tyler mane – Tripping Through Gateways

Back in 2006, Adam Green made a splash within the horror genre with a throwback to 80’s slasher films called Hatchet. The story of a group of folks on a Louisiana swamp tour who run afoul of the local legend Victor Crawley.

The legend went that the poor young deformed Victor lived with his father. One night a group of kids tried to scare Victor, only to set the house on fire. While trying to save Victor, his father accidentally kills him with an axe. Years later, after a series of deaths, that part of the swamp was declared unfit to visit. The tour group discover that Victor is more than a legend…he is an “unkillable” murder machine.

The first hatchet got a positive enough response for Green to make two sequels, which garnered a cult fanbase. And really, it is a fun franchise. The violence is far to ridiculous to be judged seriously. Green filled the films with horror royalty like Robert Englund and Tony Todd. The films relied on traditional practical effects and buckets of blood. Like, an absurd amount. Green always approached the films with a sense of humor. And using the most famous Jason, Kane Hodder, he managed to create a pretty memorable bad guy. The first film also had a really memorable teaser trailer:

Green ended the franchise with Hatchet 3 in 2013. And Victor Crawley was laid to rest. Late last year, fans were invited to an anniversary showing of Hatchet. Except, when Adam Green stepped before the audience, he informed them that instead, they were about to watch a brand new fourth film in the franchise, simply titled Victor Crawley.

The film has a bit of a shaky start with a brief flashback of a couple who meet a terrible fate. The film picks up with Andrew (Parry Shen), the lone survivor of the third film who has written a book about his experience with Crawley. Chloe, an aspiring horror director is hoping to get Andrew to join her and her film crew (well, her boyfriend and friend) in making a film about his meeting with Crawley. Meanwhile, he is talked into joining a television crew for an interview in the old Crawley stomping grounds.

Chloe and her friends are trying to figure out the voodoo incantation that made Crawley into the terrible monster he became by looking it up on YouTube. When they are distracted by the sound of a plane crash, they forget the phone and the incantation plays over and over. As to be expected, the survivors of the crash and the filmmakers must try and survive the night with Crawley.

Green tries something a bit different hear. In prior films, the characters roam the swamp, this time around they stay inside the wrecked plane most of the film as Victor tries to draw them out to creatively murder them.

Like the previous films, this one relies on outrageous practical effect gags and copious amounts of fake blood splashed everywhere. The humor of the films is still there, with Parry Shen (who has appeared in all four films as three different characters), Laura Ortiz and Dave Sheridan are all quite entertaining and Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose provides some good laughs as Andrew’s brash and loud agent. And Kane Hodder returns to play Victor Crawley once more, giving the series a pleasant consistency with it’s villain.

Victor Crawley is not reinventing slashers, but it is a pretty fun ride with a sense of humor about itself.

The Blu-Ray contains a couple commentaries and a behind the scenes featurette. There is also a nice little interview with Green where he opens up about why he returned to a franchise he thought he was done with. Green talks about a serious bout of depression (brought on by the death of a close friend, his marriage ending and his TV being canceled when the network was shut down by a merger) and how George Romero helped point the way out of his spiral.

If you like the Hatchet franchise, I doubt you will be disappointed by Victor Crowley. And if you are a fan of over the top 80’s slashers, you should check out the film (if you are not already familiar with the franchise).

After the failure of Halloween Resurrection, The franchise regrouped and tried to figure out their next step. And they were stumped. So what they decided to do? Reboot the franchise.

Rob Zombie had two films under his belt, and while the response to House of a 1,000 Corpses was tepid, exploitation fans ate up the semi sequel the Devil’s Rejects. The producers decided Zombie could rev new life into the franchise.

The end result is kind of mixed. To begin, the original gave us very little of Michael’s childhood. He puts on a clown mask, kills his sister, his parents come home…BAM! Jump to the present. The film was more focused on Laurie and her friends, with little attention given to Michael’s past. All that we really got was he came from a standard suburban family.

Zombie changed all that. Instead, we were introduced to a little boy from a white trash home. his stripper mom has an abusive boyfriend…his sister Judith is verbally abusive and mom boyfriend leer at her…and so on. He is bullied at school, and little Mikey Myers has issues…he kills animals and gets into fights. And he actually kills before he kills his sister. He actually goes on a killing spree that culminates in his sister’s death. The only person left is his baby sister and mother.

Michael continues to be creepy and violent in the hospital. He grows up to escape, being hunted by his psychiatrist Sam Loomis. We are almost halfway through the film before we meet the teen Laurie Strode and her friends. So, the film tends to be a rush to get to the end, with Michael slashing what seems to be half the town.

The most enjoyable part of the film is the cast. It is a horror and exploitation who’s who. Brad Dourif (Child’s Play), Malcolm McDowell, Danielle Harris (Halloween 4 & 5), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) among others play either prominent characters or have cameos.

This is a bloody exploitation take on the franchise, unlike prior attempts. Depending on the version you watch, it can be potentially triggering for a viewer. The theatrical cut has Michael fighting a bunch of guards to escape…in the unrated cut, he escapes when the sleazy asylum employees drag a girl into Michael’s room so they can rape her on his bed (?!). It is a pretty sickening scene that was not needed. And truth be told, I might like the film more if is was just Rob Zombie’s Exploitation Horror Movie. But calling its lead “monster” Michael Myers and having the title of Halloween invites a lot of comparisons.

The biggest is that part of what made Michael Myers scary in the original was his ambiguity. What little we could see was he appeared to come from a middle class family.There appeared to be no abuse. Michael appeared to lack any warning signs. That question made him very frightening. Rob Zombie’s Halloween gives us a view of a textbook case of the “childhood of a serial killer”. Michael has everything working against him. Michael should be haunting and this new back story ruins that. It makes Michael a predictable monster, rather than a foreboding shape.

Michael kills more in the reboot…and we get more profanity. The exploitation approach does make it stand out from the other horror reboots…rather than a glossier reboot, Zombie gives us a grittier one.

The standout for me in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films is probably Brad Dourif’s Sheriff Bracken. He remains a good-hearted heroic type angry with Loomis for what has been unleashed on this town he protects. Dourif does not seem to get a lot of those roles, and he is actually quite good at it.

Tag: tyler mane

To the Victor Go the Spoils (Victor Crawley, 2017)

The Night He Became a Zombie (Halloween, 2007)