Michael Walters
Notes from the peninsula
Welcome!
This is my little word garden on the internet—Michael Walters, author (it’s true!). I have a speculative fiction novel, THE COMPLEX, out with Salt Publishing, and I’m deep in the writing of a follow-up. I would love it if you gave it a try.
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Death Ship (1980)
Director: Alvin Rakoff
The more cheap horror films I watch from the late seventies and early eighties, the more I admire them. When Death Ship popped up on Prime, I remembered a scene that was seared into my childhood brain, one of those kindertrauma moments, along with the Wheelers in Return to Oz, the man driven mad by a thousand paper cuts from his vengeful wife a in Tales of the Unexpected episode, and others that I can’t connect with titles, like a swimmer in a pool with a glass cover sealing her in.
Captain Ashland is on his final voyage and is begrudgingly handing the reins to a younger man, Marshall. At the end-of-cruise party, another ship deliberately rams them, and there are only a handful of survivors, including Ashland and the Marshall family. The next day the ship floats by but with no crew. When they board it, Ashland hears echoes of German voices, and the others begin to sense perhaps they are not really alone.
It keeps a steady pace as a ghost story, making the most of the spectacular empty ship as a location. The final act really dials up the horror. The cast is made up of top notch actors — George Kennedy as Ashland, Richard Crenna as Marshall (later Rambo’s boss in First Blood), Sally Ann Howes as his wife, Margaret (Truly Scrumptious from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, ANOTHER KINDERTRAUMA), and the relatively unknown Victoria Burgoyne…
… who, just after the halfway point, as my intuition had suggested, gets trapped in a shower while blood rains down on her naked body, and screams and writhes for a solid two minutes while her panicking boyfriend tries to get in. Great stuff! I’m glad I found it because that scene really got under my skin as a kid. I can lay it to rest. Am I ready for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang though?
Scream VI (2023)
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
The surviving friends from Scream 5 go to college as a pack, and in New York the franchise finds some fresh energy. The opening is excellent. Samara Weaving shines as a nervous film professor in an upmarket bar waiting for her Tinder date who’s lost and talks her through his attempts to find her. It’s Halloween, so the streets are full of students in costumes on their way to parties. After the lethargy of the previous film’s opening, this one was immediately full of surprises.
The Carpenter sisters, Sam and Tara, clash over what the younger Tara can do, and at university of course there are new people in the mix, with likely and unlikely suspects, and unexpected adults from Woodsboro in positions of authority… in Manhattan?! Like with all these films, it’s about the plots, and it’s nothing to do with the plots, because we’re always looking out for Ghostface. Another game kicks in and everyone is a suspect.
There are some top-notch scenes, my favourite being on the subway with everyone in Ghostface masks, but also the finale where there is some John Wick speed stabbing going on. Sam gets to own her genetic inheritance. Don’t think about it too much, and it’s fun.
Scream (2022)
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
I think I’m getting too old for these films. The teenagers pointed banter has become straight up annoying. The legacy characters arrive with the camera knowingly hovering for the audience to whoop and cheer… but having said that, David Arquette’s Dewey is by far the best thing about it.
Ah, the plot. It’s a whodunnit, but with lots of stabbing. We know this. Twenty-five years after the first Ghostface, another killer is on the loose, this time attacking people related to the original killers and victims. Sam returns to Woodsboro from California when her younger sister Tara, who we see toyed with via phone in classic style, ends up badly wounded in hospital. Sam goes to Dewey for help, and he tells her the rules — someone in the close friend group is always the killer.
The final showdown happens in the same location as in the first film, which is a clever touch. Actually, I think that’s what the problem was for me – it’s not much different to previous films, it relies too much on the older characters coming back, and the new ones lack charisma. Christ, now I really do sound old. You bloody curmudgeon!
Director: Rolfe Kanefsky
A group of teenagers drive to a parents‘ vacant summer house in woods near a lake. One of them, the uptight film nerd Mike, calls out every possible warning sign that they’re in danger, annoying his friends (and the viewer). He’s obnoxious. And of course he ends up being right.
This popped up on Mubi billed as a low-budget meta horror film made four years before Scream. It’s a mix of Cabin in the Woods, Friday the 13th, Evil Dead and Scream, but with no budget. To make up for it, the location is cool, the director makes some clever shot choices, and quickfire editing when the action ramps up hides a lot. At one point we see the mike boom hanging down, and for a moment your heart sinks, but then one of the actors swings on it to escape the attacking creature. You have to admire the chutzpah.
Another van of teenagers shows up at the halfway point displaying all the hallmarks of slasher victims, but they’re at the wrong lake, so they cheerfully drive on. It’s fun, a broad horror comedy that isn’t afraid of the horror, with everyone seemingly enjoying themselves. And none of the actors went on to make anything of note. I hope they get a little recognition now.
Castle Freak (1995)
Director: Stuart Gordon
The Reilly family arrive in Italy to inherit a castle left to them by an elderly Duchess. They don’t know that she kept a creature chained up in the dungeons, beaten and fed on scraps until her death. John, Susan and their daughter Rebecca plan to only stay as long as it takes to make an inventory of the place, but the desperate creature escapes causing cannibalistic mayhem.
John and Susan are barely holding on in their marriage — he killed their son in a drunken car crash that also blinded their daughter. Even though it must be intentional, the heightened acting style and melodramatic tone is annoying. The creature is like Frankenstein’s monster, but created through abuse rather than science, and the most effective parts of the film are when he is shambling through the castle after his prey.
The copy on Shudder is terrible quality, so this felt like watching a VHS tape back in the day, and for one particularly tough cannibalism scene I was actually glad of the fuzzy picture. Let’s call it a fundamental mix-up between intimacy and appetite.
Re-Animator (1985)
Director: Stuart Gordon
When I was a teenager, this film had the reputation of being so fucked up that it’s taken me thirty years to press play. I started #31DaysofHorror in 2018, and each year I’ve looked at the cover art and thought, nah, maybe next time. It’s smaller, more amusing, and cheaper looking than I expected, a celebration of creativity under constraints. There are only a handful of interior locations and a series of increasingly impressive gore effects.
It’s a version of Frankenstein, a subject clearly dear to Stuart Gordon’s heart since there are similar mad scientists and abused creatures in other films he’s made. Barbara Crampton as Megan commits wholeheartedly to Gordon’s camp vision and makes some courageous decisions (if you‘ve seen the ending you know what I mean). Jeffrey Combs is comically psychopathic as Herbert West, the lodger-scientist with an ever-present syringe full of neon green liquid.
All the men are awful, especially the lecherous Dr Hill with his crush on Megan, and Megan’s controlling father, who’s also the Dean of the medical school. As bad as Herbert is, at least he’s straightforward. Even the initially sympathetic Dan, Megan’s boyfriend, isn’t immune to ambition. Put down the syringe and step away, boys.
65 (2023)
Director: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Monster movies are horror, but are dinosaurs monsters? Of course. Jurassic Park is horror, just for kids as well as adults. Now that we’ve cleared that up, 65 is about an alien (to all intents and purposes a human) who gets stranded on Earth when an asteroid hits his ship sixty-five million years ago. There is a fellow survivor. There are a series of desperate challenges. There are dinosaurs.
65 is a terrible title. The card at the beginning tells us the story happened 65 million years ago. Perhaps there are no good titles left. It’s also a weird premise, but Adam Driver knows how to be an emotionally repressed soldier, and Ariana Greenblatt is marvellous as the other survivor. The story is frustratingly emotionally manipulative. To its credit, the eighty-eight minutes fly by. I love sub ninety-minute films.
There isn’t much more to say about it. As I write this, Dad’s moved on to watch the latest episode of Wheels of Time. These are the sorts of stories that pulled him through life. Fantasy, action, science-fiction. Most genre films are mediocre, but they serve a psychological function. I wonder how much of his story addiction is now in me? What was his influence on me as a child? Am I numbing myself with this shit?
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Director: Scott Cooper
A nineteenth century murder mystery set in the snowbound US military academy at West Point, where a cadet is found hanged with his heart removed from his body. The military leadership want an investigation to catch the killer and quickly clear the camp’s reputation, so they call upon a renowned retired detective, Augustus Landor, who joins forces with an unexpected ally, Cadet Edgar Allan Poe (yes, that one).
The cast is stacked with talent: Christian Bale, Gillian Anderson, Timothy Spall, Charlote Gainsbourg, and even Robert Duvall, who I didn’t recognise, and Harry Melling as Poe, who’s clearly brilliant but whose dialogue and affectations grate after a while. The gruesome killings, autopsy scenes and eventual satanic rituals give it a satisfying October vibe. I loved the locations and costumes. It brought to life the way people might have lived in the early nineteenth century, and while I probably wouldn’t have survived childhood, I could imagine myself in the fire-lit tavern, using blades for fighting, walking snowy forest paths with a hand-held lanterns and keeping an eye out for a monster in the wilds.
The story unfolds too slowly — there is a lot of procedural detail — and for me the finale’s twist didn’t work, but in most ways it fit the bill.
The Exorcist III (1990)
Director: William Peter Blatty
It took me a long time to track a copy of this down. Fifteen years after Father Damien Karras’s exorcism of Regan McNeil, a serial killer sets out on a series of brutal murders that is reminiscent of the long-dead Gemini Killer. Each death is a meticulous obscenity that is wisely more spoken of than shown. Lieutenant Bill Kinderman (the ever wonderful George C. Scott) is a seasoned but good humoured detective trying to connect the dots.
Kinderman has a tender relationship with Father Dyer, played by Ed Flanders, because they both knew the dead Father Karras. I’d heard Mark Kermode talk about George C Scott’s improvised story about carp that makes Ed Flanders giggle, so it was a joy to see it in context. The two men bond over cinema and banter like an old married couple. This gives the midpoint plot development an extra emotional kick.
The whole film is more of an existential downer than I expected. It’s about a demon bringing hell to earth after all. It’s flawed but also filled with wonders, and it must have been an influence on David Fincher’s Seven. Brad Dourif has to say some awful dialogue but gives such a great performance you almost buy it (souls drifting after death so that demons can slip them into other people’s bodies?). The final act is a bit of a mess, but portrayals of hell are tricky, especially with 1990 special effects. The now-famous hospital jump scare is truly one for the ages.
Director: George Romero
I’ll say up front that this was not for me. On a remote island, a long-running feud between the O’Flynns and Muldoons becomes violent over whether the walking dead should be culled or chained up in case a cure is found. Patriarch Patrick O’Flynn is exiled to the mainland where he holes up in a harbour and uses the internet to lure people to rob them. Four mercenary soldiers are tempted by O’Flynn’s message (an island where the zombie outbreak is under control!), and seeing an opportunity to usurp the Muldoons, O’Flynn seizes it.
This is a dud, plain and simple. The tone is all wrong, a zombie western with off-kilter comedy (a zombie riding a horse around the island ffs) mixed with gunfights and attempts to get the zombies to eat horses instead of people (?!). Left to their own devices, these zombies do unthinkingly whatever they naturally did while alive. There’s a cool set piece at a harbour where the soldiers have to get across the water to a ferry with zombies reaching up from the bottom. However, there’s no escaping the bad dialogue and clichéd family drama.
Looking for the positives, Romero’s social theme to chew on is unthinking feuds, and the zombie-like fighting that goes on between tribes. It also touches on religion, misogyny and entitlement, but it’s too silly to make much of a mark.