Christian Slater? Mark Metcalf? Daryl "Chill" Mitchell? What happened?

Playback is a weird little movie. Mostly because every twenty minutes or so, you'll go, "Is that... is that Daryl Mitchell? What the fuck is he doing in five minutes of this movie?" Same goes for Christian Slater* and Mark Metcalf, who similarly show up for just long enough for us to go, "...the hell?" The producers clearly spent all their budget on these guys, though. I mean, it's easy to make fun of movies about movies, because they are the most solipsistic thing to make a movie about. But somebody in the writing chain here though, "You know, the films they shot way back in the day, those little random soundless pieces where you can barely tell what the camera's pointed at? Those are kinda creepy." And that's how Playback happened.

*Christian Slater actually is in it for long enough to get lead billing, kind of hilariously. Honestly, he's good, in a very sleazy and off-putting role. Good enough to make me wonder, seriously, Christian Slater? What kind of personal problem has led to you being in this movie? Because he's not visibly desiccated or bloated or high on something. Why did the world turn against Christian Slater so hard that he's in this movie? And could he do some kind of Mickey-Rourke-in-The-Wrestler-style comeback, maybe? I'd pay to see that.

Leaving aside what all those random people are doing in this movie, it's kind of cute. Again, the basic idea is, "Nineteenth-century film footage is creepy looking!" But it's a valid point. It is creepy-looking. And Daryl Mitchell gets to declare that Louis le Prince was the devil. Which is entertaining. I mean, it's on Netflix streaming, so with a little booze to get you through a few slow scenes, it's worth watching. I liked the people, I wanted to see them survive, I was a little sad at the de rigeur nihilistic ending. That's how you can tell if the characters in this kind of disposable horror movie are effective: nothing will end well, but how do you feel about that?

I'm being easier on Playback because I'm a little drunk. That's probably ideal. A fire in the fireplace, a cat, some vodka, and a difficult time in your life. That's what you need Playback for.

Cult TV, Freddy Krueger, and Pop Culture Stockholm Syndrome

Okay, first, a story. I come in just shy of five feet tall, and have always been a lot shorter than average. When I was five, around the time that Nightmare on Elm Street came out, I was the size of a toddler. So little tiny me is toddling around a novelty shop at the mall with my parents, my eye level right around knee height for most adults, when I bump into a pair of legs. I look up to see who I've bumped into, and it's a life-size Freddy Krueger doll. 

I lose my shit. 

I still remember that tantrum, the hysterical sobbing as my parents took me out in the mall concourse to try to calm me down. I remember going home that night and lying in bed, terrified that Freddy Krueger was going to climb through my window and kill me. And for the rest of my childhood, I had nightmares about Freddy. He was my own personal boogeyman. 

Fast-forward to high school. The Sci-fi Channel has a lovely running feature, the Sci-fi Series Collection, that airs short-lived and unlamented sci-fi television shows in their entirety. It was an obvious ploy to fill airtime with cheap content, but it was a treasure for me. (That's where I saw the Planet of the Apes TV show, another one that changed me for the weirder, but that's another post.) They aired all six episodes of a show from a couple of years before, Nightmare Cafe. Created by Wes Craven and starring Robert Englund, the show was a lot sweeter than you might expect, more fantasy than horror. 

Having avoided everything related to A Nightmare on Elm Street ever since that scarring childhood trauma, I had no idea who Craven and Englund were. I just knew I ADORED Nightmare Cafe, particularly the snarky and mercurial angel of death, Blackie. When I discovered that my beloved Blackie was also Freddy Krueger, my brain kind of melted. 

But by then I was a jaded teenager, not to mention a devotee of classic horror from the 20s and 30s, so I decided it was time to face the boogeyman. At a sleepover at a friend's house, she suggested the most recent of the Nightmare movies, New Nightmare. Saucer-eyed but too cool to admit my abject horror, I agreed. And of course it was the best horror movie I'd ever seen.

Granted, I'd seen next to no horror movies that dated past about 1970 at that point, so it didn't take a lot to awe me. Still, the storytelling was so good that, despite being a movie basically about a movie that I'd never seen, I adored it. Langenkamp and Saxon's performances in New Nightmare were so good, I felt like I'd seen the original, somehow. Little Miko Hughes was so weird and yet so believable -- mid-90s L.A. was so weird and yet so believable, for that matter. Occasionally a character in a movie is a Hollywood star, but very rarely do you see movies about people who just work in movies, known but not by any means famous. 

And then going back and watching Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time after seeing New Nightmare was surreal. But that's not what this is about. 

This is about Freddy, and Robert Englund, who of course appears both as Freddy and out of makeup as himself. It did… strange things to me. Taking my profound childhood fear (and fascination, of course, because that's fear for you) of Freddy with my teenaged puppy-dog crush on Blackie and effectively embodying both in a single figure, who then slices his way out of Heather Langenkamp's bed… it was a sexually formative moment. 

My high school was an historic brick edifice surrounded by old-growth trees and flower beds. Outside the school, there was this particular turn in a particular path I walked regularly which was completely unlit and black as pitch at night. It scared the crap out of me. But when I came up on that turn, I thought of Freddy hiding behind a tree or in a shadow. And that comforted me, even though I still thought Freddy was apt to disembowel me, because no other monsters would dare, not with Freddy there. Only Freddy could kill me, and I loved him, so it was okay. (It's probably fair to say that this had some strange affects on my love life later on, but everybody deals with weird shit, right?) 

I was lucky that New Nightmare happened to the be first Nightmare film I saw, really. If I'd seen, say, The Dream Master (…yeurgh) first, things might have gone very differently for me. I might be writing a blog about romantic comedies right now. 

Instead, I encountered a figure who might do horrible things to me, and who I loved anyway. A grotesque and horrifying monster who was somehow my grotesque and horrifying monster. I went on to watch enough horror movies to write an occasional (...very occasional) blog about horror movies largely because of this man -- this monster. 

Oh, MERDE: High Lane

I've been watching a lot of horror movies lately. More, I daresay, even than when I started this blog. It seems sensible to record some of my thoughts about them, especially since even now I realize I can't quite remember them all. And because Netflix has a lot of obscure and/or crappy horror movies on streaming... a lot of them. It might be nice for someone other than BC at Horror Movie a Day to comment on some of them (not that he's not awesome, but a second opinion never hurts).

So: High Lane. I picked this one out on the strength of the poster. Really. The poster reminded me a little of Yellowbrickroad, which was one of my best blind selections from the Netflix streaming collection, and I hoped for something similarly unexpected. 

Alas. 

It's French -- the Netflix version is dubbed, and I have to say, dubbed pretty well. The first time I started it and realized it was dubbed, I switched to something else, because I thought that would annoy the crap out of me. But in this case, I have to say I found the voice acting quite good. 

Unfortunately I can't say the same for the rest of the flick. The script is just crap, with one-note characters and an incredibly tired story. 

The one reason to watch the flick is to watch some European aerial course climbing. There's an aerial course near Harper's Ferry, WV that I go to, and it's awesome, but you don't see a lot of these hardcore aerial courses in the U.S. So that's pretty nifty. And the cinematography is nice when the camera is pointed at the mountains. I did want to visit Croatia after watching this movie, which is a thing I rarely say. 

Otherwise -- just watch Wrong Turn. Or Texas Chainsaw. Or Deliverance. Or... pretty much anything else, really.