October 18, 2019

With their recent acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox, the Walt Disney Corporation pretty much owns what is left of “cinema” as we know it. Star Wars belongs to Disney. The Muppets are Disney. Hell, even Pulp Fiction is technically a Disney flick. The fact that Disney pumps out all manner of adult-ish films under their various umbrellas is no longer shocking to anyone. Back in the late 1970’s, though, Disney started to produce their first PG-rated live action films...and people freaked the fuck out. This might have had something to do with the fact that some of these PG-rated movies took the hardest of hard left turns from the type of family-friendly fare typically associated with Disney (There must have been some seriously strong narcotics being passed around the Mouse House circa-’79). The type of shit that would make old Walt roll over in his grave...or at least melt out a drop or two. They have this one flick called Watcher in the Woods that threw folks into such a tizzy that it had to be pulled from theaters and retooled in post-production (more on that in like 5000 words). checked out Watcher in the Woods for the first time this week and, I gotta say, it got me TWISTED...even at age 40. Had I watched it originally came out I would’ve shat my britches, man. (Note: I was two years-old when it came out...so I probably had shitty britches anyway). What happens is this: an American couple travel to the English countryside with their two daughters in search of a short-term rental. Their real estate agent brings them to the mansion from Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and they’re all like “bah hah hah this place is hella huge and we could never afford it.” The agent lady explains that it’s actually mad cheap because it comes with a guest house that contains a deeply disturbed landlady named Mrs Aylwood (pronounced “ale would”), played by Hollywood legend and subject of the 1981 Kim Carnes tune “Bette Davis Eyes” Bette Davis. Did you know that song was the best selling single of 1981? Well now you do. Good luck getting it unstuck from inside of your head before the year 2030. The younger daughter Ellie is played by the actress Kyle Richards...who played one of the kids in the original Halloween...which is awesome...and who is now a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills mainstay and aunt to Paris Hilton...which is less awesome. The older daughter Jan is played by pro figure skater and Ice Castles star Lynn-Holly Johnson, who looks about 22...probably because Johnson was 22 when she made this movie. Too old to be loafing around her family’s crib for sure. Mrs. Aylwood takes a shine to Jan from the jump. She asks “what kind of person are you? Average? Adventurous? Do you see things?” Jan is instantly spooked...because 1980 Bette Davis is mad spooky (it’s totally those eyes. You know...from the song). She also sees weird flashes of light from the woods and is all “this place is no bueno...let’s vamanos back to London and hit the Savoy for some Earl Grey!” Before she splits, the real estate agent mentions that the old lady’s young daughter disappeared tragically on the property. Jan heads upstairs, looks into the mirror, and immediately sees not her own reflection...but the image of a blindfolded young girl staring back at her. Then the mirror breaks. The family get right the hell into their car and move to a less haunted mansion. Just kidding...they totally move right in! Jan puts some posters of Paul Weller up on her wall and tries to make lemonade out of these spooky lemons. Her first night’s sleep is interrupted by some more flashing lights from the woods. Also--a shit ton of fog. Seriously, I don’t have any concrete figures in front of me but I’m gonna go ahead and say the majority of this movie’s budget was spent on fog juice. The next morning, Jan brings Ellie puppy shopping at the puppy farm. There, she meets the handsome local bloke with blonde curly locks (Mike) who looks like the kid who played Danny Noonan in Caddyshack...but who is totally NOT that kid. Mike and Jan are making flirt faces at each other...which is all well and good...but then Ellie squats down and starts writing the word “Karen” backwards on the glass...which is less good. I know...you’re thinking “redrum,” right!? That’s what I’m thinking too! And that must be what Jan is thinking because she’s all “da fuqqq are you doing, crazy kid??” Ellie explains that she heard “someone” say Karen and that’s what she wants to name the new puppy. Not Karen, mind you, but NERAK...which is, of course, Karen spelled backwards. Also--not a real name. Jan is freaked the frig out. Mike says “I’m not sure what’s going on...and it might not be my business...but do you want to talk about it!?” I laugh my ass off because that is some silly screenwriting right there. Mike’s mom also inexplicably freaks out when she sees Jan. I feel this reaction is going to mean something at some point in this movie (spoiler: I’m totally right). Jan and Ellie take their new disastrously named puppy for a stroll in the foggy woods slash discarded sets from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. There they run into a man in a trench coat....and I scream...‘cuz there ain’t nothing. scarier than a man in the woods in a GD trench coat! They run to the pond or swamp or what have you but then WHOA! the friggin’ thing with explodes with circles of ice blue lightning (yes...circular lightening. could happen). Jan falls into the water...so that’s bad...and then Mrs Aylwood appears from out of nowhere and starts beating Jan with a stick while she’s underwater...which is even worse! But...but...but...the Jan wakes up back in Aylwood’s cottage and she’s wrapped and blankets and sipping tea and Aylwood is all “good thing I was there to save you!” Shit man...I know my lifeguard certification test was way back in 1989...and the 80’s were loosey goosey...but I’m pretty sure “beat someone with a stick” was not among the ways you are supposed to try to save someone from drowning! Mrs Aylwood decides to explain the plot of the movie/story of her missing daughter to Jan and Ellie. Turns out back in the day there was a lunar eclipse (of the heart) and her daughter KAREN was out playing in an abandoned church with her friends. Apparently they pulled some prank on her and lightning struck and Karen disappeared. It’s kind of like the plot of the Jamie Lee Curtis film Prom Night...but with no prom and 100% more English people. Mrs Aylwood was doomed to wander the woods for decades screaming “Karen”...trying to break Ray Liotta’s record for the number of times someone screams the name “Karen” in a film. Mrs Aylwood is convinced Karen is still out there. I’m convinced she’s that blindfolded girl Jan keeps seeing in mirrors...because she totally is. The next day the entire family heads to the motor cross track to watch Mike ride in a dirt bike race (note: I’m always amazed at the ability of characters in these movies to just carry on with their daily business after some creepy shit goes down. I would be halfway to Mongolia at this point!). Jan finds a sweet spot to watch the race from...but Ellie’s puppy tells her Jan is in trouble so she runs to tell Jan to get out of the way...RIGHT before a flaming bike comes crashing down on that very spot!? GAH! Solid ass puppy, that Nerak. What now!?? Oh, they just go larking about on horseback, of course. Total normal reaction to near-dirt bike-death. Mike explains that his mom got super shifty when he asked about Karen. Mmm hmm. They try to ride their horses to the woods but the horses freak out and lead Jan to the burned out chapel from Mrs Aylwood’s story. Again, instead of running away screaming, Jan decides to go inside...where the wind machine is DIMED out and the circle lightening is popping off. And OH NO!! It's trench coat man again! Scarier than snakes, this dude! But wait...he explains that he’s a hermit named Tom Collie and that he duddn’t mean anyone no harm. Well ok then! He tells Jan that he was with Karen and two other friends on the night she disappeared (note: this event is supposed to be like 30 years in the past...when they were children...but this Collie dude looks at least 65). He tells her he can’t give her the whole story...that she’s gotta go talk to this other dude named Keller. I used to have a roommate named Keller. What that has to do with what we are discussing, I do not know. Most likely: nothing. Jan she goes to see Keller immediately. No wait! She goes to a carnival with Mike first! I guess night business can wait till nighttime. Mike brings her to the funhouse...where she stumbles into the hall of mirrors or whatever...and who does she see but KAREN in every mirror?? Jan heads off to see this Keller cat...who lives in the sex mansion from Eyes Wide Shut (and no...I never get tired of making this joke). She explains that she knows what went down on that one night back in the day...and that’s she’s been seeing Karen in mirrors in whatnot. This Keller is one mean motherfucker though and he doesn’t want to hear boo about it. Tells her to clear out. So there’s that. So now Jan goes back to the woods to find the artist formerly known as Trench Coat Man, who fondles her hair and tells her that she is the ghost of Karen come back to haunt them. I also wrote down that he makes her hold his crow...but I’m not sure what that’s all about. I think it might just be as innocuous as he has crow (the bird) and she held it. Honestly, I’m getting pretty sick of this movie/review! What she finds out is this; Karen’s pals (Keller, Collie, and Mikey’s moms) brought her out into the woods during the eclipse to initiate her into their non-specific secret society. Kind of like the Skulls but coed and for children. While the children were circling a blindfolded Karen, singing “Ring Around the Rosie”, lightning struck the church, causing a giant bell to fall on Karen. But her body was never found, see? Maybe she has spent the last 30 years running around London...walking through the turnstiles of the Tube like Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Jan and Ellie rush to Mrs Aylwood’s cottage to fill her in on the latest and the greatest but when they get there Ellie starts speaking in a “there is no Dana...only Zuul” voice...telling everyone they gotta help Karen (who is a long dead missing ghost, btw). Then Ellie proceeds to faint...just as their absentee mother comes busting into the cottage (their musician father has spent almost the entire movie offscreen paying cheese whiz jazz in the city with Dave Sanborn or whatever. He’e the real hero here if you ask me). Moms is finally like “enough of this happy horseshit” and loads her daughters into the car and shuttles them off to less haunted environs. Before they can get off the Pinewood Studios backlot, however, their car gets stuck on a bridge. The get escape from the car and are all like “well, that blows.” Then the bridge gets struck by unnatural Kool-Aid red alien lightening and the car falls into a ravine...and they are like “Balls! Guess we gotta try again tomorrow!” They are such good sports about all of this cuckoo shit! Shouldn’t they at least TRY to call AAA?? AYWAY! As luck would have it...and because they need to wrap up this movie and fast...there just so happens to be another lunar eclipse penciled on the calendar for the next day. Jan figures if she can lure Collie, Keller, and Mikey’s Mom to the burned-out church and get them to re-do their voodoo during the eclipse then Karen will somehow reappear. So...umm...that’s exactly what they do. Except this time Jan stands in the middle of the circle. Ellie comes down to reveal the mystery of what happened to Karen in her weird Gozer voice. I mean...I guess what happened was...there was this alien spaceship hovering about...and when the first eclipse happened back in the day Karen got beamed up into the spaceship and an alien called THE WATCHER got beamed down to the foggy backlot of Pinewood Studios....and WHAT!!??? So the aliens try to beam Jan up to the ship but that one kid Mike breaks the circle and Jan is saved and Karen reappears looking exactly like she did the day she disappeared 30 years ago. Bette Davis enters the church and sees her SUPERLONG lost daughter and they hug and everything is fine and the movie ends...and I try to imagine what kind of intensive therapy you would need after being held prisoner on a spaceship for 30 years and then also not aging. Right...so...you probably just read what I just wrote and are maybe thinking “I have no idea what this kid is talking about...I really wish he would try to not drink so much wine before he watches these movies (honestly, if you are still reading this review I owe you a tenner. Please send a SASE to my house and I’ll see what I can come up with). The end of this movie is completely bananas....and the reason is this: as I just explained, the Watcher in the Woods is supposed to be an alien, right? Well, when this movie originally premiered in 1980 the climax of the movie featured a “skeletal, insectoid alien”...possibly stolen from the set of actual Alien...which was filming nearby at the time. The audience at the initial premiere were so fucked up by this scary Disney alien they barfed and wept and screamed and the powers that be demanded they reshoot the ending. So the final version has no aliens...just an innocuous beam of light that returns Karen from wherever the fuck she has been. The amount of sense in makes in the absence of a tangible alien is none. So there IS a watcher who is in the woods but you don’t actually get to see it/him/her/them...kind of like when the shark blows up at the end of Jaws: The Revenge (and no...I never get tired of referencing that film either). The end.