What Did I Fucking Tell You About Children?

"Oh, hey!  How ya doin'?  Podcasting is going well.  Work is fine.  How's the wife and kids?

Oh, your stepson is the Antichrist.  That's fun to know.  I'll, aaaahhhh... I'll be over here.  Not pointedly laughing at the horrible birthday clown who IS NOW ON FIRE, WHAT THE SHIT, MAN?!?"

And THAT'S the conversation I would be having with Adam Scott in the new Netflix piece, Little Evil, which wins absolutely no awards for having such a douchey name but it's still kinda fun, should I have gone into acting like I always wanted but my lack of any drive whatsoever kept me from pursuing, except I'm ALL ABOUT the casting couch because I am a sex-positive person and if a blowjob is gonna get me some choice parts, I swallow, thanks.

So, Adam Scott is playing Gary.  New stepdad to Lucas, the titular Little Evil, and new husband to Samantha (Evangeline Lilly) who is adorable and lonely and clueless.  She's really not a helicopter mom but she watches out for her boy.  Her boy who was conceived during a cult ritual and she fucking knew it, so her son being the actual Antichrist really shouldn't have come as such a shock to her but, y'know... here we are.

Awww, lookaher... All smiles and adorableness... and stupidity...

Gary, of course, being the stepdad, just wants to be a good guy.  Soapbox derby cars, ice cream, the works.  The kid, on the other hand, has some fuckin' issues.  The most pressing, of course, being that he is literally the spawn of Satan, begat via creepy reverend (Clancy Brown) who moves into town to harvest the goddamn crop.  Gary, meanwhile, is showing this dude property, none the wiser.  He's ALSO getting calls from the wedding videographer who, while taping the ACTUAL FUCKING TORNADO THAT DESTROYED THE WEDDING GROUNDS, noticed that Lucas was untouched by winds that have been known to pick up and toss around cows and trains.

Yo, Damien.  It's past your bedtime, buddy.

So, what does Lucas do to Gary the first day he drives him to school?  Manages to get himself detention and get Gary blamed for it.  Gary, who has to attend mandatory therapy and now has a Child Protective Services agent visiting (played delightfully by Sally Field).  His co-worker, a male-identifying individual by the name of Al (Bridget Everett), is also part of the the group, and they form a bro-bond over the whole thing.  A bond that is as tight as Octomom's pelvic floor.  At least at first.

She has a fantastic eye for sweater-vests.

Suffice it to say that Lucas is so upset at having a new daddy that he buries him alive.  Literally.  Called Samantha from a box under the swingset.  She DUG HIM OUT.  Which upsets Gary which upsets Samantha who puts Lucas in a time-out (seriously?) and proceeds to not believe Gary which almost gets divorce papers signed but flowers and a trip to the water park for Gary and Lucas are all it takes for happy families, I guess.

If this SOUNDS like a set-up, that's because it is.  What do we do with the Antichrist when we find him, kids?  That's RIGHT!  We try to kill him.  And that's when the fun REALLY starts.

No, for real, kids, other than that whitewashed sack of weeaboo fangasm, Death Note (which I'm currently in the middle of and thoroughly hating), Netflix is putting out some good material and, while this is not really Oscar-worthy (and come on, how much do I watch that is), it's actually pretty good.  It funny, it makes good use of its people, it's heartwarming in that "You can be whatever you want to be and I don't want to kill you, anymore" kinda way.  It's actually a decent "family" horror-comedy. 

Give it a shot.  It's cute. 

A WOOKALAR!

It's time to step into the Wayback Machine and have a jolly trip to 1980... or, rather, sometime before 1980 but it's not quite clear in which decade our "jaunt into Horror-Adjacent City" pick for today, The Private Eyes (not to be confused with the 1976 Jackie Chan flick of the same name), occurred.

We DO know that it's in the early 20th century and we ALSO know that Inspector Winship (Don Knotts) and Doctor Tart (Tim Conway) are morons that managed to get exiled from America and are now working for Scotland Yard because that always happens to people that get expelled from their own country for being a fucking hazard to themselves and others.

Seriously.  Tart invented a gun that fires itself but only every hour on the hour.  What the fuck use is that?  Comic relief, that's what the fuck use that is now hush and let an old man reminisce.

You would think that she would at LEAST wait for the opening credits...

Winship and Tart are at the Morley Manor, a quaint English mansion, to investigate the murder of Lord and Lady Morley.  Among the suspects?  Their adopted daughter, a homicidal butler around whom you cannot say the actual word "murder" (Bernard Fox, best known as Dr. Bombay in Bewitched), creepy German head of household affairs (fans of the American remake of The Grudge will recognize Grace Zabriskie as Emma, a psychic dementia patient) who rules the staff with an iron fist and the quickest knee to the groin East of the Pecos, a racist portrayal of a samurai chef, stereotypical busty maid in short frilly uniform, hunchback groundskeeper with no tongue, and racist depiction of a gypsy groundskeeper.

Ready for inspection.

 This is 1980, kids.  Malice-free racism was still in full swing.  We're working on it.  Be thankful we didn't get a legit African witch-doctor up in here.

ANYWHOSAWHATZIT!  This plays out pretty much like your standard Agatha Christie "And Then There Were None" mystery as the staff is dropping off like flies while our resident morons try to figure the whole thing out.  In case you all were wondering, this type of movie is the definitive forerunner to what we now call slasher flicks which is what lands it in the "horror-adjacent" category. 

Poor Dr. Bombay.

As for our leads, Winship is the serious one but that doesn't make him any brighter than Tart, our addlepated but lovable moron with a penchant for harboring differently-abled pigeons.  Watching these two bumble their way through this mystery farce is a master class in fucking stupid.  From they way they accidentally find themselves in hidden passageways to they way they fight over lighting a goddamn candle, you can smell the dumb coming from your blu-ray player.  It's a strong stench but not an unpleasant one.

Why does the dumb one have A) the writing duties and B) a fucking doctorate?

I gotta say, kids, I love this movie but that probably has more to do with nostalgia than anything else because by any professional standards, this movie sucks on toast.  Watching it again brought up some very nice memories of my childhood watching this kind of thing with my Mom.  It's got a simple story but it's funny in that Sheckey Greene kinda way where pratfalls were king and dad-jokes reigned supreme.  It's no Clue by any stretch of the imagination and, frankly, if we're looking for any kind of intellectualism in our horror-adjacent comedies, neither of them hold a candle to Murder by Death, but it's a fun way to spend a couple of spooky, but not scary, hours with the family and a bucket of popcorn.

You might want to ask your little kids something to distract them at around this time, though, because the "boobs are not pockets" concept is definitely a "teen" conversation.

It does make me sad to know that this was the last movie Conway and Knotts made together (not counting a cameo in Cannonball Run II) but those two had a comedic rhythm that was unstoppable and I miss that sort of thing.  I haven't seen any kind of comedy duo, lately, that compares.

But, YES!  I still recommend this one, preferably as part of a theme night with the aforementioned Clue and Murder by Death.  Because they're all awesome in their own ways.

Just beware the dreaded Wookalar.

Boo.

We Hurt the Ones We Love. LET ME LOVE YOU!

My roommate has been hounding me for MONTHS to watch his new favorite movie, The Love Witch.  I finally gave in but only because I like my roommate and I also like mid-to-late-60s retro Technicolor schlock.

Anna Biller's latest, The Love Witch, is a throwback to films like Hammer's Dracula, Blood and Black Lace, Black Eye, and Barbarella.  Super-saturated with color, marinated in pure sex, and melodramatic to the extreme, these films are EXTRA-cheesy and I love the fuck out of them.

That's it, mama.  Smoke up that classic convertable.

Elaine, our lead and played delightfully by Samantha Robinson, is a recent widow/divorcee/not-really-sure fleeing from a past she'd rather forget but also starting to weave her own little web of debauchery in her new digs.  Digs where her old coven seem to know exactly where to find her at all times.  (This is important, somehow, but I still haven't quite placed my finger on it.)

Yeah.  SUUUUper-weird.

Her schtick?  She's addicted to love.  Like a reject from a Robert Palmer video, she gives us garage-door eyeshadow and a tasteful coral lip to get what she wants and what she wants is a man to love her forever.  Except she keeps getting it wrong and either having to kill them or just watching them die.  Horribly.  Not in the way of "Oh, that death was gruesome", more like "Oh.  No.  I'm.  Dying." hilariousness.

You heard me, bitch.  DO.  BETTER.

During the course of this, the police are catching up to her, she falls in love with the lead detective and all kinds of wackiness ensues.  Like rituals:

So much unsexy nude in this movie.  I mean, it wasn't all bad but damn.

And impromptu horseback riding that leads directly to a pop-up renaissance festival starring all of her coven friends that are itchin' to hold a wedding for the two people that literally started dating a day before.

CLOWN!!

 For real kids, this is some DELICIOUS cheese.  Like a fine aged cheddar or smoked brie.  Biller obviously knows and loves her schlock and I need to meet her and thank her for this.  Mostly because I watched it reeeeeealllly fucking high (weed is not a drug, it's a plant) and that's the best way to watch it.  You don't need acid to feel like you're hallucinating.  Just some skunk weed and this movie.  Fantastic.

I may have to give this one a try sober but I feel that I may have been spoiled myself for choice this time around.  I think it would still be fun but not AS fun.  Still, this is one of the best instances of unintentional comedy-horror ever made.  (The director prefers that it be known as a melodrama but she's wrong.)

Anyway, bust out those go-go boots and fringe dresses, spark up a blunt, get yourself some munchies and check out The Love Witch.  You won't be disappointed.