Haikus: the lazy way

I feel like I'm not really "writing a new poem every week" when I write haikus, but Japanese people write haikus so screw yourself. My poetry class is coming up again this week (after a 2-week hiatus), so I'll have something real next week.

sacco's eating figs
why is sacco eating figs?
is she eating figs?

Freddy vs. Jason vs. Spoodles: A Date With Destiny

I'm finally killing Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees once and for all this afternoon: I'm finishing my month-long horror-movie marathon. What kind of content will this site have once I'm done? Hell if I know.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is the final movie in the Nightmare series proper, and what a fitting send-off it is. The film takes the tired Elm Street formula and turns it on its head, creating one of the scariest films in the franchise (second only to the original).

The conceit of this film is that we are now in the REAL world. The actress who played Nancy in the first and third installments is back, but this time she is playing the actress who played Nancy. Robert England (nee Freddy Krueger) appears in the flesh, as does director Wes Craven. Nancy...er...Heather is haunted by dreams (not to mention creepy phone calls) that Freddy has become real. The reasoning is well thought out (at least for a movie that involves multiple impalings).

Freddy is back--kind of--although it's not the same Freddy we've come to know and loathe in the five prior sequels. This Freddy doesn't have time for quips, video games, or pizza pies. Garbed in a new, black trenchcoat, he's all business, and he's scary as hell. Given the new level of gravitas in this film, I'm reasonably satisfied despite the minimal amount of gore and death.

Sure, one man is slashed across the chest. And another is given the same treatment as Nancy's friend in the first film. But the only really inventive sequence isn't actually a kill at all. Heather's child is attempting to cross the freeway in a surprisingly-well-filmed and intense scene, and Freddy dangles the boy above cars in front of his frightened mother's eyes.

That's right. For the first time, Krueger does what he was meant to do: he haunts and attempts to kill a child. While child actors have a tendency to virtually suck the life out of any movie in a hurry (see: The Lost World: Jurassic Park; The Phantom Menace; The Mummy Returns, etc.), New Nightmare remains unscathed and actually benefits from the talent of its creepy little bugger. Of course, this is partially due to the kid in question: precocious Full House smartass and Kindergarten Cop know-it-all Miko Hughes. Boys have a penis and girls have a ba-gina indeed, Miko.

New Nightmare is a more-than-fitting end to the Elm Street series, and it's a shame that some schlub goalie is about to make Freddy Krueger his bitch.

We have had many epic battles in our time--Tyson vs. Holyfield; Brown vs. the Board of Education--but none were quite so gloriously bloody as Jason vs. Freddy, the ultimate horror clash (until they find a way to work Michael Myers in there). Freddy has been dormant for four years because everybody has forgotten about him, so he culls Jason Voorhees from the depths of hell in order to wreak chaos and inspire fear on Elm Street until we have approximately forty-too-many words of exposition without any blood splatter.

As a film, Vs. is not exactly high art (even by the standards of the ten Fridays and seven Nightmares). The last ten minutes of this film alone contains more blood and gore than any of the predecessors' entire movies. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Really, Freddy vs. Jason is the best of both worlds. You have the brute-strength slaughters of the inimitable Mr. Voorhees, but you also get the creepy, dreamlike maulings of our man Krueger. In other words, if you're tired of somebody's face being eaten by a giant, pot-smoking caterpillar, you won't have to wait long for somebody to get stabbed in the torso fifteen times and folded in half by a cot.

There are a couple of "OH YEAH!" moments in the film, and they all belong exclusively to Jason. What can I say? I'm a gore fella. Weirdly, I think I enjoy the Nightmare series more as a whole, but there's no number of shitty one-liners that can have the same effect as the strong, silent type shoving a flaming machete through your chest with naught but the flick of a wrist. Anyway, Jason gets a fair number of said machete-slayings (as well as the aforementioned "stabbing a guy fifteen times and closing the cot on him"), but he gets to do some other cool stuff. He breaks a guy's neck so fast that the head seems to spin 720 degrees. And of course, no good Jason movie would be complete without somebody literally being chopped in half.

Blah blah blah. It's all unimportant, because the final half hour becomes the promised main event. The spawn of Satan versus the killer from Crystal Lake. Freddy vs. Jason. I've never seen a movie offer up so much gratuitous blood and sinew. Ever. Each of the characters gets hacked and slashed at least thirty times, and the flesh is flyin'. If you don't like spoilers, look away now: Freddy gets his ass handed to him by Jason. OR DOES HE? Well, yeah. He really does. Unless Freddy is going to kill you with his winking, disembodied head, Jason wins by means of retaining some of his limbs.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Thanks to Freddy Krueger for putting the "laughter" in "slaughter," and thanks to Jason Voorhees for putting the "machete" in "pretty much everybody."

Not long now

They've come up with more "definitive" ways to kill Freddy Krueger than dwarves under Snow White's dominion. If you are not afraid of Freddy, he will be OBLITERATED! If you love Freddy, he will be OBLITERATED! If you finally put Freddy's remains to rest, he will be OBLITERATED! If you show him his reflection, he will be OBLITERATED! It doesn't exactly add a whole lot of credibility to the series. Jason Voorhees was only obliterated once. The rest of the time he just got axed in the forehead, and we all know how easy it is to survive that.

Yet somehow, despite the fact that he is finally defeated in a final showdown (of finality) at the end of every movie, he manages to come back for more. He's been jumping from host to host. He's been reincarnated via fire-pissing dog. And then there was the Dream Child.

In A Nightmare On Elm Street, Part 5: The Dream Child, Freddy is born again via the various bodily oozes of our surviving characters from its predecessor, The Dream Master. We see him emerge from his mother's womb a scarred and disfigured demon child (the doctor's understandable first words: "Holy shit!"). And then he haunts the dreams of The Dream Master's unborn fetus.

Babies apparently sleep and dream for eighteen hours of the day (at least in the terrifying mind of Wes Craven), and this allows for the interesting tangent that the Dream Master can dream when she's awake. There are moments that you're uncertain: is this a dream or is this reality? And then you realize that the "dreams" are the ones that include Freddy Krueger turning into a superhero or a chef ("Bon appetit, bitch!"). Much of a stretch? Well, yeah.

There are some decent kills, although not enough for my tastes. One character is made into a motorcycle-human hybrid and fuel-injected until Freddy can harvest his soul. Another is force-fed until her stomach explodes. The coolest part of the movie isn't actually a kill, but Freddy is stabbed right through the mouth with a pool skimmer.

Then, of course, he is OBLITERATED forever or until the next year when New Line wants another couple bucks out of the deal.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare! Wow! There's no way he can make it out of this one alive!

Wait...of course he can. Jason [went] to Hell but he made it out in due time to slaughter some astronauts and enter mortal combat with our wrinkly lord and savior, Freddy himself. So of course Freddy will never actually die.

A touch of class: Freddy's Dead begins with a famous Nietzsche quote ("Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the toes he is very terrified, Because the ground gives the way under him, And the dream begins..."), followed by a famous Freddy quote ("Welcome to Prime Time, bitch!").

I'm pretty sure that killing Freddy for good was for the best. The kills in this film were pretty lame. One boy is trounced in a video game Freddy is playing with his "power-glove." With Freddy, the sky is the limit: he can kill anybody however he'd like. It's a shame that he did it in such cheesy ways.

Still, there's some good stuff. One character falls through the atmosphere and lands on a bed of spikes (which have been placed there Road-Runner-style by a mischievous Krueger). Freddy taunts a deaf kid by stealing his hearing aid and giving it back to him with all new modifications. Let's just say the deaf guy's noggin isn't long for this world.

And then there's the 3D. It's really poorly done. Where Friday the 13th Part 3 had its share of incredible sequences--harpoons going towards the camera, eyeballs popping out, the works--the extent of this 3D involves some animated demons flying around and causing a ruckus. Great.

This really does feel like the final chapter of a saga. Characters return from the past--Johnny Depp makes a surprise appearance. Also, there's an incredible Freddy montage that runs over the end credits. I'm two movies away from finishing the saga for real. Stay tuned for Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Freddy Vs. Jason, the culmination of the last month of my life.

A haiku 4 u

My buddy Sacco's MySpace name is "Sacco!!!1!!1", inspiring this glorious haiku.

the name is sacco
and there are ones between the
exclamation points

The Dream Post

Today I continued my Masters of Horror 2006 movie marathon with a couple of Nightmare on Elm Street flicks.

When I popped A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors in, I knew I was in for something special almost immediately. Patricia Arquette! Lawrence "Larry" Fishburne! Dick Cavett! Zsa Zsa Gabor! The stars have come out for Freddy Kreuger's grand return to form!

And it is a return to form. The second film ventured into the realm of possession, and it's nice to see Freddy back in the dream world and turning into a giant, hungry worm.

There are some other elaborate kills, which I've come to expect from the inimitable Mr. Kreuger. Freddy slits one boy's wrists and ankles, pulling out the sinew and walking him like a marionette off of a high ledge. With a fair amount of traditional Freddy snark, he smashes a young lady into a television. "This is it, Jennifer. Your big break in TV." The catchphrases are hit-or-miss, but that's the nature of the one-liner.

Our heroine from the first Nightmare film, Nancy, makes her triumphant return in a more secure and mature position--sage guru to the institutionalized remainder of the Elm Street kids. Patricia Arquette is the film's heroine--a woman that can bring other people into her dreams. These Dream Warriors are a rag-tag team of horror-movie misfits--the mute, the wheelchair-bound geek, the punk girl, and the black guy--so you know they aren't long for this world. The wheelchair kid doesn't get it quite as badly as the handicapped all-star in Friday the 13th: Part 2, and somehow the majority of the outcasts survive. Unexpected and disappointing to be sure.

Lawrence Fishburne is a smooth mothafudga. Even in his supporting role as a mental hospital orderly, he exudes more charisma than the rest of the cast combined. If I had to make a prediction, I would say that someday this Larry Fishburne will be a big action movie star with gappy teeth.

The classy saga continues with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. It's so classy, in fact, that it begins with a quote from the Bible. "And he drowned the mute kid inside of a waterbed. And it was good. (Freddy 1:14-16)"

That's right. Freddy was so pissed off about missing the obvious horror-flick targets in Dream Warriors that he came back for them. The mute guy gets drowned, the black guy gets glove-stabbed, and the Patricia Arquette character gets downgraded to a lesser blonde actress. Oh, and also she is burnt to a crisp.

Director Renny Harlin (CUTTHROAT ISLAND, bitches) doesn't leave us without our share of easy prey, though. In fact, he bundles them up into one convenient package. We get a character that is simultaneously black, geeky, and a supporting female character. Good luck making it out alive, Urkelette.

Freddy is reborn in an inventive way: a dog pisses fire onto his grave. You can't make this stuff up.

The deaths are slightly more slapstick-y than in the previous flick. Freddy eats one person on a pizza. Another is caught in a roach motel. Still, we get some good stuff. The health-conscious female (hel-LO big hair!) has her forearms snapped in half by a slightly-heavier-than-usual bench press workout. Another character literally has the life sucked out of her, leaving the shell of a human being.

Only four more movies to go until I'm the shell of a human being. I'll keep y'all posted.

Mix n match

I made a mix CD (actually, two mix CDs) for my friend Nick. I wasn't thinking of this list, so I didn't save a track listing.

The first mix was made because Nick wanted a track from the soundtrack to Hannibal. He called it "Aria Da Capo," so I began the CD with that track and filled up the CD with quality music.

The next mix was made because apparently that wasn't the track he wanted. He wanted "the opera music from the movie," which was actually called "Vide Cor Meum." I made a second mix ending with this track.

Another goal completed without even knowing it. Soon I'm going to be left with a list of nothing but crazy-ass stuff like "Sky dive" and "Punt midget off of a tall building."

Another week, another bit of foul poesy

Bender Ben killed Pissdrunk Pam
And then he killed her yet again.
The shallow wound now oozing, cut
By a sword no mightier than a pen.
In a little bit Ben had a fit
And tied a striped noose round his neck.
They stuck him in a wooden box
And dressed him in his Sunday best
And all his friends, they came to mourn
The dear, departed dude deceased
And one sage lush forlornly sighed
"T'was truly duty killed the beast."

The Killers: Sam's Town

My good buddy Brad Keen! and I have been e-mailing each other a bit lately, and he recommended to me the newest release by The Killers. That's not to say that I wouldn't have gotten it anyway if I had known it was out.

I've always equated The Killers with another recent dance-pop band, The Format. The Format fell apart in their second album (Dog Problems). The Killers triumphs in theirs.

Sam's Town is an excellent sophomore album. I haven't listened to it enough to give you favorite songs, but I've listened it enough to complete part of a task.

Boo-ya, list! In your face!

Another day, another horror franchise

I'm in the mood for something psychological. Maybe it's because I spent the last two weeks seeing teens being brutally stabbed to death by a big lug with a bushman's knife. It was time for a change. It was time to see teens being brutally stabbed by a bladed glove.

Hey, I said I was in the mood for something psychological--not something intelligent.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is, indeed, psychological--at least more so than the Friday the 13th franchise. Sure--we've all been into the deep woods. Or Manhattan. Or outer space in the year 2455. But none of us seem to spend an awful lot of time in any of these places, due in part to the fact that they are each of them inherently terrifying.

That's where Nightmare comes in. It brings the horror close to home. And by "close to home" I mean "to your home." Our hero, Freddy Kreuger, sneaks into your dreams while you're safe in your bed. Then he rips your guts out and paints the wall with your blood. Heartwarming.

The first movie in the series is great. Unlike Friday, which I found to be satisfyingly gruesome but not scary, Nightmare is a thoroughly chilling movie. Freddy can really do just about anything he wants, which means every phobia the viewer has will be checked off sooner or later. Scared of being stalked through your neighborhood? Happens all the time. Afraid that your sheets will crawl around your neck while you're sleeping and hang you from the ceiling? Freddy's done it. And also, you worry too much.

Because these movies (or at least the first one) focus less on gore and more on fear, there aren't many exceptional kills. There is one clear champion in this film, and it involves a young man credited as "Introducing Johnny Depp." Presumably he lost that first word somewhere early on in his career. Bedecked in a belly-shirt and a pair of mondo headphones, Depp is eaten alive by his bed. The best is yet to come, though. The bed regurgitates Depp's blood for a solid two minutes, spraying the ceiling and walls. There is so much blood that it actually begins leaking through the ceiling.

There are other fun moments. We get to see the star's best friend tossed around the room and brutally murdered, presumably for cheating on John Cusack in Better Off Dead. The heroine is french-kissed by her telephone for some reason. The final confrontation is like a mix between Beetlejuice and Home Alone; Freddy knows how to take a sledge to the chest like only a Wet Bandit could. The movie ends like the Friday films before it--unintelligibly.

My favorite bit in the movie is the alcoholic mom. In every scene, she seems to be pulling a bottle of booze from the most random locations. She sneaks into the linen closet for some vodka from under the towels. She pulls a bottle out from under her pillow as her daughter is tucking her in. There's even a jug of whiskey right by the fiery incinerator, which is kind of handy in the event of an attack. I'm reasonably sure that this isn't meant to be funny--alcoholics do hide bottles, I guess--but it SO is.

I really have no complaints about this movie. There's a reason it's a horror classic, and I'm disappointed that I missed its recent theater revival.

Which brings us to A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge. Essentially, the whole movie is one big complaint. While it took Friday the 13th nine movies to hit "possession," Nightmare abandons its key "dream" premise and instead brings Freddy's kills to the real world in its second installment.

Freddy has some bright moments in this flick, though. For starters, he wreaks havoc on a pool party full of teens. He tops the body count of the series' first installment in this scene alone. Most importantly though, he succeeds where Jason has always failed before--he kills actual pets on-screen. Two birds (sleeping after a blanket is put over their cage) are brutally murdered (a broken neck and a spontaneous combustion). An aquarium full of goldfish are boiled alive. The fact that Freddy has the balls to do that leads me to call shenanigans on Freddy vs. Jason. There is NO WAY that Jason should win that fight. Oops. There are spoilers in this paragraph.

Hopefully, Freddy will get back to his best arena--the dream realm--in the near future. I have high hopes when there are sequels called The Dream Child, The Dream Warriors, and The Dream Dream Dream Dream.

Forgot a poem

I did write a poem this week--another haiku for Sacco's MySpace wall. I just forgot to post it.

cristina sacco
the chemistry superstar
a haiku for you

Jason goes to Hell, and then to Space, and then into our hearts

This is it. The virtual end of the Friday the 13th franchise. Sure, Freddy vs. Jason is forthcoming, but I'm still about seven movies away from that.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday neither features Jason going to Hell (at least not for long), nor is it the final Friday. The plot of this movie is a little wacky (at least wacky compared to the tried-and-true series formula). Jason does not exist in corporeal form for 9/10 of the movie. Instead, his spirit possesses various Crystal Lake citizens until the perfect host body can be found. This is facilitated by a coroner eating Jason's heart--which, really, makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

Despite the plot, Jason Goes to Hell is a welcome return to form. The MPAA must have backed off from the creators, as the kills are much more gruesome and satisfying in this film than in any of the last four. Somebody gets a car door slammed on their skull. A guy has his arm broken at mid-forearm in a welcome bit of gore. The best kill is one I had been hoping for since I started watching the series. Finally, somebody got the axe while they were in the act of dirty, premarital sex. Not only that, but it's the best kill in the film. The woman (riding cowboy, for those interested) is cleaved in half. Hot-dog style, not hamburger-style. That's some good shit.

Jason Goes to Hell was the first Friday movie released by New Line Cinema, meaning that they were welcome to include elements of some of their other horror franchises. The Necronomicon from the Evil Dead series appears in the old Voorhees house. Infamously, Freddy Krueger's glove pulls Jason's hockey mask down to hell--a moment that inspired a geekgasm in 1993 and a spin-off in 2003.

Before I move on to the next movie: I'd feel loathe if I didn't mention the best dialogue thus far in the entire franchise.

Reporter: I'm going to say a couple of words to you and I want you to say the first thing that comes into your mind.
Creighton Duke: Okay.
Robert Campbell: Jason Voorhees.
Creighton Duke: That makes me think of a little girl in a pink dress sticking a hot dog through a doughnut.

In the long history of cinema, Jason X may be a high point. I mean, after they put a zombie serial killer in space and make him a cyborg, WHERE ELSE IS THERE TO GO?

It's important to note that even in the year 2455, sexy teens make up ninety percent of the universe's population. Even the team of battle-hardened space commandos includes buxom babes in both blonde and brunette styles. Jason X features, probably, the most gratuitous nudity of any of the Friday movies. A girl's shirt is torn off as she is attacked. One couple has sex. The robot shows off her new, metal nipples. Giggling hologram babes take off their shirts and invite Jason into their sleeping bags for premarital sex and some marijuana. On the boobies scale, this movie gets a nine out of ten.

The ten years between entries in the franchise made quite a difference. The gore is ramped up to levels previously unseen, and the setting allows for some inventive kills that just can't be done in a 1980's lakeside summer camp. In fact, when making notes on kills I left more "awesome kill" asterisks than not. A soldier gets sliced in half at the waist and is left to drag his torso across the room. Another is impaled on a giant corkscrew--gravity does the rest of the work as his body spins down to the hilt. A woman's entire body is pulverized and squeezed through a fist-sized hole in the wall due to a loss of cabin-pressure. The two topless teens mentioned in the previous paragraph each crawl into sleeping bags (in a call-back to The New Blood) and are beaten to death in a similar (but much more gruesome) way. The best kill, though, takes place early on. A busty, scantily-clad scientist has her face dipped into liquid nitrogen. Then, the frozen noggin is smashed against the wall, shattering into a million pieces. Joy!

Of course the movie is shitty. I could whine about how Jason becomes a robot that rivals Super Shredder in cheesy-monstrousness. There are technologies that don't make a whole lot of sense. The dialogue is flat. However, to complain that this movie is shitty seems kind of pointless--I mean, it's the final, shitty entry in a series that is built (and loved because) of shittiness. What a great ride.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Today I caught Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, or, as I like to call it, Jason Takes a Boat Ride.

The movie has its ups and downs. While it's uneven, it's probably better than The New Blood. The kills--absolutely the most important part of any good slasher movie--are much more inventive. A chick gets bashed in the face with a guitar. One fellow is stabbed by a harpoon-less harpoon launcher. A hoodlum is stabbed in the chest with a hypodermic needle. A boxer gets his head punched clean off his neck. In fact, I got my ever-sought-after "jaw-dropping" moment. While relaxing in the sauna, one coed finds himself the proud owner of a burning hot sauna rock inside of his chest cavity. What a lucky gent!

There's enough irksome stuff about Jason Takes Manhattan that never allows it to achieve the greatness of the franchise's earliest entries. We've all come to accept that Jason is now virtually invincible. However, this film's Jason defies the laws of physics. For example: one man climbs a ladder, being chased by Jason. He arrives on the roof, only to find...Jason! It's pretty silly.

For the first time, we hear noise coming out of Jason's mouth, and it's just...awkward. The sound effect is definitely drawn from an elephant's call. A male grunt would have sufficed, and it would have saved me the time of cleaning up all of that soda that came out of my nose.

And then there's the misnomer. Jason does not take Manhattan in this movie. Jason takes a boat for 3/4 of the movie. Jason takes a random shipyard. Jason takes a random alley. Jason takes a random subway. Jason takes a random sewer. The only time Jason is seen in any location distinctively Manhattan-ian, it's a brief five seconds in Times Square. A definite disappointment. At least the dinosaurs in The Lost World got to kill civilians. All Jason got to do was lift his mask to spook some punk kids.

Tomorrow Jason will go to hell (and probably space as well). I'll be in touch.

Love,

Spoodles

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was supremely disappointing after the relative return to form that was Jason Lives. It was not bad in the same way that A New Beginning was--the humor in the film is more similar to the first four films than Parts V and VI. Instead, this film does absolutely nothing. It's an exercise in mediocrity.

There's an interesting twist to The New Blood: the lead character is telekenetic. There were a lot of ways they could have gone with this, and none of them were taken. Instead, she's pretty much the exact same character as Tommy Jarvis in Jason Lives--a supposed "crazy" whom nobody believes.

None of the characters--even the heroine herself--are interesting or nice enough for us to sympathize. Instead, the viewer finds himself tapping his toe impatiently, waiting for the very welcome murders to come.

There is only one (1) worthwhile kill in the entire movie, and it's dedicated to a fourth-tier character that appears for five minutes. A woman is picked up inside her sleeping bag and bashed against a tree, the crunch of bones quite audible.

Where the movie does succeed, however, is in creating several characters more detestable than any of their predecessors. A psychiatrist uses the heroine for his own purposes, and eventually sacrifices her mother to the great and powerful Jason. One bitchy bitch is a total bitch, mocking the psych-ward history of the lead. That's why it's a shame that every kill in the movie either falls under the category of "Being Stabbed," or has already been done in a previous Friday. A man is punched through the chest (Jason Lives). A head is crushed in Jason's bare hands (Part 3). There is nothing thrilling, and most of the kills don't even take place on-screen (presumably due to MPAA pressures).

I haven't heard good things about the following sequels, but...well, there's always hope.

An Inconvenient Lunch*

My normal lunch crew--myself, Nick, and Megan--changed venues today due to the school dicking around with our meals. Inside the alternate dining hall, I stumbled upon two friends. Schmenis and F. Scott. I invited these two fine fellows to our lunch table, and I introduced them to Megan. So ends the harrowing journey of this task.

Also, I drank a mixture of yellow mustard and Diet Pepsi.

*Not necessarily inconvenient.