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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good flick and I totally recommend it. Its available on DVD as part of an aforementioned budget multi-pack or for streaming on Netflix.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. I’m going to stop the plot right there and let you watch it for yourselves.
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.
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. I really do recommend watching it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Note: There is quite a bit of spoiling going on. You have been warned.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, I’ll say that while I didn’t care for them I can see why others might like them.
"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?"
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 FACEBOOK and their OFFICIAL SITE.
Note 1: This actually came from Redbox. Note 2: This review is spoiler heavy. You have been warned. 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. 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. Here’s a list of why the movie fails.
The above mentioned Meta movie bullshit or OMG, ya’ll we’s in a reboot or something.
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.
A cavalcade of cameos.
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.
What’s my motivation or has the butler done it yet?
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.
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.
*Spoilers* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Should you watch this? No. It fails to engage even on a so bad it is good level.
It Came From Netflix Streaming. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) Note: This was actually watched on Comcast On Demand but you should be able to find it in any Redbox for a buck.
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.
I’m still patiently waiting for that gritty reboot of Ghoulies, where unconvincing puppets are replaced by unconvincing CGI.
A reboot, in case you are wondering, is more or less a remake of something but the kids love that computer shit.
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.
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.
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.
We are left with Nancy and sad looking guy who begin investigating and nodding off pretty much in that order.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Should you watch this? No. The original is still out there and pretty easy to lay hands on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Check out their Facebook HERE.
Also, check out Five by Five Records on Facebook HERE.
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."
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.
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.
Basically the story is ..........
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
