Texas Chainsaw Massacre... Again!

This is the third "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" film, though not to be confused with "Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Leatherface", which is not to be confused with "Leatherface". With franchises these days, the same-name titles tend to go: Original, Remake, Sequel to the Original only. This one can't quite be a true legacy sequel since all the original actors are either dead or irrelevant, but we'll take what we can get, huh?

So to avoid all the plot specifics, I'll say overall... I didn't hate it. I thought the setup was actually pretty good, involving a group of young go-getters out to renovate a ghost town, and that tends to anger some folk who don't like outsiders. From there on, it remains a rather well written horror show that's easily the most violent of the series, finally living up to its name.

Olwen Fouere plays our OG Sally Hardesty, who's got a score to settle with the elusive man she's been hunting for half a century. For a recasted legacy character, she does the best she can although her part is reduced to a side plot mostly. Her take on the character isn't too much of a rip-off of Jamie Lee's in the latest Halloween, but there are parallels.

Mark Burnham plays our new/old Leatherface, and he does it all right. I'm not sure exactly how hard it is to play the role of a lumbering brute, but he's ominous and plenty capable of physical damage. Partly sympathetic, partly an angry man as per the Platinum Dunes canon. When he kills someone, he makes it count, and he's got quite a body count.

The rest of the characters are good enough to not hate. I found the protagonists rootable, and the redneck was pretty gnarly. You'll also see William Hope in there from Aliens and Hellraiser 2 fame. The aesthetic and setting is nice, and the suspense is solid. I don't really have any complaints with it, and Netflix didn't hold back on the blood and guts.

IMDb gives it a 5/10, but I'd say it's better than the last few. What do you think of it?

#Review

Super Bowl Commercials

I don't understand football. You can explain it to me, but I still wont get it, because I simply don't care about any sports. Never have, never will. But the super bowl has never been about football to me. It's always been about the commercials, and this year, it's more about the trailers for me.

Moon Knight's tv spot is meh. They don't show much new footage and I'm not a fan of his costume. It bears more resemblance to a mummy than it does the comic's aesthetic.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness... is anybody interested in this movie for Doctor Strange's story? Or are we all just waiting for the cameos? X-Men, anyone? Of course, this trailer wont show any of those cameos, so until then... meh.

Nope. Jordan Peele's latest horror flick. Kinda vague, but kind of intriguing. I just may go see this movie in theaters if I don't hear about any racial subtext or stupid political commentaries. Keep that shit away from me and I'll be game.


Then we had Schwarzenegger as Zeus advertising electric cars, Doctor Evil advertising... more cars... and Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart advertising lighters. Really? Do people really need to be reminded to buy lighters? At least there are weed jokes. I think it's pretty funny that they're a team.

There's supposed to be a jumbo DC movie trailer too. We'll find out soon enough...

Scream 2022 - No Spoilers

Due to the element of mystery of these movies, this review will have to be vague as fuck. When I saw the first trailer, it was so vague that my interest was very slim. When all these glowing reviews started pouring in, my curiosity grew a lot, and I had to avoid the damn internet like the plague because the stupid news articles are constantly trying to spoil things with their headlines, those dumb bastards.

So it's been 11 years since the last movie, though this entry is being set 25 years after the first film for good measure. We're back in Woodsboro and things are definitely different this time around. For one, this movie is the first entry not directed by Wes Craven, and for what it's worth, it's a nice change. If you know the last movies, the self-awareness could be a bit grating at times. It felt forced like it was trying to be hip to a bunch of viewers who none of us would ever find hip, but the meta factor is toned down to a reasonable level. I think the directors understood that line better than that quasi-hack the franchise has come to revere known as Kevin Williamson. I say he's a hack because have you seen The Following? Good. Don't. He gets too much credit as is.

Of course, there are still a few blatant nods to familiar horror films, such as a character named Wes, someone's last name being Carpenter, an Elm Street, and name-dropping a few horror movies (notably more recent ones in an effort to not suck the past's dick so much). But other than that, this movie isn't trying to trick you into thinking it's cool by use of excessive references.

With this film, you'll get plenty of callbacks to the original film. Not quite the sequels, because there's a conscious effort to point out how lame the sequels can get, notably with the in-movie Stab films, which had just premiered their 8th Stab movie, which even the characters in the movie seem to loathe. There's also a conscious effort to liken this entry to Halloween 2018's approach of trimming the fat and bringing in legacy characters. Thus far, we've had our main trio in every movie, and they're back again. Will they all be back for another Scream though? Find out for yourselves!

There were a few things I really enjoyed about this movie. I thought the characters were all good as well as their ties to previous characters, and while I'm not sure how the bodycount compares to the others, I think it's safe to say the kills are the most violent. Surprisingly, the other films never had any good shots of Ghostface since he was always so hectic and running around like a jackass all the time, but this one has him a little more collected, so kudos to the directors for finally making him look cool. What I liked most was one character's connection with the past, and I really can't even talk about it. You'll know exactly what I mean you see it though.

In the end, I'm very satisfied. Plenty of red herrings, but my random-ass guess of who the killer was happened to be correct. The finale was a lot of fun, and if this were the last movie in the series, it would end on a high note. If the box office is any indication, it wont end here. Maybe the next movie will be called Scream Kills.

#Review

February Challenge Ideas

Hi folks. I've been lazy as shit lately, and I apologize for that. Winter drains my will to live.

So, February is an empty month here. Is the Trash Challenge happening in March like usual? The Found Footage Challenge was more fun than I thought, but I burned out after about a month. I think a mini challenge might be a good idea to prepare for that possible Trash Challenge, just to keep the routine going.

February is black history month, and I blew the chance to do something with that. At the same time, I'm not sure how that would work anyway. You can't very well count a movie simply because there's a black person in it. ☹️ And if you count movies that are about black civil rights, then that would basically be a racism challenge, which isn't good. So I'm not sure this one could get any traction, hmm...

Another option is a Love Mini-Challenge. This happened a few years ago, and I think the point system wasn't half bad, but you can make your own opinion on that: https://trashepics.com/post/1/395/

Thoughts for this month? Or next month?

Alien Resurrection

I watched this the other day. I have seen it before, of course, but I haven't paid close attention while viewing it in... several years, maybe more than ten. Yikes.

Now that I've watched it without being distracted, I can't stop thinking about why it isn't better than it is. I can't figure it out. It seems like it should be a major horror/sci-fi classic, just for the scenes with Brad Dourif and Sigourney Weaver talking to each other. Just stop and think about that, for a sec. What a great thing to have on film!!! They are both iconic as hell, and they were both arguably still in their prime(s) when AR was filmed. That alone should guarantee the movie an amazing reputation. And, of course, Ron Perlman adds a lot, Winona Ryder does her thing, so her fans should be on board with the movie. But, somehow it doesn't all really hold up... it's just not THAT great of a movie.

I think it's probably because of the action scenes, at least partly. It seemed like the director didn't really know what he was doing, when it came to guns, fights, etc. Like, he would show people aiming their guns, with a fierce expression on their faces, but it just looks stupid a lot of the time. He (the director) did some things well... he had a good eye, and had some really cool-looking settings. The technology of making movies had come a long way since the first Alien in 1979, obviously, and he took advatnge of that. I really do think some of the shots look quite cool. But, he just blew it with most of the fight scenes. Shame.

Anyway... I don't know, I have just been mulling this over. It had so much potential, and there are some decent parts, but in some ways it just feels like it falls a bit flat. Argh.

Anybody have any thoughts on this??

Gator Bait 1973

Unless they get her first... she'll never let them out alive! Gator Bait has a surprisingly interesting story going for it. The deputy and his redneck friend lust after a sexy swamp lady in her daily gator wrangling routine, but if she's crazy enough to be playing with alligators, you ought to know this ain't no ordinary woman. As soon as they make their rapist intentions known to her, she plays victim, speeding away in her motor boat until she baits them into her trap.

Snakes! Scaring the men into a panic, the dumb deputy blasts his gun into the boat, as well as his friend's head, and boy does he feel stupid and outwitted by a woman, and this will not stand! He tells his father, the sheriff, a completely different story. He says the woman killed the man! And she sunk his boat too! So the sheriff goes to tell the dead man's father, who has an assortment of hillbilly problems of his own, such as an irritable temper and an immediate need to discipline his incestuous son out to bang that man's daughter. And this is all in the first few minutes. Once he finds out that a woman killed his nitwit son, he's out for revenge with a lynch mob full of rapists, and the ensuing adventure is a sleaze filled cajun romp in the swamp.

I've been wanting to see this movie for years on account of my love of southern trash and rednecksploitation, but it never made itself common until I crossed it on Shudder. Not exactly a horror movie, but definitely something horror fans can appreciate, and a likely candidate for being an inspiration for rape/revenge films that followed, such as I Spit on Your Grave.

I'll keep my eyes open for the sequel, Gator Bait 2: Cajun Justice!

#Review

2022 Viewings

This is for anyone who wants to keep a log of their viewings/ratings every month so please feel free to add yours.

The links for the previous 5 years viewings are here if anyone still needs to access them for reference:

2021: https://trashepics.com/post/30/37/
2020: https://trashepics.com/post/30/31/
2019: https://trashepics.com/post/30/9/
2018: https://trashepics.com/post/30/5/
2017: https://trashepics.com/post/9/97/

Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge

Has anyone actually gotten this blu-ray? I pre-ordered it Novermber 8 and the street date was supposedly November 23. The place I ordered it from never got it and keeps saying it's backordered, and it's now listed as out of stock everywhere. It's not listed on the Arrow website at all. Did it ever actually get released?

There's Nothing Wrong with an F Cup

Whilst browsing Shudder's epic catalogue, I remember hearing about a zombie movie about a girl with big boobs going to a hospital for a reduction and then having to deal with a zombie outbreak instead. That movie is called Yummy, probably because she looks very yummy indeed.

The whole movie has her self-conscious about her breasts while everyone around her is telling her that she has a beautiful body and that she should be happy with what God and nature gave her. Then, the zombies come along and that whole plotline is surprisingly decent. I can't pinpoint why it doesn't seem stale, because it's the same old tropes, but somehow, it's better than most zombie shit. Higher production values, maybe? I suppose the adventure and progression of the protagonists trying to escape the hectic hospital was well done, and the characters were decent enough.

Our heroine's boyfriend is a lame nerd who ends up being the punching bag of the whole movie while another smoother asshole tries to steal his woman from him. Then you have some blackmail, people trying to deal with infections, paranoia about getting infected, goofy little frog monsters, and even a dick mutilation for good measure. Somehow, it makes for an entertaining romp and super gory mess of a movie, made even more watchable by the bountiful bosom of the main actress.

While the lead actress isn't actually a busty lady in real life, the prosthetics appear mighty convincing under her clothes. If the movie gets boring for a second, just look at her boobs and you'll forget.




In the end, all this shit happens because she wanted a reduction, which is never the right course of action. She wanted a B cup when "there's nothing wrong with an F cup". The moral of the story is don't get rid of big beautiful boobies or else you might die in a zombie apolalypse.

#Review

A Slew of Marvel Phase 4 Reviews

Before I cancel Disney+, I wanted to get through all this shit while I can. Right off the bat, I can say I think this "phase" is weak as hell, and I'm not impressed with most of what I'm seeing. The whole Marvel Cinematic Universe is becoming so formulaic with forced diversity when a 90s era comic fan like me doesn't want to see any of this new shit. I only want to see the same old shit I grew up with, which is to say the characters I grew up with. They're introducing so many new boring characters, it makes my head ache. Anywho, here goes...

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WandaVision - When this was first announced, I was pretty pissed because the MCU version of Scarlet Witch and Vision are both shitty characters. Super boring, generic superhero cutouts with no personality. Then I saw the trailer and saw they were making it into a shitty old sitcom and I got very excited. Then the series went on and strayed from that shitty sitcom format and turned into an actual shitty superhero story.

What really sucks here is that she has the power to alter reality, and since she's capable of merging the Fox properties (X-Men!!) with a simple chant, we were all waiting for something to happen. This show came out AFTER Fox got bought out, after all. So did they do anything? Well, they brought Evan Peters back... and then spit on the fans faces by having him be a fake out. Basically, nothing good happened here, so the start of this phase already had me disillusioned.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier - Again, Falcon and Winter Soldier are two incredibly boring characters. Anthony Mackie is a good actor and all, but what does he have to work with here? The two have to fight some uninspired super soldiers as well as Wyatt Russell's goofy looking Captain America who goes mad with power, and in the end, I was rather unenthused by the whole thing. It's just kind of a dull story that tries to cash in on the political thriller aspect of the second Captain America movie, only it doesn't have much substance to it.

Loki - Finally, we have a decent entry to this phase, because Tom HIddleston is a charming S.O.B. His character actually has a good arc, being a mischievious fuck who finally learns what an ass he's been and, in a most narcicistic twist, falls in love with himself. Well, rather a female variant of himself, but it's perfectly fitting.

This is a weird time-travel story primarily used to set up the rise of Kang the Conqueror, who I've read a lot about and he seems like he could save the MCU from all this generic drivel. I was quite fascinated with the finale of this show, which had a total Planet of the Apes type of ending.

Black Widow - After something good, we're back to this mediocre drivel about another extremely boring character that Marvel seems absolutely obsessed with. I think Scarlet Johansen is very meh, and I know her character is supposed to have no real personality, but give me a break. They only gave her this movie because she's a "strong woman" type, but apparently, it wasn't worth the wait to a lot of fans.

David Harbour was good as Red Guardian, because that dude is generally good in whatever he does. What's-her-face as Yelena was also oddly charming as a comic relief of sorts, but Task Master was completely ruined by turning HIM into a HER, and basically as a mindless drone. Ugh. What a waste.

Eternals - Perhaps the weakest Marvel movie yet. Here, we have a team of super-powered aliens who nobody knows nor gives two fucks about. I particularly hated that Superman knock-off Icarus, just because. Then the rest of our eternal characters are a showcase of ethnic diversity, with some homosexuality thrown into the mix just for the sake of being woke.

The plot has our eternals fighting deviants, who are generic monsters, as well as themselves and their master who wants to destroy the earth. When it comes to the entire earth being at stake, my relatability to the whole thing quickly goes out the window. I prefer smaller-scale adventures with people who aren't nearly indestructible. That shit is important, and it isn't in this movie, huh?

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - This one is mildly enjoyable due to the fight scenes, but it gets pretty overblown after a while, what with dragons and armies fighting each other... I will say that I didn't hate the movie like I was expecting, and it was good to see Ben Kingsley back as the fake Mandarin. The settings were pretty good, the characters weren't horrible, and it didn't suck. I can't say it was great though.

What If? - Kill me now. Yeah, the animation is okay, but this is the worst case of official fan-fiction I've ever had the misfortune of watching. Hell, I didn't even finish the series because there's no fucking point. What if Captain America was a woman? Look how good of a job she does! What if Starlord was black? Look how much better he was than the white guy! What if the main overrated Avengers died? Yeah, that'd be cool, but still, fuck them. The MCU loves to suck their dicks and put them in the forefront of everything, but there are so many better characters they'll never give a chance, which is ridiculous considering Disney owns the majority of all Marvel properties. What if Doctor Strange's love interest died instead of him losing his hands and he becomes an evil prick? What if I gave a fuck?

By the time it got to the zombie episode, I had completely lost interest and even that episode seemed like a complete misfire to me. It's like a zombie movie made by non-horror fans who think they understand the genre. Insulting, to say the least. I'm not even sure I finished that episode, because I was completely disillusioned by this show at this point, so I skipped the rest...

Hawkeye - I waited until I learned the rumors were true before I watched this one. Of course, the return of Kingpin came as no surprise to anyone because Marvel loves to leak all their biggest spoilers basically a year in advance to test fan reactions to make sure they're doing something that will go over well. This is especially true for No Way Home, but we'll get there in a minute.

So Jeremy Renner plays Hawkeye, who isn't exactly the same characterization as in the comics. The show tries to veer him back into that version as he takes on a new protege, and I'll admit it. Kate Bishop was a decent character. But Swordsman wasn't. Talk about a major departure from the source material, and simply there to be a red herring. Most of the story is okay, but they save the mighty return of Kingpin for only one episode, they super-power him, and then... SPOILERS... they "kill" him? Talk about a big fucking disappointment. We waited years for this great villain to make a reprise only to be offed off-screen by a dull side character. Disney sure knows how to ruin my day, don't they?

Spider-Man: No Way Home - To wrap things up, Spider-Man was actually a very entertaining movie. In retrospect, it definitely isn't perfect though. They didn't do shit with the long-awaited DareDevil return, and the dimensional logic really makes no sense. Yeah, it's magic, but even by their own logic, it takes a few liberties just to keep the plot flowing. Not all the villains knew Peter Parker's secret, but they're there anyway, just for the hell of it.

Does that really bother me? No. It was fun as hell to see them all back, as well as the previous Spider-Men Toby and Garfield. That part there was another one of Marvel's infamous leaks. They tried to pretend it was a twist that would blow fan's minds, but by the time it came to theaters, fans would be pissed if they WEREN'T in it. They spoiled that shit intentionally a year before the movie came out. They love to spoil everything, but fuck it. It was a welcome "twist".

I absolutely loved having Willem Dafoe back, simply because he makes every movie better. Plus, he's both sympathetic AND an evil piece of shit in this movie. Of course, the whole idea of saving the villains and returning them to their timelines is flawed and open to various paradoxes, but whatever. It was a really fun movie with a total downer ending, and downer endings make me happy, especially in family-friendly movies.

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So there you have it. Marvel phase 4 is not exactly my cup of tea, and I'm not a fan of the direction they're going with things. That is to say, making a bunch of crap nobody is asking for when they need to properly bring in all the crap people have been wanting for ages. I want to see Fantastic Four done right, but they haven't even started on that one yet. And where the fuck is Deadpool and the X-Men?! X-Men are basically my favorite Marvel property and Disney is so damn reluctant to bring them into the mix, it's nauseating.

On an unrelated note, I've been rewatching the 90s animated X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons and they hold up surprisingly well. If I keep Disney+, it's basically so I can watch that shit. Those were the days!