'Prom Night IV': The 'Angels & Demons' of slasher films

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (1992)
Starring: Nikki de Boer, Alden Kane, Joy Tanner, Alle Ghadban, and James Carver
Director: Clay Borris
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A demon-possessed Catholic priest (Carver) stalks and kills fornicating teenagers (de Boer, Kane, Tanner, and Ghadban) who have snuck for a weekend of nookie at an isolated country home that used to be a monastery.


"Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil" is a by-the-numbers slasher flick that is distingushed by a creepier-than-average slasher, thanks to a chilling performance by James Carver, and a cuter-than-average central chick in the form of Nikki de Boer, who gives the best performance in the entire film. In fact, she is so good she makes her nearly charisma-free co-star Alden Kane look even less talented than he does in scenes he doesn't share with de Boer. In fact, de Boer gives a performance that belongs in the Slasher Movie Hall of Fame, right along side Jamie Lee Curtis' turn in "Terror Train" and "Halloween".

The film even manages to do something that the original "Prom Night"did not... it manages to dish out some truly shocking and startling imagery. The film surprises more than once in that area... and I can't get specific, because it will ruin the surprises if you haven't seen this movie.

Unfortunately there are two big problems with this "Prom Night" sequel, and they conspire to make it only slightly better than the original film in the series.

The first problem is with the script. It's very uneven and herky-jerky in its pacing. After a strong start--with prelude murders, the presentation of a secret Catholic cabal that makes those guys protecting the DaVinci Code look like first-round "American Idol" contestants, and a startling dispatch of what looked to be a main character even before the film's main story has started--but it then threatened to stall out with an uninteresting build-up to the bloody teen butchery that invariably takes place in a film like this. Once the killing started, the film did an okay job of keeping up the suspense and terror, but there were at least five minutes of pure padding that should have been gotten rid of before we got there.

The second problem is with the title. While the "Prom Night" series has never been one to care about continuity between movies--the first was a simple revenge tale, the two middle ones were about a Prom Queen who was too bitchy to die, and the one being discussed here goes off in yet another direction that has nothing to do with any of the other films. In fact, it doesn't even really have anything to do with a prom, except one is talked about and the four main characters drive by one on their way to their weekend of private debauchery. I suspect the producers of the film had a generic slasher flick that they hoped to boost audience for by associating it with an established brand. It's almost too bad they did that, because Father Jonas could possibly have been another Jason or Michael if he had been allowed to skewer unsuspecting fornicators with his bladed crucifix. It would have freed the film of the tedious task of paying lip-service to a prom that has nothing to do with anything, and it might have left more time for the whole Church Conspiracy/Demon Possession angle.

On the other hand, whoever holds the rights to this film isn't terribly swift, so I can see how they might have thought the "Prom Night" brand would held their movie rather than hurt it. After all, this film was NOT released under a new title to take advantage of the "Catholic Conspiracy Craze" that was stirred up by the "DaVinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" hype of recent years.

Despite its weaknesses and its history of bad marketing, "Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil" is a fairly decent slasher flick. Fans of the classics in this horror subgenre should get a kick out of it.

Welcome to 'Watching the Detectives'

As the header implies, this is where I'll be posting reviews of crime dramas, action films, and other movies featuring criminals and lawmen. It's part of a family of blogs I'm using to organize reviews written in the past, and ones I'll be writing in the future. You can see a list of the others to the right.

This old ad (set to the Elvis Costello tune "Watching the Detectives") sums up what you'll find here quite nicely.

Props just for being titled 'Werewolf Bitch'

The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (aka "Howling II: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch")(1986)
Starring: Annie McEnroe, Reb Brown, Christopher Lee, Marsha Hunt, Sybil Danning, Judd Omen and Ladislav Krecmer
Director: Philippe Mora
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Occultist Stefan Crosscoe (Lee) convinces Jenny (McEnroe) that her newscaster sister's mysterious death was caused by werewolves. Together with Jenny's fiance Ben (Brown), they travel to Transylvania to avenge her sister and take advantage of a once-in-a-millenia chance to destroy the immortal Stirba, Mother of Werewolves (Danning).


"The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewof" (released in GB with the subtitle "Stirba, Werewolf Bitch", one of my all-time favorite movie titles) is not a good movie by any standard. The script is muddled to the point of near-incomprehensibility and the film is edited in such a way that scenes seem like they're out of place--Is the underground club at the start of the movie a werewolf hangout or not? Is the new wave/punk band performing there also performing at Stirba's Transylvanian werewolf sex party, or is reusing the performance some weird attempt at padding the run-time? Why does Jenny decide to take a bath in the middle of the day, especially when she knows Stefan may call her to head out to werewolf castle any time? Why do the number of werewolves seem to increase and descrease at random and/or according to the needs of the plot? Why do the heroes wait until nightfall to raid the castle?-- and the acting is barely passable by everyone involved, including that offered by the great Christopher Lee.

And then there's the werewolf make-up and transformation scenes. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but, although this was clearly a low-budget quickie, the budget stil was such that it could have allowed for something better than werewolf costuming that looks like it was created with a make-up kit bought off the shelf in a Halloween costume shop along with fake fur harvested from coats at the thrift shop. The take-away lesson here is that if you're going to make a werewolf movie, put the money into hiriing a decent make-up artist and make-up effects designer.

For all that's wrong with this movie, it's still got a touch of that "so bad it's good" charm to it. There are few movies you;ll see that will have you wondering "Did I just see what I think I saw? Did I just hear them say what I think they said?"

I hesitate to recommend this film--too many of you reading this know how to email me and some of you even know where I live--but it might be a worthwhile addition to a werewolf-themed Bad Movie Night, or perhaps something to have running in a screening room at a large Halloween party. (Just be aware, there is subject matter in the film that's not appropriate for the kiddies. The players of "Ricky Shore Sings the Blues" called attention to that fact when they featured a clip from "Howling II" in their Werewolves in Heat skit. And a great skit that was, too. I would have loved to have imbedded it here, but it seems to have vanished from the web. A shame really.)

'His Girl Friday' is a true comedy classic

His Girl Friday (1940)
Starring: Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy
Director: Howard Hawkes
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While attempting to score an interview with a man slated for execution the next morning, an unscrupulous newspaper editor (Grant) juggles politics, yellow journalism, and a desperate attempt to prevent his ex-wife and former top reporter (Russell) from marrying an insurance salesman (Bellamy) and quitting the newspaper business.


"His Girl Friday" is a comedy on speed, cocaine, crystal meth, and just about any other upper you can think of. It's crammed wall-to-wall with jokes, gags, and lampooning of crooked politicians and ruthless journalists, and you'll have to watch the movie twice to catch them all, because your laughter will drown out a fifth of them on the first time through.

This is one of the fastest paced movies ever made--it never pauses once it gets going, but speeds along at a mile a minute, with characters always doing two or more things at the same time and several actors usually talking over each other at once. It's a chaotic film--perhaps even a little chaotic for its own good at times--but every joke is funny and every actor featured gives a great, high energy performance. (Russell and Grant are particularly noteworthy. Russell manages to play a character who is as tough as her male counterparts yet is still feminine and sexy, while Grant plays a man who is a complete bastard, but he still keeps the character likable and charming.)

"His Girl Friday" is a true comedy classic that remains relevant nearly seventy years after its first release, because, if anything, politicians and reporters have gotten even more slimy and callous than they were in 1940.

Tomie: Great comic book, crappy movie

Tomie (1999)
Starring: Yoriko Douguchi, Miho Kanno and Mami Nakamura
Director: Ataru Oikawa
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Junji Ito created one of the only truly scary comic book series I've read--"Uzemaki." His other famous series Tomie is almost as creepy, although you'd never know it from this astoundingly boring movie adaptation.


"Tomie" is the tale of a teen girl who is the center of violent love triangles where everyone involved ends up dead, including her. And, yes, it's plural, because Tomie is so evil that even death cannot stop her--her body always regrows, even from dismemberment, into an exact replica of when she was at her most beautiful... and then she goes looking for more victims to seduce and lead to destruction.

"Tomie" is an awful movie in every sense of the word. The only reason I suffered through it until the end was because I wanted to review it for here and because I kept thinking it HAD to get better.

"Tomie" fails to take advantage of nearly everything that was truly creepy in the original source material, so it starts boring and it stays there; is filled with drab characters having inane conversations; spends too much time with characters talking about how horrific things are instead of showing the viewer the horror; and has special and gore effects so awful that Ed Wood is embarrassed on the filmmakers' behalf. Finally, the film seems to assume that the viewer is familiar with the Ito comics series, which is an unforgivable sin in my opinion.

"Tomie" would have been a One Star movie, except the actors seem to be doing as good a job as can be expected with the awful script they're working with. I still recommend that you avoid this one.

There are at least six other Tomie movies that have been made since the release of this one, and this is one series where the films get better as they go. This is the only Tomie film bad enough so far to end up here. The rest will be reviewed here.

'Identity' is a mystery within a mystery

Identity (2003)
Starring: John Cusack, Ray Liotta and Amanda Peet
Director: James Mangold
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

On a stormy night, a group of unrelated strangers are stranded at a motel... and then they start dying most horribly. As they try to find the murderer among them, it becomes apparent that they aren't the strangers they first thought they were, and that they have been brought here by mysterious forces far stronger than chance.


"Identity" is one of those movies that it's hard to talk about without spoiling the entire thing. It's extremely well-crated in that the characters start to recognize that there's something seriously wrong with the situation they have been thrust into--in addition to the fact that someone is butchering them "Ten Little Indians"-style--as the viewer does. Similarly, the characters become aware of the impossibility and improbility of what is unfolding at the same pace that the viewer does. At every turn, the movie keeps pace with the audience, continuing to share revelations at the right moment, while constantly upping the tension level and making the need to find the answers evermore desirable by the characters and the viewers. This film is quite strange, but it is a well-made kind of strange.

There have been a lot of mystery and suspense thrillers in recent years that have attempted to be oh-so-clever and have relied on twist-endings that were either so far-fetched and unsupported by what has gone before that they feel like cheats or just plain stupid, or were so predictable that the audience figured them out well before the "big revelation." With "Identity," the filmmakers get it just right, and they have actually made a clever film within the trappings of a well-used mystery movie set-up. What's more, the sets are great, the camerawork extremely well-done, and the acting is top-notch from all players.

If you have patience, a love of mystery and suspense films, and tolerance for the slightly bizarre, I think you'll enjoy the claustrophobic, meanacing sense that permeates "Identity." And I think you'll get a kick out of a "big revelation" that actually works.

Two decades later, 'Dead Calm' remainsNicole Kidman at her best

Dead Calm (1989)
Starring: Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, and Billy Zane
Director: Philip Noyce
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

John (Neill) and Rae (Kidman) are cruising the Pacific on their yacht, putting their lives and marriage back together after a tragedy claimed their son. They come upon an adrift schooner and rescue Hughie (Zane) from it. John is instantly suspicious of Hughie's claim that he's the only survivor of food-poisoning onboard... and his suspicions soon prove well-founded. The lesson learned is to not pick up hitchikers, even on the high seas.


"Dead Calm" is an exciting thriller blessed with a spectacular script. It is elevated further by some great camerawork, incredible sets, and fantastic performances by all the actors involved. Kidman does the best acting job I've ever seen from her, and I might agree her star status was well deserved if I hadn't seen her stink up the joint in other films.

The movie kept me engaged from beginning to end. Unlike some online commentators on this film, I appreciated the fact that John and Rae remained decent human beings throughout.

The common complaint among reviewers is "why didn't Rae kill Hughie at any one of the several times she had the chance?" I think many of those people don't understand how a real person with real emotions functions--assuming that person isn't a psychopath. The fact John and Rae don't kill Hughie makes the film all the more believable to me, ore so than so many other thrillers that devolve into vigilante fantasies in their third acts.

Even if you normally can't stand Nicole Kidman, she gives a good performance in this film, which is further blessed by the fact that it is populated with realistic characters. It's definately worth seeking out.

'Line' is an interesting thriller marred by lazy translation

Line (American edition published by ADV Manga, 2006)
Story and Art: Yua Kotegawa
Rating: 6/10

Chiko, a typical high school girl, picks up a lost cell phone. It rings, and the voice on the other end tells her of a gruesome death that only she can stop, one that will happen in just minutes. Chiko ignores the warning, but the death occurs as predicted. More calls follow and the voice on the phone tells her when and where suicides are going to occur, and that she is the only hope of stopping them. Soon, Chiko and her bookish friend Bando are on an all-night quest, rushing all throughout Tokyo to beat the clock and save lives.


"Lines" is an unusual graphic novel that takes the standard thriller premise of the mysterious voice on the phone with a threatening of ambigious message and uses it to tell a suspenseful tale that explores teen angst, the twin dangers of isolation and dehumanization in the internet age, and the risk of being swept along by a thrill-seeking adrenaline rush. It also has a nice thread about how Chiko gains more insight into her self and her life while she attempts to grasp the situation she has been thrust into and why so many kids want to kill themselves.

It's a fast-paced book that doesn't quite manage to maintain the suspense to the end, but it's entertaining enough. Kotegawa's art is crisp--if somewhat generic--art is easy on the eye and makes the story easy to follow.

My biggest complaint with the book is that it's been shoddily translated. It reads from back to front, because ADV was either too lazy or too cheap to either mirror or re-arrange the art so the book flowed according to English langauage and publishing standards. I can't fault them too much, however, because they're simply doing what has become industry standard.

A few years back, some clever executive somewhere decided to market Japanese translations without mirrored art (books that read from right to left as they do when in their original Japanese) as "authentic translations." The foolish consumer bought into it, the publishers took advantage of the cost savings, and now the majority of translations available are lazy and shoddily done.

I don't care that Japanese books are read from right to left. English books are not. The graphic novel imports should be translated properly and the consumers should have demanded that the be so. (At this point, it's too late. Only holdouts like me refuse--for the most part--to spend my good money on lazy work. No one stood up and said that the Emperor was authentically not wearing any clothes... or, if they did, no one paid attention. Marketing once again won out over quality.)

[left]But, my rant aside, if the akward presentation of "Line" doesn't bother you, I think and you enjoy Japanese comics, I think it's a book worth checking out. (It's also might be suitable for that young teen girl in your household who is into mysteries and manga.)

Brittany Murphy shines in 'Cherry Falls'

Actress Brittnay Murphy died today from cardiac arrest at the age of 32. I only saw her in a single film, but she was the best part of it. In fact, she made a fairly mediocre slasher film into a thoroughly enjoyable experience.


Cherry Falls (2000)
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Michael Biehn, Jay Mohr, and Gabriel Mann
Director: Geoffrey Wright
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When three teens are tortured and murdered in the small Virginia town of Cherry Falls, it quickly becomes evident that the victims are linked by two things: They went to the same high school and they were virgins. What dark secret are the leading citizens of Cherry Falls keeping that's getting their (non-sexually active) children killed?


"Cherry Falls" is a mildly suspenseful slasher-flick that's remarkable first by the fact that it takes a prime convention and turns it upside-down: The promiscuous kids are safe in this one... it's the ones that are keeping their pants on that are at risk; and second that the characters are actually intelligent. Only once does a character fall show traits of "horror movie braindeadness" where they go into a dark and creepy place... but it's in a spot where she has no reason to suspect that any danger could be lurking.

Good acting from an attractive cast--with Brittnay Murphy being particularly excellent--and some well-execute plot-twists go a long way to making this film worth seeing. It's not a masterpiece, but it's not bad either. It's low on bodycount as far as slasher flicks go, but what kills it does feature are brutal and shocking.

Miss Marple is out to sea in 'Murder Ahoy!'

Murder Ahoy (1964)
Starring: Margaret Rutherford, Lionel Jeffries, Stringer Davis, Charles Tingwell, and Nicholas Parsons
Director: George Pollock
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

On the very day Miss Marple (Rutherford) is appointed to the Board of Trustees of a charity that runs a sailing ship where juvenile delinquients are rehabilitated, one of the other boardmembers is murdered. Miss Marple goes onboard the ship to investigate, and more murders follow as she uncovers a tangle of crime on the high seas that Blackbeard would have envied.


"Murder Ahoy" features Agatha Christie's Miss Marple character, but the film isn't based on any of Christie's books. In fact, like so many screen adaptations of literary characters, Miss Marple as she appears here is quite different than the Miss Marple of Christie's novels and short stories. (I think the only similarity is that they're both old spinsters who enjoy knitting. I can't ever imagine the Miss Marple in the books spending the night in jail, or dueling a killer with sabres as she does in this film, but both events fit perfectly with Miss Marple as played by Rutherford, who is more mischevious than prim.)

Although the story and actions of the various criminals and killers don't make a whole lot of sense, and the police are either stupider or lazier than suspension of disbelief can allow for, the film's leads give such fun performances that it hardly matters. Rutherford gives a great performance, but she is ably supported by Lionel Jeffries (as a twitchy ship's captain who is driven up the wall by Miss Marple's nosiness), Charles Tingwell (as a frustrated police inspector who shares the captain's pain), and Stringer Davis (who plays an elderly friend of Miss Marple who becomes her partner in detection and police-annoying). There's also a hilarious running gag with the doctor who is called to inspect the corpses (Parsons) always needing to run off to deliver a baby.("It's always life and death with him," comments a character after one of the doctor's speedy departures.)

There's also some marvelous soundtrack music by Ron Goodman's marverlous score--particularly the bouncy main theme--also plays a large part in making this movie as enjoyable as it is.

While may not have a whole lot to do with Agatha Christie's original Miss Marple character (or anything Christie actually wrote), this is a fun little comedy/mystery film that's worth checking out.