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.
FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN (2025)
The highly prolific author R.L. Stine has written many books in his Fear Street series, telling horror stories that take place in a town called Shadyside. A while back, director Leigh Janiak and the production company Chernin Entertainment teamed up to make a trilogy of movies that drew inspiration from the Fear Street concept – and while those movies were originally made at Fox, they ended up moving over to the Netflix streaming service, which turned the release of the trilogy – Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978, and Fear Street Part Three: 1666 – into a major summertime event, releasing the films on a weekly basis throughout July 2021. Four years later, Netflix and Chernin Entertainment have brought us a new entry in the Fear Street film series: a standalone movie called Fear Street: Prom Queen, which is set in 1988 and, according to director Matt Palmer, was intended to feel like a lost slasher from the ‘80s that had just now resurfaced. While I have seen some surprisingly harsh reviews of this movie from people who enjoyed the trilogy, I felt that Palmer was largely successful in his endeavor. Fear Street: Prom Queen was exactly what I was hoping it would be: a fun slasher flick.
Scripted by Palmer and Donald McLeary, this film is (unlike the trilogy) directly inspired by one of Stine’s Fear Street books, one that was called The Prom Queen. Shadyside High School is about to hold its senior prom, and the students who are up for prom queen include the four popular girls everyone expected to be in the running; a group that’s called the Wolfpack and consists of mean girl Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza, who gives an excellent super-bitch performance) and her lackeys Melissa Mckendrick (Ella Rubin), Debbie Winters (Rebecca Ablack), and Linda Harper (Ilan O’Driscoll). There’s a dark horse in the mix, in the form of “wild child” Christy Renault (Ariana Greenblatt)... and then there’s Lori Granger (India Fowler), who is plagued by rumors that her mother killed her father.
Much of the film’s 90 minute running time takes place at the prom, which gave Palmer the chance to fill the soundtrack with some very cool music. Over the course of the movie, we hear from the likes of Billy Idol, Judas Priest, Rick Astley, Roxette, Bananarama, Tiffany, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Laura Branigan, and others – and while I’ve seen some viewers get nitpicky about the selection, I’m always just grateful to hear some ‘80s music when I’m watching a retro movie like this. I also really enjoyed the ‘80s-sounding score that was composed by The Newton Brothers.
Before and during the prom, a masked figure in a red raincoat starts hacking and slashing their way through the prom queen candidates and anyone else unlucky enough to get in their path, racking up a solid body count. While the prom queen contenders are the focus, an interesting supporting cast was assembled for the film, with Suzanna Son playing Lori’s horror-loving pal Megan, Chris Klein and Katherine Waterston playing Tiffany’s parents, Lili Taylor and Darrin Baker playing the Vice Principal and Principal of the school, and Damian Romero sporting some terrible hair as Debbie’s douchey boyfriend Judd.
For the most part, Fear Street: Prom Queen would have fit right in with the slashers of the ‘80s (although most of them would not have been able to afford that soundtrack), and, of course, it’s especially reminiscent of Prom Night. Just like Prom Night had an extended disco dance sequence, Prom Queen has a dance-off between Lori and Tiffany – but neither of these girls display the moves Jamie Lee Curtis had back in the day.
I had a good time watching this movie, which I watched in a four-movie marathon with the preceding trilogy – and in the end, I was left feeling that Prom Queen will have a greater rewatchability for me as time goes on, as the trilogy tends to feel long and convoluted, dragging at times. Prom Queen isn’t concerned with mythology, it just provides the fun of watching ‘80s teens get slashed. Which is one of my favorite pastimes.
BLACK SHAMPOO (1976)
Often, movies that are made simply to cash in on the success of another movie are pale imitations that quickly fade into obscurity... but occasionally, you might get a cash-in movie that’s actually more entertaining than the movie that inspired it. As far as I’m concerned, one such movie is director Greydon Clark’s Black Shampoo, which came about when Clark was asked to make a blaxploitation movie and decided to cash in on the success of the 1975 dramedy Shampoo in the process.
Scripted by Clark and Alvin Fast, the movie stars John Daniels as hairdresser Mr. Jonathan – and just like Warren Beatty’s character in Shampoo, Mr. Jonathan tends to have sex with his female clients. This is shown to us right up front, where a woman gets so turned on by just having Jonathan wash and rinse her hair, she’s compelled to jump his bones right there. After finishing with that client, he goes off for a house call, where another female client is waiting to jump his bones – but she nearly misses her opportunity, because her two teenage daughters start to seduce Jonathan before he can even make it inside the house! Yes, Jonathan’s life plays out just like a porno movie... and to be honest, Black Shampoo, which was made on a budget of $50,000, does have production value, sound quality, and some acting that is quite reminiscent of vintage porn movies.
Jonathan’s business (and, to a lesser degree, his sex life) is disrupted because his receptionist Brenda (Tanya Boyd) used to be in a relationship with a mobster called Mr. Wilson (Joseph Carlo, under the name Joe Ortiz). Wilson sends some goons out to bust up Jonathan’s place and try to force Brenda to come back to him... and just when Jonathan and Brenda are starting to get into a romantic relationship, Wilson is finally successful at getting Brenda to come back to his home. But she’s only there for a little while before deciding to run off and get back into Jonathan’s arms. A decision that leads to Jonathan having to go to war with the mobsters in the last act of the movie, which includes a standout sequence where he faces some enemies while wielding a chainsaw.
There are elements in Black Shampoo that haven’t aged very well, particularly the presentation and treatment of a homosexual character Jonathan works with – but we don’t watch ‘70s exploitation movies to see things handled in a politically correct manner. This movie is a product of its time, and for its time it was a pretty cool low budget flick with plenty of gratuitous nudity and some good moments of violent action. If given a choice, I would much rather watch the cheap craziness of Black Shampoo than the Oscar-nominated film it was cashing in on.
THE GRAY MAN (2022)
The sibling directing duo of Anthony and Joe Russo made a couple of Captain America movies, followed by a couple of Avengers movies, ending with Avengers: Endgame, which earned almost $3 billion at the box office and was, for a time, the highest-grossing film of all time. How do you follow up success like that? For the Russos, their follow-up has primarily consisted of making action projects for streaming services. They’ve produced the Extraction films for Netflix and the Citadel TV shows for Prime Video, and they also directed the 2022 action thriller The Gray Man for Netflix.
Scripted by Joe Russo alongside Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who worked with the brothers on their Marvel movies, The Gray Man draws inspiration from a series of novels by Mark Greaney that center on assassin and CIA operative Court Gentry. I don’t know how faithful the movie ended up being to Greaney’s work, I haven’t read any of the Court Gentry books, but I did find The Gray Man to be an entertaining flick.
Ryan Gosling stars as Court Gentry, who was eight years into a prison sentence for killing his abusive father to protect his brother when he was visited by a CIA official named Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). Along with fellow official Margaret Cahill (Alfre Woodard), Fitzroy was heading up a CIA program where they would recruit felons to be lifetime operatives for the CIA, leaving their former lives behind. Gentry took the job and has been working it for nearly twenty years by the time we catch up with him. Which is, of course, just in time for his employment situation to start falling apart.
While working alongside fellow agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) on an assassination mission, Gentry discovers that the target used to be in the same CIA program he’s in. The guy has apparently gone bad, though, so Gentry takes him out. But not before the target hands over an encrypted drive that reveals CIA official Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page) is corrupt. Soon enough, Carmichael has hired sociopathic, disgraced CIA agent turned mercenary Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to take Gentry out by any means necessary. So Hansen kidnaps Fitzroy’s young niece Claire (Julia Butters), who Gentry babysat a couple of years earlier, to draw him out.
So we have Gentry running for his life, trying to figure out a way out of this mess, while bouncing from Bangkok to Vienna to Prague and beyond while taking on Hansen’s army of mercenaries, eventually building up to a confrontation with Hansen himself.
I’m a big fan of both Ryan Gosling and globetrotting spy action movies, so I had a good time watching Gosling be a globetrotting spy in a movie that’s packed with action. I’m also, thanks to the Captain America of it all, a big fan of Chris Evans – and Evans is the anti-Captain America in the movie, clearly having a blast as he chews the scenery and plays a total scumbag. Ana de Armas is also entertaining as Miranda, and there’s a great supporting cast that features, in addition to the names already mentioned, Jessica Henwick, Wagner Moura, and Dhanush. The Gray Man was not well-received by critics, which I found to be surprising, because it’s a fun movie as far as I’m concerned. It does feel a bit too long, despite being 129 minutes (which is far below a lot of action movies that come out these days), but that’s the only problem I had with it.
I got to watch some actors I like play fun characters and participate in some cool action sequences (with the standout being a crazy shootout in Prague, during which Gentry is handcuffed to a bench), and that’s all I needed from the movie. Greaney has written a lot of Gentry books, so this had the makings of a franchise and I would have gladly watched some sequels... but with no word of a follow-up being in development three years after the movie was released, it looks like this is going to be a standalone.
THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 (2024)
I really enjoyed writer/director Bryan Bertino’s low-key home invasion horror movie The Strangers when it was released back in 2008, and when it was announced that we would be getting a sequel in 2010, I was all for it. That plan didn’t work out – but after the script received from revisions, Bertino’s concept for a follow-up was brought to the screen by director Johannes Roberts in 2018... and the long wait between films really worked out for me, because it meant that I was able to visit the set of the sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, for JoBlo / Arrow in the Head during production. Things didn’t go as well for the villainous Strangers in that movie (and the sequel didn’t go over as well with viewers as the first movie did), but I was still left eager to see a follow-up. I just never would have expected we would get a follow-up in the form we’re getting it: a whole relaunch trilogy that was shot back-to-back-to-back by director Renny Harlin, who is best known for making big budget action flicks like Die Hard 2 and The Long Kiss Goodnight (not to mention the shark thriller Deep Blue Sea), but it’s his ‘80s slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master that gets the most play in my household.
When you hear that Harlin has directed a new entry in the Strangers franchise, you might hope that he has somehow made this a return to the Dream Master ‘80s glory days. Of course, that’s too much to hope for, so that’s not how it turned out with The Strangers: Chapter 1. But I still found it to be a serviceable stalk and slash movie.
The screenplay by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland is basically a rewrite of the original The Strangers, just with slightly different characters and circumstances. Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez star as Maya and Ryan, a couple that’s on a cross-country road trip to Portland when their car breaks down in the small town of Venus, Oregon. They leave their car at the local auto shop and go to spend the night in a nearby Airbnb – and soon enough, they’re a creepy girl knocking at the door, asking, “Is Tamara here?” Fans of The Strangers will be familiar with the search for Tamara, which never ends because Tamara is never home and they’re not actually looking for a Tamara anyway. They’re just toying with their victims.
Masked killers Dollface, Pin-Up Girl, and the Man in the Mask, who is now referred to by the filmmakers as Scarecrow, are back in action. They lurk around the property, keeping an eye on Maya and Ryan, biding their time... and eventually, they attack. The second half of the movie follows Maya and Ryan as they fight to survive the night and hope to somehow get help.
It probably wasn’t the best move to go with a set-up that causes Chapter 1 to be directly compared to The Strangers, because this is a much weaker version of the scenario. But I didn’t expect this movie to be able to match up with what Bertino did back in ‘08, I just wanted to see some more stalking thrills, and the movie certainly delivers that. I could have done without some of the idiotic choices the characters make, though.
Now that we’ve covered familiar ground with Chapter 1, I look forward to seeing where Harlin and the writers take the story and characters in Chapters 2 and 3, when they have to come up with something we haven’t exactly seen before.
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