Scary Movie (1991) - I have never judged a movie for the amount of times the lead actor made me twitch.
But it happened with this one.
All I know is that it might take me two weeks to stop twitching after watching this brilliant performance by John Hawkes.
Holy smokes. What a workout for your nervous system.
I never knew that this Scary Movie existed nearly a decade before the horror comedy franchise started up in 2000.
This one might have a tinge of dark comedy in it, but it's definitely not silly funny.
John Hawkes plays Warren, a young man who is battling many things in his head.
He's shy. A nerd. Paranoid. Phobic.
The last place in the world Warren should be is at a Halloween festival in his small town in Texas, one that has a particularly aggressive haunted house of horror.
Warren is dragged there by his friend Jerry (Mark Vogues), who sets him up with a girl named Barbara (Suzanne Aldrich). She's a bit gothy and borderline slutty, and should run for the hills rather than link up with Warren. But she tries to give him a chance, God bless her.
The bottom line is, though, Warren is afraid of girls, afraid of haunted houses, afraid of bullies, afraid of everything. And he shows it. When everyone around him catches on, they make fun of and poke at him. Poor Warren gets more and more nervous and paranoid.
To top it off, Warren hears about a serial killer named John Louis Barker (Lee Gettys), who has broken out of custody and could be on his way to the very Halloween festival.
Warren, of course, thinks that Barker will be waiting for him in the haunted house of horror. And of course, he is forced to go in.
The twitching has only begun.
I'll give it to you straight. This is not a slick or lavishly produced movie. If you're looking for gore, there's not a whole lot, and what there is isn't particularly impressive. There are no real naughty bits. If you are easily annoyed by a nervous lead player, it'll have you heading for the exit early on.
I wasn't annoyed. I thought Hawkes hit it out of the park with his portrayal of high-level paranoid Warren. The haunted house of horror, on the cheap, grimy level of low-budget movies, I thought was pretty cool.
