THE STRANGERS – I doubt anyone will look back on the noughties as a time that spawned any heavyweight genre classics, but ‘The Strangers’ is always a movie I find very effective. It’s so basic – just a home invasion, no twists, no mystery even, apart from the cheap mystery of never really taking your mask off. Could be a thousand other films, and what’s good about it I can’t quite express, although a few things stand out; the performances (Liv Tyler), the way we come into it on this awkward and slightly tragic note (romantic rejection), aspects of the cinematography and how it evokes not only isolation but claustrophobia, just the way it captures that feeling of being miles from anywhere at four in the morning, then there’s a knock at the door… It’s not perfect. The last half teeters on the brink of that ultimate horror foible, ‘running around in the dark to rack up the minutes’. But, without being ground-breaking, or all that interesting or imaginative or even brutal, it somehow distils something of the essence of dread, at least for me. Divisive film as many tag it as a simplistic knock-off, but I think there’s definitely something about it that doesn’t diminish with repeated viewings.
THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 2 – I always quite enjoy the original SPM, which seemed to counter a by-the-numbers approach with witty dialogue and a slightly parodic air. This sequel was made after the slasher boom had peaked, a time when any hopeful contenders basically had to fall back on novelty or comedy to survive in the marketplace. As much as I like the seriousness of the first wave slashers, I prefer the weirder, sillier stuff that came along later – case in point, ‘The Slumber Party Massacre 2’. It picks up after the first, with the sister of one of the characters from SPM fretting about her high school band and the big rehearsal / party they have planned. Someone’s parents are away for the weekend, paving the way for everyone to end up under the same roof so that the inevitable can happen ie lots of running around and people dying. I really enjoyed SPM 2. The influence of Elm Street is apparent, with dream sequences galore and a baffling supernatural killer who resembles the lead singer of a Cramps tribute act. He also has an outrageous guitar / drill thing that looks way more metal than psychobilly, but anyway. There’s an unabashed stupidity at work – witness lame gore gags such as the severed hand in a bap, and that undead chicken’s leap for freedom – but beyond the larking about there’s a slightly arch self-awareness, and it plays with feminist ideas in the same vein as its precursor. Not that there’s anything all that groundbreaking in having your killer as a dark embodiment of male desire whose weapon of choice happens to be a really obvious phallic symbol, but not many people were taking that line in 1987 (and this film really has ‘1987’ written all over it). Trashy fun that more than lives up to the original.
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