Laid To Rest

• Straight to DVD, 2009. Unfortunately, I have not seen the unrated director's cut.
• Written and directed by Robert Hall
• Starring Bobbi Sue Luther, Kevin Gage, Thomas Dekker, Lena Headey, and the guy who played "Frogurt" on Lost

    The opening credits sequence of Laid To Rest is reminiscent of the opening of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. We see the killer's hands, we see his blades, we know he is a badass and he's got nothing but death on his mind. The imagery is not accidental, and it's not uncommon. (One major difference is that Wes Craven used an original score, and Hall, like so many horror directors now, uses heavy metal. The prevalence of metal music in horror is kind of a drag these days. It's not scary, just chaotic, and it shows a real laziness in setting a scary mood.)  The credits tell us nearly the whole story, because we've seen it before: girl runs away from killer for 90 minutes, everyone else suffers a brutal, bloody death, and through some combination of perseverance, sheer dumb luck, varying levels of toughness on her part, and a fatal mistake by killer, girl wins in the end, until the sequel in which she dies in the first ten minutes, if she's in it at all. Despite the fact that we follow the girl and sympathize with her, we all know the killer is the reason we bought a ticket, and if you're not a fan of slashers, you probably won't enjoy this movie. However, if you are a fan, if you like Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream, etc., this will blow your mind.

     The format is a little different: instead of a group of friends getting subtracted one by one, there's one girl, on her own. Played by Bobbi Sue Luther, who also produced the movie, she's known simply as The Girl. She wakes up in a coffin, in a funeral home, with no idea who she is or how she got there. She soon finds out one thing about herself: there's a guy who wants to make her dead. She seems to have a wound on her head: it's bloody and she has a headache.  We find out towards the end, in a neat little flashback, who she is (a hooker from Miami,) and how she hurt her head (baseball bat to the dome.) Meanwhile, she has no memory, "can't remember the names of things," and seems completely unable to function. She can't make a phone call, she can't take a shower, and she gets everyone around her killed.
     A supporting cast of faces mostly recognizable to sf/horror fans, including Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker, both from the ill-fated Sarah Connor Chronicles, adds a bit of fun, and they all die, of course, in some of the most merciless and bloody ways I've seen in any movie. It sounds weird when I write it, but those scenes are fun, because they are scary, and they look so real. The Girl witnesses every death, and Luther really sells the terror of it all, and you feel for her, because she's so helpless and dumb, and you are horrified with her when she finally makes it to the barn that's been serving as the killer's man-cave and sees what kind of house he keeps. (I won't ruin that one for you, but I will say this: I saw the rated R version, and I am truly frightened to see the unrated version of that scene.)  It wouldn't really be a spoiler to tell you that she kills him in the end, seemingly melting his head with acid. I say seemingly because there is now a sequel in the works, with Halloween's Danielle Harris as the new Girl. (Do I want to see that one? What do you think?)
     If you're not a slasher fan, again, don't expect to like this. However, for slasher fans, this movie is a blast. It knows what you want and delivers the goods without pulling any punches. I feel pretty confident that this is the best slasher in at least the last ten years, if not the last 20. Don't miss it, but don't take my word for it: watch the trailer.

I think you'll want to see this:

Don't you NEVER turn your back on a fuckin' clown when he's talkin' to you!

     One of my earliest memories is one of being about 4 years old and waking up in the middle of the night. My father was awake in the living room watching TV and let me sit with him while he watched Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black. I only really remember one segment, where a little tiki doll comes alive and chases her around the apartment. I remember being enchanted, not only by the puppetry, which I'm sure would look primitive by today's standards, but by how menacing and evil the little bastard was.
     Around the same time I became fascinated by the old Universal black&white monsters: Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera and the Wolfman, the latter two being played by Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces. I had the action figures, and I had the books, and I had a killer-cool Frankenstein t-shirt, but I didn't have the actual movies. In fact, I don't think I even saw them until I was much older. It didn't matter, because I loved those characters. I played with the action figures for hours, and read the books over and over because I loved the characters. I loved Chaney's Wolfshead silver cane in Wolfman, and Dracula's cool dialogue: "I never drink...wine." I liked them because they were creepy, and because they were of a world I knew didn't exist but still believed in.

"I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy!"

     1984: HBO: I'm 9 years old, once again my dad lets me watch a scary movie with him, only this time it's A Nightmare on Elm Street. My little brother watches with us; he's 5 and goes absolutely bonkers when Nancy answers the disconnected phone and Freddy's tongue comes out of it.
     And then there was Creature Double Feature, Saturday afternoons on WLVI. And Ghostbusters. And lots of kids' books with ghost stories. And Cat's Eye, Fright Night, Videodrome (yes, I was a little kid when I saw Videodrome,) The Fly, The Toxic Avenger, House, and of course, The Twilight Zone.

You do not want to know where that head has been.

     I guess what I'm saying is that my brain was warped from go, and I really can't be blamed for tastes that range from slightly demented to batshit brutal. I'm a grown-up now, supposedly, but I still love ghost stories, monsters, and things that make me squirm. I believe that good art makes you feel something, and if it's horror movies, that something is fear. I'm a lot more forgiving of a movie's shortcomings if it scares me. I must have seen Haute Tension a dozen times, and it scares me every time. I absolutely love it, even though, according to Roger Ebert,  the "movie's plot has a hole that is not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact does have a truck driven right through it." (I have the utmost respect for Roger Ebert simply for his review of my favorite movie of all time, The Devil's Rejects. The man does not fuck around.)
      So anyway, this is my new blog. I watch the movies and tell you what I think. You might see a review of one movie, you might read a discussion of a topic, like why I hate the term "torture porn." I'll probably stick to horror because it's what fires my imagination the most, but I could branch out into sci-fi, superheroes, or even comedy. (Due Date was HILARIOUS!) I would like to say I'll post 3x a week, but realistically, it will probably be once a week, by Monday morning. I'll try to include as many links as possible, so you can check out the movies if you haven't seen them or read an article I'm quoting. If you see one good movie you've never heard of before coming here, or if I can get you to think a different way about one of your old favorites, I will have done what I set out to do. Have fun, and tell me what you think!

Watch This Space

This Space

watch it.