AN INTERESTING ADDITION TO NETFLIX THAT MAY CATCH YOUR INTEREST

Flesh For The Beast: Tsukiko's Curse (TV Miniseries 2013)

Well despite the fact that nothing is working for me right now, I'm awake so I might as well let you in on an interesting short series currently running on Netflix. I first heard of this when it was a movie - the preview for it looked good but I could never find it. The preview was also one of many included on my Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead DVD so I really thought it might be interesting.


The basic premise is a parapsychology team of a male skeptic (Patrick Smith) and a female believer (Charlotte Pines) who accept Tsukiko (Maho Honda) into their little group to kind of play a paranormal style of Scooby Doo type mysteries. I've just watched the first one - interesting, not terrific, but interesting.

The first episode involved the little-known practice of post-mortem weddings. That's right folks, some people want to marry dead people. It happens. I shit you not.

Oh and my droogies I apologize for the third person blog entry from yesterday. Apparently I had my dictation equipment on 'smug bitch' mode and, well, you know.

Sorry this is short and sweet but the better I get things together, the better blogs I can put here. Thank you all so much for the continuing rise in readership - that's just way too cool for words.

UPDATE: After watching all seven shows, this promising looking series just sunk into a pit of diarrhea, murder, devil worship, anything anyone would consider offensive. It then left the viewer hanging with unanswered questions, missing characters (Charlotte Pines), and *SPOILER* the main character (Patrick Smith) getting the 'taffy pull' treatment and dying, while Tsukiko (Maho Honda) just skips merrily through a park.

Meh.

                        

THE FIFTY MOVIE MARATHON OF PURE TERROR CLASSICS... WILL NOW CONTINUE!

Pure Terror


Continuing on with our little pack of 50 (yes that's a big five oh) classic (not necessarily good, but classic) horror films.The little pamphlet AND my little tape recorder has saved my butt 'cause it keeps me straight with what movie was shown. Each movie also has a short synopsis (thank goodness) so I know whether I've actually already seen (and reviewed) the movie or not. Unfortunately for the most part, it's not.

DISC TWO MOVIE THREE AND FOUR

The Thirsty Dead aka Blood Hunt aka The Blood Cult Of Shangri-La (1974) US/Philippines

Warning: This is a 70's era sexploitation film made once more (as a lot of them were) in the Philippines. The warning is that although that's what it's supposed to be, there are no women in bondage, no Foxy Brown (Pam Grier), no nudity whatsoever, and no reason to watch this movie. I'll make it very, very short.

Granny looks pretty hot, right?

They tease you with the opening of a girl dancing in a cage. But she's dressed. And she's probably your grandmother. Okay, calm down, maybe not YOUR grandmother, but she's somebody's grandmother. The news screams of a Hong Kong slavery ring grabbing women from Manila - yawwwwn. Hey, what do you want? When the main character's name is Baru and dresses like he's from the planet Weirdo, you get what you get.

Girls are snatched, transported via boat in the sewer until suddenly they're in what is probably the same freaking river in the jungle that every other 70's Philippines movie used. Then it's over the hill and through the woods to grandmother's house... wait. No, it's through the jungle and up the mountain where Baru keeps all the women he's been collecting - and blaming Hong Kong.

A heeeeeaaaaaaadddddd in a bbbbbboooooooxxxxxxx.....

And they're all following... oh for the love of GOD it can't be... it shouldn't be... FREAKING HELL IT'S ANOTHER HEAD IN A BOX!!! Obviously somebody has conspired against me, and disembodied heads in convenient carrying cases is now my fresh hell. Wow. Anywho, the head in a box-o is in charge of picking the leader of the group, which it does then slumps over. Let me say that again. A head. In a box. Speaks. Then slumps over.

This is way too bad, let me sum up. The Red Cross show up and bleed the ladies (kidding, it was the cult members) for the select other ladies to drink the blood to stay young. And, like other 70's movies, the captive ladies make a plan to escape, find out it's a bad plan, and only one makes it out. 

She brings the whole freaking police force (or whatever they have in the Philippines) but they won't climb the mountains - but the woman with Baru is able to see with her magic telescope made of a bundle of sticks down the mountain, through the trees, down the river and to the road to make sure they're (the bad guys I mean) safe. Old, but safe. The end.




The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) TV Movie

This completely gripping tale is about a rogue US Army Major who makes a scientist create a machine to make a man invisible so he can steal materials to make a man invisible. No I'm not changing that and it's not going to get any better either. BUT NO DISEMBODIED HEADS ANYWHERE!!! Just a stupid crazed experiment taking place in a remote house that looks just like it belongs to Norman Bates' mama. It's one of those movies where you walk right in, sit right down, grab a martini and a smoke. Every. Stinking. Time.

Best line of the movie (and don't be disappointed, this was just that bad): 'This will rip out your spine and roll it up like a ball of string.' I have no idea what that's referring to, but it's the most inventive part of the movie. That and the idea of strapping a guinea pig to a table to hold it still (you wouldn't get away with that today) while they irradiate it and keep it fresh forever... whoops, sorry a B52 lyric sneaked into there. They irradiate it and turn IT invisible first to make sure it won't kill the convict. How noble.

In short (too late) this turkey is about what I already put in the first paragraph - what, don't you pay attention? The nuclear materials Ulof (the scientist) needs to better his invisibility machine are extremely rare and kept under guard in government facilities. Krenner arranges the prison break of notorious safecracker, Joey Faust, to steal the materials he needs. Faust reluctantly complies since he's a fugitive and wanted dead or alive.



Faust continues attempting to escape and tries to get one over on Krenner by attacking him while invisible and running off. However, Dr. Ulof’s guinea pig dies when the female assistant announces she's pregnant - no wait, that's a rabbit, never mind. But soon after Faust finds that he can't control the visible/invisible schtick and we get stupidity that we can't see and then we can.

Faust decides he's had enough, "I'm getting all the guinea pigs outta this place!" He must have joined PETA. He's mainly pissed because the scientist tells him it will take more and more radiation to make him invisible, which will essentially make him a DEAD invisible man. Good.

Faust is more stupid than he looks and that's saying something. He decides to go for one last heist, a big bank robbery, because nothing's less suspicious than a money bag floating in the air, right? But, unfortunately, in the middle of the robbery he becomes visible. And, thankfully, also his clothes. 'Cause he's an ugly sucker. Really. No Kidding. 

Yeah, right.

Somehow he escapes anyway, rescues the woman and the doc, and finds out he's gonna die. So he's gonna take the others out too. He sets off the nuclear material which destroys the house completely but nothing else, and there's no radiation fallout. How convenient. How stupid. How long until the end of the movie? So Faust becomes an anti-hero but more importantly, he becomes MY hero because he ends the movie.

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FINALLY! AGAIN! THE FIFTY MOVIE MARATHON OF PURE TERROR CLASSICS... WILL NOT BE SEEN YET SO WE CAN BRING YOU THIS PUZZLING WASTE OF TALENT

Zombie Night (2013)

Nah, I'm not going to bombard you with those 50 movies all at once -  I like you. And you do NOT want what I've been watching one after another after another after... sigh. So I saw this (sort of) new zombie movie and read the list of stars and went hey - how come I haven't heard of this? I mean Anthony Michael Hall? Daryl Hannah? Alan Ruck? Shirley Freaking Jones? What the hell?


Then I watched it. And sincerely wished I hadn't. What a freaking waste of time and talent. And a whopping lot of copying from older and current zombie movies (and a certain television series). I was puzzled until I looked for the IMDb. Oh. A SyFy original movie. That explained a lot. From the people who brought you Sharknado, Ghost Shark, Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators, Stonados... do you want me to go on? I sure don't.

This so-called original movie takes ideas and plot devices and outright copies other movies and TV series and mushes it all together in a mess of a zombie movie. This is the plot. It is night. Zombies come out. Morning comes. Zombies die again. That's it. For 88 minutes.

There's copying from NOTLD. There's Daryl Hannah using a Katana - that's from both Kill Bill and Michonne from TWD. There's whining like you would. Not. Believe. And what they did to poor Shirley Jones - my hubby was sitting there just shaking his head saying no, no, no.... I knew how he felt. 

Seeing Alan Ruck act like an ass and Anthony Michael Hall looking older than ME (he's not) was very, very depressing. And so was this movie. Let me clue you in and save you some time: Out of all the people they (very briefly) introduce, four live to see morning.

The youngest, as they look around at all the bodies on the ground asks, "What about tonight?" Oh hell no. I'm not gonna be sucked into that. I'm done.

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20-SOMETHINGS WHO DON'T GATHER IN A REMOTE CABIN IN THE WOODS TO DIE - THEY'RE IN AN AIRPLANE... SO THERE! AND THERE'S A GIANT SQUID!


Altitude (2010) Canada Made For TV

Isn't it weird when you find a film out of nowhere that you've never even heard of and it turns out to be better than some of the newer horror films released in theaters? Especially when you find out it's a Canadian film made for television. Huh. Maybe you United States movie makers should watch and take notes. Nah, they'd just copy the damn thing practically word for word. But I'm telling you, I'll be ripping this apart because hey, that's my job but I did really pay attention because this was different, kind of inventive and for television. A TV movie. Here in the States a TV horror movie usually means they take two ordinary creatures, mesh them together, find some worn out actor or singer from the 80's and boom, a movie.

I'm exaggerating? Okay, here's some titles of some REAL TV movies: Dinocroc, Dinocroc vs Supergator, Dinoshark, Frankenfish, Ghostshark, Hybrid, Komodo vs Cobra, Mansquito, Megapython vs Gateroid,
Piranhaconda, Sharknado, and Sharktopus. So far. I'm sure the SyFy channel has a couple hundred more coming to a cable channel near you - if not, you're lucky.

Prologue to the movie: A woman pilot is taking a family to their destination. The family has a young child who is petrified with fear. The parents try to console him to no avail. He seems to be staring out the window at something - everyone turns to look and there's an airplane coming straight at them and BOOM...

Now we have a group of 20-somethings who are flying to a destination to see Coldplay. That should be an instant death sentence right there. The pilot (in the land of incredible coincidences) is the daughter of the doomed pilot we saw in the prologue. The others are your regular assorted unlikable characters. The pilot has a boyfriend, and also of course one friend she's had for a long time who's always had a crush on her. Natch. So they take off and the camera keeps focusing on a bolt, just to let you know that something is going to happen I guess 'cause they show the same damn picture of the bolt a hundred times.

The boy with the crush on the pilot is Bruce and he is terrified of flying. As a favor of, I dunno, letting him see there's nothing to be scared of, the pilot (Sara) lets him sit up front. We get the usual beer drinking, hand held camera garbage and everybody going nuts every time there's turbulence. And the bolt. That damned bolt. Sara, not the sharpest knife in the drawer decides to further 'help' Bruce by letting him take the controls. Now the DUH factor is on full throttle. He, of course, chokes (small engine humor) and the plane goes into a dive. 

The description for the movie will tell you he takes it into a climb but I know the difference between up and down so... yeah. The other idiots of course scream at both of them which makes things worse and Sara finally takes the controls back to level the plane but the bolt finally comes loose and jams the elevator so the plane just keeps climbing. The what? I don't know small aircraft so: Elevators are flight control surfaces, usually on the tail of an aircraft, which control the altitude. This was funny - when I wiki'd this 'elevator' and got the definition it says it controls the planes' ATTITUDE. I gotta get me one of those and attach it to my hubby.

Suddenly air turbulence gets worse and there's a storm ahead. Sara reveals that not only is she not instrument certified (that means she can only fly when she can physically see the ground), but no one knows that they are going to the concert by plane - Sara had told her father she was driving - he doesn't even know she has a pilot's license. AND they've lost contact with ground control AND the plane won't stop climbing.

Hmm, Snakes On A Plane, Zombies On A Plane, Idiots On A Plane. I see a pattern. Whoops, no sorry, this is something else on a plane. Since we are in the land of incredible coincidences, one of the idiots in the plane is an experienced climber so he believes he can use a rope to get himself to the tail and... what? Stomp on it for a while? Meanwhile they left with only half a tank of gas (?!?) and so in order to conserve fuel they throw out all their stuff. And Sara. Nah, just kidding but hey if I had found out my pilot only half filled the tank before takeoff...

The climber gets to the tail and kicks it a couple of times, apparently dislodging the bolt. But before he can get back A GIANT SQUID COMES OUT OF THE CLOUDS - SOMEBODY CALL THE SYFY CHANNEL! I'm not kidding folks, that's what happens - a giant tentacle reaches out of the clouds and grabs the climber. The person holding the rope is forced to cut it or get yanked out himself.

Bruce, who had been rendered unconscious by the others 'cause he was a major douche, wakes up and confesses his fear comes because his folks died in an airplane crash piloted by, in this land of incredible coincidences, Sara's mother. They tell him of the monster and he thinks a moment, and picks up a comic book that Sara had given him. He collects them. It's one of those old issues of horror tales (this one is made up - called Weird Stories) and it's valuable - that is until the drunk douche rips out a page. 

Now it's junk. He straightens out the ripped page and what do you know? It shows a tentacle coming out of the clouds. Now he's getting the idea of what is going on. It's the why he's puzzled by. Shoot, my worksheet (patent pending) is already out and mostly filled. I was going for an all-casualty type of movie but I had to adjust that a bit...

The drunk douche, after being confronted about cutting the rope and letting the other guys die, argues until ah rats, he's sucked out of the door and we're another douche down. Now we get an explanation, sort of, but it's severely flawed. Bruce tells Sara that when's he's really stressed or scared, what he's thinking of really happens. When he was little he had seen a photo of another airplane on a magazine and, scared to death, brought it to reality where it crashed into them (they don't explain how the hell he could survive the crash) and that's what is happening now - he's causing all the nastiness with the storm, the monster, etc.

Okay, that's... almost interesting but severely flawed. When he was small he was in an airplane and scared and just because he saw another airplane on a magazine he freaked and caused a crash? And as for 'causing' the giant squid... Sara had just given him the comic book as a gift - he hadn't had time to read it yet. So how the hell did he know what the story was about? But... this WAS made for TV and on the cheap and yet it was still better that some big money productions so I can bitch, but not too loudly.

Sara's big idea when she finds out he's a mental maniac is to tell him to just imagine this all never happened. Umm, what? Are we really going to have one of those 'restart' movies where it goes in a loop? Bruce tries but being a douche and a very scared little douche, things get worse and the airplane is out of control. 

So Sara kisses him. Kiss of death? Nah, this time it's the kiss of incredible coincidence, because all of a sudden the storm disappears and so does the giant squid. But Bruce is slow, but not stupid. He figures Sara only kissed him to make him imagine everything normal and so here we go again. But no squid. Sara fights for control of the airplane... and sees up ahead another airplane and they're gonna hit. Guess who's in THAT plane? No, c'mon, guess. Oh, please?

Of course it is the plane from the land of incredible coincidences with Bruce, his parents and Sara's mother. Somehow, Bruce and Sara are able to control the plane enough to make it a narrow miss. Now history has been changed. It reminded me of the Family Guy episode Back To The Pilot when Brian and Stewie go back in time to the very first episode but of course the past (and future) gets all messed up and Stewie finally has to fix it by making sure the first couple to come back goes right back home. He then tells Brian the time line they are in has been erased and so they will disappear too. Brian asks if it will hurt - Stewie says, "A little."

Oh I'm sorry, got off track again. So instead of fading away, the scene just kind of... ends. The next scene is of Sara's mother landing safely with her passengers and meeting up with her family. Sara runs and hugs her mother and is introduced to Bruce. Sara and Bruce say hello to each other and then hold hands, looking up into the sky. We're left to wonder whether they have any memory of what happened.

Okay, this wasn't so great but hey, for a TV movie this was pretty darn good. The acting was irritating, the effects pretty cheap (fog goes a long way in keeping the audience from seeing the studio around the plane prop) and the story flawed but still not a horrible ride.

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OW OW OW MY FREAKING EYES WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?





Midnight Matinee' aka Matinee' Made For TV (1989) Canada

Not checking on this movie before I watched it (I really need to start doing that), this being a Canadian TV movie explains why they could have brief nudity at the very beginning and one swear word (and that's it). The beginning movie scene being watched by the characters also looked very familiar - it should. It is a copy of the scene in Friday The 13th where Kevin Bacon bites it. Naughty naughty... but it really is the only interesting part of the movie.

This is about horror movie marathons and why they should be banned. At least that's what this movie seems to be trying to put across. The boring and unhappy town of Holsten B.C. had one which included a movie with the shot described above. As the character in the movie is killed, so is the boyfriend of one of the girls in the audience. They had sat in the rows in the back in order to do what teenagers do in dark theaters and he was stabbed through the throat. That ended the marathon and we get an inkling that the whole town became a boring pit after that. I mean a WORSE boring pit.

So we skip ahead two years but who cares? We know what's going to happen. The town wants to do another horror movie marathon and gee, is there going to be another murder? I. Don't. Care. This is such a boring (and obvious) setup that I was ready to cry. It makes a lame attempt at being a mystery whodunit by making several characters behave strangely and trying to get the audience to think. All I was thinking is I was stuck with this for 93 minutes and I really wanted the stupid teenager's car.

And you know a movie has a major suckage problem when you actually spend more time trying to find out just what kind of muscle car the kid was driving than you spent watching the damn thing. And although I'm getting better at it, I still use the hubby to help me as he's had a lot more years of experience. This car was much too nice for this punk kid. I WANT IT. My hubby looks at me kind of funny... you want that?

Hey, it's a cool (and obviously restored) black muscle car, yeah I want it. I'm not exaggerating when I said I spent more time trying to find out exactly what it was. I knew it was a Dodge and I saw the 'RT' on the side so we went from there... unfortunately since this was a made-for-TV movie (and a horrible one at that) I couldn't find it in the IMDb database of movie cars. Rats. I had figured 60's or 70's but other than remembering the grill and the headlights I wasn't much help. But hey, I learned how to do a screen capture so this woman is getting smarter all the time, man.

HA! Did this picture all by myself! Can I have this car now?

After some frustrating searches through tons of Dodge's in both years and makes we GOT IT! Drumroll please... the car I want is a black 1967 Dodge Coronet 440 RT. Can you see why it was so hard to track down? Not exactly a car you see a lot tooling around town. Maybe they're all up in Canada, I don't know. So if one of you is some bored millionaire and you've got one of these in the back corner of your garage... I know where you can park it.

Blurry I know but you can see the RT on the side...

The movie? Do you really want to know? Okay, bored teenage girl is also the same girl whose boyfriend got whacked during the first horror movie marathon. Now her new boyfriend (the undeserving schmuck with MY car) is a bad boy and a real thorn in her mother's side. Her father (played by William Davis - you'd know him from the X-Files) wants to take her away from it all - the town, her mother, her boyfriend. He also (surprise surprise) made a sequel of the movie that was playing in the first marathon. Wow. What a bore.

So people die die die and the girl sulks sulks sulks and my car goes vrrrroooom! Who did all the dastardly deeds? Well with the people dying it's not that hard to figure out which survivor is nuts enough. In the end, the girl and her boyfriend take off for places unknown in MY car. Jerks.

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MOVIES THAT GET ONLY A DISHONORABLE MENTION



A Whole Shi--- Uh Boatload Of Bad Movies

I haven't been slacking off, really. I've been watching movies like crazy, and it's been making ME crazy. See, I knew I'd be reviewing bad movies, I just didn't realize how bad movies could be. We're not talking Plan 9 From Outer Space bad, something you can enjoy BECAUSE it's bad. We're talking movies that should at least have been decent, may have had a good actor or two in it, a decent premise maybe, but it was just AWFUL beyond the pale. 

When I'm taking notes and the next scene is so... stomach turning that I throw my pen in disgust (my cats actually love it when I do that)... well, let's just say I'm down a lot of pens. Cats aren't dogs - you throw something, they get it... and then you never see it again. Shoot.

So here's a list of dishonorable mentions of movies I really REALLY tried to do full reviews on but they were just horrid:

Beneath The Darkness (2012): I had a crush on Dennis Quaid in the 80's and 90's - I really did. I mean could he smile or could he smile? But something's gone dark with Dennis - he's either just not happy anymore or he has gotten into the 'this is the movie for you' trap and now he's stuck playing psychos. Look at Pandorum. Great movie, except Dennis was a psycho. But at least THAT was a decent movie. This... oof. 

They should have called this Trying To See A Damn Thing In The Darkness, 'cause the movie apparently takes place in a town that never sees the sun. Nothing is more frustrating than a dark movie, especially when it's a BAD dark movie. Dennis Quaid plays the owner of a funeral home. Ooooh, that explains it. See, in bad horror movies, certain professions automatically mean you're a psycho. Let's see, there's doctor, mortician, scientist, clown, priest, and of course cop. That's just a sampling but you get the idea.

So why is Dennis mad this time? Sigh. Infidelity. Yup, he's on a tear (and burying people alive) 'cause his wife was having a little too much fun. And teenagers being stupid and never being believed by anyone over 21 find out but have to 'catch' him themselves because, I dunno, they watched too much Buffy The Vampire Slayer or something. And they do. In the dark. Duh.


Silent House (2011): Oh boy, was this transparent as hell. Teenage girl decides to help daddy and his brother fix up a house they used to vacation at waaaay out in the sticks so they can sell it. As soon as she gets there she starts seeing strange things and hearing strange noises. And hmmm... there's some Polaroids she finds that her dad snatches away from her before she can look at them. Uh huh. Call Child Services please 'cause we all already know what happened and why she's freaking at being back at that house. But no, we have to suffer through ANOTHER movie that mostly takes place in the freaking dark, as she slowly realizes that the spectres she thinks are after her and her dad and uncle are shadows of the past and SHE is the one causing the havoc. 

See, in case you don't watch horror movies or you are really thick (and I don't think you are) the Polaroids she had found were of her... seems her daddy and brother used her as... uh... a main source of entertainment when they were out in this house. BIG surprise. Not. Massive duh.

Rites Of Spring (2011): Take all the country setting horror movies you know, add a splash of He Who Walks Behind The Rows and BAM! You've got yourself one horrible horror movie. But at least most of it takes place in the daytime. 'Cause it's Spring you see... no? Well I can't blame you. With a mashing together of a kidnapping plot gone wrong, girls captured, tortured and killed over decades as sacrifices, some kind of undefined monstrosity, and corn fields (Don't these farmers ever grow anything else in horror movies?), you are sucked into a head scratching, yawn inducing movie that has no purpose and no real ending. BIG duh.


Choose (2011): A revenge movie of the DUHest kind. A serial killer goes after seeming random people and makes them choose how they're going to die. Of course these people are only random because in horror movies, police are always stupid. They've been working on this thing for a couple of years. So of course the daughter of a detective gets on line on her computer and pretty much figures it out in five minutes. Okay that's not quite fair, she had help - the killer wants her to know who he is and why he's doing this. The reason? Sigh - another revenge scheme - all the people killed were NOT random, and her detective daddy should be fired on the spot for not knowing that since he was also involved. DUH of the decade.

Movies That Weren't Quite So Bad:

Crooked House (2008) UK Made For TV: One would think this would be incredibly slow and boring considering it is both a TV movie and from the uneven movie-making UK. But I found this surprisingly good (although it is a bit slow). It is the story of a young man living in his flat until one day he finds a very strange doorknocker in his garden. Taking it to the museum, the curator tells him that on the site of his building used to be a mansion with a peculiar man who was said to be into the black arts. He then proceeds to tell him of several stories of families that lived (but not for long) in that mansion. He ends the stories by saying the mansion was torn down and the new building put up because the original owner did not have an heir. The man decides to keep the ugly thing and installs it on his door.

Bad mistake. Always at the same time toward four in the morning he hears someone using the knocker. Answering the door always shows no one there - but when he turns, the inside of his flat has become the inside of the mansion. He slams the door shut, then opens it - it's his flat again. After a few times of this, with him even exploring the mansion and seeing the original family performing some sort of black arts rite, he takes off the knocker and goes back to the museum - which has been closed for years. In fear he turns to his girlfriend, who he had abandoned because she became pregnant (although he promised to provide for the baby). She's no help of course. 

Going home he throws the knocker in a pond, but that morning he is again woken by the knocker - which has appeared on his door again. Slam - mansion. Slam - flat. Very scared he looks at the door - the knocker is again gone. Again he hears a knock - but this time it's his girlfriend. She's in labor and in a panic he has her sit on the couch while he calls an ambulance. But when he turns around, she's gone.

He rushes again to the museum and breaks in. He finds the picture he was shown by the non-existent curator of the first family that had no heir. This time the picture shows them holding a son and he knows that it was supposed to be his. Rushing back to his flat he can only look in horror as he finds the mansion that was supposed to have been torn down - after all, as the curator said, it would have still been there had there been an heir. Okay, a bit of a ways to go for a punchline, but not half bad.

The Dunwich Horror (1970): This is the original, not the silly remake the Sci Fi channel put out, but both have Dean Stockwell in them. Now I've said before that you can't really encapsulate an H.P. Lovecraft story into a movie very well since it's almost more of a mythology than a story but hey, there's Sandra Dee getting naked (which shocked me, I've never seen her but I remember them singing about her in Grease), Dean getting to feel her up - a lot - and psychedelia galore. Yeah it's still kind of silly -  apparently Dean's character's main power is to widen his eyes every few seconds as sort of a hypnotism technique. Uh huh. Loved the curly hair and porn star mustache though. And it is MUCH better than the remake so if you have a choice, pick this one. It's still not that good, but meh.

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PLUNGED RIGHT IN BUT SHOULD HAVE CHECKED THE SUCK FACTOR FIRST




Deep Cove aka Fear Island (2009) Canada Made For TV

Trying to get back into the swing of things I decided to pick the very first movie on my waaay too long queue of movies to watch and it was this one. Usually when you watch a movie on Netflix, if there are several reviews that are really high (They rate 1 to 5 stars.) there are sometimes others that accuse those of leaving the high reviews of being people who either worked on or spent money on the film trying to boost views. 

I don't know why they'd bother but eh, who cares. I never had much concern about that one way or another but after this movie I kind of have to wonder. The first few reviews (the most 'helpful' according to Netflix) were solid 5's even though the more recent reviews were much lower. And then I watched this horrid thing.

I'm not even going to go into the whole 'who got killed when and how' list because this film is so not worth the bother. Suffice it to say that six college kids screw around in a cabin on an island accompanied by a 'stowaway' and only one gets out alive. This girl is in the hospital telling this horrid story to a sympathetic female doctor and a hardened male detective. As the girl drones on and her story starts to go sideways, the doctor hardens towards her while the detective for whatever reason starts to soften. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean and I don't care.

It's your typical revenge type scenario of rich kids getting their comeuppance for past wrongdoings with an assortment of creeps you can't wait to die. They've got money, privilege, and not a single one deserves anything they have. That alone is enough reason for them to die in any horror movie.

To say the ending is a surprise twist would be an insult to anyone but the most novice of horror movie watchers. If you've even seen a couple of these the ending will just make you roll your eyes and check how much of your life is now gone (95 minutes) but hey, at least it wasn't released in the US so chances are good you'll never know how close you came to a really stupid movie.

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HULU SNOOZE FINALE!




Voodoo Moon (2006) Canada TV Movie

Well I'm ending my Hulu crapfest on a kind of positive note because this movie wasn't half bad. Unfortunately that means that half of this movie IS bad and you should be warned. But we have a hunky hero, a hunkier villain and a whole lot of famous friends to round this movie out to be a kind of soap opera-ish story of good and evil having a final battle in good ole' New Orleans. Well, sort of. Near there somewhere.



Bad part - this was actually a TV movie. Good part - Jeffrey Combs is in it. Well that's good for ME. Actually quite a few people make an appearance in this thing including John Amos who will look F-I-N-E well into his hundreds, Dee Wallace, Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia for you Buffy fans), and a slew of others you may recognize.

Okay the story is thin but: Twenty years ago give or take a demon destroyed an entire town using a possessed guy to take the fall 'cause hey, they're like that - the only survivors were a boy, Cole (Eric Mabius) and his sister. Why? Don't ask questions, that will just make this longer. Anywho, the boy grows up fighting this guy all over the world and because Christianity doesn't make him strong enough - just quoting the movie, calm down - he borrows from all the 'beliefs' of the world to pump him up to defeat this same demon over and over. Seems monotonous. His last stint of learning is in Haiti with voodoo. I thought it amusing (because I'm twisted that way) to see someone shaking chicken bones and quoting scripture at the same time. Oh well.

Sensing that his playmate has come back and in fact is making a beeline for his sister (Charisma Carpenter) who, while not being a psychic powerhouse like her brother does have the uncanny ability to draw things that are going to happen. He then calls together all the 'friends' he has in the States for this final battle, which apparently will take place in his hometown, where it all began for whatever reason.

We get lots of soap opera style action with longing looks, forbidden love, a brief flirtation between Charisma and the man she doesn't know is evil, Daniel (Rik Young). Quite a few of Cole's gathered friends bite it before they can really help. Poor Jeffrey Combs - his character, a cop who owes Cole for saving his life, dies but somehow rises anyway to come and help - brain dead, stiff and rotting but he's there. Needless to say he makes a presence but can't really do anything.

The final battle is silly and typical of these types of movies. Even the bad guy comments on Cole using pagan objects while quoting scripture but he's still getting his ass kicked. Now here's where it gets stupid. Uh, stupider. Their whole hometown was flooded because the town was massacred and they decided they'd rather have a good water source (With all those corpses? Ewww.) than rebuild the town. I mean it's WAY under water, right? Well, good old Charisma notices one of the churches has it's steeple sticking out of the water. What, is this church twenty freaking stories high or something? Conveniently she had drawn that very steeple and someone impaled on it, she just didn't have a face. 

She scurries to finish her drawing with Daniel's face on the picture and sure enough - splurch! Yeah, I know, not a word but a good sound effect - splurch! He's impaled on the steeple (in the shape of a cross of course) and Cole is rescued by the impressive and still hunky John Amos as he sinks to the bottom of the lake/town. He takes him from the arms of his dead mom who's, I dunno, holding him still I guess.

At this point Jeffrey Comb's character, very much worse for wear, says, 'Cole okay? I can sleep?' and slumps over dead again... uh still. Ahhh, how sweet. Ick. And our movie is over and so is Hulu.



Hulu in case you Google yourself and this comes up here's a tip: If you want to charge for your service, don't pack your damn movies full of commercials. I don't need to watch Jennifer Aniston rub her elbows with Aveeno a thousand times, or how having a tablet in my new car is an absolute necessity or how Stayfree twists and turns to keep me fresh all day. I can watch TV for that, idiots. That combined with the lousy buffering, no close captioning available and dumber than dumb movie choices is not worth a monthly fee.