Arachnophobia (1990)

ARACNOPHOBIA (1990) ***1/2
Arachnophobia is another one of those movies from the late ’80s or early ’90s that I must have watched a hundred times back when it first played on cable TV.

File it alongside such movies as Back to the Future 2, the first two Bill & Ted movies Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, The Great Outdoors, Gremlins 2, Terminator 2, Total Recall, Tremors, and Young Guns. Those are the ones that quickly come to mind.

Recently revisiting Arachnophobia again for the first time in many years, I have to admit that I remembered a good number of the scenes, especially during the second half of the film when the spiders go wild on the fictional small town Canaima, California. I blurted out John Goodman’s line before his exterminator character Delbert McClintock says Rock and roll! I had a lot of fun with it around the age of 13 and I still had a lot of fun with it at 44.

You can have a good old time with Arachnophobia, just like Tremors, because it doesn’t go too far into extreme gross-out territory with the shock moments and death scenes, it has predominantly quirky and likable characters that you can support for the length of a silly, spooky monster movie, it straddles that razor-thin line successfully between comedy and horror, and it enjoys preying upon our fear of the unknown. I don’t have arachnophobia, or an extreme or irrational fear of spiders, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want a surprise in my size 12 shoe either.

Arachnophobia gives us a lot of familiar character archetypes.

For example, we have the highly educated big city doctor with the loving wife and two small children who relocate to a small town to get away from all the hustle and bustle. They have his new practice, her severance pay, and they also have each other. It goes without saying, of course, that our doctor suffers from arachnophobia.

The crusty old doctor who takes back his retirement after the young doctor and his family already made their move into a new house and who then seemingly opposes the young doctor at every turn during his subsequent effort to set up shop in the small town. He’s also the resident disbeliever when the spiders begin mounting their body count, and the younger doctor wants an outrageous autopsy because he doesn’t believe it was a heart attack.

The local head law enforcement officer who resents somebody like the highly educated big city doctor.

The straight-shooting but friendly old widow who takes an instant shining to the young doctor and who volunteers to be his first patient in a new town.

The football coach and his wholesome All-American family and the funeral home director and his penchant for jokes that never quite land.

Also, the world’s foremost expert on spiders, who Arachnophobia introduces before any of the small-town characters with a prologue set in Venezuela.

See, Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) and crew discover a new species of spiders, very large and very deadly, and one of the specimens hitches a ride in the coffin of his first victim Jerry Manley (Mark L. Taylor), a photographer from Canaima, California.

Our lethal spider makes his way out from the coffin and ultimately into the barn of the young doctor named Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels). He crossbreeds with a local domestic spider that Jennings’ wife saves from their new house and relocates to their barn. The Jennings not only have the barn but also the cellar that’s very convenient for spiders and their nests, and their eventual world domination.

Daniels has been one of the most reliable actors in the movies, and his presence almost guarantees quality. His 88 acting credits include Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, Gettysburg, Speed, Dumb and Dumber, Pleasantville, The Squid and the Whale, and The Martian. He’s very good as Jennings and this character and performance come across to the audience like Roy Scheider as Martin Brody in Jaws because he’s terrified by spiders just like Brody was not the biggest fan of water. In the end, though, it’s Jennings and Brody who overcome their greatest fears.

Goodman attempts to steal the movie with great moment after great moment. He’s a strong and steady injection of humor especially when the horror kicks into overdrive around the midpoint of the 110-minute film. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if Goodman’s Delbert McClintock and Michael Gross’ Burt Gummer are related.

I prefer Tremors over Arachnophobia, because Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are absolutely fantastic and trump any of the characters in Arachnophobia, Finn Carter’s Rhonda LeBeck is not cast aside for large chunks of the movie like Harley Jane Kozak’s Molly Jennings, and I just think it’s a better overall movie.

Both films, though, do a fine cinematic tradition justice.

Tremors (1990)

TREMORS (1990) ****
The title Tremors immediately conjures up such science fiction and monster movie touchstones from a long-gone era as Tarantula and Them!

Matter of fact, though it does not approach the suspense in Them, Tremors belongs filed right alongside the classic horror films of the ’30s and the science fiction films of the ’50s from predominantly Universal Studios.

Tremors also calls to mind The Birds, Jaws, and Night of the Living Dead at various times, obviously, but director Ron Underwood and screenwriters Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson provide us with a talented ensemble cast playing quirky and likable characters, as well as interesting and intelligent monsters, nifty special effects that bring the monsters to life, and the ability to balance horror and humor, that Tremors becomes a minor classic with a fresh and funky vibe all its own.

Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward star as Val (short for Valentine) and Earl, two repairmen in the small town of Perfection, Nevada. Can you really call Perfection a small town when it’s Population 14 and Elevation 2135? Anyway, Bacon and Ward have incredible chemistry in Tremors and they’re every bit as good as Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, for example. Their characters and their performances are stronger than what can be found within the average monster movie, and they form a strong human core at the epicenter of Tremors. We like these two characters a great deal and make an investment in their fate.

Finn Wilson is also quite good as seismology student (and potential Kevin Bacon romantic interest) Rhonda LeBeck. She’s not some dumdum, thankfully, and she fits right in alongside Val and Earl because she’s feisty and intelligent and resourceful and likable.

Supporting cast members Michael Gross, best known beforehand for playing Michael J. Fox’s dad on Family Ties, and Reba McEntire nearly steal the show as survivalist and prepper husband and wife Burt and Heather Gummer. Their scene in the basement when they do battle against one of the monsters earned a spot in the annals of unforgettable movie scenes next to the final scene in Road House.

Burt Gummer’s Gun Wall has, as matter of fact, its own fan page with the weapons listed: William and Moore 8 gauge, Heckler & Koch HK91, Colt AR-15 Sporter II, Remington 870, Winchester 1200 Defender, Winchester Model 1894, Winchester Model 70, Steyr-Mannlicher SSG-PII Rifle, Micro Uzi, Colt Single Action Army, Smith & Wesson Model 19, Beretta 92FS Inox, SIG-Sauer P226, Ruger Redhawk, Magnum Research Inc. Mark I Desert Eagle, M8 Flare Pistol, M1911A1, Walther P38, Luger P08, TT-33, Browning Hi-Power, Walther PPK, .600 Nitro Express, Browning Auto-5, Norinco Type 54, Ruger Mini-14, Uzi, Nambu Type-14, Ruger Mk1, Browning Hi Power, SIG-Sauer P228, .38 Derringer, Webley Mk1, S&W Model 66 3-inch barrel, S&W Model 66 4-inch barrel, S&W Model 686 5-inch barrel, Chinese SKS, Factory stock blued Ruger Mini-14, Auto Ordnance M1 Carbine with metal heat shroud, Mil-Spec M1 Carbine, M1 Carbine in aftermarket unfolding stock, and Ruger Mini-14 with Choate folding stock.

Okay, yeah, anyway, I’m glad that somebody went to such great lengths to keep organized stock of an inventory that could be considered a Dirty Harry dream come true.

There’s one super irritating, annoying character in Tremors — prankster Melvin Plug (Bobby Jacoby), a smug little teenage punk who never becomes a kill count statistic much to everybody’s chagrin who’s ever watched Tremors. He’s only a small blemish on the film, because we do get a certain satisfaction when Burt tells Melvin I wouldn’t give you a gun if it were World War 3 and eventually gives him a gun without bullets.

Tremors still comes equipped with such an inherent appeal in part because it’s one of those movies I would always sit and watch if I came across it on cable TV. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it over the years, but I know it’s a lot and Tremors fits this definition of romp — a light fast-paced narrative, dramatic, or musical work usually in a comic mood.

Any way you define it, though, it’s a fun 96 minutes and I do know that, after writing this review, I do want to watch it once again.

National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) Four stars

There are few comedies I have enjoyed as much as NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE.

I have watched it many times over the years and that’s not even counting all those times on TBS, because, let’s face it, one misses so many “good parts” of a movie like ANIMAL HOUSE when it’s been edited for TV. It warped my fragile little mind seeing it on video the first time and I lost count of how many times I watched that VHS tape I bought circa 1997.

I loaned it to Brad Rich so he could watch Bluto’s infamous “Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” speech and remember it verbatim for his high school speech class. Mr. Rich earned an ‘A’ for his performance. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to watch him act it out, though, fortunately, Mr. Rich returned the VHS tape. Bonus points for him.

College friend Don Stephens came over to my house about once a week to watch ANIMAL HOUSE it seemed like after Mr. Stephens joined a fraternity at Pittsburg State. Mr. Stephens and I started living ANIMAL HOUSE just a little bit so the viewings of the movie decreased significantly, especially after I continued my educational career in 2000 at Pitt State. Mr. Stephens eventually returned to the ranks of the independents and I remained one throughout both tours of college.

There was that one night when Mr. Stephens played Otter and I was Boon: “Hi, Don Stephens, damn glad to meet you,” then I hit ‘em with “Hi, that was Don Stephens, he was damn glad to meet you.” We only used it that one night, especially since it seemed like nobody got the reference. That’s when I started losing faith in the youth of America and have ever since.

Another time, Mr. Stephens and I went on a Thanksgiving break pilgrimage to Wichita to meet two young women (sisters) and, ahem, spend the night at their house. At some point, I believe it was early on at the bar, my date said that I was just like that Bluto guy from ANIMAL HOUSE, since I told her I’d been in college seven years. You win some, you lose some, and another time I’ll tell you about the six years off-and-on I knew my date from Wichita, although, to be honest, I really don’t want to do that.

Enough about that: ANIMAL HOUSE made a tremendous impact on the movie industry.

Every year, we get at least one raunchy, R-rated, gross out comedy.

ANIMAL HOUSE paved the parade route for PORKY’S, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, DAZED AND CONFUSED, AMERICAN PIE, OLD SCHOOL, WEDDING CRASHERS, and HANGOVER.

Every time I watch ANIMAL HOUSE, it holds up and it remains better than its followers.

First and foremost, it is superbly acted up and down the cast.

Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst (1954-2017) make a successful entry point into this world, as one snooty sorority sister calls them “the wimp and the blimp.” Tim Matheson and Peter Riegert play off each other so well as ladies man Otter and wing man Boon that we believe their characters have been friends for several years. James Daughton and Mark Metcalf, especially Metcalf as Niedermeyer, create thoroughly detestable characters that we love to hate.

Speaking of characters that we love to hate, Canadian actor John Vernon (1932-2005) had a knack for playing them better than just about anybody else. We enjoy every single appearance made by his Dean Wormer in ANIMAL HOUSE, every single time he gets his comeuppance, and especially every single time Vernon sinks his teeth into lines like “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son” and “Put a sock in it, boy, or else you’ll be outta here like shit through a goose.” Vernon later played a similar character in KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, retaining that bias against college kids.

John Belushi (1949-82) exploded into stardom with the success of ANIMAL HOUSE, one of the biggest hits of 1978. Outside action heroes Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Steve McQueen, we don’t find star-making performances built around fewer words. Belushi’s Bluto makes us laugh mostly through classic physical comedy and he irritates the comic villains every bit as effectively as the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges did in their heyday.

Bluto definitely puts the animal in ANIMAL HOUSE, smashing acoustic guitars, downing full whiskey bottles in one fell swig (actually iced tea), pouring mustard on himself, starting food fights (by popping “zits”) and nationwide dance crazes, and peeping at cute coeds. Bluto’s predominantly silent act pays off with his big speech late in the pic for the Delta troops. It’s not quite George C. Scott as George S. Patton at the start of PATTON, but it’s close, real close in memorability.

Bluto has been described as a cross between Harpo Marx and the Cookie Monster.

Just about everybody has a memorable character in ANIMAL HOUSE, from Kevin Bacon in his motion picture debut (“Thank you sir, may I have another?”; how dare I forget a softball practice where I made every teammate who wanted another grounder hit their way ask that very question) to the lovely Karen Allen also in her debut, as well as Verna Bloom (1938-2019) as the ready and willing dean’s wife, Donald Sutherland as a hip professor, and DeWayne Jessie lip syncing his way through Otis Day on “Shout” and “Shama Lama Ding Dong.”

John Landis began a string of winners here, followed by THE BLUES BROTHERS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and TRADING PLACES over a few years. Universal wanted Chevy Chase to play the Otter role that went to Matheson, but Landis felt Chase was not right for the part and the director played a little Jedi mind trick by telling Chase that ANIMAL HOUSE would be an ensemble pic. That disinterested Chase, who instead made FOUL PLAY. Landis contributed to the anarchic atmosphere of ANIMAL HOUSE by throwing things at the actors, like an early scene when Bluto leads Flounder and Pinto into the Delta house and they’re greeted by a couple flying bottles.

Harold Ramis (1944-2014), Chris Miller, and Douglas Kenney (1946-80) combined on the screenplay and contributed their own collegiate and fraternal experiences.

George Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFFITI famously asks “Where were you in ‘62?” ANIMAL HOUSE, released almost five years later to the day by the same studio, also takes place in ‘62 and Lucas, Ramis, Miller, and Kenney obviously had different answers to where they were in ‘62 and these different answers inform their respective movies and characters.

Both smash hit movies inform us what happened to their main characters. For example, in AMERICAN GRAFFITI, we’re told Terry the Toad is reported missing in action in Vietnam in December 1965. Meanwhile, in ANIMAL HOUSE, we read that Neidermeyer’s own troops kill him in Vietnam. Yes, indeed, they fragged Neidermeyer. Maybe even Terry the Toad took part in it.

Friday the 13th (1980)

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) One-and-a-half stars

Of all the horror movies over the decades that have been labelled “classic,” FRIDAY THE 13TH is the one arguably least deserving of that label.

Plain and simple, it’s a bad movie. One-dimensional characters, corny dialogue that even makes references to much much much better movies like CASABLANCA, filler scenes, and perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history are some of its crimes against cinema.

Harry Manfredini’s musical score derived from PSYCHO and JAWS and Tom Savini’s make-up and special effects are both very good, and their work earns the film one half-star each.

I can only see FRIDAY THE 13TH being considered a classic if you count all the sequels and imitations.

My personal favorite FRIDAY THE 13TH movies are PART III, THE FINAL CHAPTER (perhaps the most schizophrenic movie ever made, a cross between leering teenage sex comedy and brutal violence), and JASON LIVES. They succeed more at having a sense of humor and a sense of fun than all the other installments. The rest of the movies all have their isolated moments.

If you have seen the sequels before the original, you might be shocked by the film that started it all. It is very sluggish, at times, and there’s no hockey-masked homicidal maniac in the middle of the mayhem.

Sean Cunningham (director) and Victor Miller (screenwriter) made FRIDAY THE 13TH to cash in on HALLOWEEN, which earned $60-70 million on a $300,000 budget. When there’s an unexpected runaway success like that, naturally the clones and variations start appearing in droves and they did after HALLOWEEN for at least five years.

Cunningham and Miller worked together previously on a family film called MANNY’S ORPHANS, released nearly two months before HALLOWEEN. Cunningham began with adult movies THE ART OF MARRIAGE and TOGETHER, produced Wes Craven’s THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and directed a sexploitation comedy named CASE OF THE FULL MOON MURDERS before consecutive family pictures in 1978.

In other words, he saw FRIDAY THE 13TH as the way to make inroads in the brutal movie business. Honestly, who could blame Cunningham, especially as many others had a similar brainstorm.

Cunningham, of course, lacked the finesse and skill of HALLOWEEN director-writer-composer John Carpenter. FRIDAY THE 13TH does benefit, however, from its own low budget production — $550,000 — so it is effective in fits and starts despite itself. It is far more of an exploitation film than HALLOWEEN, and proved nearly as profitable. We saw FRIDAY THE 13TH movies in every year of the 1980s except for 1983 and 1987.

What FRIDAY THE 13TH did was establish a campground setting, add more corpses, er, characters, and amplify the gore, elements that quickly became the norm for an onslaught of “dead teenager” movies. Like virtually every horror movie since CARRIE (1976), it also has one final jump scare. The sequels — namely PART 2, THE FINAL CHAPTER, and THE NEW BEGINNING — upped the nudity and sex quotient. (FRIDAY THE 13TH fans should check out Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD, a 1971 film that undoubtedly influenced the first two FRIDAY THE 13TH installments. If you’ve not seen the Bava film before, you might be surprised. It’s also much better than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies.)

The original FRIDAY THE 13TH exists in that post-HALLOWEEN storytelling mode, where there’s a prologue detailing terrible events that happened in the past and will dovetail with the events of the present. Just about every horror film made after HALLOWEEN includes a bloody, sordid back story.

In FRIDAY THE 13TH, we head back in time to Friday, June 13, 1958, Camp Crystal Lake, when camp counselors Barry and Claudette sneak inside a storage cabin for a little lovin’ and they are murdered. We come to find out that one year before, a 11-year-old boy named Jason Voorhies apparently drowned in Camp Crystal Lake, due to negligent camp counselors.

You could build a nifty little collection of these back story / terrible event in the past scenes.

Let’s see, HALLOWEEN began on Halloween 1963 with 6-year-old Michael Myers killing his older sister Judith.

In PROM NIGHT, it’s 1974 when 11-year-olds Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick cause the accidental death of 10-year old Robin.

In TERROR TRAIN, a sexual initiation prank at a college fraternity’s New Year’s Eve party leads a young man named Kenny to become traumatized and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

In THE BURNING, it’s a fiery prank on a cruel, alcoholic summer camp caretaker named Cropsy that leads to five years in the hospital before his release and revenge.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE waits a bit to spring its 20 years ago flashback story on us.

Anyway, you get the point.

Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) decides that he will reopen a renovated Camp Crystal Lake. That’s his big mistake, one that results in eight deaths — seven of them Christy and his staff — on Friday, June 13, 1979.

Final Girl Adrienne King does have a great scream and some of the same wholesome All-American appeal as Jamie Lee Curtis. We also find out that she’s very talented at making coffee. Alice Hardy is virtually the only likable character among the lot, although we’re aghast that she ever had a love affair with the creepy Steve Christy. Girl, what were you thinking? There goes the whole idea of the Final Girl being a virgin.

As far as the boys go, Kevin Bacon later became a big star but he’s not around long in FRIDAY THE 13TH. Harry Crosby, son of the legendary actor and singer Bing (1903-77), attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and earned his MBA from the Fordham Graduate School of Business Administration before becoming a successful investment banker. Anyway, he’s killed in FRIDAY THE 13TH.

That all leads us to Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer (1926-2015), who we find out committed all the murders in a final act reveal. This middle-aged, albeit crazy, middle-aged lady, who at first seems like a kindly middle-aged lady, created all that mayhem. Early in this review, I called Mrs. Voorhees “perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history” and I stand behind that claim. I just don’t believe that she could have accomplished such murderous feats, especially as she begins her attack on Alice by slapping her silly. Palmer brings on the camp — as in campy — during her screen time.

Film critic Gene Siskel (1946-99) hated FRIDAY THE 13TH so much that he first gave away the movie’s reveal and Palmer’s fate and then he provided the addresses for the chairman of the board of Gulf & Western Industries (who owned Paramount back then) and Palmer. Siskel rated FRIDAY THE 13TH “no stars.”

Palmer herself thought very little initially of the film and took on the assignment so she could buy a Volkswagen Scirocco. She called the script “a piece of shit” and she thought no one would go see FRIDAY THE 13TH.

In her later years, Palmer embraced the film and the role.

Nowadays, the next FRIDAY THE 13TH might be a documentary on the legal copyright battle between Miller and Cunningham.

As of Oct. 19, 2019, 655 folks have signed the change.org petition “Victor Miller & Sean Cunningham, End The Lawsuit and Work Together To Let Jason Live Again.”

The petition reads, “We, the fans of Friday the 13th ask both Victor Miller, Sean Cunningham along with Horror Inc to end the lawsuit and find resolution over the copyright claim by working together.

“Allowing the battle to take place in court helps no one, especially not the fans of the series. Relying on a courts decision will take years with neither side truly profiting within that time frame. Even after the courts decision one side will likely appeal the case and that will lead to even more years of not profiting on the franchise.

“By coming to a mutual agreement you both compromise and get something you want. You find common ground and you can work together to profit both sides. You’d also be supporting the fans that have supported you and the franchise for so many years. We want to continue to watch the franchise grow under your direction. Please support us as we have supported you. Thank you.”