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Reviews
Kenny & Company (1976)
An honest and wonderful view of childhood
All-Star Video | Blogspot
When I heard Don Coscarelli had done a kids movie early on in his career, I knew I wanted to see it as soon as I possibly could. What crazy treasures lie in wait as he unearths the secrets of childhood?
Coscarelli is a very talented guy. This film shows his ability to capture the emotions of what it's like to be a kid. In some ways, I think Coscarelli is very similar to Bob Clark. Their careers are somewhat opposite. Where Clark started in horror and finally made it in comedy (Porky's, etc..), Coscarelli started in heartfelt and honest comedy (this and Jim, the World's Greatest), he made it with horror (Phantasm, Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep). There are more similarities, however, as this feels very similar to A Christmas Story. It is episodic and fragmented, portraying those cataclysmic moments of childhood. And, also similar to Clark's view of childhood, this is not a PG foray into kid-dom without caveats. These kids swear, look at Playboy and witness violence.
Kenny (played excellently by Dan McCann aka best-name-ever) is a white kid in suburban 1970s America. It starts with him playing flag football, his father watching expectedly. Kenny gets called in because some other kid is sucking big time. His friend Doug, (A. Michael Baldwin, aka Mike from Phantasm), is the quarterback and Kenny makes a great catch, but proceeds to run the wrong direction. Luckily Doug runs him down and turns him around, then makes a (now illegal) chop-block to let Kenny dive into the endzone. It's a pretty wonderful image of friendship that Coscarelli plays on for the rest of the film. This isn't a dramatic / traumatic view of betrayal, but a portrayal of devoted friends.
At first, I thought this didn't feel anything like the Coscarelli I know. However, as it goes it just gets crazier and crazier and Coscarelli's sensibilities shine through. For instance, there is a moment later on when Doug's dad is doing a show & tell thing about his job for their football team. Doug's dad tells them he is a Secret Service officer. One of the kids asks to see his gun. Doug's dad says of course, unloads the gun and hands it to the kid! The kid then proceeds to cock it and point it at the coach's head. Then, he pulls the trigger! At this point I was laughing so hard, I couldn't focus on what I just saw.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Kenny has to deal with all the regular problems of childhood. He's got a bully named Johnny, which may be a trope nowadays, but for most kids this is still all too much of a reality. The cruelty felt in school then, as now, is misunderstood by parents. Here, Kenny's dad tells him to stand up to the bully and punch him in the mouth. Not surprisingly, this strategy does not go well for Kenny.
At the same time, Coscarelli isn't painting a picture of a bunch of sweet victims. Kenny and Doug have a little neighbor, Sherman, who wants to be their friend and they treat him terribly. Granted, Sherman is super annoying, but the passage of cruelty from bully to victim to victim is so apparent. At the same time, he shows how adults can shape the ways that kids see the world. For instance, Mr. Donovan (played by the amazing Reggie Bannister aka Reggie from Phantasm), is a wonderful teacher who reaches out to the new kid, who speaks very little English, Paco.
The one moment that I found truly devastating was when Kenny learned that his dog, Bob, would need to be put to sleep. Earlier in the film, Kenny takes Bob out to the backyard, and just lays by him as Bob is too old and sick to play. There is a heart-destroying sequence where Kenny rides in the backseat of his parents car, clutching Bob tightly all the way there. I remember that exact moment when we put down my childhood dog, Cathy. At that point, I had never known sadness to be so deep and dark. And, Coscarelli portrays it perfectly. Kenny starts asking questions. Not growing up in a religious family, Kenny's parents leave the afterlife pretty ambiguous. Soon after, Kenny and Doug witness a bloody car accident, leaving more questions. Having been raised by a very Christian family, these questions were almost met with definitive answers. Heaven. God. Hell. Eternal life. But, it was fascinating for me to watch what a young kid does with those questions when there are no concrete answers. It's exciting to see that ambiguity and existential mystery that he would later play off and expand on in the Phantasm movies.
And, that's where my viewing ended. I can only speculate as to how it actually ends. The youtube channel I was using only a partial version available. There is some allusion to Halloween and going into the crazy old lady's house. I'm assuming this happens and goes badly. I'm also assuming there is an awesome scare somewhere in there and that Sherman has his come-uppance.
Either way, however it ends up, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Kenny and Company.
John Moret, allstarvideo.blogspot.com
You Better Watch Out (1980)
Fantastic Genre bender
All-Star Video | Blogspot
Christmas Evil is such a strange, hybrid-genre film, I can see why the marketing is so terrible. All the posters, descriptions, and trailers are misleading. It gets lumped in with Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Christmas, but I think that's a problem. Those are both great films, but this is not really a slasher film. This is not a horror film. This is a genuinely original psychological film more in the vein of George Romero's Martin or Taxi Driver than Halloween. That being said, it's got some genuinely crazy awesome gore sequences and is extremely entertaining.
Harry Stadling (brilliantly played by Brandon Maggert) is forever scarred when he decides to go downstairs on Christmas Eve to see the real Santa Claus and instead sees, what we presume is his dad, getting physical with his mom. Not surprisingly, the kid is disturbed. To be fair, that's pretty messed up. As a result Harry grows up overly obsessed with Christmas. He keeps tabs on the neighborhood kids, spying on them with binoculars and writing them down in the good boys and girls book or the bad boys and girls book.
Harry works at a toy manufacturing shop, Jolly Dream, and has recently been promoted to manager, where he is horribly sad that he no longer works directly with the toys. His coworkers are douchebags and one of them fools Harry into working one of his shifts so that he can go out with his wife, but in reality he is going to the bar with his friends, which Harry sees in a later scene. Harry's bosses laugh at him for wanting to donate a lot of toys to the children at Willowy Springs (the horrible State Hospital).
Harry becomes more and more agitated as he sees all these people not having the Christmas spirit. On Christmas Eve, Harry has finally had enough. He paints a sweet Santa sleigh on the side of his van and glues a white beard to his face, but then seems to immediately regret it, trying his best to tear it off. Maggert here takes over the role completely with his eyes and shows the mad desperation growing within Harry. He embraces the becoming of Santa.
From here, Harry steals toys from Jolly Dream to bring to the Hospital. It's really quite amazing how the tone of this movie continues to shift. Harry's generosity is genuinely touching. This is the moment that every great Christmas movie is able to capture, the idea that the Christmas spirit is all about generosity. And yet, it then changes quickly again as he parks his sleigh van outside his bosses' church as they attend Midnight Mass. As the parishioners exit the church, some yuppie bastards in their 20s notice Santa outside standing by his van. They immediately approach him. One of them says to him:
"Well, Santa, are you ready for a busy night?"
Harry responds, "I have something for you." The smarmy bastard replies, "Oh, what is it? I have superlative taste." (how outstanding is that?
Harry then stabs the yuppy in the eye with the gun of a toy soldier. It's super grotesque and incredible. He sinks a hatchet into the other yuppie's head and then runs to his sleigh van to escape. The gore effects are cheesy but awesome. But, Jackson lets the camera linger on the leftover chaos. What could just be a really sweet, and super funny, moment suddenly turns very dark. I found myself laughing and then immediately getting quiet.
Harry comes across a Christmas party and stops to watch through the window. Harry's sad eyes linger on the happy group, and then two men inside notice Harry and bring him inside. Awkwardly, Harry enters the group, but is soon caught up in the excitement and after much merriment, Harry delivers an amazing monologue to the children at the party:
"And, I'll bring you something... horrible."
Harry is chased by mobs of people searching for the killer Santa Claus. From there, Harry gets stuck in a chimney, has his revenge on his co- worker, gets choked out by his brother, and then punches his brother in the face. With a great surprise ending, Jackson has provided us with what is fast becoming my favorite Christmas movie.
-J. Moret, allstarvideo.blogspot.com
Dust Devil (1992)
Wonderful Horror Art Film
allstarvideo blogspot Dust Devil is that rare movie that is both art film and genre piece. It is beautifully shot and wonderfully put together. And yet, it is in that strange unmarketable space of being strange and creepy, but doesn't have the scares or gore needed to draw a horror audience. Not surprisingly, the distributor (Miramax) hated it. Stanley originally brought in the film at 120 minutes, and Miramax cut it to 87 minutes without his permission or cooperation. The version they cut removed all supernatural elements of the film and cut out nearly all of Zakes Mokae's scenes, as he was a non-traditional hero, ie: African Zulu. The studio, Palace Pictures, went broke and the film disappeared, never finding any kind of wide release. Stanley hunted down the negative, which was being held by the investors, and he personally paid for his own cut of the film. Subversive Cinema has now released Stanley's final cut of the film. The film centers on three major characters: Ben Mukurob (Zakes Mokae), who is a Zulu policeman who has been hunting the Dust Devil (Robert John Burke) and Wendy (played by Chelsea Field, who you might know better as the flight attendant in Commando "Don't wake my friend, he's dead tired" or Teela in Masters of the Universe -Dolph Lundgren!). The Dust Devil is a supernatural evil, called a Nagtloper. He is a drifter who kills and feeds off the life-force of those who have lost the will to live. As the narrator tells us, he can smell towns and people that are dying. He ritualistically cuts people apart and then keeps their fingers, as we are later told, "there is a whole lot of power in fingers." Mukurob has dedicated 15 years of his life to the hunting of this man, this serial killer, this Nagtloper. His room is plastered in newspaper stories linked to this devil. Wendy walks out on her abusive husband and decides to just drive, with no sense of hope. Wendy ends up picking up the drifter and giving him a ride. Mukurob continues to hunt, but is caught in the politics and mire of South Africa, which is in the midst of civil unrest and racial tensions are high. Wendy gets involved with the Devil, and becomes his next target. She escapes and he chases her into the desert. Mukurob follows them into the wasteland, where there is surreal showdown in a deserted city sunken in the sand. At one point, Mukurob tells Wendy to wait, saying: "I know what I'm doing. I'm a cop." Wendy replies, "That Won't Help." Mukurob, "I know." Exactly right. The film was shot in Namibia, and sand dominates every inch of it. It can be seen in the hair and teeth of every actor. It blows constantly and seems to cover every surface. The color temperature and film stock give the film an almost Aussie exploitation look. It feels all the more epic with the giant sweeping helicopter shots and long wide takes. Simon Boswell's Morricone-ish soundtrack adds another dimension to the moody, atmospheric feeling of the film. All the elements of a Western seem to come to the fore after the soundtrack really finds it's place near the end of the film. I originally heard about Richard Stanley when I read his wonderful essay, "Dying Light: an obituary for the great British horror movie," in a book a friend loaned me (thanks Tom!), British Horror Cinema. In it, he discussed The Scala cinema in the King's Cross neighborhood of London. The cinema had originally been London's first Primatarium (an ape house). His love for the theatre and his description of the programmers and projectionists at the theatre made a deep connection. Unfortunately, the Scala is now closed, and I feel a bit mournful for a place I will never know. But, it is from there that he met the people from Palace Pictures and how we now have Dust Devil.
Set Yourself Up: The film's pacing is slow and moody, so set the lights correctly. Don't have the fluorescent overheads on. Get some Tyson Chicken Fingers and a few cans of Castel, put them in your basement and let a small layer of dust form over them.
-J. Moret, www.allstarvideo.blogspot.com