Elm Street’s first installment found Krueger at his least self-consciously cute. It also gave him a worthwhile adversary in Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy, one of horrordom’s more resilient heroines. While all around her were being hacked up, suffocated, swallowed by their waterbeds and bled dry in their dreams, Nancy stayed strong and, more important, stayed awake. She also became aware that the adult world could not protect her. Her police chief father (John Saxon) refused to believe in the return of the ghosts of his past. Her mother (Ronee Blakley) blurred reality with the bottle. Craven sets the scene for a Rambo climax, a kick-ass confrontation between tormentor and teen. But even though Nancy fills her house with hidden tripwires and booby traps, the way she finally frees Elm Street of Freddy is to turn her back on him, refusing to believe in his existence. He subsequently vaporizes, denied access to a vulnerable subconscious. And then there’s a dopey, tacked-on ending—the Elm Street kids are borne away yelping by a Freddymobile while Krueger sinks his nails into Nancy’s mom—to set up the sequel. The professorial Craven would talk at length in interviews about studying dreams and the influence they wield in our lives, but his movie was a straight-ahead statement about self-reliance and the time to put away childish things.
The constraints of formula weighed heavily on the follow-up Nightmares, but they treated the viewer with less derision than the other tentpole franchises. Number two, Freddy’s Revenge (1985), has some unexpectedly kinky kills, with a gym teacher being slowly stripped, bound, gagged and strangled by ghostly ropes. In number three, Dream Warriors (1987), Nancy returns as a child psychologist, specializing in dreams. Freddy finally gets rid of her but before she goes, she passes on the Freddy-bashing mantle to shy little Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who transforms into “The Dream Master.”
Both Craven and Robert Englund attempted to use their Elm Street leverage to gain toeholds in the horror franchise industry. Craven floundered with Deadly Friend (1986) in which wholesome teen Kristy Swanson is knocked around once too often by her drunken dad. The neighborhood teen genius (Little House on the Prairie’s Matthew Laborteaux) resurrects her by sticking a computer chip in the back of her head. This transforms her into a killing machine who can throw a basketball at the local busybody with an impact that explodes her head like a watermelon. Of course, it doesn’t take long for the wonk to realize, “I’ve created a monster!” and attempt to dismantle Swanson, who projects her reanimated state by moving like Pinocchio and enunciating in a “Please hold” monotone … like she does in every movie! Englund’s attempt to get himself nice and comfy in the director’s chair was 976-EVIL (1988), wherein that odd little guy Stephen Geoffreys plays a high-school punchbag who unwittingly dials a phone number that connects him to Hell. Craven and Englund were reunited midway through the nineties on the redundant meta-movie Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, in which Freddy attempts to kill his creators for bringing him back to do another sequel. The execution sucked, but the intent was honorable.
Little Monsters
New Treatments of Old Favorites
Bite Me
Teen Vampire Movies
From its teen-tempting tag line (“Sleep all day, party all night, it’s fun to be a vampire”) to its flouncing, fang-bearing, fashion-plate cast, seasoned gorehounds found something to loathe in every glossy, shock-free second of The Lost Boys (1987). Not only did all the killings in this MTV horror movie occur offscreen, not only was Kiefer Sutherland’s grinning kingpin villain clearly modeled on Billy Idol, but—and this is the crime that could get you the chair in some states—it provided the environment for the visionary alliance between Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. I recall being among the killjoys who dismissed the film on its release but either I’ve ditched the blinkers or become less discriminating over the years (evidence points to the latter) because The Lost Boys now seems a delightful deviation from the horror norm. Director Joel Schumacher, with his signature combination of scrupulous attention to set design and flickering interest in plot logic, delivers a movie several light years more lavish and loony than any woodlands slasher. It takes place in Santa Carla, a scuzzy West Coast beachfront community that’s both a teenage paradise—it’s dominated by a giant amusement park, and dotted with video emporiums and comic shops—and a crime capital. When just-divorced Lucy (Dianne Wiest) relocates her brood, Michael (smoldering Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim, dressed like he just hightailed it off the set of the last Kajagoogoo video), to this burg, she pityingly notes its plethora of missing-children posters. Little does she realize that not all of these kids are lost; some of them are right here in her new hometown as part of a bare-chested, back-combed, body-pierced, bike-riding clan of engorged vampire stud puppies.
Schumacher takes Anne Rice’s notion of vampires as the rock stars of their day and makes a big cheesy meal of it. Kiefer Sutherland, barely able to restrain himself from bursting into a chorus of Rebel Yell, is David, the head vampire go-go boy in charge, and as soon as he catches sight of Jason Patric’s heavy-lidded vulnerability, he smells fresh meat. David vamps Michael, pulling him into a motorbike duel and enticing him to join his band of after-dark revelers. Facing initial resistance, David sics vampette Star (Jami Gertz at her most sumptuous. How come she never made it? She was always on the verge. In fact, she was verge) on his ass. Falling—and who wouldn’t—for that lustrous gypsy tangle of hair and that impeccable bone structure, Michael follows Star into David’s clutches where he’s semi-initiated into the world of the hot, sexy and undead. “Now you know what we are, now you know what you are,” mumbles David through mouthfuls of scenery. “You’ll never grow old and you’ll never die. But you must feed!”
History, meanwhile, is about to be made as the two Coreys collide. Sam, wearing an ensemble so hideous—some manner of paint-spattered, ankle-length jacket—that it seems like a plea for mercy killing, saunters into a comic shop. He’s spotted and rightly mocked by two dweebs in fatigues: the brothers Frog, Edgar and Alan (Corey Feldman and the never-heard-from-before-or-since Jamison Newlander). The razzing of Sam ceases when he displays a knowledge of fanboy ephemera. The Frog sibs, enunciating in Dragnet monotones, warn the newcomer of Santa Carla’s vampire activity. He’s skeptical but his attitude changes when he gets a look at his brother. Michael is pale, listless and permanently shielded by dark glasses. But there’s something strange about him, too. He’s developed a taste for raw meat and, in unguarded moments, he floats free from the grip of gravity. Like Louis in Interview with the Vampire, he won’t take that last vital step and slake his thirst for human corpuscles. Star feeds him at first, but soon his vampiric tendencies are so developed that he almost takes a chomp out of his little bro before the snarling family pooch intercedes. “You’re a creature of the night, Michael. My own brother, a goddam shit-sucking vampire. You wait till Mom finds out,” bawls Sam, shaking Michael out of his delirium.
Up to this point, the movie’s been careening crazily between the torment and posturing of the macho vamps and the teenybop goofing of the Frog boys, with a little of Dianne Wiest’s tentative genteel romance with Edward Herrmann’s avuncular video-store owner thrown in. Then it all falls apart gloriously. There’s squirt guns filled with holy water. There’s poison-tipped crucifixes. There’s good vampires versus bad vampires. There’s an Idiot Twist at the end when Edward Herrmann’s avuncular video-store owner turns out to be the patriarchal vampire who wants the twittering Dianne Wiest to be the mother to his extended undead family, creating kind of a bloodsucking Brady Bunch scenario (which, in itself, is a fantastic premise for a movie and here I am just throwing it out there to the wolves). Clearly, another Idiot Twist is required and, luckily, one turns up right on cue courtesy of Barnard Hughes, as Wiest’s crusty old pop who drives a truck straight through his living room wall, staking Herrmann in the process. “One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach,” he growls, “all the damn vampires.”
As I intimated, I was among the bores who cold-shouldered The Lost Boys on its maiden voya
ge, repulsed by its preening hunks and lack of rotting flesh. A decade later, I’d stand in line for a movie as exhilarating and through-the-roof stupid.
* * *
A sterling defense on behalf of Old School horror was mounted in Fright Night (1985). Wholesome high-schooler Charley (William Ragsdale) becomes consumed by his conviction that the handsome, suave and charming guy who moved in next door is actually a vampire. His attempts to draw out neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) result in Charley being regarded as a strung-out dope fiend possibly on the verge of severe mental burn-out. Only one person believes him, but unfortunately, it’s his weirdo gorehound friend Evil Ed (played to the sniveling hilt by that odd little guy Stephen Geoffreys). As it turns out, Jerry the Gent is, indeed, a creature of the night and he quickly inducts Evil Ed into his legion. Charley only knows one place to turn for help: to the campy old ham who used to host the midnight TV horror show, Fright Night. But the thesp, Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) has been ousted from his spot because the rotten kids just want to see psychos in ski masks hacking up screaming coeds in bikinis. The actor wants nothing to do with this seemingly disturbed kid but finally brings his knowledge of vampire lore to bear on freeing the neighborhood of the ghoul next door. But not before Jerry gets to make a hot panting acolyte out of Charley’s previously demure girlfriend (Amanda Bearse, from TV’s Married With Children).
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How would you rather die: burning or drowning? It’s a tough call, and an almost equally impossible task is choosing between two of the eighties’ most puerile vampire vixen teen comedies. Both Once Bitten (1985) and Vamp (1986) star dames grande enough to know better: Lauren Hutton in the first, Grace Jones in the other. The first features one guy (Jim Carrey) who should be funny, but isn’t. The second features two guys (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) who shouldn’t be funny, but are. The second loses points for treating Long Duk Dong almost as shabbily as Sixteen Candles. The first gains points by giving Carrey a feisty girlfriend (girlfriend to Hutton: “He doesn’t want you because you’re evil and mean. He wants me because I’m sweet and nice, so fuck off!”). I declare a tie. They both suck.
Hungry Like a Wolf
Teen Werewolf Movies
Huge leaps forward in the field of anthropomorphic technology had been achieved by the time Stephen King’s short story “Cycle of the Werewolf” went into production as Silver Bullet (1985). We had gazed in awe at man-to-animal transformations in An American Werewolf in London, The Company of Wolves, The Howling, Wolfen and even Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Which is to say that after making us sit through 90 minutes of little wheelchair-bound Marty (Corey Haim) babbling about how werewolves are tearing up his small town and his blustering Uncle Red (Gary Busey) saying how he doesn’t want to hear no more foolish talk about werewolves, you better be ready to show us some fancy motherfuckers. The guy in the moth-eaten Wile E. Coyote suit was not worth the preceding emotional investment.
* * *
Michael J. Fox made Teen Wolf (1985) before Back to the Future, but it was released afterwards. Suddenly, he was a media-straddling megastar and, like a cold sore on a first date, this blemish appeared to blight his moment of triumph.
I don’t know how far from being a werewolf movie a film with the word wolf in its title can actually be, but Teen Wolf does a remarkable job in distancing itself from its supposed subject. Its assemblers obviously didn’t want to alienate Michael J.’s core sitcom constituency with any upsetting imagery but, hell, they’d seen Tina Yothers in a halter top. After that, everything else was Christmas.
Boo!
Teen Ghost Movies
I don’t know if the term The Wraith (1986) immediately springs to mind when you think of Charlie Sheen. He prompts thoughts more along the lines of The Client, The Defendant or The Guy At The Bar Who Wants To Buy You And Your Friend A Drink, You Are Over Eighteen, Aren’t You…?
Nevertheless, there he is, a wraith called Jake, materializing mysteriously in a Turbo Interceptor with tinted windows on the outskirts of a small Arizona patch of dirt in the grip of intimidation by Packard (Nick Cassavetes) and his fearsome band of celebrity offspring (including Griffin O’Neal, famous for having his front teeth knocked out by dad, Ryan). Packard’s gang get their twisted kicks forcing the locals to take part in chicken races and then stealing their cars.
Jake’s Turbo piques the chief hood’s interest. The fact that the newcomer seems to be trying to make time with his girlfriend (Sherilyn Fenn) makes him crazy. But Packard’s time as arbiter of the fates of others is just about up. His band is quickly being squashed by the sleek Turbo which, no matter how they try to shoot it, stomp on it or set it alight, just keeps on rolling. That’s because neither car nor driver are of this world. Jake was killed by Packard’s gang a long time ago and now he’s back from beyond to even the score. He is … the wraith. Nope, something about that still doesn’t sound right.
White Zombies
Teen Zombie Movies
Wanna know about movies filled with slack-jawed, hollow-eyed, brain-dead catatonic kids? Well, that’s why you bought this book! But as far as films where the zombification process is actually a pertinent subject matter, three titles come to mind. There’s the slapstick of Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead (1985) wherein putrefying punks with names like Spider, Scuzz, Trash and Suicide go on a brain-sucking rampage through Louisville. There’s the poignancy of Night Life (1990) in which a kid called Archie (Scott Grimes) has to contend with his glamorous job helping the local mortician (John Astin). He also has to cope with the fact that the best friend for whom he nurses a deep and gnawing yearning (Cheryl Pollak) is involved with El Sleazo Older Dude. Worst of all, he is the target of torment by a local gang of sneering hoods. Things get better when the bad guys are splattered in a car crash. Ironically, Archie has to tend to their bashed-up bodies. Even more ironically, they come back to semilife. More ironic still, they persecute Archie much more viciously in death than they ever did when they were alive. Night Life pulls a double bluff on the Idiot Twist when, after having busted up all the zombies, he’s alone with the girl of his dreams and she starts to seem a little slack in the jaw, a little hollow in the eye. Oh shit, she’s … “Just kidding,” she says.
Finally, there’s the relatively smart Night of the Creeps (1986). Two fraternity pledges, desperate-for-acceptance Chris (Jason Lively) and spunky cripple J.C. (Steve Marshall), are under orders to steal a corpse for a frat party. The stiff they wheel out of the morgue is actually a host to a strain of alien slug that shoots into people’s mouths, incubates in their brain and turns them into … the walking dead. Soon, the campus is infested with zombie jocks. J.C. is among their victims, forcing Chris to replace him with similarly spunky cheerleader Cynthia (Jill Whitlow) and hard-ass campus cop Cameron (Tom Atkins). The latter has the best line in this, or indeed any other teen zombie movie, when he bangs on the door of the sorority house and growls: “Girls, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is, your dates have arrived. The bad news is, they’re all dead.”
What About Blob?
Teen Blob Movies
Coppola’s Dracula? Branagh’s Frankenstein? Forget ’em. For a rousing big budget revival, look no further than Chuck Russell’s Blob (1988). Blessed with more creative killing capability and a better-developed personality than Jason or Michael Myers, The Blob was a government created and sanctioned glob of carnivorous goo. Watch amazed as the pink stuff engulfs and devours the population of a small town, sucking them down plug holes, through windows, congealing them in their cars and sliming them inside their own protective suits. Watch even more amazed as teen fuckup Kevin Dillon saves the day by freezing The Blob.
Modern Horrors
Contemporary Frightfests
“I’m going to scare the hell out of you!” declared Stephen King in the trailer for his simultaneous directorial debut and swan song, Maximum Overdrive (1986). Emilio Estevez starred as the ex-con doing his probation as a cook in a
North Carolina truckstop when a comet smashes into Earth, turning all mechanical objects into lethal, human-skewering weapons. It starts promisingly with soft-drink dispensers suddenly cannonballing their loads into the skulls of thirsty consumers and kitchen knives hacking up unsuspecting housewives. Then we’re back in that truckstop, which is now hemmed in by a circle of growling semis, and King throws the movie away with a bunch of siege-mentality clichés. If you stand there and say you’re going to scare the hell out of us, you better be ready to show us dentist drills and power tools and machines fucking shit up!
* * *
There was more to the eighties than a bunch of limp-dick English synth-pop weenies. Lest we forget … the eighties rocked! Ozzy bit the heads off bats. Priest in court, suspected of influencing some midwestern kids to blow off their faces. Concerned Christians screwed up perfectly good turntables dragging records backwards in attempts to detect the subliminal commands. Coverdale and Kitaen (the Kurt and Courtney of their day). The mousse. The horned fist salute. The time could not have been righter for a teen horror movie to exploit and ridicule the metal nation and its collision of phalluses and Fundamentalist censors. Trick or Treat (1986) is not that movie. Directed by Charles Martin Smith (Terry the Toad from American Graffiti), it tells the story of spurned sad sack Eddie (Marc Price, who played Skippy, the spurned sad sack on Family Ties). Eddie’s only escape from high-school hell is through the screeching racket of Sammi Curr. Sammi promptly drops dead but a friendly DJ (Gene Simmons) gives Eddie a tape of his idol’s last, unreleased, recordings. Eddie plays the tape and Sammi (Tony Fields) returns to huge-haired, thunder-crotched life with electricity crackling through his veins and Satanic superpowers that increase in intensity every time he teases a fresh batch of power chords out of his axe. In the beginning, this is good. Sammi throws volts at the bullies who were messing with Eddie. When a televangelist (Ozzy Osbourne, looking like he is about to fall off his chair) rails against the scourge of metal, Sammi reaches inside the TV and fries him. Eddie comes to realize that the resurrected rocker is evil and must be stopped. So he flushes him down the toilet. Trick or Treat achieved the impossible: it insulted its audience’s intelligence. (Shit soundtrack, too, by nonvaunted no-hopers, Fastway.)
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