Friday the 13th: Bay, $42M; Fans, 0

Last week, I had a bad dream. I was startled at first, sleep coming back to me in fits and starts. A few days later, the details were hazy, at best. And today, I can only remember that I had a bad dream. Next week, I'll have forgotten that the whole thing ever happened.

That's how I feel about Bay & Co's Friday the 13th: It's all seems like a really horrible dream. And here I sit, two weeks later, still unable to muster up enough energy to tell you about it. I've innumerable reasons why I hated the movie, some of them now a little nebulous, but I've no interest in explaining why. Horrible, I know, but I don't care.

I'll fall back on my standard mantra: Michael Bay is the Devil, and Platinum Dunes is hell. I take some solace in the movie's record 81% second-week drop at the box-office: It tells me that not many were willing to shell out the cash for a repeat viewing, and I hope it hurt Michael Bay's ice-cold heart. I hope it hurt him for letting us down. Unfortunately for many of us, Friday the 13th happened nonetheless, and we are (according to the lukewarm-to-vitriolic reception on the blogs) still reeling, desperate to forget the bits and pieces of something awful that happened to us in a recent nightmare.

It'll go away, eventually; I know. And soon enough, I'll have forgotten that the whole thing ever happened. I hope.

Kathy Griffin: A Gift From Baby Jesus

I'm Detouring from horror for a brief moment…

There isn’t a woman on earth funnier than Kathy Griffin.

No, no—that wasn’t a question. This isn’t a topic open for debate, nor will comments disparaging Mrs. Kathy be tolerated on this site; Death at the Drive-In isn’t a democracy, after all. So, I’ll repeat: There isn’t a woman on earth funnier than Kathy Griffin.

Whether she’s vigorously slandering vacuous celebrities, or finding new ways to climb her way “to the middle” on her hit Bravo show, My Life on the D-List, Kathy can always be counted on to inspire riotous laughter.

Don’t believe me? Check out the two clips below of one of her many appearances on Jimmy Kimmel. Grab a diaper before you get to the part where she talks about opening the ‘Kathy Griffin Leadership Academy Para Las Niñas’ in the jungle of Mexico: you’ll pee yourself. For more, just do a Google Video search for literally hundreds of clips with Kathy; you won’t be disappointed.

Where's the Love: Bloodstalkers

["Where's the Love" is my new blog series, where I do my best to taut astonishingly obscure horror movies that have yet to find proper DVD distribution (see my previous two entries below).]

If you ever find yourself lucky enough to get your fry-greasy fingers on a print of Bloodstalkers (1978), pick it up! I just made a car payment bigger than the budget, and the acting is pretty shaky, but this little treasure boasts tons of creepy atmosphere, as well as a nifty trick ending.

The premise: Four adults hole up in a secluded cabin, despite repeated warnings from locals of creatures in the swamps. Before you can scream "horror cliche," the beasts come out at night to play, and pretty much everyone winds up dead. But! Things aren't necessarily as they seem, and when one of the characters decides to fight back, we're treated to—gasp!—a second bloodbath. Actually, the bloodletting here is pretty minimal, but the uber-grindhouse feel of the flick more than makes up for it.

Like I said, this one's pretty damned obscure, and you may have to search, but it's worth it. Bloodstalkers—has any title ever sounded more deserving of a proper DVD release? Jesus, people, where’s the love?

Further Thoughts on Clive Barker

A young charlatan psychic masturbates near the road to the dead—and pays the price with his flesh; two warring European villages strap their citizens one upon another, children included, to do battle to the death as hulking giants; the ghost of Marilyn Monroe plucks out a man’s eyeballs and stuffs them deep inside her special no-no place; a woman carries on an illicit affair with a murderous ape (yes, an ape), in a twisted homage to Edgar Allen Poe; a man becomes trapped on a subway train with a psychotic butcher; a mammoth pig devours the bodies—and spirits—of young schoolboys; and a poor, exasperated demon, cannot, no matter how hard it tries, unsettle the placid owner of the house it possesses.

Yes, folks, atrocities of all sorts abound in Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, Vol. 1-3. There were moments when I, the hardened and cynical horror junkie, wanted to look away from the page, but couldn’t, having found myself hooked as easily as Frank with his puzzlebox. Never has anything so putrid, so vile and repulsive, come across as lyrical and damn-near poetic enough to be called “great literature.” Barker’s a hell of a writer, to be sure, and he deserves every ounce of praise he’s received over the years.

And, again, I have to ask myself: How the hell is it that it took me so long to discover this man? Books of Blood, Vol. 1-3: pick it up, if you haven’t already.

Where's the Love: The Mutilator

And while we're at it, how about this nasty little flick, with its centerpiece kill of hook in the hoo-hah?

Yes, laughter abounds as a father goes ballistic and slaughters a group of unlucky young adults. The End. Granted, the budget was clearly on par with what I pay my gardener every year, which isn't a lot. (Love you, Juan. Seriously, I love you. Stop by my house tomorrow; I have a “gift” for you). But, The Mutilator is loaded with gore, and a fun way to kill 90 minutes—and you’ll never look at dear old Dad the same way again.

So, how about it? Where's the love? This one deserves a proper DVD release, too.

Where's the Love: Humongous & The Slayer

Anyone remember watching the crappy VHS prints of these two brutal little gems from the early 80's? I do. And I think it's about time someone gives them a proper DVD release before they're dead and buried forever.

Humongous is the heartwarming tale of a mongoloid (the by-product of rape) who, after spending a life of leisure on a secluded island, lets the blood fly when a group of teens disturbs his respite. I never saw this one during its original theatrical run, but I seem to remember that the trailer scared the shit out of me. Literally. My mother had to snap a plastic mattress pad on my bed for a week to catch what she lovingly referred to as my "happy little accidents." True story.

As far as The Slayer goes, once you've gathered your gag-reflex after my little admission above, check out the trailer below. You've gotta love that gravelly exploitation voice-over. Like Danny Bonaduce, only sober.

Friday the 13th - The Blu-ray Look

[Edit: I'm just reading this entry again, and realizing how god-awful it really is. I was tired when I wrote it, I admit, and may come back later to edit. (And by "may," I mean "won't.") To synopsize: While the Blu-ray transfer looks and sounds great, the new clarity in many scenes is so good (so bright, sometimes, as I mentioned) that some of the old magic is lost: the shadows, the gloom, the sense of claustrophobia. Many of you may disagree with me, and please let me know if you do; not that I'll listen, but let me know. Til then...]


Brenda starts to brush her teeth—and hears a noise off in the corner. She stops, looks: the camera reveals the shower stalls—curtains pulled back—and a battered metal lamp hanging above them. (Of course Marcie, only minutes before, in front of these very stalls, received an axe-blow to the head that will keep her singing her bloody raindrop song with the angels for quite some time.) We see into the stall, can make out the wall to the communal bathroom. A hand surreptitiously pulls back the curtain and lets it go just as Brenda sneaks another suspicious look. It’s all so clear to us, the viewers.

Brenda leaves, turning the lights out behind her. We’re left with the camera on the shower stalls, metal lamp now swinging to and fro, as if by magic. We can still see the stall and bathroom so clearly, as if…as if…

…well, as if we were witnessing the moment the way it was originally shot and printed.

And that, my friends, is not necessarily a good thing.

Welcome to the magic of Friday the 13th on Blu-ray, where, finally, the magician reveals the secrets of his tricks, and the audience is left to muse at the chicanery of it all—and maybe walk away a little disappointed that the illusion has been shattered. What was once steeped in shadows and gloom is now bright and alight by stage-trick artifice. Note the scene where Alice and Bill enter Jack and Marcie’s cabin—Jack’s arrow-throated body gone; Ned’s corpse done cleaned away and replaced by a rolled-up bunk mattress: the scene is bright; in fact, it’s too bright. You can almost hear Sean Cunningham, out of frame, whispering to the lighting guy: “More, goddamn it! More light!” So, too, Steve Christie, who once ran through the dark, wet woods, and entered the frame as a tiny yellow figure, only to grow larger with every step before being assaulted by a blinding flashlight. This time, we see him coming from behind a tree, far in the background, and the woods around him look, yet again, as if Cunningham were off-frame giving his lighting guy another threatening look. Even the gloom of dusk that sets in around the time Ralph plays hide-and-seek in the pantry looks too unnatural, too—how should I say?—pleasant, when it should be menacing.

But, I must be absolutely fair and clear: This is, by far, the very best transfer of Friday the 13th, ever. The color corrections are superior, bringing out everything from the kaleidoscope colors of Annie’s (so very ‘80’s) plaid shirt, to the vivid hooker-red of Brenda’s short-shorts. Take a look at the buildings when Annie comes down the stairs at the beginning of the film: you can see the trim colors, the textures of their materials. Hell, you can even see the detail in Enos’ stubble and Steve’s unholy orange chest-hair. The grit and grain of the film are all but gone, giving the movie a modern, high-value look, which may be a touch disappointing to some, like me, who find the classic low-budget feel of the film to be one of its greatest attributes. There are also a few static night shots of the lake and famous mountain ridge that are downright eerie when compared to earlier, standard-definition transfers.

The new 5.1 transfer is worth the price of this disc alone. Take a listen when Marcie’s in the bathroom: did you ever know that the sound that causes her to look towards the showers is a curtain being pulled back on its rings? I didn’t. When I heard the sound, I whooped with joy. Everything is crystal clear: the loons, the wind, the rain, and, most famously, the ki-ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma-ma. It’s a stellar presentation that should make fans ecstatic to discover sounds they’ve never heard before.

Still, the entire disc is a mixed bag for me: As a Friday purist, I reveled in the new soundtrack, and the improved resolution showing me things in the movie I’d never seen before. But (and it’s a big one) I was acutely aware as I popped out the disc that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t so ready for all the tricks of the trade to be revealed. Honestly, if I had my druthers, I’d stick with the standard DVD transfer upscaled to 1080p; at least, there, some of the mystery is sustained. As it is, a day after watching the Blu-ray transfer, I feel as though I’ve seen just a little too much.