Midnight Movie: A Cat in the Brain (1990)

“A lot of Italian genre directors are animal lovers. Mario Bava loved cats, Riccardo Freda loves horses, and Dario Argento loves himself.” — Lucio Fulci

Fade in: An aerial shot of a man, sitting at his desk, writing frantically. We hear him muttering like a lunatic. His scribbling pen can barely keep up with the ideas boiling out of him: “A throat torn out by a maddened cat… burned alive… buried alive… tortured… scalded…!” Meanwhile, the camera pushes in close to his head and the perspective enters his skull. There’s a cat in there, which munches on his brain like a vulture on roadkill.

Cut to: A cold body lying on a medical table. A section of the rump is missing. The body is then ripped apart by a chainsaw as the camera lingers.

Cut to: A man frying meat in a pan. He sits down in front of a television screen and cuts into his meal with a knife and fork. On the television, an actress seductively informs the viewer, “I love you so much I could eat you.” The man raises his fork and proclaims, “Just what I’m about to do!”

Lucio Fulci’s A Cat in the Brain (aka Nightmare Concerto) is gleeful insanity. This is Fulci’s version of 8 1/2, but instead of casting a movie star surrogate, Fulci casts himself in the lead role. Like many of Fulci’s movies, the camerawork and acting are dreamlike, but this time used to comedic effect. Meta-horror is often lame, especially when there are movies inside the movie (this time it’s stock footage from Fulci’s own films), but this one isn’t. It took me a while to get the joke—all of fifteen minutes. This isn’t Fulci ripping off Fellini; it’s Fulci making fun of Fellini as well as filmmaking in general. Being a horror director must be one of the strangest jobs in the world, which is especially apparent (and hilarious) when Fulci’s fictional shrink reviews some of his actual films.

Here are some of the things you’ll see in A Cat in the Brain: a Nazi using a woman’s vagina as a billiards pocket, a hilariously psychopathic psychiatrist, and a literal cat inside a man’s head. Fulci is one of the unlikeliest likable protagonists.

Green Room (2016)

You could argue Green Room is more thriller than horror, but bones are broken, throats are torn out, and faces are mauled. The camera rarely cuts away as the imagery shocks and awes. There’s no supernatural element—not that that’s a requisite for horror—but the skinheads here are effectively monsters because they’re depicted not as cannon fodder, but three-dimensional humans. The things that happen in Green Room are, to put it mildly, horrific. And if I were to make a list of the best movies of the twenty-first century, I’d rank it extremely high.

A wandering punk band is hard up for cash. They reluctantly end up taking a gig at a rundown neo-Nazi joint in the middle of nowhere. In true punk fashion, the band decides to rile up the crowd with a cover of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” That goes over about as well as you might expect. Fortunately, the rest of their set is played hard enough to win the skinheads over by the end. After the show, the band heads back to the green room and accidentally discover the venue’s operators are covering up the murder of a young woman.

While the skinheads scramble to come up with a plan, the band is locked in the green room with a psychopath. He subtly mentions his revolver only holds five cartridges, “because they’re so fucking big that’s all that can fit in the cylinder.” Meanwhile, the neo-Nazis outside the room call Darcy Banker, their leader and the owner of the property. Banker is played by Patrick Stewart, whose performance is neither too cold or too hot. He’s not a man who relishes his villainy. His only motivation is to get the witnesses off his property as quickly as possible so he can murder them elsewhere.

The simple plan complicates quickly. Banker, who’s always failing to keep the situation from escalating, comes up with one idea after another to flush the band members out of the green room. He approaches the problem matter-of-factly, as if coordinating the extermination of rodents. To him, it’s just another problem in the life of a businessman, albeit an amoral one. Another interesting choice is the skinheads aren’t caricatures; when Banker loses his cool and humiliates one of his men, he promptly apologizes for his transgression. His henchmen aren’t expendable in his mind, they’re family.

There’s no fantasy violence here. There are no characters who do unbelievably heroic or villainous things. The good guys are gonna take a licking. Some of the bad guys are gonna take a licking, too. We all hate movies in which stupidly written characters do stupid things, but here’s a rare example in which smartly written characters do stupid things. After all, they’re young, immature, and panicking in a realistic way.

New Year’s Evil (1980)

“Shhhh… I can hear your heart beating. I don’t like that.”

Roz Kelly (Pinky Tuscadero from Happy Days) plays Blaze Sullivan, the VJ-like host of a televised New Year’s Eve bash. During one of the show’s call-in segments, a modulated voice promises to kill someone very close to her. The police quickly discover it’s not just a prank call: someone’s already dead. The man responsible refers to himself as Evil and he intends to murder someone every hour, on the hour, as each timezone in the United States welcomes the new year.

As per Cannon Film Group’s philosophy, everything in New Year’s Evil has been cranked up to 11. This ensures even the mundane scenes are sensational as absolute anyone in the picture might be packing a switchblade. Right off the bat we see a group of punk rockers drinking and driving down a Hollywood street in a convertible that’s pushing capacity. The televised party they’re heading to hosts a gaggle of similar delinquents as one presumably real life band after another plays fantastic-shitty 80s music.

Meanwhile, the killer paroles mental institutions and bars for his victims. Remember: his plan is to kill someone every hour on the hour until the clock strikes twelve. He’s capable of getting an awful lot done between attacks, including: finding his victims, arranging their dead bodies for cinematic reveals, changing disguises, sneaking into guarded buildings, and calling into the TV show. At one point he even gets into a traffic accident with a biker gang that leads to a foot chase through a drive-in movie. Yet he still manages to get to his next appointment on time.

Unless you’ve never seen a movie in your life, you’ll figure out the twist ending: the killer is actually Blaze’s oft-mentioned but curiously missing-in-action husband. Even if the repeated “Where’s Dad?” line doesn’t clue you in, you’ll start to suspect it the moment their son pulls his mother’s pantyhose over his head and pierces his ear with a needle. Here’s the best part: during a wonderfully cheesy soliloquy he looks into the mirror and tells himself, “I think I have a mental disorder.”

Don’t worry: there’s yet another twist at the end which I won’t spoil. Unfortunately, you’ll see that one coming from a mile away, too. Oh well, it’s still a fun picture.

Midnight Movie: Deadly Friend (1986)

Paul, the teenage hero of Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, not only designs advanced robots, but he teaches college courses, dissects human brains, and somehow finds the time to hang out with his friends. The robot he’s created, “BB,” looks like a robot from any other 80s movie. It can crack locks, shoot hoops, and move heavy furniture. The only thing his robot can’t do is dodge shotgun spray, which we learn when it ding-dong ditches the neighborhood crazy lady, played by Anne Ramsey from The Goonies and Throw Momma from the Train. Don’t you just love her?

Paul’s love interest (Kristy Swanson in her first leading role) is repeatedly abused by her alcoholic father. In one of the film’s three or four dream sequences, which are filmed Nightmare on Elm Street style, she stabs her dear old dad with a broken flower vase. What follows is a jarringly bloody scene. Jarring because watching Deadly Friend is like getting thirty minutes into Short Circuit before discovering it’s an R-rated horror movie.

And here’s where my objectiveness flies out the window. I love killer robot movies. Terminator, Runaway, Chopping Mall, Screamers… I can’t get enough of this shit. What’s disappointing about Deadly Friend is they dispense with the actual robot twenty minutes in. The movie then goes the Donovan’s Brain/Frankenstein route: after Swanson’s father accidentally kills her, Paul transplants BB’s brain to her body. As expected, the world’s first robo-girl doesn’t come in peace. How she got superhuman strength isn’t explained nor is it entirely important in a movie like this.

This is an 80s movie, through and through, no doubt conceived by coked-up movie executives who wanted a gorier E.T. The Extraterrestrial. I mention E.T. because that’s exactly what Deadly Friend’s plot structure seems to mimic. Genre movies back then simply moved at a different pace than they do now. While most “slow-burn” horror films bore, this one has a pleasant pace. It really takes its time, but never takes more than we’re willing to give it. It makes the absurd climax, which is cram-packed with unintentional laughs, all the more entertaining.

J.J. Abrams said he got the name for one of his The Force Awakens characters from Phantasm. I’m beginning to wonder if he lifted BB-8’s name from this movie.

Midnight Movie: The Vagrant (1992)

The Vagrant stars Bill Paxton, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, and Collen Camp. Killer cast, right? Unfortunately, each supporting character is compartmentalized. If you don’t see them interacting with the main character, you don’t see them interacting at all.

Paxton plays Graham Krakowski, which is pronounced “Crack-house-ski” by some characters. He has a stable yet mind-numbing job, which allows him to buy a fixer-upper from his nymphomaniacal real estate agent (Camp). Soon he’ll learn there’s a vagrant in the neighborhood (Bell) who’s squatting on a nearby lot. Krakowski takes out a second mortgage and fortifies the property with the best security money can buy, including a perimeter fence, stadium lights, and an automatic music player that makes intruders think someone’s at home when he’s away.

After spending every dime on this worthless stuff—worthless because it doesn’t stop the vagrant from letting himself into Krakowski’s house—he realizes he should have bought furniture instead of Pentagon-level security. So he has the inside of the house decorated at his girlfriend’s insistence and puts it all on his credit cards. Now that he’s ensured he’ll spend the rest of his life in debt, the vagrant’s antics drive him crazy, he loses his job, and an over-the-top homicide detective (Ironside) is trying to finger him for a murder the vagrant actually committed.

Did I mention this is supposed to be a comedy? I love horror-comedies, but this one isn’t scary and it isn’t very funny, either. The concept was ripe to become a cult classic and I’m a fan of all these actors. This is actually my second viewing and I was hoping I would notice satirical complexities I was too young to pick up on the first time around. Nope. It’s shallow and intentionally cheesy and pretty incompetent to boot.

The Vagrant isn’t a terrible movie, just mediocre, but it does entertain here and there.

Midnight Movie: Clown (2014)

I never thought clowns were scary, but I love seeing them in movies. It’s almost as if they were made for the screen. (For a recent example, see: Álex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus.) Anyway, you remember that part in Parenthood in which Steve Martin has to dress up as a clown for his son’s birthday party? Imagine if he discovered the costume wouldn’t come off. Then, as his frustrations mounted, he developed urges to murder innocent children. That’s the premise behind Clown, a remarkably deadpan horror-comedy written by a couple of filmmakers who got Eli Roth to produce after they made a proof of concept trailer.

Kent McCoy, real estate agent, is stuck in an old clown costume he found. All attempts to take it off—which have involved hemostats, razor blades, and power tools—have only injured him. The costume is fusing to his body like reverse-molting. His skin turns white so he has to wear flesh-colored makeup to pass in public. Unfortunately, it’s clear he’ll never look normal again and his appearance is progressively devolving into something hideous.

While researching the origins of the costume, Kent contacts an expert played by Fargo’s Peter Stormare. Stormare’s character reveals the costume’s not made out of fabric at all, but it’s the hide of an ancient Icelandic demon. Ridiculous, right? Wisely, the film plays it with a straight face and never elbows you for a laugh, which is far funnier than a Sharknado-level farce. Getting trapped in a clown costume actually is a scary concept because it would be as embarrassing as accidentally showing up to school without pants on. Illogical, yes, but so are most nightmares.

The demon the skin belonged to was known for eating children, an urge which proves contagious to Kent. The filmmakers leverage that aspect of the plot into a moral quandary that comes into play towards the end of the movie. Without giving too much away, people often say they would do absolutely anything for their children. Clown explores the darker implications of an otherwise innocent statement like that.

While Clown’s promotional material suggests it might assault you with buckets of gore, it neither wants to push the envelope or shy away from the good stuff. It implies more than it shows, yet it makes sparing yet effective use of body horror. These guys sneak the crazy stuff into your blind spot and by the time it’s in your peripheral vision it’s too late.

I really liked this movie, which is bizarre and subtle at the same time. I was reminded of the shocking reveal at the end of Rosemary’s Baby, which is simultaneously the worst thing that could happen and somehow amusing. The acting is good and the characters seem real and grounded. They don’t even do anything especially stupid like make excuses for why they don’t call the police. I mean, if an Icelandic demon fused with your body, who you gonna call anyway?

If you ever wondered why I’m an Eli Roth fan, it’s because of his involvement in movies like this. We need more cheerleaders for the smaller voices in genre films. Roth’s enthusiasm is infectious.

Dead By Daylight: First Impressions

Dead By Daylight gives you the choice of playing a victim or a movie slasher. In order for the killer to win he must prevent the victims from escaping, which requires catching, disabling, and hanging them on meat hooks. Survivors only have to escape, but there’s a catch: the killer’s compound is entirely fenced in. The only way to open one of the gates is by repairing the generators, which are scattered about the map. It takes a long time to repair each one, adding to the suspense. The killer generally knows where the generators are at all times, but the victims have to actively search for them without the aid of a radar.

There’s also a point system. The more points you have, the more items and power-ups you can buy in between matches. The point system encourages the victims to help one another, as opposed to fending for themselves (which happens, too), while inspiring the lone killer to get creative with his traps and tactics. I’m actually surprised by how much teamwork is to be found in a title which doesn’t feature in-game chat.

What’s even more surprising is the simple concept’s longevity. There’s only the one game mode and all the maps look more or less the same beyond their drab color schemes. You’re either going to be one of three available killers (which requires hosting a game and sometimes waiting damn near forever for four other players to join) or one of the four survivors, meaning there’s not a whole lot to see beyond your first few matches. With so few combinations, I expected this one to get stale quick, but I find myself loading it up frequently. It’s very easy to jump in and out of it.

Matches last only a handful of minutes and, generally, don’t take long getting into. The overall boot time is fairly low, too, which is probably why I play CS:GO so often. Like that game, Dead By Daylight provides a surprising amount of replayability not in spite of its simplicity, but because of it. Meanwhile the graphics are more than acceptable and the sounds of blades and meat hooks puncturing flesh are crisp and satisfying.

Theme goes a long way and that’s the biggest thing Dead By Daylight has going for it. Unfortunately (for me) it doesn’t completely bring that 80s horror vibe which the upcoming Friday the 13th game promises. It just looks a little too much like a late 90s horror movie for my liking, while the victim roster is curiously lacking a teen heroine, a dimwitted jock, and a clueless police officer. Still, playing as the killer and stalking real-life players with a intimidating walk is even more fun than you may think.

If you’re not a fan of slasher movies, you should probably skip this one. Otherwise, I certainly don’t feel like I threw my money away as the twenty dollar price tag seems just about right. Besides, the thrill of finding a victim hiding in a closet is something I can’t convey with words. I find the game’s strengths more than makes up for the bugs, most of which aren’t game-breaking.

At the time of this writing, the game doesn’t have a serviceable party system. Players are constantly entering and immediately leaving lobbies in search of their friends, which sometimes makes soloing take longer than it should. The devs have tweeted they will address this issue soon, but a party system could potentially break a game that purposely omitted in-game chat because those players will no doubt be using VOIP software to coordinate against the killer.

Midnight Movies: The Toxic Avenger II & III

I originally saw the original The Toxic Avenger on USA Up All Night! when I was something like eight or nine years old. On my many repeat viewings of the worn VHS I recorded myself, I would laugh gleefully when, upon committing vehicular homicide, one of the evil punks announces he has to go to bed early “because I’ve gotta go to church.” Years later, at the beginning of Toxic Avenger Part IV, Stan Lee’s voiceover recounts the events of the first film before going on to say, “Then… two rotten sequels were made. Sorry about that!”

Curiously, I’ve watched the “rotten sequels” more than I saw the fourth movie. I actually prefer Toxie’s makeup and his John Candy-like demeanor in the two middle entries. The biggest problem with the back-to-back II & III is they were intended to be one film until director Lloyd Kaufman, realizing he had shot too much footage, had the idea to split the one movie into two. The problem is Kaufman overestimated just how much usable footage he had.

Following the events of the first film, Melvin the mop boy, aka Toxie, has successfully cleaned Tromaville of crime and pollution. He lives with his blind girlfriend Claire (even Kaufman has admitted he doesn’t know why they changed the character’s name from Sarah) and finds himself without purpose. So he sets off to Japan in search of his long lost father, only to find the man sets off his Spidey-Sense (uh, I mean “Tromatons”) because he is, in fact, an evil drug lord. Meanwhile, in Toxie’s absence, an evil corporation moves into Tromaville.

The good stuff is present, albeit smothered in the padding. Part II opens with a hilariously stupid fight before the promising pace trips on the overuse of voiceovers and the extended interlude in Japan. A lot of the footage that’s used in Toxic Avenger II is actually recycled in Toxic Avenger III, sometimes with replaced dialogue, sometimes unaltered, but always at the expense of fun. In other words, there’s a great Troma movie between the two pictures and if a skilled fan editor hasn’t made a singular supercut yet, I’d be very surprised.

When I was younger, I preferred Part II because I somehow liked the stuff in Japan. Now that I’m older, it’s clear the third film, The Last Temptation of Toxie, is the superior picture. The opening was obviously shot after Kaufman decided to split the film into two. The fight may not be as long and complex as the one which opened the previous movie, but its brevity helps solidify the pace and believe me: this movie can use all the help it can get.

Toxie’s relationship with Claire takes an unexpectedly cute turn. Toxie literally sells his soul to the devil to pay for the operation to restore her eyesight (and to get his mother a microwave oven). He does this knowing full well that once she can see, she may be repulsed by his hideously deformed nature. That’s our little Melvin—a selfless darling—and we can only hope the inevitable Hollywood remake will absorb the more subtle ingredients of the franchise rather than focusing solely on the exploitation stuff.

Nothing in these two films is half as wild (or gleefully politically incorrect) as the punks who squash a little boy’s head before beating an elderly woman to death. Nor is the dialogue ever quite as poetic as the thug who exclaims, “I’ve always wanted to cornhole me a blind bitch!” Unless you’re a completionist, or a die hard Troma fan, it’s probably acceptable to skip all the sequels. But there is some of that old magic here. It’s only in short bursts, few and far between.

Alien 3: The Assembly Cut is a very different movie

For years I’ve heard about the so-called Assembly Cut of Alien 3, but didn’t expect much from it. I wouldn’t say I hated Alien 3 (although I would say that of Alien Resurrection), I just think Aliens’ version of Ripley is possibly my favorite movie character in history. I don’t know why I find her so endearing, I just do. I get chills whenever I merely think about her saying, “Get away from her, you bitch!” But in Alien 3 she just seems… off.

Those who claim Alien 3 was only disappointing because its critics were expecting more Aliens are mistaken. A lot of us loved the first sequel because it was so different from the original, not just because it was an action picture. Right out of the gate, Alien 3 makes the mistake of treading the same water as the original. It’s also important to remember Alien clones were a dime a dozen those days; the whole “we’re trapped in a spaceship/military complex/prison with an alien” thing was already severely played out by ’92. It was understandable audiences expected something different from a series which had yet to repeat itself.

Thankfully, the first forty minutes of The Assembly Cut feel like a completely different animal than the theatrical cut. In this edit, Ripley washes up on a beach after her escape pod crash lands on the penal colony known as Fury 161. Charles Dance’s character, whose best scenes are restored in this version, is out for a stroll on the beach when he discovers Ripley’s unconscious body. Many will oppose the idea that Ripley hops in bed with the first guy she sees, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t completely believable. It’s not, “We want you to believe these characters are suddenly in love,” but more like, “Sometimes, lonely adults have sex.”

Although there were so many lame alien clones at the time, The Assembly Cut makes it clear Fincher could have made the first truly skilled knock-off. Unfortunately, the special effects suck as bad as they did in ’92 and Ripley’s reaction to learning of Newt’s death still underwhelms. I was hoping the heavy-handed crucifixion imagery at the end of the movie was gone, and although that shot is improved in a way, it’s still stupid and pretentious. Other than that, The Assembly Cut is a decent end to the trilogy.

There are various other improvements I won’t spoil. I’ll just point out the alien’s entrance is much spookier than the one we initially got.

The VVitch (2016)

I love movies about witches, whether there’s an actual witch or it’s just hysteria. The latter is typically more terrifying than the former, but The VVitch gives us the best of both worlds. Patient and irresistibly atmospheric, it layers on the horrors experienced by a Christian family who have been outcast from their New England community.

Katherine, (Kate Dickie from Game of Thrones), is the mother of five children who spends the entirety of the movie grieving. Dickie’s acting is subtle for the most part and believably grand when necessary. William (Ralph Ineson, also from Game of Thrones) is the father of the family; he’s responsible for the sin which got his family exiled to the wilderness in the first place. The film wisely keeps his criminal indiscretion vague so we won’t pass judgment on him too early. Whereas his wife sobs herself to sleep, William stoically chops wood to cope with their hardships.

Their children include a newborn baby, creepy twins who spend their days playing with a goat, and Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) who doesn’t seem to be aware her younger brother Caleb is developing feelings for her now that she’s becoming a woman. Because their father is a lousy hunter, Caleb and Thomasin secretly decide to hunt on their own despite the trouble they’ll get into when they return. It’s then that they stumble upon the witch’s hut in the woods. At this point, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what happens next.

The best thing about The VVitch, which already has plenty to like, is its unpredictability. I suspect first time director Robert Eggers felt himself veering dangerously off course while writing the script, but instead of correcting himself, he said “eh, let’s see where this goes” and barreled right off the intended path. I can’t imagine we’ll see a better horror film this year.