Sex, Drugs, Toxic Monsters, and The Honor Society:Class of Nuke 'Em High

Being born in 1981 I got to see a lot of high school comedy's, particularly the John Hughes films. Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Buehlers Day Off were my favorites.  Other than the dramatic issues (or melodramatic depending on how you look at it), these films depicted high school as a bunch of kids with crazy fashion sense, listening to music in the hallways, constantly having major dance parties, and both guys and girls talking endlessly and lasciviously about having sex.

When I arrived to high school in 1996, I found to my disappointment that none of this was true.  Music was never played in the hallways, no one danced except the dance-team, and no one that I knew at least cared if you had or not had sex yet.  Oh, and the fashion sense was not as wacky either, everyone either wore Abercrombie & Fich or a sweatshirt that contained our school mascot along with whatever sport they were involved in. Also, no one roller-skated in the hallways, something that was predominant in 80's high school movies.

At the time I thought I went to the most bland and ordinary high school ever.  There was no Ducky that dressed goofy and was obsessed with music. No wrestler that just by shouting could break a pane of glass. It was rather disappointing,  however, I came to find from my future college friends their high school experience was relatively similar, as I am sure most of you found your high school's to be this way.

However mundane I found my high school, I was at least fortunate enough to not have a it residing next to the local power plant as the students at Troma High in the 1986 Troma  produced Class of Nuke 'Em High.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Troma, it's an independent film company based in New York that is known for producing intensely, over the top, campy, raunchy violent horror-comedy's.  The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet are just a few I can rattle off. These films (including this one) are badly acted, poorly scripted, and focus heavily on gore and sex.

Class of Nuke 'Em High could almost be mistaken for a horror film with an underlying message.  Whether or not they know it, they touch on the dangers of nuclear energy (there are signs all over the place stating it's clean, safe, and efficient).  This film could also be considered a scare tactic used to deter kids from using drugs (we will touch on this in a moment).  But no, this film is simply meant to be campy and gross, appealing to a specific type of horror fan.  Laced with cock stomps, skull smashing and nudity, directors Loyled Kaufman and Richard Haines are just trying to scare you (or gross you out, whichever comes first).

Getting into the whole nuclear thing, the film begins with a nuclear power plant that has a waste leak and runs into the water supply that's shared by Troma High.  Instead of evacuating the school, the plant manager decides to just order a clean-up and not to let anyone know about the devastating accident.

We cut to the school in which the film alternate shots of the toxic sludge getting into the school, while introducing us to the student body.  Crazy, wacky 80's kids with their eccentric clothes and Flock of Seagull haircuts.  Dewy, the class nerd (and he would be the quintessential nerd from every 80's film, he's got the huge glasses slick backed hair, and equipped with a pocket protector) drinks some water from the bubbler and gobbles down some green shit.  Ten minutes later Dewy freaks out in class, jumps out a window and his face melts off.

His death is not exactly mourned by his classmates, nor does anyone question the face-melting, life as it seems in Troma High goes on as normal, except for the Cretins.

This is just one of the many confusing parts of the story.  The Cretins, were the former honor society, now turned into a motorcycle gang of punks who look like a cross between the mutants from the Hills Have Eyes and the weird motorcycle gang from Weird Science that break up Garrett and Wyatt's party, also mixed with a bit of the Warriors. If you think I am lying, here are some pics.

It's never discussed how the honor society turns into monstrous assholes, but they apparently rule the school and disobey any type of authority figure.  They also love to stomp on crotches, beat up nerds, and take their lunch money.

They are also entrepreneurs (this is the part of the movie that is supposed to make us believe at one point these guys were smart), as they have nice drug dealing business going on for them. Which entails threatening kids to buy their drugs for outrageous prices, (they must have learned in history class about dictatorships and ruling with an iron fist).

The kids hook-up is a worker at the power plant, who grows his own weed without fear of getting caught due to the plant being shut away from the public.  However, due to the nuclear leakage that happened prior, the crop has now become toxic soaked weed.  The Cretin decide to call is Atomic High.

They sell some to the Warren and Chrissy's friends, who believe that the weed will a.)help Chrissy relax and b.)get Warren laid finely.  The first part of the film spends an awful lot of time on why Warren wants to sleep with Chrissy, but waits, and why Chrissy wants to sleep with Warren (they both believe the other is shy).

The whole pressures of losing one's virginity were so open in 80's high school films. In Sixteen Candles Anthony Michael Hall's character is obsessed with being the first of his class to lose it.  The Breakfast Club has an entire melodramatic discussion about whether or not it's okay to be a virgin.  It's sort of ridiculous when I look back on my high school days. Sure, most guys thought about having sex and wanted to lose their virginity, but it was never openly discussed in the school hallways, nor did friends buy atomic weed to help their buddy get laid.

Nobody really cared and I don't think I ever felt pressure from my friends or the student body to lose my virginity. Their were many ways of being a dork in my high school, being a virgin was not one of them.

In the film you can attribute this logic of thinking (and all other 80's flicks) to the times.  In the 1980's, there seemed to be sort of a second sexual revolution going on.  The music was was highly danceable and sexual with bands like Duran Duran and Prince helping to promote promiscuity. Plus, I feel the youth might have been revolting against their uptight parents who elected a presidential figure who was really trying to hammer home moral values in our country.  The Regan administration really spent a lot of time trying to instill the youth that drugs were bad, rock n' roll was bad, and sex was bad.  High school kids are naturally defiant, so they experimented with all of it, if not for anything but to piss off their parents.

ANYWAYS....So, you guessed it Warren and Chrissy smoke the "atomic high" and somehow nuclear material causes Chrissy to become an extremely horny, breast revealing nympho (this side effect of coming into contact with nuclear material has not been proven by scientists).  So, they do it..finally.

What's strange is, Dewy comes into contact, and his face melts off, these kids come into contact, and they just decide to fuck?  Both kids experience bizarre dreams and Warren decides he is so anti-drug, that he wants to take on The Cretins, "You're not going to poison anyone anymore." (swear to god, this was a line from the film).

From than on the movie becomes more fucked up.  Warren has an Incredible Hulk moment where he mutates and actually kills two of the members of The Cretins. When I say kill, it's a pretty light word.  If you have a week stomach, or don't like over the top death sequences, you should probably cover your eyes. Warren actually punches his fist into one of the other kids throats! Despite looking fake, your stomach still turns a bit.

The crazy part is, Warren doesn't remember a thing.  Not to mention this is the only time of the movie where he mutates.  So, no face melting, no more "hulking," in fact the movie basically just stated, all he needed to do was rage, and the toxic shit is out him. If only real life were that easy, everyone would become power plant employees.

Meanwhile, Chrissy gives birth to a ultra ugly toxic baby.  The scene was directly ripped off from Alien. Like any good high school girl, she decides the bathroom is a great choice to have a baby.  The little bundle of joy is seen swishing around in her stomach and than finally exits through her mouth into a toilet (really, this happened).  The little toxic crapper looks like a cross between a piece of shit and the alien from Alien.  How Ridley Scott didn't sue is beyond me?

Well, with the little toxic alien flushed down the crapper, you would think life would go on. Nope, it breaks free and finds solace in the Fall Our Shelter (irony?) Where it grows (again, Alien!). Meanwhile, The Cretins leader Spike concocts a plan of revenge against Warren, who is he not positive but is pretty sure is responsible for the death of two of his gang members, (in that scene while Warren wasted the other two, Spike merely gets knocked out).

It's the good guys vs. the bad guys vs the toxic super monster.  The remainder of the film get's even more violent and campy, and features the students cheering when the school blows up (spoiler alert).

The only other underlying message I got out of the film was that maybe, the dorks will rise?  Typically, the honor society is not composed of members who are psychotic, extremely strong, or who have violent tendencies. Not, it's not discussed why these kids went bad, or if it had anything to do with the "Atomic High," but if it did, why did non of them mutate?

But, this may have been saying that the smart ones can become violent and homicidal, and if that happens, he social pecking order of high school is going to change.  This is actually touched on in the remake of 21 Jump Street but in a more humorous and less homicidal approach (although the dorks were the drug dealers in that movie to...hmmm). Maybe instead of worry about your daughter going out with a guy from the football team, parents should be worried about their kid dating the guy getting an "A" in chemistry.  The football guys just want to get laid, the nerds want to rule the world, but isn't that what happens in life anyways?

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Candyman:Urban Legends and the Revelation of Goat-Man

As kids, at one point in our lives we all dare each other to go into a bathroom with the lights off and the door closed and call out the phrase bloody-Mary five times while staring into the mirror.  Once this is completed, you are supposed to see a disgusting, blood red-eyed woman ready to devour your soul.  Most of us (at least me and every other kid I knew) stopped once we got to four.  We don't want to risk it or take the chance that this silly urban legend is true.  Logically, you can debunk this myth because your eyes, once it becomes dark and you stare at something long enough (a la your reflection) your eyes will begin to distort what you are seeing.  Well, now that we've cleared that up, let's all collectively go into our bathrooms and put an end to this spook story....Yep, I am still firmly planted on my couch a safe distance from the bathroom.

I don't fuck around with urban legends. Now, I realize I just wrote a piece last night exclaiming that I am not afraid of ghosts, mainly because I don't believe in them. However, it doesn't mean I want to test those waters. Just because I like to eat doesn't mean I like to cook.

Even though I am skeptical of the existence of ghosts, I still have a great respect for spirituality and stories.  A popular story we were told to as kids was the existence of Goat-Man. Yep, this is the urban legend of my child-hood.  A half man-half goat thing.  Apparently it was kind of like a minatour, in that it's head was that of a goat, it had the four legs of a goat, but than the torso of a human, with arms.  Apparently, Goat-Man stalked the woods of the Kettle Moraine area, looking for lost hikers. Goat-Man had discovered the taste of man flesh, and it decided that it would eat oats no more.  He particularly enjoyed snacking on teenagers because their meat was tender and juicy.

Now obviously this is just blatantly ridiculous.  This myth, and I can't be exactly sure on the origins, but it comes across as a tale you tell to high school kids so they don't get any ideas of going camping for the weekend and attempt to lose their virginity (Jesus parents are bad about talking to their kids about sex).  However, this story wasn't relayed to me by just my parents, nor did it just happen to be made vocal at a point when I was hanging out with girls.  No, this story was told to me as a child, by I want to say my dad and uncles.  I always thought they were kidding, but my best friends dad spoke about it, and another friends dad.  When we got to high school, and if we ever roamed Ridge Run Park, we would always laugh about the Goat-Man stories, because they were pounded into our brains as kids. But I always suspected in the back of our minds, at least in mine, we were on the lookout for the creature.  Logic dictated there was no such thing, and especially nowadays with the internet able to disprove any sort of legend, that urban legend doesn't stand the test of time very well. I mean Goat-Man, it would have been found by now, or dead.  But I suppose the existence of the Lock Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and Werewolves aren't very plausible either (apparently, and I know people who firmly believe this shit, werewolves exist in Delevin, WI).

But there's a problem with ghost stories and urban legends in our society today, with our technology and ability to document and share knowledge with each other on massive levels, we disrespect these stories, and become obsessed with making them make sense.  Whether it's to find proof or disprove, we are starting to step over boundaries and cross barriers we may not know we are crossing, just to prove something.

1992's Candyman was an excellent example of this.  The film begins with grad student Helen (Virginia Madesen) working on a thesis with her partner Bernidette (Kassi Lemmons) about an urban legend of a fellow named The Candyman.  Apparently if you say his name five times in the mirror and than turn off the light he will greet you from behind and than, with a hook for a hand, split you in two from groin to gullet (Much more intense than that whole Bloody Mary mularky).

There are a number of unsolved murders going on in the Cabrini Green Projects in Chicago, and many people are exclaiming the Candyman is responsible. Helen is not a believer in the myth and thinks the Candyman is just something made up by the real killers to strike fear into the hearts of the people. She disbelieves so much that she decides to take on the Candyman challenge and say the name five times in mirror.

Once she does, she opens a dimension she never thought possible and the real Candyman has come for her, but not before he causes some carnage on innocent people.

It's a great movie and story, paced very well based off a story by Clive Barker.  The settings are decrepit and derelict and give the film an extremely gritty realness.  Tony Todd, who plays the Candyman does a superb job of giving an extremely calm, violent, and malicious presence to the character.  He is not horrifying to look at, but when he is on screen, he commands a respect and fear you would get from any other horrifying boogeyman.

The movie was taken from a Clive Barker story.  Candyman like Hellraiser, tell stories of evil fairy tales, the kinds of stories that you wish were just fictional and had no possible way of coming true. There the types of stories that get lost over time, or only told to kids as a scare tactics, but there is validity to them (in Hollywood at least), and consequences when the stories are not kept alive and the respect is not shown.

That's why I have a problem with the information age so ready to prove or disprove ghosts or urban legends.  Yes, they exist for a reason, whether it was to create mass fear among a culture, or to warn people about dangers, but the stories had to start somewhere.  I'm afraid that if we continue to dig and go further into realms of the unknown, our quest for knowledge and are desire for truth will lead us down paths we as an entire society are not ready to face.  Or worse, open a portal so evil that us skeptics (that is the word I am going to choose for myself from now on) will be eating our words in a fiery domain.

One of the reasons why the Candyman didn't just off Helen right away, was because she took from him his power, his believers.  There are a lot of people that believe that we give ghosts powers by our belief or antagonizing them.  The Candyman needed to make people believe in him again, which is why he frames her for murders, and sets up an elaborate ending for the both of them (I just realized this, but this was also a plot device that was used in Freddy vs. Jason....yep)

So, whether or not we believe in spooks or urban legends, maybe it's best we don't fuck around with the whole bloody marry thing.

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House: I Don't Believe in Ghosts

Now let me state for the record that I typically dislike haunted house movies.  I usually find the premise fairly stupid, and the answer to the solution extremely obvious.  A couple or family move into a home that was extremely affordable due to a tragedy that happened there in prior years.  Strange and unusual occurrences begin fairly quickly upon the arrival of the new home owners.  The incidents grow more and more violent causing the family to eventually do battle, somehow with whatever raging spirit or spirits are causing havoc.

What actually pisses me off, is that it takes the family, couple, or single inhabitant way to long to realize they are being haunted. Than, instead of high tailing it out of there, they usually bring in a medium or psychic  who usually just confirms the audience's guess, that the fucking place is haunted. Which actually just exasipates the situation even worse.

Why no one runs from the home I will never understand. Now, there are certain films in which this solution is explored, like Insidious or Poltergeist II and it turns out it had nothing to do with the homes, I can't fault that at all. But when you know your home is fricking haunted, get the fuck out!

The 1986 flick House takes a pretty different path down the haunted house road, fortunately it's an enjoyable path. Roger (William Katt) is a former Vietnam vet and horror novelist whose aunt just committed suicide.  Roger inherits her home, a home he grew up in, and the home in which his and his now separated wife, lost their son. Still hanging on the hope that his son will be found and being pressured to finish a new novel, he moves into his aunts home to finish his new novel, which is an autobiographical tale of his tour in Vietnam.

But Roger also has another motive for moving into his aunts home, to possibly discover what happened to his son.  His aunt believed the house was haunted and the house stole Roger's son.

First off, the film is not scary. But, it contains some neat creatures, tense moments, and also some hilarious moments.  The film is really does do the whole haunted house motif quite different. It gives the person living in the house a reason to continue to keep experiencing the madness.

This is about to sound weird. I don't really believe in ghosts. I know, for someone who started a horror blog, and someone who watches as many horror films as I do, one would think the opposite. But I don't. I honestly believe that everything can be explained, and what we think our ghosts, is just our mind playing tricks on us.

Part of me feels this way, because if ghosts did exist, it sort of validates all of these stories that we watch and read about, that are supposed to be fictitious   Frankly, I don't want them to exist.  I think the notion of haunted houses, demonic possessions, and unstoppable boogeymen are terrifying, but at the end of the day, I can say it's a story.  If they were somehow proven real, I would be absolutely shitting myself (if someone tries to tell me that Ghost Hunters are real, than go fly a kite).

I also have a more personal reason for not believing in ghosts or haunted houses, and it's due to my mother. Before our family moved to the big city (of West  Bend, WI) I lived in Newburg, WI (small town, actually whenever I hear John Cougar Mellencamp's Small Town, I think of this town).  My parents rented a huge house that was on a farm. Apparently, it was built over an Indian burial ground (I am not sure if this is valid or not, but my mother believed so).  Anyways, she tells us stories now, as adults that the house was haunted.  She believes she heard noises upstairs. In fact, when the noises were getting a little rowdy, she would politely shout upstairs to please be quiet so everyone could sleep.  Which somehow, calmed down the restless spirits. Apparently, these ghosts liked to party. She also claims she saw an Indian in a full feathered headdress standing over my brothers crib when he was a baby.  She walked into the room, he turned, smiled kindly, and disappeared.

Now, these are spooky tales, and these are just a couple of my mothers rantings. What have I taken away from these stories, my mother is most likely crazy.  The thing is, if these stories are true, my parents never felt the need to investigate further, they didn't seem to be in any hurry to move us out of the home, and they felt completely fine with us watching horror flicks in the home. The only reason we moved from what I understood was because the school I would have had to attend was 30 minutes away (and later I found out I would have only graduated with 35 people).

I am still under the firm belief if you ever experience ghostly apparitions  or monsters in the closet you should either a.)pack up your shit and leave or b.) blow the fucker up and hope haunting are covered in home owners insurance.

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The Innkeepers: A Six-Pack of Schlitz and some Ghosts Will Solve Your Problems

The quarter-life crisis seems to be something that has become pretty prevalent in our society these days.  I am not sure how popular they were ten or twenty years ago, as I only recall people going through mid-life crisis.'  These were experienced mostly by men in their late forty's mid fifty's, who were usually frightened with the thought of getting older, questioning the validity of their prior decisions, and boredom with their spouse and wanting to seek adventure, which may tie into sexual frustration.  This was usually solved with buying a motorcycle or a Ferrari or having extra marital affairs (although with the inventions of Viagra I have to imagine fixing some of the the sexual portion of this process).

The quarter-life crisis is a lot different.  It usually happens to youngsters between the ages of 25-35 and they are usually post-college students.  There hang-ups tend to be the realization they can no longer go drinking at bars four nights of the week and survive on pizza, or it will cause health issues. They become jealous and envious of friends who are getting married and having kids while they are usually not in a relationship, and finding it more difficult to encounter casual flings. Finally, they are dissatisfied with their station in life due to being stuck at a dead-end job after dumping shit loads of money, or borrowing shit loads of money to go to school to better themselves.

The 2011 Ti West low budget ghost story The Innkeepers is, on the surface, an extremely slow paced and outright boring ghost story. But if you scrape away the ghosts, West reveals an accurate portrayal of characters experiencing unsatisfied lives, while the ghosts become an indirect relation to that theme

This is my second time experiencing Ti West in a week, as last Friday I watched House of the Devil.  Both movies were extremely similar in that were extremely slow paced with very little fright factor.  However, what he did excel at, and here in The Innkeepers more than House of the Devil was character development.

The movie takes place in an old  hotel named The Yankee Pedlar Inn, that is about to be turned into a parking lot.   The hotel apparently has a history of having things go bump in the night and the two remaining employees left to man the last weekend are Claire and Luke, who intend to capture something spectacular.

The dialogue between the two is extremely authentic. Imagine if Clerks were a ghost story and there was a ten year age gap between Dante and Randall.  The express failure and dissatisfaction.   In one scene Claire asks Luke if he ever thought about how he got there after being in college (working at the Inn), his reply is every day, as she looks sad and dejected. Luke's response is, "no one chooses to work at the Inn, it just happens."

That line is so powerful because it's exactly how a large group late twenty-somethings feel.  You get done with school, you freak out and take the first gig you can find.  Retail, sales, coffee shop, it's a first job just to get a foot in the door. But than you find yourself  staying there for one reason or the other, and some can't escape.  There are excuses and even solid reasons why you can't move on, but non-the-less, you initially never wants to be there, but you just can't seem to leave. So you find yourself unhappily steadfast, which is what Claire and Luke are in a sense.

The duo make sardonic remarks about the guests throughout the movie and find no urgency to complete their jobs (apparently there is a shortage of towels).  They even go as far as telling children ghost stories and being rude in front of the guests.  Kind of like what Dante and Randall did (well, more Randall than Dante), but those were two guys who were disassociated with what they were doing at their age.  There is even a scene in which Luke gives Claire a coffee mug that has the phrase "Looks like someone has a case of the Monday's" etched on the side.  Which is a classic line from the film Office Space, which was an entire movie about guys unhappy with their lot in life.

They even take a classic defensive approach to their job by ragging on other people who are in similar situations.  When Clair goes to get coffee is a great example.  The barista (who is played by Lea Dunahm, who also had a small role in House of the Devil FYI) tried to approach Claire in a friendly way and ask advice about her relationship. Claire returns to work, without coffee, and giving a huge sigh of exasperation, Luke asks if the "weirdo" was working.  Defensive yet ironic, since they work in a haunted hotel.

They also get drunk on Schlitz, which is the quintessential hipster beer for aimless twenty and thirty-something slackers that work in coffee shops.

But there are some sweet moments and exchanges between the two, when Luke shows Claire the website he is working on, about the hotel being haunted.  Claire shows legitimit interest and Luke is bashful appreciative   It's where the two separate in their crisis' though, while Luke is making a half-ass attempt at bettering his situation, Claire seems determined to find out why she is complacent, and that is where the ghosts kick in.

Mid-way through the film, an actress that Claire completely adores, Lee Rease-Jones, stays at the hotel and confronts Claire and asks here "what do you do."  Claire has a hard time answering the question because she has no idea what she wants to do or what she wants out of life.  Later, Claire confronts Lee and tells her that she recorded  phenomena, "that's what she is doing," but it's not really.  Lee, reveals to Claire that she has some psychic gifts and asks Claire what she wants to ask Madeline O'Malley, the ghost who is supposedly haunting the hotel.  Claire just wants to know if she is real, and why hasn't she moved, why does she continue to stay here?

This is really a reflective question, Claire looks at herself as trapped. There's never a mention of prospective employment after the destruction of the hotel.  She hasn't really expressed interest in trying to accomplish something, other than recording a phenomena. She is really actually worried that she is not able to move forward with her life.  Which is why she obsesses over past ghost, a life-force that was unable to move on as well, although for very different reasons.  In Claire's mind, it may be a relation that if she can free the ghost, she can free herself.

Luckily for most of us, it doesn't take a haunted house or ghosts frightening us to give us a good kick in the pants to better our situations.  It just takes about six Schlitz Tall Boys and your favorite indie record to motivate some change.

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The Stuff: Eating it Up

In the year 2012 people are a little more conscious about what they are putting into their bodies.  McDonalds has put the calorie count on their menu so you can see that after the Big Mac Meal, you can't eat anything else the rest of the day.  There are dozens of reality shows like The Biggest Loser that have to do with weight loss and nutrition (although I feel some of these shows really just like to shame people into losing weight). There are also countless documentaries that are examining what is really in your food such as Forks Over Knives, which basically states that putting excess processed foods and meats into our bodies basically causes cancer and heart disease.

So, there are literally thousands of warning signs out there attempting to deter us from bad nutritional habits.  However, our country still has problems with obesity, particularly child obesity.  When you watch an NFL football game, every commercial break some football player is telling the audience to make sure kids get some sort of physical activity daily.

So why the hell is this still a problem?  Is it the economy?  Processed foods are cheap and easy and with two parents working in almost every home now, feeding a family of four with Velveta shells and cheese is much more appealing than slaving over a hot stove making a meat, potato, and veggie dinner.  No, I think a lot of it has to do with marketing.

Now, many of you are going to argue that most Americans are not stupid, we don't fall for marketing gimmicks and ploys. My quick answer is, yes we do.  Think of all the appealing ways fast food markets to people.  they understand they have to put the calorie count on their products, they also realize that many health documentaries  web sites, and t.v shows are telling people they are the devil.  They have created a counter attack.

So, think about Arby's for example "good mood food" is their slogan. McDonalds advertises an under 400 calorie menu, it's still awful for you and contains a shit ton of fat, cholesterol, and god knows what else, but hey, it's under 400 calories so it's okay for you.

McDonalds is also responsible for making gaining weight fun, by introducing the Monopoly game.  That's right a large fry, medium drink, or Big Mac meal will get you two game pieces, and hey you may even be an instant winner and receive a quarter-pounder with cheese. But, even though you are getting fat, you may just win that $100,000 prize.

Fast food corporations are not the only ones responsible for this, nor is it just food products.  Think about how IPhone's are marketed, they market the product to show that it works with everything that you use it for in every-day life, you couldn't live without this product (this could really be used for any smart phone honestly).

Needs, wants, desires, these are three verbs that marketing company's understand how to manipulate so that consumers need, want, and desire their products.  This isn't just happening now, but marketing companies are clever, and they tailor their advertisements to whatever demographic they are targeting, or understanding how a to associate a product with every day living, making that product essential.

1985's The Stuff was a social commentary on this and more.  On the surface,  The Stuff is a campy re-tooling of The Blob or a different version of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.  The film starts with a group of miners finding a bubbling white substance in the snow, and one miner decides to put it in his mouth (I am not fucking kidding on all accounts here. There are no credits to intro the film, I tired to rewind just to see if I missed something. So, this fucking guy says "what the hell is that?" bends down, touches it with his finger and puts it in his mouth. Than literally has an orgasm in his pants and waves his buddy over to try it with him).

From than on The Stuff (which looks a lot like Marshmallow Fluff) is now marketed as American's number one desert. It's slogan is "enough is never enough" (tell that to Jennifer Lopez). The ice cream guys are getting a bit nervous about how well this product is doing, and no one knows what the fuck the ingredients even are. Enter David "Mo" Rutherford, an ex FBI agent who has burnt some bridges and now freelances as a private investigator (or at least I think that is what he is). He is hired by the ice cream guys to bring down The Stuff company.

Along his travels he finds out that The Stuff (No Artificial Ingredients) is alive and is taking over the minds of the people who are eating it, creating an army of Stuff eating zombies.

He than picks up a cast of characters to help him with his investigation such as the marketing gal for the company Nicole, who is regretful when she finds out what The Stuff is doing. An 11-year old boy named  Jason, whose parents and brother have been seduced by The Stuff, and escapes them before he becomes part of the family. 'Chocolate Chip' Charlie, an ice cream guy who, with his lethal hands (he knows karate, watch him take down a break-away tile on a door) who is trying to get answers of his own. Finally, Colonel Malcolm Grommet Spears. Who lives in a castle in Georgia, has an army of military dudes, even though he was expelled from the military, has as arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, is very patriotic, and in denial about he Vietnam War outcome.

All of these characters were some sort of representation and commentary on the times.

Family values, executives taking responsibility for the product they produced, and trusting your military to serve the good of the public.

Jason's family states many times that he must become part of the family by eating The Stuff. Sure this was the family being controlled by the life from, but what the film was trying to say was that families were adapting and living their lives by what they saw on television, and how products were marketed.

Nicole states many times throughout the film that she feels responsible marketing the product now knowing what the products does to people. She did this creatively and very 80's like using runway models and a music video with 80's street break-dancers.  I can't help but think this was a shot at the alcohol industry to be honest.

In the end, the movie was extremely obvious about how marketing products that are awful for us will kill us in the long run. However, we, as a society, are still swallowing whatever is being put in front of us. So the message that this movie attempted to deliver has fallen on deaf ears. So, when you get that craving for "fourth meal" tonight, ask yourself what really are the ingredients in the meat, and how is this really killing me? Even if it is with a Doritos hard shell.

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Apartment 143:The Found Footage Genre and our Obsession with Reality

I find that straying from a formula once in a while will lead to shockingly great results.  This can applied to just about anything in life.  How you approach your job, how you exercise, cooking.  In fact cooking for me is a combination of a stressful activity and a momentous achievement.  I am pretty limited in what I can make, so if I try something new, I tend to follow the instructions as closely as possible.  The only time I get a little risky with my cooking is when I make overstuffed potatoes.  I have found that substituting crushed red pepper for black pepper give them a bit of a kick and is a nice combination with the other spices, I also add a full cup of sharp cheddar cheese instead of the half-cup, it makes it cheesier and I am from Wisconsin, cheese makes everything better.

ANYWAYS...horror films are like this as well. For the most part they follow a pretty strict recipe for success.  Once in a a while you get a film that goes outside of the blueprint and improvises and it either tastes delicious or it gets fed to the dog.  The found footage genre has yet stray from it's formula, and that formula has become extremely predictable, not scary, and completely broken.

2011's Apartment 143 follows the found footage genre to the "t."  A crew of parapsychologists (which includes "Spanish" from Old School) arrive at an apartment complex which is pretty much abandoned, except for the apartment they are about to set up shop in.  We are introduced to a family, a father who is to eager, yet reluctant to have the crew their, a stand-offish teenage daughter, and of course a little boy.  From than on, we watch them set up every camera and device while explaining what everything does to both the little boy and the audience, as if we have never seen one of these films before.

The middle part of the movie is boring and excruciating to watch.  We wait for random moments of fright, something unexpected to happen and jump out at us.  In which we are treated to shaking walls and odd noises.  We of course get a psychic or medium involved and someone gets possessed.  There is, of course, more to the story than we are initially told, and it gets painfully told to us at a snails pace.  The last act of the movie, the action finally intensifies, we find out the whole story, and of course there is a "scary" and jumpy ending.

This formula has been basically used since the Blair Witch Project.  It hasn't changed and has become extremely predictable, there was never a moment where I went, "well I never saw that before in a found footage film."  To top things off, not once was I scared, even in the moments where the film was building tensions, I knew that when the camera pans around for the fourth time, there will be something there that is supposed to make me jump, but it didn't (well, maybe a little but that is due to the loud noise that accompanies the fright moment).

Unless changes are made, this genre will never truly frighten anyone anymore.  Of all the found footage genre films, The Blair Witch Project is probably the scariest (however, it's still a really boring film until the very end), now granted a lot of it had to do with the marketing of the film (there were quite a few people that thought what they were watching was real).  But there were other elements to that film that made it much more frightening then any of it's contemporary clones. 

For one, there was a continuous steam of camera activity.  There weren't any cuts at all unless the camera was turned off by the operator.  The whole reasoning behind why the found footage genre should be scary to us, is that we (the audience) are seeing what the characters experienced in true form.  If you watch Apartment 143 and other found footage genre films like Paranormal Activity, there are actual cuts in the action, or all of a sudden it's the next day. Watching these films, you are not experiencing what the characters are really experiencing, you are experiencing what a movie company or what someone somewhere cut together a bunch of film they found to be interesting.  Not to mention, there's always different cameras showing us a part of the action, it's not one camera that we see, in Apartment 143 there are multiple camera's and multiple angles, it's giving us an unauthentic look at the events that occurred.  Basically, someone manipulated the film to fit an audience, and the whole point of watching a movie like this, the reason it should be scary, is that it wasn't tampered with, we are experiencing the true horror that the characters would have seen through one camera.

Another thing that drives me crazy with this genre is the addition of sound effects.  Sound effects are typical in all scary movies.  For some reason, it's an audible cue that if what you are watching doesn't scare you visually, a loud shrieking noise is guaranteed to lift you off your seat. The Blair Witch Project didn't rely on that, which is what made it authentic for audiences, there was no cue as to what when a scary moment happened, which sometimes worked well, like the ending, it came out of nowhere.  Other times, it didn't work and you kept questioning what you were looking at, but, in a sense, isn't the unknown more frightening than the known.

Another pitfall of the genre is the story. Every story is the same.  A group of investigators that are combination of skeptics/crazy believers go to a home and meet a family or a person that has been experieicng things they can't understand.  Nothing happens for 45 minutes except maybe a kid talks to thin air or a chair moves. Story reveals some "shocking" twist that is really responsible. The ghosts or spirits become more violent or more rambunctious. Finally there is a final showdown and an ending that reveals a ghost that jumps out at the screen.   

It's a story that may work the first time, but every found footage genre follows this formula and it's getting sickening.  Apartment 143 strays a little in that the story becomes vague and nothing concrete is revealed. The doctor believe that one of the characters was schizophrenic despite what they experienced.  I am not sure if that was the film's intention to make you guess what was really going on, or if it was just poorly written, but the film still followed the same formula for the story.

A way to improve the genre would be to start the scares off right away.  Stop with the mind-numbing introductions of the characters and the team of investigators.  The unnecessary middle act of nothing happening except dumb conversations that progress the story slowly are excruciating  Pick up the pace, the audience, tends to fall asleep, and everything is so predictable, that we are just waiting for the climax ending.  Also, stop trying to throw the audience off with some twist in the story, and either have the characters clearly win or lose, no more "surprise" endings revealing a ghost that jumps out at the scream, or some monsters heavy breathing.  These films are starting (if not already) insulting the audiences intelligence.

The genre needs an overhaul.  I am not sure if V/H/S is anything different, but it looks promising, but I am going to go see that eventually.  But, why does this genre continue to thrive, and why do people feel the need to see the same repetitive movie over and over? From a studio standpoint, these movies are cheap and easy to make.  There's not a lot of production involved, for the most part these movies are cast with unknown actors to give it more of an authentic feel.  If people go see the movie in droves, the studio makes it's money back and than some (just ask the maker of Paranormal Activity how they are doing). 

The other reason why this could be scary or something why horror fans (and I am speaking about newer horror fans here) are drawn to this genre, is that reality television has become the norm.  Kids today that grow up watching horror films are so used to the Real Worlds, America's Next Top Model, Hell's Ktichen that story telling and fictional boogeymen are just not scary anymore.  The Freddy Krugers and Michael Meyers of the genre are similar to Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, if they don't exist in real life it can't be scary.  Now haunted houses, ghosts, possessions.  Since these are paranormal events that are documented as  having happened, this is scary to the audience.  They realize that what they are watching is just a movie, but what they are watching is a)shot from the perspective of being real, and b.)something that has supposedly can happen in real life.

We watch Rock of Love with the perception that what we are watching is reality.  By contrast however, almost all reality is scripted and planned, but it's the perception that gets us to either think Brett Michaels is awesome and living the dream, or that he is a dirt bag and these women are idiots.  The found footage genre is no different.  It gets the audience by creating a plausible situation based on how we watch t.v.

In a way we have all become voyeurs, a society obsessed with how others are living their lives.  That's why reality television works, we are interested in other people's lives that are not our own.  Now we are interested for different reasons, we like seeing celebrities look like real people (or just make asses of themselves), we like to fantasize about the lives they are perceived to be living, we like to watch them fail.  For horror fans, it very well could be we want to see what happens when people are faced with ghosts.

Even though we know it's not real, some people project themselves onto the characters that are being haunted, they want to see how they may react based on how a real person acts.  Shows like Ghost Hunters don't help the situation at all.  It makes people once again, watch the show because they feel that something real is happening, and this is the appropriate way to act around it.

However, in most of these films they are displaying the inaccurate ways of handling these situations, so if we do take our ques from the found footage genre like we do from reality t.v, we all better pray that a ghost never invades our home.



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Introducing a Villain Without Ruining The Core Concept: Poltergeist II: The Other Side

A poltergeist is typically defined as a noisy ghost. In Poltergeist II: The Other Side, the definition of the term poltergeist is essentially non existent. Sure, it retains it's original ghost story elements of the first movie, but it also gets turned into a boogeyman stalking film. I'm all about mixing up the formula for a sequel, especially if you are basically planning a franchise, what's discouraging, is when a sequel or film in the franchise completely strays from the formula or disregards the previous works.

Now if you have never seen Poltergiest II: The Other Side (when I type “the other side, I keep getting that fucking Areosmith song in my head), let me bring you up to speed by back tracking a bit to the first film. The Keeling family start experiencing poltergeist activity in their home. Chairs moving around lights turning on and off. But the experiences start to become a bit more violent and the ghosts kidnap the youngest daughter Carol-Ann. And bring her to another dimension.

We than find that the the house was built over a cemetery by a corrupt developing company that “Coach” (Craig T. Nelson) works for, (he's the father/husband). The ghosts (poltergeists) are the dead people still buried underneath the home. However, there is something called The Beast, that has, taken a shine to Carol-Ann and will not give her up easy. However, in the end of the first movie Diane, crosses into the other dimension and saves Carol-Ann with the help of Tangenia the psychic, and Coach.

Now, fast forward to the sequel and a year later. The Keeling's are living with Diane's mother who happens to be clairvoyant, like Carol-Ann, and Diane (who has denied it her whole life). In any case The Beast has found the family and has decided to take on a human form to stalk the family in the form a an old “Skeletore” looking fellow named the Revered Kane.

It turns out Kane was a preacher and a bit of a whack job in the 1800's that led his followers to their doom. They had sealed themselves in a tomb because Kane told them it was the end of the world (completely unclear if the whole sealing themselves underground was supposed to stop them from perishing, or maybe they thought God would take them first. This logic makes no sense to be honest) ANYWAYS.... he got it wrong. Unfortunately, Kane wouldn't let anyone out of the tomb, so they all perished. That tomb just happened to be under the cemetery that was underneath the Keelling's old home.

Apparently Kane and his followers haven't quite figured out that they are dead and have not crossed over, and when Carol-Ann crossed into their world in the first film, they got a taste of what life was like, and they want to taste it again. In the end the family has to ban together to confront Kane once and for all. Protected and aided by a Native American Shaman Taylor, “Coach” leads his family to the field of battle for a final showdown.

The film itself is actually very creepy and despite the fact the formula changed from ghost story to ghost story with a central villain, it's still very effective. It was a subtle change to the original concept of the film, but it was 1986, central villains or boogeymen were pretty critical in horror films. Even though we are introduced to a main “bad guy” the film keeps it's integrity, and doesn't stray from the core story at all.

Now Poltergeist had three films in the series, and for the most part it stayed true (the third one Carol-Ann lives with her aunt and uncle in Chicago in a hotel. Kane finds her and there are a lot of mirrors and Lara Flynn Boyle).

The horror film genre does this the most, changes the concept or structure of a film within the franchise, and I am not talking about re-makes or it's current term being used “reboot.” Either by introducing a new bad guy (like Poltergeist II) or abandoning the entire original concept of the film.

But Poltergeist II succeeds because it doesn't direction, in fact the addition of Kane, enhances the story. Where some films, by straying from the core concept end up hurting the franchise more than anything else.

For example Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, has no Michael Meyers. How can there be a Halloween film without the central fucking evil character. In fact the film has no relation to the mythos of the original existing films, it's all about an evil corporation that develops a mask that will melt childrens' faces when they watch a particular commercial.

In no way shape or form did this movie help the Halloween series. In fact, most people don't even consider it part of the films “cannon.” If the film would have been called something else (you wouldn't have been able to call it Season of the Witch, there were no fucking witches in the film) it might have been an alright movie, but it was not.

Thankfully, the addition of Kane didn't ruin the concept of Poltergeist. However, the addition of Lara Flynn Boyle in the third film, almost tanked the entire series.

Also, just because it was in my head