me up when something scary happens.
When Peg tries to show him compassion, he reacts badly. Michael tells her that no one can empathize with him if they haven't been through that kind of trauma themselves. He attacks his father's gravestone with a stick, and Peg leaves. As he follows her, blood starts pouring out of the gravestone. As we watch, Morty starts rocking in a chair on the porch, mostly due to the wind picking up. When more blood streams out of the grave, one of Morty's arms moves. Hmmmm....
Michael walks into the house just in time to referee a fight over pumpkin-carving. As pumpkin-guts go flying, he goes upstairs to speak to Peg about what happened between them by the grave. Instead of speaking, they begin a bout of passionate lovemaking. Ned passes by the door, hears them makin' whoopie, and runs downstairs to tell the others. Geez, it's like this script was written by 12-year-olds on Ritalin or something.
A loud crash makes the group rush upstairs again. They find Chris on the floor, mouth full of blood, with Morty on top of him. Even Michael and Peg rush out, still fully dressed. Dammit. As expected, Chris jumps up to scare the group. Crow examines Morty, and discovers that his arm is damaged, leading to an insincere apology from Chris. Crow and he exchange a few insults.
As Crow carries Morty away to repair the damage Chris caused, Michael and Peg start arguing about her brother and his lack of maturity. Chris decides to get involved in the discussion. A short scuffle ensues, followed by Peg accidentally being pushed down a staircase. Chris panics and rushes to her slumped body, only to have her sit up and mock him. Psyche! She even takes a bow, reveals that the whole argument was a ruse designed to prank Chris, and everyone claps. Well, almost everyone. Reminded of his mom's death yet again, Michael decides to go to the porch and sit in the same rocking chair Morty was in about 5 minutes earlier. When Peg joins him, he reveals that the whole scenario was a little too close to what happened to his mother. Still upset, he seeks out Crow.
Crow is repairing Morty. I love how, in these scenes, not one person, Crow included, has noticed that the sack of blood is no longer around Morty's neck. Anyway, Michael goes to the stables, and apologizes to Crow for fooling around, then tries to back out of the ceremony. Crow responds by showing Michael the mask he found in the cemetery. He also tells Michael that his father was both a good man, and a bad man, as all of us are. Deep, dude.
Crow assures him that he's as ready as he can be, before revealing his own greatest fear: horses. I sure hope he doesn't get killed in the stable while repairing Morty...Grumpy Grampy shows up to threaten Crow. I guess the ol' geezer just LIKES being a grouchy douche bag.
Mike's Mams tells him to fetch Grumplestiltskin for lunch. On the way to the barn, he hears the voice of his father calling out to him. The voice tells him that something's coming for him. As Mike has a fleeting vision of Crow being attacked, he faints again.
Crow FINALLY realizes something we knew ages ago...the blood-pouch is no longer around Morty's neck. He looks for it and finds some feathers on the floor. As he examines these feathers, a bale of hay swings toward him, knocking him through a stable door. Crow tries to get to his feet, but a horse traps him, while another horse uses a hoof to kill him..
Mikey wakes up in the hay. He finds blood on his hands and washes them off, right before Mams scares him half to death. She tells him to go back to his friends. Oh, and she's holding a broken plank of wood. hmmmm...
Trish finds Ned being a voyeur and flirts with him. She hints that she could go for a nice dip in the pool, and he reveals that water happens to be his phobia. They are briefly distracted by Peg, who is hauling a bag of trash around or something. She tells them that Mike is getting ready for the ritual. We then get treated to a scene involving Jennifer and I don't know, Chris(?) maybe, walking in the forest. They see a large white wolf, causing Jen to dart the other way, toot-sweet! Chris gets nervous about being lost in the woods and tries to take off after her.
Michael, meanwhile, is setting up a place for Morty to sit in the attic. After seating the mannequin, he puts on the Morty-mask again, and checks himself out in the mirror. To his shock and horror, he sees the mask transform him into Dear Ol' Dad. He pulls off the mask and smashes the mirror, then turns around and takes a swing at Morty too. He's like the George Foreman of fighting inanimate objects. Geez, the only skill less useful than that would be watching and spoiling cheesy horror flicks once or twice a week...
So now we switch over to Lisa Ann, the girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously. She's walking with some British guy whose name escapes me, and she reveals that her two biggest passions in life are religion and politics. Yeesh! The British guy goes along with it, and it's getting annoying not remembering his name yet.. Sure, I could look it up or something, but do I even care at this point? Nope. Unless someone says his name, I'll just call him Hugh Jazz. Anyway, Hugh tells Lisa that she has inner beauty as well as the only kind of beauty guys really care about, outer. Oh, and she asks him about his relationship with Trish, so I guess that makes him Mitch. THANK YOU, stupid movie.
Mitch and Lisa meet up with Jennifer and Chris at the edge of the woods, just in time to hear someone shrieking. They find Ned and Peg cornered by a huge, mutant snake. Ned cuts off Snakezilla's head, and it twitches for awhile, probably a happy-dance that it gets to exit this boring-as-hell movie. Somehow, during the scene, Trish showed up and managed to climb up a tree without anyone noticing. She begs Mitch to help her down, and his "help" consists of telling her to jump. He's afraid of heights, so he makes a dorky attempt to climb up one branch, then falls so he doesn't have to keep climbing. Trish gets down (rather easily, for someone who just 2seconds ago couldn't do it), and Peg announces that they should begin putting on their costumes for the ceremony.
After the "rescue", we see Mams in the kitchen, most likely making a stew out of all the camp counselors she killed in Friday the 13th. YUM! Peg rushes into the kitchen dressed as a clown, and practically gives her a heart attack. She tells Peg that she has a costume on as well, even though it looks like any normal black outfit. When Peg guesses it's a witch dress, Mams tells her that it represents "darkness", her greatest fear. As Peg sets the table for dinner, Jennifer comes downstairs wearing a box. She admits that her greatest fear is claustrophobia. The girls share a laugh over the costumes and find Ned in the kitchen with Mams, wearing a shark costume. He tells them that the movie Jaws traumatized him as a young child, and the fear stuck with him through the years. Chris walks in dressed in a sheet covered with words and question marks. His fear? Making decisions.
Ugh. This movie's giving me a headache. Can we just skip it this week? Whattaya mean, "NO"??? Okay, fine, but one of YOU readers are paying for the asylum I wind up in after I finish watching this thing.
Next, Lisa Ann and Trish enter. I have no friggin' clue what Trish is supposed to be representing(unless her blazer is made out of snakeskin, looks like a normal jacket to me), but Lisa Ann is dressed in a slinky red dress, representing her fear of blood. Mitch comes in screaming, to make everyone jump, but is not wearing a costume. He tells the group that he isn't afraid of anything, but they point out to him that he reacted badly to climbing the tree. I guess a costume representing acrophobia would've been pretty tough to convey. Jazzed for a party, they all get seated in the dining room and wait for Michael and Gramps-zilla to appear. Oh, and Morty is seated as well, at the head of the table.
The lights suddenly go out! Aww, it's just Mikey being a melodramatic a-hole as usual. Nice way to scare your grandmother, you douche. When he turns them on again, everyone can see that he is dressed in a tuxedo. Great, his greatest fear is waiters? Nope. He gets down on one knee and proposes to Peg. Before she can say yes or no, the lights go out after a fuse blows. Mams lights a few candles before recruiting Mikey to go to the basement with her to check the fuse box. Everyone else gets up from the table, except Jennifer who is trapped by her bulky box costume. Comedy gold. These guys must've written for Henny Youngman too.
Mike and Mams make their way to the fuse box, and find Crow's corpse on the floor. While Michael is reeling from the discovery of his friend's body, Mams reveals that she found him in the barn and "took care of it", implying that she did the same on the day Michael's dad died. Wait, what was that last part? Michael tries to run away, but flashbacks and another headache make him stumble, and he passes out.
When Mike wakes up, he is back in the dining room. Peg and the others find him, and help him to get up. They begin talking and realize that Jen is gone. Uh oh. Even worse, her box is in the corner, dripping with mysterious red stains....
They open the box, revealing Jennifer, wrapped up in her own intestines. Well, at least she doesn't seem to be claustrophobic anymore! Michael does the most rational thing he can think of: he tells the group that Morty has been possessed by the ghost of his dad, and is killing people. Sounds rational to me!
From here on in, the accusations begin flying! Crow is blamed, until Mike and Mams(wasn't that a talk show in the '90's?) admit that they found his body. Then everyone speculates that Grumpy-Gramps must be the killer(he has my vote, too; wasn't Crow killed IMMEDIATELY after Gramps argued with him???), which Mams scoffs at. Michael suggests that it is Morty, who has come to life to kill them all. That leads the others to the conclusion that it's Mike himself doing the killings, seeing how weird the place makes him and all.
Mike insists that the killer IS Morty. Peg stands by him, and, after a brief discussion, the others agree to help search the house. Lisa Ann and Mitch go to their bedroom. While Mitch is trying to calm her down, Lisa Ann opens a closet and comes face-to-face with Morty. She screams like a howler monkey on acid. Then she faints.
Off by themselves, Michael and Peg find the blood-pouch that Morty was wearing before the ritual. That seals the deal for Mike: he fully believes now that Morty is the one killing everybody. He tells Peg that finding Morty will prove it, and she placates him by agreeing to continue the search.
Lisa Ann wakes up. She stares right into Morty's eyes and screams again. Mitch pops up and reassures her that Morty is quite harmless. Lisa Ann gets turned on by the adrenaline rush that all of these frights are giving her, and she seduces Mitch. Morty continues to stare at the couple as they make out. He looks bored. Hey Morty, welcome to MY world.
We switch back to Mike and Peg. Feeling insecure, Peg tests Mike's love by asking him a "relationship" question...you know, like, if you were stranded on a desert island, who's the one person you'd want with you? Well, Mike fails the test. When he finally gets the point of the question, he answers it the "right" way. She hugs him. Geez, your boyfriend just failed to name you as the first person he'd want with him in a crisis, and you're HAPPY??? These 2 idiots deserve each other.
Anyway, she kisses the big dumb galoot, and as he resumes the search down the hall, we see a hand grab her. Mike realizes after a few steps that she vanished, and as he's calling her name, a montage of death scenes starts up: We see his mom getting killed by his dad; we see Lisa Ann drowning; Mitch falls to the floor somewhere, with blood coming out of his mouth...Mike gets overwhelmed by the onslaught of visions and falls over again.
It turns out that Peg was snatched by Chris and Ned. They try to convince her that Mike's a killer, but she won't buy it. They give up reasoning with her, and simply drag her away. Nice friends.
While Mike's eating floorboards, Lisa Ann and Mitch are bumpin' and grindin' like there's no tomorrow. As they frolic, Morty FINALLY decides to come to life. He slooooowly begins shambling toward the bed, and Lisa Ann freaks out when she sees him. Mitch turns and thinks it's Mike in a costume, and Morty gives him a good whack with his wooden arm. While Mitch is struggling to get up, Morty even pulls a "Freddy", and quips, "Going down!" as he throws Mitch out of a nearby window.
Lisa Ann screams and runs into the bathroom as Morty chases her. She locks the door, but he breaks it easily, and catches her. To quiet her down, Morty bashes her forehead into the side of the toilet, then he drowns her. Yuck.
Ned takes Mitch's pulse, but of course he's dead. They all move away from the body, but the action cuts abruptly to Mams and Trish walking into Lisa Ann and Mitch's room. They find Michael there on the floor, wearing the Morty-mask. Trish sees the others outside and tells them that Lisa Ann is dead, and Michael is with them. The trio head back inside just as Michael wakes up.
Michael sees the carnage and blames it all on Morty. He runs out of the room to find the wooden statue, and Trish follows, convinced that Michael is on a killing spree. Personally, by this point in the movie, my bet is on Mams. She DID kill all those counselors at Crystal Lake, after all!
Michael makes his way down the hallway, and a sudden noise convinces him to go up to the attic. As he heads in that direction, Peg pursues him. She calls out his name, and he passes out before he can respond.
When Mikey wakes up, his tuxedo has more blood on it, and there's a trail of blood leading to a dark corner of the attic, hidden by a curtain. He approaches the curtain, only to find Peg hanging by a noose. He gets her body down, but before he can do anything, a locked wardrobe begins shaking. Maybe he's got a lion and a witch in there!
Nope. It's the Talented Mr. Grump-Paw. Michael tries to confess to the murders, but Grumps won't let him. He claims that he saw Morty moving himself, and that the wooden statue also locked him up in the wardrobe. He tells Michael that he must go through with the ceremony. If he can overcome his fear, he can defeat Morty. They cover Peg up with a dirty sheet, then go off to begin the ritual.
In the front yard, Ned, Chris and Trish decide to try to stop Michael before he can kill anyone else. As they debate whether to try to rescue Peg first or stop Mike, Morty shows up in Peg's clown costume. Once again, Morty speaks, telling the others that they're not all right. He then proceeds to knock the trio around like rag dolls, before he tears off the clown suit.
Mike and Grumps find themselves trapped in the attic. Morty either nailed the trapdoor shut, or locked it. Either way, they're going nowhere fast. Gramps reveals to Michael that one of the reasons his dad was a killer was because he tried to face his own fear as well, but failed to conquer it. Grampy's words help Michael, and together, they decide to work at getting the trap door open.
Morty, in the meantime, is still doing Freddy-isms. Y'know, one of the great things about the first movie was the fact that Morty was a bit of a mystery: a silent, ambiguously menacing figure. The keyword in that sentence: SILENT. Here, he's like a cartoon character. Anyway, as Gramps and Michael start to bash open the trap door, Morty stops hitting Chris and vanishes. He magically teleports inside the house and bursts into the attic.
Gramps and Mike start to defend themselves, but Morty pulls a devious trick on Michael: he transforms himself into Mike's dad. As expected, Michael falls for the ruse. When Grumppaw tries to warn Mike that it's a trick, Morty tells him to stay out of it. Morty offers his hand, and Michael takes it. Grumps, afraid for Mike's soul, decides to break them apart. Using an AXE.
Too bad Morty wasn't born yesterday. He anticipates the attack and goes after the old man. During the scuffle, the 2 men bump into Michael, and he gets thrown downstairs. Gramps hurries over to the trap door to see if Mikey's okay, and Michael sees that Morty has dropped the illusion and looks like himself again. Mike tries to help his grandfather, but the trap door gets slammed in his face before he can climb up again.
Gramps and Morty struggle over the axe. Morty finally remembers that he's made of wood, and starts pounding the old man with his wooden fists and a wooden knee to the face. While Grumpy is laid out, Morty summons a pile of rats that climb onto and attack the old man. As Michael peers through a crack in the trap door, it appears that the old man has a heart attack and dies.
Frantic now, Mike rushes through the house. To his surprise, he sees what appears to be Peg with her back to him, staring out a window. She sees him and he suspects that she might really be Morty. Peg tells him that she woke up and searched through the house for him, but avoided the attic. Mikey ain't convinced. He picks up a chair and holds it out like a lion-tamer. Peg asks him to let her prove who she is, so Mike asks her the "relationship test" question she posed to him earlier. She gives him the same silly answer he gave earlier.
Mike removes the blood-pouch from around his neck, puts it around hers, and they embrace. They leave through the front door, and Morty decides to chase them. Somehow, Morty found a way to grow teeth, which are pearl-white and visible as he sneers at the couiple. Mike and Peg get into the car, where Chris is behind the wheel, and they urge him to run Morty over.
Bad plan. Morty morphs into a tree, and they crash into it. Morty becomes himself again and strolls over to the wrecked car, where everyone is knocked out. He plucks Ned out of his seat(still in his shark costume), and throws him into the swimming pool. Then he attacks Chris, and preys on his indecisiveness: Morty handcuffs him to the car's rear bumper, lights a trail of gasoline on fire, then gives him the axe. I think Morty's been moonlighting as Jigsaw! (and by the way, does this mean the Saw movies ripped off dreck like The Fear???)
Anyway, Michael wakes up while Morty is handcuffing and taunting Chris. He gets Peg out of the car and carries her away. Unfortunately, Morty sees them and decides not to watch Chris die. Mike tries to club Morty in the head, but Morty grabs his weapon and sends him flying. As Mike tries to recover, Peg attacks Morty as well, but a smack across the face with a heavy wooden hand knocks her out.
Morty morphs into Mike's dad yet again, and tries to kill Michael with a knife. But, as it turns out, he just wants Mike to become his worst fear: a killer, like dear ol' dad. He tries to force Michael to stab Peg, and his strength seems to make it inevitable. With a quick plunge of the blade--
--Michael stabs the ground next to Peg's head. But he PRETENDS he stabbed her, long enough to trick Morty. Peg wakes up, and they start running away again. In one of the funniest scenes in the movie, Michael finds Chris. He begs Mike to chop his hand off to free him, because he can't bring himself to do the deed. Mike quickly grabs the axe, Chris screams like Dakota Fanning....and Mike simply cuts the chain linking the handcuffs together. Nice, lol. They run away in slo-mo as the car explodes.
At this point, Mams and Peg show up in another car. The survivors all share a Hallmark moment, until Morty leaps between Peg and Mike. Morty tells Mike that he still has plenty of fear for Morty to exploit, which gives Mike an idea. He grabs a thick stick and lights it on fire. Turning around, he tells Morty that he knows the mannequin's greatest fear. As Peg douses Morty with kerosene from a torch, Michael throws the flaming stick, and makes good on his threat. Morty staggers around, giving new meaning to "Burning Man".
As the group watches Morty burn, they all do a symbolic forehead slap when they realize they left Ned in the pool. D'oh! They rush to the pool, only to find Ned calmly wading in the shallow end, still in his shark outfit. He is very calm...apparently, being thrown into a pool by an Indian statue is very cathartic.
As a group, they all agree to stick to a story: a maniac broke in and started attacking the party. As they all file out of the house, Michael stops and stares for some time at the picture of his father. He takes the blood-pouch necklace back, and places it on his dad's picture. As they walk out together, the photo gets a closeup, and we see the dorkiest special effect of the film, as Michael's face slowly replaces his dad's. THE END
Wow, what a wasted opportunity this was! You have a relatively low body count, a ton of red herrings(like: making Gramps look like the killer, or dressing Peg up min the clown suit again after Morty tore it up), a killer who manages to make Freddy Krueger seem "deep", and an ending with no real surprises or scares. But the biggest disappointment was Morty himself. I can understand having another actor in the suit, but why change the look of the character? Seriously, my guesses about the grandparents or Mike being the killer were better than what actually happened in this mess. 2 out of 5 trees, just for wasting my time.
What did I learn from The Fear: Halloween Night?
-If you can't swim, dress like a shark. It allows you to float and be rescued just in time.
-Ancient Indian monsters love wisecracks.
-Don't always assume that having Jason's Mom in a horror movie makes it a scary movie.
Next up: Friday the 13th Part III: The Saga of Shelley!!(okay, that's not a real subtitle, but I liked Shelley, he was a fun dude.) Have a scary weekend!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Fear
Boy oh boy, sometimes I really think I might be cursed. It's either me or these terrible slasher flicks. Remember when I tried to watch The Sorority, and it died on me? Or The Forest, which had no sound at all, until a laptop crash forced me to reboot? Well, this week's current fiasco is called The Fear, and it's the 3rd movie to give me a hassle when trying to watch the damned thing. I tried on 3 different players on my laptop, and had actually given up and started to write a review based solely on the silent images I was seeing, when it worked on someone else's laptop fine. *sigh* SPOILERS FOLLOW*, so don't say I didn't warn ya....
The movie begins with a weird dream sequence: A young boy is running in a forest, laughing at someone chasing him, when he spots 2 robed figures burying something. The figures sense his presence and confront him by just saying "Diametric!" over and over again. It's pretty bad when I'm more confused by a movie WITH sound than without!
So then the dream ends with a wooden statue looming over the kid, and it turns into Wes Craven. He plays the main character's teacher and shrink, Dr. Arnold, and he encourages the guy to explore his fears if he wants to be a successful shrink himself. Taking that to heart, the young guy, Richard, plans to have a group attend "fear therapy", a sort-of weekend getaway where everyone will confront their worst phobias. Yeah. I called that high school.
The following scene shows a young woman getting attacked. Who is she? What does she have to do with anything? Don't know. Don't care! "Diametric!!!"
Anyway, Richard posts a sign-up sheet at his college, and a kid who looks like he solves mysteries with a cartoon dog decides to attend. Oh, and the sheet says "WHAT SCAR ES YOU?" Uh, besides guys who can't figure out how to re-size their fonts before printing up bulletins? As they talk, 2 cops question them about a girl who was attacked. The cops give the usual cop-talk, then leave, probably to audition for the 200th "Law & Order" spin-off.
At this point, we meet the group-therapy patients: the hippie is Troy, or at least that's what it sounds like one of the cops called him; Troy's sister Leslie; her boyfriend Vance; Richard's girlfriend Ashley; Uncle Pete and Tanya, who is Uncle Pete's bimbo; Mindy, a psychic with verrrry sexy curves; and her boyfriend, Gerald.
As soon as they get to the cabin where Richard spent his childhood, Ashley finds 2 creepy items: the first is a family photo, showing Richard as a boy with his folks, standing in front of the cabin. In the photo, she sees a shadowy presence looming inside the cabin, at a window. The 2nd creepy thing she finds is a life-sized wooden puppet, nicknamed Morty.
They decide to use Morty in the phobia therapy. One by one, each person confesses their worst fears to Morty. Troy is deathly afraid of insects; Leslie's afraid of losing her youth and beauty; Vance is afraid of being seen as weak, I guess; Tanya has a fear of water; Mindy is afraid of heights; Uncle Pete's afraid of people seeing through his BS, I guess; Richard's afraid of commitment, according to everyone else; and Gerald, whose greatest fear is being the last guy mentioned in a dude's slasher-film blog synopsis. Whoops! Sorry, Gerald...
After they confess their fears, Vance tries flirting with Mindy, which doesn't end well. Later, as Vance and Leslie start knocking boots, Richard and Ashley also decide to have sex, until Morty shows up, sporting wood. Nah, just kidding. But he does show up, propped against a window, like he's watching them, which freaks Ashley the hell out. Richard accuses Troy of putting Morty there, but he denies it.
The next day, Richard tries to help Mindy with her fear of heights. Under hypnosis, Mindy draws Morty, and names him as the source of her fear. Immediately after, Uncle Pete, being a self-centered jerk, is terrifying Tanya by trying to force her to join him in a hot tub. She freaks out and refuses. When everyone leaves, she decides it's okay to be in it alone...until Morty somehow pops up next to her! As Morty keeps popping up(in bedrooms, tubs, hanging from rafters), the tensions run high and pretty soon everyone's trading off their sexual partners. Uncle Pete sees all the trouble brewing, and proposes a change of scenery.
"Change of scenery" means a road-trip to Uncle Pete's amusement park, a Christmas-themed place not unlike Santa's Village in northern New Hampshire. From here on in, the plot twists require an expert contortionist, so good luck trying to piece this all together as I did.
The amusement park is The Saddest Place on Earth, and everyone kind of splits up to go exploring. Uncle Pete reveals that Morty, as well as the wooden masks in the cabin and the amusement park that Richard saw in his dream are all part of some American Indian supernatural legend, yadda yadda yadda. Supposedly, before Morty ended up at the cabin he was used as a mannequin in the amusement park's gift shop, or as a prop in various attractions. Gee, I wonder what else he may be keeping from Richard?
Troy, Leslie and Ashley decide to take a carousel ride. Of course. Leslie just wants to ride the rides because it pisses off Vance...the other 2 probably tagged along to make sure the ditz doesn't fall off. While they're all riding horseys, Mindy and Gerald wander around a bit before stopping at a sign that says "Black Peter's Gaol." Being the only afro-american couple in the movie, it seems like an odd place to position themselves. Oh, and one of the wooden masks from the opening dream sequence is here as well, though I almost missed it while debating whether the sign thing was just a bad joke in the film, or a poorly-timed coincidence.
Back on the carousel, Leslie starts having some kind of asthma or panic attack, so she whips out an inhaler, and Troy grabs her arm. Before anything interesting can happen, the movie goes back to Mindy. What, did the director run out of Ritalin or something? Mindy sees someone walking toward her, and assuming it's Gerald, she relaxes. Nope. It's Vance, looking and acting like a stalker. Mindy runs away, and calms down when she spots a train ride. Grinning like Donald Trump in a bathtub filled with gold water, Mindy hops aboard the kiddie train. WHEEEEEEE!!!
Gerald is still wandering around as well, looking for Mindy. Maybe these characters should buy a crate of those house arrest tracking devices. I swear, half the movie is watching people wander around and bump into each other, over and over again. So Gerald sees a beckoning silhouette in a window, and assuming it's her, decides to go inside.
It's not her. Mindy is still on the train, trying to figure out how to stop the damned thing. Uh, it's a ride for kids: why not just step off of it? Apparently she didn't think of that. When the train ride does finally stop, it's in a dark tunnel. A figure appears at the mouth of the tunnel, but disappears when Mindy approaches. Before she can investigate any further, someone grabs her and knocks her out.
Mindy wakes up and is very disoriented. She keeps seeing the scary masks and wooden figures everywhere she turns. There are also several shots of the various rides, with no one riding them now. Getting seriously freaked out now, Mindy screams.
Gerald and Richard find and rescue her. As they try to head for the exit, Uncle Pete, Tanya and Leslie show up to lend a hand too. Ashley also turns up, and has a hissy fit because she's not the center of attention anymore. Oh, and Vance arrives last, has a meltdown of his own, then pulls out a gun. Before anyone can stop him, Vance takes one of the vehicles and returns to the house.
Back at the house, he starts venting his anger on luggage, but a trail of money catches his eye. He follows the trail of wadded-up cash to a trapdoor, where he finds stacks and stacks piled away. As greed gets the best of Vance, he bends down to retrieve the cash-stash, but someone sneaks up and uses the trapdoor as a weapon, bashing Vance repeatedly in the ol' noggin. His body is then pulled through the floor, and the door is shut.
Using the 2nd vehicle, everyone else gets backs to the house by this time. They find the vehicle, but with slashed tires. Inside, Ashley tells Richard that she's breaking up with him. At the same moment, Troy and Leslie share a tender moment, but it goes horribly wrong. As Troy tries to console Leslie about Vance's disappearance, he inadvertantly winds up getting turned on. They start to kiss, but Leslie doesn't react well to her own brother trying to get to 2nd base with her. It's not the whole brother-sister thing that gives her cold feet--it's the whole mother-son thing.
SAY WHAT NOW?
Yeah, Troy is her son. She got pregnant in her younger teens, and her folks helped her to keep Troy's birth a secret. They adopted Troy, and she kept up the pretense of being his older sister. No wonder she's so obsessed with her youth. Troy gets upset and runs into the forest. Also lost in the woods is Tanya, while Uncle Pete searches for HER. With all of these characters wandering around, how is it posible that I'M the one who's the most lost???
Well, look at the bright side: at least Uncle Pete ditched the Santa suit! He also caught up with Gerald, who somehow found time to get murdered. The killer crucified him, then shoved a crown of thorns on his head and wooden crucifix through his chest. Uncle Pete grabs a gun from his car and decides to go hunting!
Leslie finds Troy leaning against a tree, and tries to make amends. When he gives her the silent treatment Leslie grabs him, only to discover that it's Morty, dressed in Troy's clothes. As Morty stares at her, Leslie ages several decades in a second. Why can't he just kill her the old-fashioned way?
Richard goes back inside, to get rid of the headache the movie gave him, and probably to fire his agent. He checks on Mindy, who appears to be fast asleep. When he reaches over to wake her up, her eyes snap open, revealing that they've becoming murky. Seems that Morty has possessed our sexy psychic. She caresses Richard's face and tells him that she remembers him as a boy. Or Morty does. Or something.
As she's acting out the role of Morty, Morty himself also comes to life in front of Ashley. Mindy grabs a chalkboard filled with magnetic letters, and Morty pantomimes doing the same thing. She grabs Richard's wrist, and makes him spell the word from his dream, "DIAMETRIC". It turns out that it's an anagram for "MATRICIDE". So the masked creatures were trying to tell him that he killed his own mother? Why not just say the right word the first time?
Wait, it gets better. Richard starts remembering more pieces of his childhood, like his mother having an affair with a man who had a distinctive tattoo. As Morty tries to force Richard to face his dark past, Ashley runs outside and finds Troy, the real one this time. He tries to rape her, but a knee to the crotch makes for a compelling counter-argument. A chase ensues, and we return to Richard and Min-Morty.
When he found his mother having sex with the other man, Richard went to tell his father. Dad made him show him where the wife had been, and Dad confronts her. The masked figure who had turned around to speak to him was his father, wearing some kind of costume. Oh, and Morty had been helping him to bury the mother as well.
Horrified by these memories, Richard tries to escape. Min-Morty starts chasing him, and manages to grab his ankle as he attempts to climb some stairs. The pursuit continues to an upstairs bedroom, until Mindy topples out of a window. Richard sees Morty's "soul" leave her body. Morty becomes solid again, and Richard resumes running away.
Meanwhile, Troy is busy trying to rape Ashley, with little success. She tries braining him with a log, but he just shrugs it off. At one point he starts hopping around, scratching at his body, and she uses the distraction to hit him again. This is starting to look like a Jerry Springer episode...
Richard bumps into Uncle Pete, and tries to tell him about his memory breakthrough. Uncle Pete gets angry and stomps off, and fails to notice Morty turning his head as he walks past the wooden figure. Yikes.
Richard goes outside and finds Ashley standing next to Troy's body. Troy's fear of insects seems to have been valid, because a few are still crawling over his back. Richard sees that Ashley is distraught, but nothing he does seems to calm her down.
Uncle Pete finds one of the bedrooms transformed to look like it did when Richard's mother was kiolled. He moves to a sink, and begins washing up. After removing his shirt, a tattoo on his arm reveals that he was the man Richard saw with his mother the night she died. Richard talks to Ashley a bit more, then goes inside to confront Uncle Pete.
Uncle Pete confirms that he was having the affair with Richard's, and that he is responsible for the mother's death. He was also the other masked figure the night Richard watched them bury his mother's corpse. Morty enters the room, and Richard leaves his uncle alone with Morty, who tries to shoot the animated dummy with his pistol.
Bad plan. All the shooting does is piss Morty off. He grabs Uncle Pete's wrist, and forces him to turn the gun on himself. Morty then staggers outside to chase down Richard and Ashley. As the couple tries to get some distance between them and Morty, Richard sees a familiar landmark and flashes back again to the day his mother was murdered. He keeps hesitating, which allows Morty to catch up. Realizing that his options are limited, Richard changes tactics and tries to fight Morty. Oddly enough, Morty doesn't attack him directly. Instead, he uses some kind of Wooden Guy Magic to raise Richard's mother, who grabs Richard's ankle. As Richard busies himself with the task of fighting a zombie, Morty continues to go after Ashley.
Then it gets even WEIRDER. As Ricard is crawling away from the zombie, 3 more figures show up: the 2 masked figures from his dream, and his younger self. Yup, I shit you not: Big Richard meets Little Richard. Wop Bop Aloo Bop, Awop Bam Boom!
Younger Richard gives Adult Richard a puzzle Wes Craven had in his office, a small globe comprised of puzzle pieces, with 1 section missing. He takes it and uses it as a weapon, by smashing it on his mother's head. The globe breaks open, revealing that the last piece was inside the globe the entire time. Little Him gives Big Him the pieces and tells Richard to re-assemble it.
Every piece seems to make Zombie-Mom weaker. As she falls back into the ground, Richard hugs himself, and thanks him for the puzzle. The masked figures vanish in the darkness, as does Little Richard. Great Gosh Almighty!! Safe, Richard runs deeper into the woods to rescue Ashley.
Ashley runs and runs and runs. As Morty inevitably outpaces her and gets in Ashley's way, Tanya shows up in a skin-tight leotard. Now, both women are fighting off Morty, until Tanya gets thrown into a pond. She climbs out looking royally pissed. And pretty hot.
Just in time, Richard shows up to save the day. He tells Morty that he's sorry, and that he now understands that Morty was trying to protect him. He asks Morty to release Ashley, and the puppet-man complies. Then he extends an arm, and Morty grabs him by the wrist. But instead of attacking Richard, Morty merely holds his hand for a moment. AWWWWWW...
Morty stares at the young couple and mad Tanya for a few more seconds, and now just looks sad. He staggers away from the trio, and walks into the pond. They watch until he goes completely under, then Richard hugs Ashley. There's a brief scene in Wes Craven's office, where Richard gives him the broken puzzle and tells him he "found the missing piece". Richard then reveals that he has dropped out of college, and has also put the family house up for sale. In the final scene, we see a realtor showing the house to a young couple. Their son runs off into the woods and meets Morty. The kid asks if Morty is a "good guy or a bad guy", and Morty kind of smirks. THE END?
Probably not, since there was a sequel. Eh, as weepy and melodramatic as it was, The Fear could have been a LOT worse. I'd give it a solid 3 killer trees outta 5, mostly for Morty's look and the attractive women in the cast.
So what were The Fear's big life-lessons?
-"Getting wood" can be a bad thing.
-You should never trust a guy who dresses like Santa year-round.
-Wes Craven is now seeing patients. I hope my HMO lets me make an appointment...
If all goes well, hopefully I'll get to see The Fear 2 next. Wish me luck!!
The movie begins with a weird dream sequence: A young boy is running in a forest, laughing at someone chasing him, when he spots 2 robed figures burying something. The figures sense his presence and confront him by just saying "Diametric!" over and over again. It's pretty bad when I'm more confused by a movie WITH sound than without!
So then the dream ends with a wooden statue looming over the kid, and it turns into Wes Craven. He plays the main character's teacher and shrink, Dr. Arnold, and he encourages the guy to explore his fears if he wants to be a successful shrink himself. Taking that to heart, the young guy, Richard, plans to have a group attend "fear therapy", a sort-of weekend getaway where everyone will confront their worst phobias. Yeah. I called that high school.
The following scene shows a young woman getting attacked. Who is she? What does she have to do with anything? Don't know. Don't care! "Diametric!!!"
Anyway, Richard posts a sign-up sheet at his college, and a kid who looks like he solves mysteries with a cartoon dog decides to attend. Oh, and the sheet says "WHAT SCAR ES YOU?" Uh, besides guys who can't figure out how to re-size their fonts before printing up bulletins? As they talk, 2 cops question them about a girl who was attacked. The cops give the usual cop-talk, then leave, probably to audition for the 200th "Law & Order" spin-off.
At this point, we meet the group-therapy patients: the hippie is Troy, or at least that's what it sounds like one of the cops called him; Troy's sister Leslie; her boyfriend Vance; Richard's girlfriend Ashley; Uncle Pete and Tanya, who is Uncle Pete's bimbo; Mindy, a psychic with verrrry sexy curves; and her boyfriend, Gerald.
As soon as they get to the cabin where Richard spent his childhood, Ashley finds 2 creepy items: the first is a family photo, showing Richard as a boy with his folks, standing in front of the cabin. In the photo, she sees a shadowy presence looming inside the cabin, at a window. The 2nd creepy thing she finds is a life-sized wooden puppet, nicknamed Morty.
They decide to use Morty in the phobia therapy. One by one, each person confesses their worst fears to Morty. Troy is deathly afraid of insects; Leslie's afraid of losing her youth and beauty; Vance is afraid of being seen as weak, I guess; Tanya has a fear of water; Mindy is afraid of heights; Uncle Pete's afraid of people seeing through his BS, I guess; Richard's afraid of commitment, according to everyone else; and Gerald, whose greatest fear is being the last guy mentioned in a dude's slasher-film blog synopsis. Whoops! Sorry, Gerald...
After they confess their fears, Vance tries flirting with Mindy, which doesn't end well. Later, as Vance and Leslie start knocking boots, Richard and Ashley also decide to have sex, until Morty shows up, sporting wood. Nah, just kidding. But he does show up, propped against a window, like he's watching them, which freaks Ashley the hell out. Richard accuses Troy of putting Morty there, but he denies it.
The next day, Richard tries to help Mindy with her fear of heights. Under hypnosis, Mindy draws Morty, and names him as the source of her fear. Immediately after, Uncle Pete, being a self-centered jerk, is terrifying Tanya by trying to force her to join him in a hot tub. She freaks out and refuses. When everyone leaves, she decides it's okay to be in it alone...until Morty somehow pops up next to her! As Morty keeps popping up(in bedrooms, tubs, hanging from rafters), the tensions run high and pretty soon everyone's trading off their sexual partners. Uncle Pete sees all the trouble brewing, and proposes a change of scenery.
"Change of scenery" means a road-trip to Uncle Pete's amusement park, a Christmas-themed place not unlike Santa's Village in northern New Hampshire. From here on in, the plot twists require an expert contortionist, so good luck trying to piece this all together as I did.
The amusement park is The Saddest Place on Earth, and everyone kind of splits up to go exploring. Uncle Pete reveals that Morty, as well as the wooden masks in the cabin and the amusement park that Richard saw in his dream are all part of some American Indian supernatural legend, yadda yadda yadda. Supposedly, before Morty ended up at the cabin he was used as a mannequin in the amusement park's gift shop, or as a prop in various attractions. Gee, I wonder what else he may be keeping from Richard?
Troy, Leslie and Ashley decide to take a carousel ride. Of course. Leslie just wants to ride the rides because it pisses off Vance...the other 2 probably tagged along to make sure the ditz doesn't fall off. While they're all riding horseys, Mindy and Gerald wander around a bit before stopping at a sign that says "Black Peter's Gaol." Being the only afro-american couple in the movie, it seems like an odd place to position themselves. Oh, and one of the wooden masks from the opening dream sequence is here as well, though I almost missed it while debating whether the sign thing was just a bad joke in the film, or a poorly-timed coincidence.
Back on the carousel, Leslie starts having some kind of asthma or panic attack, so she whips out an inhaler, and Troy grabs her arm. Before anything interesting can happen, the movie goes back to Mindy. What, did the director run out of Ritalin or something? Mindy sees someone walking toward her, and assuming it's Gerald, she relaxes. Nope. It's Vance, looking and acting like a stalker. Mindy runs away, and calms down when she spots a train ride. Grinning like Donald Trump in a bathtub filled with gold water, Mindy hops aboard the kiddie train. WHEEEEEEE!!!
Gerald is still wandering around as well, looking for Mindy. Maybe these characters should buy a crate of those house arrest tracking devices. I swear, half the movie is watching people wander around and bump into each other, over and over again. So Gerald sees a beckoning silhouette in a window, and assuming it's her, decides to go inside.
It's not her. Mindy is still on the train, trying to figure out how to stop the damned thing. Uh, it's a ride for kids: why not just step off of it? Apparently she didn't think of that. When the train ride does finally stop, it's in a dark tunnel. A figure appears at the mouth of the tunnel, but disappears when Mindy approaches. Before she can investigate any further, someone grabs her and knocks her out.
Mindy wakes up and is very disoriented. She keeps seeing the scary masks and wooden figures everywhere she turns. There are also several shots of the various rides, with no one riding them now. Getting seriously freaked out now, Mindy screams.
Gerald and Richard find and rescue her. As they try to head for the exit, Uncle Pete, Tanya and Leslie show up to lend a hand too. Ashley also turns up, and has a hissy fit because she's not the center of attention anymore. Oh, and Vance arrives last, has a meltdown of his own, then pulls out a gun. Before anyone can stop him, Vance takes one of the vehicles and returns to the house.
Back at the house, he starts venting his anger on luggage, but a trail of money catches his eye. He follows the trail of wadded-up cash to a trapdoor, where he finds stacks and stacks piled away. As greed gets the best of Vance, he bends down to retrieve the cash-stash, but someone sneaks up and uses the trapdoor as a weapon, bashing Vance repeatedly in the ol' noggin. His body is then pulled through the floor, and the door is shut.
Using the 2nd vehicle, everyone else gets backs to the house by this time. They find the vehicle, but with slashed tires. Inside, Ashley tells Richard that she's breaking up with him. At the same moment, Troy and Leslie share a tender moment, but it goes horribly wrong. As Troy tries to console Leslie about Vance's disappearance, he inadvertantly winds up getting turned on. They start to kiss, but Leslie doesn't react well to her own brother trying to get to 2nd base with her. It's not the whole brother-sister thing that gives her cold feet--it's the whole mother-son thing.
SAY WHAT NOW?
Yeah, Troy is her son. She got pregnant in her younger teens, and her folks helped her to keep Troy's birth a secret. They adopted Troy, and she kept up the pretense of being his older sister. No wonder she's so obsessed with her youth. Troy gets upset and runs into the forest. Also lost in the woods is Tanya, while Uncle Pete searches for HER. With all of these characters wandering around, how is it posible that I'M the one who's the most lost???
Well, look at the bright side: at least Uncle Pete ditched the Santa suit! He also caught up with Gerald, who somehow found time to get murdered. The killer crucified him, then shoved a crown of thorns on his head and wooden crucifix through his chest. Uncle Pete grabs a gun from his car and decides to go hunting!
Leslie finds Troy leaning against a tree, and tries to make amends. When he gives her the silent treatment Leslie grabs him, only to discover that it's Morty, dressed in Troy's clothes. As Morty stares at her, Leslie ages several decades in a second. Why can't he just kill her the old-fashioned way?
Richard goes back inside, to get rid of the headache the movie gave him, and probably to fire his agent. He checks on Mindy, who appears to be fast asleep. When he reaches over to wake her up, her eyes snap open, revealing that they've becoming murky. Seems that Morty has possessed our sexy psychic. She caresses Richard's face and tells him that she remembers him as a boy. Or Morty does. Or something.
As she's acting out the role of Morty, Morty himself also comes to life in front of Ashley. Mindy grabs a chalkboard filled with magnetic letters, and Morty pantomimes doing the same thing. She grabs Richard's wrist, and makes him spell the word from his dream, "DIAMETRIC". It turns out that it's an anagram for "MATRICIDE". So the masked creatures were trying to tell him that he killed his own mother? Why not just say the right word the first time?
Wait, it gets better. Richard starts remembering more pieces of his childhood, like his mother having an affair with a man who had a distinctive tattoo. As Morty tries to force Richard to face his dark past, Ashley runs outside and finds Troy, the real one this time. He tries to rape her, but a knee to the crotch makes for a compelling counter-argument. A chase ensues, and we return to Richard and Min-Morty.
When he found his mother having sex with the other man, Richard went to tell his father. Dad made him show him where the wife had been, and Dad confronts her. The masked figure who had turned around to speak to him was his father, wearing some kind of costume. Oh, and Morty had been helping him to bury the mother as well.
Horrified by these memories, Richard tries to escape. Min-Morty starts chasing him, and manages to grab his ankle as he attempts to climb some stairs. The pursuit continues to an upstairs bedroom, until Mindy topples out of a window. Richard sees Morty's "soul" leave her body. Morty becomes solid again, and Richard resumes running away.
Meanwhile, Troy is busy trying to rape Ashley, with little success. She tries braining him with a log, but he just shrugs it off. At one point he starts hopping around, scratching at his body, and she uses the distraction to hit him again. This is starting to look like a Jerry Springer episode...
Richard bumps into Uncle Pete, and tries to tell him about his memory breakthrough. Uncle Pete gets angry and stomps off, and fails to notice Morty turning his head as he walks past the wooden figure. Yikes.
Richard goes outside and finds Ashley standing next to Troy's body. Troy's fear of insects seems to have been valid, because a few are still crawling over his back. Richard sees that Ashley is distraught, but nothing he does seems to calm her down.
Uncle Pete finds one of the bedrooms transformed to look like it did when Richard's mother was kiolled. He moves to a sink, and begins washing up. After removing his shirt, a tattoo on his arm reveals that he was the man Richard saw with his mother the night she died. Richard talks to Ashley a bit more, then goes inside to confront Uncle Pete.
Uncle Pete confirms that he was having the affair with Richard's, and that he is responsible for the mother's death. He was also the other masked figure the night Richard watched them bury his mother's corpse. Morty enters the room, and Richard leaves his uncle alone with Morty, who tries to shoot the animated dummy with his pistol.
Bad plan. All the shooting does is piss Morty off. He grabs Uncle Pete's wrist, and forces him to turn the gun on himself. Morty then staggers outside to chase down Richard and Ashley. As the couple tries to get some distance between them and Morty, Richard sees a familiar landmark and flashes back again to the day his mother was murdered. He keeps hesitating, which allows Morty to catch up. Realizing that his options are limited, Richard changes tactics and tries to fight Morty. Oddly enough, Morty doesn't attack him directly. Instead, he uses some kind of Wooden Guy Magic to raise Richard's mother, who grabs Richard's ankle. As Richard busies himself with the task of fighting a zombie, Morty continues to go after Ashley.
Then it gets even WEIRDER. As Ricard is crawling away from the zombie, 3 more figures show up: the 2 masked figures from his dream, and his younger self. Yup, I shit you not: Big Richard meets Little Richard. Wop Bop Aloo Bop, Awop Bam Boom!
Younger Richard gives Adult Richard a puzzle Wes Craven had in his office, a small globe comprised of puzzle pieces, with 1 section missing. He takes it and uses it as a weapon, by smashing it on his mother's head. The globe breaks open, revealing that the last piece was inside the globe the entire time. Little Him gives Big Him the pieces and tells Richard to re-assemble it.
Every piece seems to make Zombie-Mom weaker. As she falls back into the ground, Richard hugs himself, and thanks him for the puzzle. The masked figures vanish in the darkness, as does Little Richard. Great Gosh Almighty!! Safe, Richard runs deeper into the woods to rescue Ashley.
Ashley runs and runs and runs. As Morty inevitably outpaces her and gets in Ashley's way, Tanya shows up in a skin-tight leotard. Now, both women are fighting off Morty, until Tanya gets thrown into a pond. She climbs out looking royally pissed. And pretty hot.
Just in time, Richard shows up to save the day. He tells Morty that he's sorry, and that he now understands that Morty was trying to protect him. He asks Morty to release Ashley, and the puppet-man complies. Then he extends an arm, and Morty grabs him by the wrist. But instead of attacking Richard, Morty merely holds his hand for a moment. AWWWWWW...
Morty stares at the young couple and mad Tanya for a few more seconds, and now just looks sad. He staggers away from the trio, and walks into the pond. They watch until he goes completely under, then Richard hugs Ashley. There's a brief scene in Wes Craven's office, where Richard gives him the broken puzzle and tells him he "found the missing piece". Richard then reveals that he has dropped out of college, and has also put the family house up for sale. In the final scene, we see a realtor showing the house to a young couple. Their son runs off into the woods and meets Morty. The kid asks if Morty is a "good guy or a bad guy", and Morty kind of smirks. THE END?
Probably not, since there was a sequel. Eh, as weepy and melodramatic as it was, The Fear could have been a LOT worse. I'd give it a solid 3 killer trees outta 5, mostly for Morty's look and the attractive women in the cast.
So what were The Fear's big life-lessons?
-"Getting wood" can be a bad thing.
-You should never trust a guy who dresses like Santa year-round.
-Wes Craven is now seeing patients. I hope my HMO lets me make an appointment...
If all goes well, hopefully I'll get to see The Fear 2 next. Wish me luck!!
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Friday the 13th Part 2
Well, after finding the original Friday the 13th actually pretty scary and fun, I decided to give the first sequel another go too. The good news is that it has scares and stands on its own as horror movie. The bad news? Well, it started a trend that has seen Jason, the movie's "anti-hero" fight a psychic, launch into outer space, and take side-trips to New York and into people's nightmares. If there's a gimmick to exploit, the Friday the 13th franchise has used it at some point.
Luckily for me, the potential for silly gimmicks hadn't yet been thought of by the second film's producers yet. The story itself is refreshingly simple: a few years after the events of the first film, a new group of idealistic young folks have decided to use the old Crystal Lake campsite property to launch a new camp. There are rowdy counselors in training, a skeptical cop...even ol' Crazy Ralph turns up!
But before we get too deep into it, we get a few scenes to resolve the previous film's loose ends...namely, the fate of Alice, the sole survivor of the first film. She's been sort of hiding out since the events of the first film, in a small, secluded house. At the very start, a child is playing in the rain, until the mother calls the kid inside. The second the kid goes, we see a stranger's shoes and pants.
If this really is Jason at the start, then I have a couple of problems with it. First, why are the clothes so clean-looking? I mean, yeah, in the first 3-4 movies he's not yet a zombie(or a slug, if you buy the premise of Jason Goes to Hell. Personally, I don't.), but where would he get clothes that seem relatively clean, and in the correct sizes? Second, how would he NOT attract attention by making this trip? His face is badly deformed, the kid seemed close enough for him to touch, yet there's no reaction of either one of them to indicate that either one saw the other. But that also got me thinking about the recent remake-sequel(requel?) that I enjoyed: why not do a few stand-alone sequels detailing the years from childhood to young adult? Show what Jason did to survive, how he developed his skills with a variety weapons, and so forth. Hey, at least it would be a new way to approach the franchise.
Anyway...the very first scene in the film serves as a very basic summary of how the previous one ended: we see Alice being met by Jason's mother, we see them discuss the drowning, we get most of the highlights of the chase, followed by the beheading, then the dream(?) of Jason getting her in the canoe, the stuff with the cop, etc etc etc...
These scenes are intercut with a scene showing that all of the flashbacks are actually a dream that Alice is having in the bedroom of her secluded little house. She wakes up abruptly, and has a few phone calls. She thinks maybe she's not alone in the house, and decides to check each and every room. The opening kills in Scream and Scream 3 both owe a LOT to this scene. After several false scares, Alice finds a severed head in her fridge, and gets either a knife or perhaps a screwdriver in her ear. Then Jason thoughtfully takes a kettle of boiling water off the stove. He's like Martha Stewart with a psychotic personality...no, wait, he's EXACTLY like her!
After the opening titles, we see a young couple in a pick-up. They stop at a gas station to get directions to the new campground, but have no idea if they're where they should be. All the boyfriend says is something to the effect of, "We're close." Uh huh. As they park and exit the pick-up, they attract the attention of ol' Crazy Ralph, still riding his Huffy 10-speed Holly Hobby bike, complete with the pink basket. Okay, not really, but it would've been great if it WAS that bike.
As our young schmucky couple run to a nearby phonebooth to call the camp, a towtruck pulls up in the background and latches onto their vehicle. Oh, and the directions to the camp are like something you'd hear in an average Scooby-Doo episode, stuff like, "...left onto the Old Spooky Side-road, straight until you see the Old Haunted Bridge..." THAT Shoulda been their first clue! Anyway, by this time Crazy Ralph has shown up to tell the couple that they're doomed, and that was when a weird thought occurred to me: Crazy Ralph is what Scott Bakula could look like in about 20-30 years.
So after Crazy Ralph leaves and the couple get directions to Spooky World Summer Camp("Jinkies!"), they finally notice their vehicle being towed away. Smart AND observant, these two. The guy yells at the tow driver, and they continue to chase the towtruck around the corner to the next street. As they catch up, the couple hear a lot of laughter, and see one of their friends waiting for them. He paid the tow guy to take their truck. Yeesh, what a dick. (Oh, and I'm doubtful that it's the same guy, but the nerdy prankster looks a LOT like the murderous bellhop in that one episode of "The X-Files", where Peter Boyle was a psychic salesman. If it's not the same guy, maybe he had a son?)
After a mostly pointless driving scene to the new camp(the nerdy guy, Ted, tells a joke that ends with the line "...so the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit!"), we've only really learned that the new camp owner is a serious guy. The ride comes to a halt because of a downed tree in the road. As the two guys do all the heavy lifting, the female offers up useful nuggets like "It's spooky out here." Fascinating, Agent Scully. She finds the discarded sign for Camp Crystal Lake as she wanders around aimlessly, and we see that someone in the forest is watching her. With the tree out of the way, the three get back on the road and resume their journey as Jason continues to watch from the trees.
In the following scene, we meet the new guy running the camp and our main group of victims. The group includes Paul Holt, the director of the new camp; Ginny, his cute assistant; Mark, an athletic guy in a wheelchair; Terry, whose incredible ass we see as she chases after her dog; Scott, who has a thing for Terry; and Vickie, Sandra and Jeff round out the majority of the victims...errr, I mean cast. The highlight of this scene is Paul telling the others that the main thing they have to be afraid of is bears. Um, Paul, what about the mass-murdering psycho population?
Anyway, while Paul is holding his "getting to know you" session, Ginny drives up in a car that is so comically beat-up, I thought for a sec that maybe I was watching Jason vs. Herbie Goes Bananas. As Paul continues to speak to the other counselors, Ginny tries to re-park her car, which won't do anything beyond making strange grinding noises. I have to admit, Ginny is one of my favorite Friday girls...cute as heck, and a lot of fun to watch.
Later that night, around a campfire, Paul tells the trainees the legend of Jason. According to his story, Jason grew up feral, stealing what he needed to survive. Oh, and stalking anyone who encroached upon "his" property. Paul also reveals that the opening scene in the movie occurred two months prior to the events of this film, though he only says that she vanished, not that she was killed. It's kind of funny--I mean, I was highly critical about the whole "survivalist" aspect of the 2009 remake, yet they obviously spelled out that very concept in this movie, so in a way, it was actually kind of appropriate. Now, if they can get on the whole "Jason Growing Up" idea I had earlier, all will be right with the world!
Anyway, re-telling the story of Jason and "Camp Blood"(what the locals called Camp Crystal Lake after the various murders and accidents there) was merely a set-up so that Ted can leap out of the darkness with a scary mask and a spear and give them a cheap thrill. Paul winds up the story session by saying that Jason is dead, and the rest is just local superstition. Okay pal, whatever you say...I'm sure it's a bear holding that machete.
As they all get comfortable in the cabin, Scott asks Terry to dance, which she flat-out refuses. Scott, not one to go home empty-handed, dances with her dog instead. Hey, he traded one bitch for another, sweet! While the bizarre bestiality mating ritual is going on, Paul and Ginny are embroiled in a thoroughly compelling chess match. Well, compelling to me, at any rate...but I like watching paint dry, so what the heck do I know? Oh, and Ted is engrossed in a handheld video game. This being the early '80's, my money is on either Frogger or a cheapo sports emulator.
Ginny gets tired of chess, and announces that she's calling it a night. As she leaves, Jeff and Sandra discuss the story Paul told about Camp Blood. Despite Jeff's objections, Sandra announces that she plans to try and find the older campsite the next day. Being a guy, Jeff gives in. Ladies, you control our every waking moment.
Back in her own cabin, Ginny starts undressing. YAY!!! We see Freddy Krueger's shadow pass by her cabin, but he keeps moving. I guess the camera crew were nice enough to show him where HIS movie set was located. Ginny hears a knock, but no one's there when she answers the door. As she turns to go back in, a hand covers her mouth. Relax, Ginny: it's only Paul, pulling all of the same hijinks he warned everyone else about. As they begin making out, a pair of feet are seen walking toward their cabin. It's Crazy Ralph, and he's looking a little "insane in the membrane", if you catch my drift. Anyway, as he's watching them get it on, Ralph hears a noise. He turns around quickly, and Jason uses the distraction to slip a cord around his throat and pin him against a tree, strangling Ralph to death.
The next morning, Ginny wakes up to discover that Paul has left to take the counselors on an early morning jog. He leaves her a helpful message, though: BEWARE OF BEARS. How thoughtful. As Paul leads the joggers through the woods, there are a few shown we haven't seen before, which is kind of weird. Where did all the new people pop out of? Do they even get names???
So the now-larger group ends up having a cookout. Terry GreatAss even brought her dog, Muffin, along for the fun. Too bad Jason doesn't like pets, because the dog disappears right after it encounters him. Oh, and in every scene, there are about 90 gazillion potential weapons shown. Chainsaws, spears, axes...you name it, these people brought it along with them camping stuff. Seriously, A SPEAR???? What's the theme of the camp, "Lord of the Flies"?
And in case you forgot, Sandra still insists on dragging Jeff with her to find "Camp Blood". Before they get to the old campsite, we get to see Ginny in a bikini. Da-amn. Okay, so now that I've drooled all over my laptop, where was I? Oh right: Jeff and Sandra. Despite barbed wire and a very clear "NO TRESPASSING" sign, these two decide to enter the abandoned camp anyway. Idiots. Jason follows them at a leisurely pace, confident that they won't be getting away any time in the near future.
They find the dead dog during their excursion, torn to pieces. His death must been RUFF! Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. As Jeff and Sandy back away from the body, a hand grabs them from behind! Oh, it's just a local cop. Phew. Faster than you can say "red herring", he drives them back to their own campground to report their trespassing to Paul and Ginny. Paul goes easy on them, which pisses off the cop even more.
As he drives away, the cop sees Jason darting around at the edge of the forest. The cop chases him and is surprisingly agile, given his size and age. Still, he does have to stop a few times to catch his breath before resuming his pursuit. He eventually finds himself standing in front of some pretty weather-beaten shacks. Jason must have built himself these shelters. The cop enters one and finds it filled with junk: stuff like an old high chair, filthy rags, a toilet that's pretty grungy...this place wasn't constructed by Bob Vila, that's for sure.
The cop finds another room, and opens the door. Whatever's in there must be pretty nasty, because he is visibly shocked by what he sees. Before he ever gets a chance to call it in, though, Jason caves in the back of his skull with a hammer.
The next scene is back with the campers. Paul announces that he and Ginny would like to give them all a night on the town, because the next day the group will begin the strenuous work of starting to set up the camp. Everyone can go, with the exception of Jeff and Sandra, as punishment for the trespassing incident. In addition to Jeff and Sandra, the small group staying at the camp includes Mark, the guy in the wheelchair; Terry, who still insists on looking for her dog; and a cute brunette who seems to like Mark. As they all head inside, Jason walks around outside, waiting to strike.
Terry wanders around by the lake, sees that she's by herself, and makes the decision to go skinny-dipping. Thank you, Terry, from the bottom of my libido. This chick has an ass you could serve breakfast on. Man oh man. I wonder what she must look like now, 30 years after this movie was released. I swear, this movie had the cutest females of the franchise.
Back in the cabin, Mark and Jeff are arm-wrestling. Jeff cheats and wins. Before they can have a re-match, Sandra entices Jeff with her feminine wiles, and the cute brunette works her own cute charm on Mark. She challenges him to a video-game tournament, before basically throwing herself at him. Wow. Where were these cute, promiscuous women when I went to camp?
Terry finishes her dip in the lake, only to discover that her clothes are no longer where she left them. Oh, and soaking wet, she resembles Amanda Peet. One of the guys from the cabin, Scott, steps out from behind the lifeguard chair, and taunts her with the clothing. He runs off, occassionally dropping an item for her to follow his trail(and get dressed, which makes Scott's plan kinda dumb, in retrospect...)
Terry does catch up to him, and he gets what he deserves, when he accidentally steps into a trap left by Jason: a rope-snare that wraps around his ankles, then lifts him so that he is essentially upside-down. Terry gets her shirt back, and promises Scott that she'll get help. Yeah, sure she will. To her credit, though, Terry does try to help Scott out...but the cabin she goes into first is empty.
Left dangling, Scott hears someone approaching. "Someone" turns out to be Jason, who cuts Scott's throat with his machete like it's butter. Terry, unaware that she's talking to a corpse, returns to rescue him, and also to chastise him for his behavior. As she's speaking, she swings him around to face her, and sees the blood from his gaping throat-wound. Screaming, she runs right at the camera. Ouch!
Meanwhile, we catch up with Ginny, Paul and Ted watching the other counselors dance in a Country-Western bar. Ginny argues with Paul that Jason, if he is real, must have witnessed the first massacre at Camp Crystal Lake. As an adult with the mind of a child, she wonders how seeing his mother kill all of those people before being killed as well, must have disturbed him. True, Ginny. Now shut up and have another beer.
Okay, enough emo-psych 101 bullshit. We go back to the cabin, where Sandra and Jeff are upstairs getting hot 'n' heavy, while Mark and Vickie are planning the very same thing on the couch. I hope it's covered in plastic. Vickie leaves to go get herself ready for kinky chair-sex, and Mark decides to pass the time by going out on the porch and getting hit in the face with a machete. Good thing too, because that's what Jason had in mind as well. It gets better, though: the impact from the blow to the face sends the wheelchair backwards, and Mark's body goes flying off of the porch and down the front steps.
Jason then takes the spear from the cookout scene, and walks into the cabin. Upstairs, Sandra and Jeff are still screwing like proverbial rabbits. As she's about to "arrive", Sandy opens her eyes and sees Jason wearing a sack over his head and brandishing the spear. As she screams, Jason rams the spear down into both of them, impaling the couple and the mattress, which causes the blood to run under the bed. Vickie comes back and sees the couple stuck together, before Jason stabs her in both the leg and the chest.
As Jason is getting rid of bodies, Ginny and Paul return from the bar. No mention is made of Ted or any of the other "new" counselors who also went out to the bar. The couple wander around in the dark a bit, because Jason screwed with the phones and electricity. They wander upstairs and find the bloody bedsheets, just as Jason goes after Paul. Ginny runs like Speedy Gonzalez, and the body of Crazy Ralph makes one more surprise appearance.
Totally freaking out, Ginny leaps through a window to escape. She runs and runs and runs and runs some more, until she finally finds the same decrepit series of shack the cop found earlier. She also discovers the room the cop found right before he died, which contains a ton of corpses. All of the bodies(including Alice, who's seen better days) are arranged around a makeshift altar, which holds the severed head of Jason's mother.
Ginny puts on Mrs. Voorhees' sweater, just as Jason finds her. She pretends to be Pam Voorhees, and he seems to buy it, until he sees the severed head behind her. Angry at her for fooling him(how many times is this doofus going to fall for THAT trick??), Jason prepares to attack Ginny, Paul comes back to fight with him. As the 2 men grapple, Ginny uses the distraction to grab Jason's machete and hit him in the shoulder with it. Now that Jason is dead, Paul and Ginny stumble their way back to the camp. Terry's dog comes back, which is pretty damn bizarre, as it was mutilated earlier. Maybe the dog and Jason share the same regenerative DNA. As the trio prepare to live happily ever after, Jason crashes through a window. He drags Ginny out through the window, and then we discover that it was all a dream. We never get to find out whether or not Paul survived, but the final image is a close-up of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head. I've seen 2 versions of this scene over the years: one version is just a slow crawl to the severed head, and the movie ends. But on TV, I clearly remember an ending where the closeup ends with Mrs. Voorhies opening her eyes and smiling. Either way, it's THE END.
What have I learned from this particular slasher flick?
-Dogs, not cats, have 9 lives.
-Women in the early 1980's were super-hot!
-A Jason-Mama Voorhees team-up would have ROCKED!!!
The first 2 Fridays were a ton of fun. The effects were pretty amazing, the women were attractive, the suspense was pretty decent...this one gets 4 out of 5 killer tres from me. Next week, one of the The Fear movies, depending on how long it takes Netflix to send a replacement disc out.(I was going to do The Fear this weekend, but the DVD seemed faulty, as there was no volume after the menu screen and corporate logo crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens...see ya next week! Oh, and it may be awhile before I get to do Friday 3, as Netflix removed them from the Instant menu. Dagnabbit!
Luckily for me, the potential for silly gimmicks hadn't yet been thought of by the second film's producers yet. The story itself is refreshingly simple: a few years after the events of the first film, a new group of idealistic young folks have decided to use the old Crystal Lake campsite property to launch a new camp. There are rowdy counselors in training, a skeptical cop...even ol' Crazy Ralph turns up!
But before we get too deep into it, we get a few scenes to resolve the previous film's loose ends...namely, the fate of Alice, the sole survivor of the first film. She's been sort of hiding out since the events of the first film, in a small, secluded house. At the very start, a child is playing in the rain, until the mother calls the kid inside. The second the kid goes, we see a stranger's shoes and pants.
If this really is Jason at the start, then I have a couple of problems with it. First, why are the clothes so clean-looking? I mean, yeah, in the first 3-4 movies he's not yet a zombie(or a slug, if you buy the premise of Jason Goes to Hell. Personally, I don't.), but where would he get clothes that seem relatively clean, and in the correct sizes? Second, how would he NOT attract attention by making this trip? His face is badly deformed, the kid seemed close enough for him to touch, yet there's no reaction of either one of them to indicate that either one saw the other. But that also got me thinking about the recent remake-sequel(requel?) that I enjoyed: why not do a few stand-alone sequels detailing the years from childhood to young adult? Show what Jason did to survive, how he developed his skills with a variety weapons, and so forth. Hey, at least it would be a new way to approach the franchise.
Anyway...the very first scene in the film serves as a very basic summary of how the previous one ended: we see Alice being met by Jason's mother, we see them discuss the drowning, we get most of the highlights of the chase, followed by the beheading, then the dream(?) of Jason getting her in the canoe, the stuff with the cop, etc etc etc...
These scenes are intercut with a scene showing that all of the flashbacks are actually a dream that Alice is having in the bedroom of her secluded little house. She wakes up abruptly, and has a few phone calls. She thinks maybe she's not alone in the house, and decides to check each and every room. The opening kills in Scream and Scream 3 both owe a LOT to this scene. After several false scares, Alice finds a severed head in her fridge, and gets either a knife or perhaps a screwdriver in her ear. Then Jason thoughtfully takes a kettle of boiling water off the stove. He's like Martha Stewart with a psychotic personality...no, wait, he's EXACTLY like her!
After the opening titles, we see a young couple in a pick-up. They stop at a gas station to get directions to the new campground, but have no idea if they're where they should be. All the boyfriend says is something to the effect of, "We're close." Uh huh. As they park and exit the pick-up, they attract the attention of ol' Crazy Ralph, still riding his Huffy 10-speed Holly Hobby bike, complete with the pink basket. Okay, not really, but it would've been great if it WAS that bike.
As our young schmucky couple run to a nearby phonebooth to call the camp, a towtruck pulls up in the background and latches onto their vehicle. Oh, and the directions to the camp are like something you'd hear in an average Scooby-Doo episode, stuff like, "...left onto the Old Spooky Side-road, straight until you see the Old Haunted Bridge..." THAT Shoulda been their first clue! Anyway, by this time Crazy Ralph has shown up to tell the couple that they're doomed, and that was when a weird thought occurred to me: Crazy Ralph is what Scott Bakula could look like in about 20-30 years.
So after Crazy Ralph leaves and the couple get directions to Spooky World Summer Camp("Jinkies!"), they finally notice their vehicle being towed away. Smart AND observant, these two. The guy yells at the tow driver, and they continue to chase the towtruck around the corner to the next street. As they catch up, the couple hear a lot of laughter, and see one of their friends waiting for them. He paid the tow guy to take their truck. Yeesh, what a dick. (Oh, and I'm doubtful that it's the same guy, but the nerdy prankster looks a LOT like the murderous bellhop in that one episode of "The X-Files", where Peter Boyle was a psychic salesman. If it's not the same guy, maybe he had a son?)
After a mostly pointless driving scene to the new camp(the nerdy guy, Ted, tells a joke that ends with the line "...so the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit!"), we've only really learned that the new camp owner is a serious guy. The ride comes to a halt because of a downed tree in the road. As the two guys do all the heavy lifting, the female offers up useful nuggets like "It's spooky out here." Fascinating, Agent Scully. She finds the discarded sign for Camp Crystal Lake as she wanders around aimlessly, and we see that someone in the forest is watching her. With the tree out of the way, the three get back on the road and resume their journey as Jason continues to watch from the trees.
In the following scene, we meet the new guy running the camp and our main group of victims. The group includes Paul Holt, the director of the new camp; Ginny, his cute assistant; Mark, an athletic guy in a wheelchair; Terry, whose incredible ass we see as she chases after her dog; Scott, who has a thing for Terry; and Vickie, Sandra and Jeff round out the majority of the victims...errr, I mean cast. The highlight of this scene is Paul telling the others that the main thing they have to be afraid of is bears. Um, Paul, what about the mass-murdering psycho population?
Anyway, while Paul is holding his "getting to know you" session, Ginny drives up in a car that is so comically beat-up, I thought for a sec that maybe I was watching Jason vs. Herbie Goes Bananas. As Paul continues to speak to the other counselors, Ginny tries to re-park her car, which won't do anything beyond making strange grinding noises. I have to admit, Ginny is one of my favorite Friday girls...cute as heck, and a lot of fun to watch.
Later that night, around a campfire, Paul tells the trainees the legend of Jason. According to his story, Jason grew up feral, stealing what he needed to survive. Oh, and stalking anyone who encroached upon "his" property. Paul also reveals that the opening scene in the movie occurred two months prior to the events of this film, though he only says that she vanished, not that she was killed. It's kind of funny--I mean, I was highly critical about the whole "survivalist" aspect of the 2009 remake, yet they obviously spelled out that very concept in this movie, so in a way, it was actually kind of appropriate. Now, if they can get on the whole "Jason Growing Up" idea I had earlier, all will be right with the world!
Anyway, re-telling the story of Jason and "Camp Blood"(what the locals called Camp Crystal Lake after the various murders and accidents there) was merely a set-up so that Ted can leap out of the darkness with a scary mask and a spear and give them a cheap thrill. Paul winds up the story session by saying that Jason is dead, and the rest is just local superstition. Okay pal, whatever you say...I'm sure it's a bear holding that machete.
As they all get comfortable in the cabin, Scott asks Terry to dance, which she flat-out refuses. Scott, not one to go home empty-handed, dances with her dog instead. Hey, he traded one bitch for another, sweet! While the bizarre bestiality mating ritual is going on, Paul and Ginny are embroiled in a thoroughly compelling chess match. Well, compelling to me, at any rate...but I like watching paint dry, so what the heck do I know? Oh, and Ted is engrossed in a handheld video game. This being the early '80's, my money is on either Frogger or a cheapo sports emulator.
Ginny gets tired of chess, and announces that she's calling it a night. As she leaves, Jeff and Sandra discuss the story Paul told about Camp Blood. Despite Jeff's objections, Sandra announces that she plans to try and find the older campsite the next day. Being a guy, Jeff gives in. Ladies, you control our every waking moment.
Back in her own cabin, Ginny starts undressing. YAY!!! We see Freddy Krueger's shadow pass by her cabin, but he keeps moving. I guess the camera crew were nice enough to show him where HIS movie set was located. Ginny hears a knock, but no one's there when she answers the door. As she turns to go back in, a hand covers her mouth. Relax, Ginny: it's only Paul, pulling all of the same hijinks he warned everyone else about. As they begin making out, a pair of feet are seen walking toward their cabin. It's Crazy Ralph, and he's looking a little "insane in the membrane", if you catch my drift. Anyway, as he's watching them get it on, Ralph hears a noise. He turns around quickly, and Jason uses the distraction to slip a cord around his throat and pin him against a tree, strangling Ralph to death.
The next morning, Ginny wakes up to discover that Paul has left to take the counselors on an early morning jog. He leaves her a helpful message, though: BEWARE OF BEARS. How thoughtful. As Paul leads the joggers through the woods, there are a few shown we haven't seen before, which is kind of weird. Where did all the new people pop out of? Do they even get names???
So the now-larger group ends up having a cookout. Terry GreatAss even brought her dog, Muffin, along for the fun. Too bad Jason doesn't like pets, because the dog disappears right after it encounters him. Oh, and in every scene, there are about 90 gazillion potential weapons shown. Chainsaws, spears, axes...you name it, these people brought it along with them camping stuff. Seriously, A SPEAR???? What's the theme of the camp, "Lord of the Flies"?
And in case you forgot, Sandra still insists on dragging Jeff with her to find "Camp Blood". Before they get to the old campsite, we get to see Ginny in a bikini. Da-amn. Okay, so now that I've drooled all over my laptop, where was I? Oh right: Jeff and Sandra. Despite barbed wire and a very clear "NO TRESPASSING" sign, these two decide to enter the abandoned camp anyway. Idiots. Jason follows them at a leisurely pace, confident that they won't be getting away any time in the near future.
They find the dead dog during their excursion, torn to pieces. His death must been RUFF! Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. As Jeff and Sandy back away from the body, a hand grabs them from behind! Oh, it's just a local cop. Phew. Faster than you can say "red herring", he drives them back to their own campground to report their trespassing to Paul and Ginny. Paul goes easy on them, which pisses off the cop even more.
As he drives away, the cop sees Jason darting around at the edge of the forest. The cop chases him and is surprisingly agile, given his size and age. Still, he does have to stop a few times to catch his breath before resuming his pursuit. He eventually finds himself standing in front of some pretty weather-beaten shacks. Jason must have built himself these shelters. The cop enters one and finds it filled with junk: stuff like an old high chair, filthy rags, a toilet that's pretty grungy...this place wasn't constructed by Bob Vila, that's for sure.
The cop finds another room, and opens the door. Whatever's in there must be pretty nasty, because he is visibly shocked by what he sees. Before he ever gets a chance to call it in, though, Jason caves in the back of his skull with a hammer.
The next scene is back with the campers. Paul announces that he and Ginny would like to give them all a night on the town, because the next day the group will begin the strenuous work of starting to set up the camp. Everyone can go, with the exception of Jeff and Sandra, as punishment for the trespassing incident. In addition to Jeff and Sandra, the small group staying at the camp includes Mark, the guy in the wheelchair; Terry, who still insists on looking for her dog; and a cute brunette who seems to like Mark. As they all head inside, Jason walks around outside, waiting to strike.
Terry wanders around by the lake, sees that she's by herself, and makes the decision to go skinny-dipping. Thank you, Terry, from the bottom of my libido. This chick has an ass you could serve breakfast on. Man oh man. I wonder what she must look like now, 30 years after this movie was released. I swear, this movie had the cutest females of the franchise.
Back in the cabin, Mark and Jeff are arm-wrestling. Jeff cheats and wins. Before they can have a re-match, Sandra entices Jeff with her feminine wiles, and the cute brunette works her own cute charm on Mark. She challenges him to a video-game tournament, before basically throwing herself at him. Wow. Where were these cute, promiscuous women when I went to camp?
Terry finishes her dip in the lake, only to discover that her clothes are no longer where she left them. Oh, and soaking wet, she resembles Amanda Peet. One of the guys from the cabin, Scott, steps out from behind the lifeguard chair, and taunts her with the clothing. He runs off, occassionally dropping an item for her to follow his trail(and get dressed, which makes Scott's plan kinda dumb, in retrospect...)
Terry does catch up to him, and he gets what he deserves, when he accidentally steps into a trap left by Jason: a rope-snare that wraps around his ankles, then lifts him so that he is essentially upside-down. Terry gets her shirt back, and promises Scott that she'll get help. Yeah, sure she will. To her credit, though, Terry does try to help Scott out...but the cabin she goes into first is empty.
Left dangling, Scott hears someone approaching. "Someone" turns out to be Jason, who cuts Scott's throat with his machete like it's butter. Terry, unaware that she's talking to a corpse, returns to rescue him, and also to chastise him for his behavior. As she's speaking, she swings him around to face her, and sees the blood from his gaping throat-wound. Screaming, she runs right at the camera. Ouch!
Meanwhile, we catch up with Ginny, Paul and Ted watching the other counselors dance in a Country-Western bar. Ginny argues with Paul that Jason, if he is real, must have witnessed the first massacre at Camp Crystal Lake. As an adult with the mind of a child, she wonders how seeing his mother kill all of those people before being killed as well, must have disturbed him. True, Ginny. Now shut up and have another beer.
Okay, enough emo-psych 101 bullshit. We go back to the cabin, where Sandra and Jeff are upstairs getting hot 'n' heavy, while Mark and Vickie are planning the very same thing on the couch. I hope it's covered in plastic. Vickie leaves to go get herself ready for kinky chair-sex, and Mark decides to pass the time by going out on the porch and getting hit in the face with a machete. Good thing too, because that's what Jason had in mind as well. It gets better, though: the impact from the blow to the face sends the wheelchair backwards, and Mark's body goes flying off of the porch and down the front steps.
Jason then takes the spear from the cookout scene, and walks into the cabin. Upstairs, Sandra and Jeff are still screwing like proverbial rabbits. As she's about to "arrive", Sandy opens her eyes and sees Jason wearing a sack over his head and brandishing the spear. As she screams, Jason rams the spear down into both of them, impaling the couple and the mattress, which causes the blood to run under the bed. Vickie comes back and sees the couple stuck together, before Jason stabs her in both the leg and the chest.
As Jason is getting rid of bodies, Ginny and Paul return from the bar. No mention is made of Ted or any of the other "new" counselors who also went out to the bar. The couple wander around in the dark a bit, because Jason screwed with the phones and electricity. They wander upstairs and find the bloody bedsheets, just as Jason goes after Paul. Ginny runs like Speedy Gonzalez, and the body of Crazy Ralph makes one more surprise appearance.
Totally freaking out, Ginny leaps through a window to escape. She runs and runs and runs and runs some more, until she finally finds the same decrepit series of shack the cop found earlier. She also discovers the room the cop found right before he died, which contains a ton of corpses. All of the bodies(including Alice, who's seen better days) are arranged around a makeshift altar, which holds the severed head of Jason's mother.
Ginny puts on Mrs. Voorhees' sweater, just as Jason finds her. She pretends to be Pam Voorhees, and he seems to buy it, until he sees the severed head behind her. Angry at her for fooling him(how many times is this doofus going to fall for THAT trick??), Jason prepares to attack Ginny, Paul comes back to fight with him. As the 2 men grapple, Ginny uses the distraction to grab Jason's machete and hit him in the shoulder with it. Now that Jason is dead, Paul and Ginny stumble their way back to the camp. Terry's dog comes back, which is pretty damn bizarre, as it was mutilated earlier. Maybe the dog and Jason share the same regenerative DNA. As the trio prepare to live happily ever after, Jason crashes through a window. He drags Ginny out through the window, and then we discover that it was all a dream. We never get to find out whether or not Paul survived, but the final image is a close-up of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head. I've seen 2 versions of this scene over the years: one version is just a slow crawl to the severed head, and the movie ends. But on TV, I clearly remember an ending where the closeup ends with Mrs. Voorhies opening her eyes and smiling. Either way, it's THE END.
What have I learned from this particular slasher flick?
-Dogs, not cats, have 9 lives.
-Women in the early 1980's were super-hot!
-A Jason-Mama Voorhees team-up would have ROCKED!!!
The first 2 Fridays were a ton of fun. The effects were pretty amazing, the women were attractive, the suspense was pretty decent...this one gets 4 out of 5 killer tres from me. Next week, one of the The Fear movies, depending on how long it takes Netflix to send a replacement disc out.(I was going to do The Fear this weekend, but the DVD seemed faulty, as there was no volume after the menu screen and corporate logo crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens...see ya next week! Oh, and it may be awhile before I get to do Friday 3, as Netflix removed them from the Instant menu. Dagnabbit!
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