Rockula

 

Rockula is a silly very early 90's take on a vampire story where Ralph is down and out and always fighting with his inner dialogue through a mirror. Now that in and of itself breaks convention when it comes to vampire lore and what you're supposed to expect from this sort of thing because we all know that vampires can't see themselves in mirrors as well as anyone else. But Ralph going back and forth with himself about how he really feels against what is happening in the film really is funny and it's a different way for us to see into what's going on with the main character as apposed to the normal bindings that we would normally get. Rockula is sort of a vampiric/musical hybrid of a movie where there are songs that explain some of what's going on, but also it ties into the fact that Ralph needs to break this curse where every twenty two years he has to try and save his girl Mona who was killed some four hundred years ago by a pirate with a rhinestone peg-leg and a giant hambone. She was supposed to be his girl forever, but he couldn't save her, so now he's cursed to having her being killed and reborn every twenty two years until he finally builds up the courage to actually stop this menace of time and to keep her as his for the long haul. The time is finally right during the events of Rockula and we get all sorts of whacky people and characters employed here-we get to meet his mother, her boyfriend Boom Boom Williams (The Terror of Tennessee) Axman (played by Bo Diddley) Chuck The Bartender, and of course-his man guy, his main villain and the weirdo that's in Ralph's way-Stanley. This guys ends up becoming the pirate towards the third act via some advice from "his psychic" where she tells him to dress up pretty much exactly like that pirate that Stanley tried to extinguish some four hundred years ago when Mona was killed in the first place, and it makes him even more determined to break this cycle and to be bonded to his beautiful Mona. I don't blame him. Not being able to bang your girl for over four centuries would fucking suck. That's one thing I do have to mention about Rockula is that it's extremely light hearted in the fact that there is basically no cussing, no sex, no nudity, no real violence, gore-nothing extreme or dark in the way that would make this unwatchable to anyone. This is a flick that quite literally anyone could watch and have a good time with-unless you straight up just don't like 80's/very early 90's music, fashion, hairstyles and generally just like having a good time. That's the absolute best thing that I can sport on about Rockula is that even if you're not really into vampire flicks or musicals (which I'll be upfront here in saying that I really don't like musicals all that much) this piece will still suck you into what's going and you'll still have a fun time with it. Going back to what I said at the beginning with breaking conventions about what we all expect from something that has to do with vampires, there's a couple of scenes that made me laugh about just that very thing-the first one is where Ralph is contending with himself in the mirror in his bedroom about trying to go out to find Mona during the day in broad daylight, and his reflection doesn't want him to do it because of reasons we all know about-but he says "don't worry, I'm protected" and shows him a bottle of sunscreen. Good stuff. The other one is where Stanley is wearing this massive necklace made from these gigantic cloves of garlic and instead of Ralph being repulsed by it and leaving when he smells it, he says "smells good" and Stanley asks him "you know what this is right?" and Ralph replies "yeah-I cook with it all the time". This sort of energy and plane of comedy runs through the entire runtime and I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for something more on the lighter side right now instead of a lot of the more serious and darker toned films that have been coming out as of late, just sit your ass down and watch Rockula on Tubi. If you don't enjoy the music, the characters and the overall charm that this film has to offer, than you can kill my wife and I'll have to try save her every twenty two years after she is reborn. I don't want to have to do that and neither does Ralph. Also, that rosary looks like it's from the 18th century, not the 19th-but who's really keeping track.

Cheater Cheater

 

I'm not a Cheater Cheater, but I have been cheated out of many hours of my precious time here on this earth due to SRS pictures and the vast majority of their releases. Over the years since I've been doing this, they seem to distribute either the most boring, petrified, wooden pieces of 'horror' celluloid I think you could possibly imagine, or they're just absolute clunkers that no one should ever strap on their backs to carry around with them for the rest of their lives. Cheater Cheater is a film that literally made me fall asleep somewhere between the second and third acts from the very adrenaline being syphoned out of my veins-by the time the credits started rolling up on my pc monitor, I hit the snooze button on my phone probably three times just to try and jolt my ass back into reality. My hands and forearms were numb from leaning so hard on the arms of my chair that I felt like a paraplegic who lost both of those particular extremities from a major world war, and I couldn't even use the mouse or keyboard to make this thing stop when it came time to write this. Okay, I'm embellishing and overexaggerating a bit-this flick wasn't that horrendous overall, but it did commit the ultimate sin of any sort of art or media which is that it is in fact fucking boring. I could feel how sludgy and slow to stand Cheater Cheater was going to be pretty much right after it started, and none of the characters here have any energy or personality about them. I wanted to give them all some espresso or cans of Red Bull or something because everything here just drones on so painfully slow that time may have started going backwards, which if that were possible, I'd put this flick on again to go back to when I was in my very early 20's or maybe even my late teens to repair some things that wisdom makes you realize should have never happened. We all have regrets, and I don't completely regret sitting through Cheater Cheater, but man I should have never put this film on my list to review. We have Joseph and Peter who start at the beginning of this piece as the usual high school jackasses that want to act a fool on Halloween night and go into the Saps antique store and ask the owner for cigarettes and other stupid shit, he kicks their asses out and at the same time that's happening there were five murders committed on that particular night-and of course-the town of Yakima, Washington is a sleepy town where nothing ever happens. The structure here is just so bland and blah that honestly there isn't a whole lot to push around in terms of certain events building up to the reveal at the end about who killed everyone and why and all of that. It just left a very gray, neutral taste in my mouth and now I need some Listerine to brighten things up again-but after five years, Joseph comes back after completing his AA program from becoming an alcoholic, his parents go missing, his cousin Peter (who I initially thought was just some bizarre close friend that never, ever leaves Joseph's parents house) gets stabbed, Joseph's friend Amber gets stabbed, her fiancé Shane gets stabbed-everyone gets fucking stabbed by someone in a rubber jack-o-lantern mask from either Walmart or the cheapest Halloween store you could possibly find and then you find out who is killing everyone and why-and that's about it. There also is a solid reason why this flick is titled Cheater Cheater, but I'm not going to give that away if you do actually want to plunk your ass down in your chair to watch this because that does give way to some brevity that this piece might garner, but it's pretty weak and predictable to say the least. I really didn't hate Cheater Cheater, but it definitely wasn't memorable or great either. Until next time SRS-I'm sure we'll meet again, and hopefully next time I'll be the one wearing the cheap pumpkin mask so I can stab you instead of you stabbing me. Although, that time travel thing might come in handy-show me how to go back. Show me how to make a film so damn slow that time starts to reverse itself. I think we all need that slice of genius right about now.

Beyond Mamushi

 

Domestic abuse, domestic violence, mental health issues-rape... all of these types of things unfortunately have been going on for decades now. They all seem to have more prevalence now than ever when you consider how they used to be kept in the shadows-mainly because of the internet. We all as people have some sort of psychological crisis taking place because of the digital devices that we use every day-phones, tablets, laptops. Anything that has a bearing in technology gives us access to way more information than we're supposed to be able to handle, and it gives way to the dam being broken on our mental stability. That sort of thing doesn't really play a huge role here in Beyond Mamushi though. Our main characters Kate and Chris barely touch their phones or anything during the duration of this moody, atmospheric and darkly disturbed piece put together by M. W. Daniels-this is just a straight up psychological thriller that I really don't think anyone who's a fan of this specific type of horror should miss out on. I'm going to point out here right off that my favorite thing about Beyond Mamushi has to be the cinematography. What a beautifully shot film from start to finish and even though the color palate employed here was mostly white and sort of muted in the background to give the viewer more of a sense of the dread that needed to be felt here, I thought it was perfect and a lot of single frames here ignited my heart as to why I also love photography as an art form. There were a lot of individual shots here that when I saw them as the film played out, I really just wanted to pause it and take screen shots because they just had a photographic quality to them that needed to be printed and framed on a wall somewhere. Maybe that's going a little to far with the quality, but I can't help it. That's what I was thinking when I was soaking in the way this was filmed and I personally thought it was a show stopper. But the crux of Beyond Mamushi is an interesting one because there's an ambiguity about if this really is all in Kate's head as Chris is seemingly mentally abusive towards her, or is he really an asshole that needs to be put down. There's a second and third layer to this as well because there's a scene where before Chris and Kate are going to leave to go to Scotland for awhile, they have dinner with Chris' dad as sort of a send off type of thing to check up on him and to say goodbye for awhile. Earlier before this, Kate writes down on a piece of paper that she needs to kill Chris on his birthday, and while she's in the bathroom at his father's house before they leave, she accidentally drops it on the floor when she walks out. She realizes this and tells Chris that she needs to go back to his dad's place because she thinks she left something there, so when she goes back to retrieve this piece of paper, a very brutal and unexpected event takes place that pretty much threw my film huffing sensibilities completely against the wall without warning. I honestly was not even considering what happened to take place because it's just not something that I was thinking about in the context of the film in that moment, but it added a slather of tension and urgency that leaves you feeling like anything can happen and nothing is off the table. Now here's the other layer I was talking about-Ama Mamushi herself. She is presented as a psychologist or mental doctor of some sort, and Kate contacts her to talk to her about what has been going on in her life with Chris. She's the one that ends up giving Kate the idea of killing Chris on his birthday in the first place, and as a medical professional, something like that is just never the answer. Ever. But she takes the advice and ends up writing what she writes on that piece of paper and fully plans on executing what Ama told her to do. Now, here's where Ama gets sort of tricky because Kate sees Ama or imagines her at one point while we're getting towards the end where she tells Kate that she committed suicide in front on everyone at her husband's birthday party in the very house that they moved into. That incident actually just begs more questions that don't have any answers at that certain moment as you're watching this because maybe all of the abuse that Kate has been experiencing might be in her head-but maybe it isn't. There is no way to really know for sure. That's what makes Beyond Mamushi such a great psychological thriller is because you don't actually know and you need to deduce it on your own. I really, really liked this indie title immensely and if you have the chance to check it out, for the love of God just do it. I put this high on a pedestal now for tip-top praise this year in 2026, and I'll plug this thing as a reference for awhile. Also, one last thing-I really liked the symbolism for Kate with her rainbow kite. It showed us that she still was craving freedom and a spiritual state of chameleonism where she could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, and the flight and airspace of that kite just made her feel alive. Really enjoyed it. Put Beyond Mamushi on your list towards the top. It wholly deserves it.    

Dasher-The Gig Economy Is A Killer

 

The first thing I have to state (that I've stated many times in the past) is that I'm not really a fan of found footage or first person type flicks because they just have never sat right with me on some level. There's a layer of believability there that just doesn't process through my brain the right way and I end up not even giving a shit by the time a film like that is over. Dasher here however is something different. It's neither first person nor found footage because the entire thing was filmed guerilla style with a dash cam-Dasher filmed with a dash cam-huh-I don't know if that small little detail was intentional or not by directors Tom Zompakos and Juan Pablo Pendas, but I genuinely enjoyed it a lot more than a scenario where a guy somehow is still holding onto a camera while people are getting torched in the middle of a street by a psycho with a flamethrower or while some insane Godzilla styled creature is destroying everything in it's wake and he somehow captures all of it on film and never drops the damn thing. Ever. This almost forty minute chunk really kept me engaged mostly because of the characters Juan, his annoyingly hilarious friend Grits (who was played by Zompakos himself) and Juan's girlfriend Jimena and the fact that they just felt real and the situations they were in while Juan was delivering the food items he needed to while door-dashing could and probably have actually happened at some point. There probably is a door dash delivery guy somewhere that has a pal that is in the nose candy industry who doesn't have a car that looks like a mix between Bono and Ringo from The Beetles (it's those blue sunglasses man) who has infinite excuses for literally everything that seemingly needs a ride everywhere. I really enjoyed it when Grits was razzing Juan for taking his car to six different car washes in just that week alone and that he could eat spaghetti off the hood of it without a plate. That was a good riff-it shows that Juan gives a shit about how his car looks while he's doing his job, but he also probably wants to wash the slimy residue off the exterior from Grits getting in and out of it all the time as, well-the guy is a dealer and he's into it with the grimiest of people. Grits even drinks and eats a bit of one of Juan's customers' food when he's not in the car and then when he delivers it, the dude gets pissed and kind of just tosses it in the grass. Honestly, I haven't even made it to the horror part of Dasher yet and I'm smiling just because of the character interactions and dialogue that they spit between each other as they are driving around. Really quick though-there are some really cool camera angles that were employed here even with just a dash cam so the cinematography is really solid and I watched it in 4k on YouTube so that was a plus. And, I'm a big music guy in general so I have to plug the score put together here by B'Monea because the music played a massive part in the overall enjoyment of this flick. It wasn't overwritten, it wasn't off by any means and it fit perfectly with what was going on at the moment while viewing this thing. But here's the horror part-there's a scene where Juan partakes in deviating his septum, and while he's getting high, some guy is chasing a woman in a goat's head/Baphomet mask and a fucking meat cleaver and gashes her all over the hood of his car. He of course drives away not even really knowing if that was real or not or if it was a product of the coke-but that sort of thing sticks with you. After that, he's basically stalked the whole rest of the film by this demon guy because he wants to snuff him out because of Juan witnessing his murder. Or I'm guessing at that. Either way, that bastard wants him dead and I'm not into spoiling an ending but with what I just stated, you might be able to surmise how this thing closes-and it's not good. All I'm going to state here as I'm sealing this up is that Dasher is a great time and I really hope to see more from Tom Zompakos in the future-Dasher is up on his YouTube channel named Hurricane Party Studio and if you dig the film as much as I did, there's always liking, commenting and subscribing. All I'm saying zits and zombies is help this man out-we need more indie films these days and this is a good a place as any to start. Now I need to kick Grits' ass out of my car. I have some McDonald's to deliver. 

 

Scared Shitless

 

Back in 2024 before Scared Shitless was even released, my younger brother Mike had shown me the trailer for this flick and said "this looks like something you need to write a review for". And he was absolutely correct. This film fits right in with what my normal panoramic view of low budget movie good-times should encompass because it's all here. It's funny, it has plenty of gore, fantastic practical effects (with some slight CGI in spots that I didn't really think ruined anything) spot on music and characters that just felt so right in the setting and context of Scared Shitless. I won't lie, I really thought this was going to be a Monsturd type of deal where it was going to eventually evolve into a giant pile of literal shit that wants to kill and eat people-but no, that's not what this is about. It doesn't have anything to do with human fecal matter. It does however involve some weirdo that lives in an apartment in the Palmer Estates building where he conducted an experiment called "project x" (yeah, so original) that basically ended up producing some Slither/Slug looking creature that loves living it up in pipe systems and toilets because it always needs to be wet constantly, and what better way than to pop up and clog up some people's dunnys. I'm not Australian, but there it is. The way Scared Shitless opens is pretty great too because we have an older gentleman cooking an American dinner if I ever saw one which consists of long green beans, mashed potatoes and something I'm not a fan of really-meatloaf. Yeah, the legendary singer Meatloaf kicked ass when he was alive, but the food item itself is questionable at best. But Don's son Sonny is just being a lazy bastard on the couch watching a great film in and of itself-namely Manborg-if you've never seen that one, go check it out. But Sonny also has an NES and a PS1 hooked up to the main t.v. in the living room and to that I say he's got to be a proud retro gamer. Those are classic consoles. Also, the director may have thrown them in there just to populate the background and had hoped no one noticed what they were, but I did. Right away. I'm to much of a gamer to not notice things like that. But when the food is ready, Don calls Sonny over to start eating and then the exposition starts by them going through this whole thing about his mom/Don's wife passing away and now Sonny has a germaphobe problem and he's constantly drinking Bismuth all the time to settle his stomach. The Bismuth thing is integral way later in the film-but tonight is the night where Sonny is going on his first plumbing call with his dad, and it's where else-at the Palmer Estates building. Mrs. Applebaum's toilet is acting up, and she needs it taken care of. They fix it, they meet her dog Daisy and then slowly every toilet in the place starts having issues and then they eventually end up in the guys' apartment that did the experiment in the first place. They go back to Mrs. Applebaum's place where they started, and they end up extracting this massive thing that has the eggs for whatever this monster is-and they find out that the Bismuth burns them alive if it barely even touches them. There's a lot of gore in Scared Shitless with a head getting torn off and you see a mutilated body, Don's finger gets bitten off by one of the creatures and blood flies everywhere-like I mentioned before, the practical effects are great and the cinematography is spot on too. If it needs to be up close and gross, it is. If the viewer needs space to breathe, it's there. This flick is just a fun time and it's ready to watch on Tubi and Amazon Prime. When I first saw the trailer that my brother showed me a couple of years ago, I thought it looked funny, but I had a feeling that this thing was going to suck. It didn't. It was a good time. Scared Shitless didn't leave me scared shitless, but it did remind me that not every film has to take itself seriously and we can still have fun even in the bullshit times we are living in now. Would it have been better if it actually was a giant pile of actual manure or shit coming alive to kill everyone? Yeah, it might have been-but it wouldn't have been the same. I'd hang out with Sonny and his dad but I would probably tell him to stop being a pussy by constantly drinking Bismuth all the time and being worked up about germs. Turn that damn NES on so we can play some Super Dodge Ball-one of my favorite games on that console of all time. And destroy some toilet snakes while we're at it. 

HauntedWeen

 

HauntedWeen is a funny little haunted house/halloween themed slasher from 1991 because I don't think it quite knows exactly where it wants to go or who it wants to hang out with. The little Eddie Burber side of this two face is the horror part where he is hosting the family haunted house with whom I presume to be his parents-his dad looks more like he would be his grandpa-but that's beside the point. The Burber house is used for making monies with it being transformed into a haunted house to scare the crap out of anyone who is willing to pay, and something terrible happens. Before I say what happens at the beginning, I got complete Bad Ronald vibes from this situation and Eddie's mother's reaction because she almost does the same thing that Bad Ronald's mother does in that movie at the opening-if you've never seen that, what happens is this little girl keeps picking on Ronald in between going to school and whatever else and Ronald can't take it anymore after a certain point, so he shakes her up a bit and she ends up falling on a rock head first and dies. Ronald's mother cuts a hole in the wall of their house for Ronald to live in so he never gets caught by the authorities and he never has to go to jail or anything for his mistake. Ronald also ends up becoming extremely bizarre from the isolation that that type of situation provides (with living behind a wall and everything) and then his mother eventually dies when she goes to the hospital for some complications, but he doesn't know that so he's just trapped in the house forever. In HauntedWeen, during the annual money making period where Eddie and his family are hosting their haunted house, he gets a little to real with what he's supposed to do in the haunted house because he's all amped up from reading monster magazines that he ends up killing a girl while she's shitting her pants from the denizens of said haunted house. So, in order for Eddie to not get into trouble, what does his mother do? She ends up having her and Eddie move away to some remote cabin/home type place and while he's chopping wood for the fireplace, she has a heart attack and dies right on the back porch. Eddie doesn't call anyone-no ambulance, no police-nothing. He kind of just tucks her away somewhere out of sight and that's basically it. Here's the other side of this two face which is the older Eddie Burber part-I want to say about 80% of HauntedWeen is a really watered down, half-assed teen sex comedy with college idiots partying, drinking it up, smoking, guys trying to get into the girls' pants (I mean, yes-because that's what us men do) and there's plenty of nice boobs, a little blood here and there from a few random kills on Eddie's part and unnecessary drama between Kurt and Mel because Mel wants Kurt to spend more time with her and pay attention to her more, but he's the typical clown shoe where work and his boys come first. Man, fuck that shit. You have a hot blonde that wants to just be with you and you're more concerned about your Frat that is behind on it's due payments by $3,700, so you'd rather focus on that. Ass and titties, man-ass and titties. Anyway, Eddie somehow gets wind of this Frat needing the money, so he gives the keys of the house to a character here that I really thought I was going to be annoyed by the entire way through, but he actually ended up being kind of entertaining. His name is Hanks. Yeah, Hanks. He's a great sidekick and a great friend. But pretty much after the entire Frat spends an insane amount of time revamping the Burber house to be used again for haunted house purposes, the whole third act is Hanks and Kurt collecting money from random people coming to the haunted house and Eddie himself actually killing all of them one by one, and of course, everyone that is a paying patron just sees what Eddie is doing as part of the experience. They have bloodlust in their eyes and their hearts as Eddie chops people up before them, and they love it with little boys and girls screaming "chop their heads off!" and craziness like that. Towards the end (and the ending is so abrupt and absurd) Hanks actually goes in the haunted house himself because he wants to see where everyone else is and what his idea is procuring to keep making them money-and he ends up realizing that "the kill room" where Eddie is doing just that isn't in fact part of the show. That shit is real. Eddie tries escaping through a vent in the floor, and Hanks torches his ass with a prop flamethrower they have for the haunted house. Kurt sees Hanks after he runs outside and Hanks tells him "I got him-I cooked him like one of mama's homecooked biscuits-son of a bitch!" But then Eddie's toasted ass comes outside as well, gets into a car and blasts away. Kurt gets a double barrel from somewhere and unloads both shells into the back of the car as Eddie is pretty far away at the point and the whole thing blows up like someone threw a grenade at it. What a spectacular, nonsensical, unrealistic ending. And it's abrupt because after it blows up, it randomly starts driving away and then you're pushed into the end credits. And that's it. HauntedWeen didn't know how to properly end either. It just sort of stops after a fireball of a vehicle drives away somehow when we know that Eddie has to be fucking dead. But this is a funny slasher from 1991, so it needs a weird and funny ending too. And that's exactly what we have here. I had fun with HauntedWeen-would I watch it again? Maybe. I mean Hanks is pretty great and Mel is hot, but I don't know if that's enough to come back a second time. Also, the version that I watched on Tubi is actually the Vinegar Syndrome print of the film that they most likely put on blu-ray at some point. So there's that too. I don't know how to end this any better than this film does itself, so I'm just going to shoot my car with a double barrel too. Here's to investing in a new vehicle.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Badlands

 

The story for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Badlands is pretty simple-there's a well known Youtuber/content creator named Jonah that became lost somewhere in the general area of the Texas killing fields, and no one can find him. We do get to meet Leatherface at the beginning doing his thang while participating in a version of his own signature "chainsaw dance", which I mean, at this point if there's no "chainsaw dance" in a Texas Chainsaw movie than what are you doing? Is it even part of this universe without it? But at the opening of this twenty two minute romp we have a bartender talking to the local sheriff about just that-the missing Jonah guy that's out there somewhere working on videos or live streaming with the possibility of gettin' snuffed. The sheriff tells the bartender that he has some days off coming up and he's going to take some time to go look for him. He's going to be off duty and he really doesn't have to do that, but he has a heart and wants to help find Jonah, so we do see this dude again later on. But I also have to point out here that Jonah is played by Robert Irwin who also played the insanely annoying Adam in another Ian Messenger film that I made a Youtube review for titled Wendigo Falls. If you're into found footage or first person films, go check that one out because you'll probably get into it. But we do see Jonah himself here for a couple of minutes while he is in fact making content for his Youtube channel. He becomes about as lost as we all thought he would, and Leather snags him as he's pissing himself in some random dilapidated house where he is promptly kidnapped, hung up in a barn of sorts and has-you guessed it-his face fileted with a hunting knife by Thomas Hewitt himself so that he can wear his face as a mask for the rest of the show. Or Bubba Sawyer-or which ever real name you want to slap on his ass. But the cinematography in this scene in particular I thought was great because it really did remind me of how the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filmed in that you get to see everything while seeing nothing at the same time. The camera is behind Jonah the whole time so all you see is the back of his head and his hands tied up to a ceiling beam while good ol' Leather is right there torturing him and slicing his face off slowly and meticulously so that the skin can stay intact for the purpose of wearing it. That scene really is the fulcrum that keeps Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Badlands together as you go on this journey with Adrienne, Jade, Blake and Dusty as they traverse this area in hopes of finding him before what happens-happens. There honestly isn't to much more that I can really say about this fan made addition to the Sawyer/Hewitt world here because when it comes down to it, this is a little side tidbit in the hands of a really solid cast and crew who you can tell have a passion for horror and for the Texas Chainsaw franchise in particular. I liked it even more than that shitty Netflix Texas Chainsaw movie that they released back in 2022 because this entry is short, gritty and gets to the point. The 2022 one has us milling around with a bunch of annoying Gen Z losers that want to "cancel" Leatherface and all they do is whine about how hot and dry Texas is and how everyone there has guns and whatever else. That version of this story fucking sucked. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Badlands did not. If you really want an indie/short Texas Chainsaw flick that will only soak up about twenty plus minutes of your time, this is the one. It's just a travesty that Jonah is gone now. There's a lot of Youtuber's that stop making content or just quit altogether for various reasons, and his story is probably the most interesting and the darkest out of all of them. Yeah-Badlands is great and needs to be pushed more. Time to gas up my own chainsaw and cut on through. The saw is family. 

Medusa (2020)

 

Look, I didn't expect to much when I originally placed this version of Medusa on my review list at the beginning of the year because it just looked stupid-and for the most part, I ended up being correct. Medusa 2020 ended up being the most perfect example of a purgatory flick I could have possibly imagined because there just isn't anything here that would make anyone in their right mind want to pay another visit sometime in the near future. Basically everything contained here is extremely bland, mid, meh and completely forgettable. There are a few things that do stand out however and for starters, we have to talk about the atmosphere and the score of this film because they are both very good. The overall music implemented at certain points here really make you feel like you're a part of what's happening and you just don't want to be there and that's a fantastic feel for the score of any film to have. When if feels dark and depressing, so do you. When it feels creepy and oppressive, so do you. I really enjoyed the music written for Medusa 2020 and it's unfortunately the only great thing about this flick I can really point out besides the acting itself because it really went for the overall feel of what the film was supposed to be, which was a darker and more serious tone. I really think that this flick would have been so much better if it was what I thought it was going to be, which was some kind of cheesy, shitty, horror comedy type of deal-but it wasn't. It was basically the antithesis of that, and I personally think that it drug this picture down way further than it should have been. Also, one last thing that was pretty solid was the cinematography. The shots and lighting were really good and I had no complaints about that. Deep reds were used sparingly, but it served well to what was going on and to giving the audience the vibes it was supposed to. Now, everything else-yeah. Medusa 2020 sucked. I mentioned earlier that this was the most perfect example of a purgatory flick because it ticked every box that it possibly could for being boring, for garnering lackluster characters and for the entire build-up and overall situation to just leading down a path that no one is going to remember. Nothing incredibly exciting happens. Hell, I'm already forgetting certain details about what happened here as I'm writing this and I really wish that wasn't the case. There are two scenes that do stand out however and the first one I'm going to mention is when Carly finally starts shedding her skin getting towards the end of this thing and she looks like a snake-you know-because Medusa is the queen of snakes? The practical effects for this scene were really great and I wish there were more of them, which leads me to the second scene I'm going to point out which is the ending. The ending first of all is stupid. I'm not even going to say what happens-all I'm going to say is that it's really fucking dumb and the CGI used when Carly starts having the snakes in the back of her head come out because she's fully starting to transform into Medusa is legendarily bad-I'm talking here that you can actually see the line around her head where the animation of the snakes begins and ends and where it was placed in post when it was edited. Not even joking. It was baaaaaaddd. So, how does all of this even play out? Basically, Carly lives in this absolute trash trailer park in the middle of Australia somewhere and the way that these women make money is turning tricks. Yeah. And Carly's boss (or whoever this asshole is-he's basically a pimp) is a cocaine smuggling piece of shit that shows up whenever he needs something or to bring men to this little sex ring. Hi name is Jimmy. But one night for whatever reason, Jimmy takes Carly to this Dennis Rodman/Simon Phoenix looking guy's place and he tells her to ask for some woman named Alexis. Except Alexis isn't a woman-it's a snake. A snake. So Carly and Dennis Phoenix end up getting freaky a little bit and then Alexis bites her in the leg a few times, which of course slowly through the rest of the film turns Carly into Medusa. Beyond everything that I've mentioned here good or bad, Medusa 2020 is the straightest purgatory movie of all time. I never thought that I would ever run across the flawless version of that type of a film, but here I am still embarking on this quest. If you're interested, give this a shot. You'll probably see it as nothing more than a movie sporting a button up light blue shirt with it's sleeves rolled up. It always puts the work in, but it's never going to make it to the top. Or just listen to the Anthrax song titled Medusa. I'm done now.  

   

In The Willows (6th Chamber Pictures/Ian Messenger)

 

I have in the past ingested and reviewed other works from Ian Messenger such as his Friday The 13th short films Friday The 13th: Revenant and Friday The 13th: Legacy as well as his found footage flick titled Wendigo Falls. The video on my Youtube channel for all of those in one fell swoop is still there if you're at all interested in checking out my thoughts on any of those, and once again on good ol' Instagram, I was contacted by him to review the new slab sewn together by him and his crew-In The Willows. I want to say thank you right away again for thinking of me to write something on my site for this because there's already so much I want to watch and review, but I will always make the the time to review someone's work in the indie scene if they ask me to. So, for this piece it was directed by Ashley Messenger (which may be his sister or wife? I'm not actually sure) but just having a film like this directed by a woman is really cool and adds something a little different to the mix-sure, this sort of thing has happened before in the past to a greater extent, but it's still awesome to see to switch things up a bit. But In The Willows focuses on a group of friends that want to help their pal Jackson with his addiction issues, so instead of staying in the city and trying to help him grind it out with every chance and convenience he's used to by way of getting some smack or whatever his drug of choice is, they take him literally in the middle of nowhere to some downtrodden, beat-the-hell-up farm/survival resort place for him to "be away from the wi-fi and to get some fresh air". Sounds like a great idea, right? It wasn't. Because at the opening of In The Willows we have three guys fishing and shooting the shit in some lake or pond in the area of where these "rehab" grounds stand, and in between them drinking and talking about God knows what, a couple of weirdos in burlap clown and jack-o-lantern masks appear out of nowhere and start snuffing them out. I was intrigued right away because who are these fellows and what's their purpose? I mean, this is a dark backwoods styled slasher so what else are they going to do-they're going to kill people. That's what. After the three randoms are sent to heaven or hell here in the beginning, we meet all of our main squeezes and really the people you will be spending the most time with are Jackson and Gabby-they have this whole past that starts getting dug into because they dated previously and Gabby starts shouting all of the sacrifices that she made for Jackson to his face to try and save him and to get him clean-but what do junkies do? They don't want to do that-they want to wallow in their lifestyle and hide in the corners so they can keep up with their habits. There is an underlying layer to the weird people with the masks wanting to kill all of them-and very quickly, my favorite of them was actually the overweight, Leatherface looking guy named Father Abner I believe-he was the only one that actually talked a couple of times and he shot one our main characters with an old school single shot shotty. So that was a good time. But with these killers with the masks and the woman with the little bell that she keeps ringing-I think that they are some kind of physical manifestations presented to all of them maybe as what they're afraid of or some kind of spirits to make them pay the toll for their sins? I don't know-maybe I'm looking to far into that aspect and maybe they're just a cannibal family looking for some lunch. Whatever is really going on here with In The Willows, I'm going to sit here and say that I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm also going to state that I want a second part to this or even a full 80-90 minute feature so we can dig in a little more. I as well as you want to know more about our main group, we want to know what happens to them after Gabby is choked to death by the guy with the clown mask and what does happen after Father Abner carries the woman with the bell through the fields and into the end credits. Yeah-hear me 6th Chamber Pictures-I think a sequel or a full length version is in order here. Because Jackson needs to get sober and he needs to get back with Gabby again. Dug it. 

  

Revenge Of The Red Baron

 

About a week ago, my brother-in-law sent me a clip of this hilariously bad film on Youtube by the name of Revenge Of The Red Baron. The clip was in the middle of the movie where Tobey Maguire's character-Jimmy Spencer-has been brought into a mental facility based on the fact that his dad was murdered in his own swimming pool by his hand, tossing his giant bug zapper into the water while it was turned on, frying those little blood sucking bastards into oblivion. Except that's not what took place. Not at all. Jimmy's dad was killed by The Red Baron himself because he in fact is the one that did a nose dive right into the device and pushed it into the pool to effectively electro-shock his father into the afterlife. So the cops were called by their dumbass neighbor who can't seem to never be an asshole or have a cigar in his mouth because he's nosy, and the main detective is great because he's freaking Bob Pinciotti from That 70's Show. That's right-Don Stark makes an appearance here and I really enjoyed his candor and over-the-top leaning for this particular cameo because all he's here for is to send Jimmy's ass to either juvenile hall or some kind of shrink hospital for his rantings and ravings about a killer German Baron flying a little mini triplane from WWI. If this shit actually happened, no one in real life would believe him either because it's hilarious, delusional and of all the things to randomly come alive to try and murder you, why would it be the red baron of a German triplane from WWI. That's some serious imagination cranking there and it for sure warrants a straight jacket. But here's where the story for this starts-it's France 1918, and there's a dog fight taking place between The Red Baron and what seems to be a few American biplanes, and for my sake, yours, and a tad bit of historical accuracy, I actually looked up a bunch of photos of these types of aircraft while this opening was playing out just to see what I was dealing with in the moment and the planes that were used as American ones in this scene weren't American at all-they were British Sopwith biplanes being posed as American ones. Most people when this film first came out probably didn't realize the difference or even gave a shit (and to be honest if I was just watching this just to watch it instead of writing about it, I probably wouldn't have cared that much either) but I just wanted to point this out because I felt like I had to and it actually kind of adds to the overall cheapness and lack of quality that this film holds. In the entertainment department, I was all smiles and ridiculous cackles when it came to sitting through Revenge Of The Red Baron, but when it came to pretty much everything else-I was groaning and rolling my eyes at how inept this thing became. So at the end of this dog fight, The Red Baron himself is shot down and explodes in one of the crappiest explosions I think I've ever seen, and then after some embarrassingly bad score music, we are cut to Jimmy playing some flight simulator looking game on an NES, which looked like it should have been running on an early Windows 95 pc of the time or the original Playstation. That in and of itself is just insane because the writers and director clearly didn't know anything about video games at the time, and once again adds to just how quirky and terrible this film actually is. But the baron is brought back to life because Jimmy is sent to his dad's house where him and his Grandpa live so he can get some discipline and/or course correction because he's always fucking up at school and is always getting into fights with other students and teachers. His Grandpa ends up being the fighter pilot in WWI that shot down the baron in the beginning of the film, and his hobby now is that he builds and flies WWI era RC planes, and of course wouldn't you know it-he built the exact triplane that the baron was flying when he shot him down all those years ago and it's hanging from the ceiling on display. For some bizarre reason, he tells Jimmy to cut that plane down and one of the "American" ones, they fly them outside together and pretend to have a dog fight, when all of a sudden a storm comes and bolts the baron's plane with some lightning, and now he's alive and full of some of the shittiest German war era one-liners possible. The puppet that was used for the baron is so stupid looking and it almost made me feel like I was watching a lost Puppet Master film or something, which to be fair would actually fit into that canon somewhere because there's a whole WWII lore going on there with Toulon and all that-but I'm not going to get into any Puppet Master shit here. After all of that happening in the opening moments of the film, it's basically the baron following Jimmy and his grandpa around after he ends up in the hospital from having a coronary, trying to do whatever he can to eradicate him because he blasted his ass into smithereens back in WWI. There is a scene in here-and this is where the baron gets ammo for the guns on his plane-where Jimmy and his mom are actually trying to shoot him down skeet shooting style with duck hunting shotguns and lever action repeaters-they of course miss a million times and never hit him-but his mom goes to the gun cabinet for more ammo, she drops the whole box on the floor, leaves it there, and the baron sees it when he flies into the house to chase Jimmy's mom only to say "Ah, bullets. Danke schon." Then after that for the whole rest of the film he has seemingly unlimited ammo and ends up mowing down quite a few people who get into his way up until the very end. I normally do what I can to not spoil how any of these trash heaps end because it's just a better experience if you've never watched any of the movies that I review, but here's the ending for Revenge of The Red Baron-Jimmy uses the RC "American" plane to fly in circles until the baron finally screws up and flies into the power lines hanging above his grandpa's house, but he doesn't get electrocuted. So grandpa stands up out of his wheelchair next to the cut power box that's supposed to power those specific lines and he stretches those wires together to fry himself and the baron so this mess is finally all over and they can live happily ever after. I highly (and I mean HIGHLY) recommend looking up Revenge Of The Red Baron on Youtube because the entire film is there for anyone to enjoy and this is a rare one that was suggested to me that I actually ended up digging a lot because of how insane it was. Me putting this review together really doesn't even scratch the surface of how hilariously bad this flick is because I didn't even talk about any of the one-liners that the baron spits out or how much of a shitty teenage attitude Jimmy bares on his shoulders, his dad's dickhead of a neighbor, the hot nurse in the hospital where his grandpa ends up or piles and piles of other things that you just need to see for yourself. Go watch this and may historical accuracy be damned.

The Greenskeeper

 

Oh boy, this one's par for the corpse. I wish the actual contents of The Greenskeeper was as cool as the cover art, but once again this is just another film that became a victim of great poster art and great marketing to push a lame, boring-boring-boring-fucking boring movie to slasher fans and horror comedy fans. It fails miserably in both categories and the setup really enticed me because it looked and sounded like it may have been a cheap alternative to the seminal slasher classic known as The Burning. That flick kicks all kinds of ass and has some of the goriest and most violent kills I think I've ever seen in an 80's slasher-and unfortunately The Greenskeeper falls way short of that prestige. This was a slasher that I wanted to be good and I wanted it to have gorgeous chicks with their boobs exposed (there was one scene where the only attractive chick in here does just that-every other female is between a six and a seven) and I wanted there to be awesome kills, funny jokes, cool characters and a great back plot to fill in the gaps where they needed to be filled in at. But, none of that took place. I will state though that the kill at the end where Allen's "dad" (it's in quotes because he's not really his dad as you find out) actually kills his real dad by shoving a freaking sprinkler head into his chest and after he falls over as his heart keeps beating, the sprinkler starts going off by spurting his blood everywhere as if it was water watering the grass on the golf course. Clever, kind of funny and a pretty cool kill that was actually done well considering how shit the rest of this snooze-fest ended up being. I was so damn disappointed by The Greenskeeper that I honestly didn't really even pay attention to half the film while it was playing because 90% of this flick felt like I was watching some garbage late 90's/early 2000's low budget sex comedy with no comedy and barely any sex. None of it worked and now it's just another stink fest that I have to toss onto my list for worst of the year. Oh yeah, another kill that I want to point out is there is one scene where one of our resident retards does get nekkid with one of the girls here in the middle of the night while they are riding around in a golf cart, and as they are getting to work, they're interrupted by The Greenskeeper version of Cropsey, and he shoves the guys' dick in one of the ball cleaners out on one of the courses and keeps pushing it up and down, up and down, up and down and up and down. It feels like he does it waaaaayyyy to many times and I actually said out loud "okay, that's enough-I think this dude's dick is squeaky clean now!" pretty loudly at the screen. I really, really want to write more about The Greenskeeper, but there honestly isn't much else to write about. If I ever do a video about this flick on my Youtube channel, I don't think it would be every long because it's so fucking boring, empty and uneventful that I just don't want any of you zits and zombies to have to endure it. It's not worth your time and it sure as hell wasn't worth mine. Hell, I started reading Ghost Rider by Neil Peart a few days ago and I could have spent my morning ploughing through more of his 10,000 mile motorcycle ride for self healing and preservation than having to contract a mental version of walking pneumonia through The Greenskeeper. Whatever man-it's on the worst of the year list now. I'm not turning back. Stab me with a sprinkler head-I'm done.

Psycho Party Planner

 

I'm probably wrong on remembering this, but I think the last time I even remotely thought about watching a Lifetime movie was when my wife and I lived in Champaign. I chose Psycho Party Planner because the title sounded titillating and I was just ultimately curious as to how far could a film of this ilk go? I mean, we all know how hilariously bad and how hilariously low Lifetime flicks can reach to portray a story, but this entry was different. It was still pretty lame in specific spots (especially in the beginning when it's trying to setup everything to get going) but I don't know zits and zombies-I actually enjoyed myself with this one. Was this good enough to escape the clutches of being tossed somewhere onto my worst of the year list? Yeah, kind of-I threw it on the runners-up list for the moment because it still didn't steep my tea hot enough in the end, but this thing does have plenty of twists and revelations that did exceed my expectations. And I'll be honest, the acting from Lindsey McKeon, Katrina Begin and Cathryn Dylan went further than I thought it would in believability and prose to deliver what this plot eventually unfolds to. Basically here we have Kerry (Dylan) who is about to turn sixteen, and her parents want to throw her a sweet sixteen party to celebrate her. So since neither of Kerry's parents have the time to plan it themselves, they take the time to hire someone to plan it for them. Right away this is kind of ridiculous because if you don't have the time to plan the party, would you even have the time to find someone to do it for you either? I mean, I know that would take less time, but shit-okay, I just went with it for the situation that was happening. So, before any of that crap with Kerry's parents takes place with them talking to her about hiring someone to plan her birthday party when this film opens, we have Lindy (Katrina Begin) and her husband in bed fighting about how she can't physically have children and it's not part of what he signed up for when he married her and all of this other bullshit-he's a fucking prick to her outright, they end up in the hallway by the staircase and oops-his ass goes tumbling down the winding flight which is a symbolic foreshadowing to the downward spiral that Lindy is about to embark upon to keep her career going after his dumbass is dead. There's actually a lot of foreshadowing that happens in Psycho Party Planner that I don't know how you would ever miss unless you're just blatantly not watching the movie and have it on for background noise. So when Kayla (the ever sexy Lindsey McKeon) starts interviewing women who are party/wedding planners to put together something for Kerry, the first one she interviews is very likeable, knows what she's doing and is just all around reasonable. And judging from when we see the inside of her house later when Lindy bumps her off, she seemed pretty damn good and successful at what she was doing too because that was one ballin' place to live. But Lindy doesn't like the fact that Kayla wants to hire Dulcie over her (the first party planner) so she steals her resume from the table that it's sitting on to get her address and so the psycho part from here starts building up. Lindy kills Dulcie in her own house, then she starts living there I guess? Later on in the middle of the film, Lindy brings Kerry over there to figure out some stuff for the party and she lets her drink a pretty full glass of wine (she's supposed to be fifteen, remember?) and it's Dulcie's house, but Kerry doesn't know that. And then slowly but surely, Lindy just starts popping up everywhere that Kerry is-during her dance/cheerleading practices, and school in general, driving her home, when she's hanging out with her friends at some outdoor café-it gets really creepy really fast. Even thought I didn't end up being a massive, over-the-top fan of Psycho Party Planner, I did enjoy it way more than I thought I would. Out of all the Lifetime slop that I've seen randomly over the years, this really has to be the best one. The plot is rock solid, the main ladies here give pretty excellent performances and the ending is an ending that literally came out of nowhere, even though it was pretty predictable. The main issue I had with how it ended though was is that it was abrupt and the info you find out from Lindy right before her demise felt kind of shoehorned in at the last minute because whoever wrote the script couldn't figure out where else to put it, so it ended up right when this thing was about to end. Even though I enjoyed this one and I would actually recommend you inspirational undead to give Psycho Party Planner a go if you're in the mood for fare like this, it's still going on my runners-up list for my worst of the year. I can't praise it any higher than that because of the layers of lameness that plague Lifetime flicks. It's there, it will always be there and there is no cure. It's just how these movies are made. I'm turning 42 this year-maybe I could hire Lindsey McKeon to help me plan something for my birthday. Damn-dreams are so much better than reality. 

Cinderella's Revenge

 

So, there's a Winnie The Pooh horror movie and a Mickey Mouse horror movie and a Popeye horror movie, and even a fucking Little Mermaid horror movie-but now, there's also a Cinderella horror movie. One of many I guess. You barely have to dig online at all to take a plunge into this new world of terror that seemingly came out of nowhere because I have to ask the question-who the hell are these flicks made for? Are they just being made as a joke to poke fun at the fact that Hollyweird is out of ideas? Are they being slapped together to ruin our childhoods and the next generation of innocence? Are they ultimately being funded because even indie horror directors are becoming bored and just need something to do? There is a massive line of inquiries that I hold onto whenever I run across a film in this shiny new sub-genre of horror because I don't know how I feel about them. I know how to have a good time with a piece of shit that was made purposefully for us fiends to actually have a good time with-and some of them were made with the best of intentions just to get a piece of work out there because the people behind them wanted to do something different and creative. But taking something like The Little Mermaid or Cinderella and turning it into a slasher of sorts is just fucking hilariously bad. Was Cinderella's Revenge actually good or entertaining? On both accounts, to certain degrees, yeah, it actually was. But I immediately threw it on the runners-up portion of my worst of the year list because it's a massive purgatory flick. I would never want to watch this ever again and I wouldn't expect anyone else to want to either. The acting itself really isn't half bad considering the cast is seemingly a bunch of nobodies, and I have to say that the woman that plays Cinderella's step mother is particularly bitchy and reminded me at full speed of Hillary Clinton. She straight up looks just like her and I couldn't shake that fact the whole way through. Plot-wise it's the same old shit from this particular story... we have the glass slipper, a prince looking for a beautiful bride, the evil, horrible stepmother and the evil, horrible step sisters and Cinderella herself who's beaten and abused by said sisters and stepmother. They even go so far as hiring some asshole to whip her in one of the barns they have out back while Rachel and Josephine watch, laugh, and get giddy at the fact that he's destroying her body because they hate her so much for being low life scum. Let me tell you something-there's a reason why this is called Cinderella's Revenge-and we'll get to that soon. But first, let's talk about the beginning of the film and the most over-the-top moment here. The setup is that Cinderella's dad is executed by these two clowns in Spirit Halloween skeleton masks who were hired by-you guessed it-her stepmother. She has him beheaded for stealing some treasures from the king. But you find out later that she herself stole the shit and killed him as a cover up. So now Cinderella has to do her bidding because her father isn't there to protect her anymore. Also, really quickly before we get to the insane moment I just mentioned, here's what happens when the fairy godmother gives Cinderella her "carriage" and her dress and all of that crap-the "carriage" isn't a "carriage", it's a damn EV from our time period and the guy that gets out of the car when it shows up is supposed to be Elon Musk, but he sure as hell doesn't look anything like him. Also, her hair gets done by Vidal Sassoon (I think it's actually him in the movie, but I'm not sure on that one) and her dress and glass slippers were made by two other fashion designer guys that I don't know dick about. So there's that to unpack. But here's where shit peaks and gets hilarious. So after the ball, we all know about the prince going around to find the foot that fits the glass slipper. The first sister (Rachel) tries shoving her foot in it, but it's to big. Josephine does the same thing, but when the guys go to the kitchen for a minute to get some water, the stepmother gives the cake knife to Josephine so she can cut her two smaller toes off her foot so it will fit in the glass slipper-and she actually does it! And it's fucking gory! I was not expecting this at all when this happened! After that nonsense, we get to where the fairy godmother gives Cinderella one of the Spirit Halloween masks those guys were wearing in the beginning of the movie, it turns her into a nigh invincible killing machine and she slaughters her family members one by one. And Hogan, who is one of the guys who killed her father in the beginning. And Bennett, who is the other guy who killed her father in the beginning of the movie. I'm exhausted. I didn't think it was going to take this much out of me to write about Cinderella's Revenge, but this is it. Zits and zombies, if you're already invested heavily into these weird childhood slasher films, go right ahead with this one because you'll probably enjoy it. But if the very title just makes you laugh or worried, don't bother. Unless you want to watch Josephine slice her toes off to try and make her foot fit into the glass slipper. That shit was hilarious and threw me for a loop. Maybe there will be a Snow White horror movie next. Seven killer dwarves-sign me up. 

 

R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead

 

I've tried out a couple of Tubi exclusives in the past and they never worked out. At least for me. But R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead is different. Even after seeing what the poster art for this film entailed, for some really dumb reason I still thought it was going to end up being his version and vision of a remade Pumpkinhead from the 80's-but that's not what this is at all. Not even. You could call a film like Jack-O 'pumpkinhead' because the monster in that movie actually has a giant pumpkin for a head, and the actual film of that name that was released in 1988 does not have the main monster pulsate with such a thing-the villain there is a giant xenomorph looking creature reminiscent of those yellow aliens from the original Ninja Turtles cartoon. But it does not actually have a pumpkin for a head. So the title for that franchise just doesn't even make any sense. It does make sense here however because we finally have a title that fits what actually happens in the film and the main baddie itself-because kids are being sacrificed to this cursed foliage mound that slowly turns the recent offering into-well-a literal pumpkinhead. If you're familiar at all with R.L. Stine and his writing, this flick has his energy, sensibilities, charm and twists written all over it-and it made me wish that this was a book of his that he wrote at some point. And maybe it is and Tubi sought to it to adapt it into a movie. I didn't bother looking up if this was the case or not, but either way R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead ended up being a fantastic piece of work from start to finish. There's no way you could be a fan of his and not fall in love with this flick because it straight up has the tone and feel of any of his Goosebumps, Fear Street, Mostly Ghostly, Rotten School books... or really anything he has written. I loved this flick from the moment the gates opened because it's exactly what you want and expect from something that he would be involved in, and it never felt weak or began to falter. Our basis for R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead is rooted in the story of Cassie, Sam and Finn moving to the rural town of Red Haven. It's never actually said, but I got the implication that the husband/father passed away at some point and that's why it's just them three and why they're moving out of New York. Why is it always New York? Anyway, right after they move in the Sheriff is there to greet them and talks up the town as if it's the greatest place to live on the entire planet-veggie festival and all. I'm going to side step for a second and say that this flick ended up being a really solid coming of age story out of what Sam and Becka have to endure to bring Red Haven back from the brink and save everyone and everything-and the ending actually ended up being kind of sad and one that I won't forget for awhile. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So Sam is sick of Finn and their mom's "shit" (I put that in quotes because at the beginning here Sam is a snotty thirteen year old punk that needs to learn about life still) as well as being annoyed about constantly getting reminded that Finn is going to be eighteen in a couple of days. That plays a role in a minute. Sam decides to steal Mr. Palmer's prized pumpkin out of his barn as a way to rebel and to be an asshole, and this is when everything starts opening up about the curse of the town and Finn suddenly disappears because he becomes the new sacrifice for the cursed mound to keep the harvest going... and the year for kids to be "ripe" for this to happen is when they turn eighteen. Also, once this happens, everyone automatically forgets they even existed as part of the curse as well. Fun. R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead surprised me in quite a few different ways and to be honest, I already knew that I was going to dig this flick in the first place. The only other R.L. Stine flick that I remember watching some years ago to write a review on here for was Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It and now that I do think about it-that movie was a lot of fun too. I'm not going to say anything else zits and zombies-just go on Tubi and watch this piece. I don't care if it's right now, I don't care if it's your birthday and I don't care if it's Christmas time-you owe it to yourself and to R.L. Stine as a fan to have a good time with this one. It's time to move on out to Red Haven and figure out what this curse is all about. And pilfer a pumpkin from Palmer's farm. 

Valentine

 

In a similarly strained and homogenized culture from the early 2000's, Valentine sits among it's peers as a solid piece of work that delights and shines the smiles of fans which love films like the Scream franchise and I Know What You Did Last Summer. I've always been a big fan of Scream and am honestly stoked about the release of Scream 7 towards the end of this month-also, valentine's day is going to be here in less than a week as well, so what better time than now to consume something like a sleek and cleanly produced slasher such as Valentine. This was put out in 2001 and I swear that I watched this at an ex-girlfriend's house when I was with them at the time, but I might also be thinking of the My Bloody Valentine remake. Either way, Valentine is a fantastic entry and if you are indeed a fan of this type of mainstream slasher from that era, you can't miss this. It's chock full of actors that we all know like Denise Richards, Katherine Heigl, Daniel Cosgrove-the list here is heavy and it definitely adds the weight that it needs to carry itself. Valentine starts off with our five girls at a valentine's day dance during what seems like junior high with this buck-toothed nerd named Jeremy Melton. Every single one of them says no to him when he asks them individually if they would like to dance, but the only one that doesn't quite say no to him is Dorothy, and they end up making out under the bleachers. We'll get to this point later, but here in seventh grade or whatever age they are, Dorothy is a bigger girl (which I was secretly cheering Jeremy on for landing) and we all know how teens and pre-teens are-they are both targets because of their 'imperfections'. So a group of asshole boys decide that it would be hilarious to dump the dance punch on him, make fun of him and bully him for making out with Dorothy, whom I already mentioned, was a big girl. Now we need to fast forward ten plus years when everyone is in their early twenties and are past all of the bullshit that took place a decade prior. Here's where I have to point out the structure of Valentine being weak and strong at the same time because the amount of red herrings on display here is fucking staggering because it quite literally could be anyone-but if you can cut through everything as the film progresses, you'll be able to figure out who is the one wearing the cherub mask while they disfigure all of our main ladies on valentine's day. The five are Paige, Kate, Lily, Dorothy and Shelley. Shelley is the first one to bite it pretty early here, probably within the first fifteen or maybe even twenty minutes. The other tell here too is when said ladies are going to get whacked, they receive a valentine's day card that say things like "'Tis a well know fact that beauty is skin deep, savor the taste... you are what you eat. Love JM" which is a direct line to make you think that this shit is happening and the girls are getting snuffed because of that Jeremy Melton kid. Easy enough, right? It's not that simple. There's also a Jason Marquette who is creepy and talks about himself in third person and happens to have the JM initials-but there's also Evan Wheeler, Gary Taylor, Campbell Morris, Max Raimi... the list of possibilities for who the killer cherub is here like I said earlier is staggering. As I stated though, if you're really paying attention and are able to slice through everything that's going on, you'll get it. I did actually predict who was the one unaliving everyone, and to be honest when Valentine came to a close, it was satisfying. It really was. I'm a fan of slashers anyway so me digging this movie wasn't to difficult and having some of the specific actresses that are here helped things too-but I really enjoyed this flick. I'm going to end here with saying what my favorite kill was and that was probably how Denise Richards' character (Paige) gets hers-she's chillin' in the hot tub at Dorothy's valentines party, and out of nowhere the cherub comes outside and slides the plastic cover over the hot tub. He also has a giant concrete drill and is trying to drill her to death while she's trapped in the hot tub, and eventually clips her shoulder, which leads to him just taking the cover off and tossing the drill in the water to fry her ass. What a great way to go out. Happy Valentine's Day and savor that flavor. You are what you eat. So I'm going to eat a bunch of chocolate. Also, Dorothy is the big girl in the beginning of the film, and she ends up being a rich, sexy, snobby woman who talks through her teeth all the time and it really bothered me. There's that piece of information. I'm done now.