Silent Night, Deadly Night 5

Finally, a sequel to a Christmas movie that actually has something to do with Christmas! Of course, it still has nothing to do with the story that started it all, but after the last few, it's a breath of fresh air. As the title suggests, this one is about... killer toys!

A boy is gifted an early Christmas present that he's not supposed to open till Christmas, but he's stupid and tries anyway. Before he can rip all the paper off, his irritable dad sends him to bed, checks it for himself, and you can take a guess what happens next. Suffice to say, the boy is traumatized, so mom looks for something to help him cope... another toy. Hence we're introduced to the toy-maker, played by Mickey Rooney. He seems like a reasonable old man at some points, but flies off the handle when prankster son pisses him off. It ends up being pretty amusing either way.

Throughout the movie, someone is sending out evil toys that only have a slight rhyme and reason to do what they do, but instead of being a complete waste of time like the last few sequels, the end of the movie actually turns out to be an entertaining showtime with a giant "toy". This is a Pinocchio story from hell. If the movie bored you up to this point, it'll turn that around with this bizarre climax.


Still under Brian Yuzna's production, the effects are quite good. This entry was written and directed by Martin Kitrosser, who we all know as a co-writer of Friday the 13th 3 and 5, which IMO are highlights of that series.

Fun Facts:

Neith Hunter, Conan Yuzna, and Clint Howard all appeared in the previous entry and return to play characters with the same name, though are clearly different characters. WTF? This means that all five movies have a character named Ricky in them, and if they're not a recast of a previous Ricky, then they're a different Ricky all together. To hell with continuity!

Here's the best part: Mickey Rooney was a strong protester of the original 1984 film, writing letters to condemn it. But here he is, starring in the fifth one!

#Review

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4

If you thought the last movie was bad, wait until you get a load of this movie. It has almost NOTHING to do with Christmas except a few vague scenes that can easily be removed with no consequence to the overall "plot". What gives?

Our story follows a reporter who follows the story of a woman who "spontaneously combusts" and falls off a roof. Okay? Then she's stalked by Clint Howard's ugly ass, then she meets a few older women who happen to be cultists, she has many a run-in with bugs, and fuck if I know what happens after that. As the subtitle of the film suggests, they're trying to initiate her for some lousy reason I can't follow, and eventually... thank God... the movie ends.

This is a Brian Yuzna flick, so it's heavy on the special effects, but completely barren on any other merit. Yeah, Reggie Bannister is in there, but he's wasted in a minimal role. I'm just flabbergasted that they decided to make this irrelevant story part of the SNDN franchise at all. They probably figured the last one was bad enough, might as well take another shit on the series. This movie is crap.

#Review

Silent Night, Deadly Night III

Part 2 gets all the hate, but at least it's entertaining. This movie sucks, and it's really boring too. The only copy you can get is full screen, which means it's bordering on the 90s era where nobody cared about the movie enough to preserve it right and give it a proper release.

We start out in a white hospital room where Richard Beymer is using our blind^bland female protagonist's psychic powers to jump start comatose Ricky's brain. Yeah, we're jumping the shark a bit with this one, and Ricky is recast with Bill Moseley, who wears a dome over his head to expose his brain. Eventually, he wakes up, follows the girl over to grandma's house, and tries to... I don't know... kill her, probably?

He's basically a shambling zombie in the movie, and he doesn't even wear a Santa costume. One thing that's particularly stupid is that they once again use several flashbacks to the first film, including flashbacks that baby Ricky shouldn't remember. Just like in part 2.

This movie is pretty dreadful. It has no personality and begs the question of why they kept making these movies if they weren't going to put forth any effort. There's barely any Christmas relevance here. No snow, few decorations, and boring kills. I give this movie two out of five lumps of coal.

#Review

Hell House LLC (2015)

When it comes to found footage, I like to scoff at how ineffective these movies are. They often strike me as cheap and unprofessional output from people who think they can make a great horror movie simply because they own a camcorder. There are a few passable ones out there, but dare I eat my own words when I say that this movie gave me chills.

I guess every found footage movie tries to pretend it's a true story with some documentary wrap-around, and this one is no different in that sense. It follows a group of people who set out to make a haunted house in some dilapidated junk heap hotel they find, which turns out to be a real creepy place in its own right, and wouldn't you know... it's actually haunted.

The film documents their conversion of the place into a haunted attraction within a month or so, and things only get creepier as opening day nears. The movie begins with the reveal that the very first outing ended badly, so the chronicles leading up to the big night are what it's all about. Things that shouldn't be happening with the props are happening with the props, and people are gradually losing their shit and blaming each other. Subtlety without obnoxious jump scares, but rather "Why the fuck is that thing there?!"

This movie left me feeling a bit uneasy. I really like the type of scares they crafted with this one. Dare I bother with the extended director's cut and/or the sequel?!

#Review

Radical Jack (2000)

For a Billy Ray Cyrus movie with a 2.4 rating, I would have expected something a lot worse. I think people jump at the chance to give it a bad rating simply because it has Mr. Achy-Breaky Heart in it, but he does a decent job as the drifter Navy Seal vet who's being used by the government to stop an arms dealer in a podunk town.

When I was searching for this movie on Tubi, they only had the Rifftrax version, and I'll be damned if I let those fuckers talk throughout the whole movie trying to convince me I'm watching shit. Let me be the judge of whether it's shit! So I found the regular version on IMDb TV, and quite frankly, I didn't find this movie nearly as deplorable as its rating would suggest. I actually found it pretty engaging.

Basically, this movie is a big ripoff of Roadhouse. It even has some roundhouse kicks, and the fight choreography is pretty good. It has a couple babes in it, and the production values are decent, but the most noteworthy thing about it is... George Buck Flower! And he isn't reduced to a minor role, nor is he playing a hobo. In fact, he's playing a lead antagonist! One who happens to be wealthy! Kudos to the film crew for including a legend in such capacity.

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I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006)

For a movie with a 3.5 on imdb, it wasn't terrible. I avoided it for a while because it's a sequel in concept only, but that isn't always a bad thing. The second movie wrapped up all those loose ends, so where do we go from there? Colorado, apparently.

Yeah, WTF is the fisherman from North Carolina doing in Colorado mountain territory? Well, our characters start their descent with a prank involving him because their too damn stupid to realize they're landlocked. It's like telling a story about Leatherface outside of Texas, or Freddy not on Elm Street. Pretty weird, but whatever.

Anywho, it plays out as expected with our super-2000s cast gradually becoming aware that they're being stalked and eventually killed by someone who, well... knows what they did last summer. The guys all look like genuine douchebags, but the girls are hot enough to keep me watching.

It's actually kind of slow and nothing happens for a while. You're expecting a logical reveal of who may be doing the killing, but there is none. Don Shanks of Halloween 5 fame plays the fisherman, but he doesn't have enough screentime to be very menacing.

One of the more ridiculous aspects of this movie is that they don't tie up loose ends. Some of our characters involved in the initial prank simply disappear after all is said and done. Maybe they'll be revealed to be the killer in the end? Nope. The writers simply forgot about them. It doesn't surprise me that people think poorly of this movie, but it was at least mildly entertaining.

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Halloween Kills - No Spoilers

This movie was fucking CRAZY. It picks up right after Halloween 2018 and doesn't have to waste time with exposition, but there are a few recaps for anyone dumb enough to jump into this sequel without having seen the last one. In addition to recaps, they also have some extended backstories to the original 1978 events, which are pretty glorious in their own right.

Jamie Lee is back of course, but not in the capacity you would expect. The last movie was her film. This movie is about the carnage and chaos erupting in the aftermath of those events. Michael was calm and collected in the last movie, but this time, he is PISSED! The bodycount is the highest of the entire franchise, because it has to live up to the name, right? And these kills aren't quick and to the point. Michael takes out his aggressions on people and savors these kills. No one is safe.

Some of the reviews are mixed, and I'm assuming it's because people are expecting a more formulaic slasher, but this isn't your typical slasher at all. Slasher films tend to be isolated and away from authorities, but this movie is out in the open and everybody is reacting out of fear and anger. It's a very busy film, but I was sucked in 100%.

The cast does a great job here. You'll see a lot of legacy characters, as well as returning characters from 2018 (even if they only appear as dead bodies). You'll be shocked at times, but you'll also be pleasantly surprised at others. Tyler Mane may have been 7 feet tall, but James Jude Courtney would make Hobo Myers shit himself. It's going to be hard for Halloween Ends to top this shit!

#Review

Blood Feast 2016

As far as remakes go, this wasn't shit. It always helps when the movie being remade is shitty from the get-go because you might have room for improvement in that case. Here, production values are better than both BF movies, but are we really going into a movie like this for production values?

Robert "Elm Street 2 Grady" Rusler plays the new Fuad Ramses, a family man who moved to France to run a not-so-successul diner business with his wife Caroline "Stretch" Williams. Already, the cast is alright. As luck would have it, Fuad goes off his meds and starts having visions of Ishtar.

This movie takes a while for anything to happen. Sure, they had a gory intro credits, but it feels more like a flashy opening than an actual part of the narrative, whereas the original starts off with our antagonist already mad and abruptly killing. There was no buildup before because the movie was intended to be dumb, and the remake tries to play it a bit more serious. It's not necessarily a bad direction, but it isn't as memorable and lacks the camp value.

Ol' Herschell Gordon Lewis has a cameo as Professor Lou Herschell, reminding us of the good ol' days. For a movie called Blood Feast, the gore is more realistic, but there isn't that much of it. The ending is different and intended to be more deranged, but nothing will compare to the real Fuad "dying a fitting end for the garbage he was."

#Review

Halloween II - TV Cut

When you've seen the theatrical cut as many times as I have, this version seems a bit bizarre in comparison. Many scenes are re-arranged and there's a lot of alternate takes used as well as additional scenes, which come at the cost of less graphic kills and some completely removed kills. Some characters just disappear after a certain point, and if this is the only version you've seen, it might cause a bit of confusion.

A notable difference is that this is only presented in full screen. The film begins with the intro credits immediately and the titles are squished into the frame. The recap doesn't feature the erroneous 7-shot 6-shooter, but it omits little bits and lines here and there.

Basically any scene with blood is trimmed or removed entirely. The bit with Alice and Mrs. Elrod is altered, Mr. Garrett's exploration scene uses footage of Myers chase with Laurie from much later in the movie, the darkness of the hospital is more thoroughly explained as an electrical disturbance, the marshall's death has Myers wrestle him off the ground and it doesn't make much sense at all as to why he dies with blood on his body, the explosion makes Jimmy fall, and then there's the ambulance alternate ending...

This isn't even the half of it. The first movie was tame enough to show on tv as mostly the same movie with a few added scenes, but this movie is edited vastly different. The theatrical version is superior, but I definitely appreciate all the added scenes and alternate takes.

A few scenes that simply don't work now are Janet complaining about Bud (not) using profanity, as well as Loomis's shots fired at the end. They fixed the 7 shots in the beginning, but he only shoots Myers twice in the clinic (plus his warning shot in the car), so he should have three bullets left, but he points at Michael and the gun goes click. He must have gotten too lazy to load all the chambers this time around.

The TV cut is available on the Shout Factory 2-disc dvd.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082495/alternateversions

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A lot of the entries in this series have alternate versions, but I feel that this version is the weirdest.

H1 has the extended TV cut.
H3 may or may not have an uncut version. Clarification anybody?

H6 has the producer's cut and a rumored Director's Cut.
H20 has the FX TV cut.
H8 has alternate endings that were intended for a theatrical gimmick.

RZ's H1 and H2 both have director's cuts, which demonstrate that he had no clear vision as to what he wanted out of these movies.

I guess H4 and H5 are the only one-cut movies out there.

#Review

A Shit Post

Monsturd. Now that's a good movie! Set in Butte County California. I know the name is supposed to be the "butt" of the joke, but it's even funnier that it's set in California, because that whole state is bullshit, just like our killer Jack Schmidt, aka The Shit-Man!

This movie will make you fear the toilet like Jaws made you fear the water. Don't get caught with your pants down! And protect yourself from the shit-man by wearing diaper armor and stocking up on pepto bismol and a million flies.


I rate this movie 💩💩💩 out of 5 shits.

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