Ow My Mother Lovin' Freakin' Eyes

I guess my husband didn't think I had a long enough list of movies to tear apart - umm I mean review - so somewhere he found this list of horror/sci fi/fantasy movies that came in different categories, such as best movies you've never seen, movies with the worst endings, worst movies ever made, etc. I went through the list and woof, it's got some stinkers all right - but also some that weren't so bad and some I really liked. In other words, I plan to hunt down and watch the ones on this list and here they are. If I've already seen them, there will be a big 'X' beside the title. This is your only warning:

• Ghosts Of Mars
• Solaris
• Beowulf
• Thirst
• Extract
• 9                                                                      X
• Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
• The Box
• Hamlet 2
• Knights Of Badassdom
• Kob
• Phenomena aka Creepers
• Audition                                                          X
• In The Mouth Of Madness                                  X
• Braindead aka Dead Alive                                X
• Re-Animator                                                   X
• Peeping Tom
• House (Hausu)
• Psycho II                                                          X
• Suspiria                                                           X
• From Beyond
• The Beyond
• Zombie Flesh Eaters
• Ants
• The Mist                                                          X
• The Host                                                         X
• Howing III: The Marsupials
• [REC]
• The Descent                                                    X
• Ju-Don
• Dumplings
• Inland Empire
• Trick 'R' Treat                                                X
• Martyrs
• Deadgirl                                                         X
• 28 Days Later                                                 X
• They Live                                                       X

Looks like I need that new set of glasses sooner than I thought... Be afraid, be very, very afraid (but not enough not to read the reviews)...

Turn Off Your Brain And Have A Little Fun


Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)

Sometimes you just have to let go, sit back, take a mental margarita and relax. At the beginning of the 90's I discovered this film (which flopped at the box office) purely by accident and became addicted. I had (and still have a lot of) this movie memorized. It wasn't smart, it wasn't particularly good as far as plot or special effects or anything like that goes, it was just... fun. I remember we had our spanking new computer with this cool new program called Windows on it. With a $9 microphone I was making sound files and attaching them to all the computer functions (which, if you use it enough can be quite annoying). Most of my sound files came from this movie. I still quote it from time to time.


It is a brainless musical comedy about three aliens, blue, red and yellow, who crash land on Earth into a swimming pool belonging to Valerie (Geena Davis who plays a great brainless beautician). After determining they're not there to hurt her she introduces them to earth life, food and culture. They immediately check things out, and are able to mimic exact sounds they hear. But she is engaged to Ted (Charles Rocket) whom she threw out because he planned to cheat on her so she's conflicted (she's from The Valley and they make a big deal that all Valley girls are really, really dumb). Because of this she trashes his stuff including his spanking new Commodore computer (don't laugh I had one of those). She works with equally shallow Candy (Julie Brown, who co-wrote and co-produced this movie) famous for her funny-as-hell songs such as The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg . When she shows Candy the aliens, Candy knows they need a lot of help 'Lost in space with no conditioner, huh?'

When the aliens emerge from her 'makeover' we have a young and handsome Wiploc (Jim Carrey), Zeebo (Damon Wayans) who says in Candy's voice as he emerges 'Oh my God, he's like totally black!', and Mac (Jeff Goldblum, who was married to Geena at the time). Valerie wants to go home, but everybody else wants to party and we have some funny scenes of them goofing it up in a nightclub. Try to think of this movie as a musical cartoon - it's not supposed to be accurate or even logical. Have another mental margarita.

When Ted discovers the aliens at his house (she tells them they're a rock band) he storms out saying the wedding's off. Desolate she goes to her room... Mac follows. We get a silly and romantic at the same time scene as the two of them discover 'Earth Girls Are Easy'.

But the guys need to get their ship out of the pool so she hires Woody (funny bit by Michael McKean) a fried surfer dude to drain it. He believes the ship is a car from 'Finland'. It's ready to go, but Woody takes Zeebo and Wiploc to the beach where we get a hilarious rendering of 'Cause I'm A Blond', my favorite Julie Brown song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rNfZxgkH7k since spelling it B-L-O-N-D is the masculine spelling (according to Wiki it's one of the few English words with a masculine and feminine spelling) and it includes the classic line, 'Cause I'm a blond, B - L - I don't know'. That's why you see the movie, for the giggles. Here are some samples of my favorite lines (besides having a mental margarita):


Valarie: Oh, low-cal Pop Tarts. They're natural.

Valerie: Finland is the capital of Norway.

Zeebo: My panty shields keep me fresh all day.

Valerie: Men - give them enough rope and they'll dig their own grave.




So if you want to wash those bad movies right out of your head for about 100 minutes, stare at this and you'll find all those troublesome images of haunted asylums and creepy evil little kids drain out of your mind...

Old Movies Revisited Just For The Fun Of It

Dreamscape (1984)

I've had such incredibly bad luck picking out movies lately that I desperately wanted something GOOD. I faintly remembered seeing this movie when it came out, and that I had liked it (had a crush on Dennis Quaid, a man who'll look handsome in his 90's no doubt) and it was about dreams which have always fascinated me. If you've ever had an experience with lucid dreaming (being in a dream and knowing that you are and controlling what you do) you know what a cool experience that can be. I've had the flying dreams, the special powers dreams, tons of not-so-good dreams, but when you get that lucid one, it is quite a rush. I remember one where I was at a county fair and knew it was a dream so I focused on looking at every person I passed. I saw detailed faces, clothes, hair, everything - and didn't know a single one of them. Or standing on a peak in the Columbia River Gorge, seeing the mountains and hills and river turn different colors. Massively cool. So this movie appealed to me then and still does now. And it's a good one. For an 80's movie the special effects aren't too hokey, the morphing scenes are pretty good for no CGI, the story is good and the characters are interesting. My only complaint? Why the hell did they make the movie poster look like Raiders Of The Lost Ark (the sequel, which also starred Kate Capshaw AND also premiered in 1984)? The only DUH is the poster. Oh well.

Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) has been a psychic prodigy all his life, but at 19 got tired of the wires and the tests and skipped out, making a pretty good living on betting (horses, sports, etc.) since he 'knows' who's going to win. But the institute he ran from needs him - they're developing a new project having to do with, not psychic ability, but lucid dreams where you can actually participate and change other people's dreams. Supposedly this was set up to help people with crippling nightmares. Dr. Paul (Max von Sydow) was his mentor when he was young and runs this project now with scientist Jane (Kate Capshaw the future Mrs. Steven Spielberg). They use a sort of mental hook-up to connect the dreamer with the psychic so he can 'enter' that person's dream. The other prodigy is a man named Tommy (David Patrick Kelley), a real piece of work, who acts sinister from the start.

Alex first practices his technique on minor dream problems - fear of infidelity, fear of falling, etc. He then wants to tackle the problem of a young child with a massive monster that is messing him up. Another psychic who attempted this had to be institutionalized. He goes for it, and we have a pretty cool monster movie dream sequence better than most full-length horror movies. He helps the kid vanquish his fear - a massive snake-headed monster and the kid wakes, incredibly relieved that it is now gone. But Alex was really messed up by it. He draws a picture of it, which Tommy sees, and files away for future reference.

Now we have the President (the ever lovable late Eddie Albert) who is getting sick from having increasingly horrible nightmares about him causing a nuclear holocaust (stock footage but still cool). He decides that because of them, he's going to have a disarmament agreement with the Russians (Cold War time, remember?). Well a high powered government agent Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) can't have that. Under the pretense of 'helping' the president with his problem, he gets him into the institute - for the sole purpose of having Tommy, who is a psychopath who murdered his own father, enter the President's dream and 'assassinate' him. Tommy has already killed another person in their dream so they know the 'wives tale' that if you die in your dream you die in real life. Now reality dictates that this cannot possibly be proven - if you're dead who's going to know if a dream did it? And if you're thinking this is ripping off Nightmare On Elm Street - it actually was released two months before NOES came out.

Alex discovers the plot so needs to die. Bob has already murdered Dr. Paul and Alex is next so we have some chase scenes, they fit a love scene between Alex and Jane in there somewhere (just a dream of course) and finally we get down to the main purpose of this study - the President. By this time both Tommy and Alex can enter a person's dream without the hardware, so both race to get into the President's dream. Alex finds him first, again in his holocaust dream, and assures the President that he did not cause a tragedy, it is just a dream. Then Tommy shows up and, being longer at the game, proceeds to control the dream and everything in it (including razors sprouting from his fingers but again - two months before NOES). 

We get a great zombie sequence (they're supposed to be deformed by radiation but I say zombies so there) where the streetcar they're riding in becomes full of them. Tommy, himself transformed into a zombie tells them it's the President's fault and they attack. Alex gets him off the train, but Tommy has an extra trick - he knows what scares Alex. And we get the big snake headed man once again. So they're chased through some nasty post-nuclear scenes (Eddie had to do a lot of physical stuff in this movie for a guy his age) and finally they come to a dead end. Alex has to 'face his fear'. So he has an idea, since Tommy himself told him they could do anything in a dream - he turns into Tommy's father, asking him 'Why did you kill me?' which deflates Tommy pretty quickly. While he's distracted the President, a pipe in hand, stabs him in the back and he dies - both in the dream and in bed.

Bob knows he's screwed now. The President tells him to stay away from him - but Bob knows he'll never get people to believe Bob tried to kill him in a dream. Alex tells the President that Bob will kill him and is promised protection - but says he thinks he can handle it himself. We then see Bob walking down a hall and entering an elevator - but Alex is there. And turns into his own version of a nasty monster. In Bob's house, his wife attempts to wake him, but he's dead, his eyes wide open in fright.

Alex and Jane decide to take a train trip to unwind (that's where their dream love sequence was). As the train gets underway, the ticket conductor checks their tickets - he's the same guy both saw in Jane's dream. Silly but okay. 

I Should Be A Freaking Millionaire




Emergo aka Apartment 143 (2011)

Okay my children I have a very big announcement to make. I have been wasting my talents here. No, I do not think I'm special or particularly gifted, it's just that it's so damn easy to churn out a piece of crap, especially if it's a hand-held found-footage piece designed to bore you for an hour and 25 minutes then provide 5 minutes of 'What was that?' moments. I figure I'm missing out on the big bucks little idiots are shelling out to watch this stuff (even more if it's made in 3D). I figure all I need is a sheet of paper with, say, 10 or 12 bullet points on it, with room to write the basic garbage, change a name here or there, put in a really nasty CGI or two, splash some blood around and tada! I'm not kidding, I could do it. I did it for this movie. I shit you not kids, I wrote most of my review before seeing the movie, only having to change a few minor things, but the plot, progression and ending I got exactly right. And I am NOT psychic. Or exceptionally smart. I'm just a movie reviewer who has realized that it isn't originality and imagination that makes movies, it's just plain good ole' marketing - put together what the kiddies want to see and collect my check. Easy.

The Last Exorcist, Paranormal Activity 1 through 1000, Grave Encounters, Episode 50 - I hate to tell you people but if you've paid to see more than one of these you have been seriously ripped off. Because each is a carbon of the other, with a few details changed here and there and a whole lot of nothing to pad it with. This is nothing different. In fact it definitely feels a lot more cheaply made. A parapsychologist and his two cronies are hired by this guy to find out why his life is crap. That's basically all of them, right? Whether apartment, insane asylum, graveyard, house, it's all about people with crappy lives trying to find something else to blame it on. The man's wife died in a car accident, his teenage daughter hates him, and his young son is growing distant. Hmm, sounds perfectly normal to me. 

Oh, but after the wife died, strange things happened at their house... spooooky things (get out the Scooby snacks, we're gonna need 'em). They move to a crappy apartment and damn it all, the spooooky things follow them - and they're getting worse. So out comes the tons of equipment that has no clear purpose except to the 'experts', the endless scenes of cameras and other crap being put up all over the apartment (the landlord's gonna love all the new holes in the walls), and boring interviews of the family as they get a background of the place. YAWN. This was even worse than usual, because the 'found footage' is often grainy, out of focus, or just plain ole' rotten quality (I found myself several times wiping at my screen thinking it was my stuff - nope, the film sucked.).

So as with every story it starts with a door opening, a breeze from nowhere, moving dishes, you know, elementary boogeyman stuff. It upgrades to the thumping and noises in  the walls and ceiling. Oh yeah, and the split second view of some female figure. YAWN. Sorry about that. It's just my review was almost completely written by this time and the movie wasn't even 1/3 done. There are so many - I don't know if you'd call them continuity errors or just plain laziness - incompleted conversations, scenes that seemed thrown in for no reason, someone would start to explain something then... nothing. I vote for lazy. Since the filmmaker already has taken your money, he doesn't have to escalate things in decent time, so prepare for a lot of waiting (hmm, sounds an awful lot like PA). 

FINALLY things start to move - and by move I mean destroy themselves - they're not satisfied with throwing a chair across the room, ALL the furniture is tossed about like kindling, people are thrown like rag dolls, and the teenage daughter (played by a 21 y/o actress who looked every year of it) who's been an uber bitch through the whole thing now goes into the 'I'm possessed' routine, complete with white eyes, saying there's 'many' with her (isn't there always) and hints at some family secrets.

Oh this family wasn't so normal after all. In fact, the nice, loving mommy was also an uber bitch, just that she was old enough to drink, whore around, not take her meds, and be 'wicked' by 'lying in her bed for days without bathing'. Umm, I think that's called mentally ill folks. I had it called a good 20 minutes before the supposed 'expert' tells the man his wife was probably schizo and now so is his daughter - her angst and teenage hormones expressing themselves in 'psychic rage'. That's right - teenage girls are wicked, wicked creatures capable of massive damage. Sheesh. So anyway the mom died by crashing her car looking for her family who'd fled from her 'wickedness' and the teenager hates daddy for that. YAWN. After an obligatory 'look the girl can float' scene, the smug 'professional' concludes that with treatment she will be okay and the family can relax. This guy was a real piece of work, he spouted so much garbage that he then turned around and contradicted himself on, you really tuned him out quick. One sentence he assures the father his apartment is not haunted because 'there is nothing supernatural because nature can't transcend itself'. Okay. But the next sentence he talks of ghosts, poltergeists, spiritual energies that stick around... in other words, nature transcending itself, right? DUH.

So, self-satisfied and smug with a job well done, we see the now completely trashed apartment, and the equipment all too slowly being taken down and shipped out. Oh, to be clever, one piece of equipment the filmmaker chose to have pixelated out as if it were some big secret. The secret? IT DOESN'T EXIST. But the expert tells the cameraman to leave one camera on for the police to be able to look at all the footage later (thus the 'found footage' angle because everybody leaves so...) and now I've written the end of my review, knowing exactly what's going to happen. I have to wait... and wait... and wait... and then BOOM! or rather for me, boom, a female figure appears on the ceiling and scurries toward the camera which then goes out. Fin.

Emergo? Oh, that was the original title that didn't sell. It means 'to emerge'. Now don't you feel smart?

Oh George, George, George, George

Deadtime Stories 2 (2011)

Say it ain't so George...

The only reason I went for this anthology of three humdrum stories is that it was hosted by George Romero and he knows scary, right? This is going to be about zombies, right? Oh children, both you and I should know much better by now. Trying to find information on this stinker was a problem - the description of the IMDB was NOT what I just watched. So what the hell did I see? I looked around and another reviewer confirmed that yes, it is mislabeled because he had the DVD itself and it clearly said Volume 1 (the movie he reviewed). So what the hell? So I tried looking up the first story's name The Gorge. I of course got The Gorge as in Amphitheatre, which is in Washington state. If you've ever gotten to go there, you've had quite a treat - it's outdoors, scenic, beautiful, huge, and a wonderful experience. I saw ELP and Jethro Tull there (Hey, it was for my hubby ok?). But the movie clearly says it's the second, all produced by George, written by Jeff Monahan, so brace yourselves, here we go:

We're so good we don't have to tell anyone where we are.

The Gorge: Three friends go caving (apparently spelunking is for amateurs or something) and while deep in one there's a cave-in and they find themselves trapped. This goes from day to day, interminably, as one, whose foot was messed up continues to suffer and all three get weak from hunger and thirst. They of course didn't tell anyone where they were going. Believe it or not this happens all the time - I live near Mt. Hood and you wouldn't believe the number of hikers who don't bother with PLD's (personal location devices) or cell phones. MASSIVE DUH that costs thousands in rescue efforts every year. Okay so supposedly their still stuck almost a month and the guy's messed up foot is now gangrenous. The other two figure hey, we gotta cut it off anyway, why not take a few extra inches and get something to eat? Using a pickaxe, the girlfriend of the injured dude chops away until it's done. Gory and painful. And they have a little something... too little. 

HMO treatment is a bitch.

They're still hungry. In a frenzy, they attack the rest of the guy (I don't think he lived much past the leg chopping) and soon he's nothing but a head, bones and lots and lots of blood (Where were the organs - did they eat those too? Ewww.). And, as these stories go, they barely have time to dump the 'evidence' of what they've done when they're rescued. So now the remaining two are in the hospital - the girl massively guilt-ridden. Search crews were still looking for the third (Couldn't they just follow the blood trail? Sheesh.). The girl starts feeling strange and looking in the mirror her face is supposedly beginning to change. She grabs a scalpel and a fork... and goes into the other survivor's room. We next see her driving away from the hospital (In what car?) with a 'doggy bag' of wet, bloody goodies that she's slurping. The other survivor is found in his bed - again head and bones (please tell me they're not eating intestines). The last scene is more cavers going down the same place and behind them is the girl - now fully transformed into what I guess a real cannibal is supposed to look like (or a cavewoman, either way it was stupid) - and we hear screams.

This class is just too hard!

On Sabbath Hill: Typical story about the handsome professor boinking a student even though he has a wife and kids. She informs him she's pregnant, he's not sympathetic, thinking too much of his career and family (oh NOW he thinks of his family) and she leaves, devastated. She shows up for class and - wow this was a shocker (not) - shoots herself in class. So of course almost instantly the professor is getting haunted by the girl - sees blood, doors open by themselves, blah blah blah. Her roommate had picked up the gun (it was hers) and gives it and the girl's journal to the professor, slyly telling him she's made a 'copy'. Guaranteed 'A' for her. Finally in class the dead girl shows up and takes her seat. We then get a ridiculous (but hey they had to put the gore somewhere) scene of her supposedly giving birth to her 'dead' baby in class. Freaked and still carrying around the gun the professor shoots himself in class (guaranteed 'A's for the rest of 'em I guess). George makes the snide (and senseless) remark that 'you can't get rid of the ghost of a baby'. Huh? WTH? Ah screw it.

Little known fact: Small flashlights will put your eye out.

Dust: Dumb dumb dumb. It's a bunch of sex and gore wrapped in a DUH package. A scientist is studying the properties of dust taken from a Mars probe. He tells a guard (whose wife is dying of cancer) that someday the dust may cure cancer. But that will take years and the guard's wife is dying now. He steals a bit and puts it in the IV bag with her other meds. Within hours not only is she completely cured, but young and horny as hell (they're both over 55 so... ewww). Trouble is, it only lasts about a day. He needs more. Again, healthy and horny - and hungry. She wants more. Stealing a thermos full he's caught by the scientist. They argue, he hits the scientist with a flashlight, knocking out an eyeball (Oh come on!). He wraps the body and takes it home. The wife is happy (and yup, extremely horny) and hungry. She helps him throw the body in the freezer, taking out a package of meat while she's at it (nothing in the freezer was frozen I noticed). She eats it raw. This former pious, spiritual woman is now a ravenous sex machine with a foul mouth. He goes to work and when he gets home, the freezer is open and the body is gone. Oh great, she ate that too? Oh no, much worse. She re-animated him with the dust, and is gleefully screwing his brains out. Ewww. They try to get the guy to join them (they're both looking very zombie like, it's about damn time) and freaked the guard takes the rest of the dust and throws it outside in the wind - where it blows right into the cemetery so conveniently placed right next to their house. As he runs, moans are heard but do we get zombies? No we do not. We get a hand reaching up and grabbing him when he falls and part of a head showing - that's it. And the story's over. 

I'm just going to keep looking at this
fake book and hope you all go away.

This was just way past pitiful. The stories sucked, the gore was there purely for gore's sake (What kind of flashlight knocks out eyeballs?), and the endings predictable and just duh. Even George looked a bit sheepish at this point. He should, he made two of these damn things.

Movies That Rip Off Just About Everything

Episode 50 (2011)

If I began this with 'Stop me if you've heard this...' there would be no review because I'll bet not a single person hasn't seen this type of garbage in one form or another. I mean geez, can't they come up with something even remotely original - or are movie watchers so used to repetition that this kind of crap is watched over and over without complaint? If there was such a thing as movie legislation, I would propose the termination of all found footage, hand held cameras in the dark, ghost-busting reality shows that are popping up like noxious weeds. I just reviewed Grave Encounters (2011) 9/14/12 which is pretty much the exact same formula they followed for this one. For ALL of them, to be honest. They can call it whatever they want, it's all the same thing - fake and predictable 'boo' moments with a lot of shaky movement that gives the viewer a wicked headache. If I remember right, Grave Encounters was about their sixth episode where all went to hell (pun intended) - well this movie had to one-up them - this was supposed to be their season finale episode 50 but all goes to hell (again pun intended). Wow, I'm impressed. Or just really, really bored. Yeah, it's bored.

They try to be ominous but we're so jaded about this reality crap it's not even a good start. They describe four types of 'haunting': residual, intelligent, poltergeist, inhuman. Okay if it's inhuman it's not a haunting, is it? Demonic presences have nothing to do with your 'what's that shadow?' type of stuff. So grade them an 'F' on that. They then describe that yes, this is found footage and it was supposed to air but... nobody knows what happened - until now. Is the hair standing up on your arms? No? Yeah, I'm reaching for a shot of whiskey myself, preparing to be bored out of my ever-loving mind. This movie does not disappoint.

Ahhh... there's something warm running down my leg!

We have two teams investigating the WV Insane Asylum (just once I'd like to see them investigate a library, a town hall, a fire department, anything) at the request of a dying millionaire who wants proof of whether there is an afterlife or not. See, he's been a very, VERY bad boy and now is afraid of Hell. Isn't that what deathbed confessions and last rites and all that other religious garbage for? Anywho, he needs proof. But he's covering all his bets. He's sending both a debunking team, and a team of 'believers' to see, I guess, which one wins. We've already seen episode 49 where the 'Paranormal Inspectors' crew debunked a haunted house (after the husband accidentally clocked his wife with a hammer - that was kind of funny but I'm twisted that way) by showing them they had rats, leaking gas (which causes hallucinations) and bad wiring (the humming sound they kept hearing). So they believe that, at most, presences are energies left behind by the living, not ghosts. Already done dudes, The Legend Of Hell House did that much better and that was in the 70's.

I'm sorry rats and my crappy carpentry made me hit you.

But I digress. Joining this team (against their wishes) is the ASSC, Academy Spirit Searching Club. They believe God wants them to find and help people with ghosts, demons, whatever. Uh, I don't remember seeing in the Bible 'Thou shalt form a group of douchebags and practice spiritism, even though I expressly commanded you not to'. Digressing again, sorry. You can pretty much write the rest of the movie yourself, after all, in some form or another you've already seen it.

If nothing's real, I'm getting paid for nothing. Sweet!

The asylum had multiple killings, was shut down, people breaking into the building were found dead, blah blah blah. The 'energies' are everywhere, and of course, it's not just one building but dozens connected by (say it with me now) tunnels. Not an original thought in this damn thing. So they investigate, skip ahead, cameras catch the blips of supposed ghosts which no one seems to see, skip ahead, the religious nuts use prayer and seances (oops, spiritism again, naughty naughty), skip ahead, one girl is 'attacked' but she determines that whatever it was it was trying to warn her, skip ahead, things slam shut, shadows move, voices whisper and cry and laugh, skip ahead, the lead religious nut forces his spiritual medium (also his girlfriend) to 'channel' what's there and she says ghosts and demons. YAWN. Sorry about that. The demon's name is Legion. Ah come on, that just means many, everybody knows that by now. Call it, I don't know, Paul or something.

Damn my neck hurts.

Things speed up a little when, during another seance the medium is attacked by Paul - oh sorry, Legion, and her neck is broken. Now the religious guy goes on full psychotic alert, saying it's all his fault, he's opened a portal to hell and now he's gotta close it. Sigh. Then they pull a small twist, their only attempt at originality: They figure the evil dude fresh out of prison and commited to the hospital, who is in cahoots with Legion has his portal with the help of the last Warden (since the WV Pen is not longer used for that either) in the bowels of the former prison. So he takes off and so does the two dudes from the PI team. Slight backstory: when the two PI guys were kids, they experienced weird stuff in an old house one of them moved into, and the main dude's hand was badly burned rescuing his sister when 'something evil' set fire to the house, which is why they debunk stuff. YAWN. Whoa, better not get that second shot of whiskey.

Angry Birds rocks on this thing!

So the end is also predictable since they've already told you it's found footage: Something attacks the PI assistant, they see the portal complete with pentagram and demon (I shit you not it was the whole enchilada - evil symbol, fire, demon with horns and a tail). The religious nut gets stabbed in the gut and gives his cross to the remaining PI guy - who attempts a feeble 'exorcism' and we next see him (and presumably also the cameraman) dead on the floor.

God sent me to get these people killed. Thanks God.

The end scene is the rich guy watching the footage they 'found'. He asks his cronies to leave, then weeps bitterly, knowing he's totally screwed. Thankfully, it ends. Was any of this surprising or scary to you? HEY YOU SLEEP ON YOUR OWN TIME! Sorry about that, I really can't blame you. I think I'm gonna take a nap.

Movies That Are Hopeless To Understand In Under 90 Minutes

The Bleeding House (2011)

Let's see, this week I've had two haunted houses, one in 3D the other the 'pay us and we'll scare you' kind, a zombie flick, a horrible torture flick, and a classic. Time for something a little different. At least I was hoping. This is yet another Indie movie so I wasn't terribly hopeful, but it did sound different. The official synopsis once again does not give an accurate description of the movie (What the hell are these people actually watching?): The Smith family with a secret past is visited by a sweet-talking southern gentleman who is looking for small town humanity. But they'll soon find out kindness towards strangers is not always rewarded and the secretive stranger will find redemption does not always come easy. Uh, close but nope. Now if you've come from a dysfunctional family (no I don't mean the kind where you were made to do your homework, couldn't stay out late or had chores, toughen up people) like I have, this movie makes much more sense than it would to say, the typical viewer. But still, even with my, umm, experiences, there was still so much about what went on in this movie that remained unexplained, it was obvious that the overall tale could not possibly be told in a movie lasting 86 minutes - maybe a season worth of shows perhaps, where character development and the different little idiosyncrasies could be explained, otherwise, one gets totally lost and when a movie does that, it loses interest and an audience. But what you see is this:

A family in Texas is 'starting over' in a new house - but not a new town (massive duh). Whether that is from lack of money or brains I don't know - but the oldest boy, 18 wants out badly, the girl (16?) is kept locked in her room, doesn't go to school, and is only let out for meals. The father is an attorney trying to get back to work and not having much success. The mother is an artist so, you know, no money there. There are implied conversations, something about deaths, fire, a small town that has no sympathy and a very long memory. We get the idea, however faint, that this family did something major to make them such a stink that they have to live in the far outskirts of town.

One fine evening a gentleman in an ice cream suit and hat (no not an ice cream hat, it's just white, sheesh) shows up, asking for shelter as his car has died and no one is coming for it until morning. They instantly refuse, but after consideration decide to let him in. He says he is a physician, travelling to a new town for a new start himself - his family had recently been brutally murdered while he had been at the hospital. They instantly buy every word he says, and feed him dinner. He notices his food has all been cut up for him. They explain that all the knives are kept locked. Why? I know but apparently they don't want the audience to figure this out for a while.

The girl? She's a major piece of work and we instantly get a bad feeling about her. Locked in her room, not allowed near sharp objects, not allowed to go to school, and not allowed to having 'living' things in the house, although she collects and pins different insects on her wall. When caught with a live bird in her room her mother exclaims that she's not to have that and the girl dispassionately breaks its neck. Nice.

The mother, for whatever reason, decides to show the soft speaking Nick (the stranger) her 'studio' she set up in the attic. She is almost like a kid showing off her 'art' and continues to babble - until she's knocked out by a hard object in the back of the head. Okay, now we're rolling. The stranger next is downstairs with the father (who heard nothing) and they start to watch sports. The stranger goes to the kitchen to help himself to coffee - he asks the father where the sugar is. When the father goes to show him - bam. You get the idea now. The son had already left the house to meet with his girlfriend so the girl is all who's left. However she has, as she's done probably since the very beginning, escaped her room and is in the woods in the dark. She knows what's happening (hell, the stranger is telling her) and is not coming back inside. He tells her it's actually her he's come for. Why? Here's why it needed a series and not 84 minutes.

This Nick who may or may not have been a real doctor and definitely never had a family, much less one who was murdered, thinks he is saving people from themselves or something. He spouts so much pseudo-religious gibberish that it's impossible to figure out exactly what he believes he's trying to do. So basically and without knowing the entire reason for it, he travels from town to town, listening to the gossip until he finds the kind of family that needs 'saving'. These people are it tonight. The father and mother wake to find themselves bound in chairs, needles and tubes in both arms, a blood pump (Where did they get that relic?) he relishes turning on and off, and increasing the pressure when it strikes him. Again, why exactly? Exposition and backstory can be tedious in a movie but here, without it, you can get lost and with that lose any interest in the movie. As a kind of, uh, last rite or something he uses their own blood to draw a little cross on their foreheads. He then spouts more rhetoric that you can't help but start to tune out because without explanation, it's just not worth listening to. Getting blood on his shirt, he takes it off - he is covered in massive scars - again no explanation. No real one anyway. The father dies first, mother next. Daughter is still outside, too far away to get help (no one is going to help her anyway) and somehow drawn to the ultra-violence happening in her house. See, she's not just troubled, she's certifiably whacked.

The reason the family is ostracized by the town? The mother had an affair with a guy who dumped her. They fought, and she 'accidentally' started a fire in their house that killed the whole family. The father, being a lawyer, somehow got any charges against her dropped. But people don't forget or forgive, especially in small towns. But this smiling white-suited psycho knows it goes deeper than that. The girl had told him she was there and had seen the burned bodies. So the truth was - yes the mother had an affair and the guy dumped her. In revenge, the DAUGHTER stabbed the whole family with great gusto, and, I guess since its implied not shown, the mother set the fire to cover it up, the father getting the whole family off.

The brother comes home with his girlfriend. He barely gets in the door when he's killed. The girlfriend escapes, finds the daughter and they run through the dark woods. The stranger says there's a 'surprise' waiting for her. They find a car and the girlfriend runs to it, the daughter telling her to wait. When they get there, a woman asks what's going on. The daughter takes a huge stone she'd hidden in her sweater and proceeds to bash the woman's head into paste, having to be pulled off of her by the girlfriend. She shows that the woman had a knife and was going to kill them. The trunk is full of Mason jars of blood. Why? <shrugs> No keys are anywhere so they keep running, right into a police car. Since the police know this family well, they immediately go to take the girl home, despite their protests. At the house they see blood in the doorway and go in. Massive duh. They're quickly dispatched by our smiling savior.

He takes the girlfriend, ties her down and lets the daughter know his true purpose - I guess. Again it's more pseudo religious gobbledygook about finding someone to go with him to accomplish his 'purpose'. He knows she's a killer. She then says the only straightforward statement made in this whole movie: "You kill to save their souls. I kill because I LIKE IT!" Taking the knife he'd foolishly given her she stabs him, finishing him off, but not before he says she'll be seeing him 'in every mirror, in every town', and more stuff that makes no sense because hey, why start now? She lets the girlfriend go, tells her to let the town know not to look for her, and starts down the dark road to ???. In America, only 8 percent of its serial killers are women, although American women make up 76% of the total female serial killers worldwide. And you just met one.

Holy Crap! An Indie Movie That Didn't Suck (Pun Intended)

The Dead Undead (2010)

Having massively ripped apart the stinker so-called 'original' which was anything but indie movie Vile (9/24/12), just reading the movie title and the description prepared me for yet another piece of garbage to rip to pieces with more savagery than any zombie. Thankfully, in this case I was a bit surprised. I mean the title alone could make you hate the movie (I was going to call it The Duh Unduh) and the description didn't help: 'A group of humans escaping from zombies run into a vampire community who is dedicated to helping the humans and destroying the zombies.' Oh brother, that is a stinker right there. But that's not how this movie went at all. It wasn't perfect, had some massive duh moments, but it had a storyline and a little bit of imagination.

Looking for info on this though - yikes. I found several reviews. Some considered it a lot of dull shooting and nothing good, others were surprised that former 80's UK pop band Bros drummer Luke Goss, who with his twin brother singer Matt charted 13 hit singles in the UK, transformed himself from a fluff piece to a hardened soldier (even though he's also been in Blade 2 and Hellboy 2). That was kind of funny. I wondered if he was English or not, his accent was kind of muddled. So according to some critics, UK watchers seeing this movie will react as we would if, say, the movie had been made 30 years from now and Justin Bieber was in the lead role. Anyway I really looked but all I found were differing descriptions of what the movie was about (All wrong, doesn't anybody watch these things?), that it was released in the US and I'm going to guess because they don't really say it was filmed somewhere in California.

The story's all right although they muck it up a bit as it goes along (yes, there were duh moments for sure) but this is how it went: A group of five young people, (I think I'll start calling them red shirts, wink wink.) show up at a motel. No one's home however, so they check themselves in. As soon as it gets dark all hell breaks loose: One of the girls is attacked, the others panic and we get the 'please kill them now they're bugging the hell out of me' moments that every horror movie seems to have. ESPECIALLY the blonde that was attacked. She overacted and screamed so much about having a little blood on her if I was there I would have shot her myself, gladly. Anywho, for whatever reason these clean cut kids brought weapons and use them up as growling, super fast, super strong zombies attack from all sides. Suddenly a van shows up with five soldiers in it, led by Jack (Luke Goss). They have massive firepower, and we do get a rather protracted lesson in types of weapons and what kind of damage they can do. This is fairly accurate stuff, and interesting if you're into different types of weapons or the possibility of a ZA. The only surviving young one is a girl named Summer. As two of the soldiers themselves become infected (a man and a REAL woman, I mean she had upper body strength to go for miles, obviously knew weapons, and looked to be older than the average 'My name is Alice' type of zombie killer), we get a bit of a duh moment. The two were romantically involved and the movie fades away...

Two vikings are fighting each other. They've wasted all those around them, and continue to fight each other. It is our zombie fighting couple. Finally each is stabbed in the stomach, and as they lay slowly dying (Vikings wouldn't do that - that's not dying with honor.) a hooded figure offers them a potion to keep on living if they stop fighting each other and fight on the same team. They agree. Et err vikinger.

Back in the present, they continue to fight until the sun rises and the zombies take off. The three remaining soldiers and Summer (oh and some guy who just shows up, another duh moment), retreat into the motel. The stranger opens the curtains and the three soldiers start to smoke - yes they are vampires. No, they do not feed on humans, decades ago they agreed they just wanted to live quietly and have been surviving on cow's blood. So no, they're not super strong and they don't heal really fast. Get ready for the explanation of our super strong ZV's (zombie vampires): Somewhere, somehow, they got blood infected with Mad Cow disease - yeah, you heard me right. This movie is about Mad Cow Zombie Vampires. Sigh. Stay with me though, it's not that bad. The ones not infected are determined to wipe out every last one of the ZV's before it spreads - they don't want humans to get wiped out too. The three need a beauty nap and as they sleep the movie fades away...

Now we're in Vietnam. Charlie's on their ass - skip ahead skip ahead - soldiers are falling right and left - skip ahead skip ahead - one soldier is shot in the gut (What is it with gut shots and these guys?) and, say it with me now, a hooded figure offers him a potion to live. Sigh.

Back to our story. At sundown they prepare to hit some nearby mines. Good place for ZA's to hide. As the interminable battle is about to begin, the movie fades away.... (Hey you! Wake up! It's not that bad!)

In the 1800's an American town is wiped out by Scarlet fever. A surviving boy is cared for by a couple who have an allergy to the sun (wink wink). They raise him, he goes off to learn to be a doctor. When he comes back, the town, figuring out what his parents were somehow, had murdered them. He goes into town and wipes out every single person there - but not without getting shot in the (say it with me) gut. As he lays in the street a hooded figure.... ah skip it.

The battle does get a bit long, although they claim to be mostly out of ammo they seem to have plenty, but there's just too many of them. As they retreat, all are killed except for Jack and Summer. Jack tries to drive away but the sun's coming up and in movie stupid style he crashes the van. Seeing how weak he is, Summer offers her blood - after arguing he finally agrees and bites her. Now he's super strong and throws off the ZV's like paper dolls, slicing and dicing his way through a bunch of them but more are coming... finally from up the hill a squad of soldiers (Oh goody, even vampires have backup teams.) opens fire, and a REAL vampire (fangs and all) comes to talk with Jack. He asks why he's kept that 'black rag' all this time so now we know that Jack is the one who's been giving 'potions' to all these gut-wounded people - he's the oldest. And now he's hooked to Summer. Bad choice. Oh well, this wasn't a totally cerebral film but it had it's moments.

They try to set up for a sequel by a protracted story I won't go into that somehow will 'revive' all the vampires they lost (as long as they have a blood sample of each) and you know that, if this indie company gets a little cash, you'll probably be seeing something like this again. Oh, and the ending assures us that: 'No animals, zombies, vampires, vikings or western townsfolk were harmed in the making of this film'. I noticed they did not mention movie stupid young people (wicked cackle).

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?" 



House Of Fears (2007) UK Straight To DVD

Why did I pick this movie? Clowns. Evil clowns. I have a couple friends who are scared silly by 'em (and to be honest I hate them too). Is there anybody who actually likes clowns? I mean really, anyone over, say, three years old? That's not all that's in here of course. This feel-good movie (heavy sarcasm) is your typical fare of getting some teenagers together you don't like and slaughtering them one by one. Just like every other movie. A little twist (not an original one, but a twist) - they're in a haunted house. No, not your banging sounds and objects moving kind, the kind people put together and charge money to try to scare the crap out of you. And usually failing badly.

The story starts in Africa at an excavation site where a woman is there to collect relics. By the time she and her guide get there however, all the workers have been brutally murdered. She doesn't see that, he does and says they have to leave. She finds a broken statue and asks if she can have it - he gives it to her.

Now we're supposed to be in Salem, Oregon. Okay, now I'm wincing. Oregon is famous usually for the nuthouses - I'm sorry I mean psychiatric hospitals, featured in such famous films as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, not haunted houses. So I checked to see if our Salem actually has one of these (since this movie obviously was not filmed there). By gum it sure does. In fact, The Nightmare Factory boasts that this is its 20th anniversary of operation. Proceeds benefit the Oregon School For The Deaf, so for the first and only time, I'm going to provide the link to their page just for their sake: http://www.nightmarefactorysalem.com/ . Even if you are nowhere near Oregon, check out their website, it's for a good cause. Other than that, Salem boasts of many supposedly haunted spots - buildings, grave sites, you name it. Huh - never see any of that whenever I go to Salem.


But this is about a spook house named The House Of Fears. And of course we have the usual group of teenagers, Zane, Candice, Carter, Devon, Hailey and Samantha, both likable and not. Hailey is Samantha's step-sister, to whom she is storybook bitchy to. They have sneaked out of a party because one of the group works there and has the keys to the place, so they're going to have a private showing. It's a great looking building - it doesn't say where or what building is used, but it looks pretty cool. Inside it's a maze of rooms for the public and corridors for the workers. Apparently, the broken statue brought home by the woman in Africa (who happens to own the place) pieced itself back together and has already caused the security guard's dog to attack him - his greatest fear I guess. Because supposedly this is what the statue does - bring your greatest fears to life.

Zane, the keeper of the keys, lists off nine fears that are supposedly the main ones: Death, ghosts, monsters, the dark, clowns, bats, spiders, losing your mind (too late for me) and sharp knives. Uh, this must be mostly for kids - not much of that list moves me much. And the movie stalls, as most often do, because nobody gets killed for an interminable period of time. I'm not bloodthirsty, I just know that when they get killed, the movie will end and you can go home (or to bed, depending where you are). The thrills are not there, the scenarios aren't scary, but these teenagers are movie-stupid and each admits what scares them the most. NEVER DO THAT. It should be another written rule in horror movies.

FINALLY the cursed statue of fear kicks in, and Zane is killed by a dummy. A dummy. A dummy that cannot hold still to save its life. I love those - watched a wax museum movie recently where the figures were fake and they shook like they had palsy. Same here. But it moves and since he'd put a weapon in its hands, that's how he was killed. Was that what he was afraid of? Do we care? We still have five to go... Next is Candice, trapped in a mummy's tomb where sand somehow pours into the room, smothering her (and going down the drain just as magically) - she of course was afraid of that. Samantha knows what she's scared of but won't say - but it follows them anyway. A scarecrow. Something about childhood trauma of how she lost her father blah blah... for being her fear it's just as lethal to the rest and kills Carter by electrocution. Devon is brought down by the aforementioned evil clowns, apparently he had a bad birthday party somewhere back in time because he was scared silly by them.

Inexplicably Hailey is nailed in a coffin and it's up to Samantha to save her. They race for an alternate exit, with the scarecrow right on their tail. We have to endure quite a bit of this, the ending is almost more tortuous to us than them. Finally as the scarecrow has Samantha by the throat and she somehow has the statue in her hand she says 'I am not afraid of you,' and drops the statue which busts. And the scarecrow is nothing but cloth and straw again.

Hailey and Samantha exit the building holding on to each other, a touching 'we're best buds for life now' moment as they go home and try to explain just what the hell happened. The last scene shows the statue starting to move - it's reassembling itself again. Oh God, please no sequels. At least not in Oregon (I mean the UK).