FILM FOCUS: THE SCREAM TEAM

The Scream Team is one of many Halloween-themed Disney Channel original movies.  My only knowledge of it was that it co-starred Kathy Najimy as a ghost, and that was certainly enough to pique my interest.  Upon finally watching it yesterday (it first aired in 2002), I was pleased to discover that the Halloween-theme was prominent.  Too many of the “spooky” Disney Channel movies rely on supernatural elements and throw in a pumpkin or two in the background for Halloween cred.  The Scream Team actually takes place around Halloween and incorporates the holiday into the plot.

And what a plot!  What a convoluted, overly-complicated, disparate plot!  The movie begins by showing a grandfather’s corpse, dead in his chair as the paramedics arrive. I thought this was a weirdly bold (and potentially traumatizing) move for a Disney Channel movie.  We then cut to a flashback of the still-alive grandfather working on a pumpkin carving machine with his two grandchildren.  Between the early appearance of a corpse and pumpkin carving I had overly high expectations going in.

Things settled down quickly as the next thirty minutes were spent setting up the aforementioned complicated plot.  Dead grandfather was an inventor and former hardware store owner in a small New Englandy town called Steeplechase.  His adult son was embittered toward his father (I mean, really, REALLY bitter; he spent a lot of the movie complaining about his father) but his two grandkids loved him.  One of the grandkids is played by a young Kat Dennings, of Two Broke Girls and a few random movies fame.  I have never seen Kat Dennings play anything but a sarcastic wiseass and that’s what she’s doing here as well, though a milder pre-teen version.  She also engages in some of the worst, fakest on-screen running I’ve ever seen.  Meant to be running for her life in the woods at one point, she instead is laughing and sort of doing the chicken dance with her arms.  Even at a tender age, Kat Dennings was too steeped in irony to pretend to run for her life.

Eventually, after way too much set-up, the ghosts show up.  It’s hopelessly complicated, but in essence Grandpa’s ghost gets captured by a local evil spirit, and the kids track down some other ghosts to a limbo-like waystation for spirits.  The waystation is a total rip-off of the bureaucratic underworld seen in the movie Beetlejuice, down to the fact that the ghosts all appear in the same clothes they died in.  It’s an eclectic mix; spotted among the ghosts are cheerleaders, soccer players, a movie usher and a mime.  This movie would have you believe that people die constantly while engaged in their seemingly non-dangerous day jobs (which I don’t know—maybe that’s true?).

In short, the kids team up with a trio of ghosts who work at the waystation to rescue their grandfather’s spirit and usher him on to heaven (or potentially hell—this is never discussed in the movie.  The spirits just walk through a mirror into a sort of rainbow tunnel).  Erik Idle plays Coffinhead, a Revolutionary War ghost with bad teeth.  Kathy Najimy is the less-creatively-named Mariah, a ghost bride and sort of office manager.  And finally there’s Tommy Davidson as Jumper, a dead parachuter.  I’ve never seen Tommy Davidson in anything else before, but he was incredibly annoying in this.  He shouted all of his dialogue with an overload of sassiness.  Think of Chris Tucker’s character in Rush Hour, but even louder and sassier, and dressed as a parachuter.  Weirdly the ghosts only ever refer to themselves as “the Soul Patrol,” yet the movie is titled The Scream Team.

There is way, way more to the plot, involving a pyromaniac Pilgrim ghost with a thirst for revenge, a conspiring local businessman, stolen library books, an abandoned mine, the town’s first natural gas pipe system, and it goes on and on.  There is much running around with Erik Idle’s character disappearing every time the kids get into trouble, several run-ins with local cops, and the entire time the dad character is just bitching about not getting enough love and respect from his own father while his kids are fleeing for their lives (or in Kat Dennings’ case, chicken-dancing for her life) from a fireball-hurling spirit of vengeance.

Kathy Najimy (predictably, as she can do no wrong in my eyes) was the highlight, though of the three ghosts her role was the smallest.  She added some needed humor as the flustered office admin ghost who just wants to get on with her job, but at one point she morphs into a total bad-ass and has a supernatural showdown with the evil ghost and shoots ghost-lasers (or something) at him.  The special effects run the gamut; the shimmery, multi-colored flying ghosts are actually kind of cool, but there is also some laughably bad CGI fire throughout.

The other highlight of the movie is the Halloween décor and small-town festival.  Seriously, I love fictional small-town holiday festivals—call it the Stars Hollow effect.  Throughout the story the town is preparing for its annual Halloween festival, and we see truckloads of pumpkins and hay bales being delivered, and several trips are made to the most lavishly decorated library you’ll ever see (it even has a fireplace decked out with cobwebs, ravens and fake fall leaves).  The big finale takes place at the festival on Halloween, where the evil ghost hurls fireballs at the Ferris wheel and the locals burn a pumpkin-headed effigy.  As I wrote at the beginning of this overly long review, they certainly didn’t skimp on the Halloween décor.  Sadly they also didn’t skimp on the plot elements either, which were dizzying. 

The screenwriter (or writers) clearly had daddy issues since the movie essentially ends with the whiny dad sitting down with his father’s ghost for a heart to heart talk.  Those two kids risked life and limb for two hours to save their grandfather's immortal soul and then at the end when finally reunited with his ghost they say a quick goodbye and scurry upstairs to give their dad some private time to work out his feelings.  In the end, The Scream Team isn’t one of Disney Channel’s best Halloween offerings (I would give that award to Halloweentown), but it’s got a few things in its favor and makes for some good cheesy fun, with lots of nice glimpses at a New England town done up for Halloween.

HOLIDAY ICONS: ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK

I can’t recall how I first became acquainted with Elvira, but I must have been relatively young.  It was likely from commercials—back in the 80s and 90s Elvira was a staple around October, appearing in the type of lavish Halloween commercials that I miss nowadays.  We’re talking haunted houses, Universal Monsters, and dry ice galore.  She sold Budweiser and root beer and her cardboard likeness also adorned supermarket displays.  If you don’t remember just how awesome these commercials were, here’s a taste:

I’ve been going through a sort of Elvira renaissance lately, seeking out interviews, videos and whatever else I can find.  I’ve really come to love her, for her humor, her sense of kitschy fun, and knowingly bad puns.  But I think what really puts her over the top for me is that while she’s been quite successful at what she does, she’s never really broken past D-List status.  Her movie flopped; her sitcom (more on that below) never made it past the pilot; her reality show is all but forgotten.  But she’s been soldiering on for decades now, appearing in sitcoms, on pinball machines, comic books, live shows and tons of merchandise.  Elvira always gets the last laugh, even if she’s never gone fully mainstream.  Or has she?!

Elvira’s real name is Cassandra Peterson, and she’s a former member of the Groundlings comedy troupe.  Her even earlier career, starting while still in her teens, was as a go-go dancer and Las Vegas showgirl.  While in Vegas she either briefly encountered or briefly dated Elvis Presley, depending on what account you read.  In these early years she also had a brief cameo in a Fellini film and appeared in a lot of music videos, all as Cassandra.  Elvira came later, when Vampira, the original female horror host, was working on a reboot of her show in the early 80s (long before reboots were a thing).  Vampira eventually left the project over creative disputes (and remained bitter and litigious about Elvira for the rest of her life).  Meanwhile Elvira was born, the name plucked out of a hat at the last minute when lawyers blocked the show from using the Elvira name.

Elvira’s mix of Valley Girl ditziness, genuine sex appeal and Goth horror aesthetic quickly clicked with the public, and she landed endorsement deals and guested on talk shows.  But while her fame grew, it never fully exploded.  As I mentioned above, her inaugural film effort, the movie Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, was a box office bomb.  The movie was a staple rerun on Comedy Central and USA Network when I was younger.  It’s fun, but not great, and saddled with a lame bunch of teen characters that Elvira has said the studio execs forced her to include to entice the “youth demographic.” 

Elvira also filmed a sitcom pilot in the early 90s that I only just recently learned about, titled The Elvira Show.  She plays a witch living with her equally witchy aunt, portrayed by the always delicious Katherine Helmond.  Luckily, you can watch the pilot on YouTube.  It’s loaded with the purposefully lame sexual innuendo Elvira is known for, plus a talking black cat that predates Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch by almost a decade:

The show was never picked up, but Elvira continued to eke out her place in pop culture, especially around Halloween every year.  Her likeness adorned calendars, video games and slot machines; she had self-titled comic book series at both Marvel and DC, and released numerous CDs of spooky music.  For years she's had her own live show at Knotts Scary Farm every October (sadly this year is the last).  She earned her own parody character on The Simpsons, the aptly named Boobarella.  She even a reality show called The Search for the Next Elvira in the early 2000s.   The concept of the show was to find an Elvira impersonator to take up the mantle.  The judges included two drag queen Elviras and instead of cutting contestants Elvira electrocuted them at the end of every show with the help of some bad skeleton CGI.  The show only lasted one season and Elvira later admitted that no one was really interested in a mock version of herself, so she continues to play the part.

And she plays it to perfection—seriously, the woman has not aged a day since she first appeared.  She’s clearly very smart and savvy, having written or co-written her own material over the years and cannily merchandising herself.  She has a large queer following, including yours truly, I think in part due to her slightly outsider status.  She’s a misfit of sorts, but a sexy, self-confident one.  You either get her or you don’t, but if you do, you really love her.  When asked in interviews what the secret to her success is, Elvira always credits being associated with Halloween, and advises aspiring stars to hitch their wagon to a holiday.  That’s my kind of gal!

SEASON'S STAGINGS: HOLIDAY INN

Growing up, the movie Holiday Inn was a perennial favorite in our household, especially around Christmas.  It’s a combination of all my favorite things: musicals, the 1940s, inns, New England, and, most importantly, holidays!  So when I heard there was a new stage musical adaptation headed for Broadway, I promptly bought tickets.  Some unabashed Golden Age musical optimism seemed the perfect anodyne to these last few days of the most stressful election season ever (something the lead actor touched upon during his closing remarks).  It’s got that All-American, Greatest Generation “we’re gonna put on a show!” (which is literally dialogue in the musical) sunniness.

Although the critical reviews were somewhat tepid, I was not disappointed.  The first act was definitely a bit sluggish despite the many chipper Irving Berlin tunes (in addition to the holiday-themed tunes that appear in the original film, the stage version is padded out with several other Berlin songs such as “Blue Skies”).   There was a lot of plot set-up before we actually got to the holidays themselves, but once the first seasonal number started (replete with showgirls dressed like turkeys wearing cornucopia headpieces) I was all in.  The best number came towards the end of Act One—and I’m not saying that just because it was Christmas-themed.

Interestingly, the song was “Shaking the Blue Away,” a Berlin tune I associate more with Easter since it appears in the film Easter Parade.   However here it was repurposed and staged at Christmastime, with a bevy of enthusiastic showboys and showgirls shaking and singing while simultaneously decorating the inn for Christmas.  Most impressive was a tap routine that was done while the dancers also jumped rope using a bedazzled garland.  That’s the kind of old school musical razzle dazzle that I live for! 

The second act was loaded with holiday-themed numbers, including the aforementioned “Easter Parade” (with wonderfully over-the-top Easter bonnets) as well as numbers devoted to Valentine’s Day and the 4^th of July, including a recreation of Fred Astaire’s famous fireworks and tap routine.  Gone is the “Abraham” number from the original film, which makes sense given that it was done in blackface (a reminder that the 1940s, however idealized now, was also fucked up).  The ensemble of the stage version was relatively diverse, and one of the male leads was African-American, which signaled a nice change from the all-white casts of days gone by.  There was one sour note, a tired trans-panic joke where one of the showgirls speaks in a deep man's voice and scares off one of the male leads.  I was surprised that such a moment (aside from being unfunny) would be included in such a traditionally queer-friendly space as Broadway theatre.

Also gone was the problematic character of the African-American housekeeper, replaced with a coded lesbian “handywoman” played to perfection by Megan Lawrence.  It’s the type of supporting character that Thelma Ritter or Mary Wickes would have relished back in the day.  The other standout for me was leading lady Megan Sikora, who in addition to all of the dancing and singing was extremely funny in the type of part that can sometimes be a bit bland.  Speaking of a bit bland, the one weak spot was High School Musical graduate Corbin Bleu.  His dancing was admirable (he’s the one that does the 4^th of July fireworks routine), but his character, a lovable cad played by Fred Astaire in the film, fell flat.  Perhaps due to a surfeit of dialogue, his character barely registered outside of his dancing. 

The true stars of the night, however, was the cranky elderly woman and her hard-of-hearing husband sitting behind us!  She irritably repeated the punchline of every joke to him after the fact, and after a not-terribly-funny joke about a character being stung by a Connecticut wasp, she relayed the punchline and then said:

Cranky Wife: “Took you long enough.”

Husband: “What?”

Cranky Wife: “I said, took you long enough!”

Husband: Pause.  Yes, it did.

I’m waiting for the day those two get their own Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-style stage musical extravaganza!