I blind bought the new flick because I’m a sucker for throwback slashers, I bought one of the 67 flicks for Roddy McDowall, and the other one from 67 was on the same disc, so…bonus! But was the bonus worth it? Were any of them worth it? Let’s find out.
HELL OF A SUMMER (2023)
So a dude from Stranger Things and a dude from Ghostbusters: Afterlife decided to get together to co-write, co-direct, and co-star in a summer camp comedy slasher with a retro vibe to it. There’s plenty of potential here, but not much hits the mark beyond the dark, shadowy, old school look of the summer camp setting.
The opening scene is pretty damn good, with a classic first kill. There’s even some funny humor with a tennis racket bug zapper. Adam Pally of Happy Endings is sitting by a campfire with his woman. He gets killed offscreen, but she gets a satisfying kill. This sequence set my expectations high. Too high, apparently.
Next, we meet our summer camp counselors. The main guy is painted as too old for the job. He’s also painted as if he’s going to be the funny man, but he’s just not funny. And neither is most of the humor here. The cast didn’t have much in the way of good material to work with. Personally, I think if Adam Pally had played the older counselor role, he could have elevated the comedy.
The older guy’s ex-girlfriend works at the camp, there’s an influencer, there’s a gay theater geek, there’s a goth girl, there are our two filmmakers/stars, and there are a few more characters. Thing is, no one really comes across as a main character, and we simply don’t feel connected to any of them.
There’s a lot of talk for a while and not much else. The first kill is 27 minutes in, but all we see is blood splatter on a mirror. In fact, most of the kills are cutaway.
When the first dead body is found, everyone runs and screams…a lot. Instead of funny, it quickly becomes just shrill and annoying as it is overused. Eventually everyone turns on the older counselor, thinking he’s the killer because he’s too old to still be a counselor. This plot point doesn’t add much excitement or intrigue, nor does it help the pacing.
There’s a familiar “twist”, and the gay guy gets the only onscreen, graphic and gory kill. The final battle between one of the main guys and the killer is perhaps the funniest sequence in the movie, and it made me wish the whole movie had captured the same tone.
IT! (1967)
A few weeks ago, I thought I bought and posted about the last Roddy McDowall horror movie I didn’t have in my collection and then realized I’d ordered two movies and this one hadn’t arrived yet. Now my Roddy McDowall collection is officially complete.
It! has never gotten an upgrade from DVD, and it’s only available on a double feature disc with The Shuttered Room with Oliver Reed…which makes me want to see if I have every horror movie in which Oliver Reed appeared in my collection. Wait. Hold on…
Okay. I’m back. I do have every Oliver Reed horror movie in my collection.
Anyway, after a museum storehouse fire, Roddy, who works at the museum, discovers that one ancient statue survived unscathed. He also realizes it seems to be a supernatural killer. So why not bring it back to the museum?
The really weird aspect of the plot is that Roddy keeps his mother’s corpse in his house and regularly steals precious jewels from the museum for her to wear. There’s no explanation for this macabre element, but obviously it was a way to ride the coattails of Psycho. Her dead presence is a very minor part of the story with no real resolution.
It does, however, give Roddy motivation to have the statue do his dirty work for him. He learns how to make the statue his bitch, so he orders it to smash display cases for free jewelry and kill people who get in his way.
The highlight of this movie is that there are plenty of pretty boys in the cast. Roddy must have had a field day working with them….
There’s a Jewish myth background to the statue, which is cool, and the death scenes are plentiful but also fairly safe for the period. Overall, it all feels goofy, especially an absurd scene in which Roddy has the statue, which is only slightly taller than an average human, knock down a massive bridge, and the finale, when the military tries to destroy the statue with a nuclear warhead. Did the military back then not know the kind of damage nuclear weapons could do to, like, everyone?
THE SHUTTERED ROOM (1967)
Awesome killer POV and the general plot are the absolute highlights here, because they feel like the inspiration for so much horror that has come since.
The opener sets us up for a dark and sinister experience as we see through the eyes of something that comes down from the attic in a house and terrifies a little girl in her bed.
Carol Lynley, a staple in television and movies in the 60s and 70s, plays that little girl all grown up. Having been sent to foster care as a child, she returns to the home with her husband after she inherits the house from her parents. Her family backstory is so weak, and we don’t really know why she doesn’t remember much of anything…like the thing that was hovering over her bed and should have scarred her for life based on her reaction back then.
Anyway, several locals warn the couple not to stay at the house, including Carol’s aunt, who still lives in town. While there’s some killer POV when they arrive at the house, the biggest threat to the couple for most of the movie is the local gang of bad boys, led by Oliver Reed. I don’t know if everyone in this backwoods place is related, but apparently Carol and Oliver share the same aunt, so they are cousins, and he wants to sexually assault Carol. Pretty skanky storyline for 1967.
While there’s great atmosphere in the house and some good tension since we know something hides in the shadows, nothing much actually happens. Late in the movie, a slutty woman enters the house and gets viciously attacked and killed, but that’s about it until the final sequence, which involves Reed, Carol, her husband, and the aunt all ending up in the attic.
It is the biggest letdown ever for a movie about something unknown and unseen hiding in a house. Major spoiler here…it’s literally just a feral woman that we can only assume was perhaps Carol’s sister that the parents were keeping hidden away? No idea, because it’s never clearly explained beyond the aunt being left to care for the feral female, but Carol does seem to suddenly have some sort of telepathic connection with her at the last second. Holy underdeveloped script.
Not to mention, there’s a dude in town with no eye who is more frightening than the bitch in the attic.
