Chopping Mall

Today's SAW, Chopping Mall, is also known by the title Killbots, in some regions. THE END...Wait, what? I still have to watch it? Fine. But you guys are paying at least part of my therapy bills. Oh...and "SPOILERS"!

The first scene shows a thief preparing to steal all of the treasures that Link fetched for Zelda over the past few decades. He smashes the display case to smithereens(Yay! I got to use "smithereens" in a sentence!), then grabs handfuls of jewels, and stuffs them away. He boldly walks away with a huge shit-eating grin plastered on his face, until a voice orders him to stop.

The voice belongs to a security robot, which I while now attempt to describe: Imagine Stewie Griffin's head encased in metal, KITT the talking car's red front panel as the "eyes" of the robot, and Johnny 5's body from those Short Circuit movies. That monstrosity is a Killbot, ladies and gentleman, in all of its' 1986 glory. Forget it, yer payin' for ALL of my therapy bills!

The dumbass thief shoots at the robot, but aims at the place where it would have feet. Yeah, because you wouldn't want to shoot out it's electronic eye, or its' claw-like hands. Hell, just hopping on top of it and bashing it with the butt of the gun would cause more damage than what this guy did.

The guy  runs around a corner, passing a McDonald's and a nondescript "Vitamins" store. Irony, or coincidence? The robot shoots a taser into the back of the fleeing criminal, and we discover that the whole thing was a demo reel, in an attempt to try to sell the security guard robots to investors and mall  owners.

An attractive blond steps up to a podium, and introduces the audience to the president of the corporation that developed the technology, and he in turn unveils 3 prototypes that will soon be "guarding" the local mall they happen to be using for the demonstration. A skeptical couple in the audience refer to the robots as Moe, Larry and Curly.

Then there are concerns among the crowd over how the security 'bots would know the difference between, say, a thief and an average schmoe who just happens to be working late. One of the robots is activated, and the corporate guy uses an ID tag to identify himself to the robot. He then assures the crowd that "absolutely nothing" would cause the robots to go against their programming. Gosh, is that a note of ironic foreshadowing in the script?

Then the title and theme music start up. The scenes in the credits montage show how "wacky" malls can get: the film being sped up, meals getting spilled, a guy tripping on an escalator when several beauties in bikinis travel in the opposite direction. Yup, those malls sure can be zany locations, huh?

Anyway, the story resumes at the imaginatively-named "Restaurant". There, we meet Alison and Suzie, 2 blond waitresses. Suzie is trying to convince Alison to go on a double-date with her that evening, but Alison isn't too sure about going.

We leave them for a short bit of nonsense involving the technician who switched on the security robot earlier. After several lightning strikes, he tries to concentrate on a newspaper crossword puzzle, and is oblivious over the number of times the lightning hits near the mall and the mall's power lines. Nice job, man...you're going to live a long, full life.

His control panel begins to smoke. He freaks out and turns around, only to realize that one of the robots "woke up", and is ready to attack. It plunges a prod through him, and he exits the movie. Farewell, generic technician guy, your work here is done...

*moment of silence*

Okay enough of that nonsense, we need to return to the movie's nonsense. As more lightning strikes try to destroy the mall and the city it was constructed within, 3 more characters are introduced: Ferdy, Greg and Mike, a trio of young fellers who work in a clothing store. They also discuss a newlywed couple who are meeting up with them and their dates for an after hours party in the mall, Rick and Linda.

Speaking of Rick and Linda, they're stranded by the side of the road, because something's wrong under the hood of their pickup truck(According to the side of the vehicle, they operate an auto repair business together...). Rick tries to fix the engine, until Linda pushes him aside, then repairs it in seconds. They kid each other about who has the best skills to do the job right, then hurry off again to meet up Suzie and the  rest of the late-night revelers.

As the mall prepares to close for the night, Mike sneaks up on his girlfriend Leslie, and gives her an embrace and a kiss. She seems to like it, but her father is less than thrilled to see them together like that. Leslie lies to Dad, claiming that Mike was going to gallantly escort her to a birthday party for Suzie, but the old man still acts like a crab towards both of them. Dagnabbit! Consarnit! Flibberty-gibberty! Get off my lawn, you kids!

After a brief, unsatisfying scene in a womens' locker room, we see a guy in a lab coat walk into the security room, looking for Marty, the guy who was impaled. This is technician Nessler, and he's played by the grossly underrated Gerrit Graham(Seriously: check him out in CHUD II or the defunct television series Now and Again. He's a very gifted comedian.), who doesn't even look up as he enters the dark chamber. After eating the remnants of a doughnut that Marty had started on, Nessler sits down at the control panel to read and hang out.

That's followed by a long bit where Nessler gets paranoid, and looks around the room. This happens about 100 times in a row. Finally,  Nessler is killed by one the robots, when a taser gets him in the back of the neck, and yanks his head backwards. Ouch.

The mall party goes into full swing, and Alison and Ferdy are introduced to each other. They get all gushy around each other, and find a nice, dark spot in which to....make small talk. At one point, they almost get drowned out by their friends having sex. Ferdy offers to take Alison home, and she responds by removing his glasses, and cuddling up instead.

One of the janitors, Walter, is then seen mopping up the floor before leaving for the night. A pair of his co-workers walk by, and tease him as they head for the exit. Apparently, past a certain time, the mall doors are sealed automatically, and anyone left inside would have to wait until the next morning to get out again. Gee, that seems like a crappy design, at least for anyone working late.

Walter continues his mopping, unaware of a security robot approaching him from behind. The machine spills his bucket of water, then demands to see Walt's employee badge. Walt shows it, then gets electrocuted while standing in the filthy water puddle. For a brief moment, you can even see a cartoony, silly image of Walt's skeleton as he gets zapped. After he falls down as a smoking heap, Mike and Leslie debate over smoking after sex. Heh.

They get somewhat dressed, and Mike goes looking for a pack of cigarettes. At a cigarette vending machine, he is confronted by a robot, and quickly shows it his ID. He gets tasered, then the robot approaches his body. Leslie shows up soon after to look for her boyfriend, and finds him on the floor with his throat cut.

A security 'bot chases her down the corridor, and her friends hear her frantic screams. Just as Leslie gets back to the store, the psychotic machine blows her head up with a laser beam. Yeah. A laser beam. Then BOOM. Only then do her friends realize that something might be wrong. The surviving group run away, and the robots shoot out the glass storefront to pursue them.

The robots use their lasers to  blow up everything in sight: furniture, counters, lamps, televisions...it's like a Seagal film, but the robots are better actors. The teens run into the warehouse area, and then hear the security doors at the entrances slam shut for the evening. They pile as much heavy furniture as they can find in front of the door, then look for another exit.

They find an air duct, and the guys help their dates to climb up into them. Suzie gets claustrophobic, and the other girls try to encourage her to keep moving, lest the robots decide to roast them alive in the narrow space. That doesn't sound like much fun!

The guys, in the meantime, decide to get some makeshift weapons from a nearby sporting goods store. they break in, and go directly over to the handguns and rifles. We get a gun montage(MONTAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), plus they also grab a propane tank. One of them fires a couple of shoots into the air, then they wait for the attack to commence.

One measly robot shows up, but between the 3 of them, they can't seem to make even a dent in it. Ferdy rolls the fuel tank into the path of their opponent, and they aim for that instead. BOOM! goes the robot!

The women hear the ruckus, and Suzie loses her cool yet again. Didn't see THAT coming, huh? She decides to turn back, and rejoin the guys. Tired of listening to her, they all go back. One of the bots hides in a dark corner of the mall to wait everyone out, while the guys load up an elevator with gasoline and weapons.

The security bot that fell onto its' side, manages to get upright again, using its' extenders and gears to push off of the floor. As the 3 men try to rig up a trap in the elevator, the hiding sentry reveals itself to terrorize the women. Suzie continues to be loud and useless, tripping and spilling fuel all over herself. The robot sets her on fire, and they all run away again.

Alison shoots at the elevator, setting off a chain reaction where a tiny explosion occurs, the elevator plummets to the ground, and a much bigger explosion rocks them around. They find a resting spot, yell at one another, then decide to go back out and start the process over again. One of the guys is launched over a ledge, but the rest escape into a large department store. The robots try to trap them by choosing several access points.

While waiting to die, Alison proposes a new plan: Gather several mannequins together, and use them as a blockade to temporarily confuse the machines. The survivors then fire at the kill-bots from behind the mannequins, before running for the zillionth time. The main robots gets fried and blows up, but not before electrocuting both Mike and Leslie(I think). Awwwwwwww!

In the dark corridors behind the main mall, Alison and Ferdy sneak around in different areas, apparently looking for trouble. A robot advances on Alison, and she screams. The sound helps Ferdy to pinpoint her location. Grady shatters the thing's eye plate, and it tries to track him by sound. Alison watches Ferdy get cornered, and he is swiftly dispatched.

Alison hides beneath a display counter, and the killer bot goes away. She makes a noise, and tries to confuse the bot by hiding in a pet store, hoping that the animal noises will mask her own. Then she changes her mind, and decides to dangle on a railing instead. Her hand slips, and Alison crashes into a display beneath the railing.

She must have been injured, because she now limps her way into a paint store. She open many buckets of paint, creating quite a mess on the floor. She waits for the bot to follow her into the mess, then she escapes and lights a flare. After flinging it, the paint shop erupts into an inferno.

Alison stumbles her way to the exit, only to see Ferdy pop up again, very much alive. They exit together. THE END.

A mediocre horror-comedy, saved by a terrific, out-of-nowhere headsplosion. And, hey, it did have an impressive number of victims. Still pretty awful as a movie, though, so I'm giving it 2.75 killer trees out of 5. Bah humbug!

And what did I learn from Chopping Mall?

-Lightning is magic.

-Mannequins are easily mistakable for human beings, what with the similar body heat, range of movement, and all.

-When going to the Mall, remember to stop at the Vitamins Store, get a nice outfit from from the Clothes Store, then finish the day enjoying your meal at Restaurant. Low-budget is fun!

No clue what my next movie will be. Hopefully, it'll be somewhat more coherent than this one was.

Dr. Giggles

This time, we have a classic from the early 1990's, Dr. Giggles. It's a pretty vicious movie, and I was always amazed that they never did a sequel or follow-up of any kind. Anyway, get ready for SPOILERS, and let's watch this one together...

The movie begins with a pretty nifty credit sequence following various blood cells through a body. It's similar to the same opening credits for Jason X....anyone out there know if any other slasher films do something like this in the opening?

Anyway, there's a muffled voice speaking as we travel through someones bloodstream, and then an incision reveals Dr. Giggles looking into a man's open chest. He's describing what he's doing as he performs his "surgery", and the patient is revealed to be a corpse in a suit, who was apparently killed so that Dr. Giggles could "perform" surgery. Pretty demented, right off the bat. He goes on to point out that the patient just died from a heart attack.

Some real doctors show up, revealing that Dr. Giggles is a genius, but also a maniac. By the time they find the body he cut open, Dr. Giggles has already moved on. He has, in fact, moved to the lobby, where he sneaks up behind a pretty nurse/receptionist to rub her shoulders. She thinks that he's the dead man, Dr. Phillips, until she turns and sees that Dr. Giggles was using the severed arms of the doctor to massage her. She screams, he giggles, and the whole thing goes out over the PA system.

The real doctors prepare to leave the surgical area, but they hear more giggling. It turns out that Dr. Giggles released all of the patients, and several are watching from the observation deck above the surgery. As the staff reacts in horror, the loony patients laugh even louder at them.

Then Dr. Giggles turns on the microphone for the intercom system. He announces in a soft voice that "laughter is the best medicine". then we see a doctor leaving the facility. He takes out his employee card to swipe it at the electronic security gate, but Dr. Giggles grabs his arm from outside of the car. He then swipes the card with a bloodstained glove on his hand, and there's no sign of the doctor he stole the card and the car from.

A map shows him heading to a town called Moorehigh. Then we see the town itself, which looks like something out a film from 1950. Teens are swarming out of the local high school, including 2 of our main characters, Jennifer Campbell and Max Anderson. She's played by the rather fetching Holly Marie Combs(best known as one of the sisters on Charmed), and he's portrayed by the late Glenn Quinn, who we watched in that RSVP movie a while back.

They kiss, and Max tells Jen that she landed a job for the summer at the local paper. When they lock lips again, their friends show up to discuss a summer party they're all going to attend. There's another familiar face in the cast now....Doug E. Doug, a pretty funny actor who has been in numerous sitcoms and films. He was the only thing I enjoyed in Billy Cosby's last sitcom, the guy just makes me laugh.

As they leave school grounds, Max swoops in for a kiss, but Jen gives him an abrupt brush-off, leaving him looking hurt and confused. Then Jen goes to an appointment with her doctor. Jen apparently has a heart condition, but the doctor tells her not to worry too much about it.

Then we see a decrepit old house, washed out and grey. Inside, Dr. Giggles breaks down a wall with either a lug wrench or a crowbar, revealing that the wall was built to hide a doctor's office. Strange....

Jen walks home, and glances up at the old house Dr. Giggles is in. She walks a little bit faster, then hears Dr. Giggles hammering away at the walls inside the house. The distraction nearly makes her collide with her nasty neighbor Mrs. Henderson, and her small dog, Cheap Jump-Scare.

Mrs. Henderson starts to get nosy, asking Jen about the little heart monitor she has looped into her jeans, asking if it's a radio. Jen decides to be vague, and continues to walk home. Mrs. Henderson makes face, and I swear that she looks like one of the guys from The Kids In The Hall, playing one of their drag characters. Yeesh. She's the gorilla my dreams, I know that much!

Finally arriving at her house, Jen tells her father about her appointment, and her dad tries to assure her that her eventual heart surgery will work out fine. We also learn that her mother died, and she hates her stepmother. Gee, that's original. If I had to drink a beer while watching every movie made to see if anyone LIKES their stepmother, I'd be sober as Hell.

Back at Casa de Giggles, our maniac enters the now-revealed office. It was his father's office, a Dr. Evan Rendell. Okay, wait, I'm pausing the movie for a sec...So Dr. Giggles is the son of a doctor Rendell, right? And the shrinks at the facility where he was staying knew about the father....sooooo, why don't they know Dr. Giggles by his real name at the beginning? I mean, sure, maybe for some reason his first name was some kind of mystery, but just call him Mr. Rendell or something. I hate mistakes like that in movies, it's just sloppy writing that would have taken 2 minutes to rewrite.

Rendell finds a picture of his father in a lab coat and carrying a medical bag. That takes us to a flashback, showing the elder Rendell coming home from work one day. He kisses his wife, who whispers to him that their son is in the den.

In the den, Dr. Giggles(Boy Giggles?) has set up a make-believe doctor's office, complete with a crudely made plaque bearing his name and a teddy bear being cut open. As bizarre as this movie is, it's also a frickin' riot-and-a-half. When the boy sees his father standing in the doorway, he rushes over to him and announces that he wants to grow up to be a doctor too. Then, as they leave the den, the camera pans around the room, revealing that the kid has cut open at least 10-15 other stuffed animals, and then sewn them up again. This kid should have been cast as Pugsley in those Addams Family movies.

As the flashback ends, Rendell wipes tears out of his eyes, and promises to get revenge on the townspeople for what they did to the elder Rendell. I hope they eventually tells us what that was.

The happy teens pull up at the Rendell house, planning to have their party inside. Boy, that sounds like a great idea! The party consists of the Doug E. Doug character, Trotter; a drunk party animal named Stu; Leigh, Trotters's girlfriend, and Dianne, Stu's girlfriend. No sign of Jen or Max yet, which seems kind of weird.

So then Trotter starts to tell the story of Dr. Giggles. His dad, who we already saw was a local physician, apparently used a lot of unorthodox and deadly treatments on his patients. After numerous deaths, the town formed a lynch mob, Freddy Krueger-style, and stoned the doctor to death outside his home. The story ends with Trotter claiming that no one ever found his son, which again seems like bad writing. I mean, SOMEONE must have been able to connect the dots between a maniacal doctor's missing son, and the new asylum patient with a violent streak and delusions of being a doctor, right? And again, how do a bunch of local kids know that Dr. Giggles is actually named Evan, if the doctors at the mental hospital couldn't figure it out?

Anyway, Stu begins rapping on the walls, telling the others that Rendell had secret rooms and passages built throughout the house. As he gets Trotter and Leigh to help him find the hollow wall, both Stu and Dianne sneak out to the jeep, after locking the other couple inside the old house. Nice, they just left their friends to die. Jerks.

Trotter injures his shoulder trying to break down the door, and Leigh accuses him of pulling some kind of prank on her. Shen then suggests that if he can get them out, she might have sex with him later. Yeah, right. Get it in writing, Trotter.

When we next see Dr. Giggles, he has on a suit and a lab coat, To complete the look, Giggles also finds his father's pocketwatch and medical bag.He admires himself in the mirror, then promises to make the townsfolk of Moorehigh pay for killing dear ol' dad.

In the dark, Trotter and Leigh hear Dr. Giggles moving from room to room, but assume that Stu must have returned. They call out Stu's name, but when the doctor lets out his trademark giggle, they realize that he isn't Stu. Duh.

They see someone standing right outside the door, so Trotter walks up to the door, and looks through a small opening in it. Trotter then screams, and puts his hands over his eyes, When Leigh rushes over to help him, he shows her that he's fine...it was just a dumb prank.

Well, Leigh didn't find it funny, and neither did Dr. Giggles. The killer pushes a long needle through the keyhole, and injects Trotter with some kind of poison. As Leigh accuses him of playing another prank, Trotter coughs up blood and keels over.

The Doctor then enters the room, and draws another syringe of the stuff he injected into Trotter. The sound of Leigh screaming draws the attention of Mrs. Henderson and her attack poodle. She decides to take the dog for a walk, and marches right up to Rendell's front door. You go, man-girl!

She tries yelling at the front door, which achieves nothing, then attempts to look through a boarded-up window to no avail. As Mrs. Henderson turns to leave, she hears someone in the house giggling. I can't imagine who it might be.

She turns back to the house, and freaks out when she sees someone staring at her through a small peephole in the door. She runs away, dragging the dog with her. Dr. Giggles watches her leave, and does nothing but say, "Hmmm...)

The next scene shows us a carnival in full swing. The camera backs up, revealing that the carnival is a ways off, and that a group of teens are parked in what I assume is probably a popular spot for making out. This is where Max and Jen have been all night, swapping spit. As Jen scolds Max about drinking, the local cops arrive to break up the party. Officers MacGruder and Reitz watch and laugh as all of the cars peel away in 90 different directions.

As the cops head out on patrol again, they get a call about a disturbance at Mrs. Henderson's house. MacGruder tells Reitz that most of the 911 calls they get come from her. For her part, Mrs.(Why the "Mrs."? She clearly lives alone....unless she married her dog.)Henderson is in her bathroom, preparing to go to bed. she gets a sleeping pill and a glass of water ready, but hears that damned dog barking again, and decides to check out the commotion first.

After letting the dog into the house, Mrs. Henderson returns to her pill in the bathroom. She doesn't notice it, but the pill changed from a red one to a green one. You would think she'd notice something like that.

She swallows the pill, and jumps into bed, where her throat closes up. As Mrs. Henderson is gasping for air, she falls to the floor and calls 911. She meets Dr. Giggles, who sticks a tongue depressor into her mouth, then shoves a long probe up her nose and into her brain. It pretty much kills her in an instant.

MacGruder and Reitz pull up to the Henderson house, and cautiously walk through the front door. MacGruder tells Reiz the rest of the story about the Rendell family. It seems that the elder Dr. Rendell had a wife with a heart condition. His murder victims were all young women, in the hope of discovering a way to replace his wife's ticker with a healthier one.

The two cops split up, and Reitz fails to hear or see a door just behind him opening up. An old ironing board comes crashing out, giving both men a serious fright. when MacGruder comes running back to the other man's position, they briefly discuss the whereabouts of Evan Rendell Jr., AKA Dr. Giggles, but MacGruder doesn't want to have any in-depth discussion about him.

They approach a staircase, and Reitz claims that he can detect the scent of alcohol. On their way outside, Reitz finds a torn piece of fabric that he thinks is interesting, but MacGruder wants to leave, because he needs to take a whizz.

Back at the carnival, Max convinces Jen to ride the Ferris wheel with him. As they ride, she finally tells him about her heart condition. After Max tells her that he loves her, Jen reveals something else: her mother died in a hospital. Ever since, Jen has had a phobia about hospitals.

After the ride ends, she tells Max that she needs some time by herself. She walks home in the dark, and finds her dad and stepmom screwing like rabbits upstairs. Frustrated, she removes her little cardiac monitor and flings it into a nearby fish tank.

Dr. Giggles approaches her house, but Stu noisily arrives a few houses away, so the killer decides to take him out first. Stu and Dianne sneak past his younger brother, who is in a stupor playing Dr. Mario. A nuke wouldn't distract him.

In his bedroom, Stu hands his girlfriend a slinky negligee. she returns the favor by giving him a condom. As they each start to undress in different rooms, Dr. Giggles walks through the front door, right past Kid Nintendo. Then we get the all-important "dressing up for sex" montage.

Stu drops the condom in the toilet while trying to put it on, and uses someone's toothbrush to fish it out. As he's doing that, Dianne decides to check herself out in a bedroom mirror. She loudly announces that she's ready, but Stu is still busy trying to get the condom. I feel sorry for whoever uses that toothbrush.

Dianne starts to feel cold, so she leaves the bedroom to check the thermostat. As she adjusts it, Dr. Giggles attacks her. He pushes Dianne against the wall, and rams a thermometer down her throat, then calmly wipes his face when her blood sprays on him.

Stu finally gets the condom back, but throws it away after seeing how soggy it is. He then returns the toothbrush to the holder it was in, puts his cap on backwards, and heads back to the bedroom.

The light are out, so Stu climbs right into the bed. Under the blankets, he comes face to face with Dr. Giggles. The killer brings out a scalpel, and Stu screams loud enough to make even his zombie brother take notice. Then we see Stu's corpse in bed, with a spreading red stain on the sheet covering his crotch. As Dr. Giggles passes the kid playing video games again, he pronounces him, "Terminal", then leaves.

Jen is sitting in her living room, looking at old photo albums. She sees pictures of her parents in happier times, then sees a photo of her prom night with Max, and realizes that she shouldn't keep pushing him away. She grabs her jacket and decides to head back to the carnival to speak with him. The second she exits the house, Dr. Giggles enters through another door. Doesn't anyone in this town believe in locking doors?

Jen's father hears the second door, and assumes it to be his daughter coming home. After his new wife makes some catty remarks, he decides to go check on his daughter. He doesn't find her in her room, but he does find the monitor in the fish tank.

Worried that Jen might be in trouble, her dad starts to get dressed. The new wife makes several bitchy comments about Jen, but that only strengthens his resolve to find her. The evil stepmother stomps into the kitchen to eat something fattening.

At the carnival, Max meets up with a couple of girls who are trying to drive a wedge between him and Jen. they mention a party, and Max decides to go with them to check it out. I'll bet nothing goes wrong.

Jen's stepmom takes her bowl of mystery goop to the bedroom, and begins to smear it all over her vanity mirror. Then she sees the medical bag on her bed, and Dr. Giggles grabs her. He gags the surprised woman, then gets his hand on a tube among his medical equipment. it turns out to be a liposuction hose. He removes her gag, then shoves the hose down her throat. After he removes fat from her body, he cranks the suction, and the tube starts filling with blood.

At the "secret" party, Max is showing one of the girls from the carnival how to play a saxophone. After he explains how it all works, he suggests that she give it a try. She apparently has never seen a musical instrument before, because she gives it a blowjob instead. When she does manage to play a note, it sounds like a rooster in a blender. On the plus side, I suddenly want to be a saxophone.

Stupidity must be sexy, because soon Max finds himself kissing this chick. The other girl who was with them glares at the two, then leaves. It's reassuring to know that at least one person in this movie has standards.

Dr. Giggles goes looking around the house, and discovers the waterlogged heart monitor. That leads to a flashback to his childhood, to the day his mother died of heart failure. His dad sat at her deathbed sobbing, then covered his face and began giggling. As his laughter sounds more and more unstable, the young boy joins in. The flashback ends, and Dr. Giggles vows to save Jen's life. So wait, now he's the hero?

Jen wanders around the carnival, until running into the girl who left the party. Seeing her chance to screw her friend over, the girl offers to show Jen where Max is. Jen interrupts the makeout session, and tells him off, before going back to the carnival.

Dr. Giggles is also at the carnival. He examines a picture of Jen, then scans the immediate crowd. Jen appears and looks scared, but it turns out that she spotted her father in the crowd. She quickly runs into a funhouse to hide for a bit. And then Max shows up. anyone else want to pop up at the carnival? Cujo? Waldo? Bigfoot? Yup, one more person showed up, the girl who lured Max to the party. Oh, and I remember her name now: Coreen.

Jen finds herself in a mirror maze. Max calls her name, but she won't respond at first. Coreen sees Max and tries to get his attention, but she crashes into a glass wall, possibly breaking her nose. Dr. Giggles shows up at her side and giggles.

Jen hears Coreen gasp, and tries to locate Max. She finds a door with an arrow on it, and enters a new chamber. The door, which has a revolving mechanism, revolves to a closed position again. As Jen walks away, the door swivels again, revealing the other girl attached to the door with some type of yellow adhesive.

Jen doesn't scream, but she does back away, unaware that the killer is behind her now. Dr. Giggles scares her, then tells her that the tape over Coreen's mouth is "ouchless". Jen is startled enough to stumble into one of the glass walls, and she crashes through it.

As Jen recovers, Dr. Giggles takes out a syringe with a needle the size of a schoolbus. Max comes to the rescue, but he and Jen have a glass wall between them. She runs to get away from the crazy doctor, but the emergency exit she finds won't open.

As Dr. Giggles gets closer, Jen finally manages to force open the exit. She takes off running, then stumbles toward some trees, and falls into a ditch. She seems unconscious at first, but gets up when the killer gets within a few feet of her position.

She finds herself close to the Henderson house, but of course we know that Mrs. Henderson is dead. Jen doesn't know that though, and she wastes valuable seconds knocking and trying to get in. As Dr. Giggles narrows the gap between them, Jen runs into the street, where a police vehicle nearly demolishes her.

At the police HQ, both Max and Jen explain that a maniac dressed as a doctor is after Jen. Nobody believes him except for Reitz, who proposes that the killer is the presumed-dead son of Dr. Rendell. None of the others cops buy his theory, and he gets demoted to desk duty for the time being.

Out in the hall, Reitz confronts MacGruder about not backing him up. Max hears their conversation, and takes in all the details. The 2 cops move the chat to the locker room, where MacGruder pulls out a bottle of liquor and prepares to launch another flashback our way.

The flashback goes back 35 years, to the night after the elder Rendell was found to be a murderer. The angry vigilante group had already murdered Dr. Rendell, and MacGruder was posted in the morgue, to guard the bodies of all of the victims, Rendell included.

Anyway,in the middle of the night, the cop hears a noise coming from the morgue. He grabs a flashlight to check it out, and hears the sound again: giggling. And it's coming from one of the covered bodies.

He removes the sheet over Mrs. Rendell's corpse, and stares in horror when he sees the dead woman's stomach begin to wriggle and swell. A knife bursts through the corpse's torso, then a pair of bloody hands pop out. Rendell Junior sits up, covered in blood. MacGruder fainted, and the boy was gone when he woke up. The boy even cleaned up the blood, and sewed his mother's stomach together again. The old cop tells Reitz that he kept it to himself, because he knew that no one would believe him.

At Jen's house, the chief of police leaves an answering machine message, letting the family know that Jen is in his custody, and not to worry. He leaves his phone number and details in his message, and Dr. Giggles hears it all. Whoops....

Jen's father arrives home, and goes from room to room, trying to find either his wife or daughter. Or both, I guess. He hears the message on the answering machine, then dials the number the chief gave him. While it's ringing, he hears a message from Dr. Giggles, telling him that he's the new family physician, and that he's standing in the kitchen.

When Dad turns around, Dr. Giggles cuts him with a surgical saw, then makes a crack about sending the family his bill. As he prepares to finish off Jen's father, someone comes in through the front door. It's Macgruder, looking for the family. He calls out their names, and eventually discovers the body of Jen's dad in the kitchen.

Dr. Giggles also finds him though, and stabs him from behind. As Macgruder starts to fall over, he manages to shoot the killer before dying, hitting him under the ribs on the left side. Dr. Giggles wavers between crying and giggling, which is kind of awesome to watch. You gotta give this movie credit for one thing, it's pretty damn funny.

At the hospital, Jen's doctor is running a test. He tells her that it takes about 40 minutes, so the scene switches back to Max and Reitz. The cop turns on his computer to see if he can get any other info about Evan Rendell Jr. Max pulls up a chair to watch.

Dr. Giggles finds a quiet area, and decides to perform surgery on himself. He cuts open the wound, picks up something call a retractor, then uses a suction device to clean up the blood. The entire time he's laughing like a loon. He manages to remove the bullet, then sews himself back up again.

Reitz is still searching for information about the killer, then remembers the piece of cloth he found earlier. digging it out of his pocket, he sees a partial name on it, and connects the cloth to a local mental hospital. Then he finds an APB that was issued 2 weeks earlier, about the maniac killing 3 hospital workers. He rushes to follow up this new lead, and tells Max to stay behind. A second after the cop leaves, Max does likewise.

Posing as Jen's dad, Dr. Giggles calls the police station.He gets them to tell him where Jen is, then heads for the hospital. There, Jen is still having the test done. The machine starts to flatline, and Jen panics. The doctor comes in, and tells Jen that they need to operate immediately on her. Then he turns into Dr. Giggles and exposes her heart with a swift slash of his scalpel.

Dream sequence. Jen wakes up screaming and crying, and her doctor tells her that she was just having a nightmare. He checks the results of the test, and Dr. Giggles stabs him in the back. With the reflexes of a panther, Jen jumps off of the table.

Jen's real doctor crawls a short distance, then stabs Dr. Giggles in the leg. Then the 2 men have a wacky duel, using medical equipment instead of swords. Dr. Giggles wins the brief fight, then wraps a blood pressure cuff around the other man's neck. He pumps it up until the real doctor is dead, Jen hurries away while her doctor is being murdered, but Giggles catches the girl and injects her with a sedative.

Reitz enters Jen's home, and finds her dad still alive. He confirms that the attacker was a doctor. Then Reitz calls 911. Good idea.

In an empty operating room, the lunatic prepares Jen for surgery. While he's "examining" her, Reitz comes to the rescue. In record time, the cop manages to find the once-hidden office in the basement. He should be the hero in every slasher flick. Of course, then they'd only be 5 minutes long, but still...

Where was I? Oh yeah, so after Reitz finds the secret office, we see Dr. Giggles take the lid off of a metal pail, revealing it to be containing a fresh human heart. It's the size of a Buick. Seriously, it's like he harvested it from King Kong. Oh wait, it's more than 1, that's why.

Reitz finds a door marked WAITING ROOM, complete with a sign proclaiming "The doctor is in"...which reminds me of something. When this movie came to theatres, there were a couple of variations of the teaser posters. 2 that were the most memorable were "The Doctor Is In...sane!", and "The Doctor Is Out...Of His Mind!". Those always cracked me up.

Anyway, the waiting room is filled with corpses. They all have big, gaping wounds where their hearts were removed, and there's a pretty good sight gag, where Trotter's corpse is holding a magazine open. a joke about the amount of time spent in waiting rooms, I'm sure. Cute. This movie needed more sight gags. The condition of the bodies, as well as the odor, makes Reitz barf. Reitz crosses the room to another door, and finds himself in a mockup of a hospital corridor.

Dr. Giggles shows Jen some contraption his father built, and promises to let her be the first patient to try it out. She doesn't exactly look thrilled by the news. As Reitz continues to open doors as slowly as he possibly can, Dr. Giggles is telling Jen that he needs to stop her heart before he can replace it. Yikes! To add to Jen's terror, his machine begins to throw out a shower of sparks. This could get ugly...

True to his word, the mad doctor electrocutes Jen. Damn. The machine causes the lights to go out, but then they kick back on after a second. Reitz sees the light on in the O.R., and rushes in with his gun drawn. Dr. Giggles tosses one of the spare hearts at the cop, which makes him recoil with disgust. Giggles uses the distraction to short out the lights once again, and makes his escape before they come back on.

Reitz sees a door swiveling, and follows Dr. Giggles. When he finds no sign of the killer, he returns to Jen, and blocks the door the killer used with a heavy shelf. Then he resuscitates Jen while Dr. Giggles declares that he's going to "do what docrors do best", ehich leads to a view of some golf clubs. Hey, another funny gag! Why couldn't the whole movie have been filled with this stuff?

Anyway, Reitz gets Jen breathing again, then tells her that she needs to lie still while he goes to get help. The minute he leaves, Jen sits up and tries to go after him. She distracts the cop, and he nearly has a heart attack himself when Max pops up from out of nowhere.

The trio pass through the waiting room with all of the bodies, and Jen sees Dr. Giggles emerge from a hiding spot. He uses the golf club he selected to give Max a good whack, then takes a swing at Reitz. Fore! As the cop and the doc spar, Jen grabs the gun Reitz dropped, and starts to load bullets into it.

She fires a wild shot, and it hits the door. Dr. Giggles gets the pistol away from her, and she pushes him, making his shot go astray as well. Reitz uses the confusion to get up, then makes the maniac chase him.

Jen goes to Max, and helps him to his feet. they start to climb to the first floor of the house, but the old stairs collapse. Meanwhile, the doctor searches for the cop, and finds him hiding behind a table filled with various bottled chemicals. Dr. Giggles fires a shot that manages to spill some of the bottles on Reitz, then sparks a fire that engulfs the unlucky cop.

Dr. Giggles attacks him, and pushes Reitz up against a stretcher. That seemed to be a good idea, because it put out the fire on the officer's back. Let's hear it for bad aim! Hurray!

As Jen and Max decide to see if they can climb the loose wood from the stairs, Dr. Giggles and Reitz strangle each other. Giggles takes out his little saw and plunges it into the other man's back, until blood starts flowing out of the cop's mouth.

Max has managed to get to the ground floor of the house, and he helps Jen by pulling her up. In typical slasher fashion, Dr. Giggles grabs Jen's feet to try to drag her back down. She manages to kick his hands away, and Max gets her the rest of the way up.

Dr. Giggles runs through his underground lair(which is now an inferno), giggling all the way. there's a not-too-subtle view of some oxygen tanks nearby, and the young couple upstairs escape the house just seconds before it blows up.

Jen is rushed back to the hospital, where she now needs the heart surgery because of all the strain she put on her ticker that night. As she gets prepped for surgery, an ominous-looking stream of blood is seen flowing underneath a nearby door. A nurse sees the blood and decides to investigate, leading her to a dead doctor in the hallway. Dr. Giggles grabs her, presumably to steal her scrubs.

Sure enough, he slowly limps into the operating room. When the surgeon asks who he is, Giggles removes his surgical mask, revealing that his face is covered in blisters and scorch marks. He opens his charred bag, revealing several surgical implements that look like medieval torture devices. He then kills the surgeon with one that shoves several prongs into the man's face.

Jen rips away her oxygen mask, and stumbles out of the room. Didn't we do this already? Did I accidentally rewind the movie to the previous sequence? I guess not. Jen hides in an eqipment room, the sees some heart paddles and gets an idea. She backs away from the door, allowing the killer to enter the room and approach her. She then throws several bottles of alcohol at him, and uses the heart paddles to electrocute Dr. Giggles.

Jen walks away from him like she doesn't have a care in the world, which is how you know he's not dead. I swear, they do this in every damn slasher movie. Whatever happened to rushing to a safe place? It's not exactly shocking when he grabs her ankle.

He somehow manages to stand up, and tells her that he doesn't feel well. She replies by telling him to take 2 and call her in the morning--the "2" being a pair of trident-like blades. In yet another funny bit, Dr. Giggles looks into the camera and gasps, "Is there...a doctor in the house?" Then he keels over. Awesome.

In the next scene, Jen is back in a hospital bed, looking a lot like Neve Campbell in the first Scream. I think I just might have a teensy-weensy crush on Holly Marie Combs now. Her dad is at her bedside, also a patient in the hospital. He makes sure that she's okay, then lets Max have some time alone with her. Hands off, Max! She's mine bubba.

Max sits next to her, and they share a kiss. He makes a crack about how it's a heck of a way to spend the summer,then they kiss again. The heart monitor blips a few times. THE END

Well, in spite of a few lapses in logic, this was very entertaining. There was a ridiculously high body count(17, according to the IMDB website), a good group of actors, impressive gore, and some funny material towards the end. All in all, I'm giving it 4 killer trees out of 5. Now get going on a sequel or two. Or 12.

and what did I learn from Dr. Giggles?

-Contrary to popular opinion, laughter is not the best medicine. Laughter kills, man. Laughter kills.*cue up the NBC "The More You Know" logo*

-Liposuction should never be administered orally. Yuck! Same goes for rectal thermometers.

-Nintendo games are a dangerous threat to suburban families. Beware!

Next up is either Mind Hunters or Uncle Sam. This should be a fun week. See you soon!

Cutting Class

As I've pointed out before, it's not uncommon to see famous actors in horror films--especially early in their careers. This week's slasher, Cutting Class, is no exception. It stars none other than Brad Pitt, caught up in a love triangle while a killer is on the loose. Was it a legend of the fall, or did it seem like it was written by twelve monkeys? Read this incredibly SPOILERY article to find out!

The film begins with a teen girl grabbing the morning paper, which has a headline on the front page about a local boy who is being released from a mental hospital, where doctors were trying to figure out whether or not he killed his father. I'll be completely honest, though: I'm much too busy staring at this hot chick. She's like a sex-kitten version of Winona Ryder, which is NEVER a bad thing, in my book! Anyway, her name is Paula, and her father(played by the always-funny Martin Mull) is about to embark on a week-long hunting trip. We also discover that her dad's a district attorney....I'll bet that becomes a plot point later...

At a bar near his hunting spot, Dad reveals that he's hunting bloodthirsty, ravenous, killer...ducks. All of this over some DUCKS??? An elderly man who hears about his goal smears some mud and worm-guts all over Dad's clothing, supposedly to mask the scent of the city. Uhhh, thanks?

Out in the middle of a bog, Mull misses a few ducks, then hears a young man calling to him from an undisclosed location. Although Mull doesn't realize it yet, the stranger is armed with a bow and some arrows. He fires one, and it lands in Mull's abdomen. He keels over, clutching the arrow's entry point as some fog rolls by.

Next, we get a VERY young-looking Brad Pitt putting some corny '80's pop music into his cassette player, then driving to school. He nearly hits another vehicle because he was distracted, then almost kills a kid riding a Big Wheel. Oh, and he then taunts the kid's mother before he drives away, which isn't particularly bright.

He arrives at the high school late, and enters his chemistry class while the teacher is demonstrating the danger of mixing certain chemicals together. The teacher asks him a question, and we find out that Pitt's name in this is "Dwight". Okay, Dwight it is. A nerd sitting near Dwight stage-whispers every answer to him, even the simple ones. The teacher makes a piece of sodium explode, and a boy in the back of the class seems pretty interested. Whee. Learning is fun, kids.

While Dwight is busy suffering through Chemistry 101, Paula is preparing her fine hot self for gym class. She knocks over an archery display on her way to the gym, and notices that one of the arrows has a wet leaf sticking to it. Gee, I wonder where it was recently used?

In the actual gymnasium, Paula gets up on a balance beam and starts walking in her shorts and tight shirt. Thank you, lord, for reading my mind. The quiet kid from the back of the chemistry class, Brian, stares at Paula(Get in line, dude!), so the coach tells him to climb a nearby rope until he reaches the top. Dwight(boy, that chemistry class must have been about a minute long...) gets under the rope and starts swinging it around.

Can you guess what happens next? If you guessed "Brian falls off of the rope, and miraculously escapes serious injury", you win! *DINGDINGDING* When Brian falls, the coach somehow blames HIM for the accident, and makes him do 30 push-ups. Luckily, Paula's still posing on her beam, so at least he has a nice distraction...

After school, which apparently consisted of just 2 classes, Paula, Dwight and another girl go to a local burger joint that looks like something from "Happy Days". Things go a bit sour when Brian appears and is confronted by Paula's top-heavy friend Colleen, until Dwight suggests to Paula that they party at her house. Colleen and Paula both pressure Dwight to give Paula his class ring, but Paula settles for a hot dog when Dwight starts getting nervous. The nanosecond he leaves, Brian pops up again, presenting her with a hot dog. Dwight returns, sees what Brian did, and yells at the girls to get in the car. Before they leave, Dwight threatens Brian.

At Paula's home, Dwight puts on some of Martin Mull's clothes. Then he makes a penis joke and tries to get Paula to have sex in her father's bed. She wisely refuses. Good, now her family won't have to pay for a shrink, when she inevitably represses the memory of screwing her boyfriend, who was dressed as her father.

The next scene is back at school, showing the principal sniffing what looks like a pair of panties while making morning announcements. Paula shows up a little bit tardy for an art class, where she'll be disrobing and posing...wait, did I just type that? And this is in high school? Where was this class when I was a teenager?

Dwight, of course, objects to Paula disrobing, but the teacher tells him to get to his own class. Yeah, Dwight...don't ruin this for me! Awwww, she's wearing a black leotard. Oh well, she still looks great. The art teacher has her bend over, which brings Brian out of hiding. He was crouched behind a statue, and he grabs it by the breasts when it accidentally tips over. *snicker*


The teacher calls Brian to the head of the class, and makes him pose next to Paula. They get dangerously close, and we get to see Brian's "Oh!" face.(if you don't know what that is, rent the movie Office Space. Trust me, it's worth it.)

Between classes, Paula is selling tickets to a basketball game. When a middle-aged portly student starts giving her the third degree about refunds, the principal arrives, probably to tell him to stop lurking in high schools. The principal then asks Paula to stop by his office after school. When she enters the office, he's hiding behind a coat rack. Um, okaaaaay...He has her pick up a cheerleading uniform off of the floor, just so he can stare up her skirt.

Brian walks past a bunch of lockers, hitting them with a stick, and looking like a zombie. Then the scene cuts to the art teacher, cleaning up. He has a series of fresh busts put away, and a kiln the size of a 7-11. When he enters the giant oven to move the last bust, he is pushed into the oven, and the door is slammed shut. Then the killer cranks up the temperature gauge, and we get a big serving of Teacher Steak. Well done, of course.

Paula gets in her car, and Dwight jumps up from the backseat. Lucky for her, he only plants a kiss on her cheek, as opposed to, you know, strangling her or something. Paula tells him about being put in charge of the new cheerleading uniforms, and Dwight suggests that they celebrate. When Paula tells him no, he vaguely threatens her by saying, "I don't get mad, I get even..."

Dwight exits her car, and tries to get back into the school to retrieve a textbook. The janitor, Shultz, taunts him, then walks away, leaving Dwight pounding on the front door. A couple of Dwight's friends show up, and all three decide to leave to get some beer and party.

Back inside the school, Shultz pushes his cart down the hall, then stops at a classroom and dons a pair of work gloves. He makes a comment about "dirty work", which makes me wonder: is he going into the art room? Hmmm....

At home, Paula gets up to answer the front door, but there's no one there. She looks around a bit, and sees someone across the street, lurking in the bushes. When she shuts the door, the figure steps out in the open a little bit. It looks like Brian, but I'm not 100% sure, so don't hold me to it.

There's another knock. It turns out to be Dwight, Colleen, and Colleen's boyfriend Background Extra #2. Dwight asks to borrow Paula's key to the school files, and she makes him exchange it for his beloved ring. After the exchange, Paula refuses to go with them, which seems kind of stupid, considering that she'll probably be held responsible for any mischief they create while in possession of her key. Also, what good is the key if they're still not able to enter the school in the first place? Seriously, does their plan even make sense???

As Dwight and his friends start to leave, they reveal that they took Paula's textbook with them. She sheepishly exits the house, and joins them on the adventure. As they take off down the road, Brian rides his little-girl bicycle in the opposite direction. seriously, the only thing it's missing is a big pink basket. The tassels on the handlebars are a nice touch, though.

At school, the kids break a window. Okay, I guess that answers my last question. Shultz hears them while he's buffing the floor, but doesn't catch them. They race down a few generic hallways, then enter the principal's office, where they look at their personal files. Dwight finds Brian's file, and they discover that he was heavily medicated, given shock treatments, and was diagnosed as a Nucking Futcase. Brian is watching them from behind a watercooler, which they somehow all fail to notice(Colleen even gets a cup of water, and remains oblivious!!)...

They leave the office without putting anything away(real smart!), and Background Extra #2 ducks into the teacher's lounge to photocopy some of the files. Dwight, who magically arrived before the other teen, watches him from a shadowy corner. He must be the son of Jason, with teleportation powers like that.

The next day in math class, Brian is handed a pair of electrodes, then Colleen mocks him by pretending to be electrocuted. Charming. Dwight is questioned by the teacher, who doesn't buy his story about the janitor refusing to let him get his math book. To make matters worse, Brian then gives the teacher the correct answer, which just serves to piss Dwight off even more.

Outside, the science teacher has the class identifying birds and plants and shit. He actually walks right over Paula's father, who gasps. Wow, he's still alive? He gasps again to try to get them to see or hear him, but the teacher claims that it was the mating call of a bullfrog. Dwight is the last to leave the swampy area, but he only stops to pick up a snake. Paula's father passes out. Or dies.

That night, everyone's at the big basketball game. Dwight meets a guy looking to give him a possible basketball scholarship, and nearly blows it by being late for practice. Something happened to get Dwight ejected from the game, but the DVD glitched up at that point. When it started playing normally again, Brian began lurching up the bleachers like Frankenstein's Monster, glaring at Paula. If anyone has a working DVD and can tell me what I missed, I'd appreciate it.

Anyway, Paula's friend Colleen is somehow dragged under the bleachers(she thinks it's her boyfriend, I guess, although the DVD once again stuttered and glitched up), and she sees her boyfriend get his throat slit. With her screams covered by the crowd noise, Colleen is then dragged into the shadows and killed.

Outside, Dwight is sitting in the car, with his head pressed against the steering wheel. He asks Paula who won the game, then they start to make out. That's exactly when Brian shows up next to the car. He makes a noise that scares Paula, but neither she nor Dwight ever see him. She asks Dwight to drive her home.

As he's mopping up after the game, Shultz finds a sticky puddle that looks like blood. He even smells it. Oh, and he mumbles something too, but the captions don't have it, and endless rewinding doesn't quite make it clear enough to make out. Hope it wasn't important...

The next day, a shop class is studying car brakes. As luck would have it, Brian is working under Dwight's car, and Dwight joins him to make sure that he doesn't try anything funny. Then the two boys actually have a somewhat wistful conversation about the days when they were still close friends. Brian implies that Dwight may have done something to alter his father's car, but the chat ends with both guys laughing. Weird.

Back in the swamp, Martin Mull has actually stayed alive, and is trying to limp his way back to civilization. He teeters once or twice, but remains standing. Wow, I guess he has 9 lives!

In math class, Paula tells Dwight about Colleen's disappearance, but he shrugs off her concern. During the chat, the teacher has been trying to get Dwight to answer a math problem, and confronts him in front of the entire class. Brian then tries to defend Dwight, and the teacher ejects both of them from his class.

In the hallway, Brian tries to make peace with Dwight, but doesn't get a friendly response. Dwight is called into the vice principal's office first(or maybe she's A guidance counselor, at this point could care less), and Paula arrives to sit with Brian. She sets his mind at ease, then Dwight ruins the moment by storming out of the office and taking off down the corridor.

Brian is called into the office, and he's told that none of his teachers like him. When she tries to tell him that they just want to help him, he swears at her(it's a great line that I won't ruin for you here) and is promptly suspended. So wait, if anyone else dies in school now, can we rule Brian out as the killer?

As Dwight and Paula cut through the gymnasium, Shultz yells at them about their shoes scuffing the floor that he just cleaned. He makes a dramatic exit, then ruins it by continuing to turn back to them and keep yammering mindless threats. Dwight leaves Paula at the door to the locker room, and tells her that he's going to study harder, now that whatever I missed during the basketball scene cost him a scholarship.

In the dark room with the copy machine, the woman who suspended Brian is assaulted. She is grabbed by her head, and her face is smashed into the copy machine, which creates several pictures of her various stages of death. It's actually kind of creative, considering that many of the early deaths were so bloodless.

In a school bathroom, Dwight has another run-in with Brian. This is going to sound weird, but they seem to be trying to compete at washing up. You have to see it to believe it....and even then, you'll be scratching your head in bewilderment.

Paula finds the body at the copy machine and screams, which brings Dwight, Brian and a small crowd of onlookers. As Dwight tries to check for any signs that the body might not be dead, he points at Brian and names him as the killer. Dwight chases him down the hall, and both boys end up in a storage area that resembles an S&M dungeon. Hilariously, Brian walks right past the exit while searching for it, and Dwight corners the principal, who is dressed like a cross between Carmen Miranda and Mozart. Dwight sees Brian escape the area, and continues the chase outside.

Somehow, out in a wide open area, Brian shakes off Dwight. The police get involved, and it's now a huge manhunt. Martin Mull shows up again, and is found by a police dog. In a scene that defies all logic and sense, he manages to scare off the dog and avoid any kind of rescue AGAIN.

The town holds a meeting at the high school, and angry parents arrive holding copies of the photocopied woman's dead face. Dwight's dad demands that the principal bring Brian to justice, and Dwight embellishes what he witnessed under pressure from his dad.

Behind the school, the janitor's busy trashing most of the photos in a dumpster. When he goes back inside, Brian emerges from underneath the trash, clinging to one of the pictures of the dead woman. He then rides his 10-speed Huffy to Paula's house, where she hears him in her driveway. She exits the house and finds no one there, then hears a weird noise as she goes from room to room. It turns out to be the little kid with the Big Wheel, who apparently has no curfew. Nice.

Upstairs Paula finds a recording of her father preparing his closing argument in Brian's criminal trial. He refers to Brian as "scum" and a "plague" on the tape. Boy, Brian's looking guiltier and guiltier. I hope there's some great plot twist coming up, because otherwise this is like Slasher Movies For Dummies thus far....

Ah, clarity! The next scene reveals that the dead woman, Mrs Knopf, WAS the vice principal after all. Paula finds Dwight in the auditorium, rehearsing lines for what I'm assuming is Drama Club. She hands him a pile of papers, which turn out to be documented transcripts from Brian's trial. As Brian watches from a hiding place, Paula reveals that Dwight was somewhat responsible for teaching Brian how to cut car brakes. Brian refused to name him in court, because he still wanted to believe that they were friends. Brian makes a noise that scares them off.

The next scene has tits. Nice ones. That is all.

In gym class, the teacher is helping Paula learn archery. Yeah, more like lechery, the way he's got her in his arms. Dwight shows up too, but is thrown out for not wearing his gym clothes. He also threatens to fail Dwight if he doesn't show up for a make-up class. Dwight starts to aim an arrow at the gym teacher when he walks away, but Paula calls his name, so he fires the arrow at a target instead. He gets a bull's-eye. A brief scene shows Paula's father still in the swamp, which is getting kind of dull at this point. Either escape or die, man.

Back at home, Paula finds Dwight at her front door. He's drunk as a skunk, and whining about his teachers. Paula gets him to leave, then prepares to strip down to her panties and wash her hair(!), but Brian walks in. He scares her, but then he begs her to help him find Mrs. Knopf's REAL killer. When Paula tries to get her hands on some scissors to defend herself with, Brian grabs them first.

In a surprise move, he tells her to stab him if she really believes that he killed his father. He then denies that he had anything to do with any of the other deaths and disappearances in the school. Paula starts to believe him.

Dwight's in a phone booth. He calls Paula to tell her that he's going after everyone who ruined his life. Then she discovers that Brian stayed in her room the entire night, apparently just to watch her sleep. He shows her the picture he was holding when he stepped out of the dumpster, and it clearly shows the killer wearing a class ring just like the one Dwight had. Wait, didn't he trade it to Paula for her key? I don't recall her giving it back to him. Weird. Anyway, both Paula and Brian agree that they need to find and help Dwight.

Dwight shows up at the gym to make up the class he "missed". He tells off his gym teacher then storms out, but promises to return. The gym teacher does what anyone in that situation would do--he gets on a trampoline. Meanwhile, Paula and Brian sneak back into the school, but the janitor finds them an attacks Brian with his mop. Paula runs away, and is nearly caught by Shulze. She makes her way to the second floor, then hides.

Back at the trampoline, the gym teacher fails to see the killer coming up behind him with a flagpole. In a scene that was apparently stolen several years later in the movie Grindhouse, the teacher is impaled when the pointy end of the flagpole is rammed through his crotch and ass. MAJOR ouch!!

Paula finds the bodies of both Colleen and her boyfriend tied together in a closet. Dwight then tracks her down, but she locks the door before he can open it. Paula escapes through a different door, only to run into the arms of one of her wacky teachers, the math teacher I think...boy, doesn't ANYONE skip school on a Saturday??? They hide in a classroom just seconds before Shultz shows up, holding his mop like a rifle. This movie is getting pretty damned crazy, isn't it?

Someone turns on the PA system and plays a goofy-sounding pop song that I guess was supposed to be scary somehow. Paula and the teacher run into a different class to try to escape via a window, but they all have bars on them. After doing this a few times, they wind up in a classroom where the killer has posted a word problem on the blackboard for them to solve. The math problem is this: "A train leaves Chicago at 8, heading east. Another train leaves Boston, heading west at 8. At what time will the trains collide? X equals 1 or 2." Oh, and did I mention that the exits are marked with a 1 and a 2? Because they are.

The math teacher decides to try and solve the problem, but has a meltdown when Paula tries to rush him. He eventually tells her that the answer is Door 1. He opens Door 1, then proudly looks at Paula, just before getting an axe planted in his face by Brian. After killing the math teacher, Brian starts bragging about how smart he is, then asks Paula to go out with him. Then he tells her his motives for the killing spree.

It boils down to this: Brian was hurt when Paula's father called him a murderer during the trial. But over the course of the 5 years he spent at the mental hospital, Brian decided to embrace the label, and make murdering his vocation. He then rambles on about being so good at murdering people that he can defy time and space to commit his evil acts. As he winds up his speech by threatening to kill Paula next, Brian is surprised by Dwight, who breaks the door open with an axe.

Dwight and Paula head straight for the nearest exit, but Brian chained it up tight. Then they break into the science lab, where Dwight formulates a plan. He has Paula get an overhead shower nozzle running while he desperately tries to find the huge chunk of sodium the science teacher used earlier in the week. He grabs the wrong rock and throws it at Brian, which does absolutely nothing.

They run away into the industrial arts department next, where they hide behind some equipment. Brian comes in after them, and turns on some of the equipment to cover the sound of him searching, and he surprises Dwight with a kick in the face. Both boys grab electric saws and start to duel, but Dwight has a malfunctioning one. He throws it at Brian, who then throws his at Dwight, using the distraction to hide.

Dwight waits for Brian to turn his back, then gets his neck in a stranglehold with a long rod that has a manacle-like device on it. Brian tells Dwight that he'll release him if he kills Paula. Dwight raises the saw, but flings it futilely at Brian instead. As Paula stands around like a ninny, Brian puts Dwight's head in a vise and starts twisting it tighter and tighter. Paula begs him to stop, and he leaves Brian flailing at the lever while he kisses Paula.

To buy Dwight more time, Paula starts to unbutton her blouse. She asks him to close his eyes while she undresses, and the bonehead actually complies! Okay, in his defense, he DOES open them again, to tell her not to hurt him, but still...and then he closes them again! Paula quickly grabs a nearby hammer and plants the sharp end into his forehead. She then pushes him into either a table saw or drill, which goes right into his back. There's blood EVERYWHERE!

Shultz shows up while Paula's easing the tight grip on Dwight's head. The janitor makes several attempts at sexual banter with Paula, which makes me wonder if maybe he was legally blind during the whole movie, and somehow I just never picked up on it. I mean, if I enter a room where one guy is dead, another guy is being tortured, and a chick is trying to escape, pick-up lines are probably pretty low on my list of priorities...

Paula and Dwight tell the cops how they solved the murders, and the only thing missing is a big cartoon dog making a hoagie in a marijuana-filled van. The couple leave the school, just as Martin Mull's character finally gets out of the damned swamp. He rolls down a pretty big hill at the same time that Dwight starts speeding up on the road, and that's when they discover that Brian DID manage to cut the brakes on the car. Thinking quickly, Dwight sends the car into a spin, and manages to stop it just before it hits Mull. Mull tells them that he can't wait to kill Brian for what he put him through, and they tell him that they already killed him. Then he yells at them for cutting class to go out joyriding. THE END

All in all, a pretty fun slasher flick. There were around 7-8 deaths, some of the gore was decent, and the lead was a pretty hot actress. I'm giving this one 4 and a half killer trees out of 5, with the hope that more movies from the late '80's/early '90's turn out to be this goofy and entertaining. Oh, and what did I learn from Cutting Class?

-Math kills

-So does salt.

-You can survive for a week after being shot by an arrow in a swamp. In fact, the longer you stay out there, the stronger you'll get!

The next DVD Netflix is sending me has 2 movies on it, so my movie next week is either The Bonesetter Returns or Final Curtain. Hopefully one of them will be as much fun to watch as this week's movie was. See you soon!

Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives!

This week's slasher flick is one of my favorites...it was only the second or third R-rated film I had seen in theatres(the first two were Fright Night and Revenge of the Nerds, both of which would probably get a PG-13 these days), and I had just read the novelization of the film, so I was psyched to see it onscreen. Sadly, my favorite segments of the book were nowhere to be seen(a prologue and an epilogue introducing a new Voorhees psychopath, Jason's father, Elias), but the film itself was a pretty fun adventure-y slasher. There was lots of humor, some familiar faces, and another cute Final Girl. Anyway, let's start watching, and remember, SPOILERS are all over the place...so watch where you step!

The movie opens with a now-adult Tommy Jarvis travelling with his buddy Hawes. Hawes is played by Ron Palillo(Horshack from "Welcome Back, Kotter") and Tommy this time around is played by Thom Mathews(an actor from a few '80's horror flicks, including the first 2 Return of the Living Dead movies....a fun, likable guy). They both basically grew up in a mental hospital together, where Tommy has been since leaving the halfway house in Part 5. This movie largely ignores the last sequel, so Jason hasn't been cremated, and Tommy hasn't been possessed. Still with me?

Okay, so they arrive at the cemetery and quickly locate Jason's grave. They dig him up, which Hawes hesitates to do, and discover that Jason's body is covered in maggots, cobwebs and mold. Tommy has a brief flashback to when he used to look and sound like Corey Feldman, and tosses a hockey mask down into the grave. Then, in a fit of rage, he pries a spike off of the fence surrounding the grave and stabs the corpse with it several times. Tommy drives the stake through the corpse one last time, and walks away to grab a can of gasoline, so that he can reduce the body to ashes.

In a scene out of Frankenstein, a few bolts of lightning hit the spear, and the electricity re-awakens Jason. Tommy doesn't realize what has happened, so he dons a pair of insulated gloves and removes the metal pole from Jason's midsection. Before he can douse the body with gasoline and get a match lit, Jason tries to pull Tommy into the grave with him.

Luckily, Tommy manages to kick until his leg is free from the killer's grasp, and he makes a dash for the gasoline, while Hawes is screaming off to the side. When Tommy tries to light Jason on fire, the match sputters out due to the storm that just brought Jason to life, so Hawes tries to help out. He swings the shovel at the back of Jason's head, and Jason slams his hand through the man's torso, and throws his disemboweled body into the empty coffin, which slams shut. Bye, Horshack.

Tommy runs to the truck and drives away as fast as he can, while Jason retrieves the mask and puts it on. Then, as we get an extreme closeup of his eye, the film-makers do a James Bond spoof, and have Jason step into the center of the screen, turn to face the camera, and throw a machete. Pretty funny. Then the blood that covers the screen shows the titles and the credits start up. Besides Thom Matthews and Horshack, the opening credits don't display any real "famous" co-stars, but there are a few recognizable faces as the movie goes on. Besides Ron Palillo, there's a minor character played by Tony Goldwyn, a guy best-remembered(in his acting, at least) as the villain in Ghost.

Anyway, Tommy doesn't stop until he gets to the Forest Green Sheriff's Department. Okay, see, the location is still Crystal Lake, but the townsfolk voted to change the town's name because of all of the negative attention Jason has brought to their community. So Tommy goes running in to report that Jason's alive again, and Sheriff Garris arrests him, assuming that Tommy is a kook.

At this point, the action shifts to a married couple, Darren and Lisbeth. The husband(played by Tony Goldwyn) is arguing with the wife about how lost they are. She's driving, and he's got a map spread out on his lap. Oh, and they mention that they're the new head counselors of the summer camp in Crystal La--uh, I mean, FOREST GREEN.

Lisbeth suddenly slams on the brakes, and points out to her husband that Jason is blocking their car, still holding his "spear". She starts driving in reverse, but gets the car stuck in some mud. This leads Darren to suggest speeding forward, in the hopes that Jason will dodge out of the way, and they can continue to the camp.

Nope. Jason stays rooted to his spot, so Darren honks the horn at him out of frustration. To silence the horn, Jason plunges his weapon through the car's front end. Instead of listening to his wife and getting away in reverse, Darren grabs a teeny-weeny pistol out of the glove compartment and gets out of the car. The gun looks like it MIGHT swat flies, but not much else. As Darren tries to line up a shot, Jason smashes one of the car's headlights, then sticks Darren with the spear, before flinging his corpse through the air.

Lisbeth screams, and Jason tries to finish her off by shoving the spear through her side of the windshield. Lucky for her, Lisbeth manages to duck, and crawls out of the car on the passenger side. She sees Jason towering over her, and tearfully(and hilariously) asks him to give her a minute, which he inexplicably does. She grabs some money out of her purse, but he's gone when she looks up again. Lisbeth looks around in amazement, and that's when Jason leaps behind her and plants the spear in her head. The scene ends with a closeup of an American Express card, which seems kind of like counter-intuitive marketing, if you think about it.

Back at the jail, Tommy wakes up just in time to meet the sheriff's daughter, Megan, and her friends. Megan finds him cute, and that just pisses of Sheriff Garris even more. After the kids leave, Garris tells Tommy that he and the deputy will escort him to the edge of town, on the condition that he not try to come back.

In the next scene, we meet the cemetery caretaker Martin, a grizzled old man who looks like he was born to star in Westerns and cackle about gold mines and use phrases like "Darn, tootin'!" way too much. He finds Jason's grave dug up, and mistakenly thinks that Hawes' leg is Jason's. As he's grumbling about being a high school graduate(???), Martin looks right at the camera and complains that some people have a strange idea about what's entertainment. Very meta, movie. Touche.

Jason power-walks his way through the forest, making his way to Camp Forest Green. At the same time, the counselors are unpacking supplies and acting not-very-worried that their bosses haven't properly trained them yet for the kids who are going to be there soon. Anyway, after they tease Megan a bit over her crush on Tommy, she retaliates by spooking them with the legend of Jason. As Megan wraps up the tale, the busloads of campers start arriving.

And, in yet another jarring scene transition, we meet a trio of idiots dressed in fatigues and armed with paintball guns. Hell, give them British accents, and you have the cast of Severance, which was another surprisingly good slasher flick. These guys are Roy, Larry and Stan. Apparently they all work in the same insurance office, and do war games to "relax". Oh, and did I mention that Jason was standing close enough to Stan and Larry to easily pick them off?

Before he gets the chance, a female executive shows up and "kills" them both. She also "killed" Roy, who is now trudging around whacking at tree branches with a machete. While he's whacking off(branches), Jason gets behind Roy and slams his face into a tree. Oddly enough, the tree has a happy face where he hit it, so I guess Roy must've died happy. Good for you, Roy! After killing Roy, Jason lifts up the dead man's machete, and stares dumbly at the arm still attached to it. Maybe Jason should be the new Carrot Top?

We get a brief scene of the sheriff and his deputy following Tommy's pick-up truck to the town line, then we go back to the doofusy insurance-survivalist guys. One is tripping around the trees destroying everything in his path, and doing enough damage to make an Indian shed a single tear in a commercial in the 1970's. Specific enough?

Anyway, Jason VERY quickly kills the three survivalists wandering the woods together, and then turns to the nerdy guy. Nerd Boy takes off through the forest like the Road Runner(Meep! Meep!), and Jason follows at the pace of half a snail. *yawn*

Tommy, meanwhile, takes a detour before leaving Forest Green, and heads for the graveyard. He dodges around from grave to grave, until Sheriff Garris tackles him to the ground. Tommy insists that he can prove Jason's alive by showing them the open grave, which the sheriff points out is, in fact, completely covered in. Rather than verify that Tommy dug up the grave, Martin takes a huge swig of alcohol and asks the audience if they believe him to be "a farthead"?

Resoundingly, a group of children at summer camp scream, "YESSSSSSSSS!" I feel as though the movie is somehow reading my mind. Spooky. Cort, a male counselor who looks a little bit like Patrick Dempsey, is teaching the boy campers some bullshit about using rocks as landmark points. The girls are merely screaming and shouting, so this may be the worst summer camp in history. Playing with large rocks and screaming. Next time you pay through the nose to send your kid to camp, remember this scene.

Jason is still power-walking through the woods. If he's not at the camp yet, he might want to consider Driver's Ed. Oh, and something else I just noticed about this scene: While his head is all rotting and decomposed, the hand holding the machete is completely and utterly healthy and normal-looking. So apparently, only certain parts of Jason ever decompose. Uh-huh.

Tommy is dropped off at the edge of town, and he scowls as the sheriff drives away. We then see Martin staggering home through the woods, singing and drinking. Before he gets to do anything of any importance, the movie switches AGAIN, this time to a couple nearby, Steven and Whatsherface.. He's just proposed, and she said yes. Hey, Jason, think you could kill an old gravedigger for the happy couple? Yeah? 'kay, thanks man!

After Jason shoves Martin's broken bottle of booze into his throat, he goes after Steven and Whatsherface. They quickly run and hop onto Steven's motorcycle, but Jason catches up before they get away. He impales them both like a shishkebob, bringing the sad love story of Steven and Whatsherface to an abrupt end. Damn, this hurts even more than when "Joanie Loves Chachi" was cancelled.

Meanwhile all the little rugrats at Camp Forest Green are fast asleep. Paula and Sissy, two cute-ish female counselors are playing card games when they hear screaming from a nearby cabin. The discover that one of the little girls, Nancy, has seen a monster, and that he is EVERYWHERE. Wait a minute, did they switch franchises on me? Is Freddy the villain now? Or am I supposed to believe that a killer in the dream of a girl named Nancy is just one huge coincidence?

They finally calm the kids down, and we see that Cort is having sex in a camper with Nikki, a chick who dresses like she's auditioning for Flashdance 2: Electric Boogaloo. She tells him not to orgasm until her favorite song ends...which isn't for another 10 minutes! The expression on Cort's face when she tells him that is priceless. Jason actually comes to the rescue, though: he pulls apart the power cord, making everything in the camper go dark.

Nikki forces Cort to get dressed and go outside to check the cord. She claims it's too cold out for her to go. So Cort circles round the camper, finds the torn cord, then is frightened when Nikki sneaks up behind him...so much for the cold, huh?

They decide to leave, so that Nikki can return the camper to her stepfather. Cort steps on the gas, and sends her flying, and it's revealed that, during their brief time outside, Jason climbed into the camper and hid in the bathroom. While Cort is putting the pedal to the metal and cranking the volume on the radio, Nikki gets yanked into the bathroom and Jason pushes her head into the wall with such force that it makes an imprint in the wall.

Cort is much easier to kill. Jason merely walks up to him, stands directly behind him, then plunges a knife into Cort's ear. Short 'n' sweet. His death causes the camper to careen wildly, eventually crashing onto its' side. Jason pops a dor open, and stands on top of the wreckage as it starts to burn.

Back at the sheriff's office, Garris and his daughter are having a pretty heated discussion about how her feelings for Tommy Jarvis are interfering with police work. A phone call comes in, and Megan and her father both discover that the local camp counselors were murdered. Sheriff Garris is more adamant than ever that it's the work of Tommy, while Megan is beginning to question whether or not Jason truly died.

Tommy leaves a local bookstore, armed to the teeth with tomes on zombies, the occult, and how to put down restless spirits. Hey Tommy, I know this cute chick in California named Willow Rosenberg, she might be able to help you with those subjects....We see Jason roaming aimlessly, and Megan just being her cute self in the sheriff's office. She amuses herself by seeing how far back she can recline her father's office chair without tipping over, and a sudden phone call sends her crashing to the floor.

It's Tommy. He's out getting supplies to try to take down Jason, and wants to make one last attempt at getting the sheriff to help him. Megan takes a leap of faith, and tells Tommy that she'll pick him up and help him with his plan. Hilariously, she agrees to pick him up at Karloff's General Store. For anyone keeping score, so far we've had a sheriff named after frequent Stephen King-adapter Mick Garris; a general store named or the most famous Frankenstein portrayer; and earlier, there was a mention of a place called Carpenter, which was probably an allusion to horror director John Carpenter.

Jason finally arrives at Camp Forest Green, at roughly the same time that Sheriff Garris gets to the crime scene. He orders his deputy to call for a roadblock, in the hopes of catching Tommy as quickly as possible. Another deputy calls him over to a clearing, and shows him body parts belonging to one of the insurance guys.

Jason hacks a phone line with his machete, and starts to approach the house where the counselors are staying. Sissy hears a noise, and goes over to a window to see if anyone's nearby. Paula wakes up and assures her that it's just Cort pulling a prank. Sissy grabs an open can of soda, crouches under an open window, then pours the soda onto what she assumes is Cort's head. It's not. Jason pulls her outside so fast that her slippers fly off when she leaves the ground. He then twists her head completely around.

Megan pulls up to Karloff's, and Tommy tries to persuade her to leave her car with him. She refuses, and tells him that she can get him the supplies he needs. After weighing his options, Tommy agrees. She waits behind the wheel while he leaves to go conceal his truck.

Jason passes by the girls' cabin, and Nancy sees him carrying Sissy's headless corpse. She starts having a freak-out, but he passes the window without any reaction. Phew!

Megan and Tommy, meanwhile, nearly drive into one of the police barricades. She shoves Tommy under the dashboard, where he comes face-to-vagina with her crotch. Say what you will about Tommy, but one thing's for sure: He's not only clever with his vocabulary, he's also an adequately cunning linguist. (I almost went with a reference to SNL's "Colonel Angus" skit instead, but this was easier to form a sentence around)

She starts speeding up--in reverse! The 2 police cars call in to the sheriff, and he recognizes the description of the car they're pursuing. He tells them to be cautious, still unsure as to whether or not Tommy is with her. Tommy, who is suddenly on his best date ever, tells her to be careful as well.

She tells him that she'll lose them on Cunningham Road, another thinly-veiled reference to the movie franchise's history. When Tommy starts to sit up, she shoves his face back down between her legs, and tells him to stay there. Wow, why can't I meet a lady like this? She heads toward the campground, tells Tommy that the turn will be "hairy" (this gets better-sounding by the second!), and nearly runs into her father. Sheriff Garris calmly lifts up a rifle, and tells her to step out.

Jason, bloody machete in hand, approaches the front door of the counselor's cabin. Inside, Paula is sleeping pretty soundly. As the dripping blade looms over her body, Paula wakes up. It's Nancy, not Jason! She got out of her bed after seeing Jason, and found the weapon on the ground outside her window. Paula convinces Nancy that the blood is fake, and that Cissy and Cort are just playing pranks on the campers. She gets Nancy to leave with her, on the pretense that they can out-prank the other counselors. Jason watches from a short distance as they tiptoe outside.

Back at the police barracks, Tommy is being interrogated by Garris and Rick, one of his deputies. Megan is still trying to convince her father of Tommy's innocence, when a call comes in: two more bodies were just discovered, Cort and Nikki. When Megan asks what the estimated time of death was, she points out that the estimate goes against Tommy being the murderer, because she was picking him up at that time. Garris doesn't quite believe her yet, and orders Rick to lock Tommy back up in a cell.

At the camp, Nancy and Paula enter a room full of sleeping children. Paula tells Nancy that if she gets cared again, all she needs to do is close her eyes, say a little prayer, and the scary moment will pass when her eyes open again. Yeah, I'm sure a prayer will EASILY defeat a machete. She kisses the girl, stands up, and fails to notice Jason at the window, directly in front of her. Geez. In one of the more suspenseful moments of the film, Paula slowly walks the length of the cabin, and Jason keeps pace with her from outside, peering in through each window as they pass them.

Outside, Paula starts to get the willies. An owl makes some noise, and Paula starts to call Cort's name. She runs back to her own bed, and sees several drops of blood on the floor, as well as the front door still hanging open. Paula approaches the door to shut it, smiles with relief, then dies as Jason pushes it open again and kills her. Damn. I liked her. Jason doesn't just kill her, either: he kills her, then throws her through a window, THEN drags her body back inside for more abuse! Geez, what the heck did she do to piss him off?

Back at the jail, Megan is pretending to sketch. She holds up the sketchpad for Tommy to read a message on it, but doesn't feel like letting the audience know what it said. I think one of the words might've been "COVER". Anyway, she goes back to pretending to sketch, and Tommy asks what she's drawing. She holds it up, and he tells her the picture stinks. When Megan throws the pad at him, Tommy snatches it, prompting her to pretend to be outraged, so she can demand that Deputy Rick get it back.

When Rick ignores the conversation, Megan gets up and marches toward the cell herself. Tommy grabs her and kisses her through the bars. Man, I never wanted to be Tommy Jarvis so bad before this! She kisses him back, and Deputy Rick finally notices the sheriff's daughter making out with a murder suspect. While he pries the lovebirds apart, Megan grabs his gun, which has a laser sight on it big enough to fit over a cannon. At gunpoint, she forces the deputy to let Tommy out of the cage. Then she locks Rick in the cell, before the couple make a mad dash for her car.

Outside, Tommy tries to convince Megan to let him fight Jason alone, but she refuses. As they drive toward the camp, Tommy explains his plan to her: Jason keeps returning to Crystal Lake because it was where he drowned(which is stupid, because up until Part 4, he was still alive). Anyway, Tommy believes that if he can lure Jason into the lake, he can either destroy him, or at least immobilize him in the lake so that he can't do any more harm.

Back at the camp, Jason enters the girls' cabin. He marches down the middle of the room, watching each girl sleep, until he gets to Nancy's cot. She stares at him with her blanket pulled up to her nose, and Jason takes a step toward the frightened girl. Remembering the advice she was given, Nancy closes her eyes and prays. Jason hears 2 police vehicles pull up, and quickly leaves, giving Nancy the impression that her prayer made Jason vanish. Boy, wait until she becomes a teenager and meets Freddy!

Garris orders his 2 deputies to secure the camp, while he goes to the main house to gather any surviving counselors. He gets an eyeful of the bloody mess beyond the front door, and changes his mind. Gee, I hope the deputies are still alive...

One deputy takes a stroll by the lake, and begins flashing his light into each rowboat, looking for possible hiding places. Jason watches from the trees. He waits until the deputy's flashlight finds him, then tosses his machete right into the poor guy's forehead. The deputy lands in one of the rowboats he was just looking at.

Sheriff Garris finds a cabin full of sleeping boys, and moves on to the next one. He spots Nancy's empty bed, and freaks out. The second deputy, Burt Reynolds, hears some noises in the woods, and draws his gun. He demands that Jason come out of hiding, but it turns out to be Nancy. He urges the little girl to return to her bed and sleep, and Nancy runs away after spotting Jason.

Burt fires several rounds at the killer, to no avail. Jason keeps on coming. When he gets within arms' reach, Jason puts his hands on either side of the deputy's head, and squeezes until he makes the poor guy bleed. After crushing the skull, Jason admres his own craftmanship.

Sheriff Garris runs back to his car to grab a shotgun and some shells. He runs into Nancy, and sees that all the commotion has woken up several other children as well. He gathers all of the kids into one cabin, then instructs them all to hide under the bunks until he gives the all-clear. Garris then pumps the shotgun a few times, and tries to draw Jason out into the open.

Sheriff Garris trips over the body of one of his deputies, then nearly collides with Jason. He lines up a shot, and the force of the shotgun blast knocks Jason off his feet. Garris approaches the body and shoots Jason again when he gets up. He then shoots him a third time, before running out of shotgun shells.

Sheriff Garris unholsters his pistol, and fires several rounds into Jason. A bullet to the face is the only one that stops him for a moment, and Garris takes off running into the woods. Tommy and Megan arrive by this time, and when Megan sees all of the bloodshed in the counselor's house, she screams for her father. He's still being chased through the woods, of course.

Megan gathers all of the children together, while Tommy heads to the lake, hoping to draw Jason to his location. While Megan encourages the kids to resume hiding, Tommy gathers some heavy rocks to try to weigh Jason down.(Why he thinks he can get close enough to the killer to weigh him down with several rocks baffles me.) While the children are all hiding under their beds, we get one of the greatest lines of dialogue in the entire franchise, when one kid asks another, "So...what were you going to be when you grew up?" Awesome.

Both Garris and Jason hear Megan calling for her father, and when Jason decides to chase the girl, Sheriff Garris goes ballistic. He lunges at the killer, knocking him off of his feet, before kicking him and beating him with a large hunk of wood. Jason lets him get several whacks in, before they resume running through the woods.

Tommy grabs a motorboat and drifts out to the middle of the lake, while Megan finds the police cars and tries to radio for help. Opening a car door, however, reveals Sissy's severed head, which rolls out and lands at Megan's feet. When she screams, Jason starts to head in her direction, prompting her dad to make a lunge at Jason. Jason responds by twisting Sheriff Garris up like a pretzel, then twisting his arms behind his body, and breaking the man's spine.

Tommy padlocks a heavy chain around the largest rock he could find, then takes his boat out to the center of Crystal Lake. Jason obviously didn't get the memo, because he explodes through the door of the cabin where the kids are hiding. The screaming children make Megan start jogging towards their cabin, and Jason crashes through a window to try to grab her. Hasn't this guy mastered nthe fine art of doorknob-turning? Even if he hasn't, why couldn't he just exit through the massive, gaping hole where the front door used to be?

Anyway, Jason grabs Megan by the head, planning to crush her skull, but Tommy manages to distract him at the last moment. Apparently, there is no greater insult in the zombie community than to call someone a "maggot head". Tommy does this twice, which really gets Jason's goat. As Jason wades out into the lake, the water gradually gets deeper and deeper. Eventually, Jason vanishes completely underwater. Uh oh, didn't really think your plan through very well, Tommy!

Rather than wait for Jason to reappear, Tommy goes to Phase 2 of his plan. He pulls out a large can of gasoline and starts pouring it out in the lake, around the boat. He lights the ring of fuel on fire, then simply waits for Jason to pop out of the water. When Jason does burst up beside the boat, Tommy tries to wrap the chain around Jason's neck. A struggle ensues.

As Megan and the kids tearfully watch the boat catch fire, Jason ducks back under the water. Tommy leans over the side of the boat to look for the killer, and Jason uses his stupidity to pop up again and pull Tommy back into the lake with him. The boulder sinks to the bottom of Crystal Lake, landing right on top of an old sign someone had defaced, changing the name to "Camp Blood". Luckily for Tommy, the chain around Jason's neck tightens, and he struggles with it, briefly forgetting about his latest victim.

When Tommy starts to swim for the surface, Jason forgets about the chain and snatches Tommy's leg instead. They struggle a bit, until Jason gets the upper hand and chokes the life out of Tommy. He lets the body float to the surface, and turns back to his other dilemma with the chain and rock.

Megan starts sobbing at the sight of Tommy's body rising to the surface, and she decides to attempt to save him. She plunges into the water(fully dressed, dammit! This sequel had the least nudity of any of them, it seemed...) and rolls Tommy over, then starts dragging his body back to shore. Jason makes a grab for her pretty ankle, and pulls her underwater. Desperate to escape his grasp, Megan clutches the side of the busted motorboat, and gets the engine started after a few failed attempts. She manipulates the rudder so that the propeller blades dig right into Jason's head and neck. There's even a great "Holy shit!" look in his eyes when he sees the propeller coming at him.

Jason's body convulses and jitters while the blades cut him up, and Megan uses the distraction to get back to Tommy. The lake starts filling up with meaty chunks of gore. As Jason finally stops moving, Megan pulls Tommy onto dy land and starts giving him CPR. As some of the kids get on the verge of crying again, Tommy coughs up about 3 gallons of lake water, and Megan hugs him while the kids all cheer. Tommy declares that Jason's reign of terror is finally over, and everyone watches the last bits of the boat burn up. The last scene of the movie shows the lake in the morning, looking calm, peaceful and kind of muddy...yuk! The camera shows Jason just hanging out in the water, followed by an extreme closeup of his eye, glaring at the camera. THE END?

Nope. We got at least, what, four or five movies after this one? Still, I think this one's a little more fun than the others. The humor was well-placed, the pace was more action-adventure, and the Tommy Jarvis saga finally paid off with a conclusion. Had this been the last movie, I don't think anyone would have felt cheated, really. A solid 5 killer trees out of 5 for this one.( Oh, that reminds me, I did some research to see if I could also re-watch The Guardian, the movie that inspired the rating system in the first place...and it's never been put on DVD! Can you believe that, with all of the crap that gets released, and even re-released to DVD and Blu-Ray? Man.)

So, what did I learn after watching Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives?
-Thom Mathews needed a bigger career in movies. He rocked!
-You could have an entire Friday the 13th film, and no scene at the end where his face gets unmasked! (I don't really count the face at the start of the movie...it was so dark, and the face was so covered in cobwebs and dirt, you couldn't really see much.)
-A little girl who survived Jason's rampage later met up with ANOTHER killer in her nightmares! What are the odds???

Up next: Hopefully, either the 7th film in this franchise or the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Happy Thanksgiving!