Scrimm's Phairy Tales

 "You think that when you die, you go to heaven... you come to us" - The Tall Man, Phantasm 2.

On January 9th 2016 at the age of 89, Angus Scrimm aka Lawrence Rory Guy aka The Tall Man left our pastures for, presumably, his red dimension where he'll preside over an endless stream of "lurkers". This is devastating to "phans" not just of Phantasm but of horror in general. Angus, you see, was one of the Hollywood old guard. When I think of Angus I think of Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The reason for this is, he helped create a horror icon called The Tall Man who may not be the most popular but may very well be the best of all the horror icons. First seen in the 70's (a golden era for horror) in a low budget classic called Phantasm, The Tall Man would go on to show up in a further four Phantasm movies spread across the next four decades. The fifth of which is imminent and I can only hope it is the epitaph this wonderful man deserves.

This blog will be a celebration of the role that he was best known for and the movies that I watched over and over as a kid (and the odd time now).

                                                              PHANTASM
Phantasm came out in 1979 and if you'd seen the movie back then you would have been struck by the visuals and the ingenuity of the movie makers. You'd have thought director, Don Coscarelli was on the verge of becoming a big deal. What you wouldn't realise is the movie took over a year to make, shot over weekends and any free time the cast and crew could get. It was financed by friends, family local business and costumes were made by Coscarelli's mother. She also designed some special fx. This, you see, was a labour of love. Coscarelli cast people he'd worked with before and edited the whole thing himself to save on costs. In total, Phantasm cost $300k. In the US alone on original release it made $12m. A slam dunk by any standard.

So what is it all about? Well, that's kind of open to interpretation but I'll try to write something resembling a "plot". Phantasm is a movie based in a small town (Morningside) where a 13 year old boy, Mike (Michael Baldwin) has just lost both his parents and is being looked after by his older brother, Jodi (Bill Thornbury) and his friend the local ice cream vendor, Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Things take a turn for the mysterious when Jodi and Reggie's friend dies suddenly. At the funeral Mike, who isn't allow attend, watches via binoculars from afar. When everyone clears off, Mike sees the mysterious funeral director (The Tall Man) take the coffin by hand and throw it into the back of his hearse... why? It takes a while but eventually we find out The Tall Man reanimates the corpses, crushes them down to hobbit size, puts them into barrels and enslaves them. For reasons known only to The Tall Man, he then sends some of them off to another dimension (the red dimension) through a dimensional fork (see picture)

As for The Tall Man, he knows his antics are not going to go unchallenged so he keeps some of his hooded hobbits around to fend off intruders. He also has a few henchmen and if you get by those, well see below.

One of the main selling points of Phantasm was the genius design of The Tall man's spheres. These diabolical weapons fly through the air and once they lock on to you they stop at nothing to attach themselves to you, (usually through the head) and drill into your skull... ewww. They are a highlight because their design is pure genius and the results of their attacks are horrifying.

The movie ends on a very odd note. Strangely enough, we see Reggie get stabbed but he's alive and well at the end of the flick. We never see Jodi getting killed but he's reportedly been killed in the fight to bring down The Tall Man... WTF?!! So we're left to believe that it has all been in Mike's head and he's dealing with the loss of his parents and now Jodi by making up this horror story... but then The Tall Man turns up right at the end and attacks Mike yet again... AHHHHH!!! My brain!

I don't know how many times I've watched this movie but it's a lot and I still can't make much sense of it. This is not a complaint... the movie is supposed to leave you wondering if this is all just happening in Mike's head after the trauma of losing his family and if it isn't, there's still no real sense to proceedings other than The Tall Man is evil and our plucky heroes are completely out of their depth. The movie leaves you with a whole lotta why and a what the actual fuck? But I do go back to it from time to time and I think that's partially because it is such a mystery.

Another reason to return is the humour. Phantasm doesn't get enough praise for the laughs it delivers. Maybe it's just me but I always found it hilarious that this guy pisses himself at the end of this scene:

Pacing wise the movie is uneven. It's at its best when Mike starts to unravel the mysterious goings on in Morningside Funeral Home and when Jodi and Reggie decide to help Mike take down The Tall Man. As you may have gathered or already know, this is not a movie for the masses and it hasn't aged particularly well. That being said, it has bag loads of charm, it is a break from the norm and, crucially it is entirely original. Not too many horror movies can say that.

                                                                     PHANTASM 2
After the not too shabby success of Phantasm it was only a matter of time before the studios came sniffing. Oddly enough, it took a lot more time than one would have thought. A movie costing $300k that goes on to make 40 times its budget (domestically) really should have earned a lot more heat. But it took as long as it took and the sequel didn't hit US cinemas until 1988. As a 12 year old boy, I was very excited to see if Phantasm 2 could A. be as much fun as the original or B. start to make some sense out of this world. Bottom line though, I was just very excited!

Universal Studios were the ones who took a chance on Phantasm 2. They wanted a franchise to rival Halloween and Friday The !3th etc and gave the film makers $3m of a budget to make something capable of taking on the big boys. $3m is nothing to a studio like Universal but it was a lot to Don Coscarelli. In fact it was 10 times the cost of the previous movie and Coscarelli set about making good use of the funds. He hired Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman to take care of the make up fx and they did a superb job.

Story wise, Coscarelli was struggling. Given the complete lack of a coherent narrative he had to build on this was hardly a surprise. What he did was quite clever, he started the movie right at the end of Phantasm to give the audience something resembling a back story. This sequence ends with Reggie blowing up his own house filled with The Tall Man's minions with both he and Mike barely escaping. Then we cut to Mike being released from a mental home 8 years after these incidents. Again, this hints at the potential for it all to be in Mike's imagination... Once out, Mike immediately heads to the cemetery and digs up a few graves. All empty. Reggie shows up and is upset to see his long time friend digging up graves mere hours after his release. Reggie and Mike leave the cemetery and in Reggie's car The Tall Man shares a vision with Mike of Reggie's house being blown up with his entire family inside. Mike warns Reggie of what he has just seen but it's too late, they get home in time to see the house exploding... So straight away we are back to wondering if this all isn't just in Mike's head. We've seen Reggie blow up his home already, apparently full of monsters and here is his house blowing up again with his family inside. Is the trauma too much for Mike and is The Tall Man a crutch for him to deal with (another) tragedy? Or has Reggie seen two of his houses blow up? It's impossible to tell as it always is in these movies.

The movie is much better paced than the original and once Mike and Reggie set off on their journey to seek and destroy The Tall Man shit escalates pretty quickly. Mike and Reggie go from town to town and see the same pattern. "Small towns are like people, some get old and die... some are murdered" muses Reggie. And The Tall Man has been doing a lot of murdering. It's in one of these "dead" towns that Reggie and Mike break into a hardware store and make some new weapons. The best of these is Reggie's four barrel shotgun (picture from Phantasm 3)

We're introduced to a couple of new characters too. The most interesting of these is Liz. She shares a sort of psychic link to both Mike and The Tall Man. Now, before you surmise that this couldn't all be in Mike's head as someone else is having a similar experience involving The Tall Man, there is a scene (a pretty funny one actually) before the guys physically meet Liz where Reggie straight up says to Mike "I'm still not sure she's not just a wet dream". This, once again, implies the theory that Mike's imagination has got the better of him. Anyway, the movie floors it and we are treated to some highly inventive scenes one of which involves veteran actor Kenneth Tigar (he's the guy who stands up to Loki in the Avengers). He plays the local priest and he can't stand by and let The Tall Man desecrate the dead any longer. He decides to investigate the local mausoleum for himself and with God on his side (as well as some Dutch courage) he will take the fight to The Tall Man... It doesn't go well:

You can imagine where it goes from there. Great delivery from Angus Scrimm there too. Total conviction. He believes he is The Tall Man therefore we believe it. This scene also introduces the spheres to us in Phantasm 2. As previously mentioned, Coscarelli hired two craftsmen for some truly memorable sequences. The make up fx are excellent and you do get the feeling that these guys really enjoyed being responsible for the havoc wreaked by the spheres. They are by their own admission huge "phans".

It should be noted that the studio stayed very much involved with the making of this movie. Dream sequences were thrown out and they forced Coscarelli to cast James LeGros as Mike this time. This caused some anger among phans but they needn't have worried as LeGros was absolutely fine in the role and Coscarelli got to cast Michael Baldwin again in the next movie. A well known fact among horror fans is that Brad Pitt read for the role of Mike too. Someone really should ask him if he remembers. Usually it doesn't bode well when a studio gets too close to a project but in this case I think it really helped. Phantasm 2 is a great looking movie, it's tightly edited, the acting is solid and they do their best to make it accessible to newbies... a tough ask but I love that they tried.

Phantasm 2 ends with Mike, Liz and Reggie running towards certain death. Reggie takes a slap in the face from The Tall Man that sends him flying through the dimensional fork to the red dimension (see picture). He gets a good look around at the hobbitesque slaves and, for once, is rescued by Mike who pulls him back to this dimension. In a triumph of make up fx they literally melt The Tall Man to pulp to come out on top... until they don't. The Tall Man comes back as you knew he would with barely a scratch on him. This is explained in the later movies and I will get to that but in Phantasm 2 there was a sense of comforting inevitability when The Tall Man got the last word. It all ends, fittingly enough in a hearse with Reggie thrown out and Mike and Liz trapped in the back with The Tall Man driving... Good times ahead.

The movie made over $7m in the US and despite that being over twice the budget and therefore a success, Universal had hoped for more. It was pretty much panned by critics but horror fans enjoyed it, people with a dark sense of humour enjoyed it and Phantasm Phans enjoyed it too. Unlike the previous movie, time has been good to Phantasm 2. It has a huge cult following and when reviewed by today's critics it fares pretty well. I still think it's the best of the lot and I always have a hell of a time when I throw it on.

                                                    PHANTASM 3: Lord of the Dead
After the small success of Phantasm 2, Universal went ahead and gave Don Coscarelli $2.5m to go ahead and make Part 3. They also gave him full creative control and left him to make the movie he wanted to make. Tonally, Phantasm 3 is an odd beast. Yes it is a horror and there are many superb scenes to back this up but there's also an action vibe to it as well as a lot more of that dark humour that is sparingly used in parts 1 and 2.

Story wise, we pick up immediately after the events of Phantasm 2. The Tall Man is driving away with Liz and Mike in a hearse. Reggie picks himself up off the dirt and goes after them on foot. He sees the hearse explode and runs toward it. Liz has been killed but Mike has, presumably, been thrown from the crash. The Tall Man duly arrives to take his prize from Reggie. One of his hooded hobbits hands him the head of Liz, The Tall Man's slight smile is hilarious... Reggie takes out a grenade and says "eight seconds to hell god damn you". The Tall Man responds, "I don't want him in pieces". Clearly he has plans for Mike and so he grants Reggie a reprieve. I expected the movie to slow down at this point but it speeds up. Pacing wise it's just as fucked up as the original movie except where Phantasm took time to build suspense, this one just floors it and doesn't stop.

Anyway, Mike is in a coma in hospital when The Tall Man sends one of his spheres to "visit" and see how he is doing. Rather than attack, this sphere actually produces an eye (pictured below). Whatever it sees, The Tall Man sees. Sitting on a throne (pictured above) surrounded by candles he seems happy enough with Mike's condition and decides to make a play for him. Inside Mike's coma, we see him walking toward the light. There he sees his dead brother, Jodi. He tells Mike to go back but Mike is drawn to the light... The Tall Man, an expert of inter dimensional travel, of course appears. Mike panics but can't move. Meanwhile Reggie walks in on a nurse trying to open Mike's skull, we find out why later. Reggie rescues Mike for the umpteenth time and they run.

As ever with Phantasm, there's a lot of stuff happening that is never explained. Here's a cracker: Mike and Reggie make it to Reggie's home. When they get inside Jodi is there waiting for them. Reggie points out the obvious, "What the hell are you doing here, you're dead". Jodi is apparently there to help but The Tall Man "locks on" to him and emerges through a dimensional fork. Reggie is knocked unconscious, Jodi then turns himself into a sphere and attacks. He is immediately disregarded by The Tall Man who takes Mike through the dimensional fork. Reggie wakes up and Jodi, now a sphere, tells him to go to Holtsville... What. The. FUCK?!!

Still, we mustn't get bogged down in the details now, that'd be insane. So on we go. Reggie stumbles across another dead town, however, he falls afoul of three looters who stick him in the trunk of his Hemi cuda and take it, along with a pink hearse to a nearby house, they've been scoping out. It is here that Phantasm 3's tone shifts to completely fucked up, but in a good way. The three looters enter the house only to find a masked kid (Tim) hiding inside and what's worse is, the kid has booby trapped the place so we get a short but enjoyable sequence where the three looters are picked off in what I have to assume is a darkly hilarious homage to Home Alone... One (a woman) takes an axe in the face, another has his throat slit by a frisbee with razor blades attached and the last falls into an unused grave. Tim simply shoots him. He lets Reggie out of his car and they bond over the losses they've suffered. Reggie tries to dump Tim off at the next town but the kid sneaks into the trunk of Reggie's car.

In the local mausoleum Reggie (thinking he's alone) investigates. Again, he gets captured, this time by two attractive black women both seemingly trained and doing some investigating of their own. Reggie tries to warn them but a sphere comes and kills one of them. It was about to kill the other (named Rocky) when Tim emerges gun in hand and with a perfect shot, takes down the sphere saving both the lady and Reggie. Rocky takes off while Tim has now convinced Reggie he is of use. Later they find Rocky and convince her to help them take on The Tall Man.

Coscarelli brings back the dream sequences jettisoned by the studio from Phantasm 2 and in one of them Jodi takes Reggie to The Tall Man's lair where they rescue Mike and pull him back through to this world through one of those dimensional forks. Everyone together now, they need a place to hold up and they decide on the local mausoleum, the thinking being it's the last place he'd look. Of course things don't go well and while Mike is trying to learn about The Tall Man through Jodi, The Tall Man locks on to him again and comes for him. While in consultation with Jodi, Mike learns that The Tall Man puts the brains of his victims inside the spheres (we knew this from an earlier scene but Mike only finds out now). Mike already knew he was shrinking the bodies and using them as slaves but turning their minds into weapons was another horrible twist.

The Tall Man doesn't come alone, he has already reanimated the three looters from earlier and they are full of fight. Rocky takes on the woman "yo bitch, hands off my boy" she says as she was bashing Reggie. The fight is pretty good and is only ended when a sphere which came out of The Tall Man  flies straight through the reanimated woman's face (pictured above).

Jodi in sphere form takes down another and Reggie shoots the last guy will all barrels of his modified shotgun at close range. Again, a line is apparently required... "if you can keep your head while all about you are losing their's." Thankfully we do not get to see the results of this close range four barreled attack... okay, I'm lying I'd have loved to have seen it but I digress.

Meanwhile, Mike has had a sphere placed in his skull (the nurse tried to do this earlier) by The Tall Man and while he is still human, he is now very different. Reggie and co have trapped The Tall Man in the cold room (he doesn't like the cold) and the ball that came out of him has been placed in a cryogenic tank. Predictably, this doesn't get it done! Mike and Jodi take off leaving Reg to ponder what the fuck he is fighting for. Rocky leaves too "this whuppin' zombie ass just ain't my gig". Reg and Tim head back inside. Reg gets pinned up against the wall by a load of spheres. Another of those pesky dimensional forks has turned up and The Tall Man has come through yet again. Reggie warns Tim, telling him it's all over. The Tall Man's response "it's never over". Tim is taken and presumably killed leaving The tall Man victorious yet again.

I quite like Phantasm 3 but as ever I'm left wondering just what the hell did I just watch? It looks great, the acting is solid but at times I can't decide if it's flirting with genius or if it's just completely taking the piss. In fact that's probably how I feel about the entire series... Test screenings for the movie went very well but, strangely, Universal refused to distribute it and it went dtv back in 1994 (I think). They didn't lose too much money on it but they might have made a few quid if they'd put it in cinemas. I guess they just stopped caring and allowed Coscarelli to take the rights back for the next installment.

                                                              PHANTASM OBLIVION

Where to start with this one? I remember hearing that we'd get answers and explanations in this movie and while there are some, I think it's fair to say the movie raises far more questions and leaves the viewer annoyed more than entertained. Don't get me wrong, it's worth watching but I don't think it's essential to the series.
With no studio involved and a very small budget Phantasm 4 looks like Phantasm 1. This isn't necessarily a good thing because the previous two movies looked really slick and the drop in quality is noticeable. But I can live with that. What I can't live with is the weirdness is taken to places that were never even hinted at in any of the previous three movies. I'll come to some examples of this later but I'll try to put together the pieces of story I can figure out first.

Picking up where Phantasm 3 left off The Tall Man mocks Reggie. He releases him from the grasp of the spheres and tells him his time is at an end but it is not yet. Reggie runs. I presume The Tall Man is either entertained by him or he is using him to find Mike. Meanwhile Mike has taken a hearse and has a plan to take out The Tall Man yet again. This is annoying because at this stage it is clear that even if the plan works, he'll just come through a dimensional fork again. With his sphere in his head, Mike is beginning to embrace his "dark side" and seems much more at peace in this movie. The Tall Man is clearly hoping to use Mike as his new vessel and Mike has accepted he will beat The Tall Man or die.

Those dimensional forks are fucking everywhere in this movie by the way. Mike jumps through so many of them that I found myself just watching and not having any fucking inkling as to what the fuck I was watching. There are discoveries along the way. One, with the help of Jodi is, The Tall Man was a once scientist and very human. He invented inter-dimensional travel via the forks and it is when he goes through the first of these that he is taken by The Tall Man.

So whenever you kill his flesh in this world, he just comes through the dimensional fork again in the form he took all those years ago. So until you get to the root of The Tall Man which I have to assume is somewhere in the red dimension you're not going to get rid of him. But that doesn't stop Mike from trying anyway.

Meanwhile Reggie is still looking for Mike and The Tall Man. It should be noted at this point that Reggie Bannister is a solid actor and his performances in parts 2, 3 and 4 are always enjoyable. Well done that man. Anyway, as ever, The Tall Man leaves snares for Reggie and he falls into them over and over again. One of them is a very attractive blonde girl who gets naked but instead of Reggie finally getting some touch, it turns out she is a minion of The Tall Man and her breasts are actually spheres. In deep shit now, Reggie manages to escape the spheres by banging a tuning fork off a nearby table. Now, of all the fucking crazy bullshit these movies throw at you (an there is a lot) this might be the most fucking ridiculous. I just don't fucking get it. Has anything like this ever happened in the previous movies? No, no it hasn't. The only time I can remember seeing a tuning fork at all is in Phantasm when Reg and Jodi are jamming. See below:


Decent guitar work by the Reg-man there but I do not know how or why this is suddenly a thing in these movies. I have to surmise that it was just shoved in there as a throwback to the original movie without any real idea of how to explain it. What's worse is, at no point was it ever alluded to that it was a weapon to be used in this fight yet Reggie uses it and Mike also uses it later against The Tall Man and Jodi, who it turns out is now fully taken by The Tall Man and is working for him. It freezes them in place for as long as the fork echoes its note and gives Mike time to escape. In short, it's fucking stupid!


Moving on. The movie ends in an explosion next to The Tall Man. Mike's plan to destroy The Tall Man, predictably, fails as once again he emerges from the dimensional fork as we knew he would. Reggie has turned up also but is disregarded by The Tall Man and tellingly he says "Ice cream man, it's all in his head". This is a great line, it either means it is all actually a dream in Mike's imagination or he's talking about the sphere he put in there as part of the process to take him over. The Tall Man takes the ball out of Mikes head and leaves him there. Reggie goes to Mike and hears Mike whisper, "I'm dying". Reggie, in yet another spectacular show of courage, runs toward the dimensional fork and right at The Tall Man. We never see where he ends up. We then cut to the past where Mike, back to being a kid is picked up by Reggie in his ice cream van. They hear someone whisper "I'm dying" (we know it's Mike in the future) but they put it down to the wind and drive off. This ending leaves us so many questions, the biggest of which is what the fuck was all that about? It's not that I hated the movie. Far from it, I quite enjoyed it but there is no excuse or reason for adding to what was already a fucking insane mystery.

                                                             PHINAL THOUGHTS

Phantasm is a tidy and well executed franchise. Sure, I have issues with each of the movies but nobody could ever accuse these movies of not trying to do something interesting. Visually they are unusual and at times strikingly beautiful. Phantasm deserves credit for coming up with something completely different at a time when slasher flicks were two a penny. Performance wise, all of the credit must go to Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm. Reggie plays his character with conviction and quite a bit of charm. With Scrimm's Tall Man we also have a genuinely menacing and scary icon of horror. For such a pleasant man to create something so sinister is a testament to his talent and he will certainly be missed. Coscarelli also deserves credit for creating the whole thing and writing a superb score to rival that of Halloween.

Later this year the Fifth and presumably final installment will be unleashed. Having seen the clip my one fear is that the budget simply will not match the scope of the movie. It clearly has some big ideas (and bigger spheres) but it'll have to go some to tie up all the loose ends left by the movies and in particular Phantasm 4. One thing I'm grateful for is they managed to make this movie before Angus Scrimm passed. It is his swan song and he deserves it to be a good one. One thing we can rely on is this: Scrimm's performance will be excellent. He will revel in this role and we will enjoy watching him playing this character one last time. As for me, I'll watch these movies until I no longer can and I'll probably never figure them out. But I will always enjoy hearing The Tall Man announce to Mike that he is in fact right beside him, or behind him or indeed in front of him... "Booooooyyyyyy". So simple, so scary... Cheers Angus.

G.                                    

Witchers, Dragons, Dark Knights and Chris Redfield.

Happy New Year to all and I hope the gaming gods were good to you this Christmas. It has been a while since I game blogged and a lot has happened in that year. Most of it has been baby related which means my gaming has been severely culled but, early on, I did managed to find ways to adapt:

But the baby got bigger (much bigger) and the only time I seem to get to game at all is on the rare occasion that my wife and I share a day off work or when it's her turn to put him to bed and even then that doesn't take very long. But I will endeavour to find a way to make better use of my PS4. When last I blogged about games I had just started Dragon Age Inquisition. I joked I could be 40 before I finished it. As it happened our new born was a really good sleeper (he still is a good sleeper but not so much in the day time) and I got to plough through the game relatively quickly.

Most of you will have played it by now so I won't bore you with the details except to say it's a perfectly decent RPG with solid production values. Dragon Age has always been a team game where you pick the partners that you consider most suitable to a particular quest. Side quests were a mixed bag, the most challenging of these were the dragon quests. Ten of these badasses were to be hunted down and destroyed. When I encountered the first dragon, it fucking annihilated me but, as ever, a little patience and a lot of levelling up was all it took. However, as the dragons got stronger, the right team and the right tactics were hugely important. I liked this aspect of the game. It made you pick and change your team. Sometimes you had to drop your "star player" in order to complete a specific task. The main storyline was the usual fantasy dross but the game was tightly scripted and well acted. Will I go back for the DLC? No, I've had my fill of this universe but it was an enjoyable romp all the same. Trophy count: 80% Score: 8/10.

Quicker gaming thrills were required for a while and I got them in the form of Resident Evil Code Veronica HD and Resident Evil 4 HD which were both on special offer on the PS Store. I had played them on PS2 and had a hell of a time and while I can say Code Veronica holds up really well, I found RE4 ever so slightly disappointing. It's still a hell of a game but the HD upgrade I was expecting never really materialised so it loses a point there. That said if you've never played it or if you want to play it again it's still the same game... exactly the same game so there is fun to be had. Trophy count: 47% Score: 8/10.

Code Veronica, for me at least, is the spiritual successor to the amazing Resident Evil 2. Back in the day Sony had a hold on all things Resident Evil and while the game developers wanted to take RE3 to the Dreamcast (I think) Sony weren't having any of it. So they made a pretty decent game called RE3: Nemesis for Playstation and Code Veronica for Dreamcast. Code Veronica has all the elements that made RE 1 and 2 so wonderful and a couple of graphical improvements are also welcome. All your favourite beasts are in here along with a couple of newbies (the tremors monster is a favourite of mine) and it is a big game by RE standards. There is a sense of it being too big for you to deal with but that just makes it all the more satisfying as you progress through the game. Combat is pretty much as you'd expect though there are a couple of weapons where you have to go POV but that's a fun addition. CV is a greatest hits of the previous two games. I love it for doing that, it's like when you go to see a classic rock band. Yeah you got their new album but really, you just wanna hear the hits. Code Veronica plays all the hits. Trophy Count: 56% Score: 9/10.

Not finished with Resi yet as I absolutely flew through those two games which meant I had time for another hit. Resident Evil Revelations 2. Some people find it annoying that these "revelations" come out "episodically". I just wait for them all to be released and buy them like a normal game... So is it any good? I'm pleased to report, it's a ton of fun. Like it's predecessor the emphasis is as much on action as horror, no bad thing. The action lives and dies on the weapons and they are very satisfying, the horror is beautifully presented with deliciously bleak corridors and claustrophobic outdoor sections. There is a team aspect to this game where you have to protect a kid who may or may not be evil or work in tandem with other characters as you progress. The plot is the usual Resident Evil gubbins but we just wanna kill badass monsters... you'll get to do that here and in very enjoyable ways too. One of the monsters (which some found to be unfair) is invisible to you until you shoot it or you can use the (possibly) evil kid to point them out... I thought it added a huge amount of tension to proceedings and while I was annoyed when it killed me (by puking huge bugs all over me) I also enjoyed going back and killing the fuckers! My trophy count on this game is quite low as I don't play with or against others online. I'm happy to play against someone in the same room as me but never online. I just don't enjoy it and I don't suppose I ever will. So RER2 is another must own for resi fans: Trophy count: 17% Score: 8/10.

Back in April I got The Witcher 3 as a birthday present. I finished it in November. Value for money? Yes but it does not hold a candle to Skyrim for longevity. More on this in a minute. The Witcher 3 is your bog standard Tolkien-esque universe with all manner of creatures to hunt and fiends to fight. There's card game called Gwent which everyone in this world plays (but not me as I never understood it) and there's the usual bonkers storyline, which again I didn't really understand featuring a girl being hunted by a powerful faction called "The Wild Hunt" who want her for her Elder Blood (whatever). The main character, Geralt of Rivia, is her guardian and when she goes on the run from the Wild Hunt your job is to track her and, ultimately, help her fight these evil fuckers. Geralt speaks with a gruff voice so we know he's a badass... he has friends and is at the centre of a love triangle (by far the most interesting of the two women is Yennefer pictured below) and to the game's credit you do grow to like Geralt's gruffness and his "cut to the chase" attitude.

So is it any good? Yes, yes it is... for the most part. It was met with universal acclaim when it came out and the clip had me drooling. I got right into it and I enjoyed it... for a while. The problem with The Witcher 3, for me anyway, is the rinse and repeat of it. The game does try to make you utilize all your skills but once you level up to a certain point, kicking ass becomes quite easy. Did I do all the missions? No. I finished the game on Normal level, I completed all the Witcher contracts, I saved a lot of villages (not all) I killed a lot of assholes, I found a lot of treasure, I blew up a lot of monster nests and I investigated an endless amount of question marks. Ah the question marks! There's too fucking many of them. 99 of them on Skellige alone and the vast majority of those are in the ocean. This leads to you sailing out to sea, jumping into the water, crossbowing a few hapless monsters and raiding a treasure box... over and over and over again. It's not fun, it's not satisfying and it's not worth it. There is fun to be had with The Witcher 3 but make no mistake, there's padding here. It tries hard to bring you all the gameplay of Skyrim but where Skyrim found ways to keep you coming back for more, The Witcher 3 beats you over the head with the same missions and expects you to be happy with the prettiness of it. And some people are happy enough to do the same shit over and over. Not me though. In summary, The Witcher 3 is a great looking game and through a decent surround sound system it packs a fair punch. I enjoyed the main storyline and the Witcher contracts. I enjoyed exploring the game maps to a point too, just not to the point of doing it in my sleep. Trophy count: 61% Score: 7/10.

In my last game blog "Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition!" I had just finished Resident Evil HD with Jill Valentine. I knew I'd complete it with Chris Redfield one day and after investing so much in The Witcher 3 I needed a quicker fix. So I went back to the mansion again and it was just as enjoyable this time around. It's a little harder with Chris as he can't carry as much as Jill and he starts armed only with a survival knife. I've always found the game at its hardest in the early stages of playing. Once the game opens up and you get your weapons sorted it becomes easier to negotiate proceedings. It took me 15 hours to finish it with Jill last time. It took me 11 hours with Chris, I think because it was still fresh in my mind and I knew, more or less, where I was going next. If you're still a Resident Evil HD virgin I think you owe it to yourself to enter the realm of survival horror: Trophy count: 56% Score: 9/10.

Finally I just started Arkham Knight and while I am loving it, I am struggling to find any enjoyment with the Batmobile. When the absolutely stunning Arkham City came out people bemoaned the lack of the Bat tank to which the game developers responded, "Batman is the ultimate vehicle". At the time I felt like that was a cop out but I'm starting to agree with that statement. I only ever travel in the Batmobile when I absolutely have to as I much prefer gliding as the Bat from rooftop to rooftop to get to my destination. Unfortunately for me there is a lot of use for the Batmobile. I've only ever enjoyed a couple of car games in my time and, truth be told, I was never very good at those so I was always going to struggle with this. I'm currently trying to rescue Catwoman from the Riddler and it involves a lot of Batmobile. I'm struggling and it's frustrating... because I suck with cars. I do hope I can get to grips with the Batmobile though as the rest of the game is an absolute blast.

Next up will be the Resident Evil Zero HD update on PS4 which is a couple of weeks away. I hope to get to it soon.

Cheers,

G.

Aaron Sorkin, the Christian Right and Women.

I'm going to start this blog with a quote I can completely relate to. "My wife is smarter than I am in every way imaginable and it never makes me mad. I don't feel a crippling inferiority complex turn into rage and bad decisions when I think about her being smart" - Will McAvoy

When The West Wing hit in the late 90's, people were showering it with praise and rightly so. Writer and creator Aaron Sorkin was the main man on the show for four seasons. He had less success with Sports Night which came out at the same time. It ran for two seasons and shares a lot of what made The West Wing so great. It had energy, it was funny and it had many of those "fuzzy" moments that only Sorkin can do and get away with. These shows passed and he came back with a show that, on reflection, never really stood a chance. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was the show that started the Sorkin backlash. It was a behind the scenes look at the weekly creation on an SNL-esque show which gave Sorkin the platform he needed to get an awful lot off his chest and he wasn't pulling his punches. He was going after the Christian right and he didn't seem to care that it would kill any chance the show had at longevity. He even predicted it in the second episode. One of his characters, Jack Rudolf (Steven Weber) chairman of the "National Broadcast Systems" (we know who he's talking about) is explaining to Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet) the president of NBS why you shouldn't always take on the right: "They never lose Jordan, they always win".

It was about five episodes in when the God squad started their, ahem, crusade. They were being picked on and someone had to pay. So they went after the show and then they went after its creator. Among the many insults they flung at Sorkin (and the cast) and one that I'm still baffled about was that he is sexist. They decided he hated women and all he could do was write damsels in distress. This, coming from people who would take away a woman's right to choose... Sorkin probably didn't help himself by admitting he has a love of 50's screwball comedies but again what they focused on here was the 50's not the fact that in most of those screwball comedies the women are much smarter than their male counterparts. The voice of right wing reason in Studio 60 is the character Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson) who believes the world was built in six days and that God has a plan for everyone. She is a pillar of strength in the show because she respects non believers but more importantly she plays down her belief system while at the same time leaving you in no doubt that she is a follower of Christ and you will not deter her. It's a fine line but it's written to perfection by Sorkin (something the right wing army seem to have missed) and Paulson is top drawer in the role. Below is the beginning of a scene where her charm and disarm offensive is dismantled by the equally charming and way too enjoyable, Martha O'Dell (Christine Lahti):

So what exactly were they talking about? Probably not a lot but some "experts" not just on the right but overly sensitive leftists (usually college going types who are so sensitive that comedians refuse to play their campuses) also bought into this theory. Suddenly CJ Cregg's (Allison Janney) clumsiness was an issue. Ainsley Hayes's (Emily Procter) sexiness was being exploited. From Sports Night, Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) was just a mess of a human being and therefore weak. It wouldn't be truthful of me to say there was no substance to these claims. CJ was a klutz, Dana's private life was a mess and Ainsley was enormously sexy. However, these women were so much more than these traits. How many times did we see Ainsley Hayes turn Sam Seabourne around on a huge issue? How many times did CJ Cregg own the fucking room no matter who she was dealing with? Dana Whitaker never got a handle on her private life but then a great many people don't. Professionally though, she was a giant! It also seemed to go completely over the heads of the detractors that the men Sorkin was writing were absolutely riddled with imperfections. It's what makes them human. Take Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) from Studio 60 on  the Sunset Strip. He's a recovering cocaine addict. Does this disgusting facet of his personality mean that Aaron Sorkin hates men? How about the philandering Vice President Hoynes (Time Matheson) Why does he get a pass? See, I don't think Aaron Sorkin is sexist, I just think people who don't like him got so annoyed at his success that they flung as much garbage at him as possible.

There is a very popular belief among his most ardent critics that Harriet Hayes (above) was one hundred per cent based on his ex, Kristin Chenoweth and he should be ashamed of how he wrote her... Well, did anyone ask Chenoweth how she felt about it? Turns out many people have. Time magazine: I'd love to know about the role he created for you for his show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Were you accurately portrayed? "I think a lot of people thought, "Oh, that's Kristin." But it wasn't — it was very loosely based on me. It was difficult for me seeing the character doing things like not believing in gay rights when I so do. It's weird to see fights played out on TV that we had, but it was also an honor. He asked me first. He said "I think you're one of the most wonderfully complicated fantastic women, and I think there's a character here. Can I loosely" — and that's the key word, loosely — "base a character on you?" And I said sure." If it's good enough for Kristin, maybe you should entertain the possibility that it's good enough for you.

In his last television show, The Newsroom, he again went after the right and again they responded with their vitriol. What they didn't count on was HBO just not caring and the show saw three wonderful seasons. They said Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn) was a horrid character who represented the worst personality traits of women and she needed to be rescued by a man. Now, I don't know what the fuck they were watching but Sloan Sabbith was nobody's victim and as I saw it, she did the rescuing... Olivia Munn: "I had Aaron Sorkin's support to not take the "girly" route. The director and I were not on the same page but I had Aaron on my side and having him back me meant everything".

There's just something very off about right wingers throwing rocks at a liberal legend like Aaron Sorkin and tainting him with the very traits that makes them so vile. If we look at the movie that made Sorkin famous, A Few Good Men, we again get an amazing female character, Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore). She has the unenviable task of trying to get Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) to take an unwinnable case and turn it into a win even if it means making an enemy of Col. Nathan R. Jessup (Jack Nicholson). She does this by calling him out on his bullshit:

Kaffee goes for funny with his retort but he knows she is right. I suppose you could argue the Sorkin trait of a great man being made greater by a great woman is sexism but I think if you're a woman and Aaron Sorkin is in your crosshairs as apposed to something like Sex in the City or anything with a Kardashian in it, you really should start to ask yourself how many different kinds of stupid you are. Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill):

Aaron Sorkin has a quite magnificent body of work. He won an Oscar for The Social Network. He was nominated for Moneyball. Steve Jobs hasn't made a bean* but Sorkin has been nominated for a Golden Globe for his screenplay. The American President is a wonderful movie which opened the door to The West Wing's liberal fantasy world. Charlie Wilson's War isn't my favourite of his movies but I have watched and enjoyed it several times. Granted, these are male orientated movies but that does not make him sexist. All of these movies are quality. Moneyball aside, they all feature men who are better for having strong women around them. This isn't a bad thing. If you are offended by the smart woman making a slightly less intelligent man great dynamic, maybe you're just someone who likes to get offended. Because if he wrote a movie about a smart man making a slightly less intelligent woman great you'd probably be angry that he was smarter than her and that she needed a man at all.
If you're the kind of person that gets offended by Sam Seaborne saying to Ainsley Hayes that her outfit is "enough to make a good dog break his leash" then you will always consider Sorkin a sexist. If you're this kind of person you probably also get offended when CJ compliments Sam Seaborne for his ability to wear a suit. It's impossible to please you! Ainsley Hayes: "The point is that sexual revolution tends to get in the way of actual revolution. Nonsense issues distract attention away from real ones like pay equity, childcare, honest to God sexual harassment..."  

I think we have to give the last word to Allison Janney: "I love her (CJ Cregg). I wish that I carried more of her with me than I actually do. She is kind of my hero. What a great woman to get to play! I wish that she could have lived on and done other things. She's just such a truly great role model for women and that's one of my characters and one of those instances where you felt like you got to give back. I feel like I really got to inspire young girls. I get so many letters and see people on the street who come up to me and say, "Oh my God. You changed my life. I was majoring in this and I changed it to this and now I'm going to work in Washington." Aaron Sorkin really inspired a lot of people with that show. Getting to play C.J., that was an important female role on television and I am still really, really proud of it in a different way than I am of my other characters. Like in Mr. Sunshine, I loved my character, but she was the exact opposite. C.J. will always be the role that I'm maybe most proud of in terms of what it said to the world. "

Cheers,

G.

*Steve Jobs has finally made it's money back and earned about $1.5m.



Dawn of the Civil War's Awakening.

Big budget blockbusters! We love them. Well some of them. How much do we love them? Well take Spectre. I'm not a huge Bond fan and certainly Spectre did nothing to convince me I'm wrong about that but already the enormous budget of €245m has been paid back to the tune of €752m and counting. That's how much we love them. We certainly love talking about them and given that  Captain America Civil War and Dawn of Justice clips came out recently I'm all blockbustered up! Add to that, we're a few weeks away from The Force Awakens!!!

Let's start with Star Wars. As far back as I can remember, George Lucas has occasionally been a bit of a dick when it comes to his own fans. Not always... but occasionally. His latest dig came when he was talking about why he wasn't allowed direct Episode VII. The studio said they wanted to do something for the fans. Lucas: "I wasn't interested in doing a movie for the fans". Now, maybe I'm being a bit precious but that just seems like a bit of a cuntish thing to say. I mean, if you're going to make a new Star Wars movie, who are you making it for if not the fans who put you in your ivory tower in the first place? Not that it matters. Common sense prevailed, the studio picked a director who knows what he's doing and all of Georgie boys ideas were rejected by the director. This may seem a little harsh on the guy who created the whole fucking thing but given how disconnected he has become from what made Star Wars great in the first place, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised. Think I'm wrong? Check out his own reaction to The Phantom Menace:

Ultimately, I'm very psyched for The Force Awakens. I got everything I wanted. I got the characters I love back. I got the director I wanted. I got George Lucas removed from the project and I got a sense of hope that was so violently taken away by the wretched prequels. Excitement level: Very high.

Let's do something franchises do to rescue themselves from horrid entries and go back in time. Let's talk X-Men. Now, anyone who knows me knows I don't read comics so I don't wanna hear any of this "If you'd read issue #347 of the Mystique is actually Magneto chronicles, you'd understand the movie more" bullshit. I go to see these movies at face value and as a movie goer I expect to be catered for. A few years ago I went to see X-Men First Class...was kinda dragged actually but I'm glad I was convinced to go because I got a powerhouse of a movie with excellent performances. First Class had everything an X-Men movie should have but it also had a cool factor thanks to the presence of Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. Kevin Bacon didn't hurt either. As you know, the movie is an origin story. How did Magneto emerge? Why is Professor X in a wheelchair? Unlike most "hero" movies it also makes you consider the possibility that the bad guy, Magneto, actually has a fucking point. Or as I tell anyone who'll listen, Mathew Vaughn perfected in one movie what George Lucas fucking destroyed in three.
First Class was well received and on the back of this Bryan Singer had a bit of a whinge and set about wrestling control of the sequel. He got his boxers in a twist when Brett Ratner was going to make a Superman movie while he was prepping for X-Men Last Stand. They swapped, both movies disappointed...
So Singer went back to his X-Men pals and while I was disappointed that Vaughn wasn't given the gig after his excellent work in FC I did allow that Singer had made two really good X-Men movies previously so I was on board. I went to see Days of Future Past and I enjoyed it well enough. BUT, and this is huge for me, fucking time travel. It's just a horrid device. Now, it's okay in a movie like Back to the Future which is solely about time travel but no matter which way you cut it, it's used here to erase the awfulness that is X-Men: The Last Stand. Maybe that's not an issue for everyone but it kills tension... there's nothing at stake if you can fix it with time travel. First Class didn't need time travel, it got by on excellent writing and great scenes like the one posted.



Apologies for the shaky camera there, it's the only one I could find. The scene is wonderful. The acting is top drawer, the relationship between these two would be enemies is laid out raw for all to see. There's nothing like this in DOFP. In its defence, it looked great and the fx delivered but that's kind of a given these days. What I want, and what I suspect comic book fans want, is more of a focus on the relationships between the X-Men. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart did their best with limited time in DOFP. Guys of that calibre need to be used more. And so X-Men: Apocalypse is coming next year and Bryan Singer is at the helm again. Can he match Vaughn's magnificence? I doubt it. Excitement level: Luke warm.

So we've all seen the new Captain America: Civil War trailer by now. Like Winter Soldier, the movie looks like a lot of fun. What's pleasing me about this movie is the absence of so many characters. The movie will have time to play some jazz with these guys. Of course there are sub characters but by now we've spent time with all of them and so we're at least somewhat invested in them. Obviously we care more about Black Widow than Scarlet Witch but at least I know who she is now. I had no idea who she was in Age of Ultron. Actually, we really should talk about Age of Ultron as it was huge! Not as huge as Jurassic World but huge all the same. I quite liked Age of Ultron. But my enjoyment of it was tempered with frustration. Firstly, I'd no idea who some of the characters were. Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Vision were all new to me. I still don't really understand Vision's origins or what he's supposed to be but he's there now so I guess I just need to shut up and get used to him. The other two baffled me completely. I actually had to go to imdb to get Quicksilver's name. Scarlet Witch I remembered... not sure why. But they were a huge part of AoU and I simply didn't care about them. The more characters added, the more bizarre the storylines get, the harder it will be to retain anyone but the real die hard comic book fans. The next Avenger movie will be a huge challenge for all concerned. Too much of a good thing is still too much and it's probably why I preferred Ant-Man to AoU. Ant-Man was a truckload of fun and everyone got a chance to make you like them. Mind you, Paul Rudd is always likable. As for Civil War, I really think it'll be a great movie. It has all the tools needed to deliver. The bar was set pretty high by Winter Soldier but I expect this to clear it. Excitement level: Very high.

And so to Batman v Superman. I've watched and enjoyed the first clip but I backed away from what came out since as I want some mystery when I sit in my IMAX seat. Batman will hopefully be a little sneakier than Zod in his quest to tame Super-man and given how Man of Steel ended I think we can look forward to something different to the usual stoicism that Super-man has been trapped in for years. There's a gravity about these two characters that demands your attention. I know Aqua-Man and Wonder Woman are in there too but they are not why I'm buying my ticket. This is rightly being billed as a scrap between the two biggest super heroes there has ever been. Affleck as Batman is fucking inspired casting and I cannot wait to see what he brings to the role. Excitement levels: Very high.

So this is where my attention will be for the next six or seven months. Obviously I'd love to go to the cinema to see more movies but having a kid really eats into that free time so whenever I get to the cinema it tends to be for an event movie with one or two exceptions. If I'd known about Krampus sooner, I'd have organised a babysitter :)
Cheers,

G.

Halloween Movies and Memories

Black cats and goblins and broomsticks and ghosts,
Covens of witches with all of their hosts,
You may think they scare me you're probably right, 
Black cats and goblins on Halloween night...

Halloween means different things to different people. There are those who loathe the entire enterprise and can't wait for it to end. There are those who build a bonfire and run naked around it hoping to connect with druid overlords. Those are the extremes. Most of us enjoy it for the bit of fun that it is and every now and again something happens... a smell, a noise... but every year something happens to remind me of that feeling I had as a kid when the day arrived. I loved the whole thing because I was all about ghosts and monsters and the promise of sweets didn't hurt either. These days we put up the decorations and come Halloween night we hand out sweets to kids who are just as excited about Halloween as we are! I used to hand out treats wearing a Michael Myers mask. I've had to downgrade to a Jason Voorhees mask because the Michael Myers one was too scary for some of the kids. True story!

                                                      It is a horrifying mask
                                

Michael Myers took a thoroughly enjoyable night for a kid and made it terrifying. But then, that was the point wasn't it? We wanted something to scare us and it never really did. It was the hope of being scared by something that made it special. When Michael Myers finally delivered on the promise I didn't sleep properly for a long time! And, of course, I loved every second.
I'll try not to beam about Halloween in a technical way because it's been done to death. Rather, I'll tell you how I came to see it for the first time and how that impacted on me.

                                                         Finglas, Dublin 1982
Halloween hit cinemas in 1978 and aired on television in 1980 but I was too young to know about it. However in 1982 at the tender age of 6 (coincidentally the same age Michael committed his first murder) my oldest brother, Colin, was bragging about watching it on Saturday night (Oct 30th) while the rest of us (my other brother and two sisters) would be in bed and my parents were on a date night. Now, by this stage I'd already seen Jaws and had become a bit of a Hammer Horror fan. I figured this couldn't be any scarier... So after listening for the umpteenth time to my brother's continued bragging, I went to my parents and asked could I stay up and watch it. In fairness to them, they played it perfectly. They didn't make a big deal out of it, just said "No, maybe next year" and told me to be in bed by 9pm. If they'd made a big deal out of it, I'd have snuck down but, like I said, they played it cool and it went off my radar... Until about 10pm...

I was tucked up in bed on the edge of sleep when I had my first experience of John Carpenter's Halloween. The scariest score in cinematic history was 5/4ing its way into my semi conscious state and after a few bars of it I heard my brother shout up the stairs at me, "Graham, do you want to come down to watch it? Mam and Dad will never know." This wasn't Colin doing me a favour. Oh no! Colin's role as the oldest brother was torturer and chief. But I heard something in his voice... he was pleading. The fact was, the opening of the movie had frightened him and he wanted company... any company. Even me. His youngest brother. My company was never requested, unless there was a trick involved. There was never a treat at the end of Colin requesting my presence. So that, coupled with the terrifying music, I did what any self respecting 6 year old would do... I pretended to be asleep. To Colin's credit, he stayed down stairs and watched the whole fucking thing. Poor guy was bombarded with questions from all of us the following day. He answered all of them. His use of description made me want to see it...

                                                   Blanchardstown, Dublin 1984
Back in the 80's when a big movie was shown on television, it was a genuine treat. We didn't have a VCR so screenings of Super-man and its sequel, Jaws and its sequel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones  etc. were to be savoured. They generally didn't hit the television until Christmas time and part of me misses the feeling of excitement I'd get when RTE, BBC and UTV would show adds for their Christmas movies. Halloween was no exception. It was a movie that everyone was talking about but I suspect only half the people had the balls to actually watch and even though it was made in 1978 it was still a huge talking point in the mid 80's. I kept my mouth shut when I saw the television listings in the paper on October 27th 1984. There it was. I forget what channel it was on but there it was and I already knew my parents were going out. Off they went about 9pm and I was watching the movie with my sister and a friend of hers by about 10pm. It won't come as a surprise to anyone to read that it scared the living piss out of me! I'll attach some of the shots throughout this blog that stayed in my head and haunted my dreams for years after. Starting with this one: 

                                                Michael watching Laurie in school

As previously stated many people were still going without VCR's in the mid 80's. We just didn't have the money. Times weren't particularly tough but disposable income was minimal. This is why days like Halloween were such a treat. They truly were (and still are) a great distraction from the norm and while I was really, quite badly frightened by the movie I was also instantly obsessed. Of course by the time I got to see Halloween, the sequel had been doing the rounds since 1981 but I'll come back to that. I began reading the television section in the papers every Saturday in the hope that it'd be on television again. The following year, I was certain I'd get a screening... I got The Fog. I was so disappointed that Halloween wasn't on but as it happened, The Fog turned out to be a whole lot of fun and absolutely dripping with atmosphere. It didn't impact on me the way Halloween did but it was certainly more treat than trick.

                                                   Michael watching Annie and Laurie

It was about this time that I started looking at who was making these movies. Names like Irwin Yablans, Deborah Hill, Moustapha Akkad, Tommy Lee Wallace and of course John Carpenter were in my head, ingrained into my brain like a tattoo on grey matter. The Fog and Halloween shared most of these names and so my curiosity grew. Who were these people? Again, back then, information like this was at a premium in Ireland and it wasn't until I hit my teens and started buying movie magazines that I got to know a bit about them. But for years they were heroes of mine and I knew nothing about them. Imagine the frustration! Even now, when I see any of these names it triggers something in me. Just a tiny feeling in my gut to remind me that at one point, seeing these names on my television screen meant the fucking world to me.

                                              Michael watching Laurie in her bedroom

It was probably about 1986 when I first got to see Halloween 2. I've managed to stay away from the technical prowess of Halloween so I'll try to do the same about Halloween 2's shortcomings. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's ever so slightly lazy at times. Still, at 10 years of age I didn't give a shit about lazy writing or excessive gore! I was getting another Myers movie and truly nothing else mattered. By now, my parents had accepted that their youngest boy loved movies and in particular he loved horror movies. They had let me watch The Fog so they let me watch this. And it was fine. I mean, I was scared... just not "oh my fucking God Michael Myers is going to come in the window and get me" scared. I'd been out to visit my grandad that day and I dared him to watch it. On the phone the following day I asked him if he had watched it. "I did son." "And did it scare you?" "Not really son." We talked for a while about the movie. I was testing him to see if he had actually watched it. Afterwards I told my Mam about the chat and she reminded me that grandad had fought in World War 2. He'd seen a lot worse and up close. As for me, I was getting far too used to slasher flicks for one so young. Halloween 2 served as a nice little addition to "the night he came home" and I was satisfied when I watched it.

Which way is he looking?

 

A Franchise on the wane

By the time Halloween 4 came out it was 1989 and I was positively gagging to see it. Halloween 3 was a fun movie but had nothing to do with Michael Myers or Haddonfield. Part 4, however, had Michael Myers all over the advertising. It was called Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and once again an older brother would get the drop on me. My other brother Gavin was also a fan of horror so he was very excited to see the movie. I was 13 years old. No way would I get into an 18s movie! So off Gav went. He didn't brag. He didn't make a song or dance about it. He just went, came home and assured me I wouldn't be disappointed by it. I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity for it to come to video but finally it arrived and Gav went out and rented it for the whole family. I fucking LOVED it! Now, as I've gotten older I can see the many flaws in the movie but at that age this movie was just what I was looking for. Halloween was still such a hoot for me and this was something else to add to the list of things I loved about the day. Did it scare me? Not really, but I found it to be more effective than I expected and I've since seen it on the big screen where it holds up reasonably well.

 Laurie finds Annie

 

                                                      Best and worst of the rest

The rest of the Halloween franchise is hit and miss. H5, to my delight, came out a year after 4 and again at that age it was the absolute bollocks! Notice as I got older it stopped being about the scares and started being about fun. H6 took its time but when it did come out I was all over it. Again, I can see the hideous flaws now but I enjoyed it well enough at the time. It wasn't well received though and forced a reboot of sorts. Halloween H:20 disregarded H4, 5 and 6. When it came out I was 22 years old and I was excited to see this 20 year anniversary movie with Jamie Lee Curtis back to take on the scariest of all the horror icons. It's a solid movie made by people who care about this material. Its follow up was made by people who don't and is so bad that it buried the franchise and forced a full on remake. Enter Rob Zombie. He made two movies. The first, a remake of the original and the other was a direct sequel to that. Both movies are a source of much debate. I'm kind of torn about them. There are things I like and there are things I don't. Truth be told, 1981's Halloween 2 got by on the fumes of the original classic and everything since then has been poor by comparison.

                                                           Don't Fear The Reaper

The older I get the less time I have to look back at these memories. That's not sadness, that's just a fact of life. However, music is a powerful thing. How many times have you heard a song and suddenly found yourself remembering something you hadn't thought about in years? The first time I ever heard Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult was in Halloween. Whenever I hear it I always think of Laurie and Annie in a car, smoking a joint, being tailed by Michael Myers... Every. Single. Time! And every time I hear that Halloween theme I have access to so many memories of Halloween's past. Not just the movies or the anticipation of watching the original that night as a kid. But as a teenager sitting around a bonfire with friends. Or drinking in town and realising Halloween is a spectacularly unsafe night to go drinking in Dublin City! Or doing a horror themed pubcast with my buddy Wayne Talbot. Or playing a gig in a bar in Rathmines dressed as "ghostface" from Scream... There are a lot of memories.

As for the waning franchise? Well, up next is Halloween Returns however, just this week the project was put on hold while the writers and the producers come to terms with the arrival of "new partners" (probably Platinum Dunes) who weren't entirely sold on the direction the movie was taking. Hard to know if this is a good thing or not. While Platinum Dunes movies make money, their quality is, well, questionable. This is all conjecture though, they may not be involved at all. What is certain is, whatever adventures lay ahead for Michael Myers, I will be in the cinema watching and once that classic theme hits I'll be consumed by a wave of nostalgia.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Cheers,

G.

Why I love Movies - (The Exorcism of Emily Rose Edition)

"Possession is 9/10 of the law"

The Exorcism of Emily Rose or as I like to call it, The Explanation of Emily Rose is based on a true story of which there is ample information to be found online. Suffice to say, it's a tragic event which I think we can all agree should have been handled in a very different way. I'll leave it at that for the actual events and focus on the movie from here on in.

Laura Linney, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter and Tom Wilkinson would grace any movie and it is rare that a horror movie can boast such a quality cast. Director Scott Derrickson must have felt like all his birthdays had come together to have such talented people to work with.

The movie opens with ominous shots of a house where clearly some awful shit has gone down. Derrickson deserves credit for imbuing the movie with a sense of dread using some beautiful lighting and deft camera work along the way. As it happens Father Moore (Wilkinson) has carried out an exorcism on Emily and tragically the 19 year old girl has died.

Soon after we meet lawyer, Erin Bruner who has just got a client who may be a killer off on a technicality but Erin is ambitious and wants to be a partner at her firm so she doesn't care, yet. Her boss, Karl (Colm Feore) is delighted with her work and dangles a partnership in front of her if she'll defend Father Moore who has been arrested for negligent homicide. Bruner is an atheist and hates the idea but with that partnership so tangible, she agrees.

The prosecutor, Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott) is a true believer. He's a church goer but doesn't believe in demonic possession. He truly believes father Moore is responsible for the death of Emily and is seeking a maximum sentence. A quick meeting between the two lawyers sets the tone for the battle ahead. Thomas has the facts on his side, Bruner has her work cut out for her.

The movie plays out in three ways. Part courtroom drama, part flashback showing you the events leading up to Emily's untimely death and some "real time" events mostly involving Bruner and father Moore. I should state at this point that I went to see this movie as a horror fan so I was looking forward to all manner of supernatural shenanigans and while I got plenty of well executed moments of horror, I ended up being far more interested in the battle between Thomas and Bruner in the courtroom. It's tightly scripted with hardly any filler moments.

Thomas has one huge advantage over Bruner and it is this simple truth: religion does not belong in law making. If you apply your religious beliefs to common sense law making, you are Sharia Law. Even if your religion is (apparently) more tolerant, it has no place in a court of law. This is why Bruner cannot win this fight... and she struggles to find a way to make any sort of impact. She clearly has sympathy for father Moore but can't find a way to convey his decency to the jury. Partially because Thomas gives a very effective opening statement and partially because the lawyer in her refuses to embrace the theatrics that might win over the jury. She brings in an "expert" to convince us that possession and exorcism are part of the "human experience" but Thomas destroys the witness and brings in an expert of his own, Dr. Briggs played by the wonderfully smarmy Henry Czerny. He is convinced Emily was suffering from "psychotic epileptic disorder" and should have been forced fed her meds and food to live. He asserts the religious solution, ie the exorcism directly led to her death and that a combination of medicine and force feeding would have saved her life. Bruner falls into his trap when she asks, "so you'd feed her against her will?" the response is damning, "to save her life, yes".

Bruner knows she needs to change her tactics and she also knows (though it never comes up in the movie) that the jury will certainly have some religious people and if she can put on an effective show, she might convince enough of them to win this case. She's also been taken in by the charming father Moore. I feel this character is a genuinely decent guy who did what he thought was right and Bruner is starting to wonder if he isn't telling the truth.

He tells her how he saw Emily's experience and he talks about his own terrifying run ins with a hooded figure. He's very convincing. Furthermore Emily's boyfriend, Jason (Joshua Close) comes across as entirely sane and speaks of some truly horrifying moments spent with Emily. In one she begs him not to leave her and as he says himself, "I never did, I stayed with her until the end." See below:

There comes a point in the movie where Bruner decides to go spiritual. A key witness, a doctor who believes Emily was possessed, is killed "Omen style". Bruner has been rocked by the fact that the guy she got off on the technicality has killed again and she is starting to wonder what the fuck she's doing with her life. The partnership offered to her starts to mean less and less and despite being told by her boss that she'd lose her job if she allows Moore to testify she does what she feels is right rather than what is right for her career. So, she takes the shackles off and with nothing left to lose she lets father Moore take the stand. In fairness to the priest he doesn't seem bothered by the fact that this will almost certainly mean incarceration. He says he just wants to tell Emily's story. So he plays a tape recording of the Exorcism and we, the audience, are treated to the actual events. It begins in the house but things quickly turn to shit and Emily ends up hysterical in the barn. Father Moore continues the ritual and Emily, it seems, has been possessed by six demons. Father Moore doesn't back down from them and a dialogue of sorts begins. It is a superb scene, Jennifer Carpenter is so utterly committed to the scene that I started to feel very uncomfortable when I first saw it.

Actually, let's talk about Jennifer Carpenter's acting in this movie. She is incredible. The physical aspect of her performance is absolutely staggering. She bends and twists herself into all manner of shapes. In the quiet moments she shows an innocence which is essential to the movie. You believe the witnesses who say she was a wonderful person. The performance, for me at least, was worthy of an academy award nomination but this is horror and horror doesn't get the love at the major award shows. That's a real shame. It's not that there's a lot of amazing performances in horror but there are some and this is certainly one of them. It won a Scream award and an MTV award.

Back to the movie, father Moore testifies and does well considering his position. Ethan Thomas watches and listens like a spider watching its prey in the web. Thomas drops the ball here as he comes across as kind of a dick, mocking the priest for his beliefs. I found this odd given the lawyer is a practicing catholic but maybe he just got caught up in the moment. He absolutely rips the defense to shreds but he is heavy handed and he makes Moore look sympathetic.

As the movie comes into its final moments there is one scene that I'm completely torn on. Father Moore reads a letter, written by Emily, to the court. Moore's voice narrates as the scene begins. In the scene, Emily, by now on death's door, manages to sneak out of the house and into the nearby field. There she collapses by a tree and, pretty violently it must be said, her soul leaves her body. There she speaks to "Holy Mary". You see her having a conversation with the iconic catholic figure but you never see Mary. Moore reads the letter and the conversation is revealed. Mary has given Emily the option of dying where she is and going with Mary (presumably to heaven) or she can stay as she is and die in the clutches of six demons. Why? Well, if she sees this through to the end, she'll help convince people that there is a spirit realm etc.

I have problems with this scene. I'm not talking about my beliefs here. I'm happy to watch a movie like this and not let my personal belief system spoil my enjoyment of it. Or think of it like this, if I can walk into Lord of the Rings and get drawn in by that fantasy, I can just as easily get drawn in by this one. So, as stated, Mary asks Emily stay possessed to convince people that there's a spirit realm or to die and go with her there and then. Emily takes the martyr route, deciding that she'd rather endure further suffering to help bring religion to the masses. Firstly, people just believe in religion. For no rhyme or reason whatsoever and without the benefit of proof, people just believe. A kid enduring further torture by six demons won't change that. Secondly, there's a theory put forth in the movie that the exorcism failed because Emily was taking medicine which shut down the part of her brain that would be open to receiving the benefit of an exorcism. Let's follow this madness to its conclusion. If Mary wanted Emily to remain possessed to her end, surely nothing would have worked, rendering everyone trying to help Emily, including father Moore, pointless.

What I do like about the scene is the the way Thomas pays attention to the details and uses them to his advantage. Moore has stated that Emily got the stigmata after seeing Mary. Thomas points out that the field is surrounded by a barbwire fence and Emily simply cut herself on the fence on her way into the field. There is blood on the barbwire to back this up. I also love the way the scene looks. It's so haunting, almost other-worldly. A still from the scene is used as the main poster of the movie (shown at the top of this blog) and it is one of my favourite movie posters. I also like the hint at the power Mary has at her disposal. I assume Emily's outer body experience is something Mary orchestrates which is cool enough but the violence of the soul coming out of and going back into Emily's body is quite scary. Nice touch as you do get the feeling that if she wanted to Mary could handle this whole six demon thing with minimum fuss.

And so the stories have been told and the closing statements are upon us. Bruner gives a solid closing. She's played the only card she could, the theatrical one and she's played it beautifully. There's nothing more to add except variations on "I can't say for sure if these things are real or not" which is a great ploy for the reasonable doubt argument. It's a decent closer but not as rousing as you'd expect.

Surprisingly enough the rousing closing speech comes from Ethan Thomas who absolutely wipes the floor with Bruner. I don't know if it was intentional as you did feel the tide turning toward Bruner during father Moore's testimony and maybe they felt they needed to bring things back toward common sense in order to add to the suspense as we wait for the verdict. Or maybe it was just Campbell Scott being amazing, I don't know but he is brilliant here. Simply pointing out the reality of the situation is damning to Bruner's defense and she does look a forlorn figure sitting there while he rips the theatrical efforts of the defense apart.

And so we come to the verdict and oddly enough both sides win. Thomas gets his guilty verdict which was all he could do at his end but Bruner has also done her job and has reached the "believers" in the jury who decide the priest should have his sentence reduced to time served. The judge agrees. The movie closes with father Moore and Bruner at Emily's grave. It is sad and it hit me right in the face when I first watched the movie. Afterwards when discussing the movie with the person I first saw it with we both agreed that Dr. Briggs was right, if Emily had been force fed and treated by professionals she'd probably still be alive.

Once you've seen this movie the question of whether or not she was possessed is also an obvious topic. Let's be clear, the exorcism scene in this movie is terrific. As are the Emily in possessed mode scenes. I found them to be expertly shot, acted and edited. Credit again to Derrickson and Jennifer Carpenter for producing the goods in a world where we've all seen "The Exorcist". What is surprising though is the way the movie offers up common sense explanations for what you initially feel must be supernatural occurrences. It's to the movies credit that it does this and Campbell Scott's deft performance as the "well actually here's what really happened" guy is top drawer because he could have come across as a kind of kill joy but he never does.

So there's something for everybody here. Religious people will get the God versus Devil thing expertly delivered by a talented director who knows exactly what's required to make a movie of this ilk. He is helped by a talented cast who commit to the material, not least by Jennifer Carpenter's spectacular performance. Those of us who look for less creative and more rational ways to explain our existence are also catered for in a very reasoned analysis of what exactly is wrong with someone who seems to be possessed. The real trick here, however, is the attraction for people who maybe aren't big on horror but love a good courtroom drama. This is an excellent one with Linney and Scott both reveling in their respective roles.

I really feel this was the last good exorcism movie. There's been a slew of them since all pretty terrible. Even Derrickson's Deliver Us From Evil is by the numbers and more drivel than devil. I've avoided the inevitable comparison to The Exorcist up to now. Obviously The Exorcist is a better movie,  I mean it's the fucking Exorcist. But this one dares to delve a littler deeper, asking more questions of the audience and for a horror movie, that can only be applauded.

Cheers,

G.