The Power of Trees Compels You

When the director of The Exorcist makes a universally panned dud about a killer tree that’s only on Instant Watch for another day, you might as well cancel all my appointments. It was time to watch William Friedken’s The Guardian.

Quick Plot: A brief title card informs us that during Druidic times, people worshiped trees.

That’s that.

Cut to the present day, where a pair of parents are on their way out for the weekend. This is clearly quite convenient for the mysterious nanny who uses the break as the perfect chance to take her newborn charge into the woods and sacrifice him to a giant Sleepy Hollow-esque tree.

I’ll say it once: prospective nannies’ references should be checked more thoroughly than pretty much anything you’ve ever thought to check in your life, be that taxes, your bakery line number, or whether or not you remembered to put on deodorant before leaving the house.

Fast forward to a new happy couple played by Law & Order’s Carey Lowell and one of the minor characters in two of my favorite sports movies (Field of Dreams and The Cutting Edge, and yes, figure skating is a sport or would you like to try it yourself?), Dwier Brown. Phil and Kate, as they are called, are forced to hire a live-in babysitter when they decide to rent a modern house out of their means, since Kate has to return to work in order to help pay the rent. After a token montage necessary for any movie with job interviews, the couple decide on a young gym teacher in the making.

Except then she ends up dead.

Choice number 2, luckily, is a sexier Mary Poppins named Camilla. Before you can sing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Camilla is showing up in Phil’s sexy dreams and lecturing Kate about how breastfeeding will keep her baby pure. What she doesn’t say, at least not out loud, is that Baby Jake needs to save his purity so that he makes a better human sacrifice to Camilla’s tree boyfriend.

As much as the idea of a killer tree may SEEM the culprit for The Guardian’s sour reputation, it’s really more the lack of suspense that damns it into unfortunate territory. We know from the very first lullabye that Camilla wants to feed Jake to the woods, which wouldn’t be terrible if we didn’t ALSO know that we were in the hands of one of cinema’s all-time greats.

Truthfully, The Guardian isn’t nearly as laughable as one might expect when watching a cross between The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (before that was a thing) and Little Otik. The opening baby sacrifice is actually quite disturbing, and the whole cast is solid enough to sell most of the material with a straight face. We get coyotes eating nerds, trees decapitating middle-aged punks, and branches wrapping themselves around their victims like an anaconda on Owen Wilson. So in terms of ridiculous killing styles, The Guardian is kind of awesome.

It’s just also…kinda…eh…hmm. Muddled could be a good word. The shaky marriage between domestic Fatal Attraction-like thriller with the whole, you know, woman worshiping a killer tree just never meshes in a way that feels, dare I say it, organic. It’s obvious that there were script and production woes (I doubt we’ll get a proud Friedken commentary should The Guardian ever make it to Blu Ray) and while the pedigree behind the film makes it superior to a lot of rival horror films, it’s still an uncomfortable combination of too many hard to handle elements.

High Points 

Jenny Seagrove makes for a surprisingly believable sexy tree hugging nanny, something I assume is hard to because thus far, even Meryl Streep hasn't attempted that feat (and yes, that's a challenge) 

Maybe it's just a sign of the times, but I enjoyed the 'switch' of having the husband be the one accused of paranoid hysteria. From the 90s to now, most of these kinds of films always want to use the crutch of maternal instinct and the fact that it's more believable for the world to NOT believe a raging mother. Considering how easy it would have been to have Carey Lowell's character blend jealousy with fear, it's a refreshing gender swap.

Low Points

On one hand, the big thug massacre is big and gory and kind of kickass. On the other, I'm probably just saying that because it involved laughable 45 year old schoolyard bullies and death by dummy

Lessons Learned

If you don’t want anyone to know that you sustained a gigantic gash on your tummy, perhaps you should be safe and not wear a flimsy white blouse when the wound is still fresh

No matter how many babies you feed a superevil ancient tree, all it takes is one chainsaw to show it who’s boss

When reporting a series of supernatural events to a dubious police detective, you might want to leave out some of the less important and more unbelievable elements, like how the woman who tried to sacrifice your baby to a tree could also fly 

The Winning Line

“She has an accent...European I think, British maybe.”

Now I could understand someone mistaking a Belgian accent for French or Scottish for Irish, but…well…I guess Britain IS in Europe…

Look! It’s…

Candyman’s jerky professor Xander Berkely popping up in the film’s last reel to play a detective

Nostalgic ‘90s Alert!

“I love you, Roseanne Barr,” jokes Phil to his (not really) chubbily pregnant wife. Savvy Roseanne fans can easily date The Guardian by the fact that she still had a last name.

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Guardian is certainly an interesting watch, both for Friedken fans who can’t shake the curiosity of watching him tackle killer trees and horror nerds who, you know, just love when ANYONE tackles killer trees. It’s not a hidden gem or so-bad-it’s-wonderful campfest, but for a 1990 horror film with a bad reputation, it’s not boring to watch. Plus, you know...killer trees.

When planning your cat's birthday party, be sure to call Burgess Meredith

For anybody that ever wanted to see Beverly D’Angelo’s breasts, there is Hair. For anybody that has ever wanted to see Beverly D’Angelo’s breasts PLUS her dressed like a trashier version of A Chorus Line’s Cassie’s masturbating furiously, there is The Sentinel. 

Quick Plot: Successful but emotionally cuckoo fashion model Alison moves into a furnished apartment in Brooklyn in order to assert some form of independence from her boyfriend, played with a terrible mustache by the nevertheless dashing Chris Sarandon. There she meets a gaggle of oddball neighbors, including Doll’s House favorites Sylvia Miles (as D’Angelo’s leotard-wearing lover) and Burgess “I Was In 85% of Every Movie Made Between 1975 and 1985” Meredith (as a quirky old coot with a loyal pet bird and indigestion-suffering cat). 

After an wacko birthday party for Meredith’s feline (it’s even better than it sounds), Alison visits her landlady to complain, only to learn that (cue the horns) she HAS no neighbors. Well, there is a blind batty priest who stares out the window all day long, but all the chatty weirdos seem to be figments of the increasingly unstable Alison’s mind.

*Note to self: Check with landlords to confirm that my fellow apartment dwellers who blast Gospel music at 6AM on the weekends are, in fact, real

What’s a pretty gal in the outer boroughs to do? Why, head to church of course! There’s the minor problem of Alison’s residual guilt from committing adultery (the smooth Sarandon was previously married to a now mysteriously dead woman) and attempting to slit her wrists after catching her elderly father nakedly partying with a pair of giggling ladies that were not her mother. Can these wacky Catholics and their stylish hats save America’s next top model before her next photo shoot with a peacock and an Afghan, or will the unhappy beauty be forced to guard the gateway to hell for eternity?

The Sentinel is an odd duck, a film with a strong reputation but generally mixed reception. There’s an insanely impressive cast and truly memorable finale, even if the plot, like so many other films of its era, feels so carefully constructed to grab new Exorcist fans. The story varies from campy to creepy to overstuffed, ultimately ending on a satisfying enough note that you almost forget the stretches of blandness it had before.

High Points

You can’t argue with the infamously controversial climax, a demonic fiesta that includes a bevy of real-life amputees and disfigured circus performers

If you’ve been keeping track, yes, this film includes performances from Christ Sarandon, Burgess Meredith, Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, Jeff Goldblum (in an unbuttoned shirt), Ava Gardner, William Hickey (and NOT ancient!), and Tom Berenger as, and I quote the credits, “Man at end” 

Low Points

Despite a reasonable running length, there seems to be an awful lot of downtime in The Sentinel that simply mutes some of the more interesting eerie oddness developed so early on. I’ll never complain about seeing Christopher Walken or Jerry Orbach onscreen, but the many, many scenes regarding police investigations do absolutely nothing but pull momentum from Alison’s far more interesting doom

Warning:

This movie features possible illicit acts with gerbils

Lessons Learned

In the 1970s, fondling your sister was one way to make a living

Ghosts are generally bad, but ghosts that turn you into blind men or women of the cloth are simply EVIL

New Yorkers only have sense for sex and money

Being caught having a threesome with a cake-eating obese woman and a cackler will do irrecoverable harm to your daughter’s mental health

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was a tad disappointed in the dragginess of The Sentinel, but it still stands as a sweet bite of genre candy that deserves to be tasted by most horror fans. There’s a little something for everyone--Sarandon suave for me, Beverly’s breasts for others, Burgess Meredith singing happy birthday to his cat for everybody--and best of all, the glory of Netflix Instant Watch for the lucky North Americans. Don’t rush out to fork down hard-earned wampum on the DVD, but definitely keep it on your radar for an eventual initiation into a slightly bizarre, incredibly ‘70s world of Catholic horror.

Nerd Alert! Books Books Books (& Books)

I’m a slacker, but also something of a nerd. Some might even call me a nerdlacker. By ‘some’ I refer to ‘myself.’

See, I read a lot. I write a lot. I combine them sometimes, then forget that I did and end up with today’s post, i.e., a list of genre-esque books I read back in the summer through the fall. That’s my story and this nerdlacker is sticking to it.

Now please let me out of this locker. I have chess team practice and coach doesn’t tolerate tardiness.

The Conquerer Worms

Brian Keene is probably today’s most cinematic horror novelist. Of the three novels that I’ve read, each is drawn so vividly that you can see virtually every drip of blood and scrap of flesh on the page. Taking a break from his successful zombie fiction, The Conquerer Worms is a neat hybrid, part post-apocalyptic narrative and part monster mash.

As the back flap reads, one day, it started raining. And didn’t stop. Lots of bad stuff happened.

Okay, the back flap didn’t say that part. Sometimes I lie.

One half of the novel is narrated by a senior citizen fighting loneliness, desperation, and nicotine withdrawals on a West Virginia mountain as he quietly survives what his neighbors have not, namely, prehistoric worms slowly making their way to devour everything left on the earth’s surface. Eventually, the story switches to a mixed group eking out an existence in a Baltimore high rise hotel, all the while evading merciless Satanists, man-eating mermaids, and gigantic carnivorous sea creatures.

I’ve yet to be disappointed by Brian Keene’s writing. Though it starts a little slower than some of his other zombie fiction, The Conquerer Worms is a gripping tale that keeps you in constant suspense. Keene’s ability to use unique narrative voices is in full force, with Teddy Garnett’s wise old man making the reader easily emotionally involved. The second story lacks the same heart to put you on board with the characters, but it makes up for it with brutal storytelling that gets darker with each page. An easy recommendation.

The Bridge

Penned by ‘90s splatterpunk heroes Craig Skipp and John Spector, The Bridge tells the story of a Pennsylvania town on the edge of a pollution caused Armageddon. Gooey mutations ensue.

Though it suffers a little from trying to cover too many characters, The Bridge remains a fun summer page turner rich in gruesome carnage and icky monster imagery. It doesn’t read like poetry, but for a horror movie in your hands, it’s an enjoyable way to pass some time. 

The Exorcist

I’m a fairly easy person to make happy, but to really bring me to a state of bliss, throw a pile of slightly used books on the sidewalk with a sign that says ‘Free.” That’s how I picked up my paperback, coverless copy of William Peter Blatty’s infamous 1971 novel,  the very piece that spawned a somewhat popular movie with a killer third installment, The Exorcist.

To give a disclaimer, of course I’ve seen The Exorcist but sadly, it was at the wrong time in my life. I grew up with horror so it didn’t seem inappropriate to rent the VHS in fourth grade. Unfortunately, it was probably the worst possible age. At 10, I was too young to get some of the sexuality and despite a minor Catholic education, not quite old enough to fully grasp the religious aspects involved. Meanwhile, my soiled elementary school eyes had already witnessed their share of zombie mayhem and slasher guttings, rendering some of the violence tame by my then-standards. I’d seen Karen Cooper get zombified then slaughter her mother with a garden spade, both in color and black and white. Why should I care about one rich girl fighting a demon who didn’t have anything better to do? 

There are two main observations I made in comparing Blatty’s novel to Friedken’s Oscar nominated film (you know, the one that according to Kristen Stewart’s Oscar writers, was the last horror film to come near winning a little gold man except...stop it, nerdlacker). The first is just how closely the script follows its source, straight down to the infamous spider walk and crucifix masturbation. On the other side is how much more psychologically based the novel feels, as more pages are devoted to a faith vs. reason debate than gore. It makes perfect sense that Blatty would later go on to direct The Exorcist III, a film filled with powerful imagery, engaging dialogue, and open questions about the nature of evil.

But as much as I would kind of love to always talk about The Exorcist III, I think the title of this post is supposed to be devoted to books. So read the book, then see The Exorcist III.

Community service, you’ve been served!

Cover

Many of you already know of my love and admiration for the fictional horrors of one Jack Ketchum. Between his gruesome novels and deeply chilling short stories, he is, without doubt, my favorite genre writer.

Cover tells the tale of Lee Moravin, a Vietnam vet whose psychological war scars are so deep that he simply can’t live with others. Left alone in the woods with a loyal dog (seriously, no one writes man’s relationship with his pets quite like Ketchum) and a thriving marijuana farm, Lee rotates between woodsy solitude and violent flashbacks. 

Meanwhile, a group of middle aged literary yuppies (plus a surprisingly well-drawn supermodel) take an innocent wilderness weekend trip just outside Lee’s territory. In no time, Lee declares the city slickers his Nam enemies and plots a vicious hunting spree. 

Cover is not my favorite Ketchum read, but it’s brisk and fairly addictive. Lee is a fascinatingly tragic figure, a sympathetic man who’s seen some of the worst sights imaginable. In another plot, he could be a hero, yet once our ‘civilized’ campers enter his borders, he’s a bloodthirsty killer we can’t possibly root for. The balance Ketchum achieves in drawing both sides as real people dropped into the wrong situation is horrifying and believable. In no way is this the most fun you’ll have with a book, but for darker days, it’s a high recommend.

On the Beach

I’m not exactly sure why I find so much enjoyment in reading depressing sagas about the end of the world, but let’s just look past the psychology to discuss 1957’s On the Beach, a twice-filmed novel set just after a worldwide skirmish has brought upon Armageddon. Nuclear fallout has left a rash of radiation in the air and as surely as the wind blows, every drop of human life will eventually--months, weeks, days--be killed.

Set in Australia (one of the last reaches to receive the pollution), On the Beach focuses on a few key characters trying to make the most of their final days. An American naval officer continues to live as if his family is alive, even though nobody has heard a breath of life from US soil in months. If he could face the truth, he’d surely fall for the twentysomething unmarried (and doomed to die alone) local girl who struggles to find anything worth living for when there’s nothing that can be started and completed in the time remaining. A young couple raises their newborn without consequence until factors call for the dreaded suicide pill discussion. There are deadly auto races that let the brave go out in a flame of glory. Some people prefer to drink themselves to death.

Depressing, sure, but also fascinating and told with intelligent restraint. Author Nevil Shute was predominantly known for military literature and though some of that does show up on the more naval-based pages, On the Beach is much more about character and humanity than submarines. Though a few officers discuss responsibility and world politics, the novel focuses far more on the individual reactions to what war has left. The result is a haunting tale I couldn’t put down.

Haunted Homes, Demon Teens, & Long Island Lolitas That Aren't Amy Fisher

Before we revel in the sexual depravity, mass murder, and withering disappointment of Amityville II: The Possession, allow me to bid you a warning:

I will spoil this movie. Because I’m a bad person. Or maybe because if you’ve seen any of the other Amityville spinoffs, you already know the ending (or rather, middle) or The Possession and it’s just too darn tough (or I’m too damn dumb) to discuss a film that hits its mark 60 minutes in without, well, spilling the red paint. If you’re truly looking forward to the twists and turns of this 1980 prequel, I recommend coming back here after viewing or just donning a pair of those cool 80s plastic sunglasses that didn’t actually protect your eyes from the sun, but did make it really difficult to see anything clearly.

Ready? Here goes:


Some movies were just made to be watched on a hot summer night at a drive-in. Amityville II: The Possession is clearly one of these relics. With its exploitation-y atmosphere, early climax, and okay-to-fall-asleep third act, this first sequel to Long Island’s pride-and-joy-horror smash made me want to win the lottery, buy some land, and build my own outdoor movie heaven.


This doesn’t mean that I loved Amityville II. It just means I love drive-ins.


Quick Plot: Some years before the ill-fated move of Mr. & Mrs. Lutz, the best-named director in the world Damiano Damiani tells the far more ill-fated tale of the Montellis, a normal enough family who apparently didn’t read my advice on navigating the real estate market.

 Instead, they arrive at their bargain-priced dream home to meet some pesky ghost squatters that have a talent for shortening the tempers of humans they encounter. Little time passes before the sink is leaking red paint, Burt Young’s Papa Montelli is dripping heavier sweat wads than Sylvester Stallone sweatin’ to the oldies, and the teenage siblings are taking their relationship to V.C. Andrews levels of inappropriateness.

By little time, I mean almost none. The film isn’t one hour through before the central act of violence occurs, and while it’s shocking, graphic, and thoroughly upsetting, we in the audience still have another 45 minutes to get through. Therein lies the problem.


While there are flaws the first act, Damiani does succeed at creating an intriguing buildup to the collapse of the refreshingly authentic Montellis. For once, I actually didn’t want to kill the youngest child actors (even as they played hide-and-seek in plastic bags and could have made the job easy), which made their doomed fate truly horrifying. Diane Franklin is sympathetic as the naively seductable Patricia, and some of the latex-heavy effects have aged quite decently.

Unfortunately, the second half of The Possession loses all the intensity it so quickly built up. It’s hard enough to carry a film when 5/6ths of the main characters have been slaughtered, but much harder when your game plan is to rip off The Exorcist right on down to the silhouette of Father Merrin’s hat. As Sonny, actor Jack Magner doesn’t make for a particularly save-worthy soul and the guilt-baiting ghosts nagging at Father Adamsky have no real weight when all we’ve really seen of his sins were turning down one phone call. Some film fans may enjoy the boy-on-the-verge-of-manhood possession analogies, but for me, there just wasn’t enough character or story to really invest any care into.

High Points
The opening Rosemary’s Babyish la-la singing is rather haunting


Diane Franklin looks enough like a 15 year old to make the statutory incestuous stuff sufficiently creepy. This isn’t exactly a “high point,” per say, but I give it a nod since I imagine a 2009 remake would skirt this issue by casting a rapidly Benjamin Button-esque aging Lindsay Lohan and putting her in an 18-hour Playtex bra (how I fear your possibilities, Let the Right American One In 2010)


The massacre is truly disturbing, in part because the film’s lack of weight doesn’t really prepare you for such an early scene of no holds barred violence

If you’re going to have a mustache, take a note from Sonny’s lawyer and have a fucking MUSTACHE


Low Points
Maybe it’s just the poor luck of being chased down so quickly by Spielberg & Hooper, but floating paintbrushes got nothin’ on evil clown dolls


Sonny’s stomach-pumping bed scene demonstrates just how important good acting ability is to pulling of any form of the prolonged “Nooooo!” and not sounding like Darth Vader’s lament of Padme’s death


Lessons Learned
Introducing your son as your first born and letting your 15 year old daughter call you Mommy and Daddy may not be fostering the best environment for sexually confused teenagers

Chekhov’s law that introducing a gun in the first act requires said gun to be fired later in the story applies to horror movies in full force


Don’t piss off Burt Young when he’s wearing a belt

When in doubt about how to end a mediocre horror sequel, blow something up


Stray Observations
Yes, that’s Mommie Dearest’s loyal assistant playing Mama Monticelli, and yes, Rutanya Alda has the dubious honor of receiving two consecutive Razzie nominations for Worst Supporting Actress, proving that Ms. Crawford wasn’t the first one to take a second ‘round at the rodeo.

Is there some curse on adolescent male antiheroes that head the second installments of multi-film franchises? I’ll give Magner a gold medal if Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s Jessie silvers and Silent Night Deadly Night 2’s Ricky cleans up the garbage around the base of the podium.


Rent/Bury/Buy
Amityville II is not a terrible film, nor is it particularly good. Having seen bits and pieces of most of the series (like the good native Lawnga Eyelandah I am), I was quite shocked at the brutality in the central murders. If you press stop after the bodies are messily removed, you have yourself an above average demonic dream home thriller that will darken your day considerably. If you continue through the Exorcist-lite mood switch, however, you may find yourself drifting into MST3K jokes or sleep. Anyone with an interest in the Amityville saga should definitely give this a rent, but I don’t imagine a rewatch will be necessary enough to warrant a buy. If anything, give it one viewing to appreciate a simpler, sweeter time in cinema history, before the MPAA created the PG13 rating and studios smartened up to where the actual money market was. This is 80s horror sleaze without limitations. If only the script supported it the whole way through.


Special thanks to Stacie Ponder and Final Girl’s Film Club for assigning this as May’s pick. Take a virtual field trip to wander through what promises to be a diverse and entertaining mix of other horror bloggers taking their rifle shots at this misshapen gem of a movie.