MINI HORRIBLE HORROR MOVIE MARATHON COMING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Please Don't Whine Again!

Don't worry -  I know I do that way too much. This is just a quick note, first to thank you so much for putting this little blog over 59,000 views - that makes my day even if typing makes me want to scream in pain (no I'm not going to go on about the fibro stuff). So what has yours truly been up to?

Facebook. Not what you think - I've been working on 'cleaning out' my personal account. That means going through three years worth of posts and deleting everything except the new stuff which is all posts directing people to Miss Murder's Dungeon Of Horror. When I created that page, I stupidly attached it to my personal account thinking it to be easier just to go between one and the other. Stupid STUPID STUPID! I'm breaking the Facebook chains and now realize if the accounts had been separate, I could have just deleted my own and keep the horror page.

Miss Murder's page, while showing only 57 members, gets on an average week about 2,000 views by people all over the world. Not bad, considering that FB in all it's greedy stupidity, thinks I should be paying at LEAST five dollars a day to MAYBE get roughly 20 more likes - a week. Oh that sounds totally fair. Pffft and a big DUH on that one. I'd rather collapse the page and pack it up than pay blood money to coax somebody to go to the HUGE trouble of hitting the 'Like' button.

Sooo.... three years of posts are going away. Fortunately I was not one of those who constantly passed on internet rumors, scams, recipes, pictures of what I ate each night, vague inspirational posters that were already passed on countless times, threats of death from celestial bodies above if someone did not 'share' a prayer posted on my page, thousand of cute kitten pictures (okay, maybe a dozen or so), and some doohickey people have on their phone that posts exactly everywhere they happen to go even if it's to the market or to a restaurant. 

As it is, what I've been seeing on mine is complaining. Lots of complaining. Why am I on FB again? Oh yeah, the horror page. As well as having horror trivia I thought was pretty wild, it points to this blog, as this blog points to that page. It's an eeeevil little plan that seems to have worked all right.

I DID take the plunge and sign up for Tumblr and Pinterest - what is the point of these programs exactly? I know what MySpace was about, I used that a couple of years but these seems to be programs where you go when you're really REALLY bored and decide to make a whole 'board' about kittens or puppies or whatever. Is THAT all it is? If so, I won't be there very long.

I've been a bit preoccupied with newer movies and that's not what I really wanted this for - this is for low budget, low expectation, low quality horror flicks that make you flinch because they're bad, not because it's a multi-million dollar 'reimagining' of a movie you've already seen several versions of. I've lost my way and I'm gonna get it back.

But in the meantime, please enjoy this Australian commercial about why you should stay in school:

Oh yes, there will be blood...

So I've got right in front of my DVD drive my collection of 'classic' horror movies that include such goodies as 'Don't Answer The Phone!', Night Fright (anything with John Agar is a guaranteed column of derisive comments), Scared To Death (Yawn - oh, Bela Lugosi? Yawn...), The Manster.... you know, stuff you really shouldn't watch unless there's a cutout of three figures in front of the screen riffing on it.

So hold on tight, keep the faith, and I'll leave the new stuff alone for a bit - but I DO want to do one I found by sheer accident from a new app called Movie Planet. It stars (so it says, they probably have five minutes of screen time max) none other than Gene Simmons AND Ozzy Osbourne. It's 1986's Trick Or Treat and it should be a scream - of laughter. Hold on tight kiddies - this rides gonna get a bit bumpy...

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YOU WILL KNOW HER NAME - WELL NO SHIT SHERLOCK, IT'S ONLY THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE...

Carrie (2013)

Despite my assertion that I would stay away from reboots like the plague, I still had a certain curiosity about what modern cinema would do with some classic stories. Some were... okay, others not so much. This was in the not so much category I'm afraid. And they wouldn't call it a 'reboot', instead they call this a 're-imagining'. 

That is some total douchebaggery that hasn't been seen since Kubrick stole Stephen King's The Shining and changed the story any damned way he pleased. C'mon folks, you took a story that's been told more than once, added an update here and there and you're calling it YOUR re-imagining. Pffft. It wasn't totally their fault I suppose. Unless you're young and never heard or saw the original Carrie, you might think this version is kind of scary. Or not. Otherwise, one can't help but contrast and compare.


And if you're like me, you can't help but find the boo boo's that are sprinkled throughout the movie (the original had more though) and make fun of 'em. The original Carrie of 1976 was full of errors - errors in continuity, cinematography errors, etc. I reviewed it 4/11/13 if you want to take a peek. I thought that at least with more money and time they would be a bit more careful - but nope, the goofs start with the very first scene. Oh and if you want to see the movie - this is just one huge spoiler, 'kay?

As I always do because my brain was mush, I went to the wiki to get the character names and the sequence of events right. The first thing I noticed is the ending the wiki prints is completely different than the movie I saw. WTH? So I looked this little problem up. There are actual several different little touches they added and took away depending on what version you get to watch. I'll tell you what I saw, then tell you what else I found out. The movie itself is set in Maine, but is filmed in Ontario, Canada.



Julianne Moore's performance, while it was obvious she was trying her very best, still had me comparing her with the incomparable Piper Laurie. The movie starts with her (Margaret White) in her own bed screaming, blood everywhere, asking God for help. She soon finds out what the problem is (?!?) when a head peeks from between her legs. Oh c'mon now. Really? We're going this route? She doesn't know about pregnancy? Later she tells Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz) she thought she had a tumor. Nice. 

And we get our first error - or if you prefer, just a movie thing that squeamish directors insist on - in one scene the baby is icky of course and attached to an umbilical cord. The next scene it is in her arms, no cord, no afterbirth. In this version, she considers killing it with a pair of scissors but decides to let the little girl live.



Then we jump to the iconic shower scene. Ya know, the whole movie is iconic so that's the last time I'll use that word. And we get another error. Now if you look up errors, you'll find a bunch of them that could be errors or they could just be the character moving. I'm only including the ones I SAW myself. Yes, Carrie is showering and, despite being a senior in high school, experiences her first period. 

Now it's bad enough that she doesn't know anything about her body (things have changed a lot in the last couple of decades, this is now dated and not very realistic) but they make her first period look as if she's already been splashed with the pig blood. It's everywhere. I'd freak too - anybody would even if they knew what was happening.



And, because this is an electronic world and we've got to include a message about bullying (sigh) the whole event is caught on video on Chris' (the bad girl) smart phone then later uploaded on the computer. This plus refusing the discipline the class receives for their actions leads to her suspension and inability to go to prom. But since she's not smart enough to delete it off her phone, her attempts later at getting her lawyer father to sue the school are not successful. Duh.

That wasn't the mistake. The actress who played Carrie didn't want to be naked in this version, although Sissy Spacek was. She appears to be showering (no dirty pillows, sorry guys), but when she wraps herself in a towel and starts her hysteria on the floor it's obvious she's wearing panties.

We also get things that wouldn't fly today but did when Stephen King wrote the story: The gym teacher (Judy Greer) slaps Carrie to stop her hysteria, then later grabs Chris (the bad girl) for telling her to 'F' off. That's an immediate dismissal and possible assault charges - not in this movie. Which only makes more obvious what's wrong with this movie - it's outdated in places and trying to update it to today's standards was a nice idea but it doesn't really work. 

If you want to see good cinema (with all its' errors - it had a lot) with the great Brian De Palma watch the original. If you want a bloody girl who kills lots of people, see this one.

Carrie discovers through books about her 'powers' and how to use them. In this version she even practices. Her mother knows and fears her which empowers her quite a bit over the original mouse of a girl in the original. I applaud Chloë Grace Moretz for having to carry (no pun intended) so much of the movie herself. She did well - for what she had to work with.

Carrie also seems to have actually read her Bible, opposed to her mother; sex was NOT the original sin as many like to believe and the 'curse' brought upon woman for having sex was NOT blood. The original sin was disobedience and since Eve started it, her 'curse' was an increase of pain when giving birth. 

Although Carrie directly quotes from the Bible when trying to reason with her mother, her mother will tolerate no beliefs but the ones she clings to like a life raft - that she had sinned for having sex with her husband (long out of the picture even though she still wears a ring) and her curse was to have a 'witch' for a daughter. Nice.

We also see evidence that Margaret White deals with whatever emotion she's trying to sublimate by self-harm. We're not talking people flogging themselves for religious purposes kind of harm, she takes whatever is handy and rips into her skin. Self-harm is a lot more prevalent than people realize - it is not a sign of being 'emo' or 'stupid' as I've heard it called - it is a coping tool. I'm not defending it, just acknowledging that it is one of the ways people use to deal with what they cannot face.


Here's a fun little factoid: The reason that the performance of Piper Laurie could not be duplicated, much less improved upon, is that when reading the script, she was convinced this was some sort of comedy and she was supposed to be an over-the-top zealot. So even though she was told this was a horror movie, she couldn't get that comedic element out of her head - which is what made her performance so excellent.

But to be fair, none of these characters could make me forget the original actors and so contrasting and comparing performances was inevitable.

Now. We all know (unless you're under 25 and have never heard of this story) that the whole thing is just a setup for the big-badda-boom at the end. Popular girl Sue Snell asks her boyfriend Tommy to ask Carrie to the prom, while Chris, the bad girl, gets suspended and plans revenge for the things she's suffered. She has serious anger issues. Together with her punk boyfriend Billy in his 1970 Pontiac GTO they get the stuff and get ready to do the thing. At the whatever. Toward the end.

Carrie is making her dress as in the original. Here she is using an electric sewing machine and we get a very obvious boo boo. Now I have absolutely no skills whatsoever with this kind of thing, but they attempted to emphasize that she was becoming comfortable with using her telekinesis and so shows the foot pedal moving up and down by itself. Those kinds of pedals are for non-electric machines. Sorry guys, that was a really dumb mistake.


There's also a tension-breaking dumb scene where the boys all get fitted for tuxes. I don't know if you'd call this an error or not, but the scene shows Tommy and his friends checking out their BLACK tuxes yet when he picks Carrie up he is in a WHITE tux. She has her corsage but not knowing what to do with it, pins it to the left side of her dress. When Tommy shows her it is to go on her wrist, it is on the right side of her dress. Small boo boo.

Sue - in the original - helped with the decorations and wanted to watch Carrie and Tommy so was already at the school. In this version she's at home until Chris for some unknown reason decides to text her about what they're about to do. Since what they're planning could result in a serious assault charge, I sincerely doubt this - but since she WAS stupid enough to record the shower incident on her phone...

So Sue rushes to the prom to prevent the tragedy. As in the first version the gym teacher sees her first and shuts her out. And now we're all set up and I'm prepared to watch this more than once to, you know, be able to poke fun and pick out errors as much as possible. It's going to be easy. They've set the stage up with chairs for the King and Queen of the Prom and where the couple is supposed to stand are markers - which also made it easy for Chris and her boyfriend to somehow aim the bucket in the right place. And here we go.

After Tommy and Carrie are picked as we knew they would be, they stand on the stage. I watched this scene three times to analyze it. Nope, actually it was nine times. Why? Because to get the biggest bang for their buck the 'money shot' of the bucket overturning was repeated three times.

We have one lone bucket. Number one, it's metal - wouldn't rubber be easier and quieter? But that's what was used in the original so... number two, the amount of blood dumped is like someone took a bathtub up there and dumped it on Carrie - there's no freaking way there'd be that volume of blood coming down. Number three, with each take the blood looks different - once really, really thin, once too thick, and no I'm not going to say one was just right 'cause it was just all wrong.


I thought it funny ('cause I'm warped that way) that there were large screens on each side of the stage so the whole audience could see this bloody performance (pun intended) really close up. We also get to see another continuity boo boo: Carrie doesn't have near enough blood over her when they show them on the large screens - her hair isn't saturated and neither is her dress. Tommy also has a lot more blood on his tux than when you see when he's on the stage. 

The audience is shocked into silence - until one of the girls puts up Carrie's "performance" on the floor of the shower onto the screens. Then people start to laugh. Big mistake. Carrie, instead of being kind of 'sprinkled' as in the first movie actually has quite a bit of blood on her and her dress in this one - including the right side of her face and instead of freaking out, she's mad. The bucket falls, hits Tommy and kills him. That part I never understood. An empty bucket kills you? Maybe if it had a few bricks in it...


And here is where our real problems begin. If you've read any of my reviews, I've commented on the fact that when a movie uses a very specific or difficult medium (such as fake blood) and there are dozens of scenes that take weeks to do, the blood spatter or whatever medium is used is going to be different from scene to scene. That is not a continuity error so much as it is just the way things go. You just can't make an identical blood spatter on someone for days or weeks of filming. Look at Evil Dead. Look at the original Carrie. Look at ANY movie that tries to have this extreme of a scene that may have taken days or weeks to complete.

I do know this: When Tommy is killed by this mystical bucket, he is facing the audience. When Carrie bends over him to see if he's okay (he isn't), his whole body is turned around and he is facing the back of the stage. Also, Carrie looks up and sees sunglasses hanging off the (walkway?) above and sees her reflection in both lenses. Nope, sorry - could never happen. One, it would be doubtful she would even notice, two, there was no light source to see a reflection, three, she was not close enough for just her face to be in the lens. Sorry.

Also, remember those spots on the stage where they were supposed to stand? The views looking down at the stage shows the blood behind the spots. When the blood hit, it went down the front of them so wouldn't it be in front of the spots? Or am I getting really picky?














Carrie stands back up and turns around, the red contact now in her right eye to make her look even worse (the contact was clearly visible) as the two now-killers jump in their car for a quick getaway. No one is particularly concerned until she gestures and like a monsoon the whole room of people, furniture and everything else slams into the back walls (after closing the doors first of course). A fire begins on the stage presumably from power wires she has snapped.

As her tantrum continues, she starts to make movements like a bad mime. Someone said her differing movements were continuity errors - how do you make a mistake when your character is constantly moving? I'm looking for boo boo's, not people moving along as they do whatever. You do notice that her eyes are red/not red in differing scenes however - whether that is a boo boo or just a reflection on the extent of power she's using - you decide.

Sparing the life of the gym teacher who showed her kindness (but not much) she flies, floats, hovers, whatever, to the door to leave the school that is now totally engulfed in flames. Wow, that went up fast, considering people are running out of the gym and it can't have been more than a minute since the fire started or they'd have been dead. But in this version despite the fire, there are handfuls of students who make it out alive.

Carrie is now outside sans shoes. Of course, the blood stains have changed - in some scenes it looks as if her hair was merely wet, other scenes matted. In some scenes her eyes (or at least her right one) is red, some not, her dress is totally saturated so there's no problem there but as I said, constantly changing blood spatter is not a surprise as she is this way for much of the rest of the movie.

Car is obviously empty... whoops...

As she follows the car with her tormentor inside (she walks, they speed through town, she stays right behind them, go figure) fire explodes all around her. They think they're going to get away but Carrie causes the road to give way, forcing them back. They then try to run her over. He hits the gas pedal, showing that his foot was NOT on the gas pedal to begin with and supposedly in the space of half a block goes from 60 mph to 90 mph... sheah right. Instead of our car-changing crash of the original (one car drives, another type of car crashes, before it blows up it's the original car again), this Carrie simply puts up her hand and the car smashes to a halt in front of her like there's an invisible wall. Chris had worn her seatbelt for some reason but her boyfriend didn't - his head is smashed into the steering wheel.

Carrie, whose hands do change position between shots but hey, she's moving around, duh, raises the car off the ground. Chris, looking at her in horror floors the accelerator for whatever reason. And in movie duh style, even though the whole front of the car is smashed in, the engine still runs. Carrie points the car at the gas station conveniently right in front of them (all the lights are on and the bay door is open but there isn't a soul around anywhere) and the car crashes into the gas pumps. Chris' face (having taken the seat belt off to try to get out of the car) goes through the windshield, just enough for her to stare at Carrie before she dies. 

Carrie walks off and another broken transformer sends wires to the ground to ignite gas that has spilled from the pumps (which apparently have no emergency shut off or else Carrie is pumping it herself - I dunno) and we get the huge fireball explosion. Since they also show this from several angles we see that except for one where she is walking away from the gas station, Carrie is in none of the shots.

Whoops, empty again...

But just before that, it is plain, as it is in the scene where she stops the car in front of her, that no one is in it. You think they'd have strapped dummies in there at least to make it look a little more real. Nope. So the whole thing is one huge kaboom but when the fire dies down, the car is still in one piece. Tough little sucker.

Carrie does her dreamy walk down the street, heading for home. Here the cameraman must have been bored or the director watched too many Batman TV shows 'cause the camera does this nauseating flip to the side to show the whole thing sideways. Ick.

Once Carrie is home it follows the original pretty closely - she takes that miracle bath that erases every bit of blood off of her, she's in her nightgown, she hugs her mother, mother stabs her in the back. She responds by throwing every sharp object at her, pinning her to the wall in that crucifix-type position same as in the first version. 

She pulls out enough of them to get mom loose (ouch) and holds her. Rocks start to fall. The rocks part was in the book - it was an early indication of Carrie's powers - she had caused rocks to fall from the sky when she was three and her mother called her Carietta (that's the book, the review says Carrietta).

There's a change here from the original movie - Sue Snell has walked to Carrie's house and even after all she's seen, she tells Carrie she can help her. Carrie is about to kill her but detects that Sue is pregnant. I had guessed this earlier when Sue threw up - it's a movie DUH. If you get a nosebleed, you're dying. If you throw up even once you're pregnant. If you're a guy doing either one you're really screwed.

She tells Sue her baby will be a girl which shocks Sue who didn't know she was pregnant. Oh come on, is NO ONE teaching ANYBODY about the workings of the human body around this town? Sigh. Anywho, because of the baby, Carrie instead pushes Sue out of the house and it does one of those collapses that even though it's almost flat you can still see Carrie and her mother untouched inside. Finally it all goes down and all that's left is rubble (little round river rocks, but rubble).

This is the ending I saw: Sue Snell is at the cemetery with flowers. She approaches the tombstone of the grave (probably empty) for Margaret and Carrie White. The words 'Carrie burns in Hell' like the original movie is spray painted on the marker. Next we see Sue screaming in a hospital, blood everywhere - supposedly she is giving birth. She screams something is wrong, the doctor tells her to relax. From her, um, womb, a grown woman's arm appears and reaches up, grabbing her arm.

She wakes screaming, looking to be roughly 7-8 months pregnant as her mother tries to calm her down telling her she's had another nightmare. That's the movie I saw anyway.

In the wiki, they say it ends; "As a voice-over gives her testimony in court regarding the prom incident, Sue visits Carrie's grave and places a single white rose by the headstone. As she leaves, the gravestone's surface begins to break."

That would have been extremely confusing if that were the ending of the movie. Now the book was kind of a retrospective of what had happened with the case of Carrie White, and court testimony given by Sue Snell was sprinkled throughout the whole story. THEN you would have understood this but.. I don't know where this came from.
Then the wiki says there were alternate and adjusted endings. Huh? 

In one ending they present; "Sue is giving birth to her first child. But she struggles and suffers from extreme and unusual pain, while Carrie was seen to hug her baby instead of the doctor giving birth to her baby. Screaming in horror, Sue later discover she is just having a bad nightmare, waking up in her mother's arms, showing Sue is somehow mentally unstable and in a terrible shock."

Yikes. To me it's just another example of taking a good story and mucking it up. Poor Stephen King. He must feel a bit like George Romero - he's got good ideas to make great movies and people keep screwing with him. Tsk.

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NOT JUST ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE - NO SLASHERS, NO PARANORMAL CRAP, AND AN ACTUAL CONCEPT - WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?


+1 aka Plus One (2013)

So I fell again today. With my fibro and all the meds I take this is not an unusual event. It happens a couple of times a week. How bad and how hard differ - and the reasons get downright stupid. This morning it went something like this: I'm in my chair (it's an office-type on wheels) watching MST3K and writing on Facebook - you know, totally wasting my time. 


I feel a warm body start to slide down my back. This usually means one of my cats has fallen asleep on top of the chair and forgotten about gravity and so has rolled down the chair. This is no big deal, it happens a lot. I usually just keep them propped where they are - eventually they wake up and move on.

This time I had the bright idea of reaching behind me and tickling the chin of the kid who usually does that - she's a little bitty thing and forgets she's not somewhere she can roll over. Trouble was, it wasn't her. It was my huge cat Buddy and the tickle under the chin FREAKED HIM OUT. Just as he was scrambling to get away from me, another of my larger cats decided we were playing and she wanted in. 

Needless to say (but I am anyway) bedlam ensued. The chair, which is very unsteady when the back is reclined, twisted and dumped all of us off. I slammed into... lots of stuff before I hit the floor. Every animal in the house disappeared. I sat there for a while <words were said, I won't say what> and saw that one of my hands was bleeding pretty good as two fingers were slashed up as well as the knuckle. Screw that. I took pain meds and went to bed.


I was not in a good mood waking up - I can barely move and my right hand hurts like a bitch. So I looked for a movie I wouldn't have to do any thinking to watch - teenage party movies work pretty good. To my surprise, not only was this a very different sort of movie, it might have fit better if they had put it in the sci fi horror type genre. In fact, in the IMDb it IS listed as a sci fi/thriller movie. That fits better.


The set-up was typical but I wasn't expecting anything. Three college friends go to a rich guy's party that happens nowhere ever. He's set it up where the first half is in the house, the second half is outside with a stage show. In other words, the typical teenage movie. We're just waiting for the mad slasher or the pissed off ghosties to show up and kill them one by one, right? Wrong.


It starts when something from out of the sky crashes to earth causing a big hole. It then sends an overload of electricity to the pole serving Angad's (the party host) house. This causes a temporary power outage. No big deal, it comes back on after a few moments. But something weird is happening.


That weirdness gets worse each time the surge cuts the electricity. What's happening? I usually don't do this, but this movie is worth a peek just for the hell of it. Just know that the situation gets more and more, uh, outside the box? Metaphysical? Moral questions come up and people make interesting decisions. I know, I know, how smart could college kids be? Especially when they're scared beyond any kind of reason?


That's for you to find out kids - 'cause this movie is not perfect. The acting isn't that great and the ending is kind of... confusing. But for a 'college party' movie, this one is definitely in the 'interesting' category and that is rare. Currently streaming on Netflix, I'm sure it can be found on other streaming services as well.

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HI-YO SILVER AND... LET'S GET THE BLOODY HELL OUT OF HERE! WE HAVE TO STAY FOR 149 MINUTES? AH HELL NO!

The Lone Ranger (2013)

I'd heard opinions running the gamut on this one so I thought this review would be hard. I've had this on my list for a while but haven't put it together. I think I'm over-thinking a rather simple minded (although incredibly expensive) movie and so let's just whip this puppy into shape. The legend of the Lone Ranger is thought to be as old as 1915.


In the 30's, kids huddled around their radios, eager to find out what happened to their hero The Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick Tonto. The two heroes stood for justice, truth and the American way. They blazed through the Western parts of the United States righting wrongs, saving damsels in distress and being the best of the best.

In 1949 The Lone Ranger moved to television. Clayton Moore was the Lone Ranger. Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels, who was a Mohawk from the Six Nations Indian Reserve in Ontario, Canada. Trying to be a role model for the kids even in their personal lives, they tried to live by the high standards of the heroes in the shows:

• That to have a friend, a man must be one. 
• That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world. 
• That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself. 
• In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right. 
• That a man should make the most of what equipment he has. 
• That 'this government of the people, by the people, and for the people' shall live always. 
• That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number. 
• That sooner or later...somewhere...somehow...we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken. 
• That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever. 
• In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.

Even when appearing live at events they stayed to the creed of honor:

• The Lone Ranger is never seen without his mask. 
• With emphasis on logic, The Lone Ranger is never captured or held for any length of time by lawmen, avoiding his being unmasked. 
• The Lone Ranger always uses perfect grammar and precise speech completely devoid of slang and colloquial phrases, at all times. 
• When he has to use guns, The Lone Ranger never shoots to kill, but rather only to disarm his opponent as painlessly as possible. 
• Logically, too, The Lone Ranger never wins against hopeless odds; i.e., he is never seen escaping from a barrage of bullets merely by riding into the horizon. 
• Even though The Lone Ranger offers his aid to individuals or small groups, their benefit is only a by-product of a greater achievement - the development of the west or our country. His adversaries are usually groups whose power is such that large areas are at stake. 
• Adversaries are never other than American to avoid criticism from minority groups. There were exceptions to this rule. He sometimes battled foreign agents, though their nation of origin was generally not named. One exception was helping the Mexican Juarez against French troops of Emperor Maximilian. 
• Names of unsympathetic characters are carefully chosen, never consisting of two names if it can be avoided, to avoid even further vicarious association -more often than not, a single nickname is selected. 
• The Lone Ranger never drinks or smokes and saloon scenes are usually interpreted as cafes, with waiters and food instead of bartenders and liquor. 
• Criminals are never shown in enviable positions of wealth or power, and they never appear as successful or glamorous.

Reid decides to use only silver bullets, to remind himself that life, too, is precious and, like his silver bullets, not to be wasted or thrown away.

The Lone Ranger was nicknamed 'Kemosabe' which was understood to mean 'trusty scout' or 'trusted friend'. Tonto, who was a member of the Potawatomi tribe although some books say Apache, was nicknamed 'Tonto' which supposedly meant 'wild one'. Because Tonto means "foolish" or "silly" in Spanish, the character is renamed "Toro" (Spanish for "bull") or "Ponto" in Spanish-speaking countries.

And now, we begin the movie and I apologize in advance. The making of this movie was started and stopped several times, mostly because it was costing too damn much. They should have looked at the dailies and just dumped the whole thing. It. Was. Bad. Not because of the special effects, or necessarily the story line, but because they took a noble American legend and spit all over it. And I don't mean spit but I'm being nice.

In the 30's in San Francisco a young boy is wandering around a museum alone, wearing the costume of the Lone Ranger. He comes upon a display of what is supposed to represent the Indian of the Old West. It is a very old Tonto. He starts to move and speak. He tells the boy who he is (in the movie they make him a Comanche) and begins his version of the story of The Lone Ranger. On his head is a dead crow who he absentmindedly feeds as he talks.

Let's cut this down, okay? Butch Cavendish (William Fitchner, who is arguably the best actor in this thing) is the bad guy. He's being shipped off to where he committed his crimes for a trial (read hanging). Watching him is a new lawyer named John Reid (Armand Douglas "Armie" Hammer, whose mommy apparently didn't love him very much to name him after baking soda - and is supposedly descended from a Cherokee chief, so we're probably related... not.). Attached by chains to Butch is an Indian who spent waaaay too much time as a pirate (wink, wink).

We get the one and only line I liked in this whole movie. Reid asks Tonto what his crime was. He simply says, 'Indian'. Yes folks, that was it.

Of course Butch gets free because of double and triple crosses and Reid gets killed. The end. Pffft, you wish! A white horse shows up and inexplicably because of him Reid 'wakes up' and becomes a 'spirit walker'. I'm not making this crap up, this is what they did to the story.

The whole plot revolves around the development of the railroad across the United States - whoever controls the railroad controls the country - or something dumb like that. Oh, and in this movie, the railroad wasn't built by the Chinese and African Americans - nope, white boys built the railroad (snicker).

Watching The Lone Ranger and Tonto was painful. It was like the main instructions for their acting was "Okay Armie (TLR) whatever you do, make sure it constantly looks like you're confused and a bit stupid." "And you Johnny (Tonto) - did you put on more makeup? Never mind, your main goal is to not show any kind of emotion at all - and if you do any acting or showing of emotion, do it by moving your eyes - roll 'em or something. A small shake of your head once in a while is okay too. And remember - you speak perfect English."

In the movie, 'Kemosabe' now means 'wrong brother' and 'Tonto' means 'One who wears lots of makeup, hair extensions, and a dead bird for comedic effect'. None of which was funny. TLR wears his mask 'cause he's supposed to be dead so we all know from watching Superman that put something on your face and you're totally unrecognizable, right?

We get fights on trains, fights on horses, fights... everywhere. That is the main action until towards the end. Then they really shoot their budget with train chases (Two tracks in the Old West side by side huh? Not likely.). The horse often steals the scene by being able to sit in trees (you heard me), run across whole buildings (an animal parkour expert), and do wonderful things like lick scorpions off the face of TLR when he's left buried up to his neck by the bad guys.

So the main point is the railroad guys want it to look like the Indians (things weren't PC back then, lay off) have been attacking settlements so they can go on their reservations and wipe 'em out. What. A. Surprise. And the movie goes on. And on.

It's not until nearly the end of the movie that we get to hear the William Tell Overture, hear someone say 'Who was that masked man anyway?' But when TLR tries to say his catchphrase 'Hi-Yo Silver! Away!' Tonto tells him never to do that again. Sigh.

The movie ends as the boy, apparently having no parents since the museum is closing and nobody is making him leave, asks 'Tonto' if that's all true. Tonto gives the boy a silver bullet and walks away into the sunset... pffft. No such luck. Instead we get a 'duh' ending of him supposedly walking off into a painting. Hopefully they burned it afterward so there'll be no sequels.

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HERE IN MY CAR, I FEEL SAFEST OF ALL, I CAN LOCK ALL MY DOORS, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE... WAIT A MINUTE - WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?


Christine (1983)

I wasn't going to do a review today - something has a hold of me and I can't keep my eyes open for more than a few hours at a time, max. BUT... are you one of those that has this Jenga pile in your house? You know, the pile of stuff you meant to go through, in fact you don't even know what's in it anymore, but it's getting taller and taller and though you look at it every time you pass by you just think 'oh hell no not today' and so it continues to grow? No? Just me?

Well, after feeding my cats in the afternoon, back to bed was the only thing on my mind. It's usually the 'kids' nap time too. So roughly 15 minutes later as everybody's snuggled in... JENGA! Now this isn't the first time the thing has toppled over - I've stumbled into it more than once (the meds take away my sense of balance) and the cats, thinking it a super cool must-be-toys-on-top mountain have knocked it over a few times. But this time it was just good ole' gravity. Needless to say, after I got everything picked up, no sleeping was going to be done.

So I thought I'd start with an easy movie. Something simple, familiar, and something I can knock out in a half hour or so. Pffft. This became a big project as I found tons of goofs and you KNOW I can't just not tell you about them. If you love Stephen King, you've seen this movie at least several times. A sentient car murders whoever messes with its 'boyfriend' (cause of course the car is a girl), a 1958 cherry red hardtop Plymouth Fury.

Now if you know anything about cars, you're saying heyyyy... there weren't any cherry red hardtops until at least 1959. Yup. Even in the movie it shows a 1957 assembly line, and every other car is the off-white color (or eggshell or cream or beige - whatever) except for bright red Christine.

Okay, here's something totally random. One of the cars, the '58 Fury was rescued and now belongs (unless he's sold it which I doubt) to Chaney Ponton. His car won second place in the "Christine ('58 Plymouth)" class at the 2009 Chryslers at Carlisle show. Its' remote self-starter will also rev its engine and flash its headlights, mimicking the demonic Christine. Ponton is a member of the Christine Car Club, which he says has 200 members worldwide.

So why go on and on about the car? 'Cause everybody's seen this movie or read the book. Nerd kid falls in love with hunk of junk, buys it and stores it in a local garage 'cause his mom won't allow it in her driveway. Kid miraculously keeps finding Fury parts out back in the junkyard (only about a little over 5,000 of that particular car were made) but in the meantime... the car is slowly re-building herself.

The owner is one Arnie Cunningham, played by Keith Gordon who did this movie and was never seen again. Just kidding. He was in several movies, usually playing a nerdy character. He decided to direct and that's pretty much what he does today. His best friend is popular football player Dennis Guilder, played by John Stockwell who did this movie and was never seen again. Yeah, yeah I know - he was in a ton of stuff, including Top Gun. Nowadays he acts and directs.

So boy loves car, car is evil and can restore itself when it has a willing victim, car takes revenge on anybody who messes with boy, boy loses his friends (and girlfriend Leigh, played by Alexandra Paul) and becomes a real jerk, and Christine takes a licking and keeps on ticking while murdering everyone she gets mad at. Or makes romantic moves on 'her' boyfriend.


Since Arnie won't give up Christine, his former friends decide to do it for him. They take a bulldozer to her, which unfortunately kills Arnie in the process. They then take the car outside and put it in a compactor, ending her reign of terror. But at the end we see a piece of trim start to straighten out... I liked the book better - the movie needed a little more exposition so you know WHY the car was evil (instead of being evil right from the assembly line) and more about Arnie. Oh well. 

Now for the fun part - taking the movie and pointing fingers at all the DUH parts. There are TONS. Yes this was an 80's movie with budding special effects techniques, so yeah, some parts were pretty obviously faked. But that won't prevent me from pointing and laughing.

There are several scenes where objects move from frame to frame, the time Arnie talks to his girlfriend in the pouring rain and his hair is dry, yet his girlfriends' is soaked even as she gets out of the car. Cut away and his hair's soaked and plastered to his head. A license plate showing up and then disappearing, t-shirts that don't dry, a camera that clearly makes a shadow in a phone booth - all were good for a giggle or two.

Cigarettes move from one hand to another during one scene, there are different colored car grills, drive in speakers move, windshield wipers change position, and in one really fake scene you can easily tell that they are filming in a studio (one of those shake-the-car-to-show-it's-moving) 'cause they're going 80 with the windows down but Arnie's hair doesn't even move) - you know, stuff you've got to be really anal to notice. Like me.

The best ones though are for Christine. Twenty cars were used for the movie - but Furys from that time period are getting rare (not to mention expensive) so they used Belvederes and Savoys dressed to look like Christine. Only two cars survived the movie. Let's look at Christine. 

Okay I'll take it easy on you - if you just want to read about the movie, stop here 'cause from here down we see tons of whoopsies and I don't want to ruin the movie for anybody.

We've already established there were no 1958 red Furys, but in several scenes where Christine is trapping someone inside, we see scenes of regular door lock knobs going down. Trouble is, they didn't have those 'til the '59 models. 

And since they actually used 20 different cars, there are lots of inconsistencies and changes in different scenes, but those can be excused 'cause with 20 different cars of different models you're not going to have the exact same stuff from scene to scene - that really can't be laughed at (well, I laugh but that's just me).

Also when she's being 'torn apart' by the hoodlums at the garage, they are all over, breaking everything. The John Travolta-like idiot decides to go for the engine - he unlatches the hood and flips it up and off of the car because... there are no hinges keeping it on the car. Whoops.

I employed my hubby for the vehicle oopsies since we've both know cars but he's worked many more years with them than I have. We concentrated on a big scene: Christine killing two and blowing up a whole gas station. First we'll tell you, then show you:

There is Buddy and Rickie who skid Buddy's car onto the grounds of a gas station when they are chased by Christine. The Camaro is parked quite a ways away from the building, but the very next clip shows the two getting out of a car that is half in front of an open bay in the garage. Rickie sees Christine coming and hides behind the car. 

Christine then hits the Camaro which shows the hood collapsing into the engine compartment because one, the hinges are not attached and two, there is no engine. It backs up stuck to her, then she pushes it inside and breaks the hydraulic lift for both sides. She kills Rickie with the BACK of the Camaro yet the next shot shows it is still sideways against the back of the station.

Now my hubby and I discussed this - usually hydraulic lift controls are right beside the lift so how could the one smashed on the right affect the left side? I say can't, he says maybe if it was older and all the controls were together. I saw one control but he still says maybe so... we're a bit divided on that. We do agree that the attendant must have been REALLY stupid to climb under the car instead of just walking out of the freaking building.

But I HAVE seen a hydraulic lift break - it doesn't slowwwly go down, it SLAMS. So that was kind of a wash. But the angle the Camaro (whose headlights are somehow working) was parked in shows that it was impossible for Christine to push the whole vehicle into the garage unless the car had been moved into position. And Christine is good, but even she cannot shove a Camaro into a building rear first when the stupid thing was sideways to begin with.

Gasoline from a broken tank is pouring from the Camaro. We see a fire start INSIDE THE CAR (which we see has a steering wheel that must have been tacked in there somehow - you'll see why) which ignites the whole station even as Christine continues to drag it outside.

Two things wrong with this. One, it it obvious, just by looking in the windshield of the Camaro that there are no seats or anything else in there (and no longer any steering wheel). How can we be sure? As the Camaro is dragged out of the garage the hood FALLS OFF. In the next shot, the hood sits inside the engine compartment because THERE IS NO ENGINE. 

To fix that oops, in the next frame the hood, instead of being inside the engine compartment is now sitting on top again but at a catty corner angle. But because there is no engine, we see light shining through holes in the floor confirming that there's no seats or firewall or anything else that would hinder burning I guess. MASSIVE DUH.

As the Camaro continues its doomed travel, the lights shining on the ground through the inside of the car grow brighter. Why? The car door is opening, which can be seen through the empty engine compartment. And then for no discernible reason other than it made it look cooler, the whole freaking gas station ignites in a gigantic fireball. Maybe Michael Bay wanted to come and play - there's no other logical reason for it. 

The propane tank explodes like a nuclear blast. They do not, as such, explode. If there is a problem, gas leaks out of a relief valve, and the fire department (or whomever is handy) attempts to keep the tank cool until it can be stopped. Even if that is not possible, it would take a propane tank up to 20 minutes to get hot enough to explode under the conditions shown in this movie.

But at least the tow truck and telephone booths are safe, even when they repeat the explosion half a dozen times. And though Christine is totally in flames her tires not only do not explode but they don't melt either. And we won't mention her fake engine noises (which belong to a car with a much better engine). Tough little bitch. I almost feel like apologizing at this point but I did warn you.

Car parks far away from station.

The next frame shows the car in front of the station's open bay door.

Christine's first hit shows the hood sitting in an empty engine compartment.

The next screen they cover the boo-boo with an unhinged hood sitting on top.

The lights showing in the engine compartment is the ground since there is no firewall, seats, etc.

A camera mounted on the floor of the empty car shows two doomed characters...

In the next shot, both are gone.

Then Rickie is hit by the BACK of the car (?!?)

The car is again sideways against the back wall of the station and the INSIDE catches fire.

Everything explodes sparing the propane tank, tow truck and phone booths.

Propane tank explodes but liquid spreads towards the garage.

Crispy critter - apparently he could only go in a straight line instead of hiding...

The tire hub is clearly visible on the Christine 'cube'.

Whoops, they turned it around... oh well.

Computer's pissed at me and I can't get rid of these three photos - sorry.

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