[31 Days of Horror Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan] Day 1 – The Frighteners (1996)

Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, Jake Busey
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
110 mins. Rated R for terror/violence.

Happy October! We’re back with the 31 Days of Horror, and while we may not actually take Manhattan, it’s been 8 years of this event that I look forward to for 11 months, and this year especially, I have a number of treats in store and so much more expanding to the site and what I’m hoping to add to the YouTube channel as well, so check that out. Let’s start with an absolute classic (at least, to me it is) with The Frighteners!

Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox, Back to the Future, See You Tomorrow) has quite the career. He makes his money staging hauntings at local homes and then going in to exorcise the ghostly presence and make some quick cash. Sure, the ghosts are real, and Frank can really see them, and a good portion of locals see Bannister as a con man, but when he discovers a presence that appears to be the Grim Reaper on the killing spree in town, Frank will have to work alongside his ghostly friends and a newly-widowed resident to discover who is responsible, and hopefully put a stop to them. He’s also trying to evade an unhinged FBI agent, Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator, Unbelievable!!!!!) who seems to have a vendetta against Frank.

I discovered The Frighteners when I first came across the magnificent VHS cover as a youth perusing my old video store. It had a 3D effect of a creepy ghost fact protruding from the box, and I knew I had to see this movie, and I was not disappointed. This movie is full of that enjoyment factor, something that director Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, They Shall Not Grow Old) has cultivated throughout his entire career. Beyond anything else, his films are engaging and exciting. He also has a notable ability for world-building, and there’s plenty of that at play in this film. Sure, it isn’t a Middle Earth-worth of world-building, but he and co-screenwriter Fran Walsh have built a town on the water with a multitude of interesting and odd characters and an inversion of the classic ghostbuster-type story. The inclusion of this Grim Reaper killer and a wealth of foreshadow and mystery elements make for an exciting and worthwhile whodunnit, and sure, in hindsight perhaps it feels a bit on-the-nose of a mystery, but when I was younger, I didn’t put it all together until the very end. In that way, the film is a lot like Malignant, with so many exciting reveals that you may catch a few, but not all of them, and the pace moves along so well that figuring out some of it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment factor.

This was Michael J. Fox’s last leading role in a feature film, as he became too disillusioned with being away from his family for so long. From here on, he moved onto television with Spin City. It’s too bad because the role of Frank Bannister works so well because of Fox’s inherent ability to translate very unusual characters and settings in a realistic way. He took that on with Marty McFly, and he took that on with Frank Bannister. The two have that classic Fox charisma, but there is a lot of heavy lifting to both, and I don’t think either film would work as well with another actor in the role. Bannister isn’t always likable, but Fox makes him consistently interesting and engaging.

The rest of the cast is filled out nicely with well-layered character performances. No one but John Astin (What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole, TV’s The Addams Family) could possibly play The Judge, a long-dead gunslinger with a Yosemite Sam approach to gunplay. Jake Busey (Starship Troopers, DIVOS!) is an inspired choice as the demented Johnny Bartlett, a serial killer searching for a high score (side note: I met Busey at a convention a few years back, and I can conclude that his acting abilities are quite strong, as he is known for his villainous personas, but is generally one of the nicest people I’ve met in the business). There’s a cemetery-bound Drill Sergeant in the film that wouldn’t have worked well with anyone outside of R. Lee Ermey (the role was written to satirize his character in Full Metal Jacket). It also seems like Jeffrey Combs was just told to do whatever he wanted with Milton Dammers, as his secondary antagonist is one of the most disturbing and unusual I’ve ever seen put to film.

From a technical perspective, The Frighteners represents an end of Early 90s horror films, whereas Scream, which came out a few months later, would mark a turning point for the decade. Jackson’s film is nicely shot, but it has a sleepy town visual aesthetic more in line with the works of Stephen King’s Derry and Castle Rock, and it just looks more classically eerie. The pacing is quick and consistently evolving the narrative. Just like From Dusk Till Dawn’s genre switch, The Frighteners makes a hard turn into horror from the more darkly fantastical comedy that the movie starts as. This couldn’t have been done with the steadily built narrative that takes its time getting the viewer adjusted to the world (I would recommend the Director’s Cut, but both versions do this well), and the editing that holds the framework together. In fact, the tone makes sense for a film that was almost a Tales from the Crypt movie. The score is memorable and fitting, and it evolves with the narrative.

The Frighteners holds a distinctive place as being one of the most CG effects-laden films at that point, and when the amount of effects work became apparent to Peter Jackson as he prepped for the film, he just said, Buy More Computers! Weta Digital, his effects workshop, went from 1 computer to 35 in the span of making this film. In fact, because of this wide-scale purchase, Jackson had to find a use for these computers once post-production was complete, and it was there that he settled on the idea to make a fantasy epic as a follow-up, so we wouldn’t even have The Lord of the Rings without The Frighteners.

That’s really the only place I could fault the film. In the years since The Frighteners has been released, CGI has moved at a rampant pace, and not all of the effects work as well. They have an endearing quality to them still, and some have held up quite well, but there are moments where the age of the movie is noticeable all the same, and we have to look at it through the lens of time to see if it still holds up today. Thankfully, the more bombastic tone of the narrative doesn’t get bungled up by the aged effects, but they are there still, and it could turn some viewers away.

Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners is an excellent little horror movie that showcases that further transition from Splatstick horror like Dead Alive and Bad Taste to the more mature and thoughtful execution of The Lord of the Rings and King Kong that Jackson would go on to. I absolutely adore this film and it’s a staple in my home to this day. I would recommend checking out the Director’s Cut, if you can, as it offers a bit more world-building and expansion on the story, but both cuts are well-worth your time, and outside of some aged effects, the movie holds up.

4.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, click here.
For my review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, click here.

October 1, 2021 3

[Father’s Day] Father of the Bride (1991)

Director: Charles Shyer

Cast: Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short, Kimberly Williams

Screenplay: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer

105 mins. Rated PG.

It’s Father’s Day, and while I am not a father (to my knowledge), I figured now would be a great time to watch a good Father’s Day movie.

George Banks (Steve Martin, Roxanne, Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk) is dealing with the worst situation of his entire life: his 22-year-old daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams, The Christmas Chronicles, TV’s According to Jim) is getting married to a man he’s never met. As the impending date of the nuptials nears, George’s sanity gets closer and closer to shattering.

The central relationships in the Banks family are the strongest element of the film, specifically between George and Annie. I could genuinely believe that they were father and daughter. George doesn’t hate the idea of her marrying, but he’s terrified of losing his daughter. He wants to be a father for just a little longer. I really enjoyed both of them, and I enjoyed Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Poms) as George’s wife, Nina, who is so easily won over by Annie’s fiance.

George gets into some pretty frustratingly fun interactions early on in the film, like meeting the in-laws in their lavish home. I would have liked more of these situations because as the film moves along, they lose these moments. In that way, it also lost me a little.

For all the love I have for the central family dynamic, I was unimpressed with Martin Short (The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, The Addams Family) as Franck Eggelhoffer, the comedic wedding planner who is so unintelligible that he grew old rather quickly. I started out really enjoying his character, and it didn’t work after a while. The filmmakers just leaned so heavily into Eggelhoffer as a supporting character.

Father of the Bride has some really entertaining characters and comedic set pieces. The problem is that it just doesn’t have enough of them to keep the film in that upper tier of Steve Martin comedies. The movie has plenty of heart, though, and that keeps the emotional core strong enough to entertain enough. I still recommend the film but I wish it were stronger.

3/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

June 21, 2020 0

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams

Screenplay: Chris Terrio, J.J. Abrams

141 mins. Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action.

Well, we’ve come to the end, haven’t we? I guess, in the grand scheme of things, this is the third end, but who is really counting? With Episode IX, the Skywalker Saga has come to an end…for now, at least. Director J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Super 8) came on to an impossible task of ending the nine-film saga, the sequel trilogy itself, and make a less-divisive film than The Last Jedi. He also had to work around the death of one of his stars, Carrie Fisher (Maps to the Stars, TV’s Family Guy). He also had the, perhaps unfair, perception that he’s much better at starting a story than finishing one. So with all that, is The Rise of Skywalker the perfect film that delivers on all of its goals. As it turns out, it’s more of a mixed bag.

It’s been a year since The Last Jedi, and the crumbling resistance fighters have gained a few additions but still pale in comparison with the size of the dreaded First Order, now under the leadership of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, Paterson, Marriage Story). Now, a strange message has been sent across the galaxy, seemingly coming from the long-dead Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, The Lost City of Z, Sleepy Hollow), and it’s up to Rey (Daisy Ridley, Murder on the Orient Express, Ophelia) and her friends to discover his location before he unleashes his new Final Order upon the galaxy.

I think the best way to describe this final film in the Skywalker Saga is “Great Story, Poor Execution.” I had loads of fun in this movie, and I quite enjoyed the experience when I saw it a second time, but there are a lot of strange choices made, particularly in the screenplay and the editing, that I just didn’t understand. I don’t need everything explained for me in a movie, but some of the plot progression happens just because…

The inclusion of Carrie Fisher in this film had to come as a difficult decision. Ultimately, Abrams decided to utilize unused footage from The Force Awakens to create a performance for Leia in the film. Does it work? Kind of. I still stand by my thoughts that it would have served the character and the story better to just not have Fisher in the film and announce in the opening crawl that “Our princess has passed” or something similar. I think for what he tried to do, I can commend Abrams for getting Leia in the film, and the second viewing softened my criticism in the realm of Leia.

Adam Driver is absolutely stellar as Kylo Ren. I don’t agree entirely with the route taken in this film with Kylo Ren, but Driver’s performance sold me on it. Again, Kylo’s arc is one I felt would be better going one way, but the filmmakers decided to take it the expected route. Overall, he surprised me yet again as Ren.

J.J. Abrams did manage to get the galactic Scooby gang together for a bulk of this film. It was crazy to me that Rey and Poe (Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina, The Addams Family) met for the first time officially in The Last Jedi at the end of the film. The Last Jedi also managed to keep most of our heroes separate for a bulk of the runtime, so it’s great that they are all on a journey together. These areas are where a bulk of the lightheartedness of the film takes place and elevates what could be a very dreary story.

Daisy Ridley’s arc as Rey is another tough one to pull off, and I think her performance rises above expectations because of Ridley’s inherent charm onscreen. She’s a fun character and one that the audience has no problems rooting for. Again, there are some twists and turns to her character arc, some I did not expect and didn’t think would work, and they mostly did.

As far as legacy characters go, no one had a better showcase in this film than C-3PO (Anthony Daniels, I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, The Lord of the Rings). This is 3PO at his most funny and probably most utilized since the first film. Anthony Daniels continues to prove why this franchise continues to go to the C-3PO well.

The rest of the cast all perform ably, and any faults can be attributed to the screenplay. Newcomers Naomi Ackie (Lady Macbeth, Yardie) and Keri Russell (Waitress, TV’s The Americans) are both quite entertaining, but their characters seek only to convolute an already bloated screenplay. The subplot involving General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson, Frank, Peter Rabbit) and General Pryde (Richard E. Grant, Gosford Park, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) is well-acted, but it didn’t need to be in the film and is ultimately meaningless. It was great to see Billy Dee Williams (The LEGO Batman Movie, The Man in 3B) back as Lando Calrissian, but he isn’t given a whole lot to do, and one wonders why he wasn’t included earlier. It seems odd for him to just show up now.

Ian McDiarmid’s return to the franchise does give an overall feeling of cohesiveness to the saga, but Palpatine’s plans for Rey and Kylo just don’t really make sense all around. I love the visual look of Palpatine and the environment he appears in (in fact, some of Ralph McQuarrie’s unused concept art from decades ago was put to good use here), but again, it feels like lazy storytelling and I didn’t get the sense that there was detail in the screenplay because the story lacked a lot, not in how Palpatine is back, but why he waited until now and how he manages to do what he does in the film.

I think the problems of The Rise of Skywalker all stem from the fact that Lucasfilm did not have a plan for this trilogy. By not putting the three directors in a room with someone like Dave Filoni who can offer guidance in crafting a cohesive long-form story. Not having a plan forced Abrams to do a lot of heavy lifting here and it created a film with an interesting and exciting finale that lacked direction because so much is jammed into a movie. Having Chris Terrio as a writer may also have created some problems in the screenplay. While I think Terrio is quite talented, he seems to have a lot of trouble with franchise storytelling, most notably from his tie working on the DCEU. It also feels like The Rise of Skywalker would have fared batter as a three-hour film. That and tightening up the MacGuffin-filled narrative would have helped the film to be more successful in its execution.

I still think The Rise of Skywalker turned out better with Abrams than it would have with Colin Trevorrow behind the wheel. The number one thing here is whether the film is entertaining an enjoyable, and problems and nitpicks aside, there’s a lot to love in this finale. The film is filled with fun surprises, callbacks and appearances, and the score from John Williams is absolutely awe-inspiring. A better screenplay and some more cohesive editing could’ve helped quite a bit, but this is a hell of an action-packed conclusion to the Skywalker Saga.

3.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, click here.

For my review of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, click here.

For my review of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, click here.

For my review of Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, click here.

For my review of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, click here.

For my review of Irvin Kershner’s Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, click here.

For my review of Richard Marquand’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, click here.

For my review of J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, click here.

For my review of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, click here.

December 23, 2019 4

The Addams Family (2019)

Director: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon

Cast: Oscar Issac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Finn Wolfhard, Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Allison Janney

Screenplay: Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler, Erica Rivinoja

86 mins. Rated PG for macabre and suggestive humor, and some action.

I never really liked the idea of an animated version of The Addams Family. I just always felt like The Addams Family always looked better and worked better as a live-action film, especially when you high-calibre talent like Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and Charlize Theron (Monster, Atomic Blonde), who could both look and embody the characters of Gomez and Morticia Addams. But I nevertheless went into this new Addams Family with an open-mind because I love the franchise and characters.

The Addams family are not, by definition, normal, but that doesn’t stop the from living life their own special way. As Gomez (Isaac) preps his son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard, It, TV’s Carmen Sandiego) for the Addams rite of passage, the Mazurka, Morticia (Theron) tries to connect more with daughter Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz, Let Me In, Greta) as she feeds her curiosity surrounding the town in which they reside, especially the local school. All the while, local celebrity Margaux Needler (Allison Janney, The Help, Ma) is determined to rid town of the Addams family so that she can keep the town bright, shiny, and unchanged.

First of all, there’s too much going on in a film that’s as short as this one. I didn’t care about the Gomez/Pugsley/Mazurka storyline, and the Morticia/Wednesday plot has been done better. I also felt like the Margaux Needler storyline doesn’t really go anywhere interesting nor does it really end in a satisfying way. There’s just problems abound in this film.

The voice cast is all fantastic except for Nick Kroll (Sing, TV’s Big Mouth) as Uncle Fester. His is a situation of being poorly miscast.He’s a fine and funny voice actor, but I don’t think he worked well for this character.

The screenplay is the biggest fault of the film in that it doesn’t really do anything unique that makes this film memorable. For a movie like The Addams Family, it’s so forgettable.Outside of one sequence involving Wednesday in school doing frog dissection, the movie has no truly interesting scenes. It’s just a mixture of plot points that have been done in better adaptations. There is no new ground covered in this movie.

The Addams Family is a very poor first outing for this new incarnation of the beloved characters. It made enough money for a sequel, so here’s hoping they learn some new lessons here because this first installment is forgettable and very paint-by-numbers. Skip and just watch the old show or Barry Sonnenfeld films.

2/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

November 11, 2019 2

[Happy 15th Birthday!] Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci

Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker

105 mins. Rated R for graphic horror violence and gore, and for a scene of sexuality.

Academy Award Winner: Best Art Direction – Set Decoration
Academy Award Nominee: Best Cinematography
Academy Award Nominee: Best Costume Design

I remember reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a kid. I remember the way it made me feel. It was a very unhappy and dreary story, as was expected to be. I remember my excitement at hearing that there was a new film version coming along in 1999. It was a new film from director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Dark Shadows), with whom I was already familiar with at a young age. I remember finding the film to be very different than the original story, much more convoluted than it needed to be. I wasn’t a great big fan of the film, though I remembered that it had several some really great moments. I thought I would look back on the film for its 15^th anniversary and see if I felt any different about it.

As it turns out, I still find numerous flaws with the film, but I feel as though it has aged very nicely over the past fifteen years.

It’s the story of Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Transcendence) as he hunts down a murderer in Sleepy Hollow who lops his victim’s heads off. Along the way, he meets Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci, Monster, Lizzie Borden Took an Ax), a woman he develops an emotional connection to even though she may have more to her past than he knows. The townspeople believe that the murders are being committed by The Headless Horseman, a mythical being who has been birthed from Hell to avenge his death.

This film looks pretty damn good for its age. I still find the lighting to be too little during some of the more menacing action sequences. I think it could use a bit more light in its scenes. I like Johnny Depp, pre-overused by Tim Burton here. Christina Ricci returns to the genre that made her famous in The Addams Family. I find her inert sensuality and innocence brings chilling ambience to her performance here. Then there’s Christopher Walken, who gets a lot less screentime as The Headless Horseman, but all the seem, he gives one of the most iconic and terrifying performances I have ever seen here. He is almost monstrous and beastly even as a humanoid spirit.

I also enjoyed the cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki here. He definitely deserved the nomination from making this film feel like a Hammer film and gives homage to even older films of the horror genre.

Of all the films in the Burton canon, this one feels more like the Burton we know and doesn’t tread very much new territory, but overall, I enjoy the film much more now, and part of that has to do with the awesome soundtrack and the screenplay from Andrew Kevin Walker (even with an uncredited rewrite that messed with the pacing a bit). Tim Burton has done better, but he has also done worse, and Sleepy Hollow exists somewhere in the middle.

2.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, click here.

November 17, 2014 11

31 Days of Horror: Day 20 – Children of the Corn (1984)

Director: Fritz Kiersch

Cast: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong, John Franklin, Courtney Gains

Screenplay: George Goldsmith

92 mins. Rated R.

I love Stephen King. I do. He has been one of the few authors in my lifetime that have inspired me to do what I do. I am currently reading his entire library of work chronologically, and I just find his writing fascinating. I was a big fan of the short story Children of the Corn from his collection Night Shift. It was terrifying at the core. The story, about a bunch of children in the town of Gatlin who turn on their parents and slaughter the adults of the town before forming their own society to serve the mythical deity He Who Walks Behind the Rows, is just so eerie and yet told in such a way that it becomes believable, which in turn makes it more horrifying. The film version is an inverse. It tells the story in such a way that it becomes wholly unrealistic and sometimes laughable.

It stars Peter Horton (TV’s thirtysomething, The Baby-Sitters Club) as Burt and Linda Hamilton (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Dante’s Peak) as his wife Vicky. Of the children performing, the only two who warrant any such fear are Isaac (John Franklin, The Addams Family, Python) and his servant Malachai (Courtney Gains, Back to the Future, Faster).

Horton’s portrayal of Burt is totally fallable and silly. He comes across as not even believing himself when he reads lines. Hamilton as well is given next to nothing in terms of character arc (her entire character stripped down to being Daphne in any episode of Scooby-Doo). The children cannot control their scenes and the film ultimately falls apart before any supernatural elements, like a rotoscoped demonic shade deity, enter the field. It is no wonder that director Fritz Kiersch and screenwriter George Goldsmith have gotten nothing back from Hollywood, but that’s what you get when you completely throw out the original script from the source material’s creator.

It is disappointing to see such terrific source material mangled in such a way, but the film is just not all that good. Well, I guess when compared to the sequels…Oscar anyone?

2/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For more 31 Days of Horror, click here.

October 20, 2014 1