Another Descent Into...
The Pittsburgh Penguins-
The Canadiens are who I thought they'd be. They are riding the hot goaltender in Stephan Halak. Yet, the Pens are up 3-2 thanks to a 2-1 win last night in game 5 of their best of 7 2nd round. Why? Mainly, it's because we are riding a hotter goaltender in one Marc-Andre Fleury. This boy has made saves he should have no business making. If not for that, in all honesty I don't see the Pens getting as far as they have. Crosby is snakebit...Malkin is anemic and the offense Game 1 aside is weak. Let's hope tomorrow, they can crush Montreal's will and head to a 3rd straight conference final.
Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The problem with this movie is the same problem with most of the other remakes that have come out over the past few years. There is nothing new going on. With Star Trek, J.J. Abrams at least had the common sense to put his universe in a different contiunity than the original. With Elm Street, it's as if original Freddy never happened.
The motives for Freddy's kills are a helluva lot more disgusting than original Freddy, I'll give it that. New Freddy is very sinister but also a one-liner spouter. I rolled my eyes as he dropped pun after pun. There are a few decent death scenes.(The first one gets major bonus points with me..sorry Twilight kids...) and for about ten minutes, I really thought the 'something new' dynamic would happen but I got rused. The ending is bleech as hell.
In the pantheon of horror remakes, New NOES isn't Friday the 13th or The Stepfather but it's not Halloween either. E for effort, C- for execution....6/10
Alice Sweet Alice (1977)-
On to a better movie, 1977's Alice Sweet Alice marked the debut of Brooke Shields into the world of cinema.
Catherine Spages (Linda Miller) and her two daughters 9-year-old Karen (Brooke Shields) and 12-year-old Alice (Paula Sheppard) who both attend St Michael's Parish Girl's School, are visiting Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich). Karen is preparing for her first communion and Father Tom gives her his mother's crucifix as a gift. A jealous Alice puts on a creepy, translucent grinning mask and terrifies Mrs Tredoni (Mildred Clinton), Father Tom's quirky Italian immigrant housekeeper.
Later on, Alice steals Karen's porcelain doll and lures her into an abandoned building with it. She jumps out and scares Karen with the grinning mask and locks her in a room. When she lets her out she tells her that if anyone finds out she'll never see the doll again.
On the day of the first communion, Karen is attacked and strangled to death by a person donning a translucent mask and yellow rain coat in a back room as the children enter the front of the church. Her body is dragged away by her right arm and the fiend dumps her into a bench compartment and sets her on fire with the candle, but not before ripping the crucifix from her neck. Smoke begins to fill the church. Meanwhile, Alice enters the church, carrying her shiny yellow raincoat. She kneels in Karen's place to receive communion but a scream is heard. A curious nun had entered the back room where the confessionals are located, and finds Karen's body. Members of the mass run in, horrified. Catherine is inconsolable.
After Karen's funeral, Catherine's ex-husband Dominick "Dom" Spages arrives in town to help track the killer down. Also, Catherine's sister Annie DeLorenze (Jane Lowry) moves in with them to help Catherine through her grief. It is then apparent that Alice and Annie both despise each other, as seen when Annie implicates Alice in Karen's murder and when they get into an argument after Alice spills a glass of milk.
Catherine tells Alice to deliver a rent cheque to Mr Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), their obese cat-loving landlord. After he tries to fondle and molest her, Alice kills his cat and goes down to the basement, where she lights a candle and puts on her grinning mask.
When going down the stairs to go shopping, Annie is viciously attacked by the killer in the yellow raincoat and grinning mask, stabbing her in the knee, foot, and thigh. At the hospital, Annie cries to her husband Jim (Gary Allen) that Alice tried to kill her. Catherine says that Annie is only accusing Alice of murdering Karen to divert attention from her own daughter Angela (Kathy Rich) who was absent at the time of the murder. Alice is put in a mental institution due to her outbursts.
When at the sanitarium with Father Tom, Dom receives a phone call from Angela herself saying that she has Karen's crucifix and she is in hiding. They agree to meet up at an abandoned building. When at the abandoned building, Dom follows the killer inside and up the stairs where the killer stabs him in the shoulder and is knocked out by a brick and tied up. Dom awakens and sees that the killer is in fact Mrs Tredoni. She killed Karen because she believes that "children pay for the sins of the parents". She reveals that she stabbed Annie because she misidentified her as Catherine, whom she considers a whore. She calls Dom and Catherine sinners because they had been fornicating before marriage. After biting the crucifix off her neck, Mrs Tredoni beats him with a rock and pushes him out of the window.
Upon analysis of Dom's corpse, the crucifix is found and Alice is released. When going out to mass Mrs Tredoni sneaks into the apartment building. Catherine and Alice leave just in time. As Mrs Tredoni bangs on their front door, Mr Alphonso wakes up screaming (Alice put a jar of cockroaches on his belly before leaving). He spots Mrs Tredoni and mistakes her for Alice and grabs her. Mrs Tredoni stabs him twice and runs downstairs. However, a policeman witnesses her running out of the back entrance without the mask on.
Mrs Tredoni goes to the same church as Catherine and Alice where the police are stationed outside. When going up to the altar, Father Tom denies her communion. Mrs Tredoni points at Catherine and screams, "But you gave it to that WHORE!" Mrs Tredoni violently stabs Father Tom in the neck and the police rush in. The final shot features Alice walking out of the church with Mrs Tredoni's shopping bag and looking at the bloodstained butcher knife, glaring at the camera.
This movie came out in the pre-slasher movie, just right before the original Halloween would blood-stain the screen and while at times I felt as if I were watching a soap opera, overall this wasn't bad. Alice is a pure bitch in this film. So much so, you really believe she was capable of committing those murders. The acting is beyond overdone, into the world of char-broiled yet I found the killer's motives satisfying.
This will remind one of the Italian giallos that populated the horror world around this time. For an Americanized effort, it's rather decent. Worth a view....7/10
A Mother's Day message-
I'm going to break character for a moment, reader. Please indulge me for a few minutes if you could. Today is, of course, Mother's Day. You may also notice I have yet to wish my mother a happy one. There is a reason for this.
You see the truth is, I have not spoken to my mother in over twenty years. Before I was born, ,my mother was a drug user. Acid and heroin mainly. She also had manic depression coupled with paranoid schizoprhenia. She did manage to get clean before my birth but sadly her mental illness was never treated.
There was a time when she tried to kill my father in his sleep but he narrowly missed the butcher knife heading for his skull. My mother was taken away afterwards and I was sent to live with my aunt out west. My mother made out to see me and try to patch things up with my dad or at least work on an appeasement for my sake.
It didn't work and my final memory of her was her being carried away by two burly gentlemen. Her eyes were dead, her long black hair drapped her face. I said, "Bye, Mom." and she looked at me as if she didn't know who I was. This is when I was 7 years old.
For years, I hated her. She was the butt of my dad's jokes. She was the punishment if I didn't behave. The older I got, the more I realized how truly in pain she was. A few years ago, I let go of my hatred and anger towards her. I haven't spoken to her and I have no intention to. She has her life to lead and I have mind. But Kathleen Marie Depner, if by some miracle you're reading this, understand one thing.
I forgive you. While you chose to seal your own fate, I now understand that a person has to fall many times before they can stand on solid ground. I don't hate you anymore. I can't love you but I don't hate you. My intelligence, my artistic side I owe to you. For that, I am forever grateful. Thank you, Mom.
Posts
I just want to add that the last time I saw her I was 7 the last time I talked to her I was 11.
ReplyDelete