Now Serving Dessert

Help yourself to some pie, people - today marks the one-year anniversary of this blogspot! I'm not one for blowing my own horn - or even for owning a horn to blow - and this blog will be no exception but I do feel like the occasion should be marked by a few words.

Mostly that would be simply "thanks". Thanks to folks like Steven Wintle of The Horror Blog, Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique Online, and mystery man 'Arbogast' of Argobast on Film. Without coming across The Horror Blog and becoming aware of the blogosphere at large, I never would've been inspired to start Dinner with Max Jenke in the first place. And to unexpectedly be included after just a few months on the web and with less than forty posts to my credit as part of the Blogroll at Cinefantastique and Arbogast's 'For Your Information' links section was in both instances a great - and greatly appreciated - source of encouragement. I didn't take those links for granted and knowing that I was lucky to be exposed to the readership of both those sites spurred me on to be as active as possible in posting here.

I also have to give a special shout-out to my pals Unkle Lancifer and Aunt John of the indispensable Kindertrauma. Besides sharing damn near the exact same taste in horror as I do, thanks to their support I was invited to be a part of The League of Tana Tea Drinkers and to be included among that company has been a major incentive to keep writing.

Often times when I look at what other bloggers are up to, I feel like I'm doing the dog paddle in a pool full of Michael Phelps'. But even though I feel like some of my posts should've never made it online (I won't say which ones!), after just a year to have received the kind of support I have makes me think I'm getting more right than wrong here. I've never checked my hit count so I have no idea what kind of traffic this site receives (I'm superstitious about knowing things like that) but I hope that anyone who's come to Dinner over the past year hasn't left hungry. Or worse, with indigestion!

And before I completely forget my (table) manners, a final thanks to my friend Marty Langford for generously creating the banner seen at the top of this blogspot.

As soon as I added that element to the page, I felt that Dinner with Max Jenke was something real. So here's to Year Two - I predict a lot of junk food on the menu still but I've got to stick to what I've got in the kitchen!

If You're Coming To Texas, You'd Better Bring Some Heat

While going through my back issues of FANGORIA, I came across this long-forgotten advertisement for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game. At the time I originally saw this ad, I hadn't seen the movie itself and I assumed that the lean fellow to the right taking deadly aim at Leatherface must be a character taken directly from the film, which prompted me to imagine this person's role in Texas Chainsaw.

Despite the gun, I didn't get a cop vibe from him; there was something above the law about this character. He looked like someone who'd be at home in a pulp novel. Maybe he was a private detective hired to investigate a disappearance that Leatherface was responsible for. Or maybe he was a self-appointed vigilante - someone whose wife or daughter had been slain by Leatherface and was out to score some Texas-style payback. All I knew was that I was excited to discover what I thought was one more piece to the puzzle when it came to unravelling TCM.

I don't know if I was still thinking of this imaginary character when I did finally see TCM but looking at this ad reminds me of a time before the ready availability of films on VHS and cable when even the classics had plenty of mystery to them. Unless you were old enough to have seen a film during its original release you'd know about a movie like Texas Chainsaw or The Exorcist by their reputation but have little else to go on. You couldn't instantly go online and find out every detail of a movie (or download it, for that matter). And it wasn't even like hearing about a film and speculating about it for a few weeks or months before seeing it for yourself - it was often a matter of waiting many years (the subject of a recent blog over at Arbogast on Film). And the longer a movie stayed out of reach, the more every new piece of info was able to take on a life of its own.

This unknown shooter was someone I wanted to know more about. I didn't know what had brought this mystery man up against Leatherface but he looked dangerous in his own right. This wasn't some barefoot hippie knocking on the wrong door looking for gas, this was a seasoned operator who showed up to kick some ass.

And I still can't help thinking there's a story left to be told about him.

Cronenberg in Jeopardy

One of the main reasons I loved MTV in the channel's early days wasn't the novelty appeal of the medium or the great tunes or my undying crush on VJ Martha Quinn but the fact that so many of those early videos were steeped in horror movie influences - everything from Billy Idol in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies in the Tobe Hooper-directed "Dancing With Myself", Ozzy Osbourne turning into a werewolf in "Bark at the Moon" to most famously, Michael Jackson's undead dance-off, "Thriller". But one of my favorite horror-themed videos from that time remains Greg Kihn's "Jeopardy" from 1983.

In "Jeopardy", Kihn plays an anxious groom about to sweat his way through his vows when suddenly his bride-to-be along with the entire wedding congregation turn into zombies and a giant Lovecraftian tentacle erupts from the floor to drag a fleeing Kihn back to the altar. Prior to all hell breaking loose, Kihn's fears of being 'joined at the hip' are made flesh by the sight of an older married couple standing side by side connected by a pulsating growth between them - a surprisingly Cronenbergian image that anticipates the visual of the Mantle twins joined in a dream sequence by a similar growth in 1988's Dead Ringers. And any video that can combine zombies, Cthulhu, Cronenberg, and a hero who wears checkerboard vans to his own wedding is alright by me.

Adding to this video's appeal is the fact that Kihn bears a downright uncanny resemblance to 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper of WWF and They Live fame (especially when Kihn grins at the sight of his bride's wedding band at 1:55). I'm telling you, if someone had cast those two as brothers in an '80s action show, that would've been one for the ages.

Let's Scare Jessica To Death

No other horror film has given us a heroine as memorably fragile as the title character of director John Hancock's unusually sensitive shocker Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971) and sadly, it's unlikely that we'll ever see her kind again. Not only do we live in the post-Ripley world of female heroes but in the post-Sarah Connor and post-Buffy age as well. As a rule, girls have to kick ass.

But with Jessica, Hancock and co-writer Lee Kalcheim gave us a heartbreaking protagonist (brilliantly played by Zorpha Lambert) who makes the insecure Eleanor of Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) look like Lara Croft.

The film opens with a pre-title sequence that introduces us to Jessica seated alone in a small rowboat in the middle of a lake, quietly sitting in the light of early dawn. As Jessica's voiceover tells us: "I sit here and I can't believe that it happened. And yet I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares, madness or sanity. I don't know which is which."

The film that follows flashes back to the previous few days of Jessica's life, telling us who she is and finally bringing us back full circle to this moment on the lake. Days earlier, Jessica arrived at her new Connecticut home on an apple farm ("the old Bishop place", we're told) along with her musician husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) and their friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor). Jessica was recently released from a stay at a mental institution following treatment for a nervous breakdown and she and Duncan hope that their new life in the country will be a change for the better.

When the group starts to move into their new rural digs, however, they're startled to find a young vagabond named Emily (Mariclare Costello) freely enjoying the shelter of their empty house. Of course this being the early '70s, after the initial shock of finding an intruder passes, instead of calling the police Emily is greeted as a welcome visitor. And because Emily is such an appealing free spirit - as well as a stunning, red-headed beauty who Woody has eyes for - she soon is welcomed into the home as a permanent guest.

It isn't long, though, before Emily's presence is perceived as sinister by Jessica. Not only is Emily a threat to Jessica's marriage by being a ready sexual temptation to Duncan but she senses something more fundamentally wrong with Emily. Through meeting the local antique dealer, they learn that the home they're living in was the scene of a terrible tragedy years earlier which involved Abigail Bishop, a bride who drowned in 1880 prior to her wedding. Her body was never recovered and legend says she's still alive as a vampire roaming the area.

Discovering pictures of Abigail left behind in the attic of the house, Jessica sees that the doomed bride bears a striking resemblance to Emily. Given her mental history, however, Jessica is more likely to believe she's suffering a relapse then to think her wild suspicions have merit. But even though the film's title suggests that there may be a possible Gaslight-esque plot at work against Jessica, we know that Emily really is either a ghost, a vampire or some kind of ghoul.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Jessica is how Emily embodies qualities of vampirism and the walking dead, but yet doesn't conform to the established folklore of either. Whatever her true nature, Emily has converted the town folk around her (most of whom seem to be elderly - and all of whom have contempt for the bohemian ways of Jessica, Duncan and Woody) into a cabal of undead followers. In an imaginative detail, she brings victims over to her side by slicing them with a knife (never in the same spot - sometimes it's seen on the forearm, sometimes hidden behind the ear - so it's always an eerie surprise when we see that telltale incision) and then drinking their blood (an act that's suggested more than explicitly shown). Only for one key victim does she resort to the traditional neck bite.

But rather than becoming what we would recognize as familiar zombies or creatures of the night, these people simply bandage themselves (which makes for a creepy visual to see a town full of people all sporting random, unexplained wounds - as Duncan says of his conspicuously bandaged neighbors: "I bet they're left over from the Civil War!") and walk around freely in the daylight. In this aspect, Jessica is as much a "pod" movie as it is a vampire or zombie film, recalling the transformations of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which people look the same and act the same but yet are no longer human.

Set in Connecticut in the fall, with its ripe red-orange foliage, Jessica is more lyrical than it is lurid - informed by an autumnal sense of decay. And there's a mournful, elegiac mood (augmented by Orville Stoeber's score) that pervades the film, a sense of morbid romanticism embodied in a verse Jessica finds on a gravestone: "Frail as the leaves that shiver on a spray/Like them, we flourish/Like them, decay."

Not only do Jessica, Duncan and Woody make the drive to Connecticut in a used hearse (as Woody cheerfully explains to their new neighbors - "It's cheaper than a station wagon!") but the first stop they make is in the local cemetery so Jessica can indulge her hobby of making grave-rubbings - which, with their poignant reminders of life's brevity, paper the walls of her and Duncan's bedroom. And on their first night in the house, Jessica and co. conduct an impromptu seance to welcome all the souls of those who have ever passed in their new home to communicate with them (as Jessica earnestly implores, "Give us a sign!").

This flower child attitude towards death may explain why Emily is never quite depicted as being a force of evil, even as she causes the deaths of several people. In fact, Emily is more passive than almost any other 'villain' in film history, and that becomes a telling quality in Jessica's final moments.

In the end, we see that Jessica has escaped Emily and her mob of ghouls by finding refuge in the rowboat. But as Emily and her followers all standing on the shore watching Jessica give up one by one and saunter off back to their haunted town, it's with a peculiar sadness - not for themselves, we sense, but towards Jessica herself. Emily doesn't walk away with a monster's frustration of having failed to claim another victim but instead as a lost soul with a different air of regret altogether.

For many modern viewers, Let's Scare Jessica To Death may be too slow and ambiguous to sustain much interest. But for me, it's a movie that struck me as being perfect since I first saw it as a fifteen-year-old on TV one cold October afternoon in 1984. Lambert's heartfelt performance was something that I hadn't encountered before in a horror film - this wasn't the usual screaming and running of a 'final girl', this was real emotion. The scenes in which we see her relationship with Duncan fraying past the point of repair are genuinely agonizing to watch. It took me years to realize exactly what made this film so special to me, but over time it became clear: Let's Scare Jessica To Death remains the one horror film to truly convey that what scares us the most isn't vampires, or ghosts, or even necessarily our own death - it's loneliness. Nothing else can compete with that.

Count me among this film's scores of devoted fans who continue to love Jessica to death.

The Sender

At one time, it was much easier to unexpectedly come across a surprise like 1982’s psychic thriller The Sender. Today, thanks to the constant flow of info coming across the internet and with even mainstream outlets like Entertainment Weekly being savvy about genre fare, it’s rare that even smaller horror pics aren’t discussed to death months ahead of their releases. It’s almost impossible to feel like you’ve discovered a movie entirely on your own anymore and some of the fun of following genre films has disappeared with that. But a movie like The Sender was one of those minor gems that quietly amassed a following with most fans finding it on its frequent airings on HBO in the early ‘80s.

When I first watched The Sender, it immediately struck me as being different from other horror films at the time. I was about thirteen and I think that was probably an ideal age for me to appreciate it. My tastes were maturing just enough where I responded to the fact that this represented a more challenging, ‘adult’ horror film rather than just a slasher movie. I’m sure I felt a little smarter for liking a film that most of my friends probably would’ve found to be boring. It was a case of meeting the right film at the right time.

Directed by Roger Christian - the Oscar-winning set decorator for Star Wars - who, as a director sadly went on to helm Battlefield Earth (2000), The Sender struck a soft tone that was rare in an ‘80s horror scene that saw genre films getting more coarse and abrasive along with audience’s sensibilities. Abetted by Trevor Jones’ lush score (that bucked the then-popular trend of synthesized scores for horror films), Christian made a film that succeeds as an eerie mood piece first and foremost. As for the storyline, Thomas Baum’s screenplay (first conceived by Baum as a possible novel) centers on a suicidal John Doe patient at a mental hospital who has the uncanny – and uncontrollable – ability to make his dreams appear to the waking world.

Despite the character’s psychic abilities, the role is empathetic rather than fearsome, as reflected by actor Zeljko Ivanek’s sensitive performance. And even before John’s strange gift reveals itself, his plight as a troubled amnesiac earns the sympathetic attention of Dr. Gail Farmer (Kathryn Harrold) who tries to block her superior’s attempts to treat John with electro-shock therapy. Gail’s boss, Dr. Joseph Denman, is played by Paul Freeman – best known as Indiana Jones’ rival archaeologist Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark – and Freeman gives his character a surprisingly positive portrayal. Typically in a movie like this, Denman’s character would have to come across as the heavy, some self-important, bureaucratic fool. He’d be the asshole that Gail has to butt heads with to save her patient – he’d be Priscilla Pointer’s character of Dr. Elizabeth Simms in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. But instead, Denman is shown to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of not just John Doe but the rest of the hospital’s patients and staff. If he makes a bad call, it’s not out of ego or malice. And that refusal to vilify a character that normally would be painted with a broad brush is indicative of The Sender’s unusual approach. This is a horror film with no monsters or villains.

John Doe #83 may have an affliction that makes him dangerous to others but he’s never shown to be a sinister character. We don’t have to impatiently roll our eyes as Gail endeavors to save him with minimal harm. And when John’s religious fanatic mother Jerolyn (Shirley Knight) is introduced, this is another character that could’ve easily fallen into the stereotypical role of a screeching, evil Bible-thumper. This could’ve been Piper Laurie in Carrie or Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist. Instead, while we see that Jerolyn is emotionally disturbed and a clear threat to her son’s psychological well-being, she isn’t a character that we hate. As played by Knight, we can understand that in her mind, Jerolyn is the only person who can properly care for her son. A horror movie that has an opportunity to turn a mother into a monster and doesn’t go for it is rare but at every turn, The Sender refuses to play by the normal rules. That may have come at a cost to its effectiveness as a crowd-pleaser but it allowed The Sender to leave a unique impression. The cast is uniformly excellent, with its main players – Harrold, Freeman, Ivanek, and Knight – all continuing to enjoy busy careers to this day. At a time where the horror genre was predominantly teen-orientated, and where performances took a backseat to splatter FX, its talented cast made The Sender seem like a horror movie aimed at an altogether different crowd.

But yet The Sender did have its share of shocks to offer. Two years before A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) would be celebrated for the exciting way it kept the audience off-guard by blurring the line between dreams and reality, The Sender was mining similar territory. Without warning, swarms of bugs and rats appear. Mirrors crack and drip blood. Christian aims for believability in each instance, with the film's varied effects being accomplished on set and in-camera by FX supervisor Nick Allder and special effect technician Alan Poole. And working under Allder's guidance, makeup artist Sarah Monzani did the casting and sculpting work utilized in two of The Sender’s highlights – a decapitation scene and a scene in which a rat crawls out of a character’s open mouth (a moment so good that Christian can’t help replaying the shot on a video monitor later in the film, even though it makes little sense for it to reappear).

Reports have persisted over the years that The Sender was heavily edited before its release and that material that would’ve helped the storyline make more sense was removed. I’ve never read any details about exactly what happened or what material was lost but it is clear that some questionable edits were performed.

For instance, at one point John is talking to a fellow patient - a disturbed Vietnam vet (Al Matthews). When the vet has an angry reaction to John’s insistence that the war is over, the film cuts to a shot of John running down the hospital halls, apparently fleeing the vet. But when John runs back into the room he shares with several other patients, the vet is already there, lying comfortably on a bed in the background. So clearly, Christian was taken out of the loop in the post-production process.

Unfortunately, despite its cult reputation, The Sender never garnered the kind of rabid fanbase or critical acclaim that would motivate the kind of rediscovery and re-edits that a film like, say, Blade Runner has experienced so a Director’s Cut of this worthwhile film will have to exist only in its fan’s dreams.

Don LaFontaine, R.I.P.

Just the other day, I was waxing nostalgic about legendary announcer Ernie Anderson and now, sadly, it's been reported that voice-over artist extraordinare Don LaFontaine has passed away at the age of 68 due to complications from pneumothorax. While every movie fan has their favorite memories of hearing LaFontaine's voice long before they knew the name behind it, the trailers that stay with me the most are for the first four Friday the 13ths.

When I was twelve, I saw the trailer for the original Friday the 13th on The Movie Channel while on an out-of-state family visit to my grandmother's home in New Hampshire. I had seen the Friday TV spots previously to this, when the film was released in theaters, but seeing the full trailer really got my attention. Thanks to LaFontaine's ominous baritone inaugurating Friday's trademark body count as bold red numbers flashed on the screen, I thought this was the most intimidating preview for a horror movie I had ever seen. And as it took at least another year for me to be allowed to watch the film itself, it was this preview and LaFontaine's voice that kept me determined to see it. I just knew I couldn't be a true horror fan until I had.

I love the trailer for 1981's Friday the 13th Part 2, because whoever wrote it didn't even try to get their facts straight about either the original Friday the 13th or Part 2! As we see returning heroine Alice (Adrienne King) nervously creep through her apartment, we hear LaFontaine intone: "On a June night in 1980, Friday the 13th, twelve of her friends were murdered." Well, if outside of Steve Christie you mean "people she just met that day" (including one she never met at all!) instead of "friends", then sure. And if by "twelve", you really meant "seven", then that'd be true. And even though the sequel takes place five years after the original, which would make it 1985, LaFontaine asks "why should Friday the 13th, 1981 be any different?"

By the time 1982's Friday the 13th 3-D rolled around, Jason was already on his way to being a full-blown icon. This was the first Friday trailer where LaFontaine got to call Jason by name ("These are Jason's woods...") and it instantly validated Jason as a movie monster to be reckoned with.

Finally, four years of mayhem came to a head with 1984's Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter ("Three times before you have felt the terror, known the madness, lived the horror. But this is the one you've been screaming for"). This trailer rocked with LaFontaine delivering his most dramatic lines of all the Friday trailers to date ("...He moves like a shadow, dark and silent. He never utters a word. He doesn't even seem to breathe. He simply, mindlessly, mercilessly...kills.). I feel that this one trailer did more to evoke a sense of character for Jason than the movies themselves ever did. And even though the series was back in business in just another year and LaFontaine was still narrating the trailers, it never quite seemed the same.


LaFontaine's contribution to the world of movies was one that we took for granted, even as over the course of his career he helped scores of films of every genre find their audience. Among those thousands of films, the Friday the 13th movies may have been just a drop in the bucket but his voice on those trailers helped make me a Friday fan for life.

Passengers

Any time a horror movie opens in October that isn't a Saw film, I'm happy. And any time a new horror movie can be within a month of release and come as a complete surprise, that makes me happy too.

So even though this tale of the survivors of a plane crash and the paranormal after-effects they suffer doesn't look like it's going to rewrite the history of fear on film, count me in to check this out.

If nothing else, I'll gladly take a cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Clea DuVall, David Morse and Andre Braugher over whatever suckers are due to get tortured in Saw V.