Pet Semetary (1989)

"Sometimes dead is better."

Another Stephen King film, then, and one in which he gets a cameo as a vicar... and I still haven’t read more than one obscure novella by him. I must remedy that.

This film is rather good, but a curious beast; there are no stars, unless you count Herman Munster and Lt Tasha Yar. And it doesn’t really feel like a horror film until the very end where a zombie toddler is running riot, being far more of a drama about what it’s like to lose a child- an unthinkable thing for any parent- much though the whole thing is tinged with a palpable sense of the macabre which feels, well, Stephen King.

The conceit is (cliche alert) that behind the burial ground for pets of the misspelled title there lies that old horror standby, the old Indian cemetery. This allows Dead things to be brought back to life, and be brought back to life wrong so, after an initial and fairly harmless first attempt with a cute little cat which proceeds to get all creepy and animatronic (is that a 1989 thing?) things start to get serious as the fanily’s little boy gets run over by a lorry. And presumably, this being Stephen King, this all happens in the state of Maine.

It’s a nice little understated film that chooses, I think rightly, to emphasise the mood of the macabre over shocks. One think is truly shocking, though- Jud drinks that undrinksble horse piss Budweiser and forces poor Louis to drink the foul liquid. Have neither of them heard of actual beer? And why does Louis pronounce his name “Louis” but pronounce it “Lewis”? It’s most odd.

But all is forgiven as the end credits roll and we hear the splendid sound of the Ramones, everybody’s favourite all-dead New York proto-punk band. “Pet Semetary” is no “Judy Is a Punk” or “53rd and 3rd” but it does the business.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

“The first was the best."

 Phew. The franchise doesn't end with a whimper after all, but with a typically clever and well-directed instalment from the esteemed Mr Craven himself. This last film redeems the whole thing somewhat. Still, it's far from perfect in that it's somewhat slow and there's not enough Freddy screen time.

It’s clever, though; the franchise so far has just been a series of movies and Wes Craven, various actors and even producers appear as themselves. There’s lot of wry commentary on the tiresome idea of horror movies having a bad effect on society (yawn) and a lot of fourth wall-breaking fun- the ending, with Heather reading the script of the very film she’s in to her son, is perfect and, what’s more, believable. The concept is a good one- an Evil From The Dawn Of Time draws strength from monsters in scary stories and this time it’s taken on the form of Freddie from it’s new favourite horrror franchise. It’s a superb idea and very well realised, although the threat never quite feels like Freddy. In fact, much of the film evokes cinematic horror more widely- especially, in the excellent scenes with little Dylan, The Exorcist. And it’s clever to contrast the new “Freddy” make-up with Robert Englund wearing his old costume for the fans.

It’s very well done. It’s very witty. Stylistically, at times it feels very much like the precursor to Scream that it clearly is. But I can’t help feeling that it takes too long for things to start happening, Freddy doesn’t get enough screen time and, well, Freddy isn’t really Freddy, great though the effects are in the final showdown scene. This is an interesting case of a great concept, very well made, which perhaps suffers from not satisfying our expectations of the sort of film it’s supppsed to be.

And that, folks, is the end of Nightmare on Elm Street for a while. I have another franchise to devour before I get to Freddy vs. Jason, and I’ll be watching other stuff in-between. So many other horror franchises, too...