18. Madhouse (1981) / Director: Ovidio Assonitis
Madhouse is a gem. A story of two sisters. One psychotic and institutionalized her entire life (all of this chillingly explained in a title sequence that culminates with with the crazy sister, Mary -- they're children in this sequence - bashing in the head of Julia, non crazy sister) until, in her 20s, she escapes with vengeance on her mind and in her heart. Mary hates Julia, blames her for all of her issues (where are the parents in all of this, did I miss that part?). Something happened in her childhood that fueled that hatred, cased her psychotic break and led to 20 years in an asylum. Julia, the good sister or, I should say, the well sister? And, Mary, the quack job (acceptable 80s phrasing). Mary's got a vicious Rottweiler, somehow. I forgot his name. Also, there's their uncle the Priest. He doesn't believe Julia when it comes to Mary's childhood abuse (of Julia), thinks the sister is probably wrongly institutionalized, needs to get out.
Anyway, what we got here is a Southern gothic masterpiece with an over sprinkling of Italian sleaze. After the sister escapes, anyone that Julia loves, or even just likes Julia, is pretty much Rottweiler food. Yeah, almost all of the attacks and murders are performed by the poor mutt. He's a real cutie, didn't know what he'd gotten himself into. There's a scene where Julia's prized student, a young lad, at the Savannah Academy for the Deaf, is obliterated by the poor Rottie. The camera cuts aways before we see the devastation.
The picture is really just set piece after set piece, most taking place in the house where Julia has an apartment. I guess it used to be a Funeral home. It all climaxes in the best dinner scene since the Texas Chainsaw Massacre dinner scene where Julia sits to dine for her birthday (oh yeah, it's all leading up to her birthday, we even get text on the screen like "2 days until Julia's birthday) with all the killer's victims. Notice how I didn't say Mary's victims? Did I ruin the surprise? This goes on the short list for best of the month.
Essentially, I needed something light with this one since my girlfriend was watching and the scary shit isn't really her thing. Found this on Disney Plus and got excited when I thought it would be a mash up adventure where Ichabod and Mr. Toad team up to send the headless horsemen back to hell or something. Like, maybe Mr. Toad hitched a ride across the pond with the rescuers or whatever. That's not what we get. This is just two separate stories, a sort-of anthology film, with no wrap-around story. The first story concerns Mr. Toad contracting motorcar fever and being sent to prison for stealing a car, much to the disappointment of his sort-of friends (no one seems to really like Mr. Toad because he's kind of an asshole). Well, Donkey likes Toad so he breaks him out of prison and they try to retake Toad Manor from the weasels who had since moved in, after an elaborate con. It's great, but also not really an October kind of tale. More Christmas-y, I think, due to the scenes set during Christmas.
The Ichabod story is what we're here for anyway. With songs by Bing Crosby. In fact, the story is told through Song and narration. We got Ichabod, a schoolteacher, moving to Sleepy Hollow and becoming quite the ladies man, despite his weird stick-figure type appearance and awkward movements. He's really only into the women for their cooking though which seems like a pretty valid reason considering the time this movie was made and also the time the story was written (not sure if early 19th century women ventured out of the kitchen much or not). Eventually, Ichabod sets his sights on Katrina a well-to-do young woman in town, daughter of a baron or some shit. His competition is Brutus or Bron, a Bluto like figure. Ichabod and Brom (looked it up) engage in plenty of hijinks where they looney tunes the shit out of one another. All of these antics lead us to a Halloween party where it seems that Ichabod is on the verge of winning Katrina's favor. Brom, in a last ditch attempt to not lose, zeroes in on Ichabod's one weakness: He's a fucking scared-y cat. He proceeds to tell the story of the headless horsemen (in a wonderful song) knowing full well that Ichabod has a lonely horse ride home, through the woods. That horse ride is about all of this movie that i remembered from when I was a kid. It's definitely terrifying for youngsters. Is the horsemen real or in Ichabod's head? Well, no matter. The schoolmaster disappears from Sleepy Hollow forever and Brom marries Katrina. Typical happy ending bullshit.
20. One Missed Call (2003) / Director: Takashi Miike
One Missed Call follows Ringu (1998) and Ju-On (2000) in the J-horror pantheon both in release date and probably also in quality. Though, I believe time has been pretty kind to this one. While not nearly as scary, there's actually quite a bit of humor to be found here as well as a sequence or two that still manages to shock. Also, this one's got legendary film director Takashi Miike (Audition) to direct. The movie opens with some friends in a restaurant. A young woman, Yoko, receives a phone call. She doesn't answer so it goes to voicemail (I think that's why they call this thing One Missed Call). She listens to the voicemail and freaks out, goes to the bathroom. Yumi (her friend) follows. They both listen. On the other end of the voicemail is Yoko saying something like "oh no, it's raining", then screaming, then nothing. What can it mean? Who's playing this prank? Cut to a detective who is investigating strange deaths where the victims have candy in their mouth? Well, that's a weird calling card. I'm guessing evil child spirit or whatever.
Anyway, exactly 48 hours later, Yoko is destroyed by a train and her severed arm proceeds to dial the phone number of the next victim who will receive a voicemail from the future where they, themselves, are leaving the voicemail for themselves in the past and then screaming. Oh, and eventually Yumi receives that voicemail so she and the detective need to team up to get to the bottom of this mystery (the detective has some personal stakes in this as his sister was a previous victim of this chain voicemail from beyond the grave). While not all that scary (it's hard to imagine receiving a voicemail from myself, to be honest, unless it's something I did years ago in drunken revery) the movie feels really prescient in its portrayal of cell phone culture. I imagine this movie having been made today and incorporating twitter (or whatever they decide to call twitter in the movie so they don't get sued). Sure, cell phones have made many aspects of life easier but was life so bad before them? Did we really need to democratize all voices? Even the demonic ones? Not worth the risk, in my opinion.
Anyway, this is a really good one. There's a sequence, set about midway through, where one of the victims of the cell phone demon agrees to appear on a TV show where an actual exorcist will attempt to save her life as the 48 hour clock ticks down to her death date. It's an incredible sequence, feels very Miike and ups the stakes to the point where the audience wonders "oh wait, I don't think there's anything they can do to stop this." It's also the first time this picture truly feels like a "anything can happen" Miike type picture.
I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds on this one. We all know, the original theatrical cut of Dawn of the Dead is a flat out masterpiece, funny, sad, scary, gross, action-packed. It's all of those things. And probably more. I'd never seen the cut that went out to European audiences, however. Apparently, this is their preferred version. Re-cut by Dario Argento, DOTD's European cut is almost a hyperkinetic version of Romero's original. While Goblin's score finds its way into the Romero version, here it's almost front and center throughout. The score is fast, like the picture. The plotting is exactly the same. Start in a newsroom, move to a SWAT team raiding an apartment building (full of minorities), move to a helicopter escape (including two SWAT guys, a reporter, and her boyfriend, the pilot), an eventful stop to refuel, and finally the iconic mall. This version, however, does not stop to breather through any of this stuff. It just moves and moves and moves, breakneck pace. The action on screen repeatedly punched up by Goblin.
It's an action-horror hybrid. The original is a horror movie with some good action stuff. As far as going scene by scene and explaining what's different, I'm not capable of doing that. I know that one scene, before the escape, featuring the actor that played Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead was cut out. I also know that calling this thing Zombie allowed them to call Fulci's sequel Zombie 2 or actually Zombi 2. That's the one where the shark fights the zombie and also a zombie sticks a sliver of wood into a woman's eyeball which is not something I think any Romero zombie would even think to do.
So, this is a good version. It's still pretty long so it's not like you can put this on if you want to watch a 90 minute version of Dawn of the Dead instead of a two hour version. It's 8 minutes shorter (119 minutes vs 127 minutes). It just moves a lot faster. So, maybe you'll go a few miles further in less time but it still took almost the same time? I don't know. The original cut is obviously superior but this is probably the better one to throw on at a party where you want everyone to leave at 8 minutes to Midnight instead of Midnight on the dot.
Figured I'd do a little theme here in the middle of Schlocktober. So, following up on the Dawn of the Dead European Cut, I decided to watch another version of a classic, previously unseen by me. Little Shop of Horrors is a film I revere. When I saw it for the first time, at 12 years old, I'm guessing I hated musicals. This was my gateway drug. At the time, I'm sure i even scoffed at these songs but was completely won over the design of Audrey II as well as by Steve Martin's the dentist. Hell, I'm sure I was even humming his theme song at school. Also, at the time, I was unfamiliar with the original musical which has a much darker ending so it didn't even occur to me that Seymour and Audrey getting married, moving to the suburbs and living happily ever after might have ticked off a few fans.
Years later, I learned they originally shot an ending, similar to the musical's ending where the plant wins (after eating Audrey and Seymour), spawns millions of other Audrey II's that grow into kaiju sized Audrey's, and completely take over/decimate the world. I thought "that's pretty amazing but I'm not going to ruin the experience of this film by watching that stuff out of context on Youtube". I was resigned to the fact that some fucking 80s test audience had ruined the chance of this every being properly re-edited into the film where it wouldn't look fucking shitty. Well, I was completely wrong. The ending, the original ending, is completely seamless. It's also long, feels long. I think that's part of the joke. Once the plant devours Seymour, after psychologically torturing him for what feels like a half hour, it's revealed that some shady character snipped off some of Audrey II, grew little Audrey II's, and sold them around the world like fucking Cabbage Patch Kids. We're treated to scenes of mass destruction on a global scale (highlight for me was an Audrey II breaking off a train track and letting that subway drive right down it's mouth).
It's rare that a director's cut of a film is truly the preferred version. I'd say this joins the short list. Also, the songs are still great.
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