#5 - Return of the Living Dead 2 (1988)

I've give Return of the Living Dead (1985) and ROTLD 3 (1993) lots of love over the years, but It's rare I even mention part 2.  It's not that it's a bad movie, it actually has its own unique plot and has two of the same stars from the first movie, but it does kind of spoof itself, which I don't usually enjoy.  But hey, it's late and I'm half in the bag so let's do this!

Return of the Living Dead 2 (1988) starts out the same way all the Return of the Living Dead movies start out, with a barrel of 2-4-5-Trioxin (the chemical that reanimated the dead from the first movie) falling off the back of a truck and someone finding it.  Honestly, It makes me wonder how many barrels of this stuff are floating around out there causing havoc.  Kind of like with Superman, how there's more Kryptonite on Earth than there was on Krypton, ffs, but I digress.  So, a bunch of kids find the barrel this time, and let loose a zombie and the gas, and of course there's a graveyard nearby, so all hell breaks loose!

So let me tell you what I don't like about this flick first.  The same two actors from the first movie (James Karen who played Frank and Thom mathews who played Freddy) who got hit by the gas are back this time, playing grave robbers who get hit by the gas.  There are several instances where the same lines from the first movie are re-used, and in one instance where one of the characters say this all feels so familiar.  It's kind of jarringly reminding me of the first movie, which was actually better than this one, but still kind of annoying.  Also, this one is more child-focused, mainly dealing with some kid who is being bullied by another kid who turns into a zombie, and then he has to deal with zombie bullies.  It's not the only thing that goes on in the movie, but it's a lot of it, so it's kind of, i don't know, meh.  Other than that, hey, zombie movie, dead things running around screaming for brains.  Oh, and in this movie, the dead are back to staggering around like stiff corpses instead of running like they were in the first movie, although one zombie does hop a fence, so, there's that.  I may not watch this one as much as I watch 1 and 3, but hey!  I love the whole ROTLD series, so I figured I'd gve this one some love.

I do not recall where I watched this movie, but it was probably one of the premium channels, like HBO or Showtime or starz or something.  I havea  movie all set to watch tomorrow, so unless I get attacked by zombies, I should be able to actually get the review done before midnight.  That's all for tonight, folks!  Now I feel like bugs bunny, and not just because I'm wearing rabbit ears and a fuzzy puffball for a tail.

#4 - Ghost Light (2018)

If you've ever said to yourself, "Hey, I wonder what Cary Elwes and Carol Kane have been doing since Princess Bride?" wonder no more.  I found a movie they did in 2018!  It's on one of the showtime channels, showtime women, I think.

Ghost Light (2018) is about a group of Shakespearean actors trying to put on a production of Macbeth at a Canadian theatrical-style retreat/resort.  Apparently there's some superstition about not saying the name of the scottish king during the production, without it being part of the actual play.  There's also a tradition of keeping a "ghost light" (just a lamp of some kind, apparently) lit on the stage, whenever there are no actors present.  Apparently, this keeps the production on track, and forestalls any accidents from screwing up the play.  Unfortunately, a brash young understudy disregards the traditions, and...  you guessed it...  all hell breaks loose!

Yes!  I got to say it, only 4 days in!  Yes!  Yesyesyesyesyes!  YES!  Yeehaw!  Sorry, "all hell breaks loose" is one of my favorite lines.  Anyways, this movie has Carol Kane playing an older actress who portrays one of the Witches in Macbeth, and Cary Elwes playing the scottish king.  Most of the rest of the cast are recognizable acting veterans, even if I can't always recall their names right off the bat.  The acting was decent, even the meta-acting, which was kind of confusing at times.  I'm not even sure this movie qualifies as your standard horror movie, but there are a couple deaths, ghosts, blood, hallucinations, and hey there's even a good thunder and lightning storm.  There are nice outdoor scenes of fall foliage, and hell, there was even some mild nudity!  This movie has everything but a monster, which, alas, is my favorite thing for a horror movie to have.  Still, skilled actors doing skilled acting, a bit of an odd style of horror movie, but a fun watch.  Catch it on Showtime Women if you have that.

Pressed for time tonight, so you guys have a fun friday, and I'll see you next time for movie #5!

#3 - The Final Wish (2018)

One of the perks of my job as a horror movie blogger is watching horror movies I haven't seen yet.  It's also one of the downsides, since many of the newer horror flicks are complete and utter trash.  Tonight's crappy pick came from one of the showtime channels, so if you have that, you can waste an hour and a half of your valuable time that you can never get back!  And that, people, is a true horror story.

The Final Wish (2018) is about a guy who's been away from home for a long time, coming back after his father's passing.  The guy finds an old relic in his father's belongings that might actually be worth something, and then things start to go downhill from there.

Can you tell I wanted to say "all Hell breaks loose?"  I did, but that's not actually what happens, so I had to abandon that fun line of thought.  Lin Shaye (of Insidious fame) plays a nice supporting role as the guy's mother, who has been, shall we say, slightly unbalanced by her husband's passing?  Tony Todd (Candyman!) makes a cameo or two as the Librarian, and the rest of the actors are those guys where you go "hey, he looks oddly familiar, didn't I see them in...  oh, what was it?"  and then you realize that the guy you're thinking of is someone completely different, and you have no idea who the guy is, where your pants have gone, and how that bloody knife got into your hand.

There's a few unscary jump-scares, and a lot of yelling in this movie.  At one point, the main character totally goes apeshit, screaming unconvincingly at a guy who has no tongue, trying to make him verbally answer a question he's already frantically scrambling to write out an answer to.  The whole movie was pretty much like that, supposedly creepy scenes where I, as the viewer, was not actually creeped out at all.  I don't know, maybe I've just seen too many horror movies for this kind of schlock to scare or even entertain me, but I don't think anyone else really found the movie that scary either, so maybe it's just a crappy horror flick.  Again, it was on one of the showtime channels, if you want to see how bad it was.

Maybe I can try watching two or three horror movies a day, and seeing which of the three is best for a review.  I'm not sure I really have that kind of time, but meh, I'll see what I can do.  That's all I got for tonight.  Have fun, hope everyone is enjoying the cooler temperatures, and enjoy horror movie season!  :-D

#2 - The Legend of Halloween Jack (2018)

Okay, second day into OHMRAT 2019 and I'm still scrambling to find movies to watch.  Thankfully, I signed up with Vudu.com last month in preparation for October, so I'm grabbing a movie from there tonight.  From what I can tell so far, Vudu has a lot of bad old horror movies (the kind I love without reservation), so if you like those kinds of flicks, sign up for that, it's free.  Sure, Vudu emails the shit out of you trying to get you to buy newer movies (which you can do there if you have money, but I don't), but other than some ads for Vudu during the movie (which seems ridiculous since you're already watching the movie on Vudu, so I don't get that), you can watch them without interruptions.

The Legend of Halloween Jack (2018) is one of Vudu's newer movies.  I picked it because of the scarecrow pic on the icon for the movie, which is a standard symbol of Halloween and autumn.  This movie is your standard serial-killer-gets-off-on-a-technicality, then gets-murdered-by-a-bunch-of-townsfolk, then comes-back-from-the-dead-to-exact-his-revenge routine.  I'm not giving anything away that doesn't happen in the first 5 minutes.  I almost shut the movie off after that.

As is usually a problem with movies I haven't seen yet, there was no way to tell how good this movie was before I started watching it.  Once I started watching it, it was quickly obvious how bad it was.  All the actors were old, and bad at their jobs.  The dialogue was pretty awful.  About the only things I did like about this movie was the Halloween-ish atmosphere, and the one scene where there was an actual honest-to-goodness field of growing pumpkins, which is something you always see around Halloween, but I don't think I've ever seen in a horror movie before.  It wasn't anything special, but it was still cool to see, at least for me.  The rest of the movie was pretty awful, but if you don't want to take my word for it, there's always Vudu.

I usually give a review of the fall series premieres, but this fall has been pretty crappy, as far as I can tell.  About the only series that looked promising was Evil, on thursday nights, but the first episode didn't look very good.  Maybe it'll get better, but I doubt it.  With all the online movie places nowadays, maybe all the good series are ending up there?  Meh, who knows.  That's all for tonight!  Time for more horror movies!  :-D

October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon 2019 Begins!

You know all those clever plans that you have, and you think, oh, I'll have plenty of time to get this done before that hapens, and then something else happens, and you get all caught up in that, and then, before you know it, the other thing has happened and you've run out of time?  Well, it wasn't like I didn't know OHMRAT was coming, right?  So I started watching horror flicks last night, thinking, "Okay, I should have plenty of time to find something new and review it for the blog."  So today I get up, started watching a movie I had DVR'd, and then... POOF!  Shit happens and it's like 30 minutes before midnight on October 1st and I still haven't written a blog post for the day!  I know, I had ONE JOB, and I fucked it up!  :-(  So, let's open OHMRAT 2019 with Hocus Pocus, which I just watched with my mom, because she's like 1,000 years old and she loves Bette Midler.

Hocus Pocus (1993) starts off as a classic fish-out-of-water story, and ends with a halloween twist.  This high-school kid named Max moves with his family from California to some New England town where the three Sanderson Sisters (deceased witches and local legends, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy) form the core of the local halloween folklore in the area.  Max is trying to hook up with the local high-school beauty, but he's hampered in his efforts by his tag-along little sister (played by a young Thora Birch).  So Halloween night comes along and of course, Max gets stuck babysitting for the evening.  So he takes little sis out trick or treating, runs into miss-high-school beauty, and accidentally lights a black flame candle that awakens the three sanderson sisters after 300 years and unleashes them on the town for Halloween night!  Oh, man, if I had a dollar for every time that has happened to me, I'd be...  uh...  very poor.

Hocus Pocus is a Halloween classic at this point, and despite the fact that it's more aimed at kids than adults, you can't really get through the holiday season without running across it at least once or twice.  I caught it on Freeform tonight, which is doing their 31 days of horror again (along with every other decent channel out there, come on people get with the program, it's Halloween horror month, ffs), so you can probably watch it there if you want to.  There's a couple musical numbers (not my favorite thing in a movie but the tunes are catchy), and the veteran actors do a fair job of making things creepy, in addition to the overall feel of the chaos and hijinks and tomfoolery that goes on most halloween nights.  Special effects are okay for the time, but honestly, this is just one of those decent, entertaining, mildly-atmospheric Halloween movies you watch just to pass a few hours, and it certainly passes the re-watchability test.  It's been around since 1993 and it's not going away, so if you haven't seen it yet, just surrender to the Freeform-Borg Overlords and go watch it.  Resistance is futile.

That's all for tonight, and I actually want to post this before midnight, so hopefully I will get my shit together by tomorrow and do a better job then!  Ah, who am I kidding?  Anyone who's been following my blog knows I'm a completely out-of-control dumpster fire that stinks like flaming cabbage, and you guys just come here to watch and laugh.  Strangely, I'm okay with that.  See you tomorrow, assuming I don't fall down a flight of stairs and break something.

Throwback Thursday - Down/Shaft (2001)

It's almost that time of year again!  October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon is just around the corner!  I can tell you guys are salivating all over your lobster bibs for my reviews on new movies!  Well, we don't have a new movie this week.  In honor of throwback thursday, I'm reviewing something only about 18 years old, which is probably longer than most people on the internet have been alive.

Down (aka The Shaft, 2001) is about a possessed elevator.  It's one of only two horror movies I know of that elevators are killing people.  The other one is Devil (2010, bokeem woodbine, matt craven), which is also pretty decent, and I've reviewed it before.  The Shaft stars James Marshall and Eric Thal as a pair of elevator repairmen who are called to repair an elevator that got stuck and caused a bunch of pregnant women to give birth all at once.  They can't find anything wrong with it.  The next day, a blind man apparently commits suicide in it, taking his dog with him.  A guard loses his head in the doors, and that's only the beginning.  Can the heroic elevator repairmen find out what's causing all these horrific accidents, before more lives are lost?

This movie wasn't the best killer elevator movie I have ever seen, and since it's a short list, I guess this is acually the worst killer-elevator movie I have ever seen. Still a good watch, though, even the second or third time around.  Interesting actors to watch for are Ron Perlman and Michael Ironside as the evil experts behind the elevator accidents, and Dan Hedaya and Edward Herrman are supporting cast as owners of the building where the elevator is located.  Naomi Watts plays the "intrepid reporter" role, and apparently doesn't believe in wearing a bra on cold movie sets.  The ratings warned me of nudity in here somewhere, but I didn't recall seeing any at all.  The dialogue and effects are so-so, but the story is relatively coherent, and the deaths escalate pretty quickly.  I caught this movie on Showtime Beyond, but there are probably other places you can find it.

In other news, summer's over and the leaves are starting to change color, and that means it's time for OHMRAT!  I hope everyone joins me for "October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon" next month.  It starts next week tuesday!  I will try and review a horror movie every night for a single month, that's 31 horror movies and 31 reviews posted in october, 1 per day!  this year, I'm going to try and review only horror movies I haven't seen yet, but that doesn't always work out.  Frankly, I love watching horror movies, so that's the easy part, but managing to fit 31 horror movies into 31 days can sometimes be a problem.  Sometimes it'll be late in the day and despite my best efforts, all the more-recent horror movies turn out to be utter shit, and I can't even finish watching them.  In those cases, I have to resort to the usual favorites, which are often played on regular TV in honor of Halloween.  Can I do 31 days of horror movies again, same as I have been doing for the last ten years?  :-o  Only time will tell!

See you guys next week!  :-)

Stranger Things 3, Jessica Jones 3, Spider-Verse, RotLD

It's been a busy summer, and I been meaning to post a review for a long time, so you guys are getting a bunch at once.  I'm going to keep it short, since it's a sunny day, and I am going to work on my tan as soon as I finish up here.  :-)

Let's take Jessica Jones (season 3) first.  In the Final Season of jessica Jones (available on netflix, of course), Jessica takes on a normal, every-day, human serial killer.  I would have thought super villains would be more her speed, but I guess someone has to take care of the serial killers that manage to escape justice, amirite?  Right.  Along the way, Jessica reconnects with her foster mom and sister, and there's even some side-story involving that lawyer-friend of hers.

I wasn't really thrilled with the third season of Jessica Jones.  I like Jessica Jones as a character, and dealing with a serial killer is a bit different than usual.  I also suppose they had to try to finish up with a bang, since it was the last season, but it sort of ended with a whimper instead of a bang.  I won't say the whole season was bad, since some of the things the characters went through was actually kind of cool, and I liked the dynamics of the character interaction.  Minor spoilers, I also liked the symbolic way Jessica cleaned out her detective office, and handed over the keys, to give people one last look at the office she's lived in for the past 3 seasons.  It's like giving Trekkies one last look at the Enterprise before they blow it up (again, or maybe for the last time, whenever that happens).  I didn't like the way the series ended, honestly.  More minor spoilers, I was never a fan of that purple mind-controller guy's (I'm honestly too lazy to look up his name right now, it's Sunday morning ffs) voice in Jessica's head, not even as residue of the trauma she suffered after dealing with him.  I would much have preferred seeing Jessica soaking up some sun on a beach somewhere at the end of this season, in a bikini instead of her usual jeans and leather jacket combo, retiring her uniform as well as her career as a Private Detective/superhero.  I think she finally achieved superhero status in her final season, and deserved some much-needed relaxation time.  Then again, maybe that doesn't fit her character.  All in all, I thought the final season could have used a bit more Jessica, and less of everyone else.

Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse (2018) was basically a Spider-Beings cross-over event in cartoon form.  There's Spider-Girl, Spider-Man, Spider-Pig, some sort of Noir 40's detective dark knight Spider-Man Bat-Man mixup, and some futuristic anime Spider-bot thing all tossed into the mix.  They are all needed to help stop Kingpin and some alternate-universe-version of Dr. Octopus from their dastardly plan to remake reality.

First, let me preface this by saying, I love cartoons.  I grew up on Spider-Man movies in the 70's (yes, there WERE spider man movies way back in the 70s, several of them), and spider-man cartoons in the 80s.  I suppose I get that people are getting tired of the old Superheroes at this point, since most of them have been around since 1940 or so, and they want to re-invent the hero's alter-egos to make them seem fresh to the newer generations, but honestly, do you have to take everything away from a hero and remake him or her completely, just to suck in young folks?  Remember your audience, nerds who grew up on comic books, or at least take a cue from NCIS, which hasn't changed it's format in like 20 years ffs.  Show us some stability in these troubled times.  Show me spider man dealing with some freakin bank robbers, ffs.  I'd LIKE some simple, character-driven stories that DON'T involve saving the entire universe for a goddamned change.  It doesn't ALWAYS have to be bigger and more explosive than the last episode, for it to be enjoyable.  But, I rant.  Moving on.

I liked into the Spider-Verse.  Pretty sure it's also on Netflix.  Funny side-note, and minor spoiler, there's a part where the young Spider-man (spider-boy?) purposely gets a zero on a true-false test to try and get kicked out of the fancy new school he was in, because he liked his old school better.  I did the same thing in high school to get out of a business class my guidance counselor wouldn't let me just drop.  Awesome stuff!  Taken right out of my own life.  Now if only I could turn invisible, that would be awesome.  Swinging from tall buildings and fighting super-villians, maybe not so much.  I'm scared of heights, and a bit of a coward. :-D

Stranger Things season 3!  In this season, a rogue team of Russians manage to crack open the portal to the other place, and something sneaks through the crack to prey on the children of Hawkins.  Can Eleven and Mike patch up their lover's quarrel before all Hell breaks loose?  Or will Will the Wise have to step in and lay down the smackething?  Will the heroes get time to play D&D again before the Summer ends?  Will Dustin ever get a girlfriend?  Check Netflix and find out!

This season of Stranger Things only has eight episodes, so it went a lot faster.  There wasn't as much character development, but it was more than enough to move the story right along.  I really enjoy how Stranger things does their monsters.  As a lifelong horror-movie / monster movie fan, I gotta say, their critters are very creative.   Sure, maybe they rely on CGI a bit too much, and don't do things old-school (with real monsters!  Come on, monster actors for monster parts!  Fair's fair!), but at least they're giving it the old college try!  Cheerio!

I've also recently found out that Season 4 of Stranger Things will be the last, so, I guess we'll probably see that drop next fall, if past premiere dates are any indication.  This season was fast-paced and fun to watch, and didn't drag on like the previous seasons, but it also felt a little rushed at times.  Hopefully they've found their groove now, and will just settle in and give us a decent enough fourth season to cap off the series.  I'm sure the young stars probably want to move on to other roles.

Oh, speaking of other roles, minor side-bar, I just read an article that the next james Bond is going to be a black woman!  I'm thrilled!  I've been saying they need to make Bond a woman for years now.  I don't recall the actress's name (mostly because I'd never heard of her before), but it's definitely a good move.  Now all they need to do is make her either bisexual or a lesbian, and they won't have to change the default script at all!  It's always (1) Someone dies (2) Bond is called in (3) Bond seduces some secretary in an evil organization and gets info (4) bad guys find out and kill secretary (5) bond destroys evil organization because he wasn't done boning the "bond girl."  I've seen it happen a dozen times already, and it just keeps getting better, every time I see it!  Of course, boning is probably not the right word in a girl-on-girl situation.  Sorry, I will try to update my archaic slang for next time.

Now, what's ROTLD, you ask?  Well, it's Return of the Living Dead (1985), of course!  I try to watch this movie every July, mostly because the events portrayed in the movie (which are ABSOLUTELY TRUE according to the blurb at the beginning, and absolutely fictitious in the credits at the end) supposedly happen on July 3rd, 1984.  That's 35 years ago, this month!  I actually was home July 3rd this year (I'm usually not), so I got the chance to re-watch this movie on the 35th anniversary of the supposedly ABSOLUTELY TRUE events portrayed therin!  You know, it's funny, I don't recall louisville Kentucky being destroyed by a nuclear morter back in 1984.  Hmmm.  Probably just a load of malarkey, then.

Return of the Living Dead is the awesomest zombie movie of all time.  Of All Time, you ask?  OF ALL TIME, I say!  I'm not even going to go into how the plot just ZIPS right along, and how there's humor and awesome character actors in every damn scene.  I'm not going to tell you how hot Linnea Quigley is in this movie, dancing naked on a stone sarcophagus.  No, I'm just going to say two words.  FAST ZOMBIES.  Yep, this is the first movie (that I know of, anyways) where zombies aren't stupid, staggering lumps of flesh that you can easily outrun.  The zombies in this movie are fast, smart, and they remember everything that they knew in life.  And shooting them in the head doesn't do jack shit.  Why?  Because they're already dead!  Duh!  This movie was an instant cult classic, and good enough to spawn several sequels right away.  Believe it or not, they were still making more sequels, a few years back.

Of course, if you want to see Return of the Living Dead, it's not on netflix.  I'm not sure where I saw it, but I watched it on July 3rd, 35 years to the day after the fictitious events in the movie!  In fact, it might have even been right at the exact same time, too!  Not that any of that makes any difference.  It's just a good movie.  I think I saw it at one of those free-to-watch movie places online.  I also have it on DVD, but I'm not sure if my DVD player still works.  I got it like 15 years ago, and I never used it.  Hmmm.  Might be time to plug that sucker in and see if it works.

Okay, you folks are all caught up on what I've been watching, so enjoy the rest of the summer!  Hopefully you'll hear from me before October. :-D