It's Only A Movie Podcast Episode 1: Jason Takes Manhattan

Episode one of our podcast!  We are looking at Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan!

http://www.itsonlyamovie.work/blog/2016/10/18/its-only-a-movie-podcast-episode-1-jason-takes-manhattan

Joe Bob's Search for "The Nair Witch"

Ever wonder where this awesome promo shot came from?

With hype in full swing for Adam Wingard's new take on the Blair Witch franchise I thought it would be fun to look back to the year 1999, when the original Blair Witch Project took horror audiences by storm.  During this time our hero and legendary drive-in film critic, Mr. Joe Bob Briggs, was in the later years of his classic TNT Monstervision series.  These were dark times for the show as TNT had forced Joe Bob to relocate to Hollywood, the show was referred to as Joe Bob's Hollywood Saturday Night instead of Monstervision, and there was a noticeable attempt being made to show more mainstream films, presumably to lure in people that wouldn't normally tune in for the cult and horror flicks Joe Bob usually featured.  For Halloween that year Joe Bob hosted an all night marathon of films (Carrie, Child's Play 2, Phantasm, and Phantasm 2) with the host segments forming an ongoing narrative not unlike his famous Friday the 13th marathon.  The loose plot is that Joe Bob, along with Rusty (always my favorite Monstervision Mail Girl) and another lady named Summer (who I'm not really familiar with but who is apparently the dog walker of the lady who Joe Bob is staying with) are searching for the mysterious Nair Witch, "the hairless hag whose blood curdling screams can be heard all over the Hollywood Hills when she gets her twice daily bikini wax".

The show opens and immediately stays true to the "found footage" aspect of The Blair Witch Project, the film it is obviously parodying.  Joe Bob's crew can't find him but they find a VHS tape and decide to see what is on it.  As we watch the tape we see the main man being filmed with a handheld camera by Rusty as they prepare to go looking for The Nair Witch, some "legendary" creature who has a different non-sensical backstory depending on who is asked.  First they order delivery groceries to take along and then head to Joe Bob's trailer to pick up some beer.  Along the way they encounter decorative plastic rock piles and hanging popsicle stick figures.  As they head off into the woods Joe Bob never misses an opportunity to introduce a movie or give some interesting trivia even as he goes more and more crazy as they get progressively more lost in the Hollywood Hills.  The whole thing wraps up in a typically bizarre fashion that doesn't make much sense honestly.

The whole thing is silly and at this point pretty cliche but Joe Bob elevates it as he does most things.  I never tire of hearing him talk about movies and these special editions of Monstervision always just seemed even more special than the already awesome weekly show.  The whole thing would probably make more sense (especially the ending) if one had been watching the episodes leading up to this one but it seems that some of the integral plot points, like why Joe Bob is staying at that house, to this parody have been slightly lost in time over the 17 years since this originally aired.  Sadly, less than a year later from when this episode aired Monstervision would be good forever, leaving Saturday nights Joe Bob-less and far more lame.  Speaking of the time period, some of the bits definitely act as a time capsule of 1999.  It's funny to see characters wearing Star Wars Episode 1 backpacks and even toasting with the Star Wars character cans of Diet Dr. Pepper that were everywhere at the time. (Interesting side story: I remember trying to collect every one of the Star Wars collector cans during that time and then putting a ton of them in my closet where they would surely appreciate in value.  The only thing they did was explode at some point and get soda all over a bunch of my stuff).  It all just goes to show how much Blair Witch mania had taken over at that time, and it's crazy that it's been so long since the original movie premiered.  It's cool that there is a new film coming out directed by an awesome director so hopefully it will be good.  Before you head out to the theater to check out the new one, check out this awesome bit of Joe Bob nostalgia right HERE.

The Most Memorable VHS Openings from my Childhood

The opening of a VHS, that being the pre-movie sequence of previews, ads, and production company logos, is a bit of a lost art.  Sure, today's blu-rays and DVDs still have some of these, but they just don't feel the same.  When I was a kid I would watch the openings of my favorite movies over and over, never reaching for that fast forward button, because it almost felt like they were a part of the movie.  They were definitely part of the experience.  Today, if I rent a blu from a Redbox or something and the few generic trailers thrown on there can't be skipped, I get annoyed.  I know it most likely comes down to nostalgia but I don't think many would argue that they were just more fun back in the day.  I've thrown together a list of my three absolute favorites from when I was but a youngin.  The list isn't too varied (though I might do some more at a later date) but these are the tapes that I watched almost constantly when I was a kid so these are completely burned into my memory.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

"They point to the sky and I look up above, and a baseball falls into my glove!"  There's not much to this one but it still ruled.  All it is is a Pizza Hut commercial but I'll never forget this song so it was pretty good marketing on their behalf.  I probably related to the kid standing out in the middle of the field not paying attention too because I never was too into sports but I would totally be down with catching a ball and then getting a primo pizza party with everybody thinking that I rule.  Funny to see Goldberg from The Mighty Ducks in an early role as the kid who stands behind the plate before moving on to being the kid who stands in front of the net.  I did always think, even as a kid, that it was weird that Pizza Hut has an ad at the beginning of the tape but probably less than ten minutes into the movie the Turtles order Domino's.  Apparently this was because Pizza Hut was hesitant to be associated with the independent production of the film but after the huge success of the film they wanted to get their name involved somehow.  The opening then moves to the always fan favorite FBI warning and then to the F.H.E. production logo which I have seen so many times not only from this tape but every Ninja Turtles cartoon tape too. 

2. Batman (1989)

Though I truly love the original TMNT movie (and think the movie coming up next is a fun guilty pleasure), Batman '89 is my favorite film on this list and one of my favorites of all time.  That being the case, it's really hard to guess how many times I've seen this opening but I can assure you it is a lot.  Right out of the gate we see the Batmobile afterburner and then cut to Stately Wayne Manor where Alfred is making a phone call about needing to pick up some Diet Coke.  He tells the person on the other end that the guy coming to pick it up will be in quite a rush.  This is interspersed with shots of Keaton as (the best) Batman speeding around in the batmobile.  He is apparently successful at getting Alfred some Coke because the ad ends with Alfred taking him a big ol' sip while the awesome "Just for the taste of it..." jingle plays and a shot of the old school Diet Coke can wearing a Bat cape is shown.  Rules.  The tape then shows a Warner Bros. logo making you think the movie is about to start but hold on.  Daffy Duck is interrupting the proceedings to make sure you've got everything you need to watch a movie.  The list is:  Popcorn, a soft drink, and a Warner Bros. Ball Cap.  Don't got that last one?  Well, Daffy and Bugs Bunny are here to tell ya that you can order a WB catalogue and order all kinds of cool merch.  All you have to do is call a 900 number that charges you $1.50 a minute.  Chargin' people to order catalogues so they can order more stuff from you?  Come on Warner Bros.  Since the catalogue they show is a just a plain black book with a Batman symbol on it I felt that I must have it.  I spent years wanting it before finally getting permission to call and request one only to find out that the number hadn't worked for some time (I assume now that my parents probably saw the text that said the offer ended in '91 that I had ignored).  I don't know if it charged them for the call or not.  That's it for this tape though, two ads, no trailers.

1.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)

Now this one has  a lot more going on.  After the New Line logo (which I've always loved from some reason, I guess because I saw it at the beginning of so many movies that I thought ruled) and the FBI warning we get a notification that tape is protected by something called Macrovision.  Though I can't really remember seeing this notification on any other tapes it was apparently a pretty common way that studios tried to keep people from copying tapes from one VCR to another, kinda cool I guess.  RCA's home video logo is next and then into the good stuff.  First up...The Burger King Kids Club.  I never really knew what this was but I always thought the ads were awesome.  Was it actually a club or just what they called their Happy Meals?  If it was a legit club I'm bummed that I was never a member.  You've got an ultra diverse (both genders, multiple ethnicities, and a disabled kid) cartoon crew of kids that serve up a meal just for you.  What's not to love when you're six years old.  Up next comes a trailer for the ages: Suburban Commando.  You've got Hulk Hogan!  You've got Christopher Lloyd!  You've got...Shelly Duvall...I guess.  This trailer has so many memorable lines:  "I said TAKE A SEAT!", "I was frozen today!", and the immortal "This is the '90s...we're gonna sue ya.".  Add in Hogan biting the dust on a skateboard and I was sold.  Finally we get to a trailer for a movie called "Step Kids".  It was a comedy about a huge family connected by several marriages.  I always wanted to see this movie because my young mind figured that any movie even remotely connected to the Turtles had to be awesome.  Problem was, I couldn't ever find it.  I would look in video stores all the time for a movie called Step Kids but to no avail.  My young and stupid mind eventually misunderstood the tag at the end of the trailer that said "Coming 'Relatively' Soon to a Theatre Near You" to mean that it hadn't been finished and assumed maybe it never got released.  I was pretty bad at picking up puns back in the day.  The reason that I was never able to find this movie?  They changed the name before it was released.  Step Kids became Big Girls Don't Cry...They Get Even.  It's possible that I even saw this movie on the shelf while looking for its other name and just looked right past it.  I've still never seen it.

Hope you enjoyed hearing my thoughts on these.  Let me know what your favorites were over on the FACEBOOK PAGE. - TG

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014) Review

"God, look at this place.  It's The Town That Dreaded Sundown." - Tatum

"I saw that movie, it's about a killer in Texas, huh?" - Dewey

Scream (1996)

Funny that this bit of dialogue from Scream, one of the most often cited examples of meta horror, probably brought the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown back into the public consciousness for a lot of people and now the 2014 remake/reboot/spin-off/"meta-sequel" of the original Town owes as much of its plot to Scream as it does its own source material.  Indeed, there a parts of this movie that almost feel ripped straight out of Craven's classic (and its sequels) but that isn't really a bad thing in my opinion.  I, personally, love movies that acknowledge that other movies exist.  Where the Scream series went with Stab, a fictional parody of their own film, Town goes the Human Centipede 2 route and features its own original film in the remake.  This leads to a lot of interesting plot elements such as how the town featured in the original film reacted to the film being made and as a possible motive for the new killings.

Despite all of its meta elements the film is at heart a brutal throw back to the early days of slashers, where wondering who was doing the killing was as important as the kills themselves.  The tone of the film is bleak and somber, with basically no room for any type of comedic relief, but that doesn't mean that it's not a blast to watch.  Now, despite having owned the once sought after VHS of the original Town for years I've never actually watched it so I can't comment on how much the new film borrows plot wise from the original.  It does make me want to go watch the original then re-watch the remake so if nothing else that is a sign of the quality of the new film. The original was loosely based on real life killings and the remake is based on fictionalized killings happening in the same town that are presented as if they really happened so you can get an idea of how many levels this is operating on.

The film is currently streaming on Netflix and I would recommend any slasher fans to give it a shot if they are looking for a serious take on the genre.  It was produced by Blumhouse Productions, who are famous for their Paranormal Activity and Insidious franchises, so I don't understand why this didn't get at least a modest theatrical release aside from playing some festivals but instead we are soon going to be getting a SIXTH Paranormal Activity movie in the theater.  Oh well.  At least it exists and we get to check it out.  With quality modern slashers being few and far between, this one comes as a breath of fresh air, hopefully you enjoy it like I did.

Interview with Shadow Windhawk of Shadow Windhawk and the Morticians

TG:  Shadow, first off I'd like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.  If you could, could you give our readers who may not know who you or your band are a bit of your history?
 
SW:  It is my pleasure, thanks for having me. I formed Shadow Windhawk and the Morticians back in June 2013 as my solo project. At the time I was preparing to play guitar in Argyle Goolsby’s debut solo show. The band was originally conceptualized as a live five piece horrorpunk / doom / shock rock outfit, with me serving frontman duties and a backing band playing my songs. Getting a solid five-piece lineup together took some time. The original lineup that recorded “Casket Spray” with me was Trip MD on the drums and Rich Misery on bass / backing screams. I tracked the guitars, wrote music and lyrics and sung lead / backing vocals on the album. The album came out last February (digitally and on CD) and we debuted the band live together as a three piece, opening for Michale Graves. That was quite an honor. Shortly after that show, I brought on my friend Stich (All Gone Dead, Corvid, Tragic Black) to play guitar in the live band and we opened for Doyle in September as a four-piece. In October, I also brought in Tony “Mr. Drinks” Schvaneveldt on live guitar and he was slowly worked into the band during rehearsals, up until the five-piece of SWATM finally debuted live on January 30th this year, when we opened for Calabrese in SLC on their “Lust For Sacrilege” tour. As of now, Rich Misery is not playing bass for SWATM any longer. So the live lineup is back to Stich, Trip, Tony and I. At the moment, we’re working on the follow up to Casket Spray, called “Cremation Garden”. The album is a full length that I hope to have recorded and completed by Fall this year. We are also working in a new bassist at the moment, but for now we have no shows booked in the immediate future. We will announce more on all that when the time comes and rest assured when we return to the live stage it will be with a bite.

Your debut album, Casket Spray, has been met with great feedback and multiple sold out pressings I believe.  What was it like recording the album and seeing it's success?
 
It has been incredible and humbling, to say the least. I did not expect people to respond so positively to Casket Spray. The album has been enjoying a great deal of good press and exposure that only seems to continue as time goes on. It’s completely bizarre for a young band to have the audience we have at this point in the game, I’d say. People from all over the world write me on a regular basis now. Four people in the UK have SWATM tattoos now. It all just blows my mind, man. And yes, we sold out three small CD pressings of the album in 2014, which was really wonderful to see. However I have to say, success isn’t something I would measure by CD sales. In reality, we only ever break even with merch and CDs, we sell hardly anything compared to the bigger bands out there and no profit is ever seen, because all the funds we make from sales of the album go straight back into the band’s projects. If we do ever ‘profit’, it is in the fact that our next album will basically pay for itself as far as studio time goes. But we do things very quick and dirty in the studio, the way a band like ours should (in my opinion). Casket Spray was tracked in one 12 hour day and by the end of day two, we had the final mix and master in our hands.

Casket Spray Vinyl Cover by Tim Jacobus

Speaking of Casket Spray, you recently revealed an awesome new painted cover by Tim Jacobus of Goosebumps fame for an upcoming vinyl release.  How did that come about?


On a shelf high above my desk is a collection I keep of the original Goosebumps books that Tim illustrated. For me, they represent the aspect of my youth that inspired me to fall in love with, well to be blunt - scary shit. The old covers of those books played with my imagination when I was growing up. They set the tone for the stories that RL Stine was telling and put my mind in that headspace with one glance. The wild colors and dramatic lighting always struck my fancy, especially the cover for #1 “Welcome to Dead House”, which would become the template for the Casket Spray album cover. Today looking back, Dead House reminds me of Dario Argento’s Suspiria in a way. I love how Tim paints haunted houses. And that is what this all boils down to. I was sitting in my office listening to the album and looking up at these Goosebumps books, I pulled “Welcome To Dead House” off the shelf and got this wacky idea in my head of my band illustrated as authentic 90s Goosebumps characters, not this new stuff but the real deal - the Jacobus way. It seemed ridiculous and I definitely regarded the concept as a pipe dream. But the thing about me is, I actively pursue my pipe dreams. To me, nothing is outside the realm of possibility and once that is established in the mind, I honestly believe anything is possible. In May 2014, I contacted Tim through his studio. He agreed that my band would be perfect for one of his illustrations. We kept in contact and I launched an IndieGoGo campaign with SWATM to raise the money to hire Tim to create the new album artwork and pay for a pressing of the album on 12” vinyl. When the campaign closed on its goal, Tim and I proceeded with what we had been discussing and after a phone call cementing the old-school 90s feel and ‘true Halloween’ look I wanted for the piece, Tim went to work for two months. In February this year I got the cover back. Thanks to the fans, the band officially owns the illustration and it will be printed for our vinyl pressing which is currently in production! The whole process has truly been unbelievable. I am so thrilled to say this is one case where a crazy dream of mine actually came true.


I love the mood and tone you capture by combining inspiration from horror films and even using samples from films.  What is the process that goes into writing your songs?  Do you pick movies that inspire you or do you write music and then find a film to fit it?


 Thank you man. Every song I write begins with me and an acoustic guitar. I will sit and write lyrics with different potential riffs for the verses and choruses and then arrange the music so it has a clear and direct structure that can be brought to my band for tweaking and polishing up. Once I have that skeleton done and we are working with it as a band, I will tweak things periodically over time, or add little ideas here and there and Trip often will do the same with his drumming. I go home and play the songs on the acoustic with fresh ears after trying something new with the band and hearing Trip’s beats for them and at that point the songs find their final shape, they become cemented over time as we rehearse them over and over. The way we lock it all in as a band after I have written it determines a lot of the final result. Trip’s drumming might change the way I sing a song occasionally and in a lot of cases for the better. He throws his ideas rhythmically into my stuff and it makes me look at what I have started working on in a different light, which gives me ideas of different ways to sing a song in some cases. He interprets my songs and adds in the drums how he imagines they should sound and it flows out, not just organically but also in the sense that Trip understands my sensibilities and tendencies. He knows what I love already, so I really never have to worry about the drums. He knows what I want. I love working with Trip. We understand each other in a way that few others understand us, we’re like brothers in many ways. Aside from that process, some of my best work lyrically comes as a hook in my head, when I’m watching a film. I’ll get these random moments of inspiration watching my favorite horror movies, even if I have seen the film a million times. For example, I was watching Nightbreed on tape one night and got the lyrics and melody stuck in my head for the chorus of ‘Midian‘ - There’s a place where monsters go/when the world has crumbled/when I have lost my soul. It came out of fucking nowhere but I knew right then I had the chorus to a song about Boone and the Nightbreed. That spark metamorphosed into the skeleton of ‘Midian’ which ended up becoming the single longest song I have ever written and probably the longest song ever written about Nightbreed, by a horror punk band or otherwise. And I’m not saying that is exactly a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a ‘thing’, I suppose. Haha. So after Casket Spray came out, I’ve started referring to my old VCR as the ‘inspiration box’.

 Do you feel that horror punk is having a bit of a renaissance?  I've been a fan of the genre since the early to mid 2000's and it seems to be getting back to it's former glory with a more lively scene.  What do you feel has contributed to that?
 
Horror Punk is a small pond and it has its ups and downs. A lot of bands lack staying power. Some people might say that’s because a lot of Horror Punk outfits are immature, but I would say the same can be said for any musical genre - bands come and go for many different reasons. And there’s a lot of fucking bands out there. There’s a lot of great bands nobody knows about because we’re all broke and don’t have big labels to advertise for us or put us on tour. So I don’t know if there is a ‘renaissance’ going on, but certainly the genre is alive and well. As for returning to former glory, I can’t say for sure if that is the case. I see it all as an actively changing entity. Horror Punk is different now than it was and yet it is still much the same. The faces change but the pond always stays in tact somehow. If there is a big surge in its popularity now, I am all about that. It makes me happy to see the audience for bands like mine growing. I feel like Horror Punk definitely has not reached its peak yet. Not even close.


A trademark of your image and live show is your use of theatrical props, make-up, and custom masks.  What goes into the creation of these aspects of the band?
 
I am a film geek and as such I love theatrics. I’m a huge Skinny Puppy fan and I love GWAR, Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper. My belief is that putting on ‘a show’ which is visually identical to a rehearsal in terms of appearance, presence and energy has become a bullshit standard. Sure, it is all about the music but there is nothing wrong with putting the SHOW back into the SHOW, you know what I mean? That is my mission. To keep working and building up my production on stage so I can get crazier and get more theatrical. Interacting with the crowd and ‘baptizing’ them in stage blood is one of my favorite things that I do on stage but I want to go so much further. It’s just going to take time and money, as with all things. As far as what goes into my band’s live theatrics at the moment, my brother Jimmy (Nex FX) is a fucking genius. He shares my Halloween kid spirit and understands my sensibilities as an artist. The pumpkin king scarecrow mask I wear on stage was custom made by hand, crafted and designed by Jimmy. He gave it to me for my birthday in 2013. I knew right away that mask was something special and so far I haven’t been wrong. The mask is a symbol of my band and I owe a lot to Jimmy for that. Jimmy also airbrush paints my band prior to each gig to give them the ‘dead’ mortician look that has become our signature style. His work can been seen in our music video and promo photos also. The chalice I use on stage was custom carved for me out of a baseball bat blank. It was made by hand on a lathe by my great friend, Mr. Steven L. Godfrey. Aside from that I use “Bottle of Blood” by Fun World. Tons of it. It’s probably gonna give me stomach cancer someday.

We here at It's Only a Movie are big fans of Halloween 4 and 5 which were filmed in your home town of SLC.  You guys have utilized the infamous "Gothic Mansion" version of the Myers' house from part 5 in both promo photos and a killer music video for the song "Halloween '63".  How did this come about and what was it like to be able to use part of a classic franchise for your music?


It’s an indescribable feeling. It truly was a great honor to have been given permission to use the Myers Mansion for the filming of “Halloween ’63”. I initially got the idea from always trying to one up myself. The typical three dudes in a graveyard horrorpunk video and promo photo shoots are fucking played the FUCK out. And I’m not saying that as an attack on any band in particular but man. It’s done, put a fork in it. So I started brainstorming new ideas, settings that are uniquely horror but also special to Salt Lake, that represent us as a distinctly SLC Horror Punk outfit. The Myers Mansion to me is a monument to SLC’s horror history and it felt perfect to immortalize it as a part of my band’s image. Once I got the idea in my head I knew it was too good to not try it. But I also needed to be granted permission. I’m not an asshole and I wasn’t about to use somebody’s house for all this shit without them fully endorsing my endeavor. So literally the way this went down was, I walked up to the house on my way downtown from the University one day and knocked on the front door of the mansion. A young woman answered the door and I introduced myself as a local recording artist looking for a place to shoot promotional photos. She was very gracious and said absolutely we could shoot in front of the house. She was happy to hear how much I love the place and wished me and the band good luck with our project. The owner is a very nice woman and I owe a lot to her for granting me permission to celebrate a piece of horror history that has been forgotten for many years. The house really is like a miniature Hallmark Haunted House, you know the ones that light up? I adore the place. When the video shoot came up in November, I called the owner of the house back and asked if we could shoot the “Halloween ’63” video exteriors there. She was totally fine with it once again. Such an awesome person. So not only were we able to use the mansion for exterior shots in “Halloween ’63” and as the backdrop of our promo photos, but it also served as the background of the cover Tim Jacobus illustrated for the upcoming 12” vinyl release of Casket Spray. Yes, the house behind us in the Goosebumps style Jacobus painting, is in fact the very same Michael Myers Mansion from Halloween 5, rendered how Tim Jacobus sees it. I specifically requested that the mansion be featured in our cover as though it was the ‘Dead House’ from the first Goosebumps book. If that is not the crazy dream of a 90s kid / horror nerd I don’t know what is.  I am damn proud that it all worked out how it did. It feels like a dream to know that Mansion is now forever connected to my music. It makes me feel even closer to the Halloween series somehow and as a die hard fan it means a great deal to me. Really crazy.

 And finally, before I let you go, I'd like to hear about some of your film making efforts both including the video and otherwise.  You are a film student if I'm not mistaken, do you think you will make more videos or even branch out into a feature film?

 Last year I made a little short called “visitation” for my production class at the University of Utah. I also produced my debut music video “Halloween ’63” and scouted locations, painted the Myers mask, etc. I am first and foremost a lover of all things to do with cinema. I am currently working on completing my BA in Film and Media Arts at the U. I am also working on the second draft of my first feature length screenplay, “Nine of Bats”. I do hope to make another short film, a dollar baby project I obtained non-exclusive rights to from Stephen King, which is called “One For the Road”. Hopefully I find the time to make that happen this year!

I'd like to thank you again for taking the time to chat with us.  Is anything we didn't cover you would like to speak about or anything you would like to promote?

Thank you, the pleasure was mine.  Just as a reminder to all the boils and ghouls out there, you can now pre-order the 1st 12” vinyl pressing of the Casket Spray LP on colored vinyl featuring artwork by Tim Jacobus! Secure a copy at our website: http://shadowwindhawkandthemorticians.com. If you want SWATM merch and records, that is the place to go!

Check out Shadow Windhawk and the Morticians and give them a 'LIKE': facebook.com/shadowwindhawkandthemorticians

Why I Love Horror Movie Sequels

Sequels get a bad rap.  Most people say that the best a sequel can hope to do is recapture what made the original good but it will still be inferior because it lacks the originality factor.  This has some truth to it as most sequels that succeed do so by expanding the story of the original in ways not possible the first time around or by taking things to crazy new heights.  The Godfather Part 2, almost universally considered the benchmark of sequels, gives us back story that the original didn't have time for while also moving the story forward.  Aliens, James Cameron's renowned spin on Ridley Scott's classic, took the character of Ripley and fleshed her out while also introducing great new characters and upping the stakes exponentially.  Cameron's other sequel masterwork, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, took the simplistic sci-fi/horror charm of The Terminator and expanded it to a truly epic action movie and showed us the evolution of characters we cared about.  This is all to say that sequels in general can be good, even exceptional, but are usually derided as cheap cash-ins, which at times they definitely are.  But I've never felt that they are pointless because at worst you end up with a mess that fans of the original can just ignore, or at best you end up with an expanded world in which you get to spend more time with characters that you like.

Nowhere is the sequel more popular than in the world of horror movies.  And, yes, it's undoubtedly true that just about every horror sequel ever made was made to make money.  Take a surprise hit, spend some money (a lot of times less than what was spent on the original), and have something new to sell.  But then we also have something new to watch, and whether it's genuinely good or so bad it's funny, its usually pretty fun to check out.  Just about all sub-genres of horror have had needless sequels churned out over the years but the ones with the craziest amount has to be the slasher flick.  The plots of slashers are so simple that you can basically just keep making the same movie over and over with different characters and people like me will watch them all.  The Halloween series has ten titles to its name, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser both have nine, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has seven, and even something as silly as Child's Play has six.  The reigning king though has to be my favorite, Friday the 13th.  The Friday the 13th franchise has cranked out twelve movies since 1980 and more will surely be made.  To most people this probably seems like overkill, but I, and a lot of other horror fans, can't get enough.

"Well...maybe he can come back."

The Friday the 13th series is actually the perfect example to flesh out my defense of horror sequels.  The first entry originated as a cash in rip off of John Carpenter's Halloween about a disturbed mother who kills camp counselors as revenge for the death of her disabled child.  Along the next 11 movies that dead child inexplicably grows up to be a murderer living in the woods worshiping his mother's severed head, a resurrected Frankenstein-ish zombie creature, a body jumping Hell worm, a reluctant astronaut, and an opponent to Freddy Kreuger in a fight to the death.  How the hell did these things happen?  Why the hell did these things happen?  That's what makes these movies so fun to me.  The original Friday the 13th is basically a simple but effective murder mystery but the fact that the producers wanted to keep exploiting its success caused a lot of different people to come up with more and more strange ideas and it's interesting to see the various ideas that get used.  It's almost like the way comic books work.  Characters exist in a fictional universe but different writers give them a different flavor over the years and you eventually have a mythology that might not make the absolute most sense but is no doubt fun to study and critique.  Each subsequent entry gives you something completely new to dissect and you can then compare and contrast it with the previous entries.

So, even though some of these films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween are stone cold classics I've never felt that the sequels hurt those legacies.  Sure, there are some duds like Halloween: Resurrection and the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake that get made along the way when the studios keep the franchise train rolling but that doesn't take away from what made the originals so good.  And when the reins of these sequels are given to smart, creative, and ambitious young filmmakers sometimes you end up with entries that are almost as good as the source material like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6 and that makes it all worth it.  Take a chance and revel in the insanity of some of these sequels one day.  Some of them are good, a lot turn out bad, but they are always a fun way to spend a movie night. - TG

Dead Snow 2: Red VS Dead Review

When I first watched the original Dead Snow years ago on my girlfriend's recommendation I definitely enjoyed it but was pretty sleepy at the time and always meant to give it another try as I felt I hadn't given it it's fair shake.  I did that late last year and wasn't sorry.  The movie is a gorefest filled with self-aware characters and an over the top plot that I totally dug.  The main thing that stuck with me about the flick even from that original viewing was that the characters in the movie were horror fans themselves and by extension it's clear that the people behind making the movie were too.  So what would those horror fans come up with when it was time to make a sequel to their cult hit?  Their answer was apparently:  "Let's go crazy with it."

In all honesty this is the first zombie movie that I've watched in quite a while that didn't bore me.  The zombie thing has become so prevalent today that it's hard to stay interested, but director Tommy Wirkola and his writing partners Stig Frode Henriksen and Vegar Hoel deliver such a unique and interesting spin on the sub-genre that you might forget for a minute that zombies have become television staples, in league with other creatures such as the "20 something New Yorkers" and "The five member nuclear family".   The prevelance of zombie culture is even poked a bit of fun at in the movie with a few characters being American zombie nerds fiending for a real zombie attack, something most horror fans have at least come across.  But anyways, not only are these zombies Nazis, as you probably knew, but they also have a lot in common with traditional zombies...the old school ones that were resurrected with a purpose like completing a task for a master or retrieving something, not just shambling corpses like Romero's classics.  Throw in some supernatuaral elements, such as characters with the ability to raise the dead (no matter how many times they have died), and it's clear this isn't some Night of the Living Dead retread.

The first Dead Snow actually did start as somewhat of a slow-burn, cabin in the woods style horror movie that eventually devolved into gore soaked insanity but this entry picks up exactly where the original left off and just gets crazier by the minute.  I would say it's not random that a character in the first Dead Snow was wearing a shirt of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (Dead Alive), as this movie could almost be seen as a spiritual successor to that movie.  Make no doubt about it, this is a horror comedy in league with classics like Jackson's early films, Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetary Man), and Sam Raimi's immortal Evil Dead 2.  And, like those movies, this one throw all good taste out the window.  I thought I had almost grown out of shock/gross out humor but I found myself genuinely laughing at the moments where they were obviously trying to offend.  Children, old people, mothers and their babies in strollers...nobody is safe in this movie.  Plus, there are tons of great deaths and stunts (this movie wasn't made on a shoe string budget, there was money put to good use on this one) that would be right at home on one of Joe Bob Brigg's classic Drive-In Totals.

All in all, if you enjoy horror-comedies, you probably won't be disappointed in this one.  I have to give it my full recommendation.  Check it out! - TG