Pearl, All Hallow's Eve, Terrifier, and Terrifier 2
Pearl, All Hallow's Eve, Terrifier, and Terrifier 2
Weekly Horror Bulletin Newsletter 198
We've got four more hot new horror films this week. We'll start out with the prequel to the hit movie "X," called "Pearl." Then we'll switch over and watch all three "Art The Clown" movies, the original anthology "All Hallow's Eve," and then the more Art-centric Terrifier movies.
In the Bonus reviews this week, over at http://horrorbulletin.com, We've got:
"The Skull" from 1965
"Island of Terror" from 1965
Three years ago this week...
As a new feature of the podcast, we're going to start revisiting past shows and adding our recent thoughts about those old films. THREE YEARS AGO this week, on episode 46, we looked at: "Secret of the Blue Room," "Captain Clegg/Night Creatures," "A Serbian Film," and "Thirst/Bakjwi," and they're all fun in their own way.
Listen to that old episode here: https://www.horrorguys.com/hg046/
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Pearl (2022)
Directed by Ti West
Written by Ti West, Mia Goth
Stars Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland
Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a prequel to the excellent “X” that came out earlier this year, showing us how Pearl came to be the kind of person she was as an old woman in that film. Here it’s 1918, and a young woman is coming of age. She has hopes and dreams and a vivid imagination. But she’s not quite right, and her circumstances start twisting her up worse. It’s a slow starter but builds nicely with a horrifying climax.
From the publisher:
A24 & Lionsgate welcome you back to Ti West's horrifying world of X with the blood soaked & unforgettable origin story, PEARL. Mia Goth delivers one of the best performances of the year as the iconic villain, Pearl. Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, own PEARL now on Blu-ray & Digital. Rated R.
Synopsis
We start off in an idyllic farm location, and you can tell by the style of the credits that we’re in a “classic era.” We watch young Pearl dancing in front of her mirror– until her grouchy mother comes in and complains about her wearing her dresses. Mother sends her outside to feed the farm animals. Pearl tells Charlie the cow that one day she’ll leave this place and be famous. She talks to her cows like they’re her audience, and then she kills the goose with a pitchfork. She feeds the dead goose to her alligator out in the pond. Credits roll.
It’s 1918. Mother Ruth tells Pearl to quit dancing, as it’s selfish. Pearl’s father is in a wheelchair and mostly unconscious. He can’t talk or really move at all. She has to feed her father. Pearl has a letter from the trenches in France from her husband Howard. Spanish Influenza is rampant, and her mother warns her to wear a mask.
Pearl goes to town to buy some liquid morphine for her father. She goes to the movies to watch the news and drinks a big swig of the medicine. On the way out, she meets the projectionist. He gives her a frame from the film she just saw. She loses the frame in the wind and can’t find it again. As she searches, she finds a creepy scarecrow in the cornfield. She cuts it down and dances with it. She kisses it with a lot of tongue for added creepiness. After the kissing, there’s–more.
She gets home, and Mother says she has to change Father– he’s made a mess. We see that Mother is not much fun at all, and she does all she can to bring Pearl down.
Mitzi comes for a visit. She’s Howard’s sister, and she doesn’t approve of him going off to war. Mitzi mentions that there’s an audition for dancers this Friday at the church. They plan to go together.
That night, she dresses up and sneaks out to head to the theater and talk to the projectionist. He shows her a film he picked out just for her. He picked it up in France and says no one has seen it. It’s a full-on porno film from 1915. He that’s that it’s legal to do, but not legal to film. Not yet. He accurately predicts the future of porn. He fills her head with ideas of leaving her parents and that she might not get a second chance. “If only they would just die,” she says. Oops, said that out loud.
She takes Father out to the alligator pond and calls the big creature over. She parks the wheelchair right next to the end of the dock. She gives him a “This is no way to live” speech, but just then, her mother approaches and says they need to go back to the house. On the way home, she finds a nest full of alligator eggs.
Pearl and her mother argue about the dance audition. “You can’t keep your true self secret forever,” says her mother. We see that her mother is just a little bitter about her life. Before long, Mother catches fire and ends up locked in the basement.
Pearl goes to see the projectionist, and she no longer cares about being married to Howard. She wakes up in the middle of the night and runs off to practice for the audition. He drives her home to meet her father. The projectionist, who never really gets named, hears thumping coming from the basement door. He soon finds that things aren’t as clean-cut as they appeared at first. “I’d better be getting back,” he soon says. She knows there’s something wrong, but he denies it. She freaks out and kills him with a pitchfork.
It’s time for the audition, so she dresses up and smothers her father. She dumps the projectionist’s body in the swamp with the alligator, car and all. At the audition, she runs into Mitsy, and they talk about things.
It’s finally Pearl’s turn. The judges are scary. The stage is scary. It’s all very dark and serious-looking. The music starts, and Pearl does her dance. She imagines herself in a big show-tune number with a lot of background action, and she does really well. “Thank you, but it’s gonna be a ‘no’,” says the judge. She’s just not what they were looking for. “I’m a star!” she screams as they drag her off the stage.
Afterward, Mitsy tries to console the screaming, overwrought Pearl. She takes her home and wonders where Pearl’s mother is. Pearl wonders if there’s something wrong with her; “There’s something missing in me that the rest of the world has.” Mitsy says she should practice what she wants to say to Howard by telling her.
She gives a long monologue about her entire life and state of mind. That goes badly. Really badly. Too much information!
“I should probably get going now,” says Mitsy. Mitsy admits that she got the part in the dance. Pearl then chases Mitsy with an ax. That is going to be one fat alligator.
Pearl goes down to the basement to check on her mother. She sets up a very creepy dinner for her dead parents.
Time passes. A military truck drops off Howard at the farm. The war is over, and he’s home! He comes inside to find rotting corpses and moldy food. At least Pearl is there, smiling at his return. She just keeps on smiling. And smiling. And smiling.
Commentary
It’s very colorful. Supposedly Ti West had Wizard of Oz as one of the influences for this, and it’s pretty obviously the case. There are a couple of pandemic and mask references, which are fun. They were dealing with that in 1918.
It’s all good, but it does take a really long time to get going. Mia Goth, as Pearl, stands out with her acting far more than she did in the first film. She’s a nice little sociopathic farm girl with no regrets.
It was really good!
All Hallow's Eve (2013)
Directed by Damien Leone
Written by Damien Leone
Stars Katie Maguire, Catherine A. Callahan
Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
An anthology of tales, and Art the Clown makes his debut. It’s clearly a low-budget indie, but it’s overall very good and well worth the watch.
Synopsis
It’s Halloween. Tia and Timmy argue with Sarah the babysitter about bedtime and candy. The boy finds a videotape in his trick-or-treat bag. Both kids want to watch the tape. The tape has a weird clown and some scary location shots. Then the story starts.
A woman sits alone in a train station on Halloween night. She sees the clown from earlier, but he doesn’t say anything. He honks a horn and does annoying mime stuff. Then he injects her with something, and she hallucinates some weird stuff before she passes out.
Casey wakes up chained in the dark. There are three women there; “This is where he keeps us,” one explains. Sara and Kristen are the other two girls. Suddenly, Sara gets pulled away, most likely to her death. Next, a mutated monster (Toxic Avenger?) grabs Kristen and cuts her arm off.
Casey breaks her chain with a rock and runs into the tunnels. She runs into a hobo and the next thing she knows, she’s tied up and surrounded by cultists. There’s a pregnant woman there, and one of the cultists cuts the baby out of her. The cultists tear her clothes off and Satan walks in to have sex with her…
Sarah turns off the TV and sends Timmy and Tia to bed; she says that was too grown up for them. Sarah tells Tia that monsters don’t exist; Tia says the clown could be real, like a serial killer. Later, Sarah puts the tape back in and watches some more of it.
The tape starts up again. Catherine is at home unpacking boxes at her new house. Her husband John is an artist. She’s creeped out by his latest painting, an ugly face that John doesn’t remember painting. Later, the power goes out and her phone stops working. Her car is dead too.
She thinks something landed near the house. John calls, and he says to call the police. Then the phone cuts out again. Yes, it turns out there are aliens in her house. There is some cat-and-mouse hide-and-seek, and as it finally gets her, she unveils John’s painting– it’s the clown from the first segment.
Sarah thinks she sees something in the house, and she gets a little paranoid. Then she goes downstairs to finish that tape…
A woman drives alone at night on Halloween. She stops in at the last-chance gas station where she finds the attendant yelling at the clown we saw earlier. The attendant goes inside, leaving her alone outside. She goes inside and finds the clown sawing the attendant into little pieces.
She jumps in the car and drives away. Then a few miles down the road, she sees the clown on the side of the road and crashes. She drives away again but stops when she finds another crashed car; inside is a horribly wounded woman.
When the clown appears in the back seat, she gets out of the car and runs through the woods. She hides out in a barn, but the clown tunnels his way inside. She turns the tables on him and stabs him several times.
She runs outside and flags down a car. The clown drives up next to them and then the clown shoots the driver. She wakes up in the clown’s lair, and that’s really bad- he’s amputated all her limbs.
Sarah turns off the VCR. Then she gets a phone call from the woman in the previous segment of the video phoning for help. The TV comes back on and she sees the clown again. He walks over to the camera and looks right at Sarah and waves. Then she sees herself on TV with the clown sitting right behind her. She breaks the videotape.
That doesn’t help the two dead kids upstairs though. Good luck explaining that when the parents get home…
Commentary
Art the Clown would, of course, soon reappear in both “Terrifier” (2016) and “Terrifier 2” (2022) as his own thing, but here, he’s just a character in an anthology.
The segment with the alien is pretty basic and simple, but the other parts were really good, in a low-budget kind of way. Actually, the first and third segments were filmed years prior to the second tale and the wraparound story.
It’s very cheap looking and the middle segment is really weak, but overall, I liked it.
Short Film: AirBNB (2022)
Directed by Alex Magaña
Written by Alex Magaña
Stars Ashley BeLoat, Becky Bush, Wessam Eldein
Run Time: 4:55
Watch it:
Synopsis
Amanda and Melanie stop in at their new rental place, and they’re impressed! Almost immediately, we see that they aren’t alone in the house. Or are they? The host seems nice though, he even left them a complimentary bottle of wine…
Commentary
It does look like a nice place to stay. Too bad about the psycho in the closet though.
It’s short, but the whole story is there. We don’t get a lot of backstory about the man, but do we really need that? The acting with the two girls is fine, the set looks good, and the situation is completely believable. It’s definitely worth a quick watch!
Terrifier (2016)
Directed by Damien Leone
Written by Damien Leone
Stars Jenna Kanell, Samantha Scaffidi, David Howard Thronton
Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We don’t really know anything at all about Art the clown. He clearly enjoys his work, but why? Don’t ask, just sit back and watch the over-the-top gore and blood effects. There are a lot of them and they are exceptionally graphic. The story is simple. People get killed by a crazy clown. It’s good, but almost too simple and one note.
Synopsis
We zoom in on an old TV where the mutilated woman from the previous film is the only survivor of that experience. Although Art the Clown has been declared dead, we see him putting on his face, packing up weapons, and getting ready for more action as the credits roll. Monica Brown is the interviewer from the show we just saw. The mutilated woman kills her in the dressing room and giggles
Dawn and Tara walk home after a Halloween party as Art approaches. They go into a pizza restaurant, and Art follows them. Dawn insists on taking a selfie with the creepy clown. Art gives Tara a ring from the gumball machine. The girls find that they have a flat tire. Tara calls her sister Victoria to come pick them up. Meanwhile, the guys in the pizza place clean up the mess Art made in the restroom– at least until Art returns for them.
Tara goes into a place to use the restroom while Dawn waits in the car. Dawn hears on the radio about the people at the pizza place being murdered, but she doesn’t get to tell anyone. Tara gets lost in the building and meets a weird cat lady with a doll for a baby and then runs into Art on the way out. She escapes into a garage and hides, but he catches her and cuts her leg.
Victoria hears about the pizzeria murders on the radio as she drives to pick up Tara and Dawn. The radio describes Art perfectly; there have been witnesses. Art catches Tara and injects her with something.
She wakes up tied to a chair. Dawn is there too, tied up upside-down. He hacksaws her in half– vertically– as Tara watches. Tara breaks loose and makes a run for it. She smacks him in the head with a board a few times, and then he simply shoots her when she has the upper hand.
The crazy cat woman arrives just in time to see Art finish off Tara. When she goes back to her baby, she finds that Art has taken it. She talks to Art like a gentle mother, and Art ends up sucking his thumb like a baby.
Victoria finally gets inside and finds both halves of Dawn hanging from the ceiling. She then finds the cat lady, Tara, and Art and ends up hiding. There is much running and screaming in the old factory. He catches Victoria and starts whipping her until Mike the exterminator comes to the rescue. He calls 911 and tells them everything.
Mike and Victoria head for the door to get outside. Mike doesn’t last much longer. The police arrive, and Art shoots himself in the head. He’s dead– right? They take Art and Mike to the coroner, with more bodies to come.
As the coroner opens the body bag, the lights go haywire, the phone rings, and the radio goes crazy. Art wakes up and kills the coroner.
One year later, Victoria finally gets out of the hospital after Art ate her face. She’s mutilated just like the woman in the opening sequence…
Commentary
Art the Clown (and director Damien Leone) must visit a lot of gas station restrooms, that’s all I’m saying on that. Art never speaks throughout the whole film; he’s basically a maniacal mime. The blood and gore effects are exceptional, very well done.
Art himself is interesting, but with no backstory or explanation at all, he’s maybe a little too mysterious, to the point of being one-dimensional. He uses guns, cars, and all manner of weapons, so he’s no Michael or Jason, but he certainly has an iconic look and attitude. Art as a character is a lot of fun; the movie itself is a fairly standard slasher film.
It’s not bad, but I’d have to say it’s overrated.
Terrifier 2 (2022)
Directed by Damien Leone
Written by Damien Leone
Stars David Howard Thornton, Jenna Kanell, Lauren LaVera
Run Time: 2 Hours, 18 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The gore is impressive, in its quantity and uniqueness. Art is just a clown having a good time doing what he does. And sometimes he’s funny doing it. This one doesn’t have a whole lot of story to spoil. A crazy killer kills. But it’s well made and well worth the watch if you’re into that sort of thing.
Synopsis
We begin in a dark alley. Art the Clown walks out of the fog. We see him killing the coroner at the end of the previous film. He writes “Art” in blood on the mirror. He pulls out the coroner’s eye and replaces the one he shot out in the previous film. He also takes the brain and some surgical supplies. Then he goes to the nearest laundromat and does his laundry– naked. The other laundromat patron doesn’t even look up. There’s a girl clown there that looks just like Art. They… mime at each other for a while. When the other laundry patron wakes up, we see that Art is really there alone. Credits roll.
We watch as Sienna gets her Halloween costume ready. She and her brother Jonathan argue about the appropriateness of his choice; he says he’s going as the Miles County Clown, who killed nine people last year. “You wouldn’t dress up like Jeffry Dahmer, would you?” (Clearly this was made before Halloween costumes went on sale this year). Sienna mentions that Jonathan is looking up serial killers; he’s a weird kid. Sienna is into costume design and cosplay. She has a sharp short sword in her room that totally isn’t obviously going to be used by someone later.
We cut to the “Clown Cafe,” a food truck that advertises on TV. It’s got an unusual jingle. Art the Clown is there, and the crowd loves him. Art gives Sienna a package to open. Inside is a beating heart. Then Art pulls out a machine gun and kills everyone. Then he sets the singer on fire. Of course, this is all just Sienna’s dream that night because she fell asleep watching the commercial. When she wakes up, her art supplies are on fire. Elsewhere, Art and his imaginary sidekick assemble weapons and get ready for the big night.
At school, Jonathan sees Art and the little girl playing with a dead possum; the police get involved and tell his mother. The principal thinks Jonathan was playing with the dead possum. Sienna tells her two friends about her dream and what happened. Sienna has to replace her burnt Halloween costume, so she goes to the costume shop and runs into Art there. She forgot her bag downstairs, but that’s OK, because Art brought it up for her. The costume shop guy is next on Art’s list.
Sienna and Jonathan talk; they’ve both seen that famous clown. They have their father’s notebook, and there are pictures in there of Art, and murder scenes from the first film. They talk about their father, who died one year ago tonight, on Halloween.
Sienna gets dressed for the Halloween party; she’s a warrior angel. Down the street, her friend Allie also gets ready, but then she finds Art the Clown in her kitchen. He cuts her eye out and skins her alive. Then he does some things that shouldn’t be physically possible, but are definitely fun to watch. If that wasn’t bad enough, he comes back with bleach and salt and rubs it in the wounds. Wow!
Art comes to the door and has the kids take candy out of Allie’s mother’s hollowed-out head.
At the Halloween party, there is dancing and more drinking than Sienna was prepared for. At home, Jonathan admires Sienna’s sword. Jonathan’s father was sick, reminds his mother; he didn’t know who he was. Not long after, she finds her car defaced in the garage; she blames Jonathan. Then she finds Art in the front seat, and he blows her head off with a shotgun.
Jonathan comes home to find what’s left of his mother in the kitchen. Art chases him down and injects him, and that never ends well. He also notices the cool sword in Sienna’s bedroom.
At the party, Sienna sees the little girl several times, but no one else does. Her friend Brooke gave her drugs, and she doesn’t react well. Then she gets a call from Jonathan to come and get him at the old carnival. “It’s not like this night could get any worse,” Brooke states jokingly. “Didn’t a little girl get murdered out here a couple of years ago?”
Brooke tells her boyfriend about Sienna’s father, who had a brain tumor, lost his mind, and killed himself. Jonathan texts that he’s stuck in “The Terrifier,” the old carnival’s haunted house attraction.
Jonathan, who hasn’t called or texted anyone, wakes up in Art’s lair and sees the little girl. Sienna comes to the haunted house and looks around. Outside, bad things happen to Brooke’s boyfriend, but Brooke runs for it. Art throws acid in her face and then goes at her with his homemade mace.
Sienna comes in and finds what’s left of Brooke. Jonathan is there too, and then Art comes in. Art beats up Sienna while Jonathan runs away. Jonathan doesn’t get too far before Art catches up and slices him a few times. Sienna gets Art from behind but doesn’t finish the job. Jonathan thinks that from his father’s journal that Sienna’s the only one who can stop Art.
Art catches up and whips them both excessively. Sienna gets angry and lets him have a taste of the same whip. She ends up impaling him in the skull. That’s gotta hurt!
Sienna passes out, and when she wakes up, she finds Art standing over Jonathan’s body. He stabs her with her own sword. Art then leaves to go wake up and torture Jonathan.
Suddenly, the sword glows with a magical light, and Sienna is brought back from the dead and healed. She climbs out of the pit she fell into, takes the sword and goes looking for Art. She soon finds him and stabs him in the back with the special sword. This time, she keeps at it until his head rolls.
Then they spot the little girl, who picks up Art’s head and laughs. Then she carries it away.
Commentary
These actors all look like high school students– Well, at least they were high school students 15 to 20 years ago. That sure was a well-lit abandoned carnival. People in Terrifier films all live way longer than they should considering the damage they take.
The way the kids’ father kept being brought up, I expected it to turn out that they were Art’s children. Then there was the missing girl, who also was mentioned a few times. What was up with the “magic” sword? That was also never properly explained.
The gore in this is really over the top, and there are even some things I’ve never seen done before, which is saying something. There are several laugh-out-loud moments, but not too many. Say what you want about Art, he enjoys his work!
I definitely liked it, although despite the ads and social media, neither of us died, vomited, or passed out. We did giggle maniacally a time or two, however, so that’s a win.
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