Doug Bradley, You Putz.

Oh, Wrong Turn 5.  What have I ever done to you to deserve this?

Oh, yeah.  I turned you on and not like that.

Next time, can you at LEAST do me the courtesy of wearing a Hooters tank top?  Because I SERIOUSLY feel the need to remind my subconscious that I did not, in fact, fall into a doorknob.

You know, I really feel that this movie is Doug Bradley's repentance for being kind of a douche to me at the HorrorHound convention this year because, seriously?  He was not made to play an inbred, cannibal hick.

You're better than this, Doug.

Now, I'm normally willing to give sequels the benefit of the doubt.  Hell, I watched Piranha 3DD willingly (albeit just to watch the death throes of David Hasslehoff's career) but my eyes felt raped about 15 minutes into this one and I don't even think the beginning credits (with the cheesy hand representing the number 5) were done by that point. 

This is yet another one of those stupid examples where instead of rigging up a practical effect for blood spatter, they chose to go with CGI.  Are you fucking kidding me?  EVERYBODY can pick that shit out unless you're working for ILM.  Please, filmmakers, ESPECIALLY INDIE AND LOW-BUDGET FILMMAKERS, STOP USING CGI!  It's obvious and detracts from the movie experience.  And, really?  How long does it take to buy a bottle of karo syrup, some soap, a little bit of corn starch and red food coloring?

IT'S THIS EASY!

There are very few films I won't sit and watch all the way through but I don't know how I managed to sit through as much of Wrong Turn 5 as I did.  There is no human face, no matter how deformed by birth defect, that looks like the freaky bird-like one, they killed off the one girl that should have survived (although she DID have sex, so I guess the trope wasn't completely subverted) and getting Mr. Bradley to lurk in the corner saying "You're all gonna die" in his least menacing voice, EVER, had to be the easiest paycheck he ever made.  All of this made me shut it off.

Walk right on by this one.  Do not pass Go and you can forget about your $200.  

Hell, if I ever catch the director, I'm gonna make him pay ME for the hour of my life that I'll never get back and my rates aren't cheap.

Well, that was quick.

WE'RE A MONTH OLD TODAY!

Well, yesterday.

Tuesday if you count the Welcome post.

ANYWAY, 31 posts in and I'm still having a BLAST!


I hope you are, too.

If you have any suggestions for reviews or articles, let me know in the comments below, on Twitter @CandyRazorBob or on the new Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/CandyCoatedRazorBlades

Sequins and Slaughter

There's something about low-budget horror that draws me in.  I don't know if it's because of the unintentional hilarity or just seeing horror through the eyes of a young filmmaker but low, and even micro, budget horror films just grab me.

It always shocks me when I realize that John Waters never made a horror film but I think that the avant-garde art community has finally filled that niche with San Francisco's own Peaches Christ aka Joshua Grannell.

It seems that drag queens and horror mix well and Peaches collected enough of them dollars to make herself a movie.

Not only is All About Evil a fun, campy romp through low-budget-opolis, it's a hilariously loving homage to B-movies.  This is reflected in the script, the filming, the location (it was shot around the SF area and features the Castro Theater, which is one of the MOST AMAZING theaters I've ever had the pleasure of entering) and, most importantly, the cast.  It stars Natasha Lyonne (But, I'm a Cheerleader), Thomas Dekker (Nightmare on Elm Street), Cassandra Peterson (ELVIRA, BITCHES) and B-Movie ROYALTY, Mink Stole.

All About Evil is the story of a librarian who is trying to save her father's theater and inadvertantly starts a guerrilla film movement when the murder of her step-mother is caught on the security cameras and inadvertently shown to the audience currently waiting for one of their horror favorites.  The audience eats it up.  We witness a very FAST descent into madness (which is just as satisfying as a slow one) and it's a giddy, bloody, candy-colored ride through to the very end.  

This movie does NOT, by the way, give us the interminable slowness of a lot of indie films.  It's fast-paced and exciting.  Peaches knows her shit and she is one of the many, many reasons I wish I lived in San Francisco.

Seriously, I have NOTHING but good things to say about this movie.  Yes, it's overacted but that's intentional.  It's still wonderful.  It gives us gore-gore girls and rabid fans and skips gaily through the forest of tropes.  It's an insane trip through the mind of a frothing horror fan and it's FUCKING ADORABLE... well, as adorable as a horror movie gets.

Now, this is really only shown at arthouses and cons but if you can snag yourself a copy on DVD it's totally worth it AND it supports a fantastic artist and supporter of genre films and underground filmmakers.

What are you waiting for?  Order it, now!  Visit Peaches' site and make her print more!  Or, even better, get your ass in front of the TV on Halloween at 3:00 PM EST and make sure you have Chiller 'cause they got it!  

SO excited!

'Cause I have Chiller.  And the DVD.  And, yes, I'm a nerd, how did you know?

GET OFFA MY LAWN!!

Children.

Adorable moppets or murderous harbingers of doom?

Kid isn't even BORN yet and she's suspicious.  She SHOULD BE.  She should be...

In terms of horror movies, regardless of HOW sweet a child might be, you HAVE to be careful because kids are devious.  In fact, lying is actually something we ALL did as part of our natural development.  It's part of how we learn to separate fantasy and reality and everybody does it as a means of staying out of trouble as a child because nobody likes a time-out.  They're boring and serve no purpose other than a mini-nap.

This is not to say that all children in horror movies are minions of Satan.  Often times, a child can be just as innocent as he appears.  Andy in Child's Play, for example.  All he wanted was a doll.  It's not his fault he got a voodoo-enchanted tyke-bomb containing the soul of a serial killer.  He was still blamed for the whole thing, though.

Night-night.

But the face of innocence is one thing.  The face of innocence disguising the heart of evil is another.  From the ancient Greeks who glorified Zeus in the murder of his father to the present day with movies like Orphan and Case 39, the killer kid has made many a movie-goer consider voluntary sterilization.  Just FYI?  That won't help.  The evil kids, most times, are the ones visiting or that you adopt.  That's right.  You don't have to be a biological parent to end up dealing with a pint-sized psychopath.  

Let's take The Bad Seed, for example.  Rhoda Penmark is a pretty, prim and proper little girl but bitch needs some professional help.  The little freak drowned a classmate because she didn't win a penmanship medal.  You know?  My handwriting sucks.  I just would not be that concerned about it but Rhoda just kind of nonchalantly says "mine" and pushes a kid off a wharf.  Who does that?!?  The original ending of the book had the mother dying and Rhoda surviving to kill another day but the 1956 movie was changed.  The Hays Code wouldn't allow evil to go unpunished so how do they end it?  Mom lives and Rhoda gets a spanking.  A SPANKING!  Seriously?  For murder? 

Do they really think this will work?

The 1985 TV remake kept the book ending and we were all grateful because tacked on corporal punishment is just freaky and wrong unless you hold a very particular fetish.

Along this vein, probably the best performance of Macauley Culkin's career was Henry in The Good Son and this is a fantastic example of why the enfante terrible works.  It works because no one WANTS to believe that a kid is capable of this.  Poor Elijah Wood spent that entire fucking movie trying to tell Aunt Susan "Hey, your kid is a twisted motherfucker," but given that he was actually threatened by Henry in that standard "If you tell, I'll kill you" sort of way he couldn't just out-and-out say it and even when he did, she didn't listen and Henry got away with murder.

Even worse is when the creepy kids work in tandem.  Village of the Damned, Children of the Corn and Disturbing Behavior show us the power of the Drama Club.  If ONE killer ankle-biter is bad, what happens when you get a herd of them?  Nothing good, that's for DAMN sure.  

We have scarecrows.  Why not scare-children?

Seth Grahame-Smith tells us, by the way, that the best ways to end an infestation of children in your corn is to crop-dust with pot or introduce the girls to tank-tops.  Either they'll be too high to resist when you relocate them or the change in clothing will cause the boys to kill each other over who gets to touch boobs first.  (The girls will kill each other either trying to be the first set of boobs touched or through slut-shaming.  Toss a tube of lipstick in there and there'll be a bloodbath.)  Either way, a pitchfork should be enough to clear them out.

So, given all of this, don't be surprised if I shoot you dirty looks in the grocery store when your kid is throwing a tantrum.  Your crotch-dropping is not a special unicorn princess, they are a potential menace.  Rein that shit in.  Cut the psychopathic mini-me off at the pass and you won't be looking at missing pets and an increasing body count. 

The Empowerment of Women

Britain has been really coming into its own, lately, in terms of horror movies so it is with absolute pleasure that I introduce you to Doghouse.

Yeah, it's been out for a few years but since it comes from across the pond, I don't know how many of you have actually seen it.

ANY-hoo, this movie reminds me why I'm gay.  'Cause mind-controlled zombie-women, although awesome, be crazy.  I'm lookin' at YOU, Miss Britney Spears.

OK, sorry, we all know she's better now... or IS she?

Men be crazy, too, which Doghouse shows off nicely, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT!  Actually, it kind of is the point.  Only, not really.  This MOVIE is crazy, though and that IS the point.  Crazy AWESOME!

So the movie starts out with the male characters being... well... men and leaving their respective spouses (to the spouses' collective pissed-offedness) to console a buddy who just went through a divorce via a road trip to a town called Moodley where the women are supposed to outnumber men 4-to-1.  Turns out, though, that the women in Moodley are, as mentioned previously, mind-controlled zombie freaks who were exposed to a toxin delivered through washing powder.  Damn government experiments.

Hilarity ensues.

Now, a lot of folks claimed that Doghouse ripped stuff off from Shaun of the Dead, but I don't see it.  Other than the humor (of which this movie is decidedly of the Benny Hill variety) and the zombies (which, technically, aren't zombies because they aren't dead), I find it to be somewhat fresh.  I CAN see that they borrowed from Jack Ketchum's Ladies' Night but Shaun of the Dead?  Geddouttaheah!

This movie has a surprisingly low body count among the normals but, you know what?  That's OK because it's still delightfully gory and a fun watch.

It won't win any awards from feminist groups, though, because, seriously, this movie is misogynistic as hell.  Please don't misunderstand me, I am a firm believer in equal rights and opportunities for women but this movie wades into the battle of the sexes easily and with sharp implements.  Oddly, though, from MY point of view, although 4 out of 6 of the sexist pig bastards survive (not including the gay one... who survives but is not a sexist pig and calls the others out on their shit), the women, as monsters, actually held quite a bit of power, here.  Granted, they were mindless zombies but they could fuck your shit up.  The men, on the other hand, have to rely on toys and dressing in drag to achieve their goals.  Reverse sexism in the house!

Keep an open mind and check it out.

Puberty's a BITCH!

You know, when we think of horror, we often forget that man's inhumanity to man is the worst horror of all. 

It always amazes me what kind of crazy, hurtful things people will do to each other and that brings us to today's review.

Jack Ketchum is probably one of the best writers out there and, in my opinion, an unsung hero of horror, because he takes us places that we really don't want to go.  He doesn't rely on the supernatural or otherworldly monsters or masked serial killers.  His stories are, by and large, about the depths to which humanity can sink.

The Girl Next Door is probably his best known work beyond Off-Season and Offspring, and to tell you the absolute truth, this one made my skin crawl.

The thing here is that while a lot of movies claim to be based on a true story, which we know is utter and complete bullshit, this one actually was.  Sylvia Likens was a girl in Indiana that was tortured to death by her foster mother, and other neighborhood children.  And that is the precise premise of The Girl Next Door.

Sorry.  This is the LEAST disturbing image I could find.

The most disturbing thing about this movie is that, other than changing the relationship between Meg Laughlin (the titular Girl Next Door) and Ruth Chandler to one of niece and aunt, respectively, and altering the reason Meg and her sister end up with Ruth, the story seems like an almost 100% accurate portrayal of what Gertrude Baniszewski subjected Sylvia Likens to in 1965, up to and including carving insults into her stomach with a heated nail.

Around this horrendous story, but not in real life, The Girl Next Door gives us just the tiniest bit of hope as one of the boys in the neighborhood has been in love with Meg from the first time he laid eyes on her.  Unfortunately, though, he's forced by Ruth to participate in this girl's torture and, at times, feels OK with what he and the other boys are doing because Ruth makes them think that it IS OK since an adult has told them so.  (Just FYI, kids?  If an adult tells you that it's OK to put a Coke™ bottle somewhere it does not belong on, in or around another human being, that adult is lying to you and is probably a member of the clergy.)  He redeems himself at the end by attempting to release Meg, although he ultimately fails.

Never let anyone tell you that a downer ending is a bad thing.  Often times, it's the best ending to have.  Nobody likes pablum that has been sanitized for your protection.

Unlike other movies in the Torture Porn sub-genre, this movie is emotionally raw, highly visceral and tells us entirely too much about the human race.  It made me uncomfortable and actually caused my faith in humanity to waver.  More than usual, anyway.  I don't trust half of humanity as far as I can throw them. 

Ketchum, by the way, if you've read any of his other works or saw The Woman, seems like a sexist bastard but I don't think he is.  Even though women in his books and/or films are often the subject of abuse, he also uses women as both empowered characters who win the day and as horrific villains.  In terms of his writing, I don't think he's one of the best technically but he DOES know where to hit and make it hurt.  I say give him a read.

Just as an FYI, the story of Sylvia Likens is also told in An American Crime starring Ellen Page (for whom I would gladly attend the opening of an envelope) and Catherine Keener.

Breaking News: ME! and britney blaire...

Yes, you're getting another weekend update but this is important.

It's about me.

Only not really because it's REALLY about my friend Britney Blaire and her FUCKING AMAZING TALENT!

Tonight, at Wall Street, Britney gets to put on the show she's been DYING to do ever since she started doing drag, THE BRITNEY BLAIRE WITCH PROJECT!

It's gonna be two hours of spooky, dragalicious fun and it's capped at both ends by a 20 minute movie (in two parts.  I know how drag audiences can be.  ADHD bitches...) directed by ME!  Because I'm awesome.  But it's not about me.

It's a loving homage to really bad horror movies and bad acting and has some local in-jokes but I had a LOT of fun making it.  The cast was a joy to work with and I want to use them, at some point, to take a stab at a legit movie... well... a legit movie made using the very best in geurilla film-making techniques.

ANYWAY, the doors open at 8 and the show starts at 9 but, if you're in town, get there early 'cause you won't want to miss a minute!

If Ms. Blaire gives me permission, I may post the movie later.