HELLO/GOODBYE TO A FRIEND I HARDLY KNEW I HAD

FEARnet

As I've mentioned several times (I think), although my teat sucking days at Facebook are over, there are still a few things there that keep me from deleting that one last account (although all the content, pictures and most games are gone). One is promoting this blog (pffft, like anybody there reads it), two is having a quick view of local and national news on one page, and finally, I had a page for the horror sites that are on there - some to promote websites, one in particular to promote a channel I wish I had.


That would be FEARnet. They regularly show new and sometimes terrifying content, all in the form of a 10 to 15 minute short movie, as well as have a cable channel. Well, they DID have a cable channel. Apparently Comcast is dropping them from their cable services.

30 Second Bunnies: Cannibal Holocaust

This comes as a deep shock to those who love this channel, and I can see why. Not having it myself, I used to think that Chiller was fantastic to have - finally a channel for us horror watchers. But slowly, in the ways of music television, Chiller has fallen victim to the mass media munchers - those that prefer shows like Paranormal (Fill In The Blank) about (blanks) who see (blanks). Then there are endless Buffy or Believe It Or Not marathons. On Fridays they get all excited about showing "new" movies - which usually are so bad we skipped them to begin with, but with nothing else to watch, saw 'em anyway.

They're affiliated with SyFy and I've already mentioned how their programs are turning into... something... not... good. Which is great news for Netflix and a few other streaming services, as they may have crap, but they have a LOT of crap to choose from, not just one or two you're stuck with on a Friday night.

Film Short 'Knife Point' by Carlo Mirabella-Davis

July 30, 2014 is when FEARnet has announced the end of its channel - something I have heard before. Not from them, but from others on my satellite network who have felt the squeeze of big corporations and announced their 'departure'. One was even gone for a few days. All are still on the air.

Will FEARnet survive this crisis? I honestly hope so. I don't even get this channel but I love their original content, and would probably actually watch more TV if my provider carried them. Sad - but considering the programs other channels are dumping in favor of... whatever the hell they're trying to entertain people with now, I'm not surprised.

Oh, and just a quick mention about yesterday (7/21/14) that was Readers Calling Me A Dumbass day... I got a rather nasty message from one person who apparently worked on a film I gave a big yawn to (and I was NOT the only critic to do so, as the movie in question made back only $77,000 of the $750,000 it took to make, and the IMDb gives it a meh rating) stating I was just a sarcastic pseudo-critic (Just now they're figuring out I'm sarcastic? Wow.) and even stated that I must think that only I make good movies... THAT. WAS. EPIC!!! Somebody out there thinks I'm a film maker! A sarcastic, know-it-all film maker! Instead of making me cringe, this picayune prattle only made me laugh and realize I must be doing a pretty damn good job. Thank you.




                        

RUN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN 'CAUSE BELIEVE IT OR NOT IT'S THE GINGERDEAD MAN! WELL, IT CERTAINLY AIN'T GONNA BE A UNICORN, THAT'S FOR SURE...




Gingerdead Man (2005)

I love it when people comment on my reviews, I just wish sometimes they'd get to the point. Or have a point. Or stick to their point. A recent one was about a movie I'd reviewed in 2012 and I won't go into particulars, but this person apparently considered 95% of horror movies to be pure shit. Also, it was this person's opinion that there are no truly scary movies because real life is scary. 

Sperm mix-ups - sounds like
 a perfect romcom to me...

Hmm, where have I heard that LAST sentence before... oh yeah, I've been saying it for TWO YEARS on this blog. Then somehow the subject of the comment turned to unicorns and... yeah. I suggested maybe a soothing romcom (anything with Jennifer Aniston would probably do it) or something with Johnny Depp in it if horror wasn't their cup of tea, so to speak.

In fact, today seems to be 'point the finger at the reviewer and call her a dumbass' day because I had another argue I needed to get my 'facts' straight about movies because I (GASP!) mislabeled a dog as a 'German Shepherd' when it actually was a 'Whosiwhatis' and you know how important it is to keep that shit straight. It also said a sequence of events was wrong but I read it over and gee... no. No it wasn't. I would stick my tongue out but that would be childish and besides I DO THIS FOR FUN (cackles loudly).

There's those pearly whites...

This movie was part of the MIDNIGHT HORROR: TERROR & TORMENT series of eight less than stellar examples of the genre. But hey, Gary Busey gets to be a cookie. If Brad Dourif can be a dolly for umpteen movies, why not Gary as a cookie? The only thing wrong with the cookie? It had no teeth. Somehow, that just didn't seem right (pffft).

Don't get me wrong - I actually really like Gary Busey. I especially like that he embraces the things said about him without hatred and actually can join in the fun. Have you seen his latest commercial? I laugh every time - mostly 'cause I act the same way sometimes and if you're honest about it, you have too.

Hey, why do you think I have a dictation program? Okay, yes, for my hands which don't work properly most of the time without me having to sit on them (no I will NOT explain that again), but I also get frustrated at things not going as quickly as I'd like them to. I still have a decent typing speed but there are times when you have this idea and you've got to get it out quickly but POOF... your brain skips a synapse and it's gone. Most of the time permanently.

Unfortunately one of those POOFs did not happen with this movie. I remember it quite well. Sigh. First of all, the things I noticed most about this movie weren't the things in it but the things it expected us to just ASSUME. Things that you're supposed to know that DID happen. Unless there's an extended version out there and I got the short version (to which I say THANK YOU)... in either case, here we go:

In a Texas diner Millard Findlemeyer (?!?) is working on a steal/kill spree. He (Busey) shoots indiscriminately, obviously insane (pfffft). Included in the victims by the time he's caught is Sarah's (Robin Sydney) father and brother. She testifies and he's sent to the chair. Now it says (in the wiki) after he's fried, he's turned to ashes and his mother mixes him into a tub of gingerbread spice. That's... not explained in the movie. No no no... don't add anything please!

Nothing says 'love' like
 blood-tinged gingerbread dough...

Okay, first - ewwwww. Second, what, we're supposed to just KNOW all this happened? 'Cause we only know he got the chair from a quick look at a newspaper article (and his voice-over 'I'm gonna get you' type of thing) and a box of 'Grandma's GingerBread Seasoning mysteriously shows up at the back door so of course they use it without question. DUH. Even after blood gets spilled into it... remind me never to go to a bakery again as long as I live.

Geez, no wonder they're not making
any money. A dozen of these for $1.99?

For, uh, script reasons, Sarah makes one huge, insane gingerbread man instead of the small, sane ones other bakeries might choose. And so we continue...

We've got five young people to slaughter and one old lady (Sarah's alcoholic mother). And it's a slow start. And gets slower. Hey, how fast CAN a cookie run anyway? And it has a knife, not an AR-15 so we're not talking fast death rates here. Although he does manage, somehow, to get out of the bakery and run a guy down with a car (using a rolling pin to push down the gas pedal of course). He then somehow gets back into the building to terrify (yawwwwwn) the rest of the idiots.

The rest is just Ho! Ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! Umm, wait, no, that's not it. So the movie continues... screams, <sarcastic cookie remark from Busey>, more screams, one dies, <sarcastic cookie remark from Busey>,  more screams... do we get the pattern?

But first this happened...

Finally one idiot, a guy with dreams of being a wrestler (Really? Is this the '80's or something?) pounces on Cookie Busey and starts chewing off his head. Okay, ewww. Especially when blood starts gushing out of the cookie neck. It sure wasn't strawberry jam. He chews and chews and the cookie is silenced (well duh, he ate its' mouth).

If they bring out the Naturon Demonto, I'm suing...

The idiot (okay, his name was Brick) drinks a quart of milk and everything is now all right with the world. Pffft. Nah, he turns into a very cheap imitation of Ash when he was possessed in Evil Dead 2. How do I know? Trust me people, I know my Evil Dead - besides, he makes it obvious when he says 'give me some sugar baby' to Sarah. BLASPHEMY!!!

Finally the possessed Brick is burned to death in the oven. Very nice. Buuuuut... months later Sarah has a bake sale to raise money for a hospital and the nurses have brought their own cookies (Uh, what?), a box of gingerbread men. The last scene shows their eyes open. Yikes.

Yup there are three of these turkeys (plus some spin offs) and they announce the second at the end: Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion Of The Crust.

I am NOT kidding.





                        

WE INTERRUPT TRULY HORRIBLE FILMS FOR A CLASSIC THAT HAS BEEN REPEATED BUT NEVER IMPROVED AND THEY SHOULD JUST STOP TRYING...

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)

Listen up, cause I'm only telling you this once. I'm not bedtime story lady, so pay attention. It's 1956. The world is scared of communism and McCarthyism. You see, a while ago these pods started showing up. Bam, total devastation. End of the world as we know it. Everybody looks the same but nobody acts the same and they're all as emotionless as Barbie and Ken dolls. So it ain't all bad. 

Okay, I stole a bit of Tank Girl's monologue there, sorry. But that pretty much sets up a movie that is definitely before my time believe it or not. BELIEVE IT! It was a time of a kind of paranoia that hasn't been seen since... okay, people were just as paranoid then as in any other time in history. 

They just seem to find different things to be paranoid about. Between the two 'isms' they seem to be afraid of, the main gist is they didn't want to be in a world where their brains were taken over, or they were told how to think. I guess both those things are really the same.

And yet today kids listen to rap/hip hop music that tells them EXACTLY what to think and want: Money, drugs, alcohol, and sex - not necessarily in that order. Oh and that all women must be loose, with huge, umm, assets and very little clothing.

This movie has been redone three times since the original. I saw the 1978 version with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams when I was small (I am NOT THAT OLD PEOPLE!) and frankly the only thing I remember is Sutherland pointing and screeching at the end. Next they screw with it and called it 'Body Snatchers' in 1993, and a FOURTH screwing with the formula simply called it 'The Invasion' in 2007.

I've read where they have a colorized version of the original - nah, that would ruin it. It looks much more... grim and serious in black and white somehow.

The story was not supposed to be so hopeful - I'll explain that in a minute - but the studios wanted happy, happy, happy and so against their better judgement, the scriptwriters adjusted the movie. I don't need to tell you the plot... oh I do? Okay.

Somehow, somewhere, these pods show up (looking like giant fat doobies) and if they're near a human being, they start taking on the likeness of them and when the human falls asleep, it awakes and they... you know, they never really said what happens to the humans when the pods 'wake up'... maybe they just disappear in a cloud, I dunno.

This movie starred Kevin McCarthy as our hero, a small town doctor who realizes his town is fast becoming something - alien. Kevin was always very handsome, even in his later years. You may remember him from Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983 where he played Uncle Walt in the segment 'It's A Good Life'. He died in 2010 at the age of 96. His girlfriend is played by Dana Wynter, a German actress with quite the impressive list of accomplishments as well.

It was a shocker looking up the actor's list, especially when it came to an ancillary character, Teddy Belicec. I didn't even recognize her - and I should have immediately. I may not be old enough for this film or the TV series but I should at least have recognized Carolyn Jones - who most know as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1964-1966). Her list of films and televisions appearances take up quite a large page.

So. A wild-eyed McCarthy is detained by police and medical authorities as being out of his head when he claims that his town, Santa Mira, has become the home of pod people and they're gonna spread the things across the country. And in flashback...

The original story (and movie) is a very good one. Being a movie in the 50's means all the men are in suits and ties, the women in dresses and looking like they're getting ready for a party. Oh and something else interesting. Miles Bennell (McCarthy) is reunited with an old flame, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter). They both had been married to other people. But then...

Miles: "When did you get back?"

Becky: "I got back from London two months ago. I've been in Reno."
Miles: "Reno?"
Becky: "Reno. Dad tells me you were there too."
Miles: "Five months ago."
Becky: "Oh, I'm sorry."

Apparently in 50's speak, when you spend time in 'Reno' that's means you're getting a divorce. Nice reputation for Reno to have. And what a polite way to tell each other that they're free and interested.

But people are freaking right and left 'cause they swear their loved ones aren't anymore. And they're not talking about needing a trip to Reno. These people just plain are not who they say they are anymore.

That same evening Bennell's friend Jack Belicec finds a body with his physical features, though it's not fully developed; later another body is found in the cellar of Becky's home that is a copy of Becky. When Bennell calls Kauffman to the scene, the bodies have mysteriously disappeared and Kauffman informs Bennell that he is falling for the same hysteria. The following night, Bennell, Becky, Jack, and Jack's wife Teddy again find duplicates of themselves, emerging from large seed pods; they conclude that the townspeople are being replaced while asleep by exact physical copies. 

Again for the time this had some decent special effects yet some definite holes in the story. For one, there was no explanation of where the pods came from, and why they were able to absorb all your memories (and you) while you slept, AND where all the bodies that are no longer needed went.

In the original story, it ends with Miles, the only 'real' human left, fruitlessly trying to tell people that the PODS ARE COMING TO GET THEM!!!

1955 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan... Sweet...

Buuuut to keep things 'happy' we get a slightly different beginning so that the whole story is a flashback and before Miles can be committed, they find out he's telling the truth and start calling for... uh... everybody I guess. And there we see a relieved Miles and that is the end of his tale.

It is truly a good movie (don't bother with the others - well, the '78 version was pretty good) and an interesting look at the attitudes and the other quirks of those living in the 50's. Great cars too.

                        

HERE WE GO WITH A CRAPTACULAR MARATHON WITH EIGHT CREEPY HORROR MO... OOPS, I DID THAT ONE. SEVEN! SEVEN CREEPY HORROR MO... OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN - I MEAN I DID THAT ONE. SIX! SIX CREEPY HORROR MO... NO WAIT, THAT ONE IS THE FOURTH OF A SERIES AND I DIDN'T DO THE FIRST THREE... FIVE! FIVE CREEPY HORROR MO... YA KNOW WHAT? LET'S JUST TAKE 'EM ONE AT A TIME, SHALL WE?

Scarecrow (2002)

I know what you're thinking: 'Oh please, let her have gotten the date wrong and this is actually the 1973 movie starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino... dammit! Um, okay, is this some Batman mo... dammit! Okay, let's have the 2013 made-for-TV Sy Fy treat (cough cough) starring Lacy Chabert, please? DAMMIT!'

Trust me, I'd have much rather done the quirky but interesting sounding Hackman/Pacino flick, even watch Lacy Chabert (whom, among other characters, did the voices of 'Meg' in the first season of Family Guy and 'Eliza Thornberry' in The Wild Thornberrys). But no, sorry. But don't worry, maybe the review will be shorter than my overblown title on top. Maybe. This movie can be found (and this is a warning by the way) in the movie collection 'Midnight Horror: Terror & Torment. I can only assume that they meant it to be terror and torment for the one watching these horrible things.

Three boys are sitting around in the middle of a cornfield because, you know, that's what teenage boys like to do everywhere, all of the time. Seriously. Somewhere there's got to be a cornfield with three bored teenage boys trying to scare each other with stupid stories. No? Well in this movie there is so get used to it. One boy says he has a really scary story they have to listen to the end to get the neat twist. DONE! 

My horror movie worksheet (patent pending) was mostly filled while the beginning credits were running and finished when this line was spoken. If you don't get what the 'twist' could possibly be, you haven't been paying attention to me. Tsk, tsk. And the non-story begins:

This is your typical high school boy in his thirties getting bullied by popular high school kids pushing forty, with a drunk and loose mom. He gets aggressive with her, uh, current liason and the 90 pound weakling gets his windpipe crushed by her boyfriend conveniently in a cornfield that seems to be smack in the middle of this town (and right by the run-down trailer park he lives in) so that he dies staring up at a scarecrow he's been talking to. No I am NOT going to explain that. 


The killer uses a piece of rope he conveniently carries with him just in case he's going to murder somebody and needs to stage a suicide, and he and the boy's mother put him up a tree. The police, being... nothing really, don't notice that geez, there's no way he could've gotten up there. Meh. I'm looking for sense in this? The only person nice to him is a hinted-at lesbian in the film. How do we know she's a lesbian? She has her hair cut really short and wears a tank top. Offensive much?

I sometimes talk about stuff like editing and lighting and sound (not much, those things are boring) but the editing was soooo bad I thought I was going to have a seizure. In several scenes, it was like they had to do it more than a couple of times but thought 'aw screw it, I ain't gonna make all those takes match up' so the scene just jumps in front of your eyes here - there - over there - back here, all within the space of a few seconds. It was nauseating. Oh and the movie was awful too.

After Lester (yes, that's his name folks) dies, we get a nice shot of a most touching headline, pictured here. Now fake newspapers in movies are usually pretty stupid (most have it filled with nonsense, few bother to run letters backwards like this one does) but the title was funny enough: Emerald Grove Youth Takes His Own Life - Graduation Proceeds As Planned. Phew, that's relief, I was afraid for a moment there that his death was going to be inconvenient. 

This guy got his toupee' and mustache from Wal Mart...

But the backward and forward phrases repeated over and over include the words 'you'll be dead soon', 'carving up victims', and 'killer scarecrow'. Wow, they think you're soooo stupid that you need non-too-subtle hints at what you're going to be watching for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately.

Time passes. How much? I don't know, they don't say and I'm not going to make this longer by looking it up.

Olympic scarecrow gymnast contender...

So Lester the molester... sorry, I mean the dead dude goes from loser to karate and gymnastic expert SUPER SCARECROW, able to leap cars in a single bound, do backflips all the way down the street, bring out double scythes from nowhere, slice your head cleaaaaan off, then tuck the scythes... somewhere. Oh, he's also got a different voice and tries to make jokes like Freddy Krueger. He fails.

All the idiots that pissed him off get killed one by one (the owner of the cornfield says 'I TOLD YOU SO!' but never divulges what he supposedly told them) until he faces off with the  les... uh, the girl with short hair. Supposedly the girl wins, setting him on fire (Oh no, his one weakness!).

So we're back to the three boys and the one telling the story says it's time for the BIG TWIST... and if you can't guess what that is, I certainly ain't gonna tell you and I'm ashamed of you. Tsk, tsk.

                        

WELCOME TO THE JAPANESE UNDERWEAR... UM, I MEAN UNDERWORLD. PREPARE TO BE SCARED TO DEATH! OH I'M SORRY, I MISUNDERSTOOD THE DUBBING - PREPARE TO BE BORED TO DEATH!

Underworld (2002) Japan

Wow, what a stinker. This was a 'package' movie from Amazon describing six movies of terror as only the Asians can bring it - which means it was confusing, dumb, full of kids committing suicide and dying of stupidity, and, worst of all (or maybe best of all), they weren't movies. They were short stories. Geez.

A man solemnly introduces and concludes each little movie with a look which basically said 'Listen, I'm a grownup and I'm going to tell you about stupid kids and why they die'. If  you've even watched a few horror movies you already know that. Duh.

He kind of reminded me of Jack Palance, when he hosted Ripley's Believe It Or Not - a smug know-it-all who, even though he had the script in front of him, acted like he already had all the answers and the rest of us were just bumbling idiots. I think. I dunno, I started getting fuzzy after the third story.

I won't torture you with the details - it was all the usual stuff. Suicide, stupid girls getting into trouble, chain emails that kill, fear of the dead and ancestors, etc. - all those tired cliches that's seeping into the Western horror genre as well. The short (and boring) stories are:

• Chain Mail
• Left Behind The Mountain
• Tattoo
• Viewfinder's Memory
• Guardian Angel
• Mortuary

Oh well, if the West can churn out garbage as fast as it does, why not the East? Ya know, I've got to go down to Wal Mart one of these days (when I can actually move) and dig through that DVD bin they've always got with billions of horrible movies and see if I can find some more bad horror. Can't be any worse than what I've found so far.


                        

I SAID I'D DO IT AND I DID - SO THERE!

On Indexing Movies And Being An Ex-Facebooker

Hello my lovelies. I have some random ramblings for today's blog. I actually did something that I said I was going to do, and I finished it. Since there's no one else around, I guess I have to pat myself on the back. But since I have fibro, that's pretty much impossible.


It's almost as impossible to completely quit Facebook. I DID shut down everything (shh, don't tell anybody, but I had six accounts), deleted everything, and wiped my personal account's friend list down to crumbs. Uh, no, the people aren't crumbs, I just meant it's down from umpteen hundreds to something more 70-ish.

But I don't have a game system and I really don't want to shell out the bucks to 'join' some game site just to sit there and crush candy, bonk frogs on the head (Or are they turtles?), stick things in Hannah Montana's mouth (I'm not kidding, that's a game - look at the picture below), or worse, slaughter human beings. I don't care if in the game they look like trolls or aliens or whatever, you're still training to kill people - ask the army. Plus the stress of knowing there are all the other players fighting at the same time to slaughter me. That's... a bit different when you're used to stuff like Farmville.

Okay, that's just gross...

I did try a couple of games but only from the Google Chrome store 'cause that's "safe", right? Wrong. I had two or three very bland 'search for the hidden objects' type of games and I noticed that my security software was starting to complain. A LOT. Seems that stuff was attempting to invade my computer with sneaky little programs to make things load on their own even when I WASN'T EVEN PLAYING OR ON THE GAME SITE. Screw that. I flushed everything down the toilet (so to speak), ran a 'scrubber' program to get every last, uh, bit and said... something nasty I'm sure.

Long story short (you should know this is impossible for me by now) I do visit my ONE personal FB account now and again for a game and to promote this blog - which is pretty worthless, seeing as how nobody from there read it in the first place. In fact, after dumping all those people, that probably knocked my FB readership from, ummm, two to zero.

Okay, they're not quite this bad but hey, it feels like it...

I hope this still makes sense by the time I finish it, as the weather has once again changed its little mind as to whether it's going to be summer or not. My mind  is mush and I'm sitting here with my hands under my legs, using my dictation software. Let me briefly explain that. The pain in my hands and fingers, especially during weather changes, or just when my body feels like it, becomes so bad that painkillers really don't cut it. 

A simple and semi-effective method of easing the pain I have found is to (go ahead and laugh - I did when I first started doing it) sit on them. When I sleep, I always lay on them. For some reason, the combination of heat and pressure seems to relieve some of the pain. So if you see someone sitting on a bus, a train, a plane, whatever, and they're sitting on their hands – do not judge them, please. They may simply be trying to ease the pain of some kind of arthritis. Or they're just weird. I make no promises.


Oh yes, as I said waaay in the beginning, I finished an index of the movies I currently possess. My first surprise was in realizing that I still knew how to use Excel. Well, it's not really Excel, but a stripped down bastardized version of it. Meh, it does what I need it to do. I went through all the DVDs in my ole' high-tech cardboard box. I had decided to do this to make sure that I was not getting copy after copy of movies that were sure to be terrible.


I was pleasantly surprised. The winner of the movie – I – have – the – most – copies – of contest? Drumroll please… The original Night Of The Living Dead, of which I currently have three copies. Since they are in bundles of other movies, I don't feel so bad. There are maybe two or three more where I have two copies, but for the most part, every awful horror movie I have seems to be all by its lonesome.

So, since I seem to have stalled in my duty of watching movies lately, I decided to crack a couple open. And I sincerely apologize in advance, because what it is you are about to witness is absolutely horrible, but you know what? You didn't have to watch it.

Gary Busey has never looked better...

Oh, and I just wanted to mention one thing. I've noticed a couple of blogs, including some video blogs, that include the words 'so you don't have to' or something similar. I just want to say one time only that when I started this blog two years ago, I was not aware of any of those people, and knew nothing of any of them. Knowing about it now is NOT going to make me change the title of my blog. So if you think I'm a big ole' copycat, nope. There's just nothing new under the sun. Like music. Like horror movies. Hell, like anything. Just thought I'd throw that out.


                        

WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN?

Eternal Darkness of the Blood-Spattered Mind

Well kids I've been struggling trying to make a logical, methodical (and funny) review of Oculus (2014) but I'm having a hell of a time. Remember when I took Insidious 1 and 2 and put them together because they were pretty much the same story happening at the same time? Well, Oculus is like that - except the freaking thing has the two stories run concurrently - one with the protagonists as kids, one as adults. That means at times you may see the adults walk right past the kids and vice versa... I thought meh, no sweat, I've done it before.

Okay this isn't us but I couldn't find a
 picture with two people glued to a
computer constantly backing up the movie...

Buuuut I'm having a bit of difficulty concentrating right now, and this is definitely a movie you need to pay close attention to. Oh I've got my notes and even the hubby's help with this one (a lot of the movie was watched with the words 'Wait, back that up' from both of us, so a 90 minute movie took us about two hours) but I just can't seem to get it to gel yet.

I'm also looking for a good (not ripped, c'mon guys, when a DVD is "brand new" and has no label we know you just made a copy - we're not that dumb) original edition of Dead Alive (or Braindead, depending on what Country you're in) since that is my fave movie with the most volume of the red stuff I think that hasn't been equaled or surpassed. Oh wait, Cabin In The Woods (which I'm also looking for) was supposed to have beaten them in the red stuff category, right? At least nobody has corrected me when I found that it is now the movie that has used (we're talking in gallons) the most. Maybe I better correct myself...

See, I'm not talking about gore, just the splatter. There's a difference and... umm, you may want to read this later if you're eating. There's gore, which is the taffy pulling, the arm ripping, the head chopping stuff. Then there is the faux blood and how much is used to splash around. THAT's what I'm looking at. There are movies with lots of the first but not much of the second, and vice versa.

By now you should know I have a twisted sense of humor about these kinds of movies. When I first saw Dead Alive (Braindead), it was on the IFC channel. I watched it and laughed until I was sick. There was so much blood splashed around, I think they started to run out of red, because things definitely got a bit pinkish toward the end. And the scene with the single-blade lawnmower... I just laughed harder.


For the gore aspect, if it's in the right context, that's pretty damned hilarious too. Take Re-Animator. Now you know I'll watch anything with Jeffrey Combs in it. I had no idea this movie existed (this was before I started this blog) so I actually saw it only within the last couple of years. THAT was tons of gore, not a whole lot of blood. Okay, a good amount but not a LOT. And again, I laughed myself sick. Not so much with the sequels, but that's the way it usually goes with sequels anyway, right?

NEVER NEVER NEVER!!!

Did I have a point? No? Meh, that figures. Oh oh oh... getting DVD's of movies. I was looking through eBay offerings (unless you have something very specific in mind, that can take HOURS) and wondered - I saw several I really wanted but wait - did I already have them or not? Ummm... sigh. Looks like I'll be taking a little time to make a catalog for myself so I don't end up with three copies of some movie like Jack Frost 2 or something equally horrible. I probably already do have doubles, since I usually get my horror movies in packs so I'll be busy today making an alphabetized list for myself - after a good long nap.

Hmm... there seems to be
a lot of whining missing here...

I can't complain too much about the weather in the Pacific Northwest - we seem to get off pretty easy when it comes to extreme weather. I know there have been some horrible tragedies across the nation (not to mention other Countries) and this is only July. But when you've got fibromyalgia (stand by for the sob story kiddies) every little change in weather pressure, temperature, hell, even the wind, means that I'm down. Even with my tape recorder (which I do keep with me just in case a synapse in my brain connects without warning and I get an idea) and my dictating programs, there are times when staring at the ceiling (or the back of my eyelids) is the most I can do. Poor, poor, pitiful me. Pffft.

Aw c'mon, we know you're just being lazy...

Even I get tired of the fibro whining - I know that if I didn't have it and heard somebody else complain about it, I'd kind of look at them like 'You look fine to me' so I don't blame those who don't know, don't understand, and don't care. We have only just recently begun to understand the hardships of those with mental disorders (I'm raising my hand on that one too, by the way), and now we're supposed to believe that somebody whining 'everything hurts' means they have an actual disease? Really?

Yup. It's real, it's documented, and it doesn't go away. Ever. And I really can't criticize those who don't want to hear about it. I certainly don't and I've been dealing with it for... oh geez, it's been at least a decade now. That. Sucks. Rocks.

Sooo.... coming up is hopefully a coherent rendering of Oculus, plus maybe I'll print my list of movies available for viewing and reviewing... and if you see one you absolutely want/do not want done, I will/will not do it. 'Cause I kind of like you guys. Thanks to you, readership on this blog will be approaching 100,000 soon and that just brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my face. And that means a lot to a whiny fibro chick.