13 Nights of Shocktober: Death Becomes Her

by A.J.

Happy Halloween! The countdown is over and Halloween is finally upon us. Tonight, hopefully, you'll be relaxing, eating some candy, and watching a scary, or not-so-scary, movie. There are a lot of options for tonight and I hope I've been of some help. Here is my final recommendation to help bring an end to Shocktober:

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween
“'Til death do us part! Well, you girls are dead. And I'm parting.”
Death Becomes Her

You’ll find few horror comedies as absolutely fun and satisfying as Death Becomes Her. This is due in no small part to the stellar performances from Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossalini and the filmmaking wizardry of Robert Zemeckis. As with the Back to the Future movies and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Zemckis mixed cutting edge visual effects with a fun story and lively characters to create a wonderful, delightful movie.

Death Becomes Her opens on a fabulous note; actually, several notes. The year is 1978 and we see fading theater star Madeline Aston (Meryl Streep) in her new play, Songbird, a disco musical of Sweet Bird of Youth. Streep is dressed in a sparkling gown and boa and surrounded by male dancers. The audience is either walking out or bored and falling asleep except for Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), much to the chagrin of his fiancé Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). The dowdy Helen and glamourous Madeline are supposed to be friends, though frenemies would be a polite way to explain their relationship. Sure enough, Madeline steals away Ernest and Helen goes in a downward spiral that includes some pretty funny scenes of her gaining a ridiculous amount of weight, being evicted from her apartment, and being put into an institution. Then, she comes up with a plan for revenge.

Years pass and image conscious Madeline can no longer hide the effects of aging. She is introduced to the beautiful and mysterious Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), who provides Madeline with an elixir that will give her what she wants most: eternal youth. She also gives Madeline a stern warning, after Madeline has already drunk the elixir, to take care of her body. Madeline is indeed rejuvenated but doesn’t have much time to enjoy it since she finds out that Ernest and Helen, now thin and glamourous, are plotting to kill her and run away together. It turns out that Madeline can’t be killed, but her body can be broken and still, mostly, work. So, when she falls down the stairs and twists her head totally around, she’s still alive and feels, mostly, fine. When Madeline blasts a hole through Helen’s stomach with a shotgun, Helen is also still alive and, mostly, fine. They continue to inflict damage on each other while Ernest, shocked and confused, is caught in the middle.

The effects may have a slightly dated look now, but were remarkable for 1992. Frankly, even with the dated look, the visual effects are still impressive. It’s no surprise to learn that Death Becomes Her earned an Academy Award for its visual effects. Watching Madeline’s head spin around after Helen hits her with a shovel or water spill out of a hole in Helen’s stomach is so much fun. It’s like watching a live action Looney Tunes cartoon. As their bodies become more and more broken and they hobble around after each other, the humor goes over the top and absurd in the best way possible. It is obvious that Zemeckis loves using visual effects, computer created or practical, whenever possible. His willingness to experiment with visual effects would be to his detriment later in his career, but unlike in his later films, the effects in Death Becomes Her enhance the story instead of overtaking it.

As important as the impressive visual effects are to the macabre plot, Death Becomes Her would be nowhere near as fun or good without its killer stars: Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Both actresses play their parts with total glee. They go from zero to camp and back again at all the right moments. No matter who is mutilating who, thanks to their natural charisma they are both enjoyable characters. There’s no argument that Meryl Streep is one of the best actresses, ever, but she is so lauded for her dramatic work, that it’s easy to forget just how good she is at being funny. After the wonderful misfire of the opening song and dance number, we get a quick moment of her in her dressing room rehearsing different greetings for Helen. It’s a small moment but brilliant comic acting. Goldie Hawn plays both the dowdy frizzy-haired Helen and the elegant, fabulous Helen with equal ease. It’s easy to forget that before Bruce Willis became an action star, and then a self-serious action star, he started in comedy (Moonlighting), and is really good at it. He’s fantastic as the meek and high-strung Ernest. Willis acts as an audience stand in, having the appropriate freak out reactions to everything happening on screen. Isabella Rossellini is perfectly cast as the mysterious and alluring Lisle. She wears an elaborate necklace as a top and has silent muscle-bound man servants in spandex do her bidding. Everything about her character and her performance is everything you never knew you wanted to see.

Death Becomes Her plays like a classy but still campy episode of Tales From the Crypt, which Robert Zemeckis directed three episodes of and executive produced. Despite all of the damage Madeline and Helen inflict on each other’s bodies, there’s no graphic or explicit violence, so this movie could be easily enjoyed by anyone looking for something fun to watch this Halloween. “Easily enjoyed” are the key words. Just sit back and have a Happy Halloween! 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Stay Tuned

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 12: Spooky Fun Night
“666 channels of heart pounding, skull blasting entertainment.”
Stay Tuned 

Not long ago, when I worked the dayshift at Vulcan Video during Shocktober and needed something daytime appropriate (not rated R) to watch, I would often put on the 1992 horror comedy Stay Tuned. It usually drew amused reactions from customers. Stay Tuned has gone out of print on DVD but it is still available on Blu-ray and is currently available on some streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video. This is a very broad, goofy, and fun movie. If you’re looking to watch something light but still horror themed, I recommend Stay Tuned.

John Ritter plays Roy Knable, an average middle class man whose midlife crisis has him watching TV nonstop, even over the shoulder of his wife, Helen (Pam Dawber), while she tries to talk to him. Their marriage isn’t doing too great and she is ready to leave when she comes home and finds that Roy has bought a massive satellite dish from a travelling salesman. They don’t have much time to argue however because it turns out the salesman was an agent from Hell and the dish sucks them into a hellish TV world. The catch is that if they can survive 24 hours living through TV shows that are literally trying to kill them, they’ll be released from the contract.

It turns out that Hell is corporatized and run like a TV network complete with a broadcast control room and slimy executives. Eugene Levy is great comic relief, as always, even in his small role as Crowley, an obsequious, wise cracking executive. The whole organization is run by Spike (Jeffery Jones) who likes to ensnare souls is the most extravagant, showiest way possible. Why not make it entertaining? he says. The new intern, Pierce (Erik King), is disappointed by the lack of subtext in Spike’s methods. Spike, annoyed, asks Pierce if he is a film school graduate. Pierce then launches into his thesis on Kurosawa and Spike Lee. As a former film student, I found this bit particularly amusing.

This fun comes in Roy and Helen making their way through the hellish channels. They end up on a game show called You Can’t Win! (which Helen is clever enough to win), a wrestling match, a generic Film Noir, a western, and other Hell themed parodies of TV shows and movies. One of the best scenes comes when Roy and Helen end up as cartoon mice being hunted by a killer cat robot. The animation style and humor are in line with the Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, and at one point Mouse Roy sends away to ACME for a crazy contraption. The climax includes a montage of Roy and Spike stumbling through different channels. They end up in a swashbuckler movie, a hockey match between devils and angels, a movie called “Driving Over Miss Daisy,” a parody of Star Trek, and, best of all, a Salt and Pepa music video. Ritter is dressed in a yellow suit and turban, Jones is a DJ, and each are after the remote control, the key to Roy and Helen’s escape. The dancers, some representing good and some representing evil, pass around the remote, and Ritter tries to casually dance his way to the remote instead of just grabbing it. This doesn’t make any sense but it’s fun to watch.

At times Stay Tuned is clever, at other times it’s hokey. Casting notable TV stars like John Ritter (Three’s Company) and Pam Dawber (Mork and Mindy) is one of its clever strokes. The hellish TV parodies are pretty enjoyable even when they’re dumb: Three Men and Rosemary’s Baby, Northern Overexposure, Duane’s Underworld, Sadistic Candid Camera. There is even a parody of the Maxell cassette tapes commercial, for those old enough to remember the variety of blank cassette tape choices, myself included. One of the parodies has Ritter wearing a Hawaiian shirt stumbling over a couch with two women (one blonde, the other brunette) staring at him with a familiar song in the background (familiar, if, like myself, you’re old enough). He screams and immediately changes himself into another channel.

John Ritter had a great career in comedy and more serious roles like the miniseries of Stephen King’s IT. He was a talented physical comedian and gets to show off that talent a bit here (if you want to see more of John Ritter as a physical comedian, please watch Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed). Is this a secretly great film deserving of cult film status? Perhaps, perhaps not. Is it better than it has any right to be? Yes, firmly yes. The approach by Peter Hyams, both the director and cinematographer, and the talent of the cast are what have made this film worth watching and re-watching for me, and I hope for you too.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Night of the Creeps

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 12: Spooky Fun Night, “The good news is your date is here. The bad news is…he’s dead.”

Night of the Creeps

The first time I saw the cult classic Night of the Creeps was on TCM as part of TCM Underground. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, on TCM of all channels, but I was very entertained and glad TCM included it in their programming schedule, uncut and commercial free. It is a cheesy 1980’s B-film of a horror movie but it is also a thoroughly entertaining love letter to cheesy 1950’s sci-fi/horror movies. Even a sharp observer will have to hit the rewind button a few times to catch all of the direct and indirect references to other horror movies and horror filmmakers.  

Right away Night of the Creeps lets you know what kind of movie you’re in for. It begins with two aliens with ray-guns on a spaceship chasing after a third alien carrying a cylinder. When the aliens speak, their dialogue is subtitled in both English and, what I assume to be, their alien language. The aliens are so obviously short men in suits and masks that I think that is what director Fred Dekker must have intended since the special effects later in the movie are pretty good. Dekker would go on to direct another cult classic with great effects, The Monster Squad, which is either a terrible or great film depending on what age you were when you first saw it. I think it’s great.

The mysterious alien cylinder is shot into space and lands on Earth in 1959. The first scene on Earth is in black and white and looks like a clichéd scene from 1950’s teen horror movie. The setting is sorority row and not that far away a boy and girl are in a parked car. From the alien cylinder a wormy slug springs into the mouth of the boy who left his date alone in the car. While an alien parasite worm is jumping into his mouth, an axe wielding escaped mental patient is attacks the girl. After this scene you should definitely know that Night of the Creeps is campy, over the top, self-aware fun. The movie then jumps to 1986 during "Pledge Week." We meet Chris and J.C., two college freshmen. Chris talks J.C. into pledging a fraternity with him because he is desperate to impressive the very pretty Cynthia, who he thinks (for no reason at all) is only interested in frat guys. Cynthia’s boyfriend, Brad, is the head of the fraternity and gives them the pledge task of stealing a dead body from the university medical lab. Chris and J.C. accidentally unfreeze the body of the college boy infected with the alien parasite back in the 50’s. They freak out and run away. The infected zombie body walks out of the university, but not before attacking a young scientist played by a young David Paymer. 

The zombie body walks to the sorority house where its head splits open and releases more parasite slugs. The slugs enter into a body then eat at the brain turning a person into essentially a zombie until their head explodes to spread more slugs. The special effects are great old-school practical effects. Some effects, like the slugs and zombie make-up hold up better than others, like the animatronic zombie dog and cat, which still look pretty cool and scary. The effects do get pretty gross, but they are meant to scare and entertain you, not just shock you and make you feel queasy. Night of the Creeps has fun with its effects too. When a bus driver sees the decaying zombie dog in the road, his eyes bulge out of his head, like a cartoon.

Night of the Creeps is a movie you watch for the fun, gross effects, but there are some good characters to go along with the effects too. Chris and J.C. are supposed to be geeks, but there’s nothing much geeky about them other than that they’re not jocks. Chris Romero, our main character, is unfortunately blandly average. His only motivation is to impress the pretty girl because she is pretty. The characters around him, however, are pretty interesting and entertaining. His goofy friend J.C. (James Carpenter) Hooper, is more socially adept and aware and is, overall, a more well-rounded character. The character that steals the movie is the hardened, self-destructive Detective Cameron played by Tom Atkins. He walks into a crime scene and says “thrill me” and constantly refers to Chris and J.C. as Spanky and Alfalfa. When he shoots one zombie in the head he says, “It’s Miller time.” It doesn’t make any sense but it’s great. My favorite scene with him is when he tells Chris a haunting story of revenge from his past. It’s a serious and intense speech in the middle a campy movie and an awkward moment for Chris. Somehow, this character isn’t laughable but is still fun and fits right in with the rest of the movie.

My favorite character is Cynthia Cronenberg, the object of everyone’s affections, played by Jill Whitlow. To say that the female roles in 80’s comedies, especially 80’s teen comedies, are lacking in substance would be a gross understatement. Cynthia, however, is not a trophy or a doll. She’s not impressed with Chris at first since he sent J.C. to talk to her for him. She puts together that the attacks happening around the college are related to the missing body from the medical lab and has to convince Chris and J.C., who are skeptical. At the climax, when a busload of slug infested zombie frat guys descend upon the sorority house, she fights them off along with Chris and Detective Cameron to protect the rest of the sorority. Shooting the zombies stops them, but then the slugs inside just explode out and scatter. The only thing that kills the slugs is fire, so Detective Cameron gets a flamethrower from the police armory (because of course they have a flamethrower). It’s Cynthia who uses that flame thrower while wearing her formal gown to kill off the alien slugs, and she is as badass as she sounds.

This movie is as much a tribute to the whole horror genre as it is a send up of 50’s sci-fi/horror movies. If the characters last names sound familiar it is because many characters are named after horror and science fiction directors like: David Cronenberg (Shivers), James Cameron (Piranha II, Terminator), Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13^th), Steve Miner (Friday the 13^th Part II and III), Sam Raimi (Evil Dead), John Carpenter (Halloween), Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), and George Romero (Night of the Living Dead). The characters all attend Corman University, named after legendary producer Roger Corman, who made many, many campy films. When the sorority house mother is attacked she is watching Plan 9 from Outer Space on TV, perhaps the campiest film ever made by the man once voted worst director of all time, Ed Wood. 

Night of the Creeps was a flop when it was released in theaters but has since gone on to build a cult following. I can understand why. This movie has everything: horror, comedy, aliens, sorority girls, awesome horror effects, zombie jocks, a zombie cat, a zombie David Paymer, scenes in black and white, a scene with Dick Miller (who appears in several 80's horror movies), a suicidal cop on edge, a montage of college kids getting ready for a dance, and, best of all, a badass sorority girl with a flamethrower. Night of the Creeps is lots of fun and even a little scary. It’s a perfect movie for horror movie fans, people that like campy movies, and people that just want to have a spooky good time.