NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE THE BAD MAN, TO BE THE SAD MAN, BEHIND BLUE EYES




Maniac (2012) French-American

It is estimated that only about 8% of people in the world have blue eyes. It is also said to be a 'diminishing trait' meaning, I guess, that before the invention of contacts, you could be confident that the striking young gentleman or beautiful lady's blue eyes were for real. In 1985 (if you weren't born yet, shut up) there was a western that I ACTUALLY WATCHED AND LIKED called Silverado. It's main purpose seemed to cram in every actor and actress currently popular for some kind of story and lots of shooting. 

But there was one young actor and... I don't OMG and I don't think OMG even existed back then, but O.M.G. this guy had THE BLUEST eyes I had ever seen and he was gorgeous to boot - when it turned out he was a nasty bad guy I actually booed. But from then on, no matter how bad the movie, I watched everything he was in that I could find. 

His name is Jeff Fahey. Nowadays his roles seem to be as the corporate bad guy, the scruffy bad guy, the western bad guy (again), and, kind of like Tom Savini, seems to be around to appear in movies where he's there for, oh, five minutes tops, two of those with Michael Biehn (John Conner's dad in the Terminator movies). He's still doing that - the last movie I saw both him and Biehn (for two minutes) was in the movie Sushi Girl but that's coming later. Jeff's eyes may have faded just a bit but they are still striking and yes, I have had a movie crush on the guy since Silverado.


Long story short (way WAY too late) there's only one more actor with eyes that beat his - Elijah Wood. Okay now you can OMG. I'd seen him around... somewhere, but in Lord Of The Rings (those constant closeups of his cherubic face helped) those blue eyes looked enormous and the color of - huh, I tried to look up what the bluest blue in the world is and I got a bunch of links about Crater Lake, Oregon (I've been there several times, and it is gorgeous) so I'll guess it'll have to do or at least come close. Those eyes are something you could stare at for years.

The movie? You should know by now the movie is just coincidental to my rambling. In 1980 a gruesome and stupid horror movie came out called Maniac about a guy off his nut in NY, going around killing girls, scalping them and putting the hair on mannequins in his apartment to, I don't know, re-create his dead mother or something. She was a whore and constantly made him miserable so he starts killing after her death. It was horrible then (starring Joe Spinell who unfortunately died early at 52) and even featured Tom Savini (billed as 'disco boy') and I don't want to watch it now.

But I guess I just did. For some ungodly reason, Elijah Wood did a remake of this movie. It. Was. Horrible. It was embarrassing. And worst of all, for some other ungodly reason they decides to show most of it from Frank Zito's (Elijah Wood) POV, meaning you don't even get to SEE those blue eyes for a lot of the movie. If that was supposed to be clever, they failed.


Frank Zito is a mentally disturbed young man who has taken over his family's mannequin sales business after the recent death of his mother, who also moonlighted as a prostitute. Frank's childhood experiences of seeing his mother bring home clients or being taken out with her to turn tricks has left Frank unable to enter into meaningful relationships with women, and his sexual impulses tend to manifest themselves as violent urges that Frank externalizes as his mother's will. Struggling to come to grips with his mother's treatment of him, and spurred by memories of his mother brushing her hair before going out at night, Frank stalks, murders, and scalps a woman one night, attaching her hair to a mannequin that he then keeps in his bedroom.

Aaaand there's your movie. Lather, rinse, repeat. The act of scalping them was pretty well (and bloodily) done, putting those bloody things (literally) on dummy heads, going to get another one. Wow, what a riveting story. Oh but wait - there's the artist who's gonna redeem him, right? Photographer Anna (Nora Arnezeder, a French actress) takes pictures of his mannequins (the non-bloody, non-scalpy ones) and asks if she can use some of them in her exhibit. He reluctantly says yes and so she does - and puts her face on every one of them. Vain much? Seeing her all over the room makes Frank really, really nervous and really, really, murdery. Hey, my blog, my vocabulary, shut up.

So will Frank resist the kill and go for the, uh, love? This is a slasher flick, what do you think? He actually gets worse, scalping one woman while she's still alive (a flinch-worthy scene I must admit). Finally he goes after Anna - but kidnaps her instead of his usual MO. In a really REALLY movie DUH scene she escapes, gets in a car that hits Frank, then crashes, sending Anna through the windshield (because in France apparently they have neither seatbelts nor safety glass). Frank is messed up, but hobbles over and scalps Anna as she dies.

Her scalp takes its place of honor on a mannequin in a wedding dress. And we get some weird LSD-like experience of Frank, as he's dying, believing the mannequins all come alive to tear him apart, revealing him to actually be a mannequin himself, while his 'love' in the wedding dress turns her back on him. Later the cops crash into his apartment but he's already dead, somehow making it into the closet. YAWN.

I would say I hope that's the last bad decision Wood makes, but he currently stars in a TV show with a human in a dog costume so... yeah.

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WE KIDS WERE SO MUCH SMARTER BACK THEN NEENER NEENER




The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane (1976) French/Canadian

I'm not saying how old I am but I do know I was smart enough to know when to come out of the rain. Okay, so I liked playing in the rain. But you wouldn't catch me swimming in a thunderstorm. Oh, wait. Well I certainly was smart enough NOT to try anything I saw in a cartoon. HA! Laird Koenig wrote both the novel and the film.


This oldie but a goodie movie is about 13-year-old Rynn, played by a 13-year-old Jodie Foster (she always was cute as a button even today - I hate her! Nah, I'm just jealous.) who copes with living alone smarter than most adults. Ryan lives alone in Long Island, NY and must contend with nosy adults while she tries to live quietly, waiting for that magic age of 18 when people will leave her the hell alone. Not going to happen kid. Not now, not later.

It starts on Halloween which also happens to be her birthday. She is making herself a cake when who should appear but Frank, son of her landlady (Martin Sheen). This was a side of him I hadn't seen and it wasn't pretty - he's a mama's boy who's also a slobbering child molester who his mother married off in hopes of curbing his perversity. In spite of having two children of his own, he still lusts after others. And he's got his sights on Ryan. Letting himself into her house he makes his intent pretty clear without being too touchy feely. Somehow that makes him even creepier. And taught me a new word for today: hebephile. 

I had to look that one up - it's someone who prefers a certain age, not necessarily children, but adolescents from the age of approximately 11-14. It is specified that this is NOT a pedophile. Could have fooled me. Great, one more species of psycho bastard out there.

Getting rid of him doesn't end her problems. His mother Cora seems to think that a lease means nothing, that even though they paid for the house, she should be able to cruise through anytime she wants. Sheesh. Actually I've had landlords like that. Anyway, Cora keeps insisting on seeing Rynn's father but it's no go. She also wants to go down to the celler but Rynn is having none of that either. Suspicious but blocked Cora leaves, threatening to come back. She also threatens Rynn with not going to school, stating she's on the school board and will tattle on her, which Rynn quickly finds out is a lie. She's not falling for it.

Meanwhile creepy Frank is keeping his own eyes on her but for even a more sinister reason. I don't get creeped out easily but he did a little TOO good of a job being this, uh, hebephile. He tries to get her in his car but a passing cop cools him off quick. The officer is nice though and drives her home - even being a bit more gracious than the others when he also cannot see her father.

But the witch Cora soon returns in the guise of getting some jelly glasses (no I've never canned so I don't know why she didn't have them in her own house) but since Rynn didn't know the seals weren't with them, Cora insists on going into the cellar. She sees something... horrible (this is the 70's we don't get to see what) and slipping, knocks the cellar door closed on her head and dies. Ahhh.

Rynn tries to get rid of her car but can't drive (She can deal with banks and lawyers and living alone but can't start a car?) and so is helped by a passing teenager (they were actually helpful then) who is a victim of polio but so nice to Rynn in helping her get rid of the car she invites him to dinner. When the friendly police officer comes by to see her dad, Mario (the teenager) lies for her, stating the father had already gone to bed. So now they're friends for life and partners in crime - he just doesn't know that yet.

Rynn and Mario have an adolescent romance (She's 13 for crying out loud - was them jumping into bed really necessary for the story? At least they used her older - hopefully over 18 - sister for a body double) and despite Frank's desperate attempts to get at her, things are good for a while. Then Mario stumbles across WHAT'S IN THE CELLAR. We still don't get to see.

Frank shows up and barging his way through again, takes Rynn's hamster and tortures it to death (not pretty) to get Rynn to answer him about what happened to his mother and her father. The answer - which she had told Mario - is that her father had become ill and had arranged for her to have a place to live after he died. Apparently her mother, who had disappeared long ago was abusive and so when she returned to take over, Rynn was prepared - she had served her mother tea laced with cyanide - the almond taste covered by the almond cookies she served her.

While she tells Frank that her father and his mother are dead she doesn't say how - and he takes full advantage, informing her that they were going to be together for a long time (or at least until she comes of age, since he only likes adolescent girls). Rynn appears to be resigned to her fate and offers him tea and cookies... the only duh in the movie and a rather convenient ending, as we watch Frank begin to cough while Rynn calmly watches him die...

Now for the nasty part. MY nasty part. This movie had more continuity problems than Evil Dead and Zombie Ass put together. Who was in charge of continuity anyway? It doesn't take a particularly sharp eye to see that clothes, props, even furniture changes from scene to scene. In fact, writing them down got tiresome - if you're curious, see for yourself. It's not hard - in fact it got in the way of the story 'cause I have a critical eye anyway and this was just ridiculous.

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WE INTERRUPT OUR EASTERN GIRLS IN SHORT SKIRTS MINI-MARATHON FOR...





Silent Hill (2006) / Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012) Canada/France


I've been having a bit of fun with Eastern culture, especially in the way they take farce and blow it up to something that would NOT be tried in our button-down frowny face society (and we thought WE were the enlightened ones) and Manga that makes its way to the silver screen. But Westerners have their little tricks too, and one seems to be taking video games and making movies (some extremely successful) out of them (or vice versa). 

One example off the top of my head is, of course, the 'Hi my name is Alice. I work for the Umbrella Corporation.' game/movie series Resident Evil. Silent Hill is another one. Maybe not wildly successful (movies), but I think pretty respectable. At least there are more versions of the Silent Hill video game than there are movies (eight that I know of).

THIS is what I call a video game...

Now I don't claim to be a great movie reviewer. I've just seen enough good (and incredibly bad) movies to know some of what to look for and what is great to make fun of. But I'm just as good at finding a good movie and not realizing it - and passing it off for a boring hour and a half on my television set. Wrong, wrong wrong. I had watched Silent Hill some time ago and despite it having a favorite female lead (Radha Mitchell) of mine, about all I remembered is some chick trying to find her whiny daughter in a town of ash for some reason. Duh to me.

They pushed Silent Hill: Revelation 3D pretty hard if I remember right. And I thought 'But the first one was so boooring.' Pffft. Obviously I had watched it in one of my fugues and hadn't paid much attention to it so I decided to find it again online and really pay attention this time. Huh, that was a lot of fun, NOT. Netflix had the second but not the first - and finding it was not easy. If you've had a similar experience with these 'free' streaming services you realize that 1. They're not free and 2. Even if they say they have the movie, they probably don't. AND if they want a credit card right away even if they promise they're not going to charge you STAY AWAY. There are plenty of sites where you can just watch the damn things without a fuss, you just have to look around a little.

I did and I found it - no close captioning but I've found that (so far) only Netflix seems to have that option. So I turned the volume up and payed attention this time. I'd forgotten that this film also includes Laurie Holden in a substantial role (we all knew and loved her as 'Andrea' on The Walking Dead) and Sean Bean as the frazzled father looking for his wife and daughter, not knowing that the whole time he's pretty much walking right past them (I'll explain that) and HE DOES NOT DIE. 

This is a small giggle or SALTS because if Sean Bean is known for anything (besides being extremely handsome, a member of the original Fellowship in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and star or co-star of many films), is that he's repeatedly killed off in whatever he's in.


Silent Hill: So we have a mother Rose (Radha Mitchell) and troubled little girl Sharon (wonderfully played by Jodelle Ferland). They had adopted her with no problems, but lately she's been sleepwalking (and sleep drawing it seems) and the constant theme seems to be what she calls 'Silent Hill'. One night when her mother finds her at the edge of a cliff in her sleep (Okay who the hell lives near a steep cliff with no guard rail? Pffft. Oh, wait, I used to.) she has had enough and decides to try and find Silent Hill. 

Her 'suspicious' actions and the obvious distress of her daughter attracts the attention of a motorcycle cop, Cybil (Laurie Holden) who begins to follow them. Her husband Christopher (Sean Bean) tries by phone to dissuade her but to the movie's credit this isn't a 'I'm gonna do what I want screw you.' type of thing. They love each other, but she is convinced the only way to get Sharon's nightmares to go away is to find out what the heck they're about in the first place.

Racing to elude Cybil who is now trying to stop them, they both crash their vehicles in movie duh style. All three lose consciousness. When Rose wakes, Sharon is gone, she is at the edge of Silent Hill, and a fine ash falls, blanketing everything like snow. Unless you've been by a huge fire, you don't know how claustrophobic that can be. We live near enough to St. Helens that when it blew, we were not in danger, but we had a constant coating of ash fall when it initially erupted, and each time it 'hiccuped' afterward. My high school class is probably unique in that we had our Homecoming Parade interrupted because of blinding ash. It can be frightening and also extremely dirty.

Anywho, Cybil, who also had been knocked out catches up and both try to find Sharon. Silent Hill is an abandoned mining town (Aw man, a whole TOWN? Think of how many teenage slasher movies you could make THERE.) that became unlivable after an underground explosion caused a constant burn underground (and hence all the ash).

Ah but there has to be the supernatural element, doesn't there? Here is where the movie makers tried really hard to make it like the video game, or at least like the vision they had for it, but that kind of thing would have taken tons of money that they had but not enough of. So we get a 'feel' of a whole underground 'people', misshapen, some literally on fire - quite a complex bit of imagery and pretty impressive, even if they didn't get to do everything they wanted to. And it turns out the town isn't abandoned completely - it is inhabited by a nasty cult who are, to make it simple, witch hunters - and that's what doomed them in the first place. 

Back when the place was just a mining town, a red headed woman named Christabella (Alice Krige) led a doomsday cult that ferreted out the wicked to burn them... but not just on a stake - they had a sacred symbol they built a fire on (inside the church no less) and putting the victim on a tall ladder and lowering them slowly onto the fire. Nice people.

The last person they did this to was a young girl - any guess who it was? Okay her name was Alessa who was targeted for being a bastard (that's the child-without-a-father kind) which apparently gave them an excuse to charge her with being a witch (they've been doing that for a long time apparently) - but when they burned her, the symbol she was burning on broke and she lived. Umm, what? That's probably where I lost interest the first time. 

But that was a shame because this turns into a genuine freaky deaky kind of fun movie with monsters, twists and great special effects. See Alessa, burnt but alive, was taken to the hospital where her hate grew until it became an entity in itself. The last goodness in her became a baby - who was dropped off at an orphanage. Okay that makes no sense whatsoever but that's why they call it fantasy so shut up.

Meanwhile back at the farm - uh, back with the husband - Christopher manages to get the local police involved in trying to find his family. They're mostly helping him because they're missing a police officer though - they don't really care about him or why he's there. Typical. The main officer, Thomas, is played by Kim Coates, another fave character who just oozes sleaze when he plays a bad guy. He's really terrific. 

Although the police don't admit it, they've got a pretty good idea of what happened, most having had either lived in the town before it was abandoned or had relatives who did. Since they're not real helpful, Christopher helps himself to the records in the nearby orphanage where Sharon came from and sees that, somehow, their little girl should be over 40 years old. I should look that good.

But of course Sharon is the 'baby' spawned by Alessa - the last good part of her left. And Rose and Cybil have to find her before Alessa, uh, what's Alessa going to do with her exactly? That part I was foggy on but that's not surprising. So Cybil sacrifices herself and Rose goes down down down into the nightmare of the people that time forgot. No, wait, people that got exactly what they deserved. Great, great special effects keep your interest as we basically have a chase scene that goes for a while.

I could explain the ending but I'd probably muck it up 'cause even if the movie makers were forced to take a truly grand idea of an ending and smush it down into what they could afford it's a great one. But I can tell you Rose and Sharon drive out of Silent Hill - but should have been tipped off that things were not all right because the ash still fell - all the way home. When they get there, the house is empty but Rose can feel that Christopher is there. He is. In the 'real' world'. They show that while both occupy the same space it is in different realities as where Rose is, ash falls but with Christopher, it is raining. A bittersweet ending.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D: This is currently streaming on Netflix and I do recommend it - but it was not as satisfying as the first one (are they ever?) although they ramped up the special effects and I suppose the 3D element was supposed to make it more 'special' although seeing it I didn't see a whole lot of shots where it would have been worth the extra price. Eh, it always gives me a headache anyway.

We start with Christopher and Sharon. Immediately (especially if you've just watched the first one) there's a WTH element - Rose and Sharon were stuck, right? So they've got some 'splaining to do before the action can really begin. It's a hurried one and not that great. 

Christopher has told Sharon (who should have been played by the original actress, since she's 18 and beautiful it would have been perfect) that her mother died in a car crash and he killed a man in self-defense and so both are on the run with new identities - Harry and Heather Mason. He hasn't told her the truth, that her mother is alive but the remaining psychos from Silent Hill are after her because of her affiliation with Alessa, the evil that keeps them trapped (damned, doomed, whatever) in the ash covered town. 

So in hurry-and-tell-a-lot-really-fast style we find that Rose somehow had gotten half of a talisman called the Seal of Metatron. Who? Metatron is an archangel in Judaism. According to Jewish medieval apocryphal beliefs, he is Enoch, ancestor of Noah, transformed into an angel. What does that have to do with Silent Hill? Not a damned thing. Shut up.

Anywho, she only had half so only one of them could 'go back' to the real world (?!?) and she sent Sharon. But Sharon/Heather is still having nightmares - now not only does she dream of the town but a carnival (What is it about carnivals that are so creepy all by themselves? They don't even have to be haunted or damned, they're just creepy.) full of unspeakable things.

So the Masons are in a new town and she's in a new school - again. When the other teenagers begin their heckling she beats them to it and tells all of them off (I WISH I could have done that when I was in school) so that they will leave her alone. She meets fellow new student Vincent and they become friendly. But of course Vincent is from Silent Hill, instructed to find and bring her there. Yeah I know, I know, how come they can cross over so easily and cross back but Rose and Sharon couldn't? Shut up.

So despite Christopher/Harry's best laid plans as a promise to Rose, Sharon/Heather is caught and now in Silent Hill. We still have the town but they've kind of gotten away from the underground part. Now instead, there's the town and a nasty carnival. Oh goody. There are some creatures that were there in the first and some new ones, some kind of cool. My favorite were the 'nurses' with no faces who only moved when they heard noises, lightening quick with cutting tools but freezing when there was no sound.

Vincent, of course, is the son of the NEW psycho leader of the cult of Silent Hill and tries to explain to them that Heather is innocent, not like Alessa, but they want her anyway. And she wants to find her father, who (spoiler alert) DOES NOT DIE IN THIS MOVIE EITHER! WTH Sean Bean... you plan on surviving your roles from now on? <SALTS> So Heather takes the half of the seal, being told by Vincent that his bound, insane grandfather has the other half - with both she can save her mother. The grandfather (a great bit from another favorite, Malcolm McDowell) indeed has the other half - inside his chest. He takes Heather's half and shoves it in there (ouch) making it complete but doesn't get to keep it long - Heather rips it from his chest (ouch again).

Now we get to the amusement park. Heather confronts the evil part of Alessa and, uh, absorbs her. Shut up. Now Alessa is complete - uh, I guess, except for the burnt part. She then takes the talisman and exposes the current leader of the cult, Claudia (saying she's Christabella's sister - of course) of being one of the 'monsters' inhabiting Silent Hill. Since Heather is now also Alessa she summons another monster to defeat Claudia, and rescues Vincent and her father.

The ash stops and the town begins to clear. As they are about to leave, Christopher/Harry, who has 'felt' Rose visit him (Radha got only a small part in this one) announces he's staying behind to find Rose, now that Heather is safe and he has kept his promise. He walks back into the town.

Vincent and Heather leave, not seeing that the town is again fading away. They catch a ride with a trucker who says his name is Travis Grady. This is a nod to one of Silent Hill's video games - Silent Hill: Origins, a prequel to the other games. In that game, Travis searches for info on a girl he rescued from a fire and along the way unlocks repressed childhood memories... but that's another story and I don't play.

So Silent Hill - neat but confusing (even paying close attention). Silent Hill: Revelation - despite being released six years after the first one still seems a bit rushed in the story department although some awesome monsters and effects - not worth the extra money for 3D though.

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1980'S BAD BAD RUBBER PIGGY PART THREE AKA DID I ALREADY DO STUPIDEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR YET?





Oasis Of The Zombies aka L'Abîme Des Morts-Vivants (The Abyss Of The Living Dead) aka La Tumba De Los Muerto Vivientes (The Tomb Of The Living Dead) aka Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies aka Le Tresor Des Morts Vivants (The Treasure of the Living Dead) (1982) France

Yeah yeah I know, I've already proclaimed my pick - so we'll just predate this one for last year, okay? 'Cause this was by far the most horrible, boring, stupid, pointless zombie movie ever made. How bad was this movie? This movie made Zombie Lake look like something created by Einstein.

You know how when a movie is bad they just try to sell it under another title? Well this one has more titles than it has a plot. I'm not kidding either. Where Zombie Lake at least attempted some sort of story, this is merely Nazis who intercepted a French troop who happened to be moving six million dollars worth of gold across the desert. What desert? What French troop would be that stupid? How would the Nazis know? 

Point being, according to the movie anyway, that six million was seized by the Nazis and then they and the gold mysteriously disappeared (read sunk down in the sand or were buried by the French - it's not clear). So we have two different groups going after it independent of each other - one an ex-military type of Frenchman and his cohorts, the other a bunch of colleges students 'cause hey, nobody's gonna miss either group, are they?

Is the gold recovered? Pffft. Was there at least some nudity to keep interest at a minimum level? Pffft. Which group won, the students or the ex-military? Pffft. Were these Nazi zombies at least better done than those in Zombie Lake? Pffft.

Excuse me, I have to go get a gallon of water, I seem to have run out of spit.

From the metallic-sounding scratching of zombies climbing up through the sand (Metallic?) to the only site of zombie being a skull popping up and cutaways to people putting up their arms and screaming, to in the end when there is a zombie to be seen (in a dark, it-could-be-anybody scene) it is soooo obviously a mannequin and fell over like wood when 'attacked', this piece of garbage couldn't be saved by hundreds of incidences of nudity, which, of course, this film does not have. I highly recommend this movie to people you really really hate.

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1980'S BAD BAD RUBBER PIGGY PART TWO

Zombie Lake aka Zombie's Lake aka Le Lac Des Morts Vivants (The Lake of the Living Dead) (1981) France

You've got to give the French credit. What do you do when you've got a zombie movie you want people to see when they're not quite that popular yet, plus you don't have a whole lot in the way of makeup skills or even a decent plot? Why, put a bunch of naked women in it of course - it fixes whatever ills a movie has and guarantees to bring at least the guys into the theaters.

Zombies without makeup...

But this movie did have a couple of interesting zombie ideas that I haven't seen much (or at all) in other movies: This one has zombies fighting each other (I'll explain later), remembering their past lives, and, in one case anyway, gladly going to his death. Again. But if you ask somebody if they've seen it, chances are all they'll remember is the major boobage and salute the French for their nonchalance with nudity. That's probably a good thing because this is one of the worst zombie films ever made.

Zombies without makeup...

After starting the film with a good naked romp in a lake that ends in murder by the Nazi zombies hiding under the surface (it WAS pretty funny though when one 'zombie' took a really big breath before hauling his 'booty' under water), we shift to WWII and apparently we're in a French hamlet occupied by the Germans. One woman, reacting in that 'which way do I go' cartoonish way in plain view of anyone wanting a target to shoot gets rescued by a German soldier who receives a wound to the head for his trouble. But he recovers and, of course, after she gives him a necklace (why the hell would he... never mind) they do the wild thing 'cause hey, this movie's got to move along.

But the villagers prove to be treacherous to these poor Nazi bastards. They kill them, rob them and throw their bodies in the lake so they won't be found out. From now on the lake is known as Damned Lake or Lake of the Damned depending on who you talk to. Nice. The woman eventually gives birth and dies (didn't they all back then? I'm always surprised when a woman lives) but has a daughter.

Zombie/vampire losing Playdoh...

So skip ahead skip ahead... but how far forward? This is where I got really confused and had to look the sucker up - the people looked and acted like, well, the '70's type but the now-zombie father's daughter was only eight or nine years old. Turns out the movie was supposed to be set in 1957. Ah. Another case of movie suckitis, that's all. So in 1957 girls (apparently guys don't skinny dip) start disappearing and nobody does anything until an out-of-town girl's basketball team (Whaaaa?) shows up, strips and disappears in the lake. 

Zombie daddy protecting daughter...

NOW somebody comes to investigate. And the zombies decide not to wait for water boobage, they're going into the village now... the aforementioned zombie father remembers where his lover lived, goes to her house and finds his daughter who apparently lives in her bedroom. When he sees a picture of his love with the necklace he now wears (without a spot of tarnish on it either) he knows the girl is his daughter and gives her the necklace. Awwww. Sick.

I loved the makeup job on these guys. It was... well let's just put it this way. Somebody sold a whole ton of green Playdoh that year. That was the extent of it - they were green. Sometimes. AND they instantly dried off whenever they came out of the lake. That was convenient - don't want to drip all over those people they bite - oh yeah no taffy (intestine) pulling for these Nazis - they bite necks like vampires. YAWN.

Finally the little girl, wanting her 'father' to have some peace, instructs the people to get her a bunch of blood to feed them (Sick. Again.) and she'll lure them to the old mill, where the people will blast them with a flamethrower they happen to have lying around. This was the STUPIDEST part of the movie and that's saying something.

Okay, so there's green and RED Playdoh....

The father pretty much knows what's going to happen - he's already had to fight one of his fellows to keep them from harming his daughter so... uh... they show up, they have a blood feast, then the flame. Now our badly made up zombies obviously turn into mannequins since they become stiff and don't look a thing like themselves the second they turn on the flamethrower. I mean c'mon - DUUUUUUUH! But that's why it was so awful. Probably because there were no more boobs to see by this time, just burning plastic. The end.

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BEAUTIFUL, SAD, TWISTED AND BRUTAL






The Tall Man (2012) Canada/France

This is one heartbreaker of a movie that I really think you should see. I'll outline the plot but I don't want to give away too much so for just a bit I'd like to talk about movies set in Washington State that are usually filmed in Canada.

The beautiful Columbia River Gorge

I've lived in the Columbia Gorge most of my life. It is the area of the Northern state line of Oregon and the Southern state line of Washington, separated by the Columbia River. It's absolutely beautiful - but I think I can say with no exaggeration that both Washington and Oregon are two of the most beautiful States in the Country. With Oregon you have everything from beaches to lush forests to miles of orchards to desert places to tall mountains. 

Mount Hood overlooking the orchards of Hood River, Oregon

In Washington you have much the same - except maybe more farming. In fact just this morning I was pleased to see on the Bing app a picture of the Gifford Pinchot Forest in Skamania County, Washington where I lived for over a decade. I can see why they like to set movies there, but movie makers go as cheaply as possible, and that usually means Canada. So what movies and TV shows are set in Washington? Way too many to list but here are a few, usually set in a fictional Washington town:

• Twin Peaks (TV and Film): Filmed mostly in Snoqualmie, Washington.
• Twilight: Actually believe it or not this was primarily shot in Oregon mostly around Portland, although the sequels were shot in many places including Vancouver in British Columbia, Italy, Louisiana, Brazil, and I guess wherever the filmmakers thought that the place had the right "colors". WTH?
• The Tall Man: British Columbia
• Rose Red (TV): Seattle Washington and other Washington State locations.
• An Officer And A Gentleman: Bremerton, Port Townsend and Fort Worden, Washington.
• The Ring: While some of it was filmed in Seattle and Bellingham and other Washington towns, film locations included Oregon, California and Massachusetts. 
• Millenium (TV): Vancouver, British Columbia.

There are tons more, that's just a sample.

Okay now our movie - I'm just going to set it up and let you watch and get your own opinions. My opinion of the whole thing was that at first I thought meh, just another horror movie about a monster who kills kids. This is far, far different from that.

Julia, a widowed nurse, lives in the town of Cold Rock. Cold Rock was a thriving mining town until all mining was shut down - now it's just yet another sad, dying town with dirt poor residents. They have a problem however - their small children keep disappearing, without a trace. Some have come to blame it on The Tall Man, a sort of boogeyman that steals kids at night, taking them to his lair. Since the whole town sits over mining tunnels that reach everywhere (that would be scary to live in a house on) and they go on for miles, searches conducted all over find nothing. And since the place is surrounded by forest, searches are hard and still find no trace of any children, dead or alive.

Julia tries her best to help the residents but they treat her like dirt - after all, she's ONLY a nurse. Her husband was the town's doctor before he died. Besides her son, David, his nanny and an older child named Jenny (Jodelle Ferland who you may remember as Patience Buckner on The Cabin In The Woods), who is mute by choice because of her hard life, she's pretty much alone. Jenny is very talented as an artist, but that will never happen. She lives with her mother and stepfather, the bastard already having had a child with her older sister. She figures the same will happen to her when she's old enough and wishes 'The Tall Man' would take her.

One night Julia hears a loud noise downstairs. She discovers the nanny tied up and sees a dark figure taking off with her son. She gives chase, even jumping onto the truck, breaking in and fighting with the driver until the truck crashes. The dark figure grabs the child and runs away. Julia tries to catch them but she's injured and only makes it a little ways down the road, where the police find her.

And this is where the whole movie changes. Not having a local hospital (Julia is their only source of medical care) the cop takes her to the local diner, filled with people. There she is comforted and asked to tell what happened. But Julia remains silent. She does not tell them her son was kidnapped, or that her nanny is still half bound and bleeding at her house. I thought to myself this isn't right...

And that's all I'm going to say to give you a chance to watch the movie and have your own opinions because this will make you think. What really is right and wrong when it comes to the future of a child? Who is evil and who is good? This movie starts what we feel is the usual way for a horror movie and then twists upon its head, becoming instead a thinker and one way or another you are going to have a strong opinion. I did.