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His Name is Marz—Madman Marz

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Madman (1981)

All Hallows’ Eve. It’s midnight. North Sea cottages is our third and final woodland destination as we unwisely summon Madman Marz—a hirsute, backwoods local yokel, and Bigfoot-kinda-looking bloke, for a chilly, generic slasher to warm the cockles of your heart. We are quite literally at the whim of a madman for 1981’s… Madman.

We open on a familiar campfire setting with a geezer that simultaneously resembles Jimmy Fallon, Count Karnstein from the Hammer trilogy, and the lead singer from The War on Drugs, crooning a folky ode to the Madman, “Song of the Fifth Wind” in the style of Longlegs doing “Stairway to Heaven,” and relating the tale of Marz… Madman Marz—an alcoholic farmer, who was a real nasty piece of work by all accounts. According to the legend, this guy went loco down in Acapulco one night and bludgeoned his wife and children, then went to the pub, slammed his bloody axe on the bar, and drank himself a beer. Later, ten men jumped Marz, and strung him up—hanging him from a tree. They axed him in the skull, and left him dangling from a noose, but the following day the body had vanished, as had the corpses of his whole family, and they were never found, or seen again.

The object of cocky senior camp counselor, T.P. (Tony Fish) aka Jimmy Fallon’s ceaseless affections is none other than the lead actress from George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Gaylen Ross as Betsy—credited here as Alexis Dubin, presumably to spare any acting résumé blushes. There’s also a dude with a tash that looks like that one off of Hall & Oates because… 1981. He looks like he just stepped off the cover of Private Eyes.

Speaking of a special retreat for gifted children, the youngest kids I teach in Korea are five years old. I currently have two kindergarten classes, and if you asked them to be a monster they would be the Madman—that’s how glaringly broad this portrayal of an abominable, mountain man barbarian is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan. I’ve got all his records. He’s a brute; beastlike and savage, he growls unforgettably, he’s got long fingernails with a Count Orlok arch to his clawed, feral hands. Nevertheless, it’s a real performance and a truly underrated slasher villain portrayal. There’s a kinda scratchy cackle that appears on the soundtrack whenever the titular Madman is near, and when we do bear witness—be he up a tree in silhouette, flashing up momentarily in a torch’s glare in the woods, or partially veiled by a car bonnet, the soundtrack blares the same three, easily mimicable notes. How many movie monsters have their own theme tune? The Madman does—simply titled, the “Song of Madman Mars.”

The Madman is surprisingly spritely. He’s a tad theatrical and has boundless energy, which he uses to hasten purposefully across the screen, and if there’s one thing the Madman enjoys as much as doing murders, it’s dragging dead folks back to his dusty ol’ farmhouse. He’ll gladly push you into a piano, and scratch your face right down to the bone. He’ll haul you through an old house by your hair and impale you on a spike, Leatherface—or Mutilator-style. Remember when Ultimate Warrior would lift other wrestlers above his head and do several straight-armed reps with ’em before administering a gorilla press slam? Hulk Hogan would do the gesture, but he could never stretch his 24-inch pythons up all the way. Well, the Madman can do that. In fact, not only can he lift you up right above his head, he can also break all your bones at the same time.

He’s equally at home in a dusty cellar, putting out candles with his hands as he is climbing an enormous tree like a gibbon. He likes to chop you up, or hang you from a tree—that’s his killing style. Psychologically, the gotcha moments are unpredictable because the Madman can plant his axe firmly in your cranium out of nowhere, or unexpectedly noose you from above, hike you up high from a nearby branch, and dangle you by the neck until ye be dead. The Madman, bless him, also can’t speak English—he growls, grunts, and makes odd, animalistic mutterings and indecipherable bestial utterances. He gallops around the gaff giddily—clearly completely out of his mind, but with a purpose. The Madman also admirably accomplishes all of his goals without any shoes on, which I thought was remarkable and deserved some brownie points. Also, quite contrarily, the Madman will watch you do the hunka chunka in a hot tub—he’s not averse to that. The Madman is a heavy breather, and we often see from his point of view. He’s omnipotent. The screenplay even states outright, “He can be anywhere at any time, and if he hears you call his name, he’ll come for you, and if he comes for you, he’ll get you.”

Again, the inept, clumsy transitions between shots are sometimes dissolves, which get my back up no end, but the plethora of pet peeves are continuous throughout all three of my picks, so it’s actually quite befitting for this curated trilogía. Not that it would ever be humanly possible, but never hide in a fridge under any circumstances. The Madman can hear you chucking objects out, and can likely see all the groceries on the kitchen floor. Horrible decision. The filmmakers have really thought this through, and Madman’s keen misdirection is crucial as we’re never really sure when this rustic ogre will strike. When he inevitably does, it’s always a jolt, it’s always amusing, and I adore the lavish sound effects. There is an enigmatic, and palpably eerie—almost serene presence to the lurking dread of Madman, and it’s more playful than Weinstein’s ’81 Cropsy-a-like, The Burning. You know when Hitchcock used to bang on about his pictures being less like a slice of life, and more like a slice of cake? Madman is a slice of cake. Cryptically, the Madman isn’t killed on screen—he’s down in the basement of his house as it burns, with all his victims just hangin’ around. So beware. Don’t utter his name above a whisper, or perhaps do—he just might lumber back for an overdue sequel. Until then, I urge you to enter the cult of the Madman.

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These Kids Smoke Better Dope Than I Do

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Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Slip on your copper-coloured, shiny silk panties, spritz your bits, and bend over in a car to look for a hairbrush now, as we drive a clapped-out heap to Camp Blood for—you guessed it, 1981’s summer camp slasher sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2.

Known perhaps most notably for the pre-hockey-masked, The Town That Dreaded Sundown-homaging, burlap sack hooded Jason, and the calamitous yet hilarious (not to Roger Ebert) wheelchair machete murder, and its inexplicable, incendiary exploding title credit, Part 2 is the gory glue that holds my Camp It Up ’81 trilogy together. It includes an all-encompassing prologue flashback to the tale of Mrs Voorhees and her disabled son, which underpins the entire Friday franchise, and reminds audiences of the original’s key events. Namely, American telly regular on the CBS game show, I’ve Got a Secret, Betsy Palmer, as Mama Voorhees—chewing up the scenery with her giant dentures in a periwinkle blue Cosby sweater, and properly smashing Adrienne King’s face into the sand like it’s an exposed top turnbuckle. They then not only “recap the decap,” but also replay the iconic Jason popping out of the water shocker. It’s smart in the sense that we’re duped; prepped for the continuing journey of the original’s lead character, Alice, but they whack her at the beginning because in a slasher such as this, a through-line protagonist is quite unnecessary. It ain’t Janet Lee in Psycho, but definitely has forerunner to Drew Barrymore in Scream vibes.

Of course Jason isn’t a hulking, supernatural, toxic waste-dipped mutant freak at this stage—he’s a maybe 5’8″ short king, dressed like a farmer in overalls with a bag on his head, falling over awkwardly, and instead of just murdering someone instantly, he seemingly must wrestle with them for ages on the ground. He is certainly fallible. If you wait in a bush for Jason to round the corner, you can quite easily kick him in the bollocks and buy yourself some getaway time.

It’s got some sluggish, laborious chases—particularly the one involving the ranger chap. It’s too long, and not tightly-wound enough. There’s a ginger character in ridiculously short shorts, who looks like he’s going on safari with a tablecloth for a shirt. It’s got girls in bikini tops, a humorous cut from a Shih Tzu to a hot dog on a barbecue—there’s even an abandoned Halloween mask folks periodically pick up and put on.

Thankfully, amidst these carefree teen fools, there’s Ginny Field—a perceptive and tenacious final girl, played adeptly by Amy Steel. Alright, Part 2’s child psychology ending doesn’t entirely play, but it—I hesitate to say, cleverly homages Hitchcock’s Psycho with Ginny cosplaying as Jason‘s mommy by donning one of horror’s most iconic jumpers—next to Freddy’s. Although strangely, Jason is an unlikely main character to be here, as it is he who fans ultimately rooted for as the series continued. They would also regard the revolving door of teenage guest stars as mere fodder—eagerly awaiting the next effects set piece dispatch. Much to the bemusement of America’s dorkiest pundit duo, Sisk and Eebs, Friday nuts craved satisfying slayings as payoffs—even ranking the likes of The New Blood’s sleeping bag tree trunk bashing, and my fave entry, Manhattan’s rooftop boxer decapitation punch, as if they were a Goal of the Season montage on Match of the Day. What sort of warped, infantile mind would do such a thing?

The best kills in Part 2 include a claw end of a hammer to a sheriff’s bonce, a pre-Basic Instinct ice pick temple (and nose if you’ve seen the full, deleted effect) stabbing. Gene and Rog may not have got it, but poor paraplegic hunk, number 81, getting absolutely annihilated with a machete to the brow, lifelessly rolling backwards in his wheelchair, and awkwardly clattering down a substantial flight of rickety death stairs before bafflingly bleaching out to white is perhaps the maddest murder of the bunch.

To this day, there’s an infuriating censorship quagmire when it comes to the entire Friday the 13th series. Conspiracy theorists submit Paramount are actively ashamed of it, and refuse to reinstate the missing footage to give what Ebert called this “unpleasant, absolutely reprehensible, little sleaze pit of a movie,” or any of its slippery, deformed siblings uncut releases. This proper annoying wrinkle applies to almost every film in the franchise, which even on the latest 4K editions, have trimmed and truncated deaths. Some of the missing bits—The Final Chapter, for example, appear pristine and easily restorable, and others—namely Part 2 aren’t, due to their only remaining origin being an effects guy’s serendipitous, yet shabby VHS tape. Frustratingly, forty-eight seconds of celluloid is still undiscovered in a cutting room bin somewhere, or has since become guitar picks.

Friday the 13th Part 2 was released through Scream Factory on Blu-ray, but as with the rest of the slashed-canvas slashers in this set, the expunged butchery and bloodshed couldn’t be reintegrated into the movie due to either complete incompetence, sheer laziness, or an unattainable source print or negative. The Friday kills were always intended to be protracted, and in most cases were paced much better, with a more shocking nature—particularly Scott hanging upside down and getting his throat sliced in Part 2, which goes on forever and ever, and the graphic, ice pick driven through Alice’s schnoz at the outset, when the fourth-wall-breaking King discovers Pamela’s noggin in her freaky Frigidaire.

Sparing these scissor-happy splices, these now iconic films may have had a shot of standing alongside ’80s splatter staples, The Prowler, The Mutilator, Maniac, Intruder, and My Bloody Valentine, if someone could only get their act together, locate, and reassemble the missing sequences in the same manner. No one wants to watch a dulled version of a movie like this, but sadly, to this day—outside of fan edits, we have little choice. The best you can hope for is to pop over to YouTube afterwards, where some kind crank has recut the kills so they continue on seamlessly, albeit in their lower quality work prints—much like ’81’s My Bloody Valentine did in official releases until it was recently restored for the 4K. Fingers crossed we get uncensored cuts of all the Fridays at some juncture, but all signs point to highly unlikely. If they could’ve, they probably would’ve already.

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He’s Cooked

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The Burning (1981)

In the ludicrously lucrative wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween—the Cadillac of slashers, as Bruce Campbell puts it, which was released by Compass International to bank-busting business, and hastily chased up by Sean S. Cunningham’s pioneering 1980 indie megasmash, Friday the 13th, which was shrewdly snatched-up by Paramount, the majors found their shelves bare in terms of competitive pictures, and so began a free for all feeding frenzy, and the accompanying bidding wars for just about any trope-ticking finished negatives going with teens in peril, a masked antagonist, and no pricey, attached movie stars required. Cue a shitload of slasher samesies, and due to Cunningham’s summer camp-set, sub-subgenre trope codifier, the onslaught of counselor carnage copycats continued.

Notable things of which there are three: The Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice… Three Amigos. My three HalloRe’ewind picks this year are bookended by Cropsey maniac-inspired horror tales, so let’s begin with an impromptu visit to the burn unit—aided by a very unprofessional porter, as we take a gander at a freak in 1981’s The Burning. Perhaps you’ve seen the 2009 true-crime doc, Cropsey, or caught wind of New York’s foremost boogeyman and spiralling urban legend, in which a disfigured or wronged local man—be he an ex-janitor, funny farm fugitive, or bereaved dad—stalks the woods surrounding sleepaway camps, seeking vicious revenge against his perpetrators or any slasher substitutes who may stand in his vengeful path with an axe, or maybe man door hand hook car door. These real-life, opportunistic counselors, of course, shrewdly utilised the Cropsey myth to bond their groups, warn wayward ankle-biters against unwise solo excursions, and to lay down the law in terms of following their camp guidelines.

We’re leaving for a three-day canoe trip to Devil’s Creek, so our first “Cropsy venture” takes us to Camp Blackfoot with the inaugural Miramax film—Corky Burger (nice name… not) presents The Burning—aka Cropsy (without the “e”), aka Carnage, which was created and produced by the debauched, porcine, towel-dropping, massage-obsessed, cooking pot (and Hollywood actress) defiler, and all-round dressing gown grotesque, Harvey Weinstein. I try to absolve myself of any responsibility when it comes to these lascivious pigs, and the way they conduct their sleazy selves behind the scenes of movies we happen to enjoy. Unfortunately, the direct creative Weinstein association means nobody’s really pushing this picture anymore, but think yourselves lucky I didn’t pick 1984’s Sleepaway Camp—a similar slasher with a hot potato reveal so problematic, even De Palma would put on his very white shoes, and book.

As if that creepy context wasn’t enough, The Burning sets out its sordid stall with a particularly nasty, Peeping Tom-esque, prostitute stabbing with a geet big pair of scissors, which seems to trigger former camp caretaker, Cropsy’s preference for pruning juveniles with gardening shears—he loyally persists with this edged weapon of choice throughout, alongside a rinky-dink, crudely-fashioned flamethrower.

Shady and skeevy? You bet. Some of the disreputable dialogue in The Burning actively oozes, as if Harvey “plant pot perv” Weinstein copied it directly from his bumper book of male chauvinist chat-up lines, and pasted ’em into the script—particularly Eddie’s more desperate, nastier sexual advances. Not to mention elderly teenager, Jason Alexander, refers to a girl’s derrière as “prime meat,” whilst still somehow looking forty years old—even with all his own hair. The Burning is also curious in the sense that it has no final girl to speak of, and perhaps that’s why it palpably veers into a meaner lane of misogyny. There isn’t even a loose argument for a feminist slasher statement here. The ladies are all either starkly starkers (see Sally’s drawn-out, soapy shower scene, and Karen’s superfluous skinny-dip) and explicitly slaughtered, or simply have no real relevance to the plot.

There are several naked glutei maximi—unforgivably, one belongs to the definitely not-Indian guy from Short Circuit 2, who directed the Beckham doc, and another is George Costanza’s. The aforementioned Fisher Stevens plays a character called Woodstock, and participates in what is surely the hairiest, most hideously revealing mooning scene I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. Truly grim.

As an interesting wrinkle for Italian horror fanatics, the necessity to mask Cropsy’s distorting burns means he doubles as somewhat of a giallo killer in appearance—signature fedora, leather gloves, and black jacket. Disappointingly, to a degree, in spite of clocking in quickly at a mere 91 minutes, The Burning still drags here and there, and is certainly clunkily-directed at intervals—perhaps partly due to the fact that From Dusk Till Dawn Sex Machine, Tom Savini “designed” the horror sequences. Typically, the director will work with an effects technician to achieve the magic trick photography of these splattery killin’s, but here Tom was evidently trying his hardest on his lonesome.

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What’s That Werewolf Movie with E.T.’s Mom in It?

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The Howling (1981)

We’re off to Dick Miller’s lycanthrope lore bookstore for Joe Dante’s 1981 werewolf picture, The Howling—an identity-shifting story born of the original book’s writer, Gary Brandner, who stated, “We all have two faces: our public face, and our private face,” and revealed his motto, “It’s always, ‘Oh no, I’m a werewolf,’ or ‘Oh no, there’s a werewolf,’ but it’s never, ‘We’re all werewolves.’”

Intriguingly, The Howling’s werewolves are able to shift their shapes purely by choice, and their werewolfery is in no way linked to the lunar cycle, so their transformations are apparently allegorical of an embraced, alternative, lycanthropic lifestyle, and act as metaphors for any behaviour considered unsavoury by ’80s mainstream society. It’s condemning cultures that repress our natural urges, and simultaneously skewering quack psychotherapy as an ineffective form of oppression and control, whilst also targeting the exploitative extortion by the movement’s money-grubbing maharishis. The Howling has been latterly labelled as a parody of pop psychology, and the self-help gurus of the era. John Sayles—known for his subversive, satirical subtexts buried within the Piranha and Alligator screenplays, penned a picture that can be retroactively read as a fearful demonisation of sex—equating sexuality to monstrosity; a loss of control, where giving into carnal urges, erotic taboos, and indulging in intercourse outside of traditional marital relationships is sinful and depraved.

The Howling depicts a grotesque, almost sexually-transmitted werewolfery. The retreat where Dr George Waggner—namesake of the original Wolf Man director, does very little to help matters, with his colony’s cove-dwelling clients ultimately turning into serial killers, and insatiable nymphomaniacs. Again, the post-structuralists and subtextual film critics invariably have a field day with the Eighties, and love to leap to jejune conclusions, but the fact of the matter is 1981’s American Werewolf and The Howling were a smidge too early to consciously coincide with the advent of AIDS, or to make any intentional allusions to the human immunodeficiency virus. During the mid-to-late ’80s, particularly when it had anything to do with body horror, HIV was cited as an underlying theme. Most famously, the blood test paranoia of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and more speculatively, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), David Cronenberg’s re-imagining of The Fly (1986), The Lost Boys (1987), and The Blob (1988) remake. However, back in ’81, AIDS was not yet firmly in the public consciousness. Of course, in retrospect, many viewers saw these two movies during their video rental and VHS purchase era, which would have synched up with the panic precisely, and undoubtedly shaped perceptions.

Long gone were the shoes and socks lap dissolves of Larry Talbot—played frustratingly, time and time again, by serial ham and cheese sandwich, Lon Chaney Jr, originally in 1941’s The Wolf Man with its contrived camera trickery and convenient cutting to illustrate a human shifting shape. As of 1981 we could see an elongating change-o-head snout stretching, rubbery feet elongating, and reverse hair sprouting. Not only could it now be achieved seamlessly on screen, but these two werewolfery depictions by the maestro; professorial master, Rick Baker’s An American Werewolf in London, and his protégé, the student understudy, Rob Bottin’s The Howling are two for the ages—they are, to this day, the duo to beat, and despite the advent of CGI, there’s no one, and nothing remotely close.

The Howling is an aptly suggestive take on the werewolf picture. As a warning, there’s a lot of chatter, and not a ton of action, but when we do get a transformation, it’s a prolonged, graphic, real-time indulgence. One could argue The Howling suffers from this excess as its pièce de résistance is a three-minute morphing sequence, in which Dee Wallace helplessly stands there petrified, and like us, witnesses the rubbery, lupine metamorphosis of Eddie Quist. It’s an unbelievable premise to have Karen simply stand there frozen; dumbfounded, glaring like an audience member while this all plays out. Granted, she’s petrified, mesmerised, or even hypnotised, but aside from the astounding effects, story-wise, the whole debacle adds up to very little, as Dee simply chucks acid in its face and flees. As illogical as this sounds, the scene still plays, and it’s impressive as hell. Dramatically speaking, this shapeshift seems somewhat stagey in comparison to American Werewolf’s private, pain-drenched transformation of David Kessler, which still tops my list.

Yet, some say it’s level-pegging between The Howling and American Werewolf. Pitting them against one another, The Howling scores points for its entirely in-camera bubbling rubber, and lumbering bipedal creature, and American Werewolf gets major props for its two and a half-minute metamorphosis, fully-lit under the fluorescent bulbs of Alex Price’s living room. In contrast, The Howling’s morph occurs partially veiled by its darkened, shadowy office setting. In my book, Rick takes the gross cake, although one could argue Baker’s protégé and student, Bottin’s practical skills surpassed his teacher’s with his show-stopping, breakdown-inducing, gooey, bladdery, pulsating practical effects work on The Thing the following year, and this could be a case of one artist spectacularly peaking as the other steadily climbs, and eventually passes their peer at the summit of a makeup effects mountain.

I responded to The Howling’s conceit that a media news team of investigative journalists; presenters, newsmen and women, and photographers are investigating this bizarre phenomena because they diligently read up on leads in a library, they record conversations, they do their research, and it was a diverting way of getting the exposition out. Dee Wallace is brilliantly expressive and empathetic as Karen White—a television anchorwoman, emotionally disturbed by frightening phone calls, and a risky undercover, faux-street walking encounter, in which she faced off with a murderous maniac.

White can’t conquer her amnesia, and only sees glimpses of the perpetrator in her dreams and visions, so her therapist, played nobly by Steed from The Avengers (no, not that one)—also Oasis’s chauffeur in the “Don’t Look Back in Anger” video, sends her to a retreat reserved for exclusive patients. Unbeknownst to Karen, she is soon drawn into a surreptitious, sexual subculture of werewolves, and must attend sorrowful, yet saucy soirées with beach barbecues, brazen hippy chicks, and folksy bluegrass-tinged makeouts. There’s some truly great moments of poignancy, with The Howling’s lycanthropes being so depressed that when we reach the cove, suicidal fogeys whinge about their old teeth before attempting suicide by bonfire. They’re completely over the idea. Even the werewolf therapist actively seeks to die by silver bullet, and attempts a suicide by cop—almost, leaving the rifle and silver bullet-toting Dennis Dugan no option but to quite literally “put him down,” vet-style.

It’s not exactly on the nose (or snout), but we can palpably feel Dante’s reverence of, and references to the B movie genre fare he loves so much. The humour comes through in shrewd, self-aware flourishes like Dee Wallace sighing, “Hmmm” to herself before making the inevitable, dumb horror movie decision to investigate a strange noise. We feel privy to Karen’s brief indecision, followed by her scary movie character-indulgence. She might as well behave like she’s a girl in an Italian gialli, or an early slasher. Dante knows full well the only reason Dee’s doing it is because she’s in a werewolf picture—and because he knows, wealso know—and because he wants us to know, we’re just as accepting of it as he is. I sensed Dante’s gaze during the scene; I felt him nudging my shoulder and throwing a wink, and it made me feel included as opposed to frustrated with such a tired trope.

Although we do detect a few Gremlins-inspiring Pino Donaggio music cues during nightmare sequences, this is another world for Dante fans raised on his festive mogwai, Explorers, Innerspace, and The ’Burbs. We can, however, happily spot the Dante stable regulars—Robert Picardo (forever the Cowboy from Innerspace to me) as Quist, Kevin McCarthy as an acerbic newsroom producer, and last but not least, the immortal “that guy,” Dick Miller as a crotchety bookshop sage. By my calculations, Miller is the key to Joe’s trademark tone. As the Dante saying goes, “If there’s no scene for Dick, then why make the picture?” Levity inevitably finds its way in, with Bill hopping from vegetarian to carnivore the day after he’s bitten by a werewolf. It’s also a laugh spotting the Forrest J Ackerman (Famous Monsters of Filmland mags), Roger Corman (phone box man), and John Sayles (flippant coroner) cameos.

Originally, the climactic barn face-off was packed to the rafters with topless werewolf women, but Wallace had a limited nudity clause in her contract—which apparently applied to the movie as a whole, and alerted producer, Mike Finnell, who agreed it was gratuitous and vetoed the bosoms, declaring, “She’s right. It’s stupid. Put some clothes on.” Despite attempts to curb some exploitation elements, as with hairy-handed adolescent pleasures, there’s an intrinsic, lewd voyeurism to The Howling. It’s the sleaziest Joe Dante got, with an extended, explicit grindhouse depiction of a female rape—the victim naked and bound. Prolonged, graphic sexual torture is not what you’d expect from the director of Small Soldiers and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. This ain’t Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The Howling requires patience, and an open mind, but it’s brief, I believe highly significant, and delivered some of the finest werewolf imagery ever seen.

As her last act of service as a human being, Karen boldly goes back on telly to unveil the secret werewolf society; warning the public, before sacrificially transforming live on air to convince any unbelievers—turning into the cutest she-wolf ever. Dugan knows he must kill her, and Dee knows it too. Although American Werewolf’s dark denouement is not without sentiment, and has a pathos of its own at the death, it can’t stack up to the way Dante’s film concludes. The Howling partly boasts a stronger ending because American Werewolf opted for an appropriately abrupt close—albeit with a lack of sophistication, irony, wit, or any global consequence of the story we’ve just witnessed. An American Werewolf in London bows out with a provocative and sudden conclusion—a real kick in the guts. In contrast, The Howling winds down in a much more satisfying, satirically sagacious and mischievous fashion. The Howling’s finale flits from heartbreaking sadness to all out body horror, and then a matter-of-fact, jet-black comedy before the credits appear. It’s a punch—powerful and poignant, with a humorous sting in the wolf’s tail; a chuckle-inducing coda with a deadpan bent to it, all the while resonating and reverberating in our minds as Dante’s rare hamburger patty sizzles through our recovering subconscious. It had to go last of my picks as there’s unquestionably no finer climax in werewolf cinema.

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I’m Not Like Other Guys

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Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983)

What’s the first thing your mind conjures when Hallowe’en creeps around the autumnal corner? For me it’s either the song “Thriller,” or the iconic imagery from its 1983 companion promo. Despite Jacko’s Jesus juice-addled, baby-dangling plummet from grace, it remains the undisputed, greatest music video of all time, with no real contenders or pretenders to the throne. Yeah, it veers more into zombie territory, but it also arguably depicts one of the three, top-tier werewolf transformations of all-time, and certainly one of the most well known in pop culture. Iconic doesn’t even scratch the surface—record sales, the Thriller album cover, the audience views on MTV were through the roof. It’s a clear example of music and visuals interlocking so inseperably, and the art and the iconography being so momentous, that we can almost turn a blind eye to MJ’s alleged atrocities—for the 14-minute duration anyway.

Thriller is a cornucopia of horror; a mashup packed with shout-outs to the hounds of hell, zombies, werewolves—or perhaps cat people, corpses, a haunted house, and showcases an alarming, foam rubber shapeshift—the werewolf, or arguably werecat here. It’s fairly feline, with prominent, extending whiskers, and memorably shows Michael in cat-like, yellow contact lenses. We’ve got spooky, mist-engulfed graveyards, cars breaking down, a grave emergence, Fred Astaire-inspired choreography, the sinister tones of Vincent Price, and a bassline that makes you wanna freaky deaky, right? Also, it boasts American Werewolf’s key crew of John Landis—who also made “Black or White” for MJ in 1991, cinematographer Robert Paynter, and Rick Baker’s special effects, which lead on perfectly from the previous picture. Stuff to spot for the sticklers and geeks—several makeup appliances were taken from American Werewolf and repurposed for the “Thriller” video, including the clawed hand appliance that extends over the porno cinema chair, which was reused on Jackson himself.

Say what you will about certified kook, Michael Jackson, and the controversy surrounding the bloke, but the magnitude of Thriller is undeniable, and the perfect example of an artist’s work transcending their problematic persona. If Jacko freaks you out, so be it! It’s Hallowe’en. What other night of the year would be more appropriate to be psychologically perturbed by the presence of Mike in your living room? All those disturbing claims and events aside, talk about commitment to the bit. Whatever you think of him, the devotion to the music, dedication to the video, the uncomfortable makeup appliances, and the art of it all is incontestable. It will endure; live, and last forever. Codswallop about a mere two nose jobs aside, MJ had a chilling physical transformation of his own—the vitiligo skin tone shift, an evident slew of surgeries—everything became altered as his career progressed, or perhaps deteriorated. Factor in the accusations during his life, and the damning Leaving Neverland revelations after his death, one could argue Michael became monstrous himself. I’d refer you to my piece on Captain EO and Moonwalker for an extended take on the nightmarish, poptastic clout of Jackson.

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Beware the Moon, Lads

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An American Werewolf in London (1981)

I recall being disturbed by the menacing and intimidating VHS cover of An American Werewolf in London in my local video shop, Cav’s. That black box with understated purple text and blood-red 18 certificate, and a monster resembling greasy kebab meat. So much so, that I never reached for the top shelf, or plucked up the guts to audaciously point it out to my mum as a potentially sensible rental. For as long as a decade or so after that, I’d only seen its wildly-inferior, shockingly shite, 1997 sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris.

It wasn’t until 2007, prepping my MA graduation short, The Wilds, that my head of year, Nick Wright, suggested I seek out the Landis original as both films dealt with cryptid attacks in Northern England, and American Werewolf was clearly his go-to genre reference. My ten-minute short had absolutely nothing in the way of humour—although the Farmer protagonist wisecracking “Nine lives, my arse” like John McClane or Arnie might’ve let slip, was jokingly considered as a daft quip. However, I did pinch American Werewolf‘s painterly, neatly-composed opening establishing shots, but little else, as we were armed only with a dummy panther tail, and drastically under-crewed and underfunded for an ambitious creature effort—we did, however, shoot an actual deceased black calf from an abattoir with a 12 bore shotgun at 70fps hoping it would look acceptable. What I would’ve given for a panther-headed rug we could’ve turned into a rudimentary, hand-puppeted, big cat noggin for close-ups. My ace cinematographer, Adam Conlon, and I even momentarily contemplated the title, Blood of an Englishman—a direct quote from American Werewolf.

A handful of American Werewolf’s actors were treading the boards in Nicholas Nickleby at the time, and Landis judiciously plucked them from our revered Royal Shakespeare Company. You’ve also got the godlike genius, Rick Mayall, in an early, subdued role, and the preeminent cinematic Yorkshireman, Kes’s P.E. teacher, Brian Glover, at the same table, playing chess in the pub, and we wonder if that’s where the pair first became friends. Perhaps that’s the explanation for Glover’s madcap appearance as Richie and Eddie’s irate neighbour, Mr Rottweiler, in one of my favourite Bottom episodes, “Gas.”

The locals gawk at the two young yanks as they barge into the Slaughtered Lamb and eyeball them as if they’re from another world. They’re made to look like—and may as well be astronauts to these village folk in this classic, western saloon gag. The premise is somewhat of an echo of an early experience for Landis on the Kelly’s Heroes set where the upstart was working in an early role and experienced a Gypsy funeral and its unorthodox burial, which was superstitiously conducted to ensure a violent criminal’s corpse wouldn’t subsequently rise from its grave and cause further havoc. American Werewolf plays on an incredulous belief in legend, hokum, and claptrap, but muddles it with the smart, horror picture conceit that it all turns out to be shockingly true, and these smug, educated, seemingly advanced Americans fall foul of powers and supernatural workings they can never fully believe in or understand.

1981 ushered in more practical, modern day werewolf tales, and introduced agonising mutations featuring distinctly lupine beasts—all gnashers and noses; hulking and monstrous. Transformationally-speaking, American Werewolf is the absolute pinnacle. Not even Rob Bottin’s real-time Howling shapeshift can compete with David’s agonised “burning up” transformation. The sudden, painful pang that strikes as he first begins to morph, followed by the terrifying, stretchy snout, and malleable-footed freak show in Jenny Agguter’s flat, that still churns the stomach almost 45 years later. At one point, David disturbingly reaches out to the camera lens as if he wants us; the audience to help him, but we’re powerless.

I definitely didn’t fall in love with American Werewolf instantly, and I must confess to finding the film clunky and clumsy in parts. I’m also not completely taken in by John Landis. The Twilight Zone tragedy and its weighty blame aside, I don’t believe I’d like to spend any time in his company. Having dinner with that bloke would be a real chore. Landis has an obnoxious, odious manner in interviews that I frequently find repellent. The “non-stop orgy” of the See You Next Wednesday segment heralds a revealingly sleazy tone born of the lascivious Landis just wanting Brenda Bristols to get her jugs out. He seems proud to be an arse. Landis has such an irksome, abrasive personality, and a crude, unfinished directing style that lacks subtlety. However, for a movie like American Werewolf, perhaps that’s precisely what was required.

Early Eighties London seems so seedy, with jazz mags at newspaper stands, and adult cinemas adorning Piccadilly Circus. I do enjoy the peculiar interactions in the porno theatre. It’s unorthodox, funny, and dark, with the prolonged carnal moaning in the background juxtaposed throughout. The chirpy and courteous, yet fiendishly undead “Hello” couple basically invent Edgar Wright, and give birth to Shaun o the Dead’s entire comedic/horrific aesthetic with a single line of exquisitely delivered dialogue, and the three homeless fellas—Alf, Ted, and Joseph glint in the shadows of the cinema as they’re creepily cajoling David into topping himself. If you’re attuned to the cadence, “You must take your own life” even has audible shades of Shaun‘s Peter Serafinowicz.

Buses are spinning, drivers are in car crashes—getting hurled through their windscreens, and run over, lying bloody on the floor. Frantic pedestrians can only watch helplessly as Hieronymus Bosch chaos ensues. The wolf is loose—nipping at bystanders’ ankles. That head copper takes one in the jugular, and gets his head bitten off. It’s basically bumper cars in Leicester Square with a mad dog dashing about. It’s astonishing how little we glimpse the creature when it’s all broken down. We probably see more of the shark in Jaws, and that’s one of the reasons American Werewolf is still so effective. It’s not that you couldn’t do it now, it’s that there’s no restraint anymore. In a time where computer geekery can arguably accomplish anything, filmmakers opt to show everything. They can, so they do. They show their workings, and eliminate all mystique.

Like Roger Corman once said, “When the monster is dead, the movie is officially over.” American Werewolf’s wrap-up has little consideration for the audience. Granted, Agutter’s reaction is moving, and we feel for the gunned-down David, and accept the foregone conclusion of his werewolfery, but it feels like a disturbed double-decker with no brakes careering into a shopfront. American Werewolf’s clipped conclusion leaves viewers with a peculiar, unsorted feeling hanging in the air, and that’s partly why it’s my penultimate pick, as opposed to the final entry. Ebert didn’t jive with how sudden Landis rolled his credits, and although I concede certain crowds prefer a softener, they, along with a chunk of critics, often mistake a blunt wrap up for a film devoid of professionalism. Tell that to Cronenberg’s The Fly, or the downbeat, sobering climax of Easy Rider, or the rapid, hard cut of Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

A potentially profound video essay by Jon Spira on the Arrow 4K disc argues American Werewolfmay hold a covert meaning. In Germany, the wolf is a brawny, indigenous, loyal protector as well as the name of a racist paramilitary group. The name “Adolf” means “noble wolf,” and Hitler would even refer to himself as such. His military headquarters in East Prussia was named, “The Wolf Lair.” The “Radio Werewolf” station was utilised by Nazi propaganda minister, Goebbels. “Wolf packs” were encouraged to hunt down enemies of the state. Curt Siodmak had been a successful novelist in Germany, and used The Wolf Man as a literary vehicle to explore his own wartime demons—where ordinarily decent men were turned into murderous animals. Siodmak laid out the werewolf lore that would follow for decades to come, and is cited and mimicked to this day. Many of Curt’s rules didn’t stem from folklore, he created them. Infectious bites, silver bullets, and tellingly, the pentagram forseen in the palm of a victim’s hand—those marked for death in Nazi Germany were forced to wear five-pointed yellow stars.

It’s worth wondering, is Landis wielding this loaded imagery, subtext, and historic context of the wolf to present a hairy, antisemitic Jewish allegory? David is a man in a country that doesn’t seem to want him, and drifts, disturbed by the murder of his best friend. The cheeky nurse’s subtle but perceptible, Eighties intolerance as she blurts out, “I think he’s a Jew” still lands palpably, suggesting some kind of surreptitious subterfuge. Is it an impudent throwaway (literally) foreskin quip, or an authorial hint at the public’s suspicion of the unrecognisably foreign—as sneaky wolves in sheep’s clothing?

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The Hardy Boys Meet Reverend Werewolf

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Silver Bullet (1985)

Silver Bullet, along with the second wave of ’80s werewolves, would satirise and skewer the social, political, and economic shifts of Ronald Reagan’s (the actor!?) time in office—the, lets face it, truism that seemingly harmonious groups shield scandalous secrets. Reagan’s policies were founded upon the principles of family, church, and community. King sinks his teeth into the patriarchal governments we’ve installed through the democratic process, and paints them as not only corrupt, but attests they actively pursue our destruction, with all social institutions—schools, marriages, and workplaces, each capable of descending into sick sideshows of self-serving rapacity, greed, and savagery.

The shapeshifting concept of the werewolf is ideal for exploring themes of evil masquerading as civil, and demonic disguised as human. Here, it’s wickedness lurking beneath the surface of idyllic, white Christian cliques in what has been coined “community horror.” At this point of the Eighties, there could very well be grotesque brutes, cannibals, or sadistic, murderous families in your neighbourhood. The Howlinghelmer, Joe Dante’s paranoia (or is it) picture, The ‘Burbs, along with the unforgettably slimy and satirical Society certainly expressed this, but it was perhaps David Lynch, who temptingly and skin-crawlingly articulated it best with the opening bits of Blue Velvet.

My initial reaction to 1985’s Silver Bullet was, God I wish this was better. I’d pencilled in Teen Wolf from the same year for my 6pm slot, thinking a gentler take on the lycanthrope would cater to younger audiences, and diversify my picks, but Fox and company didn’t pass my sensory test either—in spite of me making extensive notes on Rod Daniel’s retrospectively rich, satirical Reaganite capitalist skewering. I also seriously considered the original 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. picture, The Wolf Man, for its authenticity, brief runtime, and iconic status, but ’80s werewolves prevailed as they’re more provocative, wacky, watchable, and let’s face it, despite a recent deluge, neither before (unless you’re partial to the tamer originals), nor since (unless you have a real fondness for the early 2000s cluster of Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers, and the diminishing returns of the Underworldfranchise), has there been a stronger run of werewolf pictures than the ’81-’85 period. The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, The Company of Wolves, Teen Wolf, and Silver Bullet stand as the meatiest of the mob, and intriguingly reveal a great deal about American life.

In his sort of extended dissertation thesis, Craig Ian Mann’s indisputable king of the werewolf movie books, Phases of the Moon—the preeminent literary analysis of werewolf cinema, Mann has a real bee in his bonnet about writers who solely see the lycanthrope as a mere Jekyll and Hyde parallel, and loathes the limitations of the “beast within,” dual personality character cop out, rampant in both film criticism, and audience readings alike. Longing for deeper work with added resonance, Mann posits the eras these pictures were produced reveal fascinating layers of subtextual meaning. I feel his frustration, particularly as so many post-Eighties werewolf films have been inadequate backward steps.

Some kinda monster is terrorising the town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine (surely among the most Stephen King settings ever put on celluloid). Typically, a werewolf is a tortured soul, and Silver Bullet’s villain’s purported mercy killings have an arguably altruistic motive—at least in the mind of its antagonist, as well as simultaneously feeling somewhat capricious and violent. Nevertheless, the slasher-esque whodunnit factor of Silver Bullet is a novel wrinkle, and kept me wondering for as long as it could realistically sustain. I won’t spoil who the wolfy culprit is here, because it’s a particularly enjoyable guessing game, and the only lycanthropic mystery of my three choices. Having said that, it’s evident on the cover of the Canon VHS who the bad guy is, and it’s even painted on posters, so search them out at your peril.

The director’s chair changed hands from Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep) to the fresh outta film school, Dan Attias (AD on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, second assistant director on Twilight Zone: The Movie and One from the Heart, and DGA trainee on Airplane!), although Coscarelli didn’t actually shoot a frame of the film—he didn’t even make it through preproduction. Silver Bullet’s slightly uneven approach and dual tone is likely due to the clashing of Dino De Laurentiis, who pushed for a hard R-rated picture, and Attias, who was angling for more of a kid-friendly PG-13. 

Silver Bullet’s originally hired—later fired helmer, Coscarelli’s shrewd take was to tackle the werewolf much like Spielberg’s recalcitrant shark, so the movie retains welcome remnants of that tried and tested approach scattered throughout. Silver Bullet boasts a somewhat bracing opening kill that’s largely unseen—but as with Jaws’s nude bather, Chrissie Watkins, the gory aftermath is. There’s a sparingly-shown child murder, with the parent of said youngster grilling the town’s cops about “private justice.” This vigilante-bating, angry mob haranguing goads the bar full o’drunken yahoos, who are all already chomping at the bit; eager to venture out as a pack, into tracking and hunting this beast down themselves. This Mrs Kintner-esque showdown, where a desperate dad puts a bounty on the beast’s head, is an unconcealed steal, and leads to a scene Coscarelli speculatively devised prior to his directorial departure—the passably suspenseful and visually appealing fog bank sequence, in which the avenging hunting party are waist-deep in thick mist, wading through a low-lying haze, and each get picked off one by one in a grisly manner. I have to emphasise the weakness of Silver Bullet is the werewolf itself. It’s far too bear-ish for my liking—however effectively hidden it is during Attias’s attempted Spielbergian set pieces. Talkin’ of Jaws-jackin’, there’s even a demise in a greenhouse, which resembles a shark attack as a bloke called Milt Sturmfuller gets dragged under the floorboards by the concealed creature.

Silver Bullet depicts a white, middle class family with a preteen paraplegic son named Marty (Corey Haim). The dad’s around, but he’s palpably absent as well—somewhat distant and seemingly embarrassed by his son‘s disability. Here, Marty is wheelchair-bound. His fussy, put upon mother views him purely as a handicapped child who requires constant supervision, her nervous attention, and ongoing aid. Marty’s physical disability gives him a kind of superpower—an understanding and empathy for the werewolf-afflicted—almost as if he understands this suffering, and akin to the lycanthrope, must not give in to his own internal frustrations. Fun uncle, or “funcle” Gary Busey as Uncle Red has an affinity with Marty, and sees a reflection of his own alcoholic demons and deficiencies in his nephew, and they form a firm bond. Cue Busey dishing out WWF chair shots to the werewolf, getting hurled into mirrors and cabin furniture over and over, and reeling off throwaway improvisational lines about how he’s gonna open up a reptile farm and cook ’em on a barbecue.

Far and away the finest sequence in the film—and a strong contender for best set piece in any of my picks, is the outstanding lycanthropic congregation fantasy in Silver Bullet. It’s one of those peculiar scenes where something’s clearly off, and we can’t quite pinpoint what it is. The ominous religious swaying with candles lit, the actors staring vehemently at Everett McGill as he sermonises, and every time we cut back to the uncanny parish, their wolf makeup is incrementally increasing. They’re getting hairier, and starier. Before long, they’re clutching at their own bodies, and their clothes are tearing away. Attias’s camera is juddering, the windows explode violently, and there’s blood everywhere. The stuffy organ music intensifies to a wild pitch with the strange performative smashing of the organ keys by a marionette-looking wolf woman. Then McGill is surrounded by furry hands, and bolts upright from his sweat-laden reverie.

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There’s a Killer on the Road

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China Lake (1983)

Robert Harmon’s calling card debut, China Lake, first burned its way into my brain via Momentum Pictures’ special edition DVD of The Hitcher, and to this day, is my favourite ever short film – and also one of the scariest.

The always welcome, darkly charismatic, Charles Napier, who more often than not pops up in Jonathan Demme’s pictures, plays Donnelly – a maniac motorcycle cop on vacation, who abuses his authority every chance he gets; locking innocent women in the boots of their cars, shooting locks off petrol pumps to steal gas, and arbitrarily targeting a pair of “germ” concrete workers (Blade Runner’s William Sanderson and Bob Dylan’s 1966 drummer, Mickey Jones). What results is a foreboding effort with an overarching, sinister tone; not a conventional horror film by any stretch, but one that lingers in the mind long after its blood red credits fade away.

Self-funded by saving every penny Harmon had for three years, and stitched together in rented (and stolen) editing suites, pulling industry favours left and right from his previous career as a stills photographer, with the whole cast and crew grafting free of charge, calling in solids from the sound crew that dubbed Star Wars, shooting on leftover short ends, blagging rent-free stages, borrowing cameras with anamorphic lenses from Panavision – even Donnelly’s motorcycle was loaned. Harmon also served as director of photography, and if all else failed, planned to use China Lake to bulk up his cinematography showreel.

The fact Donnelly is a police officer (something that didn’t manifest until the final draft of the script) makes China Lake a political statement; a fear of people in power is brought to the table. Donnelly takes a holiday from the rules and regulations of his job, but continues to wear the uniform. He tells a waitress he’s a writer, but really he’s a dangerous fantasist; a lunatic stalker, seemingly repeating his diabolical methods – his sick tradition, for his own antisocial amusement. There’s no overt motive beyond Donnelly’s warped view of society, and it’s his sick “community responsibility,” as it says on the police blackboard, which makes China Lake genuinely terrifying. The idea this psycho is out there, doing jumping jacks and press-ups between cruising the purple and orange-skied desert at night, searching for new victims, is beyond haunting.

The Hitcher (1986)

The Hitcher is a brutal, unforgiving, nightmarish cult thriller owing more than it would probably care to admit to the slew of unstoppable, serial slashers of the early ‘80s, Spielberg’s unrelenting, high-speed TV movie, Duel, and the relentless, incendiary action of The Terminator—with its familiar motel room hideout, and authentic, practical helicopter crashes, car flips, and death rolls that digital effects will never, ever equal.

This hallucinatory, propulsive action picture stars a despairing C. Thomas Howell as Jim Halsey (a sort of Marty McFly: The Horror Years) and a pretty-eyed, cherubic, mettlesome Jennifer Jason Leigh (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female) as Nash. A tricksy, persistent, Rutger Hauer steals the show as evil personified, John Ryder—a merciless, mass-murderous, motive-less hitchhiker, and real-life ”Ryder” on the storm, and killer on the road, taunting his victims to stop him.

Penned by Eric Red (Near Dark), and adeptly directed by Robert Harmon—ideally screened in a complementary double bill with his similarly-themed, nihilistic, calling card short, China Lake, The Hitcher is dynamically photographed by future Oscar-winning cinematographer, John Seale (Witness, The English Patient, Mad Max: Fury Road) with a handful of shots to die for. It’s a taught, tense thriller, unafraid to go absolutely anywhere, and drag us along—kicking and screaming for the hellish ride. In ‘86 anyway, it contained moments audiences, and certain critics, never believed they would see in a movie—specifically an unforgettable, and truly shocking truck-stop set piece.

Taking a trip to crap Critics’ Corner, Gene Siskel said he couldn’t quantify his hatred for The Hitcher, and its “violence in service of violence.” It was labelled as “heartless, cruel garbage,” and arrogantly and definitively proclaimed by Roger Ebert to be, “a movie that pretends to say one thing, but is really saying another thing altogether. The violent games are representative of perverted sex in a way the movie will not acknowledge. If you look beneath the surface of The Hitcher, it’s a deeply cynical movie that doesn’t even have the courage to admit what it’s really about, which is gay sadomasochism.”

Paging Dr. Freud! Yes, there’s a crotch stroke, and a palpable, sick intimacy between Ryder and Jim, but it’s locked within an unexplainable film with unspoken character motives. It casts such an effective broad stroke, and has an easily-internalised applicability. It invites such speculation, and evokes and inflames individual perspectives and readings to such a vivid degree, that it seemingly baited the repressed Ebert into publicly confessing his latent homosexuality.

For maximum enjoyment, pair this one with Harmon’s China Lake, and a good ole American cheeseburger and fries—hold the severed digit.

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Goddamn You, Hale

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Broken Arrow (1996)

My uncle in Hong Kong would periodically treat myself and my younger sister to videos of new releases for Christmas—often before they hit UK shelves. These tantalising, foreign VHS tapes arrived adorned with Chinese text, alternate artwork, and (forgivably) hardcoded Cantonese subtitles. Broken Arrow was one of these arbitrarily-picked, prized possessions.

I would typically receive blockbusters, and random action fare such as Independence Day (including the bonkers Jeff Goldblum-hosted ID4 making of) and that forgettable Michael Caton-Jones remake of The Jackal where Jack Black gets his arm blown off. My sister—seven years my junior, bagged Aladdin and The Lion King. Occasionally, he’d grab something from Heathrow instead, such as the moody Bruce Willis boat cop vehicle, Striking Distance, or Steven Seagal’s dire directorial magnum opus, On Deadly Ground. These sought after contraband cassettes were a hit amongst friends—and friends of friends, and would do the rounds in my village and secondary school, getting lent out, borrowed, circulated, and thankfully—most of the time, returned unscathed.

John Woo’s sophomore American film is perhaps most notable as John Travolta’s second stab at the big time, having been resurrected from talking baby movie jail by Quentin Tarantino’s Palme d’Or-plucking, Pulp Fiction, two years prior. Travolta was missed by QT and Pauline Kael alike, and deemed worthy of a career resurrection after fine performances in prime De Palma pictures, Carrie and Blow Out, and of course, the iconic hits, Saturday Night Fever, and Grease.

Broken Arrow also reunited former off-screen couple, Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis—the hottest chick in tan and taupe since the cousin in Jaws 2—who played together with teenage chemistry in the 1990 pirate radio, shock jock flick, Pump Up the Volume. This was also perhaps the first instance of score cannibalisation I can recall (outside of sequels, obviously) with Hans Zimmer’s instantly hummable, “dang-dang, dang-dang” being thieved for Wes Craven’s Scream 2 the following year.

Broken Arrow was an action staple for me, and remains a crackers, yet embarrassingly regular revisit. Travolta is a shimmering, glazed ham that clearly could not be corralled by the adeptly visual, yet evidently English tongue-lacking, Woo. Slater and Mathis arguably phone their parts in, with whatever former, adolescent screen alchemy they had palpably dissipating over the six years since. However, it should be said that Slater’s commitment to the physicality of the role is solid—particularly as it’s actually him getting precariously dragged beneath a train to sell the stunt.

Why cast Mathis over, let’s say, a 25-year-old Denise Richards, or a similarly peaking Heather Graham? Are we to believe either starlet as a single park ranger with no fella and a dog? Probably not, but when Hale and Carmichael go for an unintentional dip, and Terry has to whip her jacket off all of a sudden, we’d surely find ourselves in a very different movie if a screen siren such as Baywatch babe, and actual Playboy bunny, Miss July ’89—Erika Eleniak was wheeled out, purely for us to ogle—see 1992’s Under Siege. This mature, perhaps Eastern-influenced casting choice alerts us to the fact there is almost no male gaze in Broken Arrow whatsoever—Deak’s pervy, from behind, forced keypad pressing at gunpoint being the oddly lecherous exception. It’s not a lewd or lascivious film. Woo seems completely uninterested in exploiting sexuality here, other than any, I’m almost certain, accidental homosexual subtext between the duelling male leads.

Travolta’s preposterous, foldy-up, nuke through the guts demise is daft as a brush, and yet I return to this movie more often than I’d care to admit. It’s a bizarre comfort watch; a nostalgic, nineties explosioner with beat-hitting, box-ticking set-pieces, and stable—if somewhat unsophisticated performances. Woo exhibits a sure footing—more so than on 1993’s overtly humorous, snake-smacking, Hard Target, I would argue—with the JCVD mullet-led editorial tinkering failing to quell the director’s bullet ballet choreography—thanks partly to the gallantry of studio mandated “chaperone,” Sam Raimi. Having said that, it still feels diluted and sterilised when recalling his original Hong Kong smashers, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled—the most obvious direction I would point any newcomers when first encountering Woo.

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I’ll Send You a Case of Lollipops

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Pieces (1982)

You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre! Prepare to be slayed by a withering look by the quintessential midnight movie—the Spanish-American slasher, Pieces—known in certain dark circles as Chainsaw Devil, Chainsaw Bastard, and also by its sensationalist, hiperbólico title of Mil gritos tiene la noche (The Night Has 1,000 Screams or 1,000 Cries Has the Night). A young lad’s sexual development is seemingly stifled by his overbearing mother, causing him to grow up deranged, and when triggered by an unfortunate accident in which a jolly gal roller skates herself through a giant mirror, splitting it—and we assume, herself, into shards, the mystery murderer persists to chop up Boston campus chicks to construct his own, real-life, jigsaw lady.

This was a surefire gem from my 2021 Slash & Burn HorrOctober marathon. The tight running time, take-no-prisoner kills, abundant nudity, and Castilian flavour cement it as an archetypal coverall for newcomers to retro slashers, and connoisseurs alike. Take some uppers or something, and visit the only university where the students openly fornicate on lawns, and have perplexing martial arts altercations with dicky-tummied “kung fu professors.” Juan Piquer Simón (Slugs) surely paints a vivid picture. There’s a proper black hat, jacket, and gloves, giallo-referencing, heavy breathing (likely asthmatic) assailant, carving up pretty girls, and lopping off their lovely limbs, and it features, without doubt, the finest water bed murder ever committed to celluloid. In my preferred, dubbed American version, a pulsing, serpentine, shimmering score adds jittery suspense and thrust. Pieces also boasts a duo of exceedingly watchable rozzers—Det. Lt. Bracken, who resembles a butch Lionel Blair, and spends the whole movie trying to light his cigar, and his partner, Det. Sgt. Holden, who looks a bit like the love child of Frank Drebin and George Peppard. The daft dub adds a bonus, humorously offbeat bent to the proceedings, rendering every scene simplistic and direct, but with odd deliveries—ADR’d to match the lips of the original performances, and due to this, peculiar delays and stutters pepper the picture. 

If you’ve ever wondered where the pectorals were, Pieces will clue you in—often graphically, with a frankly more nudes than necessary quota filled, bloodshed to spare, and unexpected beats so amusing and bizarre, they’ll keep newcomers to this kind of schlock thoroughly entertained. As is often the case with the slasher subgenre, a lot of it is elementary, but there’s a neat enough concept, delivered rapidly, smartly, and efficiently, and with a super brief, palatable, and digestible, 85-minute length, the trashiness is somehow muted by the devil-may-care abandon of it all. It’s also acutely aware of its red herring deployment, and a fairly fruitful whodunit—with the shifty dean of the university, the “sugarplum” anatomy teacher, Prof. Brown, and the chainsaw-wielding brute, Willard, each suspicious enough to keep us on our toes. Underneath lies a deftly made horror, with a shock wrap-up that ladies—and especially gents, won’t forget in a hurry. The final ten seconds or so of Pieces is either a vulgar, nonsensical jump scare, or a feminist vengeance statement that shrewdly undoes the misogynistic, male gaze, borderline-porno gorefest that precedes it.