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— by Ben Cosgrove
Let us now praise nubile corpses. Is there anything more entertaining than sitting in the dark and watching high school- and college-aged men and women stalked, terrified and ultimately, gruesomely obliterated? Well, judging by the enduring popularity of horror flicks, apparently not. Year after year, filmmakers create — or, just as often, re-create — movies that invariably involve a group of friends who, through any one of several familiar, venerable plot twists, end up fighting for their lives against a masked psycho/winged beast/flesh-eating alien ... need we go on?
This week, one of the better, gorier recent offerings in the genre, Jaume Collet-Serra's "House of Wax," drops on DVD. (MTV's Kurt Loder wrote of the shudder-inducing remake: "With considerable flair and admirable economy, it accomplishes its single, obsessive goal. It scares the bejesus out of you.") To help mark the bloody home-entertainment debut of "House of Wax" — starring Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padalecki and Paris Hilton — here are several other ghastly teen-scream gems.
 "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003)
Granted, this remake of the grueling, genre-busting 1974 Tobe Hooper film of the same name doesn't quite have the chops of the original. But then again, what movie does? What this Marcus Nispel fright fest does have is a quintet of sweaty, fine-looking young 'uns (Jessica Biel, Mike Vogel et al). traveling by van through the dusty, not-so-fine-looking Texas hinterlands. As in Hooper's film, the teens happen upon a family of rather troubled folk — including the now-legendary son, Leatherface — all of whom appear to enjoy inbreeding, power tools and slaughtering anything that moves. If this film doesn't have you contemplating a move to strict vegetarianism, nothing will.
"Jeepers Creepers" (2001)
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Gina Philips and Justin Long are Trish and Darius, two sniping siblings driving home from college. On a deserted stretch of road, they have a run-in with a mysterious fellow driving a beat-up old truck that looks like it's been sitting in a swamp for 20 years. They think that maybe he's just a redneck looking to cause trouble. Surprise! He's not. He's a winged, carnivorous demon — with a quite fetching hat, by the way — who seems to want to make a snack out of one or both of the increasingly (and understandably) frantic and freaked-out students. (It's perhaps worth noting that some filmgoers, and even some hardcore horror fans, refuse to watch this movie, or indeed any films made by the film's director, Victor Salva. Salva served 15 months in a California state prison in the late 1980s after confessing in 1988 to five felony counts of child molestation and having sex with a 12-year-old boy.)
"Joy Ride" (2001)
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Director John Dahl ("The Last Seduction," "Rounders") fills this road-trip-from-hell thriller with enough horror-flick clichés to fill a tractor trailer — but the man somehow manages to use those clichés to only ratchet up the tension even higher. As Paul Walker, Leelee Sobieski and Steve Zahn are traveling cross-country, they get the nutty notion that it might be funny and help pass the time to mess with truckers' heads via CB radio. And it is funny — until their little game brings the wrath of a faceless, relentless and homicidal big-rig driver down on their pretty little heads. Sound a bit like Steven Spielberg's made-for-TV killer-truck classic, "Duel"? Well, it's supposed to — and Dahl is smart and talented enough to make the comparison stick.
"Final Destination" (2000)
Alex (Devon Sawa) has a really bad feeling about a plane trip he's supposed to take with some friends. When he convinces them not to fly, and the plane they were supposed to be on explodes before their eyes, they're grateful. But when all the kids who have cheated death start dying mysterious (and, let's admit it, really cool) deaths, it becomes clear that the Grim Reaper doesn't like having people mess with his plans. The premise might be thin, but director James Wong (who wrote and directed some of the best "X Files" episodes ever filmed) manages to make the carnage genuinely frightful and utterly entertaining.
"Disturbing Behavior" (1998)
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the plot of "Disturbing Behavior" is how long its basic outlines have been bouncing around Hollywood. With a little bit of 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" here, and a bit of "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) there — and maybe a dash of "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943) thrown in for good measure — the film manages to make nonconformity seem like the only sane option in a psychotically uniform world. James Marsden, Katie Holmes and Nick Stahl are three teens who uncover a secret about their nice little school: All the troublemakers are being turned into placid, goody-goody, unthinking zombies. Of course, there are plenty of parents out there who would probably see this film as a welcome primer on how to get their mouthy son or daughter to straighten up and fly right — but only for a minute. After all, even parents know an allegory when they see one. Right?
"The Faculty" (1998)
Now this is a cast: Salma Hayek, Josh Hartnett, Jordana "That's right, I've dated Derek Jeter" Brewster, Elijah Wood, Usher, Famke Janssen, Jon Stewart (as the brilliantly named Professor Edward Furlong) — with a combination of talents like that, as well as director Robert Rodriguez's wonderfully twisted imagination, this is a can't-miss carnival ride. The story line is ingenious in its simplicity (not to mention its plausibility): The teachers at a high school are acting weird. Or rather, they're acting weirder than usual. Can it be that they're actually aliens? As in, aliens from, you know, outer space? We're not spoiling anything here when we say yes, they're aliens. Let the wild rumpus start.
"Urban Legend" (1998)
The feet of the dangling corpse scraping against the roof of the car parked in the woods. The hitchhiker, dressed like a woman but really a hairy, twitchy man with a knife in his/her purse. Who hasn't thrilled to the telling of obviously fake (but still scary) urban legends? You? Yeah, right. We all love those things. They make us feel superior — we recognize their falsity — and at the same time our imagination keeps poking at us: what if, what if ...? In director Jamie Blanks' hands, the rather obvious notion of using notorious urban legends as inspiration for imaginatively staged slayings raises the question that all clever films raise: Why didn't anyone think of doing this before? With Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart and Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund as a professor of folklore and, yes, urban legends.
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997)
Stardom sure is fleeting. Jennifer Love Hewitt. Ryan Phillippe. Freddie Prinze Jr. Even Sarah Michelle Gellar — wasn't there a time when every one of them was huge? This little picture might have marked the high cinematic point for some of the 1990s' hottest young things, but its biggest claim to continued relevance is that it re-energized the then-moribund "those thoughtless teenagers are gonna get it, but good" school of filmmaking. Again, the plot here is pretty rudimentary, albeit effective. Four teens run a guy over with their car. Thinking he's dead, they toss him in the ocean. Bad move. Soon the body count is rising and (surprisingly) the audience's fear level is rising with it. Written by Kevin Williamson, the fellow who wrote both "Scream" (1996) and "The Faculty" and created "Dawson's Creek," the film is a smart combination of classic suspense, bloodletting and wry social commentary.
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Photos: Warner Home Video
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