54 More Days 'til Halloween!

Here. I made a list that nobody asked me to make, featuring films that not enough people have watched or even heard of, and which, in my humble and unasked for opinion, should be watched by everyone as the Halloween season approaches. Because you all spend too much time watching the same dull shit over and over again, every single year. Seriously, it's time to expand your fucking horizons. Instead of rewatching the entire Halloween franchise again, or the 647th installment of Paranormal Activity or whatever steaming pile of colorless crap that James Wan squats and squeezes out of his overkissed cinematic colon, dare to be different and try any of these instead.

(also, this will be a two part article because I am way too fucking lazy to do the whole thing in one shot. Look, I have a whole other life waiting for me on Pinterest, okay?)

Lake Mungo
Category: Ghosts
Blood & Guts: none, zero zilch
Synopsis: A fifteen year old girl drowns on a Christmas Day family outing. Has her ghost returned to haunt her grieving parents and brother? Believe me, you won't know for sure until the very last frame of the film. This genuinely eerie tale is impossible to predict. Don't even try it, just go with it.
Watch if you liked: The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Horseman, The Lovely Bones

The Void
Category: Interdimensional/Lovecraft/Demons
Blood & Guts: metric fucktons
Synopsis: A burned out hospital with a skeleton crew is surrounded by cultists and invaded by face-ripping, tentacled demons. Why? Because why the fuck not? A cop, his estranged nurse/wife, a gun-totin' militia man, his idiot son, a bitter intern, a pregnant teenager, her grandfather and a very reluctant junkie try to survive the utter, balls-out weirdness that erupts around them without warning. Absolutely batshit crazy 80s-esque homage to John Carpenter and several thousand other classic horror films.
Watch if you liked: John Carpenter's The Thing, Prince of Darkness, Hellraiser.

What We Do in the Shadows
Category: Vampires/Comedy
Blood & Guts: They're vampires, they don't put down towels.
Synopsis: Four ancient vampires allow a film crew to document their everyday activities. Much dark bidding on the internet ensues, culminating in the long-prophesied meeting between the vamps and The Beast, a terrifying ex-girlfriend of one of them. Also, no one eats Stu and werewolves are not swearwolves.
Watch if you liked: Dead Alive, Tucker and Dale VS. Evil, Deathgasm   

Hell Night
Category: Slasher. Much 80s. Very slutdrunk. 
Blood & Guts: A decent handful or two.
Synopsis: Frat house initiation, alcohol, stupid teens, haunted house, blahblahblah, deranged deformed killers, jiggly boobies, sexy undies, screaming, blahblahblah, the end. High energy, lots of fun, a cut above most of the formulaic slasher films of the time.
Watch if you liked: Prom Night, Slumber Party Massacre, The Initiation

Pontypool
Category: Zombies
Blood & Guts: Vomit up all of your internal organs in a high pressure jet, and you have this movie.
Synopsis: Certain words become infected, turning the English language into a virus that turns people into violent zombies. Survivors hole up in a remote Canadian radio station during a Valentine's Day blizzard and try to figure out what the actual fuck is going on.
Watch if you liked: 28 Days Later, The Bay, Night of the Living Dead

Deathgasm
Category: Heavy Metal Demons. Not for poseurs.
Blood & Guts: Okay, now fart out all of your internal organs in a high pressure jet whilst playing a sick black metal riff.
Synopsis: A loner metalhead finds a friend, starts a band and gets the girl. But only after he accidentally summons some nasty demons and turning the inhabitants of his small New Zealand town into possessy zombies.
Watch if you liked: What We Do in the Shadows, The Evil Dead, Until the Light Takes Us


The Banshee Chapter
Category: Interdimensional/Lovecraft/Demons
Blood & Guts: yeah, a bit here and there.
Synopsis: A guy disappears researching MKUltra and radio numbers stations. His hot British girlfriend tries to find out what happened to him and ends up with Jamie Gumb. Honestly, MKUltra is a subject matter that hasn't been used enough in horror films. And it should be. Because it was fucking real. And really fucking scary.
Watch if you liked: The Void, From Beyond

Haunter
Category: Ghosts/family friendly
Blood & Guts: Not much, and what is shown is pretty tame and fakey looking.
Synopsis: A teenage girl realizes she is living the same day over and over, and has been for a very long time. She also realizes she's dead. As is her entire family. And the super evil ghost who was responsible for their deaths is still in the house, and has killed before....and is plotting to kill again unless she can figure out a way to stop him. 
Watch if you liked: Triangle, The Others, The Pact

Lords of Salem
Category: Witches/Satan
Blood & Guts: Surprisingly little, considering this is a Rob Zombie film.
Synopsis: A former heroin addict doesn't realize that she's been targeted by an ancient coven of witches to bear the devil's child. Filmed in Salem, MA during a gorgeous autumn. Sheri Moon still can't act worth a shit, but as an homage to Stanley Kubrick and a vehicle for numerous horror movie icons, this is one of Zombie's more watchable films.  
Watch if you liked: Rosemary's Baby, Lair of the White Worm

The Pact
Category: Ghosts
Blood & Guts: not much
Synopsis: A young woman disappears inside her dead mother's house. Her sister comes to look for her and runs smack into a very pissed off ghost who wants her murder solved. Intensely frightening and quite original.  
Watch if you liked: The Changeling, Absentia, Lovely Molly

Some Guy Who Kills People
Category: Serial killer/Revenge/Comedy
Blood & Guts: A decent amount.
Synopsis: A 30 something loser who still lives with his bitchy mother wants revenge on the high school bullies who landed him in an asylum. And indeed, someone is killing them off one by one. However, a long lost daughter and a new girlfriend complicate things. Really funny, superbly acted by an ensemble cast of pros and boasting a strong, coherent story. 
Watch if you liked: Deathgasm, Behind the Mask: The Rise and Fall of Leslie Vernon 

 Frankenstein's Army
Category: Monsters/Mad Scientists
Blood & Guts: Holy SHIT!!!
Synopsis: Nazi's walk into a chamber of horrors, where some crazy mutherfucker has been turning dead human beings into killing machines. Literally! Like, zombies with propeller heads and drill bit mouths and land mine skulls and what the fucking FUCK is going on here with this crazyass shit?! 
Watch if you liked: Necromentia, Banshee Chapter


 



Splinter
Category: Monsters/Infection
Blood & Guts: yeah, some
Synopsis: A nerd, his improbably hot girlfriend, a thief and his trashy junkie girlfriend get stuck in a convenient store with a prickly parasite who turns its victims into hosts. Better than it has any right to be. 
Watch if you liked: Feast, Slither, The Ruins

Blood on the Highway
Category: Vampires/Comedy
Blood & Gore: The word "blood" is in the fucking title, what do you think?
Synopsis: A trio of friends are on their way to Burning Man Mr. Fire and are forced to do battle with trashy corporate vampires. If John Waters fucked the Blade franchise and shat out a baby, it would be this film. 
Watch if you liked: What We Do in the Shadows, Desperate Living, Feast

Harbinger Down

Well here we are again, "we" being Christine & myself. Once upon a time, Christine and I wrote horror movie reviews for pseudo-big deal websites. Now we're just embittered old bitches, yelling at kids to get off our lawns and griping about our back pain. But dammit, we still love horror movies. so we decided to close the distance between us and "hang out" via Facebook messenger. We can't share popcorn, or do each others hair, or swap nail polish, but we can still watch a movie and talk at the same time.


We had originally planned to do Deathgasm this time around, but ultimately decided to pick something that neither of us had seen yet. Besides, everyone knows that Deathgasm is flawlessly awesome, so what's the point?


So we scrolled through the possibilities on Netflix, sneered at the slim pickings and finally settled on Harbinger Down, mostly because Lance Henriksen. Notice I didn't say "because Lance Henriksen is in this movie." No, Lance Henriksen is his own stand-alone explanation. Lance Henriksen exists and existed in front of the camera while this movie was being filmed, thus shall we watch it, amen.

Me: wtf is Harbinger Down? Sounds familiar.

Christine: Is Lance Henriksen in that?

Me: yep

Christine: It's in my queue somewhere but I haven't watched it yet. Is it like Leviathan maybe? Deep Rising?

Me: Something about tentacles and sea monster mutants.

Christine: Want to try it?

Me: Sure! I'm always up for sea creatures.

Christine: Me too! And I like Lance. He probably dies in the first scene.



Fortunately, Lance does not die in the first scene. He's not even in the first scene. Instead, the film begins with a crippled spacecraft entering Earth's atmosphere, clearly in distress and helpless to stop as it zooms towards the frozen tundra below and splashes down into the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?


Oh yeah...


Turns out that this spacecraft is Russian, and is returning from...uh, somewhere, where they were fucking around with, uh, something. Something bad. Which they are now returning to Earth with. Oopski. Hey, did you know that the Russian word for "thing" is "вещь?" Somehow, "The Bewb" just doesn't carry the same amount of unknown menace as "The Thing." And there are no bewbs on display in either flick, so this is a moot point.


Heh. bewbs.

Anyway, at this point we jump ahead 30+ years and meet our present day cast. Sadie, a pouty little milkweed pod who is also the granddaughter of Harbinger Captain Lance Henriksen, whose actual name I forget because Sadie has an annoying habit of referring to him throughout the entire film as "Pop Pop." Seriously, how many girls over the age of 12 continue to refer to their grandfathers as "pop pop?" Along for the ride is Sadie's dickweed professor from an unnamed Ivy League University, who is determined to undermine Sadie's master thesis by taking all the credit and glory for himself. On board the Harbinger are the Inuit guy, the black guy, the ruggedly handsome guy, the tough and sexy Russian chick, the Really Big Guy and two tons of frozen crabmeat. Oh, and Sadie has brought along a Black Girl, so our minority buffet is set up and ready to go.



Sadie is supposed to be studying a pod of beluga whales, but she immediately discovers the remains of the long lost Russian spacecraft and convinces Pop Pop to let her haul it up onto the deck. Token Black Guy opines that this could be from Fuck You Shima. Dickweed Professor - who states that his name is Stephen Lick Me (well that's what it sounded like!) immediately takes over, filming the whole thing like Geraldo fucking Rivera. However, Pop Pop points out the universal "Finders Keepers" rule and Sadie claims the wreckage as her own, much to the miffiness of Dr. Lick Me, who is of the opinion that such things should not be approached all "hickety pickety." No really, he says "hickety pickety." I don't even know what the fuck that means. I've heard of "scattershot" and "haphazard" but "hickety pickety?" Maybe he meant "higgledy piggledy?" Oh who cares. Bottom line: Dr. Lick Me is a jerk and will undoubtedly die soon.

Me: Is that even a saying?
Christine: Hickety pickety? It's sweeping the nation as we speak.

Me: It's the new "bomb diggity."


Meanwhile, back in the mess hall (or, in this case, "mess shoebox") The Big Guy and the Ruggedly Handsome guy spend some time running interference on Dr. Lick Me so that Sadie and Tough Russian Girl can go take a look at the wreckage before anyone else can. And behind the guys, on a shelf, just hanging out, is a novelty drinking bird. And we have confirmed Alien reference sighting, I repeat: confirmed Alien reference. Miss Tough Sexy Russian makes a joke about being able to see Alaska from her house. Sarah Palin slam complete.


Christine: Is this awful or is it just me?

Me: It's...meh so far. I'll judge it by its monsters.

Christine: WHEN AND IF WE EVER SEE THEM!

Tissue from dead frozen astronaut is collected and examined. Sadie discovers something called "tardigrades" and Russian Girl translates something in Russian as water bears. Oh, they're the same thing. Wait, are we about to be attacked by water bears? But they're so cute! Look!


They look like microscopic Tusken Raiders mated with microscopic walruses and produced microscopic Hoover hand vacs! They're fucking adorable! I refuse to accept water bears as the enemy!


So anyway...Russian Girl has a wicked scar running down the side of her face and decides to bond with Black Girl, who has helpfully brought all of her cosmetics on board. See, she used to be a make-up artist but now she's a marine biologist so why the fuck would you bring all of your cosmetics onto the ship when you're studying beluga whales?! What does covering Russian Girl's scar have to do with anything? Who cares? And I call absolute bullshit here: ain't no way, no how that a black girl's foundation is going to conceal a scar on the face of the whitest white girl ever to blend in with a blizzard. Unless Maybelline turns out to be a mutated water bear deterrent, why are we watching this?!?!?!


Christine: This is kind of a rip off of The Thaw.

Me: Was The Thaw that Larry Fessenden flick?

Christine: No, you're thinking of The Last Winter, which is also very similar to this. All this global warming horror.


Suddenly, and for some reason, Dr. Lick Me gets infected. I'm not sure how, or when, maybe I blacked out when it happened and I missed it, but he suddenly starts wigging out, tearing his clothes off and turning red and spotty. Finally, the crew manages to wrestle him into a cabin before he can get his pants off, cuz nobody wants to see that. What we do see is the bad doctor's back suddenly sprouting three pus spewing appendages which proves my theory: Dr. Lick Me has become The Drizzle.

And Sadie's brilliant conclusion? "There seems to be an organism on this ship."

No shit, REALLY?!

So everyone has been exposed, no one is allowed to leave the ship and they risk contaminating the entire population if they return to the mainland. Is there an echo in here?


Christine: Soon they will tie someone to the fucking couch.

The cast then decides to reenact The X-Files episode "Ice" (Season 1, Episode 8, 1993, you're welcome) and the dog cage scene from The Thing, decide that liquid nitrogen worked in The Entity so why shouldn't it work here too, and finally Pop Pop Henriksen stumbles out into the hallway after watching a giant Red Lobster main course consume the Inuit and grimly announces: "We're gonna need a bigger bucket." Thank you, Chief Brody. Now show me the way to go home. 



The Scooby Doo gang heads in to confront the slithering hellspawn and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A CHESS MASTER VIDEO GAME IN THE RIGHT HAND CORNER!! I SAW THAT OH YES I DID! I couldn't grab a screen shot of it because my doohickey is done screwed up, but seriously! Go FFW through Harbinger Down on Netflix right now and check it out. Don't blink, or sneeze, or you'll miss it, but it is there. I shit you not.


And the black guy dies. Wow, sure didn't see that one coming. *eyeroll


Okay, so Tough Russian turns out to be Double Agent Russian and she's bound and determined to make beeg traable for Moose und Sqvuirrel. She was in on it the whole time, you see. Going undercover as a crabber...or maybe she had crabs and got confused about the assignment, I don't know. Anyway, she's blowing this popsicle stand and, oh yeah, by the way, she left bombs in the bilge, seeya! Wouldn't wanna be ya! Except oops, the monster sneaks up behind her and...


Me: Did she just get bum rushed by a mushroom?

Christine: OMFG


The monster sprouts a meat blossom, just like The Thing. It also has a very long lunchmeat like tongue appendage. Or - as Christine opined - a really big dick. It kills everybody, infects Lance and lolls about all slithery, looking like a cross between the Kothoga from The Relic and that giant maggot in Galaxy Of Terror. Except it doesn't rape anyone.

This is from Harbinger Down, right?

Christine: Of course it's a Xenomorph. Wait, no...
Me: GET TO THE CHOPPA! Oh wait...

Christine: You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Me: If the head comes off and grows legs, I will spank this movie. Hey, where's the black girl?

Christine: She died. It ate her head.

Me: She did? How the fuck did I miss that?



Another minority down. Sad dramatic reveals, final heroic gestures, schmaltzy inspirational pronouncements, yadda yadda, Sadie decides to crash the Harbinger into some stock footage of The Titanic, hence the title, and despite the fact that it's the middle of the night and she's dressed in all black, in the middle of a stormy ocean, a rescue helicopter manages to find her within 2 minutes of the crash. Yeah right.


Me: And her hair and makeup is still perfect.
Christine: Of course.
Me: Yeah yeah, and call her Ishmael.
Christine: And she freezes to death like Jack Torrance. But it's not dead! Harbinger Down 2!

Me: Harbinger Up?
Christine: Yes! There were a lot of film influences in there. Not much original.

Me: But Lance makes anything worth watching.
Christine: You are correct. If he hadn't been in it, it would be forgettable. It still might be! haha!

"Dude, what else is on?"

Allons Enfants

Syzygy

The term eclipse is derived from the ancient Greek noun έκλειψις (ékleipsis), from the verb εκλείπω (ekleípō), meaning "I cease to exist." It is a combination of the preposition εκ, εξ (ek, ex), meaning "out," and the verb λείπω (leípō), meaning "I am absent."

Tomorrow is Total Eclipse Day. Unfortunately, I live in Rhode Island and therefore will not be in the path of totality. I think we're getting 60% around about 2:47pm. I'll also be at work. Where there are no windows. And I can't just bop off outside to check out the sitch. I'm trying to tell myself "it's no big deal, I've seen Total Eclipse's before" but you know what, fuck my life. I always miss the fun stuff. 


So blahblahblah, clever segue, obligatory post about movies that feature an eclipse, you're welcome. Also, have fun at your fucking eclipse parties, you fuckers. Some of us have to work for a living.

#1 - Dolores Claiborne

I remember watching this on TV with a room full of male friends and one other girl. The Big Scene arrived: the full moon slides over the face of the sun like an eyelid closing for the last time. Tired hausfrau Dolores chooses this small window of dark time to do the unthinkable: murder her no-good drunken husband. She gets him drunk, she pisses him off and she goads him in into chasing her across the yard where lies within the overgrown summer thickets a deep, long dry well, yawning wide its dark mouth. She clears the hole, he doesn't. Down he goes, and there she stands, looking down on him as he screams. And both myself and the other girl in the room were cheering, fist-pumping, loudly wishing intense pain upon him as he dies. And the guys looked at us in horror, and asked us if we would do the same.

"Yes." we said. Because the scumbag dirtshit ambient scab had been molesting his own daughter, and would have graduated to the Woody Allen finishing school of Fucking Your Teenage Daughter had Dolores not stopped him. The bastard had it coming. 


#2 - Gerald's Game
"The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie...except in your mind. In there, it's still going on, isn't it?" 

Jessie, naked and handcuffed to the bed in her isolated summer home, has plenty of time to think about how exactly the fuck she ended up there. Her abysmal self esteem, which led her to agree to marry Prime Putz Steak Gerald can all be traced back to Dark Score Lake where, when she was ten, her father molested her during a solar eclipse. Now, some forty years later, Jessie is still waiting for the sun to come back out.


#3 - House of the Devil

Eclipse Checklist, circa 1985:
    •    Conjure Satan.
    •    Provide Satan with room and board until night of eclipse.
    •    Hire babysitter, preferably a pretty virgin.
    •    Make sure babysitter is brainwashed into ordering pizza.
    •    Make sure pizza place has Satan worshipping employee.
    •    Make sure Satan worshipping employee is scheduled to work on the night of the eclipse.
    •    Make sure to provide Satan worshipping employee with powerful drugs capable of knocking out a bull elephant.
    •    Make sure drugs look like cheese and pepperoni so the brainwashed babysitter will eat it.
    •    Change babysitter into white nightgown once she is unconscious.
    •    Tie her down to the floor and draw Satanic symbols all over her.
    •    Impregnate her with Satan's baby.
    •    Done.

#4 - Darkness
Sir Jorah Mormont moves to Spain and promptly loses his mind. Rogue from X-Men figures out that a looming Eclipse is going to usher in a whole new thing of evil, or something. Crap happens, everyone dies, the end.

#5 - The Mummy
"And he stretched forth his hand towards the Heavens, and there was darkness across the land of Egypt."

A bunch of stupid white people go fucking about in ancient Egyptian tombs and accidentally bring a mummy back to life. And not just any mummy, a really wicked magical one who has the power to bring about the Ten Plagues Of Egypt. Except, if I remember correctly, they only get around to seven of the plagues. Because apparently, frogs aren't scary enough to use as an effect in a horror movie. Still, this beats the shit out of Tom Cruise's sorryass reboot.


#6 - Ladyhawke
"Do you know that hawks and wolves mate for life? The Bishop didn't even leave us that...not even that."

I love this movie. I have always loved this movie. I will always love this movie. I give no fucks what you think of that. I forgive it its shitty 80s synth music. Cursed by a wicked priest, beautiful Isabeau is transformed into a hawk at dawn, and her lover Navarre into a wolf by night. There's a full solar eclipse on the way, which may be the only chance the doomed lovers have to breaking the spell. If you seriously cannot find something to love about this movie, you have a huge chunk of tar where your heart ought to be and I don't want to know you.

Boggy Reek

Film: Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues 

Directed by: Charles B. Pierce

Starring: The director, the directors son from his first marriage, the directors second wife, that girl who was always cast as a Native American in every movie she ever made except for this one, a guy in a Bigfoot suit and a cast of extras who would probably end up marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, VA.

I agree.

1985 saw the release of many a quality film: Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, The Color Purple, A Room With A View, The Goonies, Re-Animator, the list goes on. Released in December of that year, Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues, was not one of those quality films. It snuck in at the tail end of the year like a fart after a feast, unwelcome, enjoyed only by the deeply disturbed and politely ignored by everyone else.

Boggy Creek II was, in actuality, Boggy Creek III. But as Boggy Creek 2 (aka Return to Boggy Creek) was not directed by Charles B. Pierce, Chuck decided not to reference it in any way. Just as well since RTBG starred The Professor and Mary Ann of Gilligan's Island fame, and Dana Plato of How To Rob a Video Store with a Pellet Gun fame.

Apparently, several sequels followed BG2ATLC, but seriously, who gives a rats ass? This movie sucks. It ended up on MST3k for a reason. Here is a brief list of those reasons:

#1 - It was filmed in Texarkana. There are no black people anywhere to be seen. Everyone in this film is a cracker: heavy Southern accents, lots of guns and plaid flannel, rotting, soggy houses that cannot be distinguished from outhouses, etc. Director Pierce stars as Professor Lockhart, an insufferably arrogant and condescending fuckwipe who swings by the general store in the swamp for the sole purpose of insulting the people who work there. And despite the fact that the staff is made up of flabby, sweaty, ambient pork rinds who undoubtedly have conical white hats with eyeholes stored in their closets, Lockhart's massively inflated superiority complex still grates harder than a porcupine on a carrot peeler.

#2 - At one point in the film, Lockhart enthralls his students with the tale of a man who actually encountered the Boggy Creek Creature (aka Red State Bigfoot) on a lonely back road one dark night. According to the Prof, the man was attacked by the Creature and later died without regaining consciousness. Which begs the question: THEN HOW THE FUCK DOES HE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?! For Chrissakes, the guy could have been mauled by a badger for all we know. That's not a plot hole, that's a plot vacuum erupting in the wake of a collapsed star that was once made out of quicksand.

#3 - There are five people in this film named Charles. I hate the name Charles.

#4 - Why does the character of Oscar Culpotter excrete yellow shit? What the fuck has he been eating, a strict diet of squash, corn and Twinkies? Is that an actual turd clinging to his pantleg? Why did we need to see this? Also, please tell me this guy was not a method actor and that's just mud mixed with yellow food dye.

#5 - So, the kid who plays Tim is actually the real life son of Charles B. Pierce. Tim's name is also Charles. We even hear Charles Senior refer to "Tim" as "Charlie" at one point. Make up your mind, is it Charles, Chuck or Charlie? And why is he the same age as Cindy Butler, who plays High Maintenance Roller Disco Bitch Leslie Walker, and was also the Real Life Wife At The Time of Charles Senior? Ew, just...ew!

#6 - Can you imagine what Old Man Crenshaw must smell like? And why is he called "Old Man" Crenshaw? There is no evidence of a Young Man Crenshaw anywhere to be seen - not even a rumor. Also, Old Man Crenshaw appears to be about 35. Are hillbillies like dogs, and one year counts as seven in their life spans? Do you think this guy has ever washed a single load of laundry in his life? Does he own a pair of underpants? Has he ever wiped his ass after taking a shit that hopefully is not as unnaturally yellow as Old Man Culpotter's?

#7 - Okay, so Boggy Creek Senior has a Boggy Creek Junior. Can we assume that they are also both named Charles? But where is MRS. Boggy Creek, whose name has simply got to be Charlotte? Did Boggy reproduce asexually? Are we supposed to assume that a female Boggy exists, or that Boggy just goes around randomly raping southern fried hausfraus? Although, admittedly, said hausfraus probably can't tell the difference between a skunk ape and their husband(s) anyway. Also also, the greater percentage of them probably have a different father for every kid they ever squirted out and so it wasn't really a huge deal when Boggy Senior claimed custody. Alright, so no great stretch there.

#8 - We're deep in the swamps of Arkansas and yet we haven't seen a single meth lab. I call bullshit.

The best actor in the movie: Mr. Mad Billy Goat Gruff, aka Mrs. Crenshaw.

Johnny Dead-Eyes

Fuck it. I'm so pissed off about wasting my day off watching Ouija: Origin Of Evil. I need a palate cleanser.

Remember about halfway through the Ouija review, I mentioned that it kinda sorta reminded me of "criminally underrated 2013 ghost flick Haunter, starring a post-Little Miss Sunshine/pre Scream Queens Abigail Breslin and the eternally sexy no matter how old he gets Stephen McHattie?" Well, I apologize to the entire cast and crew of Haunter. And now, because I'm hurting, I've got to lash out in the only way I know how - by making a list of my favorite Stephen McHattie roles.

I have a short list of "older men" who will never be too old to fuck. Christopher Walken, Lance Henriksen, the now sadly deceased John Hurt, etc. Stephen McHattie turned 70 this year, so on the list he goes. 14 more years and Tim Roth will join the ranks.

Anyway...

#1 - Grant Mazzy, Pontypool

I didn't immediately recognize McHattie the first time I saw this film. I was so used to seeing him on Seinfeld with his face clean shaven and sharp as a letter opener, his emotions utterly absent, his bearing so cool you risked frostbite if you walked too close to him. As Grant Mazzy, a rugged, sandpapery Canadian shock jock, buried beneath a cowboy hat, a beard and a fluent knowledge of the French language, Steve simply had too many priceless facial expressions going on for me to pin him down. His winces and cringes and wide-eyed freakouts are hilarious, regardless of the zombie apocalypse happening just outside his door. From start to finish, Steve has the look of a man who just doesn't fucking believe that this shit is really happening, whether he's bemusedly regarding an off-key a cappella group, watching a girl vomit up her insides or kissing his real life wife, he seems totally caught off guard. This is a guy who has been winging it his entire life, but it's working in his favor.

#2 - The Pale Man, Haunter

McHattie is really good at being pale. He's downright gaunt. Waxy. Pallid, even. Perfect for the role of a dead serial killer who likes looming over pretty teenage girls in the afterlife. He makes it very clear to gothy little dead girl Lisa - a girl who was murdered back in the 80s and now haunts the house that Steve was haunting first - that he's onto her. He knows that she knows that she's dead, and he knows that she knows that he knows that she's dead, and she knows that he knows that...uh, well anyway...it's a postmortem murder mystery/ghost movie and McHattie is perfect - he moves with slow precision, gliding like a shadow, filling every frame he inhabits with darkness and the implication of sexual violence. No wonder Abigail Breslin had a massive asthma attack on set.

#3 - Vaun, The Strain

Half human, half vampire, Vaun appeared to be set to star as the Strain's main sun hunter, known as Quinlan in the book. He's got a half breed SWAT team, a shitload of guns and a very low tolerance for bullshit. He's also pastier than The Pale Man with a mouth like a moray eel and an unfortunate complexion somewhere between rotten whale blubber and reptilian roadkill. Regardless, he's quite articulate and good with children. He also walks with a serious pimp swagger and can kick the ass of even the toughest New York homeboy. All of these things combine to make Vaun a fan favorite and a seriously sexy badass, inspiring an assload of X-rated fan fiction and pornographic art projects. Trust me, I know -- I've seen both. So what do the creators of The Strain do, in their infinite wisdom? Kill him off three episodes into the second season and replace him with an actual Quinlan. Yeah? Well fuck you too.

Leland Jones, A History of Violence

Seriously? I have to explain why Leland Jones is awesome? Anyone this passionate about coffee is okay by me. Also, I like a guy who doesn't waste time on chit chat: "Coffee. Black. Shut up, bitch!" Gun? Check. Concealed knife? Check. Coffee pot to the face and still standing? Check. Shot in the head and still trying to fight? Fuck yeah.

Ouija Bored

I was in the mood for a shitty movie.
I have never denied my masochistic tendencies.

Originally, I had planned on watching and reviewing the recent remake of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise's weird smashed-pancake face and that one weird extra tooth in the exact center of his creepy, picket-fence grin. I'm assuming that my sudden surge of self-hatred stems from the fact that I have two days off from work and the sudden surcease of verbal and psychological abuse normally force fed to me by the general public left a large vacuum. And we all know what nature abhors. I mean, besides Tom Cruise.

Anyway, I got about 40 minutes in and realized I was wasting my time. #1 - I couldn't look at the screen anytime Cruise was on it, because he literally makes my intestines recoil like greasy snakes. #2 - I never thought I'd say this but Tom Cruise is no Brendan Frasier, and #3 - There's no Ardeth Bay, or even a reasonable fascimile thereof, anywhere to be seen in this limp ripoff to make any of this even remotely worthwhile. And shut up about Boris Karloff already. That was a stand-alone Creature Feature. Brendan Frasier's Mummy was less a remake of the original Mummy than an Egyptian homage to Army of Darkness. Tom Cruise's Mummy is just a pathetic attempt on Cruise's part to shave twenty years off of his career and milk the cash cow a little more before the teat runs dry.

So I went with Ouija: Origin Of Evil instead. Because it was there, Tom Cruise isn't in it and it looked just James Wanny enough to slam headfirst into the celluloid toilet. Except it turns out to be directed by Mike Flanagan, who directed Absentia, which I really liked, and both Oculus and Hush, which I really didn't. So maybe this fourth venture will tip the scales even.

And Flanagan, I'm telling you right now, if you fuck up Gerald's Game, I will...probably say some really not nice things about you. Yeah.

Alright, so...nice Kodachrome color scheme so far. Los Angeles, 1967. Young widowed mom who kind of looks like a lazy drag queen is trying to raise her two daughters (slutty teen, innocent under 10) by scamming gullible victims in a fortune telling shakedown, i.e. teen daughter stands behind curtains and pretends to be a ghost, younger daughter blows out candles, mom collects five dollars a reading, everyone is happy. But the show is getting a little stale so teen daughter suggests adding a Ouija Board to the act.

Oh fuck me, is the priest really Henry Thomas? Oh god, mom from Twilight is dating Ell-ee-OTT. Oh gross, this is so wrong.

Haunter

For some reason, this film reminds me of the criminally underrated 2013 ghost flick Haunter, starring a post-Little Miss Sunshine/pre Scream Queens Abigail Breslin and the eternally sexy no matter how old he gets Stephen McHattie. Sigh. What I wouldn't do for a big shadowy hunk of sexually threatening McHattie right about now, cuz Henry Thomas is about as sexy as a dog's rubber squeaky toy. This flick got no game. But it does have a nice, hazy, saturated decades-gone-by past-vibe going for it.

Oh yay, Doug Jones is in this! And he's cast in the role of...oil slick? *shrug* k, whatever.

So, little sister starts farting around with the Ouija Board and gets her innocent little ass possessed by the aforementioned oil slick, a greasy, tarry Slenderman with red demon eyes and a vocabulary that consists of the words "OURRA RAAHHH GLOOOBLE WORRRR!" Oooooh, scary.

"OOOOOOOOOO-klahoma..."

Unfortunately, oil slick Slenderman disappears inside of kid sister's body and thereafter manifests as her rolled back white eyeballs and a stretched open mouth. Not as scary. About as unnerving as a Hoover upright.

Yeah, brilliant. You're pretty sure your kid sister is possessed and that the spirit can hear everything you're saying because it's attached to the property you live in, so hey Mom and new Priest boyfriend, lets go up to my room and very obviously leave creepy kid sister behind so we can talk about her. I'm sure she won't hear us or guess what we're up to.

This is getting more James Wanny by the minute.

Okay so there's some Polish dead guy in the basement or something with a bunch of dead bodies stashed in the wall? I'm not sure, I missed the Reveal because I stopped caring, and when I stop caring, I stop listening, and you can always tell when I'm about to dump a boyfriend because I start saying "Huh?" a lot. But that's beside the point.

World's worst ventriloquist act.

Slutty teen's potential boyfriend gets killed and Slutty Teen reacts to this with mild astonishment bordering on slight abdominal discomfort.

Henry Thomas gets possessed.
Kid Sister stretches her mouth open a lot, rolls her eyes back and spider scurries up the walls, doing her best but not terribly original Linda Blair.
This sucks.

Fuck, and it's still not over? Really? You're just gonna start Chinese Checker possessing people all over the place, kill everyone and pin it on the teenage daughter? And then slap a last second "BOO!" scene right onto the last frame of film? Fine, fuck you too, movie. Smooch my ass cheeks. Flanagan, go back and re-watch Absentia. You started out with promise and ended up remaking Insidious and somehow made it even worse than it already was to begin with!

Maybe I should have stuck with The Mummy after all.