VOTING CLOSED - WINNER: PSYCHO BEACH PARTY
But since the final tally was only one vote apart, I'm going to review BOTH of them!
Thanks to everyone who voted!
Formulaic plots encourage parodies; there being nothing more formulaic than a body count horror film, it's no surprise that there have been comic riffs on the genre almost since the moment it broke out. This week, I've gone the route of favoring a wide chronological range, ranging from a movie that came out when the "slasher film", as a concept, had barely made itself known, to a film from the bedraggled end of the golden age of slashers, to a film that came out after the rise of the self-mocking horror film, when parodies would seem to be almost redundant. Let us go now, and enjoy seeing the mockery done on our behalf, rather than having to do it ourselves!
Psycho Beach Party (2000)
From IMDb: "Spoof of 1960's Beach Party/Gidget surfing movies mixed with slasher horror films stars Lauren Ambrose as Florence Forrest, a not-so-innocent girl in 1960's Malibu..."
Return to Horror High (1987)
From IMDb: "A few years ago, a mysterious serial-killer caused panic on [sic] Crippen High School. The killer was never caught."
Student Bodies (1981)
From IMDb: "A killer named the Breather tallies up a score of teenage bodies in this scathing parody of slasher films."
08 August 2014
11 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
Psycho Beach Party all the way. Based on a play where the lead character was played by the playwright in drag (who appears in the film as a female cop). Starring Buffy's Nicholas Brendon and with an appearance by a very young Amy Adams. Gidget as a slasher. All solid gold.
ReplyDeleteReturn to Horror High is the first movie George Clooney was ever in, which is just about the only thing it's memorable for.
ReplyDeleteI'm plumping for Student Bodies (which I have the vaguest recollection of seeing part of on cable, and the slightly-less-vague recollection of seeing the TV spots for - with a gratingly over-the-top THIS IS A PARODY! voiceover that irritated the 12-year-old precocious comedy nerd in me something fierce), not because I expect it to be a particularly successful or worthwhile piece of cinema (were there many years as starved for good American movies as 1981?), but because I'm sure there's deep fascination to be had in a slasher film parody from right in the middle of the cultural moment where both slasher films and parodies were at their popular apex. So have at it.
ReplyDelete(Incidentally, Tim, this is one of my very favorite locations in the whole of the Internet - came for the Arrested Development reviews, stayed for the John Hughes retrospective, and keep finding good reasons to come back and explore for hours and hours on end. One nagging question, though: the asterisks. Are they supposed to lead anywhere? Are there footnotes tucked away in some dank, dripping corner of the sub-basement of the Internet that we need to bribe you with bitcoin to get at? It's the one thing here that drives me slightly crazy. Other than that, this is some pretty awe-inspiring stuff, and I salute you for it.)
The asterisks: hover over them without clicking, an annotation pops up. I don't think it works on a tablet or phone, and it's one of the things on the Big List of Known Issues that I'm going to get around to fixing, one of these days.
ReplyDeleteBy God, it works. Huzzah for Happywood.
ReplyDeleteTim, in addition to BtBR, you should really see Girls Gone Dead.
ReplyDeleteIf you can find it. :)
Enjoy!
Wait wait wait wait wait...
ReplyDeleteThere is a film out there that is BOTH a slasher and a Beach Party movie, and Tim hasn't reviewed it?
And people aren't voting for it?
Is this not Antagony & Ecstasy, people?!?
Having seen the play of PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (though not the film), I must encourage you all to vote for it. An explicitly queer slasher/beach party parody is a wonderful thing.
ReplyDeleteWell, Brian sold me on SBP, but I wouldn't be torn up if it were Student Bodies, either.
ReplyDeleteGiven this development, it seems like it would be best for us all to coordinate are votes such that the polls all end up essentially tied. Don't mourn--organize!
ReplyDelete@Regular GeoX: exploiting Tim's willingness to hurt himself for our benefit is fun!
ReplyDelete