The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

In the lexicon of cult classics, one movie has reached a level of recognition rivaled only a select few. It has become synonymous with unrelenting horror and brutal violence, and even those who haven't seen it are quick to agree that it's one of the most terrifying films ever made. Its reputation has grown to a status where its name alone is enough to inspire a reaction in all that hear it. Just hearing the title automatically puts visions of unspeakable carnage in your mind.

Drawing inspiration from a notorious serial killer and an unsavory experience he had in a certain power tool aisle at Sears, writer/director Tobe Hooper presents us with one of the most insane, demented movies ever made: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the thirty years since its release, it spent all but five on Great Britain's list of banned "video nasties," spawned three sequels and a big-budget Hollywood remake, and has often been considered one of the forefathers of the slasher sub-genre. But is it really as good as its reputation lets on?

Upon hearing that vandals have desecrated the graveyard where her grandfather is buried, Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) recruits her annoying paraplegic brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), her boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger), and their friends Pam (Teri McMinn) and Kirk (William Vail) to check things out. They arrive at the cemetery and discover everything is on the up-and-up (as much as it can be with a corpse sitting on top of a tomb in the middle of the graveyard), so the five twentysomethings decide to take a little side trip to the deserted farm belonging to Sally and Franklin's grandfather. On the way, they pick up a deranged hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), who tells them how headcheese is made (if you don't know, you don't want to know) before slashing Franklin's arm and his own hand with a straight razor. They promptly kick him out of the van, and he smears a trail of blood along the side of the van as they drive away.

After arriving at the farm, Sally, Jerry, and Franklin (who's scared the hitchhiker might come back to get them) look around while Pam and Kirk hunt for somewhere to go swimming. They don't find a swimming hole, but they do discover a house out in the middle of nowhere instead. Kirk hears a generator, so he heads inside hoping to find some gasoline for the van (thanks to the gas station they passed being out of gas). Unfortunately for them but fortunately for the viewer, this is a huge blundering error. Kirk lets himself into the house and begins investigating a strange noise, which is Huge Blundering Error #2. That investigation doesn't last long, as Kirk soon comes face-to-face with one of the house's residents. Clad in a nasty leather mask and dirty butcher's smock, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) promptly cracks Kirk upside the head with a mallet and drags him deeper into the house.

Meanwhile, Kirk's prolonged absence leads Pam to make Huge Blundering Error #3, entering the house herself to snoop around for Kirk. Pam stumbles upon some rather damning evidence that something not quite right is going on, but it also leads to one of horror cinema's most famous moments. Leatherface finds Pam snooping around and chases her out of the house, but catches her on the front porch, drags her back inside, and introduces her to the business end of a meat hook. As night falls, Sally, Franklin, and Jerry begin looking for their missing comrades, but their search leads them right into the seventh circle of Hell. Franklin and Jerry fall victim to Leatherface as well, and Sally soon finds herself trapped in the remote farmhouse with a demented family comprised of Leatherface, the hitchhiker, barbecue connoisseur Drayton (Jim Siedow), and Grandpa (John Dugan). Will she survive, or will she become stew like her friends?

Before I go any further, I'd like to explain a few things. For years, people thought this was true. In fact, the remake's entire marketing campaign was based on the fact that it was supposedly based on a true story. That's not exactly correct. This movie, Robert Bloch's novel Psycho (which later served as inspiration for Hitchcock's classic movie), and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs were all inspired by Ed Gein, a serial killer and grave robber in Wisconsin circa 1957. He was haunted by his dead mother, like Norman Bates, and he would occasionally wear the skin of his victims like a suit, an idea mirrored in Buffalo Bill's skin suit and Leatherface's mask. He would also use bones to reinforce furniture (another idea used in the Massacre movies), kept body parts in jars and Tupperware, and used the tops of skulls as cereal bowls. He was one sick puppy.

The movie is very much a 70s horror film in both look and execution; it has a rough, gritty look, helping make it look and feel like a documentary or a snuff film. However, despite the movie's grisly nature, it's not as blood-soaked as some people seem to think. Much like John Carpenter's original Halloween, the movie doesn't try to scare people with gore, but instead tries to elicit scares through pacing and suspense. There are actually very few instances that I can remember someone in the movie bleeding. And the movie isn't as gory as its reputation would have you believe. Violent, sure, but not particularly gory. We watch from a distance as someone gets hit in the noggin by a hammer, a girl hanging from a meat hook with no actual flesh piercing seen, a broom being used to smack someone, and two chainsaw attacks with very little bloodletting seen. I think that might be due to the fact that writer/director Tobe Hooper was aiming for a PG rating (prior to the MPAA's creation of the PG-13 rating). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre rated PG? Just the title suggests that it should be rated R. But it doesn't need the buckets of blood, because Hooper manages to create a tense, frightening feel without it.

The acting isn't much to write home about, though. I liked Edwin Neal's portrayal of the off-his-rocker hitchhiker, as I also enjoyed Gunnar Hansen as the movie's most famous character, Leatherface. Leatherface didn't even have any real lines. All he did was run around swinging hammers and chainsaws, while babbling a bunch of nonsense. That was the good acting. Now for the bad. I just wanted to punch Paul Partain's character right in his face, then roll him and his wheelchair down a hill into heavy traffic. The rest of the cast, I could take or leave, though I didn't think Marilyn Burns was that bad. She did a decent job when she wasn't screaming her head off. I'm sorry, but her screams were like nails on a chalkboard.

Overall, I'll give the movie a thumbs up. I liked the first hour and the final three minutes a lot, but the nineteen in between just really didn't do a lot for me. That nineteen minutes is supposed to be the most memorable scenes in the movie (the dinner scene, for those of you who've seen the movie), but I don't know why. I just wasn't digging its groove. Maybe I'll need to watch it a few more times to get into it, I don't know. The beginning of the movie moves kinda slow and can be boring, but it all pays off. I enjoyed the heck out of this one, and I'm gonna give it three and a half stars. I find The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be an acquired taste. It'll grow on you after multiple viewings, and I find that it still stands up with the horror movies of today.

Final Rating: ***½

Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

The year 1985 brought us many things, such as Marty McFly, New Coke, and Tears For Fears. It also gave us a horror film that would go on to become a late-night cult classic: The Return of the Living Dead. Featuring a legion of flesh-eating undead attacking a gang of punks (one of whom spends the majority of the movie naked), it's one of the best "creature feature show" movies ever.

And even in the 80s, sequels were everywhere. Even little-known films got sequels, so we got Return of the Living Dead, Part 2 in 1988. Unfortunately, this one was nothing more than a quasi-remake of the original, played as a comedy instead of a horror/comedy blend. They even got Thom Mathews and James Karen to play characters similar to their characters in the first Return. But in 1993, Trimark Pictures released a sequel that, while having nothing to do with either of the prior two, is not a bad film at all.

We begin by meeting Colonel Reynolds (Kent McCord), the head of a military research team looking into using the chemical Trioxin to create unkillable zombie soldiers. Whenever the zombies aren't needed, they'll just put them into sealed canisters until the next war. When Reynolds's son Curt (J. Trevor Edmond) overhears his father talking about a "big test," he and his girlfriend Julie (Mindy Clarke) plan on sneaking it to witness it. Curt steals his father's security keycard, picks up Julie on his motorcycle, and together they sneak into the research facility.

There, they witness what exactly the test is: a corpse is re-animated with Trioxin, then shot with some capsule to paralyze it. Curt and Julie are heard by a guard, forcing them to flee before being found. Shortly after leaving, the experiment goes awry. The paralysis was only temporary, as the zombie gets up and kills a researcher. He's sedated a second time and wisely strapped down, but the dead researcher awakens and kills a colleague before being sedated himself.

The test is rightfully deemed a failure, and Colonel Reynolds is told he's being relocated to Oklahoma City to begin work on a new project. After years of moving around, Curt becomes furious after hearing they'll be moving again. They've only been in their current home for six months, but Curt's finally found some friends and a beautiful girlfriend that he truly loves. Curt insists that he's staying, then storms off on his motorcycle with Julie. As they're riding, Julie decides to get a little frisky with Curt, causing him to swerve off the road. Julie is thrown from the bike and smacks a telephone pole, killing her dead. Curt is devastated, but he's not going to give up on the woman he loves. He takes her body back to the research facility, sneaks back in, and gives her a dose of Trioxin.

Julie is revived, but isn't the same person she was. She complains of her hands being numb, and finds herself with an insatiable hunger. A guard finds them, and they only manage to escape him when a zombie from an opened Trioxin drum decides he wants a snack. Curt and Julie stop at a convenience store to get her some food, where they bump into a Latino gang. Julie starts chowing down on a giant pile of snack cakes that fail to satisfy her hunger, prompting the gang to start giving her trouble. They eventually rob the store, shoot the owner, and flee. Before the entire gang leaves, Julie takes a bite out of one of them, tearing off a huge chunk of skin. She's finally found the food she desires: human flesh.

Curt and Julie eventually end up in the sewers, trying to evade a group of soldiers led by Curt's father and the gang, who are looking for revenge for their injured friend. They meet a homeless guy called "Riverman" (Basil Wallace), who leads them to his home in the sewer to hide. Meanwhile, Julie discovers that the only way to control her urges to feed is self-mutilation. After piercing her entire body with shards of metal and glass, she finds that the pain no longer helps; she has to eat. As her hunger grows and she starts to lose control of her senses, how long will it be before she turns on Curt? Will true love be victorious, or did Curt make a horrible mistake?

The first Return of the Living Dead is one of my favorite movies, and Return of the Living Dead 2 isn't that great of a movie (despite being enjoyable in extremely small doses). But Return of the Living Dead 3? It is an absolutely wonderful film. It's much more serious than the prior two, though there are some minor bits of humor. The effects look good, though some look ridiculously fake. One is when Julie is supposed to be stabbing herself with a pin, though it's obviously a retractable one. Don't get me wrong either; the majority of the effects look great, but it's just that a few fake looking effects sometimes dampen the mood. In fact, the whole body piercing thing is just a little too gross. Maybe I'm a fuddy duddy, but take a look at the poster at the top of this review and tell me that's not creepy (though for some reason, it's still morbidly sexy).

But a love story involving body piercing and zombies? Yeah, it's true. The movie's earned the nickname "Romeo and Zombiet" among some of its fans, but that's not a negative term in my eyes. Even though it's still a zombie movie, I thought it was a nice change of pace from the standard "army of zombies eating brains" plot. In fact, the only real "huge zombie horde" appears in the last ten minutes. Other than that, we get just a few zombies at any given time. I like the fact that the love story adds some originality. Curt brings his love back, only to discover that his decision to do so has made her a flesh-eating monster, and now he must suffer the gruesome consequences of choosing love over death.

On the acting scope, Mindy Clarke is wonderful as Julie, the tormented zombie who struggles with her love for Curt and the growing hunger inside her. She can be both gorgeous and disgusting at the same time, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. I mean, she didn't ask to be a zombie. It's her stupid boyfriend's fault. The rest of cast is decent, though I didn't care much for J. Trevor Edmond. He just didn't play the role like it could have been played. Basil Wallace's portrayal of Riverman is great, giving him a feel that he's straight out of the Louisiana bayou. In the music area, Barry Goldberg's music is creepy, yet melancholy. I thought it was quite fitting, considering the situation of the main characters.

Return of the Living Dead 3 is a darn good movie, one that I thought was really enjoyable. Yeah, there's no giant mob of monsters, but it's not about that. It's about the love of a young man and his undead lady. Few sequels can stand alone as a fine film, and not just a retread of the original, but this one can. There's a good story, a few scares, blood, zombies, and some quality acting. It's not for everyone, but for those who think they'd like it, I recommend it.

Final Rating: ***½

28 Days Later (2002)

One of the most common themes in science fiction and horror is the notion of a sole survivor, or a small band of survivors, trying to deal with the end of the world as they know it. Both books and movies have told tales of a world where those who are still alive face numerous — and usually bloodthirsty — hardships after the complete and total breakdown of society. Among these stories is Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic pseudo-zombie movie 28 Days Later.

First released in the United Kingdom in 2002 before coming to the United States in the summer of 2003, it hit theaters at a time when people were deathly afraid of catching SARS or bird flu, getting a letter full of anthrax in the mail, or that terrorist organizations might be developing biochemical weapons. I've often said that many of the best horror films of the new millennium have come from outside America, and Boyle's vision of a world that has been ravaged by a lab-engineered disease is a film that reinforces that.

Our story opens in a Cambridge research facility, where a group of animal activists have broken in to free a group of chimpanzees from one of the facility's laboratories. Their handler disrupts things, begging them not to screw around with the chimps because they're infected with a highly contagious virus simply defined as "Rage." The activists don't really care, so ignore his warnings and opens up one of the cages. A chimpanzee leaps out and starts raising some pissed-off monkey hell, and we cut to black.

Things pick up four weeks after the previous scene, where we meet Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma, only to find that the entire hospital has been deserted. He cracks open some vending machines for a little food, then starts roaming the streets of London. Unfortunately, London more closely resembles a ghost town than a bustling European metropolis, and Jim doesn't know why. His only clue are newspapers bearing headlines about mass hysteria and chaos throughout Britain.

After spending what seems like hours searching for someone, anyone, who can fill him in on just what the hell happened, Jim is discovered by a group of lunatics while taking refuge in a church and is chased back out into the street. They chase him to a gas stations, where he is saved by two masked people flinging Molotov cocktails.

Jim's saviors lead him to their shelter in the subway, introducing themselves as Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris). They explain to him that while he was comatose, the Rage virus spread uncontrollably throughout England, and is rumored to have spread to Paris and New York City. Those that are infected have about thirty seconds before they become red-eyed, blood-slobbering psychopaths with the single-minded urge to leap at the nearest uninfected person and kill them.

Desperate to reunite with his loved ones, Jim demands to go to his parents' house to check on them, and after a mild argument, Mark and Selena eventually agree to accompany them. But upon arriving, Jim sadly discovers that his parents have committed suicide. The trio decides to spend the night in Jim's parents' house before regrouping in the morning, but when Jim goes to the kitchen for a midnight snack, he's jumped by two infected people. Mark and Selena save the day, but in the struggle, one of the infected leaves a pretty nasty scratch on Mark's arm. Convinced he'll become infected too, Selena makes quick work of him with her machete. Our trio now down to two, Jim and Selena hit the road the next morning.

In their search for shelter, they stumble upon a teddy bear of a guy named Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). Frank and Hannah welcome the weary travelers to their apartment, offering a place to rest their heads for the night. They eventually happen upon a prerecorded radio broadcast made from a military post, claiming that they have an answer to the infection and directing any survivors to a checkpoint near Manchester.

Despite their reservations about the broadcast's legitimacy, the four decide to make the two-day road trip across England. They arrive at the checkpoint and rendezvous with the soldiers and their commanding officer, Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), but little do the four survivors know that they the infected aren't the only dangerous things out there.

When 28 Days Later was released in the United States, a blurb from British tabloid the Daily Mail was used as one of the film's taglines, proclaiming in big bold letters that the movie was "scary as hell." That might be a bit hyperbolic, but that's not to say that 28 Days Later isn't a terrifying movie. It is a movie that is thoroughly engrossing, a brilliant twist on both post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror and the zombie sub-genre. However, as great a horror movie it is, it's also an excellent character study of how those who have survived the end of the world would interact with one another; it concentrates on the characters just as much as it does the plight ailing them.

Director Danny Boyle does a fantastic job, especially when you consider the movie had a modest budget and was filmed with digital camcorders. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle don't let these restrictions hinder their work, instead using them in their favor to create a sort of hyperreality. The events depicted appear to float somewhere between fantasy and reality; the shots of the gorgeous English countryside and Jim's voyage through an abandoned London take on a dreamlike, almost ethereal quality, which only serves to make the violence that much more jarring and nightmarish. This feeling is aided by the shaky camerawork and rapid-fire editing during the action sequences. I normally complain about this sort of thing, as I do get sick of it in many cases, but Boyle makes it work. The shakiness assists the action onscreen, as it gives us a feeling of being right there amidst the terror.

Boyle is also assisted by the absolutely amazing music composed by John Murphy. Murphy's score alternates between ambient noise an a melodic rock-styled sound, which greatly enhances the atmosphere Boyle works so hard to create. And when combined with songs performed by underground post-rock musicians like Brian Eno and Godspeed You Black Emperor, the music adds a certain haunting beauty to the visuals.

Alex Garland's screenplay is very good, as well. As I said above, the movie concentrates more on the characters and how they handle the situations that they face. Garland gives us a look into human nature, at how some people will try to survive at any cost, while others try simply surviving. That's what makes the movie so frightening, because I doubt everyone who survives a catastrophe like the one depicted in 28 Days Later will want to play nice. Get a band of those with the "survive at any cost" mentality together, and they could be just as bad as whatever caused the problems to begin with. It's very similar to the "soldiers vs. scientists" idea behind George Romero's seminal zombie movie Day of the Dead, while the four protagonists regrouping, enjoying having the whole country to themselves, and even going on a shopping spree very much recalls another Romero classic, Dawn of the Dead. And although the infected may not be zombies in the conventional undead sense, they're still used in a very Romero-esque style to make a commentary about society. And all in all, I believe Garland did an excellent job.

The ensemble cast is also worth some praise. Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris are both consistently entertaining as their characters evolve throughout the movie. Jim and Selena's character arcs seem as if they're as different as night and day, with Selena going from a jaded fighter to someone happy to be alive at all, while Jim's arc is quite the opposite. Murphy and Harris handle their characters with ease, so I'm not surprised that they've started getting roles in big American movies in the wake of 28 Days Later's success. Megan Burns is entertaining in a less-than-challenging role, and veteran character actors Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston are both fantastic. Gleeson is quite amiable as Frank, making him someone we believe truly cares for his daughter, and someone whose ultimate fate really strikes an emotional chord with the viewer. Eccleston is also very much worth mentioning, as his progression from way too cordial to a total sleazebag is both credible and unsettling.

28 Days Later, as I noted above, does draw comparisons to George Romero's zombie movies, but it is likewise in the vein of similar stories like The Omega Man, George Stewart's novel Earth Abides, and the classic Twilight Zone episode "Where Is Everybody?". And while the movie doesn't give us anything that we haven't seen before, it is something we haven't seen in a while. It's strong, smart, never relenting or insulting its audience by cheating its way out of things. 28 Days Later isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I thought it was sheer brilliance, with intense direction and music, solid acting, and an intelligent script. Go check it out.

Final Rating: ****½

Wrong Turn (2003)

If you know anything about horror movies, then you've probably heard of Tobe Hooper's 1973 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The tale of a group of travelers who fall victim to a family of cannibalistic rednecks in rural Texas has become one of the more famous entries into the horror genre, inspiring three sequels, a remake with its own sequel, a series of comic books, action figures, and a video game released on the Atari 2600 in 1982. However, unlike other well-known horror movies, it hasn't really inspired all that many ripoffs or imitations. At least, not to my knowledge. But there is one that I thought was worth watching: Rob Schmidt's Wrong Turn. A frightening homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a dash of Deliverance thrown in for flavor, Wrong Turn is an underrated horror movie straight out of the '70s.

We begin on the side of a cliff, conveniently sitting fifty miles from civilization in the middle of a West Virginia forest. Two people, a guy and his girlfriend, are climbing up the side. I'm not gonna bother with listing who played them, because they're only in the movie for less than five minutes. We barely even get to learn the names of the characters. The guy makes it to the top, while his girlfriend still struggles to climb up. He disappears just as she begins to ask him to help her up, and after a few moments, blood drips down onto her face. At that moment, the guy's body goes flying off the side of the cliff. The girl jumps down to the ground and runs off. She gets twenty feet from the car before tripping on a length of barbed wire and being dragged off-screen by someone laughing like a maniac.

At this point, the opening credits roll. We see various newspaper clippings with headlines like "deformity caused by inbreeding," "inbred-related psychosis," "resistance to pain," and "violent outbursts." We also see various missing persons posters, bloody scissors and knives, barbed wire, arrows, and some really hideous deformed people. It's like a demented episode of Maury Povich's talk show, one of the episodes where Maury takes a bunch of people with deformities and birth defects and parades them out on stage like some kind of freak show. Regardless, the opening credits are where we're introduced to the idea of cannibalistic inbred freaks of nature, while still leaving things vague enough to be scary.

Anyway, the credits end, and it's now a few days later. We meet a medical school student named Chris (Desmond Harrington), who's on his way to a job interview while listening to a story about the search for two missing rock-climbers (the ones from earlier) on the radio.

Chris happens to arrive at a traffic jam. According to a trucker, the traffic is backed up for five miles thanks to a chemical spill, and it'll be forever before it's cleaned up. Being short on time, Chris turns around and takes an abandoned dirt road in the middle of the woods. He takes a wrong turn, thus the title, and accidentally rear-ends a van driven a group of friends on a hiking trip. The wreck introduces Chris and the viewers to Jessie (Eliza Dushku), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Evan (Kevin Zegers), Scott (Jeremy Sisto), and Francine (Lindy Booth), who're stranded on the road after running over a strip of heavy-duty barbed wire lied across the middle of the road. Evan and Francine stay at the car while the other four decide to walk down the road in an attempt to find some help. This isn't exactly a good thing, since they're promiscuous stoners. And you know what happens to promiscuous stoners in horror movies, don't you? I'm sure you do.

Time goes by and the four others arrive at a really run-down cabin, oblivious to the fact that their friends have been brutally murdered. Dozens of rusty, abandoned cars and bicycles decorate the front yard. That should be their first hint at something being wrong. In fact, Scott suggests that they leave immediately, citing Deliverance as the reason. He's smart. I like Scott. Despite his brilliance, Chris walks right on in, hoping they have a phone. What they should have done is walked around looking for an actual phone line before assuming they had a phone. I know phone companies are starting to bury phone lines nowadays, but in rural West Virginia, I'm sure that there would still be telephone poles. The pack of geniuses also decides to snoop around the rundown shanty. Not too bright, are they? They discover formaldehyde-filled jars and Tupperware containers filled with teeth, brains, and various other body parts. Mmm, cannibal stew. Yummy.

Jessie also happens to stumble on a pile of barbed wire similar to the one that she and her friends ran over. She puts two-and-two together, long after the audience already has. Coincidentally, one of the things discovered in the house is a tiara. If you watch the opening credits closely, you'll notice in one of the missing persons posters, one of the missing is wearing a tiara. It's the little details that make movies good for geeks like me. Right about now, an old wrecker truck pulls up to the house, pulling Scott's van behind it.

The group panics, and unable to escape the house, Jessie and Chris hide under a bed while Carly and Scott hide in a closet. Turns out whoever killed Francine and Evan live in the house, as Fran's dead body is flopped down in front of Scott and Jessie. It only lies there for a moment, before it's snatched up, thrown onto a butcher's table, and you can guess what happens next. We flash forward to later. I don't know how much later, but it was later enough for the inbred, cannibal mountain men to eat Francine's leg before deciding to take a nap. The group tries sneaking out of the cabin, but one of them makes a noise and the nutjobs begin chasing their prey through the woods, a chase that lasts all night and part of the next day.

This wasn't a bad little movie at all. The production value looks to be slightly higher than your average direct-to-video thriller, but that's not exactly a bad thing. The acting also left something to be desired. Jeremy Sisto gives us his best impersonation of Jeff Goldblum at times, while I just wanted to kick Emmanuelle Chriqui. Sure, most people would be reduced to whining, blubbering idiots if confronted with situations like in the movie, but that doesn't make her performance any less annoying. You just have to draw the line somewhere. Eliza Dushku and Desmond Harrington chip in with watchable performances, however.

I also should give a thumbs-up to both the score and the special effects. The score, composed by Elie Cmiral, is good, really good. I've heard better, but it's effective in creating plenty of tension in otherwise tame scenes. The special effects, done by Stan Winston's effects team, are also excellent. It's good to see Stan Winston involved with something other than killer robots from the future. The editing is sharp, and Rob Schmidt's directing gives it a gritty feel with a glossy Hollywood finish.

Wrong Turn isn't a bad movie, but it's nothing earth-shaking. Without the twisted inbred cannibal yokels, it'd be just the same old slasher song and dance. I'm not complaining, but it's nothing I haven't seen before. It's probably just worth a rental to those of you people who are big Eliza Dushku fans, or wanted to rent a horror movie at the local Blockbuster and nothing else struck your fancy.

Final Rating: ***

Willard (2003)

Imagine a rat. A chubby, fuzzy, squeaky little rodent hiding in the walls, in the shadows. Now imagine a few dozen of the little buggers hanging out in your basement. That doesn't sound too fun, does it? If you don't think so, then this review is not for you.

A large multitude of rodents were the stars of the 1971 film Willard, featuring Bruce Davison as its human protagonist. Based on Stephen Gilbert's novel Ratman's Notebooks, the movie has become something of an obscure cult classic since its release and inspired a sequel, Ben, in 1972. (However, it should be noted that both movies were eclipsed by Ben's Oscar-nominated theme song, the first hit song of Michael Jackson's solo career.)

Both Willard and Ben have faded into relative obscurity, but that didn't stop New Line Cinema from releasing a remake of Willard in 2003. Made by the minds that created the Final Destination trilogy, the movie was an enormous failure at the box office, but I think that it should have done a lot better.

Willard tells the story of Willard Stiles (Crispin Glover), a social misfit tending to his ailing, bed-ridden mother (Jackie Burroughs). Willard's stuck in a dead-end job at the company his deceased father founded, and his boss, Frank Martin (R. Lee Ermey), absolutely hates him. In fact, Willard continues to be employed only because his late father made it a condition of his partnership with Martin. If it weren't for that, he'd be in the unemployment line. Willard is at the pinnacle of loneliness until he discovers a small white rat stuck in a trap in his basement. He forms a close bond with the rat, and impressed by its intelligence, he names it Socrates.

Willard is introduced to other rats in the basement as well, and discovers that he is almost a Pied Piper to his new friends. With simple commands, the rats, whose numbers grow into the hundreds, will do whatever he tells them to do. Willard also discovers another rat he hadn't seen before, a rat four times bigger than any of the others that he jokingly names "Big Ben."

Back at work, Mr. Martin has hired a lovely office temp, Cathryn (Laura Elena Harring), to cover for Willard’s incompetence. She takes pity on Willard and decides to help him with his problems, at one point giving him a cat to keep him company. Yeah, that's right. She gave a cat to a guy with an army of rats in his basement. You can assume how that went over with his little friends.

Regardless, Cathryn's help doesn't seem to work, but the help of the rats does, assisting Willard by letting him relieve some of his building rage. After noticing some of the rats have taken a liking to chewing on an old tire, he decides to take some of his friends by Mr. Martin's house in order to vandalize his beloved new Mercedes. But popping some tires is just the start. Soon, Willard decides to bring great vengeance and furious anger upon his oppressors with his legion of rats.

You don't really see movies like Willard anymore. It's a weird movie in a time when weird movies just don't come along too often. Shirley Walker's score, which (in what I believe is a first) included an accordion section, made the film feel very odd, which was befitting of a movie about an extremely odd fellow. The acting is also absolutely wonderful. R. Lee Ermey's take on Mr. Martin is so much fun to hate, and Mrs. Stiles is both saddening and disturbing at the same time. She also serves as proof that sometimes, putting your senior citizen relative in a rest home just might be a good thing. But most commendable is Crispin Glover as Willard. Glover is absolutely wonderful in the title role, and if he continues doing movies like this, I'm sure he'll be the next cult star. Having not yet seen the 1971 version, I can't really compare the two, but I do enjoy this one very much.

There's also plenty of fun references and things to notice in the movie. Bruce Davison, star of the original Willard, is seen in portraits and photographs as Willard's father, and the scene in which the rats swarm Cathryn's cat is set to Michael Jackson's 1972 hit "Ben," which I noted earlier as being the theme song to the original film's sequel. The cat's name also happens to be Scully, which I think might be a reference to The X-Files. In fact, I'm sure it is, as writer/director Glen Morgan once served as one of the main writers for The X-Files. And I also think it's kinda funny that a woman named Cathryn is so involved with a guy who loves rats.

I can guarantee that Willard won't appeal to everybody, which is probably the reason that it bombed out of theaters after just two or three weeks. It might disgust people who hate rats or love felines. Like I said, you don't see this kind of movie anymore. If I had to compare it to any specific style, it's almost reminiscent of something Tim Burton would make. And that's not a bad thing, is it? If rats don't bother you, and you like campy thrillers or just odd movies, go check it out. You might not be disappointed.

Final Rating: ****