NOT AS GOOD AS THE EXORCIST, MUCH BETTER THAN ROSEMARY'S BABY






The Sentinel (1977)

This movie had been suggested to me several times and I kind of passed it by. Since I thought the Exorcist was absolutely hilarious (I'm kind of twisted that way) and Rosemary's Baby bored me to tears, I wasn't terribly eager to peruse this Exorcist wannabe but there were an awful lot of big names in it, as well as names soon-to-be-famous so I bit the bullet and tried it out. It wasn't half bad. Wasn't great, but I'd watch this ten times back to back rather than sit through Rosemary's Baby again.

And boy were there a lot of names. They almost took away from the movie 'cause as I'm watching it my husband is looking over my shoulder saying 'Hey that's... (somebody not in the movie)' at which point I'd have to pause it and explain that no, that was somebody else. It happened a lot. Oh well, he knows the stuff I don't like what kind of cars are being used. Together we almost know enough to do good reviews.

Names? The leading lady is just about the only one I DIDN'T know - Christina Raines. I guess she's done a ton of TV work but I didn't recognize her. The ones I did know were Chris Sarandon (very sexy but with one of those porno star mustaches - yuck), Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, Beverly D'Angelo (naked through most of her role - wow), Ava Gardner, Jose' Ferrer (whose son Miguel Ferrer is a favorite of mine, and oh yeah, he's George Clooney's uncle), Eli Wallach, Christopher Walken (who seemed to spend most of the movie chewing on something, he rarely spoke), Jeff Goldblum (who didn't even get a credit until the end of the movie) and Tom Berenger who had five seconds of screen time, billed only as 'man at end'.

Oh what was the movie about? Sorry about that. Seems this neurotic model wants a place of her own to get some space from her clingy boyfriend (Chris Sarandon) so in Brooklyn she finds this fully furnished apartment for some outrageously low price and moves right in. On the fifth floor she sees a man but is told he is a blind priest and never leaves his room - in fact, the whole building is supposedly owned by the church. 

Not being the sharpest tool in the shed she moves right in but things get strange fast - thank goodness. This did not rely on shots of her scared and shocked face like in Rosemary's Baby - she actually moves. Her neighbors are massively weird though, from the owner of a cat who keeps showing up at her door to the two lesbians who seem to like lounging around in the buff and... doing what lesbians do I guess - at least in the movies.

We get cutaway scenes from the Catholic Church and we are let in that something big is about to happen, involving the building they own and the model who's moved into it. Her boyfriend, being a lawyer decides to stick his nose in her business, being a bit put out she wouldn't move in with him, and begins to find evidence of some sort of conspiracy. 

Meanwhile the model complains to the realtor about the neighbors only to be told and shown that there are no neighbors - the apartment she went to a party in obviously hasn't been lived in for years, and the only other inhabitant of the building is the old priest. She thinks she must be going nuts - not a first for her, as her childhood was traumatic and caused her to attempt suicide. When she first met her boyfriend he was married but his wife committed suicide which made HER attempt suicide again - this chick is not the sharpest tool in the shed, as I said.

So we're supposed to believe the explanation that the building is not owned by the church, but rather by a group of excommunicated Catholic priests, and is a gateway to Hell. The blind priest is the guardian but is about to die and they need a new one - one who has attempted suicide, as all the guardians have. Wait a minute - that makes no sense whatsoever. To Catholics, suicide is instant Hellbound behavior. Ah, but since she survived, she needs to pay for being miserable by being the new guardian. Ummm... whatever.

Here's where the movie makers got themselves in quite a bit of trouble. Burgess Meredith, who played her massively nosy neighbor (and like the others is actually a dead murderer) comes at her with some 'demons' from Hell. This would all have been well and good, except for the part of the 'demons' instead of special effects they used people with real deformities and some from freak shows. 

That was a major no-no. Why? Well, think about it - by doing so, they infer that those who are 'different' go to hell, right? That may not have been their intent but a lot of people saw it that way and were massively pissed.

Among these 'demons' is her boyfriend who had been murdered and because he had really arranged for his wife to be killed and have it called suicide is damned with all the others. Now here's where it's not how much money you have or the kind of people you hire but how well you use the camera that makes the movie. My long-winded speech is because at this point to show he's, uh, dead I guess, Chris Sarandon's face flies apart. One itty bitty problem though. If you stop the film just as it starts to rip, you can CLEARLY see strings on four points of his face - the four places the skin 'rips' away. Ah damn, that would have been a good effect too if they had been more careful.

They try to convince her to join them, but suddenly a priest who's been bugging her throughout the movie plus the blind priest beg her not to join the dark side - oops, sorry, I mean beg her to return to Christ. Or something like that. Does she?

Somehow, even though she now stays in the same apartment, they manage to demolish the old building and build a new one. A young couple love the place and ask if there's anyone else living there. On the fifth floor, the realtor explains, is an old nun who never leaves her room. It, of course, is the model who is now the new Sentinel.

Did any of that make sense? No? Oh well, it was still better made than most and certainly was a who's who of actors and actresses.



                              

#WHAT #THE #(BLEEP) #IS #UP #WITH #THE #HASHTAG?





Hold Your Breath aka #HoldYourBreath (2012)

I do NOT Twitter. I'm not trashing it, I just don't get it. I tried it for a while but getting bits and pieces of other people's conversation that I didn't understand wasn't worth all the time trying to follow and put together. Plus I don't feel people want to know what I'm doing or thinking every minute of the day. Isn't that what Facebook is for?

This is yet another boring and cheap effort by horror-by-the-pound company The Asylum so right away I knew any extra research I did would be a hell of a lot more entertaining than the movie itself. And I was right. This plays on the urban legend fear that if you drive by a cemetery and don't hold your breath, a wandering spirit can inhabit you. Massive duh. So of course we have seven young people you hope die quick going on a weekend trip and one refuses to hold his breath. Again, massive duh.

See, the moronic backstory is that in 1956 at the Goodchild Sanitarium For The Criminally Insane a nasty killer named Detrich Van Klaus is about to be executed in the electric chair. Now let's stop a moment. A SANITARIUM is going to EXECUTE a criminal. Umm, no. A Sanitarium (or sanatorium or sanitorium) is a place that, in the US at least, at the beginning of the 20th century was used mostly for the long-term care of those with tuberculosis. With some, if you had the money you could get residence at really nice ones that were more like resorts, others, not so lucky. They did NOT execute anyone.

A lunatic asylum (or more nicely put a mental hospital) was for the insane - those who either voluntarily committed themselves and those who were committed either by relatives or the justice system. They did NOT execute anyone either. So major, MAJOR duh from the beginning.

Then we come to the urban legend. I've heard lots of versions of this and it has about the same impact of 'step on a crack break your mother's back'. In other words, it's crap. But because this movie is so incredibly boring I thought I'd print a couple of these just for the hell of it. If you want some old-time death traditions, watch the Panic! At The Disco video 'The Ballad Of Mona Lisa' (Contrary to the popular meme I DO know more PATD songs than I Write Sins Not Tragedies) and it will give you some basic rules (Some reasons according to different sources are in italics:

1. Open A Window: All windows should be opened at the moment of death so the soul may have a speedy journey to the other side.
2. Close It Two Hours Later
3. Stop All Clocks And Cover All Mirrors: Mirrors in the house with a corpse should be covered or the person who sees himself will die next.
4. Bathe The Body (Keeping a white cloth on the face)
5. Lay The Body In White
6. Allow The People To Wail And Lament: Bodies were watched over every minute for 3-4 days after death to prevent a premature burial for someone who might simply be in a coma rather than actually dead.

Some of these are pagan rituals, some are... I dunno, just stupid? The whole point was to, I guess, convince the spirit of the dead person to leave without messing anybody up. I dunno. But anywho, as far as urban legends and death goes, here's just a couple:

• A person must hold their breath when passing a cemetery or they will breathe in the spirit of someone who has recently died. Tuck your thumbs into your fists when passing a cemetery to protect your parents.
• Collecting epitaphs from tombstones is unlucky and will result in losing your memory.
• Being near or in an open grave cures all manner of illness including toothache, boils, and incontinence.

Why am I blathering on and not telling you about the movie? Not much to tell really. They of course get possessed one by one, take a quick trip through the sanitarium (which they keep calling prison, good job guys) and kill each other - too damn slowly. The first one didn't die until 50 minutes in. That's inexcusable for such a boring movie.

The gore is below acceptable for the amount they tried to show - ripped out eyeballs always had the look of marbles and the wounds looked like they were days old; the most they did try was cutting a young lady in half while she was tied to a tree - but they only showed it from far away, to keep the cheapness and fake quality of the special effect hidden I guess.

And what the ever loving hell were they thinking at the end of the movie? I'm not just talking about the ending itself which WAS lame beyond belief but switching vehicles with every scene? Did they think we wouldn't notice? Now I do NOT know cars. I only know this was a Chevrolet Suburban because they had nice product placement and showed the logo several times. But in the getaway scene at the end even I had to pause the movie a couple of times cause - wait a damn minute - the cars were different. 

How did I know? They didn't even have the same damn license plates for crying out loud. Did they really think we wouldn't notice? C'mon folks, how many seconds does it take to change a license plate? I did that myself when I worked at a dealership (which I wouldn't recommend for anyone wanting to keep their sanity) and I can tell you it's a simple, quick procedure.

But as I said I don't know spit about cars so I looked this movie up to see if I was just being a bitch 'cause I had to sit through yet another 'oh gosh a spirit - wait we killed him - wait it's still alive after all' kind of movie. It turns out that during the (brief) getaway scene where they drove out of the cemetery (Which they alternatively called a graveyard - get a freaking dictionary, would you? Graveyards are next to churches...) onto the road they used SIX VEHICLES. Why? They were travelling down a dirt road onto pavement, they weren't traversing the jungles of Africa. Massive, massive duh and an appropriate end to yet another The Asylum abortion.

                              

BACK TO BUSINESS

My apologies my young readers for getting off track and blaming it on my personal troubles. I am here to pick apart movies, not bog you down with my personal garbage - although this IS my blog, it's not why I started it. I've got a few movies from the 70's that I'll be throwing at you, plus I gotta tackle all those (terrible) zombie movies I've lined up but haven't gotten to yet.

Rest assured I am still a sick, twisted little monkey who likes her movies gory and her insults sharp and pointy. And thank you for continuing to read my little project.



                              

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE IS DEAD






In 2005 I was fortunate to come across a kind of music I had not really listened to before and from a band I had never heard of. We had gotten a new satellite provider who had available a channel called 'Fuse' and on their top ten countdown they had a video I found to be very engrossing - the music was great and the band was very charismatic. I couldn't help but listen to it every day (Fuse actually played music back then) and finally my husband said 'Why don't you just get their CD?' I didn't even know their name. The next day I watched and discovered the band was called My Chemical Romance, and the song was called Helena.

For years fans of MCR were kind of ridiculed. We were labelled EMO, but we were always told by Gerard Way and his band that we could be however we wanted, to embrace life, that we were beautiful, to keep it ugly and stay real. We were told we were special and to never let others determine how we regarded ourselves.

We listened to the music, went to their concerts, bought their merchandise and kept the faith even when the albums came years apart. We kept buying their music even when they started coming in very expensive sets that seemed to get more and more spendy with each CD. The merchandise was expensive too, a lot of it a little too rich for those of us listening. I may be old, but most of the fan base were the youth, kids with not a lot of money but tons of heart and faith and we listened to every word, read every article, waited endlessly for every song.

Today we got a short, anonymous paragraph saying it was over. No explanation, no personal notes, just basically two sentences that said it's been swell but the swelling's gone down.

Do you truly realize what you've done MCR? I've read letters and blogs already of countless kids in mourning talking about being hurt, feeling betrayed, wondering why their heroes would just dump them without so much as a goodbye. One anonymous paragraph was an insult. We deserved better than that.

Now I'm quite a bit older so I know this is an inevitable part of the music industry. Each generation has had to endure the breakup of bands they held very dear. In fact most bands, even if they play in some capacity today, have suffered some kind of lineup change as people left, died or just plain burned out. Bands that were a lot larger in fan base than MCR and much more important to the history of music - some I can think of are The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, etc. and those were just some from the 70's - the list would be huge if we went further forward. The recent no-we-didn't-break-up-but-we're-back return of Fall Out Boy would be a good example. They too disappeared without so much as a 'thanks for the memories' and came back nonchalantly like nothing ever happened.

So why are we so betrayed? Why no warning or at least some personal note from the ones we were loyal to, some from the beginning which they claim is 12 years? Why did we have to find out on news channels that the band, who, in the March 9, 2013 issue of Kerrang (A UK based music magazine) had an article called MCR: The New Album which goes on to state that there are six songs finished for the new album that were 'exactly in  line with what My Chem fans will be thrilled to hear, but at the same time it really marks what I think is a new phase [for the band]. It's super-refreshing, but at the same time familiar in the ways you want it to be'.

IS DEAD

So what the hell MCR? One week you have a new logo, your new album is nearing completion, the next week you quit? Yes, it's your lives and you can obviously do with them whatever you want, you are not obligated to be a band and make music. But you had people counting on you. Kids that clung to you. And you just dumped them without warning or explanation.

I'm old and cynical. This is not killer news for me and I'm sure that despite the thousand of MCR items all over my house I'll move on and be fine. But your main base of fans, the younger set, counted on you. Especially since you told them they were special and that you cared about them.



                              

HE SAID, SHE SAID, REDUX 50%







2001 Maniacs (2005)

July 23, 2012 I had the pleasure of reviewing the 1964 chew-'em-up-spit-'em-out movie Two Thousand Maniacs!, a Southern revenge movie, with my friend Tim Forston. While he can't help me out with this remake review (Come back soon buddy, we miss you!) and I knew the remake wouldn't be near as good as the original, hey, it had Robert Englund in it and you know how I am about watching certain character actors no matter what the movie. Woof, what a stinker. 

While the 1964 film was labelled as a 'splatter' film although only three people died and with not much blood, it was a lot of fun. The characters were great, the Southerners were NOT depicted as just being hicks or ill bred and I enjoyed it. This one was played for the sheer gross factor and splatter and gore was aplenty throughout. I understand that in 2010 a re-remake was done called 2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams. I will be skipping that one, thank you.

It's called a comedy horror film I think only because it's funny to watch snotty college kids get killed. I'm kidding of course. Well, maybe just a little. This film updates the original in that instead of six random people being picked to be rerouted to the town of Pleasantville, we've got college kids and a motorcycle with (gulp) an 'N' word gentleman and a 'C' word woman (these Southerners were playing hick to the hilt). The Mayor of the town in fact was pissed that these two were brought in but the ones doing the detour couldn't see their 'colors' under their motorcycle gear so... they made do I guess.

They still centered the movie on the basic story that the town of Pleasantville was cut down by Yankee troops, although most were women and children during the Civil War. Now the town, population 2001 (I have no idea why they added one over the original) can't rest until they kill 2001 Yankees in retribution. Duh. I mean that's silly since... well war sucks anyway and this was as good a story as any I guess.

Robert Englund as the mayor does his usual over-the-top acting with a lot of sarcasm and wit. The other standout is a man who is a fine director and an actor with such a distinct voice that as soon as he was on the screen I knew him instantly as the man who played the stoner deputy in both Cabin Fever and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. He's got this voice... well, let's just say you can pick him out of a crowd, that's for sure. That would be Giuseppe Andrews by the way. He. Is. Hilarious. And how he managed to look exactly the same in both CF movies though they were eight years apart I will never know.

Okay, since this is more gore than humor, our splatter guests of the 'Guts And Glory Jubilee' die in the following ways:

• Girl - Drawn and quartered. She is later skinned and served as dinner to the group.
• Boy - Drinks moonshine that actually is acid.
• Girl - Crushed by a heavy bell.
• Boy - Hog tied and fatally pierced from end-to-end with a roasting spit.
• Boy - Tied to a cotton press and crushed to death.
• Boy - Castrated, then eaten.
• Boy and Girl Survivor - Go to the sheriff, find out Pleasantville is a cemetery as in the original, ride away on a motorcycle, but since this is the age of no happy endings, both are decapitated by a strand of barbed wire strung across the road.

 Watch the original for the color and the fun - watch this one if you just want a naked shot or two and lots of gore. Don't watch the sequel.





                              

PURE FREAKIN' LUCK




House Hunting aka The Wrong House (2013)

I've been a bit burned out from watching movies lately - got a ton of zombie ones to cover (hard to do during TWD season) and a lot of foreign movies (I need my full attention and brain power to concentrate on them) so I've been dinking around with cartoons and movies so bad I wouldn't even put them here.




I found this one by pure accident - it wasn't on the horror list, I was just looking for something to keep half an eye on while playing my games and I found this thriller with Marc Singer, a guy who's probably done a lot but I haven't seen him since he did The Beastmaster in 1982, so it was quite a shock to see him now (I keep telling myself just look in the mirror, I've aged worse than these guys). 

What I remember most about The Beastmaster was the first time Marc spoke - here's this oiled up hunk of a guy playing around with animals and the first line out of his mouth sounds like someone kicked him in the nu.. uh, kicked him somewhere sensitive.

So I start up the movie, again one eye on it, but soon it had my full attention (and a bit of frustration 'cause it's raining like a bitch today and the electricity keeps cutting out) and you know, it wasn't half bad. Compared to the stuff I've been seeing lately, it was freaking good actually. I looked up the synopsis for this movie and got 'two families go to an open house and can't leave'. Wow. That's... thorough.

We have two families looking at a house for sale - one is a realtor and his family, he wants to look at the house his business recently foreclosed. The other family is there because they were led by a man and his dog who appeared to them as they were looking at another house. The house they're looking at seems ideal - on tons of acres of wooded area, beautiful house. 

One family driving away barely misses a running, bleeding girl and being movie stupid hits a tree. The other family stops and picks them all up and they go on their way to a hospital. Except they end up back at the house. The bleeding girl is frantic and they discover her tongue has been cut out. And they can't get away from the house. This was kind of a duh but they drive in this seeming circle for hours until they finally run out of gas. Right at the house. Duh. And through the whole movie nobody thinks to give the mute girl something to write on to get some info on what the hell is going on. Another BIG duh.

So there's the Hay family, husband (Marc Singer), wife and daughter; and the Thompson family, husband, wife and son. And the mute girl. A recording at the door keeps inviting them to come in and check out all the house features. The house still has all the previous family's stuff but the first night they spend in the living room. They'll get out for sure, right?

The movie fast forwards to two months later. Sure enough they're still stuck there. Every morning warm shaving lather and a sharp straight razor is available in the bathroom, and seven cans of meat stew is in the cupboard (one can for every person). By now their nerves are completely shot. Every attempt to walk away from the place just gets them back where they started. And once in a while they see the guy who led them there, but he always disappears before they reach him. And the families have secrets. Nasty secrets.

In fact, over the course of 102 minutes we find there's really no 'innocents' here. Each person has something nasty in their past. One day they find only six cans of food. Looking around they find that the Thompson mother had hung herself sometime in the night. And things continue on a downspiral.

They can't leave, they can't live with each other, and their secrets come out and people are killed. The ending was somewhat of a duh, kind of obvious and if it was supposed to be a twist, then the movie maker must have thought we weren't paying attention. Oh well, it was far from perfect but it's a good enough story to keep your interest and have you guessing motives and secrets... Marc, you did okay.




                              

THREE SLICES OF BOREDOM WITH A SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE SIDE





Three Slices Of Life aka Slices Of Life (2010)

Not aware that this was yet another anthology of short stories (a big duh on my part since it SAYS three slices, at least on some of the posters) I was curious about the premise of a girl who can't remember her life yet there's a sketchbook full of stuff and she wonders if she really wants to remember anything after all. The poster of a girl soaked with blood also, I must admit, got me interested. This independent film took four years to make. That must be because Anthony G Sumner probably only had the weekends to work on it. Just kidding. Barely. And this movie is a little interesting. Again, barely.

Our wraparound story is simple: A girl named Mira wakes on the lawn of a seedy motel. She apparently works and lives there. She has no idea, however, of what has happened to her or really much else. However she takes her place in the motel office, with whispers of 'wake up' and 'remember' being constant in her ears. Among the things on the ground beside her is a nasty looking book (I mean the look, not the content) which definitely looks as if the writer took liberties and tried to copy the look of the Necronomicon. She looks at the book - on the front it says Work Life and she opens it up...

Work Life: A clerk at a computer firm wants to be liked. By anyone. He completes an online computer programming course and figures that he should be promoted and work upstairs with the others instead of in the basement by himself where he spends most of his life. Covering for another employee's shift he tries an online 'chat' service, but every woman simply laughs in his face and cuts the connection. 

Meanwhile upstairs in the real world, employees step on each other trying to advance, mainly by coming up with ideas the boss will like. One has what he thinks is the perfect product. It is nanoadvertising - by clicking on the site, the customer will be induced to like the product, and MUST buy it. The boss rejects it, seeing only lawsuits by people being electrocuted by their computers.

The clerk, who everybody calls 'Worm' (ha ha ha... no, that's not clever, sorry) steals the disc and loads it onto his computer. Now EVERY woman on the dating site wants him, and we have a weird scene reminiscent of Videodrome and not in a good way as his computer keyboard and mouse seem to become flesh. Ick. He then decides in order for his co-workers to like him, he must send an email with this 'worm' in it to all his coworkers. The effects are not what he expected. 

After epileptic fits and foaming at the mouth, all the workers in his building have now become zombies. Makeup and effects? Eh, good enough. Four years of production good enough? Not really. But to be fair, it is an independent film and compared to some big money productions it did work well enough. 

After almost being chomped by his now devoted (and undead) coworkers (I've worked in offices like that - I swear with some of these same people) he escapes to his basement where he finds a pretty girl who was a temp upstairs and didn't know how to work her email and so was unaffected. He is overjoyed to have someone while they hear gunshots upstairs - the government didn't waste time on this one, they were there within ten minutes of the outbreak. Wow, it usually takes them ten minutes just to take an emergency call. Sorry, that's mean but true. 

But just as 'Worm' is about to kiss his new girl, a new hole appears in her head. Good splatter though. The hazmat dressed assassins, recognizing somehow that not only is he human but he started the whole mess, take him with them to... wherever zombie masters go. Now 'Worm', who only wanted a friend, will spend the rest of his life alone in isolation as he is studied by faceless workers.

Back at the motel Mira comes to herself as if in a fugue. Her book has changed - it now says Home Life. She opens it up and starts to read...

Home Life: A young, very pregnant woman, enjoys a baby shower with friends when they hear of the recent Amber Alert on the news - young girls in the area have been disappearing for the last four months, the bodies of a couple of them have already been found. This disturbs her but her husband is a police officer working on the case so she tries not to think about it. She hears children's voices outside and looking out the window sees one young girl standing there. 

Now I have to break in this story and say that this, while being the most obvious story with obvious ending had a lot of what-the-hell moments in it, I'll tell you why. The girl who calls herself Ally doesn't want to open her eyes but stands in the yard, even when the woman offers to call her mother. She then morphs into a demon looking horror. The woman gets bad contractions whenever she sees her.

And now, the TV keeps turning itself on, always on the Amber Alert story, and the three dead girls found so far are haunting her, telling her they want her baby. Does that make sense? She didn't do anything, why torture her? I mean this has the most obvious whodunit ending since there's only her and her husband, but why torture her? Anywho, this idiot cop keeps secret keys around his neck. One of the demon children attacks him and takes the keys. 

The woman is led to the shed she is not allowed to go into (D to the U to the H) and the key unlocks both the door and a small trunk inside a van (Did she not KNOW they owned a van?) and discovers the child the TV kept playing the Amber Alert for, still alive. She lets her out and here's hubby trying his best to look menacing but just looking stupid. He says 'I was going to have to wait another month to have my fun but I guess I'll start now.' Uh, what? He wanted a kid to mess it up? Kids have only been disappearing for four months, don't you think he'd be doing this a little longer and farther away from home... ah, never mind.

The little girl Ally who first appeared to her (and causes bad contractions whenever she sees her) comes again with demon face (pretty good, bad for the kid though, hope she didn't get nightmares) and attacks and kills the husband. She then goes to the woman who's water is breaking and says 'Mama I saved us.' Conveniently, the others disappear.

Back at the motel Mira keeps hearing whispering and now believes she sees the people from her stories at the motel. The book has changed again, it now reads Sex Life (Oh brother, here we go)...

Sex Life: This, for you gore fans was full and overflowing. You're gonna get tons of guts, gallons of blood, and apparently most of the film maker's budget on this story which is stupid, simple and silly but boy was it RED. Brother and sister, alone except for their uncle who has been sexually abusing the sister for years, decide to make a run for it when they think they've killed him. They end up in a wooded area where another story has been playing out.

A father is seen locking up his daughter in the basement. He then takes implements to cut a body in the bathtub apart (wait, that's not the good part) and putting the pieces in garbage bags goes off to the woods to bury them. He slips, hits his head and becomes unconscious. The brother and sister find him and being out of money and gas decide to take him to the hospital and stay in his house which is huge and full of everything they could need. 

They don't know about either the body or the girl but they soon find the girl and let her out. While she cleans up, they see tons of artwork and a family tree showing that the bloodline of Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed leads up to the girl they just released.

Quick history in case you didn't know: Elizabeth Báthory was from Hungary and was the most prolific female serial killer in history - although no one knows the precise count of how many she murdered. She is often referred to as the Blood Countess although some have also called her Countess Dracula. Her main thrill was bathing in the blood of virgins, believing that to be the source of immortality, or eternal youth.

Meanwhile the father has woken in the hospital and beats cleats to make it home to finish what he started.

The daughter has cleaned up and the boy catches a glimpse of her as she puts on a robe. To his delight she doesn't mind a bit, in fact, is quick to take him to bed. Unfortunately, his delight is short-lived as the last descendant of the Blood Countess reveals the 'secret' to her bloodlust (at least according to this movie) - she has some sort of blood lusting worm living in her... uh... you know. We are talking total blood spatter ladies and gentleman... much MUCH more blood than can possibly be in any one person, much less a handful. The boy is reduced to mulch in a very gory manner and the girl laughs and laughs as she revels in the blood and guts.

Her father, of course knowing exactly what she's capable of doing, grabs a gun and shoots her in the forehead. The sister, seeing him come home and expecting the worse of all adult males shows up just after, seeing her pieces of brother smeared all over the bed, all the blood and the shot girl on the floor. 

She of course thinks instantly the worst of the guy and takes a sledgehammer... apparently they weren't satisfied with just smashing the guy's head in - first she has to swing at his face, taking off his nose, most of the skin, muscle... hmm, must have been some razor blades on that hammer. He dies and she buries her face into her brother (ewww) and cries. Then notices something strange.

The girl is dead but she's slowly being dragged towards the wall. Once there she is sat up by... something. That's when we get to see our wiggle worm, the size of a Buick but somehow fitting nicely into this skinny girl. It now finds the only heartbeat in the room (I guess being a Bathory descendant doesn't matter to it anymore) and sloop! Sorry, sloop is a stupid word but it fits here -  sloop! It makes a new home in the sister's... you know. She gets a strange look on her face and the ending is obvious a mile away. Sure enough she shows up at dear ole' uncle's place and, well, you know.

Back at the motel Mira is now convinced the people in her changing book are at the motel and goes to talk to the owner - and discovers a horrifying (and predictable and boring and stupid) revelation: She has been living over and over and over again, writing stories on the skin of the older one as the newer one writes. Long story short (too late) Mira IS the owner of the motel in her newest form, and takes the older woman's skin (which has been already conveniently peeled for her as the woman proudly demonstrates) to write further stories.

Hmm Mr. Sumner, maybe you needed another year.