Blood Diner! A new (to me) favorite trashy movie!
(★★★)
Right off the bat this seems like a sequel to Blood Feast… Though, as it proceeds, that starts to seem too obvious.
Young Georgie and Mikey are home alone playing and practicing their black magic hypnotism when nutty Uncle Anwar shows up, butcher knife in hand, pursued by the police. He has just a few wise words for them before his well earned demise: don’t forget him, and remember everything he taught you.
Handy words because, see, Uncle Anwar wants to perform a feast ritual to bring back the goddess Sheetar! So, twenty years later, his loyal nephews dig him up, put his brain in a jar, and begin working on the Feast preparations via their vegetarian restaurant. For Sheetar, they also need to construct a body from the parts of immoral women (ala Frankenhooker), so between the body parts for Sheetar and the body parts for the feast, they need lots of body parts!
So, while it definitely has a Blood Feast spirit, it is far far more fun.
Featuring: beheadings, faux-nazis, tons of inappropriate dialogue, wrestling, nude aerobics and martial arts, driving over people, limbs being pulled off, eyeballs popping out, a fanged tummy, terrible dialogue (all of which looks like it was dubbed), terrible acting, projectile vomiting, great dialogue (“At least eight tongues must be set aside for proper aging”). It is terrible, but also endlessly entertaining.
I also rewatched:
The Void
(★★½)
I thought it was fine the first time through, but not quite as into it the second time around… The “creatures who walk on four legs” are interesting and the landscape in the Void is intriguing, but comes to no relevance.
Finally, Microwave Massacre
(★★½)
After months of talking, some of the moviegang got together at Thunderbase to watch Microwave Massacre, even though I tried dissuading them beforehand. See, even sight unseen, I became skeptical of the merits of this film.
However, upon watching it, its clear intention of being ridiculous won me over, to some extent. Though, I wouldn’t say that the action qualifies as a “microwave massacre” as no one gets massacred with a microwave…
See, Jackie Vernon (!?) is Donald, a construction worker who eats lunch every day with Roosevelt and Philip, two much younger and hipper workers, and complains about his wife’s attempts to get him to eat gourmet food.
Between his misplaced anger towards his wife, his frustration with his food, and watching a newscast on TV, he develops a new strategy…
Kill ladies and store them in the fridge to eat for lunch! For himself, and for his co-workers, who love it!
He becomes obsessed with it, finding more ladies to add to the fridge and even dreaming of a giant “lady and mayo sandwich!”
Anyway, it is basically terrible. The ideas behind it, the script, the acting… Roosevelt and Philip read their lines so badly it feels like it must be “bad acting on purpose” or maybe just really bad acting. A zillion juvenile jokes and ogles of ladies, ridiculous nudity scenes, terrible special effects, outstandingly bad 70’s decor… But it was fun to watch with a group and was very intentionally tongue-in-cheek
Thunder even seemed quite taken with it, at least at first…
In a much much different mode, we watched Escape at Dannemora.
(★★★★½)
This was really good! The story of two felons who convince a desperate-for-attention prison employee to help them escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in New York. Great directing, great acting! Del Toro and Paul Dano are very convincing in their roles, but I would have to say that Patricia Arquette and an unrecognizable Eric Lange steal the show with their “so good it doesn’t even feel like acting” performances as the woman brought into the scheme and her doting husband. A great script, a totally engrossing storyline, and the “too real for comfort” backdrop of the town. It just feels real and is extremely engrossing.
Demons
★★½
Demons starts off pretty boring like a lot of these 70’s/80’s Italian movies. Then, tack on the terrible score, cheap set design (the mannequin on the motorcycle is almost enough to get me to turn it off), and the terrible dubbing/dialogue where everything sounds like a stilted exclamation, and see what you get. The premise behind this is that some guy in a weird mask has handed out invitations to a free showing of an unnamed movies at the Metropol theater. However, once the movie that they are screening begins, it seems a bit better than the one that we were already watching.
It perks up a bit at the half hour mark when we get some decent metal and some pretty out there and ridiculous effects. But even here where over-the-top gore stuff is the happening left and right, much of the scenes here look hard to take seriously, like it’s intended to be a comedy, but isn’t funny.
It dies down again after that, consisting of a lot of the “waiting and running” scheme of stranded zombie fare, at this point the highlight of the movie is probably the character Tony.
Towards the end it perks up, with “Kathy’s back”, hearing Accept, and most of the sword scenes during Accept are pretty watchable.
The Thing (2011)
★★★½
Third time through this and I still find it interesting either as a prequel or a remake. I like it quite a bit, but mainly because it is just so similar to The Thing (1982), which will always be one of my favorite films. Is it lazy to basically remake it? It is a clever idea? Or, considering the nature of The Thing (itself) and the situation, was there really no other option as this is just how a The Thing scenario is going to play out? One thing that comes to mind is that it is definitely a prequel in the sense of “If you are only going to watch one of them, watch The Thing (1982). If you are going to watch both of them, make sure you watch 1982 before watching 2011!”.
So, besides all that, it’s very familiar feeling and I like the main character, and it’s fun enough that maybe on its own it would rate a 4-star, but the characters just aren’t the great classic characters that populate The Thing (1982), it isn’t very suspenseful (unlike The Thing 1982 which was quite suspenseful), and while some of the effects are good, they are CGI so clearly it’s going to pale in comparison than those brilliant and disturbing practical effects of The Thing (1982).
Candyman (2021)
★★★
I only just saw the original for the first time last year, so didn’t feel the need to a sequel. But I actually liked this more than I would have expected, except it kinda lost me at the last part, when some other sub-plot took over.
I quite enjoyed Tony Todd’s creepy Candyman character of Candyman (1992), I think that in Candyman (2021), the Candyman seemed more a phantom than a character, so that detracted from the story for me and maybe I would have liked it better if it had been a new story, not a Candyman redux. But I thought it was pretty engaging.
Blood Sabbath
(★★½)
Our guy, a Vietnam vet, wandering alone, cross country with a guitar, very 1970 style. Probably not thinking that anything odd is in his future, especially witches and murder!
What he mainly seems to encounter are extremely forward, free spirited ladies who he seems to find are more an annoyance than anything else. After fleeing like a lunatic from, of all people, Uschi Digard (and friends), he winds up as the obsession of the local witch queen (yes, Dyanne Thorne) who seems to command everyone around and is intent on possessing this fellow.
The lack of blood and the fact that the gaggle of young ladies under the witch queen’s control seem to spend most of their time without any clothes on, this would be much more accurately titled “Nude Sabbath”.
Featuring, as well as you can see through the haze of a worn out VHS (which is how this appears), quite bad acting and cheap production values (mainly shot outdoors), but it’s likeable enough and definitely should have a release better than than this shoddy looking DVD release…
The Shape of Water
(★★★★½)
This fabulous movie is a great romance, but also a great thriller as well.
The story of Elisa, who is mute due to something terrible done to her throat in her youth, but who otherwise seems to have a pleasantly peaceful and solitary, if a bit lonely, life living above a cool old movie theater in a grand old apartment with a nice big bathtub and a quirky and charming, in a way, artist neighbor, Giles.
She is also a janitor at a strange, and seemingly highly secure, government facility, the purpose of which isn’t exactly clear. But they do seem to store specimens there. When the noxious and evil security man, Colonel Strickland, shows up with an extra strange specimen, who he dragged out of a river in South America and seemingly tortured all the way here, Elisa sees something in the creature that no one else does.
But when the political machinations of the US Army and the Soviet Union seem to spell doom for this fascinating being, Elisa turns to the only friends she has, Giles and her co-worker Zelda, for help.
A great movie, beautiful to look at, involving, nerve-wracking (as Strickland is just absolutely terrible and driven to stay that way), but also exciting, charming, a bit fantastical, and fun!
Blacker Than the Night
(★★½)
Pro tip: If you have a bunch of snotty and entitled roommates and you inherit a grand old house from your aunt… Don’t move your roommates into the house with you.
Especially if: the made fun of the house, are rude to the housekeeper, if owning the house requires you to care for your aunt’s cat (and the roommates hate cats), and if they are just all around ungrateful…
Otherwise, as Ofelia finds out, her friends Aurora, Marta, and Pilar are bad roommates for the cat and, once the cat ends up dead, the deceased aunt has some issues with that.
Not particularly interesting or entertaining, but it was alright.
Rawhead Rex
(★★★)
A pub called The Tall Man with a creepy tall man sign. A strangely demonic stained glass window with burning red eyes in the old church. An ancient stone pillar sticking up out of a field.
Signs of the kind of spot in the Irish countryside where you should think “hmm, maybe I shouldn’t mess around here?” Especially that stone pillar…
But no, the farmer wants that pillar out of his way… So, even as weird steam starts coming out of the ground as he tries to pry the damn thing up, he just doesn’t stop…
A pretty entertaining tale of an ancient evil unleashed in a little village, featuring: priests gone bad, dismemberment, mind control, burning red eyes, and the demon (or is it a god) Rawhead Rex, which, while it is one of the better monster names out there, the appearance of it leaves much to be desired, especially since they have no qualms showing him clearly, and often.
Poison for the Fairies
(★★★)
After a murderous start, we hop to a school where the new girl, Flavia, meets up with Veronica, whose parents are dead and who says she has a spider at home, also named Flavia?
Flavia is from a skeptic family, educated folks who pride themselves on their modern rejection of old beliefs and who don’t believe in religion or spirits or anything. Veronica, however, lives with her grandmother and has a stuffed owl that tells her things at night and, in fact, says that she is actually an old witch!
Well, they kind of befriend each other and it’s all fun and games. Until Flavia asks Veronica if she can cast a spell so that she doesn’t have to take piano lessons anymore…
From that point, things starts getting south. Turns out that witches and fairies don’t get along and Veronica sets them off on a path top make poison for the fairies. She is rather intimidating and plotting and and Flavia doesn’t know what to do but gets dragged along for the ride.
It wasn’t super engaging, but I did appreciate how they basically never show the faces of adults, leaving it feel like it is really just about the kids. And I did love the ending.
Intruder
(★★★)
Well this was pretty entertaining… And relatable! A grocery store slasher!
Turns out that the Walnut Lake Market is closing, which comes as a surprise to the staff, who are told by the owners to stay late and mark everything half off! But right at closing, one of the cashiers ex-fella’s shows up and starts a scene and a fight and then runs off into the store!
So as they work the night away, cleaning up and marking down, people start dying left and right, always (somehow…) unbeknownst to everyone else in the store! But this mysterious killer didn’t show up with special weaponry, he just uses what is at hand… And there is all sorts of neat stuff in grocery stores: knives, saw, balers, etc…
It is broken-hearted revenge? Someone who is opposed to creating a food desert? Mystery abounds! As do cheap, but effective and interesting, gory kills!
Some pretty silly characters, some odd camera angles, and lots of exciting late-80’s grocery action (for those of us “who were there” to fondly remember the old days), makes for an acceptably fun watch. And the cast includes some surprises… Sam and Ted Raimi are both here, and look out for cameos from Bruce Campbell, Lawrence Bender, and Scott Spiegel (the director).
The Beyond
(★★½)
The story of a woman who inherits an old hotel which was, unfortunately, built over one of the seven gateways to hell!
However, the trouble starts 50 years earlier when a painter who lived there was hauled away, murdered by a mob, and walled off in the basement… Supposedly for his sorcerous ways.
Now that the lady is trying to get the hotel reopened, there are many opportunities for the evil from the gateway to cause much classic Italian gore scenes as all sorts of people involved die from mysterious ways and suffer lots of acid burning, face mangling, eyes popping, etc.
Also featured are assistance from a mysterious blind woman, a doctor who, even after he learns that bullets to the head seem to be the only way to hurt the zombies, keeps wasting ammo on their chests, and a mysterious copy of that great Hyperborean bestseller, Eibon.
But my favorite parts were the first seven minutes and then the last scene. In between those was some meh stuff and some good stuff, mainly crazy sudden weather and an interesting score that seemed pretty incongruous at time.
Also, lots of zombies toward the end, and I still don’t find zombies compelling (well, except for in Burial Ground! Those zombies are great!), and these were lamer than most.
Heretic
(★★★★)
The one true religion… Is that people can be really terrible.
This is just a great film. The lead in is engaging and does a great job showing the clear differences in the women’s personalities and giving us a good feeling for their mission. Then Mr Reed’s charming demeanor and delightful home.
Hugh Grant, who I generally don’t like in anything, is great here! And his charming house is quite delightful. Even if he is an arrogant, pushy, braggart. His obsession with controlling people and trying to show off how smart he is by endlessly rambling on about with his wisdom and bs are pitiful, but realistic (we’ve all known dudes like that, haven’t we?), and rather engaging.
But the best part of the movie is Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, watching their different world views and attitudes swirl around each other as they try to navigate dealing with this egoist who is clearly used to charming people into bad situations.
I also really liked the scale model of the house.
ah, Doom Asylum.
(★★)
Such a promising title! After a terrible (in many ways) traffic accident leaves a lawyer just steps from death and his girlfriend dead, he hides himself away in an abandoned asylum.
This slasher/comedy (well, comedy but not humorous at all) is pretty lame and the title should have been used for a much better movie. There’s very little story here… Not even enough to fill it’s 78 minute runtime so lots of time is made up of showing old movies which our antagonist is supposedly watching.
Starting Patty Mullin, in a much less interesting role than in Frankenhooker (along with the most fabulously lame boyfriend ever) and a bunch of other lame characters.
Anyway, these pals joyride out to the abandoned asylum, well, abandoned aside from some pretty noisy band who are playing there for no clear reason, and oh yeah, rumors of a madman who kills people with surgical tools.
All in all, it’s boring and badly acted and has very little substance.