My Saw franchise Top 10

With Saw X taking us back to more of Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) back story, it appears that there are still stories to tell in the Saw-niverse. (The Saw-Universe). Box office-wise, the film made only $18 million on its opening weekend, it finished behind Paw Patrol, mostly thanks to the meme Saw Patrol which married the kiddie flick with the horror favorite for an even more unique double feature than Barb-enheimer. $18 million dollars is a far cry from the early 2000s heyday of the franchise when $30 million dollar opening weekends were the norm, but nevertheless, the franchise is wildly profitable thanks to its relatively low budget and its high level of gory excitement. Loyal Saw-ties, as I call my fellow Saw fans, will always turn out for this incredible franchise, arguably the best horror franchise of all time. 

With that in mind, with 10 Saw movies in the books, it's time to rank the Saw franchise. What is your favorite Saw movie Saw-ties? My top 10 is below... 

10. Jigsaw - 2017- Jigsaw retcons a little too much of John Kramer-Jigsaw's back story and is rather derivative in terms of the traps and the gore involved. The first trap, the Barn Trap, is a near complete ripoff of Saw four which also featured a series of inter-connected victims failing to work together and ending up dead for their selfish ways. There is also the way in which the film cheats the overall Saw timeline that left a bad taste in my mouth. This is the rare, not good Saw movie. Most of the Saw movies, in my estimation, are actually good movies. 

9. Spiral from the Book of Saw -2021- Big stars really don't have a place in the Saw franchise. Movie stars, even one as minor as Chris Rock, tend to go into movies like this with too much of what I call 'Main Character Powers.' The chances that Rock was going to end up in a Saw trap with his hand or leg or head cut off were minimal simply because he's a movie star, a big name celebrity. The other Saw movies made smart choices for their players. Recognizable faces like Scott Patterson from Gilmore Girls and Costas Mandylor have faces you know but they are not movie stars. Thus, they can die at any moment in a Saw movie and no one is going to get too upset. The Saw movies, after the original, are ensemble films with multiple stories unfolding. Movie stars pull all of the focus away from Jigsaw, the traps, and the plot. 

8. Saw 2 -2005- I like Saw 2, I like the energy that Donnie Wahlberg brings to this franchise. He's right in the lead actor sweet spot for a Saw movie, not a big movie star but a guy with a recognizable face. I like how his hard headedness is both his best quality as a cop and his downfall as a person. He's determined to save the life of his son but he blows the whole case because he can't control his anger. It's a phenomenal twist ending. That said, outside of Wahlberg's confrontation with Jigsaw, what remains of Saw 2 stumbles around a bit. The filmmakers haven't quite found the formula yet that binds the Saw philosophy to horror movie scares. Saw 2 is like a schematic for the better Saw movies to follow and improve upon. 

7. Saw 3D aka Saw 7 -2010- The end of the Detective Hoffman arc was a bit of a letdown for me. I hated seeing what happened to Betsy Russell's Jill Tuck and it bummed me out enough to push Saw 3D low on this list. And that's despite the much welcomed return of Cary Elwes as Doctor Gordon. Gordon as an apprentice of Jigsaw is a great reveal and the way the noose encircles the main character, Bobby (Sean Patrick Flannery) is terrific. I'm too sad about Jill Tuck to put Saw 3D higher on this list. 

6. Saw 4 -2007- The first post-Jigsaw's death Saw movie struggles a little to get going but once it does, the battle between Hoffman and Strahn, and the main trap centered on Officer Rigg is tremendous. We finally get to learn the fate of Detective Matthews and that ending, it's a heartbreaker. 

Full length list at Horror.Media 

Classic Song Review Voices Carry

Aimee Man is a brilliant songwriter and clearly always has been. My thesis statement for that admittedly not very bold claim is the 1984 song, Voices Carry, performed by Aimee's then band Til Tuesday. In many ways, this is a classic pop song. It has the structure and the strengths of a great pop song. You can, as I did for so many years, passively enjoy Voices Carry as a classic example of 80's pop music. Listening to it today however, and with the context of the incredibly simple but effective music video, you find layers and layers of relationship lore and a narrative of casual abuse that is carefully and brilliantly layered into this four minute pop song. 

Voices Carry tells the story of a relationship between a young woman finding her voice for the first time and the man who is determined to keep that voice silent. The video begins on a narrative thread with the man, played by actor Cully Holland, passive aggressively belittling Aimee's music career, her band and her look. In a voice dripping with condescension, the man  says "I'm SO happy the band is doing well. By the way, what's with the hair? Is that part of the new 'image.'" If you're skin doesn't crawl hearing this man talk, you need to listen again with a new understanding. 

Aimee Mann's opening lyrics are striking and beautifully set the tone for the song and the state of this relationship: 

"In the dark I'd like to read his mind, but I'm frightened of the things I might find." That brilliantly evocative lyric is haunting, it lingers as the song continues. The opening of the song layers in Aimee's insecurity and the excuses she's making to herself about his dismissive behavior towards her. Before long we get to the heart of something in the title of the song that Aimee the character is only beginning to understand about him and herself. When she says I love you, he tells her to keep it down. Voices Carry. Why would he say that? Is he ashamed of her? No, they're in public together in a couple context, he's not ashamed to be seen with her. 

So what's really happening here? It's about control. It's about him telling her how and when she can express her feelings. He's using the notion of propriety and manners in public to exert control over her. She can say I love you but only in the context that he allows it. He gets upset if she expresses her emotions outside of the context of his control. That notion is at the heart of the abuse going on between this man and Aimee, the character in the song and video. By this point in their relationship, it's clear she's coming into her own, finding a voice and giving power to her own words. He intends on keeping control, asserting his will, pretending that it's about some ancient notion of propriety and manners is just a cover for his controlling nature. 

In the music video, this point is made even clearer in a visual. Aimee is wearing a stylish, over-sized earring, expressive of her growing personality and sense of herself, her style. In the visual, the man reaches over the table and removes her earring and replaces it with a pair of more conservative, expensive, earrings, jewelry more in keeping with his style, the classic 80's rich guy. Once again, he's asserting his control over her. It's rendered more insidious by trying to hide his abusive control in the form of what might be mistaken as a generous, expensive gift. It would be easy to miss if you saw this interaction in public. I can see in my mind's eye, some of you shaking your head, lost to the concept that a generous gift could be anymore than just a generous gift. Keep reading. 

The next series of lyrics are some of the most powerful and revealing. 

"I try so hard not to get upset, because I know all of the trouble I'll get." The word 'trouble' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this line. It's mundane enough to indicate that she just doesn't want to endure the griping or arguments that might come from her showing  her emotions. Or, it could mean that she fears his more direct abuse and the exerting of control over her. People who have suffered abuse understand on a fundamental level the idea of going along to get along, hide your feelings so as not to set off an often unpredictable abuser hidden inside a seemingly loving partner. 

"Oh, he tells tears are something to hide, or something to fear. And I try so hard to keep it inside, so no one can hear." 

"Tears are something to hide or something to fear" is a line of remarkable emotional weight. Essentially, he's telling her that she should be ashamed to cry, to express herself in such a display. But the second half that, 'or something to fear,' is chilling. She should be afraid to cry. What could he have possibly done to make her afraid to cry? That's the strongest indication thus far that this abuse is more than just emotional, there is some kind of physical intimidation, if not, outright physical abuse going on here if she's been made afraid to cry. 

Find my full length article at Beat.Media 

Classic Song Review Take Me Home Tonight

Take Me Home Tonight (1986) 

Singer Eddie Money

Songwriter Mick Leeson, Peter Vale, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Phil Spector 

Release Date August 1986 

You know something? Sometimes, thinking too much about a song is a terrible idea. When you ponder some songs, even ones you ostensibly enjoy, you can start to hate that song. That's what has happened to me with a song that was massive in my childhood. I was 10 years old when I first heard Eddie Money sing Take Me Home Tonight. It was on the radio constantly and the video, filmed in black and white in an empty arena, was in massive rotation on MTV, the true obsession of my young mind. 

MTV took up days and hours of my time as a child. I was obsessed with music videos. I was obsessed with music video countdowns, be it the weekly Top 25 Countdown or Dial MTV, the daily Top 8 or 10 countdown to which I committed my parents hard earned money by calling in to make requests and try to push Def Leppard or Poison or Stryper's latest song to the top of the rankings. I never called to vote for Take Me Home Tonight. It wasn't that I didn't like it, rather, it was just never that kind of song. 

Take Me Home Tonight is one of those songs from the 80s that seemed to become a hit out of a particular kind of boomer nostalgia. By 1986, Eddie Money had not released a record in 3 years. He'd been a relatively brief arena rock obsession. In 1977 he released his first record and scored two big hits, Baby Hold On and Two Tickets to Paradise. Money found fame quickly but was just as quickly was reduced to a novelty. His subsequent three records struggled and he was in the wilderness for three years before Take Me Home Tonight became a song he was forced to sing. 

Take Me Home Tonight was the price Eddie Money had to pay to keep his record deal. He didn't actually like the song. His producer and the record company loved the demo and forced it on Money who then recruited Ronnie Spector to sing on the record. Why was Ronnie Spector sought for the song? Because, as lead singer of The Ronettes, her song "Be My Baby" was at the heart of Take Me Home Tonight. It's the song that the protagonist of Take Me Home Tonight is listening to while begs and cajoles a woman to Take him home Tonight.

So, with the ringing endorsement that Eddie Money didn't like the song and Ronnie Spector had to be begged to sing on it, let's dig into this utterly bizarre, lazy, and creepy song. Take Me Home Tonight could be remixed to be a song about a man who was stalking someone and has crept into their bedroom at night, through a window, uninvited to beg her for sex. It really doesn't take much more than thinking about it to move Take Me Home Tonight into the same uncanny valley where The Police classic Every Breath You Takes has lingered for about 40 years. 

Find my full length review at Beat.Media 

Movie Review Pieces

Pieces (1983) 

Directed by Juan Piquer Simion 

Written by Dick Randall, Roberto Loyola 

Starring Christopher George, Paul Smith, Edmund Purdom, Linda Day 

Release Date October 14th, 1983 

Published October 17th, 2023 

Pieces? Where have you been for all of my horror movie loving life. Pieces is a 1983 slasher movie that perfectly mixes camp and horror. The film is often hysterically over the top and genuinely gross in gory set pieces well at home in the horror genre. It's not an easy balance between being goofy and scary and Pieces really hits the sweet spot. I can't say that anyone making Pieces knew they were making a goofball melodrama crossed with a bloody slasher movie, I imagine they thought they were just making an exploitation film. And yet, what they made is exactly what I love about 80s horror, a hilariously overwrought drama and a slasher movie. 

Pieces centers on a child named Timmy Reston. It's 1942 and Timmy's daddy is fighting in World War 2. On the home front, Timmy has found some of dad's risque collection of... puzzles. Well, one puzzle specifically, one of a nude, smiling woman. When Timmy's mom catches him putting the puzzle together, she reacts with fury and plans to burn the puzzle and everything Timmy owns in revenge for this lustful heart. Timmy, being perhaps even more dramatic than his mother, runs to grab an ax which he uses to split his mother's skull and dismember her body. Timmy manages this just as his governess is arriving at the home. She calls the Police and though Timmy is covered in blood and his mother's head is in his closet, they assume he's just a traumatized kid and not the killer. 

Cut to 40 years later, it's 1982 and we get our first bizarre non-sequitur moment. On a college campus, we see a young friendly girl on roller skates. She's waving to friends  and appears to be a beloved young person. Shots of her on her roller skates are cross-cut with the arrival of a van for a glass company. We see the girl on skates and workers exiting the vehicle. She skates faster and more excited and the workers are removing a sheet of glass from the van. You know where this is heading and exactly what you think is going to happen, happens, she crashes into the glass. Is she dead? You might assume so. Why did we witness this? Beats me, there is zero explanation for this happening. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Movie Review Fair Play

Fair Play (2023) 

Directed by Chloe Domont 

Written by Chloe Domont 

Starring Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, Rich Sommer 

Release Date September 29th, 2023 

Published October 12th 

Fair Play is a vile, ugly, nasty movie and I kind of love it. Few films have gotten under my skin as deeply as Fair Play has. I've struggled to write about the film until now simply because trying to gather my thoughts on it leaves me both enraged and exhausted. In a good way. I've written this review several times and thrown it out several times. I've written negative reviews and positive reviews and tried to figure out a way to talk about the movie without revealing too much about myself. That's the power of a work of art, when it can get inside you and mess around like that. 

Fair Play has a really clever opening shot. The camera opens on the back of Phoebe Dynevor's Emily at a party. She stands alone in the distance as Donna Summer's sex anthem, Love to Love You Baby plays on the soundtrack. The deeper meanings of this shot will become clear as the movie plays out. Emily, alone, singular, distant, and yet, sex is in the air. Sex has a big role to play in Fair Play. In fact, within mere moments of introducing Emily, we meet her boyfriend Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) and the two engage in deeply, unexpectedly transgressive sex that gets bloody. Note that, it's important later. 

The sex is followed by Luke almost accidentally asking Emily to marry him. He happened to be carrying a ring which fell out of his pocket as he was getting dressed. Despite the deeply inappropriate moment, Luke decides to ask Emily to marry him and she, surprisingly, says yes. The story of their engagement will be memorable, though I doubt it's the story they will tell their kids if they have any. Get ready because writer-director Chloe Domont is going to do this to us throughout Fair Play, taking life events and giving them a nasty twist. 

Emily and Luke met while working together at the same finance gig. Luke has been with the company longer and when an opening management comes around, both Emily and Luke assume that he will get the job. They even celebrate prematurely with sex. That night, at around 2 in the morning, Emily gets a call from their boss, Campbell (Eddie Marsan). He wants her to come have a drink and upon arrival, she's told that she will be getting the promotion that she thought was going to Luke. 

It gets more awkward as Luke will now be Emily's immediate underling, her analyst. She will have to tell him what to do and take credit for work that he will do on her behalf, such is the nature of the job. She has to make the hard decision on an investment, but it's based on his grunt work. Luke tries to be happy for his now secret fiancée but the cracks in the relationship are immediate and seemingly irreparable. It's not merely Luke's male ego or pride getting in the way, it's also the way both are tip toeing around each other at work and at home.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Totally Killer

Totally Killer (2023) 

Directed by Nahnatchka Khan

Written by David Matalon, Sasha Perl Raver, Jen D'Angelo 

Starring Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen 

Release Date October 6th, 2023 

Published October 12th, 2023 

Totally Killer stars Kiernan Shipka as Jamie, a High School student with a typically standoffish relationship with her mother, Pam (Julie Bowen). The two fight and disagree as mothers and daughters are wont to do but when Pam is murdered, Jamie is devastated. The killer is one familiar to the town they live in, a vile serial murderer known as the Sweet Sixteen Killer. The moniker comes from the killer's M.O, stabbing his victims 16 times. The killer made a splash in 1987 when he killed three teenagers who happen to have been Pam's best friends as a kid. 

The killer left a note indicating that he'd planned on killing Pam all along though why he waited until now to get around to it is unclear. Nevertheless, Jamie is despondent until her best friend, Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), reveals that she has built a time machine for their school project. It's based on a design created by Amelia's mother, Lauren (Kimberly Huie), who gave up her inventing dreams when she became a single mom. Amelia believes that she can send Jamie back to 1987 which would give Jamie the chance to stop the killer before he's able to take even one victim, thus saving her mom in the future. 

This time travel theory is put to the test the same night when the Sweet Sixteen killer tracks down Jamie and chases her right into Amelia's time machine. Stabbing the control panel, the killer inadvertently sends Jamie back in time. Arriving in 1987, Jamie must now convince people that she's from the future to stop the murders but, she has to be careful not to change too much of the past or it could lead to her not having a future. In the past, Jamie meets her mom, played as a teen by Olivia Holt, and finds out that she's a mean girl. 

Pam was the leader of a group of bullies known as The Molly's. They're The Molly's because the four of them all dress like Molly Ringwald. It was the three other Molly's, Tiffany (Liana Liberato), Heather (Anna Diaz) and Marisa (Stephi Chin Salvo), who were the original victims of the Sweet Sixteen Killer. From here, the movie lays out several potential killers including the future school Principal, Doug, the future Gym Teacher Randy, and future Podcaster, Chris, who happens to specialize in documenting and exploiting the Sweet Sixteen Murders as a True Crime Podcaster. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Horror in the 90s Popcorn

Popcorn (1991) 

Directed by Mark Herrier 

Written by Tod Hackett 

Starring Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, Dee Wallace Stone, Ray Walston, Derek Rydall 

Release Date February 1st, 1991 

Box Office $4.205 million 

Popcorn is a minor miracle of a horror movie. The film should have been a complete disaster. The film ran through three directors, two lead actresses, and a screenplay credit fight that ended with the credited screenwriter being a fake name. There is no good reason that Popcorn turned out as well as it did. And yet, the film has developed a minor cult following. Despite having been passed on by Black Christmas director Bob Clark and then taken away from director Alan Orsmby, who directed a significant portion of the film, and switching lead actors after the film had begun production, Popcorn is a wildly fun and exciting horror flick. 

Popcorn follows the denizens of a college film class as they seek funding for their short films by throwing a horror film festival at a rundown local movie theater. Having somehow secured three cult horror movies from the 1960s, the plan is to use the wild, over the top marketing gimmicks of these movies to sell out the place and use the money to make short films. The plan comes together when one of the students manages to legendary movie props from the dramatic and iconic Dr. Mnesyne (Ray Walston). With his tools, the students can recreate the weird wonderful time when the movies in their festival were briefly the most innovative and popular of genre fare. 

The story of Popcorn however, truly centers on one of the students, Maggie (Jill Schoelen). Plagued by nightmares, Maggie hopes to take her wild dreams and turn them into her own short horror movie. What she doesn't know yet is that her dreams are based around a real childhood drama. When Jill was very young, her film director father murdered her mother on stage after the showing of his own short film for which the ending was unshot. The ending was instead acted out live on stage with the murder of Jill's mother. Jill was also meant to die but she was rescued at the last moment. 

Jill knows none of this so when a ragged looking can of film is found among the movie props they've borrowed for the festival, she's unaware that it is her father's legendary lost short film. She does however, recognize some of it as she and her fellow film students watch it out of curiosity. The short film happens to look a lot like the scenes from Maggie's nightmares. The question that will eventually emerge as Popcorn goes along, is Maggie's father actually dead? We may find out as her fellow students consider showing this creepy short as part of the festival. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media