Pumpkinhead, Child’s Play, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Waxwork, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and Friday the 13th Part VII
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Pumpkinhead, Child’s Play, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Waxwork, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and Friday the 13th Part VII
Weekly Horror Bulletin Newsletter 229
This week, we’re back to the 80s! More specifically, 1988, as all six films we’re watching this week come from that year.
This week, we’ll start with “Pumpkinhead” and “Child’s Play,” two excellent films that started new franchises. We’ll look at, “The Serpent and the Rainbow” and “Waxwork” and then for our bonus films, we’ll look at “Friday the 13th Part VII The New Blood” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.” That was a pretty significant year in horror!
Book News
We’ve got two announcements this week pertaining to our books:
1. FREE! Horror Bulletin Monthly Issue 20 is now out. This, as always, has all our previous month’s reviews inside, but this month, we’re offering the ebook version (in PDF and ePub) absolutely free! Check out https://brianschell.com/collection/free-books for this one and more!
2. FREE! The Horror Guys Guide To The Halloween Films is available now, exclusively at our web store, https://brianschell.com/collection/free-books. The eBook version is completely free. Enjoy! Note that it’s also available as a paperback, but that one’s obviously not free. Also note, that there are a couple of other free books on the site as well!
Check out all our books!
The Horror Guys Guide to:
• The Horror Films of Peter Cushing New!
• The Horror Guys Guide To The Halloween Films (Free!)
• The Horror Films of Vincent Price
• Universal Studios' Shock! Theater
Creepy Fiction:
Here. We. Go!
Pumpkinhead (1988)
• Directed by Stan Winston
• Written by Ed Justin, Mark Patrick Carducci, Stan Winston
• Stars Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 26 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a good and creepy little horror movie. The creature is excellent and we see a lot of it; the other effects are well done. And the cast does a nice job. It was an all-around win.
Synopsis
It’s 1957, and there’s some weirdness at the Hartley farm. Tom Hartley puts the horse in the barn and brings his shotgun inside. “Will it be all right? Should I be afraid,” asks his wife. They wait as we see a young man being chased through the woods by something. Clayton, who was the one being chased, beats on Tom’s door and begs for help, but they know better than to let him in. Clayton moves on, and little Eddie gets a glimpse of the monster killing him.
In the present day, Ed has grown up and has a family of his own now; Billy is his son. Billy made him a necklace with a little man on it. They drive over to the little grocery store that they run.
We then cut to the required group of obnoxious teenagers on the way to a cabin in the woods. Joel is the leader and a jerk, but the others follow along.
They all stop at the little roadside store. Mr. Wallace stops in with his five kids, and they’re obviously really poor. the littlest boy steals Billy’s ball, and they all say that Pumpkinhead comes for bad children; there’s a rhyme and everything.
Ed goes out to deliver some animal food to Wallace and leaves Billy in the store. The young people start riding dirt bikes all over like maniacs. Billy’s dog runs out, Billy chases him, and Joel runs Billy over. On the bright side, the dog is fine.
Joel’s been drinking and on probation, so he hops in the car and runs off. There’s no phone in the store, and the others have no idea what to do. At their cabin, Chris wants to call the police, but Joel has ripped the phone wire out, so they can’t.
Ed takes Billy home, but he soon dies. He sees Mr. Wallace and asks him about an old woman in the hills with powers. When Ed shows him Billy’s body, Wallace warns him that the old woman is the last person he needs to see. One of Wallace’s sons says the old woman’s name is Haggis, and he’ll show Ed how to get there.
Ed goes to see Haggis, who lives in what looks like a witch’s house. She can’t raise the dead, but she can get him vengeance. “What you’re asking’s got a powerful price.” She tells him about a thing buried in a cemetery that he needs to bring to her first.
He goes to the ultra-creepy cemetery and finds what he’s looking for. Haggis cuts Ed and drips blood all over the mummified little creature that Ed carried in. Ed passes out as the little thing starts to move… and grow. When Ed wakes up in the morning, Haggis tells him to go home, as now it begins. He goes to the normal cemetery and buries Billy with his mother.
At the cabin, everyone is still arguing with Joel. Maggie and Steve go out for a walk; she’s still in shock from the accident. Pumpkinhead gets right to work on Steve. Maggie runs back and tells the others, but they only halfway believe her.
Every time Pumpkinhead kills one of the kids, Ed has a little seizure. He goes back to Haggis. “It’ll pass, Ed Harley. Let it finish.” “This is wrong,” he cries. She says there’s no way Ed can stop it now.
After finding Maggie and Steve’s body, Joel goes outside. “I’m the one you want!” Pumpkinhead drags off Kim next. Joel, Chris, and Tracy run off into the woods.
Ed comes to the cabin and finds several bodies. He follows the teens and shoots Pumpkinhead himself. Joel shoots it too, but that only makes it worse when it kills Joel. Chris and Joel beat on the Wallace’s door, and the scene plays out like the one in the opening segment.
Chris and Tracy meet up with Bunt, one of the Wallace children, who wants to know if the legend is true. He explains that Pumpkinhead is a demon. Then it arrives and gets Chris.
Bunt and Tracy run into Ed, who now wants to help them. Tracy tells Ed about the accident and asks him to stop this. Pumpkinhead arrives, dragging not-quite-dead Chris with him. Ed soon discovers that he and the monster are also linked physically. Ed shoots himself in the head; Pumpkinhead doesn’t die, but neither does Ed. Tracy picks up the gun and shoots Ed a few more times. Pumpkinhead collapses and dies before combusting and burning up.
We cut to Haggis, burying Pumpkinhead back in his strange pumpkin patch grave. Except we see that the shriveled mummified little body is now what’s left of Ed.
Commentary
The big thing in this movie is the creature design and costume for Pumpkinhead. He’s a real… monster. In the close-ups, his face resembles one of the “Gremlins.” The sets and other effects are also outstanding.
There are a whole bunch of sequels to this, and there’s good reason. It’s really well done.
"Keep away from Pumpkinhead, Unless you're tired of living, His enemies are mostly dead, He's mean and unforgiving, Laugh at him and you're undone, But in some dreadful fashion, Vengeance, he considers fun, And plans it with a passion, Time will not erase or blot, A plot that he has brewing, It's when you think that he's forgot, He'll conjure your undoing, Bolted doors and windows barred, Guard dogs prowling in the yard, Won't protect you in your bed, Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead!"
Child’s Play (1988)
• Directed by Tom Holland
• Written by Don Mancini, John Lafia, Tom Holland
• Stars Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The practical effects and serious treatment of an absurd situation from a strong cast make for an entertaining movie that still holds up today. We were as entertained as we were when we saw it when it came out, if not more so.
Synopsis
We open on a man running down an alley with police in pursuit. He’s “The Strangler,” a notorious serial killer. There’s a shootout between him and Detective Mike Norris. He’s shot in the leg and hides in a toy store. Credits roll.
Charles Lee Ray, the killer, knows he can’t escape this time and swears revenge on the detective and Eddie, the partner who abandoned him here. He collapses next to a display of “Good Guys” dolls in the store. He opens one of the packages and then says some magic voodoo words over the doll. There is lightning and thunder outside as the magic happens. The entire store explodes from a lightning strike! Norris staggers over and finds Charles Lee Ray’s dead body next to a bunch of doll toys.
Sometime later, Andy Barclay watches a “Good Guys” cartoon on TV and wishes he had one of the dolls. He then has some Good Guys cereal. Andy lives with his single mother, and they’re obviously very close.
It’s his birthday, and he opens the big box and finds— clothes. He expresses his disappointment, but Karen didn’t have time this month to save up for a Good Guy. At work that day, a coworker tells her about a peddler behind the store who has one for sale at a bargain.
On her break, she takes the Good Guy to Andy; It says, “Hi, I’m Chucky, and I’m your friend to the end. Hidy-Ho!”
Karen has to work tonight, so Maggie offers to babysit. There’s a news report about Eddie Caputo escaping from jail, and the doll seems to notice. Andy goes to bed and Maggie turns on some old movies. We see Chucky running around in the background as she reads. She’s pushed out the window, where she falls seven stories to her death.
Karen gets home from work to find police, ambulances, and news crews outside her apartment. Detective Mike Norris tells Karen what happened. There are tiny footprints that Norris thinks are suspicious, but they aren’t Andy’s footprints. Norris thinks it’s a homicide, but he’s the only one.
Andy says that Chucky told him that his real name is Charles Lee Ray, and that he said, “Aunt Maggie was a real bitch and got what she deserved.” Karen gets angry and tells him that Chucky’s just a doll; he’s not alive.
The next morning, Karen drops Andy and Chucky off at school, but they slip out and take the bus downtown instead. They wind up in a very bad part of town where Chucky has business. Chucky slips inside Eddie’s house and turns on the gas. This leads to a very thorough explosion.
Norris calls Karen after they pick up Andy and Chucky. Andy keeps saying that Chucky’s been doing bad things, but no one believes him. Chucky just sits there when anyone else is watching; he’s just a doll, after all. “Mommy, he’s doing it on purpose.” They bring in Dr. Ardmore, a psychiatrist, who wants to take Andy away from Karen for a while.
Karen takes Chucky home without Andy. She looks at the Good Guys box and notices that the batteries are still there. She never put them in the talking toy, but it works anyway. She checks the battery compartment, and it’s empty. Chucky spins his head and talks. She screams and drops the doll, who rolls under the couch.
She grabs the doll and puts it in the fireplace. “I’m gonna make you talk!” He talks. Oh boy, does he talk. And punches. And bites. This is the first time we actually see him move for real— everything else was off-screen. He gets away.
Karen goes to Norris and tells him that Andy has been telling the truth. Now he thinks she’s delusional too. She goes to find the peddler who sold her the doll, and with Norris’s help, he admits he got it from the burned-out toy store, which rings a bell in Norris’s mind. The two talk about Charles Lee Ray. If Chucky killed Eddie, then that means that Norris is next. But he’s still not convinced
Norris drops Karen off and is attacked in his car by Chucky. He burns Chucky’s face with a cigarette lighter before crashing. Norris believes the story now. He shoots Chucky in the shoulder, but then the doll runs off.
Norris catches up with Karen, and they go after John, the man who taught Charles Lee Ray his voodoo tricks.
Chucky gets to John first and complains that when he got shot, he bled, and it hurt, but he’s made of plastic, so that shouldn’t happen. John says that the more time he spends in that body, the more human he will become. John calls Chucky an abomination, but Chucky’s got a voodoo doll of John, and he uses it to get the solution out of him. John says that Chucky will have to transfer himself into the first person he let in on his secret— Andy.
Norris and Karen find John, who tells them what’s going on just before he dies. “His heart is almost human. It’s the only way to kill him.”
Andy’s at the prison psychiatric ward for observation, and he sees Chucky approaching outside. The doctor ignores the whining. Chucky steals the keys and enters Andy’s cell. Andy escapes the cell, there’s a chase, and the doctor catches up to him. Chucky kills the doctor with the shock treatment machine.
Andy escapes the hospital and runs home, but everyone else is not far behind. Chucky knocks Andy out and starts his mind-transference ritual. The lightning and thunder starts up, but Karen interrupts. There’s a ridiculous battle, but Karen eventually traps Chucky in the fireplace, and Andy sets him on fire. Chucky runs around the room, screaming and burning. He’s just a melted plastic shell when they finish.
They attend to Norris’s wounds, but Andy notices that Chucky’s body is gone. “Give me the boy, and I’ll let you live!” Karen shoots Chucky’s head off. And his arm. And a leg. He keeps on trying to reach them.
Norris’s partner arrives and checks out the doll pieces all over the place. He brings in Chucky’s head, but the body still tries to attack. Norris shoots Chucky in the heart, and blood splashes everywhere.
Everyone goes to the hospital, leaving Chucky-chunks where they landed.
Commentary
Although there’s some natural humor here, this was played pretty straight compared to the many sequels that were as much comedy as horror.
Decent child actors were few and far between in the 80s, but Alex Vincent, as Andy, does a really good job here. Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon are also excellent, taking this all very seriously.
This was all before CGI, so Chucky is a mixture of puppetry, stop-motion, little people, and child actors. It’s all just fake enough to make it look real, which is just perfect here. It holds up really well today.
Short Film: Satanic Panic ‘87 (2023)
• Directed by Bryan M Ferguson
• Written by Bryan M Ferguson
• Stars Arran Totten, Yuki Sutton, Amy Clydesdale, Yoshie Campbell
• Run Time: 3:44
• Watch it:
Synopsis
Two teenagers watch a workout video in the 80s. This video, instead of getting them fit, is about how to open a doorway to Hell itself. It’s all going great until bossy old Granny wants them to turn off the TV and look for her missing cat…
Commentary
Wow. Very funny, very well done, and extremely short.
“Aerobicize for Satan!”
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
• Directed by Wes Craven
• Written by Wade Davis, Richard Maxwell, Adam Rodman
• Stars Bill Pullman, Cathay Tyson, Zakes Mokae
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a bit low-key. It’s inspired by true events, and they beefed things up from reality like they generally do in such movies, but not enough. It’s beyond a documentary but very tame as a horror movie.
Synopsis
In the legends of voodoo, the Serpent is the symbol of Earth. The Rainbow is a symbol of Heaven. Between the two, all creatures must live and die. But because he has a soul, Man can be trapped in a terrible place where death is only the beginning.
We begin in Haiti, in 1978. We watch a group of men carrying a child-sized coffin. They set it on fire in the middle of the street.
Elsewhere, a man dies and has a funeral. Dargent Peytraud is there, watching the man be buried. The dead man sheds a tear as they bury him.
Dr. Dennis Alan, a Harvard anthropologist, lands in his helicopter. He’s there to see a shaman for an interview. The old shaman makes him drink a potion. He wakes up being chased by a jaguar in the jungle— it just wants belly rubs. The shaman laughs as Alan rolls around, completely alone. Then dead men pull Alan down into the ground.
He eventually wakes up, sober, but he’s completely alone. He goes back to the helicopter, but the pilot is dead.
He gets home to Boston and meets Cassedy, the head of a pharmaceutical company. Cassedy asks what he knows about zombification. Turns out, Alan brought back drug samples they’d never seen before. They show him the man we saw buried earlier, Christophe, but that was seven years ago, and he’s been seen recently, walking around. He’s a zombie, and Cassedy wants to know how it’s done.
Cassedy thinks it’s a totally new kind of anesthesia. He wants Alan to return and get some of that to duplicate and sell.
Alan heads back to Haiti and meets Dr. Duchamp. Duchamp shows him Margrite, a woman who “died” fifteen years ago. She also takes him to see Lucien Celine, a high voodoo priest. Alan sees Peytraud and recognizes him from his vision— a black magician and chief of the secret police.
They go to a cemetery that night and interrupt some grave robbers. Alan accuses Duchamp of scamming him for money. Then they run into Christophe, the talking zombie. He recounts his own funeral and something about poison that goes through the skin.
Lucien warns them to stay out of all this; it’s too dangerous. Duchamp wants him to tell the name of the man who makes the “magic powder.” The man they talk to, Mozart, next wants $500 for the magic powder. He demonstrates his powder on a goat, which soon falls over, dead. Alan promises to pay for the powder tomorrow when the goat gets up again.
Alan has a nightmare that evening, and the following day, he and Dr. Duchamp have sex in a cave.
The government suddenly declares martial law, and everything gets very militaristic. Duchamp says that Christophe had spoken out for freedom, and the government didn’t like it, so they made an example out of him.
Alan gets called into the police station and talks to Peytraud. He warns Alan that Duchamp is a radical, as is Christophe. Peytraud knows all about Alan’s activities, but Alan plays dumb. As torture sounds come out of the back room, Peytraud threatens him.
They go to Mozart in the morning, and Alan calls him an idiot - he knows the revived goat is a different one. He drinks the entire bottle of the drug, which is fake. No, he switched bottles at the last minute; he didn’t really take the drug, which is probably just some common poison. Mozart comes out and says he can make the real powder, but there are some rules— Alan must help make the powder.
Mozart, Alan, and Duchamp go to the cemetery that night. Alan digs up the body of a dead witch.
The police attack and take Alan prisoner. He wakes up strapped to a chair, and Peytraud prepares to torture him. Then he does torture him before dumping him on the road.
That night, they continue to make the “magic” powder. The process will take another night. Mozart also warns Alan about Peytraud’s revenge.
That night, Alan dreams of being buried alive, and when he wakes up, A woman’s in bed with him, beheaded. He’s arrested again. Peytraud knows exactly what Alan dreamed last night.
The police march Alan onto a plane at gunpoint. Mozart gets onto the plane and gives him the jar of magic powder.
Back in Boston, Alan and Cassedy analyze the drug, and it’s pretty amazing. The powder makes a person appear dead for twelve hours, but then they wake up. They want to call it “Zombinol.”
Alan tells his boss that he can’t get through to Duchamp on the phone, so something must be wrong. He’s warned to stay away, but he still has creepy hallucinations. Cassedy’s wife attacks Alan and goes into convulsions, but she had nothing to do with any of this.
Alan goes back to Haiti. “He’s going to get me wherever I am,” he says. Lucien grabs him from the airport; he’s been hiding and protecting Duchamp. Peytraud does a spell somewhere, and Lucien dies painfully. He also has Mozart beheaded. Someone spits the yellow powder on Alan, who soon falls down.
“Don’t let them bury me; I’m not dead!”
He hears and sees everything as the doctor pronounces him dead. Peytraud tells the doctor that he’s made all the arrangements. He puts a tarantula in the coffin before sealing it up and burying it.
Sometime later, we hear Alan wake up in the coffin and scream. Christophe, of all people, digs him up.
There are radio reports of revolution, and the dictator has fled the country. Alan staggers into town as Duchamp is being executed. When Peytraud hears the people outside revolting, he commands Alan to come to him.
Duchamp smashes the container that holds Lucien’s soul, and Peytraud starts seeing a jaguar chasing him until he bursts out in flames and dies.
Suddenly, Peytraud jumps through the wall and fights Alan one more time. His own torture chamber chair eventually attacks him and pulls him down to Hell. Or that’s what Alan saw in his mind anyway.
Commentary
I watched this when it first hit theaters, and it was marketed as a zombie movie; I was sorely disappointed. This time around, I knew what it was going to be about.
It’s more of a drama with some horror-like nightmares. There are no real zombies here, as it’s based on a nonfiction book. There’s a small bit of magic, but nothing that couldn’t be explained non-magically with hallucinations.
It’s too realistic to be a fun horror film, and too magical/factionalized to be a documentary. It’s well-made and well-acted, but it leaves a lot to be desired as a horror film.
Waxwork (1988)
• Directed by Anthony Hickox
• Written by Anthony Hickox
• Stars Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Jennifer Bassey
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s got a lot of humor and silliness mixed with horror. And it’s almost like an anthology with little sub-stories as people are pulled into the exhibits. It’s got stuff going for it, not quite great, but entertaining - more so for Horror Guy Kevin than for Horror Guy Brian. A moderate thumbs-up overall.
Synopsis
It’s a dark and stormy night at the big old house. The owner’s head is set on fire, and all his valuables are stolen.
Mark and his wealthy mother talk about “us and them.” They also mention that some people have recently gone missing in town. She’s a snob. He’s a college student, but she won’t allow him to have caffeine until he’s all grown up. The butler sneaks him coffee and a cigarette.
Sarah and China talk about boys. Suddenly, they notice a waxwork exhibit. They’ve never seen it before. The man outside is very strange, and he invites them to a private showing at midnight, and they can bring up to six friends. Then he vanishes.
Mark rushes to class, and it looks like his history teacher is a Nazi. Sarah tells Mark, Tony, Gemma, and a few others about the waxworks, and they all want to go see it. They go there at midnight, right there in the residential neighborhood, a very strange location.
A little person named Junior opens the door and lets them in. The inner doors open, and they go into the museum. All the wax figures look surprisingly real here.
Tony accidentally drops his lighter into a display and steps through a portal— he’s got long hair and is in the woods now. He wonders if it’s hypnosis or holograms. He walks up to the big house, and someone inside tells him to go away. He goes inside and talks to an angry man who turns into a werewolf.
The werewolf bites him, and then two men come in with a gun and silver bullets. Tony soon starts to turn as well, and the old man with the gun shoots them both. Back in the museum, Mark walks right past the werewolf exhibit.
China steps up into the Dracula exhibit, and the portal gets her as well. Dracula’s in his castle, throwing a dinner party. He serves China some raw meat in blood sauce. She takes a bite, and everyone else at the table slurps their bloody meat. Afterward, she is sent to her room, and she wonders about the intense dream she’s having.
Stefan, Dracula’s son, comes in and tries to bite her. She runs downstairs straight into a cell where a man named Charles tells her about vampires. She uses a cross to make him explode. She tries to get away but runs right into Dracula. Chomp! Back in the waxwork, Mark notices Tony is gone.
Sarah checks out the Marquis de Sade’s display with interest. Mark wants to leave since he can’t find Tony or China. Junior says they left a little earlier.
A football player comes into the waxworks, and the proprietor pushes him into the Phantom of the Opera display. He’s aghast that they made a movie about that.
Mark likes Sarah, and Sarah likes Mark, but she’s playing hard to get. They both go home.
Mark calls China and Tony’s families in the morning, but neither of them came home last night. He goes to the police, and Inspector Roberts says thirteen people have gone missing in the past two weeks.
Roberts and Mark go back to the waxwork to investigate. The proprietor lets them in, but he doubts the missing teens visited the place yet since they aren’t even open yet. The detective looks around, but there’s nothing there to see, so they leave.
Roberts returns and sneaks in again later. He looks at the victim in the Dracula display and takes a big chunk of the face of the wax statue that looks like China as a sample. He steps into an Egyptian display and helps a man to open a mummy’s tomb. Now he’s part of one of the stories. The old professor there reads a scroll with a curse on it.
Sarah opens a book on the Marquis de Sade in Mark’s attic. Things get all weird, but then Mark interrupts her with details of his grandfather’s mysterious death. Mr. Lincoln, the grandfather’s assistant, went missing at that time. Lincoln is the same man who runs the waxworks today. Meanwhile, the mummy in the Egyptian display wakes up and kills everyone in the tomb.
Mark and Sarah go to see Sir Wilfred, and they tell him the story so far. He says that Mark’s grandfather collected 18 horror trinkets, all of which were stolen 40 years ago by Mr. Lincoln, who sold his own soul to the devil. Lincoln has created whole environments for his victims— all eighteen of them. Once he gets all of them, the dead shall rise and consume all things. They have to burn the waxworks.
Mark and Sarah return to the museum to set the displays on fire. Sarah steps into the Marquis de Sade display. He chains Sarah up and prepares to whip her, but she’s really into that.
Meanwhile, Mark has stepped into black-and-white land, and the zombies are coming for him. He jumps back through the portal and ends up in deSadeland. He breaks in to release Sarah, who doesn’t really want to be released. He demonstrates to the Marquis that he can’t be hurt because he knows this all isn’t real. Sarah gives in and goes with Mark back to the real world.
The bad guys in the museum grab Mark and Sarah as a young couple come in to check out the displays. They soon disappear into the displays and are killed.
“Live, my children. Live,” says Lincoln. The displays all come to life. The werewolf, Dracula, the Marquis, Jack the Ripper, Frankenstein, Mummy, and all the others.
Suddenly, Sir Wilfred comes in with Mark’s butler and others. He gives everyone swords, and they battle the monsters. China comes to Mark, and she apologizes, but she’s a vampire now and tries to bite him.
It comes down to Mark vs. The Marquis fencing and Lincoln watches. The Marquis loses, but Lincoln’s got a gun. Lincoln is the guy who killed Mark’s grandfather and stole his 18 trinkets. Wilfred shoots Lincoln in the back, and he falls into a vat of wax because, of course, someone would have to fall into that open vat of wax.
The fire spreads throughout the waxworks, and the young couple are the only ones who escape.
Commentary
The editing and cinematography are absolutely terrible, and the acting from most of the “teens” is equally bad.
The werewolf costume isn’t terrible. The mummy segment is pretty short, but he looks good, being suitably slimy under the wrappings. All the monsters at the end look pretty decent, but the big climactic battle at the end was pretty bad. It looked like a long saloon fight from a cheap Western.
It’s got all the usual horror tropes, but it’s also got a ton of comedy, some of which is very good and some that falls flat. It’s entertaining, but a little too silly for my taste.
Friday the 13th Part VII The New Blood (1988)
• Directed by John Carl Buechler
• Written by Daryl Haney, Manuel Fidello, Sean S. Cunningham
• Stars Terry Kiser, Jennifer Banko, John Otrin
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
What? Jason killed but brought back again? Impossible. Nope. They find a way. They tried shaking things up a bit with a psychic element, but it’s basically more of the same. If you’re a fan of the series, this one is a worthy effort, mostly just Jason picking off his victims.
Synopsis
We are told of a death curse on Crystal Lake and a dead killer who isn’t dead. We get a quick recap of the story so far with a murder montage. This all ends with Jason being trapped and chained at the bottom of the lake. Credits roll.
We resume with Jason, still chained to a rock from where they left him. Tina listens to her abusive, drunken father and runs outside to take a boat out into the lake. “I hate you! I wish you were dead.” With the power of hatred alone, the dock collapses, and her father falls into the lake and dies.
She wakes up, much older, in her mother’s car— that was a dream/flashback. Her mother is taking her to Dr. Crews and says she hopes she doesn’t have to go back to the hospital. They go to the same house on the lake where her father died.
Nick, a helpful guy in short shorts, helps Tina with her spilled luggage. Melissa and Sandra, two other girls there, start off being jealous of Tina.
Inside, Dr. Crews wants Tina to move a matchbook with her mind. He records the experiment, but she can’t do it consciously. He gets her angry, and she does it. He stirs her up, and the matchbook explodes.
Tina still has a lot of guilt about killing her father with her telekinesis. She talks to the water where her father died, wishing he was alive, and Jason wakes up. She may or may not have helped Jason escape telekinetically, but she faints. Jason walks out of the lake, and her mother and Crews find her shortly thereafter.
A couple, Michael and Jane, driving on the road, break down and decide to camp where they are. Jason, halfway rotten and decomposing, kills them both easily.
Nick takes Tina to Michael’s birthday party at the cabin next door, and there’s a motley collection of teen stereotypes there. What could happen? Tina gets a flashback or a premonition or something and runs home to tell her mother. Dr. Crews thinks it’s all a delusion.
Jason finds a camper in a sleeping bag and slams her into a tree, inside the bag, smooshing her up pretty badly.
At the birthday group, they all wonder where Michael is. It’s his party, and he’s late. Nick and Tina get closer, but Melissa stalks them and overhears too much. Later, Tina makes Melissa’s pearl necklace break.
Tina goes home and argues with Dr. Crews, and she mentally throws a TV at him. She tells Nick that something is really wrong here. Meanwhile, Jason beheads Russell and drowns his girlfriend. Dr. Crews goes out for a walk and finds one of the girl’s bodies. At the same time, Tina’s mother goes through Crews’s desk and finds that he’s not interested in helping Tina; he wants to exploit her powers. Tina overhears them arguing and runs off.
Maddy loses an earring in the woods and finds another body. She screams and runs right into Jason.
Crews and Tina’s mother find Tina’s car and run into the woods looking for her. Nick and Tina find some of the bodies and rush back to the cabin.
At least three naked couples are having sex (separately), and Jason kills them all, one by one, in various creative ways.
Tine gets a pistol out of Crews’s desk as well as a scrapbook of all the news reports about Jason Vorhees. Crews knows all about him, too. Tina gets upset, and it’s like an earthquake in the office.
Tina’s mother and Dr. Crews argue in the woods and encounter Jason. He chases them both, but Crews “gives” the woman to Jason.
Nick returns to the cabin and finds Melissa, who doesn’t believe there are dead bodies in the house. Tina goes out to the woods and finds Crews, who lies about where her mother is. Out of nowhere, Jason starts charging Crews with a bladed weed-wacker, and he soon catches him.
Tina finds her mother’s body and quickly tracks Jason and all the bodies down.
As expected, Tina and Jason soon face each other off. The ground starts to shake beneath his feet, and the trees attack him. He’s then electrocuted. Shockingly, that doesn’t stop him. She slows him down with her powers and then drops the whole house on him.
Tina runs next door to Nick and Melissa. Melissa doesn’t believe any of the story and goes back to bed. She soon gets what’s coming to her. Tina and Nick run upstairs, but then Tina fights Jason more with her mind.
She tears his mask off and strangles him with an electrical cable. Then she drops him in the cellar, which still isn’t enough. Finally, she douses him with gas and sets him on fire. The whole house burns down and explodes excessively.
Naturally, Jason comes back for more out on the dock. Tina concentrates, and her long-dead father comes up out of the lake and pulls Jason down with him.
In the morning, Tina and Nick ride away in an ambulance.
Commentary
Jason uses power tools now? Did they never scrape the dead father’s body out of the lake a decade ago? Why not? It wasn’t a secret.
Jason shows a lot of exposed bones in this one, especially where his mask is torn away over his decomposed cheek and where the shirt on his back has rotted. We also get a really good shot of Jason’s bare, exposed face at the end.
It’s not exactly bad, but there’s nothing new or innovative. This was the same year as “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors,” so they may have been trying to copy that somehow with the telekinetic girl. Other than that, it’s more of the same.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1988)
• Directed by Chuck Russell
• Written by Wes Craven, Bruce Wagner, Frank Darabont
• Stars Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Craig Wasson
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
• Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a good sequel that brings Nancy back from the first movie and a slew of new characters. And Freddy, of course. It’s got quite a bit of dark humor, good action, and excellent special effects. It’s a win.
Synopsis
We watch Kristen make a house out of paper mache. She stops to eat a spoonful of instant coffee powder. She’s trying really hard not to go to sleep. She tells her mother that she’s still having those nightmares.
She reluctantly goes to bed, and we hear a familiar nursery rhyme. Her dream is of a bunch of children playing in front of what looks like a haunted house. She goes inside, and the little girl says, “Freddy’s home.” Freddy chases her through the dark house, but she wakes up. She goes into the bathroom, and the fixtures attack her and cut her wrist. Her mother opens the bathroom door to find that Kristen has cut her wrist with a razor blade.
Max and Dr. Neil Gordon talk about all the recent suicides in town. They work at the mental hospital. He talks to Dr. Simm about the new intern. Kristen arrives, and she throws a fit when they try to sedate her. The new intern turns out to be Nancy Thompson from the first film. She knows the rhyme that Kirsten keeps repeating.
Nancy and Neil talk about the group of patients with nightmares. He says that they’ll do just about anything to keep from going to sleep. She meets Phillip, a patient who makes puppets, and his roommate Kincaid. Joey’s another patient.
Nancy goes to Kristen’s house, and she recognizes the paper mache house as the one she used to live in. Kristen has another dream, where a big Freddy-faced snake tries to eat her. Suddenly, Nancy is in the dream with her, and she fights off Freddy.
The next day, Nancy asks Kristen if she’s always been able to pull people into her dreams. There’s a group support session where we meet some more patients, including Will, Jennifer, and Taryn. Supposedly, they’re all part of a group psychosis. Dr. Simms believes these are all standard dreams that teenagers everywhere have, but Nancy obviously disagrees.
That night, one of Phillip’s puppets turns into Freddy and plays Phillip like a marionette. He walks him up to the tower, and Freddy makes him fall to his death.
The next day, they all talk about it during the group session. Dr. Simms thinks it was a sleepwalking accident; Neil thinks it was suicide. Everyone else in the group knows what really happened. Simms decides that from here on, everyone will be sedated and locked in their rooms at night. Neil wants to prescribe Hypnocil, a dream suppressant.
That night, Kincaid’s in solitary. Jennifer burns herself with cigarettes to try to keep awake and watches talk shows on TV— until the TV eats her head with Freddy’s help.
At the funeral, Neil talks to a nun. She says, “The unquiet spirit must be laid to rest. It is an abomination to God and to man.” The nun has that habit of vanishing when he looks away from her.
Neil and Nancy have dinner, and she tells him the truth. The next day, he gets the sleep-disorder patients together and has Nancy explain it all to them. They try a group hypnosis project, and she wants Kristen to take them all into dreamland together.
They didn't think it worked at first, but it did. In the dream, Will can walk, Kristen’s an acrobat. Kincaid is super-strong. Taryn gets spiky hair and knives. Joey has sex with a nurse, but he still can’t speak. No— that’s no nurse; it’s a tongue monster! It’s actually Freddy. “What’s wrong, Joey, feeling tongue-tied?”
Dr. Simms opens the door and finds everyone asleep, but Joey’s in a deep coma. The hospital administrator fires Neil and Nancy. Neil talks to the nun again, and this time, she says, “This is where it began.” This closed-up wing held the criminally insane but was shut down in the 40s. A girl was accidentally locked in with the inmates for days and was raped hundreds of times. Amanda Krueger gave birth to “the bastard son of a hundred maniacs,” Freddy Krueger. She tells Neil to find his remains and bury them in hallowed ground.
Nancy tells Neil that only one man knows where Freddy’s body was hidden. They go to see her father, Lt. Saxon, who’s now a major alcoholic and isn’t much help. Neil gets forceful about it after Nancy returns to the hospital to help Kristen, who’s been sedated and locked in solitary.
Neil and Thompson stop at a church and steal some holy water and a cross. They go to the junkyard where Thompson hid the body years ago.
At the hospital, Nancy talks the other kids into going into Kristen’s dream to help fight Freddy. All the characters are together again in dreamland, and Freddy wastes no time slicing up the walls.
Each kid has to go up against Freddy one at a time. Kristen jumps through a window. Taryn has a knife fight with him, but he injects her full of drugs. Will can walk and do magic, but Freddy forces him into the wheelchair from Hell and then stabs him with his fingers.
Nancy, Kristen, and Kincaid explore the dream dungeon. Kristen fights Freddy while the others rescue Joey.
Out in the real world, Thompson and Neil dig a grave for Freddy’s bones. All the “dead” cars return to life and make a racket. Freddy’s skeleton animates and tries to kill them. He impales and kills Thompson.
Freddy gets the upper hand in Dreamworld, but Joey screams and drives him off. His voice is his dream power. Nancy gets a vision of her now-dead father, and he apologizes for the things he’s done, but then he turns into Freddy and stabs her. She makes him stab himself, which he doesn’t like.
Outside, Neil drops the bones into the grave and sprays holy water on them. In the dream world, Freddy gets covered in holes and then vanishes.
Not long after, there’s another big funeral, this time for Nancy. Neil sees the nun in the cemetery and follows her to the grave of Amanda Krueger— she was Freddy’s mother.
Commentary
Neil is a really bad doctor. Who would really go along with all that?
It’s got a lot of good characters, and each one is a unique stereotype, but it’s also a bit of a superhero movie, so that works out. The special effects are better than ever.
It wrapped up several loose ends from the first film and introduced new characters that could be used later.
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