The Headless Horseman Does Ride Indeed...!

Pics of the truly haunting appearances of Headless Horseman preceding the parade at Mickey's Halloween Party on Wednesday night, October 26, 2016 at Disneyland...

More on our night at Mickey's Halloween Party later this weekend...

RTJ

Anthology Schmanthology: Fun Size Horror: Volume Two (2016)

Fun Size Horror: Volume Two (2016)
Dir.: various
TC4P Rating: 5/9

Speaking from a technical standpoint, it would appear that Fun Size Horror: Volume Two comes in an even funner size (as in: shorter collection, by almost half an hour) than the original volume, a grouping of several short films of varying quality and talent built around horror themes. It turned out that I like the first volume overall (see my review here), and I was hoping that the ratio of decent to merely banal would continue for the newer group.

However, I have always thought that the notion of a tinier portion of candy bar being a more "fun" size than a normal bar to be idiotic, because why would you want less candy bar? What's so fun about that? I think it is just marketing b.s., and we have allowed this notion to take over the Halloween candy industry without someone calling foul on the whole process.

To the point, though, Volume Two of the Fun Size Horror franchise (yeah, I am afraid so; they have a new online series for 2016 as well) comes in a smaller package, and a more apt definition somewhere for the phrase "diminishing returns" hasn't been revealed in ages. In my previous review for the first volume a couple of weeks back, after rating each short film in it one by one and tallying up an average, I found that I actually liked the film far more than I thought that I had while engaged in watching it. Would that also be the case with Volume Two? Well, the cat (black, of course, to fit the Halloween theme) is already springing about the room after being freed from its sack, having already let it slip slightly above that it wasn't. But let's go through this thing one by one as I did before... 

Initiation
Dir.: Michael May
TC4P Rating: 6/9
An interesting piece with which to begin the proceedings. Complete within itself (though you may not feel that way given what is revealed in the "twist"), Initiation also seems to serve as somewhat of an introduction to the remainder of the collection. Co-producer Mali Elfman (composer Danny's daughter), who is all over the place in this anthology along with fellow producers Michael May and Zeke Pinheiro (as they were in the first volume), not only takes the lead acting reins here, but also serves as the writer. Mainly a monologue piece, Initiation is a decent enough start for Volume Two. Two notes on this short: it was filmed entirely using candlelight, and the artwork that surrounds Elfman is that of acclaimed novelist Clive Barker, though it really doesn't play much of a hand in the story at all.

The Last Laugh
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
TC4P Rating: 5/9
An aging television star is haunted by the way he treated his ex-wife on their I Love Lucy-like sitcom, Life with Daisy. After she dies, guess who comes calling for revenge because of the credit he took over the years for their success? This one veers closer to a Tales from the Darkside in style, which is neither a knock or a compliment, just an observation (sort of a memory reflex). There is a slapstick punchline built into the back half of the piece that actually pays off for me, but the results overall are pedestrian and a little dull at best. This one would have benefited from a stronger lead. And if there is something in this world that I am actually afraid of, its having to watch fake audiences laugh at staged comedy within a film, especially when the people playing the fake audience aren't all that great at acting in the first place.

Kill Them Mommy!
Dir.: Peter Chun Mao Wu
TC4P Rating: 5/9
This is the most frustrating type of short, and it is not because it was executive produced by Brett Ratner. Surprisingly enough, his involvement actually raised my hopes a tad (for once), because I thought it might lend a bit more gloss to the look and feel of the film. You see what the director was going for in Kill Them Mommy! (it almost plays like an extended sequence/trailer for a lost Italian horror flick from the '80s even though it clearly takes place today), and the sudden insertion of a full title card twice in the proceedings makes it feel like it desperately wants to be included in a Grindhouse Vol. 2 collection instead, were such an unlikely event ever get made. I kind of appreciate someone taking the fake giallo/Italian horror route, though it has been done by others recently at a very high level; see The Editor as just one example. But the problem here is that the tone is all off through half of the attempt. The style is maddeningly inconsistent within just a few minutes, and sometimes even in the same scene, and for the second film in a row in this collection, the lack of a stronger actor in the lead fails the short. (Yeah, twitching your head at the right moment always means "confusedly crazy"...) Neat use of color, though, in the kill scenes. Almost feels like confetti flying. 

Prey
Dir.: Stephen Boyer
TC4P Rating: 4/9
The only student film in the Fun Size Horror series to this point, Prey actually feels, for at least a couple of its minutes, equally as accomplished as many of the more professional films surrounding it. Four gawky teens wander an abandoned facility in a search for one of their group's missing dog. They argue at first about how wise it is to split up into smaller teams ("You're not gonna Scooby-Doo me!"), but they do, of course, which is exactly how we will get to the title eventually. Not bad as these things go, and I like the energy of the four kids (which you will not hear me say often about a group of amateur teen/young adult actors). The payoff, however, is absolutely expected and therefore underwhelming to me, and ultimately makes me question the logic of the entire enterprise. 

Whispers
Dir.: Max Isaacson
TC4P Rating: 6/9
OK, this one went for full-bore crazy and just about succeeds. Gory, nasty, sickening to the point of distraction, I am glad Whispers was placed as early in the anthology as it is. If it came later in the proceedings, I may have thought Whispers was a masterpiece after having to sit through so many less well-conceived films. As it is, while animal rights activists and/or the squeamish may not wish to sit through it (I am pretty certain that everything was on the up and up with the animal performers though), this tale of a man obsessed with ridding himself of menacing rats is about as truly gruesome as this series gets. Strikingly composed visually, I almost got the sense Whispers started (or was intended) as a story in a graphic novel (or comic book, to you and me). Personally, I would have named the film Whiskers instead, but that is a minor nitpick. 

The Great Corben (in "Abraca-Danger!")
Dir.: Mark Alan Miller
TC4P Rating: 4/9
I am not one to criticize badly done animation if the humor behind it pays off or is interesting in a storytelling sense. We should be, by this moment, pretty used to animation that is probably not the greatest in terms of fluidity or design of movement, but matches the stylistic and dramatic intent of its filmmaker. The Great Corben is somewhat of a combination of stiff, South Park-style movement (or even proto-Gilliam at times) combined with a lusher, early 20th century graphic sense in its backgrounds, costumes, and setting. A strange, off-kilter tale of a very stage-frightened (and ultimately disturbed) magician, I think that I would have preferred if this one were told by live actors instead. The extended dialogue might work better then, but as it is, rather takes one out of the story from the start, to where one has to backtrack to remember what the point was. It just didn't quite work for me, and the reveal is anything but magical.

Pillow Fright
Dir.: Patrick Rea
TC4P Rating: 6/9
"Light as a feather, stiff as a board." The short that is the most pure fun of the group. College girls playing stupid games one night (many in their undies, of course) decide to have a pillow fight and collapse in exhaustion. Too bad, because the pillows are not just sentient creatures, but full on murderous in intent. Really goofy, bubbly (despite the outcome), and a taste of what this series desperately needs: out of left field ideas with a light sense of humor, but that still deliver the goods in a horror aspect. I don't know if I am ready to see an 80-minute film churned out from the single theme of killer pillows, but people are still talking about Death Bed forty years later, and at least this short film is intentionally funny.

And They Watched
Dir.: Vivian Lin
TC4P Rating: 5/9
The custodian in a chamber with an electric chair has little care for anything except for doing his job, until he is trapped by the ghost of the last man to be executed in that chair, who was wrongfully accused of his crime. I will admit that I have a real problem with execution scenes (especially hangings), and it is not just a political issue with me (though that plays a part) but also from seeing the wrong pictures in the wrong books as a child and being haunted by them for years. 

Playing Dead
Dir.: Ned Ehrbar
TC4P Rating: 5/9
This one has a really cool idea: a bunch of bored ghosts get their kicks pranking regular humans by pretending to come alive on autopsy tables, cutting off their faces and climbing into the backs of cars, or lighting themselves on fire. You know, the kind of things we all might do once you discover you have superpowers but have nowhere to go because of some stupid rules binding you to the earthly realm. But they have a new member of their group who just doesn't quite fit in with the rest. I am not going to lie. This one started out in a fairly promising way, and the cast works well together, including Tracie Thoms as one of the ghosts. (Diva Zappa has a bit part.) But it falls apart in two areas: not enough inventiveness with the ghost gags, and a final punchline that just falls completely flat. Like badly conceived improv flat. And I should know, because I have been in some badly conceived improv in my day.

Pinned
Dir.: Andrew Wesman
TC4P Rating: 5/9
I like it when horror attempts to update (however hamhandedly) to new technologies, and with so many thousands of apps on our phones and other devices, I figured it would be no time at all before we were regaled non-stop with variations of old themes updated to the millennial sensibility. One Missed Call and its American remake aside (which made use of cell phone tech, pretty well in the first case and unnecessarily so in the second), Why there aren't a thousand films of people being catfished by ghosts already is beyond me. Or is it just too easy to kill victims now because everyone is just so self-absorbed taking social media photos? Who has time to notice a lurking killer? Pinned makes vibrant use of cell phone tech to tell the story of a guy who is being stalked by an unseen killer that can only be detected through camera shots captured on a GoogleMaps-style of application. Once more, I am intrigued by the basic concept and it spins along nicely for a minute or two, but the execution leaves me cold by the end, when digital nonsense starts crashing into reality and I can no longer buy into the story. 

Perfect
Dir.: Taylor Phillips
TC4P Rating: 5/9
"You promised me a perfect time." Perfect is actually a sequel to Anisa Qureshi's short film, The Lover, from the first volume of Fun Size Horror, with Elfman reprising her role as a formerly spurned lover turned murderous psychopath. This time, her character of Lisa is back out in the singles market, as a woman obsessed with her personal sense of perfection. She wakes up with a one-night stand guy who is anything but perfect, but she is able to justify even his "dad bod" (which, refreshingly, it is and far beyond it) to maintain her ideal. Except there is one little thing that bothers her... I like Elfman's performance here, though the character really does not feel like the same one from The Lover. The M.O. seems a bit different, and the only real nod that they might be the same character (besides being played by the same actress) is a rather tacked on epilogue that feels a bit unnecessary. I will give the filmmakers credit for inventive use of an iron, though... 

Conventional
Dir.: Karen Gillan
TC4P Rating: 7/9
A former horror film star actress (named "Bloody Disgusting's Scream Queen 2007") who has fallen on hard times (and has had terrible lip surgery in desperation, resulting in a permanent set of duck lips that repel her former "fans") does her time at a horribly under-attended convention. She even finds herself regaled to turning tricks in a bathroom stall with the occasional man dressed as the slasher killer from her film series, Axe Wound. It's a pretty surprising directorial (and writing) debut for former Dr. Who companion Karen Gillan, and her performance here is easily the best thing in all of Volume Two, though it is not faultless. Gillan's debut behind the camera is far more assured than I could have hoped, and I wish other films in this batch had been as thoroughly thought through as Conventional turns out to be. Conventional does make more of an attempt at character growth than any of the other films (though growth may not be the right term; regression is more like it), and you can really see and feel the wheels coming off Gillan's character's bus internally. That they placed this one at the tail end of the lineup is no surprise at all, given Gillan's fanbase from hanging out with the good Doctor, and now becoming a Guardian of the Galaxy. It is also just damn good luck it turns out to be the best film of the lot as well.

*****

So, we have a dozen films of varying quality, and summing up the ratings totals, the per film average rating is a 5.25, which is only slightly down from the 5.3 for the first volume. However, I rated Volume One a 6/9 in the end because of the higher ratio of hits to misses. This volume has eight less films in it, and I actually only ended up liking four of the twelve shorts, so I have chosen to go with a 5/9 rating, "5" being my middle of the road rating, neither good or bad, just "blah". But, by all means, if you have a Hulu subscription, watch it all the way through just to get to see Conventional. Or at least move that little bar all the way to the 1:03:00 mark and just watch Conventional.

I might be knocking much of Volume Two, but I do want to see more installments of Fun Size Horror in the future. It is quite clear to me, however, that they need to get away from the feeling of a "house style," that is, endless cameos or appearances by Mali Elfman and Michael May, and need to reach and embrace a wider variety of actors and directors to get more fresh blood into the proceedings. When the same people keep showing up as extras in film after film after having been leads in other shorts, it becomes a little annoying. While it may be fun to have the feel of a repertory house or even a family atmosphere in your studio, onscreen it doesn't play as freshly as you might think. And producer/director cameos can be fun if Alfred Hitchcock is the personality involved, but too much of this stuff at a low level just becomes cloying. It feels a little too cutesy. And cutesy is very rarely scary.

RTJ

Behind the Scenes at the Halloween Pez Reunion 2016

Behind the scenes at the Halloween Pez Reunion 2016 photo shoot... Could it be that somebody is a little miffed about being left out of the "scary character" shoot? What cruel thoughts are hidden behind that greasepaint smile? Is revenge on the way?

The Halloween Pez Reunion 2016

I think everyone that is supposed to be here is here...

The Monkees in Monstrous Peril #1: "Monkee See, Monkee Die" (1966)

The Monkees: Monkee See, Monkee Die (1966)
Dir.: James Frawley

The release earlier this year of the first new Monkees album in twenty years, Good Times!, has had me delving back into my own Monkees collection of various items, whatnot, and folderol. Having been a fan of the group since I was but a child, I was handed down the group's early records from my cousins, after I presume they had gotten a bit older and grew into more presumably mature music (that I also ended up inheriting at a certain point). But while their music did enter my life at a pretty early age, the real reason I was a Monkees fan was because of their TV show.

The Monkees ran for two seasons on NBC in primetime from 1966-1968, and it is likely I may have seen it that young. But where I really encountered the show was on Saturday morning television, where repeats of the show's 58 episodes ran on CBS from 1969-1972, and then on ABC for the 1972-1973 season. The show went into full syndication after that starting in 1975, and whenever we got the chance, my brothers and I were watching the Monkees run around like crazy every weekday afternoon.

Naturally, in their trail of hijinks throughout the sitcom landscape, and given the highly fanciful nature of most of their television material, the Monkees landed into a few scenarios of a more monstrous nature. So it comes as no surprise that in the very second episode of the series (and fifth filmed counting the pilot), the boys were already stuck inside of a haunted house. At the start of Monkee See, Monkee Die, the band is practicing in their apartment, the design of which really dug into my soul as a child and became a source of emulation from that moment onward.

There is an angry knocking at their door by their landlord, and he warns them about paying the rent and threatens them by saying his lawyer will be bringing them an eviction notice. Seconds later, comes another knock, and it is indeed a lawyer comes to bring them something. Thinking it is the landlord's man, they each get into disguise: Mike (Nesmith) becomes a hard-of-hearing old codger; Micky (Dolenz) is a "23-hour doorman. I used to be the 24-hour doorman but I couldn't take the long hours"; Davy (Jones) has resorted to imitating Whistler's Mother by knitting and rocking in drag in the corner; and Peter (Tork) is a joke-cracking TV repairman. When they find out who the lawyer really is and that an eccentric millionaire on Cunningham Island has left them a legacy, they quickly switch their outfits and present themselves properly. His response? "When you see the Monkees, tell them I called."

Following the opening theme sequence, which is truly a time capsule item for television history, we see a spooky looking old mansion, with bats squeaking past the boys – clad in their classic eight-button red shirts with turtle neck sweaters underneath – and lightning flashing as the Monkees enter the front door. We are clearly in The Cat and the Canary or The Old Dark House territory in this one, though with the Monkees, the show can zigzag in any direction it wants at any given time. They are frightened by Ralph the butler, who tells them they are in time for the reading of the will. Mike questions why they are even at the reading when they had never even met the late John Cunningham, "even when he was early," but Ralph corrects them. He tells them that they once returned a wallet containing $600 they had found to him. When Micky mentions that Cunningham must have appreciated their honest, Ralph says, "Oh no, because it wasn't his wallet."

They meet Madame Roselle (a quite terrific Lea Marmer), a psychic who attempts to tell the future by shaking what looks like a crystal ball (but is really a snowglobe), and says "We'll have snow tomorrow." They next meet Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Cunningham's "walking companion," author of titles such as Beverly Hills on 5 Shillings a Day and Utica: City on the Move. And finally, there is Cunningham's grand-niece, Ellie Reynolds (Stacey Gregg), a cute British girl that allows Davy's eyes to sparkle for the first time in the series (which will happen quite a lot during its run). Her eyes sparkle back, I must add. Unable to divert Davy's attention, Mike yells in his ear, "Statistics prove that two out of three teenage marriages end in divorce!" It doesn't help. Micky says "Three out of three!" Mike yells, "Four out of three!" Finally, Mike declares, "He's in love for the first time... today."

Mr. Cunningham has recorded his will on an old-style phonograph record, and while Kingsley and Roselle bicker over whether the mansion has been left to them, the Monkees are told they have been left the library organ with the stipulation that they play at least one song on it. (I am sure that will be pantomimed at some point very soon.) Everything else in the mansion is left to Ellie, but she has to spend at least one night in the mansion before she decides to keep it. (Well, of course she has to... this only happens in spooky old mansions.) The Monkees decide to play their one song on the organ and get out of there, not wishing to spend the night in such a creepy place.

As the trio of obvious villains – Roselle, Ralph, and Kingsley, leer at them from behind a statue – Peter sits down at the organ, lifts the lid over the keys and starts to play... a song that doesn't even have anyone playing the organ on it. It is one of the Monkees' biggest and most recognizable hits (and their first of three #1 singles), Last Train to Clarksville, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. In fact, on the actual The Monkees album, the only Monkee to appear on the song is lead vocalist Micky Dolenz, the rest of the music being played by Boyce and Hart's band, the Candy Store Prophets. But in what basically constitutes an early film of music video for the song, the Monkees are not only seen singing along to the track, but also playing the song in what seems to be pretty able form (at least for selling it on camera). Planes, trains, dune buggies, unicycles, jetpacks, motorcycles, carousel animals, and even the Monkeemobile are employed to sell the importance of transportation to the story of the song, even though it is just about a train.

When we return to the story proper, Mike says, "Well, I hate to inherit and run" but Ralph warns them that they may be stuck on the island due to the "foggy season". Mike questions when this might occur, and Ralph says, "It's hard to estimate, sir. I'd say, approximately, from 1820 to 1975." The boys are next seen staying the night and have switch to pajamas, and Peter gets the best outfit of them all: giant orange pajamas with a big blue bunny on the breast and an orange nightcap to match. The second they turn out the light, they hear rumbling and creaking and fog pours in through their open window. They turn it on, and decide to shoot fingers to decide who is going to keep watch. Standing in a circle, they throw their hands at each other, saying "1, 2, 3, shoot!" On the third try (I am not sure how they were determining who was chosen), a fifth hand appears... one that is fully covered in fur and has long claws!

The boys scream and run for cover as they realize there may be a monster loose in the mansion, and wild growling follows them out of the room! They hear howling noises while they walk down the hall, and then Madame Roselle steps out to say she had a vision about the butler. She says he might have gone on a long trip or be dead, but when they ask which one, she then says flippantly, "Six of one or half a dozen of the other." Gunshots are heard, and everyone runs downstairs. In the walls of the ballroom, various knifes and scythes are seen sticking into the walls. They assume that because of the signs of violence and because he hasn't shown up that Ralph must be dead. They try to call the police but the phone's cord has been cut and tied in a bow. "Well," says Micky, "at least we know the murderer is neat." Micky examines the blades in the wall, and calls Davy over. When he arrives, the two of them are seen dressed as Holmes and Watson, having a shared detective reverie. It is broken up when they have to stop Kingsley from torturing Ellie by asking her about which of his books she has read (for the record: Dining Out in Greenland, Picnic Spots Along the Ganges, and Philadelphia: Where to Find It; it's a pretty good running gag).

Mike uses bread crumbs on the sill of their window to attract a carrier pigeon so they can send a message for help. The bread crumbs work, but when Mike picks up the pigeon, he discovers there is already a message attached to its leg. He opens it to read it aloud to the others: "Please do not strap a message to my leg. I am not a carrier pigeon." Next, Mike lays down giant bones in the hallway to attract a St. Bernard so they can use the dog to rescue them. When Peter asks him where he got the bones, Mike says he found them in the closet. The boys are skeptical that the plan can work, but then a St. Bernard dog, complete with brandy barrel, does show up through the doorway! He completely steps over the bones, however, and comes up to Mike, who notices that there is already a message attached to the dog's collar. Mike reads, "There is a message for you on the pigeon" and gives the camera a very perturbed look.

A while later that night, the boys have managed to fall asleep, but then there is a loud gunshot noise. Mike waves it off as a car backfiring, but when the others ask him where, he says, "In the next room." They all freak out, and then hear another shot. They all start to run in circles, as Madame Roselle enters the room to announce she has had a vision that Kingsley will be shot in the next ten minutes. They tell her they just heard gunshots, and she looks at her watch and says it must be slow. In desperation, Micky uses his crazy inventing skills to reconfigure the telephone equipment to contact the outside world. He gets a man with a foreign accent, and possibly on a submarine, who can only answer "Yes, I do!" to every question, even the last one, "What's your location?" Roselle holds a seance, where they all join hands and try to reach the spirit of John Cunningham. Weirdly, she ends up on a party line, and after first reaching an answering service, she contacts the Ghost of Christmas Past instead, who insists on calling her Ebenezer. The lights suddenly go out, so Micky lights a match and holds it to the faces of everyone at the table. Mike, Davy, Ellie and Peter are still there... but no Madame Roselle remains. All five turn to the camera, and the Monkees say in unison, "She's gone!"

The next morning, all seems fine, except for the three missing persons, and Davy helps Ellie out with her luggage down the stairs. The other Monkees are seen pushing the library organ through the front door while a pair of eyes are watching them through a painting in the tradition of many other haunted house stories. Mike decides it might be best that while they wait for the ferry to play some music to cheer everybody up. Mike straps on a guitar and Peter hits the organ. As Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day starts, we see the Monkees in different costumes running about, seemingly chased by themselves (in the eight-button shirts) wearing a series of monster masks. We also see them wearing diving equipment in a swimming pool, Davy dressed as an Indian, and a lot of goofing around with bows and arrows and toy guns as they run around the estate. At different points, Davy is dressed as Tarzan and frightens off whoever is wearing the werewolf mask, and Mike gets a rubber arrow through his head and falls down to the ground, after which Davy (as the Indian) scratches a mark on his bow. At tail end of the song, the Monkees with the monster masks gather, but there are five of them. Mike, Peter, Davy, and Micky each remove their masks, until there is only someone wearing a Dracula mask left. The other run in fear while he stands there in confusion.

Back to the story, Mike asks if everyone is OK now, but they all answer in the negative. Celebrating is heard inside the mansion, so the boys sneak up to the window to find Ralph, Kingsley, and Roselle sipping champagne, thinking they have successfully won the mansion. They see a monster hand through the window, and see it is attached to Ralph, who picks up a glass. Davy asks Micky if he still has "those knockout pills you've been experimenting with?" and Micky says, "Yeah, but the experiments aren't complete yet." "They will be soon," says Davy. Disguising himself in a suit of armor, Davy drops the pills into the liquor, of which the creeps soon partake. The villains hear the Monkees makes some noise outside and Ralph comes out with a gun. Peter holds up his fingers like a gun, and says, "Stop or I'll shoot!" When Ralph steps forward, Peter pretends to shoot... and Ralph drops to the ground, the pills having taking effect. Kingsley and Roselle come out to confront Peter and the same happens to each of them.

Peter twirls his hand in victory (Mike subtly makes sure the finger is not pointed in his direction), and when Ellie notices the villains are still alive, Davy lets her in on what has happened. He mentions that the noises were the three of them all along and that there is nothing to be afraid of anymore, not even ghosts. Suddenly, the booming voice of the Ghost of Christmas Past speaks from the top of the stairs: "Keep the Christmas spirit alive, Ebenezer!" The Monkees and Ellie scatter out of the mansion! Later, they tell a policeman the whole story and are given their leave, just as Kingsley comes to and starts to pester the police about which of his books they may have read. End credits.

I made a beef a couple of years ago about whether they should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While it would be really cool if they were, I also understand the arguments against it, even though there are criteria that have been used to get far less successful acts into the Hall that the Monkees completely meet. The chief thing holding them back is the notion – only partially wrongheaded – that they were a band solely created for a TV show, and that they didn't play their own instruments (which they did... eventually, and could from the start).

I have often wondered how the Monkees comedy plays with today's audience. I know how it plays with many of my friends – rather all over the board in tastes, but I know that many of them enjoyed the show in their youth and hold fond memories of it – and I know that The Monkees show forms the basis of much of the comedy that my brother and I preferred in our youth. I still find the four Monkees completely charming as a performing unit, and the show has lost little for me in over forty years of revisiting the show.

Which then made me realize that I don't really care how it plays with today's audience, because most of today's audience, even with the release of a new Monkees album, doesn't really know or even care about the Monkees anymore. Sure, the band will always pick up new fans along the way, but those are not the norm today. And unless the band hired me to promote them, why should I really be all that concerned about it anyway. Their legacy and reputation is their own concern (or not). I've got my own life to worry about now. My only stakes in continuing to follow a band from my youth is whether or not I still enjoy their music, and whether or not I can still watch a remarkably silly episode of an exactly 50-year-old television show and still get a similar feeling of enjoyment out of it that I did when I six or twelve or twenty-seven or forty.

And the answer is yes. Because I still love the Monkees. Sparkly eyes, sparkly eyes.

RTJ

And in case you haven't seen it...

Anthology Schmanthology: Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)

Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)
Various directors (20 short films)

I often have a hard time tackling anthology films. It is difficult for me to accept shifting directorial styles within what is supposed to be thought of as a conceptually bound set of films. This is especially true if there is a really strong short up front that makes me wish that the more substandard ones that follow didn't take the earlier film as an example. This is a ridiculous thought, of course, because these films are not (in the vast majority of cases) churned out on an assembly line, nor can quality – and especially an instant classic – be triggered automatically whenever one wishes. Even the greatest directors have their small (and sometimes major) misfires.

In recent years, the anthology flick has made a strong comeback with titles like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S becoming quite popular amongst the horror aficionados. None of the titles have really captured my attention thoroughly, but I chalk this up more to the hit-or-miss nature of these affairs than anything else. It's just the way things go. If you take any famous anthology series, such as The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while there may have been a very high bar set for excellence in the series overall, every once in a while, you ran across an episode that was only so-so. This is true of most television series, but in a weekly series where the characters recur each episode, you can gloss over a dud episode a little easier than an anthology. In an anthology, each new film starts from square one and works forward, and usually has little or no connection to previous stories. It has to stand on its own, but it is still going to be identified with that which preceded it in the collection.

It is for this reason that I had to adopt a new strategy when watching anthologies. I couldn't just watch them straight through and let the entire piece wash over me, because in most cases, none of the films really have anything to do with the others. There might be an overarching theme that the producers draped over the proceedings to make it look as it there were a common theme, but I have to watch them as individual short films and judge them that way. It is much the same way that I watch collections of cartoons. It's not the collection that is important, but the individual films.

And so it shall be with the first volume of Fun Size Horror, a creepy little anthology that came out last year and which is playing currently on platforms like Hulu and Amazon for the Halloween season. No really big names in this, though favorites of mine like Lance Reddick and John Ennis do show up briefly, Fun Size Horror takes its name to heart, delivering chunks of dark devilry each no more than a few short minutes in length. Enough time to take a good, bloody bite and move on to the next one.

To stay true to my word, I am going to assign each short piece a temporary rating based on how it came off for me independent of the others. Then I will average out the ratings, and modify the result (only slightly) based on how all of the shorts played together as a collection. It might not seem fair since they don't seem designed to play off each other (and they aren't), but Fun Size Horror was released as a collection, so the final rating will be in how it played that way.

There are twenty shorts in this 85-minute feature:

When They Say You're Alone 
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 6/9
Kind of a pretentious start, though I know these weren't planned to go in a certain order. This one certainly hits the "creepy" factor, as it would be hard for any of us to fall asleep if we knew for certain that things like this might occur when we were at our most vulnerable. I like director Grant Olin's (who did the animated opening for the collection as well) use of time lapse and the lack of any dialogue, and those strange sticky flowers are a nice detail. A nice way to tell a story with the briefest of information but still squeeze every inch out of the visuals. Very simple but effective.

Knock Knock
Dir.: Anthony Lund
Rating: 5/9
An asthmatic kid attempts to do battle with a monster in his closet but loses his sword on the way. This one is really built around its final shot, which is fine, I guess, but leaves the clip a little dull and a little standard. So much more could have been done with this and it left me pretty cold. Not bad, and fairly well shot... just generic.

Happy Birthday
Dir.: Erin Stegeman
Rating: 6/9
I am kind of wrestling with this one in my head. It's solid "sick" humor of the sort in which E.C. Comics specialized and its nice to see it practiced in these politically correct times. However, the "sick" punchline involves puppies, which does make Mr. Animal Rescue me a tad squeamish, so consider this a warning if you don't want to see such a joke taken a little too far. (Don't worry... as far as I know no actual puppies were harmed, but I would not be all that upset if I found out if a certain overly precocious child actor got really horrid nightmares from the experience.) There are a couple of dialogue lines and details in the party that do not ring true given the outcome, so it almost ruins the party for me upon reflection. It should be acknowledged, however, that they do go for the comically gruesome in this one, and I do appreciate that. (By the way, the dog that plays the "puppy" is almost a dead ringer for my beloved dog Trouble when I was a kid.)

Entity
Dir.: Matthew May
Rating: 4/9
A guy helps two girls move into a new place, but the lights are out. For whatever reason, they end up looking in the attic with flashlights and find a creepy doll. Soon, they hear a thump, and then weird stuff starts happening in quick order. The three actors actually aren't bad, and almost make you want to settle into a longer story with them, but then it is over before it even started. As for the scary stuff... move on, please. That aspect is not even worth further mentioning except to say it is thoroughly bland, though in line with current tastes. Tastes that are not mine at all, I'm afraid.

Bad Eggs
Dir.: Max Isaacson
Rating: 6/9
A very silly sight gag that kind of works, especially in the payoff of what comes out of where. Señor Wences-type humor taken to the Lovecraftian level (but, you know, without the ventriloquist in sight, thereby making it mere puppetry). It feels the sort of thing that might have shown up in something like Spike and Mike's back in the '80s if it had just been animated instead. Very slight and sophomoric, but I rather wish that I had thought of it.

The Screaming
Dir.: Dick Grunert
Rating: 5/9
I really hate the final shot on this one, but I am having a hard time discerning just why. I just know that I don't like it. Until then, this mostly dialogue-free quickie is based around the notion of a "chain" horror, that quickly seems to cascade closer and closer to the person perceiving a certain sound but trying to understand the possible (?) growing terror. It's an interesting concept that I wish were handled better in its closing.

Persephone
Dir.: Lisa J. Dooley
Rating: 6/9
On a personal level, I was instantly on a protective edge with this short because the title is also the name given by two of my friends to their recently born daughter. Strange how we react that way to something as simple as a name. And I haven't even met the baby yet. Outside of that, this is a mostly successful short that follows the efforts of a young woman to free herself of a coffin. She's not the Bride in Kill Bill, but she still has to figure a way out. But will it be enough if she does? A decent payoff and acting in this one.

Voice
Dir.: Mali Elfman
Rating: 3/9
Either this one is a clever spoof of a community theatre acting workshop or it's actually a short play developed in a community theatre acting workshop that was put onto film that never should have been. I am going with the latter scenario. Awful acting from the beginning took me straight out of the only barely interesting premise. I mean, really subpar "I don't know what to do with my hands" acting. This is a shame, because the director is the daughter of Danny Elfman (she also has a small role in Persephone and is a producer on other shorts), and one of the actresses is Diva Zappa. Because of these factors, I gave Voice another shot – and yet another shot – and it still came up short for me. Ugh. Easily my least favorite of the lot.

Somebody's Watching You
Dir.: Ben Rekhi
Rating: 4/9
A reality show with murderous consequences, from which we are always about fourteen seconds away in real life anyway. I was willing to go along with this for a little bit, however staid the idea already is to me. The forced drama does ring true to what we expect from such shows, but that doesn't mean that I want to see it replicated onscreen. Didn't want to see such phoniness the first time, why do I need to see someone double down on it in an even falser version? Drama, drama, drama, drama, drama... splat. Done.

Trust
Dir.: Jerry Pyle
Rating: 6/9
I was loving this short for the first five-sixths of it, and thought it was well shot and the reactions of the two actors to each other were divine. It was, to this point, the first time in the film where I was genuinely thinking that someone was on the way to a great short... but then the final gag failed me. It didn't kill the film, because I knew that was exactly where the film was meant to go from the start. I just wish it had cleverness to match the wit of the rest of the short to that point. A really nice try, though the final gag knocked my rating down a peg.

The Lover
Dir.: Anisa Qureshi
Rating: 7/9
And then The Lover showed up next and showed 'em how its done. Probably the best composed cinematography of the lot thus far. A much better showcase for Mali Elfman, who is extremely effective and believable here as the spurned girlfriend who slightly self-destructively seeks to clear her life of all traces of her former lover. A really evocative character piece with a great ending.

The Creepy Fucking Kid in Apartment B
Dir.: Eric Pereira
Rating: 7/9
For the truly fun and original, turn to this one. The little psychic kid hanging around next door is indeed creepy, but not so creepy as what he portends. This is the first one that got a genuine "aha" moment out of me, though I wish the ultimate payoff were handled a little more deftly. It's another example of what used to be called "sick" humor, but the less said about the details, the better for your enjoyment.

A Dog and His Boy
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of Harlan Ellison's controversial short story (and its subsequent cult classic film) A Boy and His Dog. My first guess was that Mr. Pinheiro had not read Harlan Ellison, given that this short is similar in ultimate outcome, albeit without the post-apocalyptic trappings. Then my second guess is that Mr. Pinheiro was at least made aware of Ellison and his litigious tendencies, and so transposed the title elements thusly. But this film is not about Ellison at all. It's a tribute to an entirely different source, one that I won't reveal here. Does it work? Well, I have some serious problems with the hows and whys of what occurs late in the film, and how even the location plays into those hows and whys. On the tribute and black humor levels, it almost works. But not quite.

Quad
Dir.: Ali Presley Paras
Rating: 6/9
No, it's not about a slasher in a wheelchair who has a murderous mind-meld with his helper dog Rottweiler. Four characters and four camera angles. You would think four different POV, but you would be wrong... almost. A pretty inventive short, based around three friends watching a slasher flick – and a secretive love triangle to boot – while something is wandering about the house around them. Because I have been rewatching The Wild, Wild West series recently, the images of the split screens constantly changing and sometimes combining reminded me of that show's graphics for going to and coming back from commercials. A packed little film that is actually a nice addition to the slasher canon. I don't know if it would work as a longer film, but for an experiment, it's pretty cool.

Let Me Go
Dir.: Glen Murakami
Rating: 6/9
This one gets the Super Overly Arty award for this movie. Gorgeously shot, though the effect comes off suited more for a Chanel No. 5 ad than an horror anthology. I almost wish that this dialogue-free piece were done fully as a silent film of the old school, because some of its imagery is entirely suited to the style. It's a lovely piece, but it is as ethereal as its ghostly female lead, and wisps away from the mind in direct contrast to how she doesn't depart from the mind of her former lover.

Mother
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 7/9
Ooh, boy... I like this one. So, if you were expecting a baby, and the ultrasound revealed a whole bunch of spiders inside you instead, how do you think you would act? And what do you think would happen to your mate? That's what I thought. Very quick and very different, but the creepiest film in the entire bunch, especially if my wife were to have watched it (which she never would). Nice job, Mr. Pinheiro. (Don't worry, he's going to show up one more time here.)

Evil Voices Lie
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 5/9
Someone watches a videotape of a man being interviewed who had been the captive of a famous serial killer. But something strange is happening during the tape. A very odd piece, and I honestly don't have much of an opinion on it. The film almost seems like it is a clip out of a longer piece, which may be its intent, but I don't really have an angle on this one. I may have to watch it again.

Paramnesia
Dir.: Michael May
Rating: 5/9
This one is far more ambitious but also more pretentious than director May's other short (Entity), and it is nicely shot for the most part. Once again, though, stiff acting undoes some of its effect, and there is just not enough here overall to really intrigue me.  

Bitter
Dir.: Ned Ehrbar
Rating: 6/9
A comedy short that at first seems like it has a nice reference to Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King) when one character seems to mockingly curse another much larger character with the word "Thinner" at the very beginning of the film. Then we discover it is a battle of two witches who each use single (or near single) word curses ending in "-er" at each other: the title word "bitter," "liver," "Hitler," with generally comic results in most cases. My favorite is "The Millers" and then the other character discovers to her horror that her entire DVR is now filled with nothing but recordings of the movie "The Millers". (I guess somebody had it in for that film; I still haven't seen it, but I like the joke.) Very light but a nice tonic after so much darkness.

Mr. Hendrix
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
Another monster in the closet tale, this time with a scared kid who enlists his parents to check out the fiend. When the kid mentions that the boogeyman goes by the name Mr. Hendrix, this triggers bad memories for the father, who encounter the boogeyman in his youth. For me, this short is enhanced briefly by the presence of John Ennis (from Mr. Show) who plays the father's dad in a flashback, and the acting is solid throughout, even by the kid. But it is just too predictable a riff on previous work with the boogeyman character, including Stephen King's.

The Collection
Dir.: Josh C. Waller
Rating: 7/9
The director of Raze (the female fighting film, which I thought was a solid drive-in-style film, starring Zoe Bell) helms this short, which features Fringe's Lance Reddick as a professional photographer who has an agenda that goes beyond being merely sleazy. It turns out he has an antique camera that takes a "special kind of picture"... but what type of picture would that be? That's what innocent models with their eyes wide shut are for, silly... As far as a polished, finished piece goes, this one is aces.

And don't forget to sit through the credits...

Overall TC4P Rating: 6/9
The twenty films averaged out to 5.3 for me overall, but in discarding the films that I rated as "5", which is my middle rating, it turns out I enjoyed more of these films (11 films rated as "6" or "7") than I actively disliked (only 3 films rated as "3" or "4"). I am greatly surprised by this, as I honestly expected to dislike and even outright hate more of them. As a viewing experience, I have to rate this film a small success, and bump its rating up to a "6" overall, which is "good" on my personal ratings chart. I hope that Volume Two, which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks, will turn out so well.

RTJ

Ghosts and Bats and Snacks Better Scurry...

Because I am who I am, I cannot help but look around the grocery stores each and every Halloween to see if there is some snack or goodie that is new to me. 

In a strange twist of fate, despite my lifelong Halloween obsession, I am not nor have I ever been a candy-holic. While I quite love certain candies (see below), my sweet tooth – even as a child – was usually sated within one or two bites of something. When other kids were seriously disgruntled when they received packs of trading cards in their bags (I mean, sure, they had a stick of chewing gum in them, but come on...), I found it an easy matter to swap out a Snickers bar (in the pre-"fun size" days) for a few packs of whatever cards were making their way through the rounds that particular year. It's how I made off with my initial stack of Topps You'll Die Laughing trading cards back when I was around nine or ten (more on this in coming weeks) and how I loaded up so well on Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, and Bay City Rollers (yup...) cards back in the day.

So, when Halloween rolls around, we make sure to have candy on the off-chance that we actually have trick-or-treaters in an given year (last Halloween was the best turnout in ages – we are in a new neighborhood and no longer in an apartment building – so we need to be sure to load up this time). But I don't really spend much time perusing the different types of candy, except to be sure to find some Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops for myself and something chocolatey for Jen. My main concern when I go to the store in October is in finding other snacks that fit the Halloween season in a proper and fun way.

You may be thinking immediately... PUMPKIN... and you are so wrong. Yes, I do have a great love for both pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. I also don't mind trying the odd pumpkin flavored this or that if it is offered to me, or if I decide on a whim to test out something. But we really are at an over-saturation point on all things pumpkin (though I am sure it is grand for the pumpkin industry), which I somewhat blame on Starbucks and on rich white people in general (I am pretty certain Martha Stewart had a hand in this somehow). Oh, yeah, and places like Trader Joe's.

And this is the stuff that I
cannot even try...

Now, I love Trader Joe's. When we lived in Anaheim for the past decade and had one just down the road from us, Jen and I shopped there weekly; now that we are a little farther away, we get to one about every three weeks or so. We have favorite items there that are staples in our weekly menus, and I cannot get by without having a stock of their Sparkling Lime Mineral Water at hand. But any trip to TJ's in late September will reveal to you entire cases full of pumpkin-flavored items that really have little to no business being pumpkin-flavored. While I am a connoisseur of tortilla chips, I just can't quite make the commitment to pumpkin-flavored ones (I've tried them though, so I at least gave them a shot). Honey-roasted pumpkin ravioli, which I have not tried because, medically, I cannot, also doesn't really appeal to me, which is also the case when I read aloud the names of many of Trader Joe's (or any other company's) pumpkin-enhanced items.

So while I don't completely write off finding something interesting in the pumpkin realm, I always hope to find something else odd in the grocery store that speaks to the monster lover that I am or really gives me a challenge for the palate beyond that great orange gourd. Unfortunately, I am saddled with dreadful wheat and rye allergies that limit me to making sure most items that I try are marked as "gluten-free" to ensure that I avoid either of those ingredients. Since wheat flour seems to be in just about everything these days, this rather kills me from trying out the bulk of items they have for sale, such as the many holiday-themed turns on Joe-Joe's (Trader Joe's brand knockoff of Oreos), including their Halloween variation which, surprisingly, does not have pumpkin-flavored cream in the middle. (Seriously, how did they miss this one?)

Last year, Trader Joe's announced Ghost Pepper Potato Chips, and I jumped on checking them out right away. Compared to another product that I tried out from another ghost pepper chip company (Paqui, though theirs were tortilla chips not potato) at the same time which blew my taste buds out, the TJ's chips were far tastier overall but not nearly as hot as the dare of the packaging led me to believe. [You can read that review from last year here.]

Cut to our impromptu visit to a Trader Joe's in Irvine the other day where, due to unexpectedly light traffic, Jen's mom, Sande, and I had a full hour to kill before my scheduled visit to my doctor, a gastrointestinal specialist. Perusing the aisles of each Trader Joe's is always interesting because every store is laid out in a  slightly different way, and this location was no exception. For one, the aisles seemed a tad wider than usual for a Trader Joe's, but it looked like it had been dropped into a much larger space than they normally tend to have. The layout of the different sections was also markedly different, so it took a little bit to get our bearings, but even the biggest Trader Joe's is still much smaller than a normal supermarket, so it is never too hard to figure out where one is situated.

The poem, I must admit,
is more than a trifle
lacking in style...

Naturally, there were a couple of different endcaps and a huge display prominently promoting roughly 8,000 pumpkin products (really, under a couple dozen) but nothing that really stuck with me. I figured that I might check out the chip aisle to see if the Ghost Pepper Potato Chips were still around, just in case nothing else stuck. But then something did stick... Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks!

If there is such thing as love at first sight for a product, it was this as I rounded the corner and saw yet another endcap featuring a brand new product to my eyes. A greenish and purple bag with a haunted house on the front, featuring ghosts and bats flying around it, and windows on the house that you could see straight through that showed the potato crisps inside. And the best part? The crisps were shaped liked ghosts and bats!

If I had a "Squeeee!" in me at that time, that would have been the moment for it to eek out into the atmosphere and shock the old lady standing nearby me. That bag was in the cart faster than you could ever imagine. The price on the item – only $1.99 for 5 ounces – also made it a no-brainer for a taste test. Of course, part of the fun of many Trader Joe's items is the packaging, which sometimes reach J. Peterman catalog-levels of odd intrigue. Not so this time. Instead, a poem is printed on the back of the bag, and as you will tell, whoever wrote it needed to give it another draft or two:

Cute UPC ghost
negates bad poetry...

"There once was a 
house in a forest dark,
where ghosts and bats – 
upon a lark...

...happened on to potato crisps
and commenced munching 
forthwith.

No squeaks or moaning 
were ever heard,
instead – 
a crunch, crunch, crunch, 
so absurd...

It was not long before
of their favorite snacks
the ghosts and bats
began to snack!

Spooky."

So, yeah... If this guy ever gets buried by accident at Poets' Corner, he would probably come back as a bull in a china shop. But it's entirely beside the point. They were just trying to sell a back of potato chips/crisps, and they did their job on me before I even got to the stupid poem with its horrible meter. Besides... there is a cute little ghost hanging out over the UPC label, so technically, that negates the awfulness of the poem.

Yup, that's what they look like. Bat and ghost,
ready to die of (your) consumption...

All of this aside, how are Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks? Well, they are certainly crispy, they are made of potato predominately (thankfully, there are only five ingredients listed on the back, potato flour and potato starch being those two), and they fall into the snack category. So, truth in advertising is in full force already. These are more crisps than potato chips, though please don't confuse that with the British term "crisps," which actually means "potato chips". These are pretty light and almost dissolve on the tongue after a short wait, almost like a cheesy poof.

As for the "ghosts and bats" part, indeed, opening the bag revealed that the greater proportion of pieces were cute cut-out shapes of winged batties and little ghosties with oval eyes and mouths that I assume are going "Woooooo!" Of course, any bag of potato snacks will have its crushed denizens lurking about within, and this was no exception. Luckily, most of the ghosts and bats were intact, and ready to charm straight away. 

As for taste, like any potato snack, I prefer to stack up multiple crisps in one bite for more potato flavor, but I will say that there was a definite lack of overall saltiness that actually turned out to be quite appealing. I would suppose some would consider that a bit bland, and normally I would, but it worked out fine in this case.

It really didn't matter, because I was purchasing this bag for the fun of the experience, and fun is what I received. It was a relatively light (130 calories per one ounce serving), silly snack that I will be more than happy to buy again before the Halloween season is over. I wouldn't mind Trader Joe's trying out different flavors with these in the future; perhaps a salt and vinegar version might be terrific (no matter what I just said about downplaying the saltiness).

But, please, despite the season, no pumpkin-flavored potato chips...

RTJ