THE AMERICAN SCREAM

Chiller Films presents Michael Stephenson's follow up to BEST WORST MOVIE.  It is a documentary about three families who every year turn their homes into haunted house attractions in the city of Fairhaven, Massachusetts.  People who do this are called "House Haunters".  The film details the challenges and stresses that go into making these attractions as well as the rewards for doing so for the families and the neighborhoods that they live in.  Oh, and the documentary is called THE AMERICAN SCREAM.  I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

The documentary starts off with Victor and his family.  Victor is a man that is focused on every detail of his haunt.  He wants it to be the biggest, scariest and most realistic looking attraction in the whole city.  He goes all out.  We learn that he didn't have a childhood that enjoyed things like cartoons, Christmas, birthdays and Halloween.  His attraction is more of a way of reclaiming some of that lost time.  A couple of blocks away Manny is also putting up an attraction.  He loves doing it but he doesn't get stressed with detail like Victor does.  He does it for fun and as a way to bond with his family more.  A few more blocks away is Matt and Richard who are a father and son team (I forget which one is which) who do not necessarily have the technical skill to pull off an elaborate haunt but they have big hearts and use their attraction to collect donations for charity and entertain their neighbors.  It is funny because you can see the quality of each attraction diminish as they move from Victor's elaborate and expensive sets down to Matt and Richards cheap and tacky but still creative decorations.  They all have different resources and work with what they got but they all have the same love and devotion to the holiday of Halloween.  Also scaring people is a lot of fun apparently.

This is a pretty good documentary.  It isn't nearly as good as BEST WORST MOVIE but it still has its own appeal.  My biggest problem is that I am not into house haunting unless it is real ghosts of course.  I am into movies which is why I love BEST WORST MOVIE so much.  However I do love Halloween which is why I find reason to be interested in the subjects of this documentary.  Also everyone is so dang likable.  You want them all to be successes which they are.  They all have to deal with their past and present day problems which everyone can relate to.  Those problems have a way of getting in the way of what they want to do with their lives.  These guys show us that you can succeed no matter how big and stressful your problems can be.

Really this is a movie about people doing what they want to do and following their dreams.  Victor wants to be a professional house haunter and he is given that chance to be that.  The message is to follow your dreams.  Manny wants to spend more time with his kids and watch them grow up.  Matt and Richard just want to make people happy.  Even though this movie feels a little dry at times you can't help but be touched by each one of these guys as they show us their love for their families, friends and Halloween.  By the end it is Victor that puts Halloween into a perspective I never thought of before.  Basically he said that Halloween is a holiday for the neighborhood.  Christmas and Thanksgiving are for families.  Halloween brings strangers in the neighborhood together to celebrate one night of the year.  There is also this understanding that each Halloween is precious.  It only comes once a year and you will only experience so many of them in your life.  The families in THE AMERICAN SCREAM make the most out of their favorite holiday.  They spend time with each other creating memories of putting up and taking down these attractions.  They together feel the excitement of opening their haunts to the public as well as the sadness of it being over.  Be sure you make the most of this Halloween this year as well as the many more to come.  You know I will.......probably.


Jason

BEST WORST MOVIE is simply THE BEST!

BEST WORST MOVIE is the best documentary I have ever seen.  It deals with the concept of what gives a film its "cult" status.  The documentary explores the weird fascination some people have for the movie TROLL 2.  The kid from TROLL 2, Michael Stephenson is all grown up and has become a film maker himself.  He takes us on a little journey learning just how much people truly love TROLL 2.  The film TROLL 2 has experienced a surge in popularity in the last few years.

God bless George Hardy.  What an American treasure and wonderful human-being.  He played the father in TROLL 2 and now in real life he is a dentist.  He is an extraordinary man living in a normal  ordinary world.  BEST WORST MOVIE follows him most of the time as he too discovers what a popular guy he is for playing the father in TROLL 2.  In the past George wanted to be an actor.  Now he is given a chance to experience a taste of what it is like to be famous.  He goes through the highs and lows of fame questioning whether or not he made the right decision in his past.  Ultimately he does come to realize that he has a great life now and that he did indeed choose the right path.  He is such a joy to watch on the screen as he cheerfully accepts his role as being in what a lot a people consider to be the worst movie ever made relishing the attention.  Often BEST WORST MOVIE breaks away from it's main story of George Hardy to also interview other actors from TROLL 2 and let us know what they have been doing and where they are now.  It is interesting to see the real people who we only thought of as characters in a bad movie.  I particularly like how the director, Claudio Fragasso tries to understand his own film's popularity.  He was trying to make a scary movie so when audiences are laughing he doesn't understand why.  The notion of what is "campy" is lost on him.  Maybe it is a cultural thing.

What BEST WORST MOVIE does best is bring to light the limited popularity of a cult film.  TROLL 2 has a following that seems rather small.  But when you get all the fans together at screenings we see just how big of a phenomenon the film has really become.  George Hardy and others involved in TROLL 2 see all these people and get the idea that this film is big everywhere.  But as the documentary shows when appearing at other conventions outside of TROLL 2 designated events the numbers of people showing up for Q&A's and autographs are almost nonexistent.  Not everyone appreciates TROLL 2's camp value.  Different audiences view the film differently (as we see at the Alabama screening for charity) and their reaction reminds us all as to why TROLL 2 is considered the worst movie of all time.

BEST WORST MOVIE is well put together and always entertaining.  I am very thankful to the documentary film makers for explaining how TROLL 2 ended up the movie it became and how it affected so many people.  I remember seeing TROLL 2 back when I was a kid.  I didn't like it especially with such an out of nowhere dark ending.  I did not become a fan making troll masks or writing TROLL 2 fan fiction like so many others depicted in the documentary.  I dismissed the film as craptacularness and went on with the rest of my life.  Still I often thought about the film.  I cannot deny that the odd and bizarre shenanigans of the film left an impression on me.  After watching so many Italian horror films I would think back to TROLL 2 and wonder if it was actually an Italian production.  BEST WORST MOVIE answered that question big time with a resounding 'YES'.  Now we know why the dialogue was so terrible and the acting so unnatural.  What the naive director thought was American behavior simply was nowhere near the realm of reality.

Overall this documentary is very honest and uplifting piece of work.  In the end it gives us film makers hope that no matter how bad a film is they all have an audience out there somewhere.  People can love a film for something other than the film's intended purpose.  Let us hope they make TROLL 3 just for the heck of it.  It wouldn't be the same but I would watch if George Hardy was back.

Jason