MOVIES YOU WATCH BECAUSE OF WHO'S IN THEM... AND THEIR CHILDREN

Curse Of Chucky (2013) Straight To DVD

This being the age of endless sequels, remakes and now the infamous new word for I-don't-wanna-think-of-something-new-now-give-me-money, namely reboots, we get the straight-to-video reboot of the Chucky franchise. But instead of being funny (people say they were awful but I still laugh my butt off when I watch Seed Of Chucky) they decided to try and go back to the 'horror' aspect and leave the laughs behind. They failed.

First, they cast none other than Brad Dourif's smoking hot daughter Fiona in the lead. That's not a bad thing, after all, she has had a good acting career of her own - but I couldn't seem to get over the fact that it was his daughter in a wheelchair and he was trying (as a doll) to kill her. Plus, it's supposed to be serious, but we get a surprise - umm wait. If you want to see this, stop and watch and then come back 'cause you know I do the whole movie which means spoilers. Anyway, they wanted this to be horror but at the end they bring in (very briefly) Jennifer Tilly at what you think is the end. But it's not. 

Do these douchebags have to add extra scenes at the end of ALL the credits? Now when the hubby and I make that rare trip to a theater to watch movies, we DO sit through the credits, usually because we're curious about something. I remember the first time we saw an after-credits scene. I'm not saying it WAS the first, it was just the first we'd ever seen. After watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), we sat through the credits, partly to watch, and partly to wait for the crowd to leave. Then we got to see the after-credit scene of Ferris saying "You're still here? It's over. Go home. Go." Okay that's not an earth-shattering plot point but we were the only ones who saw it - that day anyway. Long story short (too late) it pays to stay through the credits for extra little tidbits - in this movie's case it was a BIG one.

So four years after Chucky's last dismemberment (and we conveniently have to forget he had kids 'cause that whole storyline doesn't apply anymore) Chucky is looking for revenge (Isn't he always?). See this movie is kind of a how-Charles Lee Ray-became-Chucky kind of movie but the backstory is given in such small bits and of course mixed with a lot of murder and mayhem so if you don't pay really close attention, you don't get all the story. And do you really want to pay THAT much attention to yet another movie about a murderous doll?

Apparently for a lot of people, yes. This is on its way to reinstate the whole Chucky franchise, the makers hoping we just forget the last two Chucky movies and keep seeing him as a pure killer, not a joke. That's kind of a shame 'cause they came up with some good ones in those two - even if a lot of critics hated them. My favorite from Bride Of Chucky is when the teenage boy discovers that Chucky and Tiffany are 'alive' and asks 'How'd you end up like this?' Tiffany says it's a long story. Then Chucky pipes up and says 'Let me put it this way. If this were a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice.' If you can't laugh at that then... uh, I forget where I was going with this...

Since you know the whole movie is pretty much about Chucky killing absolutely as many people as he can, instead I'll tell the reason why since, like I said, you'd have to pay real close attention and that sucks - at least to me. There's this psycho named Charles Lee Ray (Brad Douriff), a shaggy haired friend of this particular family. Why he's a friend I have no idea, but he is in love with the wife of the family - who's pregnant (not his). So he decides he wants this woman even if she doesn't want him. He kills her husband and after the funeral kidnaps her. 

She tries to escape and he stabs her - which is why the main character Nica (Fiona Dourif) has been a paraplegic all her life. Nica's mother turns him in which leads to the big chase and kill scene from the first movie, and he becomes a doll.

So he wants the rest of this family as well to complete his revenge. Arriving mysteriously in the mail, he soon kills Nica's mother and Nica is now at the mercy of her older sister and her sister's husband, daughter, and nanny (who is secretly her lover as well). So now we have a houseful of victims for the Chuckster.

No I'm not going to outline each death, it's about the same as in all other movies. Fiona as Nica does very well and is convincing enough as a woman trapped in a chair in the same house as a bunch of psychos - and a killer doll. She's pretty much screwed though and you know that before it even starts. 

Sure enough, when the blood settles and the bodies spread everywhere with Nica being the sole survivor (except for the small daughter 'cause Chucky doesn't seem to do too well with killing kids *hint hint*). And since this is a reboot, the last escapades of the doll don't count so the authorities figure that Nica went nuts and somehow, from her wheelchair, she managed to slice and dice everybody. She's put in a mental hospital. The daughter is sent to her grandmother's house.

As had happened in a previous Chucky movie, the officer in charge of the evidence room is bribed to sell the Chucky doll to an interested party - but never gets to collect because that 'party' who is, of course, Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) slits his throat as she's done before, and takes Chucky to mail to his next target - the little girl at her grandmother's house. Now here it gets - nonsensical. I know, I know, I expect a movie about a killer doll to make sense? DUH. But it shows that Chucky has put a plastic bag over granny's head and does the mumbo jumbo voodoo on the little girl to transfer his soul. Game over. And I turned the movie off.

Naughty naughty... I didn't watch the credits. Why would I? Well, apparently Chucky wasn't successful with the little girl and so is mailed yet again to his next target - some guy. Some guy? You'd have to be reeeeeal slow not to guess who this guy is. I'm not. But apparently the makers of the movie assume we are so after he sets the package down and is talking on the phone with his mother, we get a slow pan of certificates and pictures - graduating from a military academy and, of course, a picture of him with his mother. It is the now grown Andy from Child's Play (played by the real Andy - Alex Vincent). 

As Andy's back is turned, Chucky is using a knife to cut the package open to extract his revenge. He turns - there is Andy, holding a shotgun inches from Chucky's face. Andy says 'Play with this!' and BLAM! So is Chucky dead? I dunno, how much more money can they pull from this series? And (this is my addled brain coming up with scenarios) what if the doll WAS the little girl and now the little girl is Chucky? Pffft... not even money hungry movie makers would stoop that low, right?

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MOVIES I'VE REVIEWED AND WISHED I'D FORGOTTEN




Chain Letter (2009)

Now that I have an index up and running (and am busy adding to it so you can find whatever it is you want) as of 2014, this was one movie that was so familiar sounding that I had hoped I hadn't already reviewed it because it was total crap and total crap that has sat and fermented and been reviewed is... just awful. But lucky you, this was the only review of this movie and the only time I will watch it - and you shouldn't watch it at all.

I watched this 'cause of Brad Dourif, one of those character actors I'll watch in anything (you probably know him best as the voice of Chucky), even if it's about stupid high school kids and their symbiotic relationship with their electronic toys. The movie starts with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche (you know, Hitler's favorite writer): 'Life is a dark chain of events.' I think they only used it 'cause it had the word 'chain' in it.

It's a massive duh that this and the next generation has become glued to their toys. When they actually have to pass laws to prevent people from texting and driving, I think that's a good indication that things have become really ridiculous. I myself have had the same dumbphone for almost seven years and I'm not changing until the poor little thing finally gives out. It's the middle of 2014 now and it's still going just fine. 

I've got to give Sanyo props - after all this time the battery still holds a good charge, it of course makes phone calls and I do NOT have any apps or use it to FB or text (unless it's a short note to the hubby). The only device in my house that could be considered a 'smart' device I didn't touch for so long it went completely dead so I had to buy a charger for something I didn't want in the first place and still haven't set it up as of 7/14 to use for anything. I think the dumbest device is me.

Chain letters have been around when snail mail was the only means of contacting a large number of people. If you had use of a copier, you really could push stuff around. Chain letters usually had the same format - you had to send it to ten or twenty or so people or bad luck would befall you. They really, really worked. No, really! I promise you they worked.... okay okay you caught me. They were as real and reliable as a Nigerian prince. As the internet got up and running, chain letters by email became very popular as it was quite easy to purchase or just get your hands on a huge list of people to pester. 

At least it isn't one of those 'Pass this
prayer on or Jesus will cry' messages...

Then we got Facebook, who forced us to have an email in their name. Thanks a lot. Now even more can pass the garbage around. Not that you need an email to do that. How many posters appear on your Facebook page a week stating that if you spit on your cat, do a little happy dance, lick your refrigerator and fart in your pajamas that you will have good luck for the rest of the month but do it within five minutes or it will be bad luck. And how many of your 'friends' insist on passing this tripe around endlessly?

I guess this movie was trying to make a statement but what it did was just become another one of those movies with a bunch of privileged teenagers you want dead as soon as you see them. Oh and Mr. Director? Using flashes of light and shaking the camera back and forth does not create suspense, it creates a hell of a headache. Just a heads up. We start with a girl taped up and chained to what are apparently two cars who, when they go separate directions...

So someone who hates technology for no particular reason (oh it will kill us - so will a thousand other things) has decided to teach a small group of teenagers a lesson - a lethal one. Each gets a chain letter and must pass it on to five friends within 24 hours or a life will be lost. Personally I was rooting for them to just delete the thing so somebody would die - that would mean the movie is getting closer and closer to the end.


Which they do. There are some particularly gory ways in which these kids are splatted by faceless attackers and the splatter and gore is pretty respectable, even if the story has more holes than swiss cheese. Finally we're down to the smart girl (there's always one) who, at the end, wakes to find herself (say it with me - SAY IT) taped and chained up to two different cars. They belong to her parents who are so self absorbed they 1. Don't look at the car they're getting into; 2. Don't hear the chain as the car starts to move; 3. Don't look in their rearview mirrors; 4. 

Even when a car screeches in front of them they don't stop long enough for the male teen who's trying to stop them from moving (Hey wait, a teenager's still alive, what the hell?) but they ignore him. Only the mother finally looks and sees but her husband has already started zooming down the road with half of his daughter dragging on the road behind him. Huh, I guess there was no smart girl in this movie after all.



                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU







The Hazing aka Dead Scared (2004)

I promised to do a series on the hazards of college and how parents should just save their money 'cause it doesn't matter what college your kids go to or how smart they are, all college students get into the same types of situations in which they eventually die. Within an hour and a half anyway.





This entry was a little promising - anything with Brad Dourif I'm game to watch and hey, kids I can't stand are gonna die so win-win right? Ugh. This movie was, simply put, Evil Dead With Dead Head College Kids. In fact the IMDB (which I did NOT read until after the movie) says it's Evil Dead with Scream. I wouldn't give it that good of a combination. It ripped off Evil Dead so incredibly badly that Sam Raimi should be suing by now. They even had the audacity of... well let's tell the story quickly.



Girls and guys are pledging to a sorority (Hmm, really?) that's to begin with an asinine scavenger hunt, and end with spending the night in a spooky house. Get out the Scooby snacks. First these people, who we really don't care about and have probably never seen in anything else before (I mean c'mon - one of the actress' name was Nectar Rose for cryin' out loud) search for the stupidest objects, one being a picture of Bruce Campbell (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more). When all the objects are collected, including a stolen ancient book of spells called the Necronomicon... err I mean sorry, this book really didn't have a 'title' but it has spells plus a cane for, I dunno, making the spells work I guess from a professor they think they accidentally killed (nice kids these are), everybody goes to the haunted house. Duh is certainly on a massive scale here.


We then get into dead and undead, mutilations and murder, and the camera work definitely doesn't even try to hide that it's copying Raimi's style of fast travel along hallways and down stairs as in the Evil Dead movies. What it doesn't copy, because it can't, is the sense of doom, urgency and fear that Evil Dead was able to bring to the viewer. What I felt was lethargy, boredom and a sense of c'mon, die already will you PLEASE!

But oh no, we get 86 minutes of 'whose body's got the spirit' and the surviving teens fighting against each other and themselves as the movie gets slower and slower and slower...


FINALLY the professor (underplayed by Brad Dourif) dies for real in the hospital which actually makes things worse, until the remaining college kids manage to throw his spirit (don't ask this will be twice as long) into the abyss he opened and close it. It then spits out the girl he was inhabiting. All's well, right? 

The three left alive try to open the front door - nope. It seems while they got rid of the nasty professor, they also let out all the other nasties that have been waiting their turn at the gate so to speak, and a whole new battle will now begin. Thankfully, we don't have to watch it because that's where the movie ends. Phew.

Sam, don't let them do that to your stuff again, okay?




                              

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT... A MOVIE THAT DOESN'T COMPLETELY SUCK

Junkyard Dog (2010)

I had mixed feelings about this movie. One it's not horror, it's suspense. Two it's yet another cannibal movie (yawn) set in Tennessee. Three it's one of those 'inspired by actual events' messes. It's described as a gritty psychological thriller that delves the demented mind of a cannibalistic serial rapist who kidnaps his tenth victim in as many months on Halloween night (Bad goof: When the killer flips the calendar from October to November, the calendar has 31 days for the month of November). Now I paid pretty good attention to the movie but nowhere did I see or hear this information. 

BUT it has Brad Dourif who I will watch in anything (a great character actor to me, the voice of Chucky to you) and Vivica A. Fox, a kickass girl I will also watch, even if the movie is... umm... this one. A pleasant surprise: The movie was not full of typical yeah-we-know-that-one type characters, things don't turn out as expected, and there are no morons in this movie (some do stupid things, but they do show some smarts). In other words, not terrible. Just not great.

Yeah I killed my folks they named me Jyd dammit!

We open with a Halloween party at a rich kid's house complete with tons of booze and a live band (you know, those parties that happen... NOWHERE). An OMG type of teen runs out of gas and calls for a tow. But someone else is listening in. And this totally normal looking guy gets there first. She realizes her peril when Jyd (I shit you not, that's his name, his real name is Innis Casey which really isn't that much better) passes the gas station, then it's too late - he punches  Audra's (Galadriel Stineman... stop laughing I am NOT making this shit up!) lights out and he's got a victim. She's put in an underground room with bed, table  and shower. And cameras. Gotta watch ya know. I didn't see a toilet though - eww.

Well, this is bigger than my room at home.

His basic MO: He kidnaps a girl, rapes and kills her, gets another one, then for one month feeds her the previous victim while raping her and at the end of the month... okay we get it. He's a sick son of a bitch. Duh. He keeps his parents in the freezer (in a sitting position) and drags them to the dinner table so he can scream at them before stuffing them back in the freezer. The only bit of (sick) humor you're going to find. The local sheriff (a pony-tailed Dourif) checks him out but is a little slow - not stupid, but not realizing the important things to look for until... let's continue.

Three parking tickets? You're gonna die sucker!

Now FBI Agent Deatherage (What did I tell you about that damn laughing?) played by the no-nonsense Fox has just come off a violent case where she killed the two perps. Her boss wants her to take time off - nope. She wants another case. She gets the missing teenager in Tennessee, mainly because I guess there has been - what did the description say - nine other disappearances unsolved around there. 

She's immediately in the small townpeople's faces, takes no crap off of anyone, even meets Jyd who asks her to dance (nope). After a night in the local motel, her car won't start. Jeez, here's Jyd who says in his salvage yard (It's called Junkyard Dog but he's not a dog and insists it is NOT a junkyard so the title is just.... duh) he can find a part for her car and she's on her way. Dumb move on her part: she goes with him. Dumb move on his part: he picks her up in daylight and is seen by the motel owner who tells the sheriff who tells the FBI. 

On the way she notices on the floor a large earring and instantly knows somehow that means she's got her psycho. After getting to the... whatever the hell it is, they tussle and she's knocked out (after being attacked by his German Shepherd who he regularly feeds human flesh). She wakes up with Audra, who helps her bind her arm. Okay duh number two - to stop the bleeding she has Audra make a tourniquet. Now I've been out of the emergency medicine biz for a few years but I still know that a tourniquet is only good for telling the doctor where to cut off the limb.

(Note: I have been told that the dog was not a German Shepherd but a whozawhatiz and that Deatherage was not knocked out after she saw the earring (before?) and that I am a major dumbass because I did not know dog breeds or the minute in the movie where Deatherage was knocked out. Umm, okay - I have promised to take advanced dog training lessons at Petsmart and enroll with the local FBI so that my little movie reviews are more precise. End.)

But... but I was saving myself for Prom!

There are false hopes and tries at escaping. She has to witness Audra being raped, he tries to feed her human flesh (Audra, being vegetarian, gagged too much so he gives her beans) and keeps her handcuffed to the bed. But Audra is not totally stupid. After one rape, she manages to get the key to the cuffs (don't ask, don't tell). Deatherage gets free and becomes MacGyver - she basically boobytraps the place which kind of works but not. He grabs Audra for an early slaughter, and Deatherage completes her MacGyver transformation and finds a way out of the room and frees Audra while Jyd is distracted.

I'll get the answers, I'm waiting for the end of the movie.

There's running, fighting, getting caught, getting away, and we're getting tired. But Deatherage isn't done with him yet. Finally getting her gun back for the umpteenth time, she looks around the yard, sees a fleeting image of him behind a car and makes the impossible shot of blowing the gas tank, setting him and eventually most of the yard on fire. She and Audra run for the fence - forgetting about the dog. Just as the dog starts to pounce, it's shot and killed - by the local sheriff, having pieced things together at the last possible moment and saving their butts. The end.

And a special little FBI behavioral tidbit for some reason: Of all the world's serial killers, 85% of them live in the USA (just like 85% of all the whackos I've deleted off my Facebook account have Dirty Dancing listed as one of their favorite movies). Just for info I guess. How inspiring.

CHARACTER ACTORS YOU'VE PROBABLY SEEN A LOT OF BUT DIDN'T REALIZE IT











Brad Douriff

This is a man who has had a very wide and varied career and you've probably seen him a lot more than you think. Most know him (if they recognize the name) as the voice of Chucky, the doll of a franchise of movies, but this actor has been around, been there, done that, and done it well (that's not very good English, is it?).

Early in his career he had a very moving role in the movie One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest as Billy Bibbit, a shy, stuttering inmate playing against Jack Nicholson. That movie by the way was made in a real mental hospital in my home state. Pretty cool.

But he's done so many movies and television shows that to list them all here would take up a lot of space and you can just Google the list for yourself anyway if you're interested. My point is: there are movie stars, and there are those that make a movie interesting or more colorful by just being there. That is Brad. 

Whether it's small walk-on roles or larger roles in horror movies or television shows, he just brings a special something that proves that, but for the grace of Hollywood and their love of the picture perfect twenty-something set, he could have been so much more. Not to say he's not much now, he's done, well, just about everything. 

Don't think so? Check out his filmography, it's just damned impressive. I would watch anything with him in it, good, bad or meh.