Carpenter Carpet Capsules: HALLOWEEN III, YOU'RE NEXT, MACHETE KILLS, THE OCTAGON

"For me it's simply an exercise in improvisation, since I can't read or write music - I just make it up as I go along. I think of the orchestral stuff as 'carpet' music - I lay a "carpet" under the scenes - it doesn't get in the way," -- John Carpenter (on scoring his own movies)

Horror has never been about moving forward, or being in the present, it's about the past reaching back up from the unclaimed freight basement to pull us back down, and so it's always the simple, insistent, slightly-off scores that wow us. A simple repeating riff can send chills down a nation's spine; a harmonica and single sustained twang of an electric guitar can blow our minds during a climactic western showdown. Alas, most filmmakers hire 'real musicians' for their scores, which means complicated strings micro-managing our emotional responses. As Carpenter's quote above makes clear, knowing too much about writing music and composing complex melodics can be a drawback. Less is more, a single crazy squiggling synth line or sustained Morricone guitar note is worth most full-bodied orchestral John Williams pomp. Showing off all the stuff you learned in Juliard doesn't make your work 'better' than self-taught savants like Carpenter. Let's look at these four films I've seen the last few days, united by badass music scores if nothing else.

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH

1982 - Written and Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace

**1/2

Halloween III: Season of the Witch's score is one of those great John Carpenter-Alan Howarth percolators, rich with the same kind of 303 cyclic rumblings and unease-producing synth drones that are so mind-blowing and ingeniously simple in Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York. Thought there are some shrill notes here that are less fun and less carpet-like and more like nails on a blackboard, liable to aggravate your tooth fillings, including the diegetic TV commercial jingle for the Silver Shamrock mask collection (a "London Bridge is Falling Down" if remade by Raymond Scott in his "Music for Baby" phase). Writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace (Carpenter's Christian Nyby) makes some really misguided choices, including an unscary bouncy headache music plays over some otherwise superlatively unsettling trick-or-treating shots as the sun goes down in an array of Los Angeles suburbs (onscreen text declares they are other cities but they're clearly all the same L.A. neighborhood); elsewhere it sounds like a five year-old trying to duet with a car alarm on a triangle.

Supposedly Nigel Kneale, the British sci fi writer genius behind Quartermass and the Pit, started the script for this but wound up taking his name off. It's clear whomever came up with the concept didn't understand Halloween or how we in the USA consider a shamrock anachronistic in any month but March. Maybe Silver Shamrock could have sold Guy Fawkes masks and have this be set in Britain? That might make more sense (Britain doesn't have Halloween). The jingle could have been "always remember / the fifth of November / because you'll be dead / just five days earlier" --I just made that up.

A lot of this film's detractors glide over all that to focus on the lack of Michael Myers. I have no problem with it, but I do have a problem with being expected to believe anyone would want a giant shamrock button affixed on the back of their Halloween mask like they were just down at the St. Patrick's Day parade, and neither would they want to be one of only three mask options. "Don't you have any Halloween spirit?" a bar patron asks when the proprietor changes the channel from the awful commercial. What the hell does "London Bridges" with a bouncing shamrock have to do with goddamned Halloween spirit?

I hadn't deigned to see this since first hating on it back in the 80s when it premiered on TV, and even then, as a kid, the illogic of the plot made it hard to follow, but I've been reading good things on the internet --ooh you should give it a second chance blah blah ---well, I'm glad I did, for the most part BUT there's a lot of dumb decision-making involved with the central gimmick besides the shamrock and song: the villain's plans hinge on every kid in America sitting around the house at nine PM, wearing a stifling latex mask while watching TV to wait for the 'big giveaway' --there's no clear reason why or how the masks would help one get a prize for watching, and no kid is going to sweat it out in a hot latex mask watching TV for more than a minute at a time; and it gets worse, Silver Shamrock makes only three mask types for Halloween--skull, pumpkin, and a witch (for the girls)--and no kid is going to see a selection of three lame masks and think, gee- I'd love to look exactly like a third of my class. One of the frustrated buyers at the motel complains that her four year-old was playing with the mask and the shamrock design logo chip fell off -- who the freak cares? Will people not get scared if the label falls off your ghostly bed sheet?

Ho ho Ho! Merry Xmas! 

I wish there were more great early John Carpenter films; I wish this was one of them and parts are, such as the typically refreshing and Carptenter-ish no-nonsense hotel hook-up between mystified Dr. Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin, the daughter of an early victim of killer automaton-like agents of Silver Shamrock, and there's some good use of tick-tock momentum, the sense of the hotel room as a base of operations where the pair hook up and plan their attack but another demerit for the tiresome cliche of his ex-wife Linda, who we most often hear badgering him on the phone about missing junior's recital or whatever the hell- it's shrill and unneeded, generating the kind of rote bad vibes lesser directors feel they need, but Hawks and usually Carpenter avoid such nonsense; also the cheap shock of the penultimate robot attack that rolls against most all logic and whatever affection may have come over us for this cute, easygoing and Hawksian chick. And our respect for the way Atkins handles himself on the tour is lost when he thinks he should go use the Santa Mira hotel phone to call the cops, after learning from the bum he met that the Shamrock controls everything via cameras and bugged phones!  He seems surprised when the call doesn't go through. Come on, dude! You're throwing my good faith right out the window.

But if you can forget all the ridiculous nonsense, whole chunks of the film have the groovy Carpenter vibe, especially when it's just Atkins and Nelkin driving and hanging out in their room, bluffing their way into tours of the factory with the aplomb of a pair of Hitchcockian lovers-on-the-run. Even freaked out and scared as they might be, they're cool, rational, adult, and no drama. Atkins' shaggy Nick Nolte-ish charm in full effect, "It's getting late, I could go for a drink," how often do you hear a shaggy dog hero of a horror movie say that and have it not be a sign he's an alcoholic? I like that even after they shag he's going out late to score a bottle of booze, just like I would have done, and remembering the ice bucket on his way back too, too, --that's the kind of shit Carpenter probably added --and the cute hook-up where even the nudity and showering is emotionally grounding and nice rather than just merely exploitative and I love the cool dead isolation the Northern California town in the setting sun and utter stillness at night--a lowdown town recalling the wastelands of Assault on Precinct 13, They Live and Prince of Darkness, and near no interesting park or lake; I've driven through--as that awesome music plays, that shit's all primo gold. As the evil genius mastermind Cochran, Dan O'Herlihy exudes great Celtic charm that can oscillate to reptilian evil so that his whole countenance seems to shape-shift and the cheery paternal charm in his voice drops away to reveal a base line of unperturbed malevolence -- he does after all plan to kill almost all the children in the USA. "It's a joke, you see, on the children!" He even gets in a great creepy monologue about the 'real' Halloween and the last time such a large sacrifice occurred, and "the streets ran red with the blood of animals and children... In the end, we don't decide these things, you know..."

I suppose it's wishful thinking to hope for a 'producer's cut' that replaces the anachronistic elements and makes the penultimate anticlimax less dispiriting (by which I hope you understand I do NOT mean less apocalyptic and 'horrifying,' just nicer to the spirit of the Hawks-Carpenterian feminine and less a kind of last minute abandoning of originality to just homage in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and hope for the best). Alas - fans of the first Halloween--and even the second-- still hated it, even so. The problems run deep: a guy with a mask and kinfe chasing an unmasked kid with a knife is scary but kids wearing masks watching a demon TV signal is not --it's too abstract --we have to see their faces, know their names, see them scared but brave. The kids here are all pretty one-dimensional cliches, and once the masks are on, they more or less cease to matter. It could have been terrifying but the mask kills it.

Luckily, there's that carpet.

Dig the subliminal VHS box retro vibe (the carpet lip almost a spine crease)

YOU'RE NEXT (2011)

****

Getting back to the idea of the right, simple but strong carpet being so integral to horror, You're Next has one of the best in recent memory-- a vaguely retro synth 303 burbling, eerie drones that are unnerving but never annoying-- it's enough to give one hope for horror's future-past, not that You're Next is exactly horror as opposed to a 'thriller'--there's no repressed to return--but it's certainly creepy, not least for the way we don't know whom to trust or root for and everyone is characterized in a way that's both sympathetic and the reverse, like real people, a family who can devolve into shouting matches at the drop of a pin and be calm a minute later- like my family! The cast is great and I can't really tell you anything else without spoiling it. AJ Bowen, whom I did not care for in Ti West's otherwise nearly sublime House of the Devil, is pitch perfect here, and Ti West himself shows up as one of the heirs. Also appearing is Calvin Reeder who made the genuinely nightmarish and surreal near-sublime The Oregonian (review here), and Larry Fessenden, whom I did not care for as the smug hipster hotelier, chickenshit ghost-hunter, and lame wooer in West's The Innkeepers. But I hear good things about his horror film, Habit. As long as he combs and occasionally washes his hair in future outings, we should be fine.

My brother Fred had that same brass rubbing (far right)

I haven't seen any of Missouri filmmaker Adam Wingard's other films either, but they look like a grim lot. You're Next was completed in 2011 but wasn't released here 'til last year, which is a goddamned shame as this is a future classic. Scrappy Sharni Vinson is a great final-ish girl, full of wily Australian gumption and I love that none of the characters are entirely sympathetic or unsympathetic; it works because it recalls not just classics of the 70s and 80s, but classics of the 30s, i.e. the old dark house full of secret panels, greedy relatives gathered for the will, lightning storms, scary masks, strong female leads and a refreshing lack of any moral compass. What else can I tell you that wouldn't spoil what may be the best thriller-chiller since The Descent? Or at least, Cabin in the Woods? What a treat having 80s cult horror favorite Barbabara Campton as the mom - you may remember her as the badass dominatrix from From Beyond! She still looks damn good.

Barbrara Crampton - top - You're Next (2011), bottom: From Beyond (1986)

MACHETE KILLS!!
2013 - ***1/2

Hard to believe now, but there was a time I found Sofia Vargara shrill and grating --her deafening voice and exaggerated English enunciation brought back memories of my Argentine ex-wife making fun of Yankee accents -- but in Machete Kills! Vagara tones it down as a violent madame of a high end Mexican brothel, able modulating a playful dominatrix simmer into a vengeful cannibal trash cinema boil without ever waking the frog, as it were, or hurting my ears, thus earning my devotion now and forever. Even the sophomoric breastplate machine gun couldn't dampen my awe.

So hell yeah Roberto Rodriguez is still in the game. Getting younger as he ages, he's at the point now where Carpenter hasn't been since Ghosts of Mars. Planet Terror isn't only the better of the two Grindhouse films, it's up there with Spider Baby, Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, and City of the Living Dead. I liked Machete, too, but Kills! is even ballsier; it has less to prove, throwing aside even the usual revenge boilerplate plot and going for a Machete in Space Part Part I angle (the second part being advertised in the opening trailer) having Machete recruited by the president (Emilio Estevez's brother Carlos); Amber Heard is tight like a noose as Miss San Antonio; Lady Gaga is top shelf as the assassin El Camaleón --with Cuba Gooding Jr., Antonio Banderas, and Walton Goggins some of her thousand faces. Perhaps the coolest and most original angle is that the premiero uno (Damien Bashiro) of the first batch of bad guys has a split personality, only one of which is a suicidal psychotic killer, and has a missile launch activator button attached to his heart, triggered to fire missiles at the White House and Russia if he should die or try to defuse it; so Machete ends up going to ludicrous extremes to keep him alive, which all leads to high hilarity and ballsy greatness culminating with Mel Gibson as a light saber-wielding hybrid of Steve Jobs and Drax from Moonraker.

Like the marvelous Planet Terror (which had a great 'carpet' score reminiscent of both the best Carpenter and Fabio Frizzi) there's a great score by Rodriguez and collaborator Carl Thiel here, and countless nods to great trash films old and new. I counted, among others: They Call Her One Eye, Skyfall, Live and Let Die, Rolling Thunder, High Risk, Escape from LA, The Professionals, Drive, Coffy, Switchblade Sisters, The Warriors, Enter the Dragon, The Five Deadly Venoms, and even Lucha Libre, Fantastic Four (the John Byrne-era comics, not the movies) and of course Star Wars, which Gibson's Drax-Jobs loves so much he even has a working X-34 Landspeeder. It's all here, all Mexicanized and, like Planet Terror, stacked with a hot girl cast rocking nice midriffs.

Hold up, you say, that sounds sexist. Yes, but the liberal arts-feminist squirmer like myself found nothing offensive, for Rodriguez loves strong women the way Jack Hill, or Hawks, or Russ Meyer does, i.e. free of corny John Ford sentiment, children, bossy buzzkill safety-first harridanism, sleazy objectification, or last minute bad faith dependence. I bet, for example, Pauline Kael would have loved Machete Kills, and Molly Haskell still might. Rodriguez's women get whole monologues to assert their power and independence and the actresses relish every syllable. Like the casts in Hawks, Hill, and Carpenter films, everyone seems to be having a grand time on set, and very little looks like CGI or Hollywood pasteurized. The great Tom Savini makes sure blood splatters the old fashioned way, and every head is on straight before it's sliced off. Explosions are often rendered through ye olde drive-in trailer superimposition variety, and RR leaves the blue outlines in, as the nature of non-digital superimposition demands, and that we fans love, and the color is rich and vivid like a restored Corbucci. It ends on a cliffhanger ala The Street Fighter, Kill Bill, or Nymphomaniac, but by then I felt pretty sated, bloodlust-wise. You should too. 'lessen you're a Commie. 'Cuz the film's only made back half it's budget so far --will the trilogy be unbroken? 

THE OCTAGON

(1980) - **1/2

There was a time when Chuck Norris was every kid's friend, instead of merely liberalism's enemy and a hipster objet d'curiosity. We'd all seen him jump up as a car is trying to run him down and kick the driver through the windshield on a TV commercial that played constantly during our cartoons in 1978 for Good Guys Wear Black. We all wanted to see it, and could -- it was PG. But it sucked - the cool parts were all in the commercial. So then came The Octagon, this time rate R and with more fights. It has a certain cedar sauna charm and is on Netflix streaming and looks reasonably remastered for HD - and it's dorky fun enough for a low key rainy Saturday afternoon or day off from work, while you clean your guns.

And best of all, it's deadpan funny-paranoid. The ominous lack of music, weird looks, close-ups of keys all portend some dire action is about to erupt any moment, but is it just that Norris is a terrible actor, unable to convey any emotion, or say anything of interest, and the car keys exchanged are the best he can do in his delicate fighting condition by way of Hawksian cigarettes and drinks with the Patty Hearst-ish composite heiress love interest, Justine (Karen Carlson, with more than a faint air of Ellen Burstyn)? The mercs working for Lee Van Cleef (hired as her bodyguards), an old buddy of Chuck's, are all great rugged cowboy character actors--they probably tied up Charlie's Angels and Starsky and Hutch a dozen times each, but I can't remember their names--and there's romance blooming as Norris looks out for Justine, too, but since Norris can't smoke or drink he pays for it in jumpiness: a mop handle looming into the foreground rattles him like it's a bo staff in some yet unseen assassins gloved hands; a car backfiring rattles Justine and therefore him. And he has a problem of stuttering echo within his inner thoughts. How do I know? Because we get to hear them-em-em-em. Here's a sample:

"A.J.-j-j-, Justine-ne-ne, you wouldn't even know each other-r-r-r if not for me-me-me- I'm the bridge-ge-ge..."

Dick Halligan's loping score, when it does show up, pilfers from Ennio Morricone but at least he's stealing from the best. Still, it's kind of a bummer watching Norris spending the bulk of the movie refusing to help various women who beseech his aid in killing a terrorist ninja trainer, just because said trainer just happens to be his own brother. It's cool that the mercs being trained by the ninjas finally get weary of the abuse on their own, and when they see their supposed leader being a coward in a one-on-one with Chuck, needing four ninjas on his side plus unfair weapon advantage, they turn on the guards and start kicking ass, led by the hot furry Palestinian trainee named Aura (Carol Bagdasarian). Damn right.

For all the hype, Norris is a slow fighter. We have to take his word, roundhouse kicks aside, that he's actually a black belt in anything, but that's okay. Maybe he doesn't want to accidentally hurt any of his stunt men, or is just way too used to demonstrating moves to classes of grasshoppers rather than fighting, and most of the fights take place on sand or in carpeted domiciles so no one seems to get hurt when they fall either, but it's diverting to see the ninjas pop up out of the torch-lit outer darkness from sandy holes under freshly laid corpses and so forth, compelling me to wonder if they just hang out in there all night in case a Chuck happens by. Sounds rather dull. The Octagon itself is just a space where ninjas are trained in some deleted scene; its sandy floor and wooden beams  are varnished by the time of the final fight, giving everything a dusky woodsy look like the clinic in Cronenberg's The Brood. If you like rustic wood finish and cozy exteriors, see them as a double feature, and spray some bleach and patchouli in the air, and you'll think you're soaking in it in a cedar sauna. And isn't that what good bad trash movies are all about-out-out?