Friday, March 25, 2022

Worth Mentioning - Hopped Up on Cocaine and Revenge

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 


A slasher reboot, plus seasons of The Walking Dead and Cobra Kai.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (2021)

It's rather shocking that the Slumber Party Massacre franchise was allowed to lie dormant for thirty-one years, but that's how long it was between the release of Slumber Party Massacre III and the Syfy premiere of this reboot, brought to us by Shout! Factory. Sticking to tradition, the new Slumber Party Massacre was directed by a woman from a screenplay written by a woman - in this case, the director being Danishka Esterhazy and the writer being Suzanne Keilly. And Esterhazy and Keilly had a lot of fun subverting slasher movie expectations with this one.

Although the new movie is marketed as being a remake of the original The Slumber Party Massacre, if it weren't for the fact that the drill-wielding killer in this installment is named Russ Thorn, the same name as the driller killer in the first film, this could have easily been taken as a Slumber Party Massacre 4. The story is completely different, beginning with Russ Thorn (played here by Rob Van Vuuren) crashing a slumber party being held in a remote cabin by a lake, killing almost all of the girls and a creeping ex-boyfriend. The final girl, Trish (Masali Baduza) manages to defeat Russ, bashing him with a boat oar and knocking him into the lake. His body is never recovered, but he's presumed dead... even though twenty more girls will meet tragic fates in this area over the next few decades.

Jump ahead to present day, Trish is an adult (and now played by Schelaine Bennett) whose daughter Dana (Hannah Gonera) heads out on an epic weekend trip with her pals Maeve (Frances Sholto-Douglas), Breanie (Alex McGregor), and Ashley (Reze-Tiana Wessels)... plus, unintentionally, Maeve's younger sister Alix (Mila Rayne), who was hiding in the back of the SUV. Thanks to car trouble, the girls end up staying in a cabin on the same lake we saw in the opening sequence, close to the one Trish's friends were killed in. History is repeating itself and these girls seem like the perfect victims. But that's all part of the plan, as Keilly actually wrote a really clever script.

While the girls are more prepared for a slasher attack than they first appeared to be, the murder cabin is inhabited by a group of dim-witted guys - two of them are even named Guy 1 and Guy 2 - having a slumber party of their own. Esterhazy and Keilly continue playing with slasher movie clichés in the way they depict these male characters. Slasher movies will usually linger on women disrobing and show them doing ridiculous things. This Slumber Party Massacre flips that around; it's the guys the camera pervs on while they take a shower. It's the guys who take their shirts off while having a pillow fight and pouring alcohol on themselves for some reason. Although the previous Slumber Party Massacre movies were made by women (and the first was even scripted by feminist author Rita Mae Brown), they didn't do much that was different from the average slasher. Women were objectified with shower scenes and pillow fights. Four movies into the series, you can finally really feel that this one was made by women who wanted to do something special with the slasher set-up.

Slumber Party Massacre ends up being a really fun slasher and a great new entry in the franchise. It's well-written, has plenty of deaths, and is filled with solid performances. Rob Van Vuuren isn't given many lines to deliver as Russ Thorn, but is amusing squeaking out a high-pitched "I love you" while coming after girls with his drill - in line with the original Russ saying he committed his murders because he loved the girls so much. Since Slumber Party Massacre 2 is by far my favorite movie in this series, I also really appreciated that there's a visual reference to the guitar drill from that sequel.


THE WALKING DEAD: SEASON SIX (2015 - 2016)

An ally to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) in the first episode of The Walking Dead season 1 and a maniac during an appearance in season 3, Morgan Jones (Lennie James) has finally completed the journey we saw him making over a few episodes of season 5: he has followed Rick's trail from Atlanta, Georgia to Alexandria, Virginia and is now part of his group, living in Alexandria, behind the walls that were built to keep zombies out. Morgan has changed a bit since the earlier seasons; he carries a wooden staff, knows martial arts, and believes that all life is precious. He will not kill other people, something his compatriots feel is sometimes absolutely necessary. Like when a group of blade-wielding savages calling themselves Wolves come busting into Alexandria and start slashing residents to death. The makers of this show were so convinced that viewers would be fascinated by Morgan's evolution, he even gets an entire extra-long episode dedicated to the story of what happened to him between seasons. An episode dropped right into the middle of an action-packed, multi-episode story about Wolves attacking while a herd of zombies heads for Alexandria. An episode that comes right after one in which fan favorite character Glenn (Steven Yeun) appears to be killed by that herd of zombies. Things were not as they appeared, Glenn isn't dead yet, but the show kept viewers hanging for three full episodes, one of them the Morgan episode, before giving that relieving answer. A questionable decision. And also the first sign of the odd obsession the powers-that-be seemed to have with Morgan - which turned out to be so strong they unexpectedly made him the lead of the spin-off show Fear the Walking Dead a few seasons later, even having that show undergo a major time jump just to fit him in.

Season 6 gets off to a rather exciting start, dedicating the first half of the season plus the midseason premiere to the herd-and-Wolves situation. There is some filler in there to make things last for so long, but it's still a step up from how dull I found season 5 and the second half of season 4 to be. In the midst of this, the show also starts to introduce the group that will come to be a huge threat in future seasons, the Saviors. Our first exposure to that group comes when a few of them are shown to be scouring the land for a trio of people who have run away from them - two of them being Dwight (Austin Amelio) and his wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista). Characters who still have a place in the Walking Dead universe to this day, but at the time of their introduction were a wishy-washy couple that makes enemies with Daryl (Norman Reedus), then befriends him, then screws him over. This is when we start hearing references to the group's mysterious leader Negan, who won't be a mystery for much longer.

The Saviors' approach to surviving the zombie apocalypse is to make other communities work for them, having them hand over supplies on a regular basis. If they don't follow the rules, they are punished severely. Daryl, Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) are ambushed by some Saviors who threaten to kill them. Luckily, our heroes have procured an RPG while out on the road. It's an awesome moment.

Later in this season, our heroes start to look like they're not really heroes anymore. In order to make a trade agreement with a community called the Hilltop, which they're made aware of by a fellow survivor called Jesus (Tom Payne), they tell Hilltop leader Gregory (Xander Berkeley) that they will massacre the Saviors and retrieve a kidnapped Hilltop resident. Characters like Rick, Glenn, Abraham, Sasha, Michonne (Danai Gurira), Heath (Corey Hawkins), Tara (Alanna Masterson), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Glenn's pregnant wife Maggie (Lauren Cohan) go to a Saviors armory in the night and kill people they have no personal connection to or quarrel with in cold blood. We see Glenn murdering human beings in their sleep. It troubles him to do so, but he does it. And these are the "good guys". More than twenty people are killed in that raid. When Maggie and Carol are captured, you want them to get out of it because we've come to care about them over the seasons, but if the roles were reversed we'd see them as villains.

Abraham further tarnishes his reputation by falling for Sasha while still carrying on an intimate relationship with Rosita (Christian Serratos). Rosita is great to him... then he throws her aside like a piece of trash out of nowhere, giving the worst break-up speech of all time.

As always, there are tragic deaths as we go through the season. Things get quite bad for Alexandria residents during the first half, and even some characters we meet for the first time in this season don't last very long. 

Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) starts to become likeable in this season. Eugene (Josh McDermitt) appears to be developing some usefulness. Alexandra Breckenridge, who plays a character Rick had the hots for, is around for a disappointingly short time. And his son Carl (Chandler Riggs) gets injured due to people around him making a series of dumb moves. But don't cry for Rick just yet; Carl is okay, and Rick does find new love by the end of the season. Around for an even shorter amount of time than Breckenridge is Ethan Embry, who is only here for one episode! When he first appeared I was glad to see him being added to the show's cast, then that didn't work out. Alicia Witt also makes a brief visit.

One of my favorite short-lived characters in the show's history is Denise (Merritt Wever), who has to take over as the doctor at Alexandria after Rick executes the previous one. Denise finds the doctor job a bit overwhelming, but she pulls it off, and also strikes up a relationship with Tara. In one episode, Daryl is about to leave on a supply run when Denise asks him to see if he can find a beverage she heard Tara talking about. A surprise for her girlfriend. Something Denise wouldn't drink herself; as she tells Daryl, "I don't drink pop." Daryl says, "What the hell's pop?" To which Denise answers, "Oh, I'm originally from Ohio." As a native Ohioan who has always referred to drinks like Pepsi and Coke as "pop", I love that moment. I would have been glad to be able to see Denise and Tara together for a lot longer, especially since - and here's an unpopular opinion - Tara was one of my favorite characters as well. But the Saviors mess that up.

The end of this season establishes that the Saviors are going to be messing up a lot. The Alexandria group is going to pay for the murders they carried out for the Hilltop (and that RPG shot). The season finale, another extra-long episode, is very dark, as the walls are clearly closing in on the characters we've been following. The Saviors leader Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) makes his first appearance, with his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille in hand. This is not going to be pretty.



COBRA KAI: SEASON FOUR (2021)

Cobra Kai takes you on quite a ride. If someone had told me right after I watched the season 1 and season 2 finales that it would take until the end of season 4 before the show reached the next All Valley karate tournament - and that when the tournament arrives, I'd be rooting for Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) in a fight against Robby (Tanner Buchanan), I would be baffled. Especially if they added in the information that Hawk, a student from the Cobra Kai dojo who I hated intensely for a couple seasons, would be in Miyagi-Do by that time and Robby, who was the protégé of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) at Miyagi-Do, would be in Cobra Kai. But that's how it worked out. Alliances flipped, leading to a heart-pounding season 4 finale in which Hawk and Robby fight with the fate of the Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do dojos in the balance. It's quite a fight, lasting for around six minutes... and when I describe it as "heart-pounding", I mean it. I was so wrapped up in this battle, rooting for Hawk to win it for Miyagi-Do, that I thought my heart was going to beat its way right out of my chest. Then the show continued to keep me on edge with a match between Daniel's daughter Sam (Mary Mouser) and her nemesis Tory (Peyton List).

That all comes at the end of another awesome season, which begins with a scenario I was very happy to see: Daniel and his longtime nemesis Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) set aside their differences and combine their dojos - Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang - so they can prepare to take down Cobra Kai at the tournament; having made a deal with Cobra Kai sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) that the loser(s) will have to shut down their dojo(s). While Daniel and Johnny have never been able to stand each other, it was clear in the preceding seasons that these guys really should be friends. And could be if they would stop acting like idiots toward each other. Unfortunately, they're not quite ready to stop acting like idiots. Their team-up doesn't go smoothly at all. They try to make compromises. Their students train in different areas of the Miyagi-Do dojo. They try to learn each other's ways of karate. They decide to trade students... But trading only makes things worse, because Daniel isn't happy with Sam learning Johnny's aggressive form of karate, and Johnny is jealous that Daniel starts having an influence on his protégé Miguel (Xolo Maridueña). I was somewhat disappointed to see that Daniel and Johnny still couldn't get along, but it made total sense for their characters. Of course these guys would end up at each other's throats again.

While the senseis of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang are sabotaging themselves by continuing to bicker, Cobra Kai is becoming a greater threat than ever. Not only is Robby teaching the dojo's students everything he learned at Miyagi-Do - seeing this as revenge on his deadbeat dad Johnny and his former love interest Sam, who always cared too much about Miguel for his taste - but Kreese has also called in a second sensei. Terry Silver from The Karate Kid Part III. Thomas Ian Griffith reprises the role over thirty years after last playing him, and thankfully the writers of Cobra Kai gave him a more interesting side of the character to play this time. Silver was an over-the-top, cartoonish villain in The Karate Kid Part III. Here he has some depth, and even explains the way he was behaving in that movie by saying he was "hopped up on cocaine and revenge". Silver has put that insanity behind him when Cobra Kai season 4 catches up with him. He is reluctant to answer Kreese's call for assistance. He starts off as a voice of reason. But Kreese is a very bad influence on him.

In addition to the storylines involving the characters we've been following for years, not just on Cobra Kai but also in the Karate Kid movies, season 4 adds in something new. Daniel's son Anthony made quick appearances in the previous seasons, usually only showing up long enough to be a little jackass. Actor Griffin Santopietro hit an insane growth spurt along the way, and now Anthony has become a full-fledged character on the show... and there's a storyline about him bullying the new kid at school, Dallas Dupree Young as Kenny Payne. His bullying drives Kenny to join Cobra Kai at the suggestion of his brother, a character we met in season 3. And in front of our eyes, Kenny goes from being a cowardly kid to becoming a psycho. I found Young's performance as Kenny to be rather annoying from the start, so I can't say my thoughts on him flipped as the season went on, but I can say that I developed a deep dislike for this kid by the end of the season. Meanwhile, we come to see that Anthony isn't so bad. There's hope for him. He tries to make it right. But by that time, Kenny is too far gone.

There also appears to be an attempt to make viewers start liking the Tory character more, and I know it worked for some. So well that I've even seen people say they were happy for Tory in a moment toward the end that I can't imagine being happy for her during. I can't side with Tory just yet, even if her interactions with Daniel's wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler) might imply that there's hope for her as well. She's still in Cobra Kai, and I can't root for anyone who's in that dojo.

The writers on this show continue to do incredible work, keeping the laughs coming frequently while always making sure we take the stakes seriously... maybe even more seriously than we should, because why did I nearly have a cardiac issue watching a fight over whether or not a fictional karate dojo will be closed down? They continue to honor the films the story is rooted in, and in the case of Terry Silver's portrayal even improve upon the source material. The cast also continues to do incredible work across the board. Multiple actors have moments in this season that are deeply emotional to witness.

The Daniel and Johnny vs. Kreese fight at the end of season 3 was one of the most thrilling pieces of entertainment I have ever seen, and the tournament finale of season 4 was right up there with it for me.

Cobra Kai. What an awesome show. In the years between the release of The Karate Kid Part III in 1989 and the premiere of Cobra Kai in 2018, I never would have guessed that those movies would or could get such an excellent TV series follow-up. I'm very happy it has. Blog contributor Priscilla and I watched the first three seasons of this show three times each during the month of December, building up to the December 31 premiere of season 4. We binge-watched season 4 the day it reached Netflix, then over the next couple weeks we watched the full season two more times. That's a whole lot of Cobra Kai watching in a short period of time, and it never got old. My appreciation for the show just got even deeper.

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