50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Three - Crazy Irish Warlock Dollmakers Plot to Take Over the World!

50 NIGHTS OF TERROR WEEK THREE

Week three.  A couple hits.  A couple misses.  This is the first week that any of these movies really forced me to emote.  Two movies touched me (as much as a horror movie can).

Rammbock - Berlin Undead (2010)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Zombies


This poor dude.  Poor Michael goes to surprise his girlfriend and amend what was some sort of romantic problem.  In a very intense introduction we find a handyman and a handyman's assistant working alone in Michael's girlfriend's apartment.  Michael is understandably confused.  Hell, I would be, too.  The handyman is apparently infected with a zombie virus and...WE'RE IN TO THE MOVIE.

From there we experience many of the typical zombie themes.  The level of isolation that these characters deal with is unique in that they're in an apartment complex that has a gated court entrance in the middle of the development.  The neighbors mostly have line of sight into each other's apartments as well as the court area.  Whispering to each out from window to window is the only form of communication they have.  And this presents a fun problem for the survivors.

view of the courtyard

I won't ruin any more of this movie, but I will say that the ending was very satisfying.  I would recommend this as a solid zombie movie to those that don't typically check out the genre.  I say that not only because of the fairly basic rules of zombie that the movie employs, but also because the movie only runs for 60 minutes.  It's not tasking a casual viewer with a big, heavy movie to plod through if they're not into it.

The Dead Zone (1983)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Supernatural
Subgenre:  Precognition

I've never seen Christopher Walken in a more sympathetic role.  This is a strait forward, unapologetic Stephen King 80's movie.  I have never read the book, but the movie was solid.  A great cast, some great effects, and enough gore to make me cringe.  There were a lot of themes that freaked me out and made me cringe about this movie.  This is one that is good enough to purchase.  I'm kind of surprised that AMC doesn't run this movie around Halloween.

Wait Until Dark (1967)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Serial Killer
Subgenre:  Women in Danger, Hitcockian

Like many of Hitchcock's Rope and Dial M for Murder, this movie takes place entirely inside the confine's of one room.  And like Hitchcock's best, the movie contaminates the viewer with fear and doubt without using too much (special effects, screaming cats, and other typical cheap scares).

I'm not much of an Audrey Hepburn fan (the only other movie of hers that I had seen was Charade - another Hitchcock-y movie), and I did not recognize her.  In my mind, that's a compliment, because I have read enough websites that review this as one of the scariest movies of all time, and I don't know that I would have watched it if I'd known Audrey Hepburn was in it.  Conversely, Ms. Hepburn's inclusion was one of the aspects that convinced my fiancee to watch with me.

Each of the five actors in the movie is used efficiently and poignantly.  I have no qualms about their performances.  There's an obnoxious child actor in the movie, but her obnoxiousness drives the plot, so it cannot be faulted.  Alan Arkin surprised the hell out of me.  I've never considered him much of an imposing figure before, but he was a sadistic bully bastard in this movie, and I loved every scene he was in.

Arkin going H.A.M.

I can't recommend this film enough.  I'm a Hitchcock enthusiast, and this fits in right with his best.  I jumped once during this movie.  My fiancee jumped at another point.  I fell asleep halfway through the movie, and Kelley watched throughout, so that's saying something.

In an effort to duplicate the suspense onscreen, movie theaters dimmed their lights to the legal limits, then turned them off one-by-one until each light on screen was shattered, resulting in the entire theater being plunged into complete darkness.

I also read this on Wikipedia, and because the movie revolves around Audrey Hepburn's blindness, I found it pertinent:

Tales from the Crypt:  Ritual (2001)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Voodoo
Subgenre:  Women in Danger

As if the trailer for Tales from the Crypt:  Ritual was no indication, this movie falls far short of the standard TftC fare.  This was the extent of the Cryptkeeper's participation in the movie.  There's no fun over-arching wrap with the old bag of bones.  Instead, some poseur Cryptkeeper showed up in this trailer, and that's that.

I should have known that the movie couldn't be too good based on this trailer.  It really wasn't worth the time it took to watch it.  The movie would have made a forgettable episode of the HBO series.  The best parts of the movie were very basic, but entertaining.  Erick Avari has a brutally gory scene at the beginning of the film, and Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) looks delicious throughout the entire movie.  Kelley and I both observed that we felt sorry for her post-nose-job career.  She deserves better.  Tim Curry has a supporting role in the movie, but he's no Pennywise the Clown, and his role could have been withheld from the movie without anyone noticing.

More than anything, this movie just made me angry that Tales from the Crypt isn't on TV anymore.  This last gasp to make it relevant on the direct-to-video market is feeble and unwarranted.

The Orphanage (2007)
Format:  Blu-ray
Genre:  Ghosts

Holy freakin' crap!  I can't believe it took me this long to sit down and watch this movie.  I absolutely loved it from start to finish.  I can't recommend it to enough people.  I can't remember the last time I felt this strongly about a movie, and I can't believe I watched two horror movies within the course of one week that had such intimate endings (the other being Rammbock).

To summarize this quickly, imagine the best parts of Poltergeist, The Ring, and The Secret Garden (yes, a non-horror movie) being melded together to constitute a movie so scary that I had to turn it off one night, yet so touching that I welled up at the end.

I hope this movie never gets remade.  I simply cannot imagine anyone doing the film justice.  It is perfect.  The best movie I've seen yet over the course of this challenge, and that's saying a lot.

Halloween 3 (1982)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Stupid
Subgenre:  I can't believe this got made it was so stupid

I hope this movie never gets remade.  I simply cannot imagine anyone making anything good out of this mess.  It's awful.  It is the worst movie I've seen over the course of this challenge, and that's saying a lot.

OK.  Maybe it's not as bad as Street Trash.

But it is close.  The best part of this movie was Tom Atkin's participation.  To make a long story short, this is They Live! but with androids instead of aliens and Tom Atkins instead of Rowdy Roddy Piper.

I hope nobody ever wastes their time on this one.  And because I have such a distaste for this, I don't mind including a boatload of spoilers.  I don't spoil movies often, but read this, and tell me I didn't just save you 90 minutes:

• Tom Atkins is a doctor who abandons his children to play detective because he witnessed a murder/suicide in his hospital and the victim's daughter is hot.
• An Irish warlock dollmaker creates an army of androids.  Instead of having androids take over the world, he imports one of the Stonehenge rocks from Ireland, and he puts his android army to work making Halloween masks with Stonehenge shavings glued to the back.
• Children all over the world throw tradition to the wind:  all of them buy the same three masks (a ghost, a witch, and a jack-o-lantern), and they all wear them all day on Halloween.  
• The Irish warlock plot is to promise to air a Halloween special on October 31, and all of the kids that own the masks will sit down in front of their TV to watch said special.  Mind you, to pull this off, every kid all over the world will be sitting simultaneously to watch this program.  And they will all be wearing their Halloween masks.
• When the children watch the program, the magical Stonehenge shavings will explode the kids' heads, and poisonous bugs and lizards will ooze from the dead children's heads, and they will bite and kill the children's parents.
• This will bring about a Halloween apocalypse in honor of the ancient god, Sauron.

Irish warlocks lose my respect with this one.  Shame on John Carpenter for signing off on what could have been a very cool idea for a Halloween franchise.  One that changed the theme every year but annually released something fun and scary.  Halloween 3 was neither fun nor scary.  Now I just have to come to terms with whether or not I hate it so much because if carries the Halloween name.  I don't know if I wouldn't hate it if it had been released under just the "Season of the Witch" title.

Magic (1978)

Format:  VHS

Genre:  Psychological Thriller

Subgenre:  Slasher, Puppets

I had never heard of this movie before I saw it on sale on Amazon.com.  I was really surprised by the quality of this film.  Magic could easily have been an un-scary Hammer Horror movie.  However, it was very well directed, scripted, and acted.  Bonus Points for Burgess Meredith being pretty cool and eventually badass in this movie.  Ann Margaret was sexy.  And Anthony Hopkins was, get this, creepy as sh!t.

I had no idea that Sir Hopkins was this good/psychotic pre-Hannibal Lecter.  It was really fun to see him fight for control between himself and his dummy.  See, that's the gist of this movie.  Hopkins' character Corky is an insecure magician who funnels his hate and rage and acerbic humor through his dummy, Fats.  Unfortunately, when Corky finds himself in confrontational situations, he diverts tough decisions to Fats with increasing frequency.  And Fats doesn't have the affection or hope that Corky has.  Fats is aware that he's a wooden puppet resigned to life in a box and without a companion.  

The premise here is really interesting, and it is executed extremely well.  Great scary movie.  Pre-Hannibal psychotic Hopkins is worth seeing.  Very cool.

Twenty-six movies to go.  This was a good week (the exception being Halloween 3 which I will never forgive).

50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week Two - Night Humping

50 NIGHTS OF TERROR WEEK TWO

The second week of horror movies proved to be significantly better than the first week.  Less stinkers.  More chillers.  More tingly hairs standing on end.  This week was so, so much better.  I'm more encouraged that I can get through this...

The Faculty (1998)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Aliens
Subgenre:  Teenagers, Humor

I can totally understand how this movie could be overlooked.  It came out in the midst of Screams, I Know What You Did Last Summers, and Urban Legends.  This film features an ensemble cast of teenaged stars of teen dramas and dramedies (Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall, Usher, etc.).  The casual observer might draw these similarities and skip over The Faculty very easily.  

However, one thing those other movies didn't have was one of my favorite directors, Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, etc.).  And good, dependable Robert Rodriguez stacked the movie with a ton of supporting actors like Selma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick, and a memorable John Stewart).

With a screenplay by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, The Faculty comes together as a witty, creepy re-interpretation-slash-homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Like other high school movies, the regular themes of dealing with bullies, coming of age, and finding one's place in the world are all here, but they're all filtered through the context of aliens killing your friends and family.  It's a lot of fun, and I watch this movie annually.

Child's Play (1988)

Format:  Netflix Streaming

Genre & Subgenres:  Slasher/Ghost/Killer Dolls

For the uninitiated, check out this Youtube clip that pretty much summarizes what the Child's Play franchise is all about:

There are some genuinely eerie scenes in this movie.  I think its safe to say that the star of the show is Chucky (did you know he's voiced by/acted by Brad Dourif?).  The special effects that animate the doll are pretty awesome.  The child acting in this movie is decent.  The super-mega-star of this movie is without a doubt Chris Sarandon.  He is such a boss.  I can't imagine it's easy to act with a child, let alone with a child's doll, but man does he pull it off.  So cool.

Chris Fucking Sarandon

At its heart, this is not a ghost movie...or a thrasher movie...or a cute killer monster movie (Gremlins, Critters, Ghoulies, etc.).  It is a delicious goulash of all three genres.  And it is definitely worth watching.  There are rumblings of this movie being remade.  I really hope it isn't.  

Fun Note:  This movie was directed and co-written by Tom Holland, the writer/director of Fright Night.  It's a shame that this guy doesn't have more notoriety.  I just learned that he also wrote The Beast Within and Psycho II, both of which are on my watchlist....

Child's  Play 2 (1990)
Format:  VHS
Genre & Subgenres:  Slasher/Ghost/Killer Dolls

This I could have done without.  There isn't much ground uncovered here.  Chucky is rebuilt by the toy manufacturer that built the original Good Guy dolls in an attempt to figure out why their toy is associate with the bad events of the first movie.  The nobody-believes-the-young-boy theme is rehashed.  Chris Sarandon does not reprise his role.  This movie plays very much like the first one, but with more death scenes.

There is one cool scene where the boy and his female companion are being chased through the toy factory by Chucky.  It leads to this gore, which is creepier the more I look at it:

Career highlight.

Fun Note:  this movie cover scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid.

Copycat (1995)

Format:  VHS
Genre:  Mystery
Subgenre:  Female vs. Serial Killer

It is not easy to convince females to join in on the Nights of Horror Challenge.  Not easy one bit.  But it did lead to a good conversation between my fiancee and I.  She's not a fan of "unrealistic, goofy" horror movies. But she did admit to having that guilty pleasure of being scared by realistic killer movies.  She has told me repeatedly that Copycat was one movie that stuck in her head as being really scary.  So without her knowing, I bought a VHS copy of the movie and surprised her with it one night.  We settled down with a bowl of popcorn and got down to it.

I would like to say that this movie is derivative of Silence of the Lambs, complete with Holly Hunter's take on Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.  Both Foster and Hunter were charming female detectives going after a serial killer.  But this isn't really bad.  There were some good thrills here, and I couldn't help but try to figure out who the killer was before he was introduced.  I failed.

I also failed to recognize Harry Connick Jr. at all.  He plays a seriously bastard, and I couldn't tell it was him until the credits ran.  There's enough here to make it a watchable flick.  

I'm by no means a Harry Connick Jr enthusiast,
but I didn't recognize him for anything.

That being said, this movie helped me make a grand discovery.  This movie, like Silence of the Lambs, Kiss the Girls, and Along Came a Spider, all have a similar core (strong female lead flips the script and stalks the serial killer in a role reversal).  And this similar core carries over into shows like Law & Order where Mariska Hargitay discovers a crime scene, is baffled and threatened by the criminal, and ultimately subdue the criminal with a nice, neat wrap by episode's end.  There's a tickle of violence and gore, a pinch of female empowerment, and nobody too important kicks the bucket.  When I figured this out, I like this movie a little less.

Ghosthouse (1988)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Haunted House
Subgenre:  throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks, Killer Doll

I've thought about this movie many times after finishing it.  It is not a good movie.  There is no good acting.  The death scenes are pretty silly.  This guy shows up at the end out of nowhere and proves to do nothing more than have eyeballs full of maggoty wormy things:

Somebody made a kick ass mask for this movie, and it was completely wasted.

The beginning of this movie showed so much promise.  A strict, religious bastard of a father hears a weird, repeating jingle.  He follows the sound and discovers the family cat disemboweled.  He accuses his poor daughter and locks her in the basement.  He and his wife are violently killed.  

INTERESTING.  TELL ME MORE.

The rest of this movie is a mess.  A ham radio operator and his foreign exchange student girlfriend hear a weird radio signal and follow it to an abandoned house.  They pick up some dick of a hitchhiker, and then drop him off.  They get to the house, find it abandoned, but then find another group vacationing on the same property for some reason.  They proceed to investigate the house, and for another odd reason, they refuse to pack their shit up and leave when they start getting killed by mysterious circumstances one by one.

Here's how the conversation would go if I was involved:

Me:  I'm on vacation, and I don't want to spend it staying with a group of strangers, let alone in some empty, creepy house.

Stranger:  But my sister just died in there due to some unseen force!

Me:  That sucks.  I'm out of here.

Stranger:  Don't you want to investigate the history of this house and figure out what it was that killed her?

Me:  I'm a ham radio operator on vacation.  What part of that story makes you think I'm Van Helsing?  I'm going to ham radio operate my ass back home.

That being said, and as awful as this movie is, it sticks with me.  I think it would make an awesome Nintendo game.  It would also make a sweet ride at an amusement park.  I can imagine a Ghosthouse - The Ride! at Coney Island.  As a coherent movie, though, it fails.  It fails on so many levels.  

Black Death (2010)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Medieval Times
Subgenre:  Contagion, Witches

I was never really anxious or scared during this movie.  As a horror movie, it's not too scary.  As a period piece that delves into man's relationship with his religion, it's ok.  A little too violent for that theme, but then again, what do you expect out of a movie called Black Death?  There are a couple brutal scenes here, and a scant tease at witchery.  It's not a bad movie by any means, but not one I would have chosen for the 50 Nights of Horror Challenge if I had known how non-scary it is.

Sean Bean is in it.  He just can't win.  I bet if I went into this one knowing more about what its intentions were, I would have liked it much more.

Madhouse (1974)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Serial Killer
Subgenre:  Hammer/Amicus

This was a fun Amicus horror movie that served as a tribute to Vincent Price more than anything.  Like most Amicus and Hammer horror movies from this era there are loads of beautiful women, funny looking blood baths, and fun acting.  This really is a tribute to Vincent Price.  There's an interesting idea here of the character he's played in a horror franchise, Doctor Death, overtaking the actor.  It's been done before, and it's been done since, but not by Vincent Price, and not with the surprise ending we get.

Doctor Death - pretty badass.

Night of the Demon (1980)
Format:  Borrowed
Genre:  Monster Movie
Subgenre:  Sasquatch, Kids In Nature

As far as zero-budget horror movies go, this might be the best one I've ever seen.  I did some reading and found that this belongs in the Sasquatchploitation subgenre.  This may be my new favorite term.  All I know is that if my group of friends and I went out into the woods to make a horror movie about Sasquatch, it would be very similar to this.  The makers of this movie deserve to be very proud.

It's extremely gory, but cheesy gory.  A biker gets his penis ripped off, but it's not treated as a goof like it was in Street Trash.  Two girl scouts are manhandled and accidentally kill each other.  Limbs are ripped off. In one of the more memorable scenes, a guy zipped up in his sleeping bag is twirled, tossed, and eventually meets his end at Bigfoot's hands.

There's nothing particularly scary about this movie.  It's just a lot of fun.  And I have to imagine that is what the makers wanted.  Sasquatch isn't given significant screen time until towards the end of the movie.  He rapes a villager.  He squashes a cabin full of students.  Before this, he's only shown in quick shots, and he is inferred when the movie goes into "SasquatchVision."  The audience sees the movie through Sasquatch's point of view.  It's a fish-eye lens with a red filter.  If Bigfoot is really out there, I hope this is really how he sees the world.

Pontypool (2008)

Format:  Netflix Streaming

Genre:  Zombies

Subgenre:  Thought-Provoking, Isolation

This movie was really cool.  Essentially, it is a zombie movie, though it's not particularly gory, and I didn't see a single bite or slash or tear.  I won't ruin how the zombie virus transmits itself, you really ought to see that for yourself.  The movie predominantly takes place in a radio station with a shock jock interacting with a zombie-infected city via his radio program and people calling in.  Pretty darn cool.  To say much more about it would be spoiling things.

Apparently, this is based on a very mind-blowing book.  I don't have the courage to read it.  But I probably should.

Monkey Shines (1988)

Format:  Netflix Streaming

Genre:  Creature Feature

Subgenre:  Telepathy, Isolation

As much as I wanted to really enjoy this George Romero movie, I have to admit that it just didn't trip my trigger.  I'm not sure what I expected based on the short description that Netflix provided:

Quadriplegic law student Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) gets in-home care from Ella, a supersmart monkey injected with human brain tissue. Initially, it's a dynamite relationship -- until she starts anticipating Allan's thoughts and acting out his subconscious desires. Horror veteran George Romero wrote and directed this 1988 chiller, which co-stars Joyce Van Patten, Stanley Tucci and Janine Turner.

From what I can gather, Romero submitted the movie to the studio, and they chopped and re-chopped it into a very unfrightening movie.  And that is a shame.  There is one good solid ending here, though.  And a young Stanley Tucci is really fun to watch here.

The Prowler (1981)

Format:  Borrowed

Genre:  Slasher

Subgenre:  College, Serial Killer

This movie was super, super sweet.  It would have been a regular, run-of-the-mill 80's slasher, but between Tom Savini's special effects and Joe Zito's direction the movie really does set itself apart.  The kills are pretty original, the chase scenes are legitimately cringe-inducing, and the backstory is pretty fun.  I don't know why this wasn't turned into a franchise.  I put it and the original Valentine's Day up there as two of my favorites.

So there you have it.  Eleven more down.  Thirty-three horror movies to go.

50 Nights of Horror Challenge: Week One - Dorkishness

50 NIGHTS OF HORROR WEEK ONE!

I've blogged about what a big deal Halloween and Horror movies are to me in the fall time.  Falls past have almost been determined by the depth and breadth of the weirdness that come with those things scary.  It's a weird season where one second you're super comfortable with the windows open, the smell of charcoal from neighbors floating about, and a cold beer in your hand, and the next second you're shivering cold, you hear nothing (not even crickets or bugs or dogs barking), it's super dark outside, and now you need a blanket and a bourbon because everything tastes flat and meaningless.  Naturally, one becomes more susceptible to the spooky.  

This season I've decided to challenge myself to watch 50 horror movies before Halloween.  When the idea struck me, I figured I had *just* about 50 nights until Halloween (give or take a couple weeks, and figure in nights where the fiance will just not tolerate it).  It will be an excuse to stay up late at night and work my way through a bulging, swollen collection of horror movies, several of which I haven't seen yet.  It will be an added bonus if I'm able to watch some of these with my buds (because sometimes it's more fun to share these things than to sit and slobber alone).  So here goes.  Wish me luck.  Below is my review of the  hits and misses of my first week.

WEEK 1 of the 50 Nights of Horror Challenge

The Boogeyman (1980)


I absolutely did not know what the expect when I sat down to watch this, the first of my horror movie challenge.  I knew that it was memorable enough to spawn not only two direct sequels, but it also generated a remake with a slew of remake sequels.  So it can't be all that bad, right?  I had picked up Boogeyman 2 on a whim for $.25 several months ago, and I recently found a double movie DVD that had the original Boogeyman as well as The Boogeyman Returns (the third in the series).  So I thought I might dive into the Boogeyman trilogy.

What struck me first about this movie was how similar it was to Halloween.  There is the same repeated, synth-heavy title track.  There's a flashback to the tragic events of some children.  And there's a faceless bad guy doing bad guy things to children.  Fast forward, and one of those children has grown into babehood.  Said babe has a brother who has become mute after witnessing the awful things shown in the flashback.  He's strong, he wears bib overalls, and the movie kind of suggested that he was mentally deficient but super strong.

There isn't ever really an appearance of "The Boogeyman."  Based on the similarities to Halloween earlier in the film, I thought we were going to be watching a film about a killer.  A big, silent, lumbering, ominous slasher dude.  But there was no such person.  There's no man.  Instead, there's an evil essence that exists in the world.  To make a long movie short, there's a kind of legend or popular myth that when mirrors "witness" evil things, they harbor all of these evil things, and when the mirror is shattered, that collective evilness is released into the world to do more evil things.  

Sound scary?  I didn't think so, either, and I was never really proven wrong.  The movie should really be called "The Evil Mirror" because that's what's really going on here (ironically, I think that's what the title was translated to in Spain).  When the evil mirror shines or reflects somewhere around someone, bad things happen.  That's seriously the suspense you have to deal with here.

These characters aren't really relatable, either.  The babe is already married to some dullard, and they have a kid.  The babe's aforementioned brother is mute.  They live with their aunt and uncle on a farm.  The babe visits a psychiatrist to discuss what she went through as a child.  The psychiatrist is kind of a dick that pushes her to revisit the event despite her hesitation.

There is some solid gore, though it only comes into play in two scenes.  The editing is pretty bad.  The acting is pretty bad.  The babe is the cornerstone of this movie.  There are some other babes that meet swift endings.

(this babe is about to meet an untimely end)

One scene that stuck out to me in particular was about mid-movie and centered on the brother.  He's at work in the barn, y'know, doing barn things.  A sentient wind pushes a sentient brown paper bag into the doorway to the barn.  The brother stops doing barn things, picks up the bag, shakes it upside down, emptying the bag's contents onto the ground.  Tiny pieces of shattered, evil mirror fall to the ground.  A hot girl wanders into the barn and tells the brother that she's been checking him out during church (WHAT?!).  He responds by choking her *ALMOST* to death, but then he lets her go.  She scrambles away, he goes back to work, and then he narrowly dodges a sentient, levitating pitchfork that had been...I don't know...possessed by the evil mirror pieces.  This was all so awful/awesome that it convinced me that this movie was way too awful/awesome for me to sell the DVD back.  It is a keeper.

There is a pretty awesome ending that reminded me of one of the scariest scenes from The Evil Dead.  Something is wrong in the house.  One girl is acting way too calmly, but you can't see her face.  I won't ruin it for you, but I'll tell you that you will be surprised and excited when this girl turns around.  If the entire movie had been as fun as this scene, it might have made this a considerably more satisfying movie for me.  Ultimately, I can't figure out how this movie generated sequels or why anyone decided to remake it.  I see potential for improvement, but I don't know how it earned a devoted fanbase.  I'll probably rewatch this someday.  Maybe I'll be convinced then.

Street Trash (1987)


Do you hate the homeless?  Do you laugh at scenes of dicks being ripped off, juggled, and then played "Keep-Away" with?  Have you wondered what a melting person would look like?  How about what an exploding person would look like?  Do you think rape scenes have been too difficult to come by in modern cinema?  Necrophilia?  Are you tired of feeling bad about veterans of foreign wars?  If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, man, do I have the movie for you.

Necrophilia?  Necrophilia.

Preface:  I did some research, and I found that the creators of this movie intentionally made a film that would at some point offend anyone/everyone that viewed it.  With this punk rock attitude in mind, I found the movie a bit more tolerable, but still way insane.  I regard this very similarly to how I feel about Hobo With A Shotgun.

Like The Boogeyman, there are hardly any likable characters in this movie.  That being said, all of the people you're supposed to despise in this movie (and there are plenty) have at least one scene where you empathize and wish they lived in a better universe.  If you had to peg one person as the central character to the movie, it would be Fred, the homeless scamp that steals, kills, rapes, and commits vagabondery.  He does have a poor, homeless, kid brother that is trying to do good by a local activist (she works for the owner of the junkyard where all the homeless people live, and he constantly tries to rape her).  THERE IS A LOT OF RAPE IN THIS MOVIE!  I just realized that.

Bronson, the main baddie of the movie.  A Vietnam vet/crazy killer/king of the junkyard's homeless.

I was going to list all of the characters in this movie and their relation to rape, but one major problem with the movie is the over-abundance of characters.  That, and their direct relation to rape.  And none of these characters are really likable.  Just about every one of them is miserable.

There is some solid grossness, but I wouldn't call most of it "gore."  The ending is kind of gory.  Most of it is just gross.  At one point a man's penis is ripped off, and then the homeless junkyard gang plays keep-away with is.  At one point it's obviously just a dildo.  Then the director decided to do a close-up of what is obviously a dirty, detached dick.  Gross.

I could dote on how wrong this movie is for several more paragraphs, but I'm already bored of this.  I'm sure this movie has an audience somewhere.  I doubt I'll ever watch it again.  There's a better write-up of this movie here.  If this movie was more about people melting and exploding, it would have been considerably better.

Exploding man

The Strangeness (1985)

About five years ago I made the mistake of watching The Descent.  Since then, any movie that takes place underground in tunnels or caves seems silly to me.  And I swear I tried to watch this movie, but it was so damned dark that I couldn't make out which character was talking, who they were talking to, or why they were being such assholes with each other.

The gist of this movie is that a group of researches, miners, and an author couple are going into some abandoned mines to search for precious metals despite a history of people being killed/disappeared inside these tunnels.  It was really dark and really slow.  I lost interest shortly after my favorite character died.  That's not true. I lost interest in this movie much earlier on.  God love it, I'm sure there are some people out there that really enjoy this film.

There is an effed-up creature that kills people.  Click on this link if you want to see it.  Click on this link if you want to read a better review of the film.

Tales from the Crypt:  Demon Knight (1995)

This might be one of my favorite movie trailers ever.  It sums up perfectly anything that I could write about the movie.  I really, really enjoyed this one.

Tales from the Crypt:  Bordello of Blood (1996)

Anything associated with Tales from the Crypt has potential to be a good time.  This movie was no exception.  There was a lot of potential here.  It just seems that Dennis Miller stunk up the scene.  Erika Eleniak didn't help much.  And Angie Everheart seemed flat.  It was a nice change of pace to watch a horror movie with big studio resources to pull from (CGI, editing, actors, etc.), but the movie fell flat.  And nothing, NOTHING with Chris Sarandon as a mega-church, hypocrite, demon-wielder should ever fall flat.  Chris Sarandon is cool.

Chris Sarandon.  So awesome.

Highlights:  tons of gore, tons of CGI evil, tons of boobs, Corey Feldman, and Chris Sarandon.  
Bonus Points:  I watched it on VHS.  This is the perfect medium for this movie.

Worth mentioning:  WHOOPI GOLDBERG CAMEO FTW!  (so 90's).

The Bad:  At some point, this movie about vampire hookers ran off the tracks and seemed like Dennis Miller's reinterpretation of From Dusk Till Dawn.  FDTD came out the same year, almost 8 months earlier.  Erika Eleniak wasn't anything to write home about.  Dennis Miller's joke delivery sucked. 

I suspect that this movie is the cause for the end of the Tales from the Crypt franchise, and that sucks.  I really think it could make a comeback right here and now.  If you think about it, True Blood incorporates many of the same themes and images that TftC had.  American Horror Story shares many similarities.  Hell, even Lost succeeded with the weird and creepy.  Tales from the Crypt would return to HBO and pull hella-ratings.  Mark my words.

The Boogens (1981)


After watching The Strangeness, this seemed like a much better underground, tunnel monster movie.  The production was surprisingly good.  There were genuine scares.  And it features the best dog acting I've ever seen!  

For what it is, this is actually a fun, scary movie.  I watched this as my fiance flipped around on her iPad and giggled when I would mutter a quick "whatthefuckwasthat" comment.  There are boobs.  There is a little gore.  There is good chemistry between the characters.  Come to think of it, there's not a single dislikable character in this movie, and that's a nice change of pace after some of the movies I watched earlier in the week.

The biggest disappointment in the movie is finding out what an actual Boogen is.  (It's here)  What a drag.  Still, this is worth watching.  I recommend it.

Six down.  Forty-four to go.
So that's that for week 1.  My biggest take away is that Tales from the Crypt needs to be revisited and relaunched for TV.  Next week I'll dip my toe into the Child's Play franchise.  I'll revisit the Boogeyman franchise when Boogeyman 2 is delivered (my VHS copy wouldn't play).  There are some good movies on Netflix that I'll start.  And I really want to see V/H/S.  More later.

Fall Blog

The other night I was sitting and thinking.  I do this from time to time.  Pondering.  I was giddy with the anticipation of college football.  And when I ponder/anticipate/sweat about college football, I consider the entirety...the big picture of what college football entails.  The big picture, if you will.  College football is one large piece of the grandiose puzzle that is my favorite season of the year, the fall.  This might be because it rhymes with my first name.  Fall/Paul.  It also might be due to the fond memories I have of falls past.  Without dawdling and drawing the blog out longer than it ought to be, I'll condense what my falls look like:

BIG DEALS:

• College football
• Tailgating
• Halloween
• Horror movies

Smaller Deals:

• Oktoberfest beers
• Cooking
• Transition from shorts to jeans, t-shirts to flannel
• Leaves changing colors

I'm going to blog about most of these things extensively, so please bear with me as the direction of this blog takes a bit more focus.  If you prefer the scattershot, aimless direction of the blog from spring-summer DEAL WITH IT.  Things are changing.  Temporarily.

It's almost fall, B!TCHES!  I don't know the difference between fall and autumn.  Maybe I'll do some research and blog about it.  I'm not sure it's important enough to warrant my attention.  We'll see.