Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Inferno (1980) dir Dario Argento


Preface: As I continue to slowly grind through Italian giallo/horror master Dario Argento's body of work, I've come to his semi-sequel to Suspiria. I've heard good things about this one, so let's get witchy already.

1:32: Main chick is reading about the Three Mothers. They destroyed the first one in Suspiria back in ol' Italy, and apparently the second one is in New York. Those Ellis Island employees must have been asleep at the wheel when they let HER in the country, am I right?!?! Huh?!?
2:20: Oh hey, music by Keith Emerson from 70s supergroup Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I have a feeling Moog keyboards will be involved
4:00: I was right!
5:04: It's been years since I saw Suspiria, but I take it the main character is the sister of the bro from that one and she's trying to figure out his crazy ramblings about witches
6:00: Ah, sagely old wise dude. Yes, give her advise. Whoa, not too much! Juuuuust enough to move the plot along. There we go, perfect
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP, DUH!

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Monster Squad (1987) dir. Fred Dekker


As I've mentioned before, my girlfriend is not a fan of horror films. They genuinely freak her out. So as I continue my eternal efforts to slowly expand her genre film appreciation, I started her off this October with the softest of all soft and cushy "scary" movies, The Monster Squad.

This movie was a longtime VHS-only gem. A half-remembered dream from an 80s child's nostalgic memories. I envy all who grew up with this movie and had "Wolfman has nards!" as a part of their vernacular. I didn't see it until they finally released on DVD a few years ago, but I love it all the same. It takes the classic Universal monsters Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Creature From The Black Lagoon and puts them in 80s suburbia, hatching a plot to take over the world with only a ragtag club of kids to stop them. That is pure cinema gold, my friends.

I think it's fantastic that Fred Dekker, a truly talented director, took the time to make a kids horror movie that isn't stupid and doesn't pander just to kids, make it snappy and funny and inject it with some real heart and emotion. It's just an overall great flick that you can show to anyone at any given age and they'll probably dig it.

One thing I love about Dekker is how in both Night of The Creeps (another all-time favorite) and in this flick, all the one-liners are absolute show-stoppers. Dekker clearly knows the lasting power of catchphrases and quotes and it's like someone pulls the needle off a record before each one....shit just freezes for an instant before the goods get delivered. So cheesy, but damn it feels so good.


Also, there's lots of top-notch makeup and creature effects and Tom Noonan is particularly great as Frankenstein.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Ghoulies II (1988) dir. Albert Brand

Ha! More toilet humor! Brilliant!

Preface: Apparently the entirety of the Ghoulies movies are available on YouTube, which is currently far more accessible than their respective DVDs or VHS! Let's fucking party!

2:00: Carnies and Ghoulies, a match made in hell!
5:00: Already more critter action than the first one, all right
8:15: Holy fucking claymation!
9:30: What is with these movies and featuring dwarfs?!?!
11:30: Ghoulies bein' Ghoulies!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Maniac (1980) dir William Lustig

Preface: I'm kinda embarrassed that I haven't seen this yet as it's wildly regarded as a classic trashy slasher from the early 80s, a golden era for this particular subgenre. I mean, look at that fucking cover art! Sweet Jesus! Let's get grimy!

2:32: Heavy breathing, POV of the killer and 2 throat slashings all within first 2 minutes. Here we go!
3:00: Oh shit, it was just a dream!
3:30: Oh god, this guy is weird. He's got a shrine to his dead mom among other weird shit in his room.
6:31: Ah, yes, 1980s New York. Times Square. If there's one place I could time travel to and then IMMEDIATELY LEAVE, it would be here.
7:18: Outlook for these hookers: Not fucking good
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP, DUH!

La Horde (2009) dir. Yannick Dahan, Benjamin Rocher



Editor's note: For the rest of this month's flicks, I'm going to liveblog them as opposed to writing reviews after the fact. Fair warning, this might suck even worse!

Preface: so the last 5 years or so of horror flicks have pretty much been dominated by the French as far as quality goes. I remember seeing a trailer for this flick, which almost certainly contains zombies, and thought it looked pretty decent. Let 'er rip, Netflix!

3:44: AW CRAP SUBTITLES!?!?! Just kidding, subtitles are cool. Makes me feel like an intellectual.
5:00: Some strange robbery plot is afoot, details murky...
6:27: Teehee, French profanity!
7:00: Oh jesus, that is some bad shaky cam action. This is not promising
11:50: OH NO THE ROBBERY IS GOING HORRIBLY WRONG!!!
16:23: Huh, the robber crew are actually crooked cops. Must have missed that detail
17:00: Rut roh, sounds like a zombie apocalypse is brewing down the street...gunshots, sirens, screeching tires...
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER JUMP, DUH!

Ghoulies (1985) dir. Luca Bercovici

HA! Get it? By "the end" they mean your butt! HA!

The poster art for Ghoulies terrified me as a child. The thought of a lil' green creature dude bursting out of a toilet while I might be sitting on it was pretty much the scariest thing imaginable to me for some reason. I mean, come on, that would really suck, right? You're sitting there, having a peaceful moment to yourself in the sacred silence of the bathroom and then BAM, some lil' dickhead gremlin pops up and bites your ass, or worse. Anyways, had I actually watched the movie back then I would have really saved myself a lot of troubling thoughts. There's only one lil' throwaway shot of a Ghoulie dude poppin' out of a toilet like a jack in the box. No one is even sitting on it at the time! Crisis averted!

Anyways, in the 80s, the horror movie subgenre of lil' creepers became popular. They were usually more cheeky and funny than scary, because I mean they're just lil' gross looking puppets doing stupid shit. Which, of course, totally rules.

So I was excited to finally start the Ghoulies quadrilogy after hearing bad to sorta good to utterly hilarious things about them. And to face my fears of that damn poster art!

Now let's be straight here: this first Ghoulies movie just kind of sucks. You know when you see a horror movie's runtime and it's under an hour and 20 minutes and you're like, "Sweet! Quick and dirty, let's do this." Then you watch it and you're surprised to notice that despite it's short runtime, nothing fucking happens for lenghty portions of the movie and it just drags and drags until something kinda crazy happens at the end? This is one of those flicks. It was the director's first film and boy, does it show.

There's this whole satanic cult angle to Ghoulies which I did not see coming. There are dudes with glowing green eyes (similar to the glowing blue eyes in Dune! And even crappier looking!), there's a duo of dwarf henchpeople that come out of effin' nowhere, there's a hilarious 80s party sequence with some seriously regrettable "breakdancing," and oh yeah, a handful of creepy critter shots sprinkled throughout the movie. The Ghoulies are barely in this one! They get summoned through the satanic bro, then they just kinda kick back and chill and cause some minor havoc towards the end of the movie. Then there's a HILARIOUS and inexplictably Star Wars-inspired showdown between the OG Satanic bro and the mute groundskeeper/secretly Obi-Wan Kenobi character who resembles the Grandpa from Troll 2. You simply can't make this shit up.

Obviously I came into this with my hopes set a bit too high for this sort of movie, but I'm told there is much more creature action in the sequels so I'm excited to see those, especially Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College (actual title!) Hopefully they ditch the satanic angle and just focus more on Ghoulies bein' Ghoulies.

The Thing (2011) dir. Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.

Haha, you shoot a flamethrower like a girl! Boooo!!

First of all, fuck me for writing this post where I got way too excited, albeit cautiously, about the prospects of this flick. This was a horrible idea from the start and execution was even worse.

Secondly, I've written here before about how I try really hard not to get upset about remakes/reboots, etc because it's ultimately futile and a waste of energy. Hollywood doesn't care what us nerds think or hold sacred. But, god fucking dammit, this movie bothers me. I can't help it. I just love The Thing (1982) so god damn much that I can't help but be offended by this. Here are several reasons why:

-For all the prequel hype the makers drummed up, this is more or less a remake of Carpenter's film. Every signature scene from '82 from burning the remains of the alien outside with everyone standing around it to doing a test to see who's human and who's not is recreated hastily here. Just a total lack of creativity.

-There is ZERO, I mean fucking ZERO tension or suspense. Nor is there any real sense of claustrophobia or bleakness. It has a weak-ass opening scene where some Norwegian mouthbreathers fall into a crevasse and find the alien spacecraft, they do a what I'll generously call a "homage" to the opening title shot of the '82 movie, and then we LEAVE ANTARCTICA (the FUCK?!?!) to get introduced to effin' Ramona Flowers, expert paleontologist of dead animals or some stupid shit. Fucking great guys, let's just stumble into the movie all ass-backwards and forget any sense of dread and mystery the intro to the '82 film had.

-The CG, oh sweet merciful christ, the CG. There were some hopes early on for this movie to have a strong presence of practical effects similar to Rob Bottin's legendary and still disturbing work from the '82 flick. NOPE. The first time the alien bursts out of a dude in this one, it looks like a mixture of something out of a Aphex Twin video and Resident Evil 4. Just really, really cheesy and unimpressive.

-Oh yeah, they decided to fuck with some of the logic behind the alien's abilities. In '82, the lil' bugger could not replicate any non-organic material, with clothing being a big issue. Now, in the 2011 PREQUEL to that movie, clothing is no sweat for it, but stuff like fillings and earrings, etc...now THAT'S the big red flag for everyone. Okie dokie.

-They also altered the alien's behavior. Not only is it way more aggressive in revealing itself to it's victims, but it turns out it just likes to stomp around and chase people down like it's a god damn retard tyrannosaur and not a stealthy, shapeshifting trickster.

-The last third of the moving made me want to throw a brick through the screen. Just unforgivable. We're talking chasing the alien back to the spaceship, having a budget bin version of an already budget bin Alien Vs. Predator-like throwdown on the ship, more TERRIBLE CG including the ship's super tight Windows 95 screensaver navigation system(?!?), a shitty attempt at a "dark" ending and then a lil' kicker over the end credits (which even uses the same same font/ennio morricone theme song from the '82 flick) where it slavishly links up the final events that lead to the beginning of the '82 movie yet pulls every punch possible.

If you're going to make a prequel, make a god damn prequel. Don't just steal shit from the first version and then piss all over it.

God fucking dammit, look at all that. A bunch of paragraphs filled with nerd rage. I'm so embarrassed! DON'T LOOK AT ME! *sobs*

The Hitcher (1986) dir. Robert Harmon


This movie kind of blows in that punch-pulling, middle-of-the-road thriller kind of way. It has a few great moments, but it also makes literally zero sense and requires you to suspend logic in ways you may have thought were previously impossible.

To sum things up, Rutger Hauer decides to terrorize poor lil' C. Thomas Howell (stay gold, Ponyboy!) all across the great state of Texas. During this spree of terror, the following things happen:

- Ponyboy brings this whole god damn mess upon himself by voluntarily picking up a hitch hiker. Whoopsadoodle!
- Rutger Hauer, channeling an insane mixture of David Hess, the Terminator, his character Roy Batty from Blade Runner and his own crazy Dutch self speaks almost entirely in non-sequiturs and riddles as he decides to single out Ponyboy to stalk, terrorize and generally make his life a complete hell.
- Ponyboy ditches Hauer several times throughout the movie and has many "PHEW THANK GOODNESS THAT'S OVER! I'LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN!" moments, only to have Hauer show up at perfectly opportune times to frame Ponyboy for various criminal acts and killings.
- During a high speed police pursuit, Hauer shoots down a police helicopter with several well placed shots from a simple handgun. Yep.
- The movie hints several times at the ol' WHAT IF THE HITCHER ISN'T REAL AND IT'S BEEN PONY BOY DOING THIS CRAZY SHIT THE WHOLE TIME WHOOOAAAAAAA!!!! angle, which is the only fucking way that this movie could work. This angle would have actually saved the movie, but the writers must have decided that was just wayyyyy too crazy and to go with the more realistic angle that involves shooting down helicopters with handguns and Hauer surviving multiple car crashes and leaping from the back of a moving bus through the windshield of the following truck. Yep, that makes way more sense. Totally.

The good thing is that this movie actually had a budget somehow and so there are several big ass explosions that look great and all the chase scenes are filmed well and include some pretty insane stunts. The directer clearly had a promising future, which is why he spent the last decade making Jesse Stone TV movies with Tom Selleck.

I had to see this because Hauer is one of my favorite actors and he is pretty awesome in this. Just totally batshit crazy and relentless. So there's that. Plus, they made a direct to video sequel with Jake effin Busy AND a shitty remake with fucking Boromir, so you just know it's worth your time.

Basket Case 2 (1990) dir. Frank Henenlotter

Editor's note: my output has been fucking dismal this October so I'm making up for it with longer and crappier reviews. Lucky you!


If you're a goon for filthy, trashy and gory horror movies, then you probably already know Mr. Henenlotter's name and hold him in high regard. Throughout his film making career, he's done nothing but deliver the goods in the form of low budget, darkly humorous horror gems full of practical special effects and general grossness.

Basket Case, Henenlotter's first feature, concerns this Duane fella who was born with a siamese twin in the form a giant, bulbous head thing with an arm attached to his side. Naturally, this lil' guy known as Belial is just kinda evil and is rage-blackout-pissed all the time. Just super aggro. He can't really talk, so he just screams all the time like Sam Kinison or something. But, he does have psychic link with his bro Duane, of course.

Somewhere along the line, Duane's parents decided to separate the twins. Apparently this was an unethical move because they had to find some sketchy ass doctors who were willing to check their Hippocratic Oath at the door. Duane ends up keeping his evil lil' discarded bro in a basket to hide from the outside world.

Fast forward a few years. Due to the aforementioned psychic link, the bros decide to go to the filthiest burg of them all, New York City in the early 1980s, in order to exact sweet revenge on the doctors who separated them. They do just that, which results in this iconic scene, and lots of other wacky hijinks ensue due to Duane's previously sheltered life getting a big ol' dose of big city reality. It's a great, great flick. Tons of gore and really crappy/awesome creature effects for Belial.

So this here sequel that I intended to write about 4 paragraphs ago, it was filmed 8 years later with same dude who played Duane yet the events of the film are meant to take place directly after the end of the first one. Love it!

Duane and Belial get taken in by a long lost aunt who, bless her kind heart, has devoted her life to sheltering the freakshows of the world. She quite literally has an attic full of freaks she has taken in from all around the world. I mean, who doesn't, right?

Despite this seeming like the perfect place for Duane and Belial to get their chill on, wacky hijinks ensue, freaks assemble to defend themselves from invasive tabloid reporters, Belial continues to be kinda evil despite finding love with a shy female head-arm-thingy simliar to himself named Eve (yes, there's a tender love scene) and it ends with Duane flipping out because he can't be normal in spite of himself and ends up re-attaching Belial to his side with a lil' DIY surgery.

Overall, not as gory as the first one, but all the awesome creature prosthetics are great and it's a generally zany and bizarre lil' flick. And of course, there's still Basket Case 3: The Progeny out there, waiting to be viewed.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

OCTOBER 2011 - TO WALK THE NIGHT...

You know the drill. It's god damn October. Watch horror movies and listen to Danzig. Time to party.

THE UNSEEN:

Ghoulies (all of them, finally)
Basket Case 2
Brain Damage
Swamp Thing
Candyman
The Hitcher
Rabid
Shivers
Pumpkinhead
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
The Stepfather (1986)
Monsters
Maniac
Dead and Buried
Deep Red
Black Death
Santa Sangre
The Horde
I Saw The Devil

Gonna make a few trips to Scarecrow Video to see what other jams I can find. Love that place.

Definitely going to catch the probably crappy Thing prequel in theaters and maybe Melancholia if it hits theaters here this month.

Crappy reviews to follow. Happy October, goons.