We just did a FRIDAY THE 13th themed Kindertrauma Funhouse not too long ago but no matter; today actually is Friday the 13th so we have got to pay our respects! This one should be easy for you FRIDAY fans out there but make sure you play along because one lucky commenter is going to win my extra (slightly used i.e. watched once) special edition copy of FRIDAY THE 13th PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD!
Remember not too long ago when I was singing the praises of an ice pick sharp Norwegian slasher flick entitled COLD PREY (FRITT VILT)? No? Well, trust me it was all gushing and cartoon hearts floating about. I adore COLD PREY, on the day that it was born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true. Recently I got a chance to see its sequel COLD PREY 2: RESURRECTION and let me tell ya' friends, unlike some horror series that let ya' down on the second date, this one shows up on time, looks you in the eye and says everything you want to hear. I'm putting a ring on it.
Writer of both films THOMAS MOLDESTAD has done some serious homework; he not only shows off his knowledge of the best horror dance moves but equally impresses with his crystal clear understanding of the ones to avoid. Some of y'all may require a bit more originality in a films structure, but personally I get an incredible thrill watching a movie of this kind touching all the familiar bases and then sliding smoothly into home. COLD PREY 2 is exactly what a horror movie sequel should strive to be. It moves the first film forward without stepping on its toes and it never lets you see it sweat.
Taking place immediately after the events in the first film, CP2 finds our lone survivor whisked to the nearest ominously dark understaffed hospital ala 1981's HALLOWEEN II (Anybody who was praying for a ROB ZOMBIE-free HALLOWEEN II remake, shut uppa ya' face, your wish has been granted.) Shelve any concerns that the HALLOWEEN II template is, in this day and age, broth thin, to thicken the stock, a hearty action oriented ALIENS component has been thrown into the mix as well. (Just try not to think of SIGGY WEAVER as our heroine Jannicke (INGRID BOLSO BERDAL) tries in vain to explain the quickly approaching pain.) In other words we now have a chance to see what would have taken place if, rather than being drugged out of her mind, Laurie Strode showed up at Haddonfield Hospital burning like the phoenix she became in H20, seriously , where are my smelling salts?
If this all sounds absurdly derivative to you, it kind of is: but it just happens to be derivative of everything that floats my boat. Some mysterious force in the universe chose to smoosh together nearly every cinematic element that I hold dear and then went that extra step and sprinkled snow all over the top; I thank that force on my knees. I want COLD PREY posters, T-shirts, action figures and cereal. Frosted COLD PREY cereal sounds delicious as hell, and yes I'm going to dig for the toy pick-axe prize inside as soon as I open the box!
As technically impressive as CP2's direction is (besides providing well-staged action and shocks, director MATS STENBERG has also created a nearly seamless counterpart to the original, taking place hours after and filmed nearly two years later) and as knowing and as crisp as the script may be, it would all be for naught without the participation of actress BERDAL. I can't think of many (or really any) modern genre heroines that I would place in the same esteem as my boos Strode and Ripley, but Jannicke really has what it takes to walk along side those iconic figures. I wouldn't say that about just anyone, BERDEL owns, she Daddy Warbucks owns!
I don't want to oversell this flick too much. The more you like the other films I mentioned the more you're likely to dig this. The wheel may remain un-reinvented but frankly, I don't want a new wheel, I just want the one that I know and love to spin good…COLD PREY 2 spins good. By keeping things simple and direct, learning from past sequel mistakes and presenting a truly compelling heroine, CP2 has created, in my opinion, the best on-going modern horror series that I'm aware of, plus like I said, it's got snow.
I saw this movie in 1965 with my younger brother and sister when I was six years old. The movie starts with two astronomers in an observatory discussing a possible UFO sighting. We then see the flying saucer landing. A cute little dog that saw the saucer land runs up to it and starts barking at it. The top of the flying saucer opens and a helmeted alien with a ray gun pops out and Sparky, the cute little dog, gets zapped into a gruesome little dog skeleton that clatters to the ground. …Instant trauma!
I have never forgotten that moment, none of us kids said a word, all three of us just sat there in shock as the all too human looking alien took off his helmet and more aliens emerged from the saucer to examine poor little Sparky's skeletal remains. Later in the movie, one of the aliens goes into a small town and several people get skeletonized in a gun battle. My sister was five at the time and still remembers little Sparky getting zapped into skeleton bones. That movie is probably why my three-year-old little brother feared skeletons through most of his childhood.
Some of my biggest T.V.-trauma moments from childhood were brought about by the 1985 version of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. I was seven when it started, old enough to know that I wanted to watch scary things, but too young to really handle more than Disney-fied frights (the SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES movie springs to mind as a safe favorite at that age) without nightmares.
Three stories from the series were particularly traumatic. I remember one scene from the episode called "Monsters!" making me run from the room while watching it with my parents and brother. Most of the episode was kind of sweet, about a kid (POLTERGEIST's OLIVER ROBINS) befriending a lonely old man in his neighborhood. It turns out that the old man is a vampire, and if he lives too long in one area, the humans around him turn into monsters that are out to kill him. The humans' transformations start out very mild with seemingly normal flu-like symptoms, so everyone just thinks there's a bug going around. Then one night the kid and his parents are all sick, coughing and sneezing, resting together in their living room…His dad has a really big sneeze that bloodies his nose and sends him collapsing to the ground where he, and then the mother also, suddenly start groaning and convulsing, finally changing all the way into monsters. That was all I could handle…I sprinted out of the room. The only other time in my life that I did that was a couple of years later when watching the chestburster scene in ALIEN.
Another was "Need to Know"…It's about WILLIAM PETERSEN and FRANCES McDORMAND trying to figure out why people in a small town are suddenly going crazy one by one. We find out that the source of it is one local man's discovery of the ultimate, true meaning of all life, and when you find out what it is, the implications of it instantly make you lose your mind. Of course the meaning of life is never shared with the audience, but several times we see someone who knows the secret whisper it into a sane person's ear for only a few seconds, and then sane person will start laughing or screaming maniacally, having been sent around the bend by the info. That was unforgettable and deeply chilling to me that something that only took a few seconds to say could be so monumentally important to everything that exists in the universe that the human mind couldn't handle knowing it. There were no "run from the room" moments in that one, but it's always stuck with me as psychologically terrifying.
But the biggest ‘80s TWILIGHT ZONE trauma for me was the STEPHEN KING adaptation "Gramma," starring the kid from THE NEVERENDING STORY (a.k.a. BARRETT OLIVER) as a kid named Georgie who is left at home one afternoon to look after his overweight, bedridden grandmother. He's already scared of her because she's old and gross, but gradually we learn that she practices Cthulhu witchcraft, and she's wants to take over Georgie's body since hers is dying. What really got to me was that you never see Gramma (maybe some at the end, I don't remember), you just get a sense of this hulking mass in the bed and you hear her deep, breathy voice calling for Georgie: "Georgie! Tea!" She eventually gets Georgie to come close enough to the bed that she can grab him, and as he's screaming it dissolves to later on. Georgie is sitting at the kitchen table and his mom comes home. He tells her that Gramma died while she was out, and the mom walks over and hugs him. She can't see it, but Georgie looks at the camera and he's got freaky cat eyes! I saw this one with my family while on my first ski trip, and "Georgie! Tea!" and the cat eyes are my two most vivid memories of the whole vacation.
This really scared me when I was little and I've never known what it was. It was the end, I think, of a movie I was watching on T.V.
There was a man and a woman, I think, trapped in this huge room with hundreds of tiny machines/robots who were crawling all over them and trying to kill them.
That's really all I can remember but I don't know if that's enough information.
There was a big metal structure in it too…can somebody help me?
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Professor Von Whiskersen for nailing it with RUNAWAY!
Am I the only person in existence who was traumatized as a child by the mere COMMERCIALS for the '80s horror film CURTAINS?
I love a good horror movie, but even I couldn't watch this film until last year (now that I'm in my 30's). And it still scared me!
I could never get the image of the masked killer skating across the frozen lake in broad daylight out of my mind. It absolutely terrified me!!
::shudder::
A baby stumbles in on his parents having sex and then does exactly what I would do in the same situation and discretely walks out a third story window plummeting to his death. Mom or "she" (CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG) is overcome with grief and the type of guilt that only comes from having an orgasm while your child is splattering against a sidewalk. Dad or "he" (WILLEM DAFOE), possibly the second worst therapist in the world, finds out that the couple's cabin in the woods is the exact last place in the universe his wife would like to be during this difficult time of mourning and then takes her there. Once in the woods, Mother Nature herself sends not so subtle messages to the couple that they should both drop dead. Finally mom decides to speed up the therapy by hitting the problem at its source by mangling both her and her husband's naughty zones. The end.
Does anybody know a way I can un-see ANTICHRIST? Is hypnotism a viable option or should I just throw it into the "don't go there" room in my head alongside that tortuously overplayed news footage of a baby carriage rolling in front of a train and the last season of ROSEANNE? What was I thinking? Take it from me kids, if you are inclined towards depressive thoughts or are currently grieving the loss of a loved one, you need to stay the hell away from this super bad mojo. This is LARS VON TRIER's take on horror and it's not "Yikes, there's a ghost!" horror; it's "Yikes, I need to go back on Paxil!" horror.
I know what you are thinking, LARS VON TRIER…caveat emptor, but usually the stuff that people find offensively sadistic in his films rolls right off my back because it appeals to my gargantuan persecution/martyr complex. I mean anyone who has worked in retail can relate to DOGVILLE, right? LARS gave me the super whammy this time though, didn't see it coming. Ugh, I feel like I just sat through WILLIAM STYRON's BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. When the hell is that new SANDRA BULLOCK movie coming out anyway? I need to see that NOW.
ANTICHRIST may be getting a bunch of flack for its graphic scenes of genital mutilation but whatever, that stuff doesn't really bother me as long as my junk is still intact. What I have trouble dealing with is footage of a baby bird covered with devouring ants and the oppressive sense that life is a never ending meaningless deathgasm. Don't think you can shelter yourself from the cruelty of existence within the warmth of a human relationship either, not on LARS' watch! Love is merely a front for a savage, to the death, wrestling match where both parties gnaw each other raw and silent animosity is the closest thing to a time out. Only bring a date to this movie if you never want to see that person again.
I gotta hand it to this guy, inspired by his own journey into the emotional dark lands, LARS decided to just throw it all up there on the screen completely unpoliced and unapologetic as a form of therapy. It might not all make rational sense but there is an elemental nightmare quality that just can't be argued with. Critiquing this film is like telling a mentally ill person that they should read CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL. Even the film's most graceless goofy missteps feel like accurate depictions of full on dementia. Talking animals are hilarious unless you are the Son of Sam. Several times I was brought back to my viewing of MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Do you know the part where the tiny miniature people appear? That part cracked up the entire theater I was in. Meanwhile I was completely mortified and trying to keep my wee little head from exploding.
LARSY is famous for his issues with woman and it's not hard to see why. Personally I can't fault a guy who is aware of his baggage and battles his anxieties head on. It's not pretty but as far as accused misogyny goes I find his work easier to digest than say, WARRANT's "Cherry Pie" video. In fact, I have to say, the male character, to me, in ANTICHRIST comes off as the real instigator of woe. (Even if you hate this movie, and you probably should, the acting of both DAFOE and GAINSBOURG is fearless and phenomenal.) Sure, she looks like the bad guy ‘cuz she drills a hole in his leg and fastens a millstone to it when he's unconscious (due to having his cojones whacked by a wooden plank); but hey, he started this ITCHY & SCRATCHY show by trying to suppress her natural feelings and grilling her to find her weaknesses so he could shove her nose in them. I say don't cry about your bee stings buddy if you've spent all your free time throwing rocks at the hive!
Whether ANTICHRIST is pure genius or pure bile probably depends on your own level of familiarity with coo-coo town, the well adjusted need not apply. Whether LARS is trying to beleaguer his audience or is completely oblivious of them I have no idea. There is astonishing beauty to be found here ,but it's an overall miserable experience. Like depression itself there are many jewels to be found along the path but you will never want to tread this way again. SANDY BULLOCK, slow down, wait up, I miss you!
