December 9, 2013

The Dog Farm's Best In Show 2013 - Sordid Slashers & A Shoulda Been Franchise

My Bloody Valentine (1981) poster
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
     The second edition of The Dog Farm's Best In Show 2013 presents two posts about the slasher movies that dominated the box office in the early nineteen-eighties.  I was an impressionable young tween then, but even now I'm still especially fond of this maligned sub-genre.  It tickles me that I can still watch slasher movies from this era that I've never seen before.  Slasher movies were so prevalent then that there's now a seemingly endless supply of them.  Some, of course, do rise above their contemporaries.

     The first post, Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart - My Bloody Valentine (1981), was another piece created for Blood Sucking Geek's Ultimate Gore-A-Thon about one of my own favorites.  I've never understood why My Bloody Valentine didn't warrant a sequel or two.  Such a missed opportunity.  It now seems the respectable 2009 remake is destined for the same fate.

     The second post, I Was Raised On The Slashers, Bitch, probably would have benefited from a less crude title.  We all have our moments of weakness.  The post itself is actually a pretty laid back reminiscence about the sub-genre as a whole.  No one ever quite gets the right flavor with the more recent examples, but a few movies come close.  Behind The Mask (2006), Laid To Rest (2009), and even the remake Sorority Row (2009) all deliver giddy thrills.  Nothing beats the real thing, though.


       Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart - My Bloody Valentine (1981)

       I Was Raised On The Slashers, Bitch

 
     The Dog Farm's Best In Show 2013 continues next week with two more of the least bad offerings from the Dog Farm's first year.



3 comments:

  1. Sorry to do a bit of an aside from the slasher genre, but I am curious to get your reaction on VHS2. It's been streaming on Netflix, and I need to defer to the expert for some evaluation. I found parts of the film to be surprisingly entertaining. I hope the creators don't go for a part 3 because the premise might get stretched too thin.
    Looking forward to another recap of good films on Netflix. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the new Dog Farm.

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  2. I enjoyed VHS 2, though I'm apparently in the minority that enjoyed the first one more. It was clear that the producers took criticisms of the first VHS to heart, which lessened the overall effectiveness for me. Found footage or not, VHS 2 seemed too slick for its own good. Horror is most effective when the viewer feels as though he's in the hands of a filmmaker who can't be trusted to maintain some level of decorum. That's one reason bigger budgeted horror films rarely work well - a filmmaker isn't going to test the bounds of propriety too much when millions of dollars of other peoples' money is at stake. The first VHS felt more dangerous to me, more likely to fly off the rails at any moment. VHS 2 felt like a competently made anthology film. Nothing wrong with that, but I think the end result was a less effective horror movie.

    That being said, I think it was wise to trim some fat and winnow down the number of segments this time. The first two segments didn't do much for me, but Safe Haven was effectively discombobulating. Slumber Party Alien Abduction gets the adrenaline pumping, too. For this conceit to work for me, I need some level of plausibility. I need to believe these are tapes of things that might actually have happened. Bionic eyes and a comically accelerated zombie outbreak aren't even remotely plausible.

    VHS 2 wasn't bad, but I think the first VHS was better. I'd like to see a third just to see if the producers can keep the professionalism and bring back more of the danger.

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    Replies
    1. By the way, Carl - a new Noteworthy On Netflix will be one of the first things on tap for the New Year. It's been a while. Glad you're enjoying the new layout. I feel like I lost some traffic in the process, but it needed to be done and would have been far worse after another year had passed.

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