Yay! First Birthday Gift

I opened an Amazon package yesterday, thinking it was the book I mentioned ordering in this post, but instead, it was a copy of Neon Maniacs, a birthday gift ordered off my wishlist. Alas, the Amazon slip gave the real name of the person, but not the LJ name, but I'm reasonably sure that I have moominmuppet to thank for it. So thank you!

btw, I reviewed Neon Maniacs here a couple of years ago, so although it's unlikely to crop up in this series, although I might consider an expanded edition later this year, if I feel I can add a thousand words to that last review.

Talk about making it too easy

I'm a fan of M. Night Shyamalan, one of the few who stuck around through his more recent films. But after nearly undercutting Lady In the Water before it came out with the stupid "Narf" business (I still want to see a film about faeries called "Poits"), his latest film is The Happening. I'll bet there are dozens of critics lining up for the opportunity to write a review using a line like, "the twist in The Happening is that nothing ever happens."

The man needs a good advisor. And to not act in any more of his films.

Link dump

1. Mark Evanier: Wheat Thin Bandit.

2. Your dose of "OMG! That's so cute!": Otters holding hands.

3. Yet another book-centric community tool/web 2.0 thingee: Revish. It supposedly interfaces with LibraryThing as well. I'm Yendi on both services (although my accounts are both barely used).

4. Remember the old A9 search engine? The one that used to offer a mutli-layered view of images, wikipedia entries, and web sites on one page? Not to mention a discount at Amazon? Well, Google has started a page called Searchmash that's pretty similar in scope (without the discount, alas). It's got some damned nice features, including embedded video thumbnails.

5. I totally lust after these devices.

6. The Wall Street Jounal Op-Ed page. Still populated by assholes. \

7. Stripe Generator. It does exactly what it says. I have to wonder if it'll still be here come April 2.

8. I love the photo RSS feed I get from File Magazine, if only for shots like this .

9. Finally, a Girls of Horror quiz from Mental_Floss.

wtf?

The strangest thing about this article (ganked from endora) about Catholics who are offended at the existence of a chocolate Jesus?

Not one mention of Tom Waits.

261 Days of Horror, Day 70: April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day. Directed by Fred Walton. Written by Danilo Bach. Distributed by Paramount.

No more Kari Wuhrer, because I've got a holiday-themed movie to review.

There aren't many April Fool's Day horror movies, which is something of a surprise. The entire slasher genre is built around the idea of twists, wisecracks, masks, manipulative filmmaking ("oh, it's just the cat," and first-person camera-stalking that turns out to just be one person going up to another to say hi), false endings, and holiday themes. But other than April Fool's Day and fellow 1986 release Slaughter High*, the holiday just doesn't get the love that Christmas or Halloween do.

But April Fool's Day itself is something of a minor classic, and it's a perfectly fun little flick. It's also one that has two nifty twists at the end. All of my reviews, of course, are spoilertastic, but this one spoils plot points that actually matter.

Our cast of future victims gathers to board a boat to visit the house of Muffy St. John, a rich college friend of theirs. We get the usual mix of folks, with a nice girl, a ho, a few goofballs, a cousin of Muffy's, a friend of hers from drama camp, etc. Eventually, two of the guys get into a fight, and as things escalate, one of them pulls a knife! Things get worse from there, as the other guy ends up with the knife, and throws it into the gut of the original knife-wielder, who falls into the water screaming. As the boat slows down to rescue him, one of the boathands dives in to help him out. But our stabbing victim climbs out of the water on his own! Turns out he was just playing a joke. April Fools!

Unfortunately, the deckhand who'd dived gets crushed between the boat and the dock, scraping up his face horribly. As we see him taken back to the mainland to go to the hospital, it's hard not to blame the two jokers, since the man would have been on the deck of the boat otherwise. Surely, this joke gone awry couldn't possibly lead to something horrible happening, right?

As the shaken kids get to the island, they get some more surprises. See, each of them has a dark secret in their past. And each finds grim reminders of these secrets. One finds drug paraphernalia. Another finds newspaper clippings about a car accident. Another finds a tape recorder with the sound of a baby crying. Yet another finds the eighteen missing minutes from the Watergate Tapes**.

From there, we get an hour of fun but largely typical slasher fare. Assorted characters vanish one-by-one (although we never see any on-screen violence or gore). Traps are set. People finally start to get suspicious, and eventually stumble over the bodies of a couple of their friends (which, like all horror movie corpses, vanish and reappear a few times; movie slashers stay in shape by hauling bodies around). Folks get hung, stabbed, decapitated, castrated, and sliced. Eventually, the last two survivors learn the horrible identity of the killer: Muffy's evil twin sister Buffy, who was off at mental institutions while Muffy was sent to Vassar. And poor Muffy gets her head chopped off by her evil twin***. After the usual set of chases, the two get separated, and the "final girl," Kit, eventually runs into the house. . .

To find that everyone is alive!

See, Muffy's been planning to turn the island into one of those "murder mystery" weekend events. So she figured, who better than her friends to beta test it, right? Naturally, things would be more scary if they didn't know what was going on, so she only told them about the joke when she "killed" them. The she and her makeup-artist buddies (including the guy who supposedly got his face ruined at the docks) helped put together the corpses. And it turns out that there is no Buffy****.

Muffy does apologize for using the old secrets to help create the atmosphere, and her friends are amazingly forgiving. Of course, none of them point out that this is far from the ideal way to beta-test things, especially since real visitors will have much more of a sense of what's going on (unless Muffy plans to kidnap her guests, which I suppose is a possibility). But hey, friends forgive each other, and they all have to admit that they had a fun time.

Or do they? When Muffy heads to her room, there's a jack-in-the-box on the bed, and as the jack pops out, a razor reaches out to slit poor Muffy's throat. Oh noes! But wait -- it's another joke! And we fade to credits.

One of the things I love about April Fool's Day is that the movie tells you up front what it's about, yet it still manages to work. We get practical joke after practical joke (including one of my favorites -- a painting with eyes cut out, and a cat clock with fake eyes behind it*****), we get off-screen kills, we're shown a fake "killing" right from the get-go. But it still works. Of course, the bodies that pile up are a big help, but so is the wonderful cast. I've raved about Deborah Foreman before (in my review of Waxwork), but her turn here is even better. And Amy Steel, as Kit, puts together yet another classic final girl performance (she was also the first to overcome Jason Voorhees, back in Friday the 13th Part 2), bringing her character to life and making her different from her previous parts (and from the typical mid-'80s final girl as well). Other standouts include Griffin O'Neal (about a year before his manslaughter case; it's safe to say that he probably a wee bit coked out while making this movie, but he still plays his part well enough) and Thomas "Biff Tannen" Wilson.

The screenplay by Danilo Bach (pretty much known for Beverly Hills Cop and nothing else) is witty and fast-paced, with some cute lines of dialogue and some nice twists. He also gives us characters who are deeper and more interesting than typical slasher movie victims. Fred Walton does a solid job of directing, building the suspense appropriately and toeing the line nicely between constantly winking to the audience and taking things too seriously. Given the need to convey a sense of danger without having any on-screen death, it's a nice accomplishment. Charles Bernstein's score is also fine, helping set the mood throughout.

April Fool's Day is one of those minor classics that's simply fun, and doesn't pretend to be anything more than a cute little twist on typical horror conventions. Definitely recommended for slasher fans, as well as anyone who might enjoy a movie that turns many '80s conventions on their head, but which never descends to the level of parody.

*Which was also originally titled April Fool's Day, and which I'd love to find a good copy of. It's a crappy film, but it's got some great murders "inspired" by science.

**I'm probably making the last one up.

***Buffy always starts when Muffy wants to begin.

****Only Zuul.

*****Yes, that technically makes it a cat scare.