Urban Legend (1998)

 

'What You Don't Believe, Can Kill You'

 

Welcome to Day 5 of 31 in my 31 Days of Horror...Reviews!

I had originally seen this movie a few years ago with my cousin, but we only caught the last 30 minutes.  I don't know about anyone else, but I have horrible memory, so I have no idea what happens at the end.  Anyways on to the movie!

 

So the movie opens with this girl driving, and almost crashing while trying to find a cassette, its pointless cause she doesn't even know the words to the song.  Honestly how do you not know the words to Total Eclipse Of The Heart?  She ends up running out of fuel, classic horror story plot, and by this time another classic has started, yes, it is now raining.

 

So this girl, who later in the movie we find out is named Michelle, has arrived at a gas station and is just sitting there, waiting for someone to pump it for her.  First off does this even happen anymore?  And second, where does this even happen because I have never encountered this before!  This creepy looking guy appears, and happens to be the gas attendent, who also seems to have a speech impediment, starts punping the gas.

 

"Credit card companies on the phone"

 

When the gas attendent returns with her credit card he tells her that the credit card company is on the phone and wants to talk to her, so she agrees to come in, and he locks the door behind him, he trys to tell her something but his speech impedimet is blocking him, so she assumes the worst, and escapes, only after pepper spraying the gas attendent.  Michelle then jumps into her car and speeds off while crying, which can i just say is dangerous!  We see the attendent come out of the garage, and finally gets over his speech impediment block to scream out "theres someone in the backseat!", we then go back to Michelle, who is still crying, and is attempting to sing again, and by this time the rain has picked up to a full blown storm.

 

"There's someone in the backseat!"

 

Lightning flashes, nothing in the backseat, fades to black, lightning flashes, shadow appears, fade to black, lightning flashes, we zoom into an axe, and boom he chops her head off! We pan out to a sign saying that we are now at Pendleton University.  Inside, what I presume to be the lounge area, we are introduced to Parker, Brenda, Paul, and Natalie.  Parker is telling a story of Stanley Hall, and the massacre that took place there 25 years ago.  As the legend goes, a professor went into Stanley Hall, and sliced the throats of all the students in the dorm hall.  Natalie and Brenda of course don't believe Parker, cause honestly who believes half of the Urban Legends they hear?

 

Brenda and Natalie are walking back to there dorm, and decide to play Bloody Mary infront of Stanley Hall.  Brenda starts off by saying Bloody Mary 4 times in a creepy voice before Natalie cuts her off with the 5th Bloody Mary.  First off, who taught you how to play Bloody Mary?  Cause you are doing it all wrong! Here's how you really do it, first you turn the lights off, then you stand infront of a mirror, and spin around 3 time while saying Bloody Mary once every spin, then she appeaars and kills you.

 

"Bloody Mary!"

 

After the 5th Bloody Mary, they start hearing screaming in Stanley Hall, but it was only Damon, who we learn is a friend of theres.  Natalie and Brenda split, and here we meet Natalie's roommate Tosh, unfortunately our introduction to Tosh isn't the pleasantest (is that actually a word?) as we see her in a compromising postion and then she proceeds to yell at Natalie to "turn the lights off."  Natalie then puts on headphones and falls asleep.  The next morning we see the group of friends, minus Paul, in class, where we are introduced to Professor Wexler!

 

"Thirsty?"

 

In class Wexler is talking about Urban Legends, while talking about the stranger in the house legend, Brenda interrupts and says that actually happened to a girl in her hometown.  Wexler tells her shes full of it, and 'volunteers' her for an experiment.  Wexler hands her a pack of Pop Rocks and ask her to drink a soda, which we all know will make you blow up, who didn't hear this story when they we're a kid?  Brenda refuses, but Damon agrees to do it, and he does, and then his insides blow up, and Damon dies on the floor, no i'm joking, and so was Damon.

 

"He's going to explode!"

 

After class, we see Brenda and Natalie walking around campus, Reese and the other security guards are taking all the school papers, the main article talks about the possibility of a lunatic on campus.  Turns out Michelle went to school at Pendleton, Paul wrote the article, and Natalie gets pissed at him and runs back to her dorm.  Back at the dorm, we find out that Michelle went to high school with Natalie, and they were best friends, Damon arrives and they go off to talk.  They end up in the woods, and Damon starts hitting on her, and makes up some shit story about losing someone close to him.  Natalie falls for it at first, but then realizes  he's making shit up, and asks to leave, Damon has to pee first and gets out of the car. 

 

We then start going back and forth between her in the car and Damon being strangled to death, she gets out of the car to tall him to hurry up, and runs into the fur hoodie guy.  She tries to start the car, as fur hoodie guy hooks a rope up to her tow hitch, we hear banging on the roof and it's Damon hanging from a tree.  The rope that is rigged to her tow hitch is the rope holding Damon, so when the car starts moving he gets really hung up, and Natalie ends up running over fur hoodie, and having Damon's body come crashing through the windshield.  Natalie runs to Reese's offices, and when they arrive with the police, the car and Damon are gone, and we find out the gas attendant has been arrested.

 

"Shake it and let's go"

 

The gang gathers in the lounge, Parker starts bringing up the hanging urban legend, and Natalie brings up that maybe that's what's going on.  Natalie heads to the library to look up urban legends and runs into Sasha, they find a book on urban legends and start looking through it.  They seem to be interested in the high beam initiation legend, which is when a car doesn't have they're lights on, and the car coming towards them signals them, leading to the people in that car getting killed.  

 

In the dorm room we see Tosh on a goth web chat site, and she starts chatting up a guy, they plan to meet up, and she heads to the bathroom to check herself.  Back in the room, she asks what room he's in,  and he replies 'yours', and fur hoodie is attacking her, Natalie walks in, but she thinks it's just like the other day, and doesn't bother to look.  Next morning Natalie wakes up and discovers Tosh dead, and the words 'Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights?' written in blood on the walls.

 

 

 

The dean summons Natalie to his office and asks if she saw anyone in the room, which she didn't and they write Tosh's death off as a suicide.  Natalie runs into Paul who has found out that her and Michelle we're friends, and they head to his office to talk about her urban legend theory.  Natalie then realizes that tonight is the 25th anniversary of the Stanley Hall massacre, and they head to the record room to find 1973's yearbook to see if the massacre is real.  The yearbook isn't there, and they ask the janitor about Stanley Hall, he tells them to ask Wexler, and they head to Wexler's office, but no one's there.  Paul breaks into Wexler's office, and they discover a hidden room, that has the axe and the fur hoodie in it. 

 

Wexler arrives, and they hide in the closet until he leaves, or at least they think he leaves, but he's waiting outside the closet for them.  Wexler takes them to the dean's office, Paul asks Wexler about Stanley Hall, but the dean tells Wexler and Reese to leave, and he says he knows about her past, and that Paul is fired from the paper.  At the pool, Brenda is swimming, and Natalie walks into a glass office that overlooks the pool, she sees Fur hoodie walk in, but can't get Brenda's attention so she breaks the glass wall. Turns out the fur hoodie, was just another swimmer, Natalie and Brenda head to the locker room, and Natalie tells her she knew Michelle and about her history. 

 

The past that Dean brought up, was a disorderly behavior charge, and that back in the day, her and Michelle we're driving, Michelle was drunk, and they ended up killing a guy, via high beam initiation.  Natalie and Brenda plan to head to a party later that night, as long as Brenda doesn't leave her alone.  In Paul's office, he finds a paper that states that Wexler was the sole survivor of the Stanley Hall massacre.  We see Dean in the parking lot, he gets stabbed in the leg by fur hoodie, and starts to crawl away, fur hoodie hits the parking brake and the car starts to roll after him.  Eventually Dean gets impaled on road spikes as the car rolls over him.

 

"That's my boy!"

 

At the party we see Parker making his dog suck down a keg.  Natalie arrives at the party, where she runs into Paul who tells her about Wexler being the only survivor, and that it's probably Wexler who is doing all the killings.  Paul kisses Natalie, and of course Brenda walks in at that moment, and then runs off.  Reese is in one of the buildings doing her nightly search, in Wexler's office she finds Wexler dead.  Paul tries to get Parker to end the party, but Parker acts like a dick, and makes fun of him about the urban legend idea.  Sasha heads off to the radio station, while Parker heads up to his room and gets a call from Damon. 

 

"Wrong legend"

 

The call is taking place from inside the house, Parker asks if this is the when a stranger call legend, but it's not it's the drying your dog in the microwave, and his dog is dead.  Parker heads to the bathroom to throw up, and fur hoodie is there and pours drain-o down his throat, like he did with the dog earlier.  Reese attempts to call the police, but they put her on hold, because Dean had called in earlier in the night to warn them of prank callers.  At the radio studio, Sasha is doing her show, and in the background we see fur hoodie killing her producer, then the lights go out, she look through the window, the light come back on and the killer is right in front of her.

 

"Hello?"

 

Sasha screams, and Natalie hears her at the party, because guess what?  She's still wearing her mic, and all this is being broadcast on the school radio.  The killer breaks the window with the axe and Sasha goes running, Natalie heads to the radio station, she gets there just in time to see fur hoodie kill Sasha.  Reese, who was in her car flips to the school radio and hears all of this happen and heads to the radio station to find Sasha's dead body.  Natalie heads back to the party to find Paul,  we see Paul, who says he's been in the house the whole time, but he's soaking wet, meaning he's been outside in the rain. I'd like to point out he's been missing since before Parker's death, I'm starting not to trust Paul.

 

Natalie starts to put that together, but still goes with him outside, they find Brenda and get in the car Natalie mentions she smells something weird.  They stop at a gas station for Paul to call for help, Natalie and Brenda make up, and we start to hear a ringing, Brenda and Natalie investigate, and decide to open the trunk, and find Wexlers dead body!  Natalie and Brenda run off, and get separated, Natalie finds a road and pulls a car over, and its the janitor, and she hops in. 

 

Natalie starts looking around the car and see the furcoat in the backseat, she starts freaking, and tries to open the door  However theres an approaching car with no headlights on, can you see where were headed, janitor mutters something about, damn kids, and blinks his high beans, signaling the high beam initiation.  The car pulls a u turn and starts heading after them, finally we see that the driver of the car is wearing the furcoat, and starts chasing after them, furcoat ends up running them off the road.

 

Natalie arrives back at the school, and heres screams of help coming from Stanley Hall, Natalie starts searching the dorm hall and comes across, Parker, Dean, and Damons bodys.  She finds a room a lit with candles and a bed where Brenda lies, and in what has to be now one of my favorite plot twists, Brenda knocks out Natalie, and turns into this crazy psychopath.  We find out that Brenda's doing all this because her boyfriend died, and in what is the second plot twist, he happens to be the guy that died in Michelle and Natalie's high beam initiation.   Also, little side note, the guy who was Brenda's boyfriend is Bailey from Bride of Chucky.  And just incase you we're confused:

 

 

 

Brenda thens proceeds to tell her that she is going to perform her favorite urban legend on Natalie, the kidney heist, during this all Reese is shown driving, Brenda cuts Natalie open, and Reese arrives. Brenda cuts reece, and Paul finally arrives, and tries to talk her out of doing this, by saying he could do a good cover up and that they could be together.  Brenda doesn't buy it, Reese shoots Brenda in the arm, making her drop Reese's gun, which Natalie retrieves and shoots Brenda with making her stumble backwards and through the window which is 2 stories up.

 

"What kind of friend are you?"

 

Natalie and Paul call  for an ambulance to help Reese and drive off, Natalie says how one day this too would become an urban legend, but the story would have some changes, and that Brenda as the killer would become a guy, Paul would become the cop, and she would end up in a mental asylum.   Paul jokingly asks what the plot twist would be, and with that Brenda rises in the back seat with her axe and starts trying to whack them. They start driving over a bridge and run into the guard rail which propels Brenda out the dashboard window, we see her floating down the river.

 

"You didn't tell it right"

 

They slowly pan out and over to a fire place, and to this guy telling they're story, and that the body was never found.  We are now at Ashton University, and no one believes him, we pan through the people he's telling and you see a hand raise, but not the face, saying that they believed him.  They pan to the face and its Brenda, she then proceeds to tell him that he got a couple of his facts wrong.

 

The End.

Great movie, loved the twist endings, really thought the killer was going to be Paul, so it was nice to see that it was Brenda.  Plus this movie had an amazing cast, we had, Robert Englund, Brad Douriff, Loretta Devine, Julian Richings, Tara Reid, and scream queen, Danielle Harris.  There are 2 more movies in this franchise, and they will be the next two reviews you see!  Tell me what you think of the movie in the comments, on Twitter (@SilentToHughes) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SilentToHughes).

 

Hope you all have a great night!