Welcome back to the Drive-In. It’s been a great run of episodes for the show so far, but The Last Drive-In might have delivered an absolute all-time-best episode with the double-feature of Troma’s War (1988) and One Cut of the Dead (2017).
This week’s tweet commentary is handled by a friend to Haunted MTL, Isaac Thorne. Good stuff, Isaac. Read his story “Dead Rights” here on the site.
So, let’s dive in, shall we?
Troma’s War (1988)
Opening Rant: BoBo Rodriguez’s Cold Rememedy.
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When I put together my season two wishlist for The Last Drive-In one of the items was a wish for Troma movies. Troma, that delightful independent studio of bad taste, has enough material to fill entire seasons of The Last Drive-In, and we’ve been fortunate as fans to have two films this season alone.
Tonight’s selection of Troma’s War is not one of the most iconic of Troma’s films, with it actually being quite divisive among fans of the studio, but it’s still bonkers and just right for the Joe Bob Briggs treatment. The film is a hasty, low-budget terrorist movie that reminded me of an unholy child of Lost, Rambo, Die Hard, and Red Dawn. Directed by the legendary Lloyd Kaufman, the film has all those hallmarks of Troma, the blood, the jokes, the boobs, but it also feels simultaneously more subdued and yet more pointed. It is an odd sensation.
The film follows a group of people whose Tromaville Air flight crash lands onto an island being used by a sinister cabal of nations and terrorist. These average Americans must then band together to basically kill all the terrorists in ridiculous ways.
It all sounds good, but the film is curiously tame for a Troma production, mostly due to the continual influence of the MPAA. The satire of the film, while still present, ends up feeling a little toothless. It seems that in working with the MPAA Kaufman and Troma ended up diluting the goal of lampooning the military-industrial complex. Ultimately, Joe Bob would give the film two and a half stars. It’s a fair assessment.
While the movie was ultimately not the best movie of the night or the season, the guest appearances of Lloyd Kaufman and Pat Swinney Kaufman offer perhaps the greatest guest appearances on the show, even factoring in Tom Savini. We know Joe Bob Briggs loves to talk and can keep other people on their toes, but Lloyd Kaufman is such a huckster that he kept Joe Bob on his toes. Lloyd’s film insights, when not completely hilarious, we absolutely fascinating. Lloyd’s discussion of the build of Troma across several of the breaks would establish a theme for the night that ran through the second feature of just… making films.
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Lloyd wasn’t alone, however. Pat Swinney Kaufman is another guest that seems just right for The Last Drive-In. So many great movies are shot, in-part, in New York and Pat’s role as the executive director of the New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development and deputy commissioner of Empire State Development has helped to ensure smooth productions in New York. Even completely ignoring the fact she’s married to Lloyd Kaufman, Pat is a Hell of guest with some pretty significant contributions to the types of films we mutants love. That being said, her being there with Lloyd was amazing.
This is a situation where what surrounds the feature outshines the feature itself. Troma’s War is not one of Troma’s best, but contextualized by the commentary of Joe Bob Briggs, and Lloyd and Pat Kaufman it becomes something else entirely. Unfortunately though, as a feature, I cannot give Troma’s War more than three Cthulhus.
(3 / 5)
Best Line: “You try chopping Siamese twins apart with a machete and not change.” – Nancy
One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Opening Rant: Joe Bob drops some knowledge about the lengthy history of the deep fake.
I am honestly surprised that I have not reviewed One Cut of the Dead for Haunted MTL, which is odd because it is still one of the best films offered on Shudder and was available just shortly after I started writing on the site. Perhaps it is fitting that I am reviewing it now, attached to my passion project of reviewing The Last Drive-In.
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A quirky Japanese horror-comedy is, at first blush, a strange film to pair with a Troma film, but it makes a lot of sense given the themes of One Cut of the Dead. The film is quite inventive and revolves less around zombies and rather the challenges and joys of filmmaking. The film is one that catches a lot of people off guard when they see it, as evidenced by the #MutantFam reaction to the film’s twist, which I will not spoil. Going in blind, you’re confronted with what seems to be a technically impressive, but narratively unimpressive one-take zombie film. But that is only the first part of the movie.
One Cut of the Dead is probably one of the oddest films we’ve seen on The Last Drive-In due to how heartwarming it is. The film is extremely cute and has a great many feel-good moments. It’s just a damn pleasure to watch. Joe Bob Briggs gave it the four-star treatment and that is pretty great considering the movie is just so far outside of the normal Drive-In experience. Maybe Joe Bob is getting soft. Who knows?
One Cut of the Dead continued a through-line established in the discussion surrounding Troma’s War regarding filmmaking at its most fundamental level with independent filmmakers. It all culminates with this wonderful closer, “Keep Rolling.”
It is probably one of the best sequences since Joe Bob started up on Shudder and is just damn inspiring.
Getting back to One Cut of the Dead, however, the film earns every single one of the 5 Cthulhus I am giving it. I’ll probably need to write a longer, more in-depth review of the movie because it is just that good. It needs to be discussed further than a couple of paragraphs I set aside in a Last Drive-In recap.
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(5 / 5)
Best Line: “Furrrk!” – Nao
HMTL Drive-In Totals
So, what were the official Drive-In totals this week?
This is probably the best episode of The Last Drive-In we’ve had. It is an odd pairing and for me, personally, it’s like Shudder took a core sample of my brain to figure out what my favorite sort of episode would be like. The whole night was pretty much near perfect. A five Cthulhu sort of experience.
(5 / 5)
To a lot of fans, this is the film that killed the franchise. It says a lot that the next installment is yet another retcon. Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers attempts to explain Michael’s unrelenting evil, which lead to mixed opinions from longtime fans. There are two cuts of the film, theatrical vs producer’s. For a lot of people, the latter is the only one worth mentioning. Aiming to be as accurate as possible, I will be talking about the producer’s cut. Let’s begin!
Plot
We start Halloween VI with a six-year time jump from part five. Jamie is now barefoot and recently pregnant, running away from Michael as he wants her baby. While she manages to hide the little one away, Michael finally gets his hunger satiated by killing her. The moment is one of the most brutal ways in the franchise up until that point. Rest in peace, Jamie, you held your ground for as long as you could, the sequels were just too relentless.
The movie then cuts to a whole different scene going on. We have a new family living in the Myers house and their youngest child is hearing voices telling him to kill his loved ones. Tommy Lloyd is watching the family, played by none other than Paul Rudd in his first-ever theatrical role. Tommy still carries trauma from the events all those years ago when Laurie Strode was babysitting him. So when he finds Jamie’s baby, his part in the story becomes even more essential.
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Dr Loomis also stars in what was Donald Pleasance’s final role before his passing. He and Tommy try to stop Michael once and for all before the cycle can repeat itself. As it turns out, Michael is a victim of a druid cult which makes him want to kill his family members every Halloween. Thorn, the cult in question, thinks they can control Michael and make him do their bidding. This results in catastrophe and Michael goes berzerk and kills all the cult members. Once again, it’s one of the most gruesome montages for the franchise up until that point.
Tommy and Kara are left to face Michael on their own which they manage to do with some corrosive liquid and good luck. However, nothing stays dead in this franchise as it’s soon revealed Michael somehow escaped and this time Dr Loomis might not be so lucky…
Overall thoughts
I would say for me personally Halloween VI definitely ranks somewhere near the bottom. The whole point of Michael is that there is no rhyme or reason to his killings and this film tries to go against that. I am glad the mistake was rectified by the upcoming installment. There were still some good things about it, such as Paul Rudd’s acting that reveals some raw talent as far as I’m concerned, as well as some direction choices and musical score. However, I also think it absolutely deserves all the criticism that it gets.
We’ve reached the final episode of American Horror Stories, season three. After the ups and downs of the season, I didn’t know what to expect. I felt that we were due a big finish, Killer Queens. But I feared we were in for a big letdown.
As it turns out, The Thing Under The Bed was neither.
The story
We begin our story with a little girl named Mary, who is scared of something under her bed. She sneaks out of her room, only to be caught by her father and sent back to sleep. And of course, there is something horrible waiting for her under her bed.
This scene cuts away to a woman named Jillian. She has strange dreams, including one about Mary. But her husband, Mark, doesn’t want to hear about it. He’s only interested in a little lovemaking because he wants a baby. Jillian doesn’t, which makes total sense because she’s already married to one. But her irritation with her childish husband goes away when he goes away. And by goes away, I mean he’s sloppily devoured by something vicious under their bed.
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What worked
In short, this episode just worked. The acting was professional and believable. The cinematography and lighting work were wonderful, adding spooky effects and startling moments without impairing visibility.
Best of all, the story was solid. There were no plotholes to be found. Our main character, Jillian, was relatable and sympathetic.
This was maybe my favorite part of the story. I thought Jillian was a remarkably sympathetic character. She was dealt a hand she never asked for, having her husband slaughtered in their bedroom. I don’t think she missed him, so much as she was afraid of the legal ramifications of being caught with literal blood on her hands.
Then, when it would have been safest for her to just lay low and save up for a good defense attorney, she instead goes into unlikely hero mode. She does her best to save people, putting herself in legal and physical danger. It’s hard not to root for her.
It’s also a little hard not to root for the antagonist, too. I don’t want to ruin the twist for you, so I’m going to tread lightly here. But it’s great when you have an antagonist who might be off their rocker, but also maybe has a point.
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What didn’t work
I can only really think of one complaint with this episode. And that is how frequently one character says the word Chickadee. And if you’ve seen the episode, you know what I am talking about.
I get it, he has a pet name for his daughter. It’s adorable. It’s meant to convey that the two of them have a healthy loving relationship and I get it. We all get it. Blind monks get it. But the fact remains that no parent on Earth calls their kid by their pet name every single time they speak an individual sentence to them. It was just too damn much.
All in all, this was a good episode. It was a classic story, turned on its head, told by professionals from start to finish. And I hope that if there is another season, we see more stories like this one. But after the efforts put into this season at large, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see of American Horror Stories.
If you’ve watched enough short-form horror anthology shows, you’ll notice that some stories are mainstays. Each show seems to put on the same sort of episodes, with the occasional surprising storyline that we’ve never (or at least rarely) seen before.
Leprechaun was an example of a repeated story—the story of a greedy thief whose punishment far outweighs the crime.
The story
We begin our story in 1841, with a drunk man leaving the bar one late night. He’s distracted by something glowing at the end of the well. When he reaches down for the glowing thing, he falls in. Moments later, he screams.
We then cut to the modern day. The well is still there, and now it’s surrounded by a dying town. In this town lives a young man named Colin. He’s married, his wife is pregnant, and he’s out of work. Like many of his friends.
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Desperate for cash, Colin and his friends decide to rob a bank. They put together an Equate version of Ocean’s Eleven, and break in one night. But, of course, they find that the gold is nothing more than bait. And the creature waiting for them is something they never expected.
What worked
The first thing I want to point out is how real this episode felt. At least to anyone currently living in the same small town they grew up in. These characters felt like guys I went to school with. Guys I would see at the bar.
I appreciated the real anger and frustration these characters are feeling. Especially Colin. He’s bitter, and maybe he has a right to be. He did exactly what he was supposed to do to succeed. He went to school and invested in his career, and yet now he’s out of work and struggling to support his family. I probably don’t need to tell you how that feels. Because of this, we can all kind of understand why he was tempted to rob a bank.
I also want to talk about the fact that this was, as I said, an often-explored story. That can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. This story is told over and over because it’s a good story. A relatable story. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
What didn’t work
That being said, this version didn’t try to do much to break out of the mold.
Because we have seen this story so many times, most of us could tell the story themselves. I would have expected something new, or some twist. But, in the end, the story didn’t bring anything new to the discussion.
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Maybe because of this, the ending left a lot to be desired. Trapped in the basement of the bank, everyone just sort of stares at everyone else, until the thieves give up. And that’s it. The ending wasn’t scary, shocking, or funny. It was just sad, on multiple levels.
Overall, this was an okay story. It was entertaining, if not surprising. I would compare this episode to homemade macaroni and cheese. Everyone’s got their own version, they’re all pretty good, and none of them are exciting.
There’s just one episode left in this season of American Horror Stories. Let’s hope they’ve saved the best for last.
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