(in the particular order of Roy's List )
1. Jack Frost—I think I’ve seen this film about 167 times and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it. The gore of it coupled with elaborate death scenes and cheesy one-liners is better on repeat. I distinctly recall watching a beheading over and over on rewind. This film is not scary, but it does take what should be a joyful image (magically alive snowman in a holiday film) and twist it into a phenomenally bad and delightfully ridiculous film.
2. Shaun of the Dead— I very nearly choked on snacks the first time I watched this. This is the brainchild of true horror fans, and the subtle references to the genre greats (and not so greats) sprinkled throughout the film alone make this worth the watch. It takes a true fan to bend and tweak the standard tropes of the zombie film into something funny, new and freaking smart!
3. Dead Alive—A total gore-o-rama from the director of Lord of the Rings…before he was plus-sized, high-budgeted and hobbity. If you’ve seen the LOTR you know what this man can do with money, but this very low-budget film is pure genius and invention. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the money was spent on food coloring and karo syrup. (Deep down this is an insightful bildungsroman about a timid boy looking for true love and a means to assert his independence over a domineering mother…who is zombified.)
4. Freddy vs. Jason—I agree with Roy that no one with common sense should have expected anything really frightening from this film. It is what it is, a fan-tastic (fan!! Heh!) slaughter-fest. What’s interesting about this film is it’s real tensions between each killer. On one hand you have an abused child turned puritanical executioner working with (and then against) a child abuser turned malevolent dream spirit: this is an analytical goldmine! Unlike Roy, though, I was rooting for Freddy. A side note: we saw this twice in the theater, both times it seems we were the only patrons laughing. I couldn’t decide if this meant we were weird, or if they were weird. The only drawback: no Kane Hodder as Jason. The new actor playing Jason Voorhees didn’t have the eerie bodily charm of Hodder, and despite the fact that every Jason is in mask and make-up it was evident from the first 10 minutes of the film that Hodder was gone.
5. Jason X—Jason on the Holodeck! This movie is hilarious…ly bad. One of those lovely charmers that’s so bad it’s good. The campiness potential of all the previous films is maximized (space-style) and the earlier films are spoofed in fantastic ways. There are several great death scenes and it stars Kane Hodder, the BEST JASON EVER, in his last role as the lumbering killing machine. How he can make Jason smirk behind a mask is bizarre. This movie is silly, campy, cheesy, ridiculous, absurd, it defies physics and logic, and it has nano-technological advancements.
6. Sleepaway Camp II: Happy Campers—The first Sleepaway Camp is a cult classic, but it is darkly serious and involves a startling nude scene…ah, I remember my reaction: complete befuddlement (like when a dog looks at something sideways). If you have not seen it, see it, what’ve you got to lose. The sequel, however, is a cult classic for a different reason. Oh, there’s befuddlement, but of a different order: did that person really just drown in a port-o-let? Yes, she did. The perky cuteness of the killer is endearing, and the one liners are phenomenal.
7. Leprechaun in the Hood—I am not as big of a fan of “Lep in tha Hood” as Roy is, but it does have it’s moments. I like Warwick Davis. The rhyming is funny. There are hos.
8. There’s Nothing Out There—This movie should suck, but it embraces it’s suckatude. It toys with nearly every horror movie stereotype and despite it’s low budget, bad acting and meta-horrific moments (at one point a character uses the boom mike as a prop) it winds up being pretty funny without being a strict parody along the lines of Reposessed, Shriek, If You Know What You Did Last Friday the Thirteenth, or the Scary Movie franchise (I haven’t even bothered watching part 4).
9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre IV: A New Beginning—This is wonderful. It is almost a parody of itself. Every character in this film is over the top, and yet it still manages some decent scares. One thing the directors remaking this series have ignored is the sometimes ridiculously sadistic humor of the characters in these films: the 2nd and 3rd featured my future husband (don’t tell him) Bill Mosely as a burnt out vet with a taste for torturing his meals. So the humor in this one shouldn’t be unexpected. Don’t look for strict adherence to the TCM plots and histories, this is a NEW story. OR maybe it’s that I like watching Renee Zellweger being tortured (it is her first starring role).
10. Evil Dead II—I love the meta-fiction of Evil Dead II, Roy is right…the character retells the story to make himself seem cooler than he actually is. But still, the sheer number of bookshelves that fall on the head of our swaggering, undead-destroying hero is side-splitting. And what other film features an attack by taxidermied deer? Despite the hilarity, though, this film is scary. There are some intense scenes, especially in the basement. The moral of the Evil Dead series: don’t read things aloud.
11. Slither— This film makes me so happy. Thank you to everyone who made this film happen. The finest horror-comedy in recent years. (If you have a weak stomach do NOT watch this film, it is purposefully disgusting. We call that “contempt for the audience.”)
12. Prom Night III— Make sure you listen to the PA announcements in the school. This movie was released to DVD as a combination pack with Prom Night IV (a movie which not only has NOTHING to do with the first three movies, but also has NOTHING to do with a prom) the contrast between these two films could not be more pronounced. One is a fun, gore-filled teen romp. The other is a seriously bad film about a possessed priest kept in a basement. Part III is worth the purchase of the DVD…just don’t watch the other one.
13. Friday the 13th IX: Jason Goes to Hell— Like Shaun of the Dead, this film is filled with references to other films…a fan’s seek and find. The film combines the scary and silly quite well, matching moments of levity with serious threat and graphic gross-outs.
14. Idle Hands—Funny, but not super funny. Very silly. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. The idea that the devil possesses the hand of the laziest person on earth is an interesting premise, and I do love Seth Green (a zombie who is too lazy to go into the light), but parts of this are trying to be too serious.
15. Basket Case III— I don’t like this film as much as Roy does. It is funny, but it’s also really, really bizarre (and not at all frightening). Nevertheless, it is worth a peek.
16. MY BONUS: I’m going to add the ENTIRE Nightmare on Elm Street series, minus the second one…which never happened (IT NEVER HAPPENED!), and the 6th (A New Nightmare), because it’s just way too different to include. There are very few horror movie villains with the wit, charm and viciousness of Freddy Kreuger. If you think about it most of the contemporary greats (and even the classical greats) are virtually mute: Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman. Killers are usually lumbering or animalistic…they are not usually given the human capacity for wit and/or humor. Of the list above, Dracula may be the one exception to the lumbering and/or animalistic, but he is rarely depicted as less than extremely serious or formal (except in a spoof), and he does, quite literally, take the form of animals. Humor implies good cheer, humanity, and interaction. We do not want our killers to be joyful in their tasks; we want them morose and inhuman. Our heroes can face the world with a joke in their mouth and hope in their hearts, but that joy is in survival, not death. Freddy Kruger is a unique character, the first to really toy with a victim, to be of the world (lots of pop culture references in his banter) we know rather than the eerie otherworld, does it make him more frightening? I don’t know; it might make us more frightening in the way we are attracted to his character. Remember, this is a child-murderer, a torturer of the innocent…and he’s imbued with a vindictive charm which is simultaneously disarming and disturbing. Perhaps this edges again towards the connection between horror and humor: should we be disturbed by the closeness of the two in films like those listed above. Is death funny? No. Most decidedly it is not funny. But the graphic, outlandish, splatter-filled, on-screen deaths might serve some vital psychological need we have to see the humor in the inevitable? This is bigger question than this list can ask. (To Be Continued…)
Showing posts with label parody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parody. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Jack Frost (1996)
Jack Frost (1996)
Director: Michael Cooney
Staring: Chris Allport, Shannon Elizabeth
by Roy Seeger
Jack Frost should not be a good horror movie. I suspect it may, in fact, be quite bad, but it is still one of my absolute favorites. Granted, there isn’t one truly scary moment in the film and the plot is so lame that you’d think it ripe for a Mystery Science Theatre-esque voice over, but for the fact that it is so damn funny on its own. With the title and opening credits, Jack Frost begins in the vein of a surreal Christmas special (I giggle at the thought of folks mistaking this for the Michael Keaton movie of the same title). This is the story of Jack Frost, a serial killer who vowed revenge against the small-town cop who arrested him. On the drive to his execution, Jack gets doused in toxic waste and turns into a snowman, with the ability to melt, shoot icicles, etc. Hi-jinks ensue.
So how could a movie like this be so good? Its self-awareness—this movie may not have social issues on its mind, but its twisted humor, its ability to parody both Christmas and Horror movie formulas make Jack Frost an under-recognized classic. The plot devices are sudden and convenient, and the special effects succeed through jarring close-ups, camera angles, and clever use of foam. I’m not saying there isn’t a little bit of pain for the viewer: the acting isn’t good, and the characters are mostly flat, but just about the time you begin rethinking this movie’s innate greatness, there comes another death scene, which will be a strange, wrong, hilarious thing…but then the greatness of this film is in the small details: a child’s head in a bag, an implied snowman rape scene (where did that carrot go?). I don’t know what it says about me that I find these scenes funny, but you try not laughing and then judge.
***
On the sub-genre of Horror-comedy: I think it is important to understand the differences between true Horror, where the director is trying their best to make the viewers crap their pants, and Horror-Comedy (Homedy?) which not only parodies the traditions of serious Horror, but also finds humor in death itself. Audiences cheer the high body count and take a drink with each stabbing. The killers tend to be clever and could almost kill with the sharpness of their one-liners. How can we take any of this violence seriously? The obvious answer is “we can’t,” but what interests me more is the reason why, and the possible psychological effects of making violence laughable.
Understand, to talk generally about anything is to invite argument (argue, please), and I would hate to give artistic credit to all the creators of Horror-comedies (even some of the ones I love), but there seems something inherently interesting in the concept that death is funny, especially violent creative death. Of course there is the ridiculous concern that watching violence directly makes us more violent, and the more rational one that watching death after fictional death makes the real thing, when we hear it on the news, not quite so horrible. We may imagine that we know something of the real thing. This might even be a valid concern in Horror-comedies if it were not for the ridiculous premises of these movies. Take for instance Jack Frost. The deaths don’t become truly funny until the killer turns into a living snowman and uses his new-found ice powers in a variety of homicidal ways. There is a minimal connection with the real world, and therefore the violence takes on an absurd quality it is hard to find threatening. There is much more danger in watching Cop Dramas or War Flicks which usually occur in a realistic setting when they aren’t based on real events.
In the best Horror-Comedies this absurdity is able (whether intentional or not) to draw attention to the tropes of serious Horror (by serious I mean Horror that takes ITSELF seriously), and show how far these tropes are from the real world. The killers still tend to be extensions of American Puritanical values—loners die as do people who fornicate, swear, smoke, or drink alcohol—but in such a way that it shows our puritanical beliefs as ridiculous. By the rules of horror movies Shannon Elisabeth has it coming when she sneaks into a neighbors house to take a bath and have sex right after learning of a death in the family. We even laugh at the death scene where Jack Frost embraces and kills her naked form (implying much more). Of course it is mortifying, even as we laugh at the absurdity. It also draws attention to the truth of the matter that no matter her deviant behavior, she did not “have it coming.”
Horror-comedy plays with the rules and viewers expectations, and is also able to comment on the genre they parody (I am NOT talking about the Scary Movie franchise). At their best they point out the ridiculous contradictory values that creep into many horror movies (the viewer thinks they know the secret to survival, while just the act of watching a horror movie is enough justification to die). It’s not the actual deaths in horror movies that are problematic, but that each death, in the context of the film, is justified. This is fine as long as it remains a fantasy. The problem is when viewers apply this fictional context to the real world. This is all but impossible to do when the villain is a Rat-Monkey (rats that came off a boat and raped the indigenous monkeys), or a radioactive snowman, or a clumsy alien blob. And in the light this revelation, we might begin to understand the ludicrous nature and the formula too many horror movies fall into.
Director: Michael Cooney
Staring: Chris Allport, Shannon Elizabeth
by Roy Seeger
Jack Frost should not be a good horror movie. I suspect it may, in fact, be quite bad, but it is still one of my absolute favorites. Granted, there isn’t one truly scary moment in the film and the plot is so lame that you’d think it ripe for a Mystery Science Theatre-esque voice over, but for the fact that it is so damn funny on its own. With the title and opening credits, Jack Frost begins in the vein of a surreal Christmas special (I giggle at the thought of folks mistaking this for the Michael Keaton movie of the same title). This is the story of Jack Frost, a serial killer who vowed revenge against the small-town cop who arrested him. On the drive to his execution, Jack gets doused in toxic waste and turns into a snowman, with the ability to melt, shoot icicles, etc. Hi-jinks ensue.
So how could a movie like this be so good? Its self-awareness—this movie may not have social issues on its mind, but its twisted humor, its ability to parody both Christmas and Horror movie formulas make Jack Frost an under-recognized classic. The plot devices are sudden and convenient, and the special effects succeed through jarring close-ups, camera angles, and clever use of foam. I’m not saying there isn’t a little bit of pain for the viewer: the acting isn’t good, and the characters are mostly flat, but just about the time you begin rethinking this movie’s innate greatness, there comes another death scene, which will be a strange, wrong, hilarious thing…but then the greatness of this film is in the small details: a child’s head in a bag, an implied snowman rape scene (where did that carrot go?). I don’t know what it says about me that I find these scenes funny, but you try not laughing and then judge.
***
On the sub-genre of Horror-comedy: I think it is important to understand the differences between true Horror, where the director is trying their best to make the viewers crap their pants, and Horror-Comedy (Homedy?) which not only parodies the traditions of serious Horror, but also finds humor in death itself. Audiences cheer the high body count and take a drink with each stabbing. The killers tend to be clever and could almost kill with the sharpness of their one-liners. How can we take any of this violence seriously? The obvious answer is “we can’t,” but what interests me more is the reason why, and the possible psychological effects of making violence laughable.
Understand, to talk generally about anything is to invite argument (argue, please), and I would hate to give artistic credit to all the creators of Horror-comedies (even some of the ones I love), but there seems something inherently interesting in the concept that death is funny, especially violent creative death. Of course there is the ridiculous concern that watching violence directly makes us more violent, and the more rational one that watching death after fictional death makes the real thing, when we hear it on the news, not quite so horrible. We may imagine that we know something of the real thing. This might even be a valid concern in Horror-comedies if it were not for the ridiculous premises of these movies. Take for instance Jack Frost. The deaths don’t become truly funny until the killer turns into a living snowman and uses his new-found ice powers in a variety of homicidal ways. There is a minimal connection with the real world, and therefore the violence takes on an absurd quality it is hard to find threatening. There is much more danger in watching Cop Dramas or War Flicks which usually occur in a realistic setting when they aren’t based on real events.
In the best Horror-Comedies this absurdity is able (whether intentional or not) to draw attention to the tropes of serious Horror (by serious I mean Horror that takes ITSELF seriously), and show how far these tropes are from the real world. The killers still tend to be extensions of American Puritanical values—loners die as do people who fornicate, swear, smoke, or drink alcohol—but in such a way that it shows our puritanical beliefs as ridiculous. By the rules of horror movies Shannon Elisabeth has it coming when she sneaks into a neighbors house to take a bath and have sex right after learning of a death in the family. We even laugh at the death scene where Jack Frost embraces and kills her naked form (implying much more). Of course it is mortifying, even as we laugh at the absurdity. It also draws attention to the truth of the matter that no matter her deviant behavior, she did not “have it coming.”
Horror-comedy plays with the rules and viewers expectations, and is also able to comment on the genre they parody (I am NOT talking about the Scary Movie franchise). At their best they point out the ridiculous contradictory values that creep into many horror movies (the viewer thinks they know the secret to survival, while just the act of watching a horror movie is enough justification to die). It’s not the actual deaths in horror movies that are problematic, but that each death, in the context of the film, is justified. This is fine as long as it remains a fantasy. The problem is when viewers apply this fictional context to the real world. This is all but impossible to do when the villain is a Rat-Monkey (rats that came off a boat and raped the indigenous monkeys), or a radioactive snowman, or a clumsy alien blob. And in the light this revelation, we might begin to understand the ludicrous nature and the formula too many horror movies fall into.
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