Hellraiser: Judgment

If you're die hard for Pinhead as well as the rest of his Cenobite cronies, you have more than likely been keeping up with the shenanigans that Dimension keeps pulling just to hold onto the namesake of Clive Barker's creation. The original Hellraiser is a masterpiece of 80's horror born of the flesh that came to life in the novel The Hellbound Heart, which too was also cocooned and let to fly from the dark and twisted imagination of Clive Barker. The two sequels after the first panned out more about Pinhead, his Cenobites and Kirsty Cotton to complete any and all dark desires that fans wanted to know about hell and the delights it could serve. After eight films with Doug Bradley as the icon of pain and pleasure, something happened. Hellraiser Revelations was released and it fucking blew ass. Doug didn't come back and the overall production was a damn mess, but fans unfortunately ate it up and some money was made to keep the rights to the franchise. Now we have Hellraiser Judgment and it couldn't be anymore far removed from the series if it wanted to be. I've never really been into gross-out horror, and this entry has it in droves. The cinematography is actually pretty decent to say the least, and all of the fucked up browns, yellows and vomited shades of, well... browns are captured perfectly for what they were trying to go for. Even thought I don't know what the hell that was supposed to be. The simplest way I can say what this new entry into the Hellraiser series is is this-take Saw, Se7en and Hostel, butter the bottom of your cookie sheet generously, set your oven for 450 degrees and let bake for twenty minutes. Also, bake yourself while your at it. It makes it easier to forget.

The puzzle box is obsolete? I disagree.

Sin will never dissipate.

 That must have been one hell of a resume' if the Auditor invited this guy just to "talk".

"Jesus Christ!" "Heavens no... same city-different zip code."

Well, these women would be hot if their faces weren't melted off.

Hey, you must be the butcher from the original Diablo game!

  One sided conversations are always compelling.

Detective Egerton has a great ass. Come at me, Pinhead.

    Didn't we already see this shot where Pinhead rests his head on the back of his chair? Damn these editors were lazy.

Heather Langenkamp? I think you're in the wrong sequel for the wrong franchise.

 If you were "cleansed" at the house of judgement, I guess there's no need for a shower.

  I have to give credit where credit is due zits and zombies, and Hellraiser Judgment was at least better than Hellraiser Revelations. This flick at least had some decent gore, some nice boobs to look at, Detective Egerton had a great ass and Paul T. Taylor was at least better than that loser before him as Pinhead. Beyond those small things though, this film features a fat sweaty guy (with his moobs hanging out) that eats the papers with the person's entire list of sins they've committed over the years that he pours the tears of children on-and then barfs them into a funnel that goes behind the wall where topless melted faced ladies stick their hands in the vomit and say whether they need to be "cleansed" or "killed". Man that was a lot to spit out. I truthfully never want to watch this sequel again, and if I want to watch a much better version of anything that happens in this film, I'll just watch Se7en or the first Saw movie. I'm parched. Gimme some water.   

Suffer Little Children

Finding this at my local library last week was very surprising. I'm seriously the only one that has probably rented it since they acquired it, and someone else might end up taking it out for a week out of sheer curiosity. If that said person has no experience with SOV horror at all or even knows what that is-may the Universe have mercy on their soul. I have plenty of these types of grimy, beat-up, low budget, 80's offerings in my personal collection and I even had trouble watching it. And Suffer Little Children really wasn't even that bad of an entry in the SOV sub-genre, it's just that the print that Intervision had to work with to press this on dvd was just barely passable in the production department. Especially the audio. Man the audio is so worn and muffled for most of the film that all it is is loud crackly music over people's moving mouths and occasionally some words would fall out. Thankfully, they included English subs and if you track this down to check it out you need to put them on so you can understand anything that is happening on screen. Suffer Little Children as an SOV film however is better than I expected it to be-if somewhat awkward. There is plenty of horrific gore and Jesus fighting against Elizabeth in a weird black strobe light induced showdown that kind of gave me a headache. I enjoyed this piece for what it is, and I don't really understand why this was on the "Video Nasties" list in the 80's, but I guess it was probably because it features violence against children and Satan basically posing as a young girl that wants to kill everyone in the orphanage while some of the deaths being played out as fairly grisly.

 Cute, European blonde? Sign me up!

What's up with this guy being a Stephen King knock off?

No one wears a shitty gray tie with a Cosby sweater. No one.

 So the girl that can speak telepathically slams the door in some other girls' face, she screams, falls on the floor and then it's Monday all of a sudden. That's one helluva transition.

I don't know who these two pop-star douche-bags are. I just hope they get killed.

Elizabeth is the SOV version of Angela from Sleepaway Camp.

Cloudbusters looks like a killer good time. Especially with all of the shitty strobe lights and the vomit inducing Casio keyboard music.

Jesus, for a famous pop-star, this guy fucking sucks at dancing.

Surely a gem that must be dug up by more of us, Suffer Little Children actually whet my palette for a little period of time as I haven't watched anything remotely close to the SOV underground in quite awhile. This dvd always pops up in my suggested purchases on Amazon, and I'm very glad that Intervision is picking up these odd-ball, forgotten horror pictures that seem to always have a few layers of dust and broken insect limbs gracing the lid of the film canisters. It's so perfect that I could cry if I had any tears left. Add this one to your shelf if you like these strange corpses being exhumed because remember zits and zombies...Jesus fought Satan with a lot of black strobe lights running. And with a huge beard while donning a loin cloth.         

Jigsaw (blu-ray)

Being a Saw fan can be tough. The original is legendary, the sequel is a pretty solid follow up and the third I've always felt fleshed out more about what we needed to know about John Kramer and what his big scheme about becoming Jigsaw was really all about. The rest of the entries in this franchise were really not to bad either, they just lost touch with what really made the first few really great horror/torture flicks. The story. After the fourth push into the not-so-happy world of traps, gore and people deciding if they still valued their lives or not-the franchise took a nose-dive straight into "all traps, no plot" territory which started to make it all feel so pointless and empty. The eighth entry into this masquerade so boringly titled Jigsaw sees itself really just being another add-on to an already tired series that makes me sad to say...but just needs to end already. This film doesn't really bring anything new to the limb table that hasn't already been severed, and packs none of the grit, tension or ugly feelings that form in the bottom of your stomach like they did while watching the earlier Saw films. The traps felt so uneventful and watered down and I truly didn't give any shit at all if any of the characters in this particular set of games even won or not. It just felt lazy. And the Billy Doll this time around actually made me laugh instead of invoking fear. Yeah. It looked fucking cartoony. He looked like he could have hung around Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck before going on set with his red tricycle. Even he was phoning it in this time.

Run Forest, run!

This is a dumb joke, but I think Buckethead set this trap up.

Jigsaw always wants to play a game.

   An off-screen kill in a Saw film? That's disappointing.

   Man-that Billy Doll has no grit or tension behind it at all.

"Who's doing this to us?" Where have you been, woman??

Careful and precise like the game of Operation.

The website for Jigsaw is on the dark web and Eleanor didn't use a Tor browser to visit it. Ugh, God.

I don't think you want to see Eleanor's studio.

What a surprise-it wasn't John Kramer's body in the casket.

Oooooh shit! What a reveal!

There are some parts of Jigsaw that are solid. The traps are pretty decent, especially at the beginning where the main people in the game are chained up with a metal "bucket" on their heads and get pulled towards the other side of the wall where saw blades are running. Wasn't scary or frightening at all, I just thought it was cool. There are some nice twists as well that I was kind of expecting, and they actually levitated this picture a little bit beyond what the final feeling of this film ends up at. In all seriousness, Jigsaw really didn't need to be made. Hell, even past the third picture in the Saw franchise didn't even need to be made. Zits and zombies, this truly is just a serviceable piece that really doesn't do to much to flesh this series out more. This is for keeps for die-hards only. Now I want to play a game. 

Camp Killer

I truly can't tell if this is some kind of joke or not, but Camp Killer won three different awards and was nominated for another three at an indie film festival back in 2016. Other reviewers, critics and horror fanatics seem to lean towards liking this film, but when I sat through this last night on Amazon Prime the first thing I thought after the initial twenty minutes was "is this piece of shit over yet?" The opening sequence felt like the entire film was packed right in before the beginning credits were even presented-and that already shows that Camp Killer has horrible pacing issues. I know that this flick has plenty of random references and homages to other classic terror pictures sprinkled through out, but it just wasn't enough to keep me interested let alone to stay awake. Yes, I did fall asleep somewhere around the middle mark but I did go back and check what I missed and it really wasn't anything worth losing some much needed rest over. I will say this-the gore and the kills were pretty great and very well put together. The killer himself (David Lightfoot? Really??) seemed just bland and didn't do anything more than what every other horror icon has ever done before in the past. He had some creative one-liners and was aggressive, but again it didn't add to much to me really caring about what Camp Killer ultimately offered. 

Hey Norman, you're fat. Shut up.

The girls are the only ones roasting wieners over the fire.

Can you really get that baked from vaping?

   

There's nothing wrong with being a Fangoria addict.

   "Special kids?" You're fucking special because you have a Ghostbusters tattoo.

  Oh boy-A Texas Chainsaw Massacre reference.

 Norman's dead too-thank God.

I'm pretty sure that was more than six shots-but who's really counting?

 This is simply just one of those times where I don't understand why everyone seems to like a film and I don't. There are some good things going for Camp Killer-the plot is decent, the gore and kills were pretty cool and David Lightfoot was kind of a complex killer-I guess I just thought that everything in this movie was executed poorly. There are some pacing issues and the camera work in some scenes felt kind of sloppy. Personally zits and zombies, this is just a purgatory film. I didn't completely hate it, but I also just felt that one viewing was more than enough and I'll probably never revisit it. David Lightfoot, Gordon Lightfoot, Bumblefoot-hell I don't even like feet. Ugliest human appendage out there. Put some socks on.

Saturday The 14th

I might be in the minority when I say this, but I think that Saturday The 14th was slapped together a little prematurely. It was put out in 1981 which was not to long after the original Halloween had taken off as one of the biggest grossing indie flicks of all time, and had even less time before it after Jason Voorhees' mother was killing camp counselors in Camp Crystal Lake because her son had been tortured by similar authoritarian figures that made her snap in the first place. I know that this film and other parody/spoof films like it are supposed to take a genre or particular set of tropes and cliche's and set them on fire by making everything a complete joke-but this offering just really fell flat for me. Through and through. Saturday The 14th banks on the idea that it's a horror spoof. The jokes are fucking lame, Dracula is complete weak sauce and Van Helsing is one helluva massive let down. Even though this was released in 1981, it could have been released in 1991 or even 2001 and it still would have been a damn snooze-fest. I'll be honest zits and zombies, I really wasn't expecting a whole hell of a lot from this flick, and I really didn't get a lot out of it. Like I mentioned before, the jokes are lame and really stupid and I actually don't think I laughed at anything one single time. 

Man-I think some pre-school students animated this intro.

Drac is buying a fixer-upper. That's classic.

  What an inheritance... 3,000 over-due library books and the lawyer giving the whole family the "raspberries".

You don't want to go to boarding school.

Of all the places that Uncle Henry could have left a note before he passed away... he left one in the fridge.

Pick up the lamp you fool!

"Damn owls". Are you sure it was an owl? Your son hit a monster out the window with a book!

I would probably shit in the tub if a random scaly fish-guy just popped up in the tub with me.

Owls? What the hell-those are bats not owls!

I think your butcher is Jeffrey Dahmer.

Van Helsing is supposed to be a badass werewolf/vampire hunter. Not some pasty, nerdy English teacher looking weirdo.

    Besides what I've already griped about in the first paragraph of this review, one of the main things that really bothered the shit out of me was the special effects. Especially the bats and when Dracula turns into a bat to fly somewhere so he doesn't have to walk. Dear sweet God, the fucking bats. They really look like those shitty, cheap rubber bats you can get at the Dollar Tree around Halloween time and the strings they are on are clear as day. I know it was probably done like that on purpose for the comedic effect, but I really didn't care for it. There's also these random goblin things that show up in the house and just start eating everything and destroying everything and I just didn't get what was happening with that. Zits and zombies, if you really want a spoof of any kind, Saturday The 14th is something to just steer clear of. You'd probably be better off trying to track down a copy of Sunday The 15th to watch. Let me know if you do because I can't find it anywhere.     

The Sand (Blood Sand)

(Requested by: Brette Cooper)

First and foremost, I would like to thank my good friend Brette Cooper for suggesting this film for me to review. Secondly, The Sand fucking sucked. I hated pretty much everything about this flick. This is another one of those low budget tirades that drains the blood from your soul and has no remorse or pity about what it has just performed. There is absolutely no character development at all to draw from, thus leaving the audience to not give any shit what-so-ever about any of the main characters that get stuck dealing with whatever the hell is supposed to be under the sand. This is going to be a little extreme, but I'll wager my entire horror collection on the theory that the director and writer for The Sand both said to each other "Hey, remember that game you used to play as a kid where the white tiles in the grocery store were safe and the colored ones were lava? Let's make a horror movie like that." Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's how the idea for this mound of ass-discharge came to be. I would love to say that the saving grace or that some entertainment value came from the fact that Jamie Kennedy played the Beach Patrol in the middle of this film randomly and made me smile-but unfortunately it didn't. He gets eaten by the sand just like everyone else does. I think I'd rather get my eyes tattooed next time I go to the shop for something new because honestly this needs to be never seen again. By anyone. 

Red Dixie cups always means it's party time.

You put your damn balls in the bag.

What the hell is that? One of Nessie's testicles?

Never walk away from a little brown shugga'.

Let's all cry and stand around while this asshole gets eaten by the sand!

"Chemicals, maybe it was chemicals." "It was the government."

Get some rest? Gilbert was sleeping in a fucking garbage can!

Why is everyone crying? What did I miss? Eh, it doesn't fucking matter anyway.

Now's not the time to be a macho prick.

I'm done with all of these people. They're all fucking stupid. I can't wait to see the ending.

What an ending it is. The resolve for this film wasn't any more gratifying than sitting through these college douche-bags getting eaten by the sand and figuring out that using pepper spray on the surface of it helped with being able to actually walk on it. There are just so many stupid moments that were supposed to be tense and suspenseful-but really just made me want to turn my oven up to 500 degrees and stick my head in it for twenty minutes. Ronnie (there's a chick named Ronnie) trying to not touch the sand while getting something out of the trunk of the car went on for way to fucking long because Chanda tried holding her hand so she could open the trunk-didn't work. She gave her a towel and tried to hold onto that while opening the trunk. Didn't work. Then Kaylee finds one of those life-saver hook things that lifeguards have at the beach. She holds it over Ronnie, she holds onto that, the towel that Chanda has and then she finally opens the goddamn trunk-as well as smashing her hand under the trunk door in the process. It felt like it took forever and it was supposed to imbue a feeling of dread to the viewer, but it made me want to light an entire cornfield on fire while humming the theme song to the show Firefly. It's absurd and I'm glad I never have to watch this piece of shit ever again. The one person I feel bad for at all in this production is Jamie Kennedy. Because at least he used to be funny.      

Dean Koontz's Black River (VHS)

I didn't even realize this until I started putting this review together, but this is my second Dean Koontz film adaptation that I have watched this year. It seems like his books (or in this case a novella) never get the quality treatment that King's novels do when it comes to moving them over to motion picture. My VHS of Black River has been sitting on my shelf for to long now and I finally fed it into my VCR recently to slop down some notes-and boy was this something else. Two of the main things that drag this flick down are the pacing and the acting. The overall acting in Black River is just horrendous. Normally I can look past it to absorb more of the quality of the film, but this time it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Like I needed some Listerine after eating something with a lot of onions and garlic. The pacing felt very up and down most of the time coupled with the fact that the plot just left me feeling like it wasn't really going to go anywhere. And it kind of didn't. The whole thing with the mayor's brother's ghost calling him on the phone to tell him who is supposed to be with who and who needs to stay in the town and weird shit like that just didn't seem to really fit with what the hell was going on with the rest of the film. There's also some guy that built a remote controlled SUV that follows Bo Aikens around the entire town seemed just bizarre and creepy. To put the rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae is the ending. It's exactly what happened to Bo when he first arrived at Black River, except it happens to some other jackass that's just passing through. How creative.

Traffic just sucks.

I hate saying it, but some humans just take up everyone else's space.

   Ok-I didn't think this was a pet cemetery. My bad.

Every hole needs to be six feet deep.

There are way to many cameras in this town. Especially since it was back in 2001.

The mayor is selling Black River just a little to hard.

Security guards always act like cartoons.

    Nothing like being screwed in a new town.

How the hell does a hose stand up and turn on on it's own?

Every bar should be equipped with a jukebox that fries it's patrons if they act like jackasses.

Man, there are just to many damn cameras in this town.

Zits and zombies, I don't think this actually warrants a second viewing. It might benefit from it to try to figure out what actually is going on in Black River, but it's not even worth it unless you somehow become attached to this film. Even as a Dean Koontz fan, I'd rather watch any of the King films over this any day. Nothing really positive comes from sitting through this picture unless you find Lisa Edelstein to be attractive, are prone to watching the sub-par work of Jay Mohr in any context or are in the mood to see some assclown get sprayed with a hose that turns on by itself, and then minutes later get electrocuted by a digital jukebox. In which case that scene actually made me laugh because I wasn't expecting it and seeing that guy lying on a pool table covered in electrical burns just made it even better. Go watch Dead Zone, The Shining or Silver Bullet-the Black River is one you shouldn't have to swim through.    

It's Alive III: Island of the Alive

I have already noted that the third entry into the It's Alive trilogy is my favorite piece. Mainly because it's the "black sheep" and it really doesn't take itself to serious like the previous two did. Also, it stars Michael Moriarty and anything that guy is in is bound to be on helluva treat to sit through. Legendary b-movie actress Karen Black also plays Moriarty's ex-wife, and her acting is really dim and dismal here. She really just slogs through her parts and lines (with what little she has) and it doesn't really add or subtract anything to the overall experience of sitting through It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. The main focus this time is really just Jarvis (Moriarty) going through the throes of the courtroom to testify for or against what is going on with his baby, and of course it's locked up in a cage with a chain around it's neck. He makes a spectacle out of this when the judge orders for it to be brought out for everyone to see, and then the judge puts through the idea that all of these mutated children should be shipped off to an island away from the rest of the world so they can grow and thrive without harming anyone. That's where the "island" part of the film comes from. And then a group of hunters are sent to the island to kill them and dispose of them to snuff out their existence. I'm sure you zits and zombies can already conclude what happens after they arrive on the island.

Baby's first meal is cop-food!

Michael Moriarty and Karen Black? Hell yeah!

 I'm not for killing babies, but in this case a baby death squad is a good idea.

Damn-that baby bent right through those steel bars.

She's a commando in the streets and a revolutionary under the sheets.

Isolate the babies on an island. That's the ticket.

Why did you drop your gun you fool?

There's always gotta be a twist to make some money.

Jarvis is such a dick-I love it!

"We should have brought toys and balloons-kids love clowns."

 It's Alive III: Island of the Alive is not even close to being a flawless production, but out of the three it's the most entertaining. Jarvis doesn't give a good goddamn about anyone around him and just wants to see that his child is ok-even if it is highly disfigured. If you sit back and analyze it a little bit, it's kind of the classic idea that we as humans are afraid of what we don't understand, so we shun and throw rocks until the time comes where whatever it is is accepted and we come to terms with it not being as bad as we originally thought. High art this is not, It's Alive III is the only one of the three that is watchable more than once and seems to get better with each sitting. Zits and zombies, now that this trilogy is on blu-ray and easier to acquire- give all three of them a spin. I'd still say that you'd rather get stuck on an island than to have your wife tell you that she thinks she has to poop. Figure that one out.    

It's Alive 2: It Lives Again

The It's Alive trilogy continues with the sequel It's Alive 2: It Lives Again and in my slime covered opinion, not much really changes between this one and the original. It's basically as straight forward as it can get in terms of a continuing story, and it really just jump starts itself right after the first one ends. Frank Davis travels to Seattle after he finds out that a few more of the mutant infants have been born to try to warn the next couple about what is going on. He's at their house during some kind of party or get together or something and no one knows who he is or how he got there. After all of the guests leave he basically just kind of invades the couples lives and tries to inform them about the experiences he had with his baby previously. There's a bunch of shit with scientists and doctors wanting to test the babies and experiment on them, the couple doesn't want to kill their own child but they have to make the choice to do so. Oh, Frank dies as well. So there's that. The sequel is kind of a mess and a tad on the grindy side of horror cinema, but if you at least somewhat enjoyed the original, there's a little juice to squeeze from It's Alive 2. 

Tuscon-I hope I can move to Arizona soon.

Mr. Davis isn't queer. You haven't seen the first film, have you?

Don't be a dick, Gene. Frank is trying to help.

Calling your baby "it" sounds like somethings wrong to me.

I can't sleep normally either.

Who would trust you-you're a damn doctor.

Sexual activity-would you really want these things making more of themselves?

Enter The Dragon? Hell yeah!

Their maximum potential is to be dead.

How are you going to sleep in that bed? It's so damn small.

Man these babies are freaking ugly.

In the grand scheme of things zits and zombies, It's Alive 2: It Lives Again is a very middle of the road, okay, mediocre sequel that really only warrants a single view just to continue the trilogy. There are a few kills with the mutant babies, but they are weaker than what was offered in the original and the plot really doesn't have much more weight to it than just Frank going to a different city to warn other people about the mutated infants. The main characters really have nothing note worthy behind them to make them memorable, and they have to make some serious choices here and there that would have made other relationships fall apart. But you have to do what you have to do sometimes. For now, just stick with the original. The third times' a charm.