It Came From Netflix Streaming: Ghoulies (1985)

It Came From Netflix Streaming
Ghoulies (1985)

By: Bill Brock

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)

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.

Toscrew - Antiego Album Review

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.

Savage (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."

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.

Street 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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Splatter 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.

Sounds like a blast right? Well depending on your personal taste, yes and no.

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.

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. 

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

TWO SEVERED THUMBS UP!

It Came From Netflix Streaming: Troll Hunter

Review by Bill Brock

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.

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?  

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 2nd and 3rd 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.”

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.  

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.

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.

Should you watch this?  Yes, yes you should.