LEATHERFACE (2017) ** ½

Remember Mary Harron’s wonderful indie cult classic I Shot Andy Warhol?  Remember Lili Taylor’s mesmerizing performance as the man-hating, SCUM Manifesto-writing, Andy Warhol-shooting Valerie Solanas?  Remember Stephen Dorff’s heartbreaking turn as the enigmatic transgender superstar Candy Darling?  They were so terrific together that I have spent the last 21 years wondering what it would take to team up those two titans of indie cinema again. 

As it turns out all it took was… Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 8?!?!   

What’s odd about Leatherface is that it’s the second film in the Texas Chainsaw series to be called Leatherface (after Leatherface, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3).  Last time I remember something like that happening was when the fourth Rambo movie came out and they called it Rambo, just like Rambo:  First Blood Part 2.  This also happens to be the second prequel in the series.  In fact, two out of the last three installments have been origin tales if you can believe it.   

Not that a die-hard TCM fans (that’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre fans, not Turner Classic Movie fans) would complain as long as it delivered on the gore.  Oh boy, it sure does.  There’s plenty of red stuff and squishy body parts to go around.  I just wish it felt more like an honest-to-God Chainsaw movie. 

You can’t blame directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (the team that did the amazing Inside) for trying something new.  Even though this is yet another prequel, it focuses more on how Leatherface became Leatherface rather than the usual sawing and slashing.  That means if you came looking for the usual Chainsaw thrills, you might be a tad disappointed.  With the exception of the opening birthday party scene and the last five minutes or so, this prequel is skimpy when it comes to sawing.  There is not a single meat hook in sight.  Sigh. 

This entry is more of a pastiche of other movies than a logical expansion of the Chainsaw series.  I probably missed some of the references, but there were scenes that copied/stole from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Natural Born Killers, Necromantik, Of Mice and Men (yes, Of Mice and Men), The Revenant, and Hannibal.  Okay, so maybe Bustillo and Maury weren’t trying for something new after all. 

The plot is all over the place.  Dorff plays a sheriff whose daughter is killed by the infamous Sawyer clan.  He doesn’t have any proof that will hold up in court, but he makes sure that the demented matriarch (Taylor) will feel his wrath when he sends her kids to child protective services.  Years later, Ms. Sawyer turns up at the nuthouse where her younglings are stashed and instigates a massive riot, which allows her kids to escape.  While the kids try to make their way home, the sheriff sets out to make their life a living hell. 

So, as you can see, it doesn’t really sound like any Chainsaw movie you or I ever saw (no pun intended).  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not bad.  Dorff in particular is excellent.  There’s just a couple of goofy plot devices (like trying to make Leatherface’s true identity a mystery throughout the picture, which doesn’t work at all) and lame stalling tactics that get in the way of the fun.  Still, it’s almost worth watching just for the gore alone.  It’s just that when you hear the Inside guys are directing a TCM flick, you have a certain amount of expectations.  I can’t say those expectations were met, but I can say that this is the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel AND the best Texas Chainsaw film that has the word Leatherface in the title, so that in itself is a minor victory. 

THE LADIES CLUB (1986) ** ½

Karen Austin stars as a cop who is raped in her own home by a gang of thugs.  After her attackers get off scot free, she receives an outpouring of mail from rape survivors.  She decides to form a club with her doctor and invites the women into her home to talk about their experiences.  Before long, they decide to stop talking and do something about it.  Together, they go out at night targeting, drugging, and castrating known rapists. 

The Ladies Club is a solid exploitation picture that fuses revenge fantasy with social commentary.  It’s not always successful on either score, but you have to give it points for trying.  Things get off to a fine start though and the scenes of the women picking up rapists in bars and dropping them off to the doctor for low-rent castrations are often quite funny.  Despite that, it’s not nearly as nasty or as exploitative as it could have been.  In fact, given the subject matter, it’s ultimately kind of toothless.  With a few edits here and there, it could’ve easily played on Lifetime.  The ending is a bit pat too.   

The supporting cast is solid.  Diana Scarwid does a fine job as one of the ladies and Arliss Howard is pretty good as her concerned husband.  It’s Nicholas Worth who is the most memorable as a scumbag rapist who justly gets what’s coming to him. 

AKA:  The Violated.  AKA:  The Sisterhood.

NETFLIX AND KILL: EXTRAORDINARY TALES (2015) **

Director Raoul Garcia did a nifty feat in adapting five Edgar Allan Poe stories into animation form.  Many of the stories have been done to death, so the animation is a novel way to keep them feeling fresh.  He was also able to get a couple of genre all-stars to narrate the tales, some of them from beyond the grave.  While the results are uneven at best, it’s no worse than most anthology horror films. 

In The Wraparound Story (**), Edgar Allan Poe is reincarnated as a raven.  He flies to a graveyard to brood in solitude, but winds up conversing with the statue of Death.  These sequences are slight to say the least, and they don’t really make much of an impression.  They’re really nothing more than padding to get you from one story to the other. 

The Fall of the House of Usher (** ½), narrated by Christopher Lee, recounts the familiar tale of Roderick Usher.  The animation is well done, but the highpoint is easily Lee’s vocal performance.  The gravitas his voice lends to the proceedings is immeasurable and makes up for the skimpy story. 

The Tell-Tale Heart (***), narrated by Bela Lugosi, is about a guy who kills an old man and buries the body in the floorboards.  The cops arrive on scene and the sound of the dead man’s beating heart drives the murderer insane.  The abstract black and white animation in this segment is reminiscent of Sin City.  The narration by Lugosi is wonderful too.  While the recording itself is creaky and scratchy, it adds to the overall atmosphere.  Again, the story is a bit too short to get the full effect, but it’s worth it just for Lugosi. 

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (** ½) is narrated by the Warlock himself, Julian Sands.  It’s about a doctor who mesmerizes his dying friend.  This one has an old school E.C. Comics vibe to it that is a lot of fun.  As with the other tales, it is slight, and suffers from a long-winded set-up, but it isn’t bad. 

The next tale is The Pit and the Pendulum (**) and it was narrated by Guillermo del Toro.  A condemned man awaits his sentencing from the Inquisition.  The animation is a bit more polished than in previous stories, but it lacks the cool sheen of The Tell-Tale Heart.  The story is slow moving, the pacing dawdles, and the ending is a bit of a letdown.  Del Toro’s narration leaves something to be desired too. 

The Masque of the Red Death (**) is the final tale.  Although it contains no narration, it does feature dialogue that is recited by Roger Corman, who of course, directed the original film.  Corman’s involvement is welcome, but honestly, his version was a lot better.  I did enjoy the animation though as it looks like a water-color Disney movie.  While the animation is vibrant and abstract, the story itself a bit slow moving.  It doesn’t really pick up until the Red Death shows up, and even then, it’s too little, too late.

NETFLIX AND KILL: TALES OF HALLOWEEN (2015) ** ½

Tales of Halloween gives us ten intertwined All Hallows Eve-themed horror stories.  It’s similar to the superior Trick R’ Treat in that characters from other stories turn up in different stories.  Adrienne Barbeau acts as our host, trading in on her role in The Fog as the silky-voiced radio DJ narrator.  There are also a lot of cameos by horror directors sprinkled about, which add to the fun. 

The first story is Sweet Tooth (***).  A babysitter and her boyfriend frighten a young boy by telling him about the local legend “Sweet Tooth”.  It seems the kid found his parents eating all his candy on Halloween night and killed them in a fit of rage.  After the boy goes to bed, the babysitter and her boyfriend eat all his candy and Sweet Tooth comes after them.   

This segment has a great hook.  The camerawork is a lot like John Carpenter and there are a lot of nods to his work.  The gore is also pretty sweet (no pun intended), but it’s a shame the monster looks so damned rubbery. 

The Night Billy Raised Hell (**) was directed by Darren Lynn (Saw 2-4) Bousman and it’s about a boy who is dared to egg the house of a neighbor who never celebrates Halloween.  The neighbor (Barry Bostwick), who wears a top hat to conceal his horns, catches him and makes him go around town playing increasingly mean-spirited pranks.  Eventually the duo takes to robbing trick or treaters at gunpoint for their candy. 

This segment has a good set-up.  Unfortunately, once we meet the neighbor, it all goes out the window.  I like Bostwick and all, but his performance is way too hammy.  I could’ve also done without all the annoying and unfunny comedic sound effects too.  At least we get a cameo by the ever-sexy Adrianne Curry playing herself. 

Trick (***) by Adam (The Toolbox Murders remake) Gierasch stars B-movie favorites Tiffany Shepis and Trent Haaga.  Four friends watch Night of the Living Dead while getting wasted and handing out candy.  One trick or treater comes to the door and stabs Haaga.  While his friends try to figure out what to do, they are picked off one by one by knife-wielding kids in costumes. 

After a silly second episode, this one gets the job done.  It’s simple, but effective and Gierasch does a good job at making the unlikely premise scary.  The rat poison death is particularly gruesome.   

The Weak and the Wicked (** ½) is from Paul Solet, the director of Grace.  A young man wants to get revenge on the street punks who burned his family alive.  In order to do so, he must ask for help from an unlikely source. 

Like Trick, this one is simple.  Perhaps a little too simple.  As with the first episode it suffers from a weak monster, but I did enjoy the performances by the cartoony killer street gang. 

Grim Grinning Ghost (** ½) is up next.  Lin Shaye tells a ghost story at a party about an evil spirit that kills you if you turn around.  Naturally, her daughter encounters the same ghost on her way home. 

The scene of Lin Shaye telling the story is effective, mostly because it’s always fun to watch her ham it up.  The rest of the tale is competently done.  However, the ending is way too abrupt to make much of an impact. 

Ding Dong (**) by Lucky (May) McKee is a bit of a disappointment.  A couple who lost their child the previous Halloween decide to go all out with scaring kids that come to the front door.  In doing so, they try to hash out their marital problems. 

Ding Dong benefits from the bravura performance by Polyanna MacIntosh, who plays the wicked domineering wife.  I’m not sure what all the shots of her painted red and leering at the camera were all about, but she at least looks great.  The Hansel and Gretel theme that runs throughout this story never really works though.  That’s mostly because the narrative is so fractured and borderline incomprehensible.   

This Means War (***) finds two neighbors (Dana Gould and James Duval) trying to outdo each other with their Halloween decorations.  When it becomes clear that neither man will back down, they set out to destroy each other’s decorations.  It all ends in an all-out street fight between the two. 

This segment plays like a Halloween variation on Deck the Halls.  It isn’t scary at all, but it’s a welcome breath of fresh air after the disjointed Ding Dong.  Gould and Duval are well cast as the warring neighbors and both men get their moments to shine.   

Friday the 31^st (****) by Mike Mendez is by far the best story of the lot.  A girl in a Dorothy costume is pursued by a masked killer.  After he murders her with spear, he is visited by a trick or treating alien.  When the killer doesn’t have a treat to give, the alien possesses Dorothy to get a trick. 

This one is a clever mash-up of slasher movie and alien invasion.  Mendez does the slasher thing beautifully.  I can see him directing a bona fide Jason movie down the road.  The alien is really cool too and is done through old school stop-motion animation.  The ending is a hoot.  Think Evil Dead Meets Monty Python.  If only the other stories were this much fun. 

The Ransom of Rusty Rex (** ½) by Ryan (Abominable) Schifrin is about a pair of kidnappers who hold a millionaire’s son for ransom.  They quickly realize he’s not exactly human.  Even worse, he’s HUNGRY.   

The twist ending of this one was fairly obvious from the get-go.  However, Schifrin goes through the motions in a competent fashion.  There’s more comedy than horror here, and while it’s not entirely successful, it’s a decent enough story. 

Things end of a positive note with Bad Seed (***), directed by Neil (Doomsday) Marshall.  It’s all about a killer Jack O’ Lantern.  After it bites the head off the guy who carved it, the pumpkin goes on a rampage. 

Bad Seed has a winning sense of humor about it.  (I particularly liked the scene with the police sketch artist.)  It also does a nice job of tying all the previous stories together.  Marshall films the pumpkin attacks with panache too.  It’s just a shame they couldn’t come up with a satisfying ending.

NETFLIX AND KILL: HOLIDAYS (2016) ** ½

Usually horror anthologies are wildly inconsistent endeavors.  Most times you have to sit through two or three clunky stories to get to a fun and/or memorable segment.  Holidays is different from the rest in that nearly all the stories are about as good (well, goodish) as the one that preceded it.  The stories themselves also feature a lot of the same faults (mostly crummy endings), but it’s still worth a look for fans of the subgenre. 

The first story, Valentine’s Day (** ½) was directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team who did Starry Eyes.  It’s about a bullied teenage girl who has a crush on her swim coach.  After she is pushed off the diving board by one of her tormentors, she sets out to get revenge. 

This tale has a distinct Carrie vibe to it.  (One of the girls even wears the same hat that P.J. Soles wore in Carrie.)  The strong set-up that succinctly establishes the heroine’s bullying is undermined by the rushed and unsatisfying finale.  Some of the fantasy sequences are a bit too tongue in cheek too, which makes for an inconsistent tone. 

St. Patrick’s Day (** ½), directed by Gary (Dracula Untold) Shore, is about an elementary school teacher with a problem student.  She tries to teach the class about the origins of St. Patrick’s Day and is soon plagued by visions of snakes.  Eventually, she learns she’s pregnant with a demonic snake baby. 

This segment has a real fever dream type of quality.  Shore tosses in everything from bizarre visions, to Wicker Man-inspired scenes of pagan rituals, to a disgusting birthing scene.  None of it quite sticks, but it gets points for sheer weirdness alone.   

Easter (** ½) is about a little girl who’s confused with the whole Easter Bunny/Jesus connection.  (“It’s kind of like a scary version of E.T.!”)  That night, she’s visited by a bizarre amalgam of Jesus and the Easter Bunny who wants her to join his ranks. 

Easter features some very odd imagery (like chicks hatching from Bunny Christ’s wounds) and a weird looking creature.  Like the other stories, it’s more about setting an off-kilter mood than telling a straight story.  Like Valentine’s Day, it ends much too abruptly to be satisfying though. 

Mother’s Day (** ½) revolves around a woman who habitually terminates her pregnancies.  Her doctor sends her to a remote hippie clinic in the desert ran exclusively by women.  There, they perform an ancient rite on her and hold her prisoner so that she can give birth to… something. 

The naked hippie rituals and freak-out sequences are the best part about this story.  Like St. Patrick’s Day, it revolves around pregnancies and strange visions.  It ends with an effective exclamation mark, but the journey to that moment is uneven to say the least. 

Father’s Day (** ½) focuses on a young woman who’s still reeling from the disappearance of her father.  On Father’s Day, an old tape of her father’s voice winds up on her doorstep.  She then goes off looking for him to uncover the reason for his sudden disappearance.   

This segment starts off with a great hook.  It also contains a suspenseful sequence where our heroine listens to the tape in her Walkman in order to retrace her father’s footprints.  The ominous build-up is all for naught though thanks to the abrupt and frustrating ending. 

Halloween (**) was directed by none other than Kevin (Clerks) Smith.  An asshole runs his webcam service and verbally berates the girls who works for him.  When he tries to rape one of the girls, they knock him out and start up a new cam show with him as the star. 

As is the case with Smith’s other horror work, Halloween begins like his typical foul-mouthed slacker comedies before turning dark and disturbing.  While the punchline is messed up, it’s more of a torture porn movie than the weirdo shit the other stories offer.  It might be the worst story of the lot, but it still has at least one clever edit. 

Christmas (** ½), directed by Scott (Priest) Stewart, stars Seth Green as a father waiting till the last minute to buy a VR gadget for his kid.  The customer ahead of him takes the last one and has a heart attack before he can get it to his car.  Instead of calling for help, Green takes the headset and runs.  When he tries to use the VR glasses on Christmas morning, he sees horrifying visions. 

This one has a great set-up and a good performance by Green.  Like so many other stories in the anthology, it falls apart in the homestretch.  You think it’s going to lead up to a confrontation with Green and the dead man, but things take an abrupt 180 near the end and the resulting twist is more of a head-scratcher than a mind-blower. 

New Year’s (***) stars Lorenza (The Green Inferno) Izzo as a lonely woman who goes on an internet date on New Year’s Eve.  The guy she picks up turns out to be a psycho killer.  Unfortunately for him, she turns out to be even crazier. 

Holidays concludes on a high note.  This tale is simple, straightforward, and effective.  Sure, the twist ending is predictable, but the big reveal is done in an entertaining manner.  Izzo’s performance is enormously appealing too, and her wide-eyed glee makes this final story breezy fun.

GLOW: THE STORY OF THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING (2012) ****

I wanted to love the Netflix show GLOW, but I ultimately found it to be an uneven experience.  While it got better as it went along, a lot of the drama felt forced and sitcom-y, especially early on.  Luckily, Marc Maron was terrific as the schlock moviemaker-turned-wrestling director who was loosely based on Matt Cimber, and his performance alone made it worthwhile. 

As a fan of the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, I wondered how closely the show would hew to what really happened.  Not very close as it turns out.  If you enjoyed the Netflix show and/or was a fan of the GLOW wrestling show in the ‘80s, you owe it to yourself to check this documentary out.  Not only will it give you a better picture about how the show came together, it will also pull at your heartstrings, something the Netflix show had a hard time doing.  It is simply one of the best wrestling documentaries ever made. 

GLOW:  The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling shows how everything really went down.  From the show’s humble origins, to the casting, to the rehearsals, and finally to being filmed at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.  We also learn how the show suddenly disappeared (at the height of its popularity, no less) and the fates of the female wrestlers who were left in the lurch. 

The footage from the old show is priceless.  The scenes of the girls rapping are especially memorable.  The new interviews with the ladies is genuinely moving too, particularly the scenes with fan favorite Mt. Fuji.  She proves to be just as charming and sweet as ever, even while confined to a nursing home bed.  The scene where all the ladies are reunited for the first time in nearly thirty years is guaranteed to leave you misty eyed.  

Unfortunately, Cimber declined to participate in any of the interviews.  We do see him at the reunion, mingling with the ladies, and bringing cheer to Mt. Fuji.  He probably deserves his own documentary somewhere down the line.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) ** ½

I’ve never been a big Blade Runner fan.  I think the last time I saw it was when the Director’s Cut came out.  I didn’t think that was necessarily an improvement.  (Did we really need that unicorn bullshit?)  Heck, I never even bothered with the “Final” version.  Still, I went in with high hopes for this belated sequel, mostly because I’m slowly becoming a Ryan Gosling fan (thanks to The Nice Guys).   

I was a little miffed that Ridley Scott wasn’t at the helm.  Not really because he directed the original, but because I loved his bonkers Alien:  Covenant (which was mostly ignored by critics and the moviegoing public).  Instead, we got Denis Villeneuve.  He did his best to take what Scott did right and add his own voice to it, although the results are decidedly mixed. 

One thing I can say for the movie is that it echoes Blade Runner well enough.  Like its predecessor, it’s an elegant film filled with beautiful visuals.  It’s also a superficial and empty exercise in style.  All the gorgeous cinematography in the world can’t hide the fact there isn't much of a story here. The plot is overly simple and is stretched out to a nearly three-hour running time.  I can’t honestly imagine why they waited thirty-five years to tell this particular story as it is thin at best. 

The central mystery isn’t that hard to figure out either.  (SPOILERS from here on out.)  I mean they wouldn’t make Ryan Gosling Deckard’s son because that would be too easy, right?  So that only leaves one other age-appropriate person in the cast.  I’m not even sure I understood what the big deal was over her either.  I mean the woman’s very existence is supposed to “break the world”, but since she spends all of her time in a germ-free environment like John Travolta in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, she doesn’t seem like she poses much of a threat to anyone.  I mean she could easily catch a cold and die if she ever came close to another person, so she seems like she’d be easy to eliminate. 

The subplot with Gosling’s girlfriend (Ana de Armas) is likewise overly obvious.  His lady friend is nothing more than a hologram version of an Alexa device, which I guess is supposed to be some sort of social commentary on our everyday reliance on computers, but it was all done much better in Her.  Oh, and you can pretty much guess his girlfriend’s fate from the get-go too. 

The finale is also a bit of a letdown.  I dug Gosling’s fight with the replicant badass (Sylvia Hoeks), until I realized that’s pretty much the end of the movie.  She’s not terrible or anything, but she’s definitely lacking the presence of Rutger Hauer.  Likewise, Jared Leto’s villainous character was well-acted, yet not very menacing.  Also, it sucked that there was no big showdown between Leto and Ford and/or Gosling either.  Bummer. 

The performances are fine.  I liked Gosling a lot and Dave Bautista is so good you’ll wish he had more than one goddamn scene.  (Seriously, if anyone could’ve taken the main baddie role, it should’ve been him.)  Ford does a decent job too, even if he seems to be playing… well… Harrison Ford instead of Rick Deckard. 

Still, it’s all nice to look at.  Roger A. Deakins’ cinematography is stellar.  Visually, there are several sequences that are arresting.  However, like the original, it's an ultimately hollow (not to mention a tad boring) experience.