Tuesday, October 30, 2012

DON'T SCRATCH THE PAINT!

Did you know that cars are actually designed to look like they have faces?  The higher the horsepower, the more aggressive the face.  That being the case, Christine must have a top speed of warp fucking 19.


She'll gnaw on your SOUL.  HEEHEE!  Gnaw...

This isn't Stephen King's best movie by a long shot, but this 1983 gem is one that I, personally, adore.  As a kid, I wanted my first car to be a '58 Plymouth Fury and having it haunted by a spirit of vengeance was just a nifty options package.  And, seriously?  Think of the money I'd save on gas and repair bills.  I'm pretty sure that any model of car that has fins sharp enough to shave with just slurps the oil directly out of the asphalt, anyway.  Plus, I'd NEVER have to worry about people pissing me off.

King is the master of turning the bullied into monsters and his work with John Carpenter is always sublime.  The juxtaposition of the "Faustian bargain" with the "Yandere" (see On Widowers and Poor Dating Habits) is spot fucking on and I thought it was FANTASTIC how the car could only speak through the radio.  I never looked at Little Richard the same way, again.  Keith Gordon, who hasn't done a lot of acting since then but has been a BEAST behind the camera, played up the transition from pizza-faced nerd to greasy, arrogant cool, well, not flawlessly, but well enough that I never questioned it.  


Before (on the left):  Asshole McHipster-Glasses

After: Asshole McPopped-Collar


We all know the story of Christine (and if you don't, why the fuck are you here?).   Nerdy kid (who, for some reason, has the school's best football player for a best friend and, yet, is still the unpopular kid) buys a used car that turns out to be possessed.  By what, we're not sure but apparently it was possessed even before it left the factory, seeing as how it took a bite out of one of the line workers.  The movie is kinda vague on the actual inhabitant.  (The book had it possessed by the car's previous owner, a bitter, cranky old man who was pretty fuckin' evil.  Who leaves his kid to choke to death in the back seat because they might get something on the seats?  Of COURSE she's gonna get something on the seats if you let her choke.  It's called a corpse.)


Not her, but you get my point.


So, yeah.  Car is possessed, car leads nerdy kid to believe that she loves him, car is highly jealous, kills nerdy guy's enemies and tries to kill nerdy guy's new girlfriend.  New girlfriend and popular best friend feed car to car crusher.

Now, King is no stranger to the killer inanimate object.  He brought us Trucks (Maximum Overdrive), after all, and that had anything with a motor get all stabby.  (Note to self.  Never get an electric knife.)  In Christine, though, we really do get the idea that Christine is more than just murderous, she's manipulative.  She is the very worst kind of woman and she's not even a woman.  No shade toward women, here, but Christine is a freaky stereotype gone wrong and SHE doesn't even have to resort to tears to get Arnie to do what she wants.


The biggest reason I love Christine is because all of these assholes that Christine kills are fucking stupid.  Have you never heard of stairs?  Yeah, you can try going down some alley that's supposed to be too small but a demonic car will find a way to fit.  Stairs are really the only way to go.  Even better, a spiral staircase.  Sure she might knock it down but you're up there and you can always have food flown in unless you pissed off the damn helicopter, too.

One of the awesome things about Christine, besides it being the end of that era in film where girls had to put on their best Polly-Prissy-Pants voice on camera (I was seriously glad when every fucking in actress in Hollywood stopped going to the same elocution coach), was that, from a violence perspective, it would have been a PG film but Carpenter, KNOWING that everybody hates a family horror film, made sure that the word "fuck" was used enough to get it an R rating.  

FUCK YOU, RATINGS SYSTEM!

Punk-ass bitch.

Monday, October 29, 2012

AMUCK!!

A lot of die-hard horror fans will probably hate this next post because it doesn't, technically, involve a horror movie.

Except it kind of does.

But it doesn't.

I'm going to go on record here and say that Disney's Hocus-Pocus is one of my very favorite spook movies.






Except it's not that spooky.

But it is.

See, this is that movie that has a little something for everyone.  It's definitely a kid's movie but it's grown up enough for adults to enjoy it, too.  (Disney has really gotten the hang of that over the years.)  It's not gory or scary, really, but it's just creepy enough to keep you interested.  It's got a great, if simplistic, story and, now that we're older, we can appreciate that it brought us a young Thora Birch who's practically a psychological indie-horror mainstay, now.

Except we don't know what the hell happened here...

And the movie does have some horror cred behind it.  Mick Garris co-produced and wrote the screenplay. 

This isn't to say that it isn't cheesy as hell.  I mean, it IS a Disney movie and it actually wasn't even supposed to go to the big screen.  It was supposed to be a made-for-tv movie for The Disney Channel.  But the cheese-factor is WHY I love it.  Besides the fact that it does have an incredible cast.

I mean, Bette Midler as the head villain, a centuries-old witch aiming for world domination and Toddler on a Bun for lunch?  Come on.  Who casts that unless large hunks of cheddar is what they're going for?



I'm sorry, Bette, but as much as you want to be considered a serious actress and you have the chops for it, you're always gonna be bold, brash, ballsy Bathhouse Betty to me and that, and the fact that you had TONS of fun making this movie, shines right through.

Add in an utterly ditzy Sarah Jessica Parker and the fat joke that walks, Kathy Najimy (prior to losing a lot of weight), and there really is a triple-threat, there.  And MY favorite part, as is everyone else's, I'm sure, is Bette's big musical number.  It's probably my favorite version of "I Put a Spell On You", ever.  (No disrespect, Screamin' Jay Hawkins.)

There's really not a lot here to hold on to the hard-core gore-hounds but I still think this is oodles of fun and it's a Halloween staple in my house.  

I don't even HAVE kids.

I buy fun-size Baby Ruth bars for ME, bitches.  Hands off.

Of course, my triglycerides tell a different story and are possibly out to get me.  I'm not full-on paranoid, yet, but I still think I see little fat ninjas lurking about sabotaging my lunch and turning it into a salad.

Assholes.

Friday, October 26, 2012

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.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

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?

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

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.

Monday, October 22, 2012

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 offensive picture 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.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

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.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Mace + Fanboys = Sanity

Do you know what happens to movie franchises when fanboys get ahold of them?

They mutate.

Not like this.  That would be awesome, though.

They change into forms almost unrecognizable.  They try and take on ALL of the attributes that we love and turn into a steaming pile of suck.

Yes, kids.  Today, we discuss the hilarious awfulness that is Freddy vs. Jason.



Let me first say that y'all bitches know me and you know that I'm going to rip this apart because I actually enjoyed it but I did NOT enjoy it because it was stellar film making.  I enjoyed it because of the black hole of stupid that was this movie.

Hollywood?  Whenever someone comes to you with a script that requires that two franchises merge and you're going to have to spend a LOT of money getting the rights to at least one of the characters in question, RUN!  Yes, we know that people wanted this in 1987 but, frankly, if it had been done THEN the movie would probably be better instead of this whole MTV Quick Cut editing that we're forced to endure these days.  16 years, $6 million dollars worth of rejected scripts and the squicky idea of Freddy having molested Jason as a child (because potato head children need love, too, I guess) tossed out the window later, we're stuck with this crap.

See?  Even Kelly Rowland hates it and she had to suffer Beyoncé's diva moments.

When I first heard about this, I was all kinds of excited because who didn't want to see Freddy and Jason duking it out?  Mano a mano.  Glove vs. Machete.  Brain vs. Braun.  And then I got to the theater.

I remember that there were some good kills and I remember that they had to get this miracle wonder drug that kept them from dreaming and I remember that the parents had to force an entire town to NOT remember He Who Shall Not Be Named (no, not Voldemort... wrong franchise) and if it took locking your kids in an asylum to do it, well, then, so be it.  And I remember Skut Farkus in a bathtub.  What I do not remember is pretty much anything else.  

I watch it from time to time because it makes me laugh while I watch it but then I forget where I am and wonder why I'm lying in a kiddie pool full of Greek yogurt and ferrets when it's over.

This is what happens when fan fiction meets the silver screen, kids.  It hurts us and causes holes in our memory.  It's a weaponized form of Alzheimer's.  STAY AWAY.

Oh, and what the hell is it with raves in fucking cornfields, anyway?  Are they held as an annual sacrifice to He Who Walks Between The Rows?  Are they meant to flush out unwanted children?  The world may never know.  

Everybody knows that the best raves are held in abandoned warehouses or properties known to be haunted and full of rats.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Please Share What You're Smoking.

When I was 10 or so, the local Creature Feature ran a little known TV movie called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (also known as Nightmare) and it creeped my shit out.


My siblings and I decided to call the little goblin things "Strawberry Shortcake and friends" in order to mitigate the creeps because, really, it's a made-for-TV movie that had no right being as scary as it was.  No TV movie prior to 1986 or so should be allowed to be anything but laughable.  But, noooooooo.  Spooky, spooky shit.  At least to a ten-year-old.

These guys.  These guys right here.  Nightmare fuel.


Apparently, this film has reached cult status and for good reason.  It's well done and it's rightfully scary and who doesn't love a potato-head monster?

Mmmmm.... potatoes.

This brings us to 2011, in which one of the most brilliant directors currently working updates the cult classic with his own twisted vision.



There's a problem, here.

He turned it into a dark fairy tale.  I LOVE fairy tales, dark or otherwise, but he took a truly horrifying movie and tamed it.  The man who gave us Pan's Labyrinth made a kid's movie.

Don't get me wrong.  On its own, it's quite enjoyable but I'm one of those nerds that finds it hard to divorce the source material from the movie and while I always enjoy watching a child get needlessly tortured, the only thing saving this movie is the special effects and the art direction.  They're WONDROUS.

Also?  Nightmare fuel.  Kinda.


The rest of the movie is just... blah.  I mean, yeah, it's great that Katie Holmes escaped from her basement to make the movie and she was good but she didn't have a lot to work with.  "Ooh, I'm the only good stepmother in cinema and/or fairy tale history and I have to save the little girl from creepy things because I'm the only person that believes her.  Remind me to fire my agent and stomp on Tom Cruise's balls for a while."

Seriously, I really don't have a lot to say about this one.  The original is better, but this is OK.  Your mileage may vary.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Kristin Stewart Can Die In A Fire

Today, you get TWO, TWO, TWO posts... dammit I was gonna say TWO POSTS IN ONE but that really doesn't work.

You DO get two posts out of me, though because I'm pissed.

Pissed that American literacy standards have decreased to the point that Twilight is a best-selling series.

Yes, I've been pissed about this for a long time.  Sue me.

THIS, people, is just fucking wrong and I hope to hell it's photoshopped but for some reason, I doubt it.





WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?!?!

OK, bitches.  Seriously, you have no fucking clue what you're doing.  You've either decided that your child is a My Little Fucking Pony or you have placed entirely too much stock in Stephenie Meyer's teenage slave porn and in the process you are now guilty of child abuse by proxy because you KNOW this kid is gonna get beat up so hard at recess.

Repeat after me, kids.  Twilight is nothing more than a Mormon dating primer set in a world where vampires sparkle and fully grown whatevers romantically imprint on unborn fetuses.  Where the main fucking character is never fully described and has no flaws except that she's "clumsy" until she gets married and turned into a vampire where she's finally described as "hot and no longer clumsy".  Keep in mind that she was turned into a vampire to SURVIVE THE ABUSE OF CARRYING A VAMPIRE PREGNANCY.

Think about that.  They KILLED her (and forced her to a damned unlife drinking the lifeblood of others) so that the BABY would live.  TELL ME that's not some kind of sick Mormon anti-abortion message.

Just so you all know?  It is my life's mission to get my hands on time travel technology so I can make sure that Stephenie Meyer's mother gets a complete hysterectomy at age 9.  Barring that, Stephanie Meyer is SO gonna get stranger-punched if I ever see her in the street.

Stranger-punched right in the pussy.

On Widowers and Poor Dating Habits

Today, we step overseas for a trip into J-Horror-Land.

Japanese horror has a certain richness to it that American horror does not because we Americans are not a subtle people.  I don't have a problem with that, per se, but sometimes I like to watch something that makes me think.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not one of the great philosophical works of our time.

When we think of J-Horror, we often think of the American remake.  The Ring.  The Grudge.  That's all well and good and these two are probably the best of the American remakes, but what about the movies that don't get to be remade?  We're missing out on a whole lot of great cinema, here.

This brings me to today's review:  Audition.  Or, in Japanese, Ôdishon.


Holy shit.  Audition. 

Takashe Miike is a sick motherfucker.  If you watched the Masters of Horror episode "Imprint", you know this.  This was the one episode of that series that did not actually get aired on Showtime because it was TOO dark.  In Audition, he gives us an extreme look at what is known in Anime circles as "yandere" (pronounced Yan-dé-ré), a word best used to describe Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction.  (Yandere is a pormanteau of the Japanese words "yanderu", meaning mental or emotional illness and "deredere" meaning to show affection. )  Yandere characters are, often times, INTENSELY deranged and use extreme violence and brutality to express their emotions.  And in Audition, you get to watch it coming.

I'm going to warn you, now.  Audition is not only a slow burn but one that you really have to pay attention to.  NOT a movie for the ADHD crowd unless they're up to date on their Ritalin.

Audition starts with a lonely widower, Shigeharu Aoyama.  His son and friends want to see him happy again and in Japanese culture, this requires a woman and not, oh, I don't know, therapy.  Because Japanese men are sexist bastards and it's no wonder they have negative population growth.  His buddy, seeing an opportunity for misled poon, says "Oh, hey, we can hold a fake audition to see if you want to date a young, vulnerable wannabe actress because they're TOTALLY sane and not prone to violence in the least."  Because Japanese men are stupid and it's no wonder they have negative population growth.

Enter Asami Yamazaki, a former ballerina and source of enchanting emotional depth to Shigeharu who starts a whole bunch of weirdness when her resumé turns out to be at least partially faked but that's OK because he doesn't need to actually hire her.  He just wants her to take his dead wife's place.

Shigeharu, you idiot. 

So, anyway, we get additional glimpses into Asami's life.  Or what might loosely be called a life by anyone who was even remotely sane.  Woman lives with a telephone and a sack.  She has little other furnishings and she spends 4 days literally sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.  When it does, the sack gets spooked.

Wait, what?

Yes, that's right kids, the sack does not contain furniture, it contains her pet.



So, yeah.  They get together at a motel and do the horizontal nasty even though she's all "I was abused as a kid" and Shigeharu goes all "I love you, you pretty, damaged flower, I will fix you because I am a Japanese man and you are a woman who cannot fend for herself."

Do you get where this is going, yet?

So, yeah.  Back to that resumé thing.  He finally gets a couple of hits.  The first being a ballet instructor with two prosthetic legs who shares the name of Asami's abuser and the second being a bar where she worked that was closed down after the dismemberment of the owner, the crime scene of which they found 3 extra fingers, an extra ear and an extra tongue.  GAH!

And here's where Asami starts getting REALLY weird.  Bitch breaks into Shigeharu's house and finds the picture of his dead wife so she poisons his liquor decanter and hides.  Then, in a flashback, we find out that her pet is a person (that wasn't news, really, was it?) that is missing an ear, his tongue, both feet, and three of his fingers.  When he begs for food, Asami vomits into a bowl for him and he dives in with no qualms whatsoever.



And this is where, yet again, I wonder who the hell is supplying the psychopaths with injectables because SOMEHOW Asami got her hands on a paralytic that keeps the nerves alert.

I will not go into detail but Asami is just not a nice person and Shigeharu learns his lesson about lying to get a date.  And, you almost feel bad for Shigeharu but then you realize that, instead of actually going out and being sociable, he treated dating like a business deal and that was his downfall.

One of the things that I liked about this movie is that even though we were privy to the actual torture, we were more focused on Asami's enjoyment of it.  People call this one of the most disturbing movies of all time and, frankly, they're right.  This movie puts bunny boiling to shame and gives us the hobbling that Misery should have. 



I love this movie.  I hope it never gets remade because it is a neo-classic and it shouldn't be touched.  It should probably be kept in a locked cabinet out of reach of children, pets and the elderly, but it should never be remade.

Plus, it reminds me why I don't date women.  A dude'll punch you but a lady will cut off your junk and serve it to you in the form of an elaborately arranged plate of thinly sliced sushi with a delicate white wine on the side.  And you'll LIKE IT.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Betamax Shoulda Won


Kids and their damn "found footage" movies.  I tell you what, after Cloverfield, I was done with them.  Mostly, this was because Cloverfield is the best found footage movie ever and no one will ever be able to top it.  Some may disagree, but this isn't their blog, now, is it?

This brings us to today's video tidbit, V/H/S.



Do moviegoers even remember V/H/S tapes anymore?  Do kids these days know the joy of putting tape over that silly tab to record over stuff ?  Be kind, rewind, anyone?

DAMN KIDS!  GET OFFA MY LAWN!

Ahem... sorry. 

ANYWAY!   As much as I'm so completely over found footage movies, this one intrigued me.  It seems very much like guerrilla film-making at it's finest but there's a polish to it that makes me kind of love it.

Unlike other found footage flicks like The Blair Witch Project or The Poughkeepsie Tapes, this is an anthology and that probably helped it along.  You didn't have an hour and a half of a single story to pick apart.  You had 5 stories that gave you enough action and decent acting to ignore the flaws.  Yes, some of the segments went on a little too long but who hasn't watched a home movie that meandered a bit?  I can forgive that, here.

The first segment BY FAR is the best.  If you ever get to a bar and the person you're hitting on just keeps staring at you with Bratz doll eyes and saying "I like you" over and over again, it's probably best that you don't take them to a motel with you and your friends for a drug-fueled orgy.   It will only end in tears.

There are all sorts of nifty twists and turns in here that make it fun to watch and a lot of them turn genres on their heads.  We have demons, slashers, haunters, paranoia, what look like aliens... there's something for everybody!  FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!  Only... you know... not.

The wraparound story is what bugged me the most about it.  I mean, people break into a house because they were paid to find a specific tape and you're never quite sure if this is the tape they're looking for because they just keep pulling tapes and watching them.  How the owner of these tapes got them is beyond us.

I say give this one a watch.  You may not love it but it'll definitely creep you out.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Weekend Update: Mr. Whiskers

Normally, I wouldn't post on a weekend but I had to share.  Trust me, it's relevant.

The hubby and I went to see Frankenweenie with some friends last night.  Scott was a little hesitant but he knew I'd been waiting for it.



Anyway, GO SEE IT!

It's the tale of a boy and his dog.  And the desecration of corpses.  And perversions of science.  And weird girls who dig in the kitty litter.  And an entire school full of goth kids.  And blackmail.  And the Dutch.

Sorry.  Tangents.  Can't avoid them sometimes.

Anybody who digs Tim Burton knows that this is the concept that got him fired from Disney.  It was too dark.  Now, Disney has embraced the spooky, I guess, because this movie is kinda awesome.  It gives us a glimpse of the director as a young boy (because we know that at least part of the story is autobiographical) and lovingly teases the classics like Godzilla, Frankenstein (obviously), The Mummy (poor Colossus), that weird ubiquitous hunchback... and I would seriously be having Children's Services look into his parents because no modern child gets a hunchback like that without at least a trip to the doctor and a plastic brace that inevitably gets magnets stuck to it during lunch.  Stupid scoliosis.  And gives us mutated sea monkeys.  Because monkeys are awesome.



Plus?  It freaks out my friend.  Weird Girl (she has no other name) should justifiably haunt the dreams of everyone who glimpses her and her spooky-ass clairvoyant cat.  And bitch better wash her hands first.  I don't want no poop-stains on my subconscious.



DO NOT, by the way, take the little ones.  Older kids are fine but even though the movie stays on the cutesy side of things, the end gets pretty intense and if you're going to take ANY kid with whom you haven't had the "Death Talk" with, yet, be prepared to do so either before or after the movie.  This generation hasn't had it's Mr. Hooper, yet.  Oh, hell, who am I kidding?  Anybody under the age of 30 hasn't had their Mr. Hooper, yet.  Thanks, PBS.  You traumatized a generation.

4.5 stars!  Wait... am I doing that, now?  Oh, HELL naw.  Go watch the movie.

Friday, October 12, 2012

I Fall To Pieces

Yes, I'll admit it.  I'm a sucker for a hard luck story and in horror movies, these tend to belong to lonely young women.  I'm not sure why it's so easy to write about a young woman dealing with her inner demons and reacting to the world around her but it seems to wedge itself into our subconscious so easily that I guess we never think about it.  In horror movies, though, those young women are usually psychotic.

Lucky McKee's 2002 indie masterpiece May is a prime example.


This movie made me uncomfortable in the way only a good slow-burn movie can.  And it IS a slow burn.  This is NOT a movie for the ADHD crowd (and, really, the only reason I got myself to sit and watch it is because I had the flu). In any case, it's good slow.  We don't need to have quick-cut scenes and MTV editing to have an enjoyable movie experience.

May is an interesting movie because it draws parallels to Carrie (which is why Angela Bettis got the starring role in the TV remake) without being too terribly obvious about it.  In fact, it's more like "What would happen if Carrie didn't develop that whole "I can destroy you with my mind" thing and actually survived high school?"

In this film, May is ostracized due to a lazy eye.  Petty, I know, but she spends her entire life being supremely self-conscious about it and because of her own imperfection, she is constantly on the lookout for a "perfect" friend to offset it.  Someone who is so perfect that she can ignore her own flaw.  Initially, this is a china doll given to her by her mother with the advice "If you can't find a friend, make one" that she is never allowed to remove from the glass case in which it resides... because Mom is a bitch.  Mom is the one who made her ashamed of her lazy eye.  Mom is the one that complained that the WRAPPING PAPER was ruined when May tore it opening the gift.  Mom is the one who gave her daughter a tiny, shaming mother-figure upon which to build all of her insecurities because, in classic horror movie fashion, the doll talks to her.  Because May is insane.  Like, completely binkers. 



If we left it at that, this would be a standard slasher but, much like Carrie, McKee takes May a step further by actually giving the main character hope.  Hope that she can have friends.  Hope that she might not be stark, raving loony.  He gives her not only a boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto) but a girlfriend (Anna Faris), as well, and she finds herself (and us with her) focusing on those parts of them that she finds to be perfect.  Jeremy's hands, Anna's neck and we find ourselves looking through her good eye at others perfections as the film goes on.  Leering as May is (at EVERYBODY), we never get the feeling that we're stepping into "male gaze" territory and Bettis is WONDROUS in her ability to show a slow descent into a psychotic break.  Why this woman doesn't get more work in mainstream film is completely beyond me.

But, as her own insanity worsens, so do her relationships until she is ultimately rejected by Sisto AND Faris and, to top it all off, her cat.  Yes, her cat recognized the crazy and is thankful that he didn't stick it in her.  Faris and Sisto can't really say the same.  Do I really need to tell you where all this recognition of crazy leads?  When crazy gets recognized, crazy migrates to the nearest sharp object.

Crazy, though, at least in this case, is still sympathetic as a victim of poor self-image and parental shaming.

All in all, I highly recommend this movie.  It's a fantastic character study and, even as slow-paced as it is, it's a lot of fun to watch... you know... if you like madness ending in bloody murder and hints of necrophilia.  I could probably do without that last part but HEY!  Go watch the damn movie.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Wait. You're an Oscar™ Winner?

Elizabeth Shue and Jennifer Lawrence.  What the hell have you done?



Let's talk about House at the End of the Street, shall we?  Spoilers, bitches.  Lots of 'em.

I'm OK with exposition, really, I am but when a movie starts out with a neighborhood party greeting the new folks, Oscar™-winning mom and pretty new girl, with the urban legend of the secretive boy next door and the murderous psycho girl who killed their parents who now lives in the woods and survives by hunting squirrels, you know you're in for a bad time.

And of course, pretty new girl falls in with the town jerk who takes her to a party.  Pretty new girl then deftly avoids date rape at the hands of town jerk so she makes this odd connection with the secretive boy next door when he saves her from a ten mile walk because WHO DECIDES THEY WANT TO WALK TEN MILES IN THE DARK INSTEAD OF SEEING IF THEY CAN GET A RIDE FROM SOMEONE ELSE AT THE PARTY?!?  Does no one see where this is going?  And then she just blurts out "Your sister killed your parents."  TACT, BITCH!  Learn it.

The locked door in the basement?  SERIOUSLY?!  Where they balls-out let us know where murderous psycho girl is living?  How about a little mystery, huh?  I mean, at least let me GUESS that murderous psycho girl is there.  Don't fucking bring her soup and a sedative.  And how does secretive boy next door manage to GET injectables?  Ya know for a mystery-thriller, I'm not getting a whole lot of mystery, here.

Enter middle-aged cop, who wants in Oscar™-winning mom's shorts.  He gets to make secretive boy next door likeable.  Something tells me this isn't going to work.

And, now, wait a minute.  Secretive boy next door is actually responsible for the playground accident that cause his sister to become murderous psycho girl?  And his parents were apparently high at the time so they didn't help at all?  What the hell?  Why did the parents have to be drug users?  Oh, yeah.  To give murderous psycho girl a REASON to kill them and to give secretive boy next door a reason to be overprotective.  Duh.

Oh, look.  Murderous psycho girl escaped into the woods because she's a crafty bitch who knows how to open a locked door even when she's pumped full of drugs.

MY LORD, IT'S ANOTHER UNCOMFORTABLE DINNER SCENE!!  And Oscar™-winning mom, who, as it was shown in other scenes, is not the best mom in the world, decides to lay down the law and basically kills the evening.  How rude.

I'm not even sure I can subject you to more of this.  This movie is PAINFUL.

But I will.  Because I love you.

So, pretty new girl decides to hang out with secretive boy next door against her mother's wishes... because we didn't all see THAT coming, and murderous psycho girl comes out to play with sharp things because irritating emo hipster music is just that annoying.  Secretive boy next door gets pretty new girl out of the house just in time to avoid being skewered and murderous psycho girl freaks out the neighbors by escaping and living out her urban legend status again.  Yay.

And... something happens while secretive boy next door is subduing her.  Did she pass out?  Is she dead?  Something snapped but it sounded like a twig.  Do we care?

Insert "mother-daughter dysfunctional talk" here.  Because you can't have dysfunctional without fun!

Another party scene... and, like an idiot, pretty new girl invites secretive boy next door because he's not already a town pariah, and he gets into a fight because teenagers are assholes.  He wins the fight but the kids almost literally break out the torches and pitchforks to chase him to the old mi... I mean his house.  And, in the midst of all this the kid who lost the fight has his parents calling Ryan an animal and threatening to sue while middle-age cop is still hitting on Oscar™-winning mom.

IT HURTS!!  It really does.

Meanwhile, pretty new girl decides to snoop at secretive boy next door's house and discovers the sub-basement lair of murderous psycho girl.  WHAT THE HELL, WOMAN?!?

Well, what do you know?  Murderous psycho girl is still alive after all.  And she's muzzled.  And pretty new girl goes poking around in his garbage.  Because she's stupid.

Insert "WHAT THE HELL, SECRETIVE BOY NEXT DOOR?" exposition scene here.

OK, I'm not going to tell you any more, but this movie is some seriously fucked up, wannabe Psycho bullshit.  It's just... bad.  I mean, not even good bad.  It takes itself entirely too seriously, for one, and there's a lame-ass twist that just makes it sad.  So sad that I think I'll have to watch, like, a month's worth of My Little Pony to make the sad go away.  The acting is OK but the scriptwriter and the director need to be dragged into the street and shot.  Watch it if you want but make sure you don't pay for it.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Swamp Things

Remember how I said I have a weakness for Shark movies?  It's still true.  Even if they're completely laughable.

What can I say about Shark Night (or Shark Night 3D if you spent the extra four bucks) that isn't going to hurt someone's feelings?



Well, the actors are...

The plot is...

The scenery is...

OK, there is nothing redeeming about this picture other than that the premise is so utterly hilarious that this movie has "drinking game" written all over it.  I would not suggest actually PLAYING said drinking game because you'd all be dead of alcohol poisoning in the first 10 minutes, but it certainly has that potential.

I mean, it crosses horror movie genres and does so badly.  If you're going to do a slasher flick, do a slasher flick.  If you're going to do a shark movie, do a shark movie.  If you're going to do a revenge film, do a revenge film.  Never the three shall meet.  And really, revenge and shark should never meet, either.  We SAW what happened with Jaws 4.

Spoilers ahoy, kiddies.

So, the premise of the movie is that this girl and her friends decide to hang out at her summer house which is in the middle of a salt lake... somewhere... in the South, maybe.  We're never quite sure.  She stops to get gas and meets up with her old boyfriend who is hideously scarred, only not so hideously as to make him unattractive for some reason, and he and his hickbilly buddy are acting all creepy and Deliverance-y.  No, we don't know why, yet.  Then they get a boat to go out to the lake house and get involved in a high-speed chase with the sheriff who, apparently, used to do this all the time with the lead girl.

The kids make it to the lake house and bullshit with the sheriff for a few then start doing teenage horror movie things like drinking and changing into bikinis in slow motion and going wakeboarding.  During the outing on the boat, the black guy (and it's always the black guy who goes first) gets attacked by a shark and loses his arm only it's not really lost because Our Hero, the pre-med student, goes in and gets the arm to put it on ice.  Insert panicky teenagers here.  So, yeah, while they're trying to bring him to the hospital (which is oh, so conveniently located about an hour away), black guy continues to bleed, attracting another shark that attacks the boat, which knocks a girl into the water (who promptly gets eaten) and making them crash into the boathouse.  Black guy promptly gets pissed and ACTUALLY TAKES A SPEAR into the water to kill hisself a shark.  He does, but it's the wrong one...



So, anyway, long story short, ex-boyfriend and hickbilly have imported sharks to the salt lake so they can make videos of shark attacks that they can sell to the Discovery Channel for Shark Week.

Wait.  What?  Oh, no.  It gets EVEN BETTER!

Ex-boyfriend was WAITING for lead girl to come back so he could feed her to a shark because she's the one who accidentally scarred his face in a panic WHILE HE LEFT HER TO DROWN in a scuba diving incident.  Yes, folks, he's out for revenge because the girl he left to die accidentally left him with a conversation piece that doesn't detract from his looks one iota.  Not only that, but to do so, he imported multiple species of sharks, not all of which are adapted to live in murky water and including not one, but TWO, Great Whites, SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS PURPOSE.  Money-making venture aside, this has all the earmarks of an Austin Powers world domination plot.  All it needs is head-lasers.






This movie is what failure tastes like but in that sweet, sweet, schadenfreude-like way that makes me laugh all the way through it.  Don't watch this if you want to be scared, because you won't.  Watch it for the express purpose of mocking it and the filmmakers and the actors and all of their descendants for generations to come.  Never let these people forget what laughable trash they made.  And laughable it is.  As a comedy, I give it an 8.  As a horror movie?  4 tops.




Sunday, October 7, 2012

...Smell My Feet...

Trick'r'Treat is the bestest, most funnest, most awesome-ist Halloween movie EVER MADE!


I was going to wait until Halloween to do this but I figure this will give you guys time to get to Best Buy and get yourself a copy because you all seriously need to see this movie, even if you're not a horror fan, because this movie is about Halloween (which we all know is my favorite holiday) and it's customs and traditions.  Santa can eat it (and probably did, the fat bastard).  The Easter Bunny?  Who wants hasenpheffer?  St. Valentine?  Fuck him in the ear.  Give me a Jack O'Lantern, any day.

As I said in the Creepshow post, this is an anthology movie but it almost doesn't play like one.  In most anthologies, the stories aren't related to one another.  There may be a wrap-around that connects them through the tellers of the tales, but the stories are generally very different.  In Trick'r'Treat,  director Michael Dougherty weaves the stories and characters in and out of one another so deftly and so smoothly that, even though there are four (almost 5) different plots, the movie is seamless.

The movie opens by explaining to us that there are rules to Halloween that must be obeyed or horrific things happen and the rules are the impetus for the plot.  Things like letting the Jack O'Lantern burn out by itself and never smashing one, always having candy for trick or treaters (otherwise, you're open for a nasty trick), dressing in costume to ward off true evil and always checking your candy.  Throughout the movie, we meet those who follow the rules and those who disobey and the figure behind it all is little Sam, a boy in footie-jammies and a cute little scarecrow mask who is DEFINITELY more than he seems and he's got some uses for candy that are simply delicious.



The stories themselves are almost innocent in terms of horror movie standards but the have that evil kick that makes them all kinds of twisted fun.  From the school principal (Dylan Baker) with more than one dirty little secret, to the cranky old man next door (Bryan Cox) who is more likely to send you off his property with a butt full of rock salt and buckshot than with candy, to the co-ed (Anna Paquin) who is out to get rid of her virginity and to the kids out to play tricks and tell urban legends, all of the stories are delightfully creepy and just add to the macabre charm of Halloween.  Besides?  Who doesn't love it when a little kid yells out things like "CHARLIE BROWN IS AN ASSHOLE!"?

As I said earlier, the characters interact with each other through the whole movie and part of the fun is picking them out in each of the other stories.  It makes the movie a game which makes it even MORE fun.


I have nothing bad to say about this movie.  Nothing at all.  Even with an R rating, I would suggest this movie for the 13 and up crowd.  It's not overly scary and not overly gory.  In fact, as Goldilocks would say, it's just right. This has been said before by many, many people but this movie should have gotten a wide theater release but it didn't.  Warner Bros. sat on this for ages and then finally released it directly to DVD/Blu-Ray which I think was a HUGE mistake, even though it made them a ton of bank.  In any case, I'm hoping for a sequel but since Warner Bros. has ditched it's direct-to-video division, it doesn't look like we'll get one.  Sad face.  Boo.

Once you watch it, though, you'll never break the rules again.  Sam is watching.  Always watching.


Friday, October 5, 2012

I'll Be Overrrrrr... There... For Eternity... Kisses!

My Name is Bob and I... am an arachnophobe.



Spiders are eight-legged abominations that, while I understand and almost appreciate their role in the natural universe, can go the hell away.  We'll find better, less creepy insectivores to take their place.  Ones that don't look like miniature face-huggers and have faces.  Not just multiple eyes tacked onto a torso with independently mobile teeth below dripping venom, staring at me with abject hatred and plotting my demise.  GROW A NOSE, then we'll talk.

In 1990, Frank Marshall became the most hated man in my seventeen-year-old world.  For he brought us the culmination of all of my irrational fears, Arachnophobia.



Most people look at this movie as a thriller/comedy.  I mean, who wouldn't?  It's got John Goodman in it.  The Dude abides, indeed.  And I admit that it IS funny in spots.  All in all, it's a very enjoyable movie but this is LITERALLY the only movie that ever made me jump out of my seat and cover my eyes.  I even watched Kingdom of the Spiders as a kid and didn't bat an eyelash (although I blame that more on William Shatner than anything... my brother ended up getting hit for making spider hands on my shoulder, though).  Eight-Legged Freaks was a cakewalk compared to this movie.

So, anyway, back to Mr. Marshall.  Not only did he take something that I was deathly afraid of and increased it's numbers to "Biblical Plague" proportions, but he altered them.  Made them more powerful.  Made them immediately deadly.  And they looked like this:



FUCK! YOU! FRANK! MARSHALL!

No, seriously, Frank.  Die in a fire.  You and your successful alien invasion film can bite my hairy, white ass.  You wanted it to be like The Birds but funny?  Fuck you.  I don't care HOW cute and quirky it is.  I could give a rat's ass how well the suspense was played against the comedy.  Making fun of Julian Sands' hair?  Hilarious and THAT'S NOT THE POINT!  Jamie Hyneman worked on special effects?  WHO CARES!?!  All the entertainment value in the world does not hold a candle to the utter terror I experience watching this movie.

Which, of course, makes it one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

Dammit.

I'll be curled up in a corner with a can of Raid if you need me.



Thursday, October 4, 2012

Whatever Happened To Chris Makepeace?

The 80's gave us some really lame music, some really lame fashion and some really lame horror movies.  This brings us to today's review.

You know that lame horror movies thing that I mentioned up there?  Forget it.  VAMP is, in my opinion, a classic horror comedy.  Quentin Tarentino owes a lot of From Dusk 'Til Dawn to it and somewhere in my gay contract, there's a stipulation that states that I must love Grace Jones.



This 1986 romp brings us big hair, rolled up jacket sleeves, skinny ties, Flashdance leotards, Dedee Pfeiffer and the stripper with the smallest boobs in the world.  See, the story goes like this:  Fraternity needs boobs.  Fraternity pledges need to get to the place where the boobs are to bring the boobs back to the fraternity so they can achieve social acceptance.  Rich nerd comes along for the ride so he can pretend he's loved.  Mid-range coolness fraternity pledge reunites with high-school pal Dedee and her mid-range boobs.  Cool fraternity pledge is infatuated with a Keith Haring inspired Grace Jones' tiny, tiny metal covered boobs and says "I must have her... to strip for the fraternity and make me even cooler".



Grace Jones is revealed to need a mani/pedi in the worst way and probably needs some floss, seeing as how (spoiler alert... really?) she's a vampire (and so is everybody in the boob-ranch) and she isn't the kind that leaves two neat, little holes.  Mid-range coolness fraternity pledge, rich nerd and mid-range boob Dedee have to fight off the vampires. 

Hey, I never said it was deep.

From a plot standpoint, it kind of shows that the studio wanted this to be a throwaway piece, but it stands up on its own.  It's not The Lost Boys or Fright Night but it kicks ass in its own way.  I think what makes it stand out is the visuals.  This movie does not look realistic and that's because they decided to use predominantly pink and green lighting but it actually enhances the movie and gives it a nightmarish quality that I love.

Anyway, remember how I said that teenagers wanted something to sneak out and see?  This was one of the big ones for me.  Oddly, it was because it was a vampire horror movie with Grace Jones, whom I loved as MayDay in A View To a Kill, and not because of the boobs.

Plus, there's this whole conversation about why Chris Makepeace is "testy" and I got the giggles.  When you're thirteen, anything can be made into a dirty joke.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

And a Hearty "Fuck You" To You, Too, Sir

After 6 years of Development Hell, Relativity Media and Marcus Nispel, the director behind the Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes seem poised to FINALLY bring the Devil's Due cult-classic comic Hack/Slash to life on the big screen.



Hack/Slash is, quite honestly, one of the most original and refreshing stories to grace the pages of comic-dom and I highly recommend it.  It follows the story of Cassie Hack, a goth-girl who happens to be the daughter of "The Lunch Lady", a "slasher" (a supernatural serial killer along the lines of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees) who took revenge on those who bullied her daughter by serving them in school lunches and was subsequently killed by Cassie herself.  She now spends her time hunting down these villains and is joined by her large, muscle-y and slightly deformed side-kick, Vlad, best known for being mistaken for a slasher himself and wearing a gas mask to hide his slightly green face

Currently, there's no set script but the rumor is that the Stephen Susco draft is still on the playing field.

There's a few problems, though.

Rumor has it that they want to make the film PG-13 and they want to make the relationship between Cassie and Vlad a romantic one.

I'm about to go all nerd-rage on this one.

Did they READ the comic?  Cassie Hack is at the VERY least bisexual (and, frankly, the LGBT community needs all the role-models we can get) and her relationship with Vlad, while touching and very close, is definitely more brother and sister (even though Vlad does get jealous when she gets attention and he doesn't).  There is absolutely no need to force that kind of relationship on them and the best you can hope for by doing so is an army of angry fanboys waving torches and pitchforks who are in desperate need of a big-screen lesbian romp and potential goth-girl boobies.

Beyond that, a PG-13 rating is the kiss of death for horror movies.  We want full-on horror, not teeny-bopper crap.  The comics themselves are delightfully gory and snarky and they deserve the right treatment.  And, seriously?  Teens want something they have to sneak out and see.

Really, Hollywood.  Tailoring horror for the widest audience dilutes the genre.  Stop doing it.

Do NOT take the Twilight route on this one, Mr. Nispel.  It will not end well.