Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

I tried watching this movie a few months ago and was promptly possessed by the demon of boredom, who forced unholy yawns out of my unhinged jaw and shouted profane insults at the screen from time to time (mostly "You suck!" and "Get interesting, you fucker!"). After a successful nap exorcism, I have returned, triumphant, to conquer this film once and for all.

Deliver Us From Evil 
Year released: 2014
Starring: Eric "Black Hawk Down" Bana, that Scottish guy who always plays an emaciated creep, Olivia Munn, some other people.
Directed by: The guy who did Sinister, which I quite liked.
Based on the book by Ralph Sarchie, retired NYPD, whose book of the same title was a collection of case files, not all of which I agreed with or even necessarily believed in, but which were fun to read.

And really, if this thing didn't star Eric Bana, a man I've lusted after since 2001, I probably wouldn't be giving it a second chance.

So, here we are in Iraq, 2010, because as we all know, all of the evil in the world is conveniently located in Iraq and its neighboring Muslim countries, because all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslim and HezbollahBokoHaremalQaeda blahblahblah Thanks Obama, etc etc etc. Anyway, some soldiery guys wander into a cave and get attacked by something we can't see whilst staring at a wall inscribed with Arabic script which we also can't see.

Fast forward three years and now we're in Noo Yawk.
Look, I have proof:

Is anyone really welcome in The Bronx?

So after a tough night delivering dead baby carcasses to the county coroner, Ralph and his partner amble over to the Bronx Zoo and stupidly wander into the lion paddock in search of a Juggalo. Apparently, this is the scene that inspired the equally stupid scene in Jurassic World where our dubious heroes wander into the Indominus Rex paddock. Anywho, they arrest some schized out scab-bag playing in the dirt and arrest her, figuring she's whacked to the gills on drugs. Some hot, sweaty, rugged young Jesuit shows up and claims responsibility for her. Turns out she tossed her toddler into the lion pit earlier that day and may have been prompted to do so by some dude named Santino, aka the Juggalo, aka, the Scottish guy who always plays a creep, aka one of the soldiers who was in Iraq.

Slip in some sunsplashed footage of Ralph and his impossibly beautiful wife watching their angelic daughter play soccer, and then back to the precinct.

Ralph and his Red Sox loving, one-liner chucking pahd'neh respond to a call about strange noises in a house. The couple who live there don't speak English so their kid translates.

Also, Ralph doesn't like cats. Which makes Ralph an asshole in my opinion, but whatever.

Anyway, lets go down to the spooky, stinky basement where all the scary noises seem to be coming from, and hey there's no lights down there and I know what lets do! Let's rip off the scene from John Carpenter's The Fog and have a corpse plop out of the wall behind Ralph and go BOOGA BOOGA! It's a nice, fetid, ripeass corpse too, swollen with decay and bursting with blowflies who rip out of its eyeballs and abdomen and looks really icky.  Turns out he's one of the guys from the pre-credit sequence who was down dicking around in an Iraqi cave looking for weapons of mass destruction or some such shit.

Oh look, Ralph's hatred of cats is finally personified:

This is found nailed to the wall of Dead Fly Guy's abandoned apartment, which is strewn with garbage, religious paraphernalia and a really pissed off doberman which is thrown into our face as a cheap jumpscare.

Ralph goes home, finds out his wife is pregnant and none too happy about his job. Also, his goldfish aren't too happy with the newest addition to the tank and, as Ralph watches in horror, they go piranha all over its ass and rip it to shreds. Cue ominous, foreboding music: the demons are coming for Ralph and his sugar cookie family.

So there's one more soldier left from Iraq that Ralph and his partner think may be the one responsible for the deaths. Meanwhile, Ralph goes home and yells at his wife and kid. Ralph moseys on back to the scene of a domestic dispute, where the first soldier (not the blowfly guy and not the Scottish creep) beat the shit out of his wife, stabbed Ralph and took off for parts unknown. Ralph finds this scrawled all over the guys wall:

What does it mean? Who knows and who cares? But suddenly, that stuffed owl toy that his wife bought for their daughter inexplicably becomes a catalyst for lots of evil devil Satan things. Shit, guess I'd better throw out those twenty year old troll dolls on my bookshelf before the movie Troll Hunter comes to life and my life is invaded by farting mountain trolls.

Finally, Ralph finds the videotape from the trios excursion into that Iraqi cave and makes a terrible discovery:

Santino has become the lead singer of Gorgoroth!

Ralph hasn't learned jack shit from his experience in the lions den. He bumbles off to the loony bin to visit Miss Scabby VonDroolFace, hoping she'll know where Santino is. In the process he pulls up an image of the Latin graffiti he found and brilliantly sticks his arm between the bars of her cell, hoping she'll have a reaction to the sight. And she does. And fucking bites his arm. Duh.

At this point, I feel I must point out the fact that none of this shit happened in the book, so I'm not entirely sure that the "based on a true story" shit is legit here.

Anyway, blahblahblah, crazy girl escapes, yaddayaddayadda, Santino kidnaps Ralph's wife and kid, blahblahblah exorcism scene, yakyakyak everyone is saved and God wins and Ralph's wife pops out another kid and they all live happily ever after, the end. Oh, and they get rid of that stupid demonic stuffed owl toy, the end.

The final verdict: forty minutes longer than it needed to be, a half step up from the cornball efforts of Insidious and The Conjuring, and not at all frightening. Cartoonish, childish and a waste of Bana's talent. This isn't even a movie, it's just another episode in the neverending show that is BluePrint Horror, following the same, tired out formula that just about every major horror release in the last 10 years have followed to the proverbial T.

This isn't Van Gogh, guys. It's a cheap Paint-By-Numbers.

The Black Hope Horror

Ghosts. That one word has the ability to conjure a multitude of images; long abandoned houses shrouded in cobwebs, rotting floorboards creaking underfoot, the skeletal branches of dead trees scraping the dark sky above. In such places do the sheeted dead wander for all eternity, loudly lamenting their untimely demise. Haunted houses are shunned even by the lowliest of creatures and stand forlorn and avoided, crumbling into dust and seeding the ground below with despair.

Right? Well, no, not always.

In 1982, Mr. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (aka Tobe Hooper) teamed up with the Willie Wonka of summer blockbusters (aka Steven Spielberg) and birthed Poltergeist, a modern American ghost story which turned the genre on its head. Tobe and Steve gutted the spooky old mansion on the edge of town and turned it into a sprawling suburban planned community in the sunny valleys of southern California. Christened “Cuesta Verde” (which either means “green slope” or “cheap undocumented immigrant labor hired from the Home Depot parking lot”) the lofty subdivision boasted a stunningly vanilla population of upper middle class Republican yuppies whose most pressing problem is trying to decide between eggshell or ecru paint for the kitchen. Seriously, if you soaked an entire loaf of Wonder in a vat of Clorox, you couldn’t get any more whitebread than this setting. Despite its title, nothing about Poltergeist suggests ghosts. Brand spanking new housing developments can’t possibly house ghosts, nor can a mediocre family unit be plagued by a haunting that wasn’t inherited by a family curse born of madness and/or affiliations with Satan. That was pretty much the golden rule of ghost movies, until Poltergeist redefined the genre.


The film, of course, was a hit and has since become legend in the annals of horror history. It was an astonishingly original concept, genuinely frightening and sufficiently gory, but it also appealed to non-horror fans by keeping its focus on the bonds of family and not killing off a single character. Not even the damn dog.

However, the malevolent spirits depicted in the film seemed to take on a life (excuse the pun) of their own, and whispers of a Poltergeist curse began to circulate. Dominique Dunne was murdered not long after the movie was released. Little Heather O’Rourke succumbed to septic shock at the age of 12. A few other cast members died of old age, which is hardly shocking. Most people dismiss the various misfortunes as pure coincidence, and I’m inclined to agree with them. But if art imitates life, then perhaps the reverse is also true.

Just outside of Houston, Texas is a sprawling planned community called Newport. Erected in the late 70s, its large, shiny new houses and manicured lawns attracted the reasonably well off, who purchased their dream homes with the full intention of staying put, visions of happy golden years and champagne colored Cadillacs parked in the driveway doubtlessly dancing in their heads. Sam and Judith Haney even began making plans to construct a swimming pool in their back yard, a surefire way to beat the heat in the sweltering Texas temperatures. But before they could so much as break the sod with a shovel, a neighbor stopped by to talk with them. Seems he’d heard about their swimming pool plans and just casually wanted to let them know, by the way, no big deal, that there’s a couple of bodies buried in their back yard.

Wait, what? No way. No way in HELL, as a matter of fact. This is a brand new neighborhood, clean and white and sporting a hefty price tag. Why would there be dead bodies randomly buried beneath the pristine lawns? Thinking it was a piss poor joke, the Haneys started plowing up the yard with a backhoe. Sure enough, six feet down, they broke through two pinewood coffins, both bearing skeletal remains that had lain there for so long that they crumbled into dust when touched. The county coroner conducted an official exhumation and discovered that the remains were those of Betty and Charlie Thomas, former slaves who had been buried in a potters field in the 1930s and forgotten. Betty’s skeletal hand still bore her wedding bands, which were given to Judith Haney.

Betty Thomas

Instead of tossing the bones aside and continuing on with their swimming pool plans, the Haney's decided to rebury the deceased couple in their own backyard out of respect, genuinely sickened by the idea that they had desecrated someone’s burial site. But their good intentions were simply the first stone set in the proverbial road to hell. Charlie and Betty were awake, and they were none too pleased at having their rest disturbed.

Indeed, the residents of the community soon realized that it wasn’t just Charlie and Betty. The exclusive neighborhood of Newport had once been called Black Hope Cemetery, and no one had bothered to relocate the bodies before construction had begun. Soon, other residents began noticing eerie occurrences in their formerly peaceful homes. Coffin shaped sinkholes began to appear in their gardens, refusing to be filled in. Trees and flowers planted by well meaning ladies withered and died, no matter the amount of fertilizer shoveled over their roots. It was as if the soil itself was poisoned, refusing to sustain new life where death had been sown. The putrid stench of decomposition fouled the halls and rooms of many a home, and whispered voices could be heard by longtime residents and visiting relatives alike. Electrical appliances began to run even when they weren’t plugged in. Toilets flushed by themselves. Swarms of ants and poisonous snakes invaded the neighborhood in the wake of freak, isolated storms. Family pets not only died, but seemed to go insane: birds pecking their young to death, cats birthing horribly deformed kittens. The feeling that something was terribly wrong began to take over en masse.

Infuriated that they had not been told that they were living on top of a cemetery, the Haneys and another neighborhood family, the Williams, sued the site developers for mental anguish. They lost their case and the resulting legal fees forced them into bankruptcy. The legal system blandly informed them that without proof of a cemetery, they were literally shit out of luck. Oh, and Texas forbids the digging up of graves, which was just the shit frosting on the Catch 22 Cake. It was at this point that resident Jean Williams got righteously pissed, picked up a shovel and started digging up her own yard, determined to provide an actual body if that was what it took. But, after turning over only a few shovelfuls of dirt, Jean started feeling sick. She handed the shovel to her daughter Tina and went inside to lay down. Tina picked up where her mother had left off. Half an hour later, she too was feeling sick. Two days later, Tina was dead, having suffered a massive heart attack at the age of 30. She’d had no health problems prior to her death, and no history of heart disease. It was not the only tragedy the Williams had experienced. Prior to Tina’s sudden and unexpected death, 6 members of their immediate family had been diagnosed with rare and pernicious forms of cancer. Three of them died within a six month period.

Dark specters were seen hovering over sleeping occupants. The whispering voices and teleportation of objects continued. The Haney's and the Williams, however, had had enough, They sold their homes and got the fuck outta Dodge, never to return. The housing community itself still stands and remains inhabited, however. And now, thirty years later, there's even a shitty remake of Poltergeist, the review for which can be read HERE. The Hollywood Remake Machine, much like the vengeance of the dead, cannot be stopped.

Notice I never stated that Poltergeist was based on the Black Hope Curse. I have no idea if it was or not. Other influences for the film may possibly include the Popper Poltergeist of 1958, Denver’s Cheesman Park and the Amityville Horror. The timing of events in Texas is also a tad too close, but Hooper – a native Texan – might have heard the rumors. Who knows? Who cares? A modern housing community, a freshly dug swimming pool, an abandoned graveyard, etc. It is, if nothing else, a hell of a coincidence. Perhaps with the Williams and the Haneys fled, the desecrated residents of Black Hope reached west, sensing their sad plight turned villain in a horror film franchise.

Or maybe the dead just want you to know that they are not the stereotypical trapped souls we’ve been taught to think they are, restricted to one type of locale. They are not confined to gothic Victorian mansions, weedy cemeteries or abandoned funeral homes. They’re everywhere. Supermarkets, coffee houses, brand new subdivisions. The age of the building doesn’t matter. The land it’s built on, however, is a different story. Who knows who or what was there a hundred years ago, or who or what might be there still, buried and forgotten?

Poltergeist (2015)

Poltergeist: the 2015 reboot/reimagining/contemporary remake of the classic 1982 film.

Starring: half the cast of Mad Men, the obligatory sour-faced teenage girl, the two sweet-as-cherry-pie son and daughter who haven't hit puberty yet, a mediocre willow tree, no dog, a clown doll that no one in their right mind would buy for their kid and the Ghost House logo which immediately killed any trace of hope left clinging to the walls of my soul.

And the parents don't even smoke pot.
Can I have some? I'm gonna need it.

And the first jumpscare is devoted to: a squirrel.
Sorry, bad timing on your part, movie. I narrowly avoided being murdered by a squirrel just three days ago, when I foolishly lifted the lid of a public trash can in which to stash my fetid garbage, when out of the darkness screamed a brown fuzzy ball of outrage, whose tiny back paws launched themselves off of the springboard of my chest and whose bushy tail of impending doom gave the side of my face a damn good swat before it disappeared into the trees and proceeded to violently insult me with a series of barks, chuffs and chitters.

Oh hey, thanks movie. Thanks for reinforcing the stereotype that all retail wage slaves are dead-eyed, gum-chomping bags full of hate with a void where their personalities should be.

Alright so, The McPrecious Family moves into their new house.
Weird shit starts happening.

Only youngest son Griffin and youngest daughter Madison see what's happening. Maddie is okay with it, Griffin is freaked out. Their parents are too busy to listen to their kids and daughter Kendra is, like, totally not even, ya know? Setting mood? Nah, fuck that. Creating a strong sense of the family bond? Shit yo, we got things to do. So 30 minutes into the story (or the shallow kiddie pool henceforth to be known as The Story) the parents head out to a dinner party where they are told that their new house sits atop an old graveyard, the kids are left home with Kendra the built in babysitter and a bigass storm descends over the neighborhood - a neighborhood where zero time has been spent building up a sense of community and feels about as lived-in as a Levitz display.

Alright so here come the shit splattering against that proverbial fan.

Kendra's in the kitchen, getting pulled down into a bubbly puddle of what looks like poppyseed streudel filling. Little Grif has just evaded strangulation by clown doll and is now being ripped out of the house by a tree branch which looks a little too much like Raimi's last attempt at a tree branch fondling for comfort. Carol Anne uh Maddie has walked serenely into her bedroom closet and descended into Hell, without benefit of a wind machine. Anticlimactic, to say the least. The build-up of suspense? The pay-off moment in an explosion of danger, fear and turmoil? Nah, who needs it!

 And here come mom and dad, confused but not traumatized. In general, the whole family seems only slightly agitated by the fact that their daughter is now a static ghost on the other side of the television screen. How will they fit saving her into their busy schedule of racquet ball and Rotary?

44 minutes and the paranormal investigating team sets up shop in the Freeling Bowen home, where nothing at all is happening. Oh, except for the chair that slams itself against the wall into splinters in reaction to an arrogant jerkwad camera mans utter failure to be impressed by the lack of activity present. Would that it had been Brian Harnois. Boozy dad starts barfing up grave dirt and worms, which I suppose will have to suffice in place of an exploding piece of maggoty chicken and a dude ripping his face off.

"Are we gonna die of boredom, sis?"

One hour in. Doop-de-doo, humma humma humma, *various fart noises* Bored. BORED boredboredboredbored, lalala, dipty doodaloo, booger. Yawn. yakyakyak, oh hey look, Tangina Barrons and Quint from Jaws had a baby and instead of sharks, he hunts ghosts. Hey chiefy, we're gonna need a bigger Ouija board. Talky talk talker...backstory blahblahblah, christ DO SOMETHING! Is anything gonna happen EVER?! I've spent more time wringing my hands and being stressed out over a goddamned TOOTHPASTE commercial! Oh my GOD, can the cavity demons be overcome and perhaps destroyed forever? WILL the extra long handle REALLY reach all of the back molars, delivering a deep clean you can actually feel?

Jesus. One hour and nine minutes later and they're still just standing around talking, setting up equipment, giving us backstory material that would be worth more in a remnant bin, using drone technology to explore the mouth of Hell...yes, you heard me right. Drone camera reveals a ghost reality draped over the physical one, where bald, slimy, gray beings flail and writhe. Little brother Griffin, driven by a guilty conscience, plunges into the closet void in search of his sister. Ahab spouts some pseudo-priesty stuff. The kids come back through the portal in the ceiling and all seems well, and big sis gets a "This House Is Clean!" ringtone for her new iPhone and all is...oh. We're not going to wait the standard week or so to lull us into a false sense of security? We're gonna start this shit all over again in the fucking driveway?

Maddie gets sucked back into the house, up the stairs and teeters precariously at the edge of the sinister closet while Mom halfheartedly tries to yank her back. Frankly, if she had even a split second thought of: "Oh fuck it, let the brat go and I can start over in Berkeley as a slam poet in a coffee house." I wouldn't have blamed her. Mr. TV Psychic throws himself into the closet to try and guide the dead to the light, seeing this as his last chance to redeem himself after years of faking it for ratings. The house starts imploding, the ground starts vomiting up CGI cadavers covered in goo and...this takes place in Illinois? Why?

The End

Lame.

Jurassic World

 Jurassic World (2015)

AKA: Jurassic Park 4, Jurassic Park reboot, Jurassic Park for Dummies, One Big Pile of Shit.

Starring: Ron Howard's daughter, a bunch of token minorities who may as well be wrapped in cellophane and stamped with a USDA grade, Chris Pratt (whoever the hell he is), Vincent D'Onofrio, a bunch of dinosaurs, that Asian guy who was in the first movie, that chick who played Bryce Dallas Howard's sister in The Village and also plays her sister here, an abandoned Six Flags in Florida and some other people.

Synopsis: The first movie, except with a lot more people and a chick playing John Hammond.

Chris Pratt is supposed to be our hero. His name is Owen. He's a muscly, flippant badass who has become the Velociraptors Alpha and trained them to be his bitches. His macho posing is about 50 years out of date and his brand of action hero (i.e. never wrong, never misses, always gets the girl) comes off as a caricature. Alan Grant, he ain't. Not even Hugh Grant. Not even Eddie Grant.

Ian Malcolm with flare.

Claire with Flare.

The redhead over there is Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays uptight Claire, the super corporate director of Jurassic World. She's endearingly bumbling and stammeringly nervous around Owen and can't do anything right. Despite her bungle through the jungle, her immaculate white suit stays spotless. She wants to be a badass, but like, she's just a girl! But hey, Owen is her boyfriend, so he can do the badassing.

Lex & Tim

 Those are the kids, Zach and Gray. I don't know for sure which one is which and I don't care. Their parents are getting divorced, so they're sent off to Jurassic World while mom and dad hash out the legal shit. Luckily, mom's sister is the totally inept Claire, who shoves the kids off on her cell phone addicted assistant who seems to have groomed herself in the image of Sofie Fatale. The younger kid is whiny, the older kid is hormonally

Zach & Gray

assholish. Of course they wander off where they're not supposed to and get their stupid asses endangered almost immediately.

Indominus

This is the Indominus Rex, a genetically engineered monster which is a combination of a T-rex and a Velociraptor. We're not supposed to know it's part Velociraptor until the twist ending, but it very obviously looks like a Velociraptor.
It's supposed to be scarier than the T-rex.
It isn't.

Spiny

Nothing has yet topped Jurassic Park 3's Spinosaurus.

Apparently I-rex's supreme power is draining all of the Smart out of anyone who come within a five mile radius, none of whom stop to think for one mutherfucking second that its GPS might have simply malfunctioned before they wander into it's lair. Why they didn't strip naked and roll around in a panful of beef gravy beforehand eludes me.

My kingdom for cranial kinesis, a quadrate bone and lots of hinge joints.

I hated this movie. My mom hated this movie. This wasn't even a movie, it was Jurassic Park post soul-removal with extra cheese. As a eulogy for Sir Richard Attenborough, it's an insult. I mean, I knew it was going to suck, but I thought it might at least be fun to watch for the dinosaurs. It's not. Seeing the Velociraptors tamed and cowed in the presence of a mere man - and a douchey one at that - was akin to seeing Cindy Lou Who sodomized by the Grinch. Indominus was a severe letdown: I was expecting Godzilla and got Pikachu. And that final nod between T-Rex and Blue the 'raptor? What the fuck was that? Jurassic Casablanca? Was T-Rex receiving social etiquette training? It's kinda hard to convince me that this movie wants us to denounce the slick, shiny, corporatized process of nature into an accessible, danger-free toy when this whole goddamned movie is a slick, shiny, corporatized process of nature into an accessible, danger-free toy. When the pterodactyls started dive bombing the tourists, my mom yelled "EAT THE RICH!" at the screen.

There is nothing here worth recommending, in case you somehow missed the subtle juxtapositioning of the screenshots I've arranged here from Jurassic Park '92 and Jurassic World '15.

Lex and Tim

Owen and Claire

Jurassic Park

Jurassic World

I can't even get enthused enough to rip this movie a more ragged and bloodier asshole than I already have. I'm too disappointed. What next, a reboot of The Banana Splits starring Justin Bieber as Drooper and Lindsay Lohan as Snork?

I know what lets do - Part 2

Please to be reading another list of the best and most quality MST3K one-liners ever uttered, won't we?


#1 -  Episode #309, The Amazing Colossal Man

A chickenguts private pesters Colonel Glen Manning with small talk as the countdown for the detonation of a newfangled bomb continues.
Private: "Sir, can we smoke?"
Joel: "I don't care if you burst into flames." 

#2 - Episode #418, Attack of the (the) Eye Creatures

Crow, upon having considered the ramifications of a hostile takeover by the Eye Creatures from another planet.
"So what are they gonna do? Stare at us to death?"

#3 - Episode #1007, Track of the Moon Beast

After having been knocked to the ground by her pending boyfriend SuperPaul, who has saved her from being struck by a Moon Rock (oh wow!), peroxided dumbbell Kathy gets to her feet dreamily exclaiming: "What happened?!"
Servo: "She gets up off the ground saying 'What happened?' a LOT."

#4 - Episode #819, Invasion of the Neptune Men

A nuclear power plant explodes, sending up a humungous mushroom cloud over Japan.
Mike: "I suppose Rachel Carson's gonna bitch about this, now."

#5 - Episode #414, Tormented

Tom Stewart (to 8 year old Sandy): "From now on, you're the other woman in my life."
Joel: "Put her down, Jerry Lee!"

#6 - Episode #501, Warrior of the Lost World

Crow, upon being forced to watch a kissing spree between gorgeous Persis Khambatta and the mush-mouthed, totally unlikable Warrior of the aforementioned Lost World.
"Ugh! Just drape a piece of liver over her face, it will have the same effect!"

#7 - Episode #803, The Mole People

#8 - Episode #812, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living & Became Mixed-Up Zombies

A pseudo tribal ritual dance led by white African ladies-in-waiting who are Inuit and Swedish and in whiteface breaks out and Servo catches boogie fever.
Servo: "Married to my donkey! He's my favorite honky!"

#9 - Episode #1006, Boggy Creek 2: The Legend Continues

Upon glimpsing the legendary Boggy Creek Creature for the first time:
Mike Nelson: Ted Nugent?
Crow T. Robot: Slash?
Tom Servo: Rob Zombie?
Mike Nelson: Cher?
Tom Servo: Yeah, Cher.

#10 - Episode #311, It Conquered The World

The Sweatiest Movies Ever Made

Omg, hot Hot HOT. Hot as balls, hotter than the tightest wrinkle in Satan's spinchter, hotter than a pile of pigshit on the fucking equator, did somebody stuff me inside of a Twinkie and try to microwave me, I'm dying I'm dying, I am in the prison camp of the Sweat Soup Nazi, drowning in an outhouse latrine full of tar and lava and Elmer's glue, I'm drowning in my own sweat, I feel like a two hundred pound snail nailed to a salt flat, bologna skin splitting open, gross gross gross.
It's really hot. I'm dying.

There is nothing to do here in Rhode Island on this sullen July afternoon with temps in the 90s and the humidity hanging precariously between "Wrestler's Wet Fart" and "Spoiled Lunchmeat" except drink beer, drink more beer and watch it all run back out of your pores again. Now all of the beer is gone and my faux leather computer chair feels like a kiddie pool. So may as well write another article.

The Sweatiest Horror Movies Ever Made!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Summer in Texas. The swimming hole has dried up and blown away, the shimmer of gasoline lies across the highways like thickly coiled snakes and the barbecue pits churn out their carcinogen pungent fumes. No breeze, no rain, nothing to wash away the coppery stink of dried blood smeared all over the floorboards of the ancient farmhouse stashed back in God's country, a house that has never seen an A/C unit or even a Chinese box fan. 

The environment was humid and the cast and crew found conditions tough; temperatures peaked at 110 on July 26. Hansen later recalled, "It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. 

Throw in actual animal bones, real blood and rotting skin and can you even imagine how horrible that must have smelled? Like the inside of a bloody root canal. Like a meat carnival in a deep fryer. Like a hobo's underpants after a Taco Bell dumpster raid. 

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

July 4th - Louisville, Kentucky. Ugh, just the thought of the deep south in the summer conjures images of giant sweating cockroaches, rivers of gluey sweat and the ripe tang of BO rising up from the ground along with the dead. And acid rainstorm steams things up and pretty soon the muddy ground is mixed with congealing blood, thick ash and ropes of intestines. Meanwhile, the entire cast starts getting soggy, leaking fluids from every orifice, getting ranker and more yellow-crusty as the movie melts into a slimy puddle of toxic waste.

Predator (1987)

The jungles of South America. No idea what time of year because there's only one time of year in the South American jungles, and that is Mutherfucking Hot As Balls. The commando unit led by AhNald are not only sweaty, they're covered in camo colored greasepaint and haven't bathed for days. Tiny versions of the jungle through which they wade are growing in their armpits and asscracks as they squelch along, undoubtedly all reeking like raw sausage and now covered with blood and entrails as well. And you know that shit isn't going to dry out anytime soon, not with the humidity index hovering around Blowfly Orgy. 

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Lost in the desert outside of California. Doesn't sound too bad, right? I mean, it's Cali-fucking-fornia, how far off can civilization be? Pretty fucking far, believe me. The desert is endless, baked hard and dry, bleached to the bone and mercilessly shimmering beneath the relentless eyes of the apocalyptic sun. It never rains and it's always eerily silent. Perfect place for a bunch of dirty cannibals with crusty, oozing, festering sores to hang out and be gross. They never bathe and it's always hot, so they've practically got a whole second skin made out of dried and redried sweat sitting on top of them like a neoprene suit, enclosing them like a bug chrysalis and sealing a miasma of atrocious odors safely for future archaeological discovery. They have electricity but don't bother to hook up the meat locker, preferring to let their chops season in the sun and stew in their own fetid juices. Literally.

Razorback (1984)

The Australian Outback: vast, barren and unforgiving. You can wander around for days out there and never see another human face. The only thing worse than that possibility is actually seeing a human face, especially the ones that belong to cave-dwelling kangaroo killing brothers Benny and Dicko, who dress like Mad Max rejects and whose clothes seem to be held together by sweatstains and spoiled food. Hard to believe anything smellier could live out there in the muck, but there's also a great big drooling hairy pig with tusks squealing around all over the place, shitting out body parts and wallowing in the filth steaming in the sun. It's difficult to tell the mud from the pigshit, the sweat from the slobber and the humans from the grunting, slovenly beasts.

And the winner is...

You're welcome.