DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Last Halloween was disappointing for me. I hadn't even begun preparing my trick or treat items when the first band of kids arrived begging on my doorstep. I had to give them apples without razor blades. Oh well, I'll get the little bastards next time. John Carpenter's film, Halloween, is no disappointment.
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Trick Or Meat?
by Edouard Dauphin
Last Halloween was disappointing for me. I hadn't even begun preparing my trick or treat items when the first band of kids arrived begging on my doorstep. I had to give them apples without razor blades. Oh well, I'll get the little bastards next time.
John Carpenter's film, Halloween, is no disappointment. In fact, it's one of the most elegant and genuinely frightening shockers of recent years—comparable to such classics as Night Of The Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and maybe even Invasion Of The Blood Farmers.
At the Times Square screening of Halloween I caught, the audience consisted of addiebrained cretins who, if they ever got up the energy to go trick or treating, would probably ask for razor-flavored apples. They gobbled it up.
Halloween is set in the Midwest, an area of our country well familiar with madness and the most senseless atrocities. After all, isn't CREEM headquartered there?
The date is October 31,1963. An eight-year-old boy, dressed in a Halloween clown costume, discovers his teenaged sister necking with a local pimply youth. The brat disapproves, takes a vicious looking blade from the family kitchen and hacks up big sis like a pumpkin. This kid's the original Beaver Cleaver.
The scene shifts to present day. It's Halloween night, 15 years later. Guess who's broken out of the laughing academy and is returning home for some more cutting up? (If you can't guess, you don't deserve a film this good and should be sentenced to a lifetime of watching nonstop I Dream Of Jeannie re-runs.)
Meanwhile, three foxy high school girls are preparing to spend the evening babysitting—with possible time off for nooky, drinking beer and getting high. In other words, a typical evening in middle America.
Most interesting of the trio is played by screen newcomer Jamie Leigh Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh and
Tony Curtis. Fortunately for all concerned, Jamie gets her talent and good looks from her mother's side of the family. Otherwise we might have had a nubile Tony Curtis lookalike who spoke with a lisp—give me a break!!
The nutcase hits town and wastes little time getting down to business. This bozo knows more things to do with a commonplace kitchen knife than The Galloping Gourmet making steak teriyaki.
Pretty soon he zeroes in on Jamie, the sensitive nerd of the bunch. She actually has spent the night babysitting, but now she gets a little exercise. As the killer pursues her, carving knife in hand, she races frantically from one end of the house to the other. Looked like she was auditioning to be president of the Sid Vicious fan club.
The ending is harrowing. See, this goonybird doesn't succumb easily. Even with a darning needle through his temple, he still insists on mugging for attention .^Reminded me a lot of Ted Nugent.
See Halloween and I'll bring the apples.
Ever raise piranhas?.
They're cute little buggers, quiet and unobtrusive. But blown up to giant size, they're killer fish who'll take your leg off at the knee and that's just for appetizers. It's enough to make you give up eating at Arthur Treacher's.
Piranha, latest release from schlock prince Roger Cor man's warped assembly line, is a poor man's Jaws 2 that puts to good use virtually every out-of-work actor in Hollywood.
Where else but in a trasher like this would you have Bradford Dillman, Keenan Wynn, Kevin McCarthy and a host of other semi-stars chased around Texas waterways by a school of flesheating piranhas? I thought some of these actors died years ago!
Bradford plays a cynical but good-hearted drunk. Keenan plays a harmless but old drunk. Kevin plays a brilliant but violent drunk. With all this guzzling, there's a rumor they had Joe Cocker on the set as technical advisor.
Seems that during the Vietnam war (remember that? It was on television), theU.S. government tried to breed a super-species of piranha fish to create chaos and suffering among enemy forces. It was either that or drop-shipping cartons of Iggy albums.
Are you ready for this? The feds have taught the piranhas to swim upstream just like salmon. They head for a beach amusement park, natch, so there's enough mass carnage to make Jonestown, Guyana look like a quiet Sunday afternoon at the Osmond's.
See Piranha and don't forget the tartar sauce.
