The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  After all this time, pretty much everyone knows where they stand on the Friday the 13th series. While the common consensus is that the films are all pretty much the same with different casts, parts IV through VI find the series in a transitional period. Paramount, happy to count the money when each installment was released but thoroughly embarrassed by the series, planned for part IV to be the final film in the franchise (hence its subtitle The Final Chapter). Looking to make this one count, Tom Savini was brought back to do the makeup and effects for the first time since the original film, and director Joe Zito was hired to direct.

  The Final Chapter is possibly the best of the series, with a great cast of teenage corpses-in-waiting that includes a very young Crispin Glover and featuring Corey Feldman as the on-screen representative of the film’s target audience: the budding horror fanboy. Zito brought the film an action-film sensibility– let’s just say there are a lot of people and things crashing through windows– which some fans enjoyed and others thought compromised the series’ established “rules.” Naturally, the film raked it in at the box office and Paramount quickly set the wheels in motion for the next installment, The New Beginning.

  Perhaps one of the most maligned sequels in horror film history, A New Beginning takes place ten years after the events of the previous film and sets up the Corey Feldman character– now grown and played by John Shepherd– as a possible replacement for series “hero” Jason Voorhees. After a pretty weak bait-and-switch, the film leads to an obvious setup for the next film. Luckily, the filmmakers on part VI (Jason Lives) decided to pretty much throw everything from part V out the window and, for the first time in the series, took a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach. It’s actually one of the stronger entries in the series as well, with a nice streak of black humor underlining the mayhem.

  All that is to say, for most viewers, is that IV is “the one with Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman,” V is “the one where it’s not Jason,” and VI is “the funny one.” If that describes your views on the series, these reissues are probably not on your radar, but fans of the series or the curious might find this a good place to start.

  The Final Chapter is the most feature-packed of the three. In addition to about 15 minutes of deleted scenes with commentary by Zito (the scenes are dailies without sound), an alternate ending (with commentary by Zito and Kimberley Beck), and a couple minutes of Crispin Glover doing takes of “Jimmy’s Dead Fuck Dance Moves,” the film has two commentary tracks. The first features director Joe Zito and other cast and crew, and the second is by Adam Green (director of Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (director of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End). They’re both worth listening to, but for hardcore fans the Green and Lynch commentary is the one you’ll probably want to hit first. They’re both huge fans of the series and this entry in particular, and it’s clear they’re very excited to be doing the commentary.

  A New Beginning is, unsurprisingly, pretty light on the extras. It features a commentary with director Danny Steinmann, actors Shavar Ross and John Shepherd, and “the biggest fan of part 5 in the world” Michael Felsher. They sometimes state that they’re all in on the commentary to defend the film, but they spend most of their time joking about it. By the end, they hadn’t changed my mind at all– this one is still unquestionably a low point in the series.

  Jason Lives gets back on track with around six minutes of deleted scenes that are great to finally see, but the quality is pretty rough. Perhaps the most interesting feature here (aside from the commentary by director Tom McLoughlin with some cast and crew) is an alternate ending done with storyboards and featuring the voice of Bob Larkin (the cemetery caretaker in the film). It’s cool to see, even if it’s tough to imagine where the series would have gone from there.

  Additionally, each disc has a “making-of” featurette running between 11 and 15 minutes with thoughts from many of the cast members of each film, as well as continuations of the “Lost Tales from Camp Blood” series that has been running through the whole series of reissues. Your mileage may vary, but I haven’t been too interested in this particular feature although I appreciate the effort on Paramount’s part to present some new content along with the standard special features. New to this round of reissues is a series of featurettes called “The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited,” an In Search Of…-style mockumentary about the violent history of Crystal Lake. The tone of these is pretty goofy, though, which may put off fans or other people who feel the films are plenty goofy on their own.

  Overall, this round of reissues is well worth a look even if you previously forked over for the standalone discs or even the From Crystal Lake to Manhattan boxed set. If you’ve been holding off on definitive DVD editions, these are no-brainers– with Blu-Ray gaining market share and who knows what beyond that, these are likely the best DVD treatment these films are ever likely to see. Now let’s see what Paramount does for The New Blood and Jason Takes Manhattan!

  George Romero Between Night and Dawn: There’s Always Vanilla (1971), Season of the Witch (1972), and The Crazies (1973)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 21 November 2017

  George A. Romero will undoubtedly always be best remembered as the director of Night of the Living Dead, one of the most influential horror films of the 20th century. Romero and his collaborators all but created the modern concept of the zombie in horror film, and his continuation of the “Dead” series with Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead rounded out a peerless trilogy of socially conscious horror unmatched in the 1970s and 1980s. But as unquestionably important as Romero’s original “Dead trilogy” has been to the history of genre cinema, Romero directed a number of other influential films that covered interesting thematic territory. While they have not traditionally received nearly as much attention as his most popular work, some of Romero’s other films are arguably superior to his most well-known works. Arrow Video’s new Blu-ray/DVD set “George Romero Between Night and Dawn” presents the three films Romero made in the early 1970s following the unexpected success of Night of the Living Dead in 1968, charting the evolution of his style and use of genre for social commentary leading up to Dawn of the Dead in 1978.

  Romero started off in filmmaking with commercial productions by his company The Latent Image, and was able to put together Night of the Living Dead thanks to the their success. Following the film’s release, Romero went in a much different direction for his second feature as a director. Written by Rudy Ricci–who had played a zombie in Romero’s first film–There’s Always Vanilla is a low-key counterculture drama. Chris Bradley (Raymond Laine) drifts back into Pittsburgh and takes his dad Roger (Roger McGovern) out for a good time with a couple of strippers, and the following morning Chris is run down on a train platform by Lynn Harris (Judith Ridley). She misses her train, but he offers her a ride to the commercial audition she was running to and before they know it the two have struck up a romance. Chris moves into her apartment, but after some time his aimlessness starts to grate on Lynn’s nerves. For his part, Chris is disgusted with life in modern America and tends to look down on Lynn’s work as an actress selling beer and toilet bowl cleaner. Chris narrates the story, which has enough humor that the film is often referred to as a comedy, but its tone is consistently downbeat and it deals with some dark subject matter. Laine and Ridley give solid lead performances, and the directorial style is unmistakable, but There’s Always Vanilla is ultimately not much more than an interesting footnote in Romero’s oeuvre.

  For his next film, Romero returned to the horror genre but in a quite unexpected manner. Season of the Witch (aka Jack’s Wife or Hungry Wives) is the story of Joan (Jan White), a bored housewife who begins to dabble in witchcraft when she becomes irrevocably disillusioned with her life following an uncomfortable evening when her friend Shirley (Ann Muffly) has a near-breakdown when confronted by Gregg (Raymond Laine). Gregg is a young TA who works at the college attended by Joan’s daughter Nikki (Joedda McClain) and they have a “friends with benefits” arrangement; Gregg manipu
lates Shirley into revealing her deepest insecurities, and Joan realizes she not only feels the same but is also envious of Nikki’s free sexuality. Nikki runs away from home after discovering Joan overheard her and Gregg having sex, and Joan begins having intense nightmares in which a masked assailant breaks into her home and assaults her. When her less than understanding husband Jack (Bill Thunhurst) leaves for a week-long business trip, Joan seizes the opportunity to cast her first real spell: Enticing Gregg to come to her home in order to seduce him. Jan White gives a spectacular performance in the lead role, and the film holds its own against other so-called “psychotic women” films of the 1970s like Robert Altman’s Images, Matt Cimber’s The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and John D. Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death among many others. Romero sets up the relationship between Joan and Gregg as a direct mirror of the generational divide that followed in the wake of “free love” and the Vietnam war, with witchcraft as a convenient excuse for Joan to indulge in her daughter’s way of life without taking responsibility for her own desires. It’s a phenomenal film, and sees Romero damn near the top of his game very early in his feature filmmaking career.

  The Crazies proved to be a worthy follow-up, and pushed Romero’s interest in reflecting American culture completely to the fore. Shot in Evans City, Ohio–the same town where Night of the Living Dead was filmed–The Crazies depicts the rapid deterioration of order in a small town following the release of a deadly virus. David (Will MacMillan) is a volunteer fireman in Evans City, planning to marry his pregnant girlfriend Judy (Lane Carroll). Judy works as a nurse for a local doctor, and one night they’re both called away following the murder of a family and the burning of their house by the father. Judy arrives just in time for the doctor’s office to be overtaken by the military, who are setting up a temporary headquarters to deal with the infection through a strict quarantine. As the minutes tick by, the situation becomes increasingly chaotic and dangerous. Dr. Watts (Richard France), a scientist who worked on the team developing the virus, tries to find a cure while David, Judy, their friend Clank (Harold Wayne Jones), and a father with his possibly infected daughter Kathy (Lynn Lowry) try to escape the quarantine area. The Crazies shares some similarities with Romero’s zombie films, most specifically the opening sequences of Dawn of the Dead. In fact the film is almost like a feature-length version of those harrowing, chaotic scenes of authorities trying desperately to impose order and a society on the verge of losing its collective sanity. The Crazies is almost unbearably intense; most of the dialogue is made up of people screaming at each other in anger, frustration, and panic. Romero excels at depicting situations of total confusion, and he puts that ability to full use here. The action cuts between Evans City and a government office where men in suits debate the possibility of dropping a nuclear weapon on a small Ohio town; meanwhile back in Evans City, a priest dowses himself in gasoline and lights himself on fire. This unmistakable reference to the famous image of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burning himself in protest in 1963 helps draw a clear parallel to what The Crazies has to say about the American government, military, and the quagmire of the Vietnam war.

  Arrow’s set presents these three films in their absolute best home video release to date. The 4K transfer of the theatrical version of Season of the Witch is an enormous improvement over the previously available DVD, and The Crazies (also in 4K) has never looked better. There’s Always Vanilla is the roughest of the three films, with a somewhat murky 2K transfer due to some deterioration of the film elements. It’s still completely watchable, but it is noticeably less clean than the other two films. The Blu-ray of Season of the Witch includes a composite of the extended version Anchor Bay previously released with the HD transfer intercut with the missing footage from the SD source. It gives the viewer a very clear picture of just how much of an improvement the new restoration really is. Each of the three discs is packed with special features including location tour slideshows, feature-length commentaries on each film with film journalist Travis Crawford, interviews with numerous people who worked on the films in front of and behind the cameras, alternate opening credits sequences for Season of the Witch and The Crazies, and some extras ported from the previous home video releases of the films. The packaging is typically spectacular, with reversible covers for each disc including original art and new art by Gilles Vranckx and a 60-page booklet with new writing by Kat Ellinger, Kier-La Janisse, and Heather Drain. Probably the most exciting single feature in the set other than the films themselves is a nearly hour-long discussion between George Romero and Guillermo del Toro covering Romero’s entire career, shot in February of 2016. Romero sadly passed away from lung cancer shortly after this set was officially announced earlier this year, but like Herschell Gordon Lewis’s passing before the release of Arrow’s “Shock and Gore” set, it’s good to know that at least Romero was aware these films were finally getting their due. Also like that set, serious fans of genre film history in general and the filmmaker this set focuses on in particular will find this an essential addition to their home video library.

  Halloween 4 (1988) and 5 (1989) on Blu-ray

  Originally published on Film Monthly 23 August 2012

  The original Halloween franchise continues its slow progress to Blu-ray with Anchor Bay’s latest set of reissues. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers were previously released on DVD by Anchor Bay and eventually released in a 2-pack together, although the new Blu-rays are sold separately. Are the new discs worth double-dipping? Well, for die-hard Halloween fans, the answer is pretty much a given. But is there enough here to entice more casual fans to pick up two mid-franchise entries in a long-running series?

  Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers picks up a decade after the events of the first two Halloween films. Despite going up in flames at the end of Halloween 2, Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) is alive but catatonic and on life support, held in a dark hospital sub-basement. His orphaned niece, Jamie (Danielle Harris), lives in Haddonfield with a foster family. During a routine hospital transfer on the eve of Halloween, Michael escapes and heads back to Haddonfield. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), also looking rough after all the burning at the end of Halloween 2, discovers Michael has escaped and follows him to Haddonfield to protect Jamie. Can Loomis and the new sheriff save Jamie from Michael and prevent too many more teenagers from being slaughtered?

  Encouraged by the box-office success of Halloween 4, production on Halloween 5 was quickly green-lit. Most of the surviving cast returns for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, released a year after Halloween 4. Taking place a year later, Halloween 5 finds traumatized Jamie (Danielle Harris reprising the role) in a children’s mental hospital. Once again, Michael (Don Shanks) returns from what looked like certain death at the end of the previous film in order to terrorize Jamie and murder anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way. This time, however, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) hopes to exploit the telepathic link between Jamie and Michael in order to bring about Michael’s final demise. Given that there are three more films in the original franchise, no points for guessing how that turns out.

  Both films are presented in new HD transfers, and while they’re better than the previous “Divimax” special edition DVDs, these films are not exactly reference quality stuff. This is the best they’re likely to ever look, though, so fans looking for a straight upgrade should not be disappointed. The extras on each disc are a mix of carry-overs from the previous DVD editions and newer material: Halloween 4 retains the actors’ commentary with Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell and adds a commentary with director Dwight H. Little and author Justin Beahm (who is working on an exhaustive book on the Halloween franchise), but does not include the previous DVD’s writer’s commentary with Alan B. McElroy. Halloween 4 is also missing the “Making of” featurette from that release, so fans will likely want to hold on to the DVD for those extras. Halloween 5 retains its original commentary track (with director Dom
inique Othenin-Girard, Danielle Harris and Jeffrey Landman) and adds a new commentary with Don Shanks (who played Michael Myers in the film) and Justin Beahm. The previous release’s featurette “Inside Halloween 5” is not included on the Blu-ray.

  These new Blu-ray releases are something of a mixed bag for hardcore Halloween fans. The new commentary tracks and HD transfers of the films are certainly attractive, but the missing material from the previous DVDs means these are far from definitive releases of these two films. Given the difficult release history of the films in the franchise, it seems unlikely that another upgrade may be in the works, which is certainly disappointing. However, casual Halloween and slasher film fans looking for HD thrills will probably find these releases preferable to the older releases on their technical merits alone.

  Hardbodies Collection: Hardbodies (1984) and Hardbodies 2 (1986)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 11 August 2009

  Finally, two of the most intellectually challenging American films of the 1980s are available on DVD in one package! I kid, of course– no one’s going to be picking up the Hardbodies Collection for intellectual stimulation. Anchor Bay drops an 80′s nostalgia bomb today with the release of this and Spring Break, which I have helpfully reviewed over here (spoiler alert: it’s a hell of a lot of fun). So how do the Hardbodies films hold up all these years after their original release?

  Well, the original Hardbodies is definitely worth a look. For an 80s teen sex comedy, this one has a genuinely weird plot. Scotty (Grant Cramer) and his sidekick Rags (Courtney Gains) spend all their time hanging out at the beach and chasing Kristi (Teal Roberts) and Kimberly (Cindy Silver), along with any other scantily-clad young ladies with time on their hands. Into the beach scene comes three old perverts who buy the coolest house on the beach in order to pick up young women: Hunter (Gary Wood), Rounder (Michael Rapport) and Carlton Ashby (Sorrells Pickard). Ashby is the oldest of the three and has some reservations about their plan, especially since it seems Hunter is interested in mixing pleasure with business– before long, they’ve hired Scotty to show them how to “dialogue” girls by giving them “The BBD” (The Bigger and Better Deal).