At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

What separates a “good” Slasher film from a “terrible” one is the level of talent involved with the project – a genuinely talented filmmaker can take a fairly routine script and elevate it to a higher level.  Imagine if Psycho would have been directed by a studio hack instead of Alfred Hitchcock? It would not be regarded as the classic it is today and would, more than likely, been lost to time.  The House on Sorority Row and its remake, Sorority Row, are not in the same class as Psycho, but both are a cut (pun intended) above your standard Slasher movie.  The most striking thing about both films is that they are fairly well directed and have some truly haunting visuals.  The House on Sorority Row is merely passable for its first seventy minutes, but is redeemed by its truly tense finale.  It ups the stakes by not only having the heroine (Katherine) fight off the killer, but doing so in a drugged out a state – she is injected with a tranquilizer by Dr. Beck, who wants to use he

The Blair Witch Project is one of the worst things that ever happened to cinema, not only is it vastly overrated and irritating, but it spawned the whole found footage subgenre that has been plaguing the movie theatres for the last decade.   However, at least The Blair Witch Project had a clever marketing campaign (it was promoted as being real footage) that stirred up audience interest, the later found footage movies tend to relegated to DVD purgatory, until they are eventually picked up by Netflix.   There are a few found footage movies I do like ( V/H/S, V/H/S 2, and Evidence), but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.   The V/H/S movies are an anthology series that have some genuinely creepy stories, effects, and editing.   Evidence has a framing device that justifies the found footage:   two detectives hope that videos taken by the victims at a murder scene can lead them to the killer. Also, a credible reason is given for the victims to continue recording, desp

The majority of Slasher movies are pure crap! The documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film tries to offer up a defense for the subgenre, but the cold hard truth is that most criticism of Slasher films is pretty valid. They are fairly indistinguishable from one another, devoid of any real suspense, and are extremely predictable.  That being said, it is hard to think of a movie (regardless of genre) that is as dull as Final Exam.  Sure, most Slasher movies are terrible, but they usually move at a fast pace and have a few likable characters in the cast;  Final Exam not only lacks both, but it is fairly bloodless, which means it won’t even appeal to gore fans.  The director, Jimmy Huston, said that he wanted to avoid the stereotypes of the genre by making the killings bloodless and having most of them occur off screen – it’s too bad his determination to avoid clichés didn’t carry over to the characters.  All the tropes of the genre are here in their full

There is a scene in Superstition where an attractive brunette, Cheryl, hears a noise coming from the attic and, against her better judgment, separates from the rest of group so she can investigate it. This scene is completely bewildering as it occurs just as  Cheryl is about to leave the house with her sister, Ann. Cheryl has witnessed all kinds of spooky shit throughout the movie, and is all for leaving the house, yet instead of bolting out the front door (towards safety) she inexplicably decides that checking out the creepy attic, solo and without a flash light, is the better plan. She is practically begging to be killed.  Now, you are probably asking, “Isn’t this true of most horror movies?” Yes! The characters in horror movies often behave in an irrational manner as it helps the filmmakers set up a scare, but this rampant stupidity is practically an epidemic in Superstition – every ten minutes a character wanders into a dark, creepy room to investigate a noise and gets murde

In the movie industry, timing is everything. In case of Idle Hands , its release date couldn’t have come a more inopportune time, April 30, 1999 – ten days after the Columbine shootings.   The movie opened to poor reviews (16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and an even worse box office ($4 million gross against a $25 million dollar budget).  It was nearly impossible for many critics to separate the ending of this movie from the tragedy that occurred in Colorado.  Duane Dudek of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wasn’t alone when he wrote, “This film smacks of poor judgment and bad taste, particularly in wake of the Littleton, Colo., killings.”   However, it would be disingenuous to blame Idle Hands'  piss poor box office entirely on the critics, after all, Stephen Sommer’s The Mummy was released the following weekend; Star Wars, Episode I – The Phantom Menace hit theatres shortly afterwards, May 19,1999. The reality is that Idle Hands simply didn’t stand a chance against these two j

I have a soft spot for Jaws 2. This is mainly due to the sense of nostalgia it evokes whenever I watch it, as opposed to it being a good movie. It was one of the very first movies my dad recorded on our VCR (in 1986) and, in fact, I saw Jaws 2 before I saw the original movie (we rented Jaws a few months later).  I was seven years-old at the time, therefore, I could have cared less about character development, or plotting, the only thing that mattered to me was the shark. As unnecessary sequels go, Jaws 2 isn’t bad, especially when compared to the countless Jaws rip-offs that were being produced at the same time ( Orca, Grizzly, Humanoids from the Deep, and Barracuda, to name a few ).  I would even argue that it is even better than the source material, Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, which inspired the first movie.  Benchley’s novel is a truly dreadful piece of exploitation – it is equivalent to the kind of cinematic trash that Roger Corman was producing at New World Pictures at time

From 1940 to 1956, the comedy team of Abbott and Costello made 36 movies together. In that sixteen year span they made one genuine classic ( Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein), some very good comedies ( Hold That Ghost, Pardon My Sarong,The Time of Their Lives, Who Done It?, Buck Privates), and a few forgettable movies ( Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Mexican Hayride, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff). However, it says a lot about their appeal that even their lesser movies are constantly amusing, if not particularly funny (I have a soft spot for Abbott & Costello Go to Mars ).  Who Done It? was the fourth (and last) movie Abbott and Costello made in 1942 and it is easily one of their better movies. It benefits greatly from a fine supporting cast (particularly William Bendix as a dimwitted detective and Mary Wickes as a lanky secretary) and some top notch direction by Erle C. Kenton – a gifted studio director whose best known for the horror

Remakes aren’t new to movies– they have been around since the invention of the medium. It is also a fallacy to suggest that the original is always better, as there are examples of a remake being just as good, if not better than the original; The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Ten Commandments (1956), and The Thing (1982), come to mind. Unfortunately, The Fog doesn’t belong in this category and, is in fact, one of the worst remakes of all time.  It is an extremely ill conceived remake, complete with an attractive, but bland, cast and some of the silliest looking CGI in film history. The original movie, while not a classic, was still an effective horror movie filled with genuinely haunting visuals and a better than average cast; the only real misfire is Jamie Lee Curtis, who, as the hitchhiking artist, Elizabeth, is given very little to do.  The script is filled with holes, but John Carpenter’s efficient direction, plus Dean Cundey’s moody photography, help smooth things ove