NETFLIX AND KILL: DEATH NOTE (2017) **

Nat Wolff stars as a dorky high school kid who finds a magic notebook.  The evil guardian of the book (Willem Dafoe) tells him if you write someone’s name it, they’ll instantly die in the way you described.  At first, he and his girlfriend (Margaret Qualley) try to use it for good by killing criminals under the guise of an avenging angel named Kira.  His detective father (Shea Whigham) is quickly put on the case and joins forces with an unconventional profiler (Lakeith Stanfield) to bring him down. 

Wolff is pretty in the good lead.  I liked the fact that even though he had a book that possessed evil powers, he still screams like a girl whenever he’s in danger.  He has a likeable chemistry with Qualley, who looks a little like a young Eva Green, and they make some of the film’s more tedious sections tolerable just because they are fun to watch.  Willem Dafoe basically plays The Green Goblin again, but dressed up as a porcupine man cosplaying as the Joker.  Whigham has some good moments as Wolff’s father, but Stanfield’s character is annoying.  I’m sure he’s a talented performer in other films; it’s just that his character’s eccentric behavior gets on your nerves almost instantly. 

Death Note was based on a manga, which is probably why it pretty much makes no sense.  I mean, the book just drops out of the sky and Wolff picks it up.  That’s your opening scene!  I guess this was one of those deals where I had to read a comic book prequel or watch an anime short beforehand to figure out what was going on.   

Some of the death scenes have a Final Destination quality about them.  Most of the kills are weak though.  I guess it’s novel that the characters used the book’s power on a global scale instead of just using it to get back at bullies, but the approach is just too clunky and the book's endless list of “rules” gets irritating almost from the get-go.

NETFLIX AND KILL: 1922 (2017) ***

Thomas Jane has a pretty good track record when it comes to Stephen King adaptations.  I happen to think Dreamcatcher is a bug-nuts minor classic and The Mist has one of the best horror movie endings of all time.  I’m happy to report that 1922 is another winner from King and Jane. 

Jane stars as a proud farmer whose wife (Molly Parker) wants to sell off her family’s farmland.  Jane won’t hear of it.  Farming is in his blood and he doesn’t want to give the land up.  Besides, it’s all he knows.  She’s headstrong though and won’t budge.  He soon begins plotting with his son (Dylan Schmid) to bump her off in order to preserve their way of life. 

Screenwriter/director Zak Hilditch does a good job of painting the characters in short, economical strokes.  They are desperate and conniving people driven by greed and the way they lie and corrupt to get what they want evokes the work of Jim Thompson.  Hilditch’s use of dark colors and placement of shadows in the early going is more Film Noir than horror movie.  Farm Noir, if you will. 

The second act is when the horror elements start coming into play.  There’s even a subplot about killer rats that may or may not be a reincarnation of Parker’s vengeful spirit.  The sounds of the rats running, screeching, and scratching behind the walls are quite effective.  Anyone who’s ever had a rodent problem can feel some empathy for Jane’s plight.  (Well, with his rat problem, that is.)   

The Farm Noir first half was a tad more successful for me than the stuff with the killer rats.  Both portions of the film have their moments of quiet eeriness though.  It’s just when I think back to the movie, it’ll be the early scenes of Jane manipulating his son that I’ll remember.  Some of the detours 1922 takes in the second act (like Schmid’s evolution into a ruthless bank robber) are a bit unnecessary too, and it probably runs on a good ten minutes longer than it needed to.   

If anything, 1922 is a reminder of how great Jane can really be.  With his steel-eyed stare and speaking out of clenched teeth with a thick country drawl, he does some of his finest character work of his entire career.  Heck, he even makes you feel a little sympathy for him, which considering what a cold-hearted bastard he is in the movie, isn’t an easy feat.

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.