Salem's Lot (1979)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I worry I went into this with the wrong mindset. People have enjoyed it, right? I’m pressing play on the blu ray, and I can’t get the reality out of my head that It (1990) is a 4 hour exercise where maybe two minutes of it work. Maybe the network boradcast treatment of horror novels—and especially King’s work—is destined for failure. The movie really had to win me over.

And didn’t quite get the job done. Here there might be scant seconds that work, and each of those seconds are jump cuts. The entire film is not kept together by any performance that gives the film real menace, a la Tim Curry in It. James Mason has a little bit of menace to him, and Bonnie Bedelia is always a welcome a presence, but neither of them are given enough to do to even remotely make a three hour run time not feel like a chore.

I’d say the film ages poorly, but I’m having a hard time imagining that the people of 1979 could reach for dread when confronted with only occasional appearances of a vampire that looks less like Count Orlock in Nosferatu (1922) and more like the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine (1968).

Even those few and far between jump scares wear thin as things proceed. I realize as they pile up that not only is a vampire suddenly jumping into frame, but that frame freezes in place, to really drive home the fact that I’m supposed to be scared. Throw in some act breaks that were originally designed to sell me an Atari 2600 doesn’t help matters much.

Then again, it could be worse. I direct the curious to Salem’s Lot (2004). At least this version didn’t force Rob Lowe to leave The West Wing.

The Funhouse (1981)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, William Finley, Kevin Conway

Have I Seen It Before: No. Somewhere along the line it had been recommended to me as a potential Beyond the Cabin in the Woods movie. I don’t remember how it came to me, whether we discussed it off-mic among the panel, whether somebody mentioned it to me, or it was (improbably) recommended in an old episode by either Siskel or Ebert*. We’ve got a rule on the show that I have to, you know… actually see the film in question before I recommend it for the show.

Did I Like It: Not really. It’s probably best that I can’t for the life of me remember who recommended it, as I can now think almost anybody made the recommendation**. It’s not as brazenly cheap and sleazy as Friday the 13th (1980) or any of its sequels. It’s nowhere near as classy as even some of the worst sequels for Halloween (1978). It does try to be visually interesting in its banal exploration of 80s horror, which might put it in the same pantheon of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), or any of its better sequels, but it doesn’t quite measure up in that regard, either. Its opening minutes reach for something approaching meta horror, but the entire sequence only left me wondering why the parents wouldn’t let Joey (Shawn Carson) stay up to watch the end of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) when he is demonstrably a fan. No wonder he left the house.

I suppose it’s interesting to see the progress of a filmmaker. This doesn’t have the relentless discomfort of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). It’s not hard to draw a line from Hooper’s explosive introduction to the movie world, to this, to Poltergeist (1982), where people are still trying to work out whether he was at all up to directing the film in the first place.

*As I look into info for the film it turns out that it was indeed a Siskel—yes, you read that right—liked it quite a bit. Sometimes I can’t quite account for much in the world.

**Pay no attention to the man behind the footnotes. I had started writing that sentence before tripping over that little Siskel nugget. A Sugget, if you will. (You shouldn’t.)