Horror Movie Review #31 - The Wolf Man (1941)

I've reviewed a lot of werewolf movies this month, but this was the very first one ever made as far as I know.  Lon Chaney Jr, man of a Thousand Faces, plays Lawrence Talbot.  Ralph Bellamy, who was in this one, and lived long enough to star with Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd in Trading Places, played an investigator.  Claude Rains and Bela Lugosi co-starred.

"Even a man who is pure of heart,

and says his prayers by night,

may become a Wolf

when the wolfbane blooms,

and the autumn moon is bright."

The Wolf Man (1941) opens with repetition of the above phrase.  No less than three separate characters repeat it to the main character, as if to warn him that his good natured-ness cannot defend him from the supernatural.  The main character is, of course, Larry Talbot, an Americanized descendant of the Talbot family, who has been called home to take over the family estate on the death of his older brother.  As the second son, his only goal is to prove to his father that he can handle running the family affairs now that his older brother has passed away.  Larry's father, for his part, embraces Larry warmly, and father and son make a pact to never have secrets from each other.  Larry meets a nice young girl by the name of Gwen, and while trying to get her alone in the woods, runs across a wolf attacking a friend of Gwen's.  Killing the wolf with his newly-purchased silver cane, Larry is savaged by the beast before he can manage to kill it.  But in the morning, Bela, the gypsy fortune teller, is found dead as well as the girl, with Larry's silver-handled cane nearby.  Worse, Larry's wounds are healed, so he can't verify his part of the story.  Larry begins to doubt his own version of events, and seeks out the dead gypsy, Bela, regretting whatever part he had in the man's death.  An old Gypsy woman, Bela's mother, speaks another phrase over the corpse of her son, a phrase that will soon begin to haunt Larry's life as well:

"The way you walked was thorny

through no fault of your own

But as the rain enters the soil,

the river enters the sea, 

so tears run to a predestined end."

This was classic horror.  Great acting has to compensate for the simple makeup effects of the transformation sequence.  This was 1941, after all.  A shorter movie, a lot of action happens in a short time span, between the sudden appearance of the first werewolf to the frenzied hunting of the second.  There's not a ton of character development, but I think you get to see the characters truly reveal themselves as the story proceeds.  Lon Chaney Jr does a great job trying to portray a man of reason and skill driven to near-madness by a supernatural curse, and then finally accepting his fated end.

No nudity, of course, so fun for the whole family, if your whole family is into monster movies, of course.  lol  That's it for the October Horror Movie Review-a-thon!  I did it!  Wheeeeee!  I made it to the end!  YEEEEHAAAWWWWW!!!!!  Now, I overdose on Halloween candy, and spend the weekend playing computer games while drunk!  Yea, that's almost as much fun as watching Horror movies.  :-)

Fun event of the day, I was driving down my street on my way home today, and a black cat ran across my path!  I wasn't even close to the cat, but I'm pretty sure it definitely was black, or at least, very dark charcoal gray.  I've almost never had a black cat cross my path, and to have it happen on Halloween was awesome!  I cracked up laughing at the coincidence of it.  Or... was it a coincidence?  Maybe Witches are running rampant in my neighborhood!  :-o  lol

I hope everyone enjoyed this year's Halloween Horror review a thon!  Happy Halloween, everybody!  :-D

Horror movie review #30 - Darkness Falls (2003)

I know I've reviewed this one before at some point, but I didn't do it last October, so I'm doing it again.  I searched and searched and searched but couldn't come up with a decent flick I felt like watching this evening.  I feel a little under the weather as well so maybe that's a contributing factor, but anyway, let's get to the movie.

Darkness Falls (2003) is a story about a kind, gentle woman who traded coins for the lost teeth of the town's children, a woman who would later become known as the tooth fairy.  Unfortunately, after a horribly disfiguring fire, the woman became withdrawn and distant, and one day, when two children disappeared, blame fell on the old woman.  Lynched by the townsfolk, burned to death, she vowed revenge.  "That which I took in kindness, I shall forevermore take in vengeance."  Or, you know, something sinisterly evil like that.  One hundred years later, a ten-year old Kyle loses his last baby tooth, and accidentally catches sight of the spirit of the tooth fairy, which tries to kill him.  Apparently, seeing the tooth fairy is a huge no-no.  Anyone who catches sight of her, dies horribly.  To compound his error, instead of dying quietly in the darkness of the night, Kyle goes and flashes a light in the tooth fairy's face.  The tooth fairy hates the light, and never leaves her comforting darkness.  Kyle is a little too fast for the tooth fairy,, hiding in the well-lit bathroom.  However, the tooth fairy does manage to catch Kyle's mom.  Since, obviously, no one is going to believe that the tooth fairy killed Kyle's mom, Kyle goes away to an insane asylum for 7 years when he tries floating that story to the authorities.  You'd think even a little boy would know enough not to tell them THAT one.  Five years after he gets out of the loony bin, Kyle gets a call from his childhood girlfriend, Caitlin, who he hasn't seen or heard from since the night his mother died.  Caitlin has a little brother, it seems, and her little brother has lost his last baby tooth.  He's also suddenly developed a crushing fear of the dark.  The dark that the tooth fairy dwells in...

I really love this movie.  The acting is exceptional, for one thing.  The actors aren't exactly well known talents, but they do their best.  There is maybe one funny line in this entire movie, when someone rhetorically asks Kyle if he's crazy for suggesting they move through the darkness to get somewhere, and Kyle says "Yea, a little!" without missing a beat, referring to his stint in psychiatric care.  I laughed.  But the rest of the movie was serious, tense, with a lot of atmosphere and suspense.  I can't even say it was a slow build up, because it didn't feel that way to me.  Perfectly paced, if you want my opinion.  Just the right amount of character building mixed in with terror and action.  Plus, more of a monster movie than horror, which, I always enjoy.  Not even sure where you'd classify the tooth fairy at this point, spirit?  Monster?  undead?  Who knows.  To the Ghostbusters, it's maybe a "full torso free floating apparition."  lol

I saw this last Halloween, so very rewatchable.  Love the characters, too.  Police force that suspects Kyle is just the resident psycho, a typical sneaky lawyer type, and even a damn bar fight with a drunken lout.  Where do they get these people?  lol  I do not understand the concept of a bar brawl, honestly.  You see it in movies all the time, but I have been in many many bars and never once has there been a brawl.  If there's a bar brawl, three of three things have to happen.  One, there has to be a violent drunk present.  It doesn't happen that often, but there's always the possibility.  I have even been a violent drunk on rare occasions, when I have had too much to drink too fast.  Thankfully, I have noticed it immediately when it's popped up due to the uncharacteristic anger that comes with it, and stopped it in it's tracks.  At most, I raised my voice a bit.  But, I guess that means it can happen to anyone.  Two, I don't know how often you notice how relaxed other drunks are when you're drunk, but I do.  It's like there's this big buzz going around and everyone is feeling it and everyone just sort of knows everyone else is feeling it too.  There's an exceptional amount of civility between people when they're totally soused, or at least, that's what I've come to notice when I was drunk, and that whole "we're both drunk, isn't this fun?" thing has to completely fail to calm down the situation.  Three, the bouncers have to completely fail to do their jobs.  Now, the first thing happens rarely.  The second thing happens rarely, and the third thing, well, let's just say that if there's a lot of brawls in a bar, you get better bouncers.  Or more of them.  So all three of these things have to occur in order for a bar brawl to happen.  And yet, there's a small one in Darkness Falls!  lol  Which isn't really a knock against the movie, it's just funny that one happens, and the way that it happens is so uncomfortable for both me as the viewer, and for Kyle, it's just almost funny.  Until, well...  bad things happen.  Then it's not so funny.

Kyle's love interest was pretty nice, too.  Emma Caulfield (Anya from Buffy) plays Kyle's love interest, Caitlin.  I've always found her reasonably easy on the eyes.  Emily Browning, interestingly enough, plays the young Caitlin, who later went on to play in the Uninvited and Sucker Punch.  I think all the actors in this movie did a good job, but it's always good when the actresses are actually good looking.  No offense to the, perhaps less attractive actresses out there, to be polite, who are probably better actresses in general, but it's always nice to see some eye candy in a horror movie, you know?  What can I say, I'm a guy.  :-)

That's it for tonight.  This post was quite late, as I have had a very busy, chaotic evening.  When the chinese say, may you live in interesting times, they don't mean it as a compliment or well-wishing.  lol  Til tomorrow night then.  October 31st, now.  Merry Samhain, or Happy Halloween, if you want to be all modern about it.  :-)

Horror Movie Review #29 - The Evil Dead (1981)

Way back when I was still getting beaten up by girls, Sam Raimi was writing, producing and filming amateur movies with his college buddy, Bruce Campbell.  One of these turned out to be pretty good, and pretty much launched his career, Bruce Campbell's career, and didn't hurt the rest of the cast any, either, I am sure.

The Evil Dead (1981) stars Bruce Campbell as Ashley "Ash" Williams, who's heading with his friends up to a remote cabin in the mountains to have some fun.  Along with him are his girlfriend, his sister, and his buddy and his girlfriend.  Upon reaching the cabin, the group pretty much ignores the decrepit state of the place, the weird goings on, and proceeds to try and have dinner, when they discover an old tape recording machine and an odd book.  Heedless of the warnings of the more religious person among them, they play the recording back of the translation of the book, and raise ancient sumerian demons from the dead, and then...  yep, you guessed it.  All hell breaks loose.  :-D

As we all know from my review of the Ghostbusters a few nights ago, ancient Sumerian demons are nothing to sneeze at.  I'm not really sure if the entire mythological pantheon of Ancient Sumer were all violent, bloodthirsty demons, or if the tales of the demons were all that's survived to the present day, but they sure make for some grisly movies.  Makes me wonder how Sumer survived as long as it did if they were constantly sacrificing their populace to feed the demons.  Hmmmm.

The Evil Dead was Sam Raimi's first big break into the movie scene.  A cult classic nowadays, I've been a fan of the Evil Dead movie since I first saw it.  Of course, I'd actually seen Evil Dead 2 first, and then had to backtrack, because Evil Dead 2 is essentially a remake of The Evil Dead.  Does that mean Sam Raimi inspired Hollywood remakes?  Who knows.  I liked Evil Dead 2 more than The Evil Dead, but that doesn't mean the Evil Dead isn't a good movie itself.  Bruce Campbell stars in both movies, and there's hilarious and scary scenes in both, as well, so either one is a good watch, really.

Hey!  Movie news!  They've announced Army of Darkness 2!  :-D  Army of Darkness would be the sequel to Evil Dead 2, for those of us who've seen it.  I think I have it on DVD, honestly.  I'd have to check my collection.  Can't wait for that, but it says 2016 on the release date.  Cripes!

That's it for tonight, people!  I'm off to drown myself in Minecraftian zombie fighting.  Two more days til Halloween!  W00t!

Horror movie review # 28 - Dracula's Curse (2006)

The biggest regret I have during the month of October is a lack of sufficient time to watch all the horror movies I want to watch.  Despite not being currently employed, despite playing computer games for but a few hours each day, I regret I must still eat, sleep and attend to the mundane activities that are so closely associated with the realm of the living.  Perhaps if the zombie apocalypse ever happens, I'll stay in my room and waste all my hours rotting away, catching up on all the horror movies I've missed over the years.  Since, you know, I'll probably be zombified right away and just spend the rest of eternity dead.  Whether NetFlix still functions during that time, or the internet stays up, who can say.  Assuming I'm an undead corpse at that time, I can only hope that I'll be interested more in watching horror movies than I will be in eating brains, but who knows.  Until that day comes, there are just other things that I have to do to get through each and every day.  Therefore, my time, alas, is limited.  But keep your hopes alive.  There is always next October, and I can and do occasionally watch a horror movie when it's not Halloween month.  lol

Dracula's Curse (2006) is a movie I chose solely for the fact that it was made by Asylum.  Having reviewed the remarkably decent Beast of Bray Road and another asylum movie earlier this month that just wasn't as good, I decided to give them another chance.  Alas, despite appearances by many of the Asylum regulars, it just doesn't renew my faith that they'll ever make a good movie again.

Dracula's Curse begins with a team of Vampire Hunters going about their business.  Killing vampires, that is.  Suddenly, their leader, Rufus King, is called to meet with the vampire council.  The vampires, it seems, are scared.  They want a truce.  They will agree to stop hunting humans, as long as the humans stop hunting the vampires.  In an effort to preserve the peace and save lives, an accord is signed that lasts for but a short 5 years, when one of Dracula's vixens decides to go rogue and break the pact.  Then... yea.  All hell breaks loose and all that.  lol

So, this movie just wasn't that good.  The overacting was worse than an emotional monologue by James T. Kirk.  Vampires switched sides so often and there were so many breeds of vampires involved that I couldn't tell who was human and who wasn't, or what side anyone was on.  Worse was the fact that the vampires didn't even look dead, which further confused matters, and didn't even show fangs half the time.  I guess the budget didn't have quite enough after paying the rather large cast to be able to afford plastic fangs for everyone.  I was rather hoping the one vampire would stick to his side of choice, but he didn't, and I was rather hoping the end didn't turn out to be as predictable as I had assumed, and it was.  More nudity might have spiced up things, but instead, the shots were limited to a single pair of, shall we say, rather saggy mammaries.

All in all, it was rather unsatisfying as a horror movie.  I was tempted to watch and review at least one other movie this evening, but, as I said...  time is rather limited.  :-/  If you are a fan of any of the Asylum regulars, they probably showed up in this movie.  Otherwise, I would suggest taking a pass on this one, although the chick who played Countess Bathorly was rather cute.  I would have liked to have seen a bit more of her bathtub scene, but alas, no.  No.  I was denied.  These movies are such a tease.

I hope everyone's enjoying the horror movies this month, and the halloween festivities.  To me, they are like old friends, coming around to visit me once more.  Watching the better ones is like hanging out with an old war buddy who always tells the same story of his time in the foxholes of WW2 when shit got real and what he did to survive.  Sure, you've heard it before, but he's your buddy, and it's a good story.  Meh.  Maybe I just need to get out more and meet real friends.  lol

That's it for tonight.  See you guys tomorrow!

Horror Movie Review #27 - Ghostbusters (1984)

I know what you're going to say before you've said it.  "But, but.. Ghostbusters is a COMEDY!"  And then you're going to give me that :-o face.  Yea, Ghostbusters is as much a comedy as Frighteners, which also made my list this month.  Both movies are written as comedies, I grant you, but both have a hard edge of horror to them that you just don't generally see in most comedic movies.  Think about it.  Ghost Busters.  You're dealing with ghosts, the paranormal, supernatural entities, moldy babylonian deities, sorry, make that sumerian deities, and what the hell part of that is funny?  All of it, but my point is, it's based on a horror subtext, so if the actors weren't doing it for laughs, then this whole movie would be classified as horror.

Ghostbusters (1984) stars Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Harold Ramis (who also co-wrote the script, I believe, but don't quote me on that) who are three paranormal researchers working for the University.  After a botched call to investigate a ghost at the campus library, the three of them are thrown out of their comfortable college existence and decide to go into business for themselves as...  you guessed it...  The Ghostbusters.  Unfortunately, their timing couldn't be worse, because their latest client's (Sigourney Weaver) hauntings include an ancient sumerian deity of destruction that is about to be unleashed!  Yes, now you can do your :-o face, because that shit's scary.

You've seen this movie, I am sure.  I've seen this movie about a hundred times.  I watch it every damn time it's on TV.  Even the song is stuck in my head.  I mean, let's be serious here, given all the horror movies you have ever seen, if you HAD an option to turn to someone for help, Who ya gonna call?  GHOST BUSTERS!  Damn straight.  Because if they can't handle whatever it is you've called them for, you can be sure they'll at least distract it long enough for you to get away.  lol  You've got Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd and Sigourney Weaver at the heights of their comedic careers.  Sure, Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver have done more serious roles since then, but who cares?  Not me.  I'm a monster and horror movie fan and I don't really give a damn about their other movies.  Well, except Sigourney Weaver has that whole Aliens franchise thing going, which I am a big fan of, and I hope she can return to someday,  but she does comedy in THIS movie, and that's pretty much the extent of her comedic career.  lol

Also, this is one of the few movies where you can see Jennifer Runyon at her beautiful best.  She plays a test subject for one of Venkman's experiments early in the film, but she's also been in such films as Up The Creek! and Carnosaur (after which she retired from acting, unfortunately).  I probably fell in love with her character in Up the Creek, but I think I was in my mid-teens at the time, and had a tendency to fall in love over the course of an hour and a half movie, so that was nothing unusual for me.  lol

Just like Frighteners with Michael J. Fox, this movie has a lot of funny moments, but the gist of it is straight up horror.  From the first startling scene in the library to the goings-on at the apartment complex that Dana Barret (Sigourney Weaver) lives in, there is some scary shit going on here.  I must admit, first watching this movie, the library scene alone had me tense and scared.  Sure, Venkman (Bill Murray) was putting up a brave front, trying not to take the ghost stuff seriously, but he was right out in front of the pack when they were running out of the library at full speed afterwards!  lol  Even "Slimer" (as he was referred to in the cartoons that this movie spawned) was a bit scary, a ghost that could eat real food can certainly interact with the living in some godawful way.  Plus, how many moldy Sumerian deities do you know of that look like a slovakian glamour model?  EXACTLY NONE!  This movie was the first to showcase the Sumerian deities as they truly are.  Yes, that's right, the Sumerian deities all look like Slovakian glamour models.  Who knew?  The Ghostbusters did, that's who.

I could watch this again and again, and I challenge anyone to watch this movie and not like it.  I even liked William Atherton as Peck!  He was so incredibly annoyingly perfect in his acting skill!  lol  When he got covered in hot marshmallow at the end of the movie, I laughed my teen aged ass off.  Even nearly 30 years after this movie came out, it still kicks ass.  Why the HELL can't we make movies nowadays that are this good?  Hell if I know, but dammit, there's no good reason why we can't, except we aren't trying hard enough.  You can watch this one on Netflix, right now if you want.

Come on, where's Ghostbusters 3?  Ghostbusters 2 pretty much sucked, but there can be a 3!  We don't need Bill Murray if he doesn't want to show!  Look, all the actors are old now, so play that up.  Ray Stanz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddmore are getting too old to be running around snatching up ghosts on a daily basis nowadays, so they're training a new team of ghostbusters...  an all female team.  Oh yea.  An all female team of ghostbusters that like to do the ghostbusting in the nude!  yes!  It's perfect!  And we can have Slimer back to slime them with ectoplasmic goo!  And while they're in training, the team learns of some darker threat underscoring some of their recent captures, maybe some ghost-eater is scaring the shit out of ghosts, and the ghostbusters have to deal with THAT mess while training the naked newbs!  I love it!  I'll even volunteer to play Slimer!  :-D

lol  Okay aside from my total pervy-ness, I am sure there's a decent script for Ghostbusters 3 floating around out there somewhere and we'll see it someday.  It may be horrible and it may destroy more careers than it makes, but what the hell.  If Ray Stanz can get a blowjob from a dream-ghost in the original Ghostbusters, I can perv my way into hollywood glory as the next Slimer.  Maybe they'll use my script for Ghostbusters 4: Slimer Vs the Swedish Bikini Team!  It's brilliant!  I'm going to fire off a script to Bill Murray right now!  lol

Okay, I may be a little sauced right now, but I'll see you guys tomorrow night for more horror reviews!  Only a few days left til the end of my month-long horror movie review-a-thon!  Can I keep reviewing movies til the end of the month?  Only time will tell!  Stay tuned!  Same bat-time, same bat-channel!  Biff!  Zam!  Zowie!  And those are just the names of my body parts!  I'm not saying which ones!  :-D

Horror Movie Review #26 - Zombie Night (2013)

I like to find as many new horror movies as I can, in the hopes of finding another horror movie favorite to watch.  Anyone who watches horror regularly knows they aren't all perfectly done masterpieces of cinema, so it takes a LOT of viewing before you find a good horror movie.  OR, a good guide.  Which is where I come in.

The SyFy Channel isn't exactly known for their movie excellence.  But the ones they make are generally enjoyable.  Zombie Night (2013) is about a pair of families living next door to each other who have to cooperate to survive a zombie attack.  We have some major stars in this one, Anthony Michael Hall of Weird Science and the Dead Zone, Darryl Hannah of Splash and Kill Bill, and Alan Ruck of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Twister.  There's even Shirley Jones!  Of... The Partridge Family.  lol

Zombie Night starts pretty innocuously.  A family is caught in a traffic jam.  Although this traffic jam is apparently caused by people trying to evacuate the city, in advance of the zombie horde.  As the cars are overrun, a father (a barely recognizable Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter manage to escape (through a graveyard no less), and make it home to the wife and mother (played by Darryl Hannah).  The neighbors have a safe house, more of a panic room, I guess, stocked with provisions.  Unfortunately, the father (played by Alan Ruck, who I just saw in Ferris Bueller's Day off a few hours ago, man he's aged) is too scared to open the door long enough to let anyone inside.  Apparently, the zombies are quiescent during the day, so the families only have to make it through the night to survive.  The trouble is, making it through the night...

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.  Big name actors, perhaps a little past their prime, but still popular.  Good acting.  Special effects were about average for a zombie flick, and the story was pretty much non-stop action, with an almost continual chase from scene to scene, beginning to end.  Reminded me of my days playing Left 4 Dead, only without the Tanks and the Boomers.  lol  I am sure I'd watch this one again.  But, being a fan of monster and horror movies, I'd probably watch a lot of SyFy's movies over.  And do.  lol

That's it for tonight, people!    In a bit of a rush, more horror to watch!  lol  Until tomorrow, then.

Horror Movie Review #25 - The Exorcist (1973), Grimm (TV) and Dracula (TV)

It's the 40th anniversary of the Exorcist!  Honestly can't believe this movie is 40 years old.  It holds up very well.  The effects aren't exactly state of the art, but since it's mostly a teen girl's head flipping 180 degrees and stuff floating around by itself, well, that's all still done pretty much the same way, I think?  Meh, who knows.  It was well done at the time and still looks good today and that's all that matters.

The Exorcist (1973) was voted the scariest movie of all time.  Now you can't have a movie that good without good acting, and a good story, and well, good everything, really.  Linda Blair might have won an academy award for it, but nobody has any respect for horror movies.  To sum up, a well known actress has a teenage daughter, and they are very close.  The daughter starts messing around with a Ouija board and dammit, isn't that just the gateway drug to hell?  I guess we all know what happens then!  Yea, you know it's coming!  All hell breaks loose!  lol

The Exorcist does take a very long time to build.  Slow starter to be sure.  There's lots of scenes of Father Merrin (Max von Sydow, who looked old when this movie was made and is still making movies 40 years later), and the actress mom (Ellen Burstyn) and Regan (Linda Blair) before the whole possession thing starts.  There's also a death attributed to Regan, and a cop investigates that as well, which is all part of the long slow build up to, obviously, the exorcism.  Then of course, they have to convince the church and the local priest to perform one.  I mean, you can't just call Exorcisms'R'Us, or even the Ghostbusters.  All this takes time, while old Horny hoof guy is making himself at home inside poor Regan.  Of course, the exorcism itself is probably where half the terror comes in, making the movie as memorable as it is.

Obviously this sort of movie is one you can watch more than once.  The acting and story hold up perfectly even in this day and age, though everyone has heard about this movie by now and there have been a thousand imitators, so this sort of thing is old hat for the kids of today.  But when I was a kid?  Scary stuff!  No nudity in this, unless of course you count Linda Blair, who was 13 or 14 when this movie was made, so she really doesn't count, I don't think.  I don't think there's much more to say about that, other than, if this movie has the cajones to still be revered as the scariest movie ever made after 40 years?  It's got to be worth watching.  lol  I saw this on AMC's fear Fest!  Unfortunately, it's not available on netflix.

On to Grimm!  Grimm is a TV series about a detective who hunts monsters on NBC.  Last season on Grimm, Baron Samedi (yea, the voodoo guy) managed to tranquilize Nick with his neurotoxic goo and loaded him into a coffin for a trip to europe and a fate known only to Captain Renard's brother, the Prince.  In this season's premiere, however, Nick awakes early from his Samedi-induced coma and attacks everyone on board the plane, causing it to crash.  Baron Samedi is killed, the pilot and co-pilot survive, but Nick wanders away from the crash and brawls his way through a bar-fight while under the effects of Baron Samedi's goo.  Captain Renard, nick's girlfriend, the werewolf fellow and his girlfriend, as well as nick's partner, are hot on his heels tracking him down!  Catch up on the show at NBC.com.

And now a review of the new show, Dracula, following Grimm on NBC.  Apparently someone wakes up Dracula's corpse in the late 19th century, and he takes on a new identity as an american industrialist who invents wireless electricity.  I'm not sure why he decides to do this, as there's absolutely no time between his resuscitation and his appearance as Alexander Greyson, nor any explanation as to why.  What we are left with is a hulking Renfield who plays his assistant, and Dracula's obvious desire to gain some patents so he can make some money, or something.  He's apparently trying to slay his way through the Order of the Dragon, some shady cult of oil barons intent on world domination through financial means.  Twenty minutes in and there's no explanation of why he hates the Order of the Dragon so much, or how he found out about them when he's been in the grave for some number of years.  Apparently Dracula is the hero, going up against oil company executives?  lol  I guess someone thought only one of the most brutal villains in fictional history could take on the oil companies and win?  lol  Oh geez, now they are calling Jack the Ripper a vampire and there's yet another shady organization hunting vampires that covered up the killings.  This isn't going well already.  And he's wantonly killing co-eds.  lol  I love how there's female medical students in the late 1800's medical schools over in england.  I'm pretty sure the male-dominated medical system didn't allow female medical students until well into the 1900's, but, hey, I could be wrong!  Also, Drac's killed once already and he's quickly working his way through the... ah, shall we say, arteries... of the female cast members.  Either he's a hero or he's a villain, can we make up our minds here?  An indiscriminate killer who hates people with money and power while he craves the same?  I really don't get what's going on here.  And everyone is wielding samurai swords!  That's so convenient in late victorian england.  Oh apparently the order of the dragon killed Drac's wife, and THAT's why he's so pissed at them.  Well that makes slightly more sense.  Can't say as I like the actor they picked to play Dracula.  I've seen review blurbs where the selection of this actor is praised as genius, but I think that's more to convince whoever is producing the series than the public.  He certainly wouldn't have been my first choice.

Okay, I'm not liking the new Dracula.  Seems very... lame.  Victorian england, puffy shirts, balls, the lusts and romance of Dracula as the anti-hero against the ...  can you really call an organization evil if it fights vampires?  I'm not sure.  Is this two bad guys killing each other off, or are they trying to paint the Order of the Dragon, literally, oil company owners, as the good guys, trying to stop vampires and Dracula?  lol  There's no romance here, no drama, no passion, not even good storytelling.  Flashy blood and Dracula made into a nightly soap opera, with political overtones.  Blech.  I think I'm taking a pass on this whole series.  If you want to see how bad it is, try NBC.com, they probably have it available to stream.

That's it for tonight!  Hope everyone has a nice weekend.  See you tomorrow!

Horror Movie Review #24 - House of Fears (2007)

I'm not usually fond of the newer horror movies.  They usually rely too much on gore and torture, or they are just a plethora of bad acting, poor effects and poor production that they are generally unwatchable.  I miss the good old days when good actors got naked and suspense and tension ruled the day, because the "special effects" was Christopher Lee in a set of plastic fangs.  You only had the acting to carry you along then, and that had to be enough.  Or the boobs.  There's always the boobs to get you through.

House of Fears (2007) doesn't have Christopher Lee.  Or plastic fangs.  Or boobs.  Which, normally would mean it sucks.  But somehow, it just doesn't suck as bad as I figured it would.  As Inigo Montoya would say, "Let me explain.  No!  Let me sum up."

House of Fears begins with an african artifact heading back to the states by way of a haunted house collector.  Apparently some rich lady funded a trip to africa to bring back fake antiquities for her fake haunted house, only one particular antiquity turned out not to be so fake.  An african death idol winds up in one of those Halloween haunted house tour things, and of course, a group of teens sneaks into the house and the artifact does its dirty dirty magic thing and people start dying.

This wasn't the greatest movie.  I couldn't really identify with any of the characters in this movie because they didn't give you enough time to to do so, or maybe I just couldn't see myself sneaking away from a perfectly good party with chicks and alcohol to go see a haunted house.  Then again, maybe I would, I'm a bit weird.  They introduced a couple parents of some of the main characters, then you never get to see them again.  I'm not particularly sure why they got introduced in the first place.  There was surely a better way to get one of the characters along for the party, but oh well.  If they were going through the trouble of introdcuing them, it would have been nice to see them again.  The mom was kind of attractive.  Another problem I had here was I could see the end coming along about ten million miles away.  Pretty much at the start of the movie, so, it's not exactly a twist ending.  Also, the "fears" end up being little more than extras from your typical haunted house tour, although they do get a bit more violent than your average minimum wage earner.  lol  Honestly, the only one I felt sorry for was the poor night guard who ends up getting ripped apart by his own dog, and he's only in the movie for about 5 minutes, poor bastard.

On the plus side, the acting was passable, and the girls were attractive, and the effects, though minimal, weren't totally crappy, so I suppose I will grudgingly accept this as a horror movie.  Not a good one, but it tries, and none of the actors seem to be making fun of themselves while they are doing it, so what the hell.  Not the worst horror movie I have ever seen, by any means.  Of course, it's no Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but then, what is?  They really need to make a sequel to that movie.  Did I mention there's no nudity in this movie?  Would have been SO much better with nudity.  Sigh.

So, House of Fears, worth a watch if you've got time to kill and haven't seen it before.  If you have, I don't think watching it again will show you anything you missed the first time.  I can't see myself watching this again, so it fails the rewatchability test, but there's a lot of movies like that.  Sixth Sense failed the rewatchability test for me, can you believe that?  Yea, that big blockbuster thing with bruce willis.  I saw the end coming and then once I found out I was right and the "big twist" ending was what I had suspected all along, there was no point in seeing it again.  Of course, if you've seen the movie you know there's no point in watching it twice once you've seen the end anyway, so maybe it failed everyone's rewatchability test.  Who knows.  House of Fears is available on netflix, but I think only for a few more days, so catch it fast if you want to see it.  If not, give it a pass.  Nothing particularly great here.

Last weekend coming up before Halloween!  I know many of you will be drunk off your asses, getting half naked or fully naked at halloween parties, and I envy you.  On the plus side, I'll try and watch a double feature this weekend and review it for you, and raise a can of cheap, tasteless beer in your honor!  If I'm lucky, I can pig out on ice cream and Halloween candy and ride the sugar high til monday morning.  lol  I've had to give up premium channels entirely, due to my decreased financial status, but hey!  I've still got AMC's fear fest!  Til tomorrow night then!

Horror movie review #23 - Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

You know I've been watching the Halloween movies since I was in my single digits and I didn't even realize I'd never actually seen Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.  Technically Halloween 6, it marked Doanld's Pleasance's last appearance in the Halloween movies, as it was released shortly after his death.  You can even see the movie dedicated to his memory in the closing credits.  I personally was amazed by how much he had appeared to age in the time between Halloween 5 and Halloween 6, made only 6 years apart.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers (1995) opens with a pregnant Jamie being wheeled on a hospital cart into the bowels of some building.  There her baby is taken from her womb by some satanic cult.  A nurse manages to get her baby back and help Jamie escape, but Michael Myers tracks her down and kills her.  She manages, however, to hide the baby, which sets up Tommy Doyle (the kid Jamie Lee Curtis was babysitting in the first Halloween movie), now grown to adulthood, to come fetch the baby, find Dr. Loomis and try and keep the baby alive in hopes of stopping whatever plans both the satanic cult and Michael Myers might have for the baby.

I do remember trying to watch this movie at one point, but I was put off by the early death of the new actress who plays Jamie Lloyd.  They replaced Danielle Harris, who did so wonderfully with the role back in Halloween 4 and 5, with a total unknown who I have never heard of.  After that, I just couldn't stomach watching the rest of the movie, so as a result, I had never seen it until tonight.

This movie wasn't horribly bad, but I can't say it was very good.  Set precisely six years after the last appearance of Michael Myers in 1989 (the events of Halloween 5), Haddonfield has apparently outlawed Halloween.  Except, all through this movie, there are trick or treaters roaming the streets, in costume, and all the houses seem to be decorated for it.  Odd.  Donald Pleasance is all through this movie, dragged out of retirement by his old boss when the body of Jamie Lloyd is discovered near Haddonfield and everyone realizes that Michael Myers is back in town.  The rest of the cast acted well enough, I suppose, although I can't really understand what happened at the end.  Not sure if Michael Myers is dead, beat up, quiescent for another number of years, or what the hell happened to Dr. Loomis?  Although we did hear his maniacal laughter at the end, so, maybe he won?  Who knows?  I can't say as I'd watch this one again, although there was a smidge of nudity.  If you'd like to watch it, there's always Netflix, or AMC!  Actually I think it's playing on AMC as I write this.

lol  Something just occurred to me.  If Jamie Lloyd was 9 in Halloween 5 (according to Dr. Loomis lines when he's talking to her in the clinic in that movie), and this movie is set 6 years later, then Jamie Lloyd would have been only 15 at the time she had her baby, probably 14 when she got pregnant.  That's a lovely message I am pretty sure this movie was not trying to send.  lol  The actress who played her looked much more adult than that, and was driving a truck like she knew how, so I don't think the whole movie was very well thought out.  lol  Maybe I'm the only one who caught that, I don't know, but that just seems sloppy planning in retrospect.  lol

That's all for tonight.  Watching American Horror Story.  This season is about Witches and Covens!  If there's one thing I like, it's a lot of hot confident chicks in a group.  Women are so much easier to seduce when they think they are in charge.  lol  Til tomorrow night, then!

Horror Movie Review #22 - Zombie Lake (1981)

After finding something as good as The Possession last evening, I was sure I'd never strike horror gold two nights in a row, so I didn't even try.  Instead, I looked for something bad.  Not all zombie movies are serious affairs.  Not all horror movies are about the blood and gore.  Not all monsters are after death and mayhem.

Some are just after tits and ass.

Zombie Lake (1981), or "Le lac des morts vivants" in the original french, marks the second french horror film I have reviewed this month.  I had no idea the french were so into horror movies.  I guess they can't be all bad, then.  Drinking wine all day and watching horror movies all night sounds like quite the life.  Zombie lake is definitely not a grade-A horror film.  Not even B.  In fact, if I was a teacher, I wouldn't even bother grading it, I'd just give it a well-deserved spanking, it's so far down the scale.  Apparently some french resistance members tracked down some Nazis during World war 2, and threw their dead bodies into this lake in france.  Now, years later, the nazis have awoken!

Yea, I'm reviewing this one while I write it for two reasons.  One, I'm working around watching Marvel's Agents of SHIELD at 8, and this damn movie is so funny I've cracked up laughing twice already and it's only 10 minutes in.  First off, this hot young french girl is out hiking in white shorts and a button up shirt, and a string of pearls, and full makeup.  Who hikes in pearls and full makeup?  She decides to take a dip in the lake, and takes down a sign that clearly says no swimming with a skull and crossbones next to it.  Okay, two questions arise immediately.  Who puts UP a sign that says if you swim here, it means DEATH, and two, who is dumb enough to take that sign DOWN and go swimming anyway?  lol  Young french chicks, apparently.  So the next day, they find the girls' castoff clothing to report her missing, and the guy pulls out a button up shirt and BLUE shorts.  Um.  Either the dye elves went and dyed the shorts blue overnight or more than one girl went missing.  lol

lol  Awesome, Marvel's agents of Shield just referenced Minecraft.  Got to love it when the general populace catches up on what I've been playing for the last 5 years or so.  lol

Okay, movie's over, let's review this puppy.  Started out great, lots of nudity, hot ladies, started to fall apart about halfway through when they realized they needed some sort of story to go along with showing lots of naked chicks.  All of a sudden the nudity dropped to almost nothing, and the story of the green-painted nazi zombies took on a lot of romantic and heart warming drama.  I don't know about you guys, but I like my naked zombie chick movies to be less about the heart warming drama and more about the T&A.  I guess I was disappointed the movie didn't turn out as well as it had begun, but then, when you show full frontal female (and rear, and top, and bottom, and side) nudity within the first 5 minutes of a movie, you have nowhere to go but down, I suppose.  (shrug)  Let's say, watch it once for the nudie bits and goofy looking zombies and forget it.

And now, back to minecraft!  I've got a new skin!  First new skin in 2 years!  In honor of halloween, of course.  It's a pumpkin-headed fellow in a slick looking black suit.  :-)  I downloaded a crapload of them, so after halloween I'll use them all until I find one I like and stick with THAT for a couple years.  lol  Til tomorrow night, then.

Horror movie review #21 - The Possession (2012)

Wooohooo!  Found me a good'un!  Yea, that's pretty much how I feel when I come across a good horror movie that I haven't seen before.  Some days you just search and search and you can't find shiat, and then, you stumble across something shiny!

The Possession (2012) is shiny.  Like, The Shining, shiny.  So I'm looking through my movie list on netflix.  And I just can't find anything that isn't reviewed as "the worst shit movie ever made."  And I get to this little movie called "The Possession" and I'm like, oh, geez, another demonic possession movie?  I've seen like 3 of these already this month!  But it's got Kyra Sedgewick in it, and I figure, what the shit, it's either this or Ghostbusters.  And I know Kyra from her "The Closer" days.  Well, you know, I don't know her, but I last saw her there, and those were pretty good, so I figure, what the hell have I got to lose?  An hour and a half of my life.  What would I be doing instead?  Watching crappy horror movies?  Playing computer games?  Sure, I can stand to lose a couple hours there.  Let's go, biatch!  THRILL ME, as Detective Cameron (from Night of the Creeps) would say.  Speaking of Tom Atkins, he's a fellow horror movie fan and his favorites are "The Thing from Another World" (1954) and "Night of the Creeps" (1986) which Tom Atkins actually starred in.  Way to go, Tom!  Those are two of my favorites, too!  When is the sequel to Night of the Creep coming out?  I want to see one so bad.  Maybe we could get Jill Whitlow back into acting, eh?  She was ssssssmokin!

The Possession starts off with a suitably creepy scene to get you in the mood.  Then things go all slow on you.  Don't be fooled.  This shit will turn you white.  Even if you already are white.  So basically we've got a box.  And this recently divorced guy takes his two daughters to a garage sale, where one of his daughters picks up this box.  And this guy is all like sure, what the hell, buy the box!  And so he buys the box.  And his youngest daughter takes it home.  And then...  she opens the box.  Yea.  I know.  She's never seen a horror movie, I guess.  No, really.  I did try to warn her.  I said it, I said "no, don't do it, don't open the box."  Then I said it louder, I said "No!  Don't OPEN THE BOX!"  But they never listen.  They always open the box.  No one ever listens to me.  She opened the box.

I think, if you've ever seen a horror movie, you know that was a bad idea.

Okay, the acting and production values on this movie were exceptional.  Two big name actors anchor the film.  The dad is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who I barely recognized when he came on screen as "one of those guys you've seen in something before but have no idea what."  He was a solid choice, and completely resembles his character, who is basically a divorced basketball coach going through a rough patch after his recent divorce.  He's having trouble with the divorce, he's still in love with his ex-wife, and he's having trouble explaining the whole sorry mess to his daughters.  Kyra Sedgewick plays the mom.  She blames the ex husband for everything.  She's still very bitter about the whole divorce thing, though I get the impression she initiated it.  Everything that goes wrong, she blames on the divorce, and as things begin to escalate, she blames her ex.  The two daughters are unknown actresses to me, but have been in lots of things I have never seen.  lol  Everyone did their jobs well.  There was tension, there was suspense, there was fear, there was horror.  Holy fuck, I think I shat myself about halfway through the movie and I didn't want to move to clean out my drawers til the end.

Interesting twist on the whole possession angle, is the introduction of a Dibbuk Box, which was actually, i guess, the european title of this film.  A Dibbuk Box is apparently a box containing a spirit.  What kind of spirit, you ask?  Well.  I don't think anyone would bother trying to contain a helpful, friendly spirit, do you?  Yea.  Which means this was a bad one.  Dibbuk boxes are also, apparently, jewish in origin, which brings in the need for a Rabbi to perform, essentially, a jewish exorcism.

I don't really get the whole exorcism concept, I mean, there's this spirit, demon, satan, whatever, hanging out in this body, and what's it doing?  Eating, swearing, staying up late at night.  How could you tell the difference between that and your average teenager?  Meh.  Just let it chillax until it gets bored and leaves.  What's the worst that can happen?  A few things fly around, a bed levitates?  Ooh.  Try The Killer Klowns From Outer Space.  Those fuckers put you in a cotton candy balloon and suck your blood out through a twisty straw.  Now that's something you're going to want to exorcise.  Although, I don't know what religion you'd use to exorcise Alien Clowns.  Maybe we could get Stephen King to perform a horror-exorcism.  Hmmmm.  Horrcism?  Ex-hor-cism?  Exhorrorcism?  Yea, that sounds good.  Although I don't know what he'd use to cast them out.  An autographed copy of "It," maybe?  Hardcover, of course.  These exhorrorcisms can get rough.  You don't want to use a paperback for that kind of thing.  Nuh uh.

No nudity in The Possession, which is probably good because Kyra Sedgewick is getting on, and the daughters are underage, and nobody wants to see an overweight basketball coach dad get naked.  Although there was this scene where Kyra is prowling through the house in a tight sweater and I thought HEY SHE'S GOT A DECENT RACK ON HER!  Yea, you guys probably know I'm a bit of a perv already so that's not a real surprise.  Lots of action, violence and suspense.  Even some blood.  Great special effects as far as the possessions go, and the, whatever, attacks, I guess you'd call them.  I was impressed, and I've seen a lot of horror flicks, so that's saying something.  I'm not sure what it's saying, but something.  Probably something good.

That's all for tonight!  Back to watching old horror movies everyone's seen to death, like Halloween and Halloween 2 on AMC.  In related news, I'm all better!  Which leaves plenty of room for the next virus to come stay in what I like to nickname my body, The Virus Hotel.  Damn, that'd make a good book title.  Or a band name.  Hmmm.  Til tomorrow night then!

Horror Movie Review #20 - Child's Play 2: Chucky's Back (1990)

I've always liked the Child's play series of horror movies.  I guess they are getting a bit silly now, starting probably around the time they decided to add Jennifer Tilly to the cast as Chucky's lady friend.  It's just all gone downhill from there.  Not that I don't think Jennifer Tilly pulled it off well enough, it's just that the romance between dolls wasn't something I needed to see in a horror movie, I suppose.  Meh.

Child's Play 2 (1990) is well before all that, though.  Taking place shortly after the events of the first movie, the Chucky doll is returned to the company that made it.  I am pretty sure we all know by now that this is a mistake, from movie like I, Robot and so on.  I mean, it's like returning a Terminator cyborg to Cyberdyne Systems and saying "Can you check out this killer robot and make sure it's okay?  It's killed a few people."  Yea.  Skynet would pretty much just turn it back on and point it at you.  So Chucky immediately starts searching for Andy, the boy from the first movie, so he can swap souls with him.  Apparently, due to some constraints of the old 'Soul-Swap" voodoo spell, he has to swap souls with the first person he reveals himself to before a certain amount of time has passed or he stays in the body of the doll forever.  Sounds like a lot of stuff and nonsense to me, but I guess the idea of a killer who can swap souls with anyone, anywhere, at any time, was just too horrifying for Andy to overcome.  lol  Andy, meanwhile, has been taken into foster care because his unwise mother stubbornly insists that Chucky attacked her and tried to swap souls with her son.  Yea.  She'll be spending time in a padded cell for a while.  The authorities don't seem to like people who tell the truth.  At least in horror movies.  Which leaves Andy alone to deal with a very angry and very determined Chucky, heading his way fast and furious.  Wait, that's another movie entirely.  Hmmm.  Vin Diesel and Brad Dourif in Chucky vs Furious: Chucky is now a Lamborghini!  Shit yea, I'd watch that.

Err, right.  So, there you have it.  I actually thought this movie was pretty good.  I grant you the whole doll being the killer thing is kind of laughable, but that is exactly why Charles Lee Ray cast his soul into that body to begin with.  No one would suspect a child's toy of being a lethal killer.  And that's why Chucky is always able to get to his victims.  The old wolf in sheep's clothing ploy.  Or the Trojan Horse ploy.  There are countless variations on it but it makes a great setup for a horror movie.  Brad Dourif does the voiceover for the doll and the movie never once plays the doll off as being silly.  This child's toy swears like a wounded truck driver, kills like Norman Bates, and is tougher than Arnold Schwarzenegger.  if i saw this thing, I wouldn't pick it up and play with it.  I'd run.  While pissing my pants.  But I'm not particularly brave.

I've always wondered why they never actually brought Brad Dourif back as Charles Lee Ray in any of the sequels.  I mean, if he's got enough voodoo mojo to transfer souls from one body to another, why not somehow restore his own body to life?  The Chucky Doll could go find his gravesite, dig up the rotting corpse, cast a spell and BAM Brad Dourif is back big as life.  Then the heroes of the movie have to somehow cast Charles Lee Ray's soul back into the Chucky doll in order to ultimately defeat him, as he's now a nearly unstoppable reanimated zombie killer.  I think it would, if you'll forgive the expression, breathe new life into the series.  lol  But, as I understand it, they're already making a new Chucky movie starring Brad Dourif's daughter.  Meh.  I think my idea's better.  (shrugs)

Almost down to the wire, people!  Another week and a half of horror movie reviews and then it's Halloween time!  Candy!  Can't wait for the candy.  Candy candy candy.  Candy.  Candy!  :-D  Oddly enough, I used to know a girl named Candace Cain, nicknamed Candy.  Yea, Candy Cain.  I am sure she was very popular around xmas time.  lol

Til tomorrow night!

Horror Movie Review #19 - Friday the 13th (2009)

I particularly despise remakes, mostly because they can never seem to capture the feel of the original.  The Freddy Krueger remake a few years ago was a perfect example.  I never really like Freddy as a  villain, he was too wimpy.  He couldn't kill you when you were awake, he couldn't kill you unless you were scared, he couldn't kill anyone who wasn't still a teenager, there were just so many things he couldn't do, it totally crippled him as a scary villain.  And to think the townsfolk captured him because he was a child molester/killer and burned him in a furnace?  That is not a particularly scary villain.  Now, Jason, he kills everyone.  That's just what he does.

Friday the 13th (2009) was supposed to revitalize the series.  I thought maybe I had seen and reviewed this one before but I don't remember doing so, so if I did, that's Alzheimer's for ya!  lol  So, without further ado, let's get down to the summary of the movie.

Bunch of teens go to a cabin near Crystal Lake planning to get drunk, high, naked, and any number of other innocent teenage activities that are frowned upon by Jason Vorhees.  As the original story goes, Jason supposedly drowned as a boy while the camp counselors were drinking, flirting and smoking pot, so that's basically why jason likes to kill everyone around the lake and especially anyone who's engaging in any of those activities.  Most of the cast is there just for slaughter, which is normal for these sorts of movies.  Another wrinkle in the tale is a guy looking for his sister, who vanished about 6 weeks previous in the area.  I think we all know where this is going!

Now for the review!  The feel of the movie isn't the same as the originals, for one thing.  In a lot of the original Friday the 13th movies, Jason Vorhees is a legend that no one wants brought up, not a local hero that people protect.  Many of the campers mention him before they get killed.  There's a bit of fear, suspense and tension built up just by doing so.  The "legend" of Jason Vorhees isn't mentioned in this movie as far as I can tell, just an old woman who says "all he wants is to be left alone."  Which, frankly, is a pile of crap.  The old Jason Vorhees just wanted to kill anyone and everyone near the lake.  Maybe that's what the "new" Jason wants, who knows.  I've heard it's based off of movies 1 through 4 but, wouldn't that introduce Tommy Jarvis as a possible nemesis?  You'd think so.

Also, jason kidnaps someone?  I'm not sure what that's about.  I mean, he basically keeps her chained up in his ruined basement or something, but how does he feed and water her?  And yes, I did just infer that woman are like houseplants.  lol  It's not like Jason spends his nights killing people and his days puttering around the kitchen making sandwiches and pot roasts for his captive.  And it's not like he lets her out to cook and clean up, sooooo...  how did she make it 6 weeks?  Six days would have been a stretch without food or water, but 6 weeks is just impossible.  And why kidnap her, I mean, even if she resembles his mother, why keep her chained up?

Also, while jason seems as strong and hardy as the original, he doesn't seem as aware of his surroundings.  I mean, somehow in the originals, no matter who was in his forest, or where they were in the cabins or sheds or outbuildings, jason always found and managed to sneak up on them somehow.  Sure, you could fool him a little while maybe, but suddenly he'd just look right the fuck at you, see where you were, and come after you.  This Jason doesn't seem to have that ability, making him far less terrifying.  Maybe they didn't think it was realistic, but seriously, if you're a killer zombie who drowned as a child, still grew to adulthood, and are coming back from the dead again and again to kill campers, how realistic do your powers have to be?  lol

At least the had his head in a sack for a while before he found the hockey mask.  And, he didn't speak, nor did they try to find another origin story for him, so at least they did that right.  I didn't see any nudity, but I watched this on SyFy, so maybe I missed the good stuff.  The chicks were attractive, and I apologize if I have any actual female readers as I'm not politically correct.  But I am all for equal rights, so that balances it out, right?  :-D

That's it for tonight.  Still can't find a good set of movies for a double feature, and I have a sore throat!  Man.  Maybe I should just let you guys know when I'm healthy, because that'll be a surprise.  Sheesh.  On the plus side, AMC has been showing different scary movies for the past few days, and are running them constantly right up through Halloween.  Now THAT's some good TV viewing.  TMC does an overnight now and then, and SyFy does their usual thursdays and saturdays, but every day for a week and a half is some serious consideration for fans of horror like myself.  Thanks AMC!  :-D  Luckily, they'll show a few movies over now and then so I can get a nap in.  lol

Til tomorrow night then...

Horror movie review #18 - The Relic (1997)

Most horror movies are small-budget affairs, starring mostly little-known actors.  The majority of the film's budget is usually spent on the special effects, even if they aren't first-rate.  Sometimes, every once in a while, Hollywood gets together to make a decent, blockbuster-sized monster movie.  Sometimes you wind up with something like Godzilla (1998) with Matthew Broderick, which wasn't bad, but wasn't spectacular, either, in my opinion.  And then sometimes, you end up with The Relic.

The Relic (1997) stars Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller.  There's a scattering of other well-known actors among the cast, notably Linda Hunt as the museum curator and Clayton Rohner and John Kapelos as fellow police officers trying to assist Lt D'agosta (Sizemore) in his task.  But, let's sum up the movie shall we?  Let's take this in two parts, one from the perspective of Lt. D'agosta, and one from the perspective of Penelope Ann Miller, who plays Dr. Margo Green.

Lt. D'agosta is going through a rough divorce when he's summoned to the Chicago docks.  It appears a ghost ship has wandered into Lake Michigan and been towed to the docks.  A ghost ship that sailed from south america.  There's no one on board, nothing but blood.  And then D'agosta follows his nose, and finds the bodies.  Or what remains of them.  As far as he can tell, the bodies were torn apart in a violent drug raid by some drug traffickers.  However, he can find no drugs on board.  A week later, a night guard at the local museum is torn apart, in a similar fashion to the bodies aboard the ghost ship.  Now what the hell does a museum guard have to do with a bunch of bodies from south america?

Dr. Green is having financial problems.  Her research project is in danger of losing it's funding to a fellow researcher.  Her research project is a program that can quickly map out a DNA sequence from a small sample and genetically determine the identity of the source animal.  Her program is still in the developmental stages but the working prototype could be invaluable to rapidly identifying DNA samples in any situation.  A shipment from a Dr. Whitney at the museum comes in from south america.  Inside a sealed crate are a bunch of packing leaves, a puzzle which intrigues the otherwise scientifically biased Margo.  Researching the viral fungus attached to the leaves, she determines that the substance is a hormonal cocktail capable of rapid and irreversible DNA alteration.  But why would Dr. Whitney send the leaves without warning them?  And just where the hell IS Dr. Whitney?

This movie spends about the first hour building suspense and setting up the backstory.  An hour may sound like a long time, but while it might drag in other movies, it flies by in this one.  The characters are introduced, a whodunnit mystery is in progress, and suspense and tension are just oozing from every scene.  And then the last 45 minutes are all pure adrenaline charged action, petrifying horror and violently frightening scenes of mayhem and slaughter.  The acting is good, the special effects are excellent, and ending was even better than I expected.  This is the kind of horror movie that horror movies should aspire to.  It was exciting, there was an understandable and scientifically-based backstory that got explained fully throughout the film, and the action didn't pause long enough for you to get bored of the explanation.  I have watched it a dozen times and I could watch it a dozen more.  No nudity, but the presence of an actual horror movie monster more than makes up for it.  And an original one, not even a werewolf ripoff or a vampire or some other such tripe!  An original movie monster is pretty rare these days, and pretty much nothing in this movie happens the way you'd expect it, except the guys who deserve to die, usually do.  lol

This movie's playing on netflix if you want to watch it.  Might even have a double feature tomorrow night, depending on what I can find.  Choosing what movies to watch is the hardest part of the review process, lemme tell ya.  I get like a few hours to find a movie, whether it's on TV or on Netflix, and then watch and review it   I don't want to review a movie I don't like, any more than I want to watch a movie I don't like, as I don't get much enjoyment from that unless I get the chance to trash the shit out of the movie after.  lol  It's even worse if I haven't seen the movie before, as I have to watch at least a few moments of it to see if I'm going to like it.  Some days, I'll go through half a dozen different movie beginnings trying to find something good to watch and review, and still end up failing to find something good.  Other days, I just don't have any extra time, and have to settle on the first thing I can find.  If only my game playing and having fun didn't interfere with my movie reviewing, eh?  lol

Til tomorrow night, then!

Horror movie review #17 - Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

There have been a lot of killers in the horror movies I've watched.  Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Leatherface...  But easily the most enjoyable to watch, is Jason Vorhees.  Sure, Leatherface is the campiest, and Freddy Krueger is the most laughable, and Michael Myers is probably the scariest, but Jason?  He's just all about the killing.  There's no style, there's no target he's after, there's nothing but bloody slaughter.  Plus, you know, pretty much every friday the 13th movie has boobs in it.  :-D

So here's a review of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993).  This was supposed to be the last Friday the 13th, but we all know by now that it wasn't.  lol  They just remade another Friday the 13th in 2009, I guess that was a remake or something?  I don't know if I've seen it or not.  Anyway, this one had a lot of second-rate actors in it that I guess wanted to cash in on the Jason series before the end.  The most famous of which was probably Erin Gray of Buck Rogers fame, who didn't have much screen time but was just as good looking as ever.  You might recognize a few other actors from other things, but I didn't.  lol  On to the summary.

We open on a lonely girl headed up to camp crystal lake for some fun.  It's nighttime.  She heads into her cabin.  She's about to take a shower when the lights go out.  Jason has returned.  She almost dies, manages to make it out of the cabin.  Jason chases the girl through the woods, to a clearing.  Suddenly there's floodlights everywhere.  Dozens of police officers jump out from behind the trees, and the woman dives over a police barricade.  The officers start firing.  Rockets are fired.  Jason explodes into pieces.  He's finally dead.  Except... this is the beginning of the movie, so...  You know he's not really dead, don't you?

Aside from the decent acting, and the numerous actors who got to play Jason in this film, this was probably the lamest of the friday the 13th movies.  I guess they wanted to go all Michael Myers road and have Jason go after his family or something, tied in with some lame ass origin story about jason's heart being a tiny demon or something?  They never really explained anything, so for an origin story it was quite unsatisfactory.  And then they end the film with Jason's hockey mask being grabbed up by Freddy Krueger.  Honestly, wtf?  It's like a bad crossover that nobody wanted.  The special effects were bad, the ending blew, the origin story wasn't, I can't really say why they even bothered to make this other than get more money.  There were boobs, at least.

My favorite Jason movies were probably part 2 to 4, and part 7, but especially part 6.  In part 6, Jason's nemesis Tommy Jarvis returns as an adult to put an end to his nightmares, and burn Jason's decomposing corpse to cinders.  But, while digging up jason's remains from the grave, lightning strikes the body, and jason, much like the Frankenstein monster, is reborn as an undead corpse.  Even more powerful and vicious then ever, jason returns to his old habits, stalking the lake that is forever his home.  Even Jason X has it's merits.

But, unfortunately, this isn't any of those movies.  I've seen it a few times and will probably see it again, but only because it's a Friday the 13th movie.  Whatever happened to faceless, unstoppable killing machines in movies?  Why does every killer need a heart, feelings, an origin story?  Whatever happened to slaughter, gore, mayhem and boobies?   Sigh.  I miss the good old days.

Oh well.  Until tomorrow night.  :-)

Horror Movie Review #16 - The Frighteners (1996)

Back in the 80's, when I grew to adulthood, Michael J. Fox was pretty much at the top of his game.  Fresh off his success on Family Ties, there was Teen Wolf ...  and IMDB.com is down, so yea.  Well then.  I can't check the rest of his movie career, but I know the Secret of My Success was in there somewhere.  Anyway, he was huge, for, you know, a smaller guy.  I tried to check out his new show but I wasn't very fond of it.  Not that there was anything wrong with it, exactly, but there's no monsters and it only lasts a half hour, so it's a little short for my long attention span.

The Frighteners (1996) is, in my opinion, some of Michael J. Fox's greatest work.  Granted, it's the only one of Michael J. Fox's movies that has any monsters in it besides Teen Wolf, and that's probably why I like it.  Besides, Teen Wolf was more of a comedy than this was.  On to the summary!

There have been a slew of deaths in Frank Bannister's town.  Heart attacks in perfectly healthy people.  The medical examiner described the attacks as if something had just grabbed the hearts of the victims and just squeezed the life out of them.  Frank Bannister doesn't care about any of that, though.  Frank Bannister is a fake psychic, who uses each death, each funeral, as an excuse to prey on the beliefs of the deceased's loved ones, in order to make money.  I can't really blame Frank, though.  He used to be a promising young Architect with a beautiful wife, but nowadays, he's just trying to make a living.  You see, the deaths started 5 years ago, and there were 28 of them, starting with...  Frank's wife.  And ever since then, Frank's been a fake psychic trying to make ends meet.  A fake psychic, who can actually see the dead...

I really liked this movie.  I watch it pretty much every time I see it on.  Great acting, almost two hours long, ghosts, spirits, poltergeists, horrors from beyond the grave, and a little bit of comedy tossed into the mix.  It even has Jeffrey-goddamn-Combs as a paranormal investigator working for the FBI!  :-D  Special effects were good, and aside from the lack of nudity, I can't say as there's a thing wrong with this movie.  Story was excellent, the action was nearly constant, so many characters made an appearance, there was even R. Lee Ermey (I think that's his name?  damn imdb is still down) as the ghost of a drill sergeant keeping the dead in line.  lol  You got your basic overbearing mom, a black guy from the 70's, a geeky schoolteacher the likes of Ichabod Crane, a gunslinger from the old west, a shrieking harpy, a clueless husband, a bored housewife, a psychotic Federal agent, a small-town sheriff, a mass murderer, an occultist...  Sheeeit I think I've just named everyone on the planet.  lol  And everyone gels together in a coherent, exciting tale!  It's playing on Netflix, if you'd like to watch it.

In other news, I'm almost better.  :-)  Still feeling a bit peckish now and then, but pretty sure I'm winning this one.  Two more weeks before Halloween!  Woohoo!  Can already feel the sugar rush coming on!  Almost full moon, too!  Maybe I can dig up another werewolf movie.  I know you guys love them as much as I do.  lol  I've been looking for a suitable double feature to watch but I've just been too under the weather to find something I could focus on.  Maybe this weekend.  Until tomorrow night, then!

Horror movie Review #15 - Zombies vs Strippers (2012)

I know, I know.  Strippers vs Werewolves wasn't that good.  But I thought I'd give it a chance.  to be fair, I DID try to watch "John Dies at the End (2012)" but it was unwatchable.  I mean, I could get past the horrible voice-over.  It took some doing, but I did it.  But when the freezer full of frozen meats formed itself into a ...  meat puppet?  I'm sorry.  I know a lot of adults look at the horror genre as a silly bunch of movies that only nerds like me watch.  And that's fine.  You "normal" adults will never get it.  I don't care.  But you start messing with my horror flicks, and shooting them as if they are supposed to be comedies?  That's something I just won't watch.  You can disrespect me, but you start disrespecting my horror?  IT'S GO TIME, BIATCH!

Ahem.  So.  Zombies vs Strippers (2012) is NOT like Strippers vs werewolves.  Different cast, different feel to the whole movie.  So here's the thing.  Guy named Spider owns a strip bar called Tough Titty.  Tough Titty is in a bad neighborhood, and just isn't making the bucks, despite having the best set of tits in town.  So Spider's about to sell the place.  So one quiet night, Spider gathers all the strippers and the bouncer and bartender and the janitor and the DJ and ...  okay well I guess that's everyone...  and tells them he's selling the place.  So they decide to have one helluva party to say goodbye.  And then suddenly, a miracle happens!  They start getting customers!  Customers who want to spend money!  Customers who don't give a shit anymore because the world is coming to an end!  Customers who are already dead!  Customers who...  Wait, what?  :-o

This is a solid B-movie.  The acting isn't great, but the characters they play are pretty decent.  The movie isn't played for laughs.  Well, except perhaps the zombie near the end who looks like michael jackson.  Okay, that was just silly.  Other than that, it was straight up zombie apocalypse survival fest.  These strippers and customers happen to be trapped in a titty bar at the end of the world, and goddammit, where the fuck else would you want to be when the world ends?  Shit.  I hear the world is ending, I am heading straight for the nearest titty bar.  Meet you there.  I especially liked the extremely literate, morally upright biker.  He was funny.  But again, the laughs were mostly sidelines to the action.  I mean, it's not good drama.  It's a zombie horror flick.  :-D

There were a lot of boobs in this movie!  I know that sounds strange for a movie where the whole thing is shot in a titty bar, but a lot of horror movies don't have a lot of nudity.  Sure, you get your typical shower scene or your midnight swim scene or your lovemaking scene right before the killer does his work or the zombies kill everything or whatnot, but this movie isn't like that.  There's boobies in just about every scene.  Not much ass and no full frontal or anything, mind you, but boobs?  Ayup.  There's a bunch.  Doesn't hurt any that the zombies seem to keep tearing the tops off the strippers, either.  And yea, i know that's kind of a lame way to get the boobies flopping out and all, but eh, whatever.  Boobies.  Can't argue with em.  (shrug)

Funny thing, I check IMDB and I see John Dies at the End gets like 6 and a half stars out of ten.  They give Zombies Vs Strippers a 3 something.  What do you think?  Some score padding going on there?  Probably.  All i can say is, John dies at the end is a comedy, not a horror movie.  Even if it DID have clancy brown in it.  They should at least categorize these things correctly.  You want to give horror movies 3 stars in general, fine.  You want to score comedies higher because you like them more, fine.  But don't lump shite like John Dies at the end in with actual horror movies, because frankly, it will just fall down and die.  Literally.  And don't believe the BS about it being a cult classic.  Every producer and screenwriter has wet dreams about their movie becoming a cult classic so they hype it as a cult classic before it even gets released.  I don't think these people actually understand what a cult classic is.  Let me explain.  A cult classic is a movie that wasn't SUPPOSED to be good.  It wasn't supposed to be a huge hit.  For whatever reasons, it did BAD at the box office.  But guess what?  People still LOVE the movie.  And for many years after it's release, people still love watching it.  Return of the Living Dead (1985) is a cult classic.  Army of Darkness is a cult classic.  John Dies at the End is a ridiculous comedy that can't be a cult classic because it's not even a horror movie, let alone a good comedy.  Please, I have seen some bad goddamn movies.  You KNOW I've seen some bad movies.  You read my blog.  But if I can't get through the first ten minutes?  Your movie BLOWS.  And it's not even that I was upset that it was a comedy and not a horror movie, so I am scoring it badly.  It wasn't funny, either.  So, what do we have left?  An unfunny comedy, that's not a horror movie?  Yep, that's a drama.  A drama about frozen meats joining together to form Voltron, errr, I mean, a meat puppet.  Shit, if the frozen meats HAD formed Voltron, that probably would have been funnier than all of John Dies at the End.  Then again, I didn't watch the whole movie, maybe it gets worse.  lol

In other news, I'm again, feeling still a tiny smidge better.  I've been in pain for pretty much the last week now.  If pain is a character builder, then my character is like the incredible hulk on steroids.  lol  Pain's on and off today at least, so that's better.  Still not sure if I am dealing with an infection or the flu, but since it's fading, I'm not going to worry about it.  Catch you guys tomorrow night for my next review!  Hopefully I'll run across something better, or just pick something I KNOW is good.  Would be nice to watch an exciting, scary horror flick again.  It's been so long.  lol

Horror movie review #14 - The Asphyx (1973)

Tonight I thought I'd got back to some classic horror, or at least, I was hoping this one would be more classic, being from the early 70's.  They knew how to do horror back then.  Or at least, hammer studios did, and this was made at Shepperton studios in england, the SAME COUNTRY as Hammer studios!  So!  They must be similiar, right?  :-D

Okay, my hypothesis isn't very good.   I'm not the greatest scientist ever, okay?  Sheeesh.

Let's sum up.  The Asphyx (made in 1973 and pronounced Ass-fix), is the greek term for the, oh, spirit, or essence of a man's death, I guess you'd call it.  So there's this victorian-age scientist meddling around with photography at the time of death back in the late 1800's, and he finds this smudge on his films.  A few experiments and some lighting adjustments later, and he realizes the smudge is actually the Asphyx, some sort of entity that is responsible for taking the life of the dying man.  More experiments and more adjustments, and the scientist decides he may actually be able to capture the thing!  Since this is a horror movie, you already know this is a very bad idea.  BUT, like all determined scientists, he ignores all the advice he's given about not meddling with things he shouldn't.  What's the point of capturing an asphyx, you ask?  Why, if you can capture a man's asphyx at the moment of his death, then he'd be immortal!  He could never die!  Of course, being a scientist, he needs to test his theory!  He needs a guinea pig, of sorts!  Or, you know, an actual guinea pig...  lol

I'm not really sure I understand the science behind this movie.  My general knowledge of biology, medicine, chemistry and physics is actually pretty decent, but I don't get the logical conclusion of how capturing an Asphyx can stop death.  I mean, since they describe the asphyx, at least from a greek mythology standpoint, as some sort of spirit that can only inhabit the bodies of those near death, then why should that stop actual death?  It's not like they are capturing death, unless what they improperly describe as a spirit is actually the "personal death" of whoever it appears near at the moment of their death.  In any case, another question I have is how the hell they can add a few drops of water to a blue powder and not only create a brilliant blue light, but that the powder never actually runs out of the ability to make light as long as it's kept wet?  Odd.  The rest of it is pretty self-explanatory.

I don't think I'd watch this movie again.  One, I don't need my ass fixed.  lol  Sorry, couldn't resist.  Two, it's not really that good.  I mean it sort of starts the movie in modern times and then snaps back to the late 1800's and then finishes an entire story and then snaps back to a few moments before the very first scene of the movie, and it seems like none of the beginning and ending scenes are finished.  It's not hard to figure out what happens and all, i just wish they'd have been more obvious about it.  Three, you know, there's just no nudity.  And the deaths?  I mean, come on.  I'm glad this guy was just taking pictures up til the start of this story because he is the most goddamn accident prone scientist i have ever seen.  If he was Dr. Frankenstein, the monster would be nothing but reanimated bits and pieces, his lab would be a ruin, and Igor would have been electrocuted.  lol

In other news, I am feeling slightly better.  This thing sure is taking it's time leaving.  Oh well.  Hopefully it won't be too much longer.  I'm getting sick and tired of being, well, sick and tired.  lol  Until tomorrow night, then!

Horror movie review #13 - Strippers vs Werewolves (2012)

You know, I try really hard to review actual horror movies for the october Horror movie review-a-thon.  Course, since I haven't seen about half of them before, I can't really tell how the movie's going to go, can I?  Tonight's movie just didn't live up to the hype.  Now, I grant you, Strippers vs Werewolves might have clued me in that this wasn't, you know, an actual horror movie.  But, I've seen a few other movies in the genre and honestly, all the other stripper vs werewolf movies I have seen were actually pretty scary, all right?  Can I help it if this particular one didn't live up the high standards that other stripper vs werewolf movies have set?  No.  No I can't.

So, basically, a stripper's in a private alcove with a guy.  And he goes all werewolfy on her.  And she stabs him in the eye with a silver fountain pen.  Which makes it all right then, doesn't it?  Yes.  Yes it does.  And the manager of this particular stripper club luckily has to be the one stripper club manager who's had dealings with werewolves before, because, well, they don't just run around everywhere, do they?  No.  No of course they don't.  So she knows what she's dealing with.  And of course they try to hide the body, but wtf, they're strippers, right?  Wtf do strippers know about hiding bodies in modern day london?  Exactly.  Well, I don't have to tell you the rest of the movie.  Says it all right there in the title, doesn't it?  STRIPPERS VS WEREWOLVES.  Duh.

I'm not really sure how to critique this movie.  More of a comedy than a horror film, really.  Certainly not done for the purpose of scaring people.  And come to think of it, it really wasn't even that funny, so how could it be a comedy?  Exactly.  Let's call it a drama.  A tender, heartwarming drama about strippers bonding in the face of tremendous adversity.  In the form of werewolves.  In that sense, it was a bloody great movie.  I was moved.  Before the werewolves, or Ante-Lycanthropes, or AL for short, shall we say, the strippers were just, you know, co-workers.  After the werewolves, or Post-Lycanthropes, or PL for short, there was an unbreakable bond formed, a truly emotional, passionate bond between them.  They may even be all lesbians now.  Yes, they probably are.  So, you've got a group of Post-Lycanthrope lesbian strippers who are more of a family than co-workers, and what's more heartwarming than an entire family of lesbian strippers?  Goddamn, it brings a tear to me eye.

So, there were a few experienced actors in this movie, but it really didn't save it.  Sure, the acting was actually pretty good.  That guy who played freddy krueger was in it.  Robert Englund!  That's him.  He didn't have much more than a cameo, really, but hey, what can you do.  A guy needs to eat.  I wouldn't watch it again, but i guess the story was coherent, and there were a bunch of boobs.  And I don't mean just the cast!  lol

Well that's it for tonight.  Still getting over my sickly-ness.  I think my body's fighting off an infection, but I don't know how successful it is so far.  Doesn't feel like I'm winning most days, but I've only had it less than a week now.  I feel like one of those bodies in a monty python skit that aren't quite dead yet.  BRING OUT YER DEAD!  (ding, ding) BRING OUT YER DEAD!  Here's one for you.  Hey, he's not dead!  Yes, he is!  No, I'm not!  Shut up you!  I'm feeling much better, actually!

Well, I'm not feeling much better, but a tiny smidge.  At this point I'd just let him throw me on the cart with the other dead'uns.  I feel like if this was a horror movie, and not strippers vs zombies, I'd be patient zero in the zombie apocalypse.  And honestly, what more can you ask from life than to be the star of a zombie apocalypse?  Once you've done that, it's all downhill from there!  Doesn't bode well for Brad Pitt, does it?

Til tomorrow night then.

Horror move review #12 - Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006)

You'd think with it being, you know, horror-month and all, there'd be more horror flicks on TV.  Aside from SyFy's 31 days of Halloween, I haven't really seen much.  There was like 12 hours of horror on Turner Classic Movies last night, but it was overnight.  Who the hell stays up all night just to watch horror movies?  I love the things and I'm not THAT fanatic about it.  Plus, I'm sick, I need my sleep.  lol

So tonight's movie is Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006).  A little background before I get into the summary.  Apparently this flick was made by Asylum, um, productions?  Theaters?  I don't know.  Apparently they have a bad rap in the horror movie market for making, shall we say, less than stellar horror movies.  To be fair, I can't really say how many Asylum movies I have actually watched, othe than, The Beast of Bray Road (which I reviewed two nights ago) was definitely one of their works.  I can safely say this, not because I checked to see who made the Beast of Bray Road, but because almost the entire cast of that movie is back in this one.  lol  We've got Noel Thurman, the outgoing sheriff, playing the very religious sister of gail bowers.  We've got uh, whatsisface, who played the incumbent sheriff, playing a clinical doctor that they take gail to.  And we've got the guy who played the cryptozoologist in Beast of Bray road back as a badass exorcist who goes toe-to-toe with Gail Bowers!  I must admit a certain amount of discombobulation as I am watching all these characters showing up in completely different roles, but the actors didn't seem to have any issues with it.

So here's the story.  Gail Bowers just lost her mom and dad.  How is never really explained, but it's been about 6 weeks.  They were very religious folk, but Gail isn't.  Gail's sister and her husband take her in and they move to a new home somewhere.  Gail takes the garage for her room, and there's already something wrong with the house, but things don't get really creepy until a neighbor brings over a Ouija board and convinces Gail to try and contact her dead parents.  And then, well, you know it before I'm going to say it.  All hell breaks loose!  Hah!  Yea, you knew I was going there.

So, this was a short movie.  They didn't waste any time on suspense.  Also, the neighbor who brought the Ouija board over basically rips out her own eyes and no one or nothing mentions her again, not Gail's sister and brother in law, who would have been understandably upset over the death of a neighbor, but nope!  She's just gone and no one cares.  Honestly, I didn't, her breasts were a bit saggy, but, well, I'm shallow and a bit of a dick.  Plus she wasn't the best of neighbors to start with.  Anyways, it's the psychiatrist who suggests the priest, it's the demon who suggests the exorcist by name, so I guess that really moves things along.  lol  I think the lack of suspense and the obviously cheap budget sort of hurt this movie.  There's not a lot of special effects, just your basic hovering possessed girl and an average amount of blood and gore.

Still, it moves quickly and it's a fun watch.  The actors are at least trying, if not overly skilled.  Still, they get paid for what they do, and I do not, so who am I to judge their performances?  Can't say as I'd watch it again, as this movie is pretty much just a ripoff of the Exorcist and all, but hey, the chicks are decent, there's a couple boobies, and they bought an actual pretty dagger that gets tossed back and forth.  How bad could it be?  :-D

In other news, I'm feeling a tiny smidgen better this evening.  Still achy and feeling a bit under the weather, but I think I'm on the mend.  Managed to mow my front lawn today in the nearly-80-degree heat in the middle of October, which is odd, but hey, i managed it.  The farmer's almanac and all the forecasters say this is going to be a cold, wet winter, but you know what?  I remember a summer way back when that was pretty so-so (like this past summer), and then we got a rather dry and warmly decent winter in this region.  We were amazed in november and December of that winter when temps were generally in the 50's and 60's, and it was one of the first green christmases that we'd had in a while.  And then you know what happened after that?  A very hot and dry summer, where temps hit the mid-90's for two months straight and so little rain fell that the trees were showing signs of dehydration and the leaves were dropping off in mid-august, when the rains finally started up again.  So while the farmer's almanac and all the forecasters are saying a cold and wet winter, I'm going to change MY prediction.  I think we're going to have another one of those mild winters, followed by a scorching summer.  Frankly, the odds are a little in my favor, since this past summer here in western NY was NOT, by any means, scorching, warm, or dry.  So if that heralds another half dozen years of hot and dry weather, then maybe this global warming thing has some merit.  lol

They way I figure it, what have I got to lose?  I'm not a meteorologist.  If I'm wrong, who cares?  The forecasters were right for a change, and maybe their street cred goes up a little.  If I'm right, then I've managed to forecast the weather correctly AGAIN, despite all the experts saying it was something else.  A man could make a living just off of forecasting the exact opposite of what the experts say.  Now watch, when I'm right, I'll be all like "I KNEW IT!"  lol

Catch you guys tomorrow night for another review!

Horror Movie Review #11 - Satanic (2006)

Still sick!  Strangely so.  Ah well.  I think I'm getting better.  Picked this movie quickly tonight because I always did like satanic/demonic tales (everyone is so creative with the demons!) and it boasted Angus Scrimm AND Jeffrey Combs, and if you've ever seen the Phantasm or Re-Animator series of films, you know who they are.

However, Angus Scrimm plays a fairly bewildered and kindly doctor, and Jeffrey Combs plays a bewildered and clueless detective, and neither man has a significant role in this movie.  Instead, it's about a young girl who awakes after a horrific car accident, and has lost her memory.  Not only can't she remember what happened during the accident where she apparently lost her father, but apparently her mother has died of cancer years before, and because she's a minor, even after several surgeries to restore her face to it's former shape, she has to go into a halfway house until she comes of age.  Unfortunately, even before she leaves the hospital, and once she gets to the halfway house, people start dying around her.  Can she remember her past and figure out what's going on, before it's too late?

Okay, I'm stretching my summary a bit here.  Truth be told, I wasn't very fond of this movie.  Without Jeffrey Combs and Angus Scrimm's names on this thing, it would have been a direct-to-video piece that nobody had ever heard of.  Jeffrey Combs makes exactly two appearances, and Angus Scrimm makes three scenes.  There's a couple boobs and a flash of full frontal and rear female nudity, which I guess was thrown in to make the movie worth at least something.  To be honest I'm not really sure what exactly happened in this movie, or why.  They don't do a good job of explaining it, and the end seemed like they had enough money for one quick final scene and that wasn't enough to tell me wtf had just happened, so i was left with one of those "Wtf Just Happened?" moments.  As I am sure, most of you guys are, after reading some of my blog posts, wondering Wtf just happened, and how I managed to steal your pants through the computer.  Don't worry about it.  Pants are overrated.

Strangely enough, what surprised me when I looked up the actors who had played in this film, wasn't that Jeffrey Combs was still doing horror and sci fi movies, or that Angus Scrimm was still alive (ok, I admit, that WAS a little surprising), but that the extras and bit players in this movie had imdb profiles with pictures, and the lead actress apparently did not.  In fact, the only thing in her IMDB profile was that she had a twin sister, and she and her twin sister have been in movies since the late 90's, early 2000's.  And they still don't have profiles.  Odd.

So, this was a badly acted horror flick with some cameos from two good actors and some bad performances from the main characters, with a little T&A thrown in.  The special effects were pretty nonexistent, and consisted of some prosthetic burn victim makeup and a little fake blood.  Unless you really need to see every single one of Jeffrey Combs' or Angus Scrimms' appearances, i would say skip this one.  The nudity wasn't even that good.

Hopefully the next one I pick out will be better.  Would love to do a double feature one of these nights but I'm still sick.  It'll have to wait til I get better.  But it's only been three days now, looking through my back posts here, I see that I came down with a headache tuesday evening while I was posting that night's review.  So, like 3 nights on so far.  Feels like it's been forever.  Not sleeping well.  If I was on a ship transporting an "antique coffin" from Transylvania, here's where I'd say the crew was going mad, and there have been some deaths.  lol  Guess I've seen too many horror movies.  There are worse things to have seen.  Like Rosanne Barr in the nude (shudders).  I suddenly feel bad for Tom Arnold.

Til next time, horror fans!