Friday, November 30, 2012

Mamaaaaaa, Just Killed A Man...

Ah, Mother's Day.



The day when our mom's would LOVE to be pampered and spoiled (but will really just settle for breakfast in bed (which she will not eat because toddlers aren't allowed near the stove for a reason) and us going outside for more than an hour at a time). 

Or, if you're Lloyd and Charles Kaufman, the day where scary hillbilly mothers send their children out to rape and murder.  Of course, that's EVERY day to Troma films.  And, seriously, this is the entirety of the plot, barring the three girls that go all Rambo to protect themselves.


You would think, coming from the studio best known for The Toxic Avenger, that this would be one of the worst movies ever made.

SURPRISE!!!

Butt-Sex

It's actually a decent movie.

I mean, it's obviously b-grade but considering that this is the 80s and we're smack in the middle of the era of girls all talking alike, the script and the acting are not bad at all.  They're just bad enough to make the entire movie hilarious, but the movie isn't at all painful to watch.

And it looks like Lloyd coughed up enough cash to make this a decent production.  We're not talking about the standard Troma "Sony Handi-Cams and Duct Tape" productions that we usually get.  They actually TRIED and sometimes it really is the thought that counts.

My mom taught me that.

She didn't teach me how to keep my mouth shut, but she taught me that the thought counts.

I love my mother but damn.  Really?

Sass only gets you so far, Mom.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Isn't He Jewish?

When you hear the name "Bill Goldberg", Christmas does not immediately come to mind.

A wrestling ring, a lack of pants and a couple cans of whipped cream, maybe, but not Christmas.

David Steiman and Brett Ratner, on the other hand, decided to present us with this holiday tale of blood, gore and good, old-fashioned, barely disguised Jewish disdain of Christian holidays with Santa's Slay.




You would THINK that this would be just AWFUL, but any movie that STARTS with Fran Drescher and Chris Kattan getting massacred gets bonus points.

So, here's the story.

Santa Claus is actually the Anti-Christ whose story is told in The Book of Claus.  He is the result of a virgin birth produced by Satan and the only reason he's been giving gifts for the past thousand years instead of an annual day of slaying is because an angel beat him in a curling match.  This is told in Rankin-Bass-esque animation. 

Did I mention that this was filmed in Canada?


Eh, hoser!


So, anyway, in 2005, that deal ended so Santa is free to rampage across the Earth.  He apparently likes strippers unless they reject his advances, then it's roasted silicone on a stick.  His reindeer are man-eaters and, in general, he acts more like Krampus than the avuncular, Coke-swilling, carpet soiling, cookie munching, gift giver we all expect.

Now, you would THINK that this would be just plain AWFUL considering  Hulk Hogan's Hollywood career, but it's really not that bad.

Fuck you, Hulk Hogan.


For one, Goldberg doesn't talk that much.  That probably saves him.  For two, the whole movie is pretty much a giant fuck you to all of those assholes that are all "I'm a Christian, I hate all that PC "Happy Holidays" crap!"

I'ma step on my soapbox here for a second:  There are other religious and secular celebrations that occur in December.  Jewish folk don't force the rest of the world to say Happy Hannukah.  Africans don't force others to say Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Holidays spreads cheer to everyone.  Stop being selfish.  December belongs to everyone and, frankly, most of us just look forward to the paid days off.  If I give you a heartfelt "Happy Holidays", hushyerface and accept it. 

*Ahem*

Sorry about that.  Let's continue.

So, yeah.  This is, much like ThanksKilling (and pretty much any other holiday movie out there) a reason to bust out the Christmas puns and that's not necessarily bad.  This is surprisingly well-written and the acting isn't bad plus you get to hear Santa say "I'm Santa Claus, not fucking Dracula" so I say give it a watch. 

Plus there's bad accents and Fran Drescher being set on fire and drowned in egg nog.

It's like they knew exactly what to get me for Christmas.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Fool Me Once

Blogger's... ummm... Blog.  Day 4 of Holiday Horror:  April Fool's Day.








Not the first, and certainly not the last, of the Spring Break Slasher flicks, this 1986 kinda-Canadian barker is another one of those lukewarm horror flicks that were churned out during the Slasher Renaissance of the 80s, those carefree days when nobody cared about plot or back story and just wanted to see death and boobs and boobs and death.

(Compare and contrast with the Slasher Reformation which began in 1996 with Scream, where the genre-savvy teenager started both throwing the slasher off his game and, ironically and stupidly, falling into the same damn traps.)



Hello, doctor?  Is there a pill to cure unnecessary angst-face?

It's your standard premise, really.  A bunch of friends with stupid, stereotypically rich-kid names, Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Kit and Arch, take a Spring Break trip to the fabulous island vacation home of Muffy St. John.  (Not a cabin this time.  Color me shocked.)  Muffy, it seems is a bit of a jokester.  With a name like Muffy, I'm certain this is a defense mechanism.  Much like her drifting into flashback when she finds a Jack-in-the-Box, because you take your happy places where you can get them, I suppose.  Anyway, the tone is set when a deckhand gets injured when they pull into the dock.

So, as the night progresses, the intensity of Muffy's pranks gets worse and worse.  Heroin left out.  Tapes of babies crying.  And at some point, Skip goes missing.  Bodies start popping up everywhere.  Muffy has an evil twin named Buffy.  (Also, I'm sure, a defense mechanism.)  The deckhand has a creepy brother who's main hobby is being a red herring.  All your usual bullshit.


There's a kick to April Fool's Day, though, that threw a lot of folks for a loop and seriously, if you haven't seen this one, far be it from me to ruin the joke. I WILL say that this is not a slasher flick so much as a Scooby-Doo Mystery.  Seriously?  All these bitches needed was a talking dog and this movie would have been perfect. 

That being said, it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.  If anything, you can always make fun of the 80's fashion, huge hair and tightey-whiteys.  Well, maybe not that last part.  It was actually kind of refreshing in the middle of all of the horror movies that tried to avoid plot altogether.

Anyway, I have to go unmask some villains and stock up on Scooby Snax.  
They would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for us meddling kids.

Monday, November 26, 2012

A Break...

If you guys have an hour to kill, check out Darren Lynn Bousman's The Devil's Carnival!



No questions.

Just do it.

This is awesomeness in it's purest form.

Yes, it's a musical.  Yes, it features Ghost from Slipknot, Emilie Autumn and Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch as the sweetest singing and hottest hobo clown, EVER!






Ivan Moody has the permissions, with or without makeup.  ALL THE PERMISSIONS!!

Mind blown.

Pants dropped.

Just sayin'.

NAUGHTY!

Today's third installment of "Holiday Horror" is a perennial favorite.



On November 9th, 1984, Charles Sellier Jr. gave horror fans a reason to look forward to the holidays.  Santa was here, bitches and he was PISSED.

OK, so it wasn't really Santa, but the idea of a killer in a Santa suit was a relatively untapped area of the psyche.  (At least, untapped in those who completely forgot about Christmas Evil just 4 years earlier.)  I mean, we all grew up with the stories.  Santa knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake... Santa, apparently, has more wiretaps and surveillance cameras in place than the CIA and frankly, if you're not completely paranoid by the age of 5, you'll never be a believer.




The story goes like this:  Kid witnesses his parents getting killed by a robber in a Santa suit and instead of becoming Batman, he goes completely binkers when he has to wear a Santa suit when working at a toy store for the holidays.  Seems to select victims by way of "naughty or nice".  No one is "nice".  Hilarity ensues.

Hey, I never said it was deep or complicated.

Now, considering that Nightmare on Elm Street came out the very next weekend, suffice it to say that this was quickly relegated to the bargain theaters but it still made a decent profit over all for an independent film.  In fact, it actually made a profit during it's opening weekend as compared to Nightmare which did not.


And, yet, now we have to deal with THIS crap.


As I noted last week, one of the biggest reasons behind this movie making any money at all was because the PTA jumped it's shit because they didn't want kids exposed to a killer in a Santa Claus suit.  Not to mention, you know, gore and boobs.  Because kids that still believe in Santa are going to go rushing to the theaters to see this.  Because they're not watching cartoons or Sesame Street.  And they have a buttload of disposable income.  
Half in the bank.  Half up his nose.
So, yeah, the PTA believes in what they say because the PTA is, for all intents and purposes, a mob, and we all know that the intelligence of a mob is that of it's least smart member divided by the number of people in said mob.  So, KNOWING that we're dealing with a fraction of an IQ point, horror fans spoke louder than the PTA to the tune of 1.5 million dollars in 1984 money which is "probably some ungodly amount that I'm not going to do the math for" in today money.

Now, as to how I actually FEEL about it?  It's not bad.  It's not GREAT but it does have that vintage grindhouse feel to it, even though there's a LOT of time stretching going on which makes it feel longer than it should.
It's worth it to see Linnea Quigley get impaled on a mounted deer, though. Her big, ol' fakeys a-jigglin' away.  Well... as much as they can.  Silicone does not equal Jell-o.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Never, Ever...

In 1984, my 11-year-old self NEEEEEEDED to see Gremlins.  It was to be the most awesome-est movie my childhood would ever witness.


Stephen Spielberg and Joe Dante gave us a tale of buyer's remorse gone horribly, and hilariously, wrong and a couple of the most memorable creatures in the annuls of horror.

In case you have not seen this movie, shoot yourself right n... what's that?  Oh.  Dammit.  My lawyers tell me that instead of shooting yourself, you should pick Gremlins up on DVD at your earliest convenience.  In fact, it probably comes in a box set with Gremlins 2, The New Batch, which is also completely awesome although the humor isn't so dark and, in fact, veers directly into the goofy.

So, the story goes like this:  Randall Peltzer, an inventor, is coming back from a sales pitch meeting but has forgotten to purchase a Christmas gift for his son.  He stops in an old Chinese junk shop and tries to badger an old guy into selling him a creature known as a mogwai.  Old and Crusty tells him no because it's a huge responsibility but as Dad is leaving, the old man's grandson sells it to him, anyway because they need the cash and grampa is stubborn.  He makes sure, though, to inform Randall of the rules.

You all know the rules.  Say them with me, now.

1)  DO NOT expose it to bright light, especially sunlight (because it is, apparently, Irish and it burns easy).
2)  DO NOT get it wet (because wet fur smells gross).
And, most importantly,
3)  NEVER, EVER FEED IT AFTER MIDNIGHT!!  This is very, very important.  SO important that they don't tell you exactly WHEN "after midnight" stops.  But, the rule also includes the provisos "no matter how much they cry, no matter how much they beg" so you KNOW it's ominous.



DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUN!!


He names the calm, cool, collected and somewhat shy mogwai Gizmo, to the delight every child and merchandising agent in the world, and brings it home to Kingston Falls.

Enter Billy, Our Hero.  Boyfriend of Pheobe Cates (the fearer of Christmas), befriended of Corey Feldman and the asshole who, almost immediately, accidentally spills a glass of water on poor Gizmo, thus painfully creating more mogwai (because water is what they use to breed) who are not so calm, cool and collected and unplug Billy's alarm clock causing Billy to accidentally feed them after midnight (which turns them into the titular Gremlins) and unleashes the avalanche of craziness that soon overtakes the town.  Awesome, hilarious, craziness.

SHUT UP, MAN!  I'm tryin' to watch the movie!

Now, while the gremlins, themselves, are now iconic, Stripe, the leader, is memorable as the be-mohawked leader and is the cause of many a childhood nightmare (and, oddly, many an adult fetish... fuckin' Rule 34).

We all know that I can't stand PG horror but this was the holy grail to me as a kid.  Because it DID parody those 1950s "perfect little town gets invaded" films like The Blob and it was a modern fairy tale, what with its mysterious places and the cranky old lady and the rules that must be followed and the fact that it was the first horror movie that I got to watch without an adult present.  A lot of critics, however, were rough on it because of the level of violence.  This, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, were directly responsible for the PG-13 rating that was added to the MPAA ratings system two months after Gremlins' release.

And it's all this guy's fault.


But, you know what?

It's still perfect to me, now.  I firmly believe that this is a modern horror classic that people should share with their children.  This is the hug and a cookie of horror movies and I adore it.

Nifty piece of trivia before you go?

The novelization of Gremlins actually gave them an origin:  They were genetically engineered, peaceful, contemplative creatures created on an alien world but they were biologically unstable, thus, the rules.

No origin was mentioned for them in either movie.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Get Stuffed!

Reviewer's Log:  Holiday Horror Day One.

OH GAWD MY EYYYYYYYYYES!!  WHY DOES THIS EXIIIIIIIIST!?!  WHAT LOVING GOD WOULD ALLOW THANKSKILLING TO BE MADE?!?





Before I go forward with this review let me preface with a disclaimer:

I actually did enjoy this movie but that is because I am a sick motherfucker that likes puppet shows.  Not like THAT, ya pervs.

No, this movie is unabashedly low budget, makes no pains to hide it and seems to strive for that ironic "let's be awful for the sake of being awful" feel that only bloggers and drag queens seem to get right.

It's got the trifecta of awfulness.  Bad acting, bad writing and bad special effects.  LOVE IT!



And a turkey puppet in a flesh mask being mistaken for a main character's father.


All this and MORE await you in this wonderful land of grindhouse horror and potential drinking games.  (Seriously, though, do NOT play a drinking game to this movie.  You will die and the sound of a liver drying to a withered husk is a horrible thing..  I do not want you to die.  I barely get site traffic as it is.)

The movie starts out with pilgrim boobs, even.  Like... STARTS with them.  Not that they interest me, PERSONALLY, but I'm sure there are some of you that feel a need to see a pilgrim running from a turkey puppet topless.


 Yes, this is in the movie, too, because everyone likes cartoons.


Pervs.

So, anyway, turns out that this turkey was necromanced (yes, that is a word they used in the movie) to punish the white man for stealing the Native Americans' land.  Beyond that, the only plot is "five friends from college go home for Thanksgiving break and get caught up in shenanigans after a redneck's dog pees on the turkey's mystical talisman."  It only goes downhill from there.

I mean, I'm not even sure this can even be called B-grade.  I mean, in all of the complexity of film don't we have more "grades" than A and B?  Is there a ZZZ-Grade somewhere?

Seriously, kids, this makes Piranha 3DD look like The Color Purple by comparison.  This movie LIVES on puns.  ALL THE PUNS.  There are none left.  You cannot have any.  No puns for you.

But, if you want to see boobs, moobs, ugly hillbillies with no purpose, possessed turkeys represented by puppets, gravy-flavored mini-condoms, a shotgun blast from the INSIDE and repeated use of the joke "Her legs are harder to close than the Jon-Benet Ramsey case," this movie is for you.

As an extra bonus, I even watched ThanksKilling 3, which, beyond all reason, is a worse puppet show than Meet the Feebles.  There is no ThanksKilling 2 and this is actually an integral part of 3.  Add a Thanksgiving themed theme-park, a gangsta rapper grandma, a gay space worm and a robot that shoots vortices out of it's ass and you know what kind of hell I put up with for you people.

You owe me.  I accept turkey legs.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Aww, MAN! I Hate Tests!

You remember my obsession with the freaks and geeks of the world, right?

I was HOPING that Joey Stewart's 2010 The Final would fit the bill and it very much did.




As avid a fan of the AfterDark Horrorfest as I was (I say was because they are now AfterDark Originals), I looked forward the the 8 new bits and bobs of terror they brought me ever year and, really, I still do.  They put out, for the most part, good product and The Final is no exception.  The only really BAD one I saw from AfterDark is fucking Nightmare Man.  That shit needs to be burned.

ANYHOO!  The Final is another one of those movies where the victim becomes the monster that I love so much.  When it comes to teenage revenge films, this is one of the more visceral and that makes me a happy nerd.




Maybe not this happy.

So, anyway, unlike May or Carrie, where you deal with a single scary loner who snaps, you're dealing with a bunch of kids who plan this shit out.  And you're dealing with nerds, here.  These are the kids who tutor you in chemistry.  Shit's about to go down.

The movie starts with a kind of montage of the torture that these kids go through every day which, in and of itself, should tell you that these kids have plenty to be pissed about.  So the kids decide to hold a party at a cabin in the woods that one of them just inherited.  Fortunately, no one knows who owns the place so all of the popular kids go "Like, OMG, a party!  Let's go!  There might be drugs!"

This is because popular kids are stupid, apparently.


And she's 16.  But her hair is fabulous.


And then the fun starts.  Remember what I said about chemistry?  It gets used A LOT!  Like a homemade paralytic (again, I still don't know where people get the needles... is there some kind of heroin junkie supply shop near all of these people?  One that advertises "Psycho Special, Buy One Get One Free, Sterilization Package Optional"?) and a kind of acidic paste that doesn't really eat your skin but, rather, makes it kind of melt.

 Not like this... but it would totally be worth it for all those wedgies.


This movie is DARK.  Like, blacker than black humor is even sparse.  These kids have had enough so they decide if they're gonna go out, they're going out with a bang.  Their leader doesn't even have pity for his own people and kills one of them for getting the one cool kid they liked a key to get out.

One of the cool things about this one is that it references a lot of other films, most notably Audition.  It's kind of fun to pick out the inspirations, here.

The sad thing is that, drugs, strange chemicals and the shepherding of popular kids to a kegger aside, this plot is 100% plausible.  The basis of this movie is the Columbine massacre, among other school shootings, where young outcasts lashed out at anyone and everyone.  And it's movies like this, along with my own life experience, that make me even more thankful for anti-bullying initiatives and programs like The Trevor Project.

As for my enjoyment of the film, The Final is bittersweet.  It's got a great plot and it's an awesome watch but the fact that it hits VERY close to home almost makes the torture porn worth it.  It's very much a revenge fantasy and while the idea of revenge is always interesting, we all know that all revenge really does is get your soul all sticky.  Your mileage on this one, as always, may vary.

Monday, November 19, 2012

John Carpenter, Eat Your Heart Out.

Here it is, folks.  The moment you've all been waiting for.  My directorial debut!

Presenting:  The Britney Blaire Witch Project, Parts 1 and 2.


Part 1

 


Part 2



Please note, these are intentionally bad and that is why I loved making them.  I know I'm not Cecil B. DeMille and I never claimed to be.  This was just FUN!

Thank you, Britney Blaire, for letting me do this with you!  You're amazing.

Geiger Counters and Shame

Never let it be said that I am above capitalizing on a tragedy because I am not.  I write this blog, don't I?

Anyway, today's craptastic choice is Chernobyl Diaries.




It occurs to me that other than Sinister, the guy that created Paranormal Activity needs to stop getting paid.

Actually, no, I can't really say that.  I mean, he does come up with some pretty creative concepts.  His EXECUTION, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired.  Like, oh, I don't know... plot, direction and talent.

I get that actors need to start somewhere, I really do.  I also get that the easiest place to start is in horror movies because SO MANY young filmmakers cut their teeth on them.  I firmly blame this on the fact that there seems to be this standard cut-off age of about 35 or so when successful directors decide that horror does not suit their dramatic and artistic vision.  To that I say "Fuck you, Hollywood.  Stephen Spielberg needs to try and direct Jaws again with the same special effects crew and see if he can't make the shark work this time."

PEEK-A-BOO!

Now, that being said, I can tell that Oren Peli and Bradley Parker got some funding.  Not enough for them to make a movie in the United States but enough for a couple of steady-cams and a trip to Serbia.

So, the story goes like this:  A dude, his girlfriend and their bitter, recently-broken-up-with friend take a trip across Europe, stopping in Kiev to visit his brother who, it is assumed, works there.  They're supposed to go to Moscow but big brother convinces them to take a shady side trip with a shady "tour guide" to Pripyat, the town that housed the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their factories.

Ummm... what part of "European vacation" says "I would like to expose my handsome and, most of all, fertile young body to nuclear fallout" to you?  Sorry, but I'm not going anywhere NEAR that place without a radiation suit, I don't care HOW many dark, artistic, emo pictures I can take.

 Universal symbol for angst or Pedobear dropping?  You decide.


But, I digress.

So, anyway, it turns out that the place is a popular hangout for packs of wild dogs and cannibal mutants.
  
Near the site of a nuclear disaster.

Who knew?

Now, this movie could have been great, if it weren't for the fact that it was a jumbled, confusing, where the hell am I cluster of what the fuck.  You kind of  had an idea where people were but you really didn't.  You knew that the city had to have limits but it really seemed like they spread the actors out too far away from each other to be of any help to one another.  It was like the worst game of Marco Polo EVER.  These idiots couldn't even help themselves with a fucking MAP.  And they did get one at one point.

Add to that the worst example of a tacked-on government conspiracy I've ever seen and this just adds up to a very forgettable movie experience.

It's not a completely horrible way to spend a couple of hours, but only if you're REALLY bored.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Chooga-Chooga, Indeed.

Y'all are gonna hate me for this.  Just remember that I love you and I never meant to hurt you.

I absolutely adore the Frank Oz 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives.




Now, this is NOT to say that I didn't love the original.  Paula Prentiss is an unsung goddess and her work as Bobbie in the ultimate feminist horror-fantasy is timeless.  No one will ever forget Bobbie Marlowe and her Android Karenina meltdown.  "Oh Joanna... I thought we were friends... I thought we were friends... friends... coffee... how could you do a thing like that? Like that? Like that? Like that? Friends... friends... "

The thing is, though, that I think that people were, and are, just tired of remakes and that, coupled with the infighting on the set among pretty much ALL of the principles and Frank Oz, made for a film that did not do well.  Frankly, when taken on its own, divorced from the original, this movie is still poignant as a feminist fairy tale and, most importantly of all, it's HILARIOUS.


It's like Mean Girls without the Mean.


For those of you who aren't aware of the story, basically, it's this little town in Connecticut where the women are being replaced by extra-perfect, extra-docile, extra-wifey versions of themselves because their husbands are sexist pigs that are threatened by their wives' collective success outside of the home.  Because men are wusses.

This is played for pure horror in the original, although because it was filmed in the 70s and every woman went to the same elocution coach, it ends up being an unintentional side-splitter.  Oz decided to take it all the way to Happy Town.  The remake veers directly into Scooby-Doo Mysteries territory with Joanna, Bobbie and the new gay guy, Roger peering over each other's shoulders around corners but the basic fears are still there.  

Nobody wants to be replaced.  Nobody wants to live solely for the purposes of being someone's fantasy.  When those things are real, it doesn't matter how colorful the landscape is, it's still overshadowed by dread.  Both movies were played to be "thrillers in sunlight" in order to contrast the dark secret the town holds.


Callista Gingrich: Hopefully not our supreme robot overlord.

This is one of those "Town With a Secret" movies where you KNOW what the secret is and you KNOW that it's easily escapable but the strong woman just has to remove the villain's mask and she can't escape without her family but her family is part of the problem.  Her husband is, anyway.  

The fact that most of the remake is played out like a bubblegum pop song is probably what most people hated about it but I appreciated what Oz was trying to do.  Plus, even though you can kind of see the tension between the actors, they still pull through with great performances.  Glenn Close is fucking brilliant, as always.

I really suggest that everybody give this one another chance.  It may not be the cult favorite that the original is but the remake is really not as bad as people make it out to be.  Give it another chance.

Hell, maybe you can watch it while scrap-booking or making a pine cone centerpiece for the holidays!  Or maybe you can watch it with the book club while reviewing a new catalogue of Christmas and Chanukah decorations.  Or maybe you can watch it while working out!  

Washing machine, ladies!  Chooga-Chooga-Chooga-Chooga!  Chooga-Chooga-Chooga-Chooga!

Also?  Do-si-do.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Clap Your Hands If You Believe

The Apparition has problems.



SO many problems.

You know, it really doesn't say a lot for a film when the best actor in it is Tom Felton.  I mean, he was great as Draco Malfoy and I know he's got the chops but when everyone around you falls flat, your performance has to suffer, as well.  And WOW did it suffer.

Sorry, kids, but this movie isn't even bad enough to be ironically good.

See, I do like a decent haunting film but there are no words for the lameness that is The Apparition.  None.  This is the white bread and mayonnaise sandwich of horror films.  It LOOKS slick and the effects are decent but until they create special effects that can cure bad acting, this movie is sunk.


Much like the money spent to watch this film.


OK, so, the premise of this is a college scientist (Felton) is trying to be Egon Spengler (minus the fascination with spores, molds and fungi) and, in the process of conducting an experiment, brings out this vague thing that either is or is not an actual ghost and only exists physically because they enhanced the power of belief with SCIENCE!!  Fast forward to the young couple in the brand new house where, now, weird shit's goin' down.

Are you fucking kidding me? 

I half expected the house to be built on an ancient Native American cemetary.  Oooooh.  Spooky mold. Doors open.  Oooooh. 


And spooooooky gummie bears!


Bitch, please.  And if I hear ONE MORE MOVIE say "The house isn't haunted, you are," I'm gonna kick a scriptwriter's ass from here to Poughkeepsie.  That shit should have died with Paranormal Activity.

On top of that, this guy tells the young couple that he can get rid of it by rerouting the entire town's electricity to their house.  Wait, what?  That just makes no fucking sense.  Suffice it to say that this movie only ends in tears.  Well-deserved tears. 

So, I guess the only thing left to say is:  y'all fuckin' owe me for takin' one for the team. You don't gotta watch this steaming pile because I did it for you.   Skip it.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

A Different Word For EVERYTHING!

The French are a fucked up people.  Not only is the 2006 Kim Shapiron film Sheitan one of the strangest films I've seen recently but it stars Vincent Cassel who is either entirely brilliant or completely bugfuck crazy.







For those of you who don't recognize Vincent Cassel's name right away, he played Gilles De Rais in The Messenger with Milla Jovovich, Francois Toulour in Ocean's Twelve/Thirteen, Thomas Leroy in Black Swan and Marcus in Irréversible.  In my opinion?  NOT an attractive man.  Something about his REALLY WIDE five-head, the spacing of his eyes and his itty-bitty chin.  He looks like a bird.  Monica Belucci must be extremely happy in the sack, though, because they've been married for about 10 years, now.



Here you go, straight boys.  Cleavage you will never have access to.

I digress. 

ANYWAY, so in Sheitan, the French version of The Jersey Shore cast gets thrown out of a nightclub (conveniently called "STYXX") on Christmas Eve and decide, "Oh, hey, I'm not done partying, yet.  Let's go with this girl we just met, whose name, coincidentally, is Eve, to her remote village and get wasted because French filmmakers are never subtle in their use of symbolism, particularly of the religious variety."

Is this EVER a good plan?

So yeah.  When a goat directly out of a medieval satanic woodcut blocks your path TURN AROUND!  Of course, they don't because jovial, yet creepy, farmhand Joseph (Cassel) comes to remove the goat from the path and get them unstuck from the mud with his weirdly strong legs.  He also follows them around like a puppy, gets them to go swimming at a hot spring and tries to pimp out his niece.

By the way, if'n you don't want to see some supremely ugly nekkid people, this movie probably ain't for you.  I'm all about the beauty of the human form but there's a difference between a skinny person and a toast rack.  Just sayin'.


Toast rack.  Es no sexy.  Es no bueno.

After all of this, there's an extremely awkward discussion about sex over dinner (which happens to be goat... yes, goat).  I say it's awkward because Joseph, yet again, has inserted himself into their evening.  I'm wondering by this point how the hell you get this guy to go the fuck away.  "I'm sorry, dude.  You are more than twice our age, you look like the standard definition of "child molester" and I could SWEAR I saw a windowless white van over there so if you don't mind leaving us alone and going to hang out with the very pregnant wife you're currently bitching about upstairs, that would be awesome, k?"

The rest of the evening is all "kids trying to get laid while figuring out that there is something supremely wrong going on" but, you know, they're kids.  It takes a while.




From a character standpoint, Joseph is obviously the best developed but the character of Bart (who started the whole mess by getting into the bar fight to begin with) kind of intrigued me, too.  He wants to pull of a brave front but he's highly insecure and, although nothing is said directly, I'm pretty sure that the character is supposed to be in the closet.  All of the others are fairly throw-away, including the one who's there cheating on his wife.

So, the movie itself... Overall, I liked it but your mileage may vary.  It most definitely has a gross-out quality to it that, oddly, doesn't detract from the film as much as some of the actors do.  The script is a little vague and it's even more vague when you realize you have to read subtitles.  (Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE subtitles.  Dubbing is usually just awful.  They just make my brian hurt from trying to concentrate on the dialogue AND the movie at the same time.)  Even this, though, isn't necessarily bad because the movie seems INTENTIONALLY vague.  And when you add in Frenchy McCrazypants, it ends up being this creepy thrill ride that sends slimey shivers into places you really don't want them. 

I'm not sure penicillin will cure this one.  I'm pretty sure the only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to your friends.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Hitchhikers Are Still Bad, Right?

OK, I'll totally admit that I watched Vile out of a Face-Off fanboy moment.  I saw McKenzie Westmore's name and I said, "Oh, hey.  We know she's kinda stiff as a presenter.  Let's see if her acting is as wooden as those fashionable wedges she wears."







Well?  Fortunately, she doesn't show up a lot and, for what it's worth, she's actually funny in this one but they gave her close to top billing for a part that lasts less than ten minutes.  YAY, marketing.

Anyway, I can tell you that the people who hate torture porn will ABHOR this movie because that's all it is from start to finish.  The story goes like this:  Kids are on the way back home from a camping trip when they pick up a hitchhiker (Westmore) who gasses them.  They wake up in a cabin whereupon scary mad scientist lady shows up on a screen and tells them that they have vials attached to the back of their heads that must be filled with a certain chemical that the brain produces in 22 hours.  This chemical is produced when the human body is subjected to extreme pain.


Science is MAAAAAAAAAgiiiiic!


Right there, this told me that this flick is gonna be more wince-incuding than a towel-whip to the gonads.  I didn't know if it was gonna hit or not but, damn, if I didn't flinch.

I was pleasantly surprised, though.  The film had a little bite to it.  It's more along that whole "man's inhumanity to man" thing, but it wasn't forced.  It flowed smoothly between "we HAVE to do this" to a few characters that were "we WANT to do this" and one character that was just too hot to handle.  Every cast has to have a douchebag. 


And some casts consist ONLY of douchebags.


There's some genuine tenderness between a few of the cast members, though and this is what brings Vile a few notches above your standard low-budget torture porn.  And there are a few twists along the way, as well.  One of the characters is pregnant so they have to figure out how to harvest from her without hurting her TOO badly, for example.

Ultimately, though, this movie is enjoyable but it's only a notch or two above "I just graduated from Tom Savini's School of Special Effects and my mommy bought me a camera".  Vile is so full of burns, punctures, slashes, missing fingernails, black eyes and cauliflower ears that it may as well have been filmed at a wife beaters convention.  That, on top of the fairly ludicrous "black market brain chemicals" angle, makes it ostensibly silly.  I enjoyed it but we all know I'm a sick motherfucker, don't we?

If anything, I say give it a try.  Hearing an attractive SyFy reality show presenter yelling "fucking rednecks" should make you chuckle.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Creeps. I Has Them.

You know, I saw "From the Producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious" on the poster for Sinister and I was ready to write it off.





DO NOT WRITE THIS MOVIE OFF!

I do not get creeped out often and this one was literally a white knuckler.  I have a crease on my ass from the edge of my seat.  I could not take my eyes off of the screen and I'm not sure I blinked for a while. 

It's good enough for me to use awful clichés.  Does this tell you anything?

This is not to say that it doesn't have problems.  I mean, it does follow a pretty traditional haunting/search for lasting fame/author searching for the book of a lifetime places himself and his family in danger plot so it's almost predictable.  The twists, though...  Oh, boy, the twists.



Chubby Checker, you asshole.

I'm gonna try not to spoil anything here, but basically, the story goes like this.

Author dude Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke, looking suspiciously like one of the Dillon brothers) moves his family into murder house unbeknownst to his family (until later in the movie which causes issues) because he wants to write the bestest true crime novel EVER.  Ellison finds a stack of 8MM snuff films in the attic that show a series of murders going back to 1966.  He enlists the help of the local deputy to help him make the connection.  In the films, though, is a creepy dude who it appears is some kind of pagan child-eater-god named Bagul that uses images as a gateway to his victims and he's placed his family directly in its path..



Keep lookin'.  He's comin' for you next.

Now, I understand that a modern audience may not like or get this movie but fuck them.  This movie has classic horror written all over it.  From the first frames where we watch the death of the family into whose home the author has moved to the utterly inhuman noises coming from the eldest child in the middle of a night terror to everything that happens afterward (although I wish the commercials hadn't given away some of that), this is fresh and, even given it's almost predictability, exciting.

And the lawnmower.  OHGAWDTHELAWNMOWER!!

Seriously, the only question I left this movie with is "Why the hell doesn't this asshole turn on the damn lights when he's investigating strange noises in the house?"

Sorry, but if I hear stupidness in another room, the lights are going ON.

Fuck you pagan child eater god.

 

Friday, November 9, 2012

Infant Immortality Rate Shot To Hell

THIS!  The Sleepover.  Is the most awesomest short film I have ever seen... until tomorrow when my ADHD kicks in and I find a totally NEW most awesomest thing I have ever seen.  But for now, THIS is the most awesomest thing I have ever seen!

SEE IT!


THE SLEEPOVER!!


And Your Little Dog, Too.

In case you haven't guessed, I am what the old queens call "A Friend of Dorothy".  Sadly, the 2010 indie flick YellowBrickRoad makes me want to hunt her down and stab her in the face for being SO FUCKING BORING! 


Seeing as how the movie has absolutely NOTHING to do with The Wizard of Oz and there's no mention of Dorothy in there ANYWHERE, it disturbs me to report that stabbing Dorothy in the face STILL MAKES MORE SENSE THAN THIS MOVIE EVER DID!  Hell, the fact that the title is all one word makes more sense.

I mean, it starts OK, with this legend about the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire leaving everything behind, including pets, guide dogs, food, clothing, etc. to follow a path into the forest for utterly unknown reasons and the government finally disclosing the location of the trail.  YAY!  Now, we have mystery!


ADVENTURE!!  Only not really.


So, yeah.  In true horror movie fashion, an idiot research/film crew decides they want to follow this trail.  Research is fun, right?  RIGHT?

Yeah, that's about where the fun stops in this movie.  The next hour and a half is "psuedo-creepy-but-not-really" local girl-guide, hiking, looking at kinda-sorta-scientific instruments, strange voices in the forest coming from loudspeakers because of who-knows-why and the least exciting slides into madness ever witnessed.


This piggie?  Much crazier than this movie ever gets.


Yeah, there's violence but it's disjointed and pointless and less gruesome than a chicken nugget.  Come to think of it, there's more spice in a chicken nugget.  I actually DID keep watching this one but only to prove to myself that there actually IS something more boring than watching paint dry.  At least the paint gives you interesting patterns occasionally and the fumes can be fun.

Do I really need to tell you to skip it?  This one has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever.  Go watch grass grow.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

World War Zzzzzzzz

Before y'all go jumpin' my shit, let me say that I LOVED the book.



World War Z was one of the most innovative pieces of writing I'd ever come across and Max Brooks will forever be enshrined in the horror hall of fame for it but this?

This looks like any other action movie Brad Pitt has ever done with more corpses.

Sorry.  I'm just not sure about this one.

In the meantime, read the book.  Reading is fundamental.  Reading about zombies is just plain awesome.

A Cuddle And A Kick

What do I say about Kill List?  Hmm.




Kill List is another "kind of brilliant" British multi-genre shocker that makes me think.

It makes me think "What the Hell did I just watch?"  It makes me think "What is up with the British obsession with contract killings?"  It makes me think "Can I get away with slapping Guy Ritchie around for introducing the "British mafia" genre to the world even though he has nothing to do with this movie?"

Above all, though, it really does make me think about morality and the choices we make and the extent to which can we be manipulated.

PINNOCCHIO LIED!!  No strings, my ass...


Kill List is one of those movies you have to see to believe and I did like it a lot.  It just takes patience to watch.  Much like A Serbian Film (which I do not recommend after a meal), Kill List takes us through the irredeemable fall of a once-reformed, for lack of a better word, "sinner".  A "sinner" who believes he's doing the right thing by his family when he returns to a life of contract killing.  He's ALMOST right when it turns out that his victims are pedophiles but then things go South.


Hmm.  Hell has penguins.  Who knew?

About the strangest thing I can say about this movie is that it flips through genres like turning the pages of a children's book.  You know how I feel about multi-genre films but Kill List doesn't try to meld them together.  It finishes with one and moves to the next.  Personally, that's the best way to handle these things.  Because then you don't end up with a confusing pile of crap.
 
I can't really tell you more without spoiling it but I CAN say that this movie is kind of an emotional roller coaster.  It is, by turns, stark and funny, calm and cuckoo, as tender as a mother's kiss and as cruel as the desert sun.  It really does bring back the British horror of the late 60s/early 70s but gives it a modern edge.  The cinematography is fully designed to capture the mood and it is keenly felt.  It is gritty and it hurts to watch but in a good way.  

Ultimately, Kill List is this generation's Wicker Man only without that asshole Nick Cage and the dentures he shares with Ellen Burstyn.

I think I need to dig up Witchfinder General, now.  A little Vincent Price never hurt nobody.