Stubs – Halloween (1978)

Halloween (1978) Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J.Soles, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews. Directed by John Carpenter. Screenplay by John Carpenter, Debra Hill. Produced by Debra Hill, Irwin Yablans, Moustapha Akkad  Run Time: 91 minutes. U.S.  Color, Horror

Concluding Trophy Unlocked’s Halloween tour of horror movies that launched franchises is John Carpenter’s original Halloween. Not only did this film start a trend (I’ll let you decide if it’s good or bad) of slasher films that became the norm for horror in the 1980’s and 1990’s, this is also the film that put John Carpenter on the map. 

He had written and directed two films before (Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13) and had written two others (The Resurrection of Brocho Billy and The Eyes of Laura Mars), but after Halloween he was a very big name in Hollywood. Also this film is responsible for introducing the world to yogurt eating Jamie Lee Curtis.

The film starts back on Halloween 1963 in fictional Haddonfield, Illinois. Judith Myers (Sandy Johnson) is murdered by her younger brother Michael (Will Sandin) using a butcher knife after having sex with her boyfriend (David Kyle).

Michael as a kid (Will Sandin) right after dispatching his sister, Judith.

Fifteen years later on October 30, 1978, Michael, who has been institutionalized since the murder, escapes and steals a car. Three guesses where he’s headed.

Back in Haddonfield, on Halloween, high school student, Laurie Strode (Curtis), is being stalked by Michael, who is wearing blue overalls and a mask. He appears outside her classroom and drives past her on the street. Laurie notices, but her friends Annie (Nancy Keyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles) dismiss her concerns. Laurie sees Michael again, this time standing in her front yard staring at her bedroom door.

Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) with her friends, Annie (Nancy Keyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles).

Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), has come to Haddonfield looking for Michael. He stops at the local cemetery and finds that Judith’s gravestone has been taken. Loomis goes to see Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), who happens to be Annie’s father. The two go out looking for the escaped mental patient.

Donald Pleasence plays Michael's psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis.

That night, Laurie is babysitting a boy named Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews) while Annie is babysitting a girl named Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street. When Annie’s boyfriend Paul calls her and tells her to come pick him up, Annie takes Lindsey across the street to the Doyle’s and leaves her in Laurie’s care. When Annie gets into her car, Michael is waiting in the backseat and slashes her throat.

Meanwhile, in the Doyle house, Laurie and the kids are playing hide-and-seek when Tommy spots Michael carrying Annie’s body from the house across the street. He tries to tell Laurie, but she doesn’t believe him. Lynda and her boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) show up at the Wallace’s house and go upstairs to have sex. Afterwards, Bob goes down to the kitchen to get Lynda a beer, but Michael is waiting for him and impales Bob to the wall with a knife. Michael then heads upstairs with a sheet on, pretending to be Bob in ghost attire. Lynda though is suspicious and calls Laurie, just as Michael strangles her with the phone cord. (This is in the days before cell phones.)

An unsuspecting Laurie about to be strangled by Michael.

Unnerved by the call, Laurie puts Tommy and Lindsey to bed and heads over to the Wallace house. There she finds a gruesome scene, including Annie’s dead body next to Judith Myers’ headstone and nearby the dead bodies of Lynda and Bob. Michael attacks Laurie, who falls down the staircase. Fleeing the house, Laurie screams for help, but no one appears to hear or take notice. Running across the street to the Doyle’s house, Laurie realizes that she’s lost the key and the door is locked. Banging on the door, Laurie screams for Tommy to open the door. Lucky for Laurie, the kid comes through just in time, but Michael is not far behind.

Laurie has the kids hide and then discovers the phone line is dead. Michael gains entry through a window and Laurie sits down next to the couch. Michael appears and tries to stab her, but Laurie is cunning. She counterattacks and stabs Michael in the neck with a knitting needle.

Believing Michael is dead, Laurie goes upstairs and tells the children she’s killed the boogeyman Tommy had seen. But Michael doesn’t die so easily and is coming up the stairs. Telling the kids to hide again, Laurie tries to make it look like she’s gone out a window and then hides in the closet. But Michael isn’t fooled and tears a hole in the closet door and grabs at Laurie. Frantically, Laurie undoes a wire hanger and sticks Michael in the eye, causing him to drop his knife. Laurie picks up the knife and then tells the children to run outside and try to get help.

Michael breaks into the closet where Laurie is hiding.

Dr. Loomis happens to see Tommy and Lindsey flee and suspects correctly that Michael is in the Doyle’s house. Meanwhile, Michael has started to strangle Laurie, but Loomis arrives to stop him. Loomis shoots Michael once in the head and five times in the chest, but Michael doesn’t go down easily. Falling out of a second story window, Michael falls to the lawn. But when Loomis goes to look out the window, Michael’s body is gone. 

The movie ends with the speculation that Michael is still out there somewhere, accompanied by Michael’s heavy breathing. And the sequel is set up.

Honestly, it has been a year or so since I’ve seen this film, but I don’t remember there being any real motivation for any of the murders. While Michael clearly has a thing against pre-marital sex, since half of his victims have engaged in such during the movie, why does he go after Laurie, who is virginal? Unlike Annie and Lynda, she doesn’t even appear to have a boyfriend. But hey, Michael’s crazy, right?

I also find it interesting that the mental hospital only dispatches Dr. Loomis to find Michael and that Loomis brings a gun. I guess there is only so much talking you can do with the criminally insane.

As in all horror films, the main monster seems impervious to being killed. The same was true with Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula. Those monsters returned for sequel after sequel. The same is true with Michael in Halloween for which there were seven sequels: Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), and Halloween: Resurrection (2002); not to mention a remake by Rob Zombie, Halloween (2007), with its own sequel, Halloween II (2009).

Michael Meyers proved to be a very popular horror villain.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention our star of the future from Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis. The daughter of actress Janet Leigh and actor Tony Curtis, Halloween marks her acting debut, which means she made a big impression from the get go. The success of the film lead to roles in other horror films: The Fog (1980), Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980) and not to mention Halloweens II and III, earning Curtis the title of Scream Queen. She shed her horror persona, and her top, in the comedy Trading Places (1983) and had a prominent part in John Cleese's A Fish Called Wanda (1988). After starring in Blue Steel (1989) and True Lies (1994), opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ms. Curtis' career has been somewhat uneven. She's returned to the Laurie Strode character in Halloween H2O and Halloween Resurrection; appeared in lackluster comedies like Freaky Friday (2003), Christmas With the Kranks (2004) and Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008); written children's books and is now the spokesperson for Activia, the yogurt that makes you poop.

While Halloween did not start the slasher genre, you might say Psycho (1960) was the first one, it was a milestone of sorts. Audiences found out they liked to be scared. While there had been a few slasher films since Psycho, like Black Christmas (1974), Halloween is seen as really starting the trend that led to such films (and their franchises) as Friday the 13^th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Child’s Play (1988).

As the 80’s and 90’s continued, slasher films tried to out-do one another, with more and more novel ways of killing victims and more blood and more gore. While the genre has been parodied by Scream (1996) with its sequels, and satirized by Scary Movie (2000), with its own sequels, it has never completely gone away. As mentioned in our review of Friday the 13th, last year’s The Cabin the Woods is a recent variation on the theme.

Now I am admittedly squeamish when it comes to these types of movies. As a rule I don’t like gore and I have a production code level of acceptance for blood. I only saw Halloween because my sons wanted to watch it. Perhaps it’s me or the time in which the movie was made, but it is not really all that bloody or gory. There’s enough, but it is not over the top, as in movies that came after it, notably A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), another movie I saw because of my sons, which literally gushes blood like a volcano with a bleeding ulcer. I also have a thing about piercing flesh, so Michael’s impaling victims is not a favorite to watch.

If you’re like me and not a fan of the slasher genre, then I would tell you to feel free to skip this one. But if you’re put in a position where you have to watch one or lose face, then Halloween is not really all that bad. Choose it over The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) or the aforementioned A Nightmare on Elm Street. And hey, it is Halloween after all. If you can’t get a good scare in today, when can you? And if it gets to be too much, keep reminding yourself, “it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie” (apologies to Last House on the Left).

Stubs – Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13^th (1980) Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Jeannine Taylor, Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson, Robbi Morgan, Ari Lehman. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham. Screenplay by Victor Miller. Produced by Sean S. Cunningham Run Time: 95 minutes. U.S.  Color, Horror.

No critical tour of horror films which begot franchises would be complete without a look at Friday the 13^th. (That and the fact that there are five weeks in October.) Friday the 13^th was made in reaction to the success of another of our films, though still to come, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Studios are always looking to jump on the trend bandwagon and Halloween proved that the kids like slasher films, so someone took the Halloween blue print, adapted it to a lake shore camp and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Our story opens, just like Halloween, with a flashback. In this case, it’s 1958. Barry (Willie Adams) and Claudette (Debra S. Hayes), are two camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake. Being horny teenagers, they sneak away from a camp gathering to have sex. Big mistake, as an unseen assailant stalks the two and then kills them, one with a hunting knife and the other with a machete.

Don't be fooled. Camp Crystal Lake is very unwelcoming.

Flash forward twenty-one years later and on Friday, June 13th, 1979, a young girl named Annie (Robbi Morgan) is making her way to Crystal Lake. She is one of the new camp counselors hired by the original camp owners' son Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), who intends to reopen the camp, despite its history of murders, water poisonings and fires. Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), a local man, warns Annie that the counselors are doomed. Naturally, Annie shrugs off the warnings and hitches a ride to the camp with a truck driver Enos (Rex Everhart), but he has similar warnings for her.

Annie (Robbi Morgan) is the counselor who never makes it to camp.

Meanwhile, the other counselors arrive at the camp and begin to fix the place up. There is the jokester Ned Rubinstein (Mark Nelson), his best friend Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), Jack's girlfriend Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), handyman Bill (Harry Crosby), Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and Steve's ex-girlfriend Alice Hardy (Adrienne King). In between chores, the group enjoys some free time.

The counselors at Camp Crystal Lake may be doomed, but don't they sing pretty?

Annie is still on her way to the camp and has hitched a ride with an unseen driver in a Jeep CJ-5. But when the driver refuses to stop at Crystal Lake, Annie flees the Jeep. She runs into the woods, where she is chased, before her throat is slashed with a hunting knife.

After Steve returns to town for supplies, Crazy Ralph arrives at the camp and tells Marcie, Ned and Alice that they're all doomed. (He will be proven to be not so crazy after all.)  Ned encounters a stranger at the camp and goes into a nearby cabin in search of the others. Meanwhile Marcie tells Jack about a dream she had that terrifies her during storms. Surprise, surprise, a storm comes up, and the two seek shelter in their cabin and, what else, have sex. They are blissfully unaware that Ned is lying dead on the top bunk, having had his throat slashed.

Soon after they’re done, Marcie leaves the cabin. Jack, still lying in his bunk, is killed by an assailant who impales his throat with an arrow from under his bed. The same assailant then follows Marcie to the outhouse and kills her with an axe to the face. (Once again proving that pre-marital sex is a killer.)

Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) is dressed for her hot date with an axe.

Steve, whose Jeep has naturally broken down on the way back from town, hoofs it into camp. He recognizes the killer before being stabbed by the still unseen assailant.

Meanwhile, Alice, Brenda and Bill have just finished their game of strip Monopoly (I guess strip poker would have been over too quickly) when Brenda suddenly realizes the cabin windows are open. When she turns in for the night, she is lured out into the storm with what sounds like a child calling for help. She is killed out on the archery range.

Suspicious of what is happening, Bill and Alice find many strange things wrong with the camp but are unable to find the other counselors. Thinking it is all a joke, Bill convinces Alice to return to the cabin. The killer turns off the generator and Bill heads out alone to fix it as Alice falls asleep. (Note: Never do this.) Soon after, Alice awakens, goes out to find Bill and discovers him pinned to the generator room door with arrows.

Horrified, Alice runs off just as a vehicle pulls up to the cabin. The driver is Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), who at first tries to comfort the very hysterical Alice. But very quickly, Mrs. Voorhees begins to grow violent as she talks about her son Jason, who had drowned as a boy at the camp in 1957.

At first, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) seems comforting, but not for long.

Mrs. Voorhees pulls a hunting knife on Alice, who naturally flees. She tries to escape in the vehicle Mrs. Voorhees arrived in, but discovers Annie's body in the driver’s seat. Alice runs off and encounters Steve's body (still with a knife in his chest) which falls from atop a porch.

Alice tries to trick Mrs. Voorhees into thinking she has a loaded gun, but the rouse fails. Mrs. Voorhees slaps Alice in the face multiple times and throws her onto a table. But Alice fights her off with a gun and escapes, locking herself in a spice closet.

Mrs. Voorhees, using a machete, breaks into the closet, but Alice hits her in the head with a frying pan. Alice then goes and sits on the side of the lake. (Seriously, why not try to escape across the lake?) Mrs. Voorhees, of course, attacks her with the machete. But Alice fights back, takes control of the machete and decapitates Mrs. Voorhees. Alice then climbs into a canoe and falls asleep offshore.

Pamela Voorhees comes looking for Annie down by the lake.

The next morning, police arrive to find a dazed Alice still in the canoe. When they call to her, she is attacked by a young decayed Jason, who pulls her out of the boat. But that turns out to be a really bad dream. In reality, Alice awakens in the hospital and discovers her friends are all dead, but remembers and asks about the boy, Jason.

Jason is about to attack Alice, but it's only a nightmare.

The sheriff tells her that no boy was found, and Alice says "Then he's still there..." as the final shot shows the peaceful lake, with some air bubbles erupting at the surface, before fading to black.

Not a critical success, (are these films ever?), Friday the 13^th proved to be a moneymaker. Made on a budget of $550,000, backed by an advertising budget of $1 million and distribution by a major studio, Paramount, (Warner Bros. distributed the film internationally) Friday grossed nearly $40 million at the box office. Not a bad return on the investment.

And thank God the original film left it open for a sequel, right? Why else would there have been Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981); Friday the 13th Part III (1982); Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984); Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985);  Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986); Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988);  Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989); Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); Jason X (2001); the crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and, the wait for it, reboot Friday the 13th (2009). Ironically, it wasn’t until the third film that someone got hip to releasing them on Friday the 13^th, but that release model only lasted a couple of sequels (III, Final Chapter, Part VII, The Final Friday and the reboot).

Like A Nightmare on Elm Street, in Friday the 13^th we find a future star at the beginning of his career. While Kevin Bacon is no Johnny Depp (and I guess we can all be thankful for that), he was fairly new to film acting at the time. This was only his fourth film, though he had already appeared in the seminal National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). Diner (1982), Footloose (1984) and the rest of his career though were still ahead of him.

Kevin Bacon as Jack Burrell, just another victim in Friday The 13th.

And again, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie is kind of slow in places until people start being killed. I really can’t say I got all that attached to any of the kids who were doomed or really cared which one made it out alive. By the time I saw this film, I already knew what to expect (teenagers + woods + sex + night = gruesome death). That equation still has the same answer today, see The Cabin in the Woods (2012). Some things never change.

The twist for future Friday the 13^th films is that Jason, not his mother, is the killer going forward (Oh yeah, oops spoiler alert; like you didn’t already know). In the original film, we’re told about how Jason was allowed to drown because the camp counselors who were supposed to be watching him were giving into their hormonal urges, but he doesn’t start to take revenge until the sequels. In the original, he’s pretty much not a player, except for Alice’s dream, rather nightmare.

Of our five Halloween flavored films, this one seems to be the most innocuous, so if you really want to see a slasher film for the season, then I would recommend this one. Since this was such a model for so many films to follow, it might be worth your while seeing it. However, if you’re planning a marathon of Friday the 13^th films, I think I’m busy that year. Thanks for asking.

Stubs – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (aka The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) (1974) Starring: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Screenplay by Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper. Produced by Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper, Jay Parsley, Richard Saenz. Run Time: 84 minutes. U.S.  Color, Horror.

Halloween sometimes makes you do things you might not normally. Going door to door in disguise and asking relative strangers for candy comes to mind and so does carving up vegetables with scary faces. Add to that, at least for me, watching horror films. This is not something I do normally, sort of like I don’t watch Christmas films out of season either. So tis the season, so another horror film which spawned a franchise to watch and review.

This one is a cautionary tale. And I’m not referring to the story in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but rather watching the film itself. Even though I am not a horror genre fan, especially modern horror, I had heard about this movie for years. I knew it was supposed to be a disturbing film, but it was still a watershed film of sorts. Not only did this film launch the career of director Tobe Hooper (more about that later), but inspired other filmmakers and set new standards for the slasher film genre. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also a fine example of how small budget films can make it big. Made for under $300,000, the film would eventually gross $30 million (a lot of money back then).

The movie tells the story of a group of friends: Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her paraplegic brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), Jerry (Allen Danziger), Kirk (William Vail), and Pam (Teri McMinn), who are travelling in a van down some highway to visit the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather to investigate reports of vandalism and grave robbing. Sounds like a fun time already, doesn’t it?

They decide to visit the old Hardesty family homestead and along the way they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), who turns out to be a crazy mofo. The hitchhiker (and that’s the name in the credits) talks about his family and how they worked at the old slaughterhouse. (I don’t recall anyone asking.) He starts taking Polaroids and demands money for them. When the kids refuse to pay, he burns the photo and slashes himself and Franklin with a straight razor. (I told you he’s crazy.) The group forces him out of the van and drive on. Later, they stop at a gas station to refuel, but they’re told by the station’s proprietor (Jim Siedow) that the pumps are empty.

Things start going bad when the gang picks up a hitchhiker.

Their series of mistakes continue, when they drive on, intending to return to the gas station once it has received a fuel delivery. When they arrive at the old homestead, Franklin tells Kirk and Pam about a local swimming-hole and the couple head off for a swim. But the swimming-hole has dried up. Off in the distance, the two hear a generator running and go looking for it. They stumble upon a nearby house and Kirk calls out, asking for gas, while Pam waits on a swing in the yard.

They stop at a gas station, but there's no gas.

After getting no response, he of course goes inside (I mean the door’s unlocked what else can he do?). And inside, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) appears and, of course, kills him. Pam enters soon after and trips into a room filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee, but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook, then prepares to butcher Kirk.

Leatherface gets ready to skewer Pam on a meat hook.

Meanwhile, since it’s getting dark, Jerry heads out to look for Pam and Kirk. He finds the couple's blanket outside the nearby house and, of course, goes inside. Upon investigation he finds Pam, still alive, stuffed inside a freezer. Before he can react, Leatherface kills him and stuffs Pam back into the freezer. (Anyone else think Pam’s bad news?)

With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the neighboring house and call out, Leatherface lunges from the darkness and kills Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally runs toward the house and finds the dried up remains of an elderly couple in an upstairs room. She escapes Leatherface by jumping through a second-floor window and flees to the gas station. Leatherface disappears into the night.

At the gas station, the proprietor calms Sally down with offers of help, but ties her up, forces her into his truck and drives her back to the house. They arrive at the same time the hitchhiker arrives. (Time and distance don’t make sense here, but we continue.) The hitchhiker turns out to be Leatherface's brother. When the pair bring Sally inside, the hitchhiker recognizes her and taunts her.

At this point, the film gets more creepy than gory. The men torment the bound and gagged Sally while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman (?), serves dinner. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring an old man, they call "Grandpa" (John Dugan), from upstairs to share the meal. During the night they decide that "Grandpa" (the best killer in the old slaughterhouse) should kill Sally. He tries to hit her with a hammer, but is too weak to do any damage. In the ensuing confusion, Sally breaks free, leaps through a window, and escapes to the road.

The dinner sequence at the end is just creepy rather than scary.

Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the latter is run down and killed by a passing semi-trailer truck. The driver gets out to help, but Leatherface attacks the truck with his chainsaw. The driver hits him in the face with a large wrench. Sally escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface waves the chainsaw above his head in frustration. And I guess it’s good-bye to the good Samaritan truck driver, but I don’t think the film ever shows what happens to him.

Sally makes her escape on the back of a passing pickup.

A former cow-killer at the old slaughterhouse, Leatherface is an iconic character in this genre of film. Inspired by Ed Gein, the Wisconsin murderer/grave robber, who also inspired the Norman Bates character in Psycho, Leatherface indulges in murder and cannibalism and wears a mask made from human skin. But what can you expect from an inbred. Needless to say, he’s not someone you’d want to run into on a dark street or invite over for dinner, since you might be the main course.

A Leatherface only a mother could love.

While the reviews at the time were mixed, Texas Chain Saw Massacre would go onto have four sequels and a prequel, before the inevitable remake (and no I have no plans to ever see it), in 2003 and a sequel to that, Texas Chainsaw 3D, in 2013 (no to that as well). And yes, they did change the spelling of chainsaw after the first film, making it one word instead of two from then on.

The film would also pave the way for other horror franchises, like the Blair Witch Project, Halloween, The Evil Dead, and be cited by Ridley Scott as one of his inspirations for the movie Alien. Rob Zombie also finds inspiration from the film, so you can see where this is going.

Tobe Hooper’s had a sort of up and mostly down career in Hollywood. A former college professor and assistant film director at the University of Texas (I’d heard he used school owned equipment to make the film), Hooper would be protégé of sorts to Steven Spielberg, directing Poltergeist in 1982, which would go onto to be a big hit and have its own series of sequels (Poltergeist II: The Other Side and Poltergeist III) and, surprise, surprise, is due for its own reboot in 2014.

After Poltergeist, Hooper would direct Lifeforce (1985) whose main villain is a sort of life force vampire (and naked) Space Girl (Mathilda May). In 1986, he made a remake of the 1953 sci-fi film Invaders from Mars, before making the first sequel to his own claim to fame, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). Sadly, the film sort of flopped at the box office, making just over $8 million on a budget of $4.7 million.

While Hooper has continued to make films, they haven’t been really been as earth-shattering as his first success. He even has a film, Djinn, set for release later this year. A supernatural thriller, the film was shot in the United Arab Emirates (of all places) in 2011, so it’s been on the shelf for a while.

Back to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while the film might have been gory for 1974, it is truly boring for all time. Slow paced is a nice way to put it and at 84 minutes it seems longer. While there is some killing, they didn’t make me want to look away. As I recall Franklin’s killing was almost blah when it finally happened. Creepy and weird would be a better description, especially the dinner sequence at the end.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a film that I saw so you don’t have to; you can thank me later. If you really need to see a slasher film … well, seek help. 

Stubs – A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, John Saxon, Amanda Wyss, Ronee Blakley. Directed by Wes Craven. Screenplay by Wes Craven. Produced by Robert Shaye. Run Time: 91 minutes. U.S.  Color, Horror

While I am not a big horror fan, with the quasi-holiday Halloween approaching, we, at Trophy Unlocked, thought it would be a good idea to review some of the modern day horror classics that were so popular that they inspired franchises. (Note how I didn’t say they were so good, but that they were so popular.) In the coming weeks we’re going to take a look at Saw (2004), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Friday the 13th (1980) and conclude with Halloween (1978).

To start off our origin story journey, we’ll begin with Wes Craven’s slasher film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). My initial reluctance to watch the film (and I waited nearly 30 years after its release) has nothing to do with the quality of the film itself, but its genre. I’m not a big fan of horror/slasher films. Blood doesn’t do it for me. But some things you do because you’re asked and watching and reviewing A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the things you do when you write for a review blog.

The film opens with, what else, a nightmare. An unknown person in a boiler room creates a glove with razor-sharp knives embedded in the fingers. High school student Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) dreams she is being stalked through the boiler room by a severely burned figure (Robert Englund) with the bladed glove on his hand.

She wakes herself up when the burned figure finally catches her. However, she notices that her nightgown has been slashed, identical to what she experienced in the nightmare, convincing Tina that it wasn't just a bad dream.

The next day, she discusses her dream with Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), Nancy's boyfriend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp), and her own boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri). Nancy admits that she also had a bad dream and all of them dismiss the topic of the nightmare, though Tina is still visibly disturbed.

That night, Nancy and Glen go to Tina's house to keep her company since her mother is out of town and she is still troubled by her nightmare. Tina describes the killer in her dream, which Nancy admits matches the description of the killer in hers. Rod crashes the party and he and Tina have sex while Glen and Nancy sleep in adjoining rooms. Rod also tells Tina he's been having nightmares, too, but neither of them think much more about it and go to sleep. Once asleep, Tina is again stalked by the hideous burned figure. He taunts her repeatedly before attacking.

But this time, the man catches her. Her struggles awaken Rod who watches helplessly as Tina gets slashed by the glove and her body is dragged up the wall and across the ceiling, all the time screaming his name. Nancy and Glen are alerted before she falls dead onto the bed. Because Rod was the only one in the same room as Tina, he is arrested the next day for her murder.

Tina (Amanda Wyss) under attack by Freddy as Rod helplessly watches.

The next day at school, Nancy falls asleep in class and has a terrifying nightmare. She is attacked by the same figure that killed Tina. Nancy leaves the school early and goes to visit Rod in jail. When they talk, Rod describes what he saw the night Tina was killed, which reminds him of his own nightmares, in which he too is stalked by the figure wearing the glove. Nancy realizes that Rod did not kill Tina and leaves.

Rod Lane (Nick Corri) is put behind bars for Tina's murder.

Later, she begs Glen and Nancy to watch as she sleeps so she can investigate her dreams further. Asleep, Nancy sees the killer enter Rod's jail cell and she suspects that Rod is in danger. When she wakes up, she and Glen rush to the police station only to find Rod, hung by his own bed sheets, dead in his cell. Everybody, except Nancy and Glen, believes Rod committed suicide. Only the two of them know someone else was in the cell with him.

In her nightmare, Nancy sees that Rod is in danger.

At Rod's funeral, Nancy's mother, Marge (Ronee Blakley) insists on getting Nancy psychiatric help. However, while at the clinic, Nancy has a violent encounter in her dreams with the burned figure and awakens with a streak of white in her hair and a slash on her arm. Much to Marge's horror, Nancy brings back from her dream the killer's battered hat, which Marge recognizes.

Marge begins to drink heavily and installs security bars on all the windows and the door of her house. She reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat and the burned figure from her nightmares is a man named Freddy Krueger. Years ago, he was arrested for the murder of 20 children, but due to a legal technicality, he was released. Enraged, the parents of the victims took the law into their own hands and burned Freddy alive. Now, from beyond the grave, Krueger is exacting his revenge on the parents who killed him by killing their children from within their dreams.

Nancy tells this to Glen, who advises her to turn her back on her fear and thus take away the killer’s power. But she plans to pull Freddy from the dreamworld, where she and Glen can take Freddy to the authorities.

However, both Glen and Nancy's parents lock them inside their respective houses, keeping them from meeting before going to sleep. Glen tries to stay away, but he eventually succumbs to sleep and is killed when Freddy pulls him into his bed. Later, a pureed Glen is regurgitated as a geyser of blood. Still unable to get her father, Lt. Don Thompson (John Saxon), to believe her, she tells him to break down the door of her house in 20 minutes and then goes to sleep to hunt down Freddy.

Glen (Johnny Depp) goes in...

... but he doesn't come back out.

Nancy finds Krueger in her last few minutes of sleep and grabs him just as her alarm goes off. When she doesn't see him at first, she thinks she's gone crazy, but Freddy eventually appears, and the two face off. Nancy proves to be a match for him, setting up several booby traps and making him fall into every one, then lighting him on fire and trapping him in the basement while she goes to call her father.

Don and his department arrive to put out the fires. He and Nancy then follow a trail of footsteps up to Marge's room and discover Freddy smothering her with his flaming body. They knock him out but he disappears, leaving Marge's body vanishing slowly into the bed. Nancy sends her father from the room and turns her back as Freddy rises from the bed. She proclaims she is no longer afraid of him, causing him to lose his powers. Freddy lunges forward but vanishes as she walks out of the room.

Freddy doesn't let a little thing like being set ablaze stop him.

Exiting the bedroom, Nancy steps out into daylight from her front door and her mother appears well and sober, promising to stop drinking as her friends pull up in Glen's car. Suddenly, the roof clamps shut—the material an exact match to Freddy's sweater—and the car starts moving of its own accord.

Nancy in Glen's car, just after Freddy's taken over.

The film ends with Nancy screaming as she is driven off with her friends and then Freddy drags Marge through the front door's small window.

Marge (Ronee Blakley) is about enter her own house in a new and painful way.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is an over the top blood fest, but surprisingly not all that scary when you get right down to it. Perhaps having seen other gore films has immunized me, but in reality there is a difference between blood and gore. While there is a lot of blood in Nightmare, there is so much, especially when Glen gets liquefied, that it becomes surreal and thus loses a lot of its power to scare. Some of the power of horror is the idea that it could happen to you. When that’s taken away, some of the scariness goes with it.

I would not say this is great filmmaking. The special effects are fine especially for the time it was made, but there is nothing that seems revolutionary, unless it’s the sheer volume of red liquid that can be produced at one time.

Like the other films we’ll review; this one launched a series of sequels, all built around the villain, Freddy Krueger: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985); A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987); A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988); A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989); Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991); and Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994); not to mention the inevitable crossover film with Friday the 13^th: Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and the really inevitable reboot: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). Full disclosure, I have seen Freddy vs. Jason, but the others are not on my bucket list.

One of the joys of watching low budget films is when you see someone who has gone on to bigger and better parts just starting out in the business. In A Nightmare on Elm Street that person happens to be currently one of the biggest stars in the world, Johnny Depp. In the nearly thirty years since the release of this film, Depp has moved on to star in one popular TV Series, 21 Jump Street (1987-1990) and 50 feature films, including the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and just about every film Tim Burton has directed since 1990. Like him or not, Depp has become a major star in nearly every meaning of the word. His acting is somewhat wooden here, but there probably was not a whole lot he could have done with the character of Glen.

Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz is one of his earliest film roles.
Working with Tim Burton was still a few years away.

For me the film has just about zero percent re-watch potential. But I’m sure there are many out there who make it a holiday habit to view these kinds of films and if you’re one of those, A Nightmare on Elm Street will most likely not disappoint you. You might even find it quaint in an odd way, as slasher films have only gotten more explicit with time.