Matt and I seem to be working at a rate of him earning about 400 points for every 10,000 I do. And since I’m 10,000 away from my next milestone [...]]]> I have a pretty long history of shaming Matt at our little gamerscore challenges. In the most recent challenge, I said:

Matt and I seem to be working at a rate of him earning about 400 points for every 10,000 I do. And since I’m 10,000 away from my next milestone and he’s about 400 away from his, WE HAVE A RACE.

Well here we are on the other side of that challenge: I just hit 80,000 gamerscore!

Now all that’s left is to show a screenshot of Matt’s paltry sub-ten-thousand gamerscore to shame him and prove that I won.

Oh.

Shit.

Well, it looks like this time, MATT BEAT ME. And not only did he beat me, he beat me and then DIDN’T BRAG ABOUT IT. Like some kind of person with good sportsmanship. What the hell, Matt?

Now, as the person posting this, I’ve got to pose the next challenge: Will I hit 90,000 first? Or will Matt hit 12,500? And which one of us will be the first to 100,000 gamerscore?

via cuindependent.com

I publicly remembered before you publicly shamed me, that has to count for something.

I’m a shitty friend.

http://magicalelfland.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/evan-plays-floras-fruit-farm/

For the full articles, head over there, but here’s a video giving you a taste. If you love exasperated cursing, this video is for you!

Via ComicsAlliance.

June 2nd, 2011, Evan writes: “Checking in on Matt has his gamerscore squarely at 9187, so he’ll probably hit 10k soon, right? Certainly before I hit 70k, right? Because if he failed to get 813 points in the time it took me to get 9993, that would be MAJOR SHAME.”

Fast forward [...]]]>

June 2nd, 2011, Evan writes: “Checking in on Matt has his gamerscore squarely at 9187, so he’ll probably hit 10k soon, right? Certainly before I hit 70k, right? Because if he failed to get 813 points in the time it took me to get 9993, that would be MAJOR SHAME.”

Fast forward to November 12th, 2011 – MAJOR SHAME:

I finally hit 70,000 (and a round number again!), and Matt is still shy of his first 10k. I got 10,ooo points in the time it took him to get about 400. Matt’s been playing Xbox 360 for at least 4 years and hasn’t hit 10k. I did it in 162 days. So yes, shame abounds.

However, here’s the thing I notice. Matt and I seem to be working at a rate of him earning about 400 points for every 10,000 I do. And since I’m 10,000 away from my next milestone and he’s about 400 away from his, WE HAVE A RACE. Who will hit the next Gamerscore milestone? Evan or Matt? Feel free to take bets in the comments below!

As always, tons [...]]]> After writing Scream, Kevin Williamson wrote another popular 90s Horror film called I Know What You Did Last Summer, which we will be taking a look at this month. He also wrote a TV Show that aired around that time called Dawsons Creek, which is too terrifying for me to watch.

As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!

A few months ago, I started watching this movie. About a half hour in, I stopped it for the night, and never remembered/cared enough to watch the rest. Until now! Probably not a good sign for this film.

The story is about 4 “teenagers”, all played by actors who are at least 25. They are played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Junior, and Ryan Phillippe, who didn’t bother to get a third name for the movie.

The “kids” are out partying to celebrate SMG’s victory at a beauty pageant. They drink and tell ghost stories and have sex on the beach, you know, the normal party stuff. While driving home, distracted by a very drunk Ryan Phillippe, Freddie hits a man with his car. Rather than calling the cops, they dump the body in the ocean.

Flash forward to a year later! JLH comes home from college, and her mom accuses her of doing drugs. This summer is going to be great! JLH already looks like the creepy girl fron the Grudge, and this movie has barely started. (note to self, review “The Grudge”)

Then, JLH gets a letter that says “I Know What You Did Last Summer!” A bit predictable, given the title of the movie, but it think its the big happy handwriting that ruins this moment for me. The bad guy may as well have typed the note in Comic Sans.

JLH goes to see SMG and show her the note. They talk about how nobody could possibly know about their secret because they were SO GOOD at keeping it. They talk about this loudly in a store with other people in it.

They meet up with the boys, and they assume that it was Johnny Galecki (Leonard, from the Big Bang Theory) who sent the note. So Ryan Phillippe threatens him with a big, sharp, hook.

Its also worth pointing out that this movie takes place during the 9 months in the 90s when girls were fooled into thinking that overalls were an acceptable fashion choice.

To anyone who, like the main characters, assumed that Johnny Galecki sent the note, think again, as he is killed (surprise!) with a big, sharp, hook.

Ryan Phillippe goes to the gym to work out, then strips naked and takes a shower. (Ladies, get your ladyboners ready!) When he goes back to get dressed, he sees a polaroid of his car parked outside, and realizes his jacket, with his car keys in the pocket, is gone. He rushes outside to see someone stealing his car. But don’t worry, Ryan! You’ll get it back! The car theif changes direction and then tries to run down Ryan Phillippe, who runs away from it in a straight line. Want to take bets as to whether he can outrun a BMW? (He can’t. Squish!)

Ryan lives though, and they all meet up in his hospital room, with the door open, to talk some more about how they murdered a dude and have to keep it secret. They decide that whoever is doing this is probably related to David Egan, the guy they killed, so they go do some research on their 1997 laptop. I was going to make fun of it for being old and shitty, but my laptop is surprisingly similar. May be time for me to upgrade. Getting a bit off topic, though.

So the ladies go to meet with David Egan’s sister, Anne Heche, who is a total space cadet. She says she didn’t really know any of David’s friends, but a guy named “Billy Blue” came by a few times right after he died. Then SMG goes home. She falls asleep and when she wakes up, a bunch of her hair is cut off and “Soon” is written on her mirror in lipstick.

This movie is dragging! Please, can somebody just die already?

JLH finds a dead body in her trunk with some crabs. Then it’s gone. The people blame Freddie Prinze Jr., then unblame him. Then they argue for a while. Then there’s a parade for some reason. SMG is in it because she’s a beauty queen, and Ryan tags along on the float, because he looks like he just got hit by a car, and the parade organizers thought that would look just as glamorous. Meanwhile, JLH is out by herself to revisit Anne Heche. Freddie is not helping at all, so we can be tricked into thinking he’s behind it for a while longer.

Anne Heche tells JLH that David committed suicide. He left behind a note that says “I will never forget last summer” in the same handwriting as the other notes. Jennifer realizes that someone else killed him, someone else who was there. Then she realizes that the person they hit and dumped into the river was NOT David Egan.

The parade culminates in a beauty pageant. SMG, as last year’s winner is sitting on stage. Ryan Phillippe, hangs on on a deserted balcony all by himself, because that’s a good idea. SMG sees the killer on the balcony and starts freaking the fuck out on stage pointing at the balcony and yelling about a killer up there. Everyone, in this very packed room, just watches her freak out. Nobody out of curiousity even turns to look at what she’s pointing at. A cop goes up to look at the balcony and there is no killer, no body, no blood. Apparently it was one of those super quick, super tidy murders.

A cop takes SMG home, and is a total dick disbelieving her. He also takes a back alley and then stops to help a motorist with some car trouble. Surprise! the motorist is actually the murderer, a fisherman with a hook, and SMG is locked in the back of a cop car. She manages to escape from the car, but the hook killer follows her. She flees to her sister’s dress store. Then the hook killer murders both her AND her sister.

JLH figures out that David Egan accidentally killed his girlfriend in a car accident about a year before they hit a guy, and she assumes that the person after them is Ben Willis, the dead girlfriend’s father. This whole thing is a bit convoluted. At this point I almost hope it is Freddie, since at least there’s more of an emotional connection there than “the father of a girl who was accidentally killed by a guy in a car nearby where these people accidentally maybe killed a different guy with a car or something”.

She tracks down Freddie Prinze Jr. and sums up who she thinks the killer is, and he says “That’s crazy.” I agree! Then she realizes the boat is called “Billy Blue” and assumes he’s the killer. She runs away and then gets on the boat of the REAL killer, who is in fact, the crazy father of the girl. Then there’s a fairly typical Final Girl/Killer chase scene. Only this time, the final girl doesn’t win by her own ingenuity, she wins by being rescued by Freddie Prinze Jr., which is less satisfying.

The killer dies, but doesn’t really, all to set up the sequel!

It’s almost worth watching, just to see how hook obsessed it is. They’re always talking about the hook-handed psycho of urban legend, the killer kills with hooks, Freddie Prinze Jr. and the killer fight each other, each using a hook as a weapon. In the end, the killer even loses a hand, so that in the future, he can literally have a hook for a hand, and won’t have to carry one with him.

Scream was a classic. This one? Not so much.

Catch up on past installments:
Halloween (1978)
The Amityville Horror (1979)
The Last Exorcism
Friday the 13th (1980)
Scream 4
Scream 3
Freddy Vs. Jason
Scream 2
Scream
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan

You may recall, we broke the story about Enviro-bear the game back in 2009.

As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!

Remember last time, when I was complaining that [...]]]> Did you really think Halloween would come and go without me busting out a very special holiday edition YNTE Horror Night for the film that started them all? Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you: Halloween.

As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!

Remember last time, when I was complaining that some films, no matter how important they are to their genre, just do not stand the test of time? Well, some films, 30+ years later, are still awesome. This is one of those films, but it takes a while to get there.

The movie starts off with a First Person POV scene of someone looking through the windows of a house. Inside we see a young babysitter, who instead of watching the child is having SEX WITH A MAN. The viewpoint character puts on a mask and then proceeds to stab her several times with a kitchen knife. The camera angle switches and we see that the murderer is a little boy in a clown costume. It’s revealed that this is Michael Myers, and he just murdered his sister.

Next, we meet Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence, who, 15 years later, is on his way to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium with a nurse who he is training to be Michael’s new caretaker. Apparently there has been some sort of breakout, and the inmates at the asylum are all running loose. One of the crazies, presumably Michael, steals their car, leaving Loomis outside in the rain. Loomis babbles about how “the Evil” is gone for a bit; then he abandons the nurse in the mud.

We now meet Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her young friend, Tommy, who she will be babysitting later that night. The walk by the old Myers house which Tommy calls the “spook house”. We see an eerie shadow within the house. Michael pops out of the house as Laurie walks away and creepily stares at her for a very long shot.

Laurie heads to school, but Michael follows her; we once again see him staring at her, and this time we see his signature dark blue/grey jumpsuit, and white spraypainted mask. Then, he goes and stalks Tommy for a bit. The majority of the beginning of this movie is just him looking at people, and while it does get a bit old, it is creepy as shit.

We meet a couple of Laurie’s friends. It becomes very clear that Laurie is the quiet bookish one, and her friends are the drug using slacker whores who are not long for this world. Michael stalks them in a car. Loomis yells about Evil being loose to anyone who will listen.

Eventually Laurie heads off to babysit. on the way she smokes a cigarette with her buddy. Normally this would doom her to death, but she coughs a lot, showing its not her thing. Loomis runs into the sheriff, who is investigating a break in at the hardware store, where the only thing stolen were masks and knives. I wonder who stole them?

Loomis and the sheriff go to the old abandoned Meyers house. Loomis tells some more stories about how Michael is PURE EVIL. We get it, dude. He also decides that the best course of action for him to take will be to wait alone in the haunted house, and tell as few people as possible about the murderer.

We cut back to Laurie, who is mow babysitting. She is reading a book to Tommy. He declares that he doesn’t like books anymore and pulls out his secret stash of magazines from under the couch that his mom didn’t want him to have. But as awesome as it would be to see the scene where Tommy shows the babysitter his porn, it turns out that these are just comic books – comic books with such awesome names as “Lazer Man”, “Neutron Man”, and “Tarantula Man”.

Laurie’s friend calls and apparently has set her up with a date for homecoming. Tommy sees Michael, who is simultaneously stalking just about everyone. Laurie’s phone friend spills something on herself, so she takes off all her clothes. We know how this ends! She puts on a shirt, which delays her fate, but she’s still pantsless, so her death is pretty inevitable. Then she doubles down, forcing Laurie to watch the kid she was supposed to be watching so that she can then have sex with her boyfriend. Before she gets the chance to sex her man, though, Michael strangles her. This movie took almost an hour for the first death (but it picks up from here).

Two more “teenagers” show up (I use the air quotes, because everyone in this movie looks at least 35). They find the house mysteriously empty (because no-pants is dead) and have sexual relations with one another. On screen sex, plus exposed breasts, it all means that things are not going to go well for these two.

The guy goes downstairs to get a beer, and Michael lifts him up and stabs him to a wall. Then there’s a really iconic shot of Michael just standing there staring at the guy, sort of tilting his head. Shots like this are what really drove the movie to iconic status.

Michael covers himself with a bedsheet to disguise his identity, then goes upstairs to murder the girl. She calls Laurie, but then Michael strangles her with a phone cord. History lesson for the kiddos: phones used to have cords.

Laurie, after receiving the strange call, heads across the street to check it out. She finds her friends dead and then Michael pops out from behind her and makes with the stabbing. Since Jamie Lee was the last girl though, and she’s been pretty chaste, she manages to get away. She runs back across the street, but Michael follows. She manages to grab a knitting needle and stab him in the throat. He falls down, and Laurie is relieved, but he gets back up.

Instead of fleeing the house or doing something useful to defend herself, she runs upstairs and hides in a closet, then screams. Michael finds her. She pokes him with a coathanger, then he drops his knife and she stabs him with it. He “dies” again.

Laurie sends the kids away by themselves to go to the neighbors’ house and call the police. Loomis sees screaming children and goes to investigate. Michael gets up and is about to get Laurie for real, but Loomis shoots him several times and he falls out a window. Loomis looks out the window and see’s Michael’s lifeless corpse below. Dead for real this time!

Loomis goes to comfort Laurie for a bit and then looks back out the window, and the “corpse” is gone! Michael is gone! Almost as though there will be a long series of sequels!

So, did the movie hold up? Yes and no. The way movies are paced has changed significantly in the intervening years, to the point that an hour of nothing happening is really hard to watch. But the last half hour? Where Michael is doing his murdering? Brilliant. Almost no special effects, its all just framing and composition – old fashioned filmmaking. There’s one scene where Laurie is standing in front of a dark background, and its lit in such a way that Michael slowly moves forward and just his mask is lit behind her. Creepy as shit! Pretty much every aspect of the last half hour of this movie has been copied a ton of times since, even down to the fact that you never seen one story houses in slasher flicks anymore. That stems from here. Even set design was influenced by this film!

So its worth a watch, but if you fast forward the early bits, I won’t blame you.

Catch up on past installments:
The Amityville Horror (1979)
The Last Exorcism
Friday the 13th (1980)
Scream 4
Scream 3
Freddy Vs. Jason
Scream 2
Scream
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan