Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Blood and Lace



I didn't realize how perfect it was to watch Blood and Lace a few nights ago with everyone being so rape-happy, as well as all of these grown men getting caught with kiddie porn on their pc's. It seems like now it's almost becoming some sort of bizarre trend to come fourth about someone that "touched" them (mainly in Hollyweird) with someone accusing someone else of these acts pretty much every damn passing day. It's getting old. I'm sick of hearing about it. But just as those stories and headlines are starting to yellow like the paper they would be printed on if not for digital media, it's older grindhouse/horror flicks from the 70's like Blood and Lace that remind me that the past tends to always repeat itself with a vengeance. Apparently in the kiddie porn/rape department. This film is chock full of very strange and just downright wrong sexual innuendos that have to do with grown men wanting to have sex with Ellie (our main girl) albeit even with her character being 18 in this situation-the men that would try to partake in such activities have to be at least in their 40's, if not even older than that. Pretty much the entire run time consists of awkward scenes where it seems like pretty much all of the adult characters that work at the Deere orphanage home have leanings toward such sickening desires. Hide under the bed sheets. Carry a hammer.  

Hammer with a P.O.V. That's different.

The quietest murder I've ever witnessed.

Damn. Mother's Day must have been a bitch of a holiday.

You found it buddy. The hammer.

Umm... the detective is leaning towards being a pedo. I hope it's hammer time for him soon.

Oh boy, it's Uncle Leo!

Impeccable aim sir, but did the kids hand really have to be severed?

Ellie is going to be trouble. You better be ready.

No one steps into their room for a "nice cup of tea".

Fence shadows always add a layer of suspense.

Man, is everyone a fucking pedo in this film?!

I never thought I would be rooting for Freddy Krueger's fat brother, but now is the time for him to show up.  

Blood and Lace is probably the only movie that I know of where a hammer is a character in and of itself-it even has it's own point of view which adds some sort of personal texture to people getting whacked. Everyone that gets killed in this film is by a hammer (brutally I might add) and for good reason. The people that run the Deere Orphanage Home are all just sick twisted bastards and I don't blame Ellie and the detective at all for what they do in the final act. Shut that place down. There are consequences for trying to escape the orphanage as well-Ellie finds a girl in the attic that has been tied to a support beam for days and hasn't had water or food for the duration as punishment, and you even see Mrs. Deere in one scene drinking water right in front of her to torture her even more. Upon first viewing, Blood and Lace is absolutely off the wall and presents a hefty helping of modern warnings about people not being what they seem. Watch it again though-revenge tastes sweeter than that piece of pie you ate the night before. Just make sure you wear a flannel and defend yourself with a hammer. Harvey Dent, anyone?   

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Dead Calm (VHS)


As a collector, I never really tell anyone what I'm looking for for my shelf because I want the thrill of the hunt for myself. It sounds selfish, but the ultimate thrill of finding that "movie I've been looking for" for a while adds to the overall experience, but sometimes friends and family tend to try to help out with the cause, and any input is always appreciated. My friend John found the film Dead Calm for me on VHS last week at a Goodwill when he was off from work, and told me the cover art just looked like "something I need to see". He had never heard of it. I had never heard of it. But it featured Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane-and that's all I needed to know. My initial thought was that he stumbled upon some lost SOV gem that I had never heard of, but it ended up being an actual horror/thriller that was handled by Warner Bros. and that's further from what I had expected. The main reason why Dead Calm is so amazing and so tense is because everything that happens in this film could actually happen. 

Sam Neill is a boss.

Can't find your family, eh sailor?

Jesus, the weight of that tragedy is just... to damn much.

I don't think I could be on a boat for that long.

He wants that taste for adventure-John Ingram style.

Going aboard that boat is probably not in your best interest.

She's going down sllloooooooooowwly....

This has to be a worst case scenario of "curiosity killed the cat".

You're going to be pumping the water out of that boat for a long time, bro.

Come on, Rae. Dude's a creep. Throw him overboard.

What the hell is going on in the main hull, a Nine Inch Nails concert?!

About 90% of this film is Rae vs. Hughie (Kidman vs. Zane) on the boat that her and her husband were sailing on for a very long winded vacation after a terrible incident in the family. John decides that it's a good idea to investigate the boat that Hughie came rowing to their boat from, and all sorts of horrible things start taking place, making the film more and more intense as time progresses. I'm not going to spoil anything that happens in this film because you truly need to watch this zits and zombies, but let's just say that the very end of Dead Calm is every bit of dead and the complete opposite of calm. There is no opening for any sort of sequel (and I'm surprised there never was one) and even if there was, I don't think a second installment could even touch this outing. There were also plenty of times where I thought John was going to drown, and for me personally is absolutely terrifying because I have a pretty bad phobia of any body of water that's deeper than what I can stand upright in. Put your snorkels on, zits and zombies-these waves are coming.     

Monday, January 29, 2018

Red Christmas


I'm always up for a good holiday horror flick that ruins the spirit of Christmas. Well, for me personally, it makes things more festive and enjoyable. There are really great ones like Santa's Slay, Christmas Evil, Silent Night-Deadly Night and Rare Exports. Then there are ones on the opposite side of the spectrum which make you wish it was just the new year already. That's where Red Christmas comes in. I really wasn't expecting this offering to be great considering most of the reviews about this I read ending up being mostly on the negative side, but my Christmas horror taste had to be satisfied, so I decided to dive right into this one anyway. And man was I ready to drink when the closing credits started rolling. The only really great things I can muster about Red Christmas are that Dee Wallace's performance as the mother trying to keep her ridiculously fractured and dysfunctional family together for Christmas is absolutely top notch and some of the kills are fairly gory-although they employed CGI instead of the better looking practical effects. Other than that, getting hammered on some holiday nog would have been a much better experience than sitting through this for some lousy notes. Man, I guess I really do have to suffer for my art.

Abortion is a heavy subject. I'll just leave it at that.

Jerry is the highest functioning person with down syndrome I think I've ever seen.

What, are these two Christian snobs or something?

Spiking the punch. Yes sir.

What a shocker. The priest is a voyeuristic pervert.

I would react the same way if some assclown just started peeing on me.

  There's no way that anyone I didn't know would be allowed into my house during Christmas.

Enough family drama. Can I just see some people get killed already?

Well, wishes do come true. Now I have to go listen to "Chopped in Half" by Obituary.

 Plan B looks good right about now.

The final 40 minutes of Red Christmas ended up being an insane mess of lights, sounds, colors and some of the worst cinematography I think I've burned my retinas with in quite some time. Most of it was just people in the family running around and through the house trying to get away from Cletus as he offs them one by one in some of the most boring and cliched ways imaginable. Most of the editing and camera work during this period in the film is really jittery and jarring, and I mostly just ended up with a headache when it was finally over. Some of you probably dig Red Christmas, but I had a hard time swallowing this pill. I wanted some rib-eye. What I consumed instead was a very dry, flavorless pork chop that was over cooked and under seasoned. Better luck next time, Craig Anderson. I hope your next film is filleted to perfection.   
   

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Fright Night Part 2


The original Fright Night is an 80's vampire classic. For the longest, it's sequel has been obscure, out of print and pretty hard to get a hold of in terms of physical copies. I have seen bootlegs and uploads of it on Youtube and beyond, but if I have a chance to watch an actual copy of it, I'd rather do that. This second offering has eluded me for a number of years only to find out that Amazon Instant Video of all digital streaming sources finally sprouted their fangs and somehow obtained this title for the world to see legally. I have always been a big fan of the initial flick that houses Brewster and Vincent's adventures trying to wipe out Jerry Dandrige and his vampire cronies, and I will gladly sit here and let you zits and zombies know that this sequel is absolutely worth every second of your time. I would even stretch out to say that some of the special effects in here may have even been better than the first one (especially the scene where one of the vampires starts melting after Brewster jumps on him with a holy robe) and you actually physically see him spontaneously combust and just start breaking down into a puddle of flesh and bone. That shit was rad. Or the scene where Vincent sprays holy water on one of the others and his face and neck just starts evaporating and deteriorating right before your eyes. I live for this stuff, people! 

Charles, you don't need therapy. You need a wooden stake and garlic cloves.

Shit, I need a shave and a shower.

Peter Vincent kicks ass!

For a hottie like that, I'd pretty much believe in anything.

Lust of a vampire.

Eagh!! It's Michael Jackson!

  The hell?! Why is a vampire on roller skates??

Go bowling? That's all your therapist can come up with! Hahahahahhahaha!

It's so wrong, but female vampires are so hot.

There's always time to have a dance with the devil.

Peter Vincent, you know better than that! Burn her with that cross!

John Gries' character is such a spaz, I swear.

 Most of the time, sequels are either so far from the original that everyone hates it. Or they just change so much of the lore that they might as well just be a stand alone film. But Fright Night Part 2 gets everything right and honestly made me love the first one even more than I already did. In some ways, I actually feel the second installment surpasses the first-Brewster's new girlfriend is hotter, the special effects are more involved, the vampires are more interesting and the overall pace just felt faster and more energetic. That's not to say the original was slow by any means, it just felt like the build up to the end was a bit more sluggish. Either way, Fright Night Part 2 is every bit of a vampire classic as the first. Give it a go. The suckers are back.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

This is it, the end is here.

I'm sorry guys, but this is it.

The blog isn't going to be taken down or anything, I'm just done. I'm not working on this anymore.

Go ahead and read anything that I've written, but there will be no more reviews. Unfortunately because of my work schedule and other various factors, Cinema Slayer is just going to be dormant until further notice. 

 Thanks. I appreciate it.