Many Days of Friday the 13th - Part V

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

     Here's where it begins.  Or it is when you ask most fans of the series.  I agree with them.  This film started the gradual death of the Friday the 13th franchise.  The Final Chapter, which was the film before this one, decided to kill off Jason once and for all.  That was going to be the end of the series, no more, bye-bye, gone!  Oh, the movie made a good amount of money?  Well, when we said 'the end', we didn't mean the end!  I mean, obviously people still want more of these!

    Yes friends, the series would go on.  (And on, and on, and on!)  But they killed Jason...  But fans will surely cry foul if we don't give him to them...  Hmm...  I know!  Let's make the story about the boy that killed Jason!  I mean, it was obvious at the end of the last film that he'd become mentally disturbed!  I mean, he stared straight into camera while hugging his sister!  Who does that?

     And that's just what the studio decided.  The new movie would center on Tommy Jarvis, the kid played by Corey Feldman in the last film.  The movie is set years after the last film.  Tommy is now about 17 or 18 years old, having been shifted from the mental institution to a new group home for disturbed teens.  He still has bad dreams about Jason, and he's obviously got issues.  He doesn't talk much and is awkward around other people.  Well, just after he arrives at the new group home, one of the teens murders another (very annoying) teen.  Then murders start happening in the surrounding area.  Tommy is one of the main suspects.  Is it Tommy, a copycat, or is Jason really back?

    Well, the answer is a bit convoluted and, I can't hide the fact, stupid.  Little spoiler here, but everyone knows it by now.  Jason isn't the killer here.  Hell, even the hockey mask isn't the same.  The red marks of the original mask are replaced by two blue ones.  That should be a hint to anybody.  The red marked mask does show up in some of Tommy's hallucinations, however.  Oddly enough, though the killer is an otherwise ordinary human being, he seemingly still has superhuman strength, which I will just put down to the fact that Paramount wanted a new Jason without it really being Jason, and Jason has to have great strength and cunning.  Yeah, whatever Paramount.

     

     So that's the trailer for this odd little movie.   They made sure people knew that Corey Feldman was in the film, as he was well liked by now having been in the last film and in Gremlins the year before.  Well, he's in about two minutes of the beginning of the film.  He was making The Goonies at the time of filming and could only spare a Sunday, which was his day off from the other film.  So they shot some shots of him in his back yard.  After that, you don't see Feldman in the series again.  They also set the film up as some sort of mystery, which seems fun, but it's a let-down when you find out who it is.  It's the proverbial Scooby-Doo ending!  

     What the trailer doesn't show you is how friggin' odd and downright sleazy the movie feels.  And this is the only movie in the series I would call sleazy.  There's the first use of cocaine in the series, a lot of dark morbid humor, a hardcore sex scene that was very much cut by the studio but is still sleazy as hell, and someone even dies on the crapper.  Oh, and the director?  He was known for one thing.  He was a porn director!   That's right, Paramount decided they needed a director of porn for the new film.  This makes a certain sense, as slasher films were seen as just above porn by most critics and audiences.  I suppose in a way they have a point, but as many people secretly watch a lot of porn, so do people like to watch idiots being hacked away by numerous sharp objects!

     Speaking of deaths, this one has a body count of 21!  That's the most until Jason Goes To Hell.  The disappointing part about that?  There's very little blood and gore to these deaths.  Part V was one of the most censored films in the series.  It was censored so much that besides some reaction close-ups of victims' faces or shots of the initial impalement or whatever, everything was cut.  The director to this day dislikes the film due to the MPAA cuts.  Sadly, these cuts are lost for good apparently.  There are a few shots of some interesting post-death gore, such as the result of a few chops with an axe (not done by not-Jason), and a shot of a girl who had gardening shears put through each eye, then closed.  (That was a cool death, by the way.  Too bad they didn't actually show it happening.) 

     Oddly enough, the acting isn't all that bad.  The teens are all cliches to be sure, but they aren't horrid actors.  Now I'm not saying they are good ones either, just acceptable.  In fact, one of the best actors in the film is the one that plays Tommy Jarvis.  After this film he became a hardcore Christian and went to seminary, but here he's quite good as a mental patient trying to move past his traumatic experiences.  The only really bad acting here is by some characters that should never have been put into the screenplay in the first place.  The redneck mother and son that live next door to the youth home.  My God are they annoying!  Here's just an example, but at least you can delight in their deaths.

Besides that, the movie is just another slasher film.  It's not set at Crystal Lake for the first time in the series, but that makes no difference as Jason isn't the killer here.  Now a few fans of the series consider this one the last film in the series that has the feel of the first few films.  After this, the series went downhill and became something else.  Well, I have to agree that this is the last film with the feel of the Friday series up to this point, but I think the next installment was better than this one, and most agree with me on that one I think.  A New Beginning gets a bad rep, just like Halloween III for not having the series' main villain as the baddy.  However, this film is not the huge piece of trash some would have you think.  It's certainly not great, but the series would go much lower in just a few years.  I'd say it's a definitely low on the list of ones I'd recommend in the series, but you can do worse.  I mean, at least you get to see some odd interpretive dance moves in this one!

     Also in this film is another case of a child in danger.  Again, he's a smart quick thinking boy.  He screams like a girl and wears a red track suit, but hey, token black guy!

Yep, I went there!

Many Days of Friday the 13th - IV: The Final Chapter

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

     So here we are...  The film that was originally supposed to kill of Jason for good.  This was going to be the last movie in the series.  That's it.  Paramount hated the ill-will from parents' groups and critics that went along with the series, and really, how many movies can you make about a guy who goes around killing teenagers?  The answer?  A lot more than four.

     This film takes place right after the ending of the 3rd film.  The CSI team finishes up their investigation, and Jason's body is taken to the morgue.  Of course, Jason isn't there long.  He escapes the morgue and goes back to his old stomping grounds of Crystal Lake to terrorize more people.  Now, I have one big issue with this movie.  This movie isn't just teenagers getting killed.  Sure, there's teens renting a house to have a party, but there's also a family next door to that house.  A mother, a teen daughter, and a pubescent son.  My issue is that there's been about 20 people killed around the lake in the past few days, and NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT OR SEEMS TO CARE!!!  Are these people insane?  Has the story been covered up?  How?!  But I digress.  This film has two rather well known actors in it.  There's Crispin Glover, who would star in Back to the Future right after this, as a shy nerdy teen at the party house.  There's also Corey Feldman, who would star in The Goonies after this, as the little boy next door.  Those two do give some weight to the film, as they are both pretty good actors.  In fact, out of the first four films, this one may have the best acting out of them.  The dog is pretty good too.

     The film also is memorable for the return of makeup effects master Tom Savini, who did the work on the first film.  By this time, he'd become pretty famous for his makeup effects, so I'm surprised he accepted the job.  He says that it was the chance to kill his creation that made him come back.  That it made him sort of a Doctor Frankenstein in some way.  I dunno.  I think he just enjoyed the first film and wanted more money, myself.  In a nod to the series title, this is also the first of the movies to have exactly 13 kills in it, if I remember correctly.  Speaking of the kills, they actually aren't too inventive for the most part in this one.  Jason has his usual assortment of hatchets, machetes, and his hands.  I will commend the film-makers for two very good deaths.  There's one where a guy has a harpoon shoved into his crotch, is lifted up by it, and Jason then fires the harpoon into him.  It's probably one of the more painful deaths in the series, and I don't think it even has any blood in that scene.  It's carried merely by the guy's screams.  The other really noticable death is one that involves a corkscrew through the hand and then a meat cleaver to the face.  Again, the corkscrew just seems really painful to me.  Jason's death is pretty great too.  One of Tom Savini's best effects.  (And that's not a spoiler.  The ad campaign sold this movie on Jason's death.)  It also includes a nice head shattering against a shower wall.

     So what are the film's negatives?  For one, the music.  For the first time in the series, I feel that Harry Manfredini was simply going through the motions.  The music just plain sucks.  The lead girl in the film is probably the worst lead of the first four films acting-wise.  She does scared very well, but other than that, she's not that great.  Still, the other actors are much better.  Those are really the only negatives I can think of besides the plot hole I mentioned at the beginning.

     This installment also has the most brutal Jason of the first four films.  The actor they got is imposing, he seems full of meanness instead of a playful sicko like the one in part 3, and the makeup they used for when his mask comes off is really great.  Another thing people watch this film for is Crispin Glover's crazy dance moves.  Apparently this is how he danced in clubs at the time, too!

     Yeah...  Crispin Glover is pretty crazy.

    Anyway, so when the film was released, critics of course, again, hated it.  Especially Siskel and Ebert.

      Yet again, those guys attempt to be moral critics.  I'm glad that Ebert ended up growing out of that a bit.  However, as I've stated before, this moral panic was big at the time, so everyone was saying this stuff.  It was a bit like the torture porn pushback against Hostel and Saw back in the mid-2000s, only amplified.  Apparently critics had not known about Grand Guignol.  This sort of stuff has been put up as entertainment since the late 1800s!  

      The film was released on April 13, 1984.  For the first time, it had been over a year since the last film.  It has gone on to be near or at the top of most peoples' polls of individual films of the series.  In fact, it's usually at the top of most.  I would definitely put it in the top 5.  Besides part 2, it's probably the one I watch the most.  I'd say it's probably 3rd or 4th best.  The film went on to make more money than any other horror film, including Nightmare on Elm Street, released in 1984.  It earned around $32 million, which to date makes it the 5th highest grossing in the series.  Unlike Part 3, I can recommend this to any slasher fan.  It's quite fun. 

Many Days of Friday the 13th - Part III

Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)

     For those wondering, yes, that is one of the two real poster designs for this film.  You rarely see this one for some reason, though I kind of like it.  It makes Jason look like he's on steroids, which could be a very good reason he seems so superhuman.  Or maybe Mrs. Vorhees was subject to secret German medical tests during WWII, but that doesn't matter right now.  Let's talk about Friday the 13th Part III.  Let's start with what is the most awesomely horrible version of the theme song.  (It should be heard in discos across the nations.  I love it so much I have it on my mp3 player!)

     Wasn't that just beautiful?!  Now, if you're wondering why the titles are filmed like that...  Okay, none of you are really wondering that, as everyone knows this was originally released in 3-D.  In the early 80s, there was a brief resurgence of popularity in 3-D films.  There was Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D...  And that actually may be all the horror ones, because the craze lasted about a year and a half.  It was a horrible idea in hind-sight, especially with home video, which could not replicate the effect at the time, coming into popularity.  Also note that none of the films in the craze got good reviews.  Out of the three I named, I think this one actually did the best, and critics hated the series so...  Anyway, back then, 3-D was showed off by having things conspicuously come out of the screen towards the audience to showcase the effect.  Broom handles, ping pong paddles, hands, that sort of thing.  Of course in this film, it's more like harpoons, eyeballs, machetes, a striking snake.  So I would bet it would have been pretty exciting.  Sadly, even on the new blu-rays, they don't use modern 3-D technology to show this.  No, you're stuck with the red-blue polarized glasses and a picture on the DVD that's less than stellar due to how that type of 3-D is done.  It's not great.

     Neither is the film, for that matter, especially when compared to the last two films.  It's hard to explain why, as it had the same crew and same director as the great second film had.  I think I know one reason though.  After the many times they had to re-submit new cuts of the film to the MPAA on part 2, the director Steve Miner, decided to tamp things down before they sent the film in.  And indeed, apparently they had to only send this one in once or twice before they got an R rating.  There's also a noticeable downturn in the quality of the acting on this one.  Everyone seems to be a bit more over the top, and a few characters are intensely annoying.

     The plot of this one is a bit different from the last two.  This time there's no new camp.  This time it's just friends hanging out by the lake for a while.  Now, one of the girls is a bit apprehensive about this, as she was almost molested by a deranged guy a few years back in those same woods.  Also, this film takes place right after Part 2 did.  It's just on another part of the lake.  In the beginning of the film, a couple is watching the news about what happened in the last installment.  So really, this is Saturday the 14th.

     Now, this is the film where Jason finally gets his mask, which has stayed with him through all of the sequels.  However, that wasn't what was meant to happen.  This was actually supposed to end the series, and the hockey mask was only chosen because when they were doing a lighting check, the only mask they had available was a hockey one.  They liked the look so well, they went with it.  So there you go; serendipity.   And once again, the series doesn't take itself too seriously.  This is one of the funnier entries as well.

     Seriously, I have to say, the movie just isn't that memorable other than for the hilariously bad theme music, the bad compositions due to it originally being in 3-D, and it being the first film with the mask.  I watched it for the 5th time in my life just a few days ago and honestly can't remember much about it.  I remember that the character of Shelly annoyed me so badly that I was happy with his death (he's the reason Jason got the hockey mask), I remember a guy's skull getting crushed so that his eye pops out towards the camera (and that you can see the rod it's on), and I remember the last 5 minutes being pretty good.  However, the last 5-15 minutes of any Friday film is usually pretty good.  It's the part of the movie where the last one standing finds all the dead bodies of their friends strung up all over the place while the killer chases them.  It's fun!  Out of the original run of films, which I count as 1-4, this one is the worst.  Still, there's much worse to come later.

     So the film went on to make a better profit than the second film did. (About $15 million more, actually.)  However, this was on top of a budget $1 million more than the second film, mostly due to the 3-D cameras, so it actually made more along the lines of $13.5 million more.  I will guess that a lot of it is just due to people wanting to see a slasher film in 3-D, which I can't blame them for.  It's probably one of the best genres for 3-D if you do it right, and they DID do it right for this type of film.  The technology just sucked.  However, Paramount still wanted to kill the series... Just one more film... Then we're really going to kill him... Really.  We'll even call it The Final Chapter!  Stay tuned for that story.

     

Many Days of Friday the 13th - Part II

Friday the 13th - Part II (1981)

     This installment tends to be overlooked by many fans of the series.  That's a crying shame, because it's one of the better ones, and is, in fact, my favorite of the series.  I think the reason it's overlooked is because Jason doesn't have his hockey mask yet.  He also doesn't dress the way he does in later installments.  No, in this one he's farmer bob with a bulap sack over his head!  I'm talkin' suspenders and flannel!  Another reason it's not as popular is because of the cuts the MPAA forced on the film after the outcry over the first film by people like Siskel & Ebert.  But let's talk about the story.  For those that don't remember, here's how the first movie ended.

    Which leads to a pretty bad inconsistency.  Jason died in the 50s, but in that scene in 1980, he's still like 12 years old.  Now, granted it was shot as a "it could have been a dream" ending, but Jason's in part 2.  My theory is that it was a dream due to the woman's horrible night, but that Jason was in the area, fully grown.  Still, it's just a sequel, and making sense of the last movie is the least of this one's problems.  The plot here is that another guy wants to open a camp.  This time it's across the lake from where Camp Crystal Lake was.  Surely that'll leave enough room, right?  Also, it's 5 years later.  Once again, new camp councilors come, and once again they die one by one.  Womp, womp, womp, wwwooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmpppppppp!

          In case you didn't notice, the trailer here is done exactly like the first movie.  Just showing off that this is a continuation of the first film with the body count rising.  In fact, the film's tagline was "The body count continues..."  I think that's one of the best taglines out there for a slasher film.  It knows what it is, and it has no qualms about it.  It doesn't try to be more or less than it is advertising.

     The film still has the low budget feel of the first movie, though the film had over twice the budget, coming in at 1.25 million dollars.  The pacing is a whole lot better.  The movie is only 87 minutes long, and about 10 of that is a recap of the first film, leaving only a bit over an hour to tell it's story.  For a slasher film with not much story like this one, 75-90 minutes is just about right.  The film is better directed.  Sean Cunningham moved on to other things after the first film, and this film was shot by Steve Miner, who was the Production Manager for the first film.  He's a much more capable director, and would go on after this to shoot Part 3, Forever Young, House (1986), Halloween H20, and Lake Placid.  The killer is more convincing.  The first film's killer was kind of laughable, due to overacting and the fact that a person of that build be easily overcome by a teenager.  Also the kills are more interesting. Those are all great qualities.  But how about the bad?

     Well, as I stated, the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to the gore in this one.  The shot above is from the back of the VHS case, but is not in the film.  That shot was cut due to the MPAA.  The death is still there, but the money shot as it were, was not there.  You simply see the girl noticing Jason, Jason raise the pole and start to bring it down, then an under the bed shot of the pole coming through the mattress.  (Oh, and just as an aside, this death and one other were taken from Mario Bava's Bay of Blood.  They are tributes if you will.)    The film doesn't have a lot of blood in it due to the cuts, but it's nowhere near as bloodless or tame as the late 80s Friday films would become.  I also do not like the first 10 minutes of the film being a recap of the first movie.  However, this was before video cassettes were widely available, so I can understand it.  When this came out, it had been a year since the first film, and I'm sure some had not seen it before going to see this one.  Today we can just pop in the older film and watch it first.  Not so back then.  Also, the plot here is pretty non-existent.  It's a retread of the first film in many ways.  Still, the characters are a bit more likeable and better looking.  The acting is still not great, but serviceable.  Those are about the only negatives I can think of.

     So why is this my favorite?  Well, for one thing, the burlap sack is awesome!  Jason's whole outfit including the sack is stolen from a 1970s horror film called The Town That Dreaded Sundown. It seems more like what a deformed guy would find to put on his head.  It makes more sense than a hockey mask, as it covers the whole head.  Makes him look more mysterious too.  I also like how Jason makes mistakes here.  There's one scene where he's about to impale a girl while he's standing on a chair.  He's about to make the plunge, and one of the legs breaks.  He has to run to catch up with his victims too.  All of this goes along with the story that he may have been a bit mentally disabled as a child, as was alluded to in the first film.  After this film, Jason gets real smart and becomes more and more invincible each film.  Here he can get hurt, he falls down...  He's human.  I also think the last 20-30 minutes are the best in the series.  It's suspenseful, which is surprising coming from a Friday film.  Most of these just don't try for that.  There's one shot in particular that I love.  Ginny is being chased by Jason, and finds his shed.  She runs in and closes the door.  The door has a window in it, and we see Jason running at the door while Ginny's back is turn and she sees him coming just in time to start running again.  It's probably the most suspenseful scene in the series, and is just great.  During the whole chase, Jason is just within arm's reach of her, which makes things more terrifying.  Also, the characters in this film are a bit more likeable than in the first film.  There's a sweet guy in a wheelchair (and he gets one of the best deaths in the series) who reminds me of Jason Ritter's character in Joan of Arcadia. (And oddly enough, he was in Freddy Vs. Jason.)  The lead girl is a bit less of a goody goody than the one in the first film, and in this guy's opinion, she's prettier too.  

     Just because Jason doesn't wear his hockey mask yet is no reason to skip this one.  It's probably the best put-together in the series, even with the jump cuts and logiclessness caused by the MPAA cuts.  There's more nudity, more deaths....  What's not to like?  Oh, the less gore?  Psh.  Get over it.  It's not like they cut all the blood out like they did for later installments. 

Discussion on part III will come on Sunday!

Many Days of Friday the 13th - Part 1

Friday the 13th (1980)

     Ah, Friday the 13th.  The slasher fan's bread and butter.  It's a series that's lasted 11 films and a remake.  It's gone through good films and bad ones.  It's gone from Paramount to New Line.  The film was originally made with one idea in mind.  Rip off Halloween.  That's all Sean Cunningham, the creator and director of the first installment wanted.  And to make it more extreme.  Up the blood, up the sex.  He wanted a good film for drive-ins, which are where most of his previous films did their business.  (That includes the one he produced back in the early 70s, Last House on the Left, which was directed by Wes Craven.)  By all accounts, he made one of the most successful horror franchises in movie history... well, not with critics, but financially anyway.  Made on a budget of around $550,000, the film ended up making $39,754,601.  That's right!  It made back it's budget over 70 times!

     The first film was made in the fall of 1979 on a very small budget at a Boy Scout camp in New Jersey called Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco.  (It's now a summer camp, oddly enough.)  It featured no-name actors, including a then unknown Kevin Bacon.  The story of the film is pretty typical slasher fare.  There's a legend that a boy drowned back in the 1950s at the old summer camp.  A few years later, two teen counselors were murdered.  The camp has been closed since then, the townspeople spooked.  The place obviously has a death curse on it.  Now someone is getting ready to re-open the camp, and counselors have arrived to make the place livable before the kids arrive.  To no-one's surprise but their own, it becomes a bloody nightmare with many deaths.

      I love the way this film was advertised.  It's so cheeky!  The whole trailer was just teasing you about how many deaths you'd see.  By 1980, so-called dead teenager films started to become a very lucrative way to make money.  They were done on the cheap, and they did well in theaters.  Sure, the critics and the moralists hated them, but money talks and bull%^@ walks.  People loved to go to the movies and get scared.  Whether this movie does that or not is an open debate.  I don't think it's scary in the least.  It doesn't even really have good jump scares.  However, it's pretty fun.  Modern audiences would no doubt find the movie very slowmoving and pretty darn tame.  Remember, this is one of the first slasher films.  The gore in this was considered very brutal at the time.  The rampant sex had yet to really enter the series.  (Kevin Bacon gets it on, though.) There's little nudity in this one.  It's pretty much some cliched teenagers doing teenager stuff while working to get a camp ready for the first hour of the picture.  There's some point of view shots from the killer, but the killer doesn't really DO anything until the last 30 minutes.  In a way, it's slower paced than Halloween!  

     Oddly enough, the picture above, while a publicity photo for the first film, was never filmed in this way.  You don't see the girl's death.  It wasn't even filmed.  This is simply a publicity photo.  However, the film has many great deaths in it.  I won't ruin them all for those that like to be surprised by such things, but I will name a few.  There's a hatchet to the head, a corkscrew through the throat, and a beheading!  And you see a real live snake being macheted in half, sadly.  (I'm not a fan of on-screen deaths of real animals.  It was allowable back in the 70s and very early 80s, and was exploited by many horror film directors.)

     While this film did popularize the slasher craze, it's not the greatest.  As I said earlier it's slow.  It's got major pacing problems, it's not titillating enough for today's fans of sex and gore, and most of all, it's quite amateur looking.  Not to blast Tom Savini's great gore effects, but they are dated.  It doesn't bother me, as I don't take this series seriously.  It's not bloody Halloween, it's not even Nightmare on Elm Street.  Others do, though, and they may be disappointed.  You must view the film through 1980 eyes, and too few are willing to do that.  It also doesn't have the same killer as the rest of the series, but I'm okay with that.  I find this one more creative...  And boy is the eventual killer campy as hell!  Get it?  Campy?

     I like this movie, but I don't love it.  It's not even amongst the best of the series.  It's pretty middle of the road as that goes.  However, it did start a trend.  A trend that only lasted a few years, but was very strong.  So strong that it's inventiveness effectively killed it.  By 1986, the MPAA decided it was time to get tough on these films.  They started to demand there be less gore and on-screen deaths to secure an R rating.  These films couldn't be wide-released under the X rating, so they had to comply.  This is what moral panics cause.  I'm glad today's MPAA lets just about anything in R rated films.  The Friday movies are tame by today's standards.  Even by the early 90s, I had elementary school friends that had seen the entire series.  I didn't start until I was 15, due to my parents' strict rules on R rated films.  (That being I couldn't watch them.)

Stay tuned in the next few days for more reviews and discussion on the rest of the series!

Criterion Collection films: Lord of the Flies

Spine #43 - Lord of the Flies (1963)

     Welcome to Lord of the Flies, the book where everything's made up, and the rules don't matter.  That's right the rules are useless, just like holding the conch!  Of course, the film is based on the 1954 book by Nobel Prize-winner William Golding.  The film is directed by Peter Brook, a director of stage plays and Royal Shakespeare Company productions.  He chose to use real schoolboys as actors in this film, giving the prospective children's parents the book to read to see if they wanted their children involved.  All the children chosen decided to take the chance to film.  They went to Puerto Rico to film the movie, so in a way they filmed on a tropical island anyway.  The kids and production crew lived in an abandoned factory whilst filming the low-budget film.  The film ended up receiving very positive reviews, and the director was nominated for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival that year.

     I'm going to assume everyone knows what the book is about, as it's one of the most famous books for high-schoolers to read all around the world.  I have never read the book, but know very much about it having read excerpts, having it be my favorite author's favorite book he didn't write, and having seen this very well-adapted film.  The film, like the book, is raw, powerful, and rife with allegory.  As stated earlier, Peter Brook was a director of stage plays mostly, having done only one or two filmed versions of plays before this.  So he knew how to work on a small budget.  The film was made for $250,000 with minimal crew, and in some ways I long for the days of small budget films.  They may not be able to give you great special effects, but they tend to be more powerful when done by a great cast and crew.  Seeing as the boys in this film had not been in films before, they do a great job.  Some of the lines by some of the children can seem stilted as you may hear from a high school play, but those are few and far between.  

     This title is one of the first titles Criterion put out on DVD back in the late 1990s.  The original DVD was considered great back when it came out, as it had a commentary track, home movies shot during the production, the trailer, a deleted scene, novel excerpts read by author William Golding, outtakes, and an excerpt from a 1975 show about Peter Brook's career in the theater.  Then a few years ago, Criterion released a DVD with just the film included at a lower price.  This new edition, which came out this July, has all the previous special features plus a new interview with the cameraman Gerald Feil, an interview with Peter Brook done in 2008, and best of all a 1980 interview with the author William Golding.  He was pretty much a hermit in the last 30 years of his life, so this is a treat.  There's also a great 7-minute collection of footage taken from 8-mm cameras given to the child actors to document their stay on the island accompanied by an essay written and read by Tom Gaman who played Simon in the film.  The new edition also is presented in uncompressed monaural sound for the first time, as well as being struck from a new 4K digital film transfer, which makes the film sound and look better than ever.

     I have not yet had time to listen to the commentary on this disc, though I can confirm that it's the same one that was on the 1999 disc, which was in turn originally used on the 1994 laserdisc.  I've heard that it's a great commentary for those interested in the documentary-like filmmaking used during production, and for those interested in differences from the book.  The home movies from the production are also interesting to see, as they show small scenes they decided to leave out of the finished film including, with the longer deleted scene, scenes that show how Ralph and Jack were not immediately enemies, but had an almost husband and wife relationship in that they both had different roles looking after all the others.  In the finished film, they are not friendly towards each other even from the beginning.  The 1980 interview with author Golding is a fascinating watch.  He talks about how he grew up, his time in WWII, writing the book, and his feelings towards it's success.  

    This may not be the crown jewel of the Criteron Collection, but it's a great adaptation of the novel, it's considered a classic, and it has many special features that make it worth the $30 is sells for on Amazon.com.  If you wait for the November sale, you can get the blu-ray for $20 at Barnes and Noble.  Or you can get the DVD for about 5 bucks less.  At any rate, see the film.  

*Please note that there's a bit of child nudity in the film.  I know a lot of people freak out at that.  It's completely non-sexual, very innocent.  It's not against the law as many believe.  Only sexualized nudity is.  Just thought I'd point that out for the less law-savy types.

Theme/Amusement Park Additions For 2014

     On Friday I went over the various additions to amusement parks for this year.  As was shown, there were some good additions, but mostly on the west coast.  2014 sees additions more spread out.  Just a word of warning though...  Some parks may not have announced yet.  I would not expect more coaster announcements at this late date, but some may have waterslides or flat-rides coming down the pipeline that we haven't heard from yet.  We should start again with roller coaster additions, as that's what most people want to hear about.  So....

Kings Island:  The Cincinatti, Ohio park is getting Banshee, the world's longest inverted coaster.  It replaces the recently demolished Son of Beast, which had a troubled history.  The new coaster includes 7 inversions with a top speed of 68 miles per hour.  It goes into the park's ravine area in it's last half.  This will be the park's first full circuit inverted coaster.  It looks to be a great addition to the park, which is the sister park to Kings Dominion.  Here's an computer-generated ride-through.

Dollywood:  The wonderfully themed Tennessee park is getting a nice family coaster next year.  It's themed to firefighting and is called Fire Chaser Express.  It includes two low speed launches and what we call a show building, which is where scenes with animatronics or lights and stuff is played out.  There is no POV to show you yet.  Knowing Dollywood, though, this will be a great attraction.  They put a lot of thought and effort into them.

Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom:  A few years ago, the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland started on a complete re-do.  Originally it seemed they were going to girlify the whole area having meeting places for Disney fairies and princesses, while at the meantime getting rid of the Mickey's Toontown area.  They've since soften their plans, but they did open a place to meet Belle from Beauty and The Beast and opened a new dark ride themed to The Little Mermaid.  They are also opening a new small coaster themed to the Seven Dwarves and their mine, obviously called Seven Dwarves Mine Train.  It's currently being built and will include indoor and outdoor sections.  It's meant for families as everything in the Magic Kingdom is.  I think it's an okay addition, though I don't approve of the massive changes they've made to the area.

Universal Studios Florida:  In some sort of madness, Universal is attempting to bridge their side-by-side parks by having two Harry Potter areas.  The original area themed to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts in Islands of Adventure will remain.  The new area, in Universal Studios Florida, will be Diagon Alley themed and include a Gringotts Bank coaster, a new restaurant, and a train station to take you to the other park's Hogwarts.  They tore out the old Jaws ride and Amity area to build this one.  I guess the train will only be open to those that have 2-park passes or something.  The coaster has not been detailed yet, either.  Though the building is going up!

Six Flags Magic Mountain:  The park with the most coasters on the planet is getting another one next year.  It is only a kids' coaster, but it brings their coaster count up to 19!  Also, they will run two of their coasters backward for the first half of the season (Batman and Colossus).  I so wish I could get out to California and finally go to the park.

Six Flags Great America:  The Chicago area park is getting a new wooden coaster next year.  It will be called Goliath, and will be have the biggest drop on a wooden coaster (180 ft), the steepest drop on a wooden coaster (85 degrees), and will be the fastest wooden coaster in the world at 72 MPH!  As is becoming common-place with these new wooden coasters, there will be 3 inversions as well. 

It's made by Rocky Mountain Coasters who also did this year's Outlaw Run and Iron Rattler.  The park's coaster count will stay the same, however.  One coaster will be leaving the park to go to Six Flags America in Maryland.  Speaking of that...

Six Flags America:  The Washington DC area park will get a new spinning wild mouse coaster from Six Flags Great America.  This is the second coaster they've got from that park in the past 3 years.  This new coaster will herald the christening of a rethemed area of the park.  Southwest Territory will be rethemed to Mardi Gras and will also see the addition of a new flat ride (a flying scooters).  No attraction is supposedly leaving to add these.  I've ridden this specific spinning mouse, and it's great fun if you have 3 or 4 people.  It will make a nice addition to a park they've been trying to turn around for the better for the past few years.  The park will now have 9 coasters.

Luna Park:  This park is a part of what is collectively known as Coney Island in New York along with Astroland.  They are building a new steel coaster that shares it's name with a wooden coaster that used to be there.  It will be called Thunderbolt.  It's nothing like the old coaster.  It's what is referred to as a Euro-fighter coaster.  They are a lot of fun, so this one should be too.

And that's it for roller coasters in North America as revealed so far.  Now a few words on some other park additions!

Water slides seem to be a big addition this year.  Water parks are good for amusement parks as they are cheap to build up, they swallow a lot of people, and they can charge for lockers.  It's good for park-goers because during the day, everyone's over there instead of making huge lines for the coasters/rides.  Carowinds (NC/SC), Dorney Park (Pennsylvania), Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Six Flags Magic Mountain are all getting new waterslides this coming year.  Six Flags Over Georgia is adding in a whole waterpark!    Two parks, Worlds of Fun (Missouri) and Adventureland (Iowa) are getting Windseekers.  If you've been to Kings Dominion recently, you know what that is.  Worlds of Fun is getting theirs from Knott's Berry Farm, as California decided they couldn't re-open theirs.  They are good family rides.  Six Flags New England (Massachusetts) is getting a 400 ft. Skyscreamer like Six Flags Over Texas got this year.  However, there's will be a few feet higher to break the record.  Yet another ride where only a chain is holding you 400 ft in the air! 

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (California) and Six Flags St. Louis are getting new water rides/flat rides.  It's a combination of the two things really.  It's hard to explain, so I'll just show the advertisement.  It looks fun for families with kids, and those that truly like walking around in soggy clothes all day.

Universal Studios Hollywood will be getting a 3D simulator based on the Minions from Despicable Me and a new childrens' play area called Super Silly Fun Land.  Six Flags Over Texas is redoing their kids area, which I hear did need a lot of work.   Holiday World in Indiana, which is one of the best parks in the world, is getting a swinging pirate ship for their Thanksgiving area called The Mayflower, obviously. Great Escape in New York is getting an interesting new flat ride that I can't explain.  Cedar Point in Ohio is getting two new flat rides as well.  A Disk'o (those are great fun) and a flying scooters.  (For those wondering what a flying scooters is, if you've ridden the Flying Eagles, which used to be called Scream Weaver, at Kings Dominion, those are Flying Scooters.)  New flats for Cedar Point are a good thing.  They tend to focus on coasters, and their current flats are mostly from the 1970s. 

This leaves two additions left...  Two drop towers that are making history.  Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey is taking out their oldest coaster, the wooden Rolling Thunder, and putting up Zumanjaro!  415 ft. high and 90 MPH!  The ride will be built on the supports of the world's tallest coaster, the already open Kingda Ka.  It will be the tallest, fastest drop tower in the world.

And Busch Gardens Tampa in... Tampa is opening Falcon's Fury.  It's not the tallest, but it's the first to tip your seats forward so that you're looking right at the ground as you drop.  It will be 335 feet.  And I must try it!

Obviously, my home park Kings Dominion has not released any info on what's coming next year.  I'm betting on a waterslide.  Busch Gardens announced yesterday that they are getting a new show called London Rocks.  It features British rock music and will be in the Globe Theater where the Pirates 4-D show used to be.  It will be live performers, not a movie.

Theme Park Addition From This Year

     This is my first non-movie related blog post here.  And I can assure you this blog is not meant to be a purely movie-based blog.  This is a blog for all things that interest me.  So without further ado, here's my interpretations of the additions to American theme/amusement parks in 2013.


Here are some of the parks that added new coasters in 2013:

Six Flags Magic Mountain:  The California park took out their log flume, an attraction that had opened with the park in the 1970s, and added a coaster with the largest loop in the world.  It also includes backwards and forward launches.  Apparently the coaster isn't all that great.  I have not ridden it, as I've never been to California. 

California's Great America:  The bay-area California park added a much needed good wooden coaster called Gold Striker.  The park's other wooden coaster, Grizzly, is considered one of the worst wooden coasters out there, and as the park has lost quite a few coasters in recent years, this was a good addition.  It's gotten rave reviews from coaster enthusiasts, and it includes a curving first drop that goes around the park's sky tower.  The coaster was meant to be built years ago, but office buildings surrounding the park raised hell about noise.  Well, it was finally built and incorporated several tunnels to fend off noise accusations.

Six Flags St. Louis:  They took out their bumper cars, which weren't great in the first place, and added a used Boomerang coaster that can be found in many parks in the USA.  One they got from Six Flags over Texas.  It's been repainted and given the boring Boomerang name.  Enthusiasts hate these coasters, but the general public loves them.  And it adds another coaster to a park that doesn't get them often.

Knotts Berry Farm:  California park took out the much down-time plagued (and one that resulted in a death a decade ago) water ride Perilous Plunge and added some new flat rides and a wild mouse coaster called Coast Rider, creating a new area of the park.  A big hit with the families, it's identical to Ricochet at Kings Dominion.

Elitch Gardens:  The downtown Denver park added a kiddie coaster called Blazin' Buckaroo.  The park doesn't have any room to expand, and they really need a good coaster.  They don't have any that are considered exceptional, which is sad as they have 6 coasters.  

Cedar Point:  The huge Ohio park closed their much-made-fun-of enclosed bobsled coaster, Disaster Transport last year and imploded their sky tower to build the biggest wing-rider coaster in the world.  It's called Gatekeeper, and is one I actually rode this year.  It towers over the front of the park.  It's a very good ride, though not my favorite of the new wing-rider style coasters (X-Flight at Six Flags Great America is better).  It's very picturesque and is a good addition to a park that has 16 coasters though. 

Six Flags Fiesta Texas:  The San Antonio park completely re-did their wooden coaster The Rattler, which was at one point the tallest, fastest wooden coaster in the world.  They had a company come in and turn it into a wood-steel hybrid, redoing much of its layout and adding an inversion.  Instead of one of the most painful coasters on the planet, it's now a very smooth ride with much airtime and a first drop of 171 feet at a 81 degree angle.

Silver Dollar City:  This park in Branson, Missouri added a coaster called Outlaw Run made by the same company that re-did The Rattler.  However, this coaster is completely new and has 3 inversions...  It's also not a hybrid.  It's completely wooden.  It's gotten rave reviews, and I can't wait to ride it one day.  Now if only I wanted to go to Branson.

Family Kingdom:  The Myrtle Beach park added a used Wild Mouse type coaster they call Twist 'N Shout.  I've been to the park, and it fits the park's small footprint well. 

Fun Spot America:  This new small Orlando, Florida park added 3 coasters this year.  A kid coaster, a family coaster, and a wooden coaster called White Lightning.  It's made by GCI, which is one of the best wooden coaster companies out there.  It's a smaller coaster, but knowing the company, it's got great airtime.

Besides these few coasters, only a few smaller parks added kid coasters.  Many parks spent this year just doing general improvements.  Charlotte's Carowinds theme park added animatronic dinosaurs similar to what other parks in the Cedar Fair chain have done the past few years.  I'm not a fan of this trend, as the dinosaurs are very fake looking, and they charge you money to see them.  Worlds of Fun in Missouri and Valleyfair in Minnesota also added the dinos this year. 

Some additions were more fulfilling, though.  Sea World Orlando added a new dark ride/exhibit that simulates a trip to Antarctica, complete with a penguin exhibit.  Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey completely re-did their drive-through safari attraction so that it was included with park admission, and you no longer drive your own car through it.  You now take safari vehicles driven by park employees.  Universal Studios Florida added Transformers:  The Ride, which I hear is amazing.  It cost $100 million to make, and is a totally immersive experience that includes 3D-glasses, simulator seats that move along a track, animatronics, and many 60ft movie screens throughout the ride.  If you've ridden Busch Gardens' Curse of Darkastle, it's like that, only 10x better, apparently.  Another one I can't wait to experience someday.  Six Flags Over Texas unveiled a 400ft swing ride, which is exactly like it sounds.  Spinning around 400ft in the air held by only chains.  This terrifies even me, but I'll do it.  Six Flags Over Georgia added a 200ft model of the ride.  A lot of parks just decided to add to their waterparks, which is what parks do now in a lot of their off years.  They are cheap to build, and they are crowd-pleasers.  Parks that did this were Six Flags America, Six Flags New England, Holiday World, HersheyPark, and the numerous Six Flags Hurricane Harbor parks.  Of course, Kings Dominion redid their aging kids area, removing some rides that were nearly 40 years old, including Yogi's Cave, which was not up to code anymore.  Everything is now Snoopy themed and it looks great.  Six Flags New England also redid their kids area and renamed it Whistlestop Park.

     I wasn't really that impressed with the additions on the eastern half of the United States this year.  It seems most of the interesting stuff (besides Transformers) went to parks west of the Mississippi this year.  In fact, no park nearer than northern Ohio to me added anything of interest.  However, it was hard to beat 2012 in regards to park additions.  It looks like next year will be a smidge better.  Sadly, it looks like Busch Gardens will, again, get nothing. 

Stay tuned Sunday evening for my thoughts on next year's additions, which should be much more interesting.

The Erosion of Criticism Over Time in Regards to Film

     Okay, so it's a stupid title.  I'm staying with it.   So there.

     It has long concerned me how people change their minds about certain films due to public perception.  Even critics do this.  They don't admit they were wrong in the first place either.  Oh no.  Critics have huge egos.  They just tend to pretend they thought a certain way about a film or director all along.  They've never made a mistake.  I believe most of you probably know that Stanley Kubrick films are pretty much universally loved by critics and that he's considered godlike by film lovers.  His work is brought up time and time again as some of the most important and greatest in cinema history.  Well....  When his films came out, and by this I mean pretty much all of them, critics were at best mixed in their appraisals, if not downright hostile.  For instance, Roger Ebert's initial review of The Shining (which can not be found on his site anymore) was negative.  It's now on his Great Movies list.  Clockwork Orange was deemed so immoral by film critics in the early 1970s, including by my own favorite critic Pauline Kael, that they trashed the film completely in their reviews saying it desensitized.  Barry Lyndon opened to mix reviews in 1975, and reviews are now considerably more positive.  2001 was considered a beautiful but pompous misfire.  It's not regularly mentioned among the best films ever made.  The only films of his that I can think of that got mixed reviews then and still get them now are Eyes Wide Shut and Lolita.  It seems as if these critics and indeed some audiences too, didn't like being in the minority as the world grew to love these films.

     It's not just Kubrick either.  There are films that were considered downright failures that are now considered classics or great works of cinema at the very least.  Some due to studio interference causing the director's vision to be cut down (Brazil and Blade Runner), some due to the political landscape (Citizen Kane and High Noon), and some just because who knows the hell why (Night of the Hunter and Bonnie & Clyde).   I suppose it could be argued that audiences were just not ready for some of these films, and that over the years they've grown to appreciate them.  Sort of like how there are some people who grumble about new technologies at first, and then 5 years later they can't live without them.  Of course, sometimes we love things at first, then notice we were horribly wrong...

      Remember M. Night Shyamalan?  Of course you do.  He's still around.  How about this?  Remember when he could do no wrong, and how he was going to be the modern day Hitchcock?  Now, pinpoint when that ended.  I know some of you are thinking Signs.  Others are probably thinking The Village or The Happening.  Well, a lot of people today consider Shyamalan to be a hack.  A horrible writer, not a much better director.  And I know a lot of these same people were the ones gushing over The Sixth Sense and Signs when they came out.  Well, the only movie he directed that got great reviews was The Sixth Sense.  To a slightly lesser extent Signs did.  I had thought Unbreakable got great reviews, but looking it up I found out that it got mixed reviews.  Guess what?  That's now considered his best film by many people.  Signs, which was so glorified by audiences when it came out is now routinely shat upon.  You'd think that audiences had hated it the whole time.  Even The Sixth Sense is now routinely trashed.  Now it's true that the man has made a few horrible, horrible films in the past few years, including this year's After Earth.  People now let out a collective giggle/groan when they see his name come up in movie trailers.  It's hard to think that just over a decade ago we considered him to be another Hitchcock.  What happened?  Did we decide to view his older films under a more critical eye due to his recent crap?  Did he just get really bad, really fast?  Did he die and get replaced by a lookalike sort of like what happened to Paul McCartney?!  I'm not sure.  I'm not one of those that hates on his older work (though his new work does suck). 

     Sometimes a huge mega-film comes out that everyone is looking forward to.  Remember this? 

Yeah, the most looked-forward to film in the past 25 years.  I remember how giddy us nerds were.  A new Star Wars!  Oh my God!  I can't wait to see new lightsaber battles!  New aerial dogfights!  More fun!  And then the film came out.  And you know what?  Besides some back of the room chatter (read: internet chatrooms), people originally thought it was at least alright.  It's hard to believe it, but though a bit disappointing, this film wasn't considered the great big pile of Lucas-dung that it is considered now.  No, that took a year or two.  Remember when Titanic came out and was surprisingly a huge hit?  (It was originally considered to be a massive failure.  It started doing better through word of mouth.)  Remember how the critics loved it?  Then they hype died a few years later and it's now got a very mixed reception.  Some love it, some hate it, others are indifferent. 

     This sort of thing happens faster and faster every year now.  It took years for The Shining and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to be considered classics or even to get good reviews.  It took years for people to realize that the 1976 version of King Kong and the 1970 film Airport were not the great films that everyone initially thought they were.  But now things can go great for films initially, only to suffer a gradual re-appraisal even just months later.  The Dark Knight Rises was released just last year to semi-critical acclaim.  Not to the extent of The Dark Knight, but more along the lines of Batman Begins.  It's now started to suffer a gradual chipping away of good graces just like its predecessor did.  If a film is overhyped now, there's a group of angry mouth-breathing sycophants just waiting to metaphorically beat the film into submission.  It's almost like these people have decided they need to show Hollywood who's boss.  And it's really annoying.  Though I can understand their need to lash out.  You also have fanboys who will stand by their film no matter what.  Their film/filmmaker is perfect and can do no wrong.  The internet causes a lot of strife... but we carry on.

     I think the whole reason I wrote this article is to point out that though a film may be considered junk or an absolute cinematic masterpiece today, there is no guarantee that in twenty years time views will be the same.  Hell, people have already started to jump on Richard Donner's Superman as some sort of travesty that must be erased by a remake with comic book fans in mind.  There are some that consider J.J. Abrams' Star Trek films to be the pinnacle of the franchise simply because it's not old fashioned, it's sleek, and it has lots of action.  People are weary of the new Star Wars film, partially due to the prequel trilogy's shortcoming, partially due to some peoples' distrust of J.J. Abrams.  Expectations can indeed poison the well, and I think people should know this.  Everyone needs something to complain about.  And with every new movie, they will... eventually.  Hate gets you an audience.  And you aren't a celebrity unless you have an audience. 

    Will we have classics in a few years?  Sure.  But will any modern films be considered classics?  I say that blockbusters will not.  Films like Argo, The King's Speech, Inglourious Basterds, and The Social Network will be the types of film that stand the test of time I think.  It'll be much like the early to mid 1970s where the dramas and more adult-oriented films get to be considered the best of the time-period instead of audience-pleasers like The Apple Dumpling Gang or this year's Iron Man 3.  Sure, some will carry over.  I'm sure The Avengers and Inception will be considered great films for years to come.  Others however will be left by the wayside.  Films that will be mentioned in ways like "Hey, remember The Man of Steel?!"  or "Alice In Wonderland!  Man I ain't seen that in years!  I remember everyone loved this movie. What happened?"  Yeah....  Don't bet on the current opinion being the lasting one.