Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)

 

Director: Richard Ayoade

Screenplay: Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness

Cast: Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi/Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D; Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner/Thornton Reed; Matt Berry as Todd Rivers/Dr. Lucien Sanchez; Alice Lowe as Madeleine Wool/Dr. Liz Asher

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Series)/ An Abstract Candidate

 

I have never exploded. But I know what it would be like. Don't ask me how. I just know.

Garth Marenghi - author, visionary, dream weaver - is a prolific horror author, and in the eighties, he worked on a TV series which was never broadcast except for in Peru. That was until Channel 4 in 2004, desperate for content, asked him to resurrect the project, with new interviews with cast members who have not disappeared in the decades after. Breaking kayfabe, with the premise even sustained with the DVD released, is that Matthew Holness created Garth Marenghi originally in 2000, as part of a Richard Ayoade co-written horror parody stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Brought to this series, he is a parody of the likes of Stephen King, who had his real Marenghi moment when he directed Maximum Overdrive (1986), and also the likes of Dean Koontz or James Herbert¹, fellow prolific horror authors. Marenghi is an egotist, a sexist, and has an episode of these six where he exposes his racism against the Scottish, the definition of a man with his head up his arse, thinking of himself as the messiah of horror who can even have profound insights to help humanity but is a tawdry author of terrible ideas and dialogue.

Darkplace itself is a disaster in terms of wooden acting, cheesy props and using slow motion to pad out episodes. A meta-textual work, the actual show is Marenghi directing himself and starring in the main role, as the former warlock Dr. Rick Dagless M.D at Darkplace Hospital, who with side characters encounter increasingly weird and horrifying events. Marenghi in the series-within-the-series was allowed to shoot interviews, mainly with his publisher Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade) who starred as Darkplace Hospital's administrator Thornton Reed too, and later on Todd Rivers (Matt Berry), an actor on the show that visibly became the stereotype of the older star reduced to drinking a lot. When I first saw Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I found it disappointing after all the build up. The episodes came off as slightly amusing but average altogether as I marathoned the entire series. A lot of the humour is the absurdity and ridiculousness of this set up, both Marenghi's ego, and the pastiche of a badly made horror series where he let his ego run wild, where he is shown as always cool and virtuous to the children in the wards, sexier than even Todd Rivers' heartthrob character, and always right. This time, I appreciated the show on its own terms, when the first scene introduces female lead Dr. Liz Asher (as played by Alice Lowe), who when starting at Darkplace Hospital is introduced to a cat, visibly placed on the hospital set by hands, telling her to "just leave!" in a dubbed over voice.

The show's structure could be a paradoxical one to work with; to create a technically awful programme could lead to making a dreadful show because it is too accurate to the dreariest of this type of programming. My initial issues with the show was that it was too deliberately broad, which leads to an ironic tone I found tedious at the time, growing when this became more common as a form of parody and becoming unbareable at the time onwards for a good few decades in cinema and television. With hindsight, I was too harsh on this, now that common trait has not become as prevalent. Though a version of this which fully depicted some of the strange programming coming from the likes of the BBC to ITV from the eighties would have been just as interesting for me, I just have remind myself I have seen some ridiculous special effects and incidents even in that type of programming which has won me over for their sincerely good parts. Then there are things, admittedly not a Dr. Who viewer but aware of this and seeing it with my own eyes, where you can have Bertie Bassett, the mascot of a British confectionary company, terrorised Dr. Who actor Sylvester McCoy in his sci-fi candy lab² and think that is the kind of insane moment you could have had in a hypothetical second series of Darkplace, if on a deliberately lower budget, and not bat an eye in standing out as too weird.

The central joke is established around how Garth Marenghi is clueless to how bad he is, and the six episodes we get are entirely focused on this, the first episode contrasting the madness of a man exploding into tiny pieces but Dagless still asking if he is all right afterwards. There are the scenes hastily put in to show Thornton Reed with a shotgun out-of-nowhere, in an entirely different field, when this man, the result of having tried practicing a demonic ritual with Dagless in the lunch hall, refuses to stay in his casket at the funeral, or how Reed himself is so wooden, to the point they have to shoot his scenes usually by himself even in two person conversations. A lot of my growing warmth to the series came from that initial negative reaction, developing a fondness for the production as time went on to its goofy tone as I thought about the series for a good few years, suddenly growing into a person who got the humour entirely. A lot of this is in mind that this is not trying in the premise to be a pitch-perfect parody of this type of television horror, which was the issue initially, but that this is exaggerated around Garth Marenghi's qualities as a creator being central to the joke. The one exception is where the final episode feels like Nigel Kneale's Quatermass mini-series if someone turned into alien broccoli rather than a blob. Instead, it is a very broad mash-up of medical soap opera and horror story where people being attacked by floating staplers, on noticeable strings, as in the second episode are so bad on purpose. The barebones nature of most of the episodes means you cannot really have a plot trajectory, so the humour has to come from the silliness. Also the interviews as integral to this punch line where the actors we have show their bad or misguided sides, such as how the cat somehow died on set or how two technicians died on the Scottish Mist episode, or how Dean Learner even hit a child for criticising how bad his dialogue is.

Cast wise, it is mainly the core four members who dominate the series barring a few surprise cameos, like Stephen Merchant or Julian Barratt as the hospital priest, emphasising that even before his role in Peter Strickland's bizarre horror film In Fabric (2018) Barratt could add gravitas even to the silliest of material, or add a much needed sense of absurdity to even serious material. Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi, both the writer and star, is interesting, and there are times he is lovably charming as he is actually indefensible, which makes the comedy work especially when it can lead to the abrupt reveal that they added comical amounts of slow motion to the second episode, where Liz goes on a rampage with her powers, or the Scottish Mist episode being about Dagless learning to overcome his intolerance to the Scottish only to expose, as he dodges the accusations of racism in his interview footage, that Marenghi shoot both feet off with his depictions of said Scottish. Richard Ayoade as his publicist hits the right tone and is a highlight - off the show he is a sleaze but in a subtle way that is funnier, whilst as the administrator of the Darkplace hospital, Ayoade inflects perfectly a man who cannot act. Matt Berry likewise hits to the right one too, as a hammy actor who adds w-e-i-g-h-t to his vocals in a way that's memorable, sounding like it is dubbed.

Sadly Alice Lowe as the sole female character is undercut by one of the major running gags, and is one of the moments where the show has flaws, in a show that does try for some social commentary in its humour, such as the final episode explicitly is a parody of terrible programming trying to metaphor AIDs is tasteless ways. The second episode especially, but throughout in her character's depiction, reflects how its author Marenghi has incredibly sexist dialogue and views of Dr. Liz Asher, playing her off as the simplistic female staff member, or in episode 2 going full-Carrie to the point people are menaced by furniture on string. It presents an issue especially as Lowe's character is later revealed to have disappeared, likely dead and buried in a random place in Eastern Europe. It is to the show's credit, whilst arguably the weakest episode, it was deflecting this sense of biting too hard at a difficult subject, sexism in older horror storytelling, with Marenghi coming off ridiculous from the get-go to get around this, as he is a dolt with very stupid ideas, and that we have Matt Berry in this episode having to fight off a homicidal egg whisk. My views on Darkplace have aged well due to seeing another parody of horror pulp, Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible (2001), which is likely to one Steve Coogan project people may have forgotten even exists, where you had the issue of it parodying problematic issues of pulp fiction like Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, done with earnestness to still point out this was all racist as a joke but still having an actor in yellow face playing a Manchu pastiche to get the joke over. Episode two here is in the same issue of dealing with gender politics by having the sexism be so over-the-top, which may put people off or even just cause them to roll their eyes at the broadness of the pastiche, not actually dealing with the subject with enough to justify the satire and be comedy at the same time, so this does count as one of the weakest episodes if thankfully with a defter hand than Dr. Terrible.

Episode three clears the palette with probably the most eyebrow raising moment, a male patient being impregnated by an eye creature (with pixelated out genitals to the annoyance of Dean Learner) and immediately dying in childbirth conceiving an eyeball child. Here the humour of both the interviews and the story itself works, as Marenghi's obsession with never having male child but only four daughters, and a eulogy to a dead pet dog, are contrasted by Dagless' past trauma of losing his half-man half-grasshopper son which leaves him trying to protect a potentially dangerous eyeball child. Episode 4 imagines contaminated water turning the hospital into primordial ape people, effectively Planet of the Apes if with a bicycle chase final with an "apeazoid" that briefly turns into an episode of The Krypton Factor, a 1977-2010 game show which emphasises legitimate Mensa-like brain teasers, puzzles, and as the reference became evoked, an obstacle course with rope pulls as here.

By Episode 5, we get to the Scotch Mist, which is John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) if with kilter Scotsmen instead of pirate ghosts, who leave Scottish oats by their victims. Alongside the tangent about using high street bought batteries over cheap ones from markets, it is a story about overcoming prejudice but so prejudiced in the depiction, even subtitling the Scottish ghosts, it undercuts itself, Marenghi thinking Daglass can earn the name of true Scotsman by just apologising and appeasing the ghosts with shortbread. Episode 6 is the other time the series takes a risk in terms of more serious nods, being a tone deaf metaphor for the AIDs scare, which is explicitly talked of and is the one other time Darkplace is in danger of stumbling. Thankfully, it is also the story to contrast this which has the right balance of almost taking itself serious whilst being ridiculous to prevent this undercutting itself with the metatextual commentary taking too broad a scope on this subject. The humour found in Lucien Sanchez falling in love with a female patient slowly turning into alien broccoli due to a highly contagious mutation, that does feel like soap opera, Nigel Kneale and a healthy dose of sex humour in a blender prevents this issue of tackling a risky subject for satire because it is one of the stronger stories in its jokes. It allows Matt Berry more material to work with, which is for the better; it also has the one actual surprise where the episode abruptly turns into a synthpop music video for the character, and does one of the superior metatextual jokes in which a fight scene that breaks out, to save Lucien's life, was lost and had to be reconstructed from photos shot on the film set.

The first time I saw Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I thought it was a case of acquired taste, because I had always taken an issue to ironic humour at that point. Nowadays, this is not the case, and instead I wished there had been another series to just stretch this premise from that initial set-up, forcing it to have to take risks with the construct. Garth Marenghi never came back barring a cameo in Man to Man with Dean Learner (2006), an in-world talk show hosted by the Learner character which had Marenghi on as the first episode guest, and it would have been interesting to witness how the second series of Darkplace, having established the set-up, could have forced this broad parody into his own discomfort or stranger humour as we could elaborate on the premise of the Darkplace show, or in the interviews. Any more series beyond this might have capsized the premise and become that ironic-for-the-sake of irony I thought this show had, and even with its flaws as is, you would have lost the magic I finally appreciated after time to soak myself in Marenghi's dream weavings.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Ironic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

 

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1) Not in the slightest a knock against either man, but they are the apt comparison points for authors who commonly appearing second hand book stores in the United Kingdom, least in my neck of the woods, and how Herbert's blunt titles and covers does really evoke the absurd, crasser ones Marenghi's has as seen in the series.

2) Kandyman befittingly comes from the 1988 era of Dr. Who, emphasising how actual eighties television, though Darkplace is meant to be the early eighties, could really be as ridiculous as the parodies of that era.

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

 

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: John Carpenter & Larry Sulkis

Cast: Natasha Henstridge as Lieutenant Melanie Ballard; Ice Cube as James "Desolation" Williams; Jason Statham as Sergeant Jericho Butler; Clea DuVall as Officer Bashira Kincaid; Pam Grier as Commander Helena Braddock; Joanna Cassidy as Dr. Arlene Whitlock; Richard Cetrone as Big Daddy Mars; Liam Waite as Officer Michael Descanso; Duane Davis as "Uno" Williams; Lobo Sebastian as "Dos"; Rodney A. Grant as "Tres"

Canon Fodder

 

Ghosts of Mars was just okay. That really is not a good place to put oneself in a review, but for what was once a loathed film for me from John Carpenter, that pretty much is the perfect irony when returning to this. This was not even with the loaded issue for other viewers of the weight of his legacy against his later films before he retired and became fully a touring musician. It is deemed that John Carpenter’s career ended on much weaker films, and sadly that is a concept which I have heard with the legacies of a few big names. It seems absurd, and the argument that directors as they get older lose their spark misses context, when some get better and more interesting the less “popular” they are, and when you have a case like Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira was getting critical acclaim when he was making films past a hundred years old. With Ghosts of Mars, it feels less like a film of an older director losing his style; in fact, if this came from a young director in their twenties, it feels like the film that catches attention with hope that they capitalize on the style they have and add more personal voice to the later films. That is the real irony here, as Ghosts of Mars is sound in scope, with ambitious aspects, but the presentation is conventional at times to the point it lacked something, which could be found from anyone of any age.

The setting is a tantalizing one, with this one tiny story within it even if with grander concerns. Mars is colonized, and unfortunately, an entity of its past are possessing the settlers in isolated colonies, turning them into husks to be controlled and kill those not taken over. A Martian police unit has been sent to pick up a criminal, James "Desolation" Williams (Ice Cube), from a jail in a mining colony. In attempting to collect Williams, the group find themselves within a colony where no one is around, until they find the headless bodies strung up and survivors turned into a horde of killers responsible for this. The tone of this, including that their only form of escape from these killers is a giant space railway train, evokes the western genre in an outer space setting. We never got a western from John Carpenter despite the fact he has always been open in his admiration for them and inspired by them. One of the most obvious examples is how the premise of Rio Bravo (1959) inspiring Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and this is important as that is an earlier Carpenter film evoked in Ghosts of Mars as the police and Williams find themselves trapped in a place of head hunters.

The one thing which has not aged well – in a film where the practical art design is juggled with working with CGI, for a film from the early 2000s with a soundtrack by Carpenter full of heavy metal riffs – is actually that parallel to old western films. Space westerns as a concept allow the idea, through a new frontier that is uncharted, to explore the issues of the western, allow us to reflect on the past. One of the most loaded of these is colonization of land, especially as the American Wild West is set in the context that land actually belonged to the many tribes of Native Americans. Ghost of Mars never explicitly refers to this, but by accident the film is riffing on the idea of this, which is not good by mistake as these titular ghosts, literal as we learn of who they are, are psychopaths who disfigure their hosts with body piercings, wearing victims’ faces and collect their severed heads on pikes. It is a dicey position to deal with themes of white colonization in horror with plot tropes like this, even when the colonialists are to also be criticized or even if all of this is unintentional. There is a reason why S. Craig Zahler, when he made an actual horror western with Bone Tomahawk (2015) went out of his way with the script to distance ideas to avoid this, with an actual Native American character on the leads’ side, as they are about to enter the hostile lands of a cannibal tribe, openly dismisses the “troglodytes” as they are called as being nothing like an indigenous American tribe but simply monstrous, and even that film still got called out by some reviewers as racist. You cannot really nod to themes of outsiders fighting the hostile forces of uncharted landscapes without bringing up uncomfortable colonial issues, or racial stereotypes, and Ghosts of Mars even when dealing with hostile Martian ghosts unfortunately falls into this.

Everything else about Ghosts of Mars beyond this is just okay, entertaining but just not at the batting average expected from John Carpenter, which becomes the curse for any creator who manages to string a series of legacy defining works, more so when just one of them would have been enough to cement a legacy, but Carpenter managed multiple in a row. That is the issue, that his highs were so big, even the less regarded ones, or under seen, like Christine (1983) appear with hindsight to be better than most. The issue here is that we are just missing that one twist in the plot, missing that one turn or shock of his style of the films before to stick out. The whit is still there, and actually this is jokier even if the nastiness of the threat is here. In the downtime, whilst some of the nods to the female cast being gay are crassly put, there is a fascinating nod I completely missed in my youth to the setting being a matriarchal colony. It is merely the backdrop, causing one to wish this film had been more a success and Carpenter could have made another film in this world, as it provokes a fascinating turn on gender politics without needing to be the central concern. At a period where Mars’ colonization has been dealt with in areas like the lack of breathable oxygen but is still early days, we have already set up that the figures in high power of women, that is never explained aside from the fact that, barring Ice Cube as the anti-hero, our lead is Natasha Henstridge, allowing her a good meaty role as a result of this. Men are still here, including a baby Jason Statham before his career grew, but the women are in charge, with Pam Grier as the head of the police group, and the script making jokes the explicitly cut down to size macho bullshit, even accidentally cutting their own thumb off whilst high at one point, in the downtime. Whilst Statham plays his character as a horn dog who tries too hard to proposition to Henstridge multiple times, his is one of the only male characters with Ice Cube’s "Desolation" Williams to be reliable, the most comedy coming from William’s supposed savors from jail, his brother and his two colleagues, who become the butt of most of these jokes. Cube himself, doing better than Busta Rhymes infamously in Halloween: Resurrection (2002) as a hip hop star in a genre film at this point, is stiff at first, too much attempt to make him edgy and cool, and thankfully he is able to get to the point of standing out when he and Henstridge just get to play a buddy cop duo role stuck in this hellish scenario.

The aesthetic also stands out. The practical effects are still visible, in the production design juggling the aesthetics of the western genre with science fiction on a lower scale genre film, working around ways to depict details like the giant tank-like train, a symbol from western iconography, which still work and have their own distinct sheen. There is a sense of cool pulp sci-fi in the Millennium, and it feels closer to this new century and decade than a film washing over in aesthetics from the nineties either. The music is also strong for me, in mind that there is now a greater emphasis on chugging metal riffs, prominently involving the thrash metal band Anthrax but also including guitarists of note like Steve Vai, Buckethead and Nine Inch Nail’s Robin Finck. It feels less nu metal, as the time frame have shown to have been prevalent, but feeling part of what was to become the “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” that fully formed in 2005 onwards if in context of a John Carpenter score. Some may find it inappropriate, but for me it befits the aesthetic of the entire film, which is strong in itself. With the isolation of the red earth of the setting, all the colonial town setting has lo-fi science fiction aesthetics, with steel grey and heavy looking vehicles, heavy looking guns, and the costumes either suggesting struggling on in life or the uniforms of officers designed more for practicality in this environment. The world does breath into life in the little details.

It is just a shame that the film is missing just the last little thing to get it over, the iconic aspect that a lot of Carpenter’s most well appreciated films had. This was also the film, until Carpenter’s final theatrical work The Ward (2010), we were left with as it did not do well at the box office at all. It is, in its own context, a good as a solid genre film, even in spite of issues raised by accident with the narrative. It is just a shame that this is missing that one diversion away from an A-to-B plot, which made Carpenter’s films from his golden era stand out, something which could have made this more of a highlight within the filmography.

Ghoulies IV (1994)

Director: Jim Wynorski

Screenplay: Mark Sevi

Cast: Peter Liapis as Jonathan Graves, Barbara Alyn Woods as Kate, Stacie Randall as Alexandra, Raquel Krelle as Jeanine, Bobby Di Cicco as Scotty, Tony Cox as Ghoulie Dark; Arturo Gil as Ghoulie Lite

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ease up Dirty Harriett!

The end of the Ghoulies franchise was the first I ever saw the whole of, from one of many multi-film DVD packs that used to exist in the 2000s era of DVDs with their own separate whole DVD case with another film. It was also once a film I held as one of the worst I had ever seen, though I have moved back from this opinion as being too harsh. It starts with another change in distributor in CineTel Films, a company that exists from the late eighties as one meant to produce films for the straight-to-video market but with an eye for getting notable names over the years - be it Gary Busey for Bulletproof (1987) or Rowdy Rodder Piper for Sci-fighters (1996). They were a company I crossed paths with in that DVD era of releases, with those two films mentioned among those I found at the time, and they lasted until 2023, past an entire change to the film industry with the streaming market, until they were bought out by Vision Films in 2023. In mind CineTel Films moved to making films for the likes of the SyFy Channel, this feels less like a tragic end but the follow-on to a group who have managed to survive healthier than most major film industry giants over the decades since they were founded in 1980, and got to be bought out well off.

The film itself is set up with a woman in tight leather armed with martial arts, guns and shurikens mowing down security guards in a warehouse to steal a jewel, one used in a ritual there drawing a pentagram with spray paint on the floor, and sacrificing the guards' corpses for summoning her master. This is Alexandra (Stacie Randall), who however fails the ritual, needing to find another owner of a red jewel, an on-the-edge cop named Jonathan (Peter Liapis), and accidentally summons two Ghoulies in the process. Aside from these are not Ghoulies as before, in a film attempting to follow up from the first 1984 film, even using some footage from the production, this feels like its own narrative bolted into the final film. We do get some bang for our buck, as Jonathan is introduced with his put-upon partner getting caught up in a gun battle in a convenience store with a shotgun welding till thug, which is least more distinct than the first Ghoulies film. It is explicitly connected to that film as this is the same Jonathan who was centre to the first film, replayed by the original actor Peter Liapis, somehow finding his way out of being an occultist to being a cop who has a habit of dating sex workers he arrests, a taste for using handcuffs in the bed room, and has an old relationship with a female officer Kate (Barbara Alyn Woods), now promoted as his superior and dragged back into helping him. The later is not surprising as, whilst involving one dubious Indian stereotype for a trigger happy shopkeeper, played by a white actor, most police partners would not want to stay with a guy like Jonathan who keeps getting into shoot-outs in liquor and convenience stores. Jonathan, naturally from his past, is knowledgeable of ancient occultism and is immediately aware the warehouse crime scene is suspicious, especially as he knows Alexandra, a former girlfriend who escaped a mental hospital and wants to resurrect an evil side to him as a permanent lover. It is an odd choice to follow up the original but as sequels go, but at least it's distinct.

I definitely can see, however, why I did not like this originally, if I was too extreme in my severity in opinion. This is very broad, still wacky as the Ghoulies, more actors who are wearing masks which cannot move and are visible in the eyes behind said masks, are side characters with broad accents and very little to do. One of them is actually Tony Cox, in a very early role before he would star in films like Bad Santa (2003), playing with co-actor Arturo Gil what are closer to actual goblins as comedy foils bolted onto the plot. It is very silly if not as severe as when the Ghoulies went to college in the film before, only instead with a strange contradiction where the Ghoulies feel like children's film characters, even when mugging a caretaker for his keys, but has them look on curiously at female sex workers waiting to be picked up by clients in one scene.

Directed by Jim Wynorski, he is arguably the most distinct director for this franchise, where the silly tone fits some of his films I have seen. He was eclectic if one pretty notorious for titillation in his films, including a string of erotic thrillers in the early nineties such as Sins of Desire (1993). Yes, he would also helm family films and Christmas films as many did into the 2010s, but this was a man who cut his teeth on erotic parodies like The Witches of Breastwick (2005) by the 2000s, so it comes with a surprise, when the third Ghoulies film did bring in actual nudity and sex comedy humour, this is "tamer" than before in air quotes. Titillation is not necessary, and that Wynorski is definitely a director who stands on a knife edge in the modern day to whether to roll your eyes on that softcore side of his career or not, especially as the documentary on him making The Witches of Breastwick is named Popatopolis (2009), the title an abbreviation of saying "pop your top off" to do a nude scene. Ghoulies IV is thirsty just in the dialogue and the costume choices for the female cast, not explicitly lacking of but in terms of how fetishishtic it can be, but one of the more curious choices for this film, considering its director, is that this was the film rated as suitable for twelve year olds in the United Kingdom, and is lacking overt sexuality but also more overt horror edges of the previous films. It suggests more that dichotomy between the films of before and a more cartoonish tone that feels more appropriate for a kid's film, which is an odd combination and really does emphasis how, sex or sexless, Ghoulies as a franchise was an odd duck in terms of how its selling point could have been sold to kids, cuddly little critters, but was juggling both more edgy content against pure slapstick.

Credit to Ghoulies IV, this feels like it had some production values even above films from before in the franchise, shot in exterior city locations of Los Angeles and even having a stunt involving an exploding car. It however does not feel like a Ghoulies film, like a different script only to get footage from the first film and explicit references. I found it a fun film, especially as to be brutally honest, I think the original Ghoulies was the least rewarding of all four, all curious in the directions they went for a series which never figured itself out and lasted as the Puppet Master franchise did in terms of anything Charles Band briefly got involved with that had sellable puppet figures. By Ghoulies IV, we have definitely seen the sunset fall on this entire franchise by here, never to come back, but even if slightly lame in finale, it is lame in a charming way here. This is a great example of a horror franchise when they unexpectedly swing in tone and mood per sequel, as Ghoulies IV quaintly waves us goodbye, literally, with a sense of playful fun.

 

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1) Vision Films heads to MIPTV, Cannes market with CineTel library (exclusive), written by Jeremy Kay, and published for Screen Daily on 14th April 2023.

Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College (1991)

 

Directors: John Carl Buechler

Screenplay: Brent Olson

Casts: Evan MacKenzie as Skip Carter, Kevin McCarthy as Professor Ragnar, Eva LaRue as Erin Riddle, John R. Johnston as Jeremy Heilman, Patrick Labyorteaux as Mookey, Billy Morrissette as Wes, Hope Marie Carlton as Veronica

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ragnar has no dick.

After a high for this franchise for me, the second sequel comes four years later and from Vestron Video, a home video company who became part of Lionsgate and were rechristened as their home distribution arm. Vestron also included Vestron Pictures, their production and distribution arm, and their spin-off Lightning Pictures, which Ghoulies III comes from. When Lionsgate Home Entertainment announced its revival of the Vestron Video brand as a Blu-ray and DVD reissue label in 2016, you naturally got to see the films they produced and distributed, such as Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) to Ken Russell's Gothic (1986) alongside many horror films.

The tone has also drastically changed on from the previous films, as when not biting a face off, not only have these Ghoulies are going to get degrees, they have now learnt to talk. It is set up in a period twenty one years prior to this episode in the franchise, so there is going to have to be a continuity loophole that, as established in Part II with a giant Ghoul being summoned, various species of demons per film exist that are related. More noticeable is that there is more overt slapstick than even before in its broader tone, more goofier gags and even actual nudity for titillation, a horror comedy that is more comedy in terms of its college setting. Set during a prank week between male fraternities for a Prank Crown, lead Skip Carter (Evan MacKenzie) is gunning for it whilst twenty one years earlier, these Ghoulies were captured using a comic book, an underground publication using real demon summoning spells, which is found by one of Skip's frat brothers sat on the John when he knocks a wall tile off and reveals it. The comic is with the incantations to summon them from their sacred jar, i.e. sacred toilet bowl, as they are not even hiding the franchise's obsession with them, with someone being flushed to death in one. That links with the sense of childish humour that would pass were it not for the female nudity, the more overt horror later on or the main villain, a hateable blond jock, being continually called a Hitler Youth.

That comic is confiscated by a hated teacher, Professor Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy), who becomes power hungry and summons the Ghoulies to do his bidding. One major aspect of Ghoulies III which may put viewers off is that this is less a plot from here on but more a setting for a goofy slapstick film, less homicidal Ghoulies but vandalising Ghoulies, who are late to the Freddy Krueger 'one liners' which became popular in the late eighties into the early nineties for horror cinema, which alongside the more broad tone may find extremely annoying. The most prominent film in director John Carl Buechler's career, outside of his special effects work, is being the director of Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), the film which had Jason Voorhees fight a telekinetic girl, which would be remiss to not bring up, and here he came to this with a film that was clearly more a humorous and a pastiche of horror than meant to be scary, with a script by Brent Olson, who is listed as having never done anything else.

Another is the more explicit sense of horniness, with actual nudity and one character, Veronica (Hope Marie Carlton), who when she is not trying to seduce multiple male characters including Skip is the kind of person who dances in her underwear less in her own world in her bedroom, but wanting to give ghosts an eyeful. Considering she is an Andy Sidaris alumnus, through multiple films including Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987), that is not an insult to her existence either in the film, but this does cross a line at times. There is horniness which can be acceptable including explicit titillation, but this includes the film ogling the women without giving them characters, where even the comedy security guard is a pervert trying to score panties, and has creepy Ghoulies ogling women in the shower, there only for the sight of women in showers for a sex comedy. The only consolation in that later scene is that, as anyone who has seen Phantom of the Paradise (1974), strangely this was not the first time a Psycho parody with a plunger involved transpired.

There is still horror here, the Ghoulies still killing people, even if here it involves the aforementioned death by toilet, and the finale does even get more over the top in a cool way, with someone melting and a giant prosthetic body suit costume with a stomach face. However we are fully falling into parody of the franchise itself here, with a literal cartoon bomb at one point and slapstick with the security guard and his beloved (and named) golf cart. You can feel this as our lead Skip is a pure archetype, and that his love interest Erin (Eva LaRue) is precariously generic, expecting Skip to give up his pranking and become respectable, but is a stereotypical plot that will change her mind on this, and that it encourages (in both male and female versions) this idea of stripping away one's personality, or a contrived self reflection to stay as you are. Ghoulies III is still fun, but I feel this has jumped the proverbial toilet itself, even if in a distinct way, and would have lost people who liked the balance of before between the two other films.  Certainly as time passes there is a sense the film has already felt out of time in the moment it was realised, feeling like a late eighties movie washed up on the shore of the nineties, and as much as there was cultural blurring into the later decade, this is one of those cases where, for its fun moments, it feels aged and lacked multiple virtues of the previous sequel.

Ghoulies & Ghoulies II (1984 & 1987)

Director(s): Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies)

Screenplays: Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy (Ghoulies) / Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli (Ghoulies II)

Cast:

Ghoulies: Peter Liapis as Jonathan Graves, Lisa Pelikan as Rebecca, Scott Thomson as Mike, Ralph Seymour as Mark "Toad Boy", Mariska Hargitay as Donna, Keith Joe Dick as Dick, David Dayan as Eddie, Victoria Catlin as Anastasia, Charene Cathleen as Robin, Tamara De Treaux as Greedigut, Peter Risch as Grizzel, Michael Des Barres as Malcolm Graves, Jack Nance as Wolfgang

Ghoulies II: Damon Martin as Larry, Royal Dano as Uncle Ned, Phil Fondacaro as Sir Nigel Penneyweight, J. Downing as P. Hardin, Kerry Remsen as Nicole, Dale Wyatt as Dixie, Jon Pennell as Bobby, Sasha Jenson as Teddy, Starr Andreeff as Alice, William Butler as Merle, Donnie Jeffcoat as Eddie, Christopher Burton as Leo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I'm a magician you sons of bitches. You can't kill me!

I did not expect the Ghoulies franchise begins with a Satanic cult about to sacrifice a baby in the scene, but like so many horror franchises, they either deviate from their original premises in the later sequels, or in this case develop their selling point after time, What would become the titular centre point for these films took their jumping point from a script by co-writer/director Luca Bercovici, who would work on the first film, and afterwards leave with his work continued on with the other three films. It is not a surprise though that this is a Charles Band production, distributed by his Empire Pictures, from a man who has set forth many a franchise about tiny homicidal puppets.

The baby is thankfully saved, even if his mother takes his place, growing up to be Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis), inheriting the family home where this tale originates from with Wolfgang, a cult member who helped rescue him, as his sole family and an excuse to get David Lynch alumni Jack Nance in a nicely appreciated cameo with some plot importance. Cue a party with slasher film archetypes, goofballs obsessed with strip poker in a home full of occult literature, making the bad decision to perform an occult ritual whilst drunk. Even sober, this is a dumb idea, as Jonathan becomes obsessed, possessed even, to develop him magic skills and becomes overcome with them. That and summoning the titular Ghoulies, starting with a hairy weasel goblin that stands up to one's knees, which are going to be there to terrorise people.

It is strange that I come into this series always presumed to have a more comedic edge, and I only admit only seeing Ghoulies IV (1994) growing up with a less than stellar reaction, so that was not a good perspective for all this time to ever have had. The first film undeniably is trying to be more serious, which just happened to involved involve homicidal critters played with puppets, who feel like an afterthought here and whose comedic aspects would be ran with further in later films. If you accept they are razor toothed and have a thing for eating faces, they are cuter than menacing, even if it's my sick view of cuteness inspired by having Monsters in My Pocket toys as a kid, and sadly maligned. They are, for a film made when Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) exists, an arbitrary aspect to a plot more focused about a man being possessed by his satanic father from the grave, making this as a work that is indebted to the era's tropes in the Ghoulies' inclusion, to the point Gremlins' producers Warner Brothers sued this film for the similarities to Gremlins but lost¹. Despite this luck, the Ghoulies are never taken advantage of this selling point, and there was a sense for me, going through these films for the review, this was the least interesting of the ones so far. I will concede that this film had issues I have sympathy for, such as the fact the production ran out of budget midway through and required the filmmakers to find funding², and there are many aspects to how this film could have turned out which were rejected. One I admit might have made the film more my thing, that being Jeffrey Combs being in the cast, but this was also once meant to be a children's film, and was meant to be in 3D, so Ghoulies had a chaotic coarse to even get made I have to take into consideration¹.

There is certainly a whimsical charm to this, Charles Band produced films having a sense of love within themselves for their playfulness, film pulp for its own sake like lifting the clown puppet from Poltergeist (1982), or two dwarf actors playing mystic servants summoned by Jonathan, looking like cast members from a high fantasy film or from Knightmare, the 1980s British TV series which experimented with early green screen to send its contestants into said worlds. I will also say that Richard Band, Charles Band's brother, and Shirley Walker, a pioneer for being one of the first female film composers in Hollywood, also compose between them a score which feels like it is from a larger budget production and is great. Richard Band is an unsung hero for these genre films for his work, whilst Walker, with her work for DC Comic animated adaptations, like Batman: The Animated Series, to her work on the Final Destination series, would sadly pass in 2006.  Thankfully, in 2014 The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) created the Shirley Walker Award in 2014 to honour the diversity of film and television music, to emphasis her importance in the industry.

Brutally however, this is just not a film for me. I will not say it is bad, which defeats the purpose of a review by saying films are just not for me, but it is true here. I like the attitude behind this film, but it does drift off into a plot I had no interest in. One legitimate criticism I have, regardless of my awareness of the production issues, is those titular ghouls who do immediately stand out - the green demon baby ones to the weasel goblin, when not eating its way out the chicken on the dining table, being a pervert hiding under your bed during an attempted occult sex ritual - are not really a part of the material. This film clearly realised this mistake as these creatures eventually became the central focus in later films, whilst this particular film is an acquired taste for me personally. An early film in his career, his first directorial production, Luca Bercovici would continue on to the likes of Rockula (1990), which seems more appealing for me for being about a vampire wanting to have a career in rock music with Susan Tyrrell and musician Bo Diddley among the cast.

Ghoulies II is a considerably more focused and interesting film for me, opening with Anthony Dawson, of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), in a cameo as a priest running away from Satanists with Ghoulies in a cloth sack. His attempt to dispose of them for the sake of humanity in a barrel of waste, conveniently marked as "Extremely Toxic" and left open to mist in a garage, ends up with him in said barrel and melting into a skeleton. The Ghoulies escape, five of them, and hitch a ride with travellers for a carnival who stopped at the garage, one of which is Royal Dano, already having been Abraham Lincoln's voice at the Hall of Presidents attraction at Disney's Magic Kingdom beforehand in his career alongside cinema, playing an alcoholic ex-magician who runs a haunted house named Satan's Den.

There are many improvements for what is a silly tale, the first being that needed focus on the Ghoulies themselves, legitimately evil critters who enjoy causing pain and mischief, one even knowing how to use a switchblade, which becomes more threatening. They are stuck in Satan's Den, and from here, this is significantly more interesting as a sequel for me, with the added caveat that I have a bias for carnival set films anyway, making this more tantalising. Dano is running the attraction, with the help of his nephew Larry (Damon Martin), which is one of the rides in danger of being closed by an evil eighties yuppie, an accountant who has plants to axe the attractions going in the red, Satan's Den likely to be replaced by ladies' mud wrestling by the end of the week only for the Ghoulies to accidentally bring more customers into the attraction that night. A worthy mention too, as he is a great inclusion, is Phil Fondacaro; whilst some of the lines in regards to him being an actor with dwarfism have not aged well, his character is awesome, a former Shakespearian actor and friend to Larry named Sir Nigel, a carnival employee who gets into the thick of the plot too.

It is perverse to think Satan's Den is not doing well but is far more elaborate than most real haunted houses I have been to, one I wish to go to, as this is a heightened movie version of the carnival with the production team (and real ride operators) deserving praise for this exaggerated setting. The film was fun to just watch for its production design in context of a goofy late eighties horror movie, in terms that everything is like the place of one's dreams, Satan's Den itself a vast building with elaborate practical attractions, like pop-up mummies, that emphasis the joy of the real ones you walk past in ordinary life if they had the production values of a small genre film, to the art design through the carnival like for the entrance of the "Arabian" exotic dancers. The score by Fuzzbee Morse, the awesomely named composer whose credits for musicians he has worked on is actually too long to pick from but least includes Frank Zappa to actor Harry Dean Stanton, is awesome to and adds to this with pure horror synth, and as much of the enjoyment comes from showing so many clichés of the era but in an enjoyable way. The ladies' mud wrestling reference is one of these, and it is to the point a child randomly has a shuriken throwing star on him, in the era of the ninja craze, to throw at rat creatures who puke green goo on them, because naturally kids have shuriken stars on them. They even went as far, for the metal head character who has to take his "tunes" with a boom box into the haunted house, the production got then notorious band W.A.S.P. to record a song exclusively for the production; before lead singer Blackie Lawless moved to more serious lyrics in the late eighties to early nineties albums, and then returned to his Christian faith, they were controversial for Tipper Gore angering songs like Animal (Fuck like a Beast) and him having a buzz saw codpiece, a perfect band for this era of heavy metal interlinking with heavy metal before the more serious and critically acclaimed albums took over for W.A.S.P. onwards.

Eventually bringing in a bigger-than-human size costume for the final, it has no pretence, already playing to humour further than the prequel even if with a sick streak, as the chaos in the carnival that ends this film evoking the influence of Gremlins, varying between overt slapstick pratfalls to a critter causing a ride cart to fly off and kill at least two people glibly. Also there is a fixation on toilets, the series trope from the prequel that followed from this, as the Ghoulie in a toilet moment from before is escalated in a painful way. Its director Albert Band, father of Charles Band, was clearly a safe pair of hands for this production, late into a career mostly as a producer but making films like I Bury the Living (1958) in the fifties, so the sense the film was able to be as entertaining and fun as it was comes with the sense of someone, as a producer for most of his career at this point, who thankfully knew what to shot to win the punters over. The next film, which took four years to appear, took this series further into comedy to the point it may put people off, whilst here, the balance between the humour and playful horror tone is perfect. After the sense that the first Ghoulies did not stand out for me at all, this was a nice change of pace. If you are a fan of the first film, I will not take away from your enjoyment of it, merely that I thankfully got the film I enjoyed within the second.

 

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1) 10 Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Ghoulies, written by Jake Dee and published for Screen Rant on October 31st 2019.

2) Interview with Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies), written and published for Love-it-Loud on June 28th 2018. Retrieved August 24th 2018 on the Web Archive.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

 

Director: John Fawcett

Screenplay: Karen Walton

Cast: Emily Perkins as Brigitte Fitzgerald; Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald; Kris Lemche as Sam; Mimi Rogers as Pamela Fitzgerald; Jesse Moss as Jason McCardy; Danielle Hampton as Trina Sinclair; John Bourgeois as Henry Fitzgerald; Peter Keleghan as Mr. Wayne

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fuck! Wrists are for girls!

If we are to bring up a horror film in need of a greater level of attention towards it, least more readily, than Ginger Snaps is in a place where barring an old barebones DVD from the early 2000s on the cusp of laser rot, it is a film which has not come to the United Kingdom with the cult reputation it deserves. A Canadian werewolf film, it came in my adolescent, growing up at the time into the early 2000s, off the crest of a lot of teen horror films post-Scream (1996), not all slashers, which surfed among the pop culture of the time, the teen dramas to the nu metal. Opening with fake suicide photography, Ginger Snaps possesses a sick sense of humour which contrasts others from the period as we are introduced to the Fitzgerald sisters Bridgett (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), having staged these mock deaths at their family home to the horror of their classmates. Immediately we are introduced to our outsider leads, and also one of Ginger Snaps’ best virtues, that among all the films from the time which will bring fuzzy nostalgia to my generation growing up at the time, this was a film back then and still now that had something special in its centre. That, whilst directed by a male director John Fawcett, this was about women and written by Karen Walton, working together with Fawcett in the premise of metamorphosis by way of lycanthropy. The metaphor is incredibly obvious – puberty through a werewolf metaphor, which can go as far back to I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) – but here for female characters, dealing with the subject from women, this lack of subtlety is for the better as the subject is given a fully developed interpretation.

Set up with the Beast of Bailey Downs, a mysterious animal savaging the locals’ dogs, this offers a great insight to how to use figures synonymous to folklore and especially those who would be absorbed into the Universal horror cannon like the werewolf. As mentioned I Was a Teenage Werewolf, that American International Pictures film produced by Herman Cohen, whilst a b-movies was marked in how it was about a restless and alienated male teen being awoken with violent outburst and growing hair, more so as that was made to sell to the new audience called a “teenager” in the first place. Befittingly this granddaughter takes this far further, and even when humorously, it emotionally stays focused on what it is. It manages to use even the over-the-top looking werewolf design and a surprising amount of practical gore effects than most teen horror films from the time to its advantage, all in being about two teen girls growing up and the emotional turmoil that involves.

Namely that, Ginger is nearly sixteen and finally goes through the menstruation very late but suddenly, the metaphor not being subtle that she will literally grow hair all over when she is attacked by the Beast of Bailey Downs. Even if that creature is no longer a problem by way of van, she will become a lycanthrope and change, all in mind that the Fitzgerald sisters, deeply close to each other as siblings, will drift apart. The description by the school nurse of menstruation you hear in one scene causes one, as a cis-male viewer, to realize how men have a complete area of existence they have no idea how to compose of in terms of the emotional and physical experience that a cis-female viewer might. It is all in mind that the lack of representation, even separation, of topics as simple as tampons have not been depicted as matter of fact in a lot of mainstream cinema. Puberty hits like a ton of bricks for boys, as I can attest too, but it is prominent that, least when it comes to popular culture, there has been rarely been seen in entertainment explicit conversation about female characters even having to buy tampons let alone many things women have in real life to consider with their bodies. Ginger Snaps would have been a film, abruptly in the horror genre, bothering to discuss this even with a lot of humour and irony¹.

The metaphor is broad here, but in the film’s sincerity and its dark humour, it is full of layers. It helps immediately that the leads are sympathetic, and the cast is full of great performances. Katharine Isabelle as Ginger established herself a small cult legacy between this and American Mary (2012) a time afterwards, but the cast is strong, including Emily Perkins as Brigitte, and Mimi Rogers as their mother Pamela, also worthy of praise as a character who is awesome, someone who as the narrative goes on becomes more and more sympathetic. She will stand behind her daughters even at the point when one body has to be hidden, the character taking an unexpected decision in mind to this is an emotional sucker punch. If there is a sense this cast, and those working behind the camera, feel for me not as widely known as I wish they were, it is because they worked in areas like television as much as cinema where I have less knowledge of, also in mind that, sadly, despite being an English speaking country as much as a French speaking on depending on the region, Canadian cinema is not as wildly available as one would hope.

Ginger Snaps has aged well in terms of the era and even as a werewolf film. Barring some techno in the soundtrack, and some diegetic (and non- diegetic) use of nu metal, enough to fill a soundtrack CD with the likes of Fear Factory and Soulfly on it, it does not follow a lot of horror films from the late nineties to early 2000s in stylistic choices. In fact, the lack of a heightened world onscreen, set in the fictional suburban town of Bailey Downs, which does not hide being in Canada, really helps the film greatly, as this feels like it exists in a real environment in its “cold” naturalistic appearance. The werewolf tropes are also undercut. You do not turn into a wolf on the full moon, instead the cause of a biological illness, left permanently like a wolf unless cured with monksbane, which ends up being used by injection. In does have a post-Scream (1996) sense of humour, poking fun at the tropes and with a sardonic tone to the dialogue especially when it comes to the violence, but alongside how bloody the film actually is, with a lot of practical effects, it also has a far more caustic script from Karen Walton for a horror film from this period, just from the amount of times “fuck” appears in dialogue.  

The absurdity of the events even has a whimsy at times, befitting its wrapping into the metaphor of adulthood, such as having to tap one’s developing tail to the leg for gym class. The metaphor for growing up into an adult, from a woman’s perspective, is helped a lot by this morbid humour, the Fitzgerald sisters played as naïve miscreants whose view of the world, and quick wit, makes the time it becomes serious more effective, especially as part of the metaphor is how Ginger no longer is the outsider but the figure growing in attention from the boys. Young men do not come off well in the film, baring a drug dealer/pot grower Sam (Kris Lemche), who is eventually helping Bridgett with trying to find practical solutions to the lycanthropy through real world homeopathy, such as silver not being used to shot werewolves but in belief if purified the blood. This gets into the hypocrisies of “slut shaming” and sexual conquests being viewed as only allowed for young men, something which backfires here in power structure and an STD metaphor as, with one guy eyeing up Ginger and the danger (expressed aloud) he will just talk of his sexual conquest of her, she is the dominant one and he has the bloody marks appearing on his trousers as the actor plays him off eventually as a comically sleazy fool.

The film was enough of a success that this had sequels, something which obviously raises concerns as, truthfully, the ending in its bittersweet conclusion closes the book logically on the tale, the sequels including one direct tale but the other a prequel set as a western. It is a film which, looking at the start of the Millennium, among those crossing the decades into the newest, really was a good one to come from this period, one I grew up with and has grown beyond being a nostalgic film to return to, but with huge virtues that grow the many times I have seen it.

 

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1) For another great example which has lasted for me, not in horror cinema, I think of Pink (1989), a manga by female author Kyoko Okazaki published in English. As a work with absurdist touches including the female lead having a pet crocodile, it also has a scene which has lingered for me of the female lead, in front of a man she is romantically connected in, placing in a tampon whilst letting him watch affectionately. It is a frank and sweet nod to this universal aspect of a cis-woman’s life which was, read in a release published in the 2010s, still transgressive and incredible to see from a work from 1989 in the West for me.

Ghost Talker's Daydream (2004)

 

Director: Osamu Sekita

Screenplay: Katsumasa Kanazawa and Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on the manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro

(Voice) Cast: Masumi Asano as Misaki Saiki; Tomokazu Sugita as Souichiro Kadotake; Yukari Tamura as Ai Kunugi; Daisuke Kishio as Mitsuru Fujiwara

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

"This anime adaptation had always been one of interest for me because I was a fan of the source manga. Found discounted in a British bookstore, the source manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro, whose work was adapted into Twilight of the Dark Master (1997), an obscure Akiyuki Shinbo helmed horror OVA. It is also lurid, about an albino dominatrix named Saiki Misaki who, in-between her sex worker career which also includes writing for a porno magazine, is using her ability to see and communicate with ghosts to help a branch of the local government exorcise buildings and environments. The source manga is violent, sexually explicit and sleazy, and tackles subjects like sexual violence. It was also however a work which looked exceptional, with the illustrations by Meguro, and had managed to be the right side of lurid by being smarter, building a world whose images could be ghoulish as much as it played to sex comedy. Sadly, published by Dark Horse, they only got to volume six before the series was cancelled for English language release, never continued up past through the remaining four volumes, and managing to end on the worse cliff-hanger as well to emphasis this fact involving a haunted apartment complex..."

The anime, as the review gets into, does not sell the manga well. It is lurid, very lurid, and suffers from the fact it scrapes the surface of the material, not the most interesting content, and struggles from its clear lower budget next to the source material's art. It is also, however, an adaptation I had always been curious of, and as a fan of what little of the source material got an English translation, I have to admit there was enough here to appreciate. It is absolutely a manga, not only one I wish had its entire run available, which needed a better adaptation if you could snap your fingers and unleash it.

For the full review, follow the link HERE.

Ghosts of Fear Street (1998)

 

Director: Ken Kwapis

Screenplay: Karl Schaefer

Based on the book series by R.L. Stein

Cast: Christopher Rich as PJ Murphy; Talia Balsam as Anne Murphy; Vincent Berry as Joe Murphy; Alexandra Breckenridge as Kit Murphy; Azura Skye as Cricket; Cameron Finley as Mickey; Red Buttons   as Grandpa; Alan Wilder as Safety Czar; Rick Overton as Fred the Bugman

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)

 

Metamorphosis must be a rush!

Whilst Fear Street is a book series for young teens I had never heard of, I am fully aware of R.L. Stein, whose Goosebumps series was one I grew up on. Arguably, the first tastes of horror I got into as a small boy, and meaningful for all that means, I have nothing but admiration for him, alongside the vague recollections of the Goosebumps television series, screened in the United Kingdom, and the Goosebumps board game which, whilst with so many mechanical parts to it, I wished I still had and would have been something someone would have relicensed as a niche product for my age group. Prolific, Stein's book series Fear Street returned in 2021, when director/co-writer Leigh Janiak was able to put together a trilogy shot side-by-side and set in three different time periods, made over a period of multiple years beforehand. The films - Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 and Fear Street Part Three: 1666 - ended up being a Netflix streaming exclusive in 2021. This review is not those films, but a fragment which, as a twenty minute television pilot, barely shows what it would have been, which does present a potential challenge in reviewing, but is worth talking of.

It also presents the most mid-nineties thing from the get-go, for the opening credits, imagining the famous Dancing Baby meme, a piece of early animation from that era, re-imagined by very crude CGI dancing skeletons over the opening credits. I found it amusing, but it is definitely an acquired taste. More likely to interest is that, not wasting time, a young boy discovers his friend has turned into a spider creature due to a science project going wrong. With web shooters now under his arm pits, as he has already petrified his family and others, even a group in the middle of a game of Twister, threatening to suck out his friend's juices with a bendy drinking straw.

This is of course the story being written by PJ Murphy (Christopher Rich), a horror author for teens, an R.L. Stein stand-in, who has a family. This is where there not being any other pieces to this version of Fear Street, or a longer pilot, does become an issue, as you are left with questions to where this would this have gone. This sets up a wacky horror sit-com where Fear Street, which exists in this world, is a real place the family intends to go to so the wife's father can be moved, closing down the ghoulish bed and breakfast he was running with his late wife. The place is clearly haunted, where PJ was clearly basing his tales with some exaggeration on real things there, the snippets here offering a silly but potential rewarding work. Sadly as mentioned, you barely scrape the surface of the premise due to the quick pace of this short pilot.

There is the legacy of an uncle who just one day, out of curiosity as grandpa tells the kids, stuck a lightning bolt into his heart one day. In the background, someone has clearly antagonised the God of Crows for a one scene joke. There are the moments of seriousness too. Of the wife coming here initially wishing to close the bed and breakfast out of fear her children will be bullied as she was for living in Fear Street, the show that never was one which could have ran with her coming to terms with this place when she changes her mind, or that one of the sons, able to see ghosts, not only finds them an invisible ghost dog named Spooky, but can see her recently passed mother. There are also the characters I wished would have had a sitcom. They are namely Kristina, who prefers "Cricket" (Azura Skye), the cool Goth girl who names her spiders after Gigantor and Rodan who the older daughter of the family immediately finds is the best friend forever, even a possible sudden crush, in her cobweb and insect collection filled bedroom. Or there is her father Fred (Rick Overton), the bug man who PJ grew up with whose panic attacks cause him to turn into a bug.

The show, including some very crude CGI, could have been something I watched on Fox Kids or Nickelodeon, the potential Sabrina the Teenage Witch substitute, another show I openly was binging as a kid, in combining the supernatural with comedy. This was shown on television unlike pilots which never did, but never got to be successful however. Instead, it feels like an obscure marker for people involved who would progress in long careers before and after. Fear Street itself would resurface through Leigh Janiak's project as a director, and a co-writer, in the three films, but the director Ken Kwapis would be prolific in television and film, a man you may know for License to Wed (2007) with Robin Williams, one of the divisive Williams film, or The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005), or Follow That Bird (1985), a Sesame Street film, a journeyman if in the type of programming I openly I do not pay attention to. Everyone here was already in careers, and so ahead, in television, and if you were among the teenager/kid cast here, you could have been Alexandra Breckenridge as the eldest daughter who started here, who would go on in the lives of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story. The one exception, but showing how footnotes like this weave a variety of different media together, is that the grandfather is Red Buttons, a comedian/television and film star, and Oscar winner, who would still be working close to his 2006 passing, connecting this to classic Hollywood and the early forties/fifties era of American television in his presence.

Even the writer Karl Schaefer, who created the cult favourite Eerie, Indiana (1991-2), and was probably looking for an equivalent horror show for kids here, was producing and writing shows decades later, leaving this the alternative time line piece where, if it had been picked up, it would have been interesting what the show had become but also what it would have done for people beyond a potential audience with nostalgia for it decades later. All these figures' lives would have had this be prominent in their careers, and you could speculate how many other people we could tie to its legacy even if it had gotten only a single series. Sadly, it never got that series, and the content onscreen is not enough to really judge the virtues, only offer a tempting taste, a fun and breezy comedy horror production that would have likely been a sitcom in tone. The better world would have had at least one season or a feature length TV pilot, if anything, come to be, but that sadly was not meant to be.