Jason F.C. Clarke

I can’t remember exactly how I first encountered the Evil Dead films. I think a high school friend of mine introduced me to more than ten years ago, in 1994. I became fairly obsessed with all three movies, but The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) hadn’t been released on videocassette in years.

Seclusion in a root cellar: not good for the skin. Take note, geeks!

But my parents, who had frequently proven their willingness to go the extra mile to get me a hard-to-find Christmas present, obtained copies of both movies from a Canadian video store that year. I quickly came to prefer Evil Dead II, followed by Army of Darkness (1992). Languishing at the rear of the pack was The Evil Dead, which, prior to my recent viewing, I may only have watched two or three times.
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Deepstar Six beat Leviathan to theaters by about two months. For all that your average moviegoer would notice, they’re more or less the same film: a team of underwater scientists are attacked by a sea monster. What are the odds of the same high concept showing up twice in the same year? At least as good as Deep Impact and Armageddon, apparently.

Feed me, Seymour!

I reviewed Leviathan a few days back, and I’ll complete the Sea Monster Trilogy with Deep Rising in a few days. Leviathan was a mixed bag; decent actors, a decent monster and okay screenwriting made for a middling cinematic experience. I didn’t regret my time or money (see my upcoming Deep Rising review), but I definitely wasn’t getting it on DVD.
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NOTE: I forgot to take screencaps of Leviathan before returning it to Netflix. You’ll just have to do without. My bad.

One of my greatest pleasures growing up was catching a stupid monster movie on a lazy weekend afternoon. As a wee tyke, Boston’s WLVI 56 filled that need with the famous Creature Double Feature block. But that was long gone by the time I was in high school; and besides, contrary to popular belief, I did have a social life in high school and had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than watch old Godzilla flicks. Sundays, however, were a different story; and I spent many a Sunday in my room, watching a monster flick on TV while drawing (or, on more than one occasion, working on homework).

When I say monster movie, I don’t mean slasher flicks like the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series. I was never into those; psycho-murderers are kind of boring and I don’t like gratuitous gore (though I did enjoy Jason vs. Freddy, by which point both characters had more or less become hammy supernatural monsters). In general, though, give me something with tentacles or gross bug eyes or claws. Give me a bug monster or a sea monster or an alien hellbeast. I always considered C.H.U.D. to be the archetypal Lazy Sunday Monster Flick (partly because it’s the only one I specifically remember watching).
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Ah, C.H.U.D.. C.H.U.D. (1984) is the archetypal Lazy Sunday Movie. I vaguely remember watching it (probably on WLVI 56, maybe Fox 25) in my room in Carver during early high school.

I rewatched C.H.U.D. for the purposes of this review. I was mildly surprised to find that I remembered virtually nothing about it except: 1.) “C.H.U.D.” stands for “Cannibalistic Human Underground Dweller,” and 2.) chuds have glowing yellow eyes.

That’s not Leonardo. Or Michaelango. Or Donatello. Or even Jackson Pollock. Trust me.

I certainly didn’t remember that the cast included Daniel Stern (of Home Alone, The Wonder Years and Leviathan fame) and a very young-looking John Goodman, not to mention Kim Greist, who I saw a few weeks ago for the first time in Brazil, her second film—right after C.H.U.D.!
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An American Werewolf in London is one of those cult movies I always meant to see but never did (much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’ll review later in the month). I knew it by reputation as a darkly comic horror film, perhaps similar to Evil Dead II or Dead Alive.

Not a werewolf

One of the reasons it took me a while to see it was that it was a werewolf movie. I’m not a big fan of werewolves. I understand the appeal of vampires; Frankenstein’s monster is cool; demons, sea monsters, zombies I like. But werewolves seem boring to me. They’re big dogs, essentially. And their gimmick strains even the most flexible imagination: the victim only turns into a werewolf at each full moon? Why? Are werewolves affected by gravitational forces, like the tides? And then there’s the problem of mass conversion. Whether the victim turns into a giant wolf-man or a pure wolf, the weight ratios are going to be different, and that just bugs me; where does the extra mass come from (or go to)?
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