L-G-B-Terror

JACK-O

2019-06-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

Fun Fact: Jack-O is one of the worst horror movies and best first ladies of all time. I am, of course, more inclined to write about the horror movie than the first lady, because I have seen the horror movie three times under various levels of intoxication. (And I have seen the first lady zero times under zero levels of intoxication. Man, this blog is getting weird.)

Anyway, Jack-O is an ultra-low-budget Pumpkinhead story from the early 90s. (There are no pill-box hats in sight.) I was planning to write up a blog post about this movie after I watched it last year, but I honestly could not think of anything clever or interesting to say about it, so I just let the memories fade into the back of my pumpkin head.

Today, when I was cleaning out my computer and looking at all my random saved photos (Hello, Eartha Kitt from Ernest Scared Stupid!), I came across the above picture. Now I honestly could not remember if this was a screen cap from Jack-O or an episode of Goosebumps. I believe it is actually from Goosebumps. But the fact that there was ever any doubt really says a lot about Jack-O. And basically, what it says is please do not watch Jack-O.

TITANIC II

2019-06-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

STATS

Titanic II

2010

Directed by: Shane Van Dyke

Written by: Shane Van Dyke
Starring: Shane Van Dyke (notice a pattern?)

WHA’ HAPPENED?

It’s the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s fateful voyage, and some genius decided to give it another go. Some people are afraid it’s going to sink. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it does not.

Okay. Yes it does. It sinks real good.

…And they officially blew their budget.

Unlike the legitimate Titanic movie, this one doesn’t focus on a large cast of characters. Instead, the only characters we get to know are the ship’s one competent doctor and the boat’s owner. We also follow the rescue efforts of the girl’s father, who plays a Coast Guard captain/iceberg expert. (Uh oh.) It’s this guy:

You build ONE army of murderous rats and then

you’re stuck in straight-to-DVD sh!t like this. Life isn’t fair.

This film greatly improves on the 1997 film, because now, instead of an iceberg, we have an iceberg, a tsunami, and a MEGA-tsunami. You gotta love this film.

Quick, everybody. Lean slightly to the left. It’s a mega-tsunami.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Asylum Films has perfected the art of the “mockbuster,” releasing such exploitative classics as Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers: Fall of Man, and The Terminators.

They even improved on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by releasing a Sherlock Holmes that replaces Jude Law with dinosaurs and a giant squid.

This made my eyeballs hurt.

WHAT YOU SAY?

“An ice-glacier collapsed off the coast of Greenland.”

“The lifeboats are death traps!”

“Not again!”

“Looks like history’s repeated itself!”

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

None. Our lead actor Shane Van Dyke (who pulled an Orson Welles and wrote/directed this masterpiece) makes sure that the camera lingers on him lovingly, especially when he has his arms draped around the ladies… or when he’s slow-motion surfing.

Whose idea was it to start Titanic 2 with five minutes

of slow-motion surfing? Oh yeah, probably Shane Van Dyke.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Thousands of people drown off-screen. One guy suffocates from smoke. And the lead character’s best friend gets crushed by the world’s worst emergency exit.

This happened to her to. Via a cabinet. She was pretty killable.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I absolutely love the group shots. Notice the crowd of dozens who gather to watch Titanic 2 disappear into the horizon.

By some fluke of physics, most of these people are shown on the ship in later scenes.

Try to play Spot the Extra as this movie continues. One lady in particular is like Jason Voorhees: she’s everywhere at all times.

Watch her. Watch her good.

Speaking of extras, I swear I saw Debbie Gibson in the background of most of the group scenes.

Seriously, right? That's gotte be her.

Most of the film involves our two main characters trying to reach the ill-defined safety tanks at the bottom of the ship. This section of the movie seems more like Poseidon Adventure than Titanic (without the stars or awesomeness, of course).

Oh crap. The happy face is going to reach them in T minus 15 seconds.

Our hero (notice how I never learned her name) gets surprisingly good cell phone reception in an elevator… on a boat… in the middle of the ocean… a hundred feet below the surface.

OK. IS IT GAY?

This film is an interesting disaster, mostly because it shows how one man (writer/director/actor/caterer Shane Van Dyke) builds a whole movie around himself. It’s a huge ego project, all the way down to the movie’s climax, in which our main characters gather around his lifeless body and try to bring him back. He spends so much time on himself, that we have no idea how many innocent people died because of him. (Remember, his character built the boat.) In fact, at one point he looks out at the horizon and another character asks him, “Admiring your masterpiece?” That moment almost seemed like a comment on his own hubris.

Perhaps because of this, the film doesn’t bother to develop any of the other characters. There is no romance, no drama, no real emotions at all except for a father/daughter relationship that doesn’t go anywhere. Perhaps worst of all, Titanic 2 isn’t even that campy. I have no reason to recommend this to a gay audience. It’s a Tara Reid.

I DISMEMBER MAMA

2017-05-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to VHS Tuesday, where I dig up one of my old, awful horror videos and share its delightfully stupid packaging. When horror videos first started flooding the market, the marketing geniuses really went to town thinking up the best taglines and the most hilariously literal summaries. Today we have I Dismember Mama, an awful, awful video nasty that I never want to see again. But its packaging: pure genius.

This is the cover. Look! It’s Roy Scheider playing a washed-up magician.

Note the tagline: May she rest… in pieces. Damn. Gets me every time.

And the summary:

POOR ALBERT IS JUST CRAZY ABOUT WOMEN.

Albert (Zooey Hall) is a mentally disturbed young man incarcerated in a rest home run by Dr. Burton (Frank Whiteman).

A nurse’s reprimand (Elaine Partnow) causes him to lock her in his room, strip off her clothes and attempt to murder her. Then an attendant (James Tartan) is brutally murdered and Albert escapes. And so starts a killing spree more brutal than any ever seen in the annals of filmmaking. First his mothers servant goes, then a call girl in a series of chilling murders culminating in a terrifying Hitchcockian climax that will leave you breathless time and time again!

Not only do we know exactly who dies (and in what order!) but we also know that this is the most brutal, Hitchcockian story ever put to film. God bless whatever minimum wage copy-writer wrote this description. You almost make me want to see this movie again. Almost.

WARLOCK III

2017-05-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

WHA’ HAPPENED?

The WARLOCK is back, and this time hes played by some random guy who isn’t Julian Sands. He lures a bunch of lusty college students to an old house and kills them off. The only girl who stands a chance is Kirsty from Hellraiser, because seriously, she survived Pinhead and this guy is just some Eurotrash poser.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Coming a decade-plus after the original and its surprisingly enjoyable sequel, this installment always seemed to have that late-90s, early-2000s horror vibe: a little younger, a little sexier, a little more Scream-inspired. At least, that’s what the cover reminded me of. A demon-shadow (one of the all-time great horror posters) has been replaced by a bunch of pretty young people looking blankly at us.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Yup. There was basically nothing in the first two movies to satisfy the T and A quotient, but this one has that in spades. Basically, that main girl can have sexual chemistry with a toaster. She really brought it for this movie, especially considering how haunted she has to behave and how lame her family-drama-backstory truly is.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Yeah, but the director made the regrettable decision of ratcheting up the tension by cutting everything like a music video, complete with random flashes of light. It’s a horror movie aesthetic that has thankfully died down a little in the last few years, but holy crap is it intrusive.

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

Something about a doll and a magic knife. Fun fact: I pretty much ignored the attempts at story here. Everything just felt a little low-rent for me, and not in an awesome look-it’s-a-warlock-adjusting-to-life-in-the-80s kind of way.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

Whatever happened to Julian Sands? And does he still keep Sherrilyn Fenn in a box?

VALENTINE

2017-02-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day just happened, and you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen. I'm still in a Reese's-induced sugar coma. It also means that I get the chance to talk about one of my least favorite guilty pleasures, the Denise-Richards-getting-harpooned-to-death slashfest Valentine.

Now, full disclosure: I have a soft spot in my heart for this movie, and there are two reasons why: First, it is the only Katherine Heigl movie that I can bother sitting through all the way (besides Bride of Chucky or Wish upon a Star). I enjoy the fact that she gets murdered at the very beginning. Such is my hatred for Katherine Heigl.

And secondly, it was a date movie for me. One of my first. I was in junior high; I was really nervous. It didn’t go well. But… I look back on that memory fondly. And ironically.

Aside from that, Valentine doesn’t have a lot to recommend. It came at the tail end of the late-90s slasher resurgence, and it comes across as stale and perfunctory. The final revelation is really dumb. And the acting (except for dead-eyed superbitch Denise Richards) is subpar. It’s not campy enough to be enjoyable, nor legit enough to be watchable. It’s just sort of there, limping along through wildly implausible death scenes at multi-media art installations and dimly lit mansions. Even David Boreanaz is weirdly charisma-free (and I don’t mean Carpenter).

But considering all that, I still would recommend it. It’s like a time capsule. It’s a quaint little window into the horror trends at the turn of the millennium. It’s basically the perfect distillation of everything that was wrong with horror movies at that time. The bad plotting, the hyper-verbal yet completely unnatural dialog, the long scenes of exposition, the dozens of unnecessary red herrings. Watch this and you’ll remember what it was like in the late-90s, early-2000s. For some people, that’s reason enough to sit through this dreck.

If you don’t, this lady will cut you.

G'Bye!

2016-06-01T23:29:00.001-07:00

I believe this is the end of the line for LGBTerror. Thanks for all the memories! I'll leave you with a very special goodbye video.

The Visit

2016-02-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

Wait. This is a "Nigerian romantic comedy thriller." First of all, I don't know what that means. Secondly, this can't be the right film.

That's more like it.

STATS:

The Visit
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan (Yay!)
Written by M. Night Shyamalan (Sigh.)

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Two precocious kids spend a week with their estranged grandparents. They'd never met the old couple before, which makes things particularly unnerving when the grandparents start acting very strangely. There's poop and vomit involved, as well as the tensest game of Yahtzee ever committed to film. I did not make any of that up.

WHAT YOU SAY?

I'm not going to include any quotes here, because I think the dialogue was a little overwritten. But the young boy does rap a lot. Freestyle. It's cute.

Oh, wait. I'll include one quote: "YAHTZEE!"

Seriously. You gotta see this movie.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Okay. We all know that found footage horror films are well past their sell-by date. After the first Paranormal Activity came out, people went crazy. After the last Paranormal Activity came out, people went... nowhere. At least not to the theaters, anyway. The bloom is off the rose, is what I'm saying.

But leave it to good ol' M. Night to shake things up a bit. After a long and embarrassing dry spell, he's figured out how to breathe new life into this dying subgenre. In this film, the main girl is an aspiring filmmaker who has clear emotional reasons to continue making her movie, which only heightens the weirdness when her footage starts revealing the creepy side of her family.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

The violence doesn't erupt until the very end, and the worst of it is only shown in quick flashes. Instead, this movie gets its chills from showing a seemingly normal elderly couple doing increasing weird and dangerous stuff. Also, there's a lot of poop involved. That's pretty gross.

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

M. Night's best decision when writing this movie is to go against his tendency to attach a twist ending to everything he does. Instead, he reveals the true nature of the situation at the end of Act II, which makes the whole movie seem less cheap than, say, The Village. It also allows him to really go ape shit during the third act.

Seven eights of this film is good.

OK. IS IT GAY?

Nope. There is absolutely nothing queer about it. On a scale of 1 to Freddy's Revenge, this movie's a 1. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go see it. You absolutely should. I mean...

"YAHTZEE!!!!!!!!"

Top 5 Christmas Scrooges

2015-12-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

Late December. The days get shorter, the nights get colder, and people start knocking on your door so they can sing at you. 'Tis the season for drinking eggnog, wearing ugly sweaters, and watching people be horribly, disgustingly mean to each other. We all deserve a little coal in our stockings every once in a while, but some people take the naughty list to a whole new level. This week, we're counting down the top five movie Scrooges, those heartless holiday-haters who make life miserable for everyone else, and then never learn their lesson!

Number five: Mrs. Deagle, Gremlins
Any elderly woman who threatens to murder a cute, little puppy dog is bound to get some holiday comeuppance. And that's exactly what happens to Mrs. Deagle, when the titular monsters sneak into her house and rewire her electric chair into a death trap. Will anyone mourn her passing, though? Not likely. Mrs. Deagle is a prime example of a movie Scrooge.

She shuts down local businesses, cuts in line, throws buckets of cold water onto Christmas carolers, kicks innocent families out on the street, and threatens to kill that aforementioned dog with household appliances. The only time she ever shows kindness is when she's talking to her dozen-or-so cats. Perhaps it's best that she died before seeing her beloved felines turn into Gremlin food.

Number four: Uncle Frank, Home Alone
Every family has an Uncle Frank, the relative that always shows up for family gatherings, eats the food, and says cranky and inappropriate things to virtually everyone else. Sure, he doesn't do anything evil, but he's just not pleasant. And because the movie is from young Kevin McCallister's perspective, everything is amplified.

Still, any non-family member would recognize Frank as the Scrooge of the family. He refuses to pay for the pizza, he blatantly ignores his wife, and he calls Kevin a little jerk. Plus, in a rare deleted scene, he even pulls down Kevin's pants as some sort of prank. "Look what you did, you little jerk" indeed.

Number three: The Mouse Queen, The Nutcracker Prince
The only thing worse that an ugly old mouse is an ugly old mouse with the voice of Phyllis Diller who can curse you with ugliness if she ever bites your big toe. Not surprisingly, this character and the ugly-toe curse were not part of Tchaikovsky ballet, but were added to the animated movie version.

The Mouse King might be the main villain, but his angry old mother was the true Scrooge of the story, busting out weirdly specific curses and crawling through delicious-looking food like she was auditioning for Ratatouille. She was the one who turned some innocent boy into a nutcracker, all because... Well, her motivations don't quite make sense. And isn't that the Scroogiest thing of all?

Number two: The Penguin, Batman Returns
Superhero movies aren't typically Christmas-y. The flashing lights and tinsel tend to distract from the action scenes and the tight tights. Leave it to Tim Burton, then, to make the darkest, creepiest, most Christmas-y superhero movie of the 90s.

It's late December in Gotham City, and guess who's not feeling the holiday warmth: That's right. The deformed circus freak living in the sewers under the city. And can you blame him? It isn't his fault that his parents abandoned him into the sewers because he had six total fingers and the face of Danny DeVito. It is his fault, however, that he kidnaps half of the city's children and unleashes a troupe of evil circus performers on the street. That might be a little much. By the time he starts shooting his own minions with umbrella guns, it's pretty clear: The Penguin is a grade-A Scrooge.

Number one: Killer Santa, Rare Exports, Santa's Slay, Christmas Evil, and Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 and 2
It may come as a surprise that there are so many killer Santa movies out there, but if you think about it for a second, it makes perfect sense. Santa sneaks into your house with the sole purpose of rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. Swap the red and white clothes for a blue jumpsuit and you basically have Michael Myers.

In some versions of this story--Rare Exports and Santa's Slay--jolly old Saint Nick is an ancient being with the murderous drive to dispense old world punishment on new world victims. In all the other versions, Santa is really just a crazy person in a suit, dealing with inner demons and past trauma by dressing up and murdering. In most of pop culture, Santa is such a jolly old fellow, that when he snaps and stabs someone with a candy cane, that makes him the biggest Scrooge of all.

So the next time you feel a little cranky this December, try to learn from these cautionary tales. Don't be a Scrooge. Or at the very least, don't threaten someone's puppy dog. You know that's not going to end well.

POCAHONTAS

2012-07-02T17:01:00.001-07:00

Pocahontas (1995)

Horror connections:
John Kassir (The Cryptkeeper!)
Christian Bale (American Psycho)
Billy Connolly (Fido)

Gay connections:

Out voice actor David Ogden Stiers continues his partnership with Disney by voicing two new characters, Governor Ratcliffe and his manservant Wiggins. Hmm.

Bambi’s Mother Alert:

Unfortunately, no traumatizing on-screen deaths. Christian Bale accidentally shoots some guy, who topples in slow motion. Mel Gibson almost gets his head bashed in by a chief stick. (Pocahontas rescues him, of course. If she hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have made this film.)

Coded gays:

Ratcliffe and Wiggins

Gay or British?

Ratcliffe and Wiggins have an interesting master/servant relationship. They both fawn over their overly pampered pug Percy. They bicker. Wiggins spends most of his manic energy trying to please Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe is overly fussy when it comes to appearances and fashion. (Admittedly, he sings about “the ladies of court,” but he seems more concerned with impressing everybody than getting laid.) This pairing has a definite “married couple” vibe, much like the Jumba and Pleakley duo from Lilo and Stitch (one half of which was also voiced by Stiers). It's stereotypical and jarring, but doesn't get a lot of screentime.

And this is their dog, Percy. It’s a pit bull.

Bottom Line:

Does this film deliver on genuine suspense and horror? No. Does it include gay characters of interest and depth? Not exactly. What it does deliver are songs drowning in political correctness and two coded gays that function as comedy relief/plot forwarders.

But the characters do have nice hair.

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB

2012-06-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB

As a semi-serious fan of old school Hammer, I thought I'd seen all of their Mummy movies. Never my favorite franchise, but always better than average, the Hammer Mummy films were chock-full of half-naked Egyptians and a fair amount of suspense.

So it came as a complete surprise to me when I saw this movie, and the titular "mummy" ended up being a beautiful devil-woman with a severed hand. Yeah, apparently I'd never seen this one, because that didn't seem familiar at all. And it's a good thing, too, because it would've probably scared me away from the earlier, better films. Case-in-point: within the first five minutes, there's a sandstorm that somehow has the magical ability to slash people's throats. Why not!

Anyway, my viewing experience included a lot of getting up and down and pausing for bathroom breaks. A lot. So I don't feel comfortable writing anything lengthy about this film. I will say, though, that this is not one of Hammer's top-tier efforts. But at least they had enough money for their crawling-artificial-hand budget.

MONSTER HOUSE

2012-06-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

MONSTER HOUSE

2006

The Polar Express is creepy. Like, waaaay creepy. It's the only movie that has ever been able to make Tom Hanks come across as a dead-eyed homeless pedophile (and I've seen Turner and Hooch). There are so many things wrong with the character design of that movie, and it all boils down to a technology that just wasn't quite ready to create humans.

I won't go on and on about the uncanny valley and whatnot, because those who've seen The Polar Express know what I mean. Everything looks almost normal, but there's just something really really wrong with the motion capture animation, so much so that not even a Hanksian tidal wave of charm can compensate for those dead, dead eyes.

So when Monster House reared it ugly head, complete with Robert Zemeckis as an executive producer and Image Movers as the production studio, I was not at all interested. I love animated movies, traditional and computer, but this wasn't either. It was something else. And I thought it would be ugly.

So years passed and I forgot about this movie. Beowulf came and went. Mars Needs Moms crashed and burned. And then a funny thing happened. I got really into Community, the NBC sitcom that has breathed new life into a dying television network. Community is currently my favorite show on television, and it's created by the inimitable Dan Harmon. The man's a genius, but from all accounts he's not the easiest guy to work with. (He's the only showrunner I've heard of to get kicked off of TWO shows that he co-created. Or something. I try not to follow Twitter nonsense.)

Anyway, Dan Harmon co-wrote Monster House, so that fun tidbit immediately piqued my interest. Would this little cartoon be as witty and meta as Community? Would its script outweight any motion capture creepiness? I had to find out.

So when I sat down to watch this movie, I was all prepared to focus in on the jokes and dialogue and plotting, which, admitted, were all pretty great. (There's a killer uvula joke about halfway through.) Most of the dialogue really lands, and the characters are never less-than-genuine. It's a fun, heartfelt movie.

But what I really took away from this viewing experience is that the animation works! Motion capture works! The characters are all cartoony enough that it doesn't come across as dead-faced robots and Heidi Klums lurching through the film. Like any good cartoon, these characters are like real people, except not. This one movie singlehandedly reignited my faith in motion capture technology.

Not only that, it actually turned me into a fan. I'd never seen so many beautiful, soaring camera angles on a cartoon before. The entire film is kinetic and cinematic and special. It really really soars. I don't know what this movie does differently from something like Beowulf and Polar Express. Maybe it comes down to having characters that don't try to look too human. Maybe it embraces the artificiality of the medium in a way that the others don't. Whatever it is, this is a gorgeous film. Who knew!

And that Chowder character.

That's basically every kid's first best friend.

PIRANHACONDA

2012-06-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Syfy Channel,

We're been through a lot over the years, included an ill-advised name change to make you seem quote-unquote "hip" and "edgy" and "retarded". That's fine. You're well aware that we're in a love-hate relationship.

But I would just like to say that I am very proud of you this summer. Not only did you start the season off right by killing Joey Fatone in Jersey Shore Shark Attack (Why did it take so long for someone to think of that movie!), but you decided to continue the streak by airing Roger Corman-approved masterpieces like Piranhaconda.

You are certainly on a roll, Syfy Channel. Some people might gripe about how self-consciously bad you've gotten, some people might even say that it's not fun to watch something that TRIES to be bad, but you know what... SOME people can suck it. Because you, Syfy Channel, are a good kid.

Thank you for Piranhaconda. Please don't like anyone get you down.

Thanks for the memories,
LGBTerror

COUNTDOWN: Hammer Dracula Films

2012-06-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Hammer Studios was pretty effing great. They brought red-blooded lusty, heaving raunch to classic horror stories. Rarely were there any gay characters, but the subtext of a lot of their movies has some bits of pink thrown in. Not only that, they were gory and lascivious... and somehow classy at the same time. I honestly can't describe what these movies meant to me when I was a kid watching them with my dad and older brother.

My fondest memories were probably with the Dracula films, which I saw more than Frankenstein or Mummy. I haven't seen them all (that kung fu one from 1974 holds no interest for me, because it would just make me sad). But I've seen most of them. Here are my top five:

5) The Brides of Dracula
(No Christopher Lee, but the titular brides were a step in the right direction after a significantly less sexy original. Great climax. Windmills are terrifying, and I say this as an avid mini-golfer.)

4) Dracula AD 1972
(It's ironic that the "modern" one is by far the most dated. But in a good way. Sometimes I watch this movie just to stare at the furniture and wall paper.)

3) Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
(Great use of forests. It simultaneously makes me want to visit England and stay as far away as possible.)

2) Taste the Blood of Dracula
(Not the most talkative of Christopher Lee performances, but the film is never dull, and man can Mr. Lee lurk!)

1) Dracula: Prince of Darkness
(Christopher Lee's big return, and the perfect Hammer combination of damsels, splashes of blood, creepy castles, and overacting villagers. If you haven't seen any of these films, start with this one.)

HOUR OF THE WOLF

2012-05-31T21:24:00.001-07:00

Okay, folks. First I'd like to get the big Nordic elephant out of the way: Oscar-nominated Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann is basically Chris Colfer's face-twin. It was a little distracting.

Alright. On with the review…

I had never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie before Hour of the Wolf. Everything I knew about Ingmar Bergman I learned from Simpsons references and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I knew that he was a Scandinavian director who did a bunch of artsy black-and-white movies and that Woody Allen loved him. I also knew, almost without a shadow of a doubt, that his movies were not my style. I pictured long, murky parables about war and death. I pictured beautiful cinematography and absolute boredom. I didn’t picture horror movies. And yet, here I am, writing about an Ingmar Bergman movie in my horror blog.

Hour of the Wolf, from what I could tell, is about a pregnant woman and her older husband who live on an island. The husband is slowly getting crazier and crazier because of his interactions with the island's other residents, a castle full of wack-jobs, including a woman that he fooled around with before knocking up his current wife. This guy is pushed to the edge by the surrounding characters, and his wife is becoming increasingly afraid that she’s starting to share her husband’s psychosis. I’m not going to continue explaining the plot, because it isn’t exactly linear, so let’s instead talk about how I might interpret some of the events of this story.

ONE: The husband is a crazy artist who has retreated to this isolated island to be alone. He lashes out at everyone he meets (including the little boy on the beach) because of some intense distrust of the outside world. He has his pregnant wife to cling to, but when he finally lashes out at her (he shoots her), that’s the final straw and he cracks, disappearing forever into himself.

TWO: None of the characters are real except for the husband and wife. The husband has elaborate delusions about the strange people he meets. Slowly, his wife begins to see them too. When one of these delusions gives him the gun he uses to shoot his wife, then his psychosis has finally crossed into a level where he can no longer be cured. At the end of the movie, his wife talks about a scar that the bullets left on her, thus implying that not only is she now damaged by her husband’s psychosis, but now she’s fully succumbed to it, too.

I could go on discussing about a dozen theories that try to tie together all the loose ends and abrupt moments of violence (and cross-dressing). In fact, that’s probably what Bergman wanted. But I’m of the mindset that reviews aren’t about interpretations, they’re about recommendations. Did I enjoy this movie? Was I intrigued instead of confused? Would I recommend this? I think I’d say yes to all three questions.

This is a difficult movie, one with characters that don’t really behave like real people and situations that don’t quite gel. Intellectually, I’m frustrated. Emotionally, I’m highly pleased. This movie kept me surprised, tense, and weirdly curious. The dinner scene at the castle… the violent outburst with the little kid… the laughing ex-girlfriend corpse lady… these were moments that will probably stick with me for a while. As a whole, I prefer my movies to be a little more straight-forward than this, but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating how unsettling everything comes across.

Is this a horror movie? Sure. I have a fairly inclusive definition of horror. Everything from Jaws to Rosemary’s Baby to Silence of the Lambs fits under the umbrella. This is psychological. It’s a lot like 2010’s Antichrist without all that squicky gore. Is it wall-to-wall scary? Nope. But I think this one will linger with me.

I just don’t think it completely works as a narrative film. It’s like watching a hallucination, which is a pretty powerful experience. Sure. But once you realize it’s just a hallucination, it’s hard to really care about what happens.

FOR MORE HOUR OF THE WOLF FUN, CHECK OUT THESE OTHER, MUCH BETTER REVIEWS:

Moon Is a Dead World
Lerner International
United Provinces of Ivanlandia
The Lightning Bug’s Lair

DEADLY BLESSING

2012-05-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

STATS:

Deadly Blessing
Directed by Wes Craven

WHA’ HAPPENED?
You thought Amish people were bad. (Wait. Did you?) Just wait till you meet the Hittites, these crazy farmers that get caught up in a slow-moving horror mystery involving tractors, snakes, and someone dropping a live tarantula into Sharon Stone's mouth.

FAVORITE QUOTE:
A poor manchild has been killed.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Why did I watch this movie? Well, it was directly by Wes Craven. And I’m a completist. I was sure it couldn’t be worse than My Soul to Take. But the fact that this is mostly known as the movie where Sharon Stone got a live tarantula in her mouth tells me that it wasn’t exactly one of Craven's top tier movies.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Some PG female nudity. Including a bathtub scene with an overly curious snake. Similar to Nancy’s bathtub scene in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. If Mr. Craven has to rip off other movies, they might as well be his own.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Nothing particularly memorably. Most deaths occur in shadowy barns and whatnot, so there isn’t a lot to see. Apparently, Amish country isn’t very well-lit. Who knew! But that guy from The Hills Have Eyes gets probably the longest death scene. So there’s that.

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

The reveal of the killer is sudden and kind of dumb, but holy crap does the film have an awesome ending. Think Drag Me to Hell, but completely unearned. Like, if Freddy Krueger showed up at the end of Scream. It makes no damn sense, but it is probably the only thing I will remember about this movie in a month. That and the scene where Sharon Stone gets a tarantula in her mouth. Now that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Ernest Borgnine was born to play a crazy Hittite farmer. Forget his Oscar-winning role in Marty. THIS is his legacy. Aside from him, though, everyone else is pretty much sleeping through this film, especially Martha, the main girl, who goes from constipated to dizzy without ever registering terror. All-in-all, a forgetting slog of a film, even for its short run-time, but be sure to stay for that cuckoo-bananas ending. You will not regret it.

AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE

2012-05-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Amityville Dollhouse
1996

Tagline: The biggest name in horror comes home. (What?)

Starring Kalabar from Disney’s Halloweentown. That’s about it. And it took me literally the entire movie to figure out where I knew him from.

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Basically the same nonsense from all the Amityville sequels: supporting characters die but the family is more-or-less safe. Everyone thinks the dad is going crazy. The house blows up at the end.

The difference here is that the magic dollhouse of the title is to blame, and it can summon demons, giant rats, and previously dead relatives. Also, the family’s younger son is a creepy little whiner whose only friend is a pet rat. Remember when I said that no one in the core family gets murdered? Well, sometimes that’s not a good thing.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

The mid-90s was a wonderland of random direct-to-video sequels to semi-popular horror films. Some were fun (Leprechaun 2, 3, and 4), some were painful (Children of the Corn 5), and some involved an evil dollhouse that summoned dead people.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

The older son has a shirtless make-out session with his girlfriend. It’s fairly steamy, until the girlfriend basically gets eaten by the fireplace. It’s kind of a mood-killer.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

The zombie dad was pretty great, in a Pet Semetary 2 kind of way, and the burn victim girlfriend was effective. (Seriously, do NOT date someone who lives in a haunted house.) But the coolest scene is when the teen son gets an earful of mosquito. It was like that scene in Wrath of Khan, but with a more realistic fake ear. Gloopy goodness.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

After watching Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (which is a slightly lamer title than Dollhouse), I’ve decided that this sequel is just as bad, if slightly less inconsequential. As always, there are plenty of dry patches, and the climax is a little rushed (Look! A demon! Okay, let’s leave.) But it’s charming in a bone-headed way, and the scene with the giant rat was adorable.

PIECES

2012-05-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

No words can describe how awesome and derivative this movie is. Oh wait. Words totally can do that! And here they are:

PIECES… It’s exactly what you think it is!

The year is 1941! A young boy is assembling a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman, when his mother enters in a rage and tells him to throw the puzzle out. Instead he returns with an ax and hacks his mother to death, tricking the police into believing a maniac had killed her.

Forty years later at a Boston college, the terror really begins. A chainsaw-weilding madman is roaming the campus collecting pieces of beautiful co-eds for a ghastly human puzzle he is assembling—and the police haven’t a clue to the crazed killer's identity.

CHRISTOPHER GEORGE (MORTUARY) stars in this horrifying adventure into madness, hysteria and bone-chilling brutality.

Rainbow Brite

2012-05-06T12:34:00.001-07:00

Rainbow Brite was a Japanimation series from the 1980s. Nuff said. That sentence alone will tell you whether you want to watch it or not. I am not much of a fan of that style of animation, and this particular show seemed aimed entirely at females who love bright colors and horses. Fun fact: I have a legitimate phobia of horses. I am afraid that they’ll kick me in the face.

Despite the fact that this show is obviously not for me, for some reason Netflix kept recommending the Rainbow Brite TV movie about star-stealers or something. Anyway, I buckled and decided to check it out.

Then, for the next hour and a half, I half-watched this movie. The entire thing. I wasn’t doing anything else. I was just watching it. And I must have been inside some kind of rainbow-triggered trance, because I don’t remember a single thing that happened. Five minutes after the movie ended, I didn’t remember anything. Sure, I had little snippets here and there, like the bitchy evil princess talking to herself and the Boobah-looking creatures. But other than that, nothing.

Seriously, some things are just not meant for me. This is one of them.

Truth Or Dare?

2012-05-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Tuesday! Here's another awful VHS summary. This comes from the 1986 slasher Truth Or Dare?, one of the most notorious video nasties I have had the pleasure of sitting through. Here is what the video box says:

It’s Time To Play TRUTH OR DARE? A Critical Madness

(The question mark makes everything seem less scary, somehow.)

Meet Mike Strauber. He plays a deadly game. He plays Truth or Dare with everyone…even himself.

Truth Or Dare, a child’s game turned into a psychotic, twisted game of self-destruction. This non-stop psycho-thriller packed with action will assault you personally. Mike Strauber, played brilliantly by John Brace, formerly of the Burt Reynolds Playhouse, brings you to the edge of your seat with passionate understanding coupled with unbridled hatred. If anyone ever asks you to play Truth Or Dare… tell them you’ve seen the movie.

ALL GROWN UP!

2012-04-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

I always get a strange feeling whenever I see a familiar TV character looking slightly off-brand. For example, I recently re-watched the first episode of the Simpsons during the Fox 25th Anniversary Special. There was a scene, only about half-a-minute long, that showed Homer talking to Barney. Only Barney was sober and had yellow hair. It just felt wrong to me. He looked almost exactly the way he does now, but that hair color thing really threw me off. It was a strange sensation, and not a very pleasant one.

The same can be said for the semi-popular Rugrats spin-off All Grown Up!, which takes all the familiar characters and ages them into preteens. Tommy now has a full head of hair, but otherwise has the same lumpy head-shape. Chucky looks creepily similar, just a little bigger and sans-diaper. And Spike, the dog, has gray fur and looks like he has worms.

I really cannot explain how creepy this whole show comes across to me. I mean, I had stopped watching Rugrats back in the mid-90s, when they had originally gone off the air before their first movie. I had very little emotional connection to the characters anymore, and yet... here they are, the same yet different, and everything seems so wrong.

All Grown Up! lasted for several years, so maybe I am the only one who felt this way. But it is a quite intense feeling, and every time I see another still from this show, I get a really strange queasy feeling. I do not want my cartoons to grow up. Please stop them.

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER

2012-04-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

STATS:

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
1974
Written and Directed by Brian Clemens
Starring Horst Janson (seriously)

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A rich family goes around sucking the life out of pretty, young girls in order to stay youthful forever. Our titular captain (What is he the captain of? No idea.) comes to the rescue, defeating these age-sucking jerkwads with his fencing skills, luck with the ladies, and obscure vampire knowledge. (Fun fact: vampires can bring dead toads back to life just by walking by.)

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’ve always been a Hammer fan, and I knew this entry in their mid-70s output is particularly strange. Not oppressively strange in a kung-fu-vampires kind of way, but strange enough to catch my interest on a lazy Saturday morning.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Kronos is shirtless a good 40% of the movie. He has one dimly lit sex scene, and a bunch of innocent bromantic scenes with another male character that turn slightly more homoerotic because hes shirtless. (In one memorable exchange, his buddy touches the captain's torso scar and says that he knows he has guts, because he’s already seen his insides.) The actor playing Kronos isn’t exactly someone to write home about, but hey.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Mostly slight trickles of mouth blood and glumpy old-age make-up. Hammer has done a lot better in the past.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed the wonky mythos that this film built around its vampire characters. Specifically, each vampire can only be killed in specific ways. Some have to be staked, some have to be burnt, and some have to get a crucifix to sink into their embarrassingly vulnerable chest. It must suck to be the vampire that dies via garlic pizza.

OK. IS IT GAY?

Yeah. The film builds a strange rhythm where it has a bromance scene with Kronos and the doctor who summoned him (the scar-caressing one), followed very quickly by Kronos making sexy-time with his female companion. Either hes bi, or he needs to sort through some issues fast. That, coupled with a particularly androgynous son-of-a-vampire, makes for some pleasant 70s escapism with a slight queer bent. Fun times all around.

THE DARKEST HOUR

2012-04-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

For a movie about the world ending by massive alien-based slaughter, this movie is laughably bloodless. I guess that comes from the premise: alien balls of electricity take over the world by zapping humans into ashes. No carnage. No gore. Just PG-13 ash murder.

This is not a complaint, though. The movie is fast and enjoyable enough that I really got into the rhythm of run-hide-zap-scream-motivational-speech. The dialogue is pretty dire (one climactic speech outside a submarine is particularly painful), but that never really mattered to me. The best fwiends drama between the two male leads was also half-baked, but thankfully so, because who comes into a movie like this wanting to spend half the run-time watching two guys bicker about a failed business venture!

As I write this, I realize that this does not sound like a ringing endorsement... and it really isnt. This film is bad in a bland, forgettable way. But I will say that, if in the right mindset, you can wring a few moments of enjoyment out of it. But ignore the speeches. God damn those are awful.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

2012-04-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Cabin in the Woods is unclassifiable. Is it horror, sci fi, or comedy? Is it a clever mash-up of all three? Does it lovingly pay tribute to past horror films, or mock their genre tropes?

In the end, I walked out of the theater not sure what to make of it, but the smile on my face told me that it really didn’t matter. I’m not exaggerating when I say that The Cabin in the Woods is the most enjoyable movie I’ve seen so far this year. Perhaps it’s my favorite horror-comedy since Scream 4. And everyone knows how much I love Scream 4.

Because I enjoyed the unusual twists and rhythms of this movie, I don’t want to give anything away in this review. I want everyone who walks into this movie to have as little knowledge as possible, because the ride is such an unusual and twisty one. But I will say the dialogue is Whedonesque and clever, the deaths are memorable, and the last half hour is filled to the brim with moments that would make any horror fan want to stand up and cheer. The world that this movie creates for itself is insanely clever and immersive; it basically explains how every horror film ever made could co-exist in the same, crazy, wonked-out universe.

Please, please, please see this movie while it is still in the theaters. Pay the ticket price. This is a singular experience. I may not know how to classify it, except to say that it’s good. Really, really good.

HAPPY ARBOR DAY EVERYONE!

2012-04-10T13:42:00.005-07:00

Trees! Trees! Carly’s Arboy Day Foundation,

spread the word across the nation about TREES!

Trees are terrific! Ah ha!

BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR

2012-04-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

So we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Nick Swardson did not make a movie starring any of his gay stereotype characters. The bad news is Nick Swardson made a movie.

This film, produced by the American auteur Adam Sandler, helped Mr. Sandler set a record for the most Razzie nominations in a single year. It also set a record for one of the lowest-grossing wide-release movies in the history of film. Let us see how the title character, porn star Bucky Larson, responds to the bad news...

Oh I see. Bucky is a freakish man-child, and everyone else in the movie are actual, normal characters who have to help him grow up.

...No. I guess not. I guess everyone in this movie is an off-putting weirdo. Good thing they decided not to cast any big-name stars who might otherwise derail their careers...

Oh look. I see Don Johnson. Well, he got a paycheck out of it.

And of course, this would not be an Adam Sandler movie without an addled old lady who gets abused by people. I will be you three dollars that she gets run over by a car.

Well, this is clearly turning out to be a train wreck, but at least there were no A-list celebrities slumming it in the film. We can rest assured that none of our favorite actors had to endure the awfulness of this film.

Wednesday!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!