Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Ask a group of geeks to name a writer whose work they appreciate, and a good number of them will probably say Joss Whedon. His unique style has earned him a lot of respect over the years, but his greatest claim to fame has to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show debuted in 1997 on the WB Network, and over the course of seven seasons, it turned Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar into stars while becoming a pop culture powerhouse by inspiring novels, comic books, action figures, video games, and its own spinoff TV show.

But once upon a time, Buffy was not the pop culture juggernaut that it was at the end of the '90s. In the summer of 1992, 20th Century Fox introduced the world to the title character via her own motion picture, the existence of which I'm sure Whedon would love the world to forget. Instead of the dark yet ultra-witty Buffy that was popularized through the show, the movie is instead a goofy comedy that really bears no resemblance at all to the now-classic TV show that followed it.

Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is your stereotypical early-90s Valley Girl. She's a dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader whose primary concerns are shopping, boys, and hanging out with her dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader friends. Her only goals in life are to "graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die." All that is brought to a screeching halt when she's confronted by Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who informs her that she is the next in a long line of young women chosen by destiny to kill vampires.

Naturally, she's skeptical. If some weird British guy came up to you and told you that you were destined to kill bloodsucking hell-spawn from beyond the grave, you'd probably think he was crazy too. Anyway, Merrick convinces Buffy that he's not some loony old man, and at his request, she accompanies him to the graveyard so he can explain this whole vampire slaying thing to her. Some vampires appear and get killed, and after some initial reluctance, Buffy begins to accept her role as a vampire slayer while Merrick assumes the role of her mentor.

Buffy eventually crosses paths with Pike (Luke Perry), a mechanic who looks like he's the reincarnation of James Dean circa Rebel Without A Cause. The two form a partnership after she rescues him from a gang of vampires, and when they chase a vampire into a stockyard full of parade floats, they encounter the vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his one-armed sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens). Merrick shows up and tries to prevent a Buffy/Lothos showdown, claiming that Buffy isn't ready to fight him yet. Lothos doesn't want to leave without fighting somebody, so he snatches Merrick's stake and stabs him in the heart with it. A vampire killing a guy with a tool intended to kill vampires, that's so poetic.

Buffy starts to back out of the slaying business after Merrick's death, but just when she thinks she's out, they pull her back in. Buffy and Pike share a moment at a high school dance when a posse of vampires crash the party. While Pike deals with the vamps wreaking havoc on the dance, Buffy heads for the school boiler room to duel with Lothos and Amilyn, a duel that leads to a final showdown between Buffy and Lothos on the dance floor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an 86-minute joke that just isn't funny. The humor isn't funny, the horror isn't scary, and the acting is awful. Joss Whedon's original script was heavily rewritten, and if I were him, I'd have asked for an "Alan Smithee" credit. The jokes are mediocre at best (though I got a good laugh out of Amilyn's never-ending death throes at the end of the movie), and its attempts at horror fall flat. I figure I might as well just break my complaint down into more specific categories.

First up, the acting. The only real performances I actually enjoyed were Paul Reubens (who you may recognize as Pee Wee Herman) and David Arquette as Pike's vampire friend Benny. I wanted to get into Luke Perry's character, but he just kept giving off this weird "hey, remember me? I'm on 90210 and I'm so darn cool" vibe. If the movie was made now, it'd be a "hey, remember me? I was on 90210 and I'm a washed-up nobody now" vibe, but that's beside the point. Meanwhile, Kristy Swanson's ditzy Valley Girl routine was absolutely annoying, to the point where it was rough to watch the movie. The only good thing I can say about her is that after a while, Movie Buffy didn't seem as distant and self-important as Television Buffy.

And I think that Rutger Hauer and Donald Sutherland realized the potential the movie had to be awful, but had different stances on what to do. Sutherland downplays everything to the point where it seems like he's saying "this sucks, just give me my paycheck so I can leave." On the other hand, Hauer hams it up like crazy, hitting almost every possible villain cliché he can, right down to having a conversation with the hero when he has the chance for victory. I almost expected Reubens to pull a "Seth Green in Austin Powers" and say, "Look, let me get a gun and shoot her, and save us some time."

Usually, I comment on film scores, but Carter Burwell's score was nearly nonexistent. Not once do I remember hearing anything but dumb early-90s dance and pop/rock numbers. Outside of songs by Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, there really isn't any good music in the movie. Besides, who puts a Divinyls song in a movie and expects to be taken seriously? The Divinyls suck!

If you're looking to get into the "Buffyverse," you'd be well-advised to just avoid the movie and start with the first season of the TV show because it follows different rules than the movie (in the movie, vampires can fly and don't turn to dust when killed). However, the movie does have the novelty of featuring a Buffy that isn't Sarah Michelle Gellar. Overall, I'll give Buffy the Vampire Slayer two stars. Some cool moments, but other than that, it's just empty.

Final Rating: **

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2000)

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: almost every movie gets a sequel. Even movies you wouldn't expect to get a sequel probably get one. Possibly the most sequel-driven genre of all is the horror film. Just about every horror movie ever made has a sequel (or group of sequels), prequel, or knock-off. Even the most obscure foreign horror movie can get a sequel or two. Such was the case with the Canadian import Ginger Snaps. The tale of a pair of sisters whose tightly-knit familial bonds are tested when one becomes a werewolf, it became a cult classic upon its release in 2000. It was only a matter of time until the sequel was made, and that sequel came in the form of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.

Picking up sometime after the events of the first Ginger Snaps, Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) is on the run from a werewolf looking to mate with her. Infected with the lycanthropy virus and haunted by recurring visions of her dead sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle), she has managed to slow down her transformation with a daily series of monkshood injections. After a particularly strong dose of monkshood and an extremely close escape from the werewolf, Brigitte passes out in the street and awakens in an all-girls drug rehabilitation facility. Facility supervisor Alice (Janet Kidder) confiscates her monkshood, and without steady injections, Brigitte's transformation into a werewolf begins to speed up.

Among the encounters with Alice and a shady male nurse named Tyler (Eric Johnson), Brigitte is befriended by an eccentric girl nicknamed "Ghost" (Tatiana Maslany). Unlike the other girls, Ghost gets to roam the grounds freely because she's keeping her grandmother company while she recovers from severe third-degree burns in another section of the facility. While Ghost is antagonized by the various rehab patients because of her odd behavior (her obsession with comics often leads her to speak like a comic-style prose), she and Brigitte become a close-knit pair, much to Brigitte's initial reluctance.

When Brigitte discovers the horny werewolf from earlier has found the clinic, Ghost helps Brigitte escape, and together they head to Ghost's grandmother's house for refuge. Ghost discovers that Brigitte is turning into a werewolf herself, and tries to help her new friend delay the transformation. Of course, things don't always go as they're planned. The male werewolf finds them once again, and Brigitte's tenuous grip on both her sanity and her humanity begins to slip away as the lycanthropy overtakes her.

It's very hard to have a sequel that's up to the same par as its predecessor. The list of "better than or equal to" sequels isn't exactly long. Ginger Snaps 2 isn't an equal to the original Ginger Snaps, but it's close. A lot of its quality is helped by the acting ability of its star. Emily Perkins is great as the would-be werewolf Brigitte, and she carries the whole movie on her shoulders. While she had Katherine Isabelle sharing the spotlight in the original Ginger Snaps, she does all the grunt work here. The Brigitte character pulls a transformation akin to Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, and Perkins pulls it off believably with her impressive performance.

Tatiana Maslani also puts in a decent performance, giving off a creepy vibe which is really fitting for the character by the end of the movie. Maslani does what she can with what she's given, but the character gets really annoying at times. I can only handle hearing her talk in prose so many times before I just want to reach through the TV screen and strangle her. I did, however, enjoy Katherine Isabelle's appearances as Ginger. I loved her in the original Ginger Snaps, and though she didn't have much screen time, I loved her here as Brigitte's ghostly anti-conscience.

Also good were the special effects by KNB EFX Group. I've been a fan of KNB's work for a long time, and I appreciated their work here. Unfortunately, a lot of their best stuff is hidden by insanely quick flashes. A hummingbird couldn't see most of their work. However, the visible effects were great, especially Brigitte's facial makeup near the end of the movie. Kurt Swinghammer's score was also good. I preferred Michael Shields's score from the original Ginger Snaps, but Ginger Snaps 2 has a different tone that requires a different score. The industrial/techno-esque stuff really worked, and I absolutely loved Swinghammer's reprisal of the original's theme. My only real complaint with the movie (other than Ghost being so annoying) was Megan Martin's script. It wasn't bad as a whole, but a boring stretch in the second act and some cheesy dialogue are big knocks against it.

Ginger Snaps 2 tries hard, and can call itself a success. A lot of sequels are just retreads or remakes of its predecessor, but this one takes a different step and I commend it for that. I give it three and a half stars; no more, no less. I'll recommend to fans of the first one and fans of werewolf movies, but viewers would serve well to watch both movies back-to-back.

Final Rating: ***½

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Sometimes, sequels can be good things. They can continue the story of the original, or tell a new story with familiar characters. But sometimes, a sequel comes along that cannot justify its own existence. One sequel like that is Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, the oddest chapter of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre saga. The movie is just bizarre (and not in a good way), and it's actually the only Massacre movie that has no cannibalism or deaths via chainsaw. The movie is loathed by fans of the series, and rightfully so.

The story follows four teenagers leaving their senior prom: the loud-mouth misogynist Barry (Tyler Cone), his bitchy girlfriend Heather (Lisa Marie Newmyer), stoner Sean (John Harrison), and Sean's best friend Jenny (Renée Zellweger). They head into the woods and almost immediately end up in a serious car accident, leaving them stranded out into the middle of nowhere.

It's not long before the teens stumble upon a family of psychotic rednecks, comprised of Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), Darla (Tonie Perensky), W.E. (Joe Stevens), and Leatherface (Robert Jacks). The movie ends up taking an almost incomprehensible turn when we learn that the family of cannibals aren't really cannibals at all, but just a bunch of whack-jobs that are working for a guy named Rothman (James Gale), who apparently represents the Illuminati. That whole Illuminati thing is just speculation, however. They never say exactly what Rothman's purpose is, which I guess can be said for this movie as a whole.

One of the most noticeable things about the film is its stupidity. All the characters make idiotic moves, like getting in the truck of a stranger that doesn't look like he's all that happy, calmly asking a psychopath to give them a break after he snapped somebody's neck and tried to run over them with a tow truck, splitting up in the middle of nowhere instead of sticking together, and locking themselves in the home of the villains before asking their hosts where the phone is so they can call the police. My biggest complaint is the interpretation of Leatherface. Leatherface is now a whining transvestite whose collection of masks are the faces of his prettiest victims. Sure, Leatherface wears what's called the "pretty woman" mask during the dinner scene in the original, but he's totally queening it up here. I don't have anything against cross-dressers, but Leatherface is supposed to be an intimidating monster, and it's kinda hard to be scared of a serial killer dressed like RuPaul.

Writer/director Kim Henkel co-wrote the original Massacre, and after revisiting many of the original's more memorable moments, he gives the movie its own bizarre flair. The family actually orders pizza for dinner, which (as crazy as it may sound) gives us a great scene in which Darla picks up the food at the pizza place's drive-thru window with Jenny screaming from the trunk of the car while a police car. However, the movie has absolutely zero respect for the series, and blatantly rips off scenes from the original. Leatherface drops a girl on a meat hook here, as he did in the original. But instead of doing it with the intention of making her a meal, it doesn't matter. The family members aren't cannibals, but their motivation is to scare and kill people because Rothman says so.

The only noteworthy things about the movie are Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. They both did the movie before becoming famous, and their performances are actually pretty good, considering what they had to work with. Zellweger does what she can, but any fault should be blamed on the asinine script. And McConaughey's hammy, over-the-top portrayal of Vilmer is the biggest reason that anyone should ever watch the movie. Without him, the movie would have been dead in the water, because he's the life of the whole thing. His character could probably be described as Viggo Mortensen's character from the third Massacre hopped up on angel dust. More movies should have redneck psychos controlling their knee braces with remote controls.

The movie may have been made with good intentions, but good intentions don't make a good movie. Unless you want to see an Oscar winner before she gets famous and Matthew McConaughey acting like a madman, you'd be well-advised to avoid this movie like the plague. You'll only get bad acting, crappy writing, and the reduction of one of cinema's most iconic murderers into an embarrassment.

Final Rating: *

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

I've said a million times that sequels are unavoidable, especially in the horror genre. If a horror movie is successful, then it's almost guaranteed to get more than one sequel. However, sequels to the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre were few and far between. Despite being released in 1974, it had only spawned one sequel in 1986 before New Line Cinema released Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III in 1990.

Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler) are driving across the country to deliver a car to Michelle's father. After ending up at a Texas gas station, they're given directions they think will lead them back to the highway, but it leads them deeper into the middle of nowhere. It's in the woods that they meet a survivalist named Benny (Ken Foree) and, like every other movie in the series, they encounter a family of cannibals.

This time, the family is comprised of family alpha male Tex (Viggo Mortensen), technophile Tinker (Joe Unger), the oft-disrespected Alfredo (Tom Everett), matriarch Mama (Miriam Byrd-Nethery), and a little girl (Jennifer Banko) who's always clutching a doll that looks like it was made from the skeleton of a dead fetus. And let's not forget Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff), who somehow managed to survive being gutted and blown up at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Despite having the House Party and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies raking in all kinds of cash at the time, New Line Cinema was still "the house that Freddy Krueger built." After the disappointing box-office numbers for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, New Line decided that Freddy was running out of steam and they saw a new horror cash cow in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. The movie was intended to be the start of a full-fledged horror franchise on the level of the Nightmare and Friday the 13th movies, but a poor showing at the box office killed that idea (although New Line did distribute the remake of the original Massacre).

Horror movie connoisseur Joe Bob Briggs once commented that this was the the Massacre with the least gore, and he's not too far off. The MPAA-imposed cuts really hurt the movie. According to director Jeff Burr, the movie was submitted to the MPAA eleven times (a record at the time) before it got an R rating. It ended up making some sequences almost incomprehensible, and the movie actually missed its original release date due to the constant editing.

It also had one of the stupidest endings I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil what it is, but it seriously left me wondering what happened and why. Sometime that can work in a movie's favor, but not here. And what happened to the little girl? Her name is never said once, not even in the credits, and we never learn what happens to her in the end. She just disappears. And since she doesn't return in the fourth Massacre, we're just left guessing her fate.

I can't complain about everything, though. I really liked the movie's look. It goes from the glaring reds, oranges, and yellows of the Texas desert to deep blues and blacks of nightfall, and the interior of the Sawyer house feels like a normal family lives there (well, an insane version of a normal family). The score, composed by Jim Manzie and Pat Regan, is also great. It gives us a haunted house feel that really compliments the movie. Most of the acting is actually pretty good. Kate Hodge isn't bad as our heroine. She starts out as a non-violent pacifist (she actually says something to the effect of "violence is never the answer" during the movie), but by the end, she goes nuts and has to resort to some serious violence to save herself.

Ken Foree was also good, but to be totally honest, anybody could have played his character. Foree gave it some legitimacy, however, thanks to his part in the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. And I can't forget Viggo Mortensen, who you may recognize from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The feminine apron and painted fingernails gave Tex a weird ambiguity, but he seems like the kind of guy you could bump into on the street and not think he's a cannibal nutjob.

However, I wasn't too big on Jennifer Banko. I just hated the character (sort of a little girl version of Chop-Top from Massacre 2) and I'm glad she didn't show up in the fourth one, but I did get a giggle from her doll being named Sally (which could have been a reference to the character of Sally Hardesty from the original Massacre).

Overall, I'll give the movie two and a half stars. It's a fun way to kill some time, and you might enjoy it if you're into horror movies. Of the three sequels of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this one is probably the best, but you're not missing anything if you skip it.

Final Rating: **½

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 (1986)

All the way back in 1974, Tobe Hopper directed one of the most important and influential movies of the horror genre: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Twelve years passed while Hooper made movies like Poltergeist, Salem's Lot, and a remake of the 1953 sci-fi flick Invaders From Mars before he finally returned to what brought him to the table in 1986 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2.

Our story begins with Stretch (Caroline Williams), a radio DJ working the night shift when two annoying rich kids heading to Dallas for the big Texas/Oklahoma football game decide to prank call the station's request line from their car phone. Stretch can't hang up on them (why, I don't know), so she's forced to listen as a truck the punks ran off the road earlier meets up with them on a bridge. Someone climbs out of the truck bed and starts swinging a chainsaw at their car, and in the chaos, the driver gets the top of his head sawed off and the car crashes into an overpass.

At the crash scene the next day is Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper). As a former Texas Ranger and the uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty from the first Massacre, he's been on a fourteen-year quest to exact revenge on the chainsaw killers. After Lefty puts an article in a Dallas newspaper asking for witnesses to make a statement, an enthusiastic Stretch shows up at his hotel room and offers to give him a cassette tape of the phone call made by the rich kids. He asks her to leave, stating that he wants to do things on his own.

But Lefty soon realizes he needs help, so he confronts Stretch at the radio station and persuades her to play the tape on the air with the hope that it will bring the killers out of hiding. It succeeds, as members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family show up at the station and trash the place, killing station manager L.G. (Lou Perry) in the process. Lefty and Stretch follow them back to their hideout, climaxing in a chase throughout a series of subterranean caverns beneath an abandoned amusement park.

The movie is about as far as from the original as it could. While the first Massacre was a raw "take no prisoners" nightmare, the sequel is a little more lighthearted. The movie isn't as much about Stretch or Lefty as it is about the family, who've become almost parodies of themselves here. Returning from the first film are Leatherface (Bill Johnson), the crusty heap of dust the family calls Grandpa (Ken Evert), and Drayton (Jim Siedow), who's now a caterer using the meat of the family's victims to make his award-winning chili. Replacing Edwin Neal's hitchhiker is Bill Moseley as "Chop-Top,", a wise-cracking hippie with a metal plate protruding out of his scalp thanks to a tour of duty in Vietnam. While this isn't totally a bad thing, it could have been better. The story of Lefty getting revenge on the Sawyers would have made for an intriguing movie. While this one is watchable, it was disappointing too.

Dennis Hopper is great as Lefty. He give the character its own unique charm and elevates the movie, hamming it up all the way through. He's the biggest reason to watch the movie, so Hopper's fans would do good to check this one out. Meanwhile, Caroline Williams (who has a quick cameo in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as a TV reporter with no dialogue) is good as Stretch, though she isn't really required to do much outside of screaming her head off. I also enjoyed Jim Siedow's portrayal of Drayton. While he was a bit different from he was in the prior Massacre, I thought he worked great as a total sleazeball. I did like Bill Moseley as Chop-Top as well, though the character's biggest drawback is that he almost hits Jar Jar Binks levels of annoyance at times.

And finally, Bill Johnson isn't too bad as Leatherface. Leatherface is still a menacing figure, but he seems like a wuss because he actually develops a crush on Stretch. What self-respecting horror villain falls in love? I could see it if Stretch was a chainsaw killer too, but come on now. She's the victim, not the villain. On the aspect of the film's music, the score (composed by Jerry Lambert and Tobe Hooper) isn't too bad at all. Its cartoony feel really lends itself to the similarly cartoony feel of the movie, and I can't complain about it. The makeup effects, created by a team led by makeup legend Tom Savini, look really cheesy and fake at times, but look good at other moments (L.G.'s face being peeled off, for instance).

The major complaint that I do have with the movie is the previously mentioned cartoony feel. It starts off like it could be as gritty and jarring as the original, but it does turn into a big cartoon with blood and violence. One scene features Lefty showing up at the Sawyer hideout with an arsenal of chainsaws, and instead of the family attacking him, Drayton just offers him a giant wad of cash from his catering business. It does lead to a cool Leatherface/Lefty chainsaw vs. chainsaw showdown, but what purpose does it serve? It just really numbs the family's animalistic nature from the first movie. The final twelve minutes of the film is absolutely perhaps the most odd. From Drayton trying to pay off Lefty, to the chainsaw duel, to Chop-Top chasing Stretch through the caverns (which had a major letdown of an ending), it's all a mish-mash of the bizarre and the insane.

Overall, I'd give Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 a fitting two stars. It's probably just for fans of Leatherface and crazy B-grade horror movies, but the first film and the remake remain the best of the five Massacres.

Final Rating: **