Milo-Jeeder In "American Gothic", the story revolves around Cynthia, a young woman mourning the death of her baby daughter, for which blames herself (and she really should!). Following her psychiatrist's advice, Cynthia and her husband, Jeff, go on a trip with some friends, but their trip is cut short when they find themselves stranded in a deserted island. During a walk around the woods, the group finds a wooden cottage and they decide to break in (of course they do!). While the guys and girls are snooping around the place, going through the drawers and even dancing the Charleston like complete imbeciles, the owners of the house arrive. The householders are an elderly couple who call themselves "Ma" and "Pa". Jeff apologizes for the intrusion, but Ma tells him not to worry and invites them to stay for as long as they need. Later, we find out that Ma and Pa have a "child" named Fanny, a middle-aged woman who thinks she's 11-years-old. Fanny has two brothers, who are also middle-aged and behave like children. Up until this point, we assume that this is only a very peculiar family, but the truth is that Ma and Pa are religious fundamentalist who condemn and punish everything that is disapproved by the Bible, and they have trained their "children" to be that way too. As it is expected, the young friends and their modern lifestyle don't quite fit with the family's traditional values and it doesn't take long for the carnage to begin. "American Gothic" is one of those films where it's very hard not to like the killers more than the victims. The family members are judgmental and self-righteous, which are two qualities that many people dislike, but it is also evident that they simply don't know any better as a consequence of living in seclusion and having been trained to strictly obey the Bible. At first, Ma and Pa actually seem to mean well, since they offer shelter without expecting anything in return. However, this so-called act of kindness could also be explained through the Bible, which they seem to follow unconditionally ("Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless"). It is uncertain whether Ma and Pa were being nice out of kindness or if they were only obeying the book, but regardless of their primary motives, they help the young friends nonetheless. On the other side, these ungrateful bastards show no respect, they laugh at the family's lifestyle, make fun of the obviously mentally ill "children" and expect the family to adjust to their lifestyle, so in the end, one sort of expects them to die horribly. Even though the modern audience would most likely relate to the young friends, at the same time, it is easy to understand why the family members were out to get them. It is evident that the family doesn't kill just to please the Lord, they also get pleasure from it but they are immune from prosecution due to insanity and still less offensive than the young group. The other reason to like the family of lunatics more than the young friends, is that the family members are actually funny and likable due to their hilarious insanity. Crazy characters tend to be more appealing, at least compared to these nasty and generic young characters. I wouldn't exclusively blame "American Gothic" for providing unlikeable victims, as this is a common thing in slasher films. Perhaps, in some cases, it is intentional and we are supposed to root for the bad guys or even take these films as a cautionary tale with some kind of moral, like in this case "Don't be a disrespectful jerk to those who have different values" or "don't barge in and expect the others to adjust to your own ways"."American Gothic" provides a few funny moments and lines, which in some cases seem intentional and in other cases not. For instance: I think the family members, especially Fanny, are supposed to be somewhat humorous. I refuse to believe that these over-the-top characters were not deliberately written to provide a few laughs. The acting on the other hand, is one of the things that had me chuckling once or twice and I don't think this was supposed to happen. The beautiful Yvonne De Carlo plays the part of Ma and she does it very well. Rod Steiger on the other hand, mostly gave a solid performance, but I also found his acting to be over the top sometimes, which provides this film with a nice campy nature. Actress Janet Wright basically steals the show with her performance of Fanny, the daughter. Not only she manages to be deliberately funny, she also portrays a character that is somehow likable in a condescending way (sort of like a mental patient claiming to be Napoleon, maybe?). As for the gore, there really isn't much and towards the last minutes, we get a lot of murders in a very short period of time, but it seems rushed and it is hard to appreciate them. I think this is a little bit disappointing, as gore and creative murders are usually expected in films like this. The low amount of gore doesn't ruin an otherwise entertaining film, but it sure gives the feeling that something is missing. This film goes to a safe place by using the classic formula of a group of moronic friends becoming stranded in a deserted place and ending up dead. "American Gothic" goes out of its way to avoid being too generic and makes a noble effort to stand out, by offering a very colorful family of villains and it works pretty good, even if it's unintentionally funny for moments. We also get a far-fetch twist towards the end, which I won't spoil, but I will say that I found it a little bit unnecessary and rushed, although not enough to ruin a film that is mostly fun and respectable.

acidburn-10 The plot = Six young friends fly off on a weekend's camping trip, but when engine trouble forces them down on a remote island in the middle of nowhere, they explore and find a strange house occupied by an even stranger family, and that's when the troubles begin.Okay this isn't a total train wreak of a movie, the setting of the island is a great place for a movie of this type, but of course it's not really used to it's full advantage, but the house though is a perfect setting, and for the first half this movie does keep you interested, like when we're introduced to the strange family, Ma and Pa who are both stuck living in the 1920's backwoods America, and then we meet the kids who are all middle aged but act like children, which was really unsettling.But it's when the action kicks in is when it's kinda disappointing, there is obviously no effort made on the special effects like the death scenes are tame and dull, not a shred of imagination put into any of them and the acting is flawed at best especially from the six young friends, none of them are very interesting, they were all just dull, apart from Sarah Torgov who plays the main character Cynthia who ranges from fragile minded then finally snapping as the movie progresses, although flawed at times and didn't always seemed believable. It's the cast who plays the family who are the real winners here, Rod Stegier and Yvonne De Carlo who play Ma and Pa play they're parts really well without going over the top and the middle aged children each do they're parts well.All in all not a terrible movie, but could have been better with this kind of story line.

happyendingrocks This twisted little number boasts some nifty variations on the killer family framework laid out in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but despite some often interesting ideas, the end result is only a modestly effective horror outing.The set-up works very well, and the isolation of the island our ultimately doomed party finds themselves stuck on makes the unlikely scenario play out as plausible. Things get a bit tricky when they encounter their murderous hosts, however, and the film stumbles a bit by not capitalizing on a great opportunity to build some suspense once our future victims find themselves in the family's lair. Our first introduction to Ma and Pa is pretty much enough to reveal that something is clearly out of whack with them, and once we meet their certifiably insane daughter Fanny it gets hard to believe that our protagonists would opt to stick around and let their impending fates play out. The film would work much better if it initially presented the homicidal clan as deceptively benign, and there might be some actual scares on hand if the macabre and sickening truths of the family were less thinly veiled. This seems like a wasted opportunity, and it's one of the main reasons this otherwise entertaining offering stays mired in the "decent" category.Once the predictable slasher elements begin to unfold, American Gothic loses some of the steam it builds up to that point. While the film's first death is certainly an original and mirthful bit of mayhem, the killings that follow it are largely rote, textbook fare and offer nothing that will get fans of the genre too excited, unless you've been jonesing to see someone have their eye gouged out by the lance of a pewter knight figurine. The splatter on hand is disappointingly paltry, and only Fanny's eventual come-uppance generates any shock value on that front.Far more impactful are some of the grisly nuances of the family's skewed domestic existence. Fanny's "baby" is a horrifying addition to the proceedings, as is the incestuous implications of a particularly unsettling conversation between her and one of her dim-witted brothers. Ma and Pa's brimstone-spewing religious zealotry is likewise a nice touch, and adds another portion of mental instability onto their already full plates.The film loses itself at times, especially in regard to Paul, the lone member of the stranded group who remains at their campsite instead of venturing into Ma and Pa's picturesque house of horrors, who isn't mentioned or checked on until after the gang has spent a full two days soaking in the family's sickness. It isn't until things get totally screwy and the body count has already begun that any of our unfortunate castaways even think of him, and by that point in the film, we've pretty much forgotten about him as well. Since he isn't noted during the course of events that play out in his absence, the eventual discovery of his body doesn't really pack all that much of a punch, even though he is granted one of the grislier deaths in the film.Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of American Gothic is that it is the only movie in the 80's slasher canon that features two actors with Oscar-winning fare on their resumes, Rod Steiger and Michael Pollard (from In The Heat Of The Night and Bonnie And Clyde, respectively). Predictably, their performances are the strongest of the ensemble, although Sarah Torgov ably holds her own as our lone survivor and heroine. Janet Wright should also be mentioned for her indelible rendering of Fanny, who pretty much steals the show as the most disturbing character in the film.The thoughtful back-story given to Torgov's Cynthia makes the rather abrupt shifts in her character easy to swallow, and seeing her align with the group responsible for slaughtering her friends becomes the most chilling aspect of the movie. Unfortunately, her eventual emergence from this trance to get revenge on Ma and Pa and their backwoods brood unfolds in a terse and hurried manner, so we don't really get as much of a payoff as we end up hoping for, save for the afore-mentioned brutalizing of Fanny. While Cynthia's rage toward Ma and Pa's "little girl" makes sense in the course of the story, from a viewer's standpoint the balance of revenge seems just a bit uneven when you consider how relatively easy her sadistic necrophiliac brother Teddy gets off.The film ends on a nicely bleak note, again echoing Texas Chainsaw Massacre by picturing our heroine as damaged beyond repair as the credits roll. This subtle and untidy finish leaves a sour taste behind, and provides a fitting denouement to a movie that relishes in its most unpleasant aspects.American Gothic is not a must-see, but in its best moments it is a largely intelligent and sufficiently original take on a tested formula. There are enough ghoulishly engaging moments to ensure that this film won't be forgotten as soon as you eject the disc, and for that alone it stands out amidst a very crowded decade for the genre. Definitely worth a look, but don't expect to find a classic here.

FortySecondStreetFreak How did director John "Twins of Evil" Hough sink to this dull, ponderous, by the numbers, 80's American horror fluff? Oh dear!The last 15 minutes picks up and opens up a suitably macabre world, but there is nothing here really. Low gore, rushed deaths and ending, tired direction, overly slow build-up, annoying acting (Michael J. Pollard is only slightly less awful than he was in "Sleepaway Camp 3"), slumming thesps (Rod Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo, though at least Steiger has a better wig this time than he did in "The Kindred").All in all it's just a passionless splodge of smelly blandness thrown at your TV screen, that was actually a good signpost to the (mostly) awful decade to come as far as American horror films went.