TURN OFF YOUR BRAIN AND HAVE A LITTLE FUN





Monster Brawl (2011) Canada

Anyone like wrestling? I used to watch Oregon's own late night Portland Wrestling just about every Saturday. It was silly as hell but it was fun. I've even attended (small) wrestling events and found myself yelling along with everyone at the wrestlers, the referee, the concession workers (just kidding). It was fun. It was silly. Yeah, it was kind of dumb too. But hey, I've watched a ton of cartoons and wrestling is just one yuk short of a cartoon. As is this movie.

You can't take seriously a movie of the Undead vs. the Creatures, featuring Dave Foley and Art Hindle as the announcers, an unseen Lance Henriksen as the narrator (and the guy making comments like 'BODY SLAM' as if this were a video game, of which he's been a voice in several) and appearances by Jimmy Hart, Herb Dean and Kevin Nash, a monster of a guy himself at 6' 10" and 328 pounds.

On the 'Undead' camp we have the Mummy, Lady Vampire, Zombie Man and Frankenstein. Representing the 'Creature' camp is Cyclops, Witch Bitch, Swamp Gut and Werewolf. All are performing on a pay-per-view event in a cursed cemetery (it says graveyard but those are by Churches and can't be cursed). Before fighting a statistic chart is presented for each, uh, wrestler.

Is it tasteful? Pffffft... c'mon people. It's stupid and we all know it but it was still a bit of fun - especially with Dave Foley (who I've always loved in Kids In The Hall) making statements like 'It's all fun and games until somebody loses their eye,' and the fact he has to kill his co-announcer 'cause... well, find out for yourself if you've got the time, want to watch something totally brainless and have a bit of fun.

Who wins? That would be cheating and besides it (gulp) looks like they're setting up for a sequel. Let's hope not 'cause fun is fun and done is done. Very, very done.







                              

MOVIES YOU WATCH BECAUSE OF WHO'S IN THEM






Pumpkinhead (1988)

Okay, okay this was a lame movie with a neato monster (NO CGI!) no matter how you look at it. It was a horror/creature feature that I ended up seeing backward. By that I mean that I'd seen all the sequels and never had seen the original. Why? Lance Henriksen. Of course in each of the sequels (not recommended by the way, they were all basically the same movie) Lance's character Ed Harley appears for just a few minutes 'cause, well, he's dead. Why? I never saw the original so I didn't know - until now.

Keep away from Pumpkinhead,

Unless you're tired of living,

His enemies are mostly dead,

He's mean and unforgiving,

Laugh at him and you're undone,

But in some dreadful fashion,

Vengeance, he considers fun,

And plans it with a passion,

Time will not erase or blot,

A plot that he has brewing,

It's when you think that he's forgot,

He'll conjure your undoing,

Bolted doors and windows barred,

Guard dogs prowling in the yard,

Won't protect you in your bed,

Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead.

In other words, you have a poem that's scarier and more exciting than the whole movie. In this movie you have your backwoods families, your teenagers you want dead as soon as you see them, and for a bonus a huge misshapen nightmare figure bent on vengeance - to whomever is willing to pay the price.

Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) is portrayed as one of those backwoods persons with a better education than the rest. Despite the loss of his wife he enjoys his life with his young son, a happy kid with coke-bottomed glasses whom Ed obvious loves to pieces. He runs a small general store that's probably the only store for miles. One sunny day a bunch of teenagers you hate immediately show up with some dirt bikes with the obvious intent of being loud and obnoxious as much as they want.

They stop for supplies at Ed's store, making fun of the boy for his glasses which doesn't set right with Ed but he lets it go. One of his customers wanted feed which Ed had left at the house so he asked his son to mind the store while he goes to get the feed. A couple of the boys, not being able to wait to terrorize the locals, take off on their bikes. 

The noise and the shiny toys attract Ed's son into going outside to watch them. He gets a little too close, the teenagers a little too reckless. Riding over a hill they see too late the little boy standing there to watch. Both lay their bikes down but not before the second bike runs the young boy over. One boy stays with him, the others run away. When Ed comes back he tries to explain but only gets the look of death from Ed as he scoops his son up and drives away. The young boy is dead.

The one who hit the kid is no stranger to this situation. Not only has he been busted for drunk driving but he's hit somebody before too. So he intimidates and even imprisons his 'friends' to keep them from calling for help. He's determined no one will rat him out or he's finished. Rich and rotten. Typical horror teen behavior. Duh.

Ed has lost the only thing he's stayed alive for. He thinks there's a witch woman that could give him his son back. After asking a family in the hills they turn him away, but one boy quickly tells him where to find her. She can't bring back the dead of course, but she can give him vengeance. Now anyone with half a brain would stop at this point and run but hey, that would end the movie, right?

She tells Ed the story of Pumpkinhead, warning him that vengeance comes with a price. DUH. Ed has nothing left so he goes out to the pumpkin graveyard (The what what WHAT?) and digs up a shriveled malformed figure. After the old woman does her mumbo jumbo the figure grows. It was nine feet high and six feet wide, soft as a downy chick, it was made from the feathers of forty 'leven geese, took a whole bolt of cloth for the tick... whoops, sorry.

Actually this creation was a first for Stan Winston and wasn't half bad for a, well, a Pumpkinhead. No Charlie Brown jokes please. He's got a huge head and the body and limbs kind of resembled roots in a way, although since most of this happens at night it's kind of hard to see. And off it goes to clean up the scum that Ed wants wiped off the face of the Earth. Heavy handed and obvious but hey, that's the movie.

Which means get ready to watch the teenagers die one by one horribly or, as the movie puts it, they get 'kilt'. And each dead kid means our movie is closer to ending. Oh, and also every kid killed makes Ed and the monster kind of meld together, as Ed experiences each death himself. Feeling bad about the kids (Why exactly?) Ed asks the witch to stop it but she tells him not only can it not be stopped, but he himself will die if he tries.

One smart girl (there's always one) and a local boy try to stop Pumpkinhead. Unfortunately there's really nothing they can do. The local boy dies too and the girl notices that Ed's face is looking more and more like the monster's head. Ed notices this too, finally knows what he has to do when he accidentally impales his shoulder on a pitchfork and Pumpkinhead feels the same pain. He shoots himself in the head. The girl almost gets away but Ed isn't totally dead - he attacks her and she shoots him several times. Finally both he and Pumpkinhead fall dead - the latter bursts into flames just because.

Our last scene is the witch re-burying Pumpkinhead in the same patch he came from. It is wearing a necklace - the necklace that Ed's son had made him, leading us to believe that the two kind of melded. Which is probably why he shows up, even if briefly, to repeat this story for each sequel.



                              

MOVIES THAT DON'T SUCK... NO, REALLY!

Madhouse (2004)

This movie looked like a big load of garbage at first sight, another one of those 'haunted institutions' type movies that are made by the dozens. But it has Lance Henriksen and even though he's been in some, uh, really duh type movies I'll still watch anything with him in it. After all, everyone can do bad movies - Tom Savini, George Romero, Jeffrey Combs... those who make movies and those who act in movies don't always get the best parts. This was a very pleasant surprise, although Lance plays a minor role in it, he's probably there so the film would have a big name in it. I would say this is worth a look so be warned the following describes the movie plot.

First, speaking of Lance Henriksen I'm going to give him some props for writing a pretty damn good comic series (a short one) called To Hell You Ride. The premise: A deadly curse plagues a small town, melting the flesh from its victims - the violent revenge four warriors set in motion when their sacred burial grounds were disturbed for the sake of gold miners' greed! Pretty cool stuff... check it out.

As for this movie, it was not the typical stuff - after the beginning. First we get the ghostly icky stuff, the rapid movement of giggling specters, the duh stuff every spooky movie likes to use. But then we actually get a story. Cunningham Hall is a mental facility (of course) that's run down and kind of a dumping place for the undesirables, including the violent and nasty ones. A young boy escapes this wretched place and runs through the woods to a road. A car comes towards him and purposely runs him down, knocking him down a ravine..

Flash ahead to a guy fresh from graduating, doing his internship at Cunningham. His name is Clark (Joshua Leonard) and he is told right away by the administrator Dr. Franks (Lance Henricksen) that this place is really not for advancing mental health techniques, but rather just keeping the loonies in check basically. Clark doesn't like that but since he is only an intern he can't do anything about the patients or the deplorable conditions. 

At night, he sees a young boy roaming the halls although no one can tell him who he is, only that there is no boy at the facility. One young nurse, Betty, helps show him the ropes and lets him know how things work in this place. Clark is bothered that some patients claim that they shouldn't be there and some claim they aren't allowed out even if they're 'cured'. Clark also notices that Dr. Franks has several books that suggest that paranormal activity could explain some patient's conditions, and that conversely some paranormal activity people claim to have seen could be explained by mental illnesses.

Clark continues doing everything he can in his position for the patients, even those considered the worst in the basement called the 'Madhouse' but his abilities are limited. And the boy keeps coming, looking a little more sinister each time. He develops a sort of dialogue with a patient in the basement named Ben who won't let him see his face - he talks kind of in riddles, and tells Clark that the answer is right in front of him, and that the obvious answer is usually the right one (that's Occam's Razor by the way).

Meanwhile people start to die. The head nurse (reminded me of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest) is stunned and strapped to a chair where a cloaked figure plays music while he tortures her and eventually kills her by electrocution. Meanwhile Clark asks what kind of meds the patients are given and finds that everyone receives the same thing - no matter what their illness. He takes a sample and sends it away to see what's in it. He also finds out that young Betty also was diagnosed with mild schizophrenia, which she controls with medication - the same given to all the other patients. But her pills are red - the patients receive blue pills. 

They then find a patient hanged in the rec room, which is called a suicide but Clark is suspicious. Then another doctor is killed by having his head chopped off with an ax (pretty good gore and special effect too). Clark then finds out that the reason why no one ever gets better or goes home is that everyone is given placebos, there is no treatments, and Dr. Franks has just been keeping all the money. The same cloaked figure soon does away with him too.

We have an obligatory sex scene between Clark and Betty after which Betty cannot remember who she is, where she is... Clark realizes that Betty's schizophrenia is worse than she said and that she must be responsible for the murders. Before he can do anything, she drugs him.

When he wakes up, he goes back to talk to his friend in the madhouse. He asks to see the guy's face. The man comes into the light taking off a mask - it's the little boy. As he watches, horrified the boy which we now recognize as the kid in the beginning of the film grows up in front of him and becomes him. Now if this were another twin bit.... but no. Clark IS Ben. Ben had been in the facility as a child with severe split personality disorder until he escaped. Dr. Franks hadn't wanted people to find out he wasn't really being treated and had run him down with his car to get rid of him.

Clark is now totally Ben and with an ax he's going to get rid of everybody who did him wrong. Betty tries to reason with him, but he goes after her too. She works to gain his trust and manages to get the ax away from him and wound him - but he overpowers her and despite her pleadings, well, chop chop.

Our last scene is Ben, back to being Clark, starting a new job at a new mental hospital. Chop chop.



                              

SNOOZEFEST: THE RESURRECTION





The Horror Show aka 
House III: The Horror Show aka La Casa 7 (1989)

I'm beginning to rethink watching movies just because of who's in them. This was on my list because it stars Lance Henricksen and I didn't really pay attention exactly to what it was about. My mistake. This movie mirrors, almost exactly, another film released that year that turned into a cult classic. That's because that particular movie, Shocker, was done much better. Starring Mitch Pileggi (probably better known as Mulder and Scully's boss Skinner on The X Files) as the murderous psycho sent to the electric chair which only made him mad, as well as able to travel through electric current.

This movie has Lance as detective Lucas McCarthy who captures infamous killer 'Meat Cleaver Max' played by the great character actor Brion James, who I was also sorry to learn died in 1999 at the age of 54. This movie also has Max strapped to the electric chair, but this time the premise is he 'trained' by electrocuting himself to 'build up resistance' to the electrocution (massive duh) and thus his spirit was able to escape and somehow re-solidify at will. If that wasn't bad enough, Brion gets to spend the movie seeing how wide he can open his eyes to look as evil as possible, and Lance spends the movie trying not to look bored.

And THEN I find out this is the infamous House III, a movie I swore I wouldn't watch but hey, they got me fair and square by renaming this piece of crap several times. And it IS crap. The only connection between this movie and the other two House movies (of which only the first was good anyway) is the crew that worked on it. 

Anyway... the premise is that Max made a deal with the devil (like in Shocker) which is not even MENTIONED in this movie in order to come back and frame Lucas for a series of murders (I wouldn't call two deaths a 'series') and so Lucas has to chase down the intangible/tangible Max until he corners him and electrocutes him again (And this works why?) before he pumps him full of bullets (Again, working why?).

In other words, this is a definite pass. BUT another chance to pitch the movie Shocker, which did have some clever and almost funny moments in a much better telling of basically the same story.