tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80311734911210441362024-03-13T23:31:25.364-07:00Horrorstuff!Horrorstuff! provides straight reviews and opinions about horror flicks, extreme music, and video games. We also offer an ever changing podcast and informative community.Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-24580640023921675032012-03-25T06:38:00.000-07:002012-03-25T06:38:09.871-07:00Parents (1989)Parents is one of those flicks that I remember renting as a kid. I didn't remember much about it other than that it had Uncle Eddie in it and the parents ate people, so it must have been good, right?<br />
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I grabbed some dvd multi-packs from walmart and much to my surprise Parents was one of the flicks included. So I took the dvd with me to work, popped it in, grabbed a pizza and began my excursion in to cannibal-ridden suburbia. <br />
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If you've never heard of this movie, its basically "A young boy begins to suspect that his too-normal parents are up to something strange as they continue to push him to eat his meats at dinner." It takes place during the 50's and has that "Leave it to Beaver" way of living.<br />
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Straight off the bat, this movie is pretty damn weird. I definitely didn't remember all of these scenes as a kid and I assume its because I didn't really understand them. The only way to describe this movie in my opinion is a Lynchian/50s/Cannibal NIGHTMARE. Its so weird and creepy and screwed up idk how this didn't mess me up as a kid.<br />
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This boy is kinda out there and says weird stuff, but starts watching his parents. He notices they move a lot, and becomes friends with a girl at his new school, which happens to be his dad's boss's daughter. The dad and mom are weird and say strange things, and do even stranger things. There is blood, lots of meat, weird moments where the mom and dad are rolling around in blood naked on their bed while the camera shot is in black and white, and more totally bizarre moments. <br />
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As in all my reviews, I hate to give too much away, but thats really the whole movie in a nutshell. It is a pretty slow burn style of movie, especially the first half, but its weird, really really weird and I think fans of David Lynch will dig it. <br />
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Oh yeah and after such a creeeeeeeeeepy climax, the end credits are such a freaking weird change of pace, you just have to see it. <br />
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Good flick and I totally recommend it. Its available on DVD as part of an aforementioned budget multi-pack or for streaming on Netflix.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-10940704525152714472011-10-19T05:42:00.000-07:002011-10-19T05:42:01.146-07:00Red State (2011)<div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note: Spoilers, kinda.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Religion is an odd thing. I know that’s hardly the most profound thing ever said. Society allows for belief as long as the beliefs aren’t extreme and gel with the current wishy-washy view of things. The folks at the Five Points church are literalists as far the Bible goes. Pure unadulterated Old Testament wrath of God hate the sinners and sins believers. None of that modern God loves everyone business, nosirreebob. You’d never hear them call anything “old stuff that doesn’t mean anything these days”. That level of faith has always fascinated me. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Red State is billed as a horror movie. It isn’t. It starts with a typical horror movie premise. Three high school boys are going to get laid. The lady is someone they find on the internet. Bad shit happens to them as a result. That set up is the closest it comes to horror.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If anything it is a movie about Kevin Smith’s fascination with Fred Phelps and the Westboro parishioners who picket the funerals of gays. I haven’t read much about where the idea came from but I imagine that the Dogma protesters may be in here somewhere as well.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the boys arrive at the trailer of the internet lady she offers beer that is drugged. The boys come to at the Five Points church in the midst of a sermon by Pastor Abin Cooper who is played so very nicely by Michael Parks. Cooper isn’t menacing or a cartoon stereotype of villainy, he just believes that his path is the most correct path possible and does the things he does based on that belief. In most movies he would be portrayed as a mustache twirling, over the top crazy evil guy. Smith writes him, not sympathetically exactly, but fairly. The sermon is largely about not putting up with the accepted evils of the world and the how people of God have a duty and so on. They then wrap a gay man in plastic in front of a cross and shoot him in the head. Two of the boys are in a hole in the basement and the third is in a cage and scheduled to die next. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earlier, on the way to meet the lady, the boys side swipe a car with a guy getting head from another guy. The guy getting head turns out to be the married local sheriff. He sends a deputy out to look for the car. One of the boys in the basement, around the time the deputy finds the car at the compound, tries to escape. Shots are fired and the deputy hears them and is promptly shot. Cooper threatens to out the sheriff if it isn’t covered up. The sheriff considers suicide but calls the ATF instead. I’m not clear on how that will help his situation but the guy is under pressure so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ATF agent put in charge is played by John Goodman. He has 18 years in the agency and Goodman plays him like a guy who is probably weary of all criminal shit he’s seen in those 18 years. While it isn’t exactly a Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men level performance, I could see the two of them get together for a beer and discuss things. After the local sheriff kills one of the other boys who is trying to escape because he had a gun, the movie becomes a siege movie. It seems loosely modeled after the thing in Waco.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m going to stop the plot right there and let you watch it for yourselves.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parks and Goodman really do shine here. They are two old guys who have seen too much they don’t like about human behavior and react differently to it. There is a nice funhouse mirror aspect to the characters.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While watching the movie I had a hard time recognizing the Kevin Smith in the movie. Gone is the flat direction where a camera is pointed at a couple of people who have to mouth Smith’s reams of dialog about Star Wars and what not. Here the camera actually moves. It really is a breakthrough for him after 15 years and 7 or 8 movies. If Smith really makes good on retiring after this he is doing himself a great injustice.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I really do recommend watching it. </span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
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</span></span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-5844776424934288422011-10-18T06:19:00.000-07:002011-10-18T06:19:35.439-07:00A Serbian Film (2010)<div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note: I watched this on youtube.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every now and then a movie comes along that shocks more sensibilities than a Victorian ankle show. “It’s obscene and has fucked up shit in it. You should totally watch it and be offended like me,” people tend to say. So you sit down and watch it. See a bit of shit that is indeed fucked up and wonder why someone might make this sort of thing. A Serbian Film is one of the latest of these.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The film boils down to a retired porn star comes, or cums, out of retirement and does some fucked up shit. There is also some newborn fucking.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Milos is our former porn actor who is renowned for having a large cock and being able to fuck on cue without needing a fluffer. Apparently, he needs money pretty badly. He lives in a house that would probably fetch upper six figures here in Utah. Why he doesn’t sell it and move to a much smaller place the movie never says. His wife also mentions in passing that he has a University degree in something. He could get a job somewhere but again doesn’t. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A former porn starlet comes to him with an offer. A guy is making an arty porn thing and would like him to star in it. He’s even offering a large amount of money. Milos’s wife tells him he should take the job because it is good money and it ain’t like you’re going to have to fuck your son or anything. Milos accepts and we start on our merry way.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The porn film starts innocently enough. He just has to get a blow job from some chick. Why that wasn’t bad at all. The next scene has him getting another blow job and punching the chick in the face while a young girl watches. He isn’t comfortable with this but a guy holds him in place and he cums all over the chick’s face after a bit so you can assume he enjoyed it. The girl watching is dressed as Alice of Wonderland fame. I’m guessing this is symbolic of Milos heading ever downward in the rabbit hole.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, Milos didn’t sign up for punching chicks and being watched by young girls and wants to quit. Rather than just call the director he decides to tell him in person. The director ends up drugging him with horse aphrodisiacs. This may also be the bit with the newborn porn. The details are already a bit fuzzy. Anyways, the newborn porn segment would have worked better if we didn’t actually see it. A few sound effects and a look of horror on Milos’s face would have done wonders. Instead we get a fairly silly looking scene where we see too much. And, yes, I realize that I am critiquing a scene where a newborn is fucked and I’m trying to make it work better. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Around this point the movie becomes The Hangover and we get to watch Milos descend even farther into Hell. Along the way he runs away when asked to fuck the earlier young girl, he fucks/ decapitates someone else, and fucks his son. There is a thing in there, where he skull fucks a dude to death that reminded me of R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. After all this I guess the family decides that therapy is too expensive and kills themselves. Another film crew enters and we get one last “shock”: necrophilia, although it isn’t shown.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The co-writer/director has swears that the movie is somehow symbolic of how Serbia has been treated. I know exactly fuck all about Serbia so I have no idea how true that is. There is quite a bit that seems symbolic, I guess. I see it more as a commentary on the escalating nature of porn and exploitation films. Basically both genres are identified by one-upsmanship. You have a young lady being quadruple penetrated? Well we have a young lady being quintuple penetrated and a midget fucking a horse. Yeah well, in our next movie we are going to have… and so on. So, the cold war nuclear arms escalation only with fucking.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The movie never made me angry or disgusted like a lot of the reactions to it. It was too well made to even register. Something like this needs shitty film stock and scratches in the print to achieve verisimilitude. If it looked like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or, more recently, The Devil’s Rejects it would have reduced a lot of the “you are watching a movie” distance that the sheer glossiness of the movie has miles of. I’m sure I’ll never watch it again. Not out of disgust, mind you, just out of lack of interest.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Bill Brock</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
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</span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-88492810436090452602011-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:002011-10-17T11:25:47.740-07:00Double Feature: Paranormal Activity 1 & 2<div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note: There is quite a bit of spoiling going on. You have been warned.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve liked several horror related things over on Facebook so every other week someone is asking things like: “What’s your favorite scary movie?” and “What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?” The answers tend to fall along Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, “Chucky rUlez!! Lol” and “something rented last week” lines. A couple of other movies tend to show up with fair frequency: the Paranormal Activity movies.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A bit of back story… When I was 8 or 9, a couple of girls at school told me about Bloody Mary. I don’t remember any of the particulars of the story beyond being in a dark room and saying her name 3 times while looking into a mirror. She would appear behind you and possibly kill you or something. The girls swore that they knew someone who died doing this. I lived in a fairly small town and if any one died mysteriously it was fairly big news, but the power of belief for little kids destroys logic, so I believed it with all my heart. That night I went home and said the name 2 ½ times, never getting that last Mary out. We lived in a nice rented house at the time. It had a massive backyard and these were the days when cicada and frogs were absurdly vocal. I laid in bed for hours waiting and listening for creaks and noises to signal that Mary felt that that third Bloody was good enough for her. So, I can appreciate what the movies are trying to do, even if I don’t necessarily enjoy them.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paranormal Activity is about a chick and her boyfriend living in a scary house and refusing to leave. Of course the events have nothing to do with the house and leaving wouldn’t actually help the situation, but still, just leave. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Juggsy McTitson arrives home and finds that her fella, Asshole Cameraman, of the Sausalito Cameramans, has purchased a new camera. The novelty of camcorder ownership forces him to film every second of their lives together so we get a lot of: [POV shot of steak] [Camera shakily pans to chick] Guy: Boy honey this sure is a good steak. Chick: Get that camera out of my face. It’s getting old. [Camera is placed on table to show something in the background]. That’s pretty much the entire movie.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Chick tells her fella that sees been hearing shit lately. Fella, of course, doesn’t believe her and to prove how fucking stupid she is with the ghost shit decides to film themselves while they sleep. That’ll show her. So we get the meat of the movie, a stationary camera pointed at a bed as people sleep.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The PA movies rely heavily on being the cinematic equivalent of “Find the differences in the pictures” that you find in Highlights for Kids. We search around the frame looking for a door to open or a light to turn on somewhere. I get that the anticipation of these minor events happening and their escalation into major events is the fuel that powers these movies, but still, it’s 90 minutes of staring at a static camera angle waiting for a goddamned light to turn on. Hell, half the time the light fails to turn on and you realize that you are Linus from Great Pumpkin.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In between the sleep we get scenes where Fella films Chick talking about how scared she is. She just happens to know a guy who can sense ghosts and demons. He enters the house looks around a bit and says, “Yeah the demon thing doesn’t like that I’m here. I’m leaving.” I’m guessing by “demon” he means “penis” and by “doesn’t like that I’m here” means “you have a boyfriend and I can’t motorboat your tits”. We also get scenes of Fella going out of his way to prove how stupid Chick is which might explain why in 20 some odd days he gets zero action. So a lesson for you young guys who may be entering into your first serious relationships, if your special lady claims to believe that an invisible demon is trying to possess her, pretend that you believe it also. You may also want to mention casually that you saw on a website dedicated to Precious Moment figurines, pictures of baby animals and demon possession that invisible demons hate the sound of frequent nookie and will leave after a while. If you want to push it a bit, maybe throw in that anal gets them out faster and don’t look at me like that it was on the website. No I can’t remember the URL. I recently cleaned out my cache and can’t find it now but it was there. Fine whatever.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyways, the demon thing keeps doing stuff until we get to the “shocking” conclusion. The movie doesn’t explain much, not that most of it would matter. The only thing I would have liked to have known is why the demon lollygags for 20-something days. Just possess her and get on with it, demon. Maybe the sequel will explain a bit. Let’s see.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paranormal Activity 2 was probably green lit the moment the first one made a profit. Which was probably on the first day of release at just one or two multiplexes.. According to IMDB it had a budget of $15,000 and made north of $100 million. If that doesn’t get you a sequel then nothing will.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PA2 is actually a prequel and features the sister of Chick from the first. It was budgeted at $2.7 million and I have no clue what the extra money was spend on. It looks about the same as the first and the actors are, to my eye, still a bunch of unknowns. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, PA2 follows similar lines as the first. We get a guy with a camcorder filming everything and not believing anything his wife says even though the cameras seem to be filming 24 hours per day and he could watch the events. He also has a daughter who is keen on videotaping everything as well. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The movie opens with Guy and Sister bringing home a newborn. We meet the daughter and a nanny and have a lot of people talking to the baby while staring at the camera. Next thing we know it is a few years later and there may have been a break in. I’m not sure because I had my new kitty meowing at me and my son refusing to settle down. My son was happy that the kid had one of those little airplanes with a face just like he has and he spent some time before falling asleep seeing if the kid had any Hot Wheels. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guy has cameras installed in and outside of the house and we are back into a PA movie where we sit and wait for something to happen on the edges of the frame. I’m not going to explain the “plot” in too great of detail. If you’ve seen the first you’ve seen this one. Instead I’m going to take a look at the small details given out about the nature of the demon.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The girls did something when they were young that scared them. They never really explain what because I believe that is the plot of the upcoming PA3. A relative may or may not have made a deal with the demon and the payment is a first born son. The daughter does a bit of looking and apparently the little boy is the first kid to fit the bill since the 30s. Neither of the sisters appears to have jobs and live in nice houses. Guy from PA2 may have a job but Fella doesn’t appear to have one or either works somewhere with a fairly open attendance policy so maybe the sisters have money. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question of why the demon takes its damned time possessing people still remains unexplained. Maybe the demon with be chatty in the third. Probably not. Someday the series will head to the straight to video or Syfy original territory and the demon will explain its motivations in the voice of Val Kilmer or Cuba Gooding, Jr. and probably be a wise-cracking.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I keep asking myself what I really think of these movies. They are well made for what they are. On occasion I find myself getting sucked in a bit. But, man, are they boring. In about 3 hours of movie there are maybe 5 or 6 minutes of something, which really is unacceptable. The movies also make the mistake of explaining too little. Keeping the monster a little mysterious tends to work well in horror movies, but telling the audience nothing at all about it doesn’t work. I do like how straightforward it is with the killing. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, I’ll say that while I didn’t care for them I can see why others might like them.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Bill Brock</span></span></div><div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://2.gvt0.com/vi/F_UxLEqd074/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/F_UxLEqd074&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/F_UxLEqd074&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/07XbSk7Rjt4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="background-color: transparent; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-31745200860749212262011-10-16T06:27:00.000-07:002011-10-16T06:27:37.878-07:00Horror Fields Haunted Attraction<span class="style2">"The field of corn holds many secrets…It was first noticed generations ago. How the darkness seemed darker, the night seemed colder, the terror more real. This area has always been known to have a higher number of disappearances and insanity. The field has grown here for years, though nobody plants the corn. People spin tales of beasts and monsters that inhabit the corn. It is rumored that deep in the field a family lives. No one has seen them for generations. They are rumored to be kidnapping people to keep their dark family alive. Nobody knows who the Horners are now, or how they survive. But they are known for brewing a POWERFUL ‘Shine. Can you avoid the family in the corn? This area has had a large number of people missing. This has been going on for many years. Body parts have been found hidden along the borders of the field. These have had strange symbols carved into the flesh. This has been going on since the 1900’s, with no clue who may behind this. Keep your eyes peeled for this mysterious killer of the corn. Will you be his next victim? There have been a larger number of tales about a huge spirit that inhabits this field. This monstrous creature has been barely glimpsed, and has driven some to the brink of insanity. They say it is resembles a scarecrow with the face of a jack o’ lantern. He has been dubbed the Invisible Walker of the Fields, or Ichabod Nyx. Legend says he used to be the protector of this land…is he still protector, or is he monster? This field is full of mystery and surprise, with acres of horror and terror to be uncovered. It has changed the lives of all who have visited, and some will never be the same. Can you survive the homegrown horror of Horror Fields?"</span><br />
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<span class="style2">That is the legend of Horror Fields, NC's newest haunt located in the heart of Sawmills/Granite Falls. Built into and around a sprawling cornfield, the haunt puts forth an ominous presence from the beginning. As you enter the haunt you can see the massive cornfield ahead of you with sparkling lights that almost seem to draw you in. </span><br />
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<span class="style2">Throughout the trail and even while standing in line, you can hear numerous screams and moans from both the patrons of the trail and the residents themselves. I thought this both built up suspense and excitement from the crowd, as I overheard numerous comments of "being nervous" and "on edge." I also thought the employees working out front did a good job of building up the experience for all the visitors.</span><br />
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<span class="style2">The one thing that will impress you the most in this haunt will most definitely be the caliber of acting presented throughout. This is above and beyond any trail, house, mansion, haunt, etc. that I have been through. Every actor and actress in this haunt puts forth everything they have and it shows. They live this and are extremely convincing. They're both fun and creepy and remind me a lot of the late great campy 70s/early 80s backwoods horror flicks. They literally make it a blast with every scene personalized for the group.</span><br />
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<span class="style2">The special effects and scenes were also something I could not pass up mentioning. You could tell the extreme amount of work put into this trail. There are tons of lights, fog machines, noise makers, props, gore, fire, sparks, blades, etc. I was just amazed walking around in this massive corn field taking in everything around me. </span><br />
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<span class="style2">Where most haunts rely on one theme, Horror Fields creates an entire "entity" in their haunt, offering a walk through a dilapidated outhouse, a stroll through a creepy, bug (and creature) infested swamp complete with cross-over bridge (which was absolutely beautiful), a visit to Colton's workshop, a stop by the local Slaughterhouse, and tons more. </span><br />
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<span class="style2">In wrapping up this interview, I cannot fail to mention how much fun I had interacting with the characters at this haunt. At 99% of the haunts I have visited, its a dude in a mask making noises PERIOD. At this haunt, they talk with you, personalize the experience with you, and encourage participation from you. Its an incredible innovation in the haunt world and one that Horror Fields perfects. Go to this haunt, plain and simple. Take a group of friends and you WILL have a blast.</span><br />
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<span class="style2">Horror Fields is located at 4270 Helena St. in Sawmills, NC. Tickets are $13, but I have discount coupons available if anyone messages me. I plan on being out there again on October 28th to do some on the scene interviews/reactions with random "victims" of the haunt, so hit me up if you want to come out that night. Make sure to check out their <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Horror-Fields/188724101164450?sk=wall">FACEBOOK</a> and their <a href="http://horrorfields.com/">OFFICIAL SITE.</a></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6L4M8PC3daUVFns9kgQirSBD1i4_XEWgjeTOZ2qtnLH9qu_fKNY5w1ewClqIDVvPzRxEUZpZZQcsrgWLSqYMXvin0q-5s9iV7VG_iZPE18ebBRMLG8zIg5FPR8GW68vXxTdg_ISJVLLk/s1600/199990_191879147515612_188724101164450_423171_3323792_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6L4M8PC3daUVFns9kgQirSBD1i4_XEWgjeTOZ2qtnLH9qu_fKNY5w1ewClqIDVvPzRxEUZpZZQcsrgWLSqYMXvin0q-5s9iV7VG_iZPE18ebBRMLG8zIg5FPR8GW68vXxTdg_ISJVLLk/s320/199990_191879147515612_188724101164450_423171_3323792_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="style2"> </span></div><span class="PageContext" id="TaskHost_SearchTaskPageContext"><span class="ContextInfo" id="TaskHost_TaskHost_Search_pc"><span class="ContextInfoName" id="searchPageContextContent"></span></span></span><span class="style2"><br />
</span>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-11855438320971195332011-10-15T06:13:00.000-07:002011-10-15T06:13:37.353-07:00Scream 4 (2011)<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Note 1: This actually came from Redbox.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Note 2: This review is spoiler heavy. You have been warned.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The original Scream came about in the good old days when “self-referential” was the buzzword that described movies that were aware that they were movies and had a bit of fun with creaky old tropes. We now live in a world where “meta” gets thrown around with alarming frequency and Scream 4-I refuse to type Scre4m more than this once- is rife with sheer meta-ness. So much so that the movie forgets to actually have any fun with itself or it’s concept. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After a really fun intro that gave me great hopes that the movie might –gasp!- be entertaining the movie settles into a rather desultory pattern of red herrings and silly jump scares until we get to the final reveal. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s a list of why the movie fails.</span><br />
<ol><li style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The above mentioned Meta movie bullshit or OMG, ya’ll we’s in a reboot or something.</span></li>
</ol><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The first trilogy relied a great deal on the characters knowing genre clichés but still doing stupid shit. I guess it was irony or something but it still worked. Horror movies require people doing stupid shit to advance their fairly non-existent plots. We the audience accept it because it allows us to feel superior to the characters and pointlessly shout instructions at them. The characters in Scream were largely us. You could imagine them sitting around watching some Wes Craven movie and yelling, “Don’t go up the stairs, idiot”. Hell, 75% of the dialog in those movies were these kids getting their deconstruction on.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Roughly 75% of 4’s dialog is reboot/remake snark. Here are some rules blah blah blah. Kevin Williamson and Craven are either unaware that 4 is neither or we are entering into some sort of meta singularity where they are bitter that some original scripts were rejected and they were tasked to make Scream 4, instead. I wouldn’t put it past them anyways. So what we ultimately have here is a sequel that really believes itself to be a remake. Then again the movie is warmed over Scream so whatever.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I was amused when Weathers calls Dewey and mentions meta and neither she nor Dewey know what it means. </span><ol start="2"><li style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The lack of Randy.</span></li>
</ol><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve never really enjoyed Jamie Kennedy outside of these movies. The Randy explains shit were generally the most entertaining bits. They were the best parts of the second and third movies mostly because they were terrible otherwise. And, yes, I know that a magical videotape showing up where Randy explains shit that he couldn’t possibly know about unless he was a psychic or something can’t happen but still. Here we get a couple of kids in a cinema club to explain to us about remakes and reboots. They really aren’t a good substitute and the rules provided don’t really seem to match up with the remakes and reboots I’ve suffered through. It just breaks the movie even more.</span><ol start="3"><li style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A cavalcade of cameos.</span></li>
</ol><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Since our main stars of the movie-Campbell, Arquette and Cox – seem to be fairly disinterested in being in the movie and largely seem to be in the movie so that the audience doesn’t have to put up with a completely new cast most of the heavy lifting is done by the other people in the movie. We get semi-familiar T.V. faces to pad out the running time. There’s the cheerleader from Heroes, the cute overachiever from Community, someone from the newer 90210 and Marley Shelton. In other words, people we don’t care about getting killed or killing people. There really isn’t any tension because we all know there is no way that Sidney, Dewey or Gail are going to die or be the killer because someday we’ll get a Scream 5 and people aren’t as likely to see a movie where those characters don’t appear. So we are left with one-dimensional characters that we aren’t invested in going through the Scream franchise paces.</span><ol start="4"><li style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s my motivation or has the butler done it yet?</span></li>
</ol><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shannen Doherty’s line about Wes Craven not even caring anymore from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back kept popping into my head as the killers explained their motive. In the first we had Ulrich killing because Sidney’s mother was a home wrecker and Lilliard because he was either bored or had a latently gay thing for Ulrich. Both are fairly dubious motives but I liked the movie and went along with it. The second had the mother of Ulrich and somebody I can’t remember. The mother getting revenge thing was probably the strongest motivation for killing since Friday the 13</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">’s Mama Voorhees getting revenge thing. Still she killed people that weren’t even in the first movie to get revenge but I didn’t mind all that much because I didn’t care about the movie. The 3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">rd</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> had Sidney’s half-brother or something getting revenge for reasons I don’t recall but I’m guessing it was something stupid.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here we get a killer who wants to be internet famous and a guy who really likes her. Even in my dry nookie years I don’t think I’d kill people for it. So anyways, we get some sort of indictment of people who are “famous” for no apparent reason which if we were in the year 2008 or 2009 might have seemed timely here it just comes across as empty grousing. Her plan doesn’t even make sense. While we may all be aware of who the Numa Numa Guy, Star Wars kid and Leeroy Jenkins are we don’t actually care about them enough to know their real names or buy their memoirs if they wrote them. Their fame is built upon a Youtube video we watched once to see what all the fuss was about. I suppose it is possible that the script is also aware of how of empty the motivation is and there is another Meta thing going on here, although the reporters at the end seem to belie this. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What we have ultimately is a current generation horror movie that adheres to most of the recent clichés. The best things I can thing to say about it, other than the beginning was fun, is that it wasn’t 3D or PG-13, although it is a fairly bloodless affair and it could have been PG-13 if not for all the “fuck”s. I also suspect that the webcam stuff was thrown in to allow for a bit of found footage shaky cam nonsense. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Watch it if you must. But, you’d be better off just watching the first one for the umpteen time. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Bill Brock</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/UlaZfOiGaCU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-65752714449207898512011-10-15T06:07:00.000-07:002011-10-15T06:17:32.176-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: The Last Exorcism (2010)<span id="internal-source-marker_0.02908419237722293" style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I pity teenaged girls. If they aren’t being stalked by killers with dubious motives at proms or while babysitting they are being knocked up or possessed by demons. Throw in execrable taste in music and they really do have it pretty bad.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Last Exorcism is another in the found footage style of movie and it is a fairly natural fit in that all one needs is a teenaged girl who is slightly limber and can speak gibberish. And as a fella who frequents AOL chat rooms, has a sixer of Zima on ice and hasn’t be caught by Chris Hansen yet I can concur...um, forget I said anything. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our movie opens with a shady preacher who is being followed around by a documentary crew. We’ll just call them Deadmeat and Ms. Deadmeat. Our shady preacher has a Marjoe Gortner sort of back story in that he was once a kid preacher and is now an adult preacher who just happens to perform fake exorcisms for gullible people. Gortner, as an adult, went another route and appeared in movies featuring an international cast. The preacher appears to be Baptist which is kinda weird. I always assumed that exorcisms were the métier of Catholic priests who enjoy smoking, drinking, boxing and giving smoldering looks at Ellen Burstyns. Live and learn, I guess. Well, the right reverend Cotton decides that he will do one last exorcism for the documentarians and chooses a letter at random and we’re off to New Orleans. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our possessed teen, her dad and brother live at the end of one of those horror movie dirt roads. Our preacher man interviews the girl and just exorcises the shit out of her. At one point he commands the demon to enter into him and he does a cartoonish bit of shaking. That’ll be several hundred dollars my good man. Back at the motel the possessed girl shows up and starts trying to make out with Ms. Deadmeat. So, they do what must be done and take her to the local hospital for evaluation. She turns out to be pregnant! Not from licking the sound lady, mind you. I’ll assume a penis was the culprit. But, whose? Ms. Deadmeat automatically assumes that it must be the dad ‘cause he homeschools her and lives on a dirt road and everyone knows what that means. The girl lays the blame on some kid who works at a diner.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">*Spoilers*</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, we get faux creepy possessed girl in a PG13 found footage movie nonsense and then the movie just falls apart. I guess the dad sent the letter, maybe. He’s tied up and blind folded at the ritual thing at the end. Which could be part of the ritual or it could be that the cultists are trying to keep him out of the way. If it is the second option, why not just kill him? I’m going to assume it was part of the ritual. So why send for an exorcist in the first place. If he can do the job then all their planning to bring a demon into the world comes to an end. Unless the cultists plan on having him and the film crew at the ritual, but that requires that the preacher stop by that diner to talk to the kid who the girl says is the father of the baby. What if he isn’t working that day? So, fine the dad sent the letter to thwart the plans of the cultists. I guess he didn’t think of just taking her to Planned Parenthood for a quick abortion. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If the movie was about a fake exorcist who is presented with a genuine possession and has it reaffirm his faith it might have been interesting. The movie does do this in a slight superficial way. Of course, the audience for this sort of thing has no interest in character growth or meaningful interaction between people. They just want something they can text through and occasionally glance up at the screen for the creepy stuff.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Christ this movie is stupid. Don’t watch it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-60874725910852441952011-10-10T10:02:00.000-07:002011-10-10T10:03:54.181-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: Ghoulies (1985)<div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.08188637935109067" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It Came From Netflix Streaming</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ghoulies (1985)</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; text-align: center;">By: Bill Brock</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Occasionally, I like to imagine what 80s me would think of current technology. I can see myself explaining to 80s me about streaming technology. 80s me, who has just recently become accustomed to this new VHS thing and may own a TRS-80, stares at current me in disbelief. What the heck is this internet? Does streaming involve knowledge of BASIC or COBOL? Aren’t these suede Pumas awesome? My jacket was $50 and is for members only, bitch! 80s me then asks current me to sit down in front of the console TV and watch Ghoulies. Current me figures what the Hell I haven’t seen Ghoulies in 25 years and pulls up a bean bag.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ghoulies is a bait and switch movie. It positions itself as a bit of a Gremlins knockoff even though the titular Ghoulies have little to nothing to do with plot. It’s like The Matrix calling itself Sentinels: The Movie. A more honest title for Ghoulies would be The World’s Oldest College Dude Performs Magic.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The movie opens with a confused cult dressed in white robes going through the motions of a possible Satanic ritual. There are pentagrams and something that looks like a DM’s map of that night’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign so if Rona Jaffe is to be believed it’s satanic. The cult leader is played by Michael De Barres, a guy who was Moriarty to MacGyver’s Holmes and was once married to “famous” book writing groupie Pamela Des Barres. Evil leader guy pulls out a baby to sacrifice and the baby’s mama decides that maybe this is pushing the evil satanic cult thing too far. She puts a necklace on the baby which prevents it from being sacrificed and apparently can’t be removed. The baby is handed off to another cult member who takes it outside and does something with him. The movie can’t be bothered to explain what exactly. I’ll assume he was given to a nice family.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">25 years later the all grown up baby inherits the house and arrives with his girlfriend. He’s apparently a college student because he is wearing a letter sweater. I say apparently because he looks to be in his 30s. They meet the caretaker who doesn’t actually talk to them but looks vaguely familiar. The caretaker gives a bit of voice over here and there throughout the movie. I believe the first V.O. provided explains that evil cult leader is now dead and maybe the curse won’t affect the “kid”. As it turns out the caretaker is the guy who carried the baby out at the beginning. For a guy who doesn’t want the curse to get the kid he sure can’t be bothered to clean the house of all the cult books and paraphernalia. They throw a party that night and we are introduced to other far too old to be college student college students. </span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well the world’s oldest college student/eventual magic user decides to drop out for a quarter and fix up the house. I sat there waiting for the doing stuff 80s montage set to a song that would never get airplay and it never happened. What the fuck, movie? It’s the 80s dammit. I expect a montage and you cheat me out of it. Fine, I’m listening to “You’re the Best” from Karate Kid right now. Screw you Ghoulies.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The guy gets deeper and deeper into the magic and summons the Ghoulies which are possibly the cheapest puppets imaginable and some midgets who do, well, not much of anything beyond being midgets. Hmmm, unfunny and terrible puppets. Ghoulies is also indirectly responsible for Jeff Dunham. Fuck you again, movie.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Since it is the 80s, he throws a dinner party where everyone has to wear goofy sunglasses. Somewhere along the way cult leader from the beginning is resurrected and wants to kill the former baby to steal his life force and, maybe, become young again. The ghoulies fail to do much beyond kill a person or two. The movie takes a few moments to knock off Poltergeist with this clown doll thing. And the caretaker guy is inexplicably a bad ass mage because someone has to kill Des Barres again. I would say the business with the dead friends knocks off April Fool’s Day but that didn’t come out until a year later. We are finally treated to a bit of sequel-baiting.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve never really been much for nostalgia. It always bites you in the ass. Not that I was ever all that nostalgic for Ghoulies or its many sequels. But, what do we really have here? Ghoulies ultimately is a movie about a guy who uses magic and shit happens. There also happens to be some terrible puppets. I’m guessing that Charles Band saw Gremlins and decided to pretend that the Ghoulies were more important to the plot than they really are and sold the movie based on them. The later movies probably did feature them more. To be honest I really don’t remember any of the other ones. Perhaps I went back in time and told 80s me not to bother.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch this? No. It fails to engage even on a so bad it is good level.</span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><br />
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</div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: black; clear: both; color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/gTZPOh21q2Q?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-80694194129223502302011-10-04T08:00:00.000-07:002011-10-04T08:01:03.106-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)<div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.1584437480950699" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It Came From Netflix Streaming.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Note: This was actually watched on Comcast On Demand but you should be able to find it in any Redbox for a buck.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Elm Street is a reboot of Wes Craven’s original Elm Street from 1984. It was produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, a company that seems bound and determined to reboot every horror movie you’ve ever seen. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I’m still patiently waiting for that gritty reboot of Ghoulies, where unconvincing puppets are replaced by unconvincing CGI. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A reboot, in case you are wondering, is more or less a remake of something but the kids love that computer shit. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I’m semi-kidding. A reboot is a restart of a film series that somehow lost its way and folks decide to start it over and take it back its roots. Sounds nice, right? A reboot is really just a remake of a movie that you liked where studios target a couple of markets. The first is people who can’t be bothered to watch a movie that is older than they are but they may recognize the title. The second are people who have seen the original and may want to go so they can bitch about it later. Occasionally, a reboot works out well like with Star Trek. Mostly it is just crap. Crap in 3D these days.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Elm begins with a nod to everyone’s nightmare of getting terrible service in a greasy spoon late at night. Lord only knows how many times I’ve had to wait for my chicken melt at Huddle House at 2 in the morning. Throw in the fear of salmonella and finding long greasy hairs from the recently paroled short order cook and you have my life in the 90s and 00s. Sleepy guy who is not the main sleepy guy falls back to sleep meets Freddy and appears to slit his own throat. Greasy spoon knives can’t cut chicken fried steak but have little trouble with throats.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We get a funeral and a brief dream sequence where blond girl who isn’t Nancy has a vision of a little girl with four cuts on her dress. I think it is supposed to be her but honestly couldn’t tell you for sure. I’m slightly amused at how quickly these kids enter REM sleep. Blond girl begins investigating some boxes with helpful dates on them or doesn’t. It was all a dream. Her mother conveniently skips town and her ex-boyfriend shows up push the plot forward. She dies. The ex is accused and he dies in jail.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We are left with Nancy and sad looking guy who begin investigating and nodding off pretty much in that order. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Their investigation leads them to realize that they are smack dab in the middle of Final Fantasy 8. In that game, all of the party member went to a school as kids and had the main baddie as their teacher or something and conveniently forgot until the plot required them to remember. It’s the same thing here except Ultimecia is the gardener and a pedophile. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A brief word on our main characters. In the original series, Krueger went from legitimately scary creation to hackneyed standup comic. I always imagined him in his downtime hitting up the Chuckle Hut and wondering aloud what the deal with airplane food was. In this movie they attempt to make him menacing but still give him lame jokey dialog. Plus, I couldn’t help notice that he looks like a be-nosed Voldemort who tends to write Indiana Jones fan fiction and whose aunt sent him an ugly Christmas sweater. He is played by Jackie Earle Hailey who brought a lot of menace to Rorschach and even played a pedophile to great effect in Little Children. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Nancy in the original was pretty much a teenaged girl who ends up in peril and has to overcome it. Here she is Lanie from She’s All That. She draws poorly, feels like an outcast and works in a restaurant. The only thing missing is being asked to prom by Freddy Prinze, Jr. Why does she need to work in a diner? She and her mother live in what looks like a 500,000 dollar house in a really nice neighborhood. I’d imagine her mother has a good job and could hook her up with an after school job in an office somewhere. Finally, we have sad looking kid who is sad looking, I suspect, because he dad is Clancy Brown and he knows he’ll never be as awesome as the Kurgan. He also has a crush on Nancy. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So anyway, the investigation leads them to their old pre-school which is pretty out of the way and has a boiler room that could heat the water of a hotel or hospital. They both fall asleep and get attacked by Freddy. Nancy pulls him into the real world and slits his throat. She then sets him on fire because being set on fire was such a set back the last time. Then we get the ending of a Phantasm movie as the sequel bait ending of this.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Elm makes the same sort of mistakes that the modern reboots tend to make: giving the killer far more back story than is actually required. They even try briefly to make him sympathetic when sad looking kid tells his dad that they murdered an innocent man. Bear in mind that everything that Freddy has said up to that point has an “I have candy in my bitchin’ van” tone to it. It tries to build tension with the “will they fall asleep?” contrivance. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Of course they are going to fucking fall asleep the entire movie is predicated by them falling asleep. In the original, Craven built suspense by creating a specific mood and maintaining it. Sure some of it was silly. Ronee Blakely being yanked through that small window comes to mind. Here, the writer and director are incapable of doing that so they go with lazy ass jump scares, the biggest crutch of modern horror. Ultimately, they do the unthinkable. They make Freddy boring.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch this? No. The original is still out there and pretty easy to lay hands on.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
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</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-62511575277000218132011-09-28T13:27:00.000-07:002011-09-28T13:33:24.466-07:00Toscrew - Antiego Album Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5pASnUPdfmeKMTn59cJUm9QZA_cObDl0k0qi4bbs0Glq5SroRMy5HPZYJz9JGsVubiTPI434ixLLEl4oYeKWo6FmCSlSVsQmVTpniygA-369ralIDl2GiVYgAab-EB9oM1GPWABx6zqk/s1600/front1000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5pASnUPdfmeKMTn59cJUm9QZA_cObDl0k0qi4bbs0Glq5SroRMy5HPZYJz9JGsVubiTPI434ixLLEl4oYeKWo6FmCSlSVsQmVTpniygA-369ralIDl2GiVYgAab-EB9oM1GPWABx6zqk/s320/front1000.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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Hailing from Budapest comes Toscrew, a Blackened-Death Metal band with some killer tracks. Recently, Five by Five Records sent me several albums for review, and this was one of them.<br />
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I'll be honest, upon first reading the name of the band, "Toscrew", I was like what the hell. I mean, most bands have super brutal names and stuff these days, and this name just didn't stand out. I'm thinking maybe it means something in another language or something.<br />
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On to the album, the tracks are fast and furious. The guitars have a serious death metal crunch that will shake your speakers. The bass and drums are in sync pretty well and keep everything at a roaring pace. Add on top of that, the high vocals and it goes well together.<br />
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At times, the vocalist channels powerful speed metal vocalists from the past, and at other points brings in thoughts of more modern death. I dug the style of the vocalist, as it is somewhat different from the normal death metal out today. It was a speed/black/punk style of vocalist, and I dug it.<br />
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I can't neccesarily pick out a "favorite" track, as I pretty much liked them all. Lost in You was fast and kept my interest, and Ritual was one I definitely had on repeat several times. The dark overtones on all the tracks is really what sucked me in.<br />
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I gotta say, I really enjoyed the album, and I see these guys going places. They have the talent and sound to go places, and are 10x better than some of the signed bands out there. I recommend all of you go and check them out. <br />
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Check out their Facebook <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toscrew/168628326966?sk=info">HERE</a>.<br />
Also, check out Five by Five Records on Facebook <a href="http://www.facebook.com/fivebyfiverecords">HERE</a>.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-84062681425393844882011-09-26T05:46:00.000-07:002011-09-26T05:46:33.745-07:00Savage (2011)I got a package in the mail the other day from MTI Entertainment, a company many of you may have heard about. The specialize in straight to dvd flicks with a slightly higher budget than most. When I opened the package, it contained 3 dvd screeners, one of which being "Savage."<br />
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Upon looking at the dvd, Savage initially stood out to me the most. It's dvd cover is a hand slashing the disc. The disc looked cool so I looked on the enclosed paper that accompanied the discs. Reading the synopsis, I saw that Savage was a "bigfoot" horror movie. <br />
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Upon reading this, I was stoked. I'm a big fan of bigfoot movies, such as "Legend of Boggy Creek" and even recently with the crapfest "Sasquatch" to an extent. I didn't necessarily have high hopes for it, but was excited to see what they could do with it.<br />
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Basically the story is .......... <br />
A blazing fire rips its way through Bear Valley National Park. As the firefighters try to contain it, the animals are being forced out of their habitat including a beast that was better left undiscovered.<br />
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Decent, yet simple setup for a bigfoot movie. They managed it well, and I immediately noticed how polished and professional the flick was. I don't know if this is because the production was very good or because I have been watching nothing but shot on video 80s horror for the last week. Nonetheless, I was happy to be seeing something that actually looked good.<br />
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The opening credits, which I rarely talk about, were pretty awesome. I like the whole art style and it was pretty unique. Onto the movie, when it started, I was pretty shocked at the caliber of actors in this flick. I immediately noticed Martin Kove (The Karate Kid) and of course LISA WILCOX! Most, if not all of you should know Lisa Wilcox from Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5. Well, this is her return to the big screen and it's great to see her back. Both her and Martin shine in this flick, easily being the main reason you need to watch this. The acting caliber is really good considering its still a smaller budget flick.<br />
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Tony Becker (Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons) headlines the movie as "Owen Fremont", a small town sheriff whom initially doesn't believe the whole bigfoot "nonsense" but eventually has to protect the people around him from the creature. He, like Kove and Wilcox, do a great job in the flick and really portray a sense of "realism" with their acting. I really enjoyed him in this flick.<br />
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Now, to Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Wooly Booger. The creature is practical effects aka a guy in a suit, and I really liked that. I was nervous they would go the SyFy Originals route and CGI everything to death, but they didn't. I dig the suit, it looked pretty sweet and although the face of the creature was pretty cheesy looking, I dig that. The walking and overall movements of the creature are something to see, as he lumbers quickly (if that makes sense) through the woods with ease. He's big, hairy and powerful.<br />
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Now, i've said a lot of good about this flick, but don't get me wrong, there are some bad. Such as unanswered story lines (wanted to know more about Gabrielle's husband), wanted more out of the relationship that was building between Gabrielle and Shane, wanted to know more about the burning of the forest and the land developer, wanted to know more about the guy that was going to sell his store, etc. It seemed like they didn't flesh out the characters quite as much as I would have liked either, save for Kove, they do a good job with his character development. <br />
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One thing that REALLY bothered me went like this. Through the whole movie the creature is a beast. He's powerful as hell. Hits people and they fly like 15 feet , and even pushes a big truck over with 2 people inside. He's tough, BUT at the end of the movie, they have to keep him in the house to blow it up, so the smallest girl (Gabrielle) handcuffs herself to the creature and holds him there??!?!?! How is this little, skinny (albeit really cute) girl going to hold this massive beast from leaving? I just kept expecting the creature to rip her arms off, but that didn't happen.<br />
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The gore in the flick is minimal, but its definitely there. You see blood, a skinned woodland creature, dismembered parts/head, etc, but its definitely not a overly gory movie.<br />
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I gotta say overall I enjoyed the movie. Surprisingly it kept my interest, had its fair share of good scenes, and had a fun take on the bigfoot lore. I was telling a friend and fellow critic that it "Harkens back to the days of 90s Vidmark flicks." This is a great time waster, just come in for the fun, and put story and development on the back burner. Recommended. <br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-65421829293390742722011-09-25T05:42:00.000-07:002011-09-25T05:42:34.667-07:00Street Trash (1987)When a liquor store owner finds a case of "Viper" in his cellar, he decides to sell it to the local hobos at one dollar a bottle, unaware of its true properties. The drinks causes its consumers to melt, very messily. Two homeless lads find themselves up against the effects of the toxic brew, as well as going head to head with "Bronson" a Vietnam vet with sociopathic tendencies, and the owner of the junkyard they live in.<br />
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Alright, so I had seen this movie a while back and thought it was worth of a rewatch & review. I brought it along with me to work (yes, I watch movies at work) and watched it.<br />
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It was actually a lot better than I remembered. There was a lot of black comedy in it, and I loved the practical fx. They had some trippy bright colors that worked really well with the "crazy" tone of the movie, and the acting was surprisingly good.<br />
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The movie starts out with some dude, business owner, finding a crate of "hooch", if you will, in the basement of his New York shop, behind a wall. Label says Tenafly Viper. He sells a lot of alcoholic beverages to the local bums, so he figures "hey, lets sell the Tenafly Viper to the bums and make a killing." Thus, he does, cheaply, and things go awry. <br />
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It doesn't take long before homeless people start dropping like flies. They drink the stuff, and they melt, gloriously. Like, its awesome. A dude, the first dude that drinks the stuff I think, is sitting on a toilet and he literally disintegrates into a puddle into the toilet. It's full of crazy neon colors and its complete 80s. It looks fantastic. Oh yeah, and since he's on the toilet, he manages to flush himself. Its awesome.<br />
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Anyways, theres some plot about a lady trying to help the homeless population, and a Vietnam vet that is kinda crazy and wants to rape this girl, he kills other bums, etc. Oh yeah, he cuts some dudes wang off cause he accidentally pees on him. Hilarious scene ensues. The bums play a game of "keep away" with this guy schlong. Its ridiculously over the top complete with a slow motion dive through the air to catch it.<br />
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This movie is pretty over the top, cut off penises, crazy dialog, melting homeless people, an awesome decapitation from a gas cylinder, a cop beating a bum up and throwing up on him and just cheeeeeese. Everything in this movie is dirty, like super nasty. All the people, except for a couple girls, are just dirty as hell. The world around them looks like crap, and just an overally crappy place to live. <br />
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I love this flick, from the story, to the fx, to the off the wall "gross out" scenes. I definitely recommend seeing this if you are a fan of 80s flicks, Troma flicks, or just good "they don't make 'em like they used to" movies.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-59744734348721283602011-09-24T06:00:00.000-07:002011-09-24T06:00:12.983-07:00Splatter Farm (1987)Two young twins are sent to spend time at their aunt's farm. What nobody knows is that the aunt's handyman is a psycho serial killer who dismembers his victims and stores their body parts in the barn.<br />
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Sounds like a blast right? Well depending on your personal taste, yes and no.<br />
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As regular readers of the site know, I love Shot on Video 80s horror. It's my favorite thing to watch, and there is rarely one I don't like, so obviously I love Splatter Farm. <br />
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I actually think they did a lot of stuff right in this movie. Despite having zero budget, they manage to set up a good story and good overall tone. I thought the gore was very well done, though some fx were really amateur. <br />
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You HAVE to go into this movie actually paying attention and watching it. Don't go into it and be like "oh my god, the acting is horrible" or " it looks like crap" or even "that looks so fake". Go into it and pay attention to the story and you might get sucked in.<br />
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Now a little more detail into the movie. There are a LOT of messed up things in this flick. There is a 19 year old boy having sex with an overweight 65 year old woman, a man pooping a knife, a guy giving himself a handjob with a severed hand, same guy giving himself a blowjob with a severed head, gay rape, and the eating of poop. All presented in classy SOV presentation. This movie doesn't waste time getting ridiculous either, the first scene before the title card even comes up is the one with the "Jeremy" character giving himself a handjob with the severed hand!<br />
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This is one of those flicks, like most 80s SOV flicks, that was a labor of love. Just some dudes with a consumer camcorder (on a side note, they really shot it with a consumer camcorder purchased from Sears) making the movie they wanted to make.<br />
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I thought the Aunt in the movie (who is a necrophiliac and keeps her dead husband in the house) was freaking awesome. She really looked like some lady you would see in a grocery store down the street or something. She really brought some authenticity (?) to the movie. Her acting was really bad, but I felt like it added to the overall creepiness of her character.<br />
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Bottom line is, this movie isn't scary, but it can be pretty good. It's one of those flicks that is decided by the viewer. Go in looking for a laugh, and you'll definitely get a laugh. Go in looking for a good story and serious flick, you'll (kinda) get that. It's all in how you take it, but either way, I think you'll enjoy it.<br />
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TWO SEVERED THUMBS UP!Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-6345480566668603072011-09-24T05:31:00.000-07:002011-09-24T05:37:55.667-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: Troll Hunter<div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;">Review by Bill Brock</div><div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Norway is a fascinating country what with the fjords, the moose, and the blond ladies who don’t wear much clothing and have little to do beyond having frequent sex. That last one may actually be Swedish. But Norway is also the home of zombie Nazis and as it turns out, trolls. Not the fun “don’t mess with the voodoo” kind but the living rock sort that hang out under bridges and have a taste for mutton.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Troll Hunter makes for the second found footage movie I’ve liked. The first was Cloverfield. But that was J. J. Abrams and the man can do no wrong (I’m conveniently forgetting he wrote a hunk of Armageddon and that I didn’t care for Mission Impossible 3). Found footage movies come across as a thinly veiled excuse for sloppy filmmaking. Did you see the film crew in the mirror? The camera out of focus? The lack of steadi-cam? We meant for that shit to happen! Fuck you for questioning it. What? You can’t handle real life? </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Troll Hunter has a bunch of college kids following an alleged poacher who turns out to be the guy with the awesomest job title of all time. Evel Knievel and Chuck Norris are a distant 2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">nd</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and 3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">rd</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to this guy. He’s a former Navy Ranger who was apparently so good at his job that the government approached him and asked him if he wanted to go fuck some trolls up and he said, “Sure. Whatever.”</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The college kids follow him into the woods and ignore a sign that says “No Tresspassing. Blasting Area”. I’m guessing their school is the equivalent of your state’s party school that has a 700 SAT and 2.5 GPA requirement. They aren’t the brightest kids but they sure do work hard. The kids see a light show and the troll hunter runs up and yells “Troll!” at them and they stand around discussing Julia Louis-Dreyfuss for a while. Not really. They run after him and keep asking about this troll thing. One of the kids gets bitten and his car gets messed up by the troll. The hunter decides to drag them along because he’s tired of the job which makes him even more bad ass. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Throughout the movie we are given some background on the trolls. Exposure to UV light either makes them blow up or turn to stone depending on age. And here’s where I ran into my few complaints about the movie. The first complaint is that we see the trolls a bit too much. The effects aren’t bad but they begin to feel a little over-exposed after a while. The other is that the trolls can smell the blood of Christians. The hunter mentions in passing that trolls can reach ages of 1000-1200 years old. I’d assume that trolls pre-date Christianity and I have no idea why trolls have such a grievance against them. I’d think that belief in Norse gods might piss them off more. If the movie explained it I must have missed it. I guess we could conclude that Christian belief is based around midi-chlorians or something.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The movie hums along nicely while the hunter trys to solve the mystery of why the trolls are acting erratic. The solution isn’t really anticlimactic and fits along fine with the rest of the movie.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch this? Yes, yes you should.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-70728418564928209762011-09-24T05:28:00.000-07:002011-09-24T05:37:27.617-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: Savage County<div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;">Review by Bill Brock</div><div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If horror movies are to be believed, the South is just a large interconnected web of dirt roads with creepy run down old houses occupied by inbred redneck families keen to kill people because the cable companies are assholes and won’t run cable to their houses and they are just plumb bored. Think of all the teens that could be saved if DirecTV went door to door offering services. Rainstorms might still lead to a few deaths but otherwise backwoods folks could veg out to 250+ channels in crystal clear clarity.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Savage County was produced by MTV and directed by a guy who saw Natural Born Killers and apparently quite liked it. It’s all shaky DV where the picture is either over-saturated or randomly colored or grainy. I kept getting the feeling that the director edited in Movie Maker and kept saying, “Oh shit! Look at all these effects!” </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">County has an unlikely collection of teens that seem less like friends and more like a cross section of MTV (one of the many fine channels offered on DirecTV) viewers heading out for swim and to drink a bit. The “characters” are introduced via admission letters, juvie reports and the High School newscast. It’s kinda like Feast but without the humor. After a few moments you’ll do like I did and just call them “that girl with the hair”, “nerdy guy” and so on. While hanging out at the pond one guy mentions to another guy that there is a creepy house with a reclusive family nearby who might be amused if they went and knocked on the door and ran away, because backwoods folk with guns are the perfect target for shenanigans and tomfoolery.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well the hilarity is cut short when the guy in the house isn’t amused and pulls out a shotgun. One of the kids whacks him on the head with a shovel and kills him and we stumble into the I Know What You Did movies for a bit. The constant barrage of music videos and video games seem to have eroded the morals of these youths and they decide to not tell the police. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After they leave the house the other backwoods raving maniacs show up and find their kinfolk dead and, unsurprisingly, decide that revenge may be the best option. The crazy guys are “Otis as portrayed by Uncle Jessie”, “Fat Horny Retarded Guy” and “Fat Leatherface Guy Who Wears A Mask”. “Leatherface Guy” appears to be resistant to bullets because two people shoot at him at point blank range and miss.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Earlier at the pond, “blond girl” pushed “emo girl with punk rock hair” into the pond ‘cause “emo” didn’t appear to be having any fun. “Emo” went emo and wandered off into the woods alone. She shows up at the crazy guys’ house and causes the plot to start creaking as we have to get everyone back to the house to be killed. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, suffice it to say, various folks die and then other folks die. There’s a not terribly twisty twist. Revenge is had by both sides and the movie says, “Fuck it, I ain’t sequel baiting”. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A wise man once wrote that “a good movie is never too long and a bad movie is never too short”. County runs 78 minutes. Ten of it is the character intros at the start and 3 are the end credits. It still manages to feel 30 minutes too long. I kept wiggling the Wii remote to see how much time was remaining.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch it? No. You’d be better off just heading down a long dirt road and knocking on doors. </span></div><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-18664781621978066302011-09-24T05:25:00.000-07:002011-09-25T05:27:49.868-07:00Vampires Suck (2010)<div style="color: #cccccc; text-align: center;">Review by Bill Brock<br />
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**Note: This was watched on Comcast streaming NOT Netflix Streaming**</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m a masochist sometimes when it comes to entertainment. There was a time when I watched the entire run of Unhappily Ever After promising myself that I’d stop watching when a joke on that show made me laugh. I watched every goddamned episode. I had to listen to Bobcat Goldtwait as the bunny. Every “woooooo” when the not terribly attractive Nikki Cox walked into an episode. The “yayyyy”s when Ms. Cox delivered on those terrible Al Bundy speeches from the later years of Married With Children. Dear God, I suffered.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That same masochism has led me to watch every goddamned Friedberg/Seltzer “comedy”.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vampires Suck is another in a long line of movie parodies that feature Seltzberg’s unique style of anti-comedy. Not anti-comedy in the Neil Hamburger sense where the purposeful failure becomes funny after a while. I’m talking anti-comedy that is the equivalent of Ron Silver touching his younger self and exploding. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Seltzberg got their start on Scary Movie, a movie that concerned itself with ejaculate and parodying a movie that was already a bit of a parody of slasher movies to begin with. Well, before that they wrote Spy Hard, one of those terrible later Leslie Nielson movies.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vampires Suck is their take on the Twilight series, Stephanie Meyers 4 book “saga” about vampires, werewolves, and not fucking before marriage. It’s become one of the most pointlessly beaten up things in history. I’ve never read the books, so I really can’t comment on them one way or the other, even though roughly 50% of people on the internet feels the need to say they “suck” based on the roughly 50% who did read them and think they are “awesome”. I have watched the first two movies and didn’t really think they were all that terrible (which is Bill-speak for, I actually liked them but don’t want to admit it). They are no worse than the Underworld movies at any rate. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Seltzberg’s typical parody consists of some movie that was popular with random pop culture references popping up here and there. People get hit by things and there is usually a song and dance number set to a song that was popular around the time of filming. V.S. doesn’t deviate from the formula that much although this may be the closest they have every come to staying on target for the entire run of the movie.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The major problem with every movie they’ve done is that they have no idea how to construct a joke. V.S. takes scenes from the Twilight movies, films them more or less how they appear and then either add farting, something pop cultural or someone getting hit by something and seem to believe that these count as punch lines. Case in point: Edward “Sullen” (hahaha he’s emo so it’s funny) decides to expose the vampires at a prom. He begins taking off his clothing (get it? He’s exposing). Since the vampire’s sparkle he has a disco ball over his penis (‘cause they sparkle and probably because disco is gay, just like him!!). Ow, my sides. Another scene has the werewolf kids running in to kill the black vampire. They are shirtless and, wait for it, begin singing “It’s Raining Men” ‘cause they are gay!</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeah… those are the jokes, folks. They also mention Lady Gaga, iCarly, and a few other things that tweens might titter over because they recognize the names. </span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyways, the movie is terrible and I recommend not watching it, unless you are either a masochist or have actually enjoyed their movies in the past. God have mercy on your soul if you have.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rated PG-13 because an R would prevent 99% of their target audience for seeing it in theaters.</span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-26092239892824770072011-09-19T15:56:00.000-07:002011-09-19T16:22:42.387-07:00The Orphan Killer (2011)So this flick completely came out of left field for me. I literally heard ZERO about it until just recently. Apparently director Matt Farnsworth was going social networking crazy promoting this flick. Somehow it missed me, I don't know. The bottom line is, I finally heard about it's claim to be "a tour de force murder flick that defies classification, goes far beyond current trends in gore and breaks open a new suffering genre of horror", So needless to say, I HAD to see it after reading that.<br />
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Marcus Miller is a serial murderer hellbent on teaching his estranged sister Audrey what it means to have family loyalty. His lessons are taught in massive doses of vulgar and unimaginable pain. Throughout her brutal torture we learn that Marcus is not the only Miller with Killer in the bloodline as Audrey proves to be a formidable adversary.<br />
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I turned on the flick and settled back to watch it, and was kinda shocked at first. I was a little surprised that the opening of the movie has a cover of "Cry Little Sister" playing. Although a good fit for the overall plot of the movie, I was surprised that they used it considering it is the prominent song of the Lost Boys series of flicks. I know I always think of The Lost Boys when I hear that song. The cover fits well, but I think they probably should have used a different tune.<br />
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So anyway, it basically starts out showing the killer's sister Audrey working (?) at a catholic school. Surprised me a little because she is in a really skimpy skirt, I personally do not mind (this girl has a GREAT set of legs), but just struck me as a little out of place. So she's working there and they're having some sort of dance recital that night. At the same time, her brother whom she hasn't seen since they were young, is coming to get her and show her pain for leaving him years back.<br />
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On a side note, the background of the two is fleshed out pretty well. They're parents were murdered and they hid in the bathroom. Her brother protected her and helped her hide, etc. They went to an orphanage after that and she was adopted and he wasn't. Oh yeah, and you will be PISSED at the nuns at the orphanage, I know I was. They literally treat this little boy like crap. They say he is evil and make him wear a mask, which made me be like "No wonder he turned out the way he did." I personally think this made me have more empathy for the killer. <br />
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Ok anyways, he's coming back to get her, along the way killing random people. Throughout the first half of the movie the killer, Marcus, doesn't talk much. He just kills, VERY violently, but after the first half he all of a sudden is pretty vocal. I found this kind of weird cause he didn't talk in the flashbacks, he was just pretty silent. Anyways, it works well, and I didn't mind.<br />
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The fx and kills in this movie are pretty great. I actually saw some stuff that made my jaw drop and that's hard to do. Despite the budget constrains, they manage amazing fx work. Lots of blood and gore. Overall, this flick is extremely violent and brutal.<br />
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I love how this movie was made as a balls to the wall, kick ass flick. They obviously wanted to make a killer, bad ass movie, and they did. It is literally one of the most, for lack of a better term, brutal horror movies I can remember in recent memory. Marcus just assimilates dudes left and right and I loved it.<br />
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You can have some serious fun with this movie. Its one of the better movies i've seen this year and definitely deserves a watch from horror fans. It's got the blood, gore, kills, a great villain, and Audrey's shower scene was pretty damn nice. I highly recommend it.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-50599197295557393022011-09-19T08:18:00.000-07:002011-09-19T08:18:29.109-07:00A Horrible Way to Die (2010)First off I want to say thank you Film Deviant for the copy of this flick. I won it through a contest with them and I really recommend you guys check them out. Great stuff over there.<br />
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Anyways, on to the review. This isn't going to be a long review, cause I don't have a lot to say about this flick. It actually will probably be my shortest review. A Horrible Way to Die is one of those flicks I heard quite a bit about on various horror-related sites and blogs. It had a lot of hype about it and was getting some great buzz. So.....when I won if from Film Deviant, I was looking forward to it.<br />
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Basically, the story of A Horrible Way to Die is an escaped murderer is in pursuit of his ex-girlfriend, who has fled to start a new life in a small town.We see this murderer/exboyfriend being transported somewhere from the prison, then we see that he has escaped. He is killing people along the way and we assume he is heading back to his ex-girlfriend.<br />
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While this is going on, we see his ex girlfriend attending AA meetings and eventually meeting a fellow participant in the meeting. He asks her out and they begin seeing each other. After a little while, the ex girlfriend realizes that her ex boyfriend has escaped from prison and is making his way to her.<br />
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I tried and tried to get into this flick and just couldn't. I thought it was painfully slow with very little action or anything to keep my interest. You might like this slow kind of movie, and if you do, awesome, but I just can't handle it. I wanted to go to sleep it was so boring. <br />
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For a positive, I can say the story was fairly original, the acting was very realistic, and the inevitable twist at the end was pretty good. I just hate the meat of the movie didn't keep my interest. I really wanted to like this flick and to give it a glowing review, but I just can't. <br />
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This isn't a flick I will re-visit, re-watch, or recommend. I do however suggest you read a few other reviews before deciding not to watch it. I have several friends that enjoyed it, so maybe its just me, i don't know. Either way, not enough things happened to keep my interested and for my personal suggestion, I say skip.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-35304829126395653932011-09-18T11:43:00.000-07:002011-09-18T11:43:57.234-07:00Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993)<em></em>Necronomicon: Book of the Dead follows H. P. Lovecraft (played by Jeffrey Combes from Re-animator, The Frighteners, etc) in the 1930s as he enters a secretive library guarded by Monks in his search of the Necronomicon, the “Book of the Dead”. Upon discovering the book he comes across three stories written in it, “The Drowned”, “The Cold” and “Whispers”, and as he copies them to his own parchment he watches the stories unfold before his eyes, as well as our own, while inadvertently unleashing a terrible beast protecting the Necronomicon.<br />
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I saw this movie years ago, actually waaaay back in 1995, and forgot all about it until re-discovering it through a recent conversation. My first, and only til this point, viewing of Necronomicon Book of the Dead was a unique experience to say the least. I rented it for 2 Bucks or something from a grocery store, that you might remember, by the name of Kroger. I went in with my parents one night and saw the vhs and instantly HAD to watch it. I went home and my parents actually let me stay up and watch it by myself. I started watching it and was really digging it when toward the end of the first story (The Drowned), it cut to a porno that someone had obviously recorded over part of the movie. Being 11 years old, I might not have minded that, but for nearly 2 minutes, I had to watch a completely naked mexican guy ride a horse in slow motion across a beach. Not necessarily the highlight of year 11 for me. Anyways, after the 2 minutes or so of mexican guy riding a horse naked in slow motion, the movie cut back. I missed a really cool part (which I figured out later) but I atleast had the rest of the movie to look forward to. <br />
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Thanks for listening to an old story of my childhood, I promise i'm getting to the review now.<br />
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Necronomicon's first story as I mentioned earlier is "The Drowned", an atmospheric little tale of a man who loses his wife and child in an accident at sea, and in a selfish attempt to bring them back to life he suffers even more horrors than he ever imagined. It's got some cool visuals and an awesome monster, though the monster isn't shown for long unfortunately. Probably my least favorite of the three stories, but not a bad thing.<br />
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The second story is called "The Cold" and is directed by Shusuke Kaneko famous for the Death Note adaptations. In this story we follow a nosy reporter investigating the disappearances of hundreds of people in one single neighborhood over several decades. His nosiness ultimately gets him involved in an experiment taken from the Necronomicon that grants eternal life to anything organic as long as its atmosphere is replicated after death, which leads the reporter to a sinister demise. Once again, the fx are awesome and the atmosphere is fun and campy. This segment kinda feels like an early Full Moon flick to me, I don't know why.<br />
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The final story is hands down my favorite. The segment is called "Whispers" and is directed by Brian Yuzna of From Beyond/Re-animator fame.This one follows a female police officer in hot pursuit of a vehicle driving by a man known as “The Butcher”. She suffers a terrible crash that leaves her partner, who is also the father of her unborn child, in the hands of The Butcher, and time is running out if she wishes to save him. She enters the lair of the butcher, and soon realizes that despite her plans to abort her pregnancy, The Butcher will not let that happen…for dire reasons. I gotta say that this one is damn creepy. The older couple underground are amazing and the whole segment has an incredible sense of dread. I absolutely loved this segment. The only thing I have to criticize is the fx on the creatures at the very end. I can't say much though, because this WAS 1993 and fx are not what they are now. It will prob make you laugh a little though.<br />
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Necronomicon: Book of the Dead was a fun watch. It's just as good as I remember (sans the naked mexican dude on a horse) and holds up surprisingly well. The fx are practical and pretty great, except for the end of "Whispers." Acting is all either pretty good or above average and I don't have a lot of complaints for the flick. There are times it kind of drags, and it definitely has a distinctive 90s "feel", which can be good or bad depending on your tastes. Overall, you would be crazy not to see this flick. Its not the best, but its far from the worst, and a pretty fun flick.Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-64541461745908225322011-09-18T08:49:00.000-07:002011-09-18T08:49:30.283-07:00The Basement (1989)The minute I heard about this set, I immediately pre-ordered it. In case you have been living under a rock, Camp Motion Pictures released The Basement, a previously "lost" Super 8 flick that had never been released, in a large, big box package. The package comes with dvds of The Basement, Cannibal Campout, Video Violence 1 & 2, and Captives. It also comes with a special red vhs tape of The Basement.<br />
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Like I said it comes in a beautiful oversized big box. The art on the box is stunning and very reminiscent of the late 80s straight to video horror boxes. I forgot just how massive the big boxes were. Inside the box, you get a dvd with 3 discs inside, one disc is The Basement movie plus commentary, special features, etc. The news story about the filming of The Basement is particularly interesting. The other 2 discs contain Cannibal Campout, Video Violence 1 & 2, and Captives. I actually have a problem with the dvd case itself. Its a weird dvd case that has 2 slots for dvds. One slot is where The Basement is held and the other slot has the other 2 discs stacked on top of each other in one slot! I really wish they would have had individual slots instead of stacking on top of one another. Just a small gripe though. Also in the box is a white insert with the red vhs tape. The vhs looks exactly how a shot on video/straight to video vhs would look back in mid-late eighties. The label is white with black font. Nothing fancy and no pictures on the label, just how I would prefer it. I personally took the dvds out, left the vhs in the box, and put it up.<br />
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On to the movie. I plan on reviewing Cannibal Campout, Video Violence 1 & 2, and Captives, just not on this review. I want this review to be solely about The Basement.<br />
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The Basement is an anthology flick, very much in the vein of Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. The Basement is the story of four strangers summoned to "the basement" where a ghoulish figure known as The Sentinel is set to pass judgment on them for their future actions. The segments that follow play out the horrible deeds each is destined to commit.<br />
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Although the budget is pretty miniscule and the acting is extremely amatuer, there is a lot of fun to be had with this movie. There are four stories in the movie split between the four aforementioned strangers. <br />
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The first story is entitled "Swimming Pool" and follows the exploits of a woman that just so happens to have a pool with a monster in it. After finding this out, she begins to call people over that she wants dead and ask them to swim in the pool, in return feeding them to the monster. The chick's acting is so horrible that its hilarious. I loved the over the top acting and cheesy fight scene.<br />
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The second story is entitled "Trick or Treat" and follows a teacher that hates Halloween with a passion. He dreams about murdering his students one day in class and goes home for the night (its October 31st by the way). When he gets home, his dead wife warns him to stop his ways or else. Obviously he doesn't. Great story and probably my favorite of the 4. Pretty great practical fx and gore.<br />
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The third story is entitled "Zombie Movie" and follows a director shooting an independent zombie movie and somehow ends up raising real zombies by accident. The poke a lot of fun at the zombie genre and even toss some jokes directly at George Romero. I thought the zombies were pretty awesome and fx were good.<br />
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The fourth and last story is entitled "Home Sweet Home" and follows a man that buys a house with a pretty morbid history. He starts drinking with his friend and they start seeing crazy stuff that dwells in the house (demons, etc.) The demon is actually pretty freaking cool looking if you ask me. The gore looks really good too, especially the scene where the demon rips open the dude's head and starts playing with his brain. Awesome scene.<br />
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Overall, I absolutely loved The Basement. I had such high hopes for it and I just knew it wasn't going to live up to my expectations. Boy was I wrong, it surpassed any expectations that I previously had by a mile. Its full of cheesy 80s greatness, horrible/hilarious dubbing that you have to hear to believe, gratuitous gore and fx that is suprisingly great for the low budget, and so much 80s style you'll want to wear a fanny pack. I cannot recommend this movie enough. Its so freaking great.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-18371246278989162132011-09-15T13:02:00.000-07:002011-09-15T13:02:20.176-07:00Creature (2011)So I had heard some seriously BAD stuff about this flick, like HORRIBLE reviews. Some claiming its worthless and one of the worst films of all time. Despite all of the negative press regarding Creature, I somehow felt compelled to see it. I guess I have a soft spot for rubber-suited monsters, crocodile/alligators, and louisiana backwater hicks. Anyways, I finally got the chance to see it and went for it. Was it worth it? Check out my review.<br />
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Creature starts out with a group of preppy kids driving in an SUV, headed for a camping trip in Louisiana. They stop buy this rundown gas station and happen to hear about the legend of Lockjaw, a half man/half alligator creature that is rumored to roam the swamp . The group then goes out to see the supposed dilapidated home the creature.<br />
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Although this sounds like your normal run of the mill monster movie. Probably the same kind you come to expect on the SyFy Channel at 1:00 am, it actually changes up things quite a bit. It of course starts out with Lockjaw killing the kids off one by one, but eventually the kids realize Lockjaw isn't the only threat they need worry about.<br />
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Sid Haig (Spider Baby, House of 1000 Corpses/Devils Rejects) is the headlining actor as you probably know already and does a decent job of portraying the main backwater hick (even though its almost exactly the same as his role as Capt. Spaulding) and was a lot of fun in the flick. The other actors were ok, and did a decent job throughout, not really any standouts, but I wasn't expecting there to be.<br />
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Now to the gore, there is hardly any. Most deaths/kills are off screen and the ones that are on screen are very tame (by a horror fan's standards anyways). So, if you're expecting lots of gore, be prepared to be disappointed in that aspect.<br />
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I'm sure Lockjaw isn't going to be a new horror icon and he really doesn't deserve to. I think the design was cool, he looked very "rubbery", but that was ok with me. His overall look was pretty cool. Definitely "action figure" material in my opinion, if that makes sense. I would like to see him in a sequel, but I just don't see this flick taking off enough to have a sequel. With more work on the script, some more gore, etc, this could have been a killer B flick. <br />
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I will go on record as saying that Creature is no where near as bad as some of the reviews are making it. I have definitely seen much worse and actually enjoyed watching this flick. Is it great? No. Is it a classic? By no means. Was it fun? Absolutely. It harkens back to the late 80s when just about anything could be made, monsters were rubbery and Swamp Thing ruled. Check it out, you may just enjoy it.<br />
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</div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-82919227851205778202011-09-08T10:49:00.000-07:002011-09-08T10:49:36.268-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: Dead Snow, The Horde, and Zombies: A Double Feature<span id="internal-source-marker_0.012242101489231327" style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What is a zombie and what is with the resurge of interest in them? Well, a zombie is a reanimated corpse that inexplicably wants to eat people. That’s was easy enough to answer. I’m so proud of myself right now I’m going to go high-five somebody and have a celebratory cigarette. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As for the other half of the question, well, that’s going to be a bit harder.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The earliest, chronologically, movie that I saw that touched on the modern idea of zombies was Plan 9 From Outer Space, wherein, aliens decided to take over the world by reanimating a couple of dead people in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t really work all that well. While there wasn’t much by way of people eating and they were more the skulking and carrying off women that fainted from fright type of reanimated corpses still they were still reanimated corpses, nonetheless.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It wasn’t until Romero made a little movie called Night of the Living Dead that the modern zombie was given birth. Night is kind of a Portrait of Dorian Gray type of movie were every year the picture ages a bit more horribly until, eventually, it becomes unwatchable. On the off chance that Romero sees this, can you please go back and take that goddamned cricket out of the soundtrack? Please? A cricket really isn’t the ambient sound one needs in a movie where very little happens. While Night was profitable, its influence led small studios to just make low budget horror movies. There’s a pretty good chance we’d never have a Chain Saw Massacre or a Halloween without it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1978 Romero made the greatest zombie movie that had the worst repercussions of all time. Dawn of the Dead was epic. While I could never work out who built the mall what with all the zombies that had been roaming about biting people since 1968, still it was epic. The major problem with Dawn is that it showed every Italian with a camera, a few rolls of film, some fake blood, sausage links and those cheap Halloween kits that they could also make a zombie movie. They were even cost effective, zombies don’t talk and extras who don’t talk make very little money. It seemed at the time there was a cheap zombie movie released weekly each promising to show the audience some fucked up shit. What audiences mostly got was bad dubbing and one or two zombies killing folks with terrible F/X. This is considered the Golden Age of Zombies. Golden Age of Mostly Shit, if you ask me. Over the years there has been the occasional good zombie movie (Return of the Living Dead being about the best of the lot). The best and worst things to happen to zombies were yet to come.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Back in the 60s while hippies were convincing themselves that drugs and fucking were changing the world for the better, some nerds created the Internet and actually managed to change the world on nothing but Mountain Dew and furious masturbation. The commoditization of the internet and Hollywood’s increasing fears of losing money by actually making movies formed a perfect storm for the current zombie renaissance. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Zombies, in modern culture, are an odd thing. They seem to be liked or loved by all walks of life. People who don’t even like horror, namely people who see the current crop of PG-13 J horror remakes and found footage nonsense, will squeal like little girls with a new unicorn pony at the very mention of them. But why? Zombies aren’t terribly interesting in and of themselves. They are walking bodies that eat people. They have no personality or discernable goals, regardless of how hard Romero has tried to shoehorn some in over the past few years. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My pet theory is that zombies represent our fascination with viruses and how they spread. In most movies that have bothered with an explanation of them zombies are caused by a virus. Zombies present a macroscopic view of the microscopic process of viral spread and reproduction. A person is infected and its only real desire is to bite others to spread it around. I realize that most movies have them tear folks apart and eat them but to what purpose? Their internal organs no longer work and they have no real need for sustenance. Think of it as the virus controlling the person who is limited to basic brain functions and you probably come pretty close to the truth of it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My 2 cents, anyways. I hear that other like them because “they r kool and shit lol”.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The movies I watched this week just happen to have zombies and one of the two actually gave the zombies a bit of motivation. I’m, of course, talking about Dead Snow and The Horde.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dead Snow involves a bunch of Swedes—They’re Norwegian, MacReady—heading to a cabin in some out of the way place and having bad shit happen to them. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The movie starts with a girl running from something as ironic classical music plays in the background. Oh Edvard Grieg how far you’ve come. She is promptly killed and we head into what looks suspiciously like the opening to The Shining. We meet our soon to be dead folks as they talk about seemingly inconsequential things like avalanches and one of the guys being a med student who is disgusted by blood. Both topics come into play later although the avalanche thing is used by a person in the other car. Guess she has great hearing or something.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">They arrive at the cabin and have some fun in the snow and play twister and listen to terrible Norwegian music. Shortly after they are visited by Old Man Exposition who insults the coffee, steals a beer, lights up a smoke and provides pages of back story. Some Nazis in the area generally acted like assholes and were chased off by the local villagers. After he explains everything he buggers off back to his tent and gets killed. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We continue with the slow build up which is code for shit fails to happen. Two people fuck in an outhouse which is possibly the least sexy place one could possibly fuck. If you’ve never been to a particularly rural place and have no idea what an outhouse is just replace it with a port-a-potty that’s been in use for a week and the honey wagon hasn’t been around to pump out the shit. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While those guys are having at it, the folks inside find a small chest of gold and have fun with it. The movie then becomes Leprechaun. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Nazi zombies in the movie aren’t traditional zombies. I’ve seen slow and fast zombies, this is the first movie with supersonic zombies. I thought for a while that it would paint itself in the same corner as Alien3 where any chase scene becomes pointless because no one can outrun them. Thankfully, the Nazi zombies suffer from Phantom Menace disease and can only run fast when the plot demands it. It’s never explained why they want the gold back. I can’t imagine them moseying into town to buy anything. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well the zombies attack folks to regain their pot o’ gold. There’s blood and gore and whatnot. People die. Nazi zombies re-die. The last 20 minutes or so finally manage to entertain despite the relentless silliness of it all.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you haven’t watched it I recommend it. Just be ready to fast forward a bit.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Horde is a French zombie movie where zombies happen to attack a tenement building while some cops try to kill some other people for some reason or the other. It’s French so I’m guessing existentialism or a disregard for Jerry Lewis enters into it somewhere.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We open on a funeral for someone. I’m guessing he was important ‘cause some friends of his decide to go kill the guy who killed him. I guess you could say they form an Alliance and are in Thrall to one another. A Stormwind seems to blow in the Forsaken zombies. Yes, I played WoW. Now shut the fuck up about it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The four cops decide to storm the tenement building where the Nigerians who killed funeral guy live. They do so in that really conspicuous way that little kids play spy. While sneaking about the maintenance guy gets the drop on them. So yeah they really really suck at being sneaky. The Nigerians take a break from sending spam emails and shoot at the cops who get snuck up on a second time by maintenance guy.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So the Nigerians capture the cops and shoot some unrelated guy to prove that they are BAMFs. Then kill one of the cops to reiterate their BAMFness. Then Hell breaks loose.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Zombies converge on the building for no apparent reason and the first guy the Nigerians killed starts beating on the door. They, of course, open the door and proceed to empty all their bullets into his chest. This, unsurprisingly, proves ineffective so a couple of lackeys decide to go hand to hand, also ineffective. The main Nigerian wanders over and shoots the guy in the head finally putting him down. No one really learns from this though. Throughout the movie approximately 4,000 shots are fired. Maybe 2 are head shots. Well there is the scene where one of the cops sacrifices himself and goes on a head shot rampage but by that point it really doesn’t matter.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The escape from the building is full of nonsense. There’s more hand to hand fighting, an old crazy racist French guy, a few guys seriously considering fucking a zombie chick and the introduction of a concept wherein zombies store food for later. It’s all patently ridiculous in its blatant attempts at “coolness”.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch this one? No. But you crazy kids love your zombies and probably will anyways. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-62960998256128580782011-09-06T17:33:00.000-07:002011-09-06T17:40:29.781-07:00It Came From Netflix Streaming: Uncle Sam (1997)<div style="color: #999999;"><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Slasher films and holidays go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It gives the makers of such films two easy starting points in their creation. On the one hand holidays have built in name recognition. “There’s a movie called Happy Birthday to Me! Why I have birthdays! I must go see it!” On the other, it gives them an easy to explain back story and motivation for the slasher. His mother was killed on Christmas by a dude in a Santa suit so he must now don a Santa suit and kill folks. Of course, by now, most of the good holidays have been used ad naseum. So, what’s a poor film maker to do?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This brings us to Uncle Sam, the first horror movie, not involving aliens or Tom Cruises, to take place on the 4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> of July. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our film begins in Kuwait, where random army guys find a chopper shot down by friendly fire. In the chopper is a guy lucky enough to be named Sam and have a nephew. He is also a rather spry dead guy who shoots the guys who find him. I’m guessing the army sent more guys out and those guys weren’t at all put off by the first set of guys being shot, because…</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Next we head to Small Town, USA a few days before the 4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> of July. Sam’s nephew has a room full of military related stuff, because he rather liked his uncle, Sam. The kid may or may not be having a bad dream and knocks over a photo of Sam and promptly steps on the glass. The kid’s blood has better self- control than an alien-infected guy’s in Antarctica.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A brief interlude about the kid: It’s said that Disney has a cloning facility where they make perfect clones to star on their T.V. shows and sing terrible songs and generally just part tweens from their cash. I imagine it as a sterile state of the art facility with a really nice cafeteria. There is also a dilapidated factory on the seamier side of town that grows fairly hideous B-movie kids. This kid and the kid from Troll 2 look to have been grown in the same vat. End of interlude.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So anyways, the kid really loved his uncle and wants to be like him. It a not-so-shocking twist later is turns out that Sam was –spoiler alert- an abusive asshole. Yeah, I know, shocking. He takes Sam’s medals to school for a bit of impromptu show and tell. His teacher, a former conscientious objector, gets called a coward and somehow doesn’t smack the kid. The teacher, it should be noted, is played by Timothy Bottoms. Bottoms was on the short lived show “That’s My Bush” where he was George W. Bush. Yeah, “suck it future draft dodging former president,” says the film makers in an oddly psychic moment. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A military guy delivers Sam’s body straight to his sister-in-law’s house and puts the coffin right there in the living room. No one seems to be terribly sad about the death or in any hurry to arrange a funeral. I guess the coffin really ties the room together. The kid loosens 1 of the locks on the coffin. Not all, mind you. Just one. But it proves to be enough to allow Sam to exit later. So that’s alright.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sam is resurrected by some asshole teens who practice their constitutionally protected right to burn an American flag right over his freshly dug grave replete with a tombstone. So, I suppose, the widow did make some hasty arrangements while nothing was happening, which in this movie could have been at any time.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Meanwhile, across town, a guy on stilts and in an Uncle Sam outfit decides to do what comes naturally; stares at tits on the second story of a house. Well, either that doesn’t sit well with zombie Sam or he just needs the outfit. He kills him and steals his outfit. Staring at tits is as American as apple pie and baseball. I'm sure the Founding Fathers, if not for the 20 layers of clothes that women wore and general lack of porn, loved tits as well and would have stared at them if given a chance.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This leads me to my next major issue. Slasher villains have to follow certain rules. This is what defines them. Sam ostensibly kills people for being unpatriotic. As the film goes on he tends to lose his focus and kills people for dating his widow or cutting ribs poorly. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The big July 4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> celebration begins. Sam stalks around killing a kid who sings the National Anthem poorly, a shady politician and several other people like the above mentioned girl who seems less than enthused about preparing ribs. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A burned, blind, crippled kid is introduced. He looks suspiciously like the kid who is the ½ in 2 and ½ Men after a particularly vicious burn from Charlie Sheen. What does he do in the movie other than demonstrate the dangers of fireworks? Nothing. His parents are played by P. J. Soles and Thom McFadden. Oh look! People from Halloween and 976-Evil are in this! Get a camera.</span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Burned kid get talked to and creepily touched by Sam. Why? The burned kid and the creepy kid are friends. How does Sam know this? No idea. It probably doesn’t matter. Burned kid tells creepy kid that his uncle is skulking about. So the kids seek the aid of Isaac Hayes to kill Sam. Isaac Hayes and Sam have some sort of past. We learn this by a quickly glimpsed present given to Hayes, a pair of balls in a rather nice case with a note suggesting that Hayes lacks balls. Hayes and the kids find Sam and kill him with a cannon of all things. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The kid decides that maybe the military isn’t for him, because they produce evil zombie killers or something, and throws away his toys at the end. The movie can’t even be bothered to sequel bait. </span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Should you watch this? Probably not. But it will make you feel as if you are getting your $15 per month’s worth out of Netflix. </span><br />
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</span></div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-36522716257992657392011-09-03T19:49:00.000-07:002011-09-03T19:49:06.363-07:00Lunch Meat (1987)So I remember the box art to this flick when I was a kid. Totally Gruesome, Totally 80s Big Box. I was always too scared to rent it, so alas, I never got to see it, UNTIL NOW. Man, when I came across this bad boy while trolling through various vhs site, I about POOPED. I immediately looked for it. When I found it, you would have thought it was my birthday. Anyways, here is my review, and here is a look at the old school VHS cover I was talking about, if you've never seen it.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">So basic plot point goes like this, Six high school seniors on a camping trip are ambushed by killer rednecks who kill their victims & sell the remains to a local hamburger joint. So obviously you have the killer rednecks hunting down the kids and killing/eating them. Before too long, the kids fight back, managing to kill some of the rednecks. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"> This is 1980s Shot on Video Big Box Horror AT ITS BEST. I would rank this up there easily with Cannibal Campout, Video Violence 1&2, and Woodchipper Massacre as being some of the finest SOV Horror. The score is complete 80s, the acting is pretty atrocious at times, and it looks like scratched shit. I loved it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This movie is so entertaining, and I don't understand why it isn't more of a cult classic. As much as I love heavy hitters like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween, I would prefer this kind of stuff anyday. This was made in a better time in history and there will never be a time period again where you are able to see movies like this. It was a time when a guy could literally get his camera and record a movie in a weekend, spend a little money for box art, etc. and actually get it into a movie store. It was incredible, and I hate that Hollywood has taken over so much, disallowing any kind of creativity of this level to be presented to the horror movie fan. Sorry, enough of my ranting, back to the movie.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite what you see on the VHS box cover, there is hardly any blood in this movie.You do get to see some gut munching, a hilarious decapitation (probably my favorite part), and some pretty horrible death effects. I think this movie was a blast, but next time i'm going to drink some beers and add some friends, and I think the fun will multiply ten fold. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">I highly recommend this movie to everybody. Its seriously the most fun I have had watching a movie in a loooooooooong time and brought back so much nostalgia from when I was a kid. A time when I picked a movie based on the biggest box and the goriest cover. Behind this movie you could just tell that the people in it had great love for the flick and were really having fun. Great stuff and I hope everyone gives Lunch Meat the chance it deserves. On a partial side note, I created a petition targeting Anchor Bay Entertainment to try and get a Blu-Ray Special Edition of this film released. Please take a second, head over <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/anchor-bay-entertainment-release-the-1987-classic-lunch-meat-on-special-edition-blu-ray">HERE</a>, and sign it for me! Also <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lunch-Meat/112557062180833?sk=wall">HERE</a> is the link for the facebook fan page I created/admin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031173491121044136.post-58355845357493238022011-09-03T11:42:00.000-07:002011-09-03T11:43:31.183-07:00Attack the Block (2011)After reading numerous positive reviews about Attack the Block, I HAD to see it. The concept behind it just made me giddy (for lack of a better term) and it didn't hurt that nearly everyone was saying it was amazing. Oh yeah and it had Nick Frost in it, which is rarely a bad thing (save for Paul). Did it live up to the hype? Well, yes and no.<br />
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The movie starts out with a group of British hooligans (the same group that later become our heroes) robbing a poor lady of her money and valuables. They knock her down trying to get her ring when something falls from the sky and hits a car next to them. They investigate the thing that hit the car and see that its a small alien/creature, which abruptly attacks them. This causes them to savagely beat, and ultimately kill, the creature. After doing this, they start bragging about it and showing off the alien carcass. Shortly, they notice more beams of light falling from the sky and realize that it is much larger and deadlier creatures landing on their block.<br />
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The story is meh, they incorporate some different side elements here and there with the leader of the gangs childhood & a ruthless drug dealer, but the main draw of the story is aliens attacking a block and some hooligans fighting them. Thats definitely not a bad thing, and easily the best part of the movie.<br />
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I will say that throughout most of the beginning, I wasn't impressed. There were some pretty comedic moments (as is throughout the rest of the movie) and acting was great, but it wasn't enough things happening to set it apart from being just "generic." The creatures themselves are pretty cool, but CG, except for a few scenes, and I loathe CG. The CG is handled well though, and just looks "slightly" cartoonish at moments.<br />
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I don't want what I have said thus far in the review to detract you from seeing this film though, because the film did start to kick into gear a little more about half way through. We got to see more action, and more variety in the story. Also, we get to see more of these 2 little boys (which are hands down my favorite part of the movie) who want nothing more than to be big boy gang members and fight aliens. They were hilarious and really made the movie for me. I also have to mention Nick Frost. He is in top form here and is pretty damn funny.<br />
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This movie shouldn't be taken too seriously. I actually thought it was a kids/family type movie, but it definitely isn't. It's just a fun throwback movie for adults. There is some gore, adult themes, and a lot of pot, and its used to good effect.<br />
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This movie didn't live up to the hype in my opinion, but it definitely wasn't bad. Its a fun movie that has its ups and downs but shouldn't be dismissed. Just pop it in and check out for about an hour and a half. Mindless fun that is just slightly above average. Let the flaming begin.<br />
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Bobbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05774455988828800373noreply@blogger.com0