"Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter"(1984)d/Joseph Zito

Let's see,where the fuck were we...which brings us to the fourth installment of the wildly popular Friday the 13th series,which was billed as the final movie(yeah,if you bought that for even a New York minute you're greener than Carl Spackler's Kentucky bluegrass/Maui Wowie hybrid)and with a stellar b-cast and FX goremeister Tom Savini called in to finish off the monstrous mongoloid murderer he helped to create,stands as many genre fans favorite of the lot.I know,as someone who had made the trek to the theater for every film thus far,I was willing to let the shoddy bygone of Part 3 in 3D be just that,giddy at the possibilities as I awaited the theatrical release.And if this were still 1984,and you asked me which Friday was my favourite,I'd have told you,"The original,AND the Final Chapter" with the same bold snobbishness you've come to know and love.The problem is,it ain't exactly 1984 anymore,and I'm not that same teenager who walked around with visions of Savini-crafted head explosions dancing in my head.Sure,I still enjoy watching tonight's entry on occasion,especially since the recent special edition was weighed down with tasty extras that included all the rushes of Terrible Tommy's uncut kills,something I would have snuffed out a few unfortunate bastards for a glimpse of back in the golden era.Maybe I'm just being a dick(what else is new)about it,but besides the glorious effects and some of the cast(one nutbag in particular),the whole production is pretty wafer-thin.Not that I'm expecting Exorcist-level chills from the third sequel to a series that was shallow to begin with,but other than the aforementioned highlights,this is pretty standard(translation:average)stuff indeed.Even as such,it stands as one of the better entries in the series,for sure.And compared to parts V,VII,and Jason Takes Manhattan(THE worst of the lot by a country mile),this movie might as well be the friggin' Godfather Part II.

"Sit and spin,Jenny Craig!" rhetorts the tubby ride-thumber(Bonnie Hellman).
One day removed from the chaos of the events that would come to be known as "Friday the 13th Pt.3 in 3D",paramedics and law enforcement officers are trying to tidy up the crime scene of unsightly corpses at Higgins Haven,one of which happens to be the hydrocephallic harbinger of hockey masked hate,Jason Voorhees himself,dead from a barn lynching and a right good whack upside the headpiece with an axe.At the Wessex Morgue,Axel and Morgan,the resident doctor and nurse,find out the hard way that he,in fact,isn't.One surgical saw throat slash/head twist and eight point buck-level gutting later,our resident rambunctious retard is making his way back to Crystal Lake.It's a good thing nobody's planning a decadent weekend of drugs,sex,and partying there.Oh wait.Six teenagers have rented a house for the weekend on Crystal Lake.Probably not the best idea in the world by now,but who can argue with the folly of youth.They pass a chubby banana-munching hitchhiker who gets throat-skewered with a knife after flipping them the bird for not picking her up.Upon arrival they meet Trish(Beck)and Tommy Jarvis(Feldman),who live next to the rental house.Tommy is a bespectacled young horror fanatic who enjoys showing off monster masks and animatronic heads that he's made for lack of a normal social life or father figure.Methinks it's a different Tommy altogether doing the showing off,but I digress.The group also befriends a pair of oversexed twins,Tina and Terri(what's with all the T's,man),and before long a skinnydipapalooza ensues at Crystal Point.The Jarvis's car beaks down,but the siblings are helped by a mysterious hiker named Rob,who's kind of tentative about his being in the area.Let's see,that's Paul,Sam,Sarah,Doug,Ted,Jimmy,Trish,Tommy,Rob,Tina and Terri.How many of these names would you bet on still breathing oxygen by the final reel?Yeah,me neither.

Jimmy(Crispin Glover):From a dead fuck to fuckin' dead with one chop.
Sam(Aronson),apparently unfulfilled by the afternoon's nudity,goes midnight skinnydipping and gets impaled through a raft.Her boyfriend Paul goes out to join her,getting his Moby Dick harpooned in the process.Terri leaves the party prematurely,earning her a spear in the back.Jimmy(Glover),the "dead fuck",dances like a spaz,bottoms out in Tina,and gets a corkscrew rammed into his mitt,and his grill bissected horizontally by a meatcleaver.Tina gets chucked two stories out an upstairs window.Ted(Monoson),a cocky fuck whose annoying personality("Wanna give Teddy a kiss?"repeatedly,while holding a Teddy bear)even rivals Shelly from Part Three,gets stoned and watches antique stag movies before getting knifed through a projection screen in the back of the dome.Doug and Sarah share a shower-based aquafuck before Doug gets his face smooshed against the wet tiles by a vengefully retard strong hand.Sarah gets an axe-thrown-through-the-front-door-and-buried-into-her-sternum.Jason should have tried out for the Hayward lumberjack competition in Wisconsin.Meanwhile at the Jarvis residence,Trish and Tommy find their muddah missing,so they enlist the help of Rob,who,in a revenge-laden twist that'd make the Shaw Brothers blush,reveals that he's the brother of Sandra from Part Two on a manhunt for Jason,once again.While Jason is introducing Rob to the Grim Reaper,Tommy does a slapdash makeup job on himself based on Rob's newspaper clippings to resemble twelve year old Jason who drowned in the lake because...okay,I have no fucking idea myself.The hellspawn in a hockey mask terrorizes the boy and his sister,and in a boffo finale gets his head half-hemisected by his own machete,then hacked into haggis when the boy notices movement in the downed waterhead.Trish hugs Tommy,while he visits her later at the hospital,and the boy gives a disturbed look directly to the camera which ends in a telling freeze.You know,I'll bet this wasn't the last Friday the 13th movie afterall!

Sam(Judie Aronson)displayed her hams,gams,and clam as she swam.Now she's damned.
For those keeping score,my favorite piece of screen decoration this time around is Judie Aronson,who also worked in Weird Science,American Ninja,and more recently,Hannibal.She still looks pretty good,too.Director Zito,whose prior work included genre fave,The Prowler,went on to direct longstanding viral internet joke Chuck Norris in Invasion USA and Missing in Action,his most successful movie.Corey Feldman has enjoyed a long career in b-movies when he's not haunting horror conventions across the country(and throwing dead hotel room parties,so the story goes).The always uber-bizarre Glover has been touring his self-produced headscratcher of a trilogy,where his co-stars are usually retarded,in blackface,or a Shirley Temple doll in nazi getup.Crispin Hellion Glover,what are we to do with you.Peter Barton went on to a recurring role in housewife tele-crack,Young and the Restless.Last American Virgin Lawrence Monoson is still highly active in television to this day.In closing,the effects are peerless for their time(especially uncut),there are some memorable performances by some of the cast,and that's enough to make this one of the better unlucky Fridays you could sit down to watch.The Final Chapter dances spastically around the living room to a scale rating of two wops.

Jason's(Ted White) facin' a brutal erasin' as Tommy(Feldman) hacks his ana-tomy as revenge for his mommy.

"Bad Ronald"(1974)d/Buzz Kulik

I grew up in a (then)sixty-plus year old house,so I'm fully aware that every once in awhile your attention might be drawn to the sounds of a rat scratching and gnawing inside the walls.The subject matter that tonight's feature deals with is an entirely different,far more terrifying prospect that most people don't give a second thought to:A homicidal,socially retarded teenaged nerd living in the walls of your home.Directed by the late Seymour "Buzz" Kulik,who otherwise flourished in a long career in television,helming everything from Twilight Zone episodes to the Matt Helm series,as well as some uncredited work on the equally stellar 1972 telefilm,Crawlspace(which we'll look at here at the Wop soon enough),and adapted for the small screen from a novel by John Holbrook Vance,Bad Ronald debuted during the Halloween season,October 23rd,1974,and stands in many horror fans top genre made-for-television lists to this day.Certainly on mine.The cast includes the delicious Lisa "10 to Midnight" Eilbacher,Dabney "9 to 5" Coleman,Kim "Planet of the Apes" Hunter,and in an adequate starring turn as a sort of deranged Screech,Scott Jacoby,who,apart from genre work in films like "The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane" and "Return to Horror High",had a recurring role on television's Golden Girls,of all things.I'll refrain from making peephole jokes about Bea Arthur tonight,as I'm still feeling the sting of the loss of Rue McClanahan over here.R.I.P. to a true cougar.Now,let's get to business.

"You know what your bratty little head could use,Carol? A cinderblock!"
Enter Ron Wilby(Jacoby).He's a shy,introverted nearsighted mama's boy who gets his stones busted at every juncture.After celebrating his sixteenth birthday at home with mom(Hunter) in true nutsac fashion,she presents him a nifty toolbox and some art supplies and they share some celebratory cake.Slow down,Syd Barrett.He decides to swing on by Laurie Matthews' crib next door,amidst the protests of his lone party guest,who tells him he shouldn't waste time on people who don't care about him.He finds the object of his desire splashing abight in her pool with a bevvy of sportos,meatheads,Ron Jeremy lookalikes,and cheerleader-types,who take five minutes out of their shallow day to abuse the kid's egg purse while Laurie teases him with bikini-clad teen curves that a dork like Ronald'll never get his sweaty mitts on.On his dejected walk home,he bumps into Laurie's younger sister,Carol,and knocks her clean off her banana seat,spurring the bitch-in-training to chuck a few more barbs his way,and when she paints the Wilby clan,doting mother included,with a weird paintbrush,Ron's had it.He hotheadedly pushes the young bitch to the ground,failing to notice the cinderblock,fantastic for head-pulverizing,below.After his initial panic subsides,he buries her in a shallow grave and runs home to mother.Hearing of Ronald's unfortunate chain of events,Mater Wilby naturally notifies the authorities and suggests her son turn himself in for ques-no,that's not what she does at all.She spends the evening walling off the downstairs bathroom,plastering over the door,and allowing for a pantry trapdoor,where she advises her son to hide until the coast is clear enough for the young murderer and his accessory to leave town for brighter surroundings in a month or two.

One man's walled off downstairs bathroom is another's magical fairy kingdom,like they say.
After the police buy Mrs. Wilby's story about her son running away,it looks as though the duo has gotten away with murder,as Ron gets accustomed to his new home in the wall,doing exercises,writing fiction,and using his art supplies to craft drawings of himself as an armor-laden champion to the fairies of the kingdom of Atranta.Except when his mother goes into the hospital for routine gall bladder surgery,she selfishly dies from complications,leaving wall boy to fend for himself in the empty Victorian house.Shut off from the outside world,Ronald subsists on canned beans and candy bars,retreating further into his makebelieve world with each passing day,installing more trapdoors and peepholes into the walls(but no shower),which come in pretty handy when the Woods family,complete with three teenaged daughters move into the house.The eldest,Ellen,starts dating Duane Matthews,the brother of the dead brat that caused the whole mess in the first place,and relates stories of the creepy kid who used to live in the house to the girls,who hear strange noises and feel as though they're being watched by somebody.After being forced to dispose of Mrs. Schumacher,who drops dead of a heart attack after spying Ron raiding the Woods' fridge,in the crawlspace under the house,Ronald becomes more and more delusional,envisioning the youngest daughter,Babs,as the future queen of his fantasy world,and Duane as the evil duke that stands between the star-crossed lovers and their thrones.You know,when the Woods' leave their daughters alone while away on a weekend business trip,I'll just bet Ronald uses the opportunity to capture his would-be destiny,and take her into the wall where they can be married and start their lives together as Atrantians.What does transpire,you'll have to see for yourselves.I promise you,it's worth every second.

Mrs. Schumacher pops round to pick up that myocardial infarction she'd left at the Wilby place.
Brrrrrrr,just when you thought all nerds were capable of was spending every waking hour sycophantically showering empty compliments and flattery on female D-list genre celebrities on Facebook or hermetically sealing their vintage 3 3/4" Star Wars action figures on the card while jamming to Daft Punk and counting the days until the release of the new Tron movie,comes this sobering wake up call.I'm kidding.In this informational age,your humble N only has an e-mail inbox filled with horrible middle aged Edith Massey lookalikes obsessed with getting a ride on the Great Equalizer.Like a fantastic remake,you can bet neither of those things are gonna happen anytime soon.I'm still the same sucker for petite top-heavy brunettes that I ever was.As for tonight's review,snag yourself a copy,you'll be pleasantly surprised.One of the better of its kind,for sure.Three wops.

A peephole that Klaus Kinski would be envious of.

"Pin"(1988)d/Sandor Stern

Tonight's entry,a creepy little number from C to the anada,bitches,that touches upon a couple of my favorite things,schizophrenia,and anatomical teaching dummies.Seeing popular tele-dish Cynthia Preston briefly getting cocked down in the backseat of a car isn't the least choice,either.Dysfunctional families always make for a good time at the cinema,and as a rule,the more twisted the clan turns out to be,the better the viewing experience,for me,anyway.With that in mind,the family in Stern's Pin falls somewhere between Mommy Dearest and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.What the movie lacks in genre crutches,i.e. the red stuff and barenaked bobblers,it makes up for with a relentlessly mean torrent of psychological abuse,and once in awhile,I dig the variety,man.I'd expect a goodly portion of the mainstream horror "fans" will have already tuned out the review,with no franchisable wisecracking Ronald McDonald serial killer stalking some live nude mannekin with the emoting skills of Keanu Reeves on a hookah full of Lebanese blonde finger-hash in sight,but to those,I say:Go ahead and fuck off,I'll text you when we're covering something more palatable for mainstream consumption,donkeys.
I first caught this "plastic nightmare",no relation to the current string of plastic surgery fuckups we've had to laugh at recently,during the video rental heyday,and it instantly grew on me,with its original angle and unusual methods at scaring its audience.Let it be said,this is not a particularly scary film in the traditional sense of the word,it's more of a cerebral exercise in uncomfort,the kind that makes you embarrassed to bear witness to someone when they're doing something ridiculous that they oughta know better about.As such,tonight's entry works.If this sounds like the kind of hundred plus minute vacation into mental illness you'd like to take,then you too,will enjoy Pin.

Terry "Stepfather" O'Quinn,slightly less folically challenged than he is today.
Long before sawed-off neighborhood punks were daring each other to touch the weird mannekin in the attic window of the Linden place,the atmosphere was less than conducive to good mental health for little Leon and Ursula.Burdened with an OCD-stricken neat freak for a mother,and a sociopathic,schizo-ventriloquist doctor for a dad(O'Quinn),these two unfortunate urchins never stood a chance.The psychological devastation quickly takes its toll on the boy,who never sways in his belief that his father's life-sized see-through anatomical teaching model,appropriately nicknamed "Pin"(short for Pinocchio),that he fields medical queries through creepy voice throwing to the children he treats,as well as his own,is undeniably real and alive.An existence of having to eat dinner standing up on footstools,then sweeping and vacuuming underneath directly afterwards,and nightly rigged word problems for fatherly affection has both children retreating to each other for stability and sanity,but when they start looking at each other through West Virginny eyes,Dr. Linden delivers the birds and bees speech to them through his plastic office pal.Cuz that's pretty normal.When Leon secretly visits his father's office after hours on his own to share life discussions with the dummy,he's traumatized to discover ol' Pin piercing the panty purse of his father's nurse on the examination table.Yeah,Leon?It's me,your wig.I've officially flipped,boy.Ursula,slightly more grounded in reality than her brother,becomes the resident teenaged cockacidal maniac instead.Leon coitally interrupts her one evening,while she's taking pantsmeat in the back of a classic muscle car(ah,the eighties!),feeding fraternal fist to her fuckpal in the process,but it's too late.She's already got a nine month bun rising in her Easy-Bake Oven.Leon takes sis,amidst her protests(as she's known the translucent aid wasn't real for years now),to Pin for advice,and when the stiff doesn't answer back,Leon provides the ventriloquism in his father's absence.When they take Ursula's carnal oopsie to their father,he does what any dad skilled in the medical arts would do,and gives his own daughter an abortion right there in his office.Yeah,when I told you this family was twisted,my asshole wasn't whistlin' the theme to Jackie Chan's Battlecreek Brawl,droogies.

This anatomically correct chunk of painted plastic is scoring some pussy,while you read movie reviews online.Life's a cruel bitch,indeed.
So,when both parents eat flaming automobile death(caused by Pin perhaps?),Leon takes over as the pater familiaris,and moves Pin into the Linden household,putting his plastic ass in a smart suit,latex mask,gloves,and nifty wheelchair for easy mobility.Ursula,probably a bit unnerved by her brother's ever-increasing state of bananas,takes a job at a library,where she reads up on diagnosis and treatment for Leon's Santa-list of mental illnesses.You can imagine the poor girl's embarrassment when she finally introduces her newly acquired jocko homo boyfriendo to the "family"(translation:shithouse rat-crazy brother and his lifesized talking doll)over dinner.Pin pow-wows with Leon on the matter,suggesting now that Urs' has gotten herself a man,the couple will surely leave him to decay in some mental facility while they traipse off and enjoy their lives(and her inheritance) together.Clearly,Leon's going to have to snuff the jock with Pin's assistance,if he wants everything to remain the same.He invites Stan over under the ruse of a surprise birthday party for Ursula,slipping him a mickey,then braining him with a wooden sculpture before accordingly bagging him on Pin's orders.Alas,before he can effectively dump the cadaver in the drink,Urs returns home early,forcing him to ditch the bloody sporto in the woodpile out back.When Leon's bold-faced lies combine with hard bloody evidence that maybe,Stan hadn't gone to visit a sick friend afterall,she comes to the realization that her brother was in the process of whacking her beau.Upon confrontation,Leon points the finger at the dummy,who during the course of the argument refuses to shoulder any of the blame.A hysterical Ursula returns with axe-in-mitts,and Leon screams like the psycho-bitch that he undoubtedly is.When the police discover Stan in the woodpile,amazingly,the guy's still breathing.Later,Urs and Stan return to the house to visit Pin who asks the girl if she's heard from Leon,and admits to missing him greatly.Only,Pin is now Leon.

I sported Leon's haircut in the eighties,too.The yellow sweater?Not a fucking chance,pals.
As always,O'Quinn,who's enjoyed a resurgence in popularity of late due to television's "Lost series,turns in a memorable performance.Preston,perma-sexy,also delivers as Ursula.I'm not sure if Hewlitt's cringe-worthy asexual turn as nutbag Leon is a paen to his acting skills,or a knock against said abilities.Either way,the film is a welcome retreat from the obvious cookie-cutter stuff out there,and I've always enjoyed it.Apparently,a novelization by Andrew Neiderman exists,for any "Pin" completists,if there is indeed such a thing.The dvd,which serves up a choice widescreen anamorphic transfer and interesting director's commentary track,has been floating around for nearly a decade,but shouldn't be too hard to come by if you're looking for it.Good stuff.Three wops.

I spent most of my twenties unconscious and/or covered with blood,I can totally relate.