All Dressed In White

For a sub-genre that was often labeled as "anti-women," the slasher films of the late '70s and early '80s showcased many exceptional horror heroines. One of the best was He Knows You're Alone's Amy Jensen, as played by Caitlin O'Heaney. Written by Scott Parker and directed by Armand Mastroianni, He Knows You're Alone tells the tale of Amy, a good Catholic girl, as she nervously prepares to walk down the aisle with her boyfriend Phil (James Carroll). When we first meet Amy and Phil, Amy is saying her goodbyes as Phil is leaving on a weekend getaway with his buddies. That leaves Amy in the company of her girlfriends Nancy (Elizabeth Kemp) and Joyce (Patsy Pease).

What Amy and her friends don't know is that Amy has gained the attention of Ray Carlton (Tom Rolfing), a serial killer that preys on brides-to-be, killing them before they reach the altar. We never learn much about Ray as he methodically stalks Amy and all those around her, but we do know that the Grim Ray-per previously murdered the fiancee of police detective Len Gamble (Lewis Arlt), and that Gamble is obsessed with taking down this maniac before he can strike again.

Amy's doubts about her future with Phil are amplified by the presence of her ex-boyfriend Marvin (Don Scardino, known also from 1976's Squirm). A morgue worker with a goofy, good-natured sense of humor, Marvin is still smitten with Amy and is eager to talk her out of marrying Phil. Scardino and O'Heaney have a natural chemistry and, save for the dourest roles like Ray and Det. Gamble, the film's performers all have an ease and amiability about them.

As Amy, O'Heaney is every bit as personable as famous Final Girls such as Adrienne King, Amy Steel, or Jamie Lee Curtis but yet it seems to me that she's something of a forgotten horror heroine.

It's ironic that O'Heaney should be so seldom remembered as her face was right on He Knows You're Alone's posters. No other slasher heroine, not even Jamie Lee Curtis, was featured so prominently in an ad campaign. This is not so surprising as these actresses were not movie stars but even after the success of Halloween made Curtis a bona fide Scream Queen, Avco/Embassy didn't use her face on the one-sheets for Prom Night. Instead, it was a close-up of the film's ski-masked killer holding a shard of glass. Similarly, Terror Train's poster used the image of the killer in a Groucho Marx mask and conductor cap rather than Curtis (during her horror career, Curtis was only featured on the poster for the non-slasher The Fog).

But yet it wasn't Rolfing glowering at us from the posters for He Knows You're Alone, instead it was O'Heaney in a moment of wide-eyed terror. Right out of the gate, she got a star treatment that no other Final Girl received.

After He Knows You're Alone, O'Heaney went on to have one of the better careers of any Final Girl, landing a starring role in the short-lived but well-remembered 1982 ABC adventure series Tales of the Gold Monkey, where she continued to do her share of screaming.

The Gentlemen's Guide To Vampire Slaying

With rare exception, John Carpenter's films have traditionally met with disdain or indifference and have had to wait - sometimes for years - to be embraced by fans and critics. Thirteen years after its release, I think it's time to get an answer on 1998's Vampires.

Of Carpenter's latter-day pictures, Vampires is usually held up as proof that, even if he isn't coming up with a classic like The Thing, he's still got some chops. But fans of the John Steakley novel Vampire$ insist that Carpenter squandered the potential of the book. Still others fault Vampires for indulging in misogyny, citing the abuse that Sheryl Lee's character suffers throughout the movie.

I can't speak as to whether Vampires does its source novel justice because I've never read it but the misogyny charge is more easily addressed. The bottom line is that it's kind of a bum rap. Oh sure, the hooker character of Katrina that Lee plays isn't exactly treated like a lady but her abuse at the hands of James Woods' merciless vampire slayer Jack Crow has been misreported and misremembered. The character that Crow really uses his pimp hand on is Father Adam Guiteau (Tim Guinee), a young priest assigned to aid Team Crow.

Reviews of Vampires commonly cite the ugly incidents of abuse regarding Lee's character (a recent mention of Vampires in Fangoria noted that "seeing hooker Sheryl Lee getting the crap beaten out of her every five minutes ain't funny") but the actual film tells a slightly different story. In the wake of a car crash, Crow slaps the recently bitten Katrina a couple of times to get her to wake up and walk. Later, he pulls open her mouth to check for fangs and then pushes her face away when he's done but there's none of the beat-downs that some people seem to remember. The only time that Katrina is struck by anyone is when Crow's right hand man Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) slaps her after she's infected him with a vampire bite.

Contrast that with the abuse that Father Adam receives. This poor milquetoast gets the full treatment. At one point, Crow violently yanks him out of the passenger seat of the truck he's in, throws him down on the side of the road, and kicks him across the dirt as he helplessly tries to crawl away. Later, in a hotel room, when Father Adam attempts to make a phone call to Cardinal Alba (Maximilian Schell), Crow takes the phone from Father Adam and cracks him across the face with it, sending him flying into a nearby wall. Still later, there's a confrontation in another hotel where Crow is looking to get information out of Father Adam and he chokes him, stuffs a washcloth in his mouth, then takes a knife and slices open his hand. I believe he also delivers a punch to his gut sometime during all this. Crow doesn't have the time to beat the shit out of Katrina - he's got his hands full with Father Adam.

Some would say that any way you look at it, Crow is just too unlikable and that Carpenter made a miscalculation in letting his behavior be so over the top. Carpenter is no stranger to anti-heroes but even many fans of Napoleon Wilson and Snake Plissken find Jack Crow to be too much to stomach. I say that Vampires does have its faults but that its abrasive characters aren't one of them. While I wouldn't refer to the movie as camp, there's clearly an element of over-the-top humor here that has gone slightly unappreciated. I mean, when you have a nice Catholic priest being beaten like a dog and then afterwards be asked by his abuser if that sexually aroused him, you've got to concede that the movie is deliberately crossing a line.

A case could be made that Carpenter let Woods improv a little too much, allowing him to play his role like a parody of a macho hard-ass (in contrast, Baldwin delivers a sincere, low-key performance as the loyal Montoya) but it's also hard to deny that his performance helps to make Vampires memorable. Even if it sometimes feels as if he's trying too hard to get a laugh ("Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata!"), at the end of the day you've got James Woods as a vampire hunter so even if it isn't perfect, it's still pretty awesome.

From the start, Carpenter has shown a kinship with anti-authority figures - from criminals to rock and rollers - and Vampires may represent his most gleeful celebration of that rebel streak (it's neck and neck with 1996's Escape from L.A. - sending the whole planet into the Dark Ages is awfully hard to top as a "fuck you"). In the wake of L.A.'s failure to reestablish him as a commercial force, Vampires seems to be a case of Carpenter acknowledging, with a middle finger held high, that he's out of step with Hollywood, out of step with the public, out of step with what's fashionable, and not giving a fuck about any of it. This is not a movie that was made by someone looking to ingratiate himself to the masses.

At the time of its release, Vampires suffered from comparison with the much slicker Blade, which had proceeded it into theaters by a few months. That film was state-of-the-art in a way that the lower-budgeted Vampires wasn't and I think that initial perception of not being "top of the line" still haunts Vampires. But while Vampires' action isn't so hot (watching one vampire after another be dragged out of their nest via a steel cable gets to be sluggish), the practical FX from KNB are nicely accomplished. More importantly, the relationships between the characters play out in a satisfying fashion and that's something that doesn't date with the passing years.

Yeah, in the short run it might have been cool if a bigger budget had allowed Vampires to compete head on with other films in the market then but I still love it when Father Adam steps up and blows a hole through the traitorous Cardinal Alba's chest, or when Montoya fights on after having his neck ripped open and he rides to Crow's rescue.

Those are the moments where Vampires' heart lies and whether the film is ever seen as classic Carpenter or not, that's something that time won't be able to drive a stake through.

Death Proof

When most horror fans think of the '70s, they immediately think of The Exorcist or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While I think of those classics too, being as young as I was at the time, I wasn't all that aware of those films during the '70s themselves. Back in the day, '70s horror for me was symbolized by PG-fare like Empire of the Ants, not The Hills Have Eyes.

If you had asked me then what my favorite horror movies were, 1977's The Car would have ranked right near the top of my list. It's the kind of movie I surely would have (foolishly) scoffed at as an adult - and probably even as a teenager - but as a young kid I was entranced by it. Chronicling the small Utah town of Santa Ynez's death duel with an ominous, and apparently hell-sent, black Lincoln Continental whose driver is never seen, The Car is simple and direct and does not sell its title character short. If you want a movie about a killer car doing killer car things, The Car is not going to disappoint you.

Written by Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack, and Lane Slate and directed by Elliot Silverstein (Cat Ballou), The Car has been perennially pissed on since its debut but Gen-Xers have always held it in high esteem as one of our generation's great guilty pleasures. Adult critics and genre fans saw only a low-brow rip-off of Duel crossed with The Exorcist (or even, "Jaws on wheels"). Kids saw a movie that was kick-ass from start to finish. We're simple that way.

For years I went along with the notion that The Car only seemed good to me because I saw it when I was so young and impressionable. Seeing it now, though, I've gotta say "screw that" - it's a flat-out cool movie. Sure the dialogue is occasionally hokey but the cast (including James Brolin, Ronny Cox, and R.G. Armstrong) never winks at the camera or condescends to the material - to a one, they all try to keep their reactions true to their situation. And the action is choice. When The Car does a barrel-roll in order to wipe out two approaching police cars at once, it's still spectacular.

Abetted by cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld (Young Frankenstein), Silverstein takes great advantage of the scenic, panoramic locations (it was an inspired choice, by the way, to have this film take place in a dry Southwest town so the Car can kick up dust clouds everywhere it goes). Many scenes benefit from the sense that with such wide-open vistas, with nothing but road or flat desert, there's no safe place for The Car's victims to flee to. It's a strategy that really pays off when one victim to-be does get inside their house but to our shock we see that it might as well have been made of matchsticks.

The Car was pimped out to be a horror superstar, ready to roll into sequels (the end credits show us that The Car has survived the fiery finale and is now cruising the highway alongside an unspecified city) but apparently no one cared about that back in 1977 as it played to poor box office (the fact that Star Wars opened just twelve days after The Car may have caused the movie to be overlooked). But man, The Car makes the shark in Jaws look about as lethal as a goldfish. From its tank-like design to the distinctive blare of its horn to the sizable body count that it racks up, The Car was custom-made to be a horror heavyweight.

Thanks to its opening quote by Church of Satan leader Anton LaVey, The Car has always been seen as a film that was riding on the dying fumes of the post-Exorcist wave of horror but I also think it deserves some credit for anticipating the slasher craze yet to come. Some might say the fact that The Car is, well, a car disqualifies this film from being categorized as a slasher pic but yet while films like Psycho, Texas Chain Saw, and Black Christmas are more obvious antecedents of the slasher sub-genre, as a body count movie featuring creative kills, with many scenes of the killer stalking its victims - complete with POV shots as we witness events through the hellish tint of The Car's windshield - The Car resembles assembly line slasher moviemaking as we came to know it. More importantly, The Car introduced what would become a key component of slasher cinema - the notion of the supernatural-based, invincible killer.

Like popular slasher icons to come such as Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers, The Car is impossible to kill and displays an uncanny talent for showing up in impossible places - as when it suddenly appears parked in Brolin's garage. In talking about Death-Proof, his contribution to Grindhouse (2007), Quentin Tarantino claimed that he wanted to do his version of a slasher movie but with a car as the weapon but The Car got there first.

The killer car is a familiar horror staple, appearing in films like The Hearse and Christine. But no other movie in this sub-genre has ever been as purely driven as The Car. I can't say that it ranks high alongside the '70s true masterpieces (the '70s was an incredible decade for horror, after all) but my nine-year-old self would be happy to know that, unlike many other films from my childhood, I don't look at The Car as a camp classic at all but as a damn fine ride.

Charley Brewster's War

Is Fright Night (1985) considered to be a true classic or is it just a really good movie? I'm leaning more towards the latter myself but that doesn't mean I don't think the upcoming remake has a lot to live up to. Let's face it - the new version is unlikely to have performances as memorable as those of Roddy McDowell, Chris Sarandon and Stephen Geoffreys or FX as dazzling as the ones devised by Richard Edlund, Steve Johnson and co. (Fright Night remains an '80s FX showcase just as impressive as the more celebrated likes of The Howling). Still, I do believe there's room for improvement - especially in regards to its main character, not-so-fearless vampire hunter Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale).

The original's premise is - on the surface, at least - like a love letter to horror fans. Charley Brewster is a high school student and horror buff who discovers that his new next door neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Sarandon), is a vampire. When the cops, his friends, and his family don't believe him, he turns to horror host Peter Vincent (McDowell) in the hopes that the actor's years spent killing vampires on screen will help save the day. Once a Peter Cushing/Vincent Price type horror star (hence the name that Holland not-so-subtly chose), the elderly actor hosts a faltering late night horror movie showcase called Fright Night.

How the title of Fright Night relates to the new version is unknown as, for obvious reasons, there's no horror host this time around (who even knows what a horror host is anymore?). Instead, Peter Vincent is now a Las Vegas magician (David Tennant).

When I originally saw Fright Night I thought its combo of Hammer-style horror with state-of-the-art '80s FX was great. However, there was one thing that always bugged me - Charley Brewster's quest to enlist Peter Vincent's help. Why the hell would Charley ask the actor who played his favorite vampire hunter to help him kill a vampire in real life? A very young kid might confuse an actor with the parts that they play - like, a kid younger than seven years old. But a teenager? No, I just never bought why Charley would go to Peter.

If Charley had been portrayed as already being friends with Peter because Charley was a fan and Peter's ego enjoyed the adulation and later on Charley must convince Peter that he thinks his neighbor is a vampire - not because he thinks that Peter has any experience killing vampires but because he's his friend and he needs someone to believe him - that would have been better. But for Charley to approach Peter out of the blue and plead with him to kill a vampire is absurd. I know it's supposed to be absurd in the sense that everyone is supposed to think that Charley is losing it but it's just too much. He comes off as being more challenged than crazy.

Luckily, it looks like the new film has none of that to worry about - just as long as Anton Yelchin as the new Charley isn't so confused that he thinks that David Tennant's character is a real warlock and not a stage magician.

Charley is supposed to be a stand-in for all the horror fans out there but I'd rather not be represented by someone so dense, thanks. It's just not flattering. And is Charley even really one of us? At one point he has to turn to his pal Evil Ed (Geoffreys) for tips on how to defend himself against a vampire. What kind of half-ass horror fan would need to do that? After all, Salem's Lot's Mark Petrie didn't have to ask anyone what to do when real vampires showed up in his town. It was just Game On.

The Day You Count On For Terror Is Not Over

The murderous exploits of Jason Voorhees have spread out over so many films over the years that on this Friday the 13th, I thought it was worth remembering a time when the iconic character - and the Friday franchise - was still a fresh presence on the horror landscape.

In 1981, Friday the 13th Part 2 was released - not only was it the first Friday sequel but it was also the first slasher sequel. With its script by Ron Kurz and Phil Scuderi, Part 2 created a mythology that would steer this series into the annals of history as one of horror's most successful and long-running franchises.

Steve Miner, an associate producer on the first film, took over directing duties when Sean Cunningham was reluctant to encore on the sequel. Smartly taking a "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" approach, Miner aimed to deliver more of the same in terms of what made the first film successful (good looking teens and twentysomethings getting slaughtered) while striving to apply a little more craft behind the camera.

Miner shows his directorial chops up front in a lengthy and suspenseful opening sequence that reintroduces surviving Final Girl Alice (Adrienne King), now living alone after the traumatic events of the first film, trying to get her life back together, only to find Mrs. Voorhees decapitated head in her refrigerator. Jason finishes off his mother's killer with an ice pick to the temple and after a fade to white, the title sequence kicks in.

The movie picks up five years later as a new group of camp counselors are gathering for training near the area once known as "Camp Blood." Too near to it for many locals, including the sheriff and town looney Crazy Ralph, who both spread the word in their own way that setting up shop so close to troubled grounds is only inviting that same trouble to return. But do these kids listen? No, for them Mrs. Voorhees' killing spree is old business and any notion that her son might be prowling the woods is ridiculous - the stuff of campfire tales and local superstition. As practical joker and electronic game enthusiast Ted (Stu Charno) dismissively snorts: "five years ago, some girl fell out of a canoe." As the saying goes, those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.

Child psychology student and head assistant counselor Ginny (Amy Steel) is a little more thoughtful on the subject of Jason, seeking to put the legend "in real terms." Her mini-speech about the man-child she imagines the adult Jason to be isn't so flattering - calling him "a frightened retard" just ain't nice - but it's the only time in the series that anyone tries to wax philosophical about the character.

What Miner, Kurz, and Scuderi fail to have Ginny address is how Jason could possibly be out there in the first place. The legend of Jason was screwed up from the start but the original series just glossed over this and kept moving. What happens between Friday the 13th 1 and 2 makes absolutely no sense, however, and when the makers of the 2009 remake tried to retell the story, things didn't exactly fall neatly into place.

The trouble is this: for Mrs. Voorhees to be driven to kill anyone who dares to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, a path of vengeance that leads her to eventually be killed by Alice - which then sparks Jason's own bloody retribution - Jason had to have drowned as a child due to neglectful counselors. That's the event that starts everything.

So...ok. But if Jason did die as a boy in 1958, then how did he become a full-grown man? And if he didn't die, what was he doing in the woods from '58 to 1980? And hold on - if he drowned as a kid, why didn't they ever recover the body and give him a proper burial? The thought that Jason's body would have never been retrieved from Crystal Lake is insane. It's not like he fell off a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean - he's in a tiny-ass lake. Has there ever been a drowning victim in a closed body of water that hasn't been able to be recovered? I mean, hell - what kind of mother would Mrs. Voorhees be if she didn't insist on being able to lay her child to rest? Surely not the kind of fiercely devoted mother that we're supposed to believe she is.

What I'm saying is that the conundrums of the Planet of the Apes and Terminator series look as rudimentary as a child's arithmetic homework next to the brain-exploding impossibilities presented by the Friday the 13th series. But that's what happens when you take a sequence that could have only been a dream (Jason's leap from the lake at the end of Friday the 13th) and try to refer to it as being real.

Audiences at the time went along with Jason's return without a fuss and I think that's simply because the final shock of Friday the 13th was so incredible that people just wanted to see more of that character, period. Realism was not going to get in the way of a good boogeyman. It didn't matter that it made no sense that Jason could be alive and be a full-grown adult. The myth that Part 2 lays out is that Jason saw his mother beheaded and subsequently sought out his revenge on anyone coming into his woods. Simple. Easy to understand. Except if you thought about it for even the slightest micro-second.

But hey, in case you hadn't gotten the memo, there's a frightened retard on the loose.

Look, there he goes now!

Back when I first saw Part 2, I thought the sight of Jason's dilapidated shack was so creepy. Looking at it now, my main thought is that this is an awfully big place for a single dude. And again, by having Jason living in a handmade shack they're playing it as though Jason has been living in the woods for years like some cretin hillbilly but...that...doesn't...make...sense...

Of course, it's the body count that matters in a Friday the 13th film, not logic, and Jason dutifully scrubs as many of the film's young counselors as he can, putting up big numbers to match his mother.

It's well-known that the MPAA clamped down hard on this film, causing most of Carl Fullerton's make-up work (most famously, the scene of two lovers impaled by a spear) to disappear into legend before ever seeing the light of a movie screen. At the time, it was disappointing enough to know of the cut footage but today the lack of graphic kills stands out even more. In '81, gore FX were fighting to be seen across the board so even with its truncated bloodletting, Part 2 still kind of delivered the goods. After all, it wasn't every day that you saw a guy get a machete buried in his face. Today, though, in the wake of a decade where the Saw series, the Hostel films, and any number of other bloodbaths - from The Passion of the Christ to the most recent Rambo installment to the 3-D Piranha remake - all skated by the MPAA with ease, Part 2 looks laughably tepid.

Just as it was difficult in 1981 to watch the films of earlier decades and understand how some of them were ever considered shocking, it's sweetly sad to watch Part 2 now and remember that this was notorious fare back in the day. How is it possible that this movie - and, really, the entire early '80s slasher cycle - has now become an example of more innocent times? That's crazy, is what it is.

I don't have to remind any horror fan that Part 2 is the one where Jason sported a burlap sack before he upgraded to a hockey mask. Count me in among the many sack supporters out there. Everyone always cites The Town That Dreaded Sundown as the inspiration for Jason's look here and, hey, it's a real good look to emulate if you want to scare the crap out of people. The hockey mask is what turned Jason into a slasher superhero but the sack with its one eye hole cut out - that's just creepy. I think he rocked that look better than anybody - even better than Joseph Merrick. But that's a close race, I'll grant you.

I doubt if anyone, even very young viewers, who watch the early Fridays for the first time today finds any of them to be scary in the least but those who saw them when they first came out still remember the impact they had and while I think Parts 3, 4, and 5 all managed to produce some decent scares, Part 2 was the last time that the series was truly frightening.

I mean, just the imagery of Jason's candlelit shrine to his mother was so grandly ghoulish - putting the movie, if peripherally, in the company of films like Psycho and Deranged. The subsequent Fridays never approached anything like it.

As someone who was scared shitless by Friday the 13th Part 2 way back when, it's a curious thing to rewatch it now and see it through much different eyes. Other films of similar vintage still hold up today and even if they don't scare me quite as much as they used to, I can still get a buzz of adrenaline from Alien, Halloween, The Fog or even - to a lesser extent - the original Friday the 13th.

Part 2...eh, not so much.

That said, there's still a lot to like about this entry. The sack fits Jason like a glove, Amy Steel was the best Final Girl the series ever had (and it's had a few great ones), and the climatic chase remains exciting.

Horror sequels were once reserved for classic monsters, like Godzilla or Dracula, or for blockbusters like Jaws, not slashers. Even Psycho, the godfather of the modern slasher, never had a sequel until Friday the 13th kicked opened the floodgates. Once both Friday the 13th and Halloween saw their first sequels appear in '81, it was a sign that a new era had arrived. Thirty years later, it's a kick to watch Friday the 13th Part 2 and be reminded of those simpler days. Happy Friday the 13th!

Fatal Five

Even without a numerical assignment and with a definitive-sounding "the" attached to its title, few horror fans were conned into thinking that 2009's The Final Destination was a sign that the franchise was making a graceful goodbye. Sure enough, just as calling Nightmare 6 Freddy's Dead didn't really mean that Freddy Krueger would stay dead and just as the title Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter turned out to be something of an exaggeration, this summer will bring the latest installment of the Final Destination series - simply titled Final Destination 5.

I already mentioned my excitement for this movie in my summer preview and the glimpse that we've gotten of Final 5 this week of its teaser poster and trailer have only assured me that my excitement was not misplaced (when is it ever?).

When the first Final Destination came out in 2000, it was embraced as a novel twist on the slasher formula. It was a body count movie but instead of its cast of pretty young faces being stalked by a heavy-breathing psycho or even by a wise-cracking supernatural entity like Freddy, Death itself was picking off the film's characters.

Taking a page from The Omen series but sans any theological baggage, Final Destination had its characters perish in elaborate, and apparently freak, accidents. A slasher series without a slasher, the Final Destination films didn't have to axe its characters via such played out methods as machetes, power tools, or, well, axes. Sure, those instruments could all play a part but now the palette was expanded as everything around the characters - from airbags to gas grills - was potentially lethal. They say that variety is the spice of life but it's also the spice of death.

If the job of horror films is - at least in part - to remind us of our own mortality, then the Final Destination films have that covered and then some. When you leave the theater after seeing a Friday the 13th or Saw film, unless you're having issues with reality, it's not with the thought that Jason or Jigsaw - or anyone like them - might have their murderous sights on you. But yet it's entirely possible that you might die in some seemingly random manner. In real life no one being stalked by a cinematic slasher but everyone is, in a real way, being stalked by Death.

While I feel confident that I won't be done in by a machete-wielding psycho and feel exceptionally confident that I won't be killed in my sleep by a dream dwelling boogeyman, I know that there's every chance in the world that I could be turned to red paste in a freak accident on the highway or be sucked into an escalator or something. In actuality my death will probably be due to some much more mundane cause, like a heart attack or cancer but then again it might result from an incredibly unlikely and unforeseeable chain of events involving a jelly jar, dental floss, a house fly, and a kite.

The Final Destination films are not intellectual exercises (even though an analysis on their stance on Fate vs. Free Will might be interesting) but they do tap into something that is universally understood - that no one is immune to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Death comes looking for me on August 12th, I'll be easy to find - I'll be watching Final Destination 5.

The Mostly Mighty Thor

As a longtime Marvel Zombie, Thor has never been high on my list of the company's heroes. I've enjoyed him as a member of The Avengers but only sporadically followed his solo adventures over the years. I think it was a masterstroke on the part of creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to dip into the realm of gods and myth, thereby avoiding having yet another superhero birthed from an accident with radioactivity, but I've just never been that attracted to the character or the world that he hails from. I much prefer the street level Marvel heroes, like Spidey, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Moon Knight. Compared to those earthbound types, I've always found Thor to be a hard character to relate to so given that, the God of Thunder's movie debut was the one Marvel movie I've been least excited for.

I think it was roundly agreed upon by everyone - even Thor fans - that Thor would represent the biggest challenge to Marvel Studios on the road to The Avengers. While it's easily accepted in the comics that Thor occupies the same shared universe as Iron Man and The Hulk, would the realm of Asgard be an awkward fit for the Marvel movies? Turns out the answer is no. Director Kenneth Branagh, working from a script by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne (based on a story by J. Michael Straczynski Mark Protosevich), has cleared Thor's biggest hurdle - the movie fits seamlessly into the world established by Iron Man 1 and 2 and The Incredible Hulk.

Thor may possess the powers of a God and he may live in a gleaming celestial city that defies our understanding but as he explains to scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), what may be perceived as magic from our earthly perspective is known as science where he comes from. Or something like that. The point is, Thor is a movie that makes it possible for a guy with a magic flying hammer to stand next to a guy in an advanced suit of armor and have it make sense.

Thor also strikes the right balance between time spent on Asgard and time spent on Earth. You can't ditch Asgard altogether because that's what Thor's all about and hardcore fans don't want that mythological aspect to be shortchanged. At the same time, for most audiences, Thor has to be put in more relatable context. This has also been true of the comic all these years. I forget which comic pro said this - I think it might've been John Byrne (X-Men, Superman) - but whoever it was essentially said that you can only have Thor residing in Asgard for so long then he has to come down to Earth and punch out The Absorbing Man. If Thor isn't a part of life on Earth, as readers we're going to quickly lose interest in him.

The makers of Thor certainly get that and the movie finds most of its humor and heart once Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished to Earth by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) for his crimes of arrogance. There's the expected fish out of water humor as Thor interacts with unfamiliar environments but it's all handled just right, never veering into exaggerated schitck. As a love interest, Portman is fine - if not particularly outstanding - as Jane Foster. I've read some people online claiming that the relationship between Thor and Jane isn't developed enough and that they needed another scene or two to make it believable but I disagree. All we need to believe is that Jane and Thor would be attracted to each other and that's a pretty easy sell. From Jane's perspective, she just met a God so I think she'd automatically be really interested in continuing that relationship. From Thor's perspective, Jane is a woman unlike any he's ever met so, likewise, it's easy to accept that he'd also want to continue to see much more of her (personally I think he's making a huge mistake in overlooking Kat Denning's Darcy but that's just me). So what I'm saying is that I bought Thor and Jane as a couple in the making. In fact, if there's any scenes between them that were cut for time or pacing, just leave 'em off the DVD - I'm not interested.

The other big, if less loving, relationship in this movie is between Thor and his scheming brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Everyone seems to agree this aspect of Thor came off great and I agree. Hiddleston makes Loki one of the most compelling villains in recent memory. He's a cunning manipulator but we also see his wounded pride and his deep-seated neediness. That Hiddleston will continue on to The Avengers as that film's arch-foe is very good news.

And having now seen Thor, I'm also much more excited by the prospect of Hemsworth interacting with his fellow Avengers than I had been before. The trailers for Thor were some of the worst in recent memory and made Hemsworth's performance look like a potential embarrassment. What a pleasant surprise, then, to discover how terrific he is here and how effortlessly he's able to bring Thor to life. He conveys Thor's youthful arrogance, his pride, his sometimes unwise thirst for battle but also the positive attributes of bravery, loyalty and kindness that make him heroic. It's a performance comparable to that of Christopher Reeve's Superman in that Hemsworth manages to imbue this God-like character with a natural affability.

On a sour note, in step with the Marvel Studios films to date, the action in Thor is just ok. It's not bad but nothing near exceptional. This is one aspect where Marvel Studios really needs to step up their game. I understand that they're out to keep their budgets from skyrocketing and I like that the strengths of their films so far have leaned on an understanding of the characters and an expert eye for casting. And yet...when you're making movies about characters who design and wear the most advanced battle armour in the world, who transform into raging Gamma-irradiated behemoths, and who are pretty much Gods, then the action ought to be at least occasionally spectacular (I will say I loved the frequently Kirby-esque production design in Thor and I'm glad many actual sets were built for Asgard rather than just relying on CGI).

In Thor, the action is comprised of a battle with a race of Frost Giants, a battle on Earth with the metallic titan known as The Destroyer, and a final throwdown on Asgard between Thor and Loki and each one of these scenes, while competent, could've have used a lot more panache. When you think of the great action scenes in comic book adaptations - like the fight between Superman and the Phantom Zone criminals in the streets of Metropolis in Superman II (1980) or the fight between Spidey and Doc Ock on the elevated train in Spider-Man 2 (2004), those are scenes where the filmmakers really went the extra mile to take the kind of excitement that comic fans have enjoyed on the page for years and bring it to life in a big way.

And while there have been opportunities to do that in all the Marvel Studio films so far, scenes like the Hulk's fight with the Abomination or Thor's fight with the Destroyer have been flatly rendered. As Marvel Studios moves forward, they have to realize that the action of their films needs to start soaring.

During Thor's end credits, the Bond-ian promise that "Thor Will Return In The Avengers" appears and, as a building block towards that impending team-up, Thor plays perfectly (some have carped that S.H.I.E.L.D. feels shoehorned in but I disagree - I think it's natural to have them show up in the manner that they do and it's not necessary to have seen any of the other Marvel movies to understand that they're a F.B.I./C.I.A.-style organization).

It's true that Thor's reentry to Midgard has hit a roadblock by the end of this film but I think that's preferable to having Thor left on Earth. I'd rather have his entrance be a big deal in The Avengers rather than have his first meeting with Tony Stark or Bruce Banner occurring in the time between this movie and The Avengers.

As a character, Thor will never be at the top of my list of favorite superheroes but this movie is definitely near the top of my list of favorite superhero adaptations. It could've used some fine tuning, yes, but it's fun and well-acted. What's more, it's my six year old son's new favorite movie and that alone tells me that Branagh and co. hammered out a winner.