Sooo technically, it's a government housing project for undocumented...um....guests?

Strange Invaders

     Quick backstory: I've been looking for this movie for about 10 years. I remember seeing it on HBO or Cinemax in the mid '80s, but I could never remember the name. I would describe it to people, and they'd have no clue what I was talking about. Internet searches didn't help much either because I could only remember a couple of scenes. Then about 6 months ago Comet TV was running an ad and BAM, there it was. I went to Amazon and they had plenty of copies so here we are. My last movie for the season. I don't remember it being a great movie, but there's scenes that take place in the basement of a church that creeped me out when I encountered nearly the same design when visiting another church in Minnesota. And when you're 8, that shit is real!

     In 1950-something, aliens invade a small Midwestern town and make all the residents disappear. Fast forward to 1980-something, and we meet our university entomologist hero, The Professor. His ex-wife stops by to inform him that her mother has died and he needs to care for their daughter. After weeks go by, he tries to find her in that very same small town, now populated with human skin wearing aliens that look stoned and kinda chill. Their hobbies include walking, creeping people out, and turning humans into blue glowing balls. Professor must have harshed their mellow because they start making his life hell once he's home. After involving a tabloid writer in his strange story, his ex shows up and explains she's one of them and she fell in love with him blablabla..had a kid with him blablabla...not really sure how the biology works here. On top of everything else, the Feds knew about the aliens and had an agreement with them to provide a place to stay, why they shared some tech with us. Typical. A bunch more stuff happens and at the climax, we're treated to a face ripping march towards a flying saucer filled with aliens working on steam valves inside a space ship. I guess interstellar travel still involves steam. 

And it's really phallic too!

     So how does it hold up to my memories from 30+ years ago? Pretty good, actually. The only 2 scenes I remember were very skewed compared to tonight's re-watch. Without my bias, it's really just a forgotten sci-fi movie from the mid 80s, and not really a horror film at all. As a kid, the face ripping part made me think it was a scary movie, but it was actually just a small plot detail to let us see the aliens take off their human suits.

Shout out to Comet, I guess. I don't know what the etiquette is.

     And wow. I'm done. 31 days, 31 movies, and for only the second time since we've been doing this, it was completely uninterrupted by any of the usually things that throw it off course. I'm happy to say I've seen every Halloween film, and sad to say the same thing about the Evil Bong series. In the unlikely event that you read this, thank you for doing so. And speaking of reading, I'm tired of movies. I'm going to go read a damn book or something...

See you Oct. 1st, 2018.

Infinitely Stupid

Infinite Santa 8000

     Over a thousand years ago, humanity died out, and (for the most part) only robots, cyborgs, and mutants walk the earth. So does Santa. And when we first see him, he's in the middle of a competitive blood sport. After winning, he heads back to his ranch and we meet his herd of robot reign deer and Martha, his robot companion. During the night, Martha is kidnapped by some guy that looks a rabbit, but he's not the Easter bunny. Santa rescues her, but then they're ambushed and captured. That's when we meet our really uncharismatic antagonist Dr. Shackleton. She's got some sort of world domination plot cooking, and she needs Santa's DNA to build her army. Yeah, strong writing.

     This is not the first time I've watched animated Halloween features for this blog, but this is the crappiest I've ever seen. It was like watching a Flash cartoon from 1999. This was something that should have only been 45 minutes maximum. Somehow they stretched this out to over an hour and a half. There wasn't anything funny, edgy, or even interesting. The dialog is painful to listen to and the voice talent is partly to blame. And I almost feel bad trashing this because somewhere out there is a group of people that busted their ass to make this happen. Was it a horror movie? No, probably not intentionally. It's a good candidate for this years Horror Movie Mulligan, and you can test yourself to see how far you can get into this movie by watching it here:

Infinite Santa 8000 via Youtube

Tuesday: Final film for 2017!

Rest in peace, Angus Scrimm

Phantasm 5: Ravager

Never put 'Final' in your title. Nobody believes it.

     I'm not sure how the last movie ended, but we find Reggie walking in the desert, mostly lost, battered, but alive. Within minutes, the balls this series is known for start chasing him around. After fending them off, he wakes up in an asylum. Mike, the person he's been looking for since #3, appears and informs him that he has dementia and needs to keep him 'engaged', so he asks Reggie to tell him the story from the beginning.

Really, this is all we ever want to see. Skip the ugly little grave Jawas

     From there we're given the back and forth through time, reality, not reality....it's trope that's a little tired, but far more inspiring than the last film. The problem is, you ALSO don't know what direction the film is going and that makes it really hard to keep up or simply give a damn. It happens so much that it takes over the movie, and pretty soon you start to lose interest. And the ending? Um....I'm not touching that. It was ambiguous, then the credits started rolling, then stopped and the movie started up again. Then the credits rolled again. I'm not sure who was in charge of editing, but they flubbed it.

     Now the $20 question: Will they make another? They treated it as a franchise finale, but we all know that's crap if someone comes up with the money. The only other thing that could prevent it would be the death of Angus Scrimm, who died shortly after filming this. The Tall Man was a staple of the franchise, and the one thing truly haunting about it. Though he was really showing his age and couldn't move like before, he still banged out his lines, and you still listened to every word. His was a commanding voice and I'll miss it.

Monday: My Halloween needs more Santa...

FFS, STOP CROWD FUNDING THESE!!!

Evil Bong 666

Face the face of Evil, Face the face of Stupid.

  

     OK, so maybe I've gone too far. Maybe I've pushed myself to the point of futility in watching these terrible movies. And yes, I've been stoned to the point where I thought I couldn't move my arms, hands...eyes. Limited experience, but I have a background and I have to admit, there's no way in hell that I would have ever found this funny. It helped me with Pink Floyd's Animals, but this would be a pile of shit under any kind of influence. I could have been watching the Devils play they Coyotes, but no...I said 'I have to do this' because I have masochistic integrity. Damn it.

     Rabbit has sold EeBee's Boutique to a hot Satan worshiper named Lucy Furr and somehow she springs EeBee the Evil Bong from Sexy Hell (fuck, this is fan-fiction written by a 12 year old). EeBee tells her about Sexy Hell and Lucy will do what ever she has to go get there. I'm not really sure what's so great about Sexy Hell, but it's ran by a guy named Beelzebud. Two of the mainstay hotties from the other 5 movies also get sucked in to the Sexy Hell and for some stupid reason, Rabbit and EeBee get together to try and bring them back. Then they send Gingerdead Man as an enforcer, then they make their own 'Gingerweed Man' and then you realize that even though this movie is only 1 hour, 5 minutes...you've wasted your entire Saturday night. It's now ruined because you spent an hour watching characters in a franchise that should be burned to the ground, and the ashes blasted into space. Who cares how it ended (though I did watch it all), I just know it's over.

….but you know damn well there's going to be a sequel, on top of the teaser for the next Gingerdead Man film....I've created my own hell....

Sunday: The Final 3...

I'm not even sure why they bothered with a movie poster...

Attack Of The Vegan Zombies

     God, the levels I stoop to. A wife turns to her occult mother to help boost her husbands failing vineyard. It helps to have a wiccan mother. Naturally the fallowing year is a bumper crop and some idiotic co-eds are hired to help pick grapes. 2 completely over the top geek-nerds, and 2 bargain bin blondes. The vineyard's good fortune is noticed by the other local farmers during a bad season. One of the neighbor farmers decides to sneak a sample out and is attacked by the vine. I'm not making that up. I guess they have a taste for blood and start eating people or something. It's not really made clear and I don't think I care. As the vines continue to grow out of control and make it impossible for people to leave the vineyard, other people start disappearing and the wife starts owning up to what she had her mother do. I'd like to note at the one hour mark, NO FUCKING ZOMBIES YET.....

     After being trapped indoors, the vines start to move into the house and take over the body of one girl....that they painted green. That's all they did for makeup. Green paint. Green paint means zombie? Green paint means zombie if you're a broke-ass budget. In fact, I'm pretty sure the highest expenditure was for the gallon of green paint used sparingly on 4 or 5 of the local talent that showed up for the casting. There's no way they could have recruited for this film. Alley Sheedy and Molly Ringwald aren't doing much right now. You could have gave them a call. Hell, you could have rounded up ¾ of the Brat Pack on a tight budget and turn this pile of shit into a piece of crap!

Saturday: One more turd to fish out of the punch bowl....

Giving robots a bad name since 1984...

Class of 1999

     Released in 1990, it looks like it came from 1985. But there's a decent explanation for that: The short of the long is that bankruptcy forced a delay. Granted, 1989 vs.1990 doesn't' seem like a huge jump, but I remember a considerable change in attitude in the new decade. Then again, I may be taking a myopic view of history. Due to a couple of years sitting on the shelf, this movie never made any big news. But that's also because it's kind of crappy and about 5 years past it's expiration date. Had this shipped in 1985, it'd been a classic.

     OK, this is a little confusing. The year is 1999, and certain areas of large cities are overrun with crime, and cops cannot go anywhere near them. They're called “Free-Fire” zones and there's no laws within those areas. Yet, somehow there's a school smack dab in the middle of the Seattle FF zone and...there's armed guards making students check in their weapons before entering? That sounds like a little more control than a lawless zone usually has. Anyhoo, a group of robotic teachers are now part of the academic staff and they're not fucking around. Snapped necks, brutal beat-downs, forcing druggies into OD'ing. They seem to have sadism in their programming because they just love to discipline students till they stop breathing. And the programmers don't seem to mind. And why would they? The head programmer is Stacy Keach sporting white hair, a ponytail, and creepy contacts. Not exactly what I would consider a quality thinker.

As the film progresses, we learn the android teachers were converted military units and old habits die hard. Eventually, they label every student as a threat and start a gang war to kill off the bulk of the miscreants. All the student gang-tards figure this out and go on the offensive in what ends up a battle at the...oh, you'll never guess this.....at the High School. Because hospitals, dances, and schools are where every climax needs to take place. That's called that 80-90 rule that I just made up. Naturally, at the end, our victorious warriors emerge from the ruins of the school knowing that they're the champions....but they seem to forget that they're still in a war-zone and everything sucks.

Yes, this was a bad movie. But, I have to put it in the Saturday Afternoon class because even though you know it's crap, it's still kind of interesting. However, I get the impression from this cast that some people need this gig to pay their mortgage:

Stacey Keach

Malcolm McDowell,

Pam Grier

Friday: PC Zombies are the most pretentious soy latte-swilling jackasses you'll ever meet...

Making Pumpkinhead look like an intellectual...

Rawhead Rex

     A little history: I first read this story somewhere around 1988-1991 in one of Clive Barker's Books Of Blood. That series  of books also spawned Cabal (aka Nightbreed), Midnight Meat Train,  and  The Last Illusion (Lord of Illusions). Each of these stories made it to film, but it was years before I knew that Rawhead Rex had also been adapted.  Each of these films had a questionable quality, and clearly a super low budget, but I still enjoyed them (mostly). I was never really motivated to watch this one because nobody, and I mean NOBODY has much good to say about it. But I've chosen this as the year to watch it...

     So I guess it's an Irish thing to bury immortal tooth-faced beasts under phallic pillars in the middle of fields. In the first scene, we're treated to a handful of farmers (?) trying to remove this centuries old pillar with the help of a tractor and, I can only assume, a bottle of Jameson. After tugging and wiggling, smoke starts spewing from underneath, and Rawhead jumps out. Rawhead Rex looks like this:

Toothy bastard would have ruled the WWE.

     Next we meet our protag, Howard Hallenbeck,  an American traveling around Ireland doing research on holy places and such. He's brought the whole family with him, I might add. That proves to be a mistake as Rawhead eventually tires of mature human flesh and puts some focus on human veal in the form of Howard's son. From there, we have a man hunt (or Rex hunt, as it were) involving a not-quite convinced police force, and one creepy Deacon that's in love with Rawhead. Enough so, that he willingly partakes in "water sports" with Rex in some sort of baptism.

Giggity.

     After some useless scenes of people running around, doing nothing urgently, we're treated to a climax in the graveyard of the local church featuring a rock as the deus ex machina. But as always, there's rules to this sort of thing and that means the 'God rock' will only work in the hands of a woman. Good thing Howard's wife ignored his pleading to 'stay someplace safe'. If it weren't for her, glowy worms wouldn't have shot out the of the rock and turned Rex into an old, gray, dusty corpse.

Despite the simple effects, simple plot, un-charismatic cast, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was by no means great, the only scene you're likely to remember is the pissing baptism, but it has its place in the deep dark corners of the horror film archives.


 For another take on this, Ms. Gucci has covered this movie here : http://sghorrorfest.blogspot.com/2013/10/ireland-will-never-be-same.html

Thursday: This happened both before and after I graduated from High School....

Really, I'm starting to become ashamed of this...

Evil Bong: High 5

    When we last saw these retarded potheads, they were stuck inside Eebee's bong-world. And I was happy knowing they were stuck in there. They weren't bothering anyone, and they weren't making stupid weed jokes. Sadly, Eebee decided to up the ante on her world domination plot by sending Rabbit and Larnel to the real world to make money selling her super mega weed. As ransom, she holds Larnel's kinda-girfirends in the bong-world till they round up $1 million dollars. This plot's got some meat on it's bones!

     Aw screw it, I lied. That's it, man....that's all there is to this story. I sat there for 70 minutes and watched the same group of people make un-funny weed jokes, watched the same stupid sentient bong call everyone a 'muthafucker', and the same creepy perv make stupid pervy tit jokes. Everyone in this film should be ran over by a dozer. This was made by Full Moon Entertainment! Where's the horror?!? At the end of the film, we see Eebee sucked into Rabbit's 'Nothinghole' and then we realize the horror is knowing there's one more sequel..

Wednesday: It's a Clive Barker story, so it should be solid, right? RIGHT?....

They call him The Fuzz...

Wolf Cop

     An alcoholic sheriff in Podunkville, Statesota wanders into a occult seance and through means that border on 'weak', becomes a lycanthrope. Not enough info for you?....fine. A group of shape-shifters retain there longevity by drinking werewolf blood. In order to create a werewolf, you need a village idiot, another blood filled victim, and some good 'ol occult pomp and circumstance. After tying up our protagonist, carving a pentagram on his chest, they place another poor soul above him and open him up so he drips blood into our future lycanthrope law enforcement officer. So essentially, we have the coffee house equivalent of a vinte Kyoto-style werewolf brew.

     After the drunk-cop becomes aware that he's Werewolf cop, we're treated to some pretty sophisticated scenes involving ripping people to shreds, ripping head off, ripping arms off, and my personal favorite, ripping peoples faces off.

The good news is, his harelip is hardly noticeable.

     Billed as a comedy, it has its moments. The main protagonist is a bit dull and they spend little time on him, whereas his buddy through half the film steals the shows with wit alone. One interesting take on the transformation process was instead of growing hair out, they just simply had him rip his skin off to reveal fur underneath. Given this isn't one of the higher budge endeavors, I'm pretty sure this was a cheap F/X fix. In the restroom scene when we get our first full glimpse of the 'wolfing-out', I thought I saw a hairball come out of his dingly-dangly. Turns out it was just shedding his Summer coat to reveal his Winter wiener coat.

     After all the other wacky hi-jinks, our protagonist and his buddy cop are seen walking away wounded from the climatic battle in which a full half to the entire city administration has been killed and hopefully nobody asks any inconvenient questions.

This gif serves no purpose. I just like shiny sparkly things. And it reminded me of everyone's 2005 Myspace page.

Tuesday: Well, we're up to 70 minutes now...

And 12 years later....

The Corpse Grinders 3

     Not content with crapping on the American film industry, we exported this 80 minute turd to Spain so they could be just as crappy as us. Same as the first. Human based cat food turns cats into murder machines. At this point, I'm rooting for the blood thirsty cats. Ya know, it'd be really nice if they changed up the script or, oh...I don't know...wrote a new one!?! Despite the fact that we're now treated to 2 bald bumbling chuckle-heads, nothing much has changed on the script. Still making cat food out of human meat, still using a grinder big enough for a full-sized human body, and the cats are still murdering the hell out of people. Good for them. 

     Why the hell did I watch this sober? Screw it. I don't care that it's barely Sunday afternoon. I'm drinking this movie off. 

Monday: You ain't nothing but a hound dog narc...

29 years in the making...

The Corpse Grinders 2

I can assure you, NOBODY was waiting for this sequel.

     Not content with having made one terrible movie, 29 years later they decided to make a movie twice as bad. It looks like they filmed it on a camcorder in peoples basements and living rooms.

     Whew...OK, here we go: A race of cat-people escape their war-torn planet to help themselves to Earths resources. Meanwhile, two chuckle-heads (Landau and Maltby) are starting to revive a cat food plant, complete with grinder because the only way you can make cat food is with a grinder just large enough to stuff whole bodies in. And naturally, they start paying Caleb and Cleo to dig them up. Yeah, by the way, they reused all the main character names from the first film: Maltby, Landau, Caleb, Cleo, and Dr. Howard Glass. Considering this isn't a reboot, it's puzzling why they would do that. And in fact, aside from the stupid alien cat-people subplot, this movie is very much like the original despite completely falling apart at the end. Really, I think the artistic license they took was nothing more than throwing darts on a dartboard filled with random subplots.

Cat people. Yeah, I've got nothing on this.

     Yes the film is terrible. But what I love about it is the work everyone put in. They had little for resources, a budget smaller than that crap-fest I watched last year staring Cory Feldman, and I'm pretty sure every actor was from the local community theater. Yet somehow, they belted out a movie for an hour and 45 minutes. However, despite my somewhat upbeat attitude about this film, bring some caffeine with you because it's a slow burn to the end.

Sunday: Scraping the bottom of the barrel one more time....

This is what happens when you recruit from the local dinner theater.

The Corpse Grinders

     A failing pet food company has resorted to buying corpses for processing into food for your furry critters. Once the human-tainted meat hits the open market, cats go ape-shit for the sweet yummy flesh of humans. That's right...Mr. Fluffy-bottoms is going to feast on your flesh the second you look the other way. A veterinarian and his assistant start to get suspicious and investigate as the plot thickens. Well, 'thicken' is a terrible description. Fester might be a better word. This is a grade B- snooze-fest that will put you to sleep and it's OK if you do. 45 minutes into it, and compulsion was the only thing keeping me awake.

     Not much of a horror film, but I did have one intriguing thought: They throw the bodies right into the grinder. No gutting, deboning, or shaving/skinning. It's a wonder those cats didn't choke on a chunk of fibula. Predictably, the acting is ham-fisted like a porno, but without the sex, and in the end, all it did was irritate my cat.

Murder Machine

     Unless you're on a mission to watch ever bad movie ever made, don't bother with this 'not-horror' film. The real horror of this film?

....Is knowing there's 2 sequels.

Saturday: It took almost 30 years for someone to revisit this dumpster fire...

I really hate this family...

Halloween 2 (2009)

     To say Laurie Strode is disturbed would be a gigantic understatement. The movie starts with her wandering the streets after an extremely traumatic situation. She's ushered to the hospital where we're treated to emergency services going over her body that's just been ravaged. The 'dead' body of Michael dumped in a van, and off to the morgue it goes. Predictably, Michael is not dead, the van hits a cow, and guess who's running around the countryside chopping people up. Somehow he has no problem finding Laurie in the hospital. Like, in under 15 minutes. Naturally he butchers the shit out of all the nurses as Laurie escapes. After spending 26 minutes running, screaming, seeing another security guard butchered....ooop...ha-ha, fuck you. It's a dream. Laurie wakes up screaming because she's had a massive nightmare.

     Oh look, Michael really IS still alive and starts stabbing the fuck out of everything. Because that's really all this movie is. Chopping up people, spraying blood everywhere. I guess he really DID survive that van wreck.What made him bulletproof? Was he bitten by a spider or some shit? Yes, there was a transition scene featuring a white horse and his dead mother spirit, but I dismissed it because it seemed hoaky.  Michael is shown having visions of his dead family, and in his mind, he's trying to put everyone together. So it appears he wants to kill Laurie so they can all be a family again. He also cuts up a dog and eats its raw innards. And since this has become a family movie, it should be noted that Laurie is also starting to crack into psychosis.

One word: Cardio.

     One question, however: Why did they make Dr. Loomis such an insufferable prick? He was a man of integrity, but they've made him to be a complete asshole who's only interested in chasing money. It makes very little sense and robbed McDowell of the opportunity to expand Loomis in a much deeper character. He's built up to be brought down in a violent way and it seemed so far from his character. There might have been a slight hint in prior film, but this was an extreme flip. It was a wasted opportunity, I feel.

     Without a doubt, there's a lot of horror in this film. Very disturbing scenes that work. No, it won't give you nightmares, but there will be times when you look at the screen and go 'fuuuuuu....'. HOWEVER...you might find yourself becoming desensitized to all the blood drenched scenes. It becomes tiresome but I have to say the best moments are those long 'God-pauses' Michael takes right before stabbing the shit out of whom ever is in front of him, or just happens to be in the same room.

Cast notes

Howard Hessman?

Margot Kidder

Weird Al?!? (Actually, it makes sense when you see it)

So there it is. I've watched every Halloween movie as of 2017. As I've said before, this franchise has been all over the place, and has also had its ups and downs (mostly downs). But the important thing is, I never have to see them again. And I probably won't. However, it should be noted that horror franchises don't end. They just pause....

Halloween 2018

A mediocre Gen-X interpretation of Stepford Wives, the teenage years.

Disturbing Behavior
1991?

This movie opens with a jock killing a girl who was giving him head because he needed to retain his fluids. He should've died much more horribly than he did.

Anyway...

Cyclops (James Marsden, looking tasty as usual) and his family move from Chicago to Cradle Bay after his brother commits suicide. He starts hanging out with the local stoners, one of whom has a theory that something something ain't quiet right with the jock squad, The Blue Ribbons (none of whom seem to play and actual sport). He's right.

After his friend becomes one of the fold, Clops and a pre-Scientology Katie Holmes dig up some dirt on the high school's educational fellow, Dr. Caldicott (Bruce Greenwood). Now, I had him pegged from the start. Who studies some buttfuck small town high school for two damn years when everyone knows the real sugar is in recycling data from inner city institutions. Also, the prim h.s. administrators were clearly enthralled with him, and yet dude swaggered in dressed like he was about to go on a midlife crisis date. Definitely the antagonist.

The film skipped a LOT of details. I surmised that the kids all got some kind of neuro-implant and brainwashing that made them re-enact what people think the 1950s were like. That is until they became sexually aroused. Then, gosh golly gee, it was a murdering spree. Seriously. And they were defeat by rodent pest control devices, at the hands of a man feigning retardation.

I hope the whole 31 days is not like this.

You'd think that a girl-punk cover of 'I'm The Man' would have me enthralled...

Yoga Hosers

     Two millennial Collens are about to have a really bad night. It's bad enough they had their phones taken away from them at school, but then find out they have to work tonight despite being invited to a party with senior upper clansmen? OMG!!! Could it get any worse?

Totally.

     So this movie is about sentient Nazi bratwurst crawling up peoples asses in a bid to take over the world from their secret base underneath the Eh-To-Zed convince store. They were created and ruled by a mad Nazi scientist that had been cryogenically frozen under said convince store and since he has awoken, it's time ot Nazi shit up in Canada. An how, you might ask? Well, by using the "Bratzi's" to pilot a giant human skin covered golem.  Fuck, man....Kevin Smith just smokes too much weed.

     Part of a trilogy called True North. It's about Canadians written by a guy from New Jersey named Kevin Smith. You can tell it was written by an American because every stupid Canadian stereotype is there. It wears on you pretty quick and utterly pointless. They never said 'aboot' on "You Can't Do That On Television", so why do I hear it 50 million flippin' times in this stupid movie? And 'basic'?...a word that should only be used once when describing people or a situation, is heard about as much. And for fucks sake,  STOP with the bullshit accents! They sound more like mock-Minnesotans from the movie Fargo.

Did I mention that only one cast member was from Canada? You're watching a 95% American cast act 'Canadian'.....How the hell did this stupid movie not get banned in Canada? Obviously, it's an attempt at horror comedy, but I only chuckled once. At least its a quick 90 minutes.

Thursday: What do you think the inside of that mask smells like?

I never thought I'd hear a Rush song in a Michael Myers movie.

     Today, I had to do something I never wanted to do. I've read nothing good about it, and I avoided it like the plague. All of this due to one man's involvement. And let me further this by explaining that not only do I find him to be a bit of a hack, tool, and narcissistic twat, he also changed his name to reflect his rampant douche-baggery: Rob Zombie. Which means I'm watching his reboot or in his words, "re-imagining" of Halloween. How did it come to this?

Halloween (2007)

     According to Zombie, John Carpenter gave him the advice to 'make it his own'. And attempted to. Zombie made Michael's family into horrible people to which he kills all of them but the mother and infant sister. After seeing young Michael kill a hospital nurse, she can no longer cope and eats her gun leaving only baby Laurie the survivor. As with all things dealing with the Myers family, Dr. Loomis is directly involved and is the first one notified when Michael escapes 15 years later. That's when the butchering begins. And let me tell you, Michael just stabs the fuck out of EVERYONE that he sees. If you're in the room with him, you're dead. Period. Blood EVERYWHERE.

     What's sad about this whole affair is what I have to say next: It's really not that bad of a film. Though it's really more of a visual upgrade with decent acting and a bit beefier cast, it still adds  a couple of things we never got to see. For example, young Michael's experience in the sanitarium. The story-line is pretty much the same, but the end is a lot less ambiguous and more definitive. The last scene pretty well nailed it, and it hurts to say this...I really came into this KNOWING it was going to be bad...I mean this REALLY hurts...FFS, almost every critic panned it...even after commuting 220 miles round trip to make it a 12 hour shift...at the end of the day, I honestly liked it.

Fuck.

Check out the cast choices:

John Forsythe
Malcom Mcdowell
Brad Dourif
Clint Howard
Danny Trejo
Udo Kier
Sybil Danning
Micky Dolenz?!?!?!?!

Wednesday: I don't think Canadians are this Canadian.

The movie they won't stop making

Evil Bong 420

     420? Get it? Because it's the 4th movie and it's about weed? Stupid damn movies. The only thing worse than watching them is realizing your compulsion to see them all. And that would be my character flaw.

     Rabbit has escaped from the Bongworld, and opened a 'topless bowling alley'. Needless to say, there's lots of pointless boobs in the age of free internet porn. Hot on his tail is EeBee, the Evil Bong, and the Ginger Dead Man. There's a lot of weirdness that I don't fully comprehend because I'm not stoned. I'm at a loss for words. There was a guy with a pig nose named Hambo, there was a horrible racist stereotype of Asians (complete with buckteeth and cameras), 2 rednecks (one got a mini spear to the eye by something called an Ooga Booga), there's even a sex scene for the stupid Ginger Dead Man...complete with money shot...Did I mention his penis was a bread stick?

     The one good thing I can say about this? Its about 53 minutes. That's right, they couldn't even stretch this out to 1 FULL HOUR.

Tuesday: Can a hack musician become a terrible filmmaker?

"People want reality!"

Halloween 8: Resurrection

     We start by visiting Laurie Strode in a mental hospital, which I guess is a family trait. Less than 5 minutes later, she's dead. The story we're told is that wasn't Michael she decapitated in the last film, it was  a poor security guard that switched places. So by that reasoning, the security guard had it out for Laurie too? Because whoever that was in the back of that van WAS trying to kill her. Oh for fucks sake, we're re-telling the story from the last movie. This is the finest definition of Sequel Hell and completely ruined the last movie.  Why did Jamie bother with this film at all? Oh, it's because she may not have read the contract very well. She was contractually obligated to be in this film for 30 seconds.

     The meat of this story is a bunch of stupid young people visit the home of Michael Myers for a webcast. Since Michael's a big fan of reality programming, he heads over to check it out and get some TV time. I'm guessing after seeing these young idiots take bong hits and try to hump their way through the house, he made the right decision and started hacking them up. Good call, Michael. Trust me, you'll spend this films 90 minutes rooting for Michael. Every one of these twatwaffles need to end their day with a knife in the head.

The cast:

Busta Rymes?

Tyra Banks?

Actual lines heard in the film:

"You'd be surprised how much you surprise yourself"

"The cameras are so phallic"

" You know Donna, you've got great legs. What time do they open?"

Monday: Another sequel compulsion for reasons I don't fully understand....

No.

Psychomania

     Dear gawwd, what a dull and slow movie. The premise seems decent: Biker gang dabbling in the occult lean to die and be reborn....ya know, now that I've re-read that, I see the problem.

     A spoiled British biker gang leader figures out a way to come back from the dead and become immortal. So after proving this is possible, the rest of the biker game says "Fuck yeah, let's all go commit suicide!!!" I'm not making that up, and it's damn near verbatim.  And...man...that's really all it's about. 1/3rd of the movie is showing the various ways they commit suicide. And none of them were interesting. Drowning, falling off bridges, jumping out of windows and planes, driving into traffic.  In the end, the mother of the gang leader realizes her son is out of  control and gives up her ghost so the gang loses out on their immortality bid and become stone pillars.

     This film has reached cult status, but as I've said before, if it's only worth sitting through once, then it's really not a cult film. More of a cult experience. But even if you sit through it once, you'll never do it twice. I would sooner sit through a Puppet Master movie than slog through this bore-fest again. It's really too bad, because it's one of the coolest movie posters I've ever seen.

Sunday: I know, I know...but I have to finish this. Look on the bright side, there's only 3 left...

Almost 20 years ago, they tried to fix this franchise...

Halloween: H2O

Wait...is that LL Cool J?!?

...and it kinda worked.

     Technically, this is the 2nd attempt at an escape from sequel hell. The Halloween story line has veered off the tracks several times, but this bid to put some professionalism back in is a nice change of pace. But here's the thing that bugs me a bit: This film disregards the last 4 sequels, and attempts to clean up the series. That's fine, but earlier this year (2017), it was announced that the next Halloween film will also include Jamie Lee Curtis, while wiping all but the first 2 films off the books. So sadly, that negates this film. Make up your mind, guys!

 Anyhoo, the story is Laurie Strode faked her death and restarted her life in So-Cal at a private school. She has a son, and shit-ton of baggage. While she and her son try to make the best of things while dealing with her issues, her brother stops by to relive old times. But...he forgot to bring a bottle of wine and the rest of the movie they're at each others throats. Well, he's at everyone else's, rather. Right up to the hilt. Heh.

However, you know the drill. Running, chasing, hacking, slashing, stabbing, and the ever present Quaalude march of Michael. And damn it, if you smack a bad guy in the head with a rock and he goes down, KEEP HITTING TILL THE HEAD'S GONE!!!

     But the last scene...that very final scene made this entire film worth the watch.

Once again, Laurie shows us how you take care of business!

Cast notes:
Yes, that really is LL Cool J!.

Adam Arkin?...actually, I get that. Nobody cared much for him 20 years ago, and he's pretty forgettable now.

And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, though he's killed in the first 5 minutes, face stabbed by an ice skate. He goes on to make a movie about a guy with a porn addiction that nearly destroys his love life.

Saturday: Can the British make a decent horror film?

Do rednecks make great horror movies?

Bubba, the Redneck Werewolf

Yes. Yes they do

     In the small backwoods town of Broken Taint, there's a ne'er-do-well named Bubba. He's a kind young man that loves dogs and works in a dog pound. He's got a great repertoire with the canines and he seems happy. But, he's also a dumb redneck that's just looking for a little love in his po-dunk white trash town. Sadly, the towns people know he's simple and treats him as such. That's disappointing considering he's the most likable guy in town

    After being jilted by his flame, he makes a deal with the Devil and somehow becomes a werewolf. With this new found full body rug and some bitchin' fangs, he's also found physical strength and some wicked confidence which really mixes well with his redneckatude. After doing some hell-raising and getting his wolf on, he realizes the Devil has been ravaging the town with terrible soul contracts that don't deliver or were misleading. What's a wolf to do?

     Well, I'll tell you what a wolf does. He gets off his little crybaby ass and challenges that there Devil to a drinking contest. Something about bouncing quarters in a glass...I really don't know, I hate drinking games. You wanna get drunk? Then drink. Anyhoo, the Devil looses on a technicality, and the townspeople are saved. Even the guy with a bat stuck in his head because he said he wanted to be 'Batman'.

     Overall, it's a silly movie, but likable. Based on a comic book by the same name, there's lots of typical redneck jokes, but you won't feel like  you're at a Jeff Foxworthy show. And for once, you won't be rooting for the bad guy.

Friday: Down to the final 4....

Same 'ol Same 'ol

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

Shatner got a face-lift?

Haddonfield, Michael Myers, Chop, Slash, Hack...you get the idea. Nothing much has changed much.

     The last movie ended with as strange dark figure shooting up a cop shop and freeing Mr. Myers. Who was that man? Why did he free him? It reeks of a secret project or secret society. It also appears that the same man has kidnapped Jamie in the process and bred her (at an appropriate age, I assume). Her child is taken from her as she's giving birth in some strange occult ceremony. That right there, was when the wheels came off this movie, and it was only the first 10 minutes. Regardless, with help she manages to escape with her child, and runs like hell. But by now, we know how these things go, and Michael shows up in pursuit and just starts wasting people left and right. Including Jaime! But before Michael impales her on some sort of hedge trimmer, she manages to hide her baby. And that's all Michael really wants.

Family love, Myers-style

     We jump to Haddonfield, and the town still talks about Myers like it was their best friend. An old friend stops by a retired Dr. Loomis's house to chat and offer him a job trying to find Myers.  He agrees and soon we meet the next 5-8 new victims, and one strange and creepy Paul Rudd. He finds the hidden baby, and somehow knows exactly who the child is, and the relevance of it. More chopping, slashing, hacking and our climax brings us to hospital where the tall dark stranger is revealed to be a friend of Dr. Loomis. I'm not sure what his cult was doing, but it was 'something something pure evil' and honestly I couldn't care less. Before the weird occult was to begin some sort of surgery on the child, Michael walks in there and just tears the room to pieces with what appears to be a surgical machete. I guess Doctors need those. More running victims, more Quaalude-induced chasing by Myers, and we end with baby, Rudd, and forgettable female character escaping and Dr. Loomis heading back into the building to meet his fate. Why? It makes no sense, and we're left with screams of what we assume is Dr. Loomis. Rookie mistake, Loomis! You NEVER go back into the house/building!  What of his fate? He appears to be gone, and we'll never see him again.........or will we?

Seriously, no sense of urgency from this man. Ever.

NO, no, no. He's dead in real life. Donald Pleseance died shortly after filming this, so he's gone.
However, one petty annoyance I had was the sound track. It was full of echo, and some sound effects had an odd reverb.  It's strange that all of the other prior films had a better soundscape than this turd. Meh.

Thursday: Werewolves, rednecks....there better be some damn moonshine in this here movie..

Well, I guess SOMEBODY had to milk the zombie trend to death...

Zoombies

...and much like the walking dead, the trend just won't die.

     So you want to open a for-profit zoo, but still want to treat the animals right.  For reasons we never learn, a spider monkey dies of cardiac arrest while on the exam table. Then it wakes up and just claws the shit out of everything it can. Turns out, it's got some zombie disease and it's highly contagious. That's some damn strong writing, low budget zombie movie author! Anyhoo, the monkeys get loose, and suddenly EVERY damn animal in that zoo is infected with whatever stupid virus that dreadful monkey was sporting.

    For the most part, this is a 'kill-feature' movie, meaning they wrote the script around some kill scenes envisioned by the author. This movie finally answers questions I never had. Questions like "what would a zombified giraffe look and sound like?" or  "how would a warthog eat a young, bratty teen?" But the most important question "what would it take to get a 7 year old to beat a zombified Kuala bear in HALF with a baseball bat?" Well, wonder no more! All those stupid questions are answered by this stupid movie. I told people I was going to watch this movie, and they laughed at me. They were right to do so.

It's low budget, the CGI came from 2001, and it's very distracting

Sooooooo life-like!!!

Dear gawd, just make this stop. How did they manage to pull this off for 97 minutes? Roger Corman would be proud.

Wednesday: Wouldn't the property values in Haddonfield be nose-diving by now?

The horror is having to sit through these unnecessary sequels...

Halloween 5 : The Revenge of Michael Myers

....but there I am, every year, camping out in front of the TV, watching bad films made for a quick buck.

     So as I was mentioned before, a supernatural element has been creeping into the series, and now one year after the events of #4, we learn that Jamie has a psychic link to the still living and breathing Michael Myers. In fact, it was Michael that took over Jamie's mind when she stabbed the hell out of her foster mother. Because of that, Jamie was put in a children's hospital because the trauma had nearly blitzed her mind. And one year later, Michael lumbers into town in anticipation of the most awkward family reunions we've seen in a while.

     Naturally, Dr. Loomis is nearby, watching and realizing the psychic link is taking over Jamie's mind as we see her go through what appears to be seizures. Dr. Loomis is also starting to become the old crazy coot warning about Myers still being alive. He might as well be wandering the streets with a sandwich board with a picture of Michael and text that says "He Lives!' while yelling out incoherent nonsense.

     As usual, there's a lot of running, screaming, dying...nothing new here. But there is something new: At the very end, after Dr. Loomis incapacitates and imprisons Michael by beating him over the head with a plank of wood,  a dark figure appears at the police station, shoots the place up, and releases Michael. We have no explanation, and you never see a face. Is he a G-man, military, or maybe even part of some secret experiment? It's the most original thing we've seen since the first movie....but still kind of weak. However, I'm now slightly interested in the explanation of that, and I'll get to it on Wednesday.

Tuesday: Obligatory zombie film, despite how I loathe them...

Charlie Sheen AND Randy Quaid?!? That's too much crazy for one film...

The Wraith

    ...but then again, this was BEFORE they went crazy in their own separate and unique ways.
   
     A long time ago, they used to make horror movies about killer cars. Literally,  cars that would hunt you down and kill you. Christine, The Car, and the better half of the Maximum Overdrive cast. And if you dig deep enough into the '80s,  you'll find this gem.

     I guess in the '80s, there were roaming bands of 'race for pink slips' bandits. They force you into a race for the title of your car. I don't know how that actually works, because nobody drives around with the title to their car in the glove compartment. Somehow, this dime-store cowboy wannabe tool is the ring leader of this merry band of idiots. From the first time you see him, you know he's going to be the final boss. And trust me, you want him and everyone that hangs around him to die in the most violent way possible. Despite his best Eraserhead impression, even poor Clint Howard. The good news? You pretty much get that.

In case you're wondering, yes, that's a wing.

      Shortly after learning who you're supposed to hate, a shirtless, yet denim jacket-clad Charlie Sheen wanders into the scene to show everyone his knife scars. And finally, the real star shows up in the form of this car:

And there's also some dude dressed like an emo space pirate murder machine.

     The majority of this film is about dying in road races, and clearly this is a revenge film. Every time someone dies in a race, a metal brace disappears from the emo spaceman's..uh...space suit? There is clearly a supernatural element to this story, and I guess it works. We really weren't worried about realism in the '80s. Anyhoo, there's lots of death and explosions and one ironic scene where the emo space dude takes a fancy shotgun to a garage and shoots the hell out of everything BUT the bad guys that were in it. I guess he'd much rather plow his car into them instead.

Shotguns are for stripping paint, not shaping body panels, dummy!

     There's a lot of '80s cheese in this movie, but it's still not bad.  They also do everything they can to make you hate Nick Cassavetes's character to the point of being let down when he finally dies in a ball of fire and car parts. I'm not really worried about ruining this film for you by revealing spoilers. It was made in 1986. You had over 30 years to see it.

Monday: Over the hump in Sequel Hell...

Back to what works

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

     Just to clarify the tally, Myers has been shot about 10 times, stabbed in the eye, and blown up. Yet, he survived all of that just so he could get his Kirk-faced ass back to Haddonfield and kill whatever relation is still there.  And trust me, the pickin's are getting slim. Laurie Strode died in a car accident, leaving her only daughter with a foster family.  In the most original plot device ever, Michael escapes during a transport between sanitariums. With that, the hunt is on for young Jamie Lloyd, orphaned daughter of Laurie.

   Michael seems to have super strength now, despite being comatose for 10 years. I would think muscle atrophy would be an issue. And despite his lumbering around at half a snails pace, nobody can seem to out run him. Dr. Loomis, on the other hand, now sports a limp and new facial scars from the explosion in the 2nd film.

     One of the biggest annoyances of this movie is Jamie's visions of Michael Myers. How could she even know what he looks like? She was born long after the events in 1978. One scene even includes a vision she has of what young Michael was wearing when he committed his first murder. How would she know that? Well...there is an explanation of that and a small tease at the end of this movie, but largely you'll have to wait till #5 for the full story.

This movie is slow, boring, and pointless. The kills are typical, and one is even comical in a sarcastic way

It was a loaded shotgun. Rather than pull the trigger, he impales her. It's like smacking someone to death with a scabbard rather than use the sword inside.

      And in the end, even though you see Myers shot with countless rounds of bullets and then rammed down a mine shaft that conveniently collapses, it's all for naught because you know there's a 5th film and so on.

Sunday: It's like Night Rider, but with 100% less Hoff.