Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy (1988)

I was just lamenting the other day that I miss renting my horror on VHS because of all the great trailers that played before the feature film. I used to have a pen and paper handy to write down new titles to check out when I returned the movie to the video store.

Lucky for us Portlanders we still have a few video stores around that offer VHS rentals of the rare movie that hasn't yet been converted to another format - like Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy.

Being that I was such a big Freddy fan when I was a kid it's a little surprising that I never watched or even really knew of the Freddy hosted television show about the good people of Springwood and their untimely deaths. But my husband had watched a few episodes on cable when he was a kid so he was eager to revisit the first episode, which also happens to be the origin story of Freddy. Though I suspected it would be pretty terrible I was totally game. I mean, I like terrible. Terrible can be fun.  Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy, turns out, not fun, just terrible.

School play kind of terrible. Public Access kind of terrible. The kind of terrible that becomes fascinating when you start to realize that HUNDREDS of people were involved in making and distributing the terribleness and yet it still, somehow, against all odds, made it to television. And. AND! It was directed by Tobe Hooper! I mean, I know that Tobe also directed Eaten Alive and Funhouse (actually a personal favorite though not good) I still have high expectations of him because, well, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was just THAT GOOD. (We won't talk about Poltergeist. You wouldn't like me if we talked about Poltergeist.)

The only positive thing that has come from this experience, aside from the pure visual pleasure of watching anything from 1988 (that hair! those outfits!) is that I can now say that I've seen the first episode of Freddy's Nightmares. Now the only thing left to do is to make some friends who would actually be impressed or even know what the hell I'm talking about.

2 out of 5 Stars

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Genre:  Slasher
Director:  Tobe Hooper
Country:  United States
Availability: DVD

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - for a film that is now 38 years old its reputation for being brutal and horrifying still precedes it. The history of the horror movie genre is just as long and as rich as any other genre in movie making.  There have been scary movies that have tested the tolerance of its audience since the silent film, and the controversies surrounding their violence, gore and gratuitous sex and nudity are just as old still. Thousands of movies have been made under the blood-soaked umbrella of the horror genre and yet to this day there remain very few that are remembered past their shelf life. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one such movie.

The first scene that we're introduced to is completely surreal. We're forced to look at a decaying, gooey corpse posed awkwardly atop a tombstone in midday as we listen to a radio broadcast play. The unsettling part comes in when you realize that you're so caught up with listening to what the broadcast is saying about the recent brutal murders and the discoveries of bodies that you forget that you're staring at this horrifying, unwavering statue of death and decay for over a minute. And for all of you horror movie buffs out there you'll note that the opening sequence of the photographs being taken introduce us, perhaps for the first time ever, to that creepy camera sound effect (later to be reused in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake as well as other slasher flicks that follow).

The movie setup is one that is tried and true - a carload full of friends on the road to somewhere end up in the middle of nowhere and soon after tragedy befalls them one by one. The characters aren't particularly remarkable, nor is the dialog, but the places where TTCM shines makes all the difference - like the gritty home video feel; the complete helplessness and clumsiness of the wheelchair-bound brother; the utter unpredictability of the hitchhiker; the atmosphere of all of the buildings and so forth. And that's all before we even get to Leatherface. The terror truly starts when Leatherface makes his first appearance, bursting through the rusty metal door like some faceless Frankenstein's monster, swallowing you up before you've even had the chance to scream. The violence starts from there and while it's horrific it's practically bloodless, your terror is born with the endless screaming and flailing and running and ... screaming. There is a lot of screaming. Let's talk about the screaming.

The performance given by Marilyn Burns, who plays Sally - the main female character, is unrelenting and intense and one of the most remarkable elements of the movie. She goes from zero to one hundred in moments and never stops, never lets up. Her fear and her reaction to that fear just grows and becomes more manic and desperate, in the end she more resembles a tortured, mad, blood-soaked wild animal than anything resembling a person.  And the final scene is so iconic in horror movie history that even if you haven't seen TTCM you're probably familiar with the image of Leatherface standing in the road, chainsaw raised over his head as he spins wildly in circles. To this day, 38 years later, TTCM is still regarded as one of the most important and influential horror movies ever made. And having only just seen in for the second time in ten years, I might just have to agree.

5 out of 5 stars

Salem's Lot (1979)

Genre:  Vampires, Stephen King

Director:  Tobe Hooper

Country:  USA

Availability:  Amazon Instant Video

For a vampire movie that runs an arduous three hours in length, Salem's Lot tells little of the monsters that are supposedly "taking over the town" and instead embarks on an exhaustive journey of exposition between the characters. The elements of the book that made the story rich and interesting are completely lacking here, instead of a wide cast of flawed & unique characters we are stuck with silhouettes of people so generic they are practically puppets. Instead of a town full of people dropping like flies we see a handful of victims and only hear verbal accounts of more. The creepiness and horror of our heroes having to hunt down friends and neighbors-turned-vampires for slaughter is completely missing in the movie adaptation and as a result the movie lacks tension, menace and devastation. I wasn't the biggest fan of the book but it did have a lot going for it and unfortunately the movie plays like a hollowed-out version of King's story. I don't know how this Salem's Lot movie became such a horror classic but being a fan of King, Hooper and 70's horror, and also being a sinfully forgiving viewer, I feel confident believing that nostalgia probably plays a big part of this film's continued praise. As a new viewer who is not 12 years old, I was bored and disappointed, finding no redeeming qualities in the longest three hours I have recently spent.

2 out of 5 stars