A BBB-Movie

When I saw 1988's Night of the Demons when I was a kid, I could tell even then that it was on the lower end of production quality. My family rented a lot of horror movies, and this one was a dud with my family, and my mom even coined a term for it. But, for even as cheap as I thought it was, there was something about it that stuck with me -- more than just the scares or good looking ladies (Jill Terashita spent years etched into my memory) or gore, it had an energy to it. When I went back and watched it when I growded up, I appreciated the movie even more.

The movie's just fun. It's an entertaining funhouse ride, but what's great is that it does manage to still have scary moments and take memorable, surprising turns. It's a Halloween party or haunted house attraction or spooky carnival ride in movie form. The premise of high school kids having a Halloween party at an abandoned funeral parlor always seemed to me like such a cool, fun idea. They tease each other with stories, the town folklore, of the place being haunted, but little do they know what they're in for. Further adding to the fun atmosphere of the movie is the way the cast seems to be having fun -- it's one of those movies that just looked like it was a blast to make.

One of the things I find interesting about the characters is the way that most of them are pretty antagonistic towards one another, but when hell's breaking loose, they do try to help one another. A hooligan like Sal would probably be about saving himself in another movie, but he does stick around to help out here. I remember being shocked by Sal's death when I was a kid -- I thought he was cool, and he seemed like he would have made it out alive. You also have Roger, who's initially depicted as being a bit cowardly -- he's the first to run, and in the middle of the movie, he breaks down in tears at the hopelessness of the situation, needing consoled by the heroine -- but he ends up stepping up and putting himself in danger for others in the end.

The real star of the movie, though, is Amelia Kinkade as Angela. The creepy, loner goth girl who's behind this Halloween shindig, she's the first to realize there's something evil and sinister targeting them, and that her innocent Halloween games are becoming serious, but she's just dismissed as being the kooky one who's into the occult. When she ends up possessed, she becomes the movie's biggest villain, and is rightfully made the star and face of the franchise. Even though the sequels don't live up to the original (and should be ignored), Kinkade makes Angela a memorable horror monster, at once having fun in the role but also still managing to actually be scary. (Steve Johnson's make-up effects are great; he worked on Fright Night, and you can kind of see Evil Ed's disfigured vampire form in a lot of the possessed character make-up in this movie.) Kinkade deserved better sequels and Angela might have been up there with the likes of Freddy, Jason and the gang.

(I have to take this time to mention the awesome VHS cover art. It's Kinkade in demon make-up, creepy and in demonic joy, holding an invitation to her party. The classic tagline is "Angela is having a party. Jason and Freddy are too scared to come, but you'll have a hell of a time." How awesome is that? I actually had no idea for the longest time that it was Kinkade's Angela on the cover, I thought it was just a random demonic monster not even in the movie. That's how cool the make-up is, how much Kinkade transforms herself.)

As a kid who always heard horror stories about the perils of Trick-or-Treating -- the warnings, like about checking your candy -- the end of this movie gave me the willies when I was a kid. It's meant to be comedic and over-the-top, but, still...that grumpy old bastard who wanted to give the razor-filled apples to kids getting a dose of his own medicine was a gory shock. That the razor apples are used by the guy's wife to make apple pie is pretty ridiculous; we know the wife wants the guy dead, so that explains how the razors survived the transition from apple to pie, but how'd he eat any of the pie without noticing the crisp, just-peeled razor deliciousness!?! Ah, whatever. It's still a funny and shocking "trick" to end this big old Halloween party...

"Halloween Party." It's what the movie was meant to be called before the producers of Mikey Myers' movies shot it down. But that's the perfect title for this movie -- it's a Halloween party in film form. That term my mom once coined for this movie, which she hated? I clearly remember when we returned this movie to the video store. As my mom handed our rentals over to Heidi, the video store clerk who I had a bit of a crush on, Heidi asked what we thought of the movies we rented. My mom was quick to start trashing Night of the Demons. "That wasn't just a B-Movie, it was a BBB-Movie; filled with butts, boobs and bad-acting." Well, to her it might have been a BBB-Movie. To me it's the perfect Halloween movie.

Wild and Wonderful Horror: Chillers

One of the joys of going to a video store back in the day -- something today's kids don't get to experience -- is just wandering around the genre of your choice, taking in all of the covers, looking at the back of the tapes for more pictures and descriptions and whatever ravings a critic (known or invented) gave that movie. You were sometimes tricked into renting a movie that was never heard of, not even by the people who were involved in making it.

Sometimes you could get input from another customer or clerk; if they steered you towards a shit movie, you never knew whether to question their taste or if they were being an asshole. It was all fun, though, the video store, hunting for movies to rent. When video stores introduced the 5 for 5 deal, chances are you were renting more shit than good stuff, but sometimes a dud or B-Movie would leave you with something entertaining to remember it by.

Most times with B-list horror movies, they were never scary. For those movies, I think you really had to watch them at a certain age for there to be any scare factor going on. When I was a kid, I was creeped out by Dr. Giggles. Dr. fucking Giggles! Despite the fact that it's tongue-in-cheek and a very stupid movie, some bits stayed with me, and I can still feel a little heeby-jeeby at the memory when I watch the movie now. That's the way it is with several horror movies, especially the subpar B-ones or direct-to-videos, and that's the way I feel about today's entry, 1988's Chillers.

It doesn't take a film major to realize that Chillers isn't cinematic gold...or even just cinematic. It has the production value of your local dentist's TV ad; the acting ranges from "tolerable" to "wow, way to make porn stars look like Royal Shakespeare Company members;" the plot is thinner than toilet paper. But when I saw this movie as a kid, a couple of things must have spooked me out enough to remember it all these years later. I find when there's a movie that bothered you as a kid, what festers in your memory is always more disturbing than what the movie is actually like when you get around to rewatching it. You're like "Really? THAT is what gave me the willies? I thought it was played scarier than that. I didn't remember the actor being such a goddamn hambone with cheese."

Chillers is a movie shot in West Virginia, by a West Virginian writer-director and featuring folks from West Virginia regional theater. This has to be a horror first. And not only that, but it's obviously a MOVIE first that this is a movie taking place in WV and about WV with people from WV that's NOT about barefoot, inbred, hillbilly cannibals! So, let's applaud the movie for that alone! It takes creativity and restraint to accomplish that. (This movie is probably also the only movie in history to feature the fast food joint Rax, a regional place that had cheeseburgers so good that you knew it had to be made out of Soylent Green.)

Chiller is an attempt at a Twilight Zone-y series of vignettes -- a group of five travelers, waiting at a bus terminal on a stormy night, share with one another the strange dreams they've had within the previous night. They try to one-up each other in terms of fucked-up'ness of their dreams, and each dream sequence has a Twilight Zone-y twist or surprise to them. Sound interesting? Don't get excited -- the box art ruins what ends up being the movie's biggest twist.

The first dreamer to share her story is Lindsey, who looks like the illegitimate daughter of Meg Foster and Martha Plimpton. She's a failed swimmer who begins getting coached by a mysterious diver named Billy Waters (no foolin'), who looks like the illegitimate son of David Rasche and Necros from the James Bond film The Living Daylights. She begins a romance with Billy, and one day sees him dive into the pool and never come up. She gets the lifeguard, and both hop into the pool, not making much of an effort to search, sticking to the same spot despite the fact his disastrous dive occurred from the other side of the damn pool. They give up their lazy search and later talk to the manager, who thinks Lindsey is crazy or "up to some sorority trick," because he reveals that Billy Waters...DIED FIVE YEARS AGO. Did you get the Chillers? Probably not, because this is the most underwhelming segment of the movie.

From that moment on, Lindsey's dream turns into being chased around the indoor pool by a zombiefied Billy and other random dead swimmers. This entire segment takes place at this indoor pool, thrillingly. The undead water enthusiasts eventually corner Lindsey in the shower and she wakes up with a case of the Chillers. As Lindsey was asleep and dreaming this nightmare at the movie's start, she doesn't actually get to tell the others what her nightmare was. Which is a good thing -- comedian Daniel Tosh has a bit about when you tell a friend a dream you had, only to realize halfway through the story how stupid you sound. (He used a harsher, more un-PC word than "stupid.") Lindsey would have REALLY been tasting that right about now, had she told the other travelers.

As they all attempt to calm Lindsey, admitting that they've each had terrible nightmares within the last couple of days, Mason, the lone kid of the group, is the first to step up and recount his nightmare for the others. Mason, who looks like Waldo from those Van Halen videos, dreamt about going camping with his Scout Master and two other kids. Right away, something seems off, because...there are only three kids in this troop? It's a three member troop, and they don't even have uniforms! They're just in grey sweats, with a cheap sticker on their upper arm. Yeah, this is a totally legit organization here. This ain't a real troop and this guy ain't a Scout Master, and poison ivy or shittin' in the woods ain't the only things the trio should be worried about. I'm not saying these three are running the risk of getting Canteen Boy'd, but that's exactly what I'm saying.

No, the Scout Master is a seemingly normal guy, just enjoying nature with his three member troop. They're setting up camp, and one of the kids goes to fetch firewood when he comes across a mental case who thinks they're invading his territory. The mental case returns to camp with the kid, where he beats up the Scout Master and orders them to vacate the premises within an hour. Scout Master Bob is meek and a nerd, but he's filled out the paperwork and has permission to camp here, and he loves nature, dammit, so he's not going to be ordered around by a vagrant nut! He decides to ignore the threats and stay put.

The only scout who's into this camping stuff is Mason, who eventually wakes up to see his two fellow scouts tied up, and the vagrant tied up and hanging, dead. Surprise! Scout Master Bob might not be the pervert you were afraid he was, but he's a nutcase. He spares Mason for being the only one to appreciate camping and nature. Mason eventually attempts to free the other two kids, but is stopped and pursued by a disappointed Bob. He gets close to grabbing Mason during a chase, but falls hand-first into a bear-trap, giving Mason the time to get back to camp, free the others and attempt escape. Their method? They pile into the Scout Master's car. That's right, these kids are actually going to try to drive away...in a forest...at night. If Scout Master Bob isn't going to kill them, their genius decisions are. They see there aren't any keys in the ignition, when Bob pops into view of the driver's side window, having chewed his hand off to escape the bear trap. (He had earlier voiced admiration at wolves for doing so, which was still the least creepiest thing about his whole little endeavor.)

Handless Bob popping up in the window is something that scared me when I saw this when I was a kid. Now it just plays goofily, the actor really just going too over-the-top and not being all that creepy. I think this story would have been improved had the scenario not come across as being so shady from the start; actor Gary Brown's doing a good enough job at making Bob seem just mild-mannered and ordinary, so you CAN see where the surprise was supposed to fit. It would have been great if the movie could have pulled off the shock and reveal that Bob was the one attacking the kids and the real one to fear. But the way it's depicted, you can't help but raise an eyebrow, and even the vagrant nutbar accuses him of being up to no good. When THAT guy finds it weird...

People who have seen this movie tend to think this segment's the best. It had potential that wasn't reached. The two bratty kids are also funny, and there's also a nice shot where Mason's being chased through the dark forest, lit in a blue light. That was the end of Mason's story, and next up is Sharon, with the battiest dream of all...

Sharon, a dead ringer for Ma Walsh from 90210, is a lonely woman who has a crush on the new local anchorman, Tom, whose actor is so nondescript I don't even have a funny comparison to make. Sharon likes to talk to Tom when she's watching him. Sharon is weird. But, wait, what is this -- one night, she actually hears him say something back to her! Instead of being spooked or questioning her sanity, she rejoices. He muttered something about calling him and she whips out the old Yellow Pages, calling the station. Instead of being spooked or questioning his sanity, Tom answers the call. And in what's the most bizarre conversation since the invention of the telephone, she's all "I'm totally normal and I never do this, but I watch you on the TV every single day and I like you and I totally am never forward like this, Mr. News Reporter, but would you like to go out with me, an obviously unstable and weird nobody, sometime...?" And then she slams the phone down without hearing a reply. I'd like to think she realized how dumb she sounded, but I think she might be possessed by a 12 year old and was genuinely afraid of his answer, "Like, OMG, does he still like me even after I was weird like that?"

And then, time passes, and suddenly, someone is at her door. It's the reporter! Sharon prayed to the Bad Romance Novel Gods and was heard! Well, how else did he find her? This was the '80s, before Star 69 and caller ID. He claims he looked her up in the phonebook, although she didn't leave her number. (I guess there's only one Sharon Phillips around? Don't you find, when you look in a phonebook, that no matter how plain or weird a name, there's always like a dozen bastards with the same name? Did he just go around Sarah Connor-ing every Sharon Phillips in southern WV?) He at least acknowledges that he feels crazier for showing up than she probably did for calling. Sometimes, the characters in this movie actually show some logic, which is strange for a cheapy movie like this that doesn't usually care and could get away with just being batshit crazy since it's all a dream, anyway.

Anyway, instead of being spooked or questioning her sanity, she welcomes him in, where they sit around and she literally tells him the sucky, unremarkable journey that is her life. I'm not exaggerating or making a joke there, she's meant to be a dull, depressed loner. Instead of his being spooked or questioning her sanity, the reporter guy is into her. Soon, they're awkwardly making whoopee, and wait, what's this...Tom lifts his head up and is revealed to be a vampire! He swoops in for the kill, and Sharon is the most calm vampire victim of all time. No reaction. But his being a vampire explains why he's NOT put off by her; her imagining hearing him talk to her through the television was an intended suggestion on his part.

We're then introduced to my favorite part of the movie, Tom's daytime guardian, a really foxy, scene-stealing goth-punk chick, who looks like the rebellious, illegitimate goth-punk daughter of Maura Tierney and Stevie Nicks. In her first scene, for no real reason, she kills a pizza boy when she shows up. She slowly drains his blood into a vase, steals the pizza, and is then shown eating her free victory pizza with Tom, which makes Tom the only vampire in movie history that likes pizza. Days pass, and Tom explains to Sharon that he won't turn her into a vampire but just feed on her for a while.

He chose her because she's pathetic, with a "depressing existence," and since he sees her as dead already, he thinks he's doing her a favor by letting her live her final days fulfilling her fantasies. As his assistant blackens out the windows of Sharon's apartment, Tom's begun his vampire nap in a body bag, which the assistant zips up. Body bags instead of coffins always make me think of vampire going on camping trips or something. It's supposed to be cool and different, but...it's a sleeping bag. It makes you picture vampires making blood S'mores and singing some Cure, camping near their Port-a-John, no doubt filled with the black stool that accompanies all of their blood consumption.

We then cut to the assistant doing a weird dance to a weird song, like Violet in Friday 5 or Angela in Night of the Demons, all while Sharon sneakily stakes Tom (with a freaking hairbrush), while he's zipped up in his bodybag. This is a bit disappointing, as it means Goth-Punk the Vampire Babysitter isn't the greatest at her job, no matter how cool or good looking she is while (not) doing it.

Sharon flees the scene of the kill, getting the hell out of her apartment, but surprise! The assistant can apparently teleport and is there to stop her. Just then, a cop shows up asking about the missing pizza boy. He notices the loud music and acts like it's a murder confession or something! "That music's pretty loud. Want to explain it?" And then Sharon takes off out of the building, while the assistant returns to Sharon's apartment. Every cop show I've ever seen, scripted or reality, would have the cop chasing down the person who's leaving the building, rather than the one holing themselves up in one of the building's rooms. This brilliant cop goes after the assistant and we hear a few gunshots, but are never shown or told what the hell's happened.

Meanwhile, Sharon flies home to her sister's, where she's hospitalized for being so weakened by the vampire. While in her hospital bed, Sharon turns to the playing television; the city's local anchorman is retiring, and hands over the newscast to...Tom! I guess that's what happens when you randomly stake a vampire through his sleeping bag. The genius probably staked him in the nards. On a sidenote: isn't it a little lame and stereotypical that the two female characters in this movie have romance-related dreams?

The next one to tell their dream is Ronnie, who looks like the ne'er-do-well brother Bobby Van never wanted anyone to know he had. His dream sequence seems pretty quick and simple. While one day reading the newspaper, he's kind of saddened to read the various tributes family members write for lost loved ones. When he reads of a kid who died, he pounds his fist on the paper, wishing aloud he could do something to help. Suddenly, the kid materializes in his house. In a quick montage, we see Ronnie calling the kid's parents and telling him to pick him up. It's a silent montage, so we don't hear what's being said, and I guess we're not treated to any dialogue because what the fuck is that conversation going to be? There's no logical way to write that. The parents are happy to see the kid, Ronnie is self-satisfied, and goes about his day.

Later on, Ronnie is going through the paper, wanting to try this weird ability again, choosing to use an obituary this time. Judgmental bastard he is, he skips over anybody who died at an older age. He picks out a 22 year old, works his magic, and the dead dude appears before him, just as before. Although the obit says the guy had no family, Ronnie's like "Not my problem!" and sends him on his way, wherever that could be, it's not Ronnie's concern -- he's just wowed by his cool power.

Ronnie eventually goes through a family photo album, coming across a photo of his dead brother, who looks 20 years older than he is. (And nothing like him; the brother's parents must have been Barry Nelson and French Stewart.) Ronnie places his hand on the photo, wishing him to return. He does! And he's actually kind of pissed about it -- he now thinks about having to die and lose people all over again.

Without any time to worry, the 22-year-old Ronnie previously resurrected breaks through the door with a shotgun! Fuck yeah! What's this about? He demands Ronnie resurrect some of his buddies. Turns out this 22 year old isn't some innocent kid Ronnie brought back, but an executed murderer. When the murderer threatens Ronnie's brother, Ronnie quickly grabs the paper and does a reversal of his power, wanting to send the murderer back to where he came from. It works, and the murderer vanishes. And then, shortly afterward...Ronnie vanishes, too! Do you have the Chillers? The reason is because the paper with the murderer's obit was laying on top of Ronnie's photo album -- specifically, a high-school photo of Ronnie, so when he wished the murderer away, he wished himself away, too.

OK, this whole thing was another thing that stuck with me from the first time I saw this movie. On one hand, the power to bring back the dead through obituaries is at least something new in a movie, but the way it's played is kind of goofy. People laugh at it, and it's a weird concept, but it's all in the depiction -- because it's basically just a bit of a reverse Death Note, using supernatural powers to kill (in this case resurrect) a person through their name, and that anime works for some reason. At the risk of sounding like a total wussy, obituaries gave me the willies when I was a kid, so maybe that's why this segment worked on me. And the whole bringing back a killer and then ending up erasing his own existence was unsettling to me. Stop laughing at me! The biggest problem is the way the deceased return looking the way they did on their burial day -- I know this is a dream, and a magic power we're talking about, but I'd like to imagine something more Hellraiser-y, like Uncle Frank rebuilding himself back to life from nothing.

That leaves the last traveler to tell his dream, Conrow, a college professor. Looking like the bastard son of Gabe Kaplan and Geraldo Rivera, Conrow...is the worst actor in this movie. The guy had to be the local pharmacist or something. A banker. He is just...*bad*. His line readings are that -- readings. His delivery is so lifeless, I just tune the guy out, and have to rewind and listen to him again, trying not to fall asleep. And he raises his eyebrows on every word he says. Thanks for saving this guy for last. His dream's too underdeveloped, as if it was shot as an afterthought, for it to be the movie's last story, too.

The newspaper's out-acting this guy!

His dream's about a college course he teaches, about some ancient Mayan spirit that possessed warriors and violently won battles for them, making human sacrifices. He offers his class the incantation that was said to bring forth the spirit. One of his students is fascinated by all of it, and later that night recites the words and ends up possessed. (She looks like if Jean Grey was possessed by a Deadite and not the Phoenix.) She acts very Deadite-lite, kills a couple of people and attacks the class in a scene that wants to be Carrie-like, but comes across like a Freddy's Nightmares dream. Conrow recites a spell that's supposed to exorcise the spirit, but I guess in the tradition of Ash Williams, doesn't recite every single little syllable, no, but he basically said it, yeah, and the entity sticks around just long enough to force the girl to plunge a knife into Conrow's heart.

Lackluster, right? Derivative. Dull. Made worse by Conrow's expert acting ability. Now, after each person told their dream, the kid, Mason, would tell them that it's not scary. "That's not scary!" Which is kind of tricky of the writer, you know? Why would you admit your own attempts at a horror story isn't scary? Why am I watching your supposed horror movie, then? Anyway, the bus then arrives. The entire time the five have been at the station, there's been one dude asleep the entire time, with a newspaper over his face. I didn't mention this, because I can't imagine it coming into play.

The five board their bus, but wait...what is this? The man Ronnie sits next to is his brother! Conrow sits next to that redhead student of his, who was possessed! Lindsey spots across the aisle the zombiefied Billy Waters! Sharon sits next to the Sexy Goth-Punk the Vampire Babysitter! Mason sits next to the crazy forest dweller, and sees his two friends across the aisle! The bus driver turns around, telling his passengers that the next stop is Babylon! The bus's destination sign then switches over to "Hell." Mason flips out and runs out of the bus, frantically, back into the station. He tries to wake up that dude who's been sleeping throughout the whole movie. A bloody stump falls to the man's side. Holy shit, it's crazy Scout Master Bob! Do you have the Chillers yet?

Well, even if you did, the next scene kills 'em. It's Mason, bolting upwards in bed. It was ALL just a dream! The kid was dreaming he had a scary dream and that four other assholes had scary dreams and they told each other their scary dreams, which made his dream so elaborate in that he invented dreams for four other people, and then had to dream them twice for the sake of retelling them! What the fuck did this kid eat before going to bed, and how much acid did he sprinkle onto it?! I think a normal person's mind would explode. Mason breathes a sigh of relief. "Now THAT's scary!" he looks into the camera and says. Not really, Mason, but nice try. Infuriating is what it is. You just wasted our time on bullshit that didn't happen, Waldo.

Would it have been so bad to just have the dreams -- as screwed up as they were, as off the wall bonkers and/or supernatural they seemed -- be the way the characters actually died, and its the spirits of the fives that are meeting up at this bus station? Or that the dreams were premonitions of the crazy ways they're about to die? "It's all a dream" endings just make the entire story a waste of time.

I know I've been poking fun at this movie, but I like it for some reason. I'm not going to pretend like it's a great movie, or some obscure gem, but it has its certain charms and is entertaining. It's cheap and the acting's spotty, but there's at least some thought and creativity going into the stories, unlike those try-hard Syfy movies that are intentionally trying to be cheap and cheesy -- those movies are really just lazy and dumb and pointless wastes. A couple of the story ideas in Chillers ARE interesting (the vampire targeting lonely, depressed people; the Reverse Death Note powers), and needed reworked and to be in a movie with better production values or in a movie that wanted to be more serious. Chillers tries to play it serious and comedic, but the overall cheapness adds more to the comedic vibe -- while there's intentional humor to the script, there's a lot of unintentionally funny stuff, as well. But, hey, Chillers obviously has something going for it for me to have remembered it. Maybe I'm just amused by its being a Wild and Wonderful horror movie, or just the nostalgic attachment from being creeped out by it when I was a kid.

Writer-director Daniel Boyd followed this movie up with Strangest Dreams: Invasion of the Space Preachers, another cheapie B-movie filmed in WV with WV theater actors. It's a sci-fi movie, a riff on cheesy sci-fi movies from the '50s and '60s, and most of the actors from Chillers make an appearance in the movie. (Ronnie actor Jim Wolfe is the lead) This movie has Troma backing, so I assume Boyd had slightly more resources here than with Chillers, because there's more variation in locations and it doesn't have the local dentist ad visuals of Chillers. (I poke fun at Chillers' production value, but it doesn't look all that worse than something like The Evil Dead or El Mariachi, both considered indie classics. Chillers, to me, is really like an '80s Carnival of Souls.) The performances in Strangest Dreams are also a step-up, with the returning actors from Chillers seeming more at ease. It's a funny, amusing piece of silly fun, a movie with a giddy spirit that makes you smile along. You can make it a double feature by buying the two-movie DVD set at Boyd's website.

Music recommendation: A New Beginning by Wolfie's Just Fine

If you're a fan of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning -- and there's not many of us, since that movie's so divisive -- then you should check out this video and song by Canadian band Wolfie's Just Fine. The song, titled after the fifth Jason flick, is about that silly love a young horror fan will feel for an actress in a horror movie, and the devastating effect the inevitable killing of that actress's character has.

And if you were a male of a certain age when you saw it, chances are that Friday Part 5's Debi Sue Voorhees made an impression on you. This video nicely recreates the full death scene of her character, Tina. The kid starring in the video is also pretty good; look how horrified he is by the girl's death and the sight of Jason! I feel like this song and video even trumps The Ramones' "Chain Saw," which was Dee Dee Ramone's ode to Teri McMinn's Pam from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

A big thanks to Siskoid of Siskoid's Blog of Geekery for linking to this song and making me aware of it.

Victor is grinning, flesh is rotting away

I remember being a kid and somehow seeing the music video for The Ramones' Pet Sematary theme song before ever knowing what Pet Sematary was. I thought the song was awesome, and it led me down the path of being a huge Ramones fan. (If The Ramones aren't my top favorite band, they're at least in a close top three. It's also cool that they got the Ramones to do the theme since the novel had a few references to the band.) But the clips from the movie which were used in the video interested me, and I wanted to check it out. If the song for the movie was awesome, how awesome must the movie be?

Well, I didn't get to find out for a while. I remember being excited renting Pet Sematary. I'm just watching along, no big deal -- "Where's this movie headed?" -- and, for some reason, I got creeped out by the scene of a bloodied and wounded Victor Pascow being carried into the hospital. There's no real preparation for it, the movie's mainly been a dull sitcom of the Reeds' moving day, and then BAM, a bloody head filling the frame, with the commotion of panicked crowds and rushing helpers. I think there's something about the scene beginning in slow motion that I found off-putting, too.

OK, Kid Radu, suck it up, it's a horror movie. And then the second shock -- Louis pronounces Victor dead, and everybody leaves the room. Louis sits there, saddened, his first day on the job and already he couldn't save someone...and then, with a jolt, Victor grabs Louis, spouting guttural nonsense. I was ready to walk out of the movie then but wanted to stick with it. It was a simple little jolt scare, and looked like Louis' hallucination, I'm sure that's it for that character. And then the clincher...

The disgusting, grey, vein-y, rotting corpse version of Victor shows up in the doorway of Louis' bedroom, chipper, casual, but with that supernatural echo effect to his voice. "Hi, doc!" I don't know what it was that bugged me about Victor so much, but this part freaked the shit out of me, and I turned the movie off, with no intention of finishing it. I didn't know how that guy pertained to things, how it fit in with a pet cemetery, but I wasn't going to stick around and find out. That's not all...

Later that night I had a nightmare about Victor and was 100% convinced I woke up from that nightmare and saw Victor standing in MY bedroom doorway, same as in the movie. I don't know if this was actually the nightmare, or if I was half-awake when I "saw" him, but it still scared the shit out of me. I'm pretty sure I woke up in one of those over-the-top manners, like in that episode of M*A*S*H when a resurfaced memory of nearly drowning causes Hawkeye to wake up from nightmares screaming his head off and piss the bed. I never wanted to watch that movie again...

But I soon afterward did. And the funny thing about Victor, and what I've come to like about the character over the years, is that he's a complete good guy! He looks and sounds monstrous, but he's there to help Louis and, eventually, the Creed family. I just find that brilliant about the character, that someone so horrifying looking is actually just totally decent and kind. Victor was just a college student who was tragically hit by a truck; because Louis tried to save him and stayed with him in his final moments of life, when his soul departed, Victor's spirit returns to help Louis, whose own life, and the lives of his family members, are in danger. I'd say he's like a horror version of Jacob Marley, but Marley was a cruel character who tries to compensate by helping Scrooge as a ghost.

The other tragedy is that Victor completely fails in saving the Creeds. He warns Louis to avoid the Indian burial ground, but Louis doesn't listen. He tries to get through to the Creeds through Ellie and her Shining ability, but she's discredited as a kid just having bad dreams; and then he guides Rachel as she tries to return home to Louis as quickly as possible, to prevent him from harm or doing harm. There's a limit to how much Victor is able to intervene, his most direct contact being through Louis, who ignores him.

And when everything goes to pieces -- the supernatural Gage killing Jud and Rachel, Louis losing his mind -- Victor appears one more time to apologize to the now mad Louis, who's on his way to the burial ground to bury Rachel. Victor warns him one last time, and is again ignored. He was a good man, Victor Paxcow. The funny thing is, he's not entirely essential to the story. You can take him out and more or less have the same movie. But he's such an interesting addition, giving the movie just an extra shot of creepiness and at being so unsettling. As grotesque as he is kind, he's such a memorable character and part of the movie.

Actor Brad Greenquist does a great job with the role, providing the right amount of creepiness, but also eventually bringing the movie some of its only levity in the second half, without losing what makes this character so unnerving and distinct. And the make-up design and effects are both just disgustingly brilliant. I've long wanted an action figure for this character that haunted me, but ended up becoming one of my favorite horror heroes. I once again had to take it upon myself to have a custom made...

A Rant about Bordello of Blood, chacha

HBO's Tales From the Crypt was a big deal when I was a kid. It was supposed to be cool, these episodic horror tales brought to you by A-list directors, horror vets and recognizable stars, presented to adults, gorier than any network show could be. I tried several times to get into the show -- I STILL make attempts to get into it -- but I just can't. I think I always just had a problem with how the show's not genuine about being scary, not serious about presenting a dramatic or chilling Alfred Hitchcock Presents/Twilight Zone type of anthology. They're about being "tongue-in-cheek," which is just kind of a lazy way of saying "we refuse to take this seriously because we think we're too cool for this stuff." I just don't think the episodes are done well and they rarely are as clever and funny as they think they are.

The show's agenda is to take all of those old EC Comics parables and make fun of them, dressing them up in a big, glossy production, but really just making fun of them and the genre, turning it into comedy. Making it lighthearted, mocking horror is what attracted recognizable stars to the show, because they wouldn't dare be caught dead doing something as lowbrow as a horror. A mocking takedown, though? That's excusable. Excuse me while I roll my eyes. This show is really hokier and unscarier than R.L. Stine's Goosebumps. THAT is how little I think of Tales From the Crypt.

I remember kids at school eventually making a big deal when Tales From the Crypt's first movie, Demon Knight, came out. While I should have expected that I wouldn't like it based on my feelings about the series, I looked forward to it. It was the first movie I rented from Blockbuster, but I really didn't like it. So when Bordello of Blood came out, I didn't even bother. I didn't want to see it. In fact, I'd see the ads and just roll my eyes and think it looked like a From Dusk Till Dawn knockoff, but I already knew it wouldn't be as good as that movie (which I loved at the time), because Tales From the Crypt was never good, period, let alone good enough to rival an awesome movie like that.

I eventually got into the comedy of Dennis Miller, watching a ton of his comedy specials, listening to albums, watching HBO's Dennis Miller Live. (HBO used to rerun that show well after it aired, which is shocking since its topical, but pretty awesome of them to do.) When reruns of Dennis Miller Live from around '96 hit, Dennis would constantly make jokes about Bordello of Blood and how bad he thought it was. I liked Dennis Miller a lot, and even though he always trashed the movie, I felt like I had to check it out. Dennis Miller! In a horror movie! Sure, it's Tales From the Crypt, and I didn't have high hopes because of that, but I eventually did check it out...

It's a weak movie, but better than Demon Knight. And true to Tales From the Crypt form, it's a neat idea, but they trip over themselves to make it "funny" and "campy" at the expense of everything else. A hard-boiled detective noir work about the P.I. investigating a vampire case, where the femme fatale is the head vampire, could be a pretty cool story. Showered with Tales From the Crypt's Cheez Whiz and filtered through HBO's 12 year old "BEWBIES!" mentality, you get this Grade-Z butt burp. But the movie has one saving grace that nobody wants to acknowledge: Dennis Miller. How did I come to that conclusion? Because Miller is the ONLY thing that is actually funny in the movie, and if you remove him, you're left with one of the dumbest, most unwatchable movies ever made.

And Miller had to be ad-libbing most of his dialogue, if not everything. So much of it IS Miller, and he seems like the type to show up and be like "Yeah, this is shit. I'm doing what I want to do." And while HBO had its talons in Miller at the time, since that's where he did his talk show, I'm kind of thinking Miller's name wasn't the first to enter any HBO exec's mind when casting their Tales From the Crypt movie. While there was a period in the mid-90s where he did a few movies, Miller was never setting out to be an actor, and it's not like his humor can be easily placed in a movie. So, I don't know how Miller even came into the mix, but it was to the movie's fortune.

Miller doesn't belong in this movie and he knows it. He uses it. His Rafe Guttman character doesn't belong in his world of degenerates, morons and shitheels that he can't believe surrounds him, but that's his life and what his job brings him. He's a down on his luck P.I. who's smarter -- and smart-asser -- than everyone else in town, looking for any job he can get. He's hired by a woman to find her no-good brother, tracking him down to the vampire whorehouse of the title, making quips all along the way. And while I said this mixture of hard-boiled noir and vampires could have been great played straight, Miller delivers a funny take on the standard jaded private-eye of these stories; he's so run down, he's dealt with such low lives, that he doesn't even really care about the vampires or supernatural shit -- they're low-lives just the same, and he's going to be a sarcastic ass about all of it.

Miller's just having a blast in the role. While a lot of performers in various Tales From the Crypt productions ham it up or go campy or phone it in, Miller's sensibilities just mesh with this character, and I think his kind of easygoing performance isn't the typical looking down on horror and making it a cartoon, in Tales From the Crypt style, but out of disbelief at headlining a movie. I'm not saying Miller's a bad actor, but following his career, I know that acting's not something he set out to do, and it's not like he was even a regular performer back on Saturday Night Live. I get the impression he had agents pushing him to go for roles and make some money. But he works for this role, he's good in the role, he makes it better, he makes it funnier -- he's having a blast and he makes this movie a blast.

The ONLY other person who comes close is Kim Kondrashoff as the weirdo Jenkins. Looking like Lars Ulrich after he heard about Napster and Hulked out, this dude grunts out all of his dialogue like he's taking the world's hardest shit and looks like he's about to have an aneurysm so bad it has its own aneurysm. He's so oddly memorable he's funny. (You can see Miller even about to crack when he's around the guy and not even trying to hide it.)

Other performances are forgettable. Erika Eleniak is miscast; Corey Feldman's more awkward as an adult performer than he ever was as a kid; Angie Everhart just cheeses it up (we needed someone better as Lilith; she needs to be funny, fine, but still seductive, dark, dangerous and mysterious, so I think someone like Tawny Kitaen, Kari Wuhrer, Krista Allen or Tia Carrere would have been better. Too bad they wasted Brenda Bakke in Demon Knight, she could have worked, too.); and Chris Sarandon is disappointingly a ham here, which I guess at least compliments Everhart's cheese. It's neat to have a cast member from The Lost Boys and one from Fright Night, the two classic '80s vampire movies that are constantly pitted against one another by fans, but it probably wasn't even intended.

The movie has no style, certainly isn't scary, and fails to be funny when Miller's not around. So why am I even devoting all of this time to talking about this movie? Because people -- fans and cast members -- blame the movie's sucking ON Miller...! Corey Feldman, who's probably the weakest one in this thing, will actually go around in interviews criticizing Miller's involvement, saying he's not funny in it, calling his involvement "disastrous," and criticizing his performance. WHAT?! Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Felddog? (Feldman also condemns Miller for failing to promote the movie adequately, frequently referring to the way he would supposedly go on Leno and tell people not to bother seeing it. But here's a clip of Miller on Letterman telling people TO go and see it, even if it's just to justify his paycheck.)

That criticism and accusation is not close to being accurate. Miller's the only funny one in this thing, the only one making an effort. I don't want to get political or anything, but it really all comes down to Miller's political views shifting in the early '00s. He was one way for most of his career, and his views changed as he got older, and he was affected by real life events. Prior to that, it was cool to like Miller, he was the thinking person's comedian. But suddenly, it became cool to trash Miller, and even all of his prior works. I'm not a conservative, but I still enjoy Miller's old stand-up and his talk show and still even enjoy some of Miller's recent work. Maybe it's the familiarity since I was such a fan, maybe it's the skill with which he can deliver a joke -- the dude still makes me laugh. I don't always agree with him. (Heck, I didn't even always agree with him before he became a "turncoat." There were a couple of times on his show where I found him to be too judgmental.)

It's entertainment, and sometimes it would be nice if people could look past certain things. They're entertainers, you're not voting them into office where they could affect the way you live. It puzzles me, some of the awful things certain entertainers are accused of, but the press and their fans will look the other way, but there are those who will be run out of town and have legacies torn down over a couple of political beliefs. You probably don't agree with everything your friends and family members believe. Do you shun them? Mock them? Throw away everything they've given you, everything that reminds you of them? Do you go to Rekall and have your memory of them wiped? So why treat freakin' entertainers that way?

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Ghostbusters, Whaddya Want?

Is it safe to talk about Ghostbusters again? Now that the remake is out, hopefully it is. My feeling on the remake is...I don't like remakes. But Hollywood's in that rut right now and the remakes/reboots/sequels-after-the-fact/etc. aren't going to stop. Now, I don't like remakes, but when it was announced that it would be an all-female cast, my first reaction was "Well, at least that's a different spin." I was heartbroken when Hollywood announced they were remaking The Karate Kid, but it ended up *trying* to do its own sort of thing that it's really just a name-only thing, so it ended up being nothing to get too worked up about.

If you're going to remake something, at least try to do it from a different perspective. Keep the spirit of the characters and movie, but don't be a lazy note-for-note, unimaginative cover song. A team of female Ghostbusters would be a different perspective, something to yield new results and set it apart. I know not all Ghostbusters fans felt the same, but that was my feeling. Early on, you had Bill Murray pushing for Emma Stone to be in it, although she seems too young to me. And I remember comedian Michelle Buteau campaigning to be a Ghostbuster; I think she would have been funny, and have the right New York-kind of attitude. If *I* was trying to cast a female Ghostbusters team? Buteau would work as a sarcastic Venkman-type; as the oddball Spengler-type, Gillian Jacobs; America Ferrera as the the knowledgeable and handy Ray-type; and Jane Lynch as the droll, Average Winston, the voice of reason in a sea of madness. In place of Janine, how's about Gemma Chan as Kanon, a benevolent spirit watching over the 'Busters in the guise of a put-upon, overworked, overqualified secretary? None of those names have the box office clout of a Melissa McCarthy or Kristen Wiig, and I know there are people who would hate MY cast list, but, hey, that's the list I made for my own amusement.

My trepidation about the Ghostbusters remake came when it was announced it would be a Paul Feig movie. I don't like Feig's movies, I don't like his style, and I don't like the way the performers are in his movies. (I've found Feig to be funny off-the-cuff in interviews, I just don't like his movies.) I'm not a real fan of what's considered to be "in" in Hollywood comedies currently. I would have felt exactly the same way if it was Judd Apatow directing the remake, with his usual crew of Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and so on. You know exactly what you're getting with a Feig or Apatow movie, and I know I don't like what their movies are giving you, and I don't like their brand of comedy.

We all know the shitstorm that ensued, and I don't want to dwell on it. For me, the most frustrating thing has been the way that reporters and people involved with the remake and people on forums who think they're cool have gone out of their way to tear down the original movies. This isn't Adventures in fucking Babysitting we're talking about -- a low-tier Reagan-era movie that, sure, has some laughs, and a following, and in its case, the power of nostalgia is stronger than the movie's own powers -- this is fucking Ghostbusters we're talking about! Probably the most popular franchise of the '80s, long considered one of the best comedies, a well-made, always quotable, jam-packed with laughs and creativity film, it had all of those respected SNL and Second City comedic performers who were bulletproof at the time. I don't need to tell you how good the original Ghostbusters is, you know -- you know damn well. It's a genuine classic.

The thing that I always marvel at whenever I watch the original Ghostbusters is just how creative it is. It covers so many genres, it's pitch-perfect, there's never a dull moment, and there was never before a movie like it. It was a complete original. So, it's an insult to denigrate it for the sake of propping up the new, not original work that's capitalizing on its success and the fondness people have for the first. I know some Ghostbusters purists out there have said some vile things in regards to the new movie and those involved with it, but wouldn't a better strategy for the studio to have been trying to win the old fans over, rather than piss them off at every step? Fans can be a kneejerky, complaining lot -- take the higher road, studio.

The thing that irks me is the rewriting of history; people acting like the original was a kids movie that us 30 and 40 year old kid-men just can't get over. Ghostbusters was NOT a kids movie, and was never intended to be one. Kids loved it, yes. They made a cartoon out of it that kids loved more, yes. They also made cartoons out of Rambo and RoboCop, so I guess I'll start calling those kids movies, too. Secondly, a (suspiciously robotic and directed) comment in several reviews for the new movie are that it's "funnier and scarier than the original." People have lumped Ghostbusters in with Gremlins as a kind of kids horror movie. Well, it's neither. Ghostbusters has creepy moments, involves the supernatural, and employed a lot of effects guys with horror backgrounds, but it was never intended to be outright SCARY or a horror movie. Like I said, it taps into a lot of genres, but it was first and foremost a comedy movie, the latest in the line of all of those classic early '80s comedies brought to you by guys like Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman. (Just because the movie has a PG rating doesn't mean it's for kids; if it had been released just a year later, it would have definitely had a PG-13.)

Goddamn, this remake has caused such a quagmire of piss and bullshit that I didn't even want to devote this much time to it. My whole purpose of this post is to defend Ghostbusters II. If the original is taking a beating lately, then you know the always-unpopular sequel is getting poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered. I remember the Ghostbusters II mania in 1989 -- that ghost logo with the fucking peace-sign two was all over the place. There was merchandise all over the place. (Except in the one place that matters most for kids: toys. There were no Ghostbusters movie toys back in the day, thanks Bill "Grinch" Murray.) As someone who loved the movie and The Real Ghostbusters, I was excited by the movie, but ended up not being in love with it, especially compared to that year's Batman.

Throughout the years, I definitely preferred the original (way more), put it on a high pedestal, and thought lesser of the sequel. I never outright hated Ghostbusters II the way a lot of people did, but I always saw that it was a clear step down in quality from the first movie. The strange thing is, Ghostbusters II is a perfectly entertaining movie, it has a lot of quotable lines, it's funny, I'm never bored by it. People knock it for being too similar to the first one, but I never thought it was a complete Xerox -- it's different enough. The only real similarity is Dana being targeted again, everything else is nitpicking. You know some sequels that's the Same-Shit-Different-Movie? The beloved Back to the Future movies. Ghostbusters II doesn't reach that level of tediousness.

Honest Trailers treated the movie pretty unfairly, pretty much for the sake of winning points with the Pro-Remake people. I always thought it was a bit clever to have people dispute what the Ghostbusters had done for the city in the first movie, and discredit them. It seemed realistic to me; politicians were going to want to brush it underneath the couch, ordinary citizens probably thought they were frauds or myths even. The Ghostbusters are underdogs, I like that their profession is so crazy and unbelievable, but they handle it like a regular job, and there's all of that typical bureaucratic bullshit even in hunting ghosts! I guess people wanted a sequel where the Ghostbusters were obnoxiously drunk on their own power and treated like rock stars, but I like that they're back at the bottom, still underdogs, with the odds against them...

It feels realistic. It seems very New York City. And that's another thing I think the movie does that's clever -- I guess all of these kids putting together these criticisms and funny little YouTube videos disparaging Ghostbusters II don't remember or never heard the horror stories of what NYC was like in the 1980s. It was a scary place, man. That's one of the brilliant things about Ghostbusters being set there -- the city and its people have such a specific attitude, it really serves our heroes and makes for an ideal setting. If there was one place that would be a magnet for spooks, specters or ghosts, it would be 1980s NYC. NYC was a mean, mean place. So I find it incredibly creative to have a threat in the sequel be the underground river of slime that feeds off negative emotions, and to work that in with NYC's attitude, the dichotomy of the city that it can be a cruel place, yet also has such a perceived sense of community and a camaraderie that they are able to unite and combat that force of evil in the end. The people coming together on New Year's, the city's Times Square celebration being one of the holiday's most famous and symbolic celebrations, is realistic to me, and heartfelt in a way that's not schmaltzy, and works better than, say, the awkward and cheesy "Don't mess with New York!" scene from Sam Raimi's Spider-man.

There's just so much use of New York City -- its spirit and its famous landmarks -- in Ghostbusters II that, frankly, it's surprising that most of it was filmed in Hollywood and that the movie was written by a Canadian. It makes the movie stand-out, and I think there's a lot more good in Ghostbusters II than people like to give it credit for, and I guess it's just too hot to handle, too cold to hold.

And even though I like Ghostbusters II, and think it's sorely unappreciated, like I said, I do acknowledge that it's a step down from the first movie. (It's certainly not "atrocious," as people have described it. Or a "disastrous" sequel like Batman & Robin.) And I'm one of the only Ghostbusters fans who DIDN'T want a Ghostbusters III with the original cast. Sequels so long after the fact have a real bad track record -- most of 'em suck, quite frankly, it's something which experts now call the "Crystal Skull Syndrome." I remember rumors of a Ghostbusters III in the mid-90s that had a new team of Ghostbusters taking over, and the names being thrown out were Will Smith, Pauly Shore and Chris Farley. (The rumor also went that the script was being written by Conan O'Brien.) Can you imagine that? That sounds awful! And you had a problem with the remake!

Stephen King's IT, based on the novel "IT" by Stephen King

There was a time when miniseries ruled television, and they were an event, goddammit! Some miniseries changed the landscape of pop-culture, some miniseries sought to rival big-screen epics, some miniseries...weren't so great. But the miniseries was THE ideal place to go when you wanted to adapt an overly long novel, or maybe even a known writer's less popular works that Hollywood wouldn't give a shot on the silver screen. You might not get the most money to work with, you might not have the best talent available to you, and you're going to be heavily censored, but the miniseries gave you the time to take on lengthy novels. As is the case of any movie or TV show, the TV-movieshow hybrid that was the Television Miniseries Event was a crapshoot; people can be dismissive of them, but there were good ones.

1990's IT was far from the first adaptation of a Stephen King novel, and it wasn't even the first TV miniseries adaptation of one of his works. I recommend Salem's Lot, but it was before my time, so I don't know how much press it got. But I remember IT being heavily promoted, just plastered on magazines and constantly having commercials aired. I don't know if there was that much faith in IT or if it was all simply a result of the many popular and successful TV miniseries that the 1980s saw. And while IT kicked open the door for ABC's lengthy run of turning just about every Stephen King novel into a miniseries, I feel like IT was pretty much the last truly successful, popular miniseries, and that they soon fell out of fashion afterward.

I was young, but I was a horror freak, and I was massively into IT when it aired and obsessed with it. I remember being so excited when it was released to VHS and renting it -- those two-tape sets that are rubber-banded in video stores -- and then eventually buying it. I had the novel that was a tie-in, with Tim Curry's Pennywise on the cover. (I didn't read it, obviously. I was a kid, and the thing was bigger than an Arby's Big Montana. And that's just the paperback! When I ended up reading IT, I read the damned hardcover, which is like a vintage Olympia typewriter; you could kill someone with that sumbitch.)

There were things that appealed to me as a kid horror fan, but it also has layers that I appreciate more as an adult, and it's a movie that I think works well and holds up, so I've always been surprised that, despite its success at the time, it's a movie that divides the horror fans. A lot aren't happy by its TV Movie-ness, a lot aren't happy that it isn't faithful to King's novel down to the letter, a lot of people think the cast is cheesy. I've mentioned before what a King fan I am, what he means to me as a horror fan growing up in the '80s, and while I've always liked this movie, I put off reading the book. And when I finally did? No offense, I prefer this movie.

What was the appeal for me? Probably that it was a serious horror movie centered on kids; one that didn't pull punches and wasn't filled with cloyingly cute characters or ones who only exist in Hollywood scripts, where they're mini-adults who know and can do everything. These felt like regular kids, really relatable -- I knew kids like this, I identified with most of these kids. They're kids who are leading kind of depressing lives in dreary old Derry, and they're smart, but they retain some of that innocent and young belief in the otherworldly. They're outsiders, but they come together in their shared sense of loneliness and bond over their shared experience with unhappy lives, bullies and the terror of IT. They're kind of like a team of superheroes. And how tragic and unfair is it that IT targets these particular kids, who already have such sad lives?

One portion of the movie that disturbed me when I was a kid was all of the parts relating to Georgie. My kid brother would sneakily follow me around, attach himself to me, and I'd worry about the sumbitch. So all of the gruesome scenes with Georgie, and Bill's pain at losing him, I found all of that so unsettling. And it leads to these moments that help convey what an absolutely evil bastard Pennywise is, like when he creepily leaves an old photo of Georgie at a new crime scene or the way he's always tormenting Bill with the paper boat he made for Georgie. And then there's the creepy scene of Georgie's picture coming to life and bleeding -- I hated that.

And what really interests me, as I got older, was the way they come back together as adults to face their old childhood enemy again. Again, I see it as almost superhero-like, but there's a real tragedy in the way their lives went; they mostly all fled Derry and its horrible memories, and while they mostly found success in their careers, they are still as broken and haunted as they are scattered from one another. It took a tremendous amount of courage for them to face IT as children, but they had a certain amount of faith then. I feel it takes even more courage for them to all rush back to Derry to keep their promise to face IT again, as traumatized adults, broken by their unhappy childhoods and fears, which have led to some of them to falling into patterns of pain -- they may have escaped Derry, its dreariness and IT, but it's still all with them, deep down. (Ben distracts himself with booze and women; Beverly is stuck with an abusive and controlling boyfriend, echoing the relationship with her dad; Eddie is unhappily still living with his controlling mother; Richie is jaded and busies himself with work -- and in the novel, is a drug user; Mike has damned himself to a depressing life in Derry, keeping an eye open for IT's return; Stan is unable to contemplate facing it again, and in despair, takes his own life, in what is a strong and sorrowful end to Part 1.) There's just a sadness and pitiful quality to these characters now that they're older, with the odds against them, and trying to find the courage to face their fears one last time.

Most people think Part 1 of the miniseries is its best part, and it IS really good and well done. It's a breezy 90 minutes, that doesn't quite feel rushed, yet manages to pack SO much story and characters into it that I don't even know how they pulled it off. It balances from the past to the present smoothly, hitting all the right beats of who our characters are and filling in each of their individual experiences with IT which leads to them ultimately coming together to face IT in hopes of killing it. Fans of the novel complain that the miniseries dilutes too much of the novel, that the novel is deeper and richer, but I think the movie did a fine job of keeping the essential portions of the story. There's a lot of extraneous detail in the novel, a lot of surprisingly wrongheaded and gratuitous turns. (You know what I'm talking about, if you've read the book. It's a segment that screenwriter-director Tommy Lee Wallace rightfully criticizes and dismisses in the commentary track.) The miniseries is pared down, not just by the limits of budget and television, but by wisely jettisoning some of the novel's excessiveness, and I think it ends up making the movie more grounded, less outlandish, more emotional, more mysterious and therefore creepier.

Some people say the novel does a better job of getting you to know and feel like one of the Loser's Club. While many criticize the miniseries' casting of sitcom vets as the adults, I think a great advantage to having so many faces from familiar, popular shows is that shorthand -- you're so familiar with some of these performers from having seen them in so many episodes of whatever, and you have likable people like John Ritter or Harry Anderson or Richard Thomas or Tim Reid that you take a quick liking to them, you feel like you know them, and you therefore feel like they're old friends. And I feel like the production is aware of that, and does put that to use. And they manage to get good, likable kid performers, and block-by-block establish their relationship, while cutting back and forth to the present day so you know who's who and you're able to quickly care for them.

People like to poke fun at the "sitcomy" cast, but Thomas, Annette O'Toole, Dennis Christopher and Richard Masur are dramatic actors, and even John Ritter started out as a dramatic actor. I always thought this cast goes pretty unappreciated. They do a great job here, and convincingly convey their friendship and history of shared pain. Would you rather prefer Rick Springfield or some 90210 cast members? The cast we got took their work seriously, with director Tommy Lee Wallace giving them ample rehearsal time to bond. Several cast members had already known each other and worked together, which was an advantage for the project, and the adult actors were adamant about meeting up with their kid counterparts to work on creating similarities.

And horror fans should at least appreciate O'Toole and Christopher's involvements, after they were in Cat People and Fade to Black, respectively. There's also Olivia Hussey -- Black Christmas, come on! I used to question Michael Cole's casting as the older Henry Bowers, because he seemed so much older than the rest of the cast members, but I think it works to the story's advantage in conveying what a harsh life Bowers has had. Bowers was a sadistic piece of shit, but how crazy is it that he loses his mind in the sewers when he was a kid and ends up taking the fall for Pennywise's crimes?

I think Part 2 of the miniseries is thought lesser of because it's more of a straightforward narrative; it takes its time, it's about the team reuniting, the dread building within them as they prepare to take IT on. There's less of the flashbacks, it's a really focused, singular storyline, so it's not as impressively packed as Part 1, therefore maybe seeming "boring" to viewers. I think the slower pace works in building the dread in these characters; I don't think it's a negative, I don't feel like Part 2 is padded or dull, I disagree with the criticism against it. If anything, Part 2 is more somber, and perhaps that's what turns people off, whereas Part 1 had more humorous moments and levity with the younger versions of the characters and the nostalgic setting of 1960. (I don't want to be insulting and say "it was a simpler time." I disagree with that shit, there's never been a "simpler" time. But pop-culture has certainly made certain time periods, like the '50s and a brief period of the early'60s, come across as a warm and fuzzy period of innocence and happiness.)

Whether you like this movie or hate it, one thing everybody can and does agree on is Tim Curry's awesome, classic, excellent performance as Pennywise. Think of what it usually takes for an actor to break through with a character and create an iconic, definitive take. With the snobbery of movies versus television, movies are usually only taken into consideration in terms of this. Bela Lugosi IS Dracula, Christopher Lee IS Dracula, Gary Oldman IS Dracula. Jack Palance, Louis Jourdan? Nobody talks about them. They're not contenders, they were in "lowly" TV movies. (By the way, despite all of the critics who say we're currently in a "golden age" of television, the stigma and snobbery of movies/cinema over television still remains.) But Tim Curry takes this role and performs magic with it, creating one of the top fan favorite horror villains, one who's always included in the big line-up of Great Horror villains alongside heavyhitters like the Universal Monsters and Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers -- all from just a criticized, "lowly" TV movie that's over 20 years old.

What's shocking is just how little Pennywise is in the movie -- or at least Curry. Billed as a "special guest appearance," Curry was probably the biggest name in the movie at the time, and it's apparent that they only had a limited amount of days to work with him. He appears sparingly, and rarely even interacts with the main cast, which says to me he was such a get, that they had to film all of his stuff on separate days, reading to crew members. But it's such a strong, incredible performance, that you don't even notice any of that -- he's such a dominating presence, it feels like he's in much, much more of the movie than he actually is. And what's great about his performance is just how much he's able to do with this mysterious, vague character, how terrifying and intimidating he can make the character, but also how silly and entertaining he can turn around and make Pennywise be. Pennywise is given some intentionally moldy jokes to say at times, but Curry sells the hell out of it and manages to make you laugh at World's Worst Jokes like "Prince Albert in a Can." Royal Shakespeare Company, baby. Like the trained actor he is, you can tell Curry read the novel, especially with the way he mispronounces "correct" the way Pennywise does in the book.

(I think it was a missed opportunity not to have Tim Curry, sans make-up, playing the gas station attendant Audra encounters. The character is just yet another one of Pennywise's disguises, but it would have been a neat touch -- especially if they had given him a name-tag that said "Bob," alluding to IT's Bob Gray disguise in the novel.)

When I was a kid, I was always interested in the sort of behind-the-scenes details of things, I paid attention to movie credtis, I had a fascination with actors who were diverse and I couldn't quite picture it when I realized that this performer is the same one who played that such-and-such character. I remember eventually renting the movie Clue when I was a kid, well after seeing IT and being obsessed with IT, and my mom pointing out Tim Curry, telling me he played Pennywise. I was just like "Huh, what, really?!?" I could see the resemblance to Pennywise, but was pretty astonished at the transformation.

And he's working through a design that's...creepy, yes, but a fairly understated design. I don't say that as an insult, I like how low-key and simple Pennywise's look is -- he's not far off from any ordinary clown design and outfit. It's all really in Curry's performance, the anger and sinister side and evilness of the character. But he's funny and quick to turn on the charm. Some people question why IT decides to take the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown the most, and I question what those people don't understand about the concept. You don't need to suffer from coulrophobia to find clowns creepy; there's something just inherently spooky about them. And yet at the same time, clowns are meant to represent fun and joy and entertainment. Who loves clowns? Kids. What is IT's target? Children. So, it should be obvious why IT chooses the form of a clown as a way to lure IT's prey in.

There's also people who knock the movie for having IT take the form of movie monsters like the Teenage Werewolf and Mummy, using it as a way to insult the movie and call it "cheesy." These moments might not necessarily scare the audience, but are necessary in context of the story; if IT was using these two forms to scare the adults, I'd agree it's lame. But he's using it to scare the kids. When are those movie monsters scariest? When you're a kid. I have some embarrassing stories of being scared of movie monsters when I was a kid. You do, too, don't deny it! There was a time when I was a kid, when I was rummaging through a box of junk in our basement, and at the bottom was a folder with Freddy Krueger on it, and I ran out of the room. Literally, like a cartoon character, I think I was walking on air as I got the hell out of there. I loved Nightmare on Elm Street, and it was MY folder, and I knew Freddy was just Robert Englund, but being alone in the basement and the shock of finding that image when it wasn't expected -- sent me running out of the room like a nut.

The big criticism, in terms of the shapes IT takes when it comes to the final big form... People are puzzled by and question the choice of the gigantic spider. I always thought the answer to why it was a spider was pretty simple: one of Stephen King's big phobias is spiders. So he has his big monster, which takes the shape of whatever you fear most, reveal its ultimate physical shape as his own big fear. All it is is King putting something personal on the page, no different from the fact that a main character in every one of his stories is often a writer of some variation.

But what is IT, really? That's something the movie tries to keep a little mysterious by its paring down the novel, and something that works to its advantage. Is IT an evil spirit? A monster? A demon? Is it a supernatural collection of everyone's fear? Is it, as some suggest (and I disagree with) merely the shared psychosis of the kids it targets? The movie doesn't dwell far from the book, but makes it blurry -- it just hints that IT's true form is a madness-inducing light, which Stan sees and calls the "deadlights." Pennywise tells them that the human mind cannot comprehend his true form, but the giant spider is apparently IT's biggest weapon, saved for when IT's in its lair and taking on the grown-up Losers Club.

Well, the book reveals that IT...originated as an alien organism that was attached to a meteorite that landed in what became Derry...? Yeah, the book gets all weird and becomes a metaphysical, metacosmic acid-trip. People criticize the movie for its final battle being between the Losers and the giant spider form, but the book is just unfilmable. There's still a giant spider, but King throws in some pseudo-spiritual stuff with Bill lost in IT's "deadlights" and getting help from IT's longtime enemy, a giant tortoise and...whaaaaaaaaaa? Now, I find a lot of King's climaxes to be rushed or disappointing, and this one is no different. I guess he thought -- and it's understandable -- that by the time you've hit page 1,000, the reader is just going to want it to end, no matter how insane or weird, so, hey, might as well just throw whatever at the page, eh?

I've stuck up for the miniseries and its TV budget, but I can not stick up for the spider effect. First of all, it makes its debut appearance in some clunky Claymation. Secondly, the size wildly varies. At first it's humongous, but then it's practically no bigger than Bill and the gang. Finally, it barely looks like a spider, it looks more like an anorexic BrundleFly that's been stepped on. Actually, it's more crustacean looking than arachnid. I'd be willing to overlook it if the scene is strong, but it initially isn't due to their trying to hide this spider effect. Our heroes look a bit dumb when Bill's like "I'll fight you, bastard!" And then gets frozen by staring at the deadlights. And then Ben's like "I gotta help Bill!" and then gets frozen by catching a glimpse of its deadlights. And then Richie is like "Hey, guys, snap out of it!" and gets frozen by the deadlights. Eddie takes the gambit of repeating his inhaler attack, which is kind of ludicrous when the spider's so damn huge, and he gets himself quickly killed, while Bev is trying to find the silver jewels to shoot IT with after missing the target.

That part of it is kind of ho-hum for me, but I like the follow-up; once Bev has successfully injured IT (she shoots silver into its deadlights, which is unfortunately ruined by an effect that basically looks like the firework explosion from the credits of Love, American Style superimposed over the spider's abdomen) and the three guys snap out of their deadlights daze, Eddie dies in their arms and the four just stare at the entrance of IT's lair in pure hate and rage. They then storm the room and beat the ever loving shit out of the giant spider, tearing it to pieces, ooze covering the spider and their hands, as they rip out its heart and hold it in victory. The actors sell the rage as they beat up this plastic CrabSpider, and I think it's a strong scene, and it's sold even more by playing Tim Curry voiceovers, of him just howling in pain, as IT dies, its lights fading. (They literally punch IT's deadlights out.) So, that makes up for the lackluster spider effect for me, the intensity of that scene, the brutality and drama behind it.

One thing the book has over the movie is that once IT dies, there's a horrific flood that sweeps through Derry. It's a bit Biblical, and it represents IT losing its hold over the town. Not an entirely necessary thing for the movie to keep, and certainly not within its budget, but I think it's symbolic and further adds to the Loser Club's hard fought victory.

I like this movie, I think it works, I think it has a lot of heart and emotion, as well as scares and a classic movie monster in Tim Curry's Pennywise. The cast and director taking it seriously and treating it with respect comes across and I think IT is the best miniseries adaption of a King work. And the DVD is one of my favorite DVD releases ever, with the cleaned up picture, fun menus (the balloon cursor bursts into a blood splat when you select something!) and a really entertaining commentary track.

There's been talk for years of an IT remake, first as a new television miniseries and now as a feature film. The feature film has had a revolving door of cast and crew members, but seems to be finally getting off the ground. As of this writing, Swedish actor Bill Skarsgard has been cast as Pennywise, replacing the previously announced Will Poulter. I'm concerned with how young they're casting Pennywise. Whoever plays Pennywise has extra-large clown shoes to fill, and I don't know if a younger performer could come close to what Curry did in the role. (Skarsgard is only as old as the miniseries!) I'm also afraid that the new movie will go too extreme with Pennywise's look, being overstylized and making him constantly look monstrous and weird and forgo the minimalist approach the miniseries took.

Most of the book fans who trash the miniseries are excited about this new movie, and I don't understand why they think it will be any truer to the novel they're so protective of. To do the novel perfectly, you'd probably have to adapt it as a three-season show on HBO or Showtime. A theatrical movie is going to have to excise just as much, if not more, than the miniseries did. I think a lot of viewers and moviemakers today are incredibly cynical, so I don't think a new movie will have the heart or sentimentality that the story requires AND that the original movie worked so hard to bring to life. And if the kid portion is going to be set in the '80s instead of the '60s... Current pop-culture has sucked the '80s dry. And, besides, the '80s have never had the warm and glow that decades like the '50s and '60s have been given, so it's not going to work the same. The biggest difference will be in the gore and language department. I guess maybe people are just that desperate to hear "This is battery acid, fucknuts!"

One last laugh.