Thoughts on Cult of Chucky

Has anyone seen this recently? It's on AMC. I just noticed a few likely references to 80s movies that I think I missed in previous viewings.

Toward the end, Nica dresses very similarly to how Chris Sarandon dressed, not in the original Child's Play, but in Fright Night (1985). She has a red scarf on, and a winter coat with a sort of collar that is not identical to, but is similar to, what Chris S wore in FN. Chris S's winter coat was darker in color, but otherwise they are kind of similar.

Also, right at the end they drive off in a car that makes me think of the Freddymobile from the end of the original Nightmare on Elm Street.

Had to share.

Rawhead Rex

Easily the one of the most fun straight forward horror movies. Watch a monster kill some people for an hour and a half.

I heard that Clive Barker retroactively made Rawhead Rex an official part of the Nightbreed. But i'm not sure.

Here's to another Black Christmas

Bob Clark made an ultra-creepy Christmas classic back in 1974. It relied on mood, mystery, and dread, with the perfect amount of humor thrown into the mix. Top notch horror, and with that said... it didn't resonate to the studios for some 32 years. Then, somebody asked Santa for a new Black Christmas, and what did they get?

In 2006, some bastard finally decided to revive pop awareness of the original by directing the remake. Granted, the movie isn't half bad, with a great lighting scheme and some decent violence. However, the Billy backstory didn't really add anything except that we'd have more killer confrontations, but he's a character everyone always used to wonder about in the original, like who he was and where did he come from. I always assumed he came from a looney bin, and I'm more or less correct about that. By remake standards, it's pretty good. By regular standards, it's nothing new.


So after their success with Halloween last year, they move along to Black Christmas. It's good to hear that this company is doing it, because they put forth a proper effort. Still, is it too soon since the last remake? Or is it the perfect time for more Christmas carnage? It's got Imogen Poots, and I like her. How bad can it be?

I think horror fans have grown to accept that their favorite movies will be remade whether they should be or not, but fortunately, there are more and more ways that these older movies are becoming available, so the real thing is always out there if you want it.

As great as Black Christmas was though, it doesn't have a mythology around it like some franchises do. It's basically a few well-written characters getting picked off in a sorority house with a Christmas backdrop. It's the execution of the concept that makes it a wonderful movie, but I feel the story can easily go in one of many directions for this new movie. Hopefully, they try to keep it simple and creepy. That's the best I can hope for.

Unless they make this a direct sequel to the original, 45 years later. Kinda doubt that part though, but sequels to old movies are making a comeback, with Doctor Sleep being an example. I digress...


Do you care what happens to Black Christmas?

Blood Creek (2009)

It's On Demand this month. I'm basically a fan of this movie, although there are probably too many things that you're not supposed to think too hard about.

Dominic Purcell is really good in this, he has such a sense of urgency. He's always charging around with his eyes really wide open, bellowing at the top of his lungs. In this movie, he reminds me a lot of Richard E. Grant in Warlock (1989). He's supposed to be the only one who really understands how much peril everyone is in.. or least, he thinks he is.

In fact, wow, what a cast. Michael Fassbender, Dominic P., and Henry Cavill. And Shea Whigham is always good too, although he doesn't have as huge a role here as in some others of his movies. It was directed by Joel Schumacher, soooo... I don't know if that's good or bad. I like The Lost Boys, so he certainly can do a good job.

I like the beginning, and the basic story they lay out. It's kind of like Hellboy, an old Nazi occult experiment that is still having repercussions in our world today. It's also extremely similar to an episode of Fear Itself called The Sacrifice, starring Rachel Miner. I recommend watching that, if you never have... It also has some common ground with that Ken Foree/Barbara Crampton movie From Beyond, the one with the pineal gland eyeball coming out of people's foreheads.... I also like the idea of old connections between Europe and North America, taking place either before the historical record, or sort of outside it.

Anyway, I would be hard pressed to do a good job explaining what the hell actually happens in this movie, but I like it anyway. It has a few things going for it... the things I have mentioned already, and also a good sense of a group of people besieged at an old farmhouse, and some cool Evil Dead type effects, like zombie horses and dogs,,, I like the ending too.

OK, that's enough. Check it out if you get a chance!

The Slumber Party Massacre, because Why Not?

After the 1981 slasher saturation, things would never be as good as that again. So in 1982, we went out with a bang, because The Slumber Party Massacre is just really fun to watch.

The backstory of our killer Russ Thorn is as generic as it gets, because we don't need a backstory for this guy. We just need a creeper to stalk and kill some gratuitous teens through various great locations.

We start off in a lovely suburb of California. A few popular slashers are set in Cali, and others filmed there. It's got a unique look about it, and we're painted a pretty awesome suburban night of terror here.

We get a good shower scene, followed by a nice chase sequence in the high school. The body count is growing, and there's no point to any of it, really. Our character has no motive, and it works in spades somehow.

This movie doesn't try to hide anything. Our killer isn't even wearing a mask. He's just a regular jackass with a backstory of murdering some 6 people about 15 years back, and for absolutely no reason, he's determined to drill into some high school girls because his dick doesn't work. There's some feminist bullshit going on here, but it's still pretty awesome.

The title comes into play as a handful of teens have a slumber party. Girls only, but the men are perverts and stick around anyway. The body count continues as we're back and forth between two groups of teen girls, and the lady coach who can't catch a break. Some of this movie reminds me of Carrie. The girls and their banter mostly, but also that side coach lady who is only trying to help, but doesn't quite get there. 😵


Our final girl does pretty good as the modelesque shy older sister who just wants to sit back and watch a horror movie on tv. Whatever she was watching looked pretty fucking cool, and I want to watch it. Some Joe Dante movie "Hollywood Boulevard" (1976) which features Dick Miller as "Walter Paisley" for one of several times. I love that gag.

Her little sister hates french kisses, but she's aching for some Stallone porn in that playgirl mag. I don't know why I think that's so amusing, but I do.

The rest of the girls are pretty throwaways, but they don't care, and it works in their favor. They're part of the whole "gratuitous" thing, and they make for some great filler, what with their undressing and whatnot.

I still don't know why that girl girl ate the pizza on that guy though. I would have eaten it far away from him, because that pizza looked pretty damn good. They had to endure a whole chase scene before they even considered the pizza, but still looked melty delicious. No pizza will ever look as delicious as the NY style stuff in TMNT2: Secret of the Ooze. That whole scene makes me salivate.


So while this movie isn't particularly scary, it's got a great vibe to it. I love that doomy gloomy theme, and the movie has a lot of good things going for it. It even has the mega generic cat jumping out of the closet scare. The blood looks good, the killer is determined, and it even features actual animal killings, with the brutal death of a snail. How could they sleep at night, those sadistic bitches... jk. Fuck that snail.


I always thought Slumber Party Massacre was a standout slasher flick, and one of my personal favorites. I've often wondered why it hasn't achieved as high regard as other horror franchises at the time. This movie is great. The sequels are highly watchable, too, and I think a lot of it has to do with the short runtimes. These movies are concentrated and potent balls of 80s(and barely 90s) cheese. Kind of perfect in a way.

Then the series allegedly spins off to the Cheerleader Massacre series, a mere 2-entry series about killers and robots and some other dumb shit, but the tits are great. Those movies are where the trash gets kicked into overdrive.

To Hell and Back - Kane Hodder Documentary

Thoughts?

Dark Phoenix is a dim failure

The X-Men series has always been hit or miss. The first two films were pre-MCU hits that launched a few careers. Even if some of these movies suck... and they do it hard... Hugh Jackman was always bad-ass as Wolverine. The series finally started getting its shit together around 2014 with the epic "Days of Future Past", a mix between the old and failed X-verse with the new and popular First-Class-verse, and it worked. Exceedingly well.

Fox was finally learning from their mistakes, especially with Deadpool and it's hard-R rating. Of course, we were quickly followed by the underwhelming X-Men: Apocalypse, then the ultra awesome Logan, then the shitty Deadpool 2, then the trough of the shit-wave... X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX!



Notice how when Endgame came out, the whole world was in upheaval. The damn movie made a billion in its opening weekend, because it had a LOT of material to cover, a lot of characters to do right by, and a damn good story to tell in the meantime.

When Dark Phoenix came out... there was none of that. Nobody cared about this movie, like... ever. Even after the trailers, there was no hype. There's no good X-Men story to tell after Apocalypse. They should have left it as a trilogy. X1, X2, and X3... Origins Wolverine, The Wolverine, Logan... and First Class, Future Past, and Apocalypse. Even if Apocalypse was a subpar finale, it was still better than this turkey.


So if you haven't already guessed it, the timeline for X-Men is FUCKED. The continuity is riddled with errors, and this new movie just adds to them. I understand that the gimmick was to make the series range from 1962, 1974, 1983, 1992 (about every 10 years), but the 90s? Who needs 'em! Sure, that's when the X-Men was at its peak, what with the 90s animated series and all, but the actors haven't aged at all to make that little bit believable...

One thing that pisses me off is Jennifer Lawrence. Now, I've never liked this bitch, but when she started talking smack about the X-Men movies and how she didn't want to be in them anymore, I started to hate her even more. She just so happened to be in one of the WORST movies I have EVER seen (mother!), and she dares complain about X-Men? Now, the character of Mystique was always supposed to be partly evil, but in our Dark Phoenix movie, she's portrayed as a "good" X-woman, finally. They try to give her character a backbone, but it seems totally forced, and I'm glad as fuck when Jean fucking kills that stupid ho. Like seriously, Mystique is known for having regenerative abilities almost as much as Wolverine, yet a few impalements put a kink in those panties? Bitch, please. You could have survived that trauma, but you chose not to, because you're a cunt. Have you ever experienced those fake shivers that you tell yourself you wont get, but the music cues trick you into feeling all those feels? Well... her death meant NOTHING to me.


So anyway, this is Jean Grey's movie, and she's a pretty boring character, if I say so myself. She's ultra powerful as it is, but on a routine space mission to save the lives of some inept astronauts in the midst of a "solar flare", shit happens, and she's consumed by the "phoenix". Then, she gets overwhelmed by "the voices" of her parent's deceased animosity toward her, and shit figures it'll be good to turn completely evil. Then, we have Jessica Chastain as a completely generic and not even attractive supervillain to combat her.

God, even thinking about this movie, my brain turns to shit. There's no good story here, and there's nothing left to say in the X-Men universe. Fuck this movie, and fuck everyone involved in it... Except Michael Fassbender, who still puts forth a great effort, despite knowing in the back of his mind that this movie will be absolute shit. What a sour way to end a once great (albeit rocky) franchise.

X-Men's Dark Phoenix can suck my nuts. The real X-Men movies ended with "Logan" in 2017. Now, we can only hope that the MCU will breathe life into this dead franchise again, because it definitely deserves better than this.

Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

No this isn't a rant about Blue Velvet, although I do love the film. This is a rant about me finally feeling cohesion with the titular quote. Never in my life have I hated a beer; I've disliked the taste, cut myself on the can, thrown up because I drank too much too fast, throw up because I choked on it and thrown up because I just simply drank too much. Yet never and I mean literally never have I ever hated a beer... Until tonight.

It all started pretty normally. I had had a long day, fighting and ranting and getting into drama. I ate some pasta, drank a couple Body Armors and longed to shoot some zombies with my broskie and as usual I desired some brewskies for that. Alas I was out of beer, @Box had bought some malt liquor shit, but I really like a good solid imported beer. Luckily my wife was out picking up some diapers and trash bags, so I gave her a call and asked for some beer. I waited and waited, you know like you do anytime a woman is out getting 3 items from a store right down the road, but I digress.

Finally, she gets home. I turn to @Box with joy and say "hey man you want a beer? Then we can play some zombies with balls (I know its 'Ballz', but when I say it, I think 'balls')". Apace my smiles faded as I glance upon the 6-Pack on the floor. "Heineken 0.0" it says. I turn to my wife as my joy saunters into disbelief as I fight through waves of anger. It was alcoholic free, and the only Heineken sold at the Walgreens my wife went to. So here I am writing this rant. Sober and sipping on the only beer I've ever hated. So, I ask you next time you go to the store and fancy a nice beer; Heineken? FUCK THAT SHIT! Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Nightmare (1981) - Grainy Italian slasher

Like many Italian films of the time, this one begins in New York with some grizzly imagery of a mental patient's recurring nightmares about dismemberment and past trauma. However, George is making progress in his treatments at the institution, so he's given some leeway.

Of course, on his first night out, he prowls the streets of NY, and that can only lead him to one place: a sex shop/strip joint. Naturally, his issues are sexual in nature, and this can never end well to a man of this type.


I was watching a "restored" print, but it was still quite grainy. You could see the lines down the screen, the black spots, and the redness of the aged film. Normally, these are considered detrimental qualities for film, but not for this type of movie. 70s and 80s exploitation looks marvelous in this light, and so does that acryllic red blood they always used, and those close-ups of gratuitous gore.


This movie is bastard offspring of Halloween '78 and The Amityville Horror '79. After fleeing New York, our unstable antagonist finds himself in a coastal town in North Carolina, where he fixates on a family a single mother and her three kids. She's quite convincing as the irritable housewife who'd rather be banging this Chong looking guy who goes as far as telling her to "mellow out" after her son plays a sick prank.

This kid reminds me of Billy, the kid in the wraparound segment of Creepshow (which came out a year later). He's the creepy kid who cries wolf, and somehow, he becomes our protagonist. Hmm...

So not only does the Chong guy also resemble George Lutz of Amityville, but he's also banging these kids mom. Some of the babysitting plots are heavily inspired by Halloween, from the curtain shots, to the phone calls, to the entire climax. Someone telling you to "Get out" of the house? Check. The guy's doctor heading on a road trip to find this guy before he does any more damage? Check. Hell, the house even looks like the Myers in ways, and like in Halloween 2 (same year), they show the ambulances out front as they wheel out a body.

Now I know I'm pointing out a few parallels, but they're all regarding films that I like quite a bit. The film also has a lot of Maniac (1980) flare to it, with the psycho in New York, on the beach, fighting his compulsions to chop up attractive women, etc.

Like Amityville, this film is measured in days. It counts down the days, culminating in an interesting, albeit uninspired showdown in which the killer is incapacitated before any true suspense can unravel.

Nonetheless, this film has some good retro gore imagery and a delightful old school aesthetic. The narrative isn't strong, but the performances are adequate, and all the weird little things seem to work for this movie. In true Italian fashion, it even has a somewhat bizarre twist that I didn't see coming, nor do I fully comprehend.

Why didn't I watch this sooner?

Another Day in Paradise (1998)

I've been meaning to see more Larry Clark movies for a while, so I finally knocked this one off the list. In this one, James Woods takes a delinquent junkie under his wing, teaching him how to rob places and be a better bad guy.

It starts off in the urban city muck with petty crimes, like stealing change from the vending machines. Very quickly, this movie shows you it isn't fucking around when our scrawny protagonist gets the shit beat out of him by a disgruntled security guard. Shit got fucked, and quick.

We've got all the makings for a great movie here: drug addiction, lowlives, violence, and desperate decisions. James Woods plays a cool and collected con-man who eventually loses his cool and spazzes out. He's playing himself, basically. The main dude Bobby is tough-talking yet determined delinquent, and he's often overconfident in his abilities.

This movie is one of many ways to tell the same old story, but it's done well, and it's not afraid to get its hands dirty. It's like Trainspotting and SLC Punk, but unlike those, this one has Lou Diamond Phillips as flaming gay psycho.

Solid movie. Might watch another Larry Clark movie soon. This guy knows what I look for in a movie.