We're All Mad Here

After yesterday's Christ-awful terrible cinematic abortion that was See No Evil 2, I felt like we deserved something really, really good today, and boy-howdy, do we have that...

TELEVISION:


American Horror Story
Season 2: Asylum - 2012
Created by Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy

I really enjoyed Murder House, the self-contained first season of American Horror Story.  It was a ghost story (my favorite flavor of scare), bursting at the seams with ghosts and interesting character relations, but there were definitely some nagging narrative weaknesses that suggested either incomplete planning or late-season scheduling conflicts.

The second season's story, Asylum, fixes what was broken and improves everything that wasn't, resulting in one of the finest and most compelling horror stories ever created.  The show's team actually courts disaster by filling it with SO MUCH that it should trip over its own subplots and varied ingredients, and yet it pulls it off masterfully.

Roughly spanning the 60s (with trips back and forth through time) in the asylum at Briarcliff Manor, we have at least three serial killers, two axe murderers, a mad scientist Nazi war criminal, the twisted victims of said mad science,  a sadistic nun, a demon possessed nun, the Angel of Death, and, oh yeah, space aliens.  That's just the boogeymen (and women, to be fair).  To each of those spooks, there's at least one human story attached, and usually more.  Those stories then entwine with one another, creating a tangled web of "I HAVE TO FIND OUT, BUT DON"T LET IT END!" storytelling.

Honestly, this is one of the single best narrative arcs in television history.  Yeah I said it, and I meant it.

Several cast members from season one are back in new roles.  The most fascinating of these is perennial show-stealer Jessica Lange in a radically different and vastly more complex role.  She plays the tough-as-nails Sister Jude, the nun charged with running the asylum, who has turned it into her personal domain.  Lange has played no shortage of Southern belles throughout her career (including season one), so it's a real delight to see her take on the role of a hard-bitten New England nun with a secret past.  As strong as she is as Sister Jude, she really takes it a few more levels up when she ceases to be Sister Jude and suffers her comeuppance.  This was a remarkably complex character whom we despise and then pity, and ultimately mourn. Okay; Jessica Lange.  Now I get it.

It's virtually impossible to summarize the story (stories) without falling into the trap of a breathless "And then that happened, and then she said, and then -- OH YEAH, I forgot to tell you about..." recounting.  Virtually every character has their own story, and roles to play in other characters' stories.  Every time I start to say "In addition to Sister Jude, there's one other key lead" I realize there was another.  Then when I'm prepared to commit to three leads, I recall another major arc that may not have been key, but certainly was significant.  The strength of this storytelling and juggling of characters compels me to mock the failure of Lost to do the same, despite pretending that it did.  Dear producers; Do this.  Not that.

Realistically speaking, there were indeed three primary characters and their analogous structural story lines.  In addition to Sister Jude, there's the brave and bold reporter, Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), unjustly imprisoned at Briarcliff for attempting to expose its corruption, and Kit Walker (Evan Peters) who is also unjustly imprisoned there, believed to be the serial killer Bloody Face.  Shockingly, his alibi that he'd been abducted by aliens doesn't help his case.  Both of their stories are strongly rooted in issues of social justice, which apply strongly to their unjust imprisonment.  Like the best of horror, Asylum deals not only in imagined evils, but in genuine evils, and addresses the human condition through one of our most damning and damaging traits; our fear.

Performances are uniformly good-to-outstanding.  I can't think of a single character that I ever wanted to get off the screen so I could see someone else, and I frequently wanted more or just about everyone.  Perhaps the most tantalizingly brief appearance was the few episodes we got with Ian McShane as the hilarious and menacing Santa Claus killer.

I freely admit that the relatively "up" ending went a long way toward formalizing my enjoyment of Asylum as a whole.  So many characters went through their own personal Hells that it was gratifying to see their struggles pay off.  Not that anyone exactly lived all that "happily ever after" and a lot of good people died along the way.  The end felt both authentically human as well as satisfying the narrative.  We don't see that often on television or (even less so) in horror.  Hell, after Glee, I wouldn't have even guessed that Ryan Murphy was capable of either.

If you have any interest in quality television and/or quality horror... [Shalit] ...you'd have to be completely CRAZY... to miss American Horror Story's Asylum. [/Shalit]

The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 5: the 1990s

FILM & TELEVISION

Things definitely take a turn toward improvement in the 90s.  The stinky cheese stench of commercial abuse lingers, but is fading.  Midnight movie nerds like Tim Burton and Joss Whedon are on the rise, exorcising and exercising their demons, as it were, and changing flow of the mainstream.

Waxwork II: Lost in Time - 1992
Written & Directed by Anthony Hickox

Featuring: Frankenstein's Monster, Ghosts, Aliens-but-definitely-not-"Aliens"-aliens, Zombies, Mr Hyde, Jack the Ripper & more

The first Waxwork was a pleasant surprise for me, but Waxwork II was an outright delight.  While relying on an even more contrived framing device, the segments that made up the body of the film were even better tributes to beloved films, and the laugh-out-loud moments made it a rollicking good time.

Picking up immediately after the first movie, albeit with a new actress in the role of Sarah, the sequel wastes no time killing off her stepfather, courtesy of a zombie hand which escaped from the waxwork.  She's blamed for the death and stands trial for murder.  Having sent the homicidal hand down the garbage disposal, she's hard pressed to back up her story.  Before the trial is finished, she and Mark return to his uncle's home to find some kind of Hail Mary play to prove her story.  This leads them to a portal through time, and they spend most of the movie looking for evidence and fighting evil in various film tributes (mostly horror based) and trying to find their way back home.  The homages here are more overt, and more on the nose than those in Waxwork, touching on Frankenstein, The Haunting, Alien, Legend and other sword & sorcery films, with brief trips through even more.  As in the first, the effects range from surprisingly good to definitely not but that's okay, particularly for the kind of movie it is.  Once again, we're treated to some fabulous character actors in the supporting cast including Bruce Campbell, Jeffery Combs, Marina Sirtis, Patrick Macnee, Juliet Mills and David frickin' Carradine, among others.  Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun making this movie, and I had a hell of a lot of fun watching it.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - 1993
see link to make sense of writing team credits
Directed by Henry Selick

Featuring: a town full of monsters

Though commonly attributed to Tim Burton, he neither directed nor wrote the screenplay for the much beloved film.  Burton wrote the short story upon which it was based.  I find this curious, since it's regarded by many as the high point of his career.  In my more esoteric moments, I might even wonder if this mightn't explain his creative flailing and repeated attempts to recapture something that was never fully his to begin with.

But I digress.  Jack Skellington is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, a kind of anthropomorphism of the Halloween spirit.  Amid an existential crisis of sorts, he discovers that there are other towns, each representing other holidays, and sets his sights on taking over Christmas.  He enlists all the citizens of Halloween Town, which represent all sorts of fearful images associated with the holiday, or just fear and weirdness.  Jack himself is a skeleton.  His beloved Sally is a patchwork girl (a la Frankenstein's monster).  There are witches, corpses, demons, vampires, mummies and so on; taking many of the classic tropes under the "Universal Monsters" umbrella and mixing them in with all manner of spooky night-bumpers.  Now, more than 20 years on, I feel that it's safe to say that this is not only a classic, but it's quite possibly the truest classic of all the monster mash-ups.  It just now occurs to me that stop-motion animation doesn't age the same way that CGI does, assuring that the Nightmare Before Christmas will continue to look as fresh as the day it... died.  Mwahaha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa....

Dollman vs Demonic Toys - 1993

I am aware that this is a thing that exists.  It combines two other things that, surprisingly, also exist.

That is all.

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II - 1993
Written by Wataru Mimura
Directed by Takao Okiwara

Featuring: Godzilla, Godzilla Jr, Rodan, Mechagodzilla & Mecha King Ghidorah

Despite the Roman numeral two in the title, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II is not a sequel to 1974's Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla.  It does, however, function as a sequel to 1991's completely senseless yet smashingly successful Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, so go fig.  That's how Godzilla's intermittent and resettable continuity works.

The original Mechagodzilla was created by aliens and posed as Godzilla to lead their invasion plans.  The new one was created (using technology salvaged from the Mecha King Ghidorah from the future) by the UN-backed G-Force to end the global threat posed by Godzilla.  Don't worry, the most convoluted part of this film is when they refer back to GvKG.

A team of scientists is investigating a radioactive island where they discover a giant egg when Rodan shows up (called "Radon" here, which is evidently the monster's actual name, before Americans goofed it up).  Godzilla arrives not long after and he and Rodan get into a pretty brutal fight while the scientists escape with the egg.  Back in Tokyo, the egg eventually hatches, revealing not a pteranodon like Rodan as they expected, but a baby godzillasaurus reminiscent of the baby Godzilla known as Minilla from late 60s installments.  Godzilla comes to Tokyo, apparently looking for the baby, but is confronted by Mechagodzilla.  With the giant robot, they're able to get a couple electrified harpoons into Godzilla and take him down... until the energy starts to feedback and fry its own systems.  With the "Baby" in their care, the scientists are able to study its anatomy and glean some insight into what went wrong before, and how they can bestter go about killing Godzilla.  This, however, raises some ethical questions, both about how they're using Baby and what it would mean to kill Godzilla.  This all culminates in a massive brawl between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, thank heavens.

The final battle takes place in the city, which is awesome.  The miniatures include skyscrapers and a sports arena which really gives some nice scale to the giants, to say nothing of the mass destruction.  Sure, there are still some nonsensical story beats, but nothing near as bad as the completely ridiculous story in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah.  I'm finally coming to accept that that's just another part of what makes a Godzilla movie a Godzilla movie.

Monster Force - 1994

Universal proves that it can exploit and devalue their monster legacy as well as anyone with this 13 episode animated series.  A group of teens (plus Frankenstein's monster) team up to combat poorly animated versions of classic Universal Monsters and to keep the copyright active.

Monster Mash: The Movie - 1995
Written & Directed by Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow

A low-budget musical based on that song you hate, written by the guys who wrote the Garfield movies and featuring that girl from some show and Jimmie "J.J." "Kid Dynamite" Walker.

As my sweet Grandma Frances would have said, "You figure it out."

The Creeps - 1997
Written by Benjamin Carr
Directed by Charles Band

Featuring: Mini-Dracula, Mini-Frankenstein's Monster, Mini-Mummy & Mini-Wolf Man

A mad scientist gathers first editions books to bring their characters to life.  I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not clear on how that's "science."  Anyway, he succeeds, but only partially.  The characters he brings to life are Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy and the Wolf Man, but they all turn out to be "mini" versions of each.  You might remember this movie from the fierce Oscar competition of which it was a part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - 1997-2003
Created by Joss Whedon

Featuring: everything (except leprechauns)

In a category oft defined by low-budget fan-serving schlock, Buffy slays 'em all.  At first glance it might be a little unfair to include a seven season show that trotted out a new monster on an episode-by-episode basis, but for a group of misfit high schoolers who evolved into a hell-beasty death squad comprised of a demon-fuelled slayer, a witch, a werewolf, a former demon, a vampire with benefits, and... Xander, I'd say they more than achieved the many-monsters-one-box spirit.  As for the other creatures of the night and sometimes late afternoon, BtVS included countless vampires (I'm actually pretty sure that someone has counted them -- oh internet) including such Universal Monster homages as a skeezy rendition of Dracula himself, a Frankensteinian footballer, a hot Gothy werewolf, a hot Incan mummy, a Creature from the high school swim team, an Invisible Girl as well as two different kinds of zombies, and so, so, SO much more.  Buffy is a milestone in TV history.  Anyone who loves monsters and/or series television should have seen it at least twice by now.

I'm not going to list Angel separately as that would be redundant.  There was less tribute paid to classic monsters in the series, and less overall variety altogether.  That's not a dig.  Angel did a really strong job of developing its own mythology and maintaining characters over longer, sustained story lines.

Archie's Weird Mysteries - 1999-2002

Archie and the Riverdale gang get involved in all kinds of mysteries, often with a supernatural theme.  Vampires come to town, Veronica turns into a 50 foot woman, there are ghosts, aliens, a "glob," ghosts, mummies, time travel and ghosts.  It's a clean-cut good time for all, and actually sounds less embarrassing than most monster mashing cartoons we'd seen up until now.  Actually, it sounds a little like a watered-down Buffy.  It was produced by DiC, so make that very watered down.  There was also a comic based on the cartoon based on the comic.

The thrills continue with The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 6: the Twenty-Aughts!

Or you can catch up with the series, from the top with The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 1: the 1940s & 50s!