Fear of Clowns

Drat and buggeration. I hate it when a film you intend to snark on turns out to be... quite good. Not good, mind – but not bad. Like Fear of Clowns, for instance: a cheapo horror film that manages to make a low budget look, if not exactly big, then bigger, simply by pulling together something resembling a story, casting adults rather than teenagers, and investing in an orchestral-sounding score and some proper camerawork.



Like I said, it has a story. I didn’t say the story makes much sense. Jacky Reres plays an artist called Lynn Blodgett who paints not-terribly-terrific pictures of scary clowns (and, yes, I know all clowns are scary) which she manages to sell for $8,000 a pop at a local Baltimore gallery. She’s also going through a bitter divorce, bringing up a kid, falling in love with a rollercoaster designer called Tuck, and being stalked by an evil killer wearing clown makeup. Pay attention, folks... This is how you make a slasher movie last an hour and fifty minutes.

So, one day, Lynn is leaving for work when a neighbour informs her that an entire family has been butchered in their beds, oh, two doors down. You can tell it’s serious because there’s some of that yellow crime-scene tape you see on CSI, and no gawkers watching as the paramedics clumsily hoist out a few bodies wrapped in what appear to be blankets. But, hey, Lynn’s already late so she packs herself off to the gallery. And it’s a good thing too, because there’s a rather strange man there who wants to pay her $20,000 to paint his child-molesting dead clown father. Bargain!




Lynn says no... then yes... then worries she might not be able to finish the portrait in the specified three days... and then swans off with her new boyfriend to a disused amusement park for some minor clown-dodging chills. Did I mention she also has a child? It’s OK, I think she forgot too. Little Nicholas is only around when the plot needs him, and Lynn keeps him in a box or something for the rest of the time.

Somewhere amidst all of this riveting entertainment, the clown keeps on a-killin’ and the suspense starts to build. Which brings us to Fear of Clowns’ big fat unfortunate flaw. The clown-faced but shirtless killer is, um... kinda hot. You see, whereas mask + boiler suit = scary, I’m afraid that mask + pecs + abs = something else entirely. This is a problem, as they say in Houston, and I’m sure it even holds true in Baltimore. You simply cannot have a killer who’s both scary and distractingly hot. I mean, you need to know which direction to run in. Granted, said killer may have the face of an evil clown and carry a giant battleaxe, but hotness will always win out, so trying to make your killer both horny and horrifying is like trying to have your cake and lick eat it. (Note to self: invest in therapy.)



Anyway, Lynn (remember her?) doesn’t have the same problem as I did regarding her greasepaint-sporting stalker. She’s flat-out terrified. So it’s bad news for her but good news for Tuck, who gets to hang around with her a lot, which, in turn, is bad news for Little Nicholas, who has to go back in his box until tea time.

For me, Fear of Clowns peaked around the midpoint, when there’s a simply outrageous (and suspenseful) scene involving an altercation between our hunka honka lethal killer, a hitman who’s unfortunately also dressed as a clown, and a completely innocent clown caught in the red-nosed crossfire. It’s a real circus, believe me. Thereafter, things do build up to a lengthy climax that takes place, credibility-stretchingly enough, in an empty movie theatre, but I’m not sure whether it was the prolonged nature of this set piece that caused me to start getting a bit antsy, or if the movie had simply worn out its welcome by then.

I didn’t exactly juggle for joy, then, when I found out there’s a sequel, Fear of Clowns 2, that actually picks up after the events of this film, utilizing most of the same cast and crew. Still, after reading up on it, I’ve become intrigued enough to want to give it a go. Maybe Fear of Clowns will become the new Phantasm series of continuity-based low budget horror. Or maybe not. Either way, I’d find myself much more predisposed to the whole thing if they’d called this one Someclown’s Watching Me!

Rating: 3/5

The Stalker

Way, way, way before the craze for stalker movies (well, 1977) a middle-aged Witchita woman received a string of taunting threats by phone and post from a sinister criminal the police dubbed “the Poet”. Twenty-one years later, along came the TV movie version of her Lifetime-baiting true story, which starred Mare Winningham in the lead role and was entitled Little Girl Fly Away.

There’s a reason for that perhaps strange-sounding title (later changed to the more straightforward The Stalker) but before we get into all that, let’s play a quick game of “Complete The Threatening Note!”. I’ll give you the first few lines of one of the Poet’s endeavours and all you have to do is pick the missing lyric. Ready?

Hickory dickory dock
I know you are Cathy Brock
Your clock has run out
Only I can hear you _____
Hickory dickory dock

(A) Shout (B) Pout (C) Scream, you fucking trout

Hmm, I think the author just scrapes by with that “poet” nickname, personally, but the answer is, in any case, A – although C would’ve been far more threatening, don’t you think? Let’s try another!

Wherever you go on water or land
I’ll make sure everybody knows about your _____

(A) Brand (B) Post-punk band (C) Soon-to-be-chopped-off right hand

Yep, the answer’s A, somewhat disappointingly. Apparently, Cathy was attacked and “branded” by a sex offender back when she was a teenager. I think C would’ve been much scarier. The Poet really missed a trick there! One last one:

Frank can’t save you, nor the cops
I’m too clever for all them _____

(A) Slobs (B) Fops (C) Cock-sucking candy-pops

It’s a toughie, I know, but the answer is... A again! It doesn’t even rhyme, does it?! Quite frankly, I would’ve made a much better deranged literary stalker myself – as would you if you picked all C’s. But we can’t all be sadistic geniuses, can we, and this is a TV movie after all.

I mentioned earlier that The Stalker was originally known as Little Girl Fly Away, which admittedly sounds less like a scary thriller and more like a heart-warming drama. Basically, the reason for this is that The Stalker does err more on the side of heart-warming drama, but to explain why takes us into spoiler territory...

Now, it’s not a major spoiler if you’re in any way familiar with the real-life case of the Poet, or the book this movie’s based on, but it’s something the film chooses not to reveal until halfway through. And that’s the fact that ... SPOILER ALERT! ... Cathy, the supposed victim, is herself the Poet. That’s right: she’s stalking herself – composing the scribbled notes, leaving a jar of urine on her own doorstep, stabbing herself with a knife and, at one point, even going so far as to go missing from a local mall, only to turn up bruised and battered many hours later, having been “kidnapped”.

So why is she doing all this? And what’s with the “Little Girl Fly Away” stuff? Well, it’s not just a case of drawing attention to herself, nor was it diagnosed as multiple-personality disorder; the second half of the movie deals with Cathy’s quest to understand the motives behind her behaviour with the help of a therapist (played by CCH Pounder). I’ll not spoil it all here but, as you might expect, the roots of her problem go back to her childhood.

Yet another title this movie goes by

The Stalker is filled with good actors. Mare Winningham makes the slightly frumpy, unlikely victim role her own, with Bruce Davison sympathetic as her bewildered husband. If you’ve ever wondered what a psycho-stalker movie would be like with a middle-aged couple at the centre instead of a glamorous TV anchorwoman played by Morgan Freeman, well, there’s clearly something wrong with you, but the good news is: this is the movie for you. Anne Haney plays it cool as Cathy’s distant (suspicious?) mother, while Clayton Rohner (still displaying signs of hotness) is a cop on the case who suspects that the Poet is someone Cathy’s been having an affair with. Finally, there’s CCH Pounder, who’s so white-hot I’d happily fake mental illness just to have her as my shrink.

Despite its (new) title, this is a long way from being a thriller, but I still found it pretty gripping – more so, in fact, than some outright thrillers. With that cast, a decent script and a touching final scene, can The Stalker really be blamed for the fact that the most lasting impression it leaves is the mental image of Mare Winningham peeing in a jar? I think not.

Rating: 3/5

View of Terror

With Shannen Doherty back in the public eye again (and, shockingly, not for throwing beer bottles) I thought it high time to dig out one of her TV movies from the wilderness years between her exit from Charmed and recent comeback with 90210. And you know what? I liked it! I’m also not alone in this possible delusion, as a surprising number of people have also left positive user comments at the IMDb. Yes, it seems that 2003’s View of Terror (aka Nightlight) just isn’t bad at all. Either that, or Shannen’s been at it with the threats again.

Both sides, huh? Guess that’s why they call it a window!

Like many a post-Rear Window voyeurism thriller, this one begins with a view through a telescope. Someone’s spying on the residents of a New York apartment building and, in particular, a beautiful female resident with some lovely lingerie but, unfortunately, no curtains. The next thing we know, she’s been tied up and left to flambé in a burning apartment, as her mysterious stalker disappears with a whispered “Sleep tight, babydoll...”

SHOCK CUT! to Shannen Doherty, reaching out her hand to grab hold of a large cock...atiel. I’m not sure if this is actually meant to be a shock cut or it’s just a clumsy one but, either way, the terror of the previous scene abruptly gives way to a shot of Shannen fingering her feathered friend – which we learn is a beloved pet that goes by the name of “Kitty”. Irony? I don’t know. But I do know that pets never fare well in stalker movies, and I’ll be surprised if Kitty makes it to the final reel without ending up as cockatiel chasseur.

Flambé... Chasseur... Those cooking classes are really paying off! Anyway, Shannen’s in the middle of bit of a domestic hoo-hah, breaking up with her boyfriend (Michel Francoeur) on the grounds that he’s always starting fights. (Again with the irony, Ms Anger Management!) In retrospect, it’s not the best plan, as not only is she left without a seriously hunky boyfriend but also – oops – a home. Enter her best friend and business partner, Tasha (Jayne Heitmeyer), who pulls a few strings with the building manager and gets her a place across the road in the ominously named (not really!) Sommer Building.

But wait a minute, this new apartment looks familiar. We’ve seen – or rather not seen – its dire lack of curtains somewhere before. Could this be the place formerly owned by the ill-fated exhibitionist from the pre-credits sequence? You bet your spied-upon ass it is! Soon the telescope is back, the threatening phone calls have begun, and Shannen’s starting to regret signing a one-year lease. Oh, watch out Kitty!

As TV-made suspense flicks go, View of Terror is no Someone’s Watching Me! but then it’s not directed by a young John Carpenter. It suffers from the common TV-movie affliction of having good ideas that only get developed as far as the next commercial break. (For instance, there’s a great scene where Tasha decides bring the voyeur out of hiding by performing a seductive striptease in front of her window. Does it work? Who knows, but I can tell you that Peugeot is the drive of your life.™) Similarly, the stalker’s predilection for giving his victims Saw-style “rules” to abide by is never really explored. Despite this, the plot works and even manages to feel like it’s throwing in some new twists.

I liked it that Shannen’s friend, Tasha, is seen both helping her and going behind her back when it suits, like when she sets her sights on Shannen’s boyfriend (y’know, like how people act in real life). It’s actually a shame Tasha’s absent for much of the second half. For once, the police also take our heroine’s fears seriously when she goes to them with her story, but it’s the legal complications that end up making them ineffective. These are simple touches, but they work towards making View of Terror that little bit more believable.

Not that you necessarily want a Lifetime movie to be enormously believable when it comes to providing some decent thrills, but you do want it to be thrilling. And View of Terror manages this and feels so rewatchable that I’d even consider buying the DVD. A few more like this, Shannen, and you can flip ’em the finger when they ask you to star in that next-generation Charmed spin-off circa 2014. Just don’t throw anything, ’kay?

Rating: 3/5

The Seduction

I know, I know... How can I call this blog Anchorwoman In Peril! and not include a review of the 1982 Morgan Fairchild masterpiece The Seduction? That’s like having a birthday cake without any candles on top... Sure, it’s sweet, it’s tasty and it fills you up, but where’s the sense of occasion? It’s just a vanilla sponge. And look, you’ve not even iced it properly! Can’t you get anything right?

I forgive you, anyway. This time. And, as a gesture of goodwill, here’s that long-overdue review of The Seduction, the queen of Anchorwoman In Peril movies and, um, bastard child of the slasher and erotica genres.

The first five minutes of The Seduction aren’t so much a blast from the past as they are a 15 megaton explosion of early-eighties kitsch. The music, the hair, the nails, even that typeface used for the opening credits... It’s like being raped by 1982. In the eyes. And the purpose behind all this malarkey? A few hazy Morgan Fairchild beaver-shots.

Now, don’t get me wrong; that may be your thing. And if it is, lucky you, because The Seduction isn’t just about telling a decent story, it’s about showing Morgan Fairchild in as many swimming pools, hot tubs and saunas as humanly possible. Seriously, she spends more time in the water in this film than the shark does in Jaws – and, by the end of it, even my skin was starting to go wrinkly.

Which isn’t to say that The Seduction doesn’t also tell a decent story. Fairchild stars as Jaime Douglas, the smokin’ hot anchorwoman of the Six O’Clock News on Channel Six. When she’s not busy reporting on a recent spate of local “Sweetheart Murders”, Jaime can most likely be found sharing a bath with her rather mismatched older boyfriend, Brandon (Michael Sarrazin). But it seems she’s also getting some attention of the unwanted kind – in the shape of a young fan called Derek (Andrew Stevens), who’s much more her own age but, sigh, also a psychotic stalker.

After Derek breaks into her home, frenziedly snapping photos of her whilst slapping her about with cries of “wet your lips!”, Jaime approaches Brandon’s cop buddy Captain Maxwell (Vince Edwards) for help. Surprisingly, however, Maxwell is adamant that, “as far as the law’s concerned, this guy really hasn’t committed a crime” (remind me not to move to Hollywood), and Jaime’s left with no option but to buy a gun, lock her doors, and hope that Michael Moore doesn’t decide to make a documentary about celebrity firearm-owners.

Cue one of the movie’s biggest cheat sequences wherein, following a ten-minute sequence of Jaime soaping her thighs in the tub (while creepy Derek spies on her from the closet) the telephone rings. But – oh, sweet mother of Dale Midkiff – there’s no one on the line! Now, by this point, we’ve become accustomed to Jaime receiving strange calls but, since her stalker is clearly hiding nearby, we’re left wondering who placed this mysterious call. Does she have two stalkers? Does Derek have an early mobile phone that he uses to play the old “the calls are coming from inside the house” trick? Or is it all perhaps just another excuse to show Jaime wrapping herself provocatively in a towel?

No matter, because we’re heading towards The Seduction’s Live-On-Air Wig-Out scene. As fans of Anchorwoman In Peril movies will know, the heroine’s On-Air Wig-Out is the staple component of the genre, and this one’s a corker: Derek manages to sneak into the studio one evening and add a little page of his own to the Six O'Clock Report’s autocue script, resulting in Jaime reading out the words “Jaime, I’m watching you” in the middle of a report, before breaking down and whimpering, “He’s gonna kill me... Please help me... Please!”

Sadly, other than authorizing some time off work, no one really does do anything to help her, and it’s up to Jaime to sort things out for herself in a climax that involves the aforementioned shotgun and Jaime’s own top-secret weapon – her smouldering sexuality (or is that two weapons?). It’s in this last real that The Seduction finally bubbles over from tolerable pot-boiler to Fairchild-femme-fatale fever-pitch, bringing together all its subplots to a neat conclusion that neither cops out nor runs out of steam.

All the film really needs is a body count. Lord knows, there are enough peripheral characters to support a spot of pruning – from Jaime’s gay assistant (Kevin Brophy) to her best friend (Colleen Camp) – but the lack of nastiness detracts from the sense that Derek is actually dangerous. As a result, The Seduction never quite makes that step up from TV-movie level (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) to full-on shocker – a move that would have nudged it into the realm of the previous year’s Lauren Bacall vehicle, The Fan, which also concerned the then-hot topic of celebrity stalkers but thankfully required less nudity from its aging star.

Despite this flaw, your Anchorwoman In Peril education is NOT COMPLETE if you haven’t yet experienced The Seduction and its retro-fitted fabulousness. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and report directly to Morgan Fairchild’s hot tub.

Rating: 3/5

P2

It’s been a bad bank holiday weekend here at Anchorwoman In Peril! A bad weekend for movies, at least, with two of the four films I’ve watched being borderline abysmal (Shrooms and St Trinian’s) and another being watchable in comparison but still pretty poor (Wind Chill). Thankfully, things improved with the entirely watchable P2 (not to be confused with T2, K2, X2, xXx2, U2, t.A.T.u, the QE2, or P2P file sharing).

P2 falls into a horror subgenre very dear to AiP’s heart: the “trapped in a high-rise with a killer” category arguably spawned by the excellent 70s TV shocker I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill. More recent examples have been the made-for-TV Trapped and The Face of Fear (the latter based on a Dean Koontz novel) and yet another TV movie, Lower Level, which I own on video but have yet to watch – and which sounds remarkably like P2. Why has this genre been explored so exclusively by TV movies? Perhaps because “trapped in a high-rise with a killer” movies can be filmed overnight in the TV offices without anyone having to build any sets... But I digress.

P2 manages to go that one step further by not just having its heroine trapped in a high-rise with a killer, but trapped in a high-rise with a killer at Christmas. Talk about bad luck. And what should have been a jolly holly happy holiday for office worker Angela (Rachel Nichols) turns into a bloody, brutal battle for survival.


Angela’s working late on Christmas Eve, doing what all office people are always doing in movies – trying to land an account. I’m sure P2’s script explained what kind of account this was and what kind of company she works for, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand all the corporate techno-speak (hey, what can I say? I work in a library) and missed the details. But, no matter, the whole thing’s keeping her terribly busy and it doesn’t look like she’ll be arriving at her sister’s house in Jersey in time for the family meal tonight.

Eventually, after finishing her proposal and making Christmassy small-talk with some random people who may or may not turn up dead later on, Angela makes it to her car, parked in the building’s underground car park on level P2. And that’s when things go from “running late” to “running scared”, because not only will the car not start, but she finds she’s actually locked inside the parking garage – and the only other person around is a slightly creepy security guard, Thomas (Wes Bentley).

At first, Thomas seems friendly enough, even trying to get her car started by charging the battery – but something doesn’t seem right. He knows more about Angela than he should, his jokes about her staying for a candlelit meal in the cramped security office feel a little forced, and there’s a strange whiff of chloroform in the air. And when Angela wakes up a little while later chained to a table, she starts to realise she’s in big trouble indeed...

One thing separates P2 from the twenty-two tele-movies before it, and that’s sheer gruesome gratuitousness. It comes as no surprise that the film’s from the makers of Haute Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, as stomachs tear open, eyes are gouged, and guard dogs chew human flesh with gory abandon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Its nastiness gives P2 its edge as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not sure I would’ve enjoyed it as much had it relied simply on the mind-games between Tom and Angela that make up rather too much of the first half as things are.

Angela isn’t bad as women-in-peril go, managing to do what you’d do for the most part if you found yourself at close quarters with a psychopath (while leaving out some of the disreputable things I’d do if said psychopath were Wes Bentley). Of course, her efforts are hampered by all manner of movie clichés, each one dredged up with relish but given a slight counter-spin either to offset the cheesiness or just cheese you off if you’re looking for plot holes, i.e...

Angela’s car won’t start! (But we suspect it’s been tampered with...)
Her phone has no signal! (But at least the battery doesn’t run out...)
She’s wearing a skimpy dress! (But the psycho dressed her like that...)

Yes, P2 is quite contrived, but then the villain has contrived to trap Angela, so it’s only a spoilsport who’d complain about the film’s believability.

Senator Roger Ebert gave P2 a solid three out of four stars, but then he always was an old gorehound at heart, despite how he’s complained about “dead teenager movies” in the past. I’m not sure he’d have found such novelty in the film if he’d seen as many “trapped in a high-rise with a killer” TV movies as AiP, but he does share a story in his review about how he once got locked in Hyde Park overnight... Hollywood, stop your endless remakes, I want to see a movie of THAT!

Rating: 3/5

Perfect Blue

Here’s one that slipped off my radar for a while. After seeing Perfect Blue during its original cinema release back in 1999 – and being thoroughly confused by its twisty plot – I decided to give it another go on DVD, seeing as how (a) there aren’t many other animated slasher movies out there (in fact, are there any?) and (b) the whole “Japanese pop star turns actress/gets stalked” theme has a nice whiff of Anchorwoman In Peril about it. So, has the intervening decade brought new resonance to Perfect Blue? Have I matured enough in the meantime to fully understand its psychological intricacies? And where did all my hair go?

First off, I will say that Perfect Blue has a pretty perfect sense of what the internet is and how it actually works... which is no mean feat for a film made in 1998, when movies tended to portray surfing the net as if it were something out of The Matrix. The Web isn’t a huge part of Perfect Blue, but it has an important role to play and comes across refreshingly realistically. In fact, the entire world of the movie is one of inescapable pop culture, with a backdrop of bubblegum pop music, cheesy detective dramas and voyeuristic websites that seems, if anything, even more spookily relevant ten years down the line. How does our main character, Mima, fit in?


Mima is a singing starlet with the three-girl pop group, CHAM. Or, at least, she was. Now, she’s branching out into a hopefully more lasting career, playing an emotionally disturbed character on a TV soap opera (this is what it’s referred to in the film, anyway; it actually seems more like a cop drama – perhaps a Japanese genre without a western equivalent). But the more Mima immerses herself in her new career, the more she finds herself haunted by what seems to be a ghost of her former self. For real! An actual entity that looks like her, talks to her but can’t be real... can it? Not only that, but she’s also being followed by a very creepy-looking obsessed fan, who sends her scrawled faxes calling her a traitor. Plus, her managers are pushing her into ever-more-explicit storylines at work, involving gang rape and increasing emotional trauma. Pretty soon, she’s starting to crack up herself – and not with laughter.

This is where you’ll either go with Perfect Blue, or just get left behind. Because, as Mima loses her grip on reality, so does the film, and it’s not long before the fractured narrative would give even Brian De Palma a headache. Having said that, thanks to TV shows like Lost and Damages, we’ve become increasingly familiar with non-linear storylines, so this might even be another case of Perfect Blue predicting future trends. Yet, for a large chunk of the second half, you’ll likely have no idea what’s going on, as the plot offers several conflicting explanations (at least one of which is quite appealing) before snatching them away, twisting them around, and throwing them back at you in a series of dreams, hallucinations and fake endings.


Thing is, if you manage to stick with it – without throwing your remote at the screen after your latest perplexed rewind – Perfect Blue eventually comes together quite cleverly. Or, at least, it comes up with an ending that slots the preceding shards of chaos into a reasonably attractive mirrorball effect. The final double-climax is an absolute treat for slasher fans, as Mima battles several adversaries across a striking range of landscapes.

Which leads me to a question: Would I have enjoyed Perfect Blue more as a live-action thriller, rather than an animated one? You’ll notice in the previous paragraph I referred to “battles”, “adversaries” and “landscapes” – all computer game terms I used almost before I realised, perhaps because the film, in its animated artifice, has an unreality, a videogame like quality to it that, for me, chipped away a little at its style. I’m not saying it spoils it; the characters are as strong as any you’d find outside Manga and the animation is often beautiful, capturing a sense of urban loneliness (and danger) that’ll stick with you long afterwards. But it also left me with a feeling of potential – like it would make a great live-action movie, something truly classic. Most tellingly of all, however, I was planning to sell the DVD of Perfect Blue (at Computer Exchange, perhaps aptly) but I didn’t in the end. I kept it. Because I suspect that someday I’ll want to revisit its frustrating, fractured but often beautiful and unsettling world.

Rating: 3/5

Hotline

Did someone say “theme week”?! Hot on the heels of Hysteria, here’s another psycho-thriller that also has a one-word title beginning with H... It’s the classic 1982 TV movie, Hotline.

Yes, I said “classic”. It may not be a landmark in cinema – or even TV movies – but there’s something about Hotline that just works. Y’know? Like when the batteries in your remote control run out, so you take them out, put them back in again, roll them around a few times and – hey presto – the remote works again. I can’t explain why it works. Scientists can’t explain why it works. But the point is: it does. And so does Hotline.


Part of the movie’s success is undoubtedly down to Lynda Carter, who stars as art student and part-time bartender, Brianne O’Neal. Carter brings a degree of world-weariness to the role that I’m not sure is intentional – after all, once you’ve been Miss World and Wonder Woman, where is there to go but down? – but which acts as a total grabber. You just can’t help but feel for the lonely gal with the vintage car and mysterious house-sitting arrangement (I would elaborate, but the reasons why Brianne’s staying in a luxury beach house are never explained).

One night at the bar, Brianne fends off the attentions of a drunken customer who’s looking for a little return on the generous tips he’s been giving. She lets him down gently at first, becomes a bit sassier when he turns threatening, and eventually kisses him off with a cheerful “Drive safely!”. I’m not sure whether this is a blast of sarcasm or an example of early-80s attitudes towards alcohol but, either way, her people-skills impress nearby psychiatrist Justin Price (Granville Van Dusen) so much that he offers her a job working for his crisis helpline.


Brianne is a bit reluctant at first but, luckily, her first phone call comes from a teenage runaway who’s just a peach to deal with. We only hear one half of the conversation but, basically, Brianne tells her to call her parents, the girl presumably cries, “Sure! What wonderful advice!”, and Brianne is well on her way to becoming the hotline’s employee of the month.

So now Brianne has art classes all day, two part-time jobs, a new boyfriend (it turns out Dr Price didn’t just pick her for her phone manner) and still finds time to get herself a mentally disturbed stalker. That’s right... one of her regular callers at the hotline is a rasping lunatic who loves nothing more than to taunt her with creepy children’s rhymes whispered in a, well, whispery voice.

Of course, Brianne is quick to realise that each rhyme contains a clue to a past murder committed by the psychopath. Like, when he whistles “London Bridge Is Falling Down”, he means that the murder took place in... Michigan! (Just kidding – it was actually London.) Soon, Brianne is spending whole days at the local library scanning microfiche for reports of mysterious deaths, not to mention jetting down Reno to investigate past crimes. Heck, it’s not like she’s busy with two jobs and a college course or anything...

Anyway, most of Hotline plays out along these lines, and entertains in ways that only TV movies from the 80s can (although it actually has quite a 70s feel). Carter charms as the busy but bored woman who actually finds dealing with a serial killer quite exciting; Van Dusen is just gross as the psychiatrist/love interest; and you’ll probably spot the identity of the killer a mile off (but it’s very satisfying nonetheless). Everything eventually comes together for a slasher-movie styled climax that finds the killer on the loose with a big pair of scissors and Carter running around in a blouse sporting more tassels than a 70s lampshade.

Click HERE for a look at the UK video cover, but bear in mind that the photo on the back is a major spoiler! The same goes for certain shots included in the trailer – if you can make them out through the murky picture quality.

Tune in next week when I’ll be reviewing “slasher movies with seven-word titles beginning with I”. Oh, and if anyone can think of any, feel free to drop me a line. Thanks.

Rating: 3/5

The Killer Next Door

I always felt sorry for poor Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years, sharing a neighbourhood with the interminable Fred Savage. In 2001’s The Killer Next Door, she has an even worse problem... The two creeps who’ve moved into the big old house beside her aren’t just annoying – it seems they also want to kill her.

While we’re at it, then, shouldn’t that title be The KILLERS Next Door? They do after all come as a pair, and one of them is Tobin Bell, the self-righteous serial killer of the Saw movies. But it’s a moot point, anyway, since this low-budget thriller is known as Good Neighbor in the States, although that’s actually an even less accurate title... Sheesh!

But back to poor Winnie – or Molly Wright as she’s called in this film (Danica McKellar if you want to know her real name). Molly is a student of – something – at Somewhere University... That’s not important. What you do need to know is that she lives in a dorm house with sassy friend Rhea (Christine Horn). And by “sassy”, I mean “constantly drunk and a bit of a slut”. Molly, on the other hand, is a straight-A goody-goody who’s escaped her abusive mom and just wants to get stuck into some studying so she can rise above it all and maybe get a part in Wonder Years: The College Years.


There’s just two things that might get in the way of her sitcom dreams. Firstly, she spots one of her neighbours carrying what looks like a dead body out of the house and – oops – now she’s a murder witness whose own life may be in danger. Secondly, damn, the girl’s got a dirty mouth! “What about protect and serve, motherfucker?” she spits at the police officer investigating her Neighbourhood Watch allegations. Then, when Rhea suggests calling her mom for her, Molly fires back: “Why don’t you go and fuck yourself!” Language like that just isn’t going to endear her to fans of whimsical TV drama.

It doesn’t endear her to the local cops, either, and no matter how many times Molly contacts them about her psycho-neighbours, the lack of hard evidence leaves her looking like a hysterical, foul-mouthed motherfucker. Her only hope is recently-demoted homicide detective Paul Davidson (Billy Dee Williams) who’s been investigating missing persons in the area. Two separate cases have both led him into her neighbourhood recently... but will his tracks lead to Molly before the killers decide to finish her off for good?


The Killer Next Door works on a small scale, but at least it works. I saw shades of Fright Night in Molly’s fascination with – and fear of – the mysterious older neighbour and his young accomplice. As in that film, whenever Molly finds herself next-door (or the neighbours pop round uninvited) the tension’s pretty high, and some of the action is quite nasty as verbal threats eventually lead to physical violence.

Much of the menace comes from having Tobin Bell as one of the killers. Shorn of the masks, puppets and props associated with him in Saw, the guy is still scary, whether it’s his evil expression:


...or hairy back:

What doesn’t work? Well, you won’t forget this is low-budget. And, as we all know, low budgets buy clichés – so here we get courageous nuns, eccentric pimps, tired cops, jocky boyfriends and alcoholic mothers. Even the “disappearing body” trick gets a look-in, with the added absurdity that the killers deliberately leave the body somewhere with the intention of scaring Molly – despite the fact that lack of evidence is the only thing holding her back.

It’s not great cinema, then, but it’s not bad either. Playing Molly, Danica McKellar isn’t the best actress, but let’s not forget she managed to make us believe it was possible to be attracted to Fred Savage in The Wonder Years. Do I smell an Oscar?

Rating: 3/5

Door Into Darkness: Eyewitness

Well, I did promise I’d be having a look at Dario Argento’s TV anthology series Door Into Darkness, but I never said I’d be watching the episodes in order. (Please, I’m not that organised.) So here we go with episode 3 of the DVD set, which actually aired second according to some sources... Anyhow, no matter – it’s not like Lost, where as long as you watch it all in order it all makes perfect sense. No, Door Into Darkness presents four different stories, and this one’s called Eyewitness.

Straight off, let me point out that many of Eyewitness’s plot elements probably seemed a lot fresher back in 1973, before three decades’ worth of TV actresses played murder witnesses in three decades’ worth of TV movies, and subsequently found themselves in various degrees of TV movie-permitting peril. Here, it’s Marilù Tolo playing housewife Roberta Leoni, whose life is so dull and empty she spends most of her time dressing up in outfits that match her stylishly mod furnishings:



All that’s about to change, however, because soon Roberta will be on high terror alert after a woman runs out in front of her car in the middle of the night and drops down dead in the road. When Roberta gets out to help – being careful not to get any of that icky blood on her new orange flares (well, they do go lovely with the futon) – Mystery Woman turns out to have a bullet wound in her back. But that’s not all: Mystery Murderer is waiting in the bushes beside the road with a gun in his black-gloved hand... Run, Roberta, Run!

Luckily, there’s a diner nearby and Roberta has soon ordered a nice cup of coffee. Oh, and summoned the police. But when she takes the detective back to the scene of the crime, the body has disappeared – along with any trace of blood and, indeed, anything out of the ordinary. Has Roberta imagined it all? The police and her husband (Riccardo Salvino – sort of a better-looking version of Dario Argento, although with the same tombstone forehead and lanky hair) seem to think so, but we’re left in no doubt when a cutaway reveals someone suspiciously burning a pile of bloodstained clothes...

Ah, sweet, naïve, innocent Eyewitness, you had me gripped up until about this point, when you decided to turn into a decidedly mediocre stalker thriller. Roberta returns home to the now-ubiquitous ominous phone calls and half-hearted attempts on her life, while events slow-burn to a rather predictable conclusion. I know it’s not your fault, Eyewitness. You were probably once the hottest thing since open plan interiors:


But now you’re more like this clock – dated and slightly pointless:


I mean, can you tell the time on that? Anyway, the plot of Eyewitness has become so standard that it really doesn’t offer much in the way of suspense or excitement any longer, despite the fact that it’s well staged and particularly nicely scored (by Giorgio Gaslini – Deep Red). I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a worthless waste of time – I’d recommend it unreservedly to giallo/Argento fans – but time hasn’t left Eyewitness with much to remark upon. Except, of course, those fabulous interiors.

Rating: 2/5

All the Colors of the Dark

Colour me confused. Not because I couldn’t follow the plot of this 1972 giallo (often a challenge for me where the genre’s concerned, I’ll admit) but because, in this case, I could. All the Colors of the Dark is a surprisingly straightforward and simply plotted thriller, which is both refreshing and a little ordinary as a result.

Things get underway with a hideously pantomimed nightmare sequence I wasn’t sure whether to take seriously or not. A man in drag cackles at the camera, giant turquoise eyes peer out of the screen, a naked woman smears blood on her belly... And they say you can never relieve your college days. All of this is taking place in the diseased imagination of Jane Harrison (Edwige Fenech), a troubled Londoner still recovering from the loss of her unborn child in a car accident some months ago.

It seems that these and other gruesome images flash into Jane’s mind whenever her fiancé Richard (George Hilton) tries to make love to her. He responds by mixing her up strange “vitamin drinks” that look like inky water, while she in turn becomes progressively more unbalanced. It’s a vicious circle, really, and no one’s having much fun except the man in drag.

Soon, Jane’s nightmares start to come to life as she finds herself repeatedly menaced by a blue-eyed man wielding a stiletto (that’s wielding, not wearing – we’ve moved on from the man in drag). At the park, on the train, even in her own apartment building, nowhere is safe – and one particularly good suspense sequence finds Jane inadvertently locked out of her flat, waiting for a slowly approaching lift as her stalker ascends the staircase below.

So far, so giallo, but things take a turn for the supernatural when Jane makes friends with Mary (Marina Malfatti), a neighbour – and predatory lesbian, natch – who inducts her into a satanic cult as a means of curing her nightmares. From here on in, nothing and no one can be trusted, as events get even stranger and the true motives of Jane’s friends and family are shockingly revealed!

Or perhaps not so shockingly, since All the Colors of the Dark doesn’t really go in for the genre’s usual twists and mysteries, other than the central issue of whether the traumatising set pieces Jane puts herself through are real or imagined. Instead, it concentrates on building an atmosphere of nightmarish paranoia similar to Rosemary’s Baby and, for the most part, pulls it off. It’s only in the final third, when the film starts chucking in all kinds of new ideas (premonitions, previously unmentioned inheritances) that it starts to feel forced. Even so, it all makes enough sense and ties up neatly.

Director Sergio Martino was in the midst of an amazing run when he shot this film hot on the heels of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, but it’s the following year’s Torso that I think shows him at his best. Now that’s a scary movie! All the Colors of the Dark has plenty going for it (not least of which is that fantastic title) but remains a pretty tame option stacked up against its mostly more outrageous contemporaries.

Rating: 3/5

Through the Eyes of a Killer

I’ve a habit of taping films shown in the middle of the night, usually on Movies 24 – or, according to its website, “the first channel completely devoted to movies that have been made specifically for television” (hmm... I always thought that was Five). Then the videos sit unwatched on the shelf until I run out of blank tapes and have to watch something in order to tape something else I won’t watch for six months.

That’s what happened in the case of 1992’s Through the Eyes of a Killer, except that when I went to put it on, it turned out the film was actually showing again on Movies 24 at that very moment! I even toyed with the idea of watching it straight off the TV and – hah! – chucking the tape back on the “blank” pile unwatched. But then I remembered my beans on toast was burning and decided to stick with the recorded version for extra pause-and-rewind-ability. (Alas, no Sky Plus for me.)

But, in a bizarre twist of fate, the cassette turned out to be faulty and my VCR spewed the ruined tape out into... Naw, just kidding! Oh, the potential irony!

So, anyways, I did get to see Through the Eyes of a Killer after all, and it was well worth it too. A pre-CSI Marg Helgenberger (who doesn’t exactly look younger – just less surgically enhanced) plays architect’s assistant Laurie Fisher, to whom we’re introduced via a nice, long tracking shot during which she argues with her boyfriend Jerry (Joe Pantoliano) in their apartment. Laurie ends up storming out, and Jerry ends up punching his fist through a framed photo of her. Ooooh... ominous!

And “ominous” turns out to be today’s secret word, as Laurie is later shown around a potential new apartment by her realtor, who tries to cover up the blood in the bathtub and points out that the walls are three feet thick and soundproof (in this flat, no one can hear you scream). Then there’s the spooky stained-glass eye design in the window pane. It’s almost like someone’s watching you... And it’s also like Someone’s Watching Me!

Ominous or not, Laurie thinks the place could be her home sweet home-away-from-home, and decides to buy and renovate it completely. Of course, she’ll need the help of a builder, and one mysteriously – one might even say ominously – turns up in the shape of Ray Bellano (Richard Dean Anderson). He’s good-looking, muscled, has a rad mullet and, better still, promises to undercut the competitors’ prices by half. Laurie says yes, Ray moves in to start work and, before you can say “Insert rod A into hole B”, the couple are testing out the bedsprings together. Or they would be if the apartment had any furniture.

Anyway, remember how things were all ominous before? Well, during the building work, Ray uncovers a hidden door... leading to a walled-up pantry. “How did you know that was there?” asks Laurie. “I just knew,” replies Ray. Then it turns out that the previous occupier has installed guillotine-like sliding shutters on all the doors. “To keep other people out,” suggests Ray. “Or in...” muses Laurie. Feel my goose bumps. (Hey! Hands off, pervert.)

Just when you think things couldn’t get any more portentous, Laurie opens a fortune cookie that reads: “Don’t build new boat out of old wood”. Is Confucius trying to tell her something? What is the no doubt terrifying secret of her new home? And will all this ominous-ness pay off? The only way to find out is to look... through the eyes of a killer!

Well, I’ve looked through the eyes of a killer and, let me tell you, it’s pretty scary for an early-nineties TV movie. Call me chickenshit, but there’s nothing like the old “Get out of the house now!” phonecall-from-a-friend routine to send the shivers up my otherwise orthopaedically-sound spine. Maybe it’s because I’m more used to seeing Marg Helgenberger as the kick-ass Catherine Willows in CSI, but watching her helplessly chased round secret passages by a knife-wielding psycho was enough to give me a genuine case of the eek-a-boos. Hell, it was enough to make me use the word “eek-a-boos”, which has to mean... something.

Another major factor in the success of Through the Eyes of a Killer is its classy direction. It’s all long takes and eerily tilting angles – which, coupled with a lush faux-Hitchcock score, give it a cinematic feel not often found in TV movies. Even Tippi Hedren pops up at one point to sprinkle in a few clues. And what great clues this movie comes up with! One of Laurie’s ill-fated friends warns her that everything’s tied up in that creepy fortune cookie message, which seems to make no sense whatsoever but gets cleared up nicely by a trip to the library to look through some old newspapers on microfiche. As for that all-seeing eye in the window pane... well, that goes unexplained, but dammit if it doesn’t pay off perfectly at the climax.

I can’t finish without mentioning another little something that I presume can only have happened by chance but creates a classic moment. At one point, Marg comes face-to-face with a rat for a typical cheap scare. Marg screams in horror – and the startled rodent jumps like hell! Well, anything that scares a rat that bad gets top marks in my book. And I am keeping a book, by the way. It says:

Rating: 4/5

I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill

Confession time: Long, long before Anchorwoman In Peril! existed (i.e. sometime last month) I flirted, floozied and experimented with running a short-lived blog called Buon Giallo, all about Italian horror. What can I say? I was young... I didn’t know what I was doing... I didn’t inhale... I also didn’t keep the blog going for very long. I guess my heart just wasn’t in it. Anyway, one of the films I talked about was actually an episode of the 70s British TV series, Thriller. It’s a great episode deserving of greater recognition – and, now that the whole series of Thriller is available on DVD, perhaps it’ll be discovered by a new generation of horror fans. If so, they’ll find a gripping thriller featuring a classic final girl years before the slasher cycle kicked into full swing. In this hope, I hereby reprint my review of I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill. (How’s that for getting away with only one paragraph of new material for today’s entry? ... Score!)

In 1973, Dario Argento presented the TV series Door Into Darkness on Italian TV, comprising four, hour-long stories of murder and suspense modelled on the giallo films that had brought him to prominence. Over here in the UK, screenwriter Brian Clemens had envisaged a similar show called Thriller, of which I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill is a particularly giallo-like episode from the third series, originally broadcast in 1974. [See how I tied it all in to Italian horror for Buon Giallo? Clever, no?]

Token American Julie Sommars stars as Ann Rogers, a hardworking employee at Parker Industries, based in a London high-rise. What this company actually does is only vaguely defined, but it must take up a lot of time because Ann is always finding herself working late on things like “the Jamaican project”. Arriving home to her flat one evening, Ann passes a mysterious man in the hallway and, in a superbly spooky scene, discovers her neighbour’s dead body on the upstairs landing. She provides a description of the killer to the police – who believe him to be responsible for several other murders in the area – but time passes and the culprit remains at large.

One good thing comes out of Ann’s visit to the cop shop, however: she bags herself Detective Sergeant Tanner (Tony Selby), a prime slab of afro-haired 70s studliness, and useful boyfriend to have around if it looks like you might be stalked by any deranged psychos in the near-future. Of course, this is exactly what happens to Ann; after spotting the killer in a local jewellery shop one lunch hour, she’s chased back to her office and barely makes it back to safety. A quick phone call to Tanner assures her that her pursuer has been apprehended and, ever the diligent worker, Ann carries on with her day’s work until night falls and she’s the only one left in the building. Except, that is, for a familiar figure lurking in the lobby below, knife in hand and ready to strike...

I haven’t seen any other episodes of Thriller but, if I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill is anything to go by, it looks like I’ve missed a treat. Lean, taut and terrifically suspenseful, the episode is tele-terror at its best. Its premise is played out at just the right length to ensure we get to know and care about the characters, all the while taking care to plant ominous pointers to the trouble Ann will encounter later on – from electrically-locking doors, to windows sealed “for your comfort”.

The remainder of the story constitutes a harrowing battle of wits between killer and super-secretary – who, while resourceful, is never played as unrealistically as she might be in this post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer age of martial arts-trained female empowerment. Lifts and telephone switchboards become instruments of tortuous tension as Ann’s familiar workplace becomes a deadly trap. There’s even a moment reminiscent of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, in which characters find themselves trapped between two sets of glass doors. Ann learns to turn the tools of her trade against her attacker... while he learns that it pays not to be overweight if you’re a psychopath intent on chasing your victim up to the twelfth floor and back.

Now available on DVD as part of the complete Thriller series box set, I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill also includes an extended opening sequence shot for American TV, featuring – naturally – a gratuitous shower scene, as well as lots of shots of feet padding around portentously (I’m guessing the original cast weren’t available for reshoots). I’d encourage you to seek out the film in whatever version you can... It’s absolutely thriller-ering.

Rating: 4/5

Exclusive

Tireless, that’s me, dear Anchorwoman In Peril! reader (and I wish you’d stop calling yourself that). I’ll search out any cheap obscure DVD in order to provide you with an incisive commentary on the merits – or not – of the film in question. So, when I remembered a film from my childhood that featured Suzanne Somers as a TV reporter stalked by a killer, I just knew it was my duty to seek it out... at any cost!

As it happened, that cost was £1.09 on Amazon (plus postage, mind) and the film was Exclusive, a 1992 TV movie riding on the coattails of Somers’ then-popularity in the sitcom Step by Step.

As Anchorwomen In Peril go, Marcy Howard (Somers) really is in peril. Barely a moment goes by when she’s not being crept up on by some sort of mysterious, shadowy figure. First it’s when she’s lying in bed, sleeping fitfully as a black-gloved intruder slips into the house, creeps up the stairs in the dark, hovers ominously above her, and... [camera pans up to face] False alarm – it’s just her husband, Reed (Michael Nouri)... Phew! He’s arrived home late, but there’s just enough time for a bit of nookie before Marcy heads off to work at the TV station.

Some time later, Marcy is working alone at the office when a black-clad stranger sneaks up behind her desk. She’s too busy typing to notice as he opens up a mysterious briefcase and… [camera pans up to face] False alarm – it’s just her co-worker Allen (Ed Begley Jr.)... Phew! Talk about suspense! Marcy’s not even being stalked by that killer yet, but her friends are doing a good enough job at skulking around and keeping her in a constant state of peril anyway!


So what about the actual stalker? Well, one night, Marcy’s at her desk when she receives an anonymous phone call telling her to go to the Blue Mood bar if she really wants a story. This is a stroke of luck, as the new station manager has been on her back recently, demanding higher ratings and reminding her that she used to be LA’s top investigative reporter. Of course, she also used to be an alcoholic and, in giving up the hard drinkin’, she also seems to have lost touch with the hard news.

When Marcy arrives at the Blue Mood bar, however, she won’t have to worry about forking out for an overpriced mineral water. Everyone’s been killed in a gruesome shotgun massacre – and she’s first on the scene with a camera crew. Marcy’s back in the big league and making the headlines herself... but at what cost? How long is it before the killer comes after her? And will she ever be able to get any work done without someone sneaking up on her?

Exclusive harks back to the days when, if you had a hot TV actress, a camera and Ed Begley Jr., then goddammit you had a movie. For much of the running time, it’s just that: Somers and Begley goof around in the studio; Somers and Begley argue about ratings; Somers and Begley follow a hot lead... And, occasionally, Michael Nouri pops up like a screensaver to protect your TV from the combined strength of all that blonde.

For an Anchorwoman In Peril movie, however, Exclusive is lacking in the requisite hysteria. Despite being a recently-divorced former alcoholic fighting off a murderous stalker (as well as the urge to down the odd bottle of vodka) Somers is pretty together and, as a result, it’s all a bit bland. Sure, there’s the usual investigating-strange-noises and receiving-strange-phonecall exploits, but we might as well be watching Somers in Three’s Company for all the suspense on offer. On the other hand, I was amused by Marcy’s “research”, which seems to consist entirely of clipping articles out of the daily papers... So much for being on the front line!

We do get a magnificent Live On Air wig-out in the second half, when Marcy is forced to report on her own attack at the hands of a man in a gimp mask, and turns into a comatose wreck in the middle of the nightly news...


And then there’s the moment when she’s driving along and takes her eyes off the road for a second to reach for her vodka bottle...


Unfortunately, such highlights are spread as thinly as the thrills, and Exclusive plods along to one of those climaxes where the gun goes off, the police break in, and you’re supposed to wonder which of the “bodies” will move first: Marcy or the killer. I didn’t hate it but, in the ten years since the initial Anchorwoman In Peril cycle, everyone seems to have forgotten how to make the formula fun.

Rating: 2/5

Run... If You Can!

Welcome to Anchorwoman In Peril’s new review strand, the Grindhouse, where I’ll be reviewing the cheapest and sleaziest genre efforts ever to get a legitimate DVD release. And we all know what you get when you mix “cheap” with “sleaze”... Yup, “cheese” – or, to be strictly accurate, “cheaze”, whatever that is. Anyway, whenever you see the Grindhouse logo here on AiP (that’s it on the left), you’ll know to expect fuzzy video, muffled sound, wooden actors... and, who knows, maybe you’ll even come to love ’em like I do. So adjust your brightness, crank up the volume, and don’t expect any special features (or chapter stops)... I’m hoping that, as we wade through the sludge, we might trip over a few diamonds-in-the-rough together (so watch your toes – they might be sharp). The sludgery starts with today’s 1987 psycho-thriller, Run... If You Can!

I’m guessing this movie was made on a budget of about $1,000, most of which went on punctuation for the title. Hopefully, the majority of what was left went into the pocket of Martin Landau... Yes, that’s right, there’s an honest-to-goblins Oscar-winning actor in this movie and, more importantly, he’s actually good in it (unlike most of the name-above-the-title-nobodies like Tom Hulce, Linda Hunt and Louise Fletcher who, after winning an Oscar each, went on to blight a hundred B-movies with hammy performances that only served to drag the films deeper). In Run... If You Can!, however, whenever there’s a moment that rings true or a flicker of raw energy at the edge of a scene, you can bet it’s because Landau is onscreen. But he’s still really only a best supporting actor here; let’s not forget our heroine...

Meet Kim Page (Yvette Nipar), a pretty young student who’s house-sitting for a friend of her father’s. The first thing you’ll notice is that this ain’t no ordinary house – it’s a genuine Beverly Hills mansion, complete with a lagoon-like swimming pool, indoor forest and, up on the roof, a giant satellite dish. Kim’s boyfriend is heading out of town for a while, so she plans to crack out the mac ’n’ cheese and veg out in front of the many TV channels available thanks to the Jodrell Bank-like piece of receiving equipment overhead.


As Kim nods off in front of the tube one night, the late-night movie is rudely interrupted by some amateurish footage of a man and woman having sex. Strange... the TV guide had promised 1930s classic Of Human Bondage, but Kim is drifting in and out of a carb-coma thanks to all that pasta, and barely bats an eyelid when the man suffocates his partner and stuffs her body into a plastic bag.

It’s not until the next day, when her friend Jill informs her that a woman’s body has been found dumped in a plastic bag – the latest in a series of killings attributed to the “Beverly Hills Ladykiller” – that Kim remembers the creepy video. She figures, however, that it was all just a scene from Of Human Bondage (right after the bit where Leslie Howard torches Bette Davis with a flame-thrower, perhaps) and dismisses it outright. Unfortunately, Kim is in for a far greater shock the following night, when the TV snuff scenes are repeated... only this time the helpless victim is Jill!


Low-budget it may be, but Run... If You Can! has a story to tell and manages to tell it with a fair degree of grainy panache. Kim quickly enlists the aid of Lieutenant Landau and his partner, Brian (Jerry – brother of Dick! – Van Dyke), who together bring some old-school acting chops to the table, imbuing an unlikely story with some believability. Nevertheless, I never quite bought the fact that Kim would confuse a black-and-white movie classic with some dirty home video beamed onto her TV in full-colour – but, since she’s getting free nightly snuff-porn of the like Eli Roth would surely kill for, I guess she’s not complaining.


In this late-eighties production, the high-tech world of satellite TV broadcasting is clearly still seen as something frighteningly new. Every time Kim’s rooftop dish does a little swivel, for example, it’s accompanied by scary chords on the soundtrack. And as the police scramble to uncover the source of the broadcasts, I half expected someone to call Kim and cry, “The signal’s coming from inside the house!”. But where the uncertainty surrounding this new technology is understandable, the confusion caused by the revelation of the killer’s identity is just ridiculous. In fact, the more I think about it, the stupider it is. I don’t want to give anything away, but... why? Why, for the love of God, would this particular character be the killer? Did I miss something?

Thankfully, the film ends on what has to be one the greatest freeze-frames ever, er, frozen, which, when accompanied by the novel way of listing the end credits, manages to send you out with a smile. Run... If You Can! won’t please everyone but, with its sly suggestion that late-night TV really is bad for you, makes a great late-night movie itself. Enjoy... if you can.

Rating: 3/5

Intimate Stranger

I’ve tracked down some obscure films in my time, pawing through bargain bins filled with battered ex-rental video tapes, trawling eBay for titles deleted in 1987, and surrendering my credit card details to websites so foreign even the HTML was in French. When it came to finding the 1992 straight-to-cable thriller Intimate Stranger, however, I struck lucky: I just wandered into a second-hand shop in London and there it was, gleaming improbably on the shelf in all its region 4 DVD glory – a film currently only available on DVD in Australia.

Why had I wanted to see Intimate Stranger for so long? Let’s count the reasons: (1) It stars Deborah Harry as a phone-sex operator. (2) It stars Deborah Harry as a phone-sex operator in peril! Isn’t that enough? Do you even need to know that it also co-stars Tia Carrere (the Relic Hunter herself) in an early role as an over-enthusiastic hooker? Or that Twin Peaks’ Grace Zabriskie has – eww – a fellatio scene? Or that, at the climax, we’re treated to the truly insane sight of Deborah Harry wielding a flame-thrower whilst screaming “YOU DIRTY BASTARD!”...? Now tell me that hasn’t zoomed straight to the top of your must-see list?

Harry plays Cory Wheeler, a platinum-blonde telephone sex worker who, when she’s not pretending to be a naughty 15-year-old in black panties, also sings at a local dive called the Tom Tom Club (seriously, you should see the restrooms... yeucch!). One night, Cory’s peddling her sexy shtick to the usual clients (and smoking her way through about ten packs of fags) when she finds herself chatting up a particularly sinister individual who claims to have a woman tied up in his house. “My inside stuff is coming out... and her INSIDE stuff is coming out,” he intones, before taking out a knife and slitting the girl’s throat with a cry of: “My inside stuff is white... and her inside stuff is red... red... red!”

Needless to say, Cory’s pretty freaked out. Who wants to hear about yucky white stuff? Especially when your hair looks like this:


The whole experience is enough to drive a (Debbie) harried phone-sex operator straight to the cops, which is exactly where Cory heads. Unsurprisingly, the homicide squad aren’t interested in a case where the witness can provide no description, no evidence and no corpse, but before Cory can storm out, she’s approached by sympathetic officer Nick Ciccini (James Russo) who offers to help catch the killer on his own, in the hope that it might fast-track his promotion to detective.

Back at the apartment, Nick installs a state-of-the-art tracing device on Cory’s phone line:

Sure enough, the killer calls again, but – curses! – he must be using a scrambler, because all that comes up on the tracer’s digital display is a string of random numbers. Luckily, Nick has a buddy in the telecommunications department who’s able to provide him with the credit card details and address of the murderous caller, and soon he and Cory are swept up in a whirlwind of mystery, danger and romance. And you know what happens to your hair in a whirlwind:

Intimate Stranger is the stuff that straight-to-cable dreams are made of, and I loved every dirty-talking minute. By the ten-minute mark, Debbie Harry has already smoked 400 cigarettes in eye-watering close-up, snarled the word “pussy”, and delivered a phone fantasy about sitting in a dentist’s waiting room without any knickers on. I’m sure John Waters was thinking of her when he envisaged Serial Mom’s evil streak.

Then there’s the first murder: a thunderball of sleaze, featuring so much topless torture and talk of “inside stuff coming out” that I was actually a teensy bit shocked in my old age. If anything, the movie calms down somewhat after this startling opening, and settles into more familiar mystery territory – although it’s not long before a frazzling sequence set in a sex shop during a power cut (!).

With the added bonus of a few Deborah Harry vocal performances unavailable anywhere else, Intimate Stranger is the very definition of a lost gem. It would have benefited from a bit more suspense during the midsection, but the climax is a dizzy, delirious affair, which rockets around dingy alleys, seedy motels and the decaying stairwells of a derelict building. Quite where that aforementioned flame-thrower comes from, however, is anyone’s guess!

Rating: 3/5

Halloween

Not since going to see Jaws on the big screen (it was a revival – Jeez, I’m not that old!) have I been as excited/nervous as I was before last night’s screening of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. The 1978 original remains one of my all-time faves, so the excited/nervous ratio was something like: 77% “It's Halloween!” versus 21% “It's gonna be a travesty!” (The other 2% was me wondering whether or not to buy a drink.)

With Jaws, there was plenty of excitement compared to just a small ratio of nervousness (e.g. tickets might sell out; the projector might break down; should I get a drink?). As it happened, something actually did turn out to be wrong with the print, and the film kept skipping important moments – like when Roy Scheider went from splattering a scoopful of chum into the sea to suddenly jumping back in terror for what seemed to be an unspecified reason. I mean, I knew he’d seen the shark but what about the Jaws virgins in the audience? Perhaps they thought he was just scared of getting a bit of chum on his pants. I know I would be. Anyway, the point is: the slight amount of nervousness was justified... Jaws wasn’t quite the Jaws I knew and loved.



Halloween-wise, the nervousness was also justified. Not because there was anything wrong with the print, nor did I go thirsty during the screening... it was just that Zombie’s new vision of the classic slasher, well, didn’t really feel anything like the classic slasher. It felt more like a remake of the remake of Black Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually thought 2006’s Black Christmas was an enjoyably dizzy blur of blood and bitching, but I wouldn’t want to base another film on it. In Halloween 2007, everything from Michael Myers’ white-trash nightmare of an upbringing, through his violent escape from the asylum, to his stalking of various interchangeable teenagers and climactic chase through the cavity walls of a big old house, all I could think of was Black Christmas 2006 (as well as how you have to specify particular versions of horror films these days).

Halloween is, of course, reminiscent of its 1978 progenitor, and by reminiscent I mean it has all the same characters doing all the same things and getting killed in mostly the same ways. But dammit if I didn’t care who died or how – and that apathy extends to Scout Taylor-Compton as nominal main character and final girl, Laurie Strode. Taylor-Compton is likeable, and her appearance around halfway through is a welcome relief from the unsympathetic greaseballs who populate the move until then, but there’s little to distinguish her from her friends, and her giggling innuendoes quickly wear thin. The only death scene that genuinely perturbed me was the one reserved for the always lovely Dee Wallace, nicely cast here as Laurie’s mom. In the approximately four minutes Wallace is onscreen in Halloween, she exudes more warmth and personality than any other character. Which seems to be all the more reason to shove her face through a glass coffee table in crunchy close-up.


Moving away from John Carpenter’s original, the coloured-in backstory of Michael’s childhood offered by Zombie’s version is surprisingly successful, at least in terms of delivering the gory thrills. Creating a believably gruesome family background for him is another matter entirely, however, and the stripper-mom/abusive-dad clichés offered up are trite and broadly comic. Considering Zombie’s apparent urge to explain explain explain, it’s perplexing how much seems to go unaccounted for – such as how Michael finds out about his one surviving relative when he escapes from captivity, what he wants to do exactly when he catches up with her, and why he wants to kill a bunch of other folk. This sort of stuff didn’t matter in the original, where Michael was simply a “shape”, a “boogeyman” and a faceless bringer of death, but the remake seems to set itself up to fail in this respect by lingering on some points but glossing over others.

In all, I might’ve enjoyed this more as a killer-psycho movie without the Halloween banner. I certainly couldn’t rate it higher than any of the Myers-related Halloween sequels, and that includes the lazy-but-stylish Part 5 and muddled-but-exciting Part 6. As for Mr Zombie... Rob, when you're looking for your next movie to remake, keep your hands off Black Christmas 2006!

Rating: 3/5

Someone’s Watching Me!

I first saw John Carpenter’s Someone’s Watching Me! as a teenager, when you could catch a TV movie on the box every night if you stayed up late enough. (These days, the late-night movies are all things I saw at the cinema in the late nineties – ouch!) All I really remembered of the film was a chilblains-inducing moment in which our heroine is talking on the phone alone in her apartment... when suddenly a black-clad figure dashes silently past in the background! Well, I must have found that pretty creepy to have remembered it all these years (not to mention put it in italics) so it was with some anticipation that I popped Warner’s new DVD – released as part of their fairly accurately titled Twisted Terror Collection – into the machine.

Let me tell you: the moment is there, it’s a doozy, and it doesn’t take long to get to it. Someone’s Watching Me! establishes its stalker theme right off the bat, as the camera glides the length of a telescope before disappearing right into its darkened lens (a truly evocative shot that seems to implicate the viewer as – lordy – both voyeur and victim). Speaking of victim, it’s attractive, endearingly gappy-toothed Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton) that the telescope of terror will soon be trained upon when, after taking up residence in an L.A. apartment, she finds herself at the mercy of an obsessed observer who tracks her every move and telephones her at all hours with whispered threats.


We first meet Leigh as she’s shown around the ultra-modern Arkham Tower building by a realtor who explains how every apartment is controlled by a computer that does things like sense the strength of the setting sun and adjust the room temperature accordingly. (Not bad for 1978, huh? My computer still won’t do that.) I found this idea creepy enough even without the added bonus of a leering psychopath, but Leigh’s a busy woman-in-peril TV director and probably hasn’t had chance to see Demon Seed yet. In any case, she’s pleased as punch with the place, and is soon all moved in.

As satisfied as she is with the evening climate control (a good thing, since she never closes the curtains) Leigh’s housewarming is soon marred by a string of vaguely threatening phone calls and mysterious gifts – first a mysterious telescope, then a mysterious orange bikini. Her new gay buddy Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) tells her not to worry and takes her out for a meal but, even at the restaurant, it seems that Someone’s Watching Her, when a bottle of wine arrives compliments of a swiftly exiting stranger at the bar. As the mystery man’s attentions increase, Leigh becomes increasingly worried for her own safety, and Arkham Tower comes to seem less like an intelligently air-conditioned playground and more like a glass-walled prison of doom!

Someone’s Watching Me! is a wonderful blend of Hitchcockian stylings, 70s TV-movie terror and, thanks to the presence of a young John Carpenter in the director’s chair, early slasher movie technique. Carpenter is clearly intent on giving things a Hitchcock flavour: we open with a bombastic Bernard Herrman-esque score played over some ersatz Saul Bass credits (all parallel lines and sliding names), plus there’s the Rear Window-ish plotting, an overhead shot straight out of Psycho, and at least one reverse dolly zoom; it’s so stylishly slavish to the Master, I want to call it De Palmaian but can’t really spell it. This being only months prior to Carpenter’s cinematic breakthrough, everything also reeks of Halloween, including the strong female leads, occasional steadycam use, and faceless killer. Even the heroine’s name – Leigh (as in Jamie?) and surname Michaels (Myers?) – had me thinking of the slasher classic.


Leigh isn’t your average woman-in-peril, just as Someone’s Watching Me! isn’t your average woman-in-peril TV movie. She’s confident, independent and refuses to allow anyone to control her life, characteristics that Carpenter (who scripted as well as directed) establishes early on in a barroom scene where, after rebuffing the advances of several male admirers, Leigh calmly approaches a single man with the pickup line, “Hello! I’m Leigh Michaels!”. Later on, when things get even hairier, she’s not afraid to follow her stalker into a deserted basement, break into his apartment or, in a particularly ballsy move during the trapped-in-the-dark climax, demand that he come out of the shadows and show himself. As she rants to Sophie at one point, “How dare he invade my life!”.

While we’re on the subject of Sophie, what a refreshing character she is: not gay-for-a-few-wisecracks nor even seemingly attracted to gorgeous Leigh; she’s just a great best friend who also happens to be a lesbian. The fact is simply noted and they move on. In fact, of all the characters Leigh comes into contact with (I doubt she could pick her nose without someone coming on to her), Sophie is the least predatory and most positive. This may be a comment on the late-seventies theme of all men as potential rapists – here used to ominous effect when a male co-worker blindly ignores Leigh’s rebuttals by repeatedly asking her for a date – but also shines as one of the least showy, most affirmative portrayals of a gay character from the era. (William Friedkin simply wouldn’t have had a film if he’d represented gay men as matter-of-factly as this in Cruising two years later.)


In fact, there’s precious little to complain about in Someone’s Watching Me! I would’ve liked to see more of Leigh at work; she seems to spend less time there than talking to herself while alone (or is she?!) at her apartment but, since her job doesn’t have direct bearing on the plot, it’s justifiable. After all, she’s not technically a genuine Anchorwoman In Peril – being instead employed behind the scenes as the person who says “Fade in on camera three” during the news – but there’s more than enough woman, peril and indeed TV stuff here to justify the moniker. I’d even go so far as to say the film is absolute canon as the Anchorwoman In Peril genre goes... It’s certainly scary, thrilling and, er, glamorously seventies enough. Someone’s Watching Me, I’ll be watching you in future!

Rating: 4/5