Halloween Horror Month #2: 2001 Maniacs

From being pleasantly scared by Joe Dante's The Hole the previous night, last night we visited Pleasant Valley in Tim Sullivan's 2001 Maniacs, a remake/update of H.G. Lewis's 2000 Maniacs. The movie was picked for one simple reason last night. It was short, finishing at under 90 minutes.

A word of warning. This is not the best movie to watch with your wife/girlfriend. While not being the T&A-fest that Alexandre Aja's Piranha is, there's definitely enough breasts on screen to make your wife doubt if we're actually watching a horror movie or a softcore porn(this actually happened).

That said, there isn't much going for this movie. None of the characters are memorable, except for Robert Englund's main villain, and that's just because he's played by Robert Englund, who is hamming it up and clearly having fun. There is no plot to speak of, which is evident at the ending when we are told what happened earlier by a sheriff, and it really doesn't work at all. It seems that they thought of the kills of the movie first and then wrote the rest of the movie around them.

And thee kills are about the only thing that does work in the movie. They are some of the more inventive deaths I've seen and Sullivan shows them all in their gory glory. The best of them all involves a character drinking some special moonshine. This movie never tries to be scary in the slightest, so I can't fault it for not being scary. But since you don't care for the characters at all, you don't care what happens to them and there is no suspense to the "story".

I do have a feeling that the circumstances I saw this movie in do affect my judgment of it, somewhat. This is the kind of movie you should watch with your friends, having a few beers on a Friday night. Not after work on a Tuesday night after your kids have fallen asleep. Still, I don't see myself returning to this one anytime soon. My rating for 2001 Maniacs: 4/10

P.S. I noticed that they made a sequel as well, but Robert Englund is replaced by Bill Moseley. I think I will stay away.

Halloween Horror Month #1: The Hole

So this year for Halloween, I thought it would be nice to watch a horror movie every day for the whole of October. So I made a list, checked it twice, had the wife take a look and off we go. There's movies we've never seen before, movies we love and movies that are...less than good, but I love them anyway.

The first movie on the list was Joe Dante's The Hole, which I've reviewed on my blog before. I'm rather surprised that it is only now getting a theatrical release in the US, as it was released on DVD/Blu-ray in Europe back in January 2011. Not going to waste a lot of time on this review, since you can find my earlier thoughts on it as well.

That said, I think this movie works better on the second viewing. Chris Massoglia's Dane doesn't come off quite as wooden as he did before, and the relationship between him and his brother is actually quite sweet. The love between the brothers isn't always spelled out in the movie, but you can feel it constantly throughout the movie.

Also I'm reminded at how scary this movie actually is. I'm sure I'm not the only one going "That fucking clown..." after the movie. According to my wife, this is one of the creepiest movies she's seen. And there's a lot of creepy things in the movie, but the movie doesn't go over the top with the scares and there's a very few unearned jump scares. I'm sure that how Joe Dante managed to get under my skin with Gremlins when I was a kid, this movie will get under the skin of a whole new generation.

Only thing that doesn't really work for me is the ending. As this movie is geared more for a kid-friendly audience (friendly might not be the right word), there's the whole "facing your fears" lesson to teach the kid. This is all fine and dandy, but I was rather disappointed in the way Dane finally faces his fear.

In the end, I definitely recommend this movie to horror fans, young and old, and I hope this does well in the box office in the US. It's been too long since we got a Joe Dante movie and call me crazy, I would want to see another movie from him sooner rather than later. My (new) rating for The Hole: 8/10