Really , I never know when I've reached the bottom of the barrel..

Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver or Roller Boogieman

     I'm not a journalist, nor  have a ever pretended to be. Journalists have an amazing talent to squeeze 500+ words about nothing and still keep you reading. I, on the other hand, struggle to manage 2 paragraphs about the last movie in a stupid low budget horror franchise featuring a gingerbread cookie possessed by the soul of a homicidal maniac. But here goes anyway....

     In a blatant rip-off of Silence of the Lambs, we meet the stupid Gingerdead Man in an asylum filled with other foods that have become homicidal. Some idiotic PETA terrorists release them all, thinking they're animals caged beyond their will. Apparently, they missed all of the sights saying 'INSANE ASYLUM' as they drove towards the building. And also missed the sign on the door. Like I said, 'DUMB".  With Gingy released, he wanders into a secret lab working on time travel and after killing the scientists, he goes for a ride to 1976. Solid. Plot.

     Once transported, he lands in a damn roller rink during the height (?) of the disco era, and starts killing people with methods like: Hooking up a vat of acid to the hose of a bikini car wash. I guess lots of roller rinks use hydrochloric acid for...stuff. Lots more stabbing, nail gunning, chopping, and slicing till the end when things go all Carrie-like and everyone is electrocuted. Then Hitler, Manson, Dahmer, and Borden show up and that...that right there was when I realized I was watching a silly movie. And for now, the last one in this franchise. Yay.

Tuesday: In movies, why are most aliens naked?

Someone's got a man-crush.....

Super 8

Warning: This is going to be less about the story, and more about the movie's  impact. Or lack thereof.
 
     It's pretty obvious from the start that this is a nice homage to Spielberg movies that a lot of us grew up watching. And I liked the style, but you could also tell the difference between an imitation and the real thing. I wanted this to be as fun as Stranger Things, and I had a good feeling till the overly obnoxious train wreck scene near the start. For a minute there, I thought I was watching a Michael Bay movie. It was just so over the top and distracting from the story.  Through out the rest of the movie, there was some pretty cool visuals, but could you PLEASE stop with the damn lens flare?!? We get it! You really like Spielberg! Get your own trademark, fanboy

     You could make the argument that the only reason Stranger Things exists is because of Super 8. And more than likely, you're right.  But Super 8 came and went with little fanfare, despite the great box office numbers.  Is there any scene really memorable? Aside from the train wreck, not really. And the cast? Two of the kids annoyed the fuck out of me. First one: The Filmmaker. He needs to shut up. Second one: The puker. He was a damn crybaby and I hated him in every scene. Everyone else, really forgettable.

In contrast, Stranger things had a great cast filled with awkward boys creeping  through early puberty, a creepy and confused older brother, a mother going out of her mind, and a damaged and flawed cop that was believable. The story was far more strange, with a much less comical view of the era. It didn't focus on the time period  nearly as hard as Super 8 did. Though it had much more time for set up, the amount of memorable scenes blows away anything S-8 had to offer, so as far as I'm concerned, Stranger Things wins this battle easily.

     I think it's because Abrams tries too hard to make it identical to the past, whereas the Duffer Brothers worked on the adding just enough weird to make you think about it long after the the final credits. Super 8 was actually a very good film and I do recommend it, but it's also fan service with a very shallow plot. We've all seen this before and nobody's got the balls to put something out there that blows our minds.

Wednes.....oh damn it, this asshole again? What was I thinking?!?

It's another tradition of mine....

Urea ....er, Area 51 aka This Years Mulligan!

    What I THOUGHT I was getting was the old 1980 film Hanger 18. Nope, I ended up with a SyFy channel POS staring Bruce Boxleitner and a bunch of other lame actors. I love it when they do the ridiculous shark movies, but the alien crap is just blaaaa. It's good to fill in a Saturday afternoon when it's too hot or too cold to go out side. In other words, when you can't escape it.

     All I'll bother you with is this: It's a movie about trapped aliens getting loose at Area 51. They chop up a lot of  people, and almost everyone dies in the end. Even Bruce. It's a crappy movie.

     But then again, I guess it's not THAT bad. They didn't use any CGI crap, and the monsters were all true F/X, but it didn't explain whey their were 3 different species of aliens. Did they all come on the same ship? Did they come in separate vehicles? Is this the only work Bruce Boxleitner can get? I can only answer that last one, and it's 'YES'. Did you ever see Transmorphers 2? Nobody but me has, and  that's the best he can get now. But not all's lost. He can still act circles around the rest of these community theater rejects. So at least he's got that going on.

Whatever, I'm going to stream Miami Vice on Hulu.

Tuesday: It sounds like a seedy motel...

It came from 1977...

Tool Box Murders

There's a lot more full frontal than I was expecting.

     Bare with me. This shouldn't be so complicated of a story, but I'm going to make it that way.

    We start with a car accident, and a young woman dies. The very next scene is of a man killing  two young women for no obvious reason. Just hacks and slashes with a hammer, drags the bodies around and leaves them.  Next up is killing a woman in the tub because apparently, he's not into self-love like she is.  Did he ever stop to think that that might a contributing factor to his disposition? And on top of that, he kidnaps the upstairs neighbors daughter.

     After the murders, The nephew of the apartment complex owner and the brother of the  kidnapping victim go all Hardy Boys and start "investigating" the murders. By the middle of the movie, we know the murder is the apartment complex owner. Apparently, that car accident from the beginning of the movie caused him a bit of stress and he snapped. The brother starts putting 2 and 2 together, and figures this out as well when he finds the tool box full of murder weapons. The nephew shows up and explains to him that he needs to protect his family and throws gas on the brother and lights him on fire. Like a total jerk.

     But the next scene pisses me off. While the brother is burning in the garage, the neph walks in on his uncle and the kidnap victim and starts to go nutters because of the way the uncle is treating her (like his child that died in the car accident) and acts all appalled at this. Pretty short memory for someone who JUST killed an innocent young man by burning him to death not 20 feet away in the garage. Kind of pious and hypocritical if  you ask me.

     What a ham-fisted attempt to make a horror movie out of a 'based on a true story' script. The acting was just terrible at first, then got slightly better. Or I could have sunk to their level and was just desensitized by the end. All of the kill scenes were choppy, forced, and nobody seemed to be in a hurry, especially the murderer. Good riddance to this turd.

Monday: ALIENS!!!...no, not the really good James Cameron movie...

Leave my cat alone, you sick nut-job!!!

Re-Animator

     Based on the HP Lovecraft story, we meet creepy Herbert West in Switzerland "ALLEGEDLY" trying to bring his professor back to life by injecting him with some magic serum. Instead, the serum makes the poor professors eyes explode and die again. Swing, and a miss....

     We next find him Stateside, starting new classes at a university and immediately hits it off with his professor by basically calling him a hack. Next, he rooms up with a fellow student, and also hits it off with his new roommate by re-animating his dead cat. Then he reanimates a corpse, and it kills the Dean of the University. Then he re-animates said Dean...This guy KNOWS how to make friends.

     The rest of the film develops into another story filled with double-cross, black mail, and a whole lot more nudity than I was expecting. Seeing a bare-ass 40-something female corpse dance around was actually refreshing. They could have gone with a bimbo. Same with the males. Droopy, sagging moobs and receding hairlines. And the crowning scene? Attempted Decapitated Cunnilingus:

Can I show boobs here? Meh..I'm showing boobs....

Sunday: The right tool for the job....

I HATE gingerbread men...

GingerDead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust

     <sigh>...Here I am again, watching stupid walking-talking cookie disguised as a horror franchise star. Once again, I've set myself up to watch an absolutely terrible movie. I knew it was before I saw it, but I picked it out anyway. I knew it would be groan inducing, but I said to myself 'yeah, I want to see this'.

     Our shitty little cookie cutter star is back, and running rampant on the set of a super-low budget film studio. His mission? To get into a real body. Then things get convoluted because there's also a terrorist bombing plot as a side story...that happens at about the 3/4 mark. There's  some stabbing, some chopping, anal electrocution, and the best part...the credits!

     Would you believe this is actually better than the first film? For reals, it is! But that's not saying much. At one point, puppets showed up (including one made out of a dildo) and spiked that stupid cookie to a cross and lit him on fire.

Second from the left? Yeah....that's a plastic dick.

      Thankfully, it's only 67 minutes so you won't be in pain for too long.

Activities include:

Murder!

Masturbation!

Punny One-Liners!

Cookie Crucifixion!

SATURDAY: Let's go sailing on the Lovecraft....

Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller...

Or C.H.U.D. for short

      In 1984, all I really cared about was playing with my friends, watching He-Man kick the  hell out of Skeletor, and Garbage Pail Kids. We didn't have a VHS player, so we had to rent the machine overnight and grab a couple tapes. I was never allowed to rent a horror film, but I always walked through them to check out the sleeves and always wondered just how scary they really were. One that always caught my eye was C.H.U.D.  Time to find out if this would have scared me...

     We start with a hapless woman walking her dog in the street at night in NYC. Not sure why she's walking down the MIDDLE of the street, but there she is. As she nears a manhole cover, something nasty reaches out of it and sucks her and her poor dogie in. We've met our first C.H.U.D.!
Strange things start happening in the sewers and the homeless that live down there beginning to arm themselves. 3 different people start investigating the oddities and watching them converge to the same conclusion is done really well. While this wasn't a big budget film, the writing is very strong in ways that we're not used to seeing. But also ham-fisted in other scenes. But you'll find yourself ignoring them or smiling to yourself when you remember this was an '80s horror flick involving NYCPD.  This includes one of the most improbable car explosions I've ever seen. As far as the F/X go, it seemed at first that they were going to be cheesy and cheap. But they knew which scene to spend the money on and where to skimp.

     Call it a period piece, but I liked it. I remember a lot of the 80s, and this brings me back to a time when there was no internet, no cell phones, no CGI, and no Michael Bay.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back there, but it's nice to check in on it every once in a while.

Future star watch:

Daniel Stern!
John Goodman!


Friday: Oh, you're a stupid little half-assed cookie/cracker hybrid....