This is the time of year that really puts us in the spooky spirit. Like all of you, we love watching horror movies and content year-round, but October is something special and Halloween is the most special in that month. The last couple of years I’ve tried to pick something big to discuss either for horror in general or perhaps from one of horror’s biggest authors. Lately though I’ve been on a kick of looking up the opposite of what we do on this show. A reverse Uno card of a situation where instead of looking at the movie which is based on a book and their differences, I wanted to look at books that were written as tie-ins to their movie counterparts. There are a metric ton of these but as the trees change colors and all the Spirit stores inhabit long dead brick and mortar businesses, I wanted to look at the novelizations of the first 3 Halloween movies. Look out for voiceless shapes as we find out what happened to these adaptations.

As I said in the opening, this was, and kind of still is, a common practice. One of my favorite authors, and one that is fairly prolific, is Alan Dean Foster. Not only has he had a long list of stand-alone novels, but Foster also is one of the undisputed kings of the media tie-in. He wrote books based on Star Trek from the animated TV series to the original movie and the newer Abrams set of movies. He dabbled in the other major space fan base with books based on Star Wars and stayed in space while dipping his toes into horror with his novelizations of Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Covenant. He is relevant to today’s topic because he also wrote 3 books based on John Carpenter properties. While he didn’t do Halloween, he did do Starman, Dark Star, and The Thing. What’s great about these books and makes them so different is that they are based on the screenplay and not the final product. This can create wonderful instances of built-in change like when his write up of The Thing was based on a much earlier script. I highly recommend you seek that one and Escape from New York out, which was written by Mike McQuay.

Today’s novelizations were written by Curtis Richards, a nom de plume for Richard Curtis, for the first movie and Jack Martin which was a pseudonym for author Dennis Etchison for the other two. Man, these guys really didn’t want to be associated with these books, did they? These books, by the way, are now highly collectable and even though the original did get a reprint recently, the other two did not and if you want to seek all of them out, that’s wonderful. If not, they are available online for you to check out as the original authors or even companies aren’t exactly seeing any of money that these books go for and it’s kind of a lot. Richard Curtis, no, not the director of films such as Love Actually, is a literary agent and author, largely of non-fiction books about writing. His book is the only one that received a re-release recently and honestly, it’s the most different of the 3. Dennis Etchison passed in 2019 but also wrote the novelization of The Fog and was asked by Carpenter to write a script for Halloween 4 but Moustapha Akkad rejected it. Would have been interesting, as it focused on Lindsay and Tommy, but it was never to be. His final novelization would be for Videodrome, and I recommend you check out that and The Fog.

On to the movies and their books. Halloween is the gold standard and will never be topped both for slashers and inside its own series. It follows the night HE came home and broadly, is the story of Michael Myers, years after killing his sister on Halloween night, escaping the mental hospital that he was in and coming back home. He ends up stalking Laurie Strode and her friends and kills all of them, with the survivors being Laurie, Tommy and Lindsay, and Michael’s doctor Loomis, who wants him locked up forever. Lynda, Annie, and Bob are all killed and although Michael is shot out of a window by Loomis, he is nowhere to be found, and the Boogeyman is still out on the prowl.

The book is short compared to standard novels at 166 pages but not so short compared to these movie tie-ins of the time that were akin to the Giallo or yellow paperbacks in Italy that the genre of horror takes its name from, or even the dime store Western paperbacks available for purchase at every gas station in America at one time. Those 166 pages, though, do their best to be different and of the 3, Halloween has the most to offer in terms of differences. I’m looking forward to going over it and have no intention of having restraints on spoilers, so if you want to experience it for yourself first, pause and read, then come on back. First the minor differences. Names are changed here and there with Laurie’s dad being named Chester instead of Mason, Judith’s boyfriend actually has a name in Danny, and some other last names and street names are changed. Finally, in a cool touch, when Tommy sees Michael carrying Annie’s body. it is Creature from the Black Lagoon that is playing on the TV instead of The Thing from Another World. Carpenter would go on to remake The Thing but was supposed to remake Creature at some point too.

The same characters die in the book version, but it happens in a more graphic manner. Lynda is strangled in the movie and Annie has her throat slashed but both are gutted in the book, and the mangled bodies are far more messed up on the page. While those changes do add some spice to the book if you’ve seen the movie a couple dozen times, the big changes really reshape the story. If its better or worse comes down to how you feel about Myers being explained more. The book is 15 chapters and while the last 11 chapters chronicle the main story of the movie, those first 4 chapters go off the rails and makes me wonder if Rob Zombie was a fan of the book growing up. Loomis is revealed to have a wife and child in the novel. This doesn’t change Loomis as much and he is just as voracious in his belief about Michael on page as he is in screen but wait, there’s more. Those first 4 chapters give us insight into the why as well.

The book starts all the way back at the origins of the Druid festival of Samhain and how it created a killer. This killer is somehow related to Michael and the impulses are passed down. We get to interact with a 6-year-old Michael, who speaks with his grandmother about voices in his head telling him to do things and hear these voices again when he is about to kill his sister. We do get him talking a few times which is a very polarizing thing. After the murder, the judge puts him in the psychiatric hospital under the care of Loomis just like in the movie, but we get a lot more of that experience too. Myers becomes the boss of the hospital almost and hurts people at will but is smug and emotional about it. Neither patients nor workers want to mess with him and Loomis even sets up a trap by having a Halloween party that doesn’t work. Later on, we even get more inner thoughts from The Shape where he is somewhat titillated by hunting his victims. That is quite the different killer than we are used to. Personally, I dislike how Michael is treated here even more than putting in the sister angle but it’s still a fun and different take.

Halloween II takes place immediately after the first film with it even showing the ending of that movie. Michael escapes after being shot and heads towards the hospital where Laurie is taken. The town now knows what is going on and all the killed teens are discovered. Loomis has become more unhinged and vows to kill Myers rather than take him back in and he gets poor Ben Tramer killed in the process. Michael kills his way through the hospital before having a showdown with both Laurie and Loomis where he and his doctor end up getting blown up via gas and a lighter. Although the cover for this book is lights out compared to the other two we talk about today, the changes aren’t nearly as drastic or in some cases infuriating as the first one.

Small changes include a different opening, with more from Mrs. Elrod and her husband, including her assuming it’s the Myers boy coming back. Mr. Sandman is heard, or I guess read, extensively through the book rather than just at the end and several of the kills differ in either how graphic they are or description. For example, Budd is seen being killed through glass that isn’t clear but, in the book, it goes into detail about how he is strangled with a stethoscope. These are neat little touches, especially with this movie having a much higher body count than the first one. The other major changes are more frequent flashbacks from Laurie that include her parents and almost everything that was cut from the final movie that ended up as deleted scenes or in the vaunted TV cut also appear in the book. The biggest addition, and this book is even fewer pages than the 166 of the first one, is that the TV reporter has a much more substantial part. We follow her for a bit as she pursues her story and she inadvertently drives Michael towards the hospital in her trunk before he kills her. Overall, a quick and fun read, though not as different as its predecessor.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is now rightfully seen as one of the best films in the series and of the ’80s in general. It follows Doctor Dan Challis and a young woman named Ellie, who are on the hunt to Santa Mira to figure out why her father was killed. It turns out an old warlock named Cochran is using Stonehenge and magic to play a dastardly trick on most of the population and activate masks that kids will wear on the holiday that will kill them and anyone around them. Challis is able to shut down the factory and kill Cochran but loses Ellie and may lose the ultimate battle. This has the fewest differences of the 3 but is nonetheless a fun experience. The speech that Cochran makes to Dan when he thinks he has won in the movie is an all timer that I watch every year, even if I don’t watch the movie, and it’s different and less compelling in the book. Ellie is turned into a robot in both book and film but she is also toned down to almost a toddler in the book and almost kills herself in the process. Some other minor things like the robots’ blood being white like the Alien androids in the book and yellow in the movie as well as the old woman playing Solitaire rather than knitting.

The final two bits that are actually better in the book are the death of Buddy and his family, where it goes into much more horrifying detail and has more horrible creatures emerge. Little Buddy’s eyes go big and fully red, and an enormous spider comes out and kills the mom. The entire room is filled with carnage and other dimensional creatures. Finally, while we don’t know the extent of the event on Halloween night, it is still far worse than the movie’s ambiguity. The movie may end with the final channel going dark, but it cuts out before we see and the movie has the sad act of Dan calling his house to try to save his family but also hearing the screams begin to arise from all over the country. That last channel definitely didn’t get turned off. All 3 of these are fun and I would recommend really any movie tie in if you like the movie enough. Heck, the one for Halloween Ends actually makes the story good! Other avenues to seek out are the YouTube channel Audiobooks for the Damned which found many of these tie-ins and makes them audiobooks. Also seek out the PDFs online if the physical copies are too rich for your blood. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Adaptation? can be seen below. To see the other shows we have to offer, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

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When we talk about movies being hard to categorize or even succinctly summarize, this movie is the poster child for that statement. Almost 50 years on and that still holds true but how about is it good? Does a movie need to be put in a specific area or even be able to be explained to still be good? The Rocky Horror Picture Show is in a category all by itself and yet has had spinoffs of sorts and on-stage revivals since its inception and shows no signs of slowing down. I’m not even sure how the introduction to such a movie should be fleshed out so take a jump to the left, a step to the right, put your hands on your hips and bring your knees in tight. We are about to take a time warp and see if The Rocky Horror Picture Show still stands the Test of Time.

Plot

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the movie version of the stage play musical The Rocky Horror Show. That musical was written by Richard O’Brien with songs cowritten by Richard Hartley and directed by Jim Sharman. The original cast included Tim Curry, Richard O’Brien, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, and Jonathan Adams, with Meatloaf coming on pretty early as some cast would change. It first appeared in the West End of London and was a massive smash success. Record company owner Lou Adler saw one of the first showings and immediately wanted a filmed U.S. release version of it. O’Brien would again be the writer along with original director Jim Sharman who would also direct. The cast for the movie would be a mix of original cast like O’Brien, Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, Meatloaf, and Jonathan Adams. The movie would get distribution rights from 20th Century Fox and be released first in the U.K. in August of 1975 with a U.S. release the next month.

Some newcomers to the cast would be Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon, Charles Grey, and Peter Hinwood. Now, admittedly when you look up the cast list, many of the actors have their pictures from this movie as their main photo and honestly why wouldn’t you? In some cases, like Hinwood, it is really the only thing they ever did but with others like Campbell, Adams, Quinn, and O’Brien, they have done more than a few other roles, but they are forever linked to these beloved characters. Adams would also show up in a lot of British TV productions and also a minor role in the Argento/Romero collaboration Two Evil Eyes. Gray has 140 credits to his name but crossing paths with James Bond a couple of times, once as Blofeld, are probably his most famous roles aside from this. Patricia Quinn had done a lot of TV before this and would do more after but would stay out of the public zeitgeist until Rob Zombie was able to get her to appear in his Lords of Salem in 2012. Nell Campbell didn’t do much else apart from appearing here and there from time to time but it must be said that she, along with multiple other cast members, would appear in the sequel which most people have never even heard of called Shock Treatment. Meatloaf would appear in a ton of different movies but may be best known for Fight Club apart from this movie and O’Brien has shown up in a bunch of random places with my favorite being showing up in 89 episodes and a couple movie versions of Phineas and Ferb. His appearances in Dark City, Flash Gordon, and the second Elvira movie should also be seen. Barry Bostwick has almost 200 credits to his name, but Spin City and the low budget Project Metalbeast are my favorites. Susan Sarandon won an Oscar and was nominated 4 other times and for the sake of brevity, I’ll just say that Bull Durham is my other favorite role for the star. Finally, there is Tim Curry, and you can tell a lot about a person by what their favorite Tim Curry role is but for the record, none of them are incorrect. Mine happens to be Clue. The only other major movie that Sharman would direct is the sequel Shock Treatment, but his legacy is secure for this and this alone.

The movie follows Brad and Janet who want to get married after going to their friend’s wedding and go to see their friend and mentor Dr. Everett Scott. They are sidetracked by a storm and their car breaking down which takes them to a secluded mansion where they meet a cast of colorful characters including Dr. Frank-N-Furter, his creation Rocky, his staff Magenta and Riff Raff, and his collection of oddball friends. They see a murder, are seduced by multiple parties, and are finally forced to perform in Frank’s strange burlesque show before his workers turn on him and take the house (which is actually a spaceship) back to the home planet of Transsexual Transylvania. Dr. Scott, Brad, and Janet are left in the dust with everyone else dead and the whole movie is sort of told as a criminal case by Charles Grey’s Criminologist. The movie is the longest running theatrical movie with it still popping up in midnight showings 49 years later and has made nearly 200 million on its 1.7 million dollar budget.

Signs of the Time

The 1970s was really the last strong decade for consistent musicals. While there weren’t nearly as many as, say, the Busby Berkeley era, there were far more in the mostly nihilistic 70s than there were after. Rocky Horror fit snuggly in the middle when it was released in 1975. Not only did you have other musicals that same year like Nashville and Tommy but the earlier part of the decade had Jesus Christ Superstar and Fiddler on the Roof while the later half of the decade gave us stuff like Grease and All That Jazz. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of what you were feeling when you chose what musical to go for. Another thing it has in common with some other 70s contemporaries is that it was ahead of its time. Hell, I’m not convinced that we are ready for it NOW in 2024, but it was certainly different from what audiences of the time were expecting. The 70s as a decade were seemingly ready to be done with where they were made, and Rocky Horror is no exception.

Its ideas on sexuality, both the repression of it and the open nature of things like Frank-N-Furter being Bi or Brad and Janet being into multiple people are also indicative of the decade. The 60s free love movement may have been over but the 70s decided to put a lot more on screen than ever before. While Texas Chainsaw may have made you think you saw more than was actually on screen, Rocky Horror showed and told you everything it wanted you to see and hear. Finally, that nihilism we discussed earlier is also here. Almost no characters make it out unscathed either with their morals intact or their lives in some cases. The ones that are alive at the end of the movie are reborn in a world of suffering and confusion. That’s about as cinematically 70s as we can get.

What holds up?

Trying to look at this movie through an unbiased lens was very difficult but I think my findings are correct that nearly every damn thing holds up here. First and foremost is the music. The music and songs put together by Richard O’Brien are amazing and mini love letters to old sci fi and horror films. This was easy for O’Brien as he genuinely loved the genre and all it had to offer. There are references all throughout in both the songs and what you see on screen from the characters’ names and outfits to the very purpose they serve. This also extends to the set decoration being top tier especially for how little money they actually spent on the thing. All of what was just mentioned is present in the opening credits. You have the bright red lipstick mouth singing the opening song and all of that could be straight out of an old B movie, especially when you watch the special version where the movie is black and white until the Time Warp opens the doors to the part guests.

The whole movie is truly lightning in a bottle and not only couldn’t be made today to the same effect but also just wouldn’t be as good. That’s not just a theory either as they did try a few times to remake this movie, and it fell flat each time. The cast is perfect and each time that I watch it I notice something different from this group. Watching this late at night on Comedy Central was a way of life for me and even though they had to censor some things, it was still perfect watching these actors and actresses do their thing. The one that stands out, on huge heels no less, is Tim Curry who is the thing everyone knows from this movie. He is truly amazing in either the singing scenes or just the normal speaking parts and there is nobody alive or dead that could replace him as the nefarious doctor. The movie is also to be commended for its leanings towards sexuality and really just loving who you want to love and loving yourself. That last song with the 4 innocent bystanders singing, dancing, and feeling comfortably uncomfortable is one for the ages.

What doesn’t hold up?

It pains me to even broach the topic of something here not holding up but so few movies are perfect and there are things that I don’t look forward to on every viewing. The first of these is completely subjective and that’s your preference on songs. You may not love every song, hell, since I grew up listening to the album first, the couple songs that show up in the movie but aren’t on the official soundtrack don’t do much for me. Those are Rocky’s Song and Wise Up Janet for the record. We all have our favorites, but the music just may not be for you. To go along with the music aspect, as great as they are, there are some slow points between musical numbers that can drag on a bit. Some of the effects for the movie’s small sub 2-million-dollar budget have shown their age too as charming as they may be and the final slight I would levy against the film is that once you’ve seen it with a live audience its extremely difficult to go back to just the movie version.

Verdict

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a blast. It’s a love letter to all things us horror hounds love in its audio and visual feasts. They have tried to capture it in other ways to be sure with different versions of the on-stage musical and even a few attempts and a new TV movie but they all pale in comparison to the original. There is a weird point and click game that is more companion to the movie, but it doesn’t really add or take away your enjoyment as its own thing. We even got a sequel that follows Brad and Janet again though this time they are played by Cliff DeYoung and the wonderful Jessica Harper. Shock Treatment does bring back some of the other actors and creators but like I said, the original movie was the definition of lightning in a bottle. Rocky Horror is worth taking a time warp for and absolutely still stands the test of time.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – The Test of Time appeared first on JoBlo.

There are some stories in the history of film that end up being repeated over and over again. Some of these are just simple categories like vampire, werewolf, and zombie films. Some of them get a little more granular and specific like the story of Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Finally, we can get even more granular and look at a specific title that has made the rounds a few times. I Am Legend by the wonderful and prolific Richard Matheson was made into three different movies with Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and finally I Am Legend. While King Kong and Phantom of the Opera probably have the most, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most consistent offerings. The 2007 iteration was a bust but the other 3 are all incredibly solid. With the 90s version turning 30 we thought it was worth seeing if it was a generic replication of the real deal or if it stands the test of time.

Plot

A script for another version of Jack Finney’s seminal sci fi novel The Body Snatchers was written by the wonderful team of Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon and eventually Nicholas St. John with story credits by Larry Cohen and Raymond Cisteri. It was originally going to be directed by Stuart Gordon but when he had to back out, explosive and maverick director Abel Ferrara was approached to helm. It was already completely written and decently into pre-production when he took over and even though he wasn’t thrilled about some of the aspects, the love of the original, just like that of the 78 director Phillip Kauffman, kept him on the project. Its not like the script and story doesn’t have pedigree, either. Gordon and Paoli were a great team and between them or even together wrote some of the best horror of the 80s and 90s. Things like Re-Animator and From Beyond, Ghoulies II, Castle Freak, The Dentist, Robot Jox, and Dagon all came from these two.

Larry Cohen is a legend as well both in Blaxploitation and Horror with stuff like, well, The Stuff, Q the Winged Serpent, and the It’s Alive trilogy. He too was also a good writer for movies that he didn’t end up behind the director’s chair. The lesser-known gentlemen, namely Nicholas St. John and Raymond Cisteri, are no slouches either. St. John is actually Nicodemo Oliverio, and he would end up writing 9 movies with and for director Abel Ferrara. Cisteri only has one other title to his name from back in 1972. Ferrara is the gritty and hard shooting New York director behind things like Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant, and King of New York. The Wikipedia page says that today’s movie is his first excursion into the world of sci-fi but I think this has a lot of horror to it just like the 78 version. He also did Driller Killer and a really cool vampire movie called The Addiction to add to his horror output.

The cast is a fun collection of talent that mostly weren’t huge stars. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker is the exception here as he would go on to a star-studded career in both TV and film. For horror though he wouldn’t have much else in horror apart from his part in awesome creature feature Species. Meg Tilly may not be the horror mainstay her sister Jennifer is but her career has been great including horror like the Chucky TV show and Psycho II as well as being part of 80s classic The Big Chill and an Oscar Nomination of Agnes of God. The stunning Gabrielle Anwar had a heck of a run in the early 90s with Body Snatchers, Scent of a Woman, Three Musketeers, and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. She was also amazing on the underrated show Burn Notice but if I can make a suggestion, it would be to seek out The Grave from 1996. Christine Elise from Childs Play II and R. Lee Ermey need no introduction to horror hounds and the patriarch of the family is played by Terry Kinney who you will also know from his TV work in Billions, OZ, Inventing Anna, and Good Behavior.

The movie follows Steven Malone who works for the EPA and is sent to a military installation in Alabama with his wife, daughter, and son. He is there to check on what the military may have done to the environment there and what effects that may have on the soldiers. His daughter Marti is cornered in a gas station restroom by a hysterical soldier who tells her they get you when you sleep. The military base is full of what you’d expect with typical military soldiers and their nonmilitary families. Strange things start to happen with people not acting as they should, Steve’s son Andy getting scared out of school because the other kids are way too different, and reports of people not being who they say they are. The base doctor and Steve discuss the widespread fear of falling asleep that has swept across the base, but Doctor Malone doesn’t see any correlation.

His son sees what we have come to expect from this movie, a main character being taken over by one of the alien pod invaders that are taking over the base. While no one believes Andy, the very next night both Steve and Marti are almost changed into pod people and are chased out of their lodging with a screaming pod wife alerting the rest of the doubles of their escape. A soldier named Tim who Marti met the night before is also being chased and after Steve hides his two kids in a storage area, he witnesses the base doctor end his life rather than willingly turn into a drone. Steve goes back and grabs his kids, but it is revealed he has been replaced too. Marti, Andy, and Tim try to escape but the two siblings are captured. Tim goes back to save them and is successful with Marti but when Andy runs after the helicopter it is revealed that he, too, is now a pod. They dump him out of the ship and take revenge by blowing up the base and all the pods with missiles from the helicopter. They land at another base, but it is unclear if they are truly safe.

Signs of the Time

Look at these people enjoying their pod apocolypse with nary a cell phone in sight. Just really living in the moment. All jokes aside, this was a movie of the moment. The director, replacement and all, was a staple of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Abel Ferrara was all over the place and from 1986 to 1996 released a total of 12 movies on either the big or small screen. He did things his way and while this was his first big studio backed film, it still has some of the style he brings to all his projects. Its clear from the opening scene that while the Steve character would normally be the main protagonist, his daughter Marti is the real hero, and we know that from her narration which is also something that was a prevalent framing device in the early half of the decade.

Two other trends that were big in the 90s were the opposite of the 70s nihilism and that’s the relatively happy ending. While the 50s version went nice, the 70s version has one of the best and most down beat endings of the decade. While it is somewhat up in the air on what our main characters are landing into while the movie ends, you could at least interpret that its possible the threat is over. While on the subject of the 70s, the cyclical phenomena of environmental fears also decides to rear its head again with things like The Guardian, Alligator 2, Dust Devil, and later on Mimic to name a few. Finally, the 90s was also a time where horror went back to the literary world both with readapting some of the classics with Dracula and Frankenstein but also taking chances on this remake or the previously mentioned Guardian.

What Holds Up?

The movie is just a solid experience all the way around for the most part. All of the military stuff is great from the analogy of the pod people and the stringent and logic of the military system as pointed out by Roger Ebert at the time to the PTSD that the soldiers and doctor have. You could even throw in the angle of the doctor not wanting to do something that the military, represented by the pod people here, want to force him into. The script and story hold up really well too. While the change to the military base seems like an obvious layup, they could have screwed it up really easily. How they jump right into it with the reveal in the gas station bathroom to the horror of how the people change and how quickly characters die are all sharp and biting. They even give no effs about killing off a kid, twice technically, with his human form poofing away into dust when he changes and his pod version being noped out of a helicopter. The horror is real here even if the scream isn’t quite as haunting as the previous iteration.

The acting here is really good too particularly by the two female leads in Meg Tilly and Gabriel Anwar. Meg Tilly going from playful younger mom to cold and calculated pod creature really shows her range and Anwars Marti is a good mix of scared victim and angry survivor. The other stand out for the movie are the effects. They are natural progressions from the 70’s version and look creepy and great. The pod creatures are well done and absolute nightmare fuel when they die and melt away into puddles of horror. It’s the kind of stuff you look at 30 years later and wish that CGI was never created.

What doesn’t hold up?

Some of the other performances can be wooden and I don’t mean in the requisite pod like attitudes either. The little boy is neither good nor bad, but the love interest Tim falls a bit flat. I used to think that Terry Kinny was William Hurt but he does a good job here and I wont hold that against him. One thing that does stand out is the score not quite fitting the mood of the movie. It’s not outright bad, actually it’s a good piece of music on its own, but it’s nothing special when looking at a horror film. The camera work tries a bit too hard to be 70’s and Avant Garde at times and there are a few scenes that are derivative or outright stolen from other versions that aren’t as good as they were when originally used. None of that is a deal breaker though and even my last gripe doesn’t ruin it. The one thing that stood out as kind of a cheat was that the pod people use deception at points to trick the characters and not just deception but EMOTIONAL deception which they really shouldn’t even be capable of. They do it more than a few times and while I’m all for changing of rules with anything from werewolves to vampires to zombies, but this seems to go against the very conceit of the pod people’s core. Doesn’t ruin the movie but I feel it could have been changed easily enough too.

Verdict

It’s very rare for a story to be told this many times and still be good but all three of the first tellings of this book come out on top. While the 50’s is a classic Sci Fi classic of the highest order and the 78 version is a downbeat, downtrodden, and downright downer example of peak 70’s oppression, today’s version has a few tweaks that make it unique and special on its own. It has different metaphors and changes some of the main characters and outcomes enough that its unique outlook and presentation shine. The follow up in 07 is as dull as the pod people it shows on screen, but Abel Ferrara adds some punch and elements missing from the other adaptations of the original story. While the movie was a huge bomb and failure, it’s worth seeking out and stands the test of time now 30 years on.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post Body Snatchers (1993) – The Test of Time appeared first on JoBlo.

Salem’s Lot has a legendary status not unlike the vampire creatures that are the chief antagonists therein. While we are finally getting the newest movie adaptation this month after what seemed like an eternity in development and then an unceremonious shelving, the original continues to have a cult classic aura around it. There was a second TV miniseries that came out on TNT in 2004 but the quality of that one varies depending on who you talk to. Even with all the cache that the original miniseries brings to the table, it had been years since I had watched it. It deserved a revisit and make no mistake, this addition to the King cinematic universe needed a remake more than nearly anything else he has put out.

Originally Salem’s Lot was going to be a theatrical experience but Warner Brothers, who had purchased the rights, had a hard time settling on the story and the personnel. They took in numerous screenplay options from names like Larry Cohen and Robert Getchell and originally even approached George Romero about directing but the 400 plus page novel seemed daunting to faithfully recreate in one big screen film. Warner Brothers then turned to their TV division and decided to make it a miniseries event at the tail end of the 70’s which was the decade of the made for TV movie, particularly in the horror realm. Producer Richard Kobritz was given the challenge to get the project made and the two driving forces he chose were screenwriter Paul Monash to deliver the screenplay and then after watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he wanted Tobe Hooper to direct.

Hooper is one of the horror legends that we hold up on high with the likes of John Carpenter and Wes Craven even if his output doesn’t quite have the same legacy or stand the test of time. While Chainsaw is a juggernaut and will never go away, others just don’t jump out as easily. Sure, Poltergeist is credited to him, and it doesn’t sound like anyone will argue that fact, but it jumps out as feeling different from his other works. He does still have greats like the first Chainsaw sequel and space vampire madhouse Lifeforce as well as lesser greats like Eaten Alive, The Funhouse, and Invaders from Mars. The rest of his catalogue isn’t really that impressive, from his other theatrical flops to strait to video dreck. Hooper is one to be celebrated for sure, but this movie is much more in line with the rest of his contributions rather than the outlier that is TCM.

Monash was a classic TV writer from the early ’50s all the way to his death in 2003. He did add in some fun movie credits like The Law Breakers and The Friends of Eddie Coyle but mostly stayed on the small screen. Two of his biggest credits there are adapting Peyton Place for television and writing an episode of the TV event V. The Primetime Emmy winner isn’t discussed much but certainly had his place in history. The cast for Salem’s Lot could have been bigger but the screen adaptation ended up mixing characters together or cutting some completely. This sounds like a recipe for disaster when adapting a large story but King himself came out and said Monash did a really good job consolidating the material and the story remained similar at heart. Well, mostly.

Chosen for some of the roles were Fred Willard, Geoffrey Lewis, Ed Flanders, Elijah Cook Jr., Bonnie Bedelia, and even James Mason with David Soul as the main author character Ben here. This would be one of many author characters that King throws into his work to be an avatar for himself. This selection of actors mostly works. The old timers in particular like Mason, Cook Jr, and Flanders all own their roles and are every bit as interesting on screen as you would hope. The TV movie had a 4-million-dollar budget and aimed to be a big hit for the studio on TV. So, what did we get?

On paper this is mostly a success. The TV event was nominated for 3 Emmys, had mostly good critical reception, and captured TV viewership at greater levels than they anticipated. This only tells part of the story, however, as the now cult classic has its fair share of problems. The first and most glaring is how slow it is. Notice I don’t say the length of the movie. Length isn’t the problem here as a movie can be 3 plus hours and be just fine. No, I mean it’s slow. The movie runs 183 minutes but feels like it could be 300 minutes. There is a lot of just meandering around or extended conversations that don’t need to be as drawn out as they are. There are some good instances of this like most scenes with James Mason or anything with the town sheriff played by Kenneth McMillan who I couldn’t figure out why I knew him for the longest time until his eyebrows reminded me that he was the first Baron Harkonnen that we got to watch on screen.

The story itself is an interesting one with King being inspired by his class reading the Bram Stoker classic. He apparently wondered what would happen if vampires came to America, specifically to a small town. Events coincide when author Ben Mears comes back home to write about a legendary house and a pair of antique dealers open up a shop. The townsfolk start to die off or disappear and Mears starts to suspect that the new pair are vampires, or at least one of them is. He is able to convince the town doctor, and father of his love interest, but most of the town has either been killed or turned. He and a young boy who no longer has a family are able to kill the head vampire and his not quite human protector but are unable to save most of the town. They flee to regroup and are hunted by the remaining vampires, knowing that they will continue to be hunted until they or the vampires die.

The biggest issue with the movie just dragging on is that the main character we follow, Ben Mears, is a bit of a dud. The character itself is fine as an author returning to his hometown after being obsessed with what he saw at a now allegedly haunted house but actor David Soul lacks any of what his last name suggests. The character is played with almost no charisma and even less chemistry with the lovely Bonnie Bedelia. What could have been a really neat love story or even partnership against the main vampires feels every bit the slog that the actionless scenes feel like. Soul has a good look and reason to be there, but it just falls flat. Its really hard to get excited about the movie when the main character is someone you can’t wait for the film to move past.

While this isn’t our adaptation show, it has to be said that one of the biggest changes, and one that gets called out the most, is the change from the lead vampire from a debonaire aristocrat to a temu version of Count Orlock from Nosferatu. The series may have been nominated for makeup, but a new Blu-ray transfer does it no favors. I actually like the way he is supposed to look, but the movie falls flat when trying to pull it off. What We Do in the Shadows was able to make the look intentionally funny but here it loses its fear in a way that was certainly not what they were going for. He is supposed to be this very imposing figures and it’s disheartening that one of his best moody entrances, when he enters as a cape through the window, is ruined when he kills someone’s parents with a gag straight out of a Three Stooges short. My memory had this creature much more frightening than he actually is and the only time he almost lives up to his reputation is at the climax when they find him in his coffin.

The fear to non-fear ratio struggles mightily here too. It would be one thing if there was payoff for the long stretches that the movie makes you wait but there isn’t anything close to what you’d call a payoff here. The scenes that get the job done vary between ones you remember and ones that sneak up on your memory as you watch them. Probably the best scene in the whole thing comes when caretaker Mike played by Geoffrey Lewis has been bitten and starts turning only to come back to his friend’s house as a vampire. We see him slowly rocking back and forth in a chair with his piercing vampire eyes all but stealing the shot. It’s great subtle stuff that plays into the low budget and remains with you long after the movie is over. That’s the one that everyone remembers but the other really terrifying part comes at the end when Ben and Mark are trying to kill Barlow in his coffin. Mark is watching Ben try to overpower Barlow in his coffin and his victims/acolytes slowly crawl towards Mark and Ben both to stop the murder but also feed. Again, the budget here isn’t an issue as the filming and tension do all the work.

The other scene that most people remember, hell that is used in a lot of top horror scenes lists, is when one of the towns youngest victims’ floats to his friends’ windows and asks to come in. its filmed in reverse to give it its attempted eerie effects but what should be harrowing and tragic like the zombie kids at the fuel station in Dawn of the Dead, just doesn’t work here. Lots of people dying off screen combined with slow builds that don’t go anywhere leave the movie in a precocious spot of trusting that what we see on screen is worth the wait and it’s just not. What is undeniably one of King’s best works, and one that comes back both in a short story form as well as one of the characters showing up in his magnum opus series The Dark Tower, ends up falling flat on the small screen.

The movie was cut into a much smaller 112-minute theatrical version, think the opposite of Needful Things, which was blown up into a TNT event, but that version isn’t ever brought up even if King himself seemed to prefer it. Salem’s Lot isn’t a bad movie, it’s just a deeply flawed adaptation that rests on memories and legends to get by. Here’s hoping that the newest iteration finally does the King book proud.

Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

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The 90s was a great time for adaptations. Jurassic Park is the gold standard, of course, but there was so much more. That book’s author, Michael Crichton, also had Sphere and Congo get greenlit and released while we would see non-horror output like Forrest Gump (yeah, really. Look up that strange book) and Shawshank Redemption, which account for the greatest film of all time… and Forrest Gump. On the horror side we would have Silence of the Lambs, the wonderful IT TV miniseries, Exorcist III, and a fun little monster movie throwback called The Relic. At the time, I just thought it was a cool creature feature designed specifically for 12-year-olds like me but looking back all these years later I found out it was an adaptation of a book by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child in what would be the first of 22 separate stories for one of the chief protagonists. That’s all well and good but how well does The Relic adapt Relic? Be careful what crates you open up from the jungle as we find out what happened to this adaptation.

The Movie

When the book Relic came out in 1995 it was quickly snatched up by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall who know a thing or two about producing big movies. From there it would be produced by Gale Ann Hurd and Sam Mercer and released by Paramount Pictures. The director chosen was Peter Hyams and he has quite a fun career resume. He also did End of Days and the only other thing even close to horror would be A Sound of Thunder but some of the other movies he has done that I really like are The Presidio, Outland, which is High Noon in space, Running Scared, and Time Cop, with a special shout out to Stay Tuned. While his career ended about 10 years ago, his cinematic catalogue is both fun and eclectic.

Hyams wanted Harrison Ford to be Lt. Vincent D’Agosta but that would eventually fall to Tom Sizemore where he got to do some of his best leading work. The character of Dr. Frock could have also been played by a more recent heavy hitter as Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Christopher Lloyd, and Robert DeNiro were all considered but it eventually went to James Whitmore. Whitmore is Brooks from Shawshank but also a two-time Oscar nominee who would be in a million other things including other great creature feature, 1954’s Them, a personal favorite of mine. Sizemore passed in 2023 but had a hell of a career, and life for that matter, for better and for worse. Just some of my other favorites include True Romance, Saving Private Ryan, and Strange Days. Rest in Peace sir.

The rest of the main cast stars Penelope Ann Miller, Oscar winner Linda Hunt, and Clayton Rohner in supporting roles. Hunt has no other horror releases but has great turns in the God of War video game series, Silverado, and Kindergarten Cop. Miller has been around for what seems like forever but never broke through to that upper echelon even with roles in Carlito’s Way and Chaplin to name a few. Another star for the movie is behind the scenes and he’s used to that. Stan Winston helped create the creature effects for the movie and they look great, at least when they are practical and maybe not in the high-definition view of a Blu-ray. The movie was filmed at an actual museum but not at the one it takes place at. The Museum of Natural History in New York was offered seven figures to shoot there but between fears of children being scared and the reputation of management given in the book (one of the authors used to work there and wasn’t kind in the novel apparently), the producers moved to Chicago to shoot at the Field Museum of Natural History and also a soundstage in LA for tunnel scenes where Sizemore got the flu twice.

The movie was also written by 4 screenwriters and while that is usually a death sentence, it worked out fine here. Ric Jaffa, Amy Holden Jones, John Raffo, and Amanda Silver collaborated on the project and combined, they have things like Jurassic World, the new Planet of the Apes movies, Indecent Proposal, the remake of The Getaway, The Slumber Party Massacre, and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. The movie was supposed to be released in 1996, but special effects postproduction would push it to January of 1997 where it would be a bit of a flop, grossing 48 million on its 40-60 million dollar budget.

The Book

Relic was written in 1995 by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston in what would become a series starring the main detective, Pendergast. This would be the start of an absolutely epic amount of collaborative works between the two that would lead to many opportunities. They each have their own books too, including a lot of non-fiction from Preston, but their main output has been together and mostly with Pendergast. Surprisingly, they only have today’s movie as adaptations of their work, but George Clooney was once attached to a project called The Monster of Florence, based on a book Preston wrote with crime reporter Mario Spezi. If that movie had been made, Clooney would have been playing Preston himself.

Preston has done a lot of neat extra-curricular stuff, like being involved in the previously mentioned Italian Serial Killer case and going on an expedition in 2015 to one of the last unexplored places on earth. He later became president of The Authors Guild in 2019. Child has written mostly in the techno horror realm when not writing with Preston.

What is the same?

The story follows the exploits of an anthropologist on an expedition in South America looking into a tribe and their culture and monsters. When his ship comes back into harbor he is nowhere to be found with no sign except his crates. A dock worker is killed and then a guard at the museum that the anthropologist worked at is also killed and Vincent D’Agosta is brought onto the investigation to see what is going on. Dr. Green and Dr. Frock are questioned about the case as well as their missing peer but disregard the whole thing initially. The Museum also wants to keep the case under wraps as they are hosting a big gala and opening a new exhibit showcasing superstition and myth from across the globe.

They look over the crates that were sent to the museum, but they are filled with only plants as packaging without any actual items. These plants are later revealed to be rich in a specific type of protein and some DNA left behind by the killer reveals itself to be part human. This leads the museum scientists to hypothesize that not only is the killer an ancient creature, but it is also in fact their former colleague who sent the plants as food. Furthermore, all of the deaths involved the hypothalamus gland being removed which also ties into the plant’s protein. The gala moves forward as planned but a series of events leads to the power being shut down as well as the security gates going into lockdown.

Many guests escape but a lot of them and museum staff are trapped along with D’Agosta. The creature, who has human intelligence along with a gaggle of other animal DNA, stalks the guests throughout the museum and kills both staff and regular guests. A SWAT team comes in to try and save the patrons but is slaughtered by the creature after it takes out the guests and staff in the main lobby. Most of the civilians are led out danger via the sewer that crosses the street while Dr. Green is able to help kill the creature.

What is Different?

The overall story is very similar but there are a few key differences. The movie moves pretty quickly from the doctor story back to the museum part but the book takes a gap of seven years between the jungle portion and the museum portion. There is also a lengthy epilogue in the book that sort of deconstructs the details not given during the main story including what the creature is exactly and what happened to the team sent there. Further along in the epilogue is when a character finds out that the creature WAS the research scientist, Whitney in the movie and Whittlesey in the book. He also learns how to create and perfect the mutagen and plans to sell it as a drug followed by controlling an army of creatures. The museum staff also knew about what was going on, at least to a degree, and covers it up in the novel while the movie has them as just blissfully and stubbornly unaware.

Regarding the characters, there are a lot of changes ranging from very minor to completely plot changing. Two kids go missing and are killed in the book but found alive in the movie. Frock dies in the movie but goes on to be one of the villains in the sequel book called Reliquary. One of the main characters of the book and one that would go on to star in a lot of future books, Pendergast, is nowhere to be seen in the movie. The majority of his role is handled by D’Agosta played by Sizemore and the D’Agosta character from the book is now a younger police officer named Hollingsworth who does a lot of what D’Agosta does in the book. The creature’s death in the book happens when Pendergast shoots it in the eye which also hits the brain while the movie has Dr. Green final girl it up and blow the thing to bits after tricking it in the offices part of the museum.

Legacy

I had no idea the movie was based on a book, let alone that it had a sequel and a character that would go on to have a hell of a run in their own series. The book is a pretty easy read and it isn’t the best thing I’ve read, for this show or in general, but by those terms it’s not the worst either. The movie holds a special place in my heart, as I saw it in theaters as a 12-year-old and had an absolute blast with it. I still had a great time with the movie now and enjoyed it more than I thought I would on this viewing. The book is a fine book but if I’m looking to consume this story, I’ll stick with the much shorter movie version even if it is smaller scale and a little dumbed down. If you want a cool literary duology featuring a mythic creature and its origins, check out the two books but if you want to see a fun and at times schlocky creature feature that gives the late Tom Sizemore one of his best roles.

A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Adaptation? can be seen below. To see the other shows we have to offer, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post The Relic (1997) – What Happened to This Adaptation? appeared first on JoBlo.

When we think of monsters on this channel, most of the time its from a fictional, mythical, or legendary monster like the Mummy, Wolfman, Dracula, or Frankenstein’s Monster. On this specific show, however, a Monster can take on a whole new meaning. I joke that half of these episodes will be about reportedly true possessions and while that will probably hold fast, there is another type of monster we have discussed a few times. The guy that loosely inspired the Scream killings, Henry from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and today’s subject Aileen Wuornos. The crime drama made about her is literally called Monster and put director Patty Jenkins and star Charlize Theron, at least in terms of her being seen as an A list actor who can actually act, on the map. It’s a straightforward telling of a murderer that of course adds nuance and even audience empathy to the cinematic version. It has the vaunted “Based on a true story” moniker slapped on to it but how accurate is the tale of the tape vs the real events? Be careful who you pick up hitchhiking as we find out what REALLY happened to Monster.

Relative unknown Patty Jenkins had only 2 short films to her name when she decided to write a screenplay based on Aileen Wuornos who was one of the most notorious female serial killers of the 20th century. She wrote the script in only seven weeks and then was on the hunt for who could play her characters. Even though the movie came out AFTER Wuornos was executed, Jenkins was able to speak with her and was even given access to hundreds of letters. This was a huge get for the production and writing as Wuornos was usually very uncooperative. To play this powerful character, Jenkins had a few options in mind. She screen tested Kate Winslet, Heather Graham, Brittany Murphy, and Kate Beckinsale. Reese Witherspoon made her intentions known that she wanted to play the role, but the decision came down to a fateful late-night movie that was playing when Jenkins woke up.

Seeing Charlize Theron’s performance in The Devil’s Advocate sealed the deal for Jenkins and Theron was taken aback but very excited to play the part. She would even founded Denver and Delilah Films to help produce the movie. This would pay off in spades as the movie was made for 1.5 million and brought back a whopping 64 million at the box office. Mix that in with rave reviews and Oscar gold for Charlize and I’d say that was a great decision. While this movie is horrifying, Theron has other traditional horror movies to her name like the previously mentioned Devils Advocate, The Astronaut’s Wife, and her first movie was one of those damned straight to video Children of the Corn sequels. Oh, and Prometheus.

For the role of Wuornos’s girlfriend and unwitting pawn, Kate Hudson was originally offered the role but turned it down. Cristina Ricci was cast and she had already done a good job shedding her child acting perception with movies like Buffalo 66, The Opposite of Sex, and Prozac Nation, but this movie showed her ability to act. It didn’t garner the same awards as Theron but Roger Ebert called it brilliant. Other horror under her belt includes Sleepy Hollow, Bless the Child, Cursed, and After Life. Of course, she is also an icon as Wednesday Addams in her two live action portrayals. The rest of the cast is no slouch either with Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Scott Wilson, and Pruitt Taylor Vince in smaller roles. Heck, we even get none other than Kane Hodder as an undercover agent. It was released on Christmas Eve in 2003 and as stated killed it for audiences and critics alike.

The movie opens with Aileen narrating about her early life and her dreams. On the screen we see a far less positive portrayal of Aileen’s troubled home and school live followed by prostitution at a young age. It cuts to present day Aileen who has a few dollars in one hand and a gun in the other thinking of ending it all. She ends up in a gay club to get a beer and meets Selby Wall. She says she has a pressure washing business but is visibly offended by Selby’s companionship and makes her pay for their booze. They end up having a great time together and close the place down. Aileen has nowhere to go and ends up staying at Selby’s house before she ruses out in the morning when Selby’s family almost catches them. Aileen agrees to meet up with Selby at the Moonlight later that day.

(Factometer 50%) The movie’s goal is to show just before Aileen went on her killing spree all the way up to her capture and incarceration but it does have hints of what happened to her beforehand. Aileen was born in Michigan in 1956 but never met her father who was put in jail for life and hung himself while there. Aileen and her brother Keith were abandoned and left with their grandparents who unfortunately were both alcoholics and had other problems as well. As early as the age of 11 she began trading sexual favors for food, money, and cigarettes and even began having intimate relations with her own brother. Her own grandfather would also assault her in the same way as well as beat her and eventually kicked her out of the house after she became pregnant from a family friend. She gave birth in a women’s home and gave the child up for adoption. Just like the movie states, she moved throughout the country supporting herself via prostitution. There was a marriage that we never heard about and a lot of other incidents before she finally met 24-year-old Tyria Moore who was a hotel maid. This is who is portrayed as Selby in the movie, but Moore was very private and didn’t want anything to do with the movie.

Aileen heads to a storage unit that she is living out of and is fed by Thomas who may be her only real friend besides Selby. The two meet up at a roller-skating rink where Aileen tells Selby all about her prostitution and what men want. They skate together and eventually kiss but someone staying with Selby sees them. Aileen turns some tricks to get money after promising Selby she would see her later and eventually is picked up at 545 pm by one last john. His name is Vincent Corey and instead of just sex, he violently assaults her. Selby waits for Aileen who never comes, and Aileen is able to turn the tables and kill Vincent and take his car. This ends up being the first victim of her spree and completely changes the trajectory of her life.

(Factometer 50%) There is quite a bit in this section that is true to life. Wuornos did live out of a storage shelter for a little bit but while it’s only seen once in the movie, she actually stored some of her victims’ items there before she sold them. Selling the belongings to a pawn shop and having her thumb print taken played a part in her eventual capture. While Aileen was a habitual liar and it was hard to tell fact from fiction from her, its entirely possible that her first victim, real name Richard Charles Mallory, did assault her as she says. He was convicted in the state of Maryland for a similar crime as Wuornos stated happened to her.

Aileen makes it back to Selby and apologizes for not meeting up sooner. Eventually the two leave together and live out of a hotel while dating. They go out, spending the money Aileen made from her work as well as what she stole from the body of her first victim and the two are very much in love. Aileen talks about the baby she had to give up and tries to get a real job from various companies who all turn her down as she has no experience. One man in particular shuts her down in a really rough way which sets her off. She lies to Selby about the experience and about having other opportunities lined up before she is picked up by a cop who makes her pay him back for letting her go in a specific way. She sees a newspaper that shows a picture of the man she killed and that the police have no leads. Aileen Tells Selby what she did because Selby thinks she is using her and says she is going to take care of them.

(Factometer 25%) The two stayed in a hotel and spent money together all-around Florida. It is unknown if Aileen actually attempted employment at the places she claimed because she was a pathological liar and much of her version of things could be hard to prove one way or the other. The police did find the body of the first victim and didn’t have any leads on who the murderer was early on.

Aileen continues her work as a street prostitute but now in addition to money, she has made it her mission to kill these men and sees them all as violent monsters. Her second victim is Will followed by a few more. She and Selby go out but have an incident at a restaurant. Selby, who feels isolated and always worrying about Aileen goes out and makes a group of friends at the gay club from the first part of the movie. Aileen is worried at home and is upset that Selby took a car that could be identified but calms down and tries to understand. They go to a carnival where Selby hangs out with friends and mostly ignores Aileen until they ride the Ferris wheel together. The next day while Selby is driving, the car crashes and two elderly witnesses see the pair run off.

(Factometer 50%) Director Patty Jenkins agreed to change Tyria Moore’s name and likeness for her participation. Much of Selby’s character in the movie, apart from being in a relationship with Wuornos was made up to give Ricci more to do. The two did have incidents like the restaurant scene but Moore was a bit of a recluse and didn’t make friends easily. The car being crashed and the two being identified by eyewitnesses is fairly accurate with a woman named Rhonda Bailey seeing the two women abandon the car, a car owned by one of Aileen’s victims, and giving a description to the police.

Selby justifiably freaks out that the cops are coming for them, but Aileen convinces her that they are fine and continues to kill men that pick her up including a retired cop. She has Selby convinced that the killings are self defense and justified. Aileen goes back out and is picked up by a genuinely nice man who isn’t looking for sex. Because Aileen is so self-convinced that all of these men are trying to assault her, she still kills him even when he begs not to. The Police are in hot pursuit now after having a sketch and a general idea of who the two women are. Aileen sends Selby home on a bus to protect her and ends up getting taken into custody by two bounty hunters, one played by Kane Hodder. Aileen confesses that she alone was involved in the murders and during the trial, Selby testifies for the prosecution. The trial ends in a verdict of guilt and a sentence of death by lethal injection.

(Factometer 90%) Wuornos would end up killing 7 men including a retired chief of police, similar to that in the film. She was also arrested in a biker bar in real life similar to what is seen on film and Moore was also brought in to testify so she could save her own name. She was ok with Moore’s seeming betrayal as she truly believed that what they had was love. Wuornos was convicted of 6 counts of murder and sentenced to death where she was killed via lethal injection on October 9th, 2002.

Patty Jenkins changed a handful of details but kept a lot of the tone of Wuornos and her crimes true. Who she was, what she did, and how her life ended were all captured faithfully and Theron more than earned her Oscar for her brilliant and dour portrayal of the serial killer. The movie is a must watch and one of the great depictions of a famous killer ever filmed. Watch the movie and then check out any of the multitude of books and documentaries on the true Florida Monster.

A couple of the previous episodes of What Really Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To check out the other shows we have on the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel, head over to the channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post Monster (2003) – What Really Happened to This Horror Movie? appeared first on JoBlo.

Gremlins may have stopped at only 2 movies and a recent animated TV show, but a lot of its imitators went on to make a killing in the sequel market. Sure, we had one offs like Munchies from Roger Corman and Goobers from the mind of Charles Band which should have rightfully stayed one and done but others wanted in on that franchise action. The Gate would have 2 entries as would Hobgoblins. Troll would get a few sequels, kinda, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of strange Italian sequels in name only that are just called that to capitalize on the profits of other movies and Ghoulies would somehow, miraculously, get 4 films although if I’m being honest, I actually enjoy watching that series. Critters also had 4 (initially) but has a much stronger legacy in terms of enjoyment and interesting background including the fact that even though it came out after Gremlins, the first Critters may have been in various stages of production before and during the making of Gremlins. While 1 is a classic and 2 is one of the few Easter horrors flicks I like to put it on yearly, where does that leave the other two? Part 4 sends the critters, like most of the slasher villains of our time, into space but 3 is a forgotten and mostly maligned entry into a series that mostly holds up. It’s a black sheep if I ever saw one and today it gets its due.

While you can find it easily as one of the 4 Blu-rays included in Scream Factory’s wonderful box set, its original release was in the burgeoning age of home video. Specifically, it was released in the first year of New Line Cinema’s home label being created. New Line Home Entertainment was created in May of 1991 when they decided to release their movies on their own brand after having multiple other companies do their work for them. While they certainly received money for selling the release rights, this allowed them to keep all of the profit and also gave them the idea to look into their catalogue for movies that could get more sequels that maybe weren’t good enough for the big screen but surely ok to go straight to video both for purchase and renting. The first movie made a solid 13 million on its 3-million-dollar budget but part 2 was a certified bomb. Critters 2 got an extra million for its budget but only brought in 3.8 at the box office.

Critters 3 and 4 were actually shot at the same time to capitalize on budget and crew. Critters 3 has the distinction of coming out that first year of New Line Home Entertainment’s life and while I don’t have any revenue numbers, home video was a big deal at the time and Critters was still a name brand. Not an overly impressive one anymore but a name all the same. The director chosen for the project was Kristine Peterson who only had two features to her name before this in Deadly Dreams and Body Chemistry but also would be assistant director on stuff like Tremors, Chopping Mall, and Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child. The story for the film would be developed by producers Rupert Harvey and Barry Opper while the actual screenplay was done by David J Schow. Schow, we have talked about before with his contributions to the Texas Chainsaw franchise and The Crow.

Critters 3 (watch it HERE) has some fun in front of the camera folks too and that probably has to start with Leonardo DiCaprio as one of the leads in his first movie. I think a lot of us go with Johnny Depp in the first Nightmare movie or Jennifer Anniston putting in the work for Leprechaun, but DiCaprio is definitely right there. As you can guess, he hates it, referring to it only when mentioning that all actors make crap from time to time. He would only show up in horror one other time in the horror adjacent Shutter Island. Aimee Brooks, John Calvin, Jeffery Blake, Dianna Bellamy, Bill Zuckert, and Nina Axelrod are all recognizable faces who have done other things in and out of the horror realm. The only carry over from the other films, or at least main one because Ug appears literally during the credits, is Don Keith Opper who has appeared in other TV and movies but really has the distinction of being the only actor to appear in all of the original Critters movies. For better and for worse.

Critters 3 is certainly a forgotten film whether you are talking about within the context of its own series or in general. I get why as the first movie had the small farm location and being the first movie in the series while the second movie expanded to the whole town and the 4th movie went to space, as one does. Part 3 tried to almost remake the first movie with its small setting being duplicated here but transported to a building rather than a farm. It has a similar character dynamic and even copies the fact that there are only two deaths and some characters being poisoned by the Crites thorn darts. I say Crites at least once because I know that’s what they are called even though I grew up calling them Critters and still refer to them that way. The movie doesn’t stand out traditionally even with it being Leo’s movie debut.

One of the things I do love about this movie is that the Chiodo brothers and really family worked on it. From being credited for characters and consulting on the movie to doing the special effects of the little garbage disposal fuzz balls, having them on is a win regardless of how the movie turned out. The creatures still look and act similarly to the previous two movies and even though some of the charm and humor is gone, this isn’t a case of the main draw of the film betraying its source material. The movie does use one of the more common straight to video and sequel tropes though with a character explaining the events of what happened prior while clips of the first two films play in the background. It’s not as egregious as Silent Night Deadly Night 2 where that is 40% of the finished product but it does feel a little lazy.

The movie opens with a family of three moving to a city before getting a flat tire right near a rest stop. We are introduced to pretty much everyone here and their violently 90s wardrobe before Charlie warns a group of kids and us about both a corrupt landlord, who happens to be Leo’s character’s stepdad, and the Critters. We get our previously mentioned flashback before seeing that there are fresh eggs under our new family’s car. We get to the apartment that looks like it could be one of the mazes at universal studios and eventually we get our first kill. It’s set up really well and feels exactly as it should. While there isn’t as much blood as you might hope, it gets the job done. It’s a perfect example of why this movie is worth your time as it’s workman like in every aspect. The characters that die are a holes and the rest of the cast is full of quirky and likeable ones that we hope make it out alive.

The Critters are fun to watch regardless of if it’s a close up of their disgusting and well detailed face or a shot of them rolling to attack someone. They look more believable than Leo playing on his Gameboy in the car at night without the mega light you could purchase to go with it. That’s just plain ridiculous. The movie really picks up when it turns into a siege movie of sorts where the human characters have to keep moving up the apartment building while some of them get poisoned by the quills getting shot at them. The power also goes out and we get a flair lit scene that tries it’s hardest to be something out of Aliens. Leo’s character Josh gets so fed up with his stepfather that he locks him in a room to eventually be the films second and final casualty. I don’t mean that as a knock on the movie either, there is enough tension that we may see nearly any of these characters go at any time.

The remaining characters make it to the very top of the building while the critters eat their way through the rest of the rooms. The adults end up stuck or unable to help while the kids have to put in the extra effort to find a way out before Charlie makes his way back into the movie with all of his gear. With less than 20 minutes to go we get to see some exploding critters that is funny, satisfying, and a good boost of action for the end of the movie. Charlie’s gun malfunctions and the building is mostly on fire before the Critters are reduced to 1 remaining. Charlie is able to help kill it while avoiding death and saving the youngest kid character and the rest of the movie is wrapped up with friendships, burgeoning relationships, and one of the earliest examples of mid and post credits scenes I can remember. This movie also leads directly into part 4 and it’s nice to see a horror series do that let alone a direct to video one.

Critters 3 knows exactly what it is and while I could absolutely see parts be changed or cut out, it’s not the dud its reputation makes it out to be. It’s a fun pairing either with just part 4 or if you are going to run the series and there’s nothing here that your younger, human critters can’t see if they are starting their journey into horror. It was long overdue that we gave this little movie a shout out and it has an important history in both its casting and release. The Critters series should have been left alone after part 4 but we would unfortunately, decades later, get another movie and a TV show that both failed to recapture the magic of the original run. Magic that might I add is wholly present in this maligned third entry. Critters 3 is a fun sci-fi horror flick that is exactly what you think it is, the black sheep of a famous series that deserves much more than it gets.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen at the bottom of this article. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post Critters 3 (1991) Revisited – Horror Movie Review appeared first on JoBlo.

It can be hard to tell sometimes what is a Best Horror Movie You Never Saw. You look at the credentials on a particular film without looking at the title and surely it has to be a mega popular hit. You have Italian mega director Dario Argento, Oscar nominated Piper Laurie, James Russo, Brad Douriff, and special effects by another master of his craft in none other than Tom Savini. I set you up with all those names and accomplishments and maybe you wrack your brain on the possibility that you have seen or even heard of the movie. But I say have you seen the 1993 horror movie Trauma (watch it HERE) and I’m guessing for most people, the answer will be no. That is a sure fire way for a movie to end up on this show and that’s why today you will learn why Trauma is one of the Best Horror Movies You Never Saw.

I’ll be honest. The reason I’m showcasing this movie is two fold. On the one hand, we recently learned that horror legend Brad Dourif is retiring apart from his work in the Child’s Play universe and if you look at his career, there is so much more to discover. The other reason is that I’m a huge Italian horror fan in general and specifically consider Dario Argento to be one of the best directors of horror that we ever had. For those of you that don’t get into Italian horror, looking at you Lance Vlcek, Trauma is a good way to dip your toe into it. It follows all the principles of your typical Giallo thriller, has some wonderful gore effects so long as you are watching the right version, and is one of the man’s few American productions that is in English without being dubbed. It’s a Giallo gateway if you will.

Trauma starts with a lot of the hallmarks the genre offers. We have a rainy night, a character discussing a mysterious visitor, in this case a chiropractic office getting a new patient, and we see who the black-gloved killer is clearly. Well, we see what Argento wants us to see as the person is dressed in all black with black gloves and carries with them a bag that contains another wonderful hallmark of Italian horror, the murder weapon. We don’t see the face or hear the voice of the killer or even find out if it’s a man or a woman, but we do see our first of many brutal killings. This is just to set up that there is a killer for the movie and show off their weapon of choice. That weapon? A motorized wire decapitator that effects designer Tom Savini called the Noose-o-Matic. According to the book Dario Argento: The Man, the Myth, the Legend by Alan Jones, Savini wasn’t even sure what the murder weapon would be at first but was tasked with creating one anyway and put it all together when he went to the hardware store. There was also a conceived but never shot scene where Savini himself was decapitated, setting off the killers, well, trauma, and setting the movie in motion.

Savini has been a legend for nearly 50 years and had worked with Argento before in another Best Horror that now you have hopefully seen after we talked about it, Two Evil Eyes. I won’t go over Savini as, I mean, he’s Tom freaking Savini. Argento is a different story, especially for those that haven’t gone all in on Italian horror. You can take your pick from supernatural horror like Suspiria or Inferno or any of his stellar Giallo entries like Deep Red or Opera. There is something for everyone, you just have to give it a try. Argento directed and co-wrote Trauma with his frequent collaborator Franco Ferrini. Ferrini also helped out with things like Phenomena and the previously mentioned Opera.

After the movies first kill, we are introduced to our two main characters of David Parsons and Aura Petrescu, who are played by Christopher Rydell and Argento’s daughter Asia. Asia Argento has made a great career for herself both in her father’s movies and others in horror and out. Rydell wasn’t the first choice for the role, but it was turned down by the likes of Tim Roth, James Spader, and John Cusack. While all of those choices would have turned in fine, different, and nuanced performances, Rydell holds his own here. He got in as a huge fan of Argento’s work and in a fun moment, this Argento movie is probably what he is best known for. The cast is rounded out by Oscar nominees Piper Laurie and Frederic Forrest as well as James Russo and Brad Douriff. David stops Aura from killing herself by jumping off a bridge. She has an eating disorder and had escaped a hospital but is found by police and returned to her parents. David is a former drug addict and writes segments for the news on TV. The evening of Aura’s return, her parents are helping find the identity of the serial killer we saw earlier via a séance. It goes wrong and both Aura’s parents are killed by the person known as the Headhunter who shows poor Aura the heads of both her parents.

The movie has more than just Ferrini and Argento as screenwriters with a handful of other people working on the story, script, and even additional dialogue. It does show as there are quite a few story lines. We follow a little boy named Gabriel who lives next door to the killer, all of the victims that the Headhunter is looking for, and the police. We also have Aura’s eating disorder that, while obviously a serious thing, doesn’t really go anywhere within the bounds of the movie. Even with the story being bloated and sure, the movie being maybe a tad too long, there is a lot to like here. The main characters continue to investigate and find out that the killer only strikes during storms. One of the most interesting set pieces in the movie is during another kill in a hotel room where it isn’t storming outside, but the killer sets off the fire alarm and sprinklers to make it rain in the room and follow their own rule. In true Giallo fashion, this is because the inciting incident that happened to the killer happened during a storm.

While Rydell and even a very young Asia Argento may feel a little weak in the acting department, the great character actors more than make up for it. Piper Laurie, in a small role for the actress, is great as Aura’s mom and psychic. Frederic Forrest is a pervy psychologist and part time red herring, James Russo as a police captain investigating the killings and attempting to find out how our leads are related, and finally Brad Douriff. Douriff has a small but impactful role. Our main characters finally link the killings together to the fact that nurses who worked at a specific time in a specific hospital are getting targeted specifically. Douriff plays Dr. Lloyd who was the group of nurse’s superiors but has since lost his license and fallen into drugs.

He doesn’t want to talk to David about what may or may not have happened during that time but since he was involved, you better believe the killer has eyes, and a handheld guillotine, for our Dr. Lloyd. Dourif may have a small part but gets the movie’s best death which is very fitting for such an icon. A necklace he is wearing jams the murderer’s weapon so the killer drags his body, still weak from the signature blow to the head that incapacitates his victims, over to the elevator shaft and has the elevator do the job for him. We even get a neat effect where Durifs decapitated but somehow still functional head screams all the way down the shaft. Just gory goodness for us to enjoy. While it is a short and bloody role for Dourif, its just another example of how much we will miss this incredible talent on the big screen and that he proved he was oh so much more than just cinema’s scariest murder doll.

Dr. Judd, Aura’s former psychologist who we have already seen go a little crazy around her, attacks Aura in her sleep and escapes after David tries to fight him off and the police arrive. After a short chase and deadly crash, the police find some heads of the victims in his trunk and conclude that Judd was the headhunter. David returns and is heartbroken to find a suicide note from Aura but no body. He falls into a depression and drugs again but see’s a shady figure wearing a bracelet he knew to belong to Aura. He follows them to a house, and we find out that Dr. Judd wasn’t the killer but who was? I know I discuss a lot of these movies at length but ruining the surprise of a Giallo movie just isn’t something I’m willing to live with. I will say, it follows the rules well that it’s not supernatural and that there are clues left to you to solve the mystery yourself.

Trauma was released in 1993 first in Dario’s home of Italy on March 12th, followed by the festival circuits and a very limited US release at the end of October. It was so limited, in fact, that I can’t find how much it made at the box office against its estimated 7-million-dollar budget. 1993 wasn’t exactly a sleeper of a year for movies and it had to go against quite a few heavy hitters both holding over from previous months as well as films released at the tail end of October and into November. The reviews were kind of down on it, seeing it as a lesser de Palma imitator which is kind of funny since Argento was making similar suspense and horror films in Italy while De Palma was doing the same here. If anything, they were contemporaries and I even see De Palma as making really great American Giallo’s such as his masterpiece Dressed to Kill.

While its hard to tell when Argento stopped being a master of his craft as nearly all of the greats, particularly in the horror realm, seem to hang around just a bit too long, this is certainly not it. While it doesn’t quite hold up to his earlier works, it has all of his hallmarks and could have been even more as it was cut down in a lot of areas. Even Piper Laurie’s death was originally supposed to have the wire come through her mouth and take the top part off rather than the whole head. Thankfully we have a wonderful Blu-ray packed with extras curtesy of our friends at Vinegar Syndrome. Even with what could have been, what we did get was a fun horror movie from Argento, a great appearance from Brad Dourif, and undoubtedly one of the Best Horror Movies You Never Saw.

A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post Trauma (1993) Revisited – Horror Movie Review appeared first on JoBlo.

Sometimes a movie can be a best horror movie you never saw candidate but there are other instances where a movie has been seen and talked about but altogether lost to time. Richard Stanley has had a long career in terms of time he has been active but a very small amount of output in terms of actual number of projects. While the saga of his journey to direct the big budget remake of The Island of Doctor Moreau and subsequent firing has been widely captured in the documentary Lost Soul and his latest success with The Color Out of Space was highly regarded but tinged with controversial allegations, he had a couple of gems before all that. Dust Devil, his sophomore effort, still very much so belongs in the Best Horror You Never Saw category and I will get to that one too, but Hardware (pick up a copy at THIS LINK) is such a unique animal that I had the urge to revisit and remember why I dug it all those years ago.

Richard Stanley started his career with a few short movies ranging from 10 minutes to 45 minutes and a couple of these short excursions led to his first two feature films. While these short films got him notices, the South African Filmmaker cut his teeth on music videos before getting the chance to make a post-apocalyptic feature length film. It was somehow shot and made for less than a million dollars, but it looks a lot better. While it excels at utilizing minimal locations, the actors in it and practical effects go a long way to give it a much bigger budget feeling. The Weinstein Brothers picked it up for distribution but not with Miramax. The movie was released in September and October of 1990 by Millimeter Films which was their earlier production company. It made back 5.7 million and had middling reviews but more importantly showed that Stanley was a director who could get a movie made and have it be successful.

The movie was called derivative of things like Alien and Terminator for obvious reasons. The central robot stalker could be right out of Skynet’s early arsenal to go after John Connor and the isolation and claustrophobia the seethes into almost every scene after the first 20 minutes wears it’s inspiration of fleeing the xenomorph on its futuristic sleeve. Going beyond that though, the movie had more inspiration to it whether it was intentional or not. While its admitted and direct inspirations were from the works of Philip K Dick, Damnation Alley, and Soylent Green, it bared a little too much resemblance to a comic called SHOCK that appeared in the weekly British sci fi comic 2000 AD in 1980. The creators sued and were successful enough to not only get the writer’s credit but also get a little based on blurb in later releases of the movie. Think Terminator having to acknowledge the great Harlan Ellison and his story Soldier from Tomorrow.

It follows a man named Mo who buys the head of a scrap robot that was found by a wanderer. Mo’s girlfriend is an artist and he gives the head to her to use in her sculptures as a gift but later finds out that the robot may have been something called a Mark 13. He goes back to his friend at the junker area but he is dead and by the time he goes back, the robot head has used the rest of the scrap to make a body and begins to wreak havoc. It kills a peeping tom neighbor and the security team among others but also one of the main characters before Jill figures out its weakness and stops it once and for all. Well, at least that one, as the government has apparently approved the Mark 13 for mass production.

The cast is filled with fun musician cameos like Iggy Pop as the voice of Angry Bob on the radio and Lemmy, who if Airheads taught us anything, is God, as a post-apocalyptic cabbie. The other actors in it include Mark Northover who you may recognize from Willow, John Lynch who would go on to show up in the TV series The Terror and 2024’s The Watchers, and William Hootkins. Hootkins would end up with over 120 credits to his name but will probably forever be known as Porkins or Red Six from Star Wars. That’s a shame as he would appear in a ridiculous amount of stuff from Flash Gordon to Indiana Jones to Batman and even play a character called John Carpenter in Death Machine. Some of his dialogue and actions here though make this his most unnerving and unforgettable role.

The two leads, not including the killer robot, are played by the gorgeous Stacey Travis, who went redhead for the role, and a young Dylan McDermott in only his 6th role. Travis’s first role would be in Phantasm 2 but she would go on to appear in other genre fare like Venom, Dracula Rising, and Deadly Dreams. McDermott would also show up in a killer episode of Tales from the Crypt but also have a good run on American Horror Story. Its 94 minutes go by fast, especially after the initial conceit for the movie kicks in and it’s a shame that its so damn hard to come by. My favorite designer label for horror movies, Severin Films, had an awesome region free Blu-ray in 2009 but it is long since out of print and the movie never streams anywhere. I hate to say this, but you need to watch this movie any way you can.

While Stanley hasn’t done that many movies, he certainly has a flair for storytelling and visuals with an emphasis on the last part. The colors overwhelm at times with the wasteland being a brown dreamscape of fuzzy textures and sounds and when the building of the main characters loses power, the red color is oppressive in its danger. There are a lot of views from the robot’s point of view or the pervy neighbors’ night vision cameras that ensure very few shots and angles will be the same even with the previously stated use of very few locations and environments. One thing that I don’t think gets enough attention is the score which is done by Simon Boswell who also did movies like Santa Sangre, The Crying Game, and Stanley’s own Dust Devil from a couple years after.

As I said, there are a bunch of reasons why the movie works so well including the actors, score, direction, and overall story but there are three things that really stand out. The first one is how gory the movie is. It was almost an X rating due to the violence and boy does it still deliver on this. The kills in the movie don’t happen as frequently as other horror movies but when they happen, they are glorious. Or maybe gorious. The first one kind of tricks you here too as the shop owner doesn’t get more than some poisoning before he dies. From then on though, its pretty brutal. The pervy neighbor played by Hootkins goes over to open the blinds so he can continue his perviness and the kill bot is waiting for him. It injects him with poison, or acid its kind of hard to tell, removes his eyes and then drills into his midsection. I tell you this because my editor probably won’t be able to show you much of anything here. Our hero is next an even if his actual death isn’t as violent, it’s still harsh and we get some good arm gore. Finally, the two security members for the building get ripped apart and shot when they try to stop the robot.

The second thing that stood out to me, and I already spoiled it so I’ll lean into that, is the creative decision to have the art sculptor be the hero and not only kill of Dylan McDermott before the final fight but also not have him be involved in much of the action. It’s not reinventing the wheel but absolutely sets itself up as a more traditional hero complex with the guy saving the girl. She holds her own in less of a Sarah Connor in T2 and more like Ripley from Alien. Jill may be a sculptor in the beginning of the movie, but she also isn’t dumb or helpless. She uses her quick thinking and whatever she has in her apartment to go on both the defense and the attack of her pursuer. She more than holds her own and in fact figures out a way to stop the thing permanently in what turns out to be a fairly easy trick in line with War of the Worlds aliens being stopped by the common cold or the invaders from Signs not realizing that the planet they invaded is 71% covered in the thing that can kill them. Whoops.

The final thing that gives this movie so much damn charm is what it isn’t. The movie, possible plagiarism aside, doesn’t do a whole lot new but it does do it differently which means something. Unlike his second feature Dust Devil which I didn’t fully get when I initially saw it, this movie appeals to nearly anyone looking for a good time, especially a teenager who thought this was kind of forbidden fruit. It has a dash of sex and nudity, a post-apocalyptic setting that speaks to gamers and sci fi aficionado’s alike, more gore than you expect after the slightly sleepy first act, and just fun characters and concepts. As a first feature film it shows a lot of promise for a young filmmaker with a ton of ideas. The gore had to be trimmed to get its R rating and Stanley had a sequel planned that would follow Jill as she tried to stop the remainder of the robots from being used and potentially taking over the world. Sadly, much like many of Stanley’s projects that were planned like a trilogy for H.P. Lovecraft, this wasn’t to be.

Hardware is a great time and it’s a shame that it isn’t easier to find. Sure, you can get a used copy of that Severin disc that I talked about but $100 can be a hard pill to swallow even if the thing was brand new. It’s possible that we could get a future physical release, or you could always import a copy from another region if you have the means and, if you’ll excuse me, Hardware but for now I’d say if you can catch it somewhere then consider yourself lucky. It’s the type of movie that rarely gets made anymore and while that’s a bummer, it’s nice to know these still exist and maybe inspire filmmakers in the future.

Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

The post Hardware (1990) Revisited – Horror Movie Review appeared first on JoBlo.

We talk a lot about the top of the pile when discussing horror novels and novelists. Obviously, the top of that pile is a certain man by the name of Stephen King. However, if you were going to have a Mount Rushmore of authors with him, I’m throwing the great Michael Crichton up there with him in one of the other 3 spots. Yeah, I know he’s not known as a hardcore horror guy, or even really a horror guy at all, I know for a fact his most well-known work Jurassic Park scared the bejesus out of a whole generation of kids. For that matter, I showed that movie to my kids as their first entryway into horror. While I’ll probably tackle Jurassic Park at some point as it is vastly different from book to movie, let me know in the comments if you guys want that, but today I wanted to cover a lesser-known work from the author. Congo came out after Jurassic Park and probably was possible in huge part because of how crazy big that amusement park disaster piece was but how close did the movie follow the book? Learn some sign language and stop eating that sesame cake as we look at what happened to this adaptation.

The Movie

Congo was originally supposed to be put into production and come out in the early 80s. Crichton was very interested in making a modern-day version of King Solomon’s Mines which was one of his favorite books by an author named H Rider Haggard. While there had been movies in the past, there hadn’t been one in a while. He actually sold the rights before writing the book to Frank Yablans and 20th century Fox who paid him an advance for the book, screenplay, and directorial duties. He really wanted Sean Connery to star in it after having a great time working with him on Murder on the Orient Express a few years earlier. One of the reasons it stalled at that point was because Crichton wanted a real gorilla to be featured and the studio wouldn’t go for that. It would be passed around into the late 80s to people like Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter but nothing would come of it. The property was turned into an early computer game in the 80s for the Apple II among others but because he had sold ALL the rights to the book, the name of the game was changed from Congo to Amazon. An additional nugget about this is that Crichton himself knew how to code and helped with the game. It would go on to be a huge seller for Telarrium and Amy the Gorilla would become Paco the Parrot. It’s obviously freeware now so go check it out on your emulator of choice!

After the massive success of Jurassic Park, the idea to make the movie would come back up and Frank Marshall would be shown the property by his wife and decide to take it on. Marshall has also directed things like Arachnophobia and Alive but is also a 5-time Oscar nominee for his part in producing many more projects. Crichton, and accomplished screenwriter himself had nothing to do with the screenplay here and instead that fell to John Patrick Shanley. The name may not jump out to you, but he is an Oscar winner for Moonstruck and an Oscar Nominee for Doubt. In addition to that, he also wrote Joe vs the Volcano and Alive for Frank Marshall. In front of the screen has talent in main roles from Laura Linney, Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, and Dylan Walsh while also having a who’s who of supporting roles from James Karen, Joe Pantoliano, Bruce Campbell, John Hawkes, Joe Don Baker, and Delroy Lindo.

Bruce Campbell went for the lead role but just like in Darkman, would have to settle for a much smaller appearance. Reese Witherspoon, Diane Keaton, Geena Davis, and Susan Sarandon were all up for Dr. Karen Ross while Kim Basinger and Carol Kane were considered for the voice of Amy. Warren Beatty and Tim Allen were both considered for the role of Monroe which would eventually go to Ernie Hudson and end up being his personal favorite role. The movie was released by paramount in the summer of 1995 on June 9th to not great reviews. Reviews don’t tell the whole story though as the movie was a huge success with a total box office take of 152 million on its 50-million-dollar budget. It would get a released video game on the Sega Saturn that was an exploratory first-person shooter and an unreleased game for the 16-bit generation of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo that kind of looks like the Sega Genesis Jurassic Park game.

The Book

Congo was a big deal before it was even released as studio bid on it to turn it into a movie before writing even began. That’s because Michael Crichton had already been writing for 15 years. The guy was sort of a renaissance man with being a graduate of Harvard with a degree in biological anthropology and late being a guest lecturer at Cambridge. He learned how to code BASIC which allowed him to program his own game based on today’s book and wrote his first novel while at Harvard Medical school at the age of 23. That book was called Odds On and he wrote it and had it published under the pseudonym John Lange which was a take on famous anthropologist Andrew Lange. The book became popular enough to sell the film rights in 1969 but no movie would come from it sadly.

While in medical school he realized that writing was his true passion and that he was good enough for that to sustain him with books still being published under his Lange nom de plume and he started reviewing books under his real name. 1969 would give us the first Crichton published book with The Andromeda Strain which was a mega hit and get turned into a feature film. He would go on to write short stories, fiction, non-fiction, put collections together, and become an accomplished writer and director in his own right with one of my personal favorites being the 1973 movie Westworld with Yul Brunner and James Brolin that has obvious inspirations for the Terminator. Well, that and Harlan Ellison’s Soldier from Tomorrow but in any case, Crichton was a true original that could do anything he wanted.

While Congo is considered a lesser adaptation of his work, he has quite a few that will live on in perpetuity and continue to get made and remade as time goes on. He passed away in 2008 but his legacy will live on for generations with Jurassic Park alone. Seek out the rest of his stuff both in the literary world and on screen as it’s always interesting and entertaining.

What is the Same?

Congo follows an expedition but a large company that is looking to find gemstones in the Congo to help with their technology. The original expedition is wrecked by what we eventually see is a type of aggressive gorilla and a second expedition is sent out to find them. This is led by Karen Ross who also brings along with her animal trainer Peter Elliot and his sign language trained gorilla Amy. They also meet up with a famous mercenary named Munroe. They run into multiple dangerous elements including weather, plane crashes, dangerous animals, and a civil war in the country that causes political strife and difficulties in navigating to where they need to go.

Eventually the group makes it to the old camp where there are no survivors. They are attacked by a large group of hyper aggressive gorillas and are able to defend themselves while killing many of the animals. They find the lost city of Zinj where the diamonds are located and discover that the tribe of this area actually bred these gorillas into something different to protect them and the city, but something went wrong. Inside the volcano they find the diamond deposit but are attacked by the guardian killer apes and escape after a battle and some help from Amy. Even though the 3 main characters make it out alive, several other members of the team do not, and the volcano erupts which buries all of the diamonds, city, and race of gorillas forever. The characters were aiming to “put ’em on the endangered species list,” and more than succeeded. The survivors escape in a hot air balloon while Amy gets to be among her fellow normal gorillas where she will undoubtedly teach them sign language.

What is different?

There are a handful of little things that are different like the name of Monroe being Charles Monroe in the book and Monroe Kelly in the movie as well as him being a white guy in the book and, well, Ernie Hudson in the movie. It works well and he even has a line about being the great white hunter, but black which is awesome. The names of the science companies are different as well with it being ERTS in the book and Travicom in the movie. Technology also changes from the 15-year gap between book and movie with the books purpose of the diamonds being for processor chips and the movie making it about satellites. Crichton’s penchant for science jargon is much more prevalent in the book too but that’s probably because he had nothing to do with the final movie product. I call it jargon but after learning more about the man, he knew what he was talking about. Finally, since the technology didn’t exist in 1979, Amy the gorilla only uses sign language in the book instead of the electronic interpreter glove of the movie.

Some of the more major differences from book to screen are the genesis of the diamond gorillas. In the movie they are just hyper aggressive and bred to protect but the book has a whole autopsy scene where the group discovers that the gorillas are mixed with both human and chimpanzee DNA which makes them different and dangerous. The group that goes on the expedition isn’t alone in the book either. It’s a race between different companies from across the world that are after the diamonds and because of all the issues, its ERTS that gets there last and the balloon they all escape in is found from one of the other groups wreckage. Finally, and the thing that almost gives the movie the edge alone, is the Tim Curry factor. His character of the treasure hunting fake philanthropist Herkermer Homolka doesn’t exist at all in the book. He’s a minor villain and he and Bruce Campbell appearing in the movie are a huge win. Curry has an awesome look and accent to him and is just a fun character. While he doesn’t have anything as great as his quote from command and conquer, Mike please hit us with some Tim Curry space, he does add so much, and the movie would suffer greatly without him. There is also an epilogue in the book that tells us Monroe saved over 30 gems and sells them to intel while an angry Karen Ross from the movie throws the only one she saved from using her BFG out of the hot air balloon.

Legacy

The book is better. I had a good time with the movie, in fact better than I expected to having not seen it in over 20 years, but the book is superior. I’ll still say watch the movie for the really fun cast, particularly Tim Curry, but the book is one of the easier reads from one of our most underrated sci-fi and horror elements writers.

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