Child's Play (1988)

Child's Play (1988)

"Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?"

     If you've read my blog religiously by now (and come on, we know you have), you would know that by about 1985-1986, the horror genre was starting to die.  It would take until about 1991 to really fully die, but thanks to the media's concern about violence in movies and the MPAA really taking a hard line on violence because of that, horror had to be quite tame for the most part.  By 1988, the slasher films were all but dead.  The installments of those series were showing less violence and blood for fear of X ratings.  Thankfully, Child's Play isn't exactly a slasher film.  The body count is pretty low and it's more of a regular horror film.  For some reason it gets mixed in with slashers, I guess because the bad guy who possesses the Chucky doll was in fact a serial killer.  That's about as close as it gets to a slasher in my mind.  This film, if the technology had been available, would have fit right in the with the 1970s horror films like The Sentinel or Legacy.

     So here's the story.  There's this serial killer, the Lakeshore Strangler aka Charles Lee Ray (made up from killers Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray) played by Brad Dourif.  The cops finally chase him down after his partner drives off without him.   Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) follows him into a toy store that's closed for the night and shoots Ray.  Ray knows that he's dying, but luckily he knows some voodoo (Because what serial killer doesn't, right?), and when he runs into a stack of Good Guy dolls, he uses voodoo to transfer his soul into one of the dolls just as he dies.  (And as he dies, the building is struck by lightning and the store kinda... explodes.)  Sometime after that, Karen Barlclay (Catherine Hicks) is celebrating her young son Andy's birthday.  Andy is sad he didn't get the thing he wanted the most, which is a Good Guys doll that can say 3 different things back to you and is the size of a real child.  She can't afford the doll with her salary, but thankfully a hobo is selling one behind where she works for a drastically reduced price.  Andy is very happy with his new doll, but when mommy has to work late, her coworker babysits Andy and well, she ends up going through the high-rise apartment window and into a car below.  From there, the police suspect Andy, his mother thinks he's going insane, there are more killings...  

      I've been of two minds about this film since I first saw it about 12 years ago.  It's a fun little movie, but I can't take it seriously.  Even though Chucky was not yet really comedic relief, and the animatronics look great, I'm always at a loss at how you can get killed by a little doll about the size of a four year old if you're really careful.  Now yes, I know that many get killed because they don't know it's alive and a threat.  A six year old can tell you their doll is alive continuously and you won't believe them.  And if it gets a gun, that could be a problem.  There's a scene in the film that's supposed to be frightening, the moment the mother gets to see Chucky come alive, but to me it's just damned hilarious.

     How seriously can you take a doll suddenly thrashing and calling the lady onscreen a slut and a bitch?  Reminds me of the native guy who goes insane at the end of Brave New World calling the main character a strumpet and a harlot and abusing himself.  However, if it weren't for the unbelievableness of it, Child's Play wouldn't work for me.  Chucky just isn't very scary to me.  But he's darned entertaining.  He's quick with a joke as he's killing people.  He toys with Detective Norris as he attempts to kill him from the back seat as Norris is driving.  Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, makes the movie at least work on an entertainment level.  He's vicious, insane, and really really angry.  Apparently Dourif would go around the studio yelling and screaming, working himself up before he recorded his lines, and by the time he was done doing the lines, he'd sometimes be on the verge of fainting.  It's interesting to note that most of the cast never even saw Dourif.  His lines were recorded earlier, and he was only in the beginning of the film in person.  However, he did do rehearsals with Catherine Hicks.  One thing I had never noticed before is that as the movie progresses and Ray's soul stays in the Chucky doll longer, the doll's face begins to look more and more like Charles Lee Ray.  The hair recedes, the eyes become more full of life, it becomes more expressive, etc.  I think it's a triumph of the special effects department that they did this without me noticing.  (Or maybe it's bad that I didn't notice?  I dunno.)

     It's also remarkable that they got a somewhat good child actor to play Andy.  Alex Vincent was only six years old at the time he was in this first installment.  Sure, he's not as good as an adult veteran actor would be, but he's believable and isn't one of those kids you want to have die very early on just because they're annoying as hell.  No, he's very cute and sincere.  My only problem with Andy is down to screenwriting.  He's very mature for a six year old.  At one point he takes the Chicago elevated train by himself (well, the Chucky doll is with him too) to a bad part of Chicago at the behest of Chucky.  None of the adults on the train or around him wonder what a six year old kid is doing by himself in the bad part of town?  A bit too much suspension of disbelief for me.  Now, Chucky told him to go there so he could speak (aka: kill) an old friend.  The old friend being the one who left him behind at the beginning of the film.  He sets the guy's house to explode, and just as the house is set to explode, Andy, who is outside, is looking for Chucky who walked away while Andy was "taking a tinkle."  The kid manages to step into a hole just as the house is exploding behind him.  It's like something out of friggin' Keystone Kops.  The kid does a good job with crying when he's in the mental institution later on and he sees Chucky outside the building ready to kill him.  (He finds out from his voodoo mentor before he kills him that he needs to find the human body he first came into contact with to possess or he'll be stuck as a doll forever.)

   
      The directing of the movie is pretty good.  Tom Holland directed this installment.  He had directed the great horror-comedy Fright Night three years earlier.  (Itself somewhat of a classic now.)  That movie too starred Chris Sarandon.  Sadly, after this film, his directing career sort of went downhill, the only two films worth note being Stephen King adaptations.  (The Langoliers tv movie and Thinner)  He made the decision not to show Chucky in full walking and talking mode until halfway through the film.  It's an old horror rule mostly used for budgetary reasons, like with Jaws, but also has the effect of creating more suspense and putting the monster in your imagination, or so they say.  To me, it doesn't always work.  It doesn't really do much in this film.  For most of the walking Chucky shots, they used a little person with 30% larger than normal props, set, and furniture.  Sadly, it's pretty darn obvious when they used a person rather than the animatronic.  The movement is different.

      Although this is often considered the best of the franchise's films, it's not mine.  It's up there near the top, though.  It takes itself somewhat seriously unlike Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky do.  In fact, this movie is so far from those two, it's almost like a different series.  (You can basically separate the series into the first 3, the 4th and 5th, and the new 6th film.)  I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't been remade yet.  Not that I would want one.  I'm glad it hasn't been.  I'm guessing that Don Mancini, the writer, holds his creation's rights?  (Actually, pretty sure Universal does.)  The movie opened on November 9, 1988 to pretty good reviews.  It currently has a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit with only 6 reviews).  Siskel of Siskel and Ebert disliked the film because it relied on the old child in danger trope, which he always railed against.  Roger Ebert enjoyed the film, much to my surprise.

      On a 9 million dollar budget, Child's Play went on to make a respectable $44.2 million over the Thanskgiving/Christmas season of 1988.   When the movie was released, there were protests outside of MGM, the studio that made the film.  The protestors were concerned that the movie would cause violence in children.  Apparently as the TV crews were starting to arrive to do live news reports on it, a guy working in producer David Kirschner's office said he could handle the group in 10 minutes.  He went out, talked to the leader of the protest, shook his hand, and they left.  It is not known publicly what was said.  Even Kirschner doesn't know how the guy got the group to go away.  Sadly when Child's Play 3 came around, the subject would be back in the press.  The movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel, which began pre-production pretty quickly.  However, it would soon hit trouble.  That, however, is for the next installment.

4 1/2 out of 7 stars.
(Anyone else notice how Chucky's face kinda looks like Reagan's in The Exorcist?)

Critters 3 and Critters 4

Critters 3 (1991)

       I've been trying to come up with things to say for this film and its sequel for months now.  Being early 90s direct-to-video releases, there isn't much data on them.  So I apologize for how short this write up is.  

     After the box office disappointment of Critters 2, the once promising series seemed to be done.  For 3 years the franchise kept dormant.  However, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a surge in the idea of shooting movies on a low budget in order for the films to bypass theaters and go directly to VHS.  It was akin to the idea of TV movies, but this way, instead of getting sponsers and the TV station to pay for it, you had the movie company pay more or less than a million bucks and hope to recoup the money with movie rental stores buying the rights to rent the film.  (It may surprise some of you, but film ownership was not important in the early days of VHS.  In fact, VHS was mainly made for the rental market back in the late 1970s, with VHS tapes costing about $100 each.)   So New Line was eventually persuaded to fund two Critters films to be shot at the same time, both to be released straight-to-video, and to be released pretty much back to back as well.

    The plot of Critters 3 is kind of like the first to films, but set in pretty much one building.  There's this teenage girl, Annie, and her younger brother.  They are going with their father to their apartment when their tire has a flat.  They stop at a rest stop and there they meet Josh.  Now Josh is played by a young Leonardo Di Caprio.  Supposedly he was 17 when this film came out, but he looks maybe 14.  Makes me wonder if perhaps the film was filmed way earlier than it was released and they decided at the last minute to release direct to video?  (As I said, there's not much info on these films to find out.)   Anyway, it was Di Caprio's first film.  Now Josh starts playing frisbee with Annie and her brother, and when the frisbee goes into the woods, they are surprised by Charlie, the village drunk and now alien bounty hunter from the first two films.  He's of course hunting Crites again and warns the kids who all think he's just the local crazy.  Once the tire is fixed the kids leave.  We also find out that Josh's stepdad, who he's traveling with, is a bad guy.  He's the family's new landlord.  Oh, also some Crites laid eggs under the family car and they are traveling with them to their apartment.  Well, I think you can guess how it goes from there.  The whole rest of the film takes place in the apartment.  Of course Josh and his stepdad show up, people die, there's some funny hijinks with the Crites thrown in, and after everything's over they set up for the next movie which was apparently shot at the same time.  Basically Charlie is told by a hologram of his best friend and bounty hunter Ug from the last two films that he apparently can't kill any more Crites.  That they are now protected and to give him the eggs he finds. 

    I didn't like this film as much as the first two.  The lower budget is very very obvious and none of the main characters from the first two films are major characters here.  It's not a bad movie.  It's even fun in some parts.  (Like the fat lady getting shot repeatedly by the Crite's quills, which make people partially paralyzed.  There's still a bit of blood and menace here, but not much.  It's more of a made-for-tv type of movie.  Nothing to really offend anyone... Except maybe the huge pair of panties the apartment maintenance guy holds up of the fat lady's.  Yeesh!

Critters 4 (1992)

     So at the end of the last film, Charlie, intergalactic bumbling bounty hunter, is told by a hologram of his friend an co-worker Ug that he can't kill Crites anymore as the two eggs he's about to smash are the last two and he can't cause a species' extinction and to put the eggs in a transport.  Well, somehow Ug gets stuck in the transport too, and it takes him into space and puts him in suspended animation.  In 2045, his pod is found by a salvage ship, but once the salvage ship captain reports the pod, Councilor Tetra tells the crew he will pay 3 times what they ask if they'll go to TerraCor, a space station, and hand it over.  Everyone on the crew, except the young engineer's apprentice Ethan accept the idea.  He just wants to get to earth and see his father, and this is another delay.  When they arrive, the station is empty, the core is slowly building to meltdown, and the station computer won't do what it's told.  (In fact, it always does the exact opposite, they find out.)  Well, after finding this all out, Rick, the captain of the salvage ship, decides he wants all the money for himself and opens the pod.  He finds Charlie, but doesn't believe he's the only thing in the pod.  So he goes in and is eaten by freshly hatched baby Crites.  At this point I should mention the other three characters.  There's Bernie, the drug addicted cargo specialist.  He's not a nice guy, just like the captain.  Then there's the pilot Fran, played by Angela Bassett.  She's sort of a mother figure to Ethan, our main character, on the ship.  And there's Albert, the head engineer.  He's played by Brad Dourif.  So, now the Crites have hatched, we soon find they've laid more eggs and are commandeering the salvage ship and setting the course for Earth.  Also, a recording was found showing that the station was being used to engineer bioweapons from alien species...  Yeah...  Now our entrepid crew must work its way through the space station towards their ship avoiding Crites along the way... But then Councilor Tetra shows up... and I'm gonna leave it there, because the ending is sort of a surprise.

   Now, I will tell you.  This movie doesn't have much Crite action in it.  The budget went mostly to the space station sets, I think.  Which is pretty sad as there isn't much to look at.  White walls mostly.  No, this is more character driven, which would be fine if the characters were interesting.  They aren't.  Brad Dourif does what he can with what he's got, but he's not playing crazy here like he usually does, so that's not much.  The film is also essentially bloodless.  Most of the comedy comes from the station's computer doing the opposite of what it's told to do, so there's not much to that either.  I guess the most amusing thing is that the movie is essentially Alien Resurrection but made 5 years earlier.  It even has Brad Dourif in it, albeit a very different character.  No talk of "beautiful, beautiful butterfly!" here, thank you very much.  And there's the engineering of a pesky alien monster to make bioweapons, which is the plot of the whole Alien franchise.  All that's missing is an android and crazy Sigourney Weaver.  

   This was the second worst Critters film, in my opinion.  The space setting, which is usually considered the point when horror series fail (Leprechaun and Jason X) works here.  I mean, the Crites are aliens after all.  The setting alone makes it better than the last film.  It brings a new feeling to the series.  What doesn't work is not having the Crites being the focus.  The focus is on the corporation coming to take the Crites to make bioweapons and the station close to having a meltdown.  The Crites are maybe in 5 minutes of the film.  There's really only two attacks.  Heck, if I remember correctly there's only two Crites in the whole film!   However, I must say the end reveal of the movie is just about unforgivable.   I mean it's believable, but it's not something the audience wants to happen, and it leaves the series on a sad note.  If you want to know what I'm talking about, watch the film.

So, after all that time dreading talking about these movies, I've finally finished and can now move on to writing about movies that have commentaries or making-ofs to them... that have documentation of their making, or retrospectives so I can actually give you guys and gals some facts and anecdotes.  I plan to start a write up of the Child's Play series next, so you have that to look forward to.  Also, I started over a year ago doing write-ups for the Star Trek films and only got through the third one, so I plan to get back to that as well.  We'll see how it goes.

Critters 2: The Main Course (1988)

Critters 2: The Main Course (1988)

     When the first Critters film did well in the box office, making 6 1/2 times its budget, a sequel was planned pretty quickly.   Sadly, there is not much info out there on the making of this series, so there's not much I can say.  The budget this time would be over twice as much as that of the first film, coming in over $4 million.  This meant that more money could be spent on special effects.  However, the well-known actors from the first film are mostly gone.  Only 4 actors from the first movie return for this one.  The boy from the first film is back, a little older now being a young teenager.  The space bounty hunter Ug, using his hair metal look from the first film is back as well as Charlie, the town oddball who joined the bounty hunters at the end of the first film.  Oh, and Lin Shaye is back as the town gossip/secretary.  

    So somewhere between the first film and this one Brad, the redheaded main character from the first film, has moved out of town.  It seems the town didn't like being known for man-eating aliens and sort of threw his family out of town.  (They voted out the sheriff too.)  Well, now he's coming back to town to visit his grandmother.  About time he gets back the town the Crite (critters) eggs secretly laid by the ones from the first film, are about to hatch.  Meanwhile, Charlie and Ug, just coming back to their ship from some bounty hunting, get an assignment to go back to earth because it's been learned that the Crites weren't fully eradicated two years ago.  All this happens during Easter break (guess I picked the right time to watch this one), and of course the Crite eggs are found and painted like Easter eggs to use for the church Easter egg hunt.  And just as Easter Sunday services are going on, the Crites hatch and kill the guy dressed as the Easter bunny. (Somehow he manages to fly through the church window dead, scaring the congregation pretty badly.)  It doesn't take long for the Crites to spread around town creating mayhem.  They kill people, animals, and... well they basically try to eat everything in their paths.  

      Even though the first film didn't take itself very seriously, this one is even more of a comedy.  Things happen like a Crite deciding to bite into a truck tire.  When it does that, his body inflates to epic proportions.  (He is still attached to the tire when the truck drives off, squishing the poor Crite.)  A Crite gets the hair on the top of its head shot off.  It looks in a mirror and says "bitchin!" in it's own language, which is of course translated for us all to see.  If the first movie was a lot like Gremlins, this one is more like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which wouldn't come out for another two years, actually.  There's even a Freddy Kreuger joke in this one.  Don't start watching this expecting any scares or mystery.  This is a fun comedy with a bit of gore and nudity thrown in.  Speaking of nudity, one of the bounty hunters (the one who in the first film didn't transform into anyone) chooses to transform into a Playboy centerfold here.  Complete with bare breasts at first.  After the first scene she's covered up, but still, pretty daring for a PG-13 film.  The gore, too, is surprising for such a film.  I guess it was decided the gore was so fake-looking and in good humor that it wasn't really that offensive.   There's also the fact that the PG-13 rating in the 1980s was still finding its footing.  Heck, even PG films back in 1988 would allow the F word once or twice and non-sexual nudity, both of which would give you an R right away now.  (Ratings creep, my ass!)  

      I must say, the special effects here are just okay.  One of the main effects in this one is all the Crites getting together to form a big ball and rolling and eating at the same time.  (Getting it to go, as it were.)  You can always see the wire that's pulling the big fluffball.  And even when rolling as just one Crite, you can tell these were simply rolled or thrown where they need to be.   Still, if you can overlook such things like I can, you should have fun watching this.  Most fans of the series consider this film to be the best of the bunch.  I'm not sure I agree so far.  I find it equal with the first film, but they are quite different.  This one is set mostly during the day with the not-so-great special effects shown bare.  It's a full-out comedy.  And the direction isn't as good.  Mick Garris directed this, and I've never been much of a fan of his.  He's mostly known for directing Stephen King miniseries adaptations like The Stand (which I did like), The Shining (really boring and doesn't hold a candle to the Kubrick film), Desperation, and Bag of Bones.  This was his first theatrical film.  In fact, he only had directed an episode of Amazing Stories before this.  The point is, he's an old-fashioned TV director.  He's there to keep things on budget, to be done in a short amount of time, and that's about it.  He doesn't have a great eye for camera angles, character direction, or anything to make the movie stand out.  And for some reason, someone thought Eddie Deezen should be in this movie.  You know, the geek from Grease and Wargames.  He plays the manager of a restaurant called The Hungry Heifer.  And one of the bounty hunters turns into him for a few minutes.  I don't know why he was needed here, or for any other movie for that matter.  (Okay, maybe Laserblast just for the MST3K jokes.)

     Sadly, the movie didn't even make back its budget in theaters.  It made just over $3 million dollars, making 2/3 of that its opening weekend.  The movie wasn't liked by critics, but as I said earlier, a lot of people like this better than the first film.   Siskel and Ebert obviously didn't agree, but I can empathize with Ebert's reasons for his thumbs down.  His main problem is the quality of the effects and Garris's direction as well.   But don't let that make you think I didn't like the film.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as much as I did the first film, which was a great deal.  Both films have faults.  They aren't Alien or Gremlins, but I do think they are just as much fun as Gremlins...  Yeah, they don't even touch Alien.

 

However, even though the movie lost money, two straight-to-video sequels were made just 3 years later...

     

Critters (1986)

Critters (1986)

"Where do they come up with this stuff?!" - Raphael leaving a showing of Critters in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

      The 1980s were probably the last golden age of the horror film.  It was also the last era of the science fiction B movie.  The late 80s brought about CGI, which rapidly became the special effect of choice through the 90s and continues to be today (along with wire work that is hidden by CGI and of course the old standby of green screen).  Back in the 1980s, science fiction and horror films were routinely made on low budgets with simple blue screen, matte paintings, and puppets for the creatures.  Now, of course, sometimes these effects look ridiculous now to some.   Puppets are clearly puppets to some people, and you won't convince them otherwise.  To me it's the same with CGI.  I know it's fake and I just see the actor there reacting to nothing but a tennis ball on a stick... if even that.  Give me the old effects any day.  Thankfully, in the past few years film-makers have started to mix puppetry and other older forms of special effect in with their CGI like CGI was supposed to be used originally.  The best films tend to do this.  Jurassic Park and Lord of the Rings for example.  LOTR used a lot of large miniatures (bigatures) instead of just making CGI forts or castles.  Jurassic Park used more puppets and animatronics than CGI to great effect.  But I digress.  This is about a film that didn't use CGI at all.  A low budget movie made to cash in on the success of 1984's Gremlins.  

     So we all know by now (if you read my Nightmare on Elm Street blogs) that New Line was pretty much put on the map by Freddy.  (Kreuger, not Mercury)  And hey, if you do well with horror, why stop, right?  And man, that Gremlins flick did pretty darn well, didn't it?  So New Line buys up this script that's been sitting around since 1981 written by Dominic Muir.   The script was then redone to make it less like Gremlins was by the guy who ended up directing the movie, Stephen Herek.  Now Stephen was a Roger Corman productions alumni.  He was an assistant editor on 1980s Corman films like Space Raiders and The Slumber Party Massacre.   Working with Corman was probably the best thing for a person to do that was going to make Critters anyway.  It basically is a 1980s Roger Corman type film without Corman being involved.  It's low budget but does the best it can with that budget.  Take the plot for instance...  They did this on $2 million!

     Shape-shifting bounty hunters are sent after some little ferocious aliens that did a prison break from an asteroid penal colony.  (Great so far, am I right?!)  The nasty little things of course land on earth.  Where on earth?  Kansas!  Where else?  The bounty hunters do their job and pursue.  They learn about earth through TV transmissions and the lead bounty hunter choses his body from a hair metal singer in a music video he comes across.  (Hey, it's the mid-80s)  The other one finds nothing to his liking so he stays a no-faced green humanoid until later on.  When the critters get to earth, they start eating, which is what their race is known for.  They eat cattle and then decide humans are up there on the menu too.  Now, the story is brought to earth by this quaint midwestern family.  You have mom of all 1980s movie moms, Dee Wallace-Stone.  (Mother in The Hills Have Eyes, Cujo and E.T.)  Billy Green Bush as the father.  (Known for character acting throughout the 1970s and 80s.)  The sister is played by little known Nadine Van der Velde.  And of course, our main protagonist, little Brad, played by Scott Grimes, the only one of those besides Dee Wallace still working today.  (E.R., Band of Brothers, Robin Hood, Justified)   Also in the film are Ethan Phillips (Neelix from Star Trek Voyager), Billy Zane as the sister's boyfriend (and critter snack), and of course Lin Shaye (sister of New Line owner Bob Shaye) as the police department receptionist.  

    So, as you can see, it's not a bad little cast.  Now, the question is, is the film any good?  That answer I suppose would have to depend on if you like 1950s science fiction films.  Because that's essentially what this is.  Rural family is trapped in farmhouse by little vicious aliens and must defend their lives.  It's more akin to Killer Klowns From Outer Space than the 1982 redo of The Thing.  More like the 1980s Tobe Hooper remake of Invaders From Mars.  To be perfectly honest, I really had a fun time watching this movie.  It doesn't take itself seriously.  It's fun but not goofy.  (In that way it's not Killer Klowns)  The acting isn't horrible.  It's not great by any means, but it doesn't distract from the fun of the film.  This isn't in the so bad it's good category.  It genuinely is good.  You just have to watch it and go with it.  I mean, you have bounty hunters that steal people's faces and aliens that roll around on the ground like hedgehogs and shoot out needle things to paralyze their prey.  Don't go looking for deep philosophical truths here.  It's a B movie.  A very fun B movie filmed in the 1980s.  And it's got some meta-humor. One critter attempts to communicate with an E.T. doll.  (And Dee Wallace was in that film.)  The family's cat is named Chewie.  There's a lot of fun to be had watching this if you will allow yourself.  

     The special effects are okay for a low budget film of the time period.  The effects were done by the Chiodo brothers.  (They directed and did the effects for the aforementioned Killer Klowns From Outer Space, which I also recommend for fun.)  They tend to keep the critters partially obscured by shadow or in low light.  The puppets are clearly puppets here.  They didn't have the budget of Gremlins to do animatronics as were done in that film.  There is a critter that grows to giant size later in the film, which was done via a man in a suit.  (Also shot so detail isn't shown.)  I think most of the budget here went to destroying a church halfway through the movie and blowing up a farmhouse.  I can't blame them.  I would spend half a budget on cool explosions too!  In the end the effects are simply serviceable, which is all they needed to be.

     The film went on to make over $13 million on a $2 million budget.  Dee Wallace still says she loves the film, but then again, unlike many actresses she embraces her horror movie roles.  The director, Stephen Herek's next project was a little film called Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and he would follow that with the likes of Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead, The Mighty Ducks, The Three Musketeers, the live action 101 Dalmations, and Eddie Murphy's under-appreciated Holy Man.  Billy Zane would of course go on to be in one of the greatest movies of all time... Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knights... and Titanic.  3 of the actors, including young Scott Grimes, would come back for the second film in 1988.

    

Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)

Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)

     It had been 12 years since the last real Nightmare on Elm Street film (it's debatable on whether New Nightmare should be considered one or not.  If considered, it'd been 9 years), but only one year since the last Friday the 13th film (Jason X).  However, this film had been in development hell since about 1993.  10 long years.  Actually, both New Line who owned the rights to Freddy, and Paramount who owned Jason, had considered a movie involving the two fighting way back in 1987, but could never come up with a story that satisfied both studios.  After New Line bought the rights to Jason back in the early 1990s, the plan was more feasable.  If you remember, 1993's Jason Goes to Hell ended with Freddy's glove reaching up out of the ground and pulling Jason's mask down to hell.  And yes, it was meant by Sean Cunningham, producer of the film and creator of the Friday the 13th series to point towards the big horror match.  But when Wes Craven decided to make New Nightmare in 1994, all plans for this were put on hold.  And yet a script still had to be written.  By 2003, New Line had spent 6 million dollars figuring out how to do the film, paying people to write screenplays, etc.  One of the first story ideas involved both working as Hell's assassins for Satan, harvesting souls for him.  Satan starts a little contest sending the two to earth to see who could get the most souls (kill the most).  The one that wins gets to stay on earth to kill people, the other one goes back to hell and does nothing.  Even Brannon Braga and Ronald D Moore, who were responsible for the three Star Trek shows in the 1990s wrote a script!   There was one where it was revealed that Freddy once worked at Camp Crystal Lake and he molested Jason and then drowned him so he wouldn't tell.  (Um... no.  Ew.)

    Finally, a script was chosen that seemed to work well.  Two writers named Mark Swift and Damian Shannon wrote the one that was ultimately chosen. (About 14 screenplays were written over the 10 years.)  These two writers would go on to write the screenplay for the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th.   Finding the right director took a little while, but definitely not the 10 years it took to find the script.  They met with about 40 directors and finally they asked Ronny Yu, who had directed 1998's Bride of Chucky to direct the film.  Initially he had no inclination to make the film.  He wasn't a fan of either franchise.  But when told that he didn't have to take it seriously, he was on board.  They got Robert Englund to come back very easily.  (It was the last time he played Freddy on screen.)  However, fans of the series were not happy when the producers opted not to bring back Kane Hodder as Jason.  He'd portrayed the character in every Friday the 13th since 1988 (4 films).  They went for some other stunt guy who had more "emotive eyes" and who was 3 inches taller.  I dunno.  I don't see the big deal.  

   The movie has Freddy manipulating Jason (by appearing as his mother) into killing teens on Elm Street because no one remembers him.  The police department has hidden every trace of what happened on Elm Street in the past, including sending those who have witnessed Freddy's killings to a psychiatric hospital.   So, after the first few killings that Jason does (and make Freddy progressively stronger) but Jason is an unstoppable killing machine and won't let Freddy actually kill anyone (Freddy likes to play with his victims first, and Jason just hacks away.).  After a while the teenagers figure out what's going on (including the main character's ex-boyfriend who was locked away in the psych hospital after watching her dad who was really Freddy kill her mom) and plan to knock out Jason with sedatives and drive him 600 miles from Springwood, Ohio to Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey.  (In the movie, it seems to take less than an hour due to cuts from the script.)  And of course there are two physical brawls between Freddy and Jason.  One in the dream world and one in Camp Crystal Lake.  

     The cast here is... a mixed bag for sure.  The main actress, Monica Keena, is usually an okay actress.  Here she's probably the worst actress since Nancy's mom in the first Nightmare film.  Her lines are overdone, and she seems kind of drugged out most of the time and I doubt it's just great acting due to sleep deprivation.  On the other hand you have the great Brendan Fletcher (Tideland) and Jason Ritter.  The other actors are serviceable I guess.  (Well, maybe not the deputy who I figured was supposed to be like Deputy Dewey from Scream.)   Jason Ritter was a last minute addition to the film.  His part originally was going to go to Brad Renfro (Tom and Huck, The Client) but his drug problems forced him to be recast.  (He died about 3 years later from a heroin overdose.)  

     However, people are so not here for the acting.  They're here to see Freddy and Jason kill said actors and kick each others asses.  But if you're hoping for gore galore, you'll be sadly disappointed.  A lot of the blood is CGI or unrealistic.  The whole film is so very over the top, especially the two fight sequences.  Ronny Yu wanted sort of a WWE vibe to the fight scenes, very theatrical with a lot of name-calling (at least from Freddy, as Jason is thankfully still mute).  In fact, before the film was made, a mock press conference was held with Jason and Freddy in the WWF etc style.  It set the fans up perfectly for what the movie would be like.  

     All in all, I don't have much to say about this one.  Pretty much everyone has seen it.  You know it's just stupid fun.  And it is fun.  Freddy is about like he was in Nightmare 4 making lots of puns.  Jason looks like he did in like part 4 of his franchise before he was turned into a eewy gooey zombie with a mask in part 6.  The characters are annoying and for the most part really stupid.  They're there to run around, pretend there is some interesting plot (there isn't really) and get killed.  And they do that admirably I suppose.  (Christopher Marquette has a charming womanly scream.)  I must admit, when I went to go see this by myself in Richmond back in 2003 on opening day, I was really looking forward to it.  I mean what slasher fan wouldn't be?  And even though it wasn't the dark gory film that I wanted, I still had fun watching it.  However, I hate, hate, hate the ending.  What a cop-out!  No winner?  WTF?  Well, I guess you could say the main girl and main guy in the film win.  They live, at least.  At least with the way it ended, both Freddy and Jason fans are either unsatisfied or satisfied.  Most of my friends see Jason as the winner because they like those movies and don't care for the Nightmare on Elm Street films.  I always consider Freddy the winner, because I've always liked the Freddy character more than lumbering, my walk is my act Jason.  Hey, at least I got to see that chick who's not Beyonce from Destiny's Child do mouth to mouth with Jason Vorhees!  

     The movie certainly did well at the box office.  I mean, when you get fans of two different franchises together and others who just are interested to see the fight, that's a lot of people!   In its opening weekend of August 15, 2003 (this was the last movie I saw before I moved to the mountains for a year for college) the movie earned 36 million dollars.  That was 6 million more than it cost to even make the film!  By the end of its theatrical run, it had made globally about 115 million bucks, making it the most profitable film of either of the franchises.  (A record it still holds even after the two remakes.)  Efforts were immediately made to do a sequel with either Pinhead, Michael Myers, or Ash from Evil Dead, and in fact, Sam Raimi was keen to have Ash fight the other two, but alas the deal was never worked out.  However, the screenplay was turned into a comic book which is apparently pretty good.  I'll have to give it a look one of these days.

Well folks, with that, there's only one more Nightmare on Elm Street film to blog about, which is the 2010 remake.  I hope to do that one sometime within the next week, but you know not to take my word on such things by now.  I'm sorry there wasn't much to this blog entry, but as the film isn't one of my favorites nor particularly bad, I just didn't have much to say about it.  The dream sequences were cool, though.  I will say that.  The movie is very comic booky, if you know what I mean.  You've got a Hong Kong director directing this one, so you should expect lots of wire work.  Seriously.  I am also sorry there's not much multimedia in this blog post.  The clips were available, but I didn't do any scene breakdowns here so I didn't need them.  Plus, from what I'm told, most don't watch the clips I put up anyway, as they read this on their Android phones or devices, and alas most of those clips require Flash, which those devices can't use.

Until next time, don't let the bed bugs bite!