So, first off, apologies to anyone that cares for not having done a post in so long. Been going through a lot of personal crap that has made it hard to really muster up much motivation to write. However, working on fixing that, going to try getting back into writing, maybe also do some Lets Plays that I'd been wanting to do and upload 'em on youtube.
Moving right along.
I saw The Thing 2011 finally. I've been avoiding reading reviews as best as I can, but I've been hearing snippets here and there, like Brad Jones (aka the Cinema Snob, who I'm a gigantic fan of and totally recommend) talking about how ridiculously awful it was. Still, I tried not to go into this with a negative mindset. This is a bit of a problem though, and I want to come clean on my bias here: I'm a gigantic fan of 1980's The Thing. How big of a fan? I'd honestly consider it my favorite horror film of all time.
Still... I tried to keep my head clear, and I just kind of sat there, waiting for it to begin, thinking to myself "No matter what, I'm sure it at least won't be as awful as, say, the remake of Halloween." Hahahaah. ...Hahahahaha.
First off, fuck the casting. It's now a camp of Norwegians AND Americans, because the film needs Americans for it to even be watchable to American audiences, right? I mean there's no way horror fans would sit through a completely subtitled movie like [REC] or Let The Right One In, right?
Our MacReady is a 20-something cute girl who, for reasons the script doesn't care about and I guess we shouldn't either, is brought in with some other young Americans to help some middle aged Norwegians get a Tyranid and his giant swivel fan out of a block of ice. Why do I call it a Tyranid?
Fuck the alien design. It's like G-Birkin mixed with some Zerg/Tyranid shit. It's an amorphous CG blob with random insectoid parts and a lot of teeth. I mean it was spider-like in some parts of the Carpenter film, but for the most part the alien there was an odd combination of various parts, rather than... a fleshy blob with a lot of Zerg limbs.
On that note, it's not even good CG, at best it's on par with the cheapest looking parts of RE: Degeneration, at worst it's more like RE2. Oh god, the CG snow in this movie especially. I cringed, I -cringed-. I've been watching a lot of Hercules The Legendary Journeys lately on Netflix and I laugh at all the horrible screened shots... but this... this stands out more than they do. It's like parts of an early, early PS2 game (not even The Thing PS2 game, that had better snow) were overlayed over parts of the film.
Fuck the tension. First off, you can tell right off the bat who is an alien and who isn't. Why? Because they act it. They act overly suspicious or overly evil, they even get little musical signs that yes, they are most certainly an alien. There is no way in hell to be surprised at any of them. Secondly? The alien repeatedly gives up on sneaking and just roams about in alien form picking off people like I'm watching some shitty Syfy monster slasher flick, the kind of thing John Rhys Davies might pop up in and he'd be the only reason you decided to watch it (I'm looking at you, Chupacabra Terror.)
Fuck the continuity. This movie... God... it tries, it really tries to keep itself in line with some things in the 'sequel', but god it fails, it fails so hard. The alien behaves completely differently, and ...god, there's one thing I have to get out there that bugs me. They make this huge, huge deal out of the fact that the alien can't mimic inorganic material. This becomes such a big deal they use "Do you have fillings?" as a test to see if someone's human. Thankfully the Norwegians were apparently testing the sweetest of experimental arctic candies as most of them do have fillings. This'd be fine and dandy as I can't think of anything in the Carpenter Thing that contradicts that off the top of my head, but... then the movie has the alien randomly getting completely perfect condition clothes that look exactly like the clothes the humans were wearing before they got taken over. This despite y'know, we've seen what it does to clothes. Where the fuck is it getting the clothes? Even out in the middle of nowhere, away from the base? Do the Norwegians just like, bury boxes full of backup uniforms everywhere?
On top of that, the fucking ship.. the ship that crashed, stranding the alien at the start of the Carpenter movie? Stranding him for 100,000 years according to this movie and suggested by the Carpenter movie? Well apparently it's actually 100% fine. The alien just went "Hurpa durp I'm gonna go for a walk" and got frozen for 100,000 years. How do we know it's fine? He starts the ship up just fine, turning it into what, on the outside, looks like a fan from Sharper Image, and on the inside looks like, well, a generic space ship with curvy metal walls, random shiny things, and some tube in the middle that is constantly playing Tetris. This ship starts up, and is fine. In fact, the only thing that powers it down is the alien dying, because I guess it was a load-bearing alien.
This 'prequel' was just fucking retarded, and I'd far from recommend it. I wish nothing but the worst towards those that make it, and I'm glad it was both a critical and financial disaster.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The Saw Trilogy
The first Saw film was honestly something I've got to praise, which may come as a surprise to some readers out there. It receives a bunch of hatred these days from non-horror fans and horror fans alike for starting the trend of torture porn film genre, inspiring such divisive films as the remakes of Hills Have Eyes, the Hostel films (which I love, because they're funny as hell. I swear to god it feels like people miss out on the satire in Hostel), and all of those Michael Bay backed remakes of popular horror films warped into mindless gore fests.
You see, despite all the claims, the original Saw really cannot be considered a torture porn film. It's relatively light on the gore, and the few intense torture sequences in the film are shot in a way where we don't see the details (Dr. Gordon cutting off his own leg is mostly offscreen/implied, and the barbwire trap victim is shown in super high speed.)
I stand by that it was one of the few major original horror releases of the decade. The twist was a complete surprise, the setup was fairly unique, the atmosphere was fantastic... everything had that sort of level of filth that brought me back to Se7en.
Honestly one of the only real complaints I can make is that I hated was Adam's horrible faking dead scene. I know it's supposed to be him being a bad actor, but that's awful even by bad acting standards. Beyond that, I thought the acting was top notch. Cary Elwes delivers a fantastic performance, and it makes me sad that I've barely seen him in anything since then. The man was great in Robin Hood Men in Tights, Shadow of the Vampire, etc. Dr. Gordon's wife and child also deliver a really believable performance while being held hostage that honestly makes this scene most disturbing than anything else in the film for me. There's no blood, no violence, even implied, and it manages to come across as more disturbing than any other scene in the film to me.
I would, in all honesty, rate it as one of the better horror films of the past eleven years, as a standalone film. Most of the hate, at least from horror fans, seems to stem more from the sequels and for what this inspired. It really can't be blamed for either, though. Part of me blames the latter on false claims from major critics that exaggerated the amount of gore found in the film (Something we still see today. I'm still fucking disappointed after seeing Human Cenipede, realizing it's far more disturbing in reviews and in your head than the lame-ass, relatively tame piece of shit it actually is.)
Saw 2 came out merely a year later, and this one I actually got to see theatrically (Which already got me worried. It's usually not the good horror films I see in theaters.) Sadly, this film ended up being way more traditional than the previous film. Instead of the two men, one room setup we've got what I could only describe as a poor man's Cube wherin a rag tag group of some of the most unlikable people (including what is easily the least likable character I've ever run across as a main character in a horror film) run into various potentially deadly traps. There's more gore, more violence, and altogether a lot less of what made the first film great.
The only parts of the film that really save it as a genuinely good film are the scenes of Jigsaw himself. It's interesting hearing him talk, explain everything. I love how they managed to make an old, frail, sickly old man somehow both evil and pittyable at the same time. Seriously, Tobin Bell is half of what keeps the Saw series going today, and without him I doubt they would have gotten all these sequels.
I've got to tip my hat off to Xavier, the puerto rican american gangster in this film, for simply being such a horrible, disgusting character. Seriously, I've seen many, many horrible characters in horror films, but this guy just takes the cake. Even by real life evil standards, he's the kind of guy that ends up getting shived within his first week of prison time for being a disgusting sack of shit. He's the kind of guy they throw on Showtime's Dexter to give a completely unsympathetic one-episode character for him to kill and have the audience cheer, because there's no moral ambiguity when you're this evil. I find if frustrating how cartoonishly evil they made this one guy. He makes the cast of Rob Zombie's Halloween seem like The Wiggles. The cast of this film really highlights my complaint about Hollywood horror films having to pack their films with the most horrible of horrible people in order to create that moral level where maisntream audiences are fine with seeing them die horrible deaths, because it's okay for them to be entertained by the bloody death of a monster and only a monster.
Overall, it's not a bad film on its own. It's entertaining, and Tobin Bell's performance as Jigsaw is fantastic, but it's still really weak compared to how awesome the first film was. I'd call it the Dream Warriors to Saw 1's Nightmare on Elm Street. At least it managed to have an unpredictable twist like the first film did.
The third film, which was the final film I saw theatrically, for the most part seems like an attempt to return to the basics that Saw 1 gave us rather than the traditional, dumb jerkasses getting killed in creative ways (like Final Destination's sequels only completely straight faced.) While nowhere near as good as the first film, it's at least a far better sequel and much closer in tone to the first film.
The plot, similar to the second film, is split into parts that we constantly shift back and forth between (rather horribly I might add, I detest whoever edited this film.) One half is devoted to a sort of anti-Punisher style story of Jigsaw's latest plaything: A man whose child was accidentally killed, and who feels he was denied justice. Jigsaw puts him in positions where he decides if people tied to the case (a witness who fled the scene, the judge, etc.) deserve to live, giving him the option to save them from the various deadly traps or let them die in order to feel like justice has been done. I'm fine with those kinds of stories for the most part, when they're done right. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Death Wish, I'm a big fan of The Punisher (especially Punisher MAX), but it's nice to see the darker side of this mentality, and it's really hard to sympathize with the man even with his sob story background. The other half of the film follows a female doctor being forced to perform surgery on a dying Jigsaw by Amanda, his apprentice, as well as some flashbacks explaining how they came to work together.
First off the film begins on a sour note by showing us two gruesome death traps that Amanda made to be purposefully unwinnable, as well as Detective Matthews from the previous film breaking his own ankle to get out of his chain, before we get into the film proper. Originally this had me expecting the film would be more like the previous film, just an excuse plot to see various people in traps with little attention being payed toward character development. You see, the first film, to me, really depended on the paranoia of the characters involved. That combined with the feeling of confusion over who is doing what, why, how things happened made for a very awesome film. I can't get any of that from a group of jerkasses that exist purely to be killed off.
Thankfully, despite the first ten minutes or so, the film ends up being much different than I'd expected. There's only a few victims and only one of them just feels like the kind of gratuitous, over the top shit we got in Saw 2, or the shit we got in later films. I was actually pleasently surprised by how relatively restrained this film was compared to the other Saw sequels, as the only truly gratuitously done bits in the film are the previously mentioned opening and part of the surgery done on Jigsaw. So, that's at least one thing I can't gripe too much about.
The one issue that remains from the previous film, however, is that many of the characters are complete idiots or do idiotic things. Amanda grips onto an idiot ball for dear life in that entire half of the story just so she can antagonize the doctor, refusing to have Jigsaw taken to a hospital where he can, y'know, not die. The main victim is also something of an idiot and just stands around squirming, squinting, and grimacing during two of the victim sequences long after he's decided to help them. The level of incompetency on his part gets outright laughable when he waits until an obviously frozen woman is dead to injure himself to get the key to save her. The captured doctor's being held i pace by a metal brace around her neck with shotgun shells attached to it that are rigged to go off if Jigsaw dies, and all I can think in the back of my head is: "Why can't she just use the water from the sink to render the shells useless? There's a huge sink right there!"
Even Jigsaw has an idiot moment when we flashback to the setup to the main trap from the first film. I'd always thought it cheap that the key to the leg braces was inside the tub, where it'd obviously go down the drain and be impossible to get. This makes the trap unwinnable as, despite what a later sequel would have you believe, slicing off that much of your leg is pretty much not survivable, unless there was a team of trained medical professionals waiting right outside the door with the necessary equipment. Do you have any idea how bloodflow in the leg works? Anyway, this film sets up that Amanda was responsible for the unwinnable traps, leaving that as a good excuse for that and one of the traps in Saw 2 (The two glass boxes), but no. We actually see Jigsaw and Amanda doing this, and the key being there was totally part of his plan. This completely shits over Jigsaw's attempting to teach Amanda to keep things fair.
The film ends with Jigsaw fucking dying, and yet we got another four films, because fuck you. I mean seriously, it reminds me of that feeling I got watching Tim Burton's remake of the classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which pretty much 'ends' and then continues on for another twenty minutes or so. The logical ending spot comes and goes because Tim Burton wanted to shove in some crappy subplot about Wonka having an evil dentist dad played by Christopher Lee. The series had a logical ending point, all loose ends wrapped up, Jigsaw's storyline ended, Amanda's storyline ended, Detective Matthews is dead, the two main victims from Saw 1 are dead, etc. Yet we got four more films because of how successful these three are. It reminds me of the situation with Halloween 2, how the fucking hospital basically explodes, taking both Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers, and how Halloween 4 basically had to pretend none of that happened so it could exist as a sequel, or how Halloween Resurrection had to basically break reality and turn everyone into complete idiots in order for it to exist as a sequel. I fucking -hate- that in a horror series.
I'll be tackling the other four films a bit later, I just felt that the series proper should be seen and reviewed seperately, like how I divided Halloween up into the first 6 films, and then the two alternate realities (Zombie's reboots and the H20 universe.)
You see, despite all the claims, the original Saw really cannot be considered a torture porn film. It's relatively light on the gore, and the few intense torture sequences in the film are shot in a way where we don't see the details (Dr. Gordon cutting off his own leg is mostly offscreen/implied, and the barbwire trap victim is shown in super high speed.)
I stand by that it was one of the few major original horror releases of the decade. The twist was a complete surprise, the setup was fairly unique, the atmosphere was fantastic... everything had that sort of level of filth that brought me back to Se7en.
Honestly one of the only real complaints I can make is that I hated was Adam's horrible faking dead scene. I know it's supposed to be him being a bad actor, but that's awful even by bad acting standards. Beyond that, I thought the acting was top notch. Cary Elwes delivers a fantastic performance, and it makes me sad that I've barely seen him in anything since then. The man was great in Robin Hood Men in Tights, Shadow of the Vampire, etc. Dr. Gordon's wife and child also deliver a really believable performance while being held hostage that honestly makes this scene most disturbing than anything else in the film for me. There's no blood, no violence, even implied, and it manages to come across as more disturbing than any other scene in the film to me.
I would, in all honesty, rate it as one of the better horror films of the past eleven years, as a standalone film. Most of the hate, at least from horror fans, seems to stem more from the sequels and for what this inspired. It really can't be blamed for either, though. Part of me blames the latter on false claims from major critics that exaggerated the amount of gore found in the film (Something we still see today. I'm still fucking disappointed after seeing Human Cenipede, realizing it's far more disturbing in reviews and in your head than the lame-ass, relatively tame piece of shit it actually is.)
Saw 2 came out merely a year later, and this one I actually got to see theatrically (Which already got me worried. It's usually not the good horror films I see in theaters.) Sadly, this film ended up being way more traditional than the previous film. Instead of the two men, one room setup we've got what I could only describe as a poor man's Cube wherin a rag tag group of some of the most unlikable people (including what is easily the least likable character I've ever run across as a main character in a horror film) run into various potentially deadly traps. There's more gore, more violence, and altogether a lot less of what made the first film great.
The only parts of the film that really save it as a genuinely good film are the scenes of Jigsaw himself. It's interesting hearing him talk, explain everything. I love how they managed to make an old, frail, sickly old man somehow both evil and pittyable at the same time. Seriously, Tobin Bell is half of what keeps the Saw series going today, and without him I doubt they would have gotten all these sequels.
I've got to tip my hat off to Xavier, the puerto rican american gangster in this film, for simply being such a horrible, disgusting character. Seriously, I've seen many, many horrible characters in horror films, but this guy just takes the cake. Even by real life evil standards, he's the kind of guy that ends up getting shived within his first week of prison time for being a disgusting sack of shit. He's the kind of guy they throw on Showtime's Dexter to give a completely unsympathetic one-episode character for him to kill and have the audience cheer, because there's no moral ambiguity when you're this evil. I find if frustrating how cartoonishly evil they made this one guy. He makes the cast of Rob Zombie's Halloween seem like The Wiggles. The cast of this film really highlights my complaint about Hollywood horror films having to pack their films with the most horrible of horrible people in order to create that moral level where maisntream audiences are fine with seeing them die horrible deaths, because it's okay for them to be entertained by the bloody death of a monster and only a monster.
Overall, it's not a bad film on its own. It's entertaining, and Tobin Bell's performance as Jigsaw is fantastic, but it's still really weak compared to how awesome the first film was. I'd call it the Dream Warriors to Saw 1's Nightmare on Elm Street. At least it managed to have an unpredictable twist like the first film did.
The third film, which was the final film I saw theatrically, for the most part seems like an attempt to return to the basics that Saw 1 gave us rather than the traditional, dumb jerkasses getting killed in creative ways (like Final Destination's sequels only completely straight faced.) While nowhere near as good as the first film, it's at least a far better sequel and much closer in tone to the first film.
The plot, similar to the second film, is split into parts that we constantly shift back and forth between (rather horribly I might add, I detest whoever edited this film.) One half is devoted to a sort of anti-Punisher style story of Jigsaw's latest plaything: A man whose child was accidentally killed, and who feels he was denied justice. Jigsaw puts him in positions where he decides if people tied to the case (a witness who fled the scene, the judge, etc.) deserve to live, giving him the option to save them from the various deadly traps or let them die in order to feel like justice has been done. I'm fine with those kinds of stories for the most part, when they're done right. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Death Wish, I'm a big fan of The Punisher (especially Punisher MAX), but it's nice to see the darker side of this mentality, and it's really hard to sympathize with the man even with his sob story background. The other half of the film follows a female doctor being forced to perform surgery on a dying Jigsaw by Amanda, his apprentice, as well as some flashbacks explaining how they came to work together.
First off the film begins on a sour note by showing us two gruesome death traps that Amanda made to be purposefully unwinnable, as well as Detective Matthews from the previous film breaking his own ankle to get out of his chain, before we get into the film proper. Originally this had me expecting the film would be more like the previous film, just an excuse plot to see various people in traps with little attention being payed toward character development. You see, the first film, to me, really depended on the paranoia of the characters involved. That combined with the feeling of confusion over who is doing what, why, how things happened made for a very awesome film. I can't get any of that from a group of jerkasses that exist purely to be killed off.
Thankfully, despite the first ten minutes or so, the film ends up being much different than I'd expected. There's only a few victims and only one of them just feels like the kind of gratuitous, over the top shit we got in Saw 2, or the shit we got in later films. I was actually pleasently surprised by how relatively restrained this film was compared to the other Saw sequels, as the only truly gratuitously done bits in the film are the previously mentioned opening and part of the surgery done on Jigsaw. So, that's at least one thing I can't gripe too much about.
The one issue that remains from the previous film, however, is that many of the characters are complete idiots or do idiotic things. Amanda grips onto an idiot ball for dear life in that entire half of the story just so she can antagonize the doctor, refusing to have Jigsaw taken to a hospital where he can, y'know, not die. The main victim is also something of an idiot and just stands around squirming, squinting, and grimacing during two of the victim sequences long after he's decided to help them. The level of incompetency on his part gets outright laughable when he waits until an obviously frozen woman is dead to injure himself to get the key to save her. The captured doctor's being held i pace by a metal brace around her neck with shotgun shells attached to it that are rigged to go off if Jigsaw dies, and all I can think in the back of my head is: "Why can't she just use the water from the sink to render the shells useless? There's a huge sink right there!"
Even Jigsaw has an idiot moment when we flashback to the setup to the main trap from the first film. I'd always thought it cheap that the key to the leg braces was inside the tub, where it'd obviously go down the drain and be impossible to get. This makes the trap unwinnable as, despite what a later sequel would have you believe, slicing off that much of your leg is pretty much not survivable, unless there was a team of trained medical professionals waiting right outside the door with the necessary equipment. Do you have any idea how bloodflow in the leg works? Anyway, this film sets up that Amanda was responsible for the unwinnable traps, leaving that as a good excuse for that and one of the traps in Saw 2 (The two glass boxes), but no. We actually see Jigsaw and Amanda doing this, and the key being there was totally part of his plan. This completely shits over Jigsaw's attempting to teach Amanda to keep things fair.
The film ends with Jigsaw fucking dying, and yet we got another four films, because fuck you. I mean seriously, it reminds me of that feeling I got watching Tim Burton's remake of the classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which pretty much 'ends' and then continues on for another twenty minutes or so. The logical ending spot comes and goes because Tim Burton wanted to shove in some crappy subplot about Wonka having an evil dentist dad played by Christopher Lee. The series had a logical ending point, all loose ends wrapped up, Jigsaw's storyline ended, Amanda's storyline ended, Detective Matthews is dead, the two main victims from Saw 1 are dead, etc. Yet we got four more films because of how successful these three are. It reminds me of the situation with Halloween 2, how the fucking hospital basically explodes, taking both Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers, and how Halloween 4 basically had to pretend none of that happened so it could exist as a sequel, or how Halloween Resurrection had to basically break reality and turn everyone into complete idiots in order for it to exist as a sequel. I fucking -hate- that in a horror series.
I'll be tackling the other four films a bit later, I just felt that the series proper should be seen and reviewed seperately, like how I divided Halloween up into the first 6 films, and then the two alternate realities (Zombie's reboots and the H20 universe.)
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Bleeders (aka Hemoglobin)
Sorry for the long delay, readers. I've been going through some personal stuff this month and it became hard to work up the motivation to write again.
Tonight's movie is Bleeders, aka Hemoglobin, one of two film adaptions I've seen of the classic H.P. Lovecraft story The Lurking Horror, and sadly the only one I own. I wanna start off saying that as with many other fans of the horror genre, I'm a tremendous fan of Lovecraft. I have everything he's written, I've both played and GMed Call of Cthulhu, and every Christmas since release I've ha to listen to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's mythos-themed Christmas album.
What saddens me is that, for the most part, outside of HPLHS's silent film Call of Cthulhu, we've never had a faithful H.P. Lovecraft movie. We've had a lot of in-name-only adaptions (the film Necronomicon only got one story right, Cool Air), we've had a lot of really loose adaptions (From Beyond, Reanimator, Dagon.) We've of course also had a lot of tribute films or relatively Lovecraftian movies in general (In The Mouth of Madness being an excellent tribute to the man, from the always fantastic as long as you pretend Ghosts of Mars doesn't exist John Carpenter.) We almost had a faithful film begin production this year, an adaption of In The Mountains of Madness directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth) and supervised by H.P. Lovecraft expert S. T. Joshi. Sadly, Universal refused to greenlight it because Guillermo del Toro wouldn't promise a PG-13 rating. Fuck Universal.
Bleeders begins in Holland with twin aristocrats having softcore sex, because some films just want to get to the sex as quick as possible before the opening credits are even done with. When the credits do arrive, we see Rutger Hauer in the list, and it becomes even more obvious why I would review the film. Besides loving H.P. Lovecraft, Rutger Hauer is something of a b-grade horror icon, beyond just being in the always awesome Blade Runner and Ladyhawke. Besides that, this film was also written by Dan O'Bannon, the writer behind Alien, Darkstar, Return of the Living Dead, Total Recall, and Director Gets Excuse For Hot Naked Woman To Roam London, better known as Lifeforce. Surely with those two working on an H.P. Lovecraft film this has to be awesome, right? Right?
We flash forward to the modern era where Pale Rich Guy and his wife arrive at a small, crappy looking New England fishing town just in time for PRG to seize up and bleed from multiple orifices. Instead of cutting to medical diagrams while Massive Attack's Teardrops plays, he's taken to the local doctor, played by everyone's favorite Hobo with a Shotgun, who for some reason looks more like he's cosplaying as Charles Bronson here. We also cut to a mean old mannish chick carrying luggage into her house and some kids playing in her basement. The kids are messing around with a dog when old mannish chick screams for them to come up, and... we get a shot of our lurking horror: Some white thing with bone tools. Really, as long as it looks better than the ones in the Full Moon adaption, I'm fine.
Pale Rich Guy, who we now know is named John, was apparently raised in France under an anonymous trust fund (is this as silly sounding to everyone else as it is to me?) and has some "serious congenital medical disorder". We don't know what one, it's not named, so I'm gonna go ahead and call it blooditis. His wife, Kathleen, apparently was trying to find information on his parents, and tracked his birth back to the island. Well, at least the exposition is handled alright. Or at least it is until even Dr. Rutger Hauer feels the need to give a backstory out of nowhere involving alcoholism. Still, it's Rutger Haeur, so I don't mind. Rutger Hauer, Tony Todd, Linnea Quigley, Clint Howard, etc. are among the few b-grade horror actors where a scene of them giving bad dialogue or doing something stupid is generally more enjoyable than anything else in the film. Oh what I'd give for a film with all of them. We need the b-grade horror equivalent of The Expendables wherein Bruce Campbell, Tony Todd, Rutger Hauer, Linnea Quigley, Clint Howard, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs fight a bunch of monsters played by Kane Hodder, Doug Jones, Doug Bradley, Robert Englund, etc.
We get to meet a bunch of the townsfolk including a sweet but shy girl that works at the mortuary that the main couple are staying at (I'm not joking), a slutty girl that wants to hop Pale Rich Guy's bone and seems to think his non-french french accent is Italian, and some woman that has apparently never said a word since she was six. That's totally not a setup just for her to struggle to say something and overcome her silent later, surely not. We also get an update on what Dr. Hauer thinks is going on with John: He's a byproduct of inbreeding and may be part of the Van Damme family, which apparently was very big on inbreeding. Also Dr. Hauer keeps a fetus with heterochromia in a jar for some reason. ...we also get this little jewel randomly shoved into the end of that scene: "I'm pregnant." There was nothing prodding it, it almost seemed like the actress only just remembered she was supposed to tell Dr. Hauer that she was pregnant.
For some reason, or for no reason, later that night John tries to rape Kathleen. It's not explained, and he stops and apologizes after ripping her dress, so it just seems kinda... random. The scene doesn't even last that long as we cut to the graveyard where the cute mortician chick is gonna do some graverobbing, because dammit only Rutger Hauer should be likable in this film, and he keeps jarred fetuses around! While stealing the necklace, the coffin gets broken through from below and the corpse gets taken off by some unseen thing. She runs to get out of the grave, but a bone tool digs into her leg and she's pulled down by some deformed midget unmasked Jason Voorhees into the tunnels below. I'm not sure how the creature is able to pull her off while she's still alive just using that, and I don't think anyone involved with the film knows either, but maybe they just didn't care.
The next day we find out some huge storm is happening and trapping people on the island. Shortly after some woman's going through shipping crates when another deformed midget pops out of the box, scares her, runs off the dock, and gets diced up by a boat. I guess deformed midgets like hanging out in empty crates? Elsewhere Jack and Kathleen are heading towards the Van Damme home with the mannish old chick who gives them some exposition about the Van Dammes in such a rapid fire way that the actress actually has to pause for breath during it, which made me laugh. It turns out that the mannish chick is just there to steal the necklace as well, but she presumably meets the same fate off camera. We'll never know, because we cut to Dr. Hauer performing an autopsy on one of the deformed midgets, wherein he finds that it's a functional hermaphrodite that can apparently have sex with itself. I'm not joking.
Up at the old Van Damme house, John and Kathleen run into a crazy old woman with a rifle who knows the secret of John: He is a Van Damme, but was named after the composer Strauss when he was given away. The old woman gets creeped out hearing that he has some craving he doesn't understand, and then threatens to shoot them with her rifle. She kinda reminds me of the batshit insane southern version of the old woman that owns Tweetie Bird and Sylvester. Because this film didn't have enough scenes to cut to in the middle of other scenes, we cut to the kids from earlier playing hide and seek in the same graveyard where to people have already died this film. Surely this will end well. Predictably, the only girl of the group gets pulled underground to her death while the other kids watch.
John decides not to trust the old woman because she claims she saved him from the fire that happened 75 years old, and eventually he realizes that he's not 75 years old and therefore the Van Dammes have to still be alive. She gives in and takes them inside where she admits the house never burned down, and probably couldn't due to the materials used in it. It turns out that the Van Dammes were horribly deformed, and she decided to save John because he didn't look as monstrous as they did. Why she saved Jean Claude as well, I'll never know. Before she can give us an explanation of what happened, one of the deformed midgets comes out, and we get a good look at it in all of its Muppetlike glory as it kills the old woman, only to be scared off by sunlight. The creature effects in this are... pretty hilariously bad looking. Remember that one fun scene in the first Troll where the creatures sing? The creatures in this look on par with them, at best. On the bright side, at least they're better than the goblins in Troll 2.
Rutger Hauer decides he hasn't done anything badass yet in this movie, and since he's still dressed as Charles Bronson, he explores the tunnel system and gets a good view of both the muppet monsters and the bodies of their many victims. We also get a random shot of the cute chick's breast as she's hanging upside down causing her shirt to hang, and we find that the obvious wig on the mannish chick was in fact a wig, whether or not she was actually a man is not stated. I found the random boob kinda funny, since it's just the one and the camera really focuses on it, making it feel hilariously gratuitous. I find it funny that every 30 minutes something sexual has to happen. The film starts with fucking, 30 minutes in we get attempted rape, 30 minutes after that we get gratuitous boobage. If the film wasn't an hour and a half I'd expect more nudity in half an hour, maybe they'll work it into the ending or the credits. Dr. Hauer runs off to gather the towns people to warn them about the monsters and give them all the knowledge that he shouldn't have but does because he read the script, and tells them all to head to the lighthouse because the muppet monsters hate light.
Instead of waiting half an hour, we get a gratuitous sex scene about ten minutes after the gratuious boobshot. The sex scene seriously comes out of nowhere and goes on far too long during a time where the townsfolk are supposed to be running off to the lighthouse for shelter. Thankfully they still have time to get there! Some chick's hanging out outside of the lighthouse keeping guard with a flashlight when one of the muppet monsters comes out and attacks her with a bone weapon. The silent girl tries to warn her but predictably fails. She comes back down to tell the others, and is given a knife so she can go Rambo on them or something. The monsters start dragging themselves towards the lighthouse using bone tools, at times forgetting they hate light, but eventually continuity doesn't have to matter anymore as the light from the lighthouse dies out.
The monsters get into the lighthouse and start attacking the kids and some random townsfolk, dragging them into the tunnels to their doom. One of them stabs Kathleen in the arm with a bone tool, causing the mute girl to jump down into the pit, shout out "No fucking way", and stab one of the muppets to death. She's quickly grabbed by another though and decides to let her throat get slit rather than try getting away. Honestly I don't see hoe these things can be considered menacing. They're like one foot tall, legless, slow as fuck... These people suck at surviving, big time. Seriously, these things would be easy to kick away, they can't realistically reach shit that they're allegedly able to attack... it just doesn't make sense.
John ends up deciding that he likes the killer muppets, and starts eating a little boy with them for some reason. It's kinda out of nowhere and honestly just feels ridiculous. A cave in randomly happens seperating him and the muppets from the townsfolk, saving them and allowing John to leave his wife and have cannibalistic hermaphroditic midget adventures for the rest of his life. His wife's a little saddened by this, but she has Rutger Hauer to keep her company, so I guess everything works out in the end.
Remember me joking about how every half hour something sexual has to happen, and how they'd probably work that into the ending since it's 1h30m? The film ends with him finding his very human looking but severely overweight hermaphrodite sister who, according to narration, can have sex with herself, she also has sex with him too. I'm not joking. What an ending. This film was just... wow. It's not the worst H.P. Lovecraft film I've ever seen, and although from years back I remembered this being better than the Full Moon adaption of the same story, it's... really not better. Still, if you can find a copy of the film, I'd suggest picking it up just to help save this film from obscurity. It's damn near impossible to find a copy on DVD under any of its three names (Bleeders, Hemoglobin, The Descendant.)
Tonight's movie is Bleeders, aka Hemoglobin, one of two film adaptions I've seen of the classic H.P. Lovecraft story The Lurking Horror, and sadly the only one I own. I wanna start off saying that as with many other fans of the horror genre, I'm a tremendous fan of Lovecraft. I have everything he's written, I've both played and GMed Call of Cthulhu, and every Christmas since release I've ha to listen to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's mythos-themed Christmas album.
What saddens me is that, for the most part, outside of HPLHS's silent film Call of Cthulhu, we've never had a faithful H.P. Lovecraft movie. We've had a lot of in-name-only adaptions (the film Necronomicon only got one story right, Cool Air), we've had a lot of really loose adaptions (From Beyond, Reanimator, Dagon.) We've of course also had a lot of tribute films or relatively Lovecraftian movies in general (In The Mouth of Madness being an excellent tribute to the man, from the always fantastic as long as you pretend Ghosts of Mars doesn't exist John Carpenter.) We almost had a faithful film begin production this year, an adaption of In The Mountains of Madness directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth) and supervised by H.P. Lovecraft expert S. T. Joshi. Sadly, Universal refused to greenlight it because Guillermo del Toro wouldn't promise a PG-13 rating. Fuck Universal.
Bleeders begins in Holland with twin aristocrats having softcore sex, because some films just want to get to the sex as quick as possible before the opening credits are even done with. When the credits do arrive, we see Rutger Hauer in the list, and it becomes even more obvious why I would review the film. Besides loving H.P. Lovecraft, Rutger Hauer is something of a b-grade horror icon, beyond just being in the always awesome Blade Runner and Ladyhawke. Besides that, this film was also written by Dan O'Bannon, the writer behind Alien, Darkstar, Return of the Living Dead, Total Recall, and Director Gets Excuse For Hot Naked Woman To Roam London, better known as Lifeforce. Surely with those two working on an H.P. Lovecraft film this has to be awesome, right? Right?
We flash forward to the modern era where Pale Rich Guy and his wife arrive at a small, crappy looking New England fishing town just in time for PRG to seize up and bleed from multiple orifices. Instead of cutting to medical diagrams while Massive Attack's Teardrops plays, he's taken to the local doctor, played by everyone's favorite Hobo with a Shotgun, who for some reason looks more like he's cosplaying as Charles Bronson here. We also cut to a mean old mannish chick carrying luggage into her house and some kids playing in her basement. The kids are messing around with a dog when old mannish chick screams for them to come up, and... we get a shot of our lurking horror: Some white thing with bone tools. Really, as long as it looks better than the ones in the Full Moon adaption, I'm fine.
Pale Rich Guy, who we now know is named John, was apparently raised in France under an anonymous trust fund (is this as silly sounding to everyone else as it is to me?) and has some "serious congenital medical disorder". We don't know what one, it's not named, so I'm gonna go ahead and call it blooditis. His wife, Kathleen, apparently was trying to find information on his parents, and tracked his birth back to the island. Well, at least the exposition is handled alright. Or at least it is until even Dr. Rutger Hauer feels the need to give a backstory out of nowhere involving alcoholism. Still, it's Rutger Haeur, so I don't mind. Rutger Hauer, Tony Todd, Linnea Quigley, Clint Howard, etc. are among the few b-grade horror actors where a scene of them giving bad dialogue or doing something stupid is generally more enjoyable than anything else in the film. Oh what I'd give for a film with all of them. We need the b-grade horror equivalent of The Expendables wherein Bruce Campbell, Tony Todd, Rutger Hauer, Linnea Quigley, Clint Howard, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs fight a bunch of monsters played by Kane Hodder, Doug Jones, Doug Bradley, Robert Englund, etc.
We get to meet a bunch of the townsfolk including a sweet but shy girl that works at the mortuary that the main couple are staying at (I'm not joking), a slutty girl that wants to hop Pale Rich Guy's bone and seems to think his non-french french accent is Italian, and some woman that has apparently never said a word since she was six. That's totally not a setup just for her to struggle to say something and overcome her silent later, surely not. We also get an update on what Dr. Hauer thinks is going on with John: He's a byproduct of inbreeding and may be part of the Van Damme family, which apparently was very big on inbreeding. Also Dr. Hauer keeps a fetus with heterochromia in a jar for some reason. ...we also get this little jewel randomly shoved into the end of that scene: "I'm pregnant." There was nothing prodding it, it almost seemed like the actress only just remembered she was supposed to tell Dr. Hauer that she was pregnant.
For some reason, or for no reason, later that night John tries to rape Kathleen. It's not explained, and he stops and apologizes after ripping her dress, so it just seems kinda... random. The scene doesn't even last that long as we cut to the graveyard where the cute mortician chick is gonna do some graverobbing, because dammit only Rutger Hauer should be likable in this film, and he keeps jarred fetuses around! While stealing the necklace, the coffin gets broken through from below and the corpse gets taken off by some unseen thing. She runs to get out of the grave, but a bone tool digs into her leg and she's pulled down by some deformed midget unmasked Jason Voorhees into the tunnels below. I'm not sure how the creature is able to pull her off while she's still alive just using that, and I don't think anyone involved with the film knows either, but maybe they just didn't care.
The next day we find out some huge storm is happening and trapping people on the island. Shortly after some woman's going through shipping crates when another deformed midget pops out of the box, scares her, runs off the dock, and gets diced up by a boat. I guess deformed midgets like hanging out in empty crates? Elsewhere Jack and Kathleen are heading towards the Van Damme home with the mannish old chick who gives them some exposition about the Van Dammes in such a rapid fire way that the actress actually has to pause for breath during it, which made me laugh. It turns out that the mannish chick is just there to steal the necklace as well, but she presumably meets the same fate off camera. We'll never know, because we cut to Dr. Hauer performing an autopsy on one of the deformed midgets, wherein he finds that it's a functional hermaphrodite that can apparently have sex with itself. I'm not joking.
Up at the old Van Damme house, John and Kathleen run into a crazy old woman with a rifle who knows the secret of John: He is a Van Damme, but was named after the composer Strauss when he was given away. The old woman gets creeped out hearing that he has some craving he doesn't understand, and then threatens to shoot them with her rifle. She kinda reminds me of the batshit insane southern version of the old woman that owns Tweetie Bird and Sylvester. Because this film didn't have enough scenes to cut to in the middle of other scenes, we cut to the kids from earlier playing hide and seek in the same graveyard where to people have already died this film. Surely this will end well. Predictably, the only girl of the group gets pulled underground to her death while the other kids watch.
John decides not to trust the old woman because she claims she saved him from the fire that happened 75 years old, and eventually he realizes that he's not 75 years old and therefore the Van Dammes have to still be alive. She gives in and takes them inside where she admits the house never burned down, and probably couldn't due to the materials used in it. It turns out that the Van Dammes were horribly deformed, and she decided to save John because he didn't look as monstrous as they did. Why she saved Jean Claude as well, I'll never know. Before she can give us an explanation of what happened, one of the deformed midgets comes out, and we get a good look at it in all of its Muppetlike glory as it kills the old woman, only to be scared off by sunlight. The creature effects in this are... pretty hilariously bad looking. Remember that one fun scene in the first Troll where the creatures sing? The creatures in this look on par with them, at best. On the bright side, at least they're better than the goblins in Troll 2.
Rutger Hauer decides he hasn't done anything badass yet in this movie, and since he's still dressed as Charles Bronson, he explores the tunnel system and gets a good view of both the muppet monsters and the bodies of their many victims. We also get a random shot of the cute chick's breast as she's hanging upside down causing her shirt to hang, and we find that the obvious wig on the mannish chick was in fact a wig, whether or not she was actually a man is not stated. I found the random boob kinda funny, since it's just the one and the camera really focuses on it, making it feel hilariously gratuitous. I find it funny that every 30 minutes something sexual has to happen. The film starts with fucking, 30 minutes in we get attempted rape, 30 minutes after that we get gratuitous boobage. If the film wasn't an hour and a half I'd expect more nudity in half an hour, maybe they'll work it into the ending or the credits. Dr. Hauer runs off to gather the towns people to warn them about the monsters and give them all the knowledge that he shouldn't have but does because he read the script, and tells them all to head to the lighthouse because the muppet monsters hate light.
Instead of waiting half an hour, we get a gratuitous sex scene about ten minutes after the gratuious boobshot. The sex scene seriously comes out of nowhere and goes on far too long during a time where the townsfolk are supposed to be running off to the lighthouse for shelter. Thankfully they still have time to get there! Some chick's hanging out outside of the lighthouse keeping guard with a flashlight when one of the muppet monsters comes out and attacks her with a bone weapon. The silent girl tries to warn her but predictably fails. She comes back down to tell the others, and is given a knife so she can go Rambo on them or something. The monsters start dragging themselves towards the lighthouse using bone tools, at times forgetting they hate light, but eventually continuity doesn't have to matter anymore as the light from the lighthouse dies out.
The monsters get into the lighthouse and start attacking the kids and some random townsfolk, dragging them into the tunnels to their doom. One of them stabs Kathleen in the arm with a bone tool, causing the mute girl to jump down into the pit, shout out "No fucking way", and stab one of the muppets to death. She's quickly grabbed by another though and decides to let her throat get slit rather than try getting away. Honestly I don't see hoe these things can be considered menacing. They're like one foot tall, legless, slow as fuck... These people suck at surviving, big time. Seriously, these things would be easy to kick away, they can't realistically reach shit that they're allegedly able to attack... it just doesn't make sense.
John ends up deciding that he likes the killer muppets, and starts eating a little boy with them for some reason. It's kinda out of nowhere and honestly just feels ridiculous. A cave in randomly happens seperating him and the muppets from the townsfolk, saving them and allowing John to leave his wife and have cannibalistic hermaphroditic midget adventures for the rest of his life. His wife's a little saddened by this, but she has Rutger Hauer to keep her company, so I guess everything works out in the end.
Remember me joking about how every half hour something sexual has to happen, and how they'd probably work that into the ending since it's 1h30m? The film ends with him finding his very human looking but severely overweight hermaphrodite sister who, according to narration, can have sex with herself, she also has sex with him too. I'm not joking. What an ending. This film was just... wow. It's not the worst H.P. Lovecraft film I've ever seen, and although from years back I remembered this being better than the Full Moon adaption of the same story, it's... really not better. Still, if you can find a copy of the film, I'd suggest picking it up just to help save this film from obscurity. It's damn near impossible to find a copy on DVD under any of its three names (Bleeders, Hemoglobin, The Descendant.)
Friday, August 12, 2011
The 10 Greatest Comedy-Horrors
Comedy/horror films are becoming more and more common in the last decade, but for the most part it's still hard to find genuinely good ones, so while digging around for some I thought "Hey, why not make a list of the ten best films of the genre?"
However, first off I want to clarify that for the most part, these are films that are more comedy than horror. There's a lot of good horror films that are less than serious, so I decided just go to for the films that are closer to the 50/50 mark of comedy and horror, or more comedy than horror.
Also a quick warning: Expect spoilers, as always. I wouldn't normally mark this, but I want to set up a sort of spoiler policy for my blog. If it's relatively new and not a piece of crap, I'm going to either avoid spoilers altogether or put up a warning before a spoiler.
#10: Feast
This movie honestly came as a supreme surprise to me. Seeing the previews and reading up on it before giving it a buy (It's got Clu Gulager and Henry Rollins, of course I gave it a buy), I thought it was going to basically just be a super gory tongue-in-cheek flick reminiscent of the kinds of 80s b- grade gorefests I was raised on. Instead? I got TV Tropes: The Horror movie.
Almost the entire point of the film is to showcase and tear apart numerous horror cliches ranging from infant immortality to sex = death. I'm probably gonna catch some crap for this, but Feast was pretty much what Scream could have been. I've always had a dislike for the Scream franchise, as it's less a deconstruction of slashers and more a generic slasher film that references other, better slasher films. Do you want a smart, meta horror film? Pick up New Nightmare. Want a good parody of horror tropes and cliches? Watch Feast.
I think my favorite part of the film is Henry Rollins' character, where he's, in the films' own words, a poor man's Tony Robbins. There's just something hilarious about seeing Henry Rollins of all people as a scumbag, pacifist self-help douchebag, and he does it well. Of course, this isn't the first time he's done horror, as fans of the short lived Night Visions will remember, or fans of the Wrong Turn series. I'm just hoping that, someday down the line, we get a movie where he fights Kane Hodder.
A warning though, I'd recommend against seeing the sequels to Feast. Whereas Feast is mainly a parody of horror cliches with some grossout humor, the sequels drop the former and focus entirely on the grossout humor. I mean, if you're a fan of lowbrow humor go ahead and watch them, just don't expect anything similar to the first film.
#9: Killer Klowns from Outer Space
God I don't even know where to begin with this film. Mainly a parody of outrageously silly low budget horror films from the 60s and 70s, Killer Klowns is exactly what it says on the cover: Killer clowns from outer space invade a town in order to eat humans.
This film is absolutely hilarious. You've got shadow puppets eating people, pies that, when thrown, melt people... you've got killer popcorn, people being cocooned in cotton candy, it's all just fucking hilarious. The effects are also pretty awesome, as the creators of this film also did effects work for Critters, Team America of all things, and the nostalgic Halloween special classic Ernest Scared Stupid.
Easily one of my favorite things in this film is John Vernon, who most of you will remember as the dean from Animal House, or for his role in Dirty Harry. He plays an assholish, overzealous cop who is so overly skeptical about the whole clown thing that he actually repeatedly insults one of them and even attempts to lock it up.
It's hilarious, crazy, and a great tribute to low-budget 60's flicks with unbelievable premises, and on top of that it's actually fairly frightening to any coulrophobes that watch it.
#8: Comedy of Terrors
I love Vincent Price movies, even the bad ones. There's just something so awesome about the man so of course I have to throw his best comedy-horror on this list. Vincent Price and Peter Lorre were pretty much the horror equivalent of Abbot and Costello, and holy fuck were they awesome together because of that. This extended to real life where, at Bela Lugosi's funeral, upon noticing that he was buried in his cape, Lorre turned to Price and asked if they should stake him through the heart just to be safe.
The plot follows an evil mortician/funeral director who, in an attempt to cut costs, has been using the same casket each time. That is, he dumps the body out of the casket after everyone leaves and just buries it in the ground, taking the casket back with him. Eventually he ends up having to turn to murder in order to keep himself from being evicted, which leads to wacky situations when one of his victims has a habit of slipping in and out of a seemingly deathlike state.
On top of having Vincent Price and Peter Lorre giving great performances, the film also has Boris Karloff as Vincent Price's elderly senile father-in-law and Basil Rathbone as a particularly assholish victim. Having all four actors together in one film by itself is amazing, but on top of that it's also quite hilarious and is easily my favorite classic black-comedy, besting even Arsenic & Old Lace.
#7: Re-Animator
Easily a classic, this film is one of my favorite b-grade horror films of all time. Before there was Evil Dead, there was Herbert West. Before there was Bruce Campbell, there was Jeffrey Combs. The film combined gore, gratuitous nudity, and dark humor in such an awesome way that it helped to popularize a sub-genre of b-grade gorey horror-comedies, often with Jeffrey Combs at least making a cameo, such as Cellar Dweller (which I reviewed maybe two months back.)
For those that have somehow never seen the movie, it's about Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs, who fellow trekkies will remember as DS9's Weyoun), whose goal in life is to reanimate the dead, much to the chagrin of the teachers at the teaching hospital he works at. He succeeds in making a concoction which reanimates the recently deceased, only to discover that if they've been dead for awhile they come back violent. Cue shennanigans as he and a well-meaning college student he's roped into helping him have to fight off zombies and the decapitated head of an evil, perverted professor.
There's two sequels, both of which are also hilarious, but not quite as good as the original. The first sequel takes place not too long after the events of the first film and contain the same two male leads, while the third film takes place long after and only Dr. West remains. The third film also gave us this catchy, hilaribad music video.
If you've somehow never seen the trilogy, I strongly recommend picking all three up, especially if you're a big fan of zombie films and/or The Evil Dead trilogy.
#6: Return of the Living Dead
Shockingly, this film is responsible for about as many zombie cliches as Night of the Living Dead, including being the popularizer of the cliched zombie that only wants to eat brains. The movie was written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, who many will remember as the writer behind such movies as Alien, Total Recall, Lifeforce, and the best segment from Heavy Metal: B17, so you already know you're in for some quality.
The film follows two seperate groups that end up eventually connecting: A medical supply seller (the always awesome Clu Gulager) and his young assistant accidentally releasing a chemical that raises the dead and having to turn to a moritician friend to dispose of a zombie, and a group of teenage punks that party in a cemetery where the dead rise up after the previously mentioned zombie is tossed into the cremator, spreading the chemical into the atmosphere and causing it to come down as acid rain.
The makeup effects are amazing, the writing is hilarious, and the acting is pretty damn awesome. The film's also pretty notable for what I'd consider to be the greatest nude scene in horror film history. That is, Linnea Quigley (easily my favorite scream queen of all time) stripping naked for the other punks, and remaining naked in every scene afterwards. Quigley has a great body, and many a bad 80s flick turned to her showing some skin to make their film worth watching (see: Jack-O.)
There's numerous sequels, each of varying quality. The second film is like a wackier, more family friendly version of the first film (no nudity, much less gore). The third film is pretty fun, but not as good as the first, but still worth a rent. The fourth film is something to avoid at all costs, while the fifth film is at least worth a view if you liked the first two.
#5: Gremlins
There are certain films and shows some I watch at a certain time each year, like The Twilight Zone marathon that occurs every New Years Eve. With Gremlins, I used to make it a solo tradition to watch it each Christmas, simply because it is the greatest Christmas related horror film. In your face, Silent Night Deadly Night 2!
I seriously doubt anyone reading this has somehow avoided the film all of this time, but to play it safe: A teenager gets a pet mogwai (think a Furby only cute), but is given strict instructions to not feed it after midnight, get it wet, or expose it to sunlight. He fails at following rules, and eventually from the mogwai we get a bunch of tiny green skinned demons that kill people and wreck havoc on Christmas day.
The film is hilarious but at the same time fairly dark, like Loony Toons without the immortality. The gremlins are all complete goofballs, but they do actually -kill- a few people, and they are kinda creepy despite being so silly. Sadly, the sequel removes most of the dark elements and keeps things strictly wacky, but is still awesome in the same way that Rocky IV is awesome. I mean what other film gives us Hulk Hogan threatening gremlins, Daffy Duck riffing credits, tiny demonic things singing New York, New York, etc.?
This and Critters (which is also pretty awesome) ended up inspiring numerous clones of varying quality, including Hobgoblins (which MST3K fans will remember as an epic about two men fighting with lawn equipment) and Ghoulies (and hey, Ghoulies 2 was a fun movie.)
#4: Beetlejuice
If you didn't automatically start hearing the theme music in your head, I feel sorry for you. This film is just pure awesome. The humor is just how I like it: Slapstick, abstract, and dark all at the same time. I mean what other comedy film can begin with two people dying in a car accident?
This may just be my favorite Tim Burton movie of all time, beating out Batman, Mars Attacks and Nightmare Before Christmas. That's saying a lot, as I love all three of those as well. Honestly, I love all Tim Burton films except for his god awful Planet of the Apes remake, his Alice in Wonderland (I got enough 'Lets watch Johnny Depp be wacky' in the PotC trilogy), and his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (it really says something to me when Tim Burton's remake somehow is far less nightmare fuel filled than the original... that and Depp just kinda annoyed the fuck out of me here.)
Michael Keaton deserves special mentioning here, because he seriously makes this movie as the titular Betelgeuse. His performance is so amazing that you forget you're watching -Batman- doing all of these things. The man's a fantastic actor and it makes me sad that I don't see him in much anymore.
There's also an animated series, which... okay. I'll say this: The theme song? Is still fucking awesome. I did like the show as a kid, but after going back and rewatching it lately I find it to be way too pun filled. There's way too much "Hey Lids, I'm tired! *turns into a tire*." It's like the episodes were written by Schumacher's Mr. Freeze.
#3: Creepshow
About here, I'd say my top three are pretty much tied. It was so hard deciding where to put these, so just keep that in mind. Creepshow is easily one of my favorite films of all time, a movie that I go out of my way to watch each Halloween just because I feel it is easily the best movie for the holiday. It's just so chock full of references and homages to classic EC horror comics that it's just... a fantastic holiday film.
For those that haven't seen the film, it's an anthology story centered around a kid's horror comic: Creepshow. We get segments about an undead old man that wants his father's day cake, Leslie Nielsen killing Ted Danson, Stephen King as an ignorant hick that turns into a plant, a killer ape-like beast within a crate, and a swarm of cockroaches. All done in a tongue in cheek manner based largely on stuff like the old Tales from the Crypt comics, and directed/written by George Romero and Stephen King.
The music is fantastic, this was one of the first horror films I ever got the soundtrack for, and I still treasure both it and my The Thing soundtrack. The cast is top notch and includes such greats (on top of the previously mentioned Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson) as Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, Ed Harris, and Fritz Weaver. The special effects are among my favorites in a horror film, done by the always amazing Tom Savini who also cameos in the film. God I love Savini.
As with many of the other films mentioned here, Creepshow did get a couple of sequels. There's Creepshow 2 which is pretty fun, but avoid Creepshow 3 like the plague. Don't buy it, don't rent it, don't download it. Just avoid it. It's a god awful in-name-only sequel with horrible writing, terrible production values, and god awful acting. If you want a true sequel, watch Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.
You see, Tales from the Darkside was originally meant to be Creepshow: The Series, but the studio suggested a different name. The movie based on the show even uses a segment that got written out of Creepshow 2 involving a killer black cat. Tom Savini himself as gone on record as saying that TftD is the true Creepshow 3. Also hey, it has Christian Slater!
#2: The Evil Dead Trilogy
I know, I'm cheating by having all three films share the #2 spot but I really, really could not pick between them, and if I didn't group them together this list would get be hogged by them. Admit it though, you knew this'd be on the list, and high up on it.
The Evil Dead trilogy... had so much impact on entertainment for what they are that it's just hilarious to me. I mean without them, would we still find chainsaws popping up constantly as an efficient zombie-killer? Think of all the pop culture references directed at the trilogy, or all of the comedy-horror films it spawned. On top of that, the trilogy basically brought mainstream attention to other shlocky low grade horror films, creating an even larger fanbase for the kinds of movies I love so much.
Think about all the big careers this film series started, too. Sam Raimi went onto do a bunch of big name films, including the Spider-Man trilogy (which admitedly I hate. I'm a big fan of the comics, so I hated seeing Parker turned into a whiny, mopey douchebag that spends more time being awkward around Mary Jane than anything else). The Coen Brothers also got their start with Evil Dead, moving on to make some of my favorite films of all time like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother Where Art Thou.
Similarly, the trilogy gave us Bruce Campbell. The man is like the horror genre's answer to Seagall and Chuck Norris. The man became a symbol of manliness within the horror genre, the image of the ultimate badass horror protagonist, and his fanbase grew so strong that even the worst pieces of crap could gain a following just because he was in it (I still love all the people that saw Serving Sarah just because he had a minor role in it.) I mean hell, he even got two big shows based around him going around and doing badass things: Brisco County Jr. (which was epic) and Jack of All Trades (which wasn't.) All of this thanks to these three movies.
I'm still upset knowing that Diablo Cody, the screenwriter behind Juno and Jennifer's Body, is doing a remake of The Evil Dead, but I think I've finally just grown to accept that Hollywood is... horrible. I mean seriously, we're getting remakes of this, Creepshow, Toxic Avenger, Total Recall, Hellraiser, Fright Night, The Birds, etc., etc. Originality seems to be almost dead when it comes to major theatrical releases. We get crappy remakes, crappy sequels that just repeat the same shit the previous film(s) did, and movies that just repeat the same fucking script over and over (comedies lately are especially guilty of this.) And all of this is because we actually give them our money. I mean, bash shit like Disaster Movie all you want, but it's become hard for even awful movies like that to financially fail.
#1: Ghostbusters
If anything beats the above in terms of impact, it's this. Ghostbusters is easily the greatest comedy-horror to me. It's a perfect blend of the two genres, managing to actually be pretty frightening at times while still being completely hilarious at others, and started a franchise that is still alive today.
The cast is completely awesome, and each character is extremely memorable, you've got so many big quotables that still pop up even today (my favorite being the "dogs and cats, living together, mass histeria" rant.) We've got a film that, ontop of inspiring a fairly good sequel, also inspired multiple tv shows, gave us an easily recognizable an extremely catchy theme song, an amazing game that acts as a third film... it's a beast of a franchise.
I remember that, as a kid, the library ghost scared the -shit- out of me. It may sound odd, being scared by a film starring Dan Akyroyd (though it probably doesn't to anyone that recognizes what my banner quotes), but jesus fuck I jumped when I first saw the movie. Then you've got that fucking demon dog...
The movie is a childhood classic, and a great example of the comedy-horror genre as a whole, so the degree that it's easily a film that needs to be shown to every kid, alongside other important movies like the classic Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Honorable mention goes to Cannibal! The Musical, which was originally on the list, but in the end it just didn't seem to fit with the others in terms of genre. Still, it's a fantastic film, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone reading this.
It's from the creators of South Park (who also star in this) and is about Alferd Packer, the cannibal that inspired such films as Ravenous.
Singing, dancing, eating people. Amazing movie.
However, first off I want to clarify that for the most part, these are films that are more comedy than horror. There's a lot of good horror films that are less than serious, so I decided just go to for the films that are closer to the 50/50 mark of comedy and horror, or more comedy than horror.
Also a quick warning: Expect spoilers, as always. I wouldn't normally mark this, but I want to set up a sort of spoiler policy for my blog. If it's relatively new and not a piece of crap, I'm going to either avoid spoilers altogether or put up a warning before a spoiler.
#10: Feast
This movie honestly came as a supreme surprise to me. Seeing the previews and reading up on it before giving it a buy (It's got Clu Gulager and Henry Rollins, of course I gave it a buy), I thought it was going to basically just be a super gory tongue-in-cheek flick reminiscent of the kinds of 80s b- grade gorefests I was raised on. Instead? I got TV Tropes: The Horror movie.
Almost the entire point of the film is to showcase and tear apart numerous horror cliches ranging from infant immortality to sex = death. I'm probably gonna catch some crap for this, but Feast was pretty much what Scream could have been. I've always had a dislike for the Scream franchise, as it's less a deconstruction of slashers and more a generic slasher film that references other, better slasher films. Do you want a smart, meta horror film? Pick up New Nightmare. Want a good parody of horror tropes and cliches? Watch Feast.
I think my favorite part of the film is Henry Rollins' character, where he's, in the films' own words, a poor man's Tony Robbins. There's just something hilarious about seeing Henry Rollins of all people as a scumbag, pacifist self-help douchebag, and he does it well. Of course, this isn't the first time he's done horror, as fans of the short lived Night Visions will remember, or fans of the Wrong Turn series. I'm just hoping that, someday down the line, we get a movie where he fights Kane Hodder.
A warning though, I'd recommend against seeing the sequels to Feast. Whereas Feast is mainly a parody of horror cliches with some grossout humor, the sequels drop the former and focus entirely on the grossout humor. I mean, if you're a fan of lowbrow humor go ahead and watch them, just don't expect anything similar to the first film.
#9: Killer Klowns from Outer Space
God I don't even know where to begin with this film. Mainly a parody of outrageously silly low budget horror films from the 60s and 70s, Killer Klowns is exactly what it says on the cover: Killer clowns from outer space invade a town in order to eat humans.
This film is absolutely hilarious. You've got shadow puppets eating people, pies that, when thrown, melt people... you've got killer popcorn, people being cocooned in cotton candy, it's all just fucking hilarious. The effects are also pretty awesome, as the creators of this film also did effects work for Critters, Team America of all things, and the nostalgic Halloween special classic Ernest Scared Stupid.
Easily one of my favorite things in this film is John Vernon, who most of you will remember as the dean from Animal House, or for his role in Dirty Harry. He plays an assholish, overzealous cop who is so overly skeptical about the whole clown thing that he actually repeatedly insults one of them and even attempts to lock it up.
It's hilarious, crazy, and a great tribute to low-budget 60's flicks with unbelievable premises, and on top of that it's actually fairly frightening to any coulrophobes that watch it.
#8: Comedy of Terrors
I love Vincent Price movies, even the bad ones. There's just something so awesome about the man so of course I have to throw his best comedy-horror on this list. Vincent Price and Peter Lorre were pretty much the horror equivalent of Abbot and Costello, and holy fuck were they awesome together because of that. This extended to real life where, at Bela Lugosi's funeral, upon noticing that he was buried in his cape, Lorre turned to Price and asked if they should stake him through the heart just to be safe.
The plot follows an evil mortician/funeral director who, in an attempt to cut costs, has been using the same casket each time. That is, he dumps the body out of the casket after everyone leaves and just buries it in the ground, taking the casket back with him. Eventually he ends up having to turn to murder in order to keep himself from being evicted, which leads to wacky situations when one of his victims has a habit of slipping in and out of a seemingly deathlike state.
On top of having Vincent Price and Peter Lorre giving great performances, the film also has Boris Karloff as Vincent Price's elderly senile father-in-law and Basil Rathbone as a particularly assholish victim. Having all four actors together in one film by itself is amazing, but on top of that it's also quite hilarious and is easily my favorite classic black-comedy, besting even Arsenic & Old Lace.
#7: Re-Animator
Easily a classic, this film is one of my favorite b-grade horror films of all time. Before there was Evil Dead, there was Herbert West. Before there was Bruce Campbell, there was Jeffrey Combs. The film combined gore, gratuitous nudity, and dark humor in such an awesome way that it helped to popularize a sub-genre of b-grade gorey horror-comedies, often with Jeffrey Combs at least making a cameo, such as Cellar Dweller (which I reviewed maybe two months back.)
For those that have somehow never seen the movie, it's about Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs, who fellow trekkies will remember as DS9's Weyoun), whose goal in life is to reanimate the dead, much to the chagrin of the teachers at the teaching hospital he works at. He succeeds in making a concoction which reanimates the recently deceased, only to discover that if they've been dead for awhile they come back violent. Cue shennanigans as he and a well-meaning college student he's roped into helping him have to fight off zombies and the decapitated head of an evil, perverted professor.
There's two sequels, both of which are also hilarious, but not quite as good as the original. The first sequel takes place not too long after the events of the first film and contain the same two male leads, while the third film takes place long after and only Dr. West remains. The third film also gave us this catchy, hilaribad music video.
If you've somehow never seen the trilogy, I strongly recommend picking all three up, especially if you're a big fan of zombie films and/or The Evil Dead trilogy.
#6: Return of the Living Dead
Shockingly, this film is responsible for about as many zombie cliches as Night of the Living Dead, including being the popularizer of the cliched zombie that only wants to eat brains. The movie was written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, who many will remember as the writer behind such movies as Alien, Total Recall, Lifeforce, and the best segment from Heavy Metal: B17, so you already know you're in for some quality.
The film follows two seperate groups that end up eventually connecting: A medical supply seller (the always awesome Clu Gulager) and his young assistant accidentally releasing a chemical that raises the dead and having to turn to a moritician friend to dispose of a zombie, and a group of teenage punks that party in a cemetery where the dead rise up after the previously mentioned zombie is tossed into the cremator, spreading the chemical into the atmosphere and causing it to come down as acid rain.
The makeup effects are amazing, the writing is hilarious, and the acting is pretty damn awesome. The film's also pretty notable for what I'd consider to be the greatest nude scene in horror film history. That is, Linnea Quigley (easily my favorite scream queen of all time) stripping naked for the other punks, and remaining naked in every scene afterwards. Quigley has a great body, and many a bad 80s flick turned to her showing some skin to make their film worth watching (see: Jack-O.)
There's numerous sequels, each of varying quality. The second film is like a wackier, more family friendly version of the first film (no nudity, much less gore). The third film is pretty fun, but not as good as the first, but still worth a rent. The fourth film is something to avoid at all costs, while the fifth film is at least worth a view if you liked the first two.
#5: Gremlins
There are certain films and shows some I watch at a certain time each year, like The Twilight Zone marathon that occurs every New Years Eve. With Gremlins, I used to make it a solo tradition to watch it each Christmas, simply because it is the greatest Christmas related horror film. In your face, Silent Night Deadly Night 2!
I seriously doubt anyone reading this has somehow avoided the film all of this time, but to play it safe: A teenager gets a pet mogwai (think a Furby only cute), but is given strict instructions to not feed it after midnight, get it wet, or expose it to sunlight. He fails at following rules, and eventually from the mogwai we get a bunch of tiny green skinned demons that kill people and wreck havoc on Christmas day.
The film is hilarious but at the same time fairly dark, like Loony Toons without the immortality. The gremlins are all complete goofballs, but they do actually -kill- a few people, and they are kinda creepy despite being so silly. Sadly, the sequel removes most of the dark elements and keeps things strictly wacky, but is still awesome in the same way that Rocky IV is awesome. I mean what other film gives us Hulk Hogan threatening gremlins, Daffy Duck riffing credits, tiny demonic things singing New York, New York, etc.?
This and Critters (which is also pretty awesome) ended up inspiring numerous clones of varying quality, including Hobgoblins (which MST3K fans will remember as an epic about two men fighting with lawn equipment) and Ghoulies (and hey, Ghoulies 2 was a fun movie.)
#4: Beetlejuice
If you didn't automatically start hearing the theme music in your head, I feel sorry for you. This film is just pure awesome. The humor is just how I like it: Slapstick, abstract, and dark all at the same time. I mean what other comedy film can begin with two people dying in a car accident?
This may just be my favorite Tim Burton movie of all time, beating out Batman, Mars Attacks and Nightmare Before Christmas. That's saying a lot, as I love all three of those as well. Honestly, I love all Tim Burton films except for his god awful Planet of the Apes remake, his Alice in Wonderland (I got enough 'Lets watch Johnny Depp be wacky' in the PotC trilogy), and his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (it really says something to me when Tim Burton's remake somehow is far less nightmare fuel filled than the original... that and Depp just kinda annoyed the fuck out of me here.)
Michael Keaton deserves special mentioning here, because he seriously makes this movie as the titular Betelgeuse. His performance is so amazing that you forget you're watching -Batman- doing all of these things. The man's a fantastic actor and it makes me sad that I don't see him in much anymore.
There's also an animated series, which... okay. I'll say this: The theme song? Is still fucking awesome. I did like the show as a kid, but after going back and rewatching it lately I find it to be way too pun filled. There's way too much "Hey Lids, I'm tired! *turns into a tire*." It's like the episodes were written by Schumacher's Mr. Freeze.
#3: Creepshow
About here, I'd say my top three are pretty much tied. It was so hard deciding where to put these, so just keep that in mind. Creepshow is easily one of my favorite films of all time, a movie that I go out of my way to watch each Halloween just because I feel it is easily the best movie for the holiday. It's just so chock full of references and homages to classic EC horror comics that it's just... a fantastic holiday film.
For those that haven't seen the film, it's an anthology story centered around a kid's horror comic: Creepshow. We get segments about an undead old man that wants his father's day cake, Leslie Nielsen killing Ted Danson, Stephen King as an ignorant hick that turns into a plant, a killer ape-like beast within a crate, and a swarm of cockroaches. All done in a tongue in cheek manner based largely on stuff like the old Tales from the Crypt comics, and directed/written by George Romero and Stephen King.
The music is fantastic, this was one of the first horror films I ever got the soundtrack for, and I still treasure both it and my The Thing soundtrack. The cast is top notch and includes such greats (on top of the previously mentioned Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson) as Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, Ed Harris, and Fritz Weaver. The special effects are among my favorites in a horror film, done by the always amazing Tom Savini who also cameos in the film. God I love Savini.
As with many of the other films mentioned here, Creepshow did get a couple of sequels. There's Creepshow 2 which is pretty fun, but avoid Creepshow 3 like the plague. Don't buy it, don't rent it, don't download it. Just avoid it. It's a god awful in-name-only sequel with horrible writing, terrible production values, and god awful acting. If you want a true sequel, watch Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.
You see, Tales from the Darkside was originally meant to be Creepshow: The Series, but the studio suggested a different name. The movie based on the show even uses a segment that got written out of Creepshow 2 involving a killer black cat. Tom Savini himself as gone on record as saying that TftD is the true Creepshow 3. Also hey, it has Christian Slater!
#2: The Evil Dead Trilogy
I know, I'm cheating by having all three films share the #2 spot but I really, really could not pick between them, and if I didn't group them together this list would get be hogged by them. Admit it though, you knew this'd be on the list, and high up on it.
The Evil Dead trilogy... had so much impact on entertainment for what they are that it's just hilarious to me. I mean without them, would we still find chainsaws popping up constantly as an efficient zombie-killer? Think of all the pop culture references directed at the trilogy, or all of the comedy-horror films it spawned. On top of that, the trilogy basically brought mainstream attention to other shlocky low grade horror films, creating an even larger fanbase for the kinds of movies I love so much.
Think about all the big careers this film series started, too. Sam Raimi went onto do a bunch of big name films, including the Spider-Man trilogy (which admitedly I hate. I'm a big fan of the comics, so I hated seeing Parker turned into a whiny, mopey douchebag that spends more time being awkward around Mary Jane than anything else). The Coen Brothers also got their start with Evil Dead, moving on to make some of my favorite films of all time like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother Where Art Thou.
Similarly, the trilogy gave us Bruce Campbell. The man is like the horror genre's answer to Seagall and Chuck Norris. The man became a symbol of manliness within the horror genre, the image of the ultimate badass horror protagonist, and his fanbase grew so strong that even the worst pieces of crap could gain a following just because he was in it (I still love all the people that saw Serving Sarah just because he had a minor role in it.) I mean hell, he even got two big shows based around him going around and doing badass things: Brisco County Jr. (which was epic) and Jack of All Trades (which wasn't.) All of this thanks to these three movies.
I'm still upset knowing that Diablo Cody, the screenwriter behind Juno and Jennifer's Body, is doing a remake of The Evil Dead, but I think I've finally just grown to accept that Hollywood is... horrible. I mean seriously, we're getting remakes of this, Creepshow, Toxic Avenger, Total Recall, Hellraiser, Fright Night, The Birds, etc., etc. Originality seems to be almost dead when it comes to major theatrical releases. We get crappy remakes, crappy sequels that just repeat the same shit the previous film(s) did, and movies that just repeat the same fucking script over and over (comedies lately are especially guilty of this.) And all of this is because we actually give them our money. I mean, bash shit like Disaster Movie all you want, but it's become hard for even awful movies like that to financially fail.
#1: Ghostbusters
If anything beats the above in terms of impact, it's this. Ghostbusters is easily the greatest comedy-horror to me. It's a perfect blend of the two genres, managing to actually be pretty frightening at times while still being completely hilarious at others, and started a franchise that is still alive today.
The cast is completely awesome, and each character is extremely memorable, you've got so many big quotables that still pop up even today (my favorite being the "dogs and cats, living together, mass histeria" rant.) We've got a film that, ontop of inspiring a fairly good sequel, also inspired multiple tv shows, gave us an easily recognizable an extremely catchy theme song, an amazing game that acts as a third film... it's a beast of a franchise.
I remember that, as a kid, the library ghost scared the -shit- out of me. It may sound odd, being scared by a film starring Dan Akyroyd (though it probably doesn't to anyone that recognizes what my banner quotes), but jesus fuck I jumped when I first saw the movie. Then you've got that fucking demon dog...
The movie is a childhood classic, and a great example of the comedy-horror genre as a whole, so the degree that it's easily a film that needs to be shown to every kid, alongside other important movies like the classic Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Honorable mention goes to Cannibal! The Musical, which was originally on the list, but in the end it just didn't seem to fit with the others in terms of genre. Still, it's a fantastic film, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone reading this.
It's from the creators of South Park (who also star in this) and is about Alferd Packer, the cannibal that inspired such films as Ravenous.
Singing, dancing, eating people. Amazing movie.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Willies
Today's movie came as a recommendation from the same friend that suggested Sorority Row, so I braced for the worst. I mean it's got Donkey Lips and some other names I recognize in it, but the box looks cheesy, so it seemed like a good idea to brace anyway.
Our film begins with some kids (including Sean Astin, aka Sam, the true hero of LotR) sitting around a campfire, one of them telling some gross out jokes that I'm used to hearing in the form of dead baby jokes, like "what's grosser than 10 dead puppies in a garbage can? One dead puppy in ten garbage cans." One of them tells us a story, which we see enacted, of some fat woman ordering chicken at a KFC parody and getting a deep fried rat. The way it's filmed, and the way they act in the enactment, reminds me a lot of the original Toxic Avenger film. In fact, the guy behind the counter even kinda reminds me of pre-mutated Toxie.
After this story we cut to an old guy who I swear I've seen in like a hundred movies, including Home Alone the other day, as he's going through a haunted house ride thing, but he dies of a heart attack from fright! This is also a story about how the theme park had to tone down the haunted house. Please tell me the whole film isn't like this.
We cut to another story, an old woman washes her puppy in the sink next to a microwave, and before I can finish saying "She's gonna microwave it," she microwaves it. For some reason though, the poodle doesn't blow up until a few seconds after the microwave's done. It's odd thinking back favorably to fucking Urban Legends. Thankfully the prologue finally ends with one kid saying his next story will give them... the title screen!
The story begins with some dorky kid getting bullied... inside the school by some kid with a mullet and his goons. They tie him up to the ceiling with a firehouse, rip up his prize winning drawing, and put the prize ribbon in his mouth... in the middle of the school hallway. What horrible school is this? By the way, believe me on this, Rudy, the main bully? His goons are called Frick and Frack. I'm not kidding. Lucky for the kid, he gets saved by a kind old mustachioed janitor.
So, the kid's doing a test on fractions when he suddenly has to use the bathroom. The teacher's hesitant to let him go, but the class votes on it and lets him. Once there he finds the janitor's cart is blocking him, so he checks the stalls for him, only to find a crappy monster in one! Shock! He runs back to the class, tries to tell the teacher about it, but the bully points out he peed himself. The teacher promptly mocks him for this, in front of the class. She -insults- the kid. Then sends him off to clean himself. He goes back to the bathroom, and there he finds... a body suit of the janitor. Shock! The janitor was a monster all along, and is trying to use the bathroom, but the kid just won't let him for some reason. Seriously kid, let the monster take a crap.
He runs back to the teacher to tell her that the monster killed the janitor, and shock, she still doesn't believe him, and is still being a complete and total cunt. Shockingly, the janitor's door is now locked, the stall is now empty, and she continues insulting him. Cue the monster... dropping down, she hits it in the head with a book a few times, he pulls her up and then kills her. Surprisingly, for a film this immature, there's actually some blood!
Anyway the kid leads the three bullies to the bathroom to show them he's not lying, an that it ate the teacher, and they decide to follow him in there for some reason. They aren't too bright. Once in there he pushes over the drinking fountain to prevent them from leaving, because obviously the best revenge against a bully is to have them die a horrible death. Cue the monster killing all three bullies offscreen while the nerdy kid just walks away to happy music. Happy music just feels odd when it's set to three children dying. We get a shot of someone walking into the bathroom and finding the bloody mess before it pans up to reveal what was already obvious to begin with: The monster is putting on the janitor's body as a suit.
Well, the janitor moves to another town after this, according to the narration, and gets a job at another school as a janitor. The principal and the older woman from Hatchet, the one who went on the tour with her husband (the Jump to Conclusions guy), come up to the janitor and ask if he's seen Jordan, some kid who is apparently a bully at this school too. As soon as they walk away, he pulls out a torn kid's shirt to use as a washrag, complete with dramatic music to imply that that was Jordan's shirt! And that's the end of that story. So, this continues as an anthology, then? I was wondering why the pacing was so god awful.
The next story begins at Gary Spivey's place, the father of that kid that got poison ivy at Camp Grenada. He's apparently some farmer/scientist guy! Well, Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts waltzes in and steals a jar of his manure, but as he's trying to run off the farmer goes crazy and tries to shoot him. But Farmer Spivey, if you kill him now, who will Budnick befriend? Well, Donkey Lips turns out to be a no good kid in general, as he later goes into a pharmacy just to shoplift some nail polish remover. He also tries to scare a cat into traffic, but a car swerves to miss it, almost hits an old lady... and instead a big plastic bug from the car falls off the roof and scares her. That was... silly.
It turns out Donkey Lips is doing all of this because he has a weird fascination with flies, and we're shown a scene of him examining them and feeding them all to some... oddly pretty music. Because when you look at Donkey Lips, you think insect loving classical music fan. Well, maybe not, as we then pan over to some dioramas he's made of a castle, a diner, and a church, each one with flies glued to them. So he raises flies just to glue them in a small scale representation of Barf's Diner? Moments later he and his dysfunctional parents are sitting around eating friend chicken and watching the local news station: KORN (I'm not joking) where the farmer, who is being interviewed by KORN, reveals that his special manure makes things grow. So what, we're gonna get giant flies killing Donkey Lips?
What is it with kids movies and furthering the whole parents suck and school is hell theme? There's also the recurring thing about how kids with odd interests need to be punished, and how horrible it is to not have a social life... and there's even several films I've seen where a kid is at fault for not dating, and it just kinda blows my mind. Want to have your mind blown? Later that night Gordy (Donkey Lips)'s watching TV, and he changes the channel to fucking Growing Pains, where Mike Seaver seriously kills flies and says he's saving them for Gordy. I'm not joking. Also if we wanna talk about crazy, Donkey Lips in this film is far less crazy than Kirk Cameron in real life, just wanna go ahead and say that. He wakes up from this nightmare, only to find himself in a bed covered in mealworms. Why is it movies typically use mealworms instead of maggots? Well, that's also a dream, and he wakes up in his normal bed.
The next day at school, Gordy sits down with some girls at lunch where he tries to get one girl just to try talking to him for once. Well, turns out she shouldn't show any pity for him, as the second she does and takes a bite into an offered cookie he made, we find out it was covered in flies. Still less crazy than Kirk Cameron. He gets sent home because of this, and the last we see of the girl she's being checked out by the school nurse for some reason. I mean eating a fly sounds disgusting, but I can't imagine the nurse being that necessary.
On his way back, the creepy farmer guy tries acting friendlier to him, and gives him a huge jar of the suped up magical manure. He goes home to find that his mom has already heard about the whole cookie thing, and has thrown away everything related to his hobby in anger. Luckily for him, his mom's kind of absent minded and managed to miss a flystrip, so he gets to keep three flies in the jar of magical manure! Predictably, that night, this makes the flies gigantic and angry, and they attack Donkey Lips! They seriously look like Power Rangers villains here, which made me think back to Bulk of Bulk & Skull instead.
His parents hear the noise and go into his room to fin that the flies have ripped off Gordy's arms, leaving hm crying in a corner with two bloody stumps. They turn around, see the flies come out of the closet wielding his arms, and then the lights go out as they scream, and the farmer watches from outside smiling. Gordy wakes up the next morning in a hammock, leading to a false "all just a dream" scene again as the camera zooms out to reveal he has hook hands now. I couldn't not laugh my ass off at this scene. I figured at first they were going to imply that he was glued to it and it's all a big diorama, but no, it's just a hammock.
We cut back to the wraparound story where the the kids argue about how the stories couldn't have happened, when the light suddenly goes out. The main storyteller's dad (apparently the uncle of the other two kids) comes out to check on them, and the kids ask him to prove the janitor story wasn't fake. ...so he predictably takes off his mask, revealing that he was the monster from that story, and judging by the silhouette as the camera moves outside the tent, probably kills the kids? Or not, I don't know, they're related somehow...
Overall, this movie was about on par with some of the better Goosebumps episodes, like How To Kill A Monster, but not as good as Werewolf of Fever Swamp. If you grew up on stuff like Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, etc. and enjoyed them, I'd recommend digging this up and giving it a view.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman
Hey guys, sorry for the delay on a new article. While doing some yardwork I managed to expose myself to so many allergens that the itching and burning has become a distraction. So, just been digging around for some stuff I feel nostalgic about.
Whilst doing this, I managed to find a bit of nightmare fuel from my own childhood, and thought I'd spread it around, see if anyone else saw this as a little kid and was creeped out by it.
Speaking of nostalgia, my next article will be a review of a film featuring Donkey Lips, from Nickelodeon's Salute your Shorts. If you didn't watch Nick in the 90's, SyS was a live action show about a crappy summer camp, starring John Connor's friend from Terminator 2 as a jackass bully. Was pretty good for the time, at least better than Hey Dude.
I figure it's obvious now from my posts that I do have a love of the late 80's-90's, and pretty much bury myself in nostalgia fuel on top of all the nightmare fuel. Not that it's a surprise to anyone I know who is reading this, as I even made this to use as a wallpaper a year or so back:
And am using a similar, though smaller version as a mousepad.
On top of that, enjoy some possible nostalgia that didn't age as well:
Oh Tim Curry, even at your cheesiest and most awful you're still awesome. Would Congo be tolerable without you? Would Fern Gully even be watchable without "Toxic Love"? I think not.
Now if only the two videos were linked, Tim Curry narrating Teeny Tiny. Hell, Tim Curry reading scary stories in general, that would be awesome. I for one am going to try reading creepypasta in his voice from now on.
Whilst doing this, I managed to find a bit of nightmare fuel from my own childhood, and thought I'd spread it around, see if anyone else saw this as a little kid and was creeped out by it.
Speaking of nostalgia, my next article will be a review of a film featuring Donkey Lips, from Nickelodeon's Salute your Shorts. If you didn't watch Nick in the 90's, SyS was a live action show about a crappy summer camp, starring John Connor's friend from Terminator 2 as a jackass bully. Was pretty good for the time, at least better than Hey Dude.
I figure it's obvious now from my posts that I do have a love of the late 80's-90's, and pretty much bury myself in nostalgia fuel on top of all the nightmare fuel. Not that it's a surprise to anyone I know who is reading this, as I even made this to use as a wallpaper a year or so back:
And am using a similar, though smaller version as a mousepad.
On top of that, enjoy some possible nostalgia that didn't age as well:
Oh Tim Curry, even at your cheesiest and most awful you're still awesome. Would Congo be tolerable without you? Would Fern Gully even be watchable without "Toxic Love"? I think not.
Now if only the two videos were linked, Tim Curry narrating Teeny Tiny. Hell, Tim Curry reading scary stories in general, that would be awesome. I for one am going to try reading creepypasta in his voice from now on.
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