Hello to all those faithfully reading and hopefully enjoying this effort to make even the worst horror movie more watcha... aw, screw that - I'm not that good. If a movie makes you cringe because yet another batch of unlikable teens that are pushing 30 are inching toward their deaths, having a party no one does anywhere ever, a paranormal movie is boring you to tears with unending pans of empty rooms, or thanks to CGI technology when people finally bite it, their blood squirts everywhere except on the victim, the ground, the people next to them... you're in good company and this is the right place for you.
WAKE UP <TAP TAP TAP> WAKE UP!!!
Nightmare Alley (2010)
Way way WAY back when I was a young chick if I ever got to stay up late at night, it was to watch local programming that Portland, Oregon was famous for directing toward the insomniac crowd. We had Portland Wrestling, bad movies, and of course, the wake-up call in case we got drowsy from our locally famous Tom Peterson (he's even got his own Wiki page, look him up) of Tom Peterson's Furniture and Electronics - a businessman who got quite popular by the 80's. He even gave away free Tom Peterson haircuts (a 50's style buzz cut) and Tom Peterson watches with purchases.
His knocking on your TV set was a regular part of your late night viewing pleasure. It was a cheap but effective ploy. It reminded me of this movie - it would have fit perfectly in the local channel's late night lineup (language removed of course).
This is an anthology of the most horrible, low budget, badly acted and poorly written stories you will ever encounter. The whole cast looks like someone went to a local bar/tattoo parlor and cleaned the place out. And Scarlet Fry - whose name alone is one of the few giggles you'll get here - claims them all. He even hosts his own abortion of horror.
Well Mr. Fry, you knew this movie was bad so I'll give you credit there. This is not supposed to be overly clever or good. In fact, it is supposed to be AWFUL. But there is a difference Mr. Fry between AWFUL and WORTHLESS. Plan 9 From Outer Space was AWFUL - the most celebrated awful movie there is. Not recognized as actually having some interesting aspects until years after Ed Wood's death, it is now even being remade - not necessarily a good thing, but it is being recognized as something to see.
You, Mr. Fry, also will not see that happen to your film in your lifetime, and unfortunately not even decades later because this is not AWFUL, it is WORTHLESS. Small giggles and puzzled looks will not get your movie recognized, just thrown in the trash. And claiming it's filmed in Grind-o-scope, like you're hoping it's somehow linked to the great Grindhouse films is criminal.
Speaking of trash: The beginning is two foul mouthed idiots approached by a guy offering a comic book in exchange for a cigarette. After giving it to him, the guy inexplicably stabs one of them, causing the second to abandon his buddy but hold on to the comic and run away... about half a block to lean against a dumpster.
The comic is the 'newest' edition of Nightmare Alley (costing a cold dime) and he opens it... to see himself in the comic with his head chopped off by someone in the dumpster behind him. Then... well I already told you. We then see:
Mr. Fry wearing the costume of... I would guess a ghoul to tell his stories. His mask is so tight, and the soundtrack so awful that all of his dialogue is muffled behind the mask and the lips barely move. If that is part of the inside joke, it's a very small one. And the stories begin with more attention to detail paid to the titles than to the stories themselves (And I'm not bothering with his inane banter in between.):
A Fistful Of Innards: Three outlaws are walking in a desert (horses are too expensive). Sweating in their J Crew clothes, they look up to see a horribly fake meteor crash right in front of them, making almost no noise, no hole and being perfectly cool. To them it looks like gold but they get nauseous. The fattest of the three shoots the other two and tries to pick the damn thing up. The two shot get right back up - they are now zombies. They kill the third guy with the nugget, chew on what's supposed to be his brains then go into town - or rather towards two hastily built wooden shacks. You then 'hear' since seeing would cost money screams, shots, and munching sounds.
Rebellion: Ah yes, a story that's dumb AND racist. A man walks into a Mexican whatzawhozits shop for no apparent reason and picks up a box with a stuffed rat. He takes it to the counter and the Senora with a horrible accent and obviously no Latino or Mexican background whatsoever tells him in first year Spanish then English that's not much better that the rat is Satanic and contains a Pentagram necklace. She doesn't charge him for it, just tells him to get out. First thing he does... ah hell, you already know. The rat is now his 'master' and has him kill for him - until he finds a woman hitchhiker that I guess the rat likes better 'cause he has her kill the guy and take his car. The only thing interesting about this story was the car - a 60's or 70's Ford Galaxy 500, not a great car but this had obviously been restored, and it was funny that they put a blanket in the front seat so the actors wouldn't get it dirty.
Death Chat: After his girl catches him cheating a guy decides to set up a date via the internet. He finds one hot and ready and goes to the house - which is covered in plastic. What is the number one rule about places covered in plastic children? Get out, right? Not in this case. It means that whomever they rented this room from did not want anything getting dirty. Anywho, the guy gets axed by a woman whose mask they must have blown whatever budget they had on, it was decent - for a dime-store Halloween mask. The explanation is a year ago at that house a cheating husband was axed by a woman who then threw acid in her own face so... she's haunting the place? The internet? Uh huh.
Meat: If you're expecting these stories to get better, stop now and watch Twilight or something. A woman is flirting with a massive pig of a guy (his boobs were sooo much bigger than hers) who only wears 'Daisy Dukes' and if that doesn't give you a horrid picture, nothing will. Her husband arrives before she can do anything, so after the fatter guy leaves (her husband being only maybe 10 pounds lighter) she kills her husband and we see her baking. She calls the guy with the Daisy Dukes shorts which apparently is the only piece of clothing he owns and he comes back. She drugs him and, to save money, we get a title card that explains that she 'incompacitated' him (Yes, yes I know it's incapacitated, just let me finish this okay?) and fed him her dead husband's flesh for six weeks before the smell brought the police.
Closet Case: A homophobe is propositioned by a the type of gay guy you see absolutely never, and is enraged and kills him but steals his homo mag and reads it. There, I did it all in one sentence.
The Great Damone: Is another self-absorbed idiot who thinks he's an artist but nothing sells. His wife screams at him, he cuts her throat, uses her blood as paint and sells it for way too much. Wanting more he saws her head off (the saw clearly has air between it and the body) and covers it in clay to sell... which it doesn't. Despondent he commits suicide - his wife laughs and he cries in Hell.
Slash Of The Blade: They make a great deal about a radio announcement of a Jack The Ripper display opening featuring 'authentic' pieces from the 1880's crimes. Then they show people we don't give a rip about (Get it?) being slashed one by one by some idiot in a cape, top hat and bad mask with a kitchen knife. That's it. That's the story.
And Mr. Fry ends it. As you've noticed if you've actually read this far, these stories, if you can call them that, often have no clear beginning, plot or ending. They just... stop. Unfortunately for whoever watches it, they stop 88 minutes too late.
SNOOZEFEST: THE FINAL, FINAL CHAPTER
Milo (1998)
This movie was so badly conceived, written, acted and filmed that most of my notes say 'I'M SOOOOO BORED!' This movie wouldn't even MAKE it on the Lifetime channel - this chick and her whimpering for 90 minutes was 89 3/4 minutes too long. And they can't make up their mind - is Milo a permanent child? A demon? A drowned kid his doctor dad brought back as a zombie? A clone (his dad did abortions, lots of raw material)? A combination of all of the above?
Trouble is, even though Milo kills a girl and wounds another, supposedly drowns, then comes back 16 years later to finish off the other four girls in the group he likes (I'd hate to see what he does to people he doesn't), it is so drawn out, whiny, and dull that there was absolutely nothing to write about - except for how boring it is.
The poster says 'Remember, Jason and Freddy were kids once too.' Yeah, but they grew up... hell one grew up AFTER he was dead so that's pretty talented... they were both interesting psychos. This is just some kid (or little person, bad makeup makes it kind of hard to tell) with a scalpel and a lisp riding a bicycle throughout a dull dull dull movie.
SNOOZEFEST: REVENGE OF THE SNORE
The Graveyard (2006)
Okay class you had your assignment: Six stupid students and a graveyard, make a movie out of that. And I'm picking through the pile and choosing one at random... Our choice today is by a new student who doesn't wish to be identified because <flips through pages> wow, does this suck! Okay Michael - oops, sorry about that, but don't get bent out of shape I didn't give your last name Mr. Hurst. Your tagline: Fear Is Buried Here. You realize you just lost a grade for that don't you? Six kids in a graveyard - umm Mr. Hurst you do realize there has to be a church here right? No? Another grade off, sorry.
This is a cemetery Mr. Hurst, try looking up your facts before putting nonsense together. You've even got here that this takes place in Placid Pines Cemetery. That's just weak sauce Mr. Hurst. Okay if you're going to cry do it on your own time, we've got a review to do.
A group of stupid kids play hide and seek in a cemetery. Two of the boys (three girls, three boys) decide to scare the third boy by pretending to be a masked killer. In his fright he falls on the broken gate and impales himself. Sigh. Must we even go on here? Stop crying Mr. Hurst. So the boy who wore the mask gets five years for manslaughter (that's pretty light) and when he's released all decide to go to a camp by the cemetery they know to BE a cemetery even if Mr. Hurst doesn't.
A camp by the cemetery? That's where I'd love to spend my vacations. They're going to celebrate the life of their friend. Who's dead. The five are met by the caretaker (Oh brother, I've already got my killer, don't I?) but we also see a guy bloody and tied up in the shed. He's then killed. Why wasn't he already dead? Stop whimpering Mr. Hurst, we're the ones being tortured here.
So the killing begins and because the kids are stupid they're all suspecting each other instead of the stranger they just met. The one fresh out of prison, Bobby, is kind of out of the running 'cause he's gone to the sheriff - who promptly arrests him since they have an unsolved murder on their hands and he's on parole. Duh. And the killings are also weak since you don't see anything actually happen to them, just that they're dead - except one neck cutting that was not even remotely good Mr. Hurst.
No no, you don't blame the people who work for you, you hired them, deal with it. You have sex scenes with people with their pants on, that's a bit of physics you flunked, people dying of injuries you don't see, that's just lazy and the pathway to the end of the mystery so easily laid out a five year old could have seen the ending coming.
When you revealed that the dead friend's family was killed in a fire you pretty much cemented the story. Yes the dead kid had a brother who went nuts (or already was) when his brother died and burned down the house (apparently to have people think he was dead). He kills the caretaker, takes his place and tada. You've just wasted 83 minutes of some poor saps life.
After Bobby and the brother fight and the brother is supposedly killed, the two left (Bobby and the smart girl 'cause there's always one.) are put in the back of the squad car. Since you've revealed that the brother's body wasn't found, if he HADN'T gotten into the driver's seat of the squad car, THEN you would have had something... like a sequel set up if someone was dumb enough to give you more money. But no, you had to be just as weak and obvious at the end as you were at the beginning. D- and I suggest you do the necessary work before you turn in a project next time Mr. Hurst.
SNOOZEFEST: THE RETURN OF THE SNOOZE
Scary Or Die (2012)
All right class settle down, it's project day and we've got a lot of ground to cover so - hey! I said settle down people! You've been divided into groups for your short films and I'm hoping you have a wraparound for them people, I gave you a whole week - YOU! Sleep on your own blog mister! I want to hear what you've got and it's due NOW so let me... no you may NOT have one more day! The assignment gave you two weeks for the story and one week to come up with a wraparound now if it's not done you all get an incomplete for the semester. What's your working title? Scary Or Die. Why? It's a website? Really? That's the best... oh okay what's the setup?
A hand with icky skin is on a computer mouse looking at a computer site called scaryordie.com for videos to watch. That's... awful. Okay let's continue - group one?
1. The Crossing: Three rednecks in a POS pickup truck travel through Arizona. C'mon people, redneck stereotypes? At least sharpen them up a bit. No? All right the driver has the most smarts apparently, the girl has a body and that's about it as far as talent, and the other is a drooling brown toothed ick who drinks his own foul version of homemade liquor. That's the best you could do?
They travel through the hot sun, stop to gas up and grab supplies and murder the Mexican at the cash register on the way out. Redneck and racist, really? What's next? Hmm... at the border they stop, and the driver reveals that under a tarp in the back he's got two more Mexicans tied up. And they didn't scream and the girl didn't know they were there huh? Sigh. What's next? They throw them out of the truck and we see they are at the Mexico border.
There is a lot of clothes and belongings strung all over the ground. It looks like it's all only been there for about five minutes but let's continue. There are also graves. We have racist rednecks that murder Mexicans huh? They kill the two they brought and bury them with the rest, then wait until nightfall, knowing they will probably have the opportunity to kill more as they come across the border. Suddenly a hand reaches up from the ground... oh for crying out loud another zombie story? Really? Mexican zombies, terrific.
The murdered bodies rise up and kill the two men, the woman is wounded but gets away and runs down the road. Up on the hill are two members of the Arizona Border Patrol with rifles. They see the girl staggering on the road far below. #1: "What do you think?" #2: Looks like a zombie to me." ABP number 2 aims his rifle and shoots her in the stomach and she goes down. #1: "Should we go get her?" #2: "What time is it?" After learning it's the end of their shift he shrugs and says "Let the animals have her." That's it? Rampaging Mexican zombies that just stop rampaging and your twist is the ABP are there for zombies, not illegals? Sigh. C+
The hand on the mouse, looking a bit worse, continues looking around the site until it settles on:
2. Tae Jung's Lament: People after this assignment we are going to have a serious talk about stereotyping people and cultures. Tae Jung is a man who has lost his wife and mopes around. One night he sees three women, the one in the middle is drop dead gorgeous. And Asian.
Really people, there ARE other cultures in L.A. A man appears, putting a cloth over her face and dragging her away in a new Honda. Instead of calling 911, Tae takes his iPhone and shoves it inside the gas door of the Honda. Uh huh. He uses his Apple computer to locate his iPhone... do you people know how much product placement costs? He locates the phone and WALKS to the location. The man is driving a car, he is walking but he catches up to them right away. Really? Sigh.
He finds both by a canal, the man about to murder the woman. He knocks the man into the canal and saves her. As a reward she invites him to a party the next week. C'mon people, you don't think anyone has guessed this situation and the ending by now? Really? Tae Jung goes to the woman's building where, again, everyone is Asian. He goes up and there are nothing but drop dead gorgeous women.
He starts to make out with the one he rescued, apparently the leader... we see starting at the front door every person on the way up is dead, staked through the... ah come on! The final scene is just as Tae gets fangs to the throat the man who was knocked into the canal drops his bag to get more stakes and a large wooden mallet. Then... aw hell you have GOT to be kidding me <puts hand on forehead in disgust>. We then see the name 'Van Helsing' on the bag. You ran out of money here - I see you make everything go black and all we hear is screams and pounding and splats... D
Again with the rotting hand... it chooses:
3. Re-membered: A hit man has finished cutting up a body in a motel bathroom. Not very original but at least not racially motivated. He cleans up, wraps the pieces up and puts them in a large duffel bag, throwing a necklace with some sort of pentagram on it on top. Oh brother, here we go. Driving off to get his money, the body in the trunk, he's tired - he's weaving a bit on the road. He hears thumping in the trunk. He stops, looks in the trunk and... the body is there and all is as it should be.
Driving on he's even more drowsy and his weaving has caught the attention of the 5-0 and he gets stopped. He's about to be let go when there's thumping in the trunk again. As the cop goes to inspect the trunk the hit man gets his gun out of the glove compartment and sticks it in his jacket. The cop comes back, says he's free to go. Puzzled the hit man drives on then stops at the side of the road to look for himself.
The duffel bag is empty, save for the necklace with <pained look on face> the pentagram and a note that says 'You can't kill me.' He sees the man, with all the cuts but in one piece in his car. He leaps out of the car - the re-membered man <we're going to talk about grammar after this too> is behind him and uses the large bone cutting saw to take his head but we don't see that 'cause you ran out of money... D
The hand is definitely getting ickier as it looks for another story:
4. Clowned: Are we trying to be clever? Hope the story tries as hard. Hmm, two brothers, one older the other small live with their mother. The older one's girlfriend also lives there. He's black and... don't you guys have any shame? Why does he have to be a crack dealer while his white girlfriend is a nurse? Sensitivity training for the whole class will be mandatory starting next week!
While his mother throws his little brother a birthday party, one of the kids goes missing. All the adults go to look for the kid and the mother tells the older brother to pay the party clown. He finds the clown in the kitchen raiding the refrigerator. Pissed off he tells the definitely pug ugly clown to beat it. The clown drops a kid's finger on the floor and pretty much dares the guy to confront him which, being a black guy... all right, I am not African American but already I am very insulted by this class' racist... sigh.
The guy, not seeing the finger somehow (Nobody does, doesn't anybody look down or sweep the floor?) shoves the clown outside where they fight and the clown pins him down and bites his leg. After that, he takes off, skipping and dancing down the sidewalk. The kid is never found.
Now people this story just... quits. I could go on about it but nothing happens. The man mopes around as changes start to take place and... still nothing. You had a good beginning <except for the racist part> but it just dies. Finally when the 'transformation' of monster clown is complete, we... get more moping. Geez!
Finally it comes down to... oh come on people. The original clown kidnaps his brother? Really? A million children around... so the two clowns square off and he kills the one who bit him. Feeling the urge to eat his brother despite his love he tells him to go home and instead does a DBC (that's death by cop in case you don't know and it's pretty damn insensitive to the poor cops who have to shoot) and your story is done. D-
The hand, in major decay clicks on one last story <Thank God>:
5. Lover Come Back: Another racist story huh? An African American couple, who were once so in love but of course now married and bored, he beats her. I should just flunk your group right now. Oh and because of her race of course her Gran Pere (Cajun for grandfather) knew spells and covered her in goofer dust which, in case you kids think I don't pay attention or know about cultures, is any powder used in a spell, usually supposed to be harmful or deadly and can be or include graveyard dirt.
Having her grandfather spray it on her as a protection is... ah never mind. So one day her husband, cheater and wife beater kills her and puts her in a trunk. But thanks to Gran Pere, she's going to reclaim her man. She finds him and another woman in a car (too cheap for a motel) and at the sight of her the woman screams and runs, the man can only look in horror as his wife, now rotted Cryptkeeper style, rips him apart. C- and I'm being generous because this was so short.
The wraparound: The owner of the hand stops at the keyboard and the one owning it comes to the doorway. It is the rotted dead wife from story #5. She slams the door. Fin
Starting next week I will be bringing in a sensitivity instructor and you people will learn about tolerance and how harmful stereotypes can be. And as for being film makers? I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
SNOOZEFEST: THE RESURRECTION
The Horror Show aka
House III: The Horror Show aka La Casa 7 (1989)
I'm beginning to rethink watching movies just because of who's in them. This was on my list because it stars Lance Henricksen and I didn't really pay attention exactly to what it was about. My mistake. This movie mirrors, almost exactly, another film released that year that turned into a cult classic. That's because that particular movie, Shocker, was done much better. Starring Mitch Pileggi (probably better known as Mulder and Scully's boss Skinner on The X Files) as the murderous psycho sent to the electric chair which only made him mad, as well as able to travel through electric current.
This movie has Lance as detective Lucas McCarthy who captures infamous killer 'Meat Cleaver Max' played by the great character actor Brion James, who I was also sorry to learn died in 1999 at the age of 54. This movie also has Max strapped to the electric chair, but this time the premise is he 'trained' by electrocuting himself to 'build up resistance' to the electrocution (massive duh) and thus his spirit was able to escape and somehow re-solidify at will. If that wasn't bad enough, Brion gets to spend the movie seeing how wide he can open his eyes to look as evil as possible, and Lance spends the movie trying not to look bored.
And THEN I find out this is the infamous House III, a movie I swore I wouldn't watch but hey, they got me fair and square by renaming this piece of crap several times. And it IS crap. The only connection between this movie and the other two House movies (of which only the first was good anyway) is the crew that worked on it.
Anyway... the premise is that Max made a deal with the devil (like in Shocker) which is not even MENTIONED in this movie in order to come back and frame Lucas for a series of murders (I wouldn't call two deaths a 'series') and so Lucas has to chase down the intangible/tangible Max until he corners him and electrocutes him again (And this works why?) before he pumps him full of bullets (Again, working why?).
In other words, this is a definite pass. BUT another chance to pitch the movie Shocker, which did have some clever and almost funny moments in a much better telling of basically the same story.
SNOOZEFEST: THE FINAL CHAPTER
Lake Mungo (2008) Australia
While I was watching an unsurprisingly boring supernatural movie, I noticed one of the reviews acknowledged that yeah, that movie pretty much sucked so go watch Lake Mungo. I put it on my 'list of things to do if I'm desperate' and forgot about it. I wish I never remembered. This movie is basically about the family of a 16 year old girl named Alice who drowned (fictional I better point out) and their tribulations afterwards. Because they keep seeing her... up to a couple of years later.
The movie starts with an interview about the whys and wherefores. It's pretty straightforward: A family was on an outing at a dam when the brother and sister went swimming but only the brother came back. The search for the girl took over a week before they found her - the images they showed of her body were pretty, uh, yeah.
When a body is underwater for say, 24 hours or more, it really doesn't look like the person it was. Trust me on this one and I'm not going to explain it. This picture may seem gross but... actually it's worse. Usually, especially if it has been several days, they don't make the loved ones do a visual identification - not only is it cruel to the family, it's not really possible. But of course the movie has its reasons as we find out later...
Because folks that's all this movie is. An interview with the family. That means you spend 87 minutes listening to the family recite the story in constant monotone with the interviewer asking questions, and very grainy, horrible video that may or may not show a teenage girl in the background. I mean where the hell did these cameras come from? The 70's? The images are so... awful that one could see anything in anything if that's what you wanted to see.
The only hint of originality in this film was the admission by the brother that he had faked the initial footage and pictures supposedly showing his dead sister. That was a plus. AND shows how easily those things CAN be faked - he explained the process and damn, it's just that easy. That was it though. We find that the girl was troubled (GASP - a 16 year old with problems?) and even was trapped in a sexual relationship with the neighbors - both at once. Ick. Very, very doubtful they'd let that get taped but they did and she had it hidden - which is why we get to see the boy's fake footage again 'cause they then see the shadow of their neighbor hiding in her closet, there hoping to find that tape. Duh.
The psychic the family had been consulting, apparently being the only one in the whole bloody country had also spoken with Alice. She said she had been having dreams of drowning for months. That would kind of tell me not to go swimming for a while. Actually that would tell me not to talk to a bloody psychic. Sigh.
So why did we have to see her drowned corpse? Footage from a school trip to Lake Mungo (movie's almost over and now we hear about it) shows her crying off in the distance (again the video was past awful) and burying something. The family goes there (this is a year or so later) and find the spot because hey, the movie's almost over. Alice had buried her cell phone and her favorite jewelry.
And good on you Nokia, for showing a cell phone can be buried over a year and still work. They find footage on her cell phone (Again, extremely crappy, bad, bad Nokia!) that shows she had seen an apparition coming towards her - it was her bloated corpse (they think). Mystery solved. Alice was a psycho.
Just kidding - a little. We go through this pseudo mystery because Alice needed her family to know all these things so now they can live with the fact that not only did their beloved daughter drown, she was into kinky sex and was being haunted. How special.
SNOOZEFEST III
Screamtime (1983) UK
I could just sit here and type the alphabet and that would be just as scary as this movie was. This might be, and I say MIGHT be scary to a five year old but that's about it. Saying 'Don't believe the rumours about all the dead bodies... they're the people who fainted watching!' is just plain... sad. And a giveaway that this is a UK product. It is a three story anthology supposedly in the style of Creepshow - yeah, maybe the ones from the 50's.
The wraparound is a couple of slackers who steal three videos from the rental store (That dates this right there, doesn't it?) and since they don't even own a VCR they go to a friend's house to watch them. And, big sigh, here they are:
1. That's The Way To Do It: How do the kids of today live without the good ole' fashion domestic violence of a Punch and Judy puppet show? Oh yeah, they murder hookers, zombies and each other in video games. Well, for this story, it's domestic violence so shut up. An older man with a younger wife and stepson makes a meager living putting on these horrid shows for the little ones to someday emulate in their own families. The wife has had enough and the boy, being a teenage jerk as is always the case in these things, brings his friends to a show to make fun of the old geezer and burn down the stage, and part of the puppets inside.
So you know he's dead. Sure enough on the beach he looks back in horror as he hears a kazoo blaring... no wait, that's supposed to be the puppet screeching as he's beating him to death with a large 2x4. Umm, what? A teenager that's scared of a puppet and a board they could easily grab away from their attacker and do some real damage? Sigh.
The wife gets it next, the husband gets scared he's going to die but then... the girlfriend shows up and almost becomes the next victim - of the old man who has been acting like the puppet all along. You didn't think a puppet 5 inches high could carry a 2x4 did you? Really? So according to the gods of extreme coincidence he chases her up on a roof, does a swing-and-a-miss and falls into a perfectly placed trash compactor which of course is on and... nothing. That's it.
2. Dreamhouse: A newlywed couple move into a house given to them by his parents and they're total jerks about it. They snipe about everything that's wrong with it. I was hoping for a slow, awful death for both of them, but instead we get to be tortured by watching their sorry asses. As these things go, the woman starts to see things - first just a boy on a bicycle in the yard that disappears whenever she brings attention to him, then more violent things - blood, murder, screams and all kinds of.... YAWN. Sorry about that but we all know what's going to happen.
Since these things have to twist, after the woman goes crazy and gets institutionalized, the husband sells the house to a nice family - with a boy on a bicycle in the yard, the same people his wife saw and... he gets in his car and the escaped psycho killer (we know he's a killer 'cause it's on the front page of a paper sitting in the front seat) looking suspiciously like Mark Knopfler slits his throat before going in to chop up the family... see, if he'd only got there a couple days sooner, both ungrateful house owners would have gotten their comeuppance and we wouldn't have had to watch this lame story...
3. Do You Believe In Fairies?: Do you believe in stupid stories that knock off every stupid story you didn't want to watch in the first place? Old ladies with evil intentions? Evil garden gnomes? Ghosts that come out of nowhere with no explanation to rip ones clothes off and then leave? Two brothers decide to rip off the old ladies and gee whiz, we've got little light blots floating here and there, plus some weak zombie action in the garden... you know what? If my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you what the hell that was all supposed to be about. Not. One. Clue. Just that thankfully it's not long.
So our stories are over - except for the wraparound. To end things with a BIG YAWN the scumbags who stole these movies are killed by the different characters in them. I guess. The cold truth is I was really paying more attention at that point to my Facebook page.
SNOOZEFEST II
Beyond Bedlam aka Nightscare (1994) UK
At first glance I saw the name Elizabeth Hurley and thought no way am I seeing a movie with Hugh Grant's model girlfriend trying to act. Then I saw the claim on the Nightscare cover: 'The Best Horror Film Since Hellraiser'. Ah hell no! The only way on Earth that could happen is if it was released one second after Hellraiser and no other films were made since...
SNOOZEFEST
7 Days To Live (2000) Germany
We start this loooong snoozefest with an entry from Germany. Not a good entry unfortunately. This movie could easily be given a steady rotation of viewing on the channel Lifetime (because men are bad and they will hurt you). We have the huge yawn setup: A young couple lose their son to, umm, okay I'm not kidding, a bee gets in his cereal and he swallows it and is either allergic or the bee swelled to the size of an apricot and he can't breathe and dies. Really.
They decide since that was just so... convenient, they're going to move out to the country in this huge mansion and... stare at each other I guess. Now right away Amanda's character Ellen starts getting freaky deaky signs that she's going to die - mainly, from things telling her she's going to die. Duh.
First it's a 7 on the mirror, a road sign telling her she has 6 days, the radio announcer telling her 5 and so on... meanwhile her husband, not the sharpest pencil in the box and as emotional as a piece of paper is turning into the husband from The Amityville Horror and gets more and more hostile towards her. See? Lifetime would eat that crap up. That's the basis for just about every movie they show.
The boring, not-really-explaining-anything reason for their troubles (and the troubles of other couples who have lived and died there) is that the house is surrounded by a swamp that was used as a mass grave in the Middle Ages and for some reason they've been there for the past two centuries and JUST NOW have decided they're pretty pissed about that.
So... what? I have no idea but it culminates down to Ellen having to grow a bit of a spine, actually saving her husband although he really doesn't deserve it and getting the hell out of there back to the city and the deadly cereal bees. Oh and they write a titular book about their experiences. Maybe they SHOULD move to Amityville...
100 PERCENT GEORGE A. ROMERO, 0 PERCENT ZOMBIE
Bruiser (2000) US/France
A film written and directed by the exalted Mr. Romero, this is not a movie with gore and zombies and the only monsters are the good ole' human kind - those ruthless enough in life to stomp on whomever they please to get exactly what they want. And they cause the breakdown and subsequent revenge moves of people-pleaser Henry Creedlow (Jason Flemyng).
We get a brief backstory of Henry - married to a woman who is always disappointed in him no matter how hard he tries, trying to afford to finish a sprawling expensive house which she demands, working constantly without proper credit at a fashion magazine called Bruiser trying to please a boss that is never satisfied, and trusting his best friend with his future in the stock market.
And of course every one of those people betray him. His only friend and one he can trust is the estranged wife of his boss - who must stay with him, otherwise he pretty much keeps the magazine that she really has worked much harder for than he has. In other words, pretty typical business, typical people.
And in typical style, Henry gets betrayed - his boss is messing with his wife, his best friend has been stealing money from him. Feeling helpless and hopeless his only friend seems to be the boss' wife. Her artistic outlet is making masks of people and she makes one for him. After finding out about all the betrayers in his life he wakes up and looks in the mirror - only to find that the white mask has become his face. He scratches at it and it bleeds as if it's his skin.
From there we have a progression of Henry manning up and getting revenge on everyone - although it's not really all that courageous, considering no one knows what he looks like now. One by one he confronts and eliminates those who've wronged him and when that's done, his face is now his own again. That's kind of heavy-handed George. Not bad mind you, just not that subtle.
The movie ends we assume years later as Henry is now a long-haired mailroom employee somewhere, and the way he goes through the office we assume he's happy to do it - until he passes a boardroom where the boss is reaming some employees and, seeing Henry watching starts to yell at him. Henry takes it for a few seconds then responds by turning his head - the white mask is back.
The moral to the story? Stick to what you know because although this movie wasn't horrible George neither was it effective or very interesting and the 'moral' part was pretty murky. Sorry.
DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB... ON PURPOSE
Pleasures Of The Damned (2005)
Have you ever tried to tell your friend a joke only to have them look at you blankly and say 'I don't get it.' and when you explain it to them, which of course takes away the fun they return with a soul crushing 'That's not funny.'? Apparently, looking at Netflix's reviews, quite a few just 'didn't get it'. This movie is a joke people, maybe not a hilarious one, but a joke. Anyone trying to take it seriously and getting disgusted with the 'poor story, acting and effects' are not getting the joke and you should just shrug and walk away.
With a tagline of 'Banned for 25 years... the most shocking film you've never seen.' and knowing it was shot with a whopping $2,000 budget, I thought this was actually pretty damn good, and a lot better than some 'serious' horror films I've seen lately.
The story, such as it is (and has nothing to do with the title): A group of bikers who worship Satan (with the cheapest Satanic props possible) are looking for a fabled book to gain eternal life. They follow a guy in a cardboard Satan leader suit (no kidding folks) who changes into different people or animals, depending on the situation - or who's on the set at the time.
The rest of the 'gang' are dressed in bad wigs and cheap denim 'gang' outfits. The film is 'dubbed' although there is no attempt to line up the dialogue with the actors, and also no attempt to keep the sound effects true to the action. Just as it's supposed to be.
I guess I should have mentioned that this film was supposedly made in 1979 by a man named Antonello Giallo, who was charged by the Italian government with 17 charges of indecency (having seen a lot of Italian films, if I took this seriously I could call BS on this alone) and was exiled. All copies of the film were destroyed - except for one. It was 'restored' and presented in all its glory.
Of course this is total crap. Especially when you watch and notice that all the cars have Maryland plates and one is driving a Scion... which wasn't even invented until 2003. So shut up and listen to the rest of the movie... which at 75 minutes was blissfully short - this version anyway.
Using fake dubbing, fake wigs, and recycling body parts to use in every gore scene, we also are told it is shot in Psychovision - meaning you will get a visual and auditory warning when ick is going to happen. The movie that this little gimmick copies (which was awful and not on purpose) was of course Chamber Of Horrors (1966).
The 'zombies' in the movie are guys in KKK outfits (except the hoods aren't pointy) dyed black with pentagrams painted on them (hard to 'munch' on body parts when your hood has no mouth hole) and are probably just the same actors recycled as I'm sure there were only a total of eight or ten people in this movie. Oh, supposedly the good guys win - with the usual twist which is more of a frame of uh-oh at the end.
So if you're a drinker (or just someone who enjoys a groan worthy movie) check this one out. My favorite review is also probably fake: 'There isn't enough water in my shower to wash the filth from my soul!' That. Is. Funny. I don't care who you are...
