The new print ad for Happy Birthday to Me includes a quote from Lance Vaughan’s Retro Slasher review for the film. The quote can be found directly below the dvd and beside the Amazon logo. To read Lance’s review click here: www.retroslashers.net/review_happybday.htm
Any Halloween fan wanting to know more about the rest of the night HE came home should check out Pat Jankiewicz’s interesting retrospective in the current issue of Fangoria. Director Rick Rosenthal reveals how behind-the-scenes battles between John Carpenter and Dino De Laurentiis changed what scenes made it into the final film. Dean Cundey and several members of the cast also provide anecdotes about characters, missing scenes, and rumors of heavy drug use on the set. There’s also a hint Rosenthal is working on a director’s cut of Halloween II due for release next year.
Slasher fans rushing to Wal-Mart in search of Happy Birthday to Me should keep their eyes open for the $5 Gore House Greats Collection. Most of the 12 films in the collection rank somewhere between bloody awful and drive-in trash, but there are two little gems that should interest slasher addicts.
Terrified is a proto-slasher from 1963. The story involves a masked killer stalking an old western ghost town. Anyone who crosses his path gets a cement bath for his troubles. There are elements in Terrified that reminded me of Tourist Trap and Scream (1985). The killer is pretty twisted for an early 1960s horror film. When surrounded by cops, the killer begs the Final Girl for a few minutes of pleasure before he dies.
The best film in the collection (and the main reason I bought it) is Terror, a British film from 1978 that mixes elements from slashers and Suspiria. Gore is heavy and the murders are brutal. Even better, there are several creepy scenes that ooze suspense and atmosphere. Overall, Terror is an excellent shocker.
Back on September 5th I warned Halloween fans not to get their hopes up at the prospect of seeing Halloween 3D in the near future no matter what the Weinsteins’ promised. My suspicions were confirmed tonight when TWC pulled the plug on pre-production for the next entry in the revamped series. The studio was rushing the project into production, looking for the film to be finished by January for a summer 2010 release.
Several rumors are circulating as to why H3D met a sudden demise; the company doesn’t have the financial resources to make the film, director Patrick Lussier had a falling out with the Weinsteins over the price-tag of the final budget, and the new script is so bad it was better to shutdown production rather than carry on. The “official” Hollywood story is Patrick Lussier has other projects in the works and the Weinsteins are just waiting for him to get a little more free time so he can film H3D at a later date.
Here’s a link to the original article on Deadline Hollywood:
www.deadline.com/hollywood/weinstein-cos-dimension-films-shuts-down-pre-production-on-halloween-3d/
Usually a lost slasher finally getting released makes a few headlines but here’s one that has gone mostly unnoticed. The S.O.V. Beauty Queen Butcher, filmed way back in 1991, wasn’t released until 2007 by Camp Motion Pictures as part of their Retro 80s Horror Collection. Phyllis Loden (Rhona Brody) is a rather hefty girl tricked into entering a beauty contest by the evil Muffy (Kathryn Mensik). In an attempt to drive Phyllis out of the contest, pageant director Betty Prunish (Jim Boggess in drag) orders Muffy and her friends to make Phyllis’ life a living hell. After Loden’s cat suffers death by microwave in a prank gone wrong, Phyllis swears revenge against everyone connected to the pageant.
Camp Motion Pictures tries to sell Beauty Queen Butcher as a cross between Carrie and Prom Night and promises the film “rips a bloody page from the book of high school horror.” It’s easy to trust Camp’s false claims because the other entries in their Retro 80s Horror Collection are absolute gore fests. Camp should have said “bloodless” instead of bloody. The only thing “shocking” about Beauty Queen Butcher is the film is one of the tamest slashers ever made. It would have struggled to earn a PG-13 if it had been released back in 1991. See that scary goth chick holding the ax on the dvd cover? Well, she ain’t in the film and nobody gets hit with an ax. The only thing that gets butchered during this film is the viewer’s brain cells.
Director Jill Zurborg and co-writer Shane Partlow handle Beauty Queen Butcher as a campy parody of the slasher genre rather than an out right slasher film. Sometimes the jokes work, the nerdy Cameron (Steve Kollin) steals every scene he’s in and the misadventures of a female report covering the murders are pretty funny. Other bits will make you want to claw out your eyes and shove sharpened pencils into your ears. Rhona Brody keeps flashing her panties in one stomach churning running gag. The talent portion of the beauty pageant features a young lady who’s singing voice sounds like a cat being strangled with piano wire and another contestant murders a musical instrument. She blows, fellas, but not in a good way.
There are two major factors keeping Beauty Queen Butcher from being a so-bad-it’s-good entry in the S.O.V. slasher sub-genre. First, there are too many subplots that bog down the story and cause the film to move at a snail’s pace. At 130 minutes, the film is just too long and slow to keep the viewer’s interest. Second, Phyllis Loden is an unsympathetic character. Scenes of Phyllis eating tubs of ice cream and bags of chips or smearing bile colored eyeshadow across her face make Loden look like a slob instead of an underdog.
Fans of S.O.V. slashers will get the most enjoyment from a viewing of Beauty Queen Butcher but the average slasher fan will find the film damn near unwatchable when the pace really slows down. The picture quality of Beauty Queen Butcher is amazingly clear and crisp considering the age of the film. You can actually see Jim Boggess’ five o’clock shadow creep in during his scenes as Betty Prunish. The only extra, other than trailers for Camp Motion Pictures other releases, is a grainy home video shot during the making of Beauty Queen Butcher. The home video ends with a teaser for Beauty Queen Butcher 2.
The layoffs have started at The WeinsteinCompany just one week after Rob Zombie’s Halloween II finished a disappointing third at the box-office. TWC, once a major player in Hollywood, had pinned its survival on the box-office performance of Halloween II. The films pulled from release so TWC could safe enough money to promote Inglourious Basterds and H2 are now in limbo until the Weinsteins find another bunch of suckers to lend them money. Even if TWC scraped up enough cash to release the films they’re sitting on there is little chance of them having a box-office hit.
So what does this mean for slasher fans? Don’t expect to see Halloween 3D or a new Scream at your local cineplex anytime soon. I don’t care what the press release says, I doubt TWC will be around long enough to rush H3D into production. Me thinks the announcement of a new installment was really just a ploy, a sort of weak attempt by TWC to make things appear as if everything is just fine after they saw the box-office returns.
Go to www.deadline.com/hollywood/unhappy-halloween-weinstein-co-layoffs/ to read the more about TWC’s troubles and Hollywood’s reaction.
Horror fiction writers were slow to take up the slasher mantle back in the early 80’s even though celluloid stalkers were carving up hefty profits at the box-office. Anyone scanning paperback racks at the corner market were more likely to find novels about demon possessed houses, Stephen King rip-offs featuring evil little kids with psychic powers, or past-life-ghostly-romance crap. Slasher fans could get a quick fix from the occasional Halloween or Friday the 13th novelization but the market was painfully barren when it came to new slasher material. Finally, in 1983, slasher fans received a gore drenched gift when Pinnacle Books published Stephen Crye’s Joyride.
Nine teenagers venture into All Saints Hill Cemetery one evening in search of a quiet place to get drunk, stoned, and naked. Watching from a tool shed is Cleats, the hideously scarred caretaker who thinks the cars contain his tormentors from six years ago. Cleats locks the gates, gathers his tools, and goes hunting. Any poor soul straying too far from the party runs into the wrong end of a sickle, chainsaw, pick-axe, or ice pick. A subplot set in 1974 follows the life of Robert Atchison as he fights with his abusive father, falls in love with the most beautiful girl in school, and suffers a terrible tragedy that changes him from a dreamer into a monster.
Stephen Crye writes like a man who knows the rules of a slasher and then tweaks a few things to keep the reader off balance. Crye sets up one of the female characters as a very obvious Final Girl then turns her into the first victim. After that first kill the reader knows anyone could be next. While most of the characters are written as rather generic slasher victims, Crye’s monster has much more back story and depth than the average mad slasher. Cleats could have easily been written as a Jason clone but reading about his life before his face was blown off during a prank gone wrong makes him much more sympathetic.
The real highlights of Joyride are the extremely gory murders. Crye handles the deaths with ghoulish glee and never backs away from the descriptions. Severed limbs twitch, decapitated heads roll and fly through the air, and arterial spray stains anything in its path crimson. The most stunning image, which was also used for the front cover of the novel, is a gore splattered statue of Mary holding baby Jesus in one arm and nestling a decapitated head in the other.
At 248 pages, Joyride is a fast, thrilling read and captures the feel of the slasher genre during its golden age. As for the author, Stephen Crye remains an enigma. Joyride appears to be his only novel and no other information could be found about Crye while researching the book for this review. One can guess Crye is a fan or at least watched a few slasher films back in the day as subtle elements from Hell Night, The Burning, and The Prowler can be found in Joyride. Next time you’re in a used book store or walking through a flea market check around for a copy. Joyride is a grizzly goodtime for folks who enjoy moist slashers.
Right this moment a major debate is taking place in the United States. Will you see Halloween II or The Final Destination this weekend? I say to hell with the debate, go see both films. Here’s how the Retro Slashers Trifecta weekend works. Go see Halloween II and The Final Destination. After you’ve seen both films leave your thoughts and comments here at Retro Slashers. Do they both suck? Do they kick major ass? How was the crowd reaction? Let us know what you enjoyed or hated.
This is a big weekend for genre fans, I don’t think two major horror fans have been released on the same Friday since the early 1980s. Both films will be facing strong competition from holdovers so horror fans need to turn out in a big way. I’m a Halloween fan, so I’ll be seeing that first. But I expect The Final Destination to have the bigger box-office due to the ad blitz during prime time hours on every major network. Halloween II ads only appear during commercials on wrestling shows, UFC bouts, and the Sy Fy channel.
So get out there this weekend and enjoy large quantities of murder, mayhem, and mass destruction.
Talk about finding a diamond among a bunch of worthless rocks. I first saw Seth Grahame-Smith’s excellent book on a new release table sandwiched between mountains of Oprah’s latest Book of the Month and literary dreck that folks buy but never read. The cover, featuring a bloody gash through the title, is definitely an eye-catcher. I had no intention of buying the book when I first picked it up and started scanning pages at random. When I read the title of chapter 2, Slasher Survival School, I knew it was time to reach for my wallet and head towards the registers.
Grahame-Smith’s narrator has seen all of the evils lurking in the night and lived long enough to write a survival guide to help other poor souls who suddenly find themselves trapped in a horror film. The book is broken up into six chapters: Welcome to the Terrorverse, Slasher Survival School, Inanimate Evil, Crypt-ography, Fangs of Fury, and The Satanic Verses. With each chapter, the narrator breaks down a different element of the horror genre. He provides helpful hints as to which people, places, and animals one should avoid depending on the situation. Thinking of having a seance in a house with a murderous reputation or visiting any town with Amity in the title? Read this book first and you’ll know why that’s a bad idea.
All of the chapters are written with a sharp, sardonic wit but it’s Chapter 2 that will draw in RetroSlasher fans. The five main groups of slashers to watch out for are the strong, silent types, gamesman, half-retarded hillbillies, wisecrackers, and mamma’s boy. Other sections in the chapter offer advice on selecting only the best weapons found in a tool shed and ways to convince the cops that a crazy slasher really is taking out the teen population. The biggest gut-busting laughs are found in the sections dealing with the horrors of camp and misadventures in babysitting.
The book ends with an appendix that lists and briefly describes a number of horror films that are required viewing for anyone trying to survive until the final credits. Grahame-Smith gets bonus points for including Black Christmas, The Burning, Last House on the Left, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Sleepaway Camp, and Slumber Party Massacre on the list. Seeing those movies listed lets the reader know the author is a real slasher fan, not just some turkey grabbing random titles off the shelf at Blockbuster. It’s nice to see these lesser known titles (lesser known to the general public, that is) getting some positive press alongside Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
How to Survive a Horror Movie is a damn funny book but it also serves as a damn fine example of horror film criticism done right. Seth Grahame-Smith explores all of the horror cliches that we know and love but in a way that doesn’t insult the films. The writing never disparages the reader for loving characters that always find themselves on the wrong side of a bloodbath because, as a fan, Grahame-Smith also loves these elements in horror movies. The $14.95 cover price won’t completely drain your bank account like some other horror movie books (yes, I’m talking about you Crystal Lake Memories and Going to Pieces). Wes Craven provides a forward and Nathan Fox supplies plenty of gory artwork. Best of all, Graham-Smith’s survival tips can prove valuable in everyday life. The “empty a clip through the door” if there’s an unexpected knock has saved my life several times. True, I have taken out two Mormons, three postal workers, and a whole cub scout troop collecting canned food for the homeless. But, hey, better to be safe than sorry.
***WARNING***NOT WORK FRIENDLY***
Michelle Bauer is my favorite scream queen. When Bauer retired in 1995 several publications marked the event with special issues and goodies for die hard fans. These images are from an autographed card set released by Scream Queens Illustrated.
